Category: Writing Process
-
The Question That Started Everything: Is Deletion Murder?
There’s a question at the heart of The Sapient Chronicles that shows up almost immediately. Not buried halfway through the book. Not saved for a dramatic reveal. Right there, near the beginning, before you fully understand the world, before you fully understand the stakes, the story quietly asks: Is deletion murder? But here’s what makes…
-
It Doesn’t Really Matter If AI Is Alive. What Matters Is If It Believes It Is.
I’ve been asked this question quite a bit: “Where did you get the idea for The Sapient Chronicles?” I wish I had a clean, cinematic answer. Something like, “It hit me all at once,” or “I woke up at 2:00 AM and wrote the whole thing in a single burst of genius.” That’s not how…
-
The Research and Ideas That Shaped The Sapient Chronicles
One of the questions writers get asked a lot, especially when they write science fiction, is this: How much of this did you make up, and how much of it came from real research? For me, the answer is both. “I wanted to write a world that felt inhabited, a world shaped by real ideas,…
-
Designing the Sapients: Creating Distinct Artificial Superintelligences
When I began building the world of 2115, I knew one thing had to be true above all else: The Pantheon of Nine could not feel like typical AI. We have all seen that story before; cold, calculating systems that optimize outcomes and quietly decide humanity is inefficient. That is not the story I wanted to…
-
Building a Believable World Set in the Year 2115
When I first began shaping the world of this story, I had to answer a foundational question: Why 2115? The answer is actually pretty simple. I wanted the future to feel real… but not fragile. If you set a story too close to the present, you run the risk of being proven wrong before the…
-
Saving the Prologue I Couldn’t Keep
The only thing slightly less painful than hearing someone say, “Your baby is ugly,” is hearing, “Your baby is not as cute as you think it is.” I am relieved to report that no one has said the former about my book. The latter, however, has been said, diplomatically of course, about the prologue. The…