Greetings, everyone.
I wanted to take a little time to share where my creativity comes from, how The Scarlet Project began, and what the tools I use actually contribute to my work.
I have been a creative soul for as long as I can remember. Some of my favorite childhood gifts, even at Christmas, were spiral notebooks, pencils, pens, and colored pencils. The notebooks had to be college ruled. Apparently, I had editorial standards before I had anything to publish.
No crayons, though. Those were for “little kids.” This was a very serious operation.
I remember coming home from morning kindergarten around a quarter after noon and catching the end of Channel 9’s news here in Cincinnati. Al Schottelkotte is a familiar face from those childhood television memories. But the show that captured my imagination was Dark Shadows.
Now, keep in mind that I’m Generation X. Our parents’ ideas about appropriate television viewing were sometimes a little different.
I loved that show. When I discovered Barnabas, I became fascinated with vampires, mysteries, and the possibilities of a world that held more than it first revealed.
A few years later, when I was around eleven to thirteen, a middle school teacher in Bethel, Ohio, saw something in my writing. She encouraged my poetry and stories and helped me cultivate the early ideas that would eventually become The Scarlet Project.
In a classroom of more than twenty-five children, she took the time to tell me that I had something worth developing. What stayed with me was her belief that I had talent and that I should keep writing.
When I became a freshman in high school, we lost touch. She later passed away from cancer. The writing project she had encouraged went into storage, where it remained for many years.
About two years ago, I returned to it.
Since then, that childhood idea has grown into a world spanning nine books: the six-book Scarlet Project series and a three-book prequel. I am enormously proud of what it has become, and I wish she could see it.
Along the way, artificial intelligence tools have helped me organize the work, explore questions, and keep moving creatively. What I did not anticipate was the backlash I would encounter for being open about using them.
So I want to explain my process clearly.
The characters, their relationships, the story, and the prose begin with me. They come from my imagination, my experiences, and, most importantly, my heart. I often dictate my writing, then work through it, revise it, and listen to it again.
I use AI as an assistant in that process: for research support, outlining, organization, and working through the many details involved in an interconnected series. Research still needs checking. Suggestions still need judgment. I decide what belongs in the story.
And yes, I talk to these tools conversationally, as though I were talking to another person. That exchange helps me think. Sometimes explaining an idea aloud is what allows me to understand what I’m trying to do with it.
Over these past two years, that process has helped me develop both this project and my abilities as a writer. It has also encouraged me to return to ideas I might otherwise have left sitting in a notebook.
That is why it is discouraging to see the phrase “AI slop” used as an automatic verdict whenever an author mentions these tools. It assumes something about the work before anyone has read it or asked how it was made.
I understand that people have concerns about AI. Questions about artists’ work, consent, livelihoods, and misleading claims deserve serious discussion. Embracing a tool does not mean dismissing those concerns, and I do not expect everyone to use it or feel the same way I do.
But I do ask that my work be judged on what I have actually written and how I actually use the technology.
Writers have worked with pens, typewriters, word processors, and increasingly sophisticated writing software. Those tools are different, and AI raises questions of its own. For me, the responsibility remains personal: I am accountable for the words I choose to put in front of a reader.
When the third draft of The Scarlet Project: Book One, Awakenings is complete, I plan to work with a human line editor. Human insight, imagination, and experience matter deeply to me. A teacher’s encouragement is part of the reason this story exists at all.
I have been writing since I was a little boy with very particular opinions about notebooks. The tools have changed. My desire to tell stories has been there all along.
I will continue to explore what helps me create: conversations with other writers, notebooks and pens, a tablet, a computer, or artificial intelligence tools. I want to learn, improve, and give this story the care it deserves.
My invitation to you is simple: give it a chance.
Meet the characters. Spend some time in their world. Decide for yourself whether the story moves you, surprises you, or leaves you wanting to turn the page.
That is what I have been working toward since those first college-ruled notebooks.
Best regards-
Jesse
