The indie publishing world accepts undisclosed ghostwriting—where someone else writes the prose and the credited author takes full credit—but treats AI-generated book covers as a betrayal of readers’ trust. This is completely ass-backwards. The line that matters to me is simple: did the credited author actually write the story? I don’t care how the cover was made. And why should I? How did we get to a point where fraudulent authorship practices are dismissed as “just business” but marketing materials created with AI-assistance are some kind of moral crisis?
Don’t Lecture Me About AI Ethics While Typing on Blood Cobalt
A Twitter user called me unethical for defending AI in the creation of book covers. “It is certainly unethical to use AI in the creation process of anything intended to be sold for profit,” they declared—while typing on a device built with components sourced through child slave labor and weaponized rape. Six-year-olds work 12-hour days in the DRC to fund armed militias. Indigenous communities lose their water to lithium extraction. Rare earth mining poisons entire provinces. Every electronic device you touch on a daily basis requires human suffering on a scale you probably can’t comprehend. But an indie author using AI for marketing? That’s the great moral crisis facing us today. So let’s talk about principles—and why critics can’t answer basic questions about their own.
Far More Authors Than You Think Are Using AI—Guess How Many Won’t Admit It?
Authors are quietly using AI for covers, marketing, research, plotting, and more, while anti-AI activists rage impotently on Twitter and threaten boycotts on BookTok that never materialize. When a Midjourney-generated cover won a fantasy reader popularity contest, 2,500 scrutinizing fans couldn’t spot it. Only forensic metadata analysis revealed the truth. The backlash came after disclosure, not before. Authors who admit AI use fear review-bombing and boycott threats. Authors who stay silent? They face nothing and collect their royalties because readers can’t tell and frankly DGAF. At least 45% of all authors now use AI for their work in some fashion—and you won’t believe how many of them don’t admit it.
Picking the Best AI Video Model for Book Promo Videos and Trailers
I’ve been drowning in AI video model options while building promo videos and trailers for “Doors to the Stars.” Google Veo 3? Kling 2.5? Runway Gen-4? Sora 2? The marketing claims all sound identical—until you actually test them. Mixing the wrong model to the wrong shot wastes hours (and dollars) generating unusable footage. I’ve researched the major players included in Freepik’s umbrella subscription to figure out which models excel at what, and the differences matter more than you’d think. The lessons I learned about matching AI video tools to actual storytelling needs will save you time and money.
How I Plan to Build 1,500 Readers from Scratch in Four Months
I have 123 days to launch Doors to the Stars with the wrong audience and no real platform. My Twitter followers are mostly middle-aged men, not young women who want dark YA space opera. Email lists convert 40x better than social media, so I’m building 1,500 engaged subscribers from scratch in four months using reader magnets, group promotions, and strategic ads with a $2K budget. The book is good—I know that. My fear is that quality doesn’t matter if no one sees it. I’m documenting everything publicly with real numbers and real failures. This will either work or become a very public lesson in how not to launch a book.
He Who Saves His Country Does Not Violate Any Law
Napoleon once said, “He who saves his country does not violate any law.” Two centuries later, another world leader echoed those exact words nearly verbatim. Those aren’t the words of a constitutional conservative—they’re the logic every autocrat uses to dismantle democracy. So why is half the country cheering instead of recognizing the pattern? Because MAGA has convinced itself the republic already fell to a deep state coup, which justifies any measure—even unconstitutional ones—as restoration rather than violation. But you can’t save a Republic from a coup that never happened. And scholars of democratic erosion will tell you we’re following the exact playbook that killed democracies in Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela.
An Open Letter to r/Republican on Reddit
I was permanently banned from r/Republican for warning that the precedents conservatives celebrate today become the powers they’ll face tomorrow. Not for opposing Republican values—for defending them. Not for abandoning conservative principles—for taking them seriously. My crime? Making a constitutional argument about executive overreach and institutional constraints from an explicitly conservative framework. Apparently that makes me “anti-Republican.” If raising concerns about abandoning the checks and balances our oaths require us to defend is now grounds for expulsion, then “Republican” no longer means what I spent my life thinking it meant. And that should trouble Republicans far more than it troubles me.
My Oath Didn’t Expire. Neither Did Yours.
In January 1994, I swore an oath to defend the Constitution. As far as I’m aware that oath has no expiration date. I’ve voted Republican my entire life. But I’m now watching conservatives make a catastrophic strategic error: dismantling constitutional constraints to empower Trump, without realizing these same tools—deportation infrastructure, normalized defiance of courts, purged oversight—will inevitably transfer to a Democratic president they’ll despise. MAGA isn’t building durable conservative power; they’re eliminating the very safeguards that protect our values when power changes hands. The machinery they’re cheering today can be repurposed against us tomorrow. So I’m asking you—one veteran to another, one conservative to another, one American to another: Stop celebrating and start thinking. Think about the system you’re building. Think about who inherits it. Think about whether you’d accept these same powers in the hands of a President you despise. Because that’s coming. Not maybe. Guaranteed. Our oath is being tested right now, in real-time. The question is will we honor it?
Things Aren’t as Bad as They Seem; They’re Much Worse
In March 2025, the V-Dem Institute warned the U.S. was “on track to lose its democracy status in six months.” It’s October 2025. We’re there. I’ve been tracking what I thought were three separate crises for months: constitutional collapse, genocide infrastructure, and unchecked executive power. I was wrong. They’re not separate—they’re components of a single, integrated authoritarian mechanism where each requires the others. This isn’t partisan catastrophizing. It’s pattern recognition backed by international democracy monitors, genocide scholars, and constitutional experts. The window for prevention is closing. I’m a U.S. Army veteran and lifelong Republican-voter, and I’m sounding the alarm—before it’s too late.
#NoKings isn’t Hyperbole
Someone on Twitter said #NoKings is just grandstanding from people who lost, that Trump’s power grab doesn’t approach monarchy—but they’re historically illiterate. Most kings throughout history had less power than Trump claims: they couldn’t fire every official, ignore parliaments, or eliminate institutions that constrained them because financial dependency, nobles with armies, and customary law weren’t ideals but survival mechanisms. Trump claims authority to purge agencies, ignore Congress, override courts, and centralize all executive power personally through “unitary executive theory”—control most monarchs never possessed. The Founders fought a revolution against exactly this, built an entire constitutional system to prevent it, and traitors in America are dismantling it voluntarily while calling themselves patriots.
The Annex 