Ryan Williamson Commentary

AI Isn’t the Problem: Fraudulent Authorship Is

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?

Ryan Williamson Commentary

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.

Ryan Williamson Commentary

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.

Ryan Williamson Marketing, Tutorials

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.

Ryan Williamson Announcements, Dark Dominion

The Dark Dominion Sequence

The child growing inside her shouldn’t exist. Sarai izt Kviokhi’s bloodline is genetically incompatible with the divine elite—especially The Name, the immortal tyrant who’s ruled the galaxy for three thousand years. But her impossible pregnancy becomes living proof that the Dominion’s entire social foundation is a lie. When word spreads, ancient prophecies resurface and Sarai becomes the target of a destiny she desperately wants to avoid. Abolitionists hunt her daughter for their agendas. The Name seeks her destruction. The only way to save her child is to give them what they fear most: a mother with nothing left to lose and an empire to burn.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Ryan Williamson Doors to the Stars, On Writing

What Actually Makes YA Literature “Young Adult”

A reader challenged me after I posted about “Doors to the Stars,” my YA space opera: aren’t you just writing adult fiction with a teenage protagonist? It’s a sophisticated question that cuts to the heart of YA’s current crisis. The genre has been captured by adult readers, and publishers responded by making seventeen-year-olds act like college students with adult emotional processing. But the answer to what makes fiction YA isn’t about what darkness you include—it’s about something else entirely. When a 13-year-old kills to protect another girl from sexual exploitation, is that YA or adult fiction? The answer might surprise you.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Ryan Williamson On Writing

FernGully and the Last Space Marine: or Why Desperately Seeking “Originality” Is Bullshit

When I started writing “The Stygian Blades” earlier this year, I was nearly petrified by concerns about being “unique” enough. A grizzled mercenary veteran, an exiled jinn, a frostroot-addicted shadow mage—every fantasy heist story you’ve ever read. I was so paralyzed by the familiar elements that I almost never started writing it. Then I posted a simple tweet: “Nothing is original. Every story has already been told—but it hasn’t been told by you.” Three million views later, the response was clear. This fear is epidemic. But here’s what Avatar, Shakespeare, and Bob Dylan all understand about originality that MFA workshops don’t teach.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Ryan Williamson On Writing

Losing My Voice to Find It

A reader loved my book enough to reread it within a month. She ranked it in her top 10 of the year. Then she gave it three stars. Her reason? My protagonist felt like three completely different people wearing the same name. She was absolutely right. I was fighting myself on every page—code-switching between “proper military fantasy” and the literary voice that kept breaking through whenever the story hit real moral weight. She’d caught me mid-transformation, documenting the messy transition from writing what I thought readers wanted to writing in my actual voice. It took me five books and hundreds or thousands of discarded words to find my true voice. But it was worth it.

Ryan Williamson Doomsday Recon

Guest Review: Death or Glory

Goodreads reviewer Joanne Budzien calls Death or Glory one of her top 10 books of 2025—so compelling she reread it within a month, finishing both times in under 24 hours. This middle book in my Doomsday Recon trilogy masterfully blends military action, fantasy, and literary fiction without typical sequel slump. Real stakes, visceral character development, and genre-defying storytelling create something rare: a philosophical war story that never lectures. Budzien’s spoiler-filled review wrestles with an unexpected problem—too much excellent character development—while praising my handling of everything from realistic dialogue to traumatic events. Her verdict? Read it, then immediately continue to Born in Battle for the full emotional impact.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Ryan Williamson Marketing

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.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​