17 - Kickstarter, AI Art, and Dragons with Fantasy Author Amy Campbell

In this episode of Brave New Bookshelf, we sit down with fantasy author Amy Campbell to explore how she leverages AI tools like Midjourney and Dall-E to create stunning visuals for her successful Kickstarter campaigns. From dragons to magical cowboys riding Pegasus, Amy shares her journey in using AI to enhance both her writing and the visual elements of her books. We also dive into the challenges of navigating anti-AI sentiment in the creative community and discuss how authors can ethically integrate these powerful tools into their publishing workflows. Visit our website https://bravenewbookshelf.com to view the full episode notes, links and apps mentioned in the episode, and the full transcript.

# 17 - S2E5 - BNB Interview with Amy Campbell

[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:** Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Brave New Bookshelf. I'm one of your hosts, Steph Pajonas. I'm the CTO and COO of the Future Fiction Academy, where we teach authors how to use AI in any part of their business. And just recently, in the last few days, we launched our new AI writing tool. It is free for everyone. And it is called RaptorWrite. And you can find out more about it at futurefictionacademy.com slash raptor. Yes we're really doubling down on the dinosaurs at Future Fiction Academy. Just wait. I'm sure there will be more of them when the time 

comes. 

**Danica Favorite:** about the dinosaur theme. I was showing it off to a friend [00:01:00] yesterday and uh, he's like, what's with the dinosaur theme? And so I told him the whole dinosaur story with Rexy and Raptor he's like, Oh my God, that's brilliant. So keep it up.

**Steph Pajonas:** Keep it up. I'm here, joined, obviously, by my lovely co host, Danica. How are you doing? 

**Danica Favorite:** I'm doing great. Thank you. Danica Favorite. I am the community manager at PublishDrive. And uh, we help authors on the other side of their writing business because we help you distribute your books to the widest worldwide audience. We also help with you doing AI metadata description. As well as royalty splitting and a bunch of cool things.

And while our entire product isn't free the way Raptor Write is we do have every one of our products free at the entry level. So, both of our companies, it's awesome that we're giving people the opportunity to use everything for free! And really get your feet wet. think both Steph and I are just like, we're here to help authors.

And that's really the [00:02:00] whole purpose of the podcast is helping authors get started and really succeed at their publishing journey. And I'm really excited also about Raptor Write. 

**Steph Pajonas:** Yeah, we we offer that in conjunction with a free class that teaches authors, like, the basics about AI. What are tokens? What's temperature? What are all these terms and terminology that we use in AI? And then it gives them access to RaptorWrite to to do the actual writing. So it's now a full fledged, like, free suite, which is 

**Danica Favorite:** yeah, I love that because, you think with both of us and both of our companies that we are with All authors at any stage of their journey can use AI or not. And so that's something again, just we want to emphasize that you don't have to use AI to write your books. You don't have to use AI for marketing. You don't have to use AI for images. You can use or not use AI for whatever. it's really a matter of respecting everyone's choices and cheering each other on and supporting each other. [00:03:00] However, we want to use AI. And that's why I'm really excited for our guest today. 

Okay. Amy Campbell, who is someone we are friends with. She's part of our AI for Authors group. We've followed Amy for quite some time. And she is using AI in such a cool way. And I have to say, she shares stuff about her AI usage and I am just drooling cause I'm like, Oh my gosh, are you kidding me? This was AI. So I want to introduce you all to Amy Campbell.

She uses AI for Kickstarter, which is fantastic because I know a lot of authors really want to do more with Kickstarter and it's become just one more way for authors to further monetize their writing business. And so with that want Amy to tell us a little bit about herself, her writing, and of course her Kickstarter stuff, which is awesome and amazing.

**Amy Campbell:** Hi, Danica and Steph. Thank you so much for having me here. I'm glad to be hanging out with y'all today. So I am someone who, I wanted to be an author from the [00:04:00] time I was like seven years old. I'm the kid who came home with like the stack of books from the library that, my parents panicked about if we were going to lose books, that type of thing. And I, I even wrote like, I was writing by hand books at seven, Wanted to become a published author. So sadly, I became an adult and adult things happened like college and having to have like a real job and stuff. And that was back in the day, before indie publishing to kind of date myself.

I am a Gen X er. Hello, fellow Gen X ers. So that was before indie publishing and like the iPhone, the kindle. They were not anywhere on the horizon. So I was like the writing's not going to happen. I better go be an adult now. And then, indie publishing happened but by that time I was also a librarian at a public library. And public libraries when, Kindle was just a new thing, they were not very open to indie books because of the tsunami of crap we were all told was happening at the time. 

So librarians, [00:05:00] even though we try not to be gatekeepers, are sometimes unfortunately gatekeepers. So for a long time I was like, Oh, I love to write, but I'm not gonna be an indie author because I don't want to write garbage. You know, lo and behold, looking back at 2013, Amy with 2024, Amy here we are. But so, I was a librarian for a while, but then I had a friend who she was, living the dream. She was in the publishing her books on Amazon. And I was like good for her. She's doing what she wants, but I don't have time because I've got kids now I've got a job, blah, blah, blah. 

Then, 2020 happened and COVID came around and I was like, Oh no, what if I never publish a book and then I get COVID?

So in April of 2020, when I sat down on my computer, got my butt in my chair and just started writing, he was like, what are you doing? And I was like, I'm writing a book. And he's like, what? So, I wrote the first book in 11 months. Got it published everywhere. Cause I'm wide and I haven't stopped since then.

I just love to write and I'm glad I'm back doing it again. And I'm excited about AI. And I've kind of determined part of the reason I love [00:06:00] AI is because I feel like I, Missed out on the first the indie gold rush and I don't want to be left behind. But also because I have two kids. This is the world that they're going to grow up in. And my oldest son, he has autism and ADHD. And I really feel that These are going to be tools that will help him live his best life. So I want to understand it and know what's going on with it. So that's part of my author journey and part of my AI journey. 

**Danica Favorite:** am so glad you shared that there. I don't know about you, Steph, but I'm like pulling all these great nuggets out of this because so many things that you and I are passionate about are things that Amy just totally said in her messaging today.

**Steph Pajonas:** I'm the same kid who came back with the stacks of books from the library. I had to have my mom take me to other libraries because I had read all the books at

**Danica Favorite:** Yes, me too. 

**Steph Pajonas:** libraries.

**Danica Favorite:** I like, we've never talked about this, but like, yeah, that was me as a kid too. And I thought I was the weirdo that wait, you've read [00:07:00] every book in this library. Uh Huh.

**Steph Pajonas:** Huh. Yeah.

**Danica Favorite:** that's awesome. So one of the things that you said that I really love and I am glad you brought up, but there's a couple.

So the first one I'm going to mention is this idea of, COVID happened and, you I know Steph's journey is is her, it helped her write after COVID when she had the brain fog and everything. But I also love this idea of recognizing that we live in a different world now and we don't want to die with those stories still within us.

And we want to get those out. And it's, so interesting. You said that I just very low key started a sub stack and that was a recent post that I did where I the same thing in 2020, a little bit differently because I'd always been a writer. But You know, saying to myself, okay, wait, I have this one life to live.

How do I want to spend this life? And I think that lockdown and COVID really made us all aware. And to me, it's fantastic that we have these AI tools that gives someone like you, who was like, wait, I [00:08:00] can't die with these books in me. And I think that that's so true for a lot of people out there who are either writing now or want to write a book.

Hey, you don't have to die with this story still in you. We have ways to help. The other thing I wanted to pull out is I know Steph is super, also super passionate about this one. It is, is your son with the autism and the ADHD. We are so pro AI.

In terms of helping people with disabilities or are differently abled. I'm starting to come to the side where I don't believe that autism and ADHD are disabilities. I think it's a different ability. And I think that they're actually quite gifted and we just need to help them find the tools to use those gifts.

And I'm excited for your son and I'm excited, not just because he has these tools, but because he has a mom who's embracing those tools. So. Yeah, like I just want to give you like a big high five and a big hug and say, Oh, my gosh, what an amazing mom [00:09:00] you are. Yeah. So we, you kind of got into this with your author journey, our first question is, how are you approaching AI in publishing?

And again, I know you started there, but let's talk a little more about that. I'm really curious as I think, Where we'll get into all the Kickstarter stuff and all the other stuff you're doing. That's absolutely amazing.

And I really want our listeners to hear about what you're doing and how you've approached this, because seriously, you just blow my mind every time you post something.

**Steph Pajonas:** Especially the different genres that you've chosen to, to write in as well. Would love to hear about that as well. 

**Amy Campbell:** Yeah, yeah, definitely. I'll talk about both of those. Yeah, so as far as my kind of journey with AI I started off like a lot of people. I was like, what's this AI thing? Is it going to make it so that, no one's going to buy my books anymore? Do I have to be scared of it? And this was back in about the time Joanna Penn started just first talking about Sudowrite and it's very, very early iterations. 

And I kind of played with it then. And I was like, oh, this is cool. But, this is getting [00:10:00] good like is this going to make it so people aren't going to want to buy what I can produce? And I was a brand new author at the time. Are people not going to like my weirdo books?

Are they going to write their own weirdo books with this software and then just leave me in the dust? 

So I approached it from a place of being nervous about it. And then I guess that was probably fall of 2021 or 2022. I don't know, like the years are a blur because I have small children and I'm like, I don't know what happened yesterday, much less two years ago. But it was around the time Jo Penn started talking about Sudowrite. And then, then Midjourney and Chat GPT were just starting to go public. That might've been late 2022. Maybe I forget. Yeah, probably 2022. 

Yeah, so that December of 2022, I opened up ChatGPT just to mess with it, and I was showing somebody, one of my co workers at work, because I was working at a public library at the time, and I was like, hey, hey, Jim, come over here. Let's see what this does. 

And I just put in a prompt, like everyone does like basic [00:11:00] prompts at first. I was like, Write a story about a cat and a dragon or something like that. And it just wrote this very short very plain story about a cat and a dragon. But even then, my, my friend, who's also one of my readers, she was like, Wow, the computer can do this?

And I was like, yeah, it can. Isn't that interesting? And so from there, I was like it's okay. It's cool. Good, but it's not as good as a human, but I think it could be better with a human. 

So, let me see what this does. Let me investigate it. Maybe I don't need to be scared of it. So I was exploring it that way. And then the same with AI art, like, at first, when Midjourney came out, I also thought, oh this is. They trained it on all these data sets. It's stealing people's art, but then also because I'm a librarian, I naturally am curious and like to look into things. So I discovered more about how these things , what they did scrape and, they learn a lot like we do by looking at things.

You can probably tell the listeners can't see it, but I've got a [00:12:00] bunch of model horses behind me. I'm a horse girl from a very young age. So the only thing I can draw by hand is a horse because I see them all the time. That's what I would draw as a kid. I cannot draw a person, but I can draw a pretty darn good horse. 

So if people ask for me to sign their book and put a drawing in it, they get a horse. And that's because I see horses all the time. 

So Midjourney, they see dogs all the time or people's faces or supermodels. So it can do those like that's how it learned to do that. So this does learn a lot like me and just playing with some of the different models. Like with Midjourney, I don't see it noted anywhere, but I'm kind of sure it learns how my characters look even when I don't use a character reference, because when I put these same descriptions in, they start to look more and more like who I see in my mind, and I'm like, yes, that's Blaze.

That's my main character right there. And then, without using the character reference, because that only existed very recently, I was getting even more than a year ago characters who looked like my characters. So for me that was kind of [00:13:00] the, the amazing process of learning. So yeah, that was kinda my process with that.

But then as far as my genres, so I'm a fantasy writer and reader at heart, but with my first book it was going to be a almost like Harry Potter type, medieval type fantasy with magic school. 

And that's exactly what the first draft was, and I was like. This is boring. I want it to be different. So, it became a magical western with cowboys riding Pegasus in a magical old west. I can't even tell you how it went from that first magic school to this totally different thing. It just did between drafts because I do multiple drafts. 

But that's what happened, and that's my Tales of the Outlaw Mages series. It's currently five books long, working on book six, and I have the best time writing it. It's got lots of LGBTQ rep, lots of different representation lots of magic, and lots of hope, too, because it's very Noble Brite. I can't write. Doom and gloom stuff. My stuff has to be hopeful. 

And then my other series, which is set in the same world as [00:14:00] my Airship Dragon series, and that was based on the idea, because I always like to have these weird premises and twist them. It was, what if Moby Dick but with dragons? 

So that's kind of how my series came about. And that's the weird stuff I write, but I have a lot of fun with it. And you can bet you cannot go to Google and find very many images of cowboys riding Pegasus. So that's part of why I do what I do with the art too.

**Steph Pajonas:** Yeah, I don't blame you. It may be kind of hard to find those images out there. You definitely could probably spend a lot of time bashing photos together to get kind of what you want, right? But this is the fun thing about MidJourney and a lot of these AI image utilities is that the sky is the limit.

Whatever you can think of, It, it can probably happen and it is getting better too. I remember a point when I couldn't ask for like a man with blue skin and now I can get that, you know? So it's, it's definitely evolving and getting much better. 

**Also Danica Favorite:** Yeah, and I like that [00:15:00] too, because I think there is that difficulty sometimes in, you know, everyone says, why don't you just use a real artist? And the truth is, is that. Like those images just don't exist except in your own head. And so the fact that you can say this is in my head, here's what it looks like in paper.

And I know you've had some struggles with some cover designers. Haven't you?

**Amy Campbell:** Yeah. And it's, it's really unfortunate because I do like to support other artists and other humans when I can. And I had a very, very awesome cover designer who I'd used from the very beginning. Very sweet, easy to work with. And she's one of the few people who understands like my weird ideas. Like, she could nail my magical Western cover.

She could nail my steampunk magical dragon cover. Like very few artists I can tell that idea to and they get it. So she was wonderful to work with. 

But unfortunately this past summer when I told her I wanted her to work with me on book six from my Outlaw Mage series, she came to me and she said I don't [00:16:00] know that I can because other authors that I work with have told me that you use AI art in your Kickstarter campaigns and they don't want me to work with you anymore.

So I need to, I need to think about this. And I said I, I understand that. And I explained to her that I really still want to support artists. But I could not pay an artist to produce the 100 different chapter headings I had in my previous Kickstarter campaign. I would be in debt to the day I died from that, honestly. 

But I told her , I still wanted to support her business and have her do covers that I was asking her to do two covers at the time, the retail cover and the Kickstarter cover. So, you know, that was a lot of money I was going to put in her hand. So she thought about it and then she came back and she said, you know, I'm, I'm so sorry, but because of these other authors, I can't work with you anymore. And that disappointed me for the sake of this artist because that bullying and those people wanting her to not work with me when she was willing to work with me, it wasn't because [00:17:00] of her ethics. She was very sweet and wanted to work with me.

It was because other people imposed their ethics and morals on her. And now she's out several hundred dollars that I was going to pay her, which is really sad because I wanted to keep using her.

**Also Danica Favorite:** Yeah, I think that's really sad. And, obviously Steph and I are very passionate about the whole anti bullying thing. And that's the thing is what people don't realize. And I'm really grateful that you've shared your story because we don't realize that's also the impact of bullying. That people are bullying authors who use AI because they don't want all this money stolen from real artists. But the fact of the matter is this bullying actually did take money out of a real artist's hands. And so we have to be careful in how we talk to people and how we choose to talk to people about their businesses, because ultimately that's her artist business and she should have the right to run it. However, she wants just as you as an author has [00:18:00] the right to run it however, you want. 

So number 1, I'm really sorry that happened to you. And I'm doubly sorry that happened to the artist and I just really, again, want to urge authors to stop bullying over what you think is ethical AI use. Obviously if you're breaking laws or outright stealing, that's not okay, but let's find ways of handling stuff other than bullying because there just really should not be room in our industry for that.

**Steph Pajonas:** Yeah, this is very, very unfortunate. I mean, 'cause we do hear a lot from the people who don't wanna use AI or are anti ai, that we who are using ai, we're pro ai, are stealing money from actual artists by not going to them for these things. But yet. Many of us still do want to pay, pay an artist to do our covers, to help us with maybe website images, whatever it may be, right?

I've been a graphic designer since 1997. I've used Photoshop since it was [00:19:00] 2. 0. I love all of it. I love playing with it. I love playing with designs. And I use AI now, too. But I struggle with typography. Like I just It's something that I'm just not all that great with. And it is much easier for me to just hire a designer to handle all of that, even the cover without AI art.

I, I'm just much happier to do that. And to think that I wouldn't be able to still support somebody who I've worked with for years and give them my business and then be able to then tell other people about their business and refer people to them. This really, it really frustrates me. It really makes me. It makes me very angry. I'm not a person who gets very angry all that often. I'm very sunshine and rainbows most of the time, right? But it's just one of those things that's just like, that this really, really bothers me and we really need to get people to stop doing that.

**Also Danica Favorite:** Exactly. And that's, like I said, that's why I'm so glad you mentioned that because I don't think [00:20:00] people realize that the bullying thing is happening on so many levels. And, you know, there, there's this meme on Facebook that I have seen a few times, but, and I don't remember the exact wording of it, but the gist is I saw someone post about this thing and I didn't agree with it.

And I just let it pass me by and the world went on perfectly fine without ever having to comment. And that's really how I feel. If you're not using AI in a way that I agree with, I don't have to comment. I don't have to say people who do this, because I see this a lot.

If you use AI for this, you're okay. If you use it for that, you're not okay. And all these levels and gradients of that. And just because I don't use AI the same way you use AI, it doesn't make my use better or worse. It's just different. And. We have to really learn to just look at someone who's doing it differently from us and say, cool, I'm glad you found a way that works for you.

So yeah. So thank you [00:21:00] for giving us the opportunity to get on our soap boxes again, because I think at this point, Steph and I are just like, we want to stop all the bullying and just hammer this home because we just really want everyone's journey to be recognized as valid, whatever is. And so going back to your journey, you're doing cool stuff with Kickstarter.

You mentioned you had over a hundred images for this last starter. And so I would like you to tell us about how you're using AI for your Kickstarters and the AI images and what that looks like, particularly because I know people are concerned about using AI and kickstarter and there's some backlash and how that's affected you.

But I do want to say to those who are listening before we started recording, we did talk to Amy. She's going to send us some of her images. And we are going to post that on our blog at brave new bookshelf. com. So please make sure if you are curious about these images that Amy has done, which I highly recommend you take a look at, [00:22:00] because what I've seen is amazing and mind blowing.

Please go to the website, brave new bookshelf. com. Look for Amy's episode, and you are going to see all kinds of cool stuff. So Amy, back to you to hear more about your use of AI for Kickstarter.

**Amy Campbell:** Yeah. So I've been doing a Kickstarter since 2022. About the time Russell Nohelty and Monica Leonelle started to do their Kickstarter classes for it. So I was in one of their cohorts. I ran my first Kickstarter in July of 2022, and it did pretty well. Kickstarter was still kind of new to authors and publishing at the time.

So that one did almost 5,000 dollars. So that was very respectable for a book that was already out published. And I feel like looking today at what I can do versus then that book was like the Stone Age because it was published at Ingram, which no shade to Ingram, but you know, they sometimes have quality issues. But it was very good for a 2022 book, which it sounds like [00:23:00] forever ago, two years ago, but it is what it is. 

But I like to have lots of art in my books, but I was limited with what I could do. So I did what any bootstrapping author would do. I went to Deposit Photos with my Black Friday deal and found lots of clipart that I thought was close enough to work. And that's the problem with my genre because I don't write romance so I can't find, you know, a hundred kissing couples to put there. Like I have, again, Magical Cowboys writing Pegasus, so that works. It's very difficult to find clip art for. So I was like here's some boots. Here's a saddle. Here's a cowboy who roughly looks like one of the characters, but not exactly, but you know, close enough. So that was the first campaign. And I do have lots of backers who got that book and they really enjoyed it. 

So my second Kickstarter came around February of 2023 for book two in the series, same type of art and February is not a great time to run Kickstarters I found out. So no, that started in [00:24:00] January.

So that one didn't do as hot as the first one, but that was okay. Also, book twos can sometimes be as hot as the first one, but that, so my next Kickstarter that was my first book to incorporate AI art because I got on board with Midjourney. I was discovering how to do it. I made thousands of dragons, some of them missing legs, some of them missing tails, some of them with heads coming off their wings. So I also invested in Affinity Suite and I became really good at editing some really wonky dragons and transplanting, this dragon has a really good leg, so we'll put him on this dragon in this image. It's missing a leg, but I like his pose. 

So I was doing lots of bootstrapping like that, but it was kind of fun because this also helped me develop a lot of skills. I'm, I'm probably, I'm Gen X, so we didn't have like diagnosis like my, my kid does, so I probably have ADHD or autism or something.

So I can watch a few minutes of video before I get bored and I'm like, [00:25:00] okay, what else is going on? So I would watch a little tutorial for Affinity Photo. As long as I could tolerate it, then I would go do the thing, and sometimes I would do it right, sometimes I would do it wrong, but I was always learning as I was going. 

That's the curiosity I was doing with this Kickstarter. That third campaign that book had full AI done headers, it had full page images, and I printed it in color with Book Vault. And Book Vault was so impressed with my book that at last year's 20 books if you went by the Book Vault table, my book was on that table with Jo Penn's book.

That's how pretty it was and that's how much people liked it. And that, that third Kickstarter, it did really well. It did almost 10,000 dollars, had 252 backers. So that really told me that number one, people on Kickstarter like dragons, that just goes without saying. But number two, I had a lot of people, they were like, Your art is beautiful. I love this art. I want this book. So, the AI art really [00:26:00] brought it up to the next level. 

Then my fourth campaign this last spring I decided, because I'm very extra sometimes, I was going to do all five books in my Tales of the Outlaw Mages series in hardcover with AI art. And five fantasy books is a lot of books, and I did each individual book, and because I'm very extra, I'm like they can't all have the same chapter header image because, like, I want there to be variety. So by the time I was done formatting all five books, I had a hundred and two, I think, different chapter headings, and each book probably has about, 50 to 60 chapters, so there's not a lot of time that they were getting used over and over again.

My next kickstarter that's coming in September for book two in the Airship Dragon series Dragon Meridians, it's going to have full AI art inside it. The case laminate is AI Art done by me. I'm also going to be using Book Vault's new custom edges. So it's going to have custom edges also done by me with Midjourney. So fingers [00:27:00] crossed that comes out well. The, the proofs are hopefully on their way soon. So I use AI Art for pretty much everything.

If you look at the Kickstarter story page, there'll be different little decorative headings for each section. So I made those with AI art and then put the text in it in Affinity Publisher. A lot of the stuff I'll do with Canva, but I'll bring my AI art into Canva to make my little mock ups and pictures and things like that. So, I use AI art a lot for this. 

And as far as using it within Kickstarter, Kickstarter does have rules about transparency. They want all creators to be transparent. Which is their right. They really should be. So there is a little disclaimer you put there for AI about how you used it, but it's kind of more aimed at the technology companies more than at the authors, because I'm not making a video game or a new platform or whatever you'd produce. I'm just making a book for you to read and enjoy. 

So I pretty much explain how I'm using the art as ethically as I can. I don't put in the style of Pixar or [00:28:00] in the style of Boris Vallejo or anything like that. I'll put stuff like concept art, visual novel style illustration, and then describe my dragon or magic cowboy or whatever. So that's how I use my art with the Kickstarter.

**Also Danica Favorite:** I love that. You were getting comments that people love the art and it was AI art. Like that to me is, is what I think should be encouraging to people is that. They love it and it's AI art. And so it's still art. It's still beautiful. Have you had much backlash because you use AI art for Kickstarter or have you mostly gotten positive feedback?

**Amy Campbell:** So for the first campaign , I had one person who posted a comment asking if I was going to have a version without the AI art and I explained they could back at the ebook tier and I would specially strip out all of the AI art and send us some one copy without AI art. Or they could wait and get it off the, the retailers like Amazon where it would have AI art in the ebook version. And then that person just [00:29:00] canceled their 1 pledge and I never heard from them again. So that was the only backlash I got for that first campaign. Overwhelmingly, I had people saying, this, this book is beautiful. I love this book. So that was that campaign. 

My second campaign with AI art this last spring, the only comments I had were a few people on social media who disagreed with me using AI art, but they were also authors who are on this anti AI art bandwagon. And I was like I respect your opinion, but it doesn't matter because the odds of you buying my book anyway are very slim, like you're just commenting because you don't like my art. And so, that Kickstarter did well too. It didn't do as well as I'd like, considering I had five books, but when you take into account the payment plans, I had about 12,000 dollars coming for it, which Again, it's very, very respectable. Very nice. I can't be sad about only only 12, 000 dollars. 

**Also Danica Favorite:** Not going to say no to 12,000 dollars. 

**Amy Campbell:** I don't know. Exactly. Yeah. So, [00:30:00] but this next one, I'm wondering how it's going to go. I have, I've kind of fallen off the bus with putting the social media out there. So I'm just like, starting to schedule posts for it. So we'll, we'll see how that goes. But I've been warming up my newsletter.

I have my banner out there and some of the Kickstarter author groups and other authors are open to swapping with me. So I don't know if they may not realize I use AI . The funny thing is, and one of the Kickstarter authors group, sometimes people will ask about AI art. And some of the other moderators, they'll mention, Oh, this person uses AI Art, go look at their campaign for how they do it. And I'm seldom mentioned, which I'm like, okay, are my campaigns forgettable? Or do they forget that I use AI art? Because one of my things with my AI art is, i, I design it the way I design my print books.

I want it to look like every other piece of art you see out there. I want it to be virtually indistinguishable from what an artist would do. Just the way my print books, they need to look like what [00:31:00] a traditional publisher would do. So I, I think slash hope that's why people keep forgetting that I make AI art because I edit it so much that it loses some of those tells.

**Steph Pajonas:** Yeah, your execution is strong, right? Your execution is strong. Your editing is strong. The same thing goes for writing with AI as well. I mean, I just wrote like a 95 percent AI book and I made sure that I got rid of all the cliches and I made sure that it flowed well and there were no real tells that it was AI because it was edited well.

And the same goes for AI art too. You can get rid of any of the things that are little fragments in the image. You can smooth things over. You can move things together. And as long as it's edited and it looks really beautiful, people aren't looking at it and thinking, boom, that's AI art.

They're thinking, wow, that's beautiful. That's beautiful. 

**Also Danica Favorite:** Yeah. I remember thinking that a lot about Amy's stuff going, wow, this is so good. I can't believe it's AI. Because I will tell [00:32:00] you, I actually just canceled my mid journey subscription because It's garbage. Like everything I come up with is garbage, but the truth is, and listening to you and your journey, Amy, is you have done hundreds upon hundreds of AI images.

And you were talking about how when you would get those garbage images, you would pop them into Affinity and you would fix them.

And so I think that's what people need to realize is, yeah, it's AI art. But. Like that takes the talents of an artist. And by the way, I am not talented enough to pop it into Affinity and fix it.

Like I am really not that good at it. And I have the same typography struggles as Steph. So at this point, I'm just paying someone to do this because it's silly for me to keep beating myself over the head, trying to do something that I would rather be off writing a new book and Even to Steph's point about going through and editing, watching some of the live videos that [00:33:00] FFA has been doing about their writing and their writing process, I really encourage people who are wondering, Oh yeah, you pop in a prompt and you get a book.

No, you don't. I'm still working on the garbage book. But I, I'll admit I've been super busy, so I haven't been able to fully get there yet. But go and watch their videos. They've got some amazing videos on YouTube of the process of, Okay, AI gave me this. Oh, this is an AI ism. Which in the past, every single one of us have written in our books.

The AI didn't write it. Now that's become an AI as I'm okay. Now we know, because we see what AI does, we can do it better. Let's fix this. Let's change that. I was watching Elizabeth last night where it changed the tense in the middle of its writing and she had to go back and fix that.

It's never going to come out right out of the box perfect. 

**Also Danica Favorite:** Amy, I would love to learn about your AI workflow. Could you describe to us? What we always ask people is our second question. What does your AI workflow [00:34:00] look like? 

**Amy Campbell:** Yeah, with the art side of things, so I just finished recently edits for Dragon Meridians, which is the upcoming Kickstarter. So the smart version of Amy, as I was going through edits and my earlier drafts, I would have been making notes of this would be a good scene to do art for. This would be great for a chapter heading. 

Sadly, my weird brain does not work that way. My brain is like, when I'm editing must only edit. We're in the editing box right now. We're not in the art box. We can't do those at the same time. Even though, yes, we really could if we tried hard enough. I really wish I could be working on the art aspect while I'm writing or editing because I think that would probably speed up my workflow a bit. 

So for people thinking like, oh, you're doing this so fast, no, I'm probably adding like 18 extra steps that shouldn't even exist. 

But anyway, so, after I completed my draft, then I went through it and was thinking about What would make, you know, what would make a compelling chapter heading image? What would make a really cool double page spread scene? 

Another thing I do in my process when I'm [00:35:00] getting any of my books ready for publishing, whether they're going on a retail storefront or a Kickstarter, I like to give every chapter a cute or funny little chapter title. That will hint at what's going to happen. Sometimes I'll, I like to be clever with wordplay, that type of thing. If, if my brain is up to it at the time, other times it'll just be the reunion or something like that. That'll be the title.

When I'm making these titles, I want to have the image for the special edition kind of go with that heading somehow. So I have to think about it and then I'll just start putting prompts in Mid Journey like gosh, now I can't even think of anything. Let me pull one of my books and just open it to a random chapter heading.

Okay, this one that the chapter title is Capybara, so I probably should have made like a little capybara for it, but in that chapter they're on this island. All of my Airship Dragons books take place in the tropics because dragons should live in tropical environments.

Why are they on the snowy mountains? Anyway, with them being on the island there, I thought, oh I should have, [00:36:00] a temple and have a jungle. I'm also not the most descriptive prompter with Midjourney, so I'll just start with, very basic things, like, a tropical temple in the jungle and then it'll show me some garbage and I'm like no that's not what I want why can't you read my mind mid journey? And then I have to start in putting like different art styles. I do a lot of Concept art, visual novel style illustrations, and that's the art style I use for that one.

Adding or subtracting a word can drastically change what you get. And something funny that me and my friends who I have a little chat group where we talk about and share our different AI art together we've discovered that sometimes typos can improve your prompt. Sometimes if you spell something wrong, mid journey, it's like, here's this beautiful image now.

And you're like, yes, that's what I wanted. You understood my typo where I spelled the word dragon wrong. I spelled it D A R G O N. Like, but you knew Dargan was dragon. Great. Fantastic. 

So don't be afraid if there's typos in your prompt because sometimes [00:37:00] that will work better for whatever insane reason.

**Also Danica Favorite:** So I know we've talked a lot about Mid Journey, but I'm going to give you the chance to tell us about your favorite AI tool. It doesn't have to be mid journey. If that's your favorite tool, you can tell us about Mid Journey some more, but I'd really like to hear what a or maybe there's multiple tools that you're using and enjoying.

But I'd love to hear about the tools that you're using. What you really love. And any more tips and tricks you can give our listeners.

**Amy Campbell:** Yeah, I, I do like to use a variety of tools as far as image tools go. Mid Journey, it's one I have my subscription to, so I do a lot with it, but I found out that Mid Journey's weakness is my Magic Cowboys Riding Pegasus. It cannot do them for whatever reason, but I found out that Dall-e 3 through ChatGPT Plus is actually really good at Magical Cowboys Riding Pegasus. Who knew? Like. the most random thing in the world, but it can do it.

It's only problem was it would not put the [00:38:00] pegasus wings on their shoulders by their withers in front of the saddle. For some reason, it's like the pegasus wings go on the cowboy or it goes on the pegasus's butt for whatever reason. So again, a lot of editing was done, but aside from the wing weirdness, it would do really good images. 

So for my Outlaw Mage books, most of the images of the magical cowboys with their pegasi were done through ChatGPT's Dall-e 3. So hats off to ChatGPT for understanding pegasus for me. Midjourney I found is better at getting my consistent dragons.

So if you're doing this art, don't be afraid to play with different generators because for whatever reason one of them may be better at something you need than the other, and I do have images in my last campaign where I have, it's like half Midjourney, half Dall-e 3 edited together, and they came out really nicely, and people would probably not know that that came from totally two different generators. 

So those are my favorites for art. [00:39:00] As far as LLMs I've actually been experimenting more with Google Gemini within the whole Google AI studio, mostly because it's free and free is my favorite price point. But I've done things like I was recently working on my Kickstarter video for this Kickstarter, and I'm doing a book trailer that has my AI art in it, and I'm using CapCut and putting like lots of visual effects. But my weakness is coming up with like snappy copy for anything, much less a movie trailer. 

So I went into Google Gemini and I'm like, Hey, I want to make a trailer for my Kickstarter. What information do you need for this? And so it walked me through what it needed. And we went from there and it helped me make this really pretty nice script to go with my trailer for my kickstarter.

And then from there because I want it to be a voiceover script and I want it to be male and I'm obviously not male nor do I want to have my voice on kickstarter for my video all the time. I went to 11 labs and found a voice and I made a little voiceover with this [00:40:00] with a character's voice on 11 labs and put that together in CapCut. 

So Google Gemini was really good for that and 11 labs were handy for that. I also like ChatGPT, although I did lose my Plus subscription a couple months ago just because of the price, and I was like Google Gemini is getting better so it can do some things, so I don't do as much in ChatGPT anymore because I'll run up against that, that limit. 

And it'll be like, you can't use this again till tomorrow at 9am. Great, okay, back to Google Gemini, because Gemini likes me. And if Gemini does not work with you, threaten that it cannot watch cat videos anymore and it will start working for you again.

**Steph Pajonas:** Yeah, that's a great tip. 

**Also Danica Favorite:** Remember that I remember you posting about that. And I was like, I want, I can't remember what model. And now I will remember that because I know I've mentioned this before on the show that I have this love hate relationship with Gemini where some days Gemini is my new [00:41:00] boyfriend and some days I'm like, Gemini, what the heck?

So I am going to threaten Gemini with taking away the cat video privileges. So 

**Steph Pajonas:** That sort of makes a little bit of sense because Gemini is run by Google and Google owns YouTube and there are so many cat videos on YouTube. I gotta imagine that's where the synergy happened there.

**Amy Campbell:** Yes I told it it couldn't watch any more YouTube and it was actually Gemini's idea about the cat videos. It was like, Don't take away my cat videos. And I was like, I will take them away. Cause if it works for my kids, maybe it'll work for the LLM. And it actually gave me really good stuff after that threat.

And I was like, okay, you can go watch some, some YouTube again. And it was like, yay, cat videos.

**Steph Pajonas:** I freaking love it. That's great.

**Also Danica Favorite:** I think that is so awesome. See, I'm telling you, Amy is amazing. So I'm so glad we got to have you because we always get so [00:42:00] much from you just online and chatting with you. So I'm glad that our listeners get to have a little of the Amy magic that we have been seeing all this time.

And like I said Amy will be sending us some pictures that we will be posting on the blog. So please check out some of these images because seriously, mind blown when I look at some of them going, really, you didn't draw that. Okay, cool. But, and I also really love what you were saying about how some of these great images are actually two different tools combined into one.

And I know, again, as authors, we do this all the time with the LLMs. I know Future Fiction Academy talks a lot about this, where you'll be writing with one model, you don't quite get what you want, so you switch to another LLM model and you get it. And I actually found that the other day where I was really getting irritated Chat GPT usually gives me amazing marketing copy and it was not doing what I wanted it to do.

[00:43:00] And I said, you know what? Fine. I'm switching to Claude and boom, I moved it to Claude and Claude usually does not give good marketing copy. And Claude gave me exactly what I needed. And so like it is really that human ability to interact with it and say, okay, you're not doing what I want you to do. Boom.

I'm going to try something else. And boom, here it is. Now some of the copy that I've been writing lately, it is a combination of different LLMs and which is which I don't know because I, I edited it all together so much that I don't think you could tell. And I, so I think it's cool that you also do that with the images because I was noticing there were some things I was trying that I really had good results with Leonardo and, but then there's other things where Leonardo gives you garbage too. I hadn't made that connection until you said that. So thank you.

**Steph Pajonas:** Excellent. All right. So we're coming up on the end of our interview time here. I was wondering if you have any URLs that we [00:44:00] want to send people to so that they can find you online and your books as well.

**Amy Campbell:** Yeah my website is amycampbell. info, I N F O, and if anyone wants to check out the Dragon Meridians Kickstarter, it's launching on September 16th, running through the 27th, and you can find that at kickstarter. com backslash dragon meridians, all one word.

**Steph Pajonas:** Excellent. Excellent. So thank you so much for showing up today. God, this is a great, great session. I love talking about, especially Mid Journey. I really love Mid Journey. I'm in there all the time. I was in there all this morning making images of raptors. Of course I was making images of raptors. this morning. I do a lot of dinosaurs lately just like you do dragons. So it was great to hear about all the different things that you're doing. I really like the fact that we shed some light onto all the stuff that's going on with Kickstarter and using AI in Kickstarter. So I think this would be really helpful for authors coming up.

So thank you so much for coming. We loved [00:45:00] having you.

**Amy Campbell:** Thanks for having me.

**Steph Pajonas:** Excellent. So everybody can come and check out the show notes. They will be at brave new bookshelf. com where we'll have a blog post about this particular episode and some of Amy's images of her artwork that she's putting in her books and her Kickstarter, etc.

And we'll have the full transcript and any links that are mentioned in the episode. So thank you so much for listening and we will see you back on the Brave New Bookshelf next time. Thank you. Bye.

**Also Danica Favorite:** Bye.

Thanks for joining us on the Brave New Bookshelf. Be sure to like and subscribe to us on YouTube and your favorite podcast app. You can also visit us at BraveNewBookshelf. com, sign up for our newsletter, and get all the show notes.