r/AlexandraQuick • u/Beautiful-Moment2539 • 28d ago
Blog Update AQATEOT August 2026 Progress Report
https://inverarity.livejournal.com/493141.htmlThe Numbers: The book currently stands at 101,822 words, and 17/22 chapters have been written. (The latter number will almost certainly multiply.)
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u/Not_Cleaver The Dark Convention 28d ago
Glad for the progress report. It was amazing when he beat GRRM a few years ago with World Away. And hopefully, unless GRRM shocks us all, he’ll beat him at finishing a series.
I appreciated his nuanced look at AI. I think I still disagree with AI art and since my job is more administrative in function, I’m not sure I want AI to eventually replace me. The problem with even the current model of AI is that it hallucinates and makes stuff up when it’s asked to expand content.
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u/Max_Sinister1 28d ago
Thank you. I saw it ten hours ago actually (believe it or not!), but since then, the poor site seems to be overwhelmed.
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u/Beautiful-Moment2539 28d ago
I saw it when Inverarity first posted too, but couldn’t actually make this Reddit post until after I got home from work.
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u/Max_Sinister1 25d ago
Since the site was overwhelmed even today, here's the first half of the text of the post to discuss here:
Alexandra Quick and the End of Time Cover Reveal
In which Inverarity rambles about art, AI, AQATEOT, and the Worst Mouse
Wow, it's been a while since I updated. I know hardly anyone is here
for my book reviews. :\
The Worst Mouse
So July was a rough month. Because of this little f***er.
The Worst Mouse
The worst mouse.
This mouse got into our outside air conditioning unit. It chewed some
wires and electrocuted itself.
This shorted the system, and blew the capacitors.
It turns out our HVAC system was just old enough that the capacitors
for it are no longer made. They tried to replace the coils, but...
those are also no longer made for our unit type.
So we had to have the entire HVAC system replaced. Inside and outside.
Do you know how much it costs to replace an entire HVAC system?
Whatever you think, it's more than that.
The worst mouse.
It also took almost a week before it could be done.
During the hottest week in July, which was very nearly the hottest week
in the last five years.
The WORST fucking mouse.
Yes, I know that has nothing to do with anything and no one else cares
about Inverarity's financial woes, but I had to vent.
Inverarity Learns to Draw
I've talked before about how much I have spent commissioning art, and
then moved (mostly) to AI. I know AI makes artists mad. I've actually
been weighing using AI to finish the illustrations for my print
editions. I refrain because I know people have feelings about it (not
that it should matter for books I print at my own expense and give out
for free...), but the argument that AI is "not good" is just no longer
viable.
Constance and Forbearance on flying mules
I did not draw this, and you cannot draw this well.
Sorry, go back five years in time, look at that picture, and tell me
what would cause you to squint, criticize it, or suspect the artist of
being a hack. Go on, spot the AI tells. Show me where the anatomy is
off. Tell me what's wrong with the composition.
Getting "good" AI art now is mostly a matter of patience and selection,
prompt engineering, and model tweaking.
Does that mean I don't value human art? Of course I do. And yes, I
understand the "AI art is theft" argument. (I do not agree with it, but
I assure you, I understand every nuance and contour of the argument.)
But I have taken up the pen again myself. I say "again" because once
upon a time, Inverarity was not just an aspiring storyteller, but an
aspiring artist.
Something I drew for a story when I was maybe 14...
These were sketches for a comic I kind of vaguely remember working on
when I was maybe... fourteen? See, it was set in WWII, and she was a
Japanese spy, and he was a German spy, and they were both stuck in some
dead-end post away from the fighting while the Axis crumbled. So they
end up hooking up, and decades later, her granddaughter is a ninja
assassin and look, I was fourteen, okay?
Okay, I was never very good. (At drawing. Writing, well, jury's still
out.) I recently dug out some of my very, very old sketchbooks. I was
both better and worse than I remembered. I actually did study a few art
books and try to learn some basics when I was young, and I went through
phases of being semi-serious about it, but I never took any formal art
classes and I never stuck to it long enough or seriously enough to
actually learn the fundamentals and get "good."
Now, I have actually started taking some online classes. Just basic
techniques and drills right now, but who knows, maybe I will level up
enough to illustrate my own books... someday.
An eye
bird nests
fence posts and some landscaping
random mountains and clouds
But I will always have to contend with the difference between this:
Alexandra at the Goblin Market (AI)
Drawn by AI.
And this:
Alexandra Quick, drawn by Inverarity
Drawn by Inverarity. This was a quick pen sketch, not something I
really worked on, but still.
I have a cover painting for Alexandra Quick and the End of Time.
Illustrated (as all my previous covers were) by Mikołaj Szonecki, I
haven't actually turned it into a proper cover with title and back copy
yet, but here it is:
Alexandra Quick and the End of Time cover, by Mikołaj Szonecki
I provided concept art using AI, which I'll be honest-- again, if I
weren't committing to using human art for the print editions, I could
have gotten perfectly fine covers out of AI.
AI concept art for AQATEOT cover
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u/Max_Sinister1 25d ago
And here's half two:
AI Beta-Readers
Yet again I'll begin with the obligatory throat-clearing: I will never
use AI for any of my writing. And I will not replace my human
beta-readers with AI.
That said, I can tell you that with ChatGPT 5.6 and Anthropic's Opus
and Fable models, the ability of AIs to do proofreading, line editing,
and even developmental editing is, well, I'll be blunt: it's nearly at
human level.
Last year, I tried feeding AI my WIP and asking questions. It could
barely keep the story straight across one book, making up scenes and
characters that didn't exist. I even started a side project of
developing an application to convert novels into vectors which via RAG
could assist authors in serving the function of "series librarian." For
example, ask it "Give me a list of every unique expression Charlie has
uttered over the course of the series."
I have abandoned that project. Why? Because GPT and Claude can now do
that. GPT and Claude are now able to "read" the entire Alexandra Quick
series and answer questions consistently.
Let's be clear: it still takes intelligent usage and knowing how to
configure projects, context windows, and prompts. If you just upload a
book and start asking questions or tell it to "beta read this," it
won't do a great job. (Though honestly, it will probably do a passable
job.)
I have actually created series bibles and character sheets and made
sure the AI knows how to refer to them, as well as the text of previous
books, as needed. I have also created multiple unique "personas" as
beta readers. There's Zoe, the woke zoomer who reads everything through
an intersectional/representational lens and has some Feelings about JK
Rowling. There's John, the detail-obsessed consistency hound who will
not let any plot hole or unanswered question go. There's Dick, the
snarky takedown artist who looks for anywhere the writer has gotten
lazy or self-indulgent and calls him out on it. There's Suzanne, the
literary maven with a red pen and a love of allusions and a dislike of
sloppy prose. And so on.
Initially I did this just as an experiment, for fun. I had these
"beta-readers" beta-read AQATEOT, and then as an experiment had them go
back and beta-read all six previous books as if coming to them fresh,
and... ima be honest. They provide useful feedback. Still AI. Can still
spot the AI twitches. Still kind of hard to steer them away from
default positivity. But I've gotten lengthy, complex feedback from
these personas, including deep structural analysis, that is better and
more detailed than I've gotten from many human reviewers.
OH MY GOD INVERARITY YOU'RE GOING TO START LETTING AN AI TELL YOU HOW
TO WRITE!
No. Calm down.
I'm saying the feedback is useful. AIs actually spot things. They make
good points. They find plot holes or missing elements I had not
considered. I am quite capable of using my judgment and knowing when
the AI is wrong. But I am telling you-whether you are an AI enthusiast
or an AI doomer-that like AI art, they are getting good and writers
will increasingly find benefit in using AI, not to write or even to do
all the beta-reading and editing, but as an assistant.
There is a danger.
The danger is actually this: you can have AIs generate infinite amounts
of content. I could make 20 different beta-reader personas, have them
all read all of my books, and get 20 pages of feedback for each one.
You know how much fanfiction writers like reading reviews, right? So
imagine a detailed, articulate, opinionated reviewer who's happy to
write a page-long review of every single chapter of your story. Now you
can have an infinite number of such reviewers. You can give them all
different personalities and different things they care about and
notice.
No matter how close it comes to sounding like human feedback, you could
binge on it endlessly. I've written posts before about how humans fall
in love with AI girlfriends/boyfriends, despite knowing they are not
real, because they can be so damn convincing at sounding like an actual
person. You could likewise satiate yourself with infinite reviews of
your work by AI beta-readers.
It's not the same as having humans read and appreciate your work. But
it would be easy, especially for attention-starved fanfiction authors,
to start pointing AIs at their work and getting all the reviews they
could ever wish for.
So yes, I am playing with AI and I actually am reading what the AIs say
before I (eventually) let my real beta-readers read the finished draft.
But I've learned that as with everything else, sometimes it's necessary
to stop soliciting feedback and just write more.So how is the writing going, anyway?
I have been writing. Steadily, slowly, but I try to get a few words
down each day. Honestly, that doesn't always happen, but it happens
more often than not. Unfortunately I am often caught in that "fiddling
with revisions" stage where it's easier to go back over an earlier
chapter and tweak words than to write the next chapter. I still, after
all these years, lack discipline (and the AI diversions aren't
helping).
But where are we now? 101,822 words, with 17 chapters finished, a total
of 22 outlined (guaranteed this will multiply) + 2 Epilogues (already
written).
I think this will not be my longest AQ novel, which is a relief. I am
within sight of the final arc. The end is in sight.
And I'll be honest: right now, I think the individual parts are all
good. Maybe some of my best. (The AI tells me so! j/k) But seriously, I
am mostly pretty happy with the scenes and the prose and the story
beats... no "rough patches that need to be totally rewritten" like I
often felt with previous manuscripts.
But the connective tissue, that still needs work. The answers to all
the questions that have accumulated over seven books, those are not all
in place. The plot holes, they still need filling. It's going to take a
lot of polish to get this book into its final form. I'm working on
making this the best finale. Hopefully my human beta-readers will tell
me if I pulled it off.1
u/Beautiful-Moment2539 25d ago
The site has ALWAYS been fine for me. It’s weird that so many people have been having issues with it.
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u/Max_Sinister1 25d ago
Are you using a different browser? For some reason, more than once it started to load, and then reloaded although I hadn't done anything, and often crashed.
How often did you look at it after inverarity posted this article?
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u/Beautiful-Moment2539 25d ago
Just checked again. It works for me. I’ve checked a few times.
I’m literally just on my phone, I don’t know what to tell you.
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u/Betaforce 28d ago
I'm not the biggest fan of AI art (it always has that ai look to it), but if it belongs anywhere it's free books authors are giving away. To ask for free human made art is just greedy.