I have made a decision. (It’s not a bad thing, promise.)

By now, most of you have heard about the Anthropic settlement regarding the theft of books to train AI systems. I had a significant number of books in the class action, and I made the decision to file my claims for those books.

Should the payments go out as expected, I will be taking the settlement money, stashing it away for my life expenses, and making certain alterations to my schedule.

First, after the books I’m working on are finished, I will be exclusively working on series finishers. These are the final book of a series.

Examples:

• The Edge of Midnight
• Dual Nature (Sean #2)
• Deaths’ Door (Fox Witch #3)
• Tales of Catalina de la Corona #2

It does not include books with two or more left in the series. Examples:

• Jesse Alexander (two books left)
• Dae Portals (two books left at a minimum)
• Sandra/Jonas (two books left)

Note: that is not the complete list for either category, just examples of what’s going on.

There will be a catch: every third finisher I write, I will progress one of the series with only two books left. (See the second list.)

The harsh reality of the situation is this: AI is absolutely trashing the book world, filling it with mindless drivel “penned” by people with ideas and no skill. Ideas can be great. I get wanting to write a story. But having AI write it for you is not writing. It’s vomiting ideas.

These are not the same thing. Anyone can create ideas for a story.

I am not a fan of AI replacing human creativity. Doing my dishes? Helping to make dinner? Cleaning my home? I would welcome my AI overlords with open arms. These things free up my time so I can write more words. But art, creativity, and everything it means to have a human spirit needs to be made by humans, not some computer software program leeching off the actual humans (usually without compensation or permission) to make someone feel like they have artistry and skill when they do not.

These are my opinions, and I’m not going to be arguing with any of you over them.

Hell, I don’t even trust Word’s spell checker, and I have just about every damned “tool” offered turned off because I want my books to have the human touch. I don’t want my book to have actually been written by some other author who had their heart’s work lifted without compensation or permission.

So, that’s where things are at; should the settlement payments start coming as anticipated, I will be pausing my main series for a period of a year or two (with rogue publications coming through as they’ll be play projects in the mean time) so I can get all the old series finished and off my plate.

I’ve been thinking about this pivot for a while, and the reality is? The main series are not truly hurt by having a gap, and it’s time to give the older series closure despite their lack of sales, small fan bases, and so on. (And that’s fine. This settlement just means I can afford to do it, so I’m going to take advantage of the opportunity.)

This way, it gets done… and this way, I don’t take too many big hits to my earnings because the book pirates are paying their dues.

I know this will upset some of you who only read the Magical Romantic Comedy series. The other books are written by the same person: me. You can like kit kats AND reese’s peanut butter cups, after all.

There’s no reason to only choose one.

Just don’t read the Balancing the Scales series unless you like darker fiction that does not play around regarding trauma, abuse, toxicity, and so on. Those books were not written for the happy go lucky crowd, and that’s fine. They were written for people who wanted to get cut while reading a book.

There is a reason “comedy” isn’t listed in the Witch & Wolf books as part of the series name. Is there humor in the series? Yes. But it’s job isn’t to leave you on the last page laughing.

It’s to take you on an adventure, and on adventures, you might just end up a little battered and bruised.

And here’s the real point behind the commentary: I am not a one trick pony, I have diverse writing interests (and reading interests), and a little adventure is good for the soul. Assigning authors to one very narrow and tiny box just means you miss out on potentially great books. (Give the other stuff a chance. You might even find your next favorite book that way.)

So, there it is. And yes, I understand that I’m the equivalent of a writing dinosaur at this stage, and it’s entirely probable AI will make me (and other authors who refuse to use AI to write their stories) go extinct.

So, I’m in the process of finishing things up, and we’ll see where things go from there. I do not expect this rodeo to last forever, but I’ll hang on for however long I can before getting bucked off.

I hope you all have a good one and that this change of plans doesn’t really bother anybody. The current publication schedule is as follows, and all of these books will be finished before I pursue the change of plans:

• Death Dance (March)
• Game On (November)
• Winter Paradise (December)
• Failed Colony (Possibly December)
• Murder Floof (Possibly December)

Yes, if I manage to get the books done, the Christmas release will be a triple header with a representation from three different pen names. If I don’t finish on time, Failed Colony and Murder Floof will release as soon as they ARE done.

As a reminder, I have a new newsletter signup so you can follow the authors you want. You can check it out here.