Over the next few weeks, you’re going to see a lot of promotional material in support of my book release for Astrojuggernaut. I’m very proud of the ROCK STARS series, so I want to make sure it finds as wide as audience as possible. In the old days, publishers financed elaborate promotional efforts including signing tours, newspaper and magazine ads, sometimes even commercials on network TV. Those days are over. In 2026, unless you’re, well, already on international bestseller lists, any marketing efforts fall on you, the author — which, in this case, is me. So I’m gonna do everything I can on a budget of effectively zero, especially since I won’t charge a penny for the EPUB, electronic release of Volume I.
There’s very little consensus on how to publicize a space fantasy novel that isn’t part of an ongoing, lucrative series. I don’t know how to do it and apparently neither does anyone else. So I asked myself, Carv, if Astrojuggernaut were a movie, how would you go about creating a promotional campaign for that? Because we all know how movie publicity works; we’ve all seen the posters and watched the trailers and listened to the soundtrack music and so on. In some cases, it’s almost as much fun as watching the movie!
So that, I confess to you now, is where artificial intelligence must needs step into the frame.
For reasons that will become especially clear after Volume III hits the streets, I have mixed feelings about AI-generated content. The truth is it yields some pretty interesting stuff, often via software that’s freely available online. I’ve been working with AI over the last few months because I know it’ll threaten my job(s) in the very near future. I want to be ready to use it as a tool rather than join the early casualties in what I fear will be an inflection point in the cold war between wealth and labor. Know your enemy, that’s what I say.
But AI can also be our friend. Just like the internet, it’s both an amazingly convenient source of entertainment and enlightenment and, quite possibly, the imminent assassin of capitalism as we know it.
My heartfelt promise to you is you will never see my name on a piece of fiction writing that was actually composed by AI. I wrote all three of the ROCK STARS novels (essentially one long narrative as told by a tag team of characters) myself and would never delegate that to anyone including computer software. But I do use word processing software, obviously, and I’ve been using Photoshop for years to improve my admittedly limited visual arts skills. I see what I’m about to tell you as a continuation of that 21st-century tool use. Your opinion may well vary.
You’ll see visual art here and elsewhere, probably including short videos, most of which was finished in AI. In every case those illustrations began as detailed textual prompts and, in several cases, line drawings in pencil and ink. The content of that art will be exactly what I imagined in my head and, again, often drew in unfinished sketches. You’ll hear a snippet of rock music, ostensibly performed and recorded by the band in the novel. That music was generated by AI in response to a detailed verbal prompt that included the key and a full set of lyrics. If you see fit to get mad at me for that, I get it. I don’t blame you. I too am worried about the fate of human artists, and this feels a bit like shaking hands with the enemy. But maybe that’s just where we are now. I’m not going to deprive myself of a great resource when I know how much of the concept work was mine and mine only.
Looking back at the thousands of books I’ve read over half a century of life, I think one of the most influential on me was The Art of Star Wars, edited by Carol Titelman for release in 1979. I must’ve read that thing a dozen times and bought it at least twice. It contains a full copy of George Lucas’s Episode IV screenplay along with production paintings, thumbnail sketches, photos of creature maquettes and banks of storyboards. When Lucas was shopping his Flash Gordon tribute act around Hollywood in the early 1970s, he realized words on paper wouldn’t make as enticing an impression as the visuals they described, so he commissioned aerospace illustrator Ralph McQuarrie to paint several key scenes. There’s good reason to believe it was McQuarrie who came up with such iconic designs as Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber, Darth Vader’s helmet and C-3PO’s physique. Then, when the project was greenlit, Lucas hired dozens of incredible artists including Joe Johnston to help him visualize his own imagination. At that point the Star Wars Galaxy became a team effort, a collaboration that continued through Doug Chiang’s design work on the prequels.
I’ve always envied Lucas that opportunity. Imagine being able to walk into a room full of fresh, new paintings by top-notch artists, images of planets and vehicles and beings never seen before on planet earth, and getting to say, “Yea. Nay. No, this won’t work. This is OK. Take the fin off this design and slap it on this other one. I’m rejecting all these. This one’s pretty good, but paint it again with the guns facing forward and a satellite dish on the back.” I know plenty of incredible artists, but I can’t afford to pay them a studio salary in exchange for keeping them around and busily working as an artistic resource. Instead what you’ll get is the budget alternative: I’m using AI to make my own art look better than I know how to make it.
But Carv, you say, couldn’t you just learn how to draw like Michelangelo and paint acrylic illustrations and sculpt clay maquettes? I mean … You know I have a full-time-plus day job right? And do you know how to do all those things? If you do, I’m impressed, but surely you wouldn’t be willing to volunteer your time and expertise to the online release of a free space opera novel. Or would you?
Now hear this! If you read Astrojuggernaut or its sequels and feel moved to turn words into visuals, music or other entertainment, be my guest! I own the copyright on all three novels, but I have no intention, at least for the time being, of squashing anyone’s enthusiasm when it comes to diving into the sandbox that is ROCK STARS “IP.” It’d be a dream come true for me if some of you use this series of novels as a springboard for further adventures in storytelling. If you do, thank you so much, and please let me know how I can help you, the artist, broadcast those efforts to others who might be inspired to play along. Just be sure to give credit to AI if and however you see fit to use it! I promise you I will always do the same.
Brace yourself: Valentine’s Day’s less than three weeks away, so I’m about to launch as exciting a promotional campaign as I can possibly muster. Hello, fellow space opera and prog music lovers! Let’s rock!
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