Sorry to pull you out of the full “J. Thorn Immersion Experience,” but you asked for an explanation, so here it is...
TLDR:
AI stole my joy of making art so I’m not using it to generate anything creatively, such as audio tracks or text. I use it occasionally as a consultant or advisor, but not for anything generative.
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Here’s the longer version:
I’ve been skeptical about AI since Big Blue beat Kasparov in 1997. What I’d seen from AI leading up to the autumn of 2022 was pretty underwhelming. It was the equivalent of a toddler brain. When OpenAI rolled out ChatGPT, that’s when things got interesting.
One of my writer friends tried to get me excited about the opportunity because I hated the thought of it. At that time, I saw the endgame. If Joe Sixpack could come home from work and “ask Siri” to spin up a new novel with him as the main character, custom-tailored to the kind of story Joe liked to read, why would we need authors anymore? In fact, I was asking why we’d need Amazon, or why Amazon would need authors. I saw the future for creatives and it was grim—on demand, customized entertainment generated by AI that would be good enough that 95% of people wouldn’t be able to tell it was AI. Or wouldn’t care. Unfortunately, I still think that’s our future. Human artists, authors, musicians, and creatives will be creating for that 5% who still care, so it’ll be more like a hobby than a career for most creatives. None of us will make money from this anymore except your James Pattersons who will continue selling books to boomers until that generation (and maybe Xers) dies off.
I got swept up in the hype. And as it turned out, I’m pretty good at talking to AI, which is not as easy or common as you would think. From September of 2022 until about November of 2024, I went all in on generative AI. I rapidly built a following with a newsletter about AI for creatives. I sold a course. I was even invited to Austin to speak about it at SXSW in 2024. I was writing AI manuals for authors and publishing them on Amazon. I’d even developed a unique drafting style using AI. I taught ChatGPT how to converse with me in character so that we were performing scenes together rather than just writing them. I used that dialogue in a serialized fiction project.
But then something strange happened. I wasn’t having fun anymore. It turns out, humans enjoy making stuff. Not so much the thing, but the process of making the thing is what matters. You’ve heard those influencer platitudes: “It’s not the journey. It’s the destination.” The Gram is right. For me, when AI generated the words for my story, it no longer felt like my story—even if I told ChatGPT how to tell the story. I would revise and “J. Thorn it” so that the prose was consistent with my style and voice, but it still felt hollow to me. I was disconnected from the art because I didn’t have my hands in the clay.
So I sold my AI newsletter, ironically the biggest acquisition of my career, and gradually started shutting down my author services business. I knew that most writers wouldn’t be able to ignore the siren’s call of ChatGPT, meaning authors would no longer seek out an editor or book coach when they could have AI do it for $20 a month. In addition, I believed I was done making art. I thought, if anyone can use AI to generate fiction effortlessly and the quality was good enough for 95% of readers, what future did I have as a novelist? And if you extrapolate it out to my original dystopian vision (which I still believe is true), there won’t be a need for Amazons, authors, or author services anyway. “Hey, Siri! Make me a book like Stephen King’s THE DARK TOWER but make me Roland.” Or something like that.
I spent almost a year shutting down my business and optimizing my existing fiction back list for “legacy mode,” which means I wanted to “set it and forget.” I was no longer going to actively market, sell, or promote my 30+ novels. Because, what’s the point? I was happy to ride off into the sunset, proud of my accomplishments as a novelist and leaving that identity behind as AI slop flowed freely onto Amazon.
And technically I did. I’m currently enrolled in a Masters of Clinical Mental Health Counseling program so I can become a licensed therapist. I want to spend the last chapter of my professional career and my “retirement” (in quotes because I don’t plan on watching TV and playing pickleball until I die) helping people. Sitting across from another human being, connecting, enjoying the real interaction, and making a few dollars to pay the bills.
That is still my plan. However, something interesting happened after I let go of the commercial expectations for my fiction and stopped trying to get AI to do the writing for me. I felt the urge to create again.
It started innocently enough. The DUSTFALL series I wrote with Glynn James has been a slow burn over the past ten years and we noticed a gradual increase in reviews, royalties, and readership. So much so that I asked Glynn if he was interested in revisiting our shared world and writing book six in the series. He was not, but he gave me his blessing to continue alone if I couldn’t shake the bug.
I couldn’t. For reasons that don’t matter now, I decided to advance the timeline of DUSTFALL another 500 years. I was so curious about what a far-future post-apocalyptic world might look like even FARTHER out. I named the sequel series DUSTRISE, and as they say, the rest is history. It’s probably why you’re reading this now.
To be clear, I like money. I want DUSTRISE to sell. It would be nice to continue to eat. I’ve gotten accustomed to it. But things are so different for me now in the best possible ways. Our children are adults. I’m on a path for a professional license to do the future work I want to do. All of this means I’ve come full circle with my creative expression. Just like I did as a teenager, I’m creating again because the hard, messy, frustrating act of making art fills me up. Even though it feels more like a hobby, there's a renewed fire in my belly. The funny part? One novel a year is a fun passion project for me and yet it’s the expectation for professional authors working for traditional publishers. Interesting...
As serendipity often does, I stumbled across a super niche subgenre of ambient music called, “post-apoc ambient.” As you can probably deduce from the name, it’s instrumental and cinematic music that includes elements you’d find in a post-apoc wasteland such as mechanical noises, industrial percussion, atonal drones, and the occasional melodic hook. I know, right? Not only was this the perfect artistic accompaniment to DUSTRISE, but its the exact type of music I’m really good at producing. Using nothing but field recordings (some recorded with my phone) and my electric guitar, I can use my software (not AI) to alter and manipulate the sounds into a dystopian symphony of destruction. Shout out to Megadeth on that term.
Now, I’m super focused. I’ve simplified my life. My “career” energy is targeting a license to be a professional counselor. My “creative” energy is squarely aimed at DUSTRISE, both the story and the soundscape.
Back to the website and the original question you asked, which was, “I don't understand your website. Can you explain it to me?” Yes!
Once I let go of commercial aspirations, my artistic vision soared to another level. Let’s start with the rationale for this website. I hate social media. Not on it. Won’t ever be again. And if I don’t care about selling books, I had to ask myself, “What should my website do? What function should it serve?” Answer: FUN! I know I’m old, but I remember the very first websites—after Compuserve and AOL. People went to “the information superhighway” because it was fun, entertaining, or interesting.
I returned to first principles.
1. Be interesting. I started by designing an “immersion” website for the reader that feels like an extension of the DUSTFALL/DUSTRISE world. Because this world has a retro-future vibe, I used the most modern HTML coding techniques to create the retro tech aesthetic. The site is entirely code (HTML, CSS, Javascript), meaning even the images are ASCII characters compiled in an SVG file as opposed to the rasterized images you typically see today (like PNG or JPG files). WordPress can suck it.
2. Be a human storyteller and be able to prove it. I wrote the entire first draft of DUSTRISE by hand. The whole thing. Because I like using technology as a tool and not a replacement for creativity, I bought myself a DC-1 tablet with a stylus and wrote on that device so that I could have AI transcribe my handwriting into text I could paste into my open-source word processor (I hate Apple, Meta, Microsoft, and Google—story for another day). Handwriting the first draft was the purest form of story generation I’d ever experienced and I was excited to sit down and write every session. I didn’t use an outline, a production schedule, or deadlines. I wrote about 3-5 times per week, one chapter at a time and nothing more. This entire process forced me to be thoughtful and intentional with the storytelling and it uncovered some true story gems I hope you’ve enjoyed reading.
3. Be a human musician. I put constraints on my music making process. I allowed myself to only use field recordings in the Creative Commons or I recorded them myself. For the tonal elements, I played the notes or chords on my guitar and then used plugins to manipulate the sounds. Again, I did not use AI for any of this. I didn’t even use audio samples from online libraries because I couldn’t verify that the samples hadn’t been generated by AI.
So there’s a long-winded answer to your original question. I’ve released the commercial ambitions of my youth. I’ve stopped caring what other authors think of me. I honestly don’t even care if you read DUSTRISE. I wrote it for myself because I wanted to know what happened next. Maybe you do too?
As a teenager, I wanted nothing more than to be considered an artist. Five decades later, I’ve realized that I’ve been one all along. And now I’m going to start acting like it.
J. Thorn
November, 2025
With no help from ChatGPT.