Brave New Bookshelf

[00:00:00] Welcome to Brave New Bookshelf, a podcast that explores the fascinating intersection of AI and authorship. Join hosts, Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite, as they dive into thought provoking discussions, debunk myths, and highlight the transformative role of AI in the publishing industry.

**Steph Pajonas:** All right. Hi, everybody. Welcome back to Brave New Bookshelf. I'm Steph Pajonas. I'm the COO and CTO of Future Fiction Academy. And I'm joined by my lovely co host, as always, Danica Favorite. Danica, hi.

**Danica Favorite:** How are you? I am Danica favorite. I am the Community Manager at Publish Drive, and we help make your publishing process more simple and more efficient. And one of the ways we do that is with AI. And so since Steph and I are both with companies that have passion for AI as well as in our own personal lives, we love AI.

So, we're here to talk about that with you. Last week, if [00:01:00] you didn't catch our last episode with Melle Amade, she was amazing. I love her tech background and she has such a great business insight into AI and the use of AI. So if you didn't catch that, go back and listen to that. 

**Steph Pajonas:** She even name dropped NASA. That was, whoa.

**Danica Favorite:** Hey, right, NASA. Like, I love that. I mean, one of my favorite parts of the interview was when she was talking about how we're using AI to get people to the moon and Mars and all of that stuff. And whoa, mind blown. As we have been saying all along, we know that AI is kind of a controversial subject in the author and publishing worlds.

But we also recognize that it is in every part of our lives. So let's figure out how to harness it for good and use it ethically and responsibly for authors in ways that are going to benefit our careers. So [00:02:00] today we have an amazing author with us who uses AI for her writing and has some really cool stuff.

Steph, you can tell us a little bit about Rachelle and then we'll have Rachelle introduce herself.

**Steph Pajonas:** Oh, Rachelle's fantastic. I've met her in the past year or so since I've been in the AI space. Really love her and her books. She writes about writing with AI, and she's also put AI into some of her fiction, too. So that's really cool as well. I wanted to introduce guys to Rachelle Ayala. She's here to talk with us today. How you doing, Rachelle?

**Rachelle Ayala:** Doing great. Thanks for having me. 

**Steph Pajonas:** Please introduce yourself.

**Rachelle Ayala:** I'm Rachelle Ayala and it is a pen name and I actually do have a technical background. I was there during the days in the mainframes and have a Ph. D. from Cornell University in Applied Math where we did parallel processing.

We now know that you need parallel processing. For A. I. But yeah, I started writing [00:03:00] fiction about 12 years ago. Well, actually, 14 years ago. But before that, I actually worked on AI with optical character recognition back in the early 90s. We were only going from zero to nine.

That was the big deal. You were trying to. Yeah, it was. I worked at NYNEX science and technology. And they wanted to automate reading checks. So when people wrote their checks, they wanted to be able to read the numbers off the checks. And I do remember all the backpropagation and the feature recognition and all this matrix multiplication and going forwards and backwards, adjusting the weights.

It's so amazing to me that years later, we have LLMs, which are billions of parameters more than our little check writing thing. But I do remember we had a lady she would, she used to sit there and her whole job was an image would flash on, and she was the trainer. The image would flash on [00:04:00] the screen and she would decide if it was a number from 0 through 9. And s

[00:00:00] Welcome to Brave New Bookshelf, a podcast that explores the fascinating intersection of AI and authorship. Join hosts, Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite, as they dive into thought provoking discussions, debunk myths, and highlight the transformative role of AI in the publishing industry.

**Steph Pajonas:** Hi everybody. This is the Brave New Bookshelf and we're here to talk about more AI in publishing. Once again, I'm Steph Pajonas. I am the COO, CTO of Future Fiction Academy and I am also an author of Science Fiction Romance and Space Opera Romance. I have my lovely co host here with me today and we also have a guest but I'm going to introduce Danica.

Danica!

**Danica Favorite:** I'm Danica favorite and I'm the community manager at Publish Drive. And I am like Steph also an author. And so we are very excited today to be here with our fourth episode and [00:01:00] finally starting some guest insights and hopefully something that you can all take away something really valuable.

**Steph Pajonas:** Yeah, we're so excited to finally be having some guests on here instead of just me and Danica talking all the time. But I wanted to mention a few housekeeping issues. I wanted to mention first of all that we are on YouTube. You can find us at youtube. com slash at. Brave New Bookshelf.

It's just like the title of the podcast. So you can find us there if you want to watch us on video instead. We're also on all the major podcast apps by this time. Took a couple of weeks for them to all propagate and get us on there, but we should be on there by this episode at the very least, and we have the website.

It's all up and running. That's also at brave new bookshelf. com. And each one of the episodes that we publish, we have on the website with some major points pulled out of the episode and then a full transcript too. So if we say something in this episode where you're like, Oh, [00:02:00] that sounded really interesting.

I can't remember, what it was, but Steph was talking about such and such. You can go to the website and you can go to the transcript and search it and find whatever it was we were talking about. So we have a guest here today. Her name is Melle Amade and she is here to talk to us. I'm going to let her introduce herself and tell us how she came into AI and publishing and all that good stuff, because we've been in this business for a little bit together and I'm excited for you guys to hear from her.

**Melle Amade Melkumian:** Thanks, Steph. first of all, Steph and Danica, thank you so much for inviting me to talk on Brave New Bookshelf. I'm really excited. I think that there have been a lot of transitions in our industry, and as indie publishers and indie authors, we're seeing the old guard of the last, let's say, five to eight years are starting to transition away supporting authors and away helping them to really move into the AI era, which is [00:03:00] absolutely what we're on. So seeing your organizations come together to create Brave New Bookshelf is fantastic. So I'm really excited to watch the growth of your podcast. My name is Melle Amade. I publish under the name Melle Amade. I have been publishing since 2016. I write fantasy romance and within fantasy romance, I skip around a little bit, which is not a good marketing tactic.

Just want to be clear about that. I also have been a technology marketing director. For about 25 years working at like Hewlett Packard, Northrop Grumman and NASA. It's been an amazing career. I love it. When generative AI came out, I was always already working with companies that used machine learning and you, you use that when you're flying things to Mars and the when generative AI became public and I was, I remember on, I was on a business trip to Miami, which was awesome. And one of my colleagues leaned ov

# Brave New Bookshelf - Episode 3

[00:00:00] Welcome to Brave New Bookshelf, a podcast that explores the fascinating intersection of AI and authorship. Join hosts, Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite, as they dive into thought provoking discussions, debunk myths, and highlight the transformative role of AI in the publishing industry.

**Steph Pajonas:** Hi, everybody. Welcome to the Brave New Bookshelf. We're back again. This is Steph Pajonas. Once again, I am the COO and CTO of the Future Fiction Academy.

And I'm a Fantasy romance, science fiction romance, cozy mystery author with lots of books out. And my co host is Danica. Danica, hi, it's good to see you. 

**Danica Favorite:** Hey, how are you? I'm Danica Favorite and I am the Community Manager at PublishDrive. And I am also an author. I am a multi published author, a hybrid author.

So I'm both traditionally and independently published. My books are out with Harlequin Love Inspired and then I have several indie titles as well. We are just here to talk to you [00:01:00] about AI and hopefully give you some perspectives in publishing that perhaps you haven't thought of and to help educate you as to what AI is, what it isn't, and how we are using AI in our own personal writing.

**Steph Pajonas:** Yeah, we've been thinking about the kinds of questions we want to ask guests who come onto the show with us. Danica came up with this list of three questions that we thought were great way to lead into talking to our guests. And we figured we, we would answer these questions ourselves today.

And then we can talk back and forth about the kinds of stuff that we're using AI for. 

So I'm going to get started by asking Danica, the very first question on the list. And that is, how are you approaching AI? 

**Danica Favorite:** So I am approaching AI with the attitude that it's here to stay. It's not going anywhere.

In fact, I feel like every time I turn around, there's some new "AI" thing that different [00:02:00] products are coming out with. And so the reality is, is it's here. And the truth is, I've been using AI for a long time without realizing it. I just had a recording from a summit that I was on just go live today and someone messaged me about it saying, wow, yeah, I didn't even think about that because I dictate my books and I've been using Dragon Dictation to transcribe my recordings for years. And guess what that's AI and we don't think of it because it wasn't labeled that and suddenly you slap that AI label and people get scared but I think that we have to approach it with this idea of it's already here and so I want to learn how to use it to my best ability so that I can maximize my abilities but also so that I'm not afraid of it and that I'm not left behind because I think that's actually the challenge here with AI is that it isn't that someone said this in a podcast or something that I was listening [00:03:00] to a long time ago.

And I took this attitude as my own. So I apologize for not properly attributing it, but I can't remember who it was, is that the thing with AI, Is it a I isn't going to replace me as a writer that the people what's going to replace me as a writer are other writers who are good at AI and I want my writing to still be there.

I want to still be functioning and doing well as a writer. And so I want to have all the tools at my disposal and regardless of how they're used. I want to have them at my disposal, and I also want to use them responsibly and ethically. That, that, that's how I'm approaching AI. How about you, Steph? How are you approaching AI? 

**Steph Pajonas:** I'm approaching AI the same as you, it's here to stay. I see it in almost every sector of b

Brave New Bookshelf - Episode 2

[00:00:00] Welcome to Brave New Bookshelf, a podcast that explores the fascinating intersection of AI and authorship. Join hosts, Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite, as they dive into thought provoking discussions, debunk myths, and highlight the transformative role of AI in the publishing industry.

**Steph Pajonas:** Okay. Hi, everybody. Welcome. So we're getting off into our episode number two of Brave New Bookshelf. I'm Steph Pajonas, space opera, romance, and cozy mystery author. I don't know. I do a lot of stuff now with my co host Danica. 

**Danica Favorite:** Hi, I'm Danica Favorite. I am a romance author and also co host with Steph Pajonas, as well as the community manager at PublishDrive.

And I have to say this is the first time I've heard you describe what you write a space opera, so that's new and fun. 

**Steph Pajonas:** I know, I usually say sci fi romance, but it's sci fi romance has become very like aliens and monsters, and I tend to write mostly humans in space, so I've been saying space opera romance.

**Danica Favorite:** [00:01:00] I love that. I love that change. I love it. I like that new distinction because you're right. It is one of those things that is changing. 

**Steph Pajonas:** Yeah. 

**Danica Favorite:** But, but I think that's everything in publishing, right? It is ever changing. 

**Steph Pajonas:** It is ever changing. 

**Danica Favorite:** Gotta keep up with the times. 

**Steph Pajonas:** I agree. And I'm also one of the co founders of the Future Fiction Academy and we help authors use AI as part of their writing process and their business processes.

Today we're going to talk a little bit about some basics about AI. What authors can expect from AI. What it is. Where it came from, those sorts of things. It didn't just come out of the sky from aliens. And although that would have been really cool, but 

**Danica Favorite:** I'm gonna say as a fan of ancient aliens and someone who has been secretly working on an ancient aliens book or an alien book, like the dude, it's the aliens.

So I will be happy to give aliens credit. 

**Steph Pajonas:** I'm happy to give aliens credit. That's [00:02:00] so funny because I want to put each and aliens in my next serial. So maybe we'll have to hook up on that. 

**Danica Favorite:** Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

See, we're here to talk about AI, but as always, Steph and I just are like, 

**Steph Pajonas:** let's talk aliens instead.

No, no, no. We're actually going to talk about AI.

So what are some basics that we can talk about to get started with the authors with AI? 

**Danica Favorite:** I think first of all, what we need to understand speaking of aliens, believe it or not. Everyone thinks AI artificial intelligence, I don't know. About you. I haven't seen the new ones, but growing up, I Watched the original Terminator stuff with my dad. That was our thing.

And for a long time, I think that's what we thought AI was where were these Terminator robots coming to get us. And I still think there's a little bit of that fear again, particularly for us who had that kind of stuff in our childhood. And we remember that. But I think we have to pare that down because AI as we [00:03:00] know it now is not that smart. 

And it doesn't even work that way. And Steph, I love how you explain how AI works. So why don't you start about when we're talking about AI, what are we talking about? And how does it work? 

**Steph Pajonas:** It's funny that you mentioned Terminator, because I actually think of AI as the computer on Star Trek.

Brave New Bookshelf - Episode 1

Steph Pajonas: [00:00:00] This is the first, first, first episode of our new podcast, Brave New Bookshelf. And I'm Steph Pajonas and I have Danica Favorite with me. Say hi, Danica. 

Danica Favorite: Hello, good to see everyone. 

Steph Pajonas: We're here, we're going to do a little bit of an introduction into who we are and why we started this podcast and why we are using AI as part of our process as authors.

And I'm sure that some of you won't even know who the heck we are. So let's get started and we'll figure it out as we go along. We're going to have a lot of fun and a lot of laughs. Danica and I like to riff off each other plenty. So we should be having a good time on this podcast. 

Danica Favorite: I think so. I think that that's why when we were talking about doing a podcast, I was like, Oh my goodness, doing this with Steph is going to be so much fun because we do have a good banter between us. And we like to chat and sometimes we get sidetracked. So hopefully we don't do that too [00:01:00] much. And hopefully we also entertain you along the way.

Steph Pajonas: Yeah, absolutely. Why don't you tell us about you, Danica? 

Danica Favorite: All right, so I'm Danica Favorite. I am the Community Manager at PublishDrive. And PublishDrive is a book aggregator that helps authors and publishers distribute their books to the largest worldwide market of any aggregator.

And rather than taking a percentage of your money, we charge a flat monthly fee. So for a lot of authors who are making substantial money, that's a really good deal. And we got into this because as we were looking at publishing and innovations and publishing, the AI thing just kept coming up and kept coming up.

And my boss said to me, hey, we need to do more with AI. Actually, he said it to everyone in the company. And, so this was my contribution to say, Hey, let's start having these conversations and really take a look at what authors and publishers are doing and how we can be part of that conversation and hopefully help [00:02:00] shape what AI is going to look like in publishing in the future.

And the reason that's important to me is because I am also an author. I'm multi published. I am a hybrid author. And so I have 19 books with Harlequin. And then I have, I think, 10 indies. I could be wrong on that. 

Steph Pajonas: It's easy to lose count. 

Danica Favorite: It is! I think that I, I, I sat down and I counted and then I thought, oh, but wait, there's this thing and this thing and this thing that I took down and so it's a lot.

But I think as someone in the author community you hear Everybody talking about AI, this AI, that AI is that AI is good, blah, blah, blah. And once this conversation started coming up, this is important to me as a writer, as a creative. And for me to be part of that conversation and to do the research and to figure out what's really going on.

I think that we're at an incredible [00:03:00] point in the history of publishing where we get to guide that future. And so let's work on guiding that future in a positive direction. 

Steph Pajonas: Oh, yeah. I agree with all of that. Yeah. 

Danica Favorite: Yeah. That's why we're friends. That's why we're doing this together. 

Steph Pajonas: That's why we're doing this together, right?

Danica Favorite: And not, it's an echo chamber because I do feel like there are times where you'll be like, hey, what about this? I'm like, and then I'll say, oh, and so we have those conversations, which I like. I like that ability to run ideas off of each other and be able to come up with something really interesting to bo