51 - Building a Multimedia Empire: Novae Caelum on AI and Diverse Narratives

In this episode of Brave New Bookshelf, co-hosts Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite sit down with Novae Caelum, an innovative author and pioneer in AI-driven storytelling. Novae shares their journey from self-publishing to exploring the transformative potential of AI in video production, aiming to create a multimedia empire that celebrates queer, trans, and non-binary narratives. Discover how Novae leverages AI tools to bring joyful, representative stories to life and fill a market vacuum for diverse content. Visit our website https://bravenewbookshelf.com to view the full episode notes, links and apps mentioned in the episode, and the full transcript.

Speaker 2: 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 co-hosts, Steph Pajonas, CTO of Future Fiction Academy, where we teach authors how to use AI in any part of their business. We're launching lots of books that are AI forward assisted by AI with authors at the helm making books, and it's been a lot of fun, a lot of great ideas coming in from people out there wanting to work for the press. We were pulling from our current students at the Future Fiction Academy. So, you know, If that sounds interesting to you, maybe you should come join the accelerator and get in on the action, and then you can learn how to use these tools and possibly write your own books or write for the press someday.

You never know, it could happen. So yeah, I'm [00:01:00] really excited. There's been lots going on. I'm also, putting together a lot of the, additional stuff for this podcast all the time. I put together a blog post. Some images get them all up into social media and whatnot. And I also put together a newsletter, now. I try to make sure that I get it out every single time. If you wanna go and sign up for a newsletter, it's at bravenewbookshelf.com/subscribe. And, what will happen is that the day after an episode goes live, I send out a newsletter. It's got the blog post that I write for the blog that's at bravenewbookshelf.com, and it's got the links and everything in there.

And then this way if you're listening and you're like, "Oh, I really wanna go check out the blog post," and then you just forget, you can just sign up for the newsletter. It'll just show up in your inbox. So isn't that great? I would go do that. So once again, that's bravenewbookshelf.com/subscribe.

So go check that out. As usual, I'm here with my only wonderful co-host... 

Danica Favorite: Wait, Steph. Are you like cheating on me or what? 

Steph Pajonas: I'm not cheating on you. I promise. I promise. [00:02:00] It's just you. Danica Favorite. How you doing? 

Danica Favorite: I'm doing good. I'm doing great. really excited for today.

And I'm like, ooh, and excited about all the stuff you're doing. for those of you who don't know me, I'm Danica favorite. I am the community manager at Publish Drive, where we help authors through every stage of their publishing journey. Whether that is, getting the right metadata and keywords or AI book covers for their books or getting distribution to the widest audience possible.

And then finally, once you have that book, published and out they're making sales and you've got co-authors, we can help you split your royalties, which is great because, the only thing we can't do is help you write the book, which that is why we have Steph here. It's super great and really excited to see like all the stuff Steph is doing with the newsletter and all the things we're trying to do to get more attention to the podcast.

And also part of my job at Publish Drive, I just got assigned this task today, but my boss was like, "Hey, you guys have such great [00:03:00] content. How much of this can we repurpose for publish drive stuff?" And I'm like, "All of it." If you also wanna follow any of the Publish Drive accounts, on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all of that, I will be hopefully very soon repurposing a lot of our content there as well, because this is great content we want people to learn.

That's why we try to get so many different guests. Also remember to like and subscribe to the Brave New Bookshelf, Facebook and, YouTube. So like you can get us all kinds of places. but now that we have most of our admin stuff done, I really am excited about today's guest, Novae Caelum I have been a fan for a long time, and it was really funny because when we came in, and we were chitchatting as we're recording, we're like, "It's so great to see you again." And both Steph and I were like, oh wait, we haven't actually met you in person. But we've interacted with them so much online that it just feels like we're [00:04:00] already long time old friends. And I was just telling Novae that I am addicted to their Instagram right now. I know in the end we'll give some links and things, but they're doing such cool things with video. And it was funny when I put out the call to say, "Hey, does anyone have ideas for guests?" Novae was one of the people that was recommended a bunch of times, and I said, "It's so funny because they're at the top of my list to ask for this fall season."

So clearly. You all have the same love for them as we do, and I'm really, really excited to introduce you to Novae Caelum. Novae, tell us about yourself. 

Novae Caelum: Thank you, and I've interacted with both of you enough that I'm like, yeah, cool. Gonna hang out with friends. I'm Novae Caelum. I write, queer, trans and non-binary sci-fi fantasy romantasy, typically romance related.

And I've been a published author since [00:05:00] 2014, but I have only been self-publishing in earnest since the last four years. and really took off about two years ago. So it's been a wild ride since then. I figured out socials and then it took off, but that's how it goes sometimes.

But, yeah, I do a lot with AI video. I'm already making movies. To figure out how to use AI to make high quality feature films and TV and stuff like that. So that's my trajectory right now. I. Straight up right in the middle of forming the LLC for a studio.

Steph Pajonas: That's exciting. when you think about the trajectory of the last few years in AI, right? We started off with just a little bit of text, and then Midjourney came along. And it was this... some of the very scary first images of Midjourney were a little creepy, a little weird, right?

And now here we are. We're making movies, we're making [00:06:00] videos, and we're making amazing imagery, amazing text. you could do full cast audio now. it has really, really exploded, and I'm excited for you because, I feel like you really grabbed a hold of video and you were like, I'm gonna make this mine.

Right? Took your stories and put them out, in a visual way so that people can actually see your characters and understand your themes and the kinds of things that you write about. So what was one of the first things that you really wanted to make into a film, TV video type thing?

Novae Caelum: So I have two series and one was like the one that really took off to begin with. And that I initially wrote that series as a CW show in my head. Like it's got this ebb and flow and all this drama and a big cast and it's all pretty people in my head. [00:07:00] So that was what I first started...

I played with the very first version of Runway, and I have a TikTok from I don't know, a year and a half ago or maybe two years ago. It's bad, but it's wonderful, for characters from that.. .the other series I have, which is my main series now, and which is probably what you see most of on social media, is a romantasy.

And that's the one I'm gonna be adapting first, because it's less ambitious than a seven book series. I've always been cinematic, because I was a cover designer, and I was always chasing that. And there's only so much you can do in imagery. I want it to move. I want it to talk. I want it to do this. I want it to do that. I think it was on Veo3, the day it came out and pushing stuff out with it. it's fun. It's just fun. 

Danica Favorite: I love it, and I can tell that you have fun with it. 

So first of all, I'm gonna make a prediction, because Steph and I try not to because we're always wrong. But I really think I'm [00:08:00] right about this. Steph, like the past few interviews we've done with video, you are so passionate about video. I think that in a few months, year, something like that time, you are not going to introduce yourself as the editor in Chief of Future Fiction Press.

You are going to be the head producer of Future Fiction Films. And someone like me or somebody else is probably gonna be like, "No, I'm the editor now because Steph, is our movie maker now." 'Cause that passion just comes out and I'm here for it, by the way... 

Steph Pajonas: From your lips to the universe's ears. Let's see if that happens. 

Danica Favorite: Yes, we're, manifesting it. It's so exciting and, I don't know how the order of the episodes are gonna come out, but for those of you who heard our last interview we had, Michael Evans.

We just interviewed Michael Evans about, all of his film stuff, and Novae's name came up in that interview, so I'm putting it out there to the [00:09:00] universe, because I do think that the three of you have such brilliant minds, deep passion for this, and I'm really excited. Which leads me to that second point of, I've been riveted to Novae's Instagram, because a lot of their videos about this new romantasy are out there, and I am going to be buying the book to read on the plane when I go to NINC next week, which this episode will have aired already by then. But, I'm riveted and I'll be honest, I'm not a romance person, I've never really gotten into the romantasy. And I'm like, "No man. I need this. I need this book because it sounds amazing."

And part of what's amazing to me, and this is something that I wanted to get in here in this conversation is that Novae writes such amazing, representative stories that, I think number one, they need to be movies. They need to be out [00:10:00] there, because we need more representation, and I am so grateful to you, Novae, for putting those books out there that are representative.

And I would love if whatever you feel like sharing about putting that representation out there, I would love to hear it and I'd love for our audience to hear it, because I do think there are people out there wondering about representation. I want them to know they are not alone, and AI is here to help them as well.

Novae Caelum: Yeah. So funny thing, 3 years ago, I was absolutely convinced that my queer books would never sell. Like straight up, you couldn't talk me out of this. I was on my bandwagon, and it took daily iteration of TikTok on four accounts, like two hours a day for months of just doing the same hooks over and over again, to start seeing them take off and then getting comments of people like, oh my God, I see [00:11:00] myself in a book for the first time. Or, oh my God, I've never seen a book like this. Oh my God, I haven't read in 10 years, because I didn't know books like this existed.

Over and over again, I was seeing these kind of comments. So I kind of turned my train around and pushed hard in that direction. And a lot of my social presence has to do with, joy in the representation. Not I don't know. Some people are kind of like, like, like, you just can't, the ne the negative end of it, I don't know. I don't know if I'm quite saying that right. 

Steph Pajonas: Yeah, I understand. 

Danica Favorite: Yeah. I understand a lot, because I feel like you...and this is what's attracted me to you and your work and all of your videos, and I can't get enough of them, because they're that joy and I'm like, "Oh my goodness, I love this. We need more of this." R eally thank you. 

Novae Caelum: Yeah. 

Steph Pajonas: Yeah. a lot of the stories surrounding, you know, queer characters and diverse characters can sometimes be just about their struggle, right? It can focus a lot on their particular struggle [00:12:00] of what they're doing with their family that they're living in or whatever. And sometimes it can be quite negative. So it's nice to see that there's this joy in your work. I agree with Danika, there's a lot of joy in your work. And it makes me smile, it gives me the warm fuzzies.

I think that's where you set yourself apart from other books in your sphere and your genre. 

Novae Caelum: As a reader I get frustrated sometimes because, like you said, there is so much books about queer trauma and that's really heavy. That's really, really heavy. And when you've got book after book, after book of that, you start getting depressed versus, you know. So my books are about queer people being epic, and and having their enemies to lovers stories and all of that good stuff. It's not about, the people being upset about them for that.

And that's what I wanna do with movies too, because the trans movies that exist are like countable on hands and toes maybe a few times. But [00:13:00] of all of those out there, most of them are focused on like the real world struggles. And I'm like, no, I want my trans Captain Kirk off having adventures or something like that.

It just things like that where it's like the character just happens to be, and the story moves on. That's what I have been reaching for. I've been pursuing AI writing like, crazy, but I'm not entirely synced up with it yet. And a part of that is because the LLMs still have a lot of the bias.

So I haven't hit the point where, I'll go through a thing with Claude and just, say, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. And then Claude's oh yeah, cool we got it. And then gives me back an outline that is just full of transphobia.

And I'm like, "No. No." So we're not quite there yet, but I'm getting closer. But what I really would love to do is somehow figure out a way to just blast out this type of content in quality and quantity and [00:14:00] then bring that into the movies and blast off that with quality and quantity.

Most of what I've been doing this year has been process building and figuring out how to do those things. 

Danica Favorite: Yeah. 

Steph Pajonas: I think that you're pioneer on this one. Maybe, heading out there with the more positive stories. And I think that by being a leader in this space, I think that there will be people who will be following you.

Novae Caelum: I hope. Yeah, I hope, quite honestly, I'm so full-steam-ahead. I don't always stop to assess what I'm doing and any impact it's having. I know that what I've done has already helped in other creators' things is like, people have told me that. But. to the degree. I have no idea.

I'm just like onto the next, onto the next, onto the next. My friends know I'm a bit of a chaos gremlin, and I've always got some sort of manic project going on. But, it's a lot. And it is a responsibility, but also. it's just [00:15:00] fun. That's mostly what I'm after.

Steph Pajonas: Excellent. 

Danica Favorite: Yeah, it's very clear you're having fun with it, and I think, you're like, "Is this working?" I mean, you've got two people here who are like, give us more. Give us more. And so I'm excited about that. Usually I ask a direct question about how you're approaching AI and publishing, but I think we've nailed that topic.

So I wanna go to my second question, because you touched on it, and now I wanna hear details. Because you're like, "I'm creating processes." And so we always ask people what their workflow looks like. And so I'm very curious as like kind of that workflow question, tell us about those processes, because I think it'll be really interesting for people to know and see what that process looks like or what processes you feel have to be created.

Novae Caelum: God, I've integrated AI into almost everything I'm doing these days. So it's like, where do I start in this spider web? it's...so... H eavily in my socials. I would [00:16:00] love to be able to automate my socials more, but the AI stuff hasn't quite done as well in many cases as like my in-person stuff.

And I think part of that is audience trust for me. So I am still pretty heavily on camera. But I have someone like helping me make the book flip videos now where I hold up a book and flip it around. I built myself an app, three fourths of an app, with lovable and then lovable broke, so I took it over to Cursor and then kept working on it, and it's this social thing that I'm hoping to, for it to be like, as part of a movie studio as well. But I more urgently needed socials so I can dump a bunch of Midjourney videos into it, and give it a bunch of hooks, text files. And it'll just zip it through and overlay the text on top of it. So theoretically, if I have enough videos, I can make a couple dozen to a couple hundred of the AI videos in an afternoon.

An hour's worth of just [00:17:00] me tweaking the hooks that TikTok doesn't get mad that the text is the same. So a lot of my process has to do with the repetition of that, the repetition of socials, the repetition of hooks. I am always drilling down to the tighter hooks and the tighter text, something works, something goes viral, I pull it back in again, try and find why it works, and then tweak it. A lot of what I'm doing is that, and as much as I would love for Chat GPT to help me with that, it's not that great at it. it's not viral tikTok great.

But, I'm always in and out of like Chat GPT and Gemini are my of choice ones that I use all the time. 'cause I argue with Claude. I argue with Claude. I'm always in and out of them and pitting them against each other. " What do you think of this marketing strategy? Here's what I did this week. I'm going crazy. Help me figure out a way through this mess, because I have no time left." Things like that. I have people running Midjourney images for me now. I don't have [00:18:00] time to do it anymore. So I've hired that out and I got someone, a mega Midjourney account, and he ran through it in, I don't know, three days.

So I've just got this massive amount of content that I'm constantly pushing through the machine. I use Midjourney, and I roll it myself, like for my Patreon, because I release chapters ahead of time on Patreon. I've got this multi-tiered system going on where I release it on Patreon, while I have it on pre-order on my direct store.

I figured out this time as I am getting ready to push out a paperback of my latest release, I can gather all the images I made for Midjourney on my Patreon for swag, and I'm like, this is a bonus. So I was just doing that this morning where I'm going through the Patreon.

I was like, which were the higher rated poses and pulling that in. I make videos and put 'em on my Patreon as well. Just putting them on the post. It takes five minutes to do a Midjourney thing and then turn it into motion now. so I'm [00:19:00] constantly in all of this and I made a soundtrack.

So I've been pulling in like Suno songs and putting them on posts. I made a soundtrack because I had an ad running with an AI video and, people were like, what is this song? Where can we find it? And they were trying to like. I forget what the service is that identify songs.

They're like trying to Shazam. They're trying to find it and there was like, it was three people deep trying to figure out what this song was, and I'm like, "Oh God." So I took a weekend, knocked out like 15 songs, put up an album and sold 10 of them in the next few days.

And I'm like, this works. So I'm just. All over the place. It's like whatever's working. 

Steph Pajonas: It seems that you are, you're cultivating like a following, right? You're using social media and Patreon, and probably a bunch of other different platforms, to bring people into your content and get excited about it. Is the ultimate goal to get them to Buy your [00:20:00] books, or is it like to join your Patreon or do like a newsletter or that kind of thing? That's what I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about that workflow that you've got going. Yeah, which is a lot of it's imagery, it's video, it's you know, massaging the hooks and making music and doing all this stuff, which goes out into the ether of the social media and whatnot, and captures people's attention and brings them into your universe, your world. But I'm curious about what that ultimate world, that goal is. is it getting them onto a specific platform or what might it be? 

Novae Caelum: I think it's ecosystem.

Like I'm very much gearing toward... I 'm starting a production studio, and I'm gonna start with my own stuff, but what I really wanna do is bring in IP and develop it like by licensing other people's IP and develop. 'cause not everyone's gonna want to make movies. So I am looking to be Disney. [00:21:00] Not that's not an ambitious goal, but...

Steph Pajonas: This is great. I love this goal. This is a great goal. 

Danica Favorite: I want you all to remember I made this prediction, I predicted this. so when Novae is like this super Disney AI person, just remember I predicted it. Thank you very much.

Novae Caelum: I talk about a lot with my friends who are also doing similar things, I have been under heavy fire, for using AI from specifically the queer community, which tends to be very anti AI. Like even this morning I had this long email in my inbox that was just like...

B ut it's one of the things that I've gotten a little burned on the author community, if that makes sense. I'm backing out of being an author, more of a storyteller. I almost wanna develop movies first and then punt them to books, and then punt them to audio books and audio dramas, like all formats, blasting off all [00:22:00] translations.

Comics. Games. Like we were looking at the Runway's new, game engine thing and it's okay, how do we develop this for ourselves so we don't have to do it, it's not that hard, it's just getting the generations in the right place. Um, so I, my, my goal isn't, isn't like become a bestselling author.... I've hit some of my career goals and found that you can make multi six figures and still like be struggling income wise, because of the ad spend and all of that. So I'm like, okay, that's not the end goal. The end goal is empire, a multimedia empire.

And for income, yes, and also for influence, because I've got this mission. And I've seen, I have seen how rabidly hungry people are for diversity in books on TikTok. It's like this Petri dish of you hold up diversity and people are [00:23:00] like, oh my God, I didn't know it existed.

And it's not that these books don't exist. It's that traditional publishing's, not marketing them like that to the people who aren't readers, or the people who have been abandoned by the industry. and they are absolutely rabid.

And I've seen this happen twice, two different series that I have in two different, completely different angles, bringing in these large audiences where comment after comment is, "O h my God, I need this. Oh my God, I've never seen this." So like to me, that means that the market vacuum is enormous.

So my goal is to hit it in every format that I possibly can. and it is wonderful for someone on Instagram to be like, " I'm so sad it's not in French." Frowny face. "Oh, yes it is. Here's the link." And they're like, "What?" Because never it, queer books never get translated. Very rarely.

And which honestly is a little hard to translate non-binary pronouns. I [00:24:00] actually had to strip them out of a few books, and then make a note. But, it's. That is the end goal, is basically just empire, multimedia empire. And I've been studying like Tyler Perry's business model these other creators. There's people I've managed to somehow go into their orbit or pull into my orbit and it's like just.

We're finding out cool things. And I think with the ai it's so interesting, because it's a level playing field. Because some people have filmmaking experience, some people have storytelling experience, some people don't have either, and they're just ramming at it anyway, I think it's gonna be so wild. 

Danica Favorite: I agree. And I love that you keep saying empire, because I really ... 

Novae Caelum: Not evil empire. 

Danica Favorite: Yeah. No, I believe in creating this empire where there's a level playing field. And you talked about these people who have been abandoned by the industry and this idea of this vacuum, and I'm like, "Yes. Let's create that empire. So that these places are filled." [00:25:00] And going back to our interview with Michael Evans, I love his positivity and the idea that. It's not this evil empire like you were saying. It's this idea that there is a place for everyone and every kind of creator. And it saddens me.

I thought it was maybe just my queer friend group as opposed to you have that same experience where they're so anti AI. And I'm like, do you people not understand that this is the leveling of the playing field? This is you getting the chance to step up and be heard. I'm really I know I've said it before, but I'm so grateful to you for being able to step up and say, I am here.

I want to fill the vacuum. I want to let your voice be heard. And the reality is all the things that you're doing, it wouldn't be possible without AI. And so that is amazing to me. 

Novae Caelum: Yeah. Thank you. And I mean, it, it, it [00:26:00] wouldn't be possible, it just wouldn't. Um, I mean, specifically the visuals, it, that just would not even be possible.

With my first series that took off, there is a lesbian couple that is, a white woman and a curvy black woman. I found one picture. After days of searching on DepositPhotos that accurately represented them, and according to most of the stock terms you're not even supposed to use, anything that's not specifically marked with the representation of what you're trying to represent.

It's considered sensitive use and Shutterstock has all these policies where you have to pay them extra money to cover legal needs. It's this thing, so you can't even do it, fully, legally, I found that out with clients and it weighed really heavy on me.

So when AI first came out, I was like, "Oh my God, this solves everything." I was one of the crazy people trying to chase photorealism in Midjourney version three. I was loading stuff [00:27:00] into Photoshop and using Photoshop's filters to contour the face. Looking at it now, it's no, that was not it.

But, I recovered my books, Midjourney, version four something. Or maybe it was early five, but I recovered my books at that point, and it's still the covers they are now. I'm gonna recover them in a few weeks again, because things have updated. But. that series started taking off on its own, just on those covers alone.

Because it was different. It was something that you just, hadn't seen, because Midjourney could pull in, visual styles that just didn't look like every other cover out there, and I could get the characters on the cover. I could get my gender fluid king wearing a dress. I couldn't get that in stock.

So it, it's, yeah, I lost the thread of where I'm going with that.

Steph Pajonas: I love this because it's like, you can obviously tell that it's really exciting and a passion of yours. So I'm happy to hear you talk about all of these things. I'm specifically [00:28:00] hoping that we can talk about this next question that Danica's gonna ask 'cause I would love to hear about the tools that you use.

Danika, do you wanna talk about tools? 

Danica Favorite: Yes. Tell us about your favorite tools. Obviously you have a lot of different tasks, so there's no one tool to rule them all yet.

I'd love to hear about some of your favorite tools, for particular tasks. 

Novae Caelum: So I heavily use Plot Drive in writing, research and, filmmaking now, because I've got my script to shots, conversion buttons. I heavily use Plot Drive. I use Gemini and the Chat GPT interface.

I have the Google Ultra subscription because I'm crazy, for the videos mostly. I got into Gemini because it's technically free through there, with the cost of the videos. I use, Veo 3 a lot. That's the backbone of the video.

I have a Kling account that I paid, like the huge yearly subscription and I hardly use it. I use Veo 3. I use Freepik. I did not like [00:29:00] Runway. No, I loved Runway last year. And then all this new cool stuff came out and then I'm like, Runway. I did a competition with their, they had a competition like, a couple weekends ago, and they have this new thing where it edits video. It's called Aleph. I got a character in the screen with me, with it, which was crazy. it weirded me out for days. I'm like, "Oh my God. I just pulled this character into my living room who does not exist except anywhere in my head."

This can be a little mind trippy. So I love Runway and, Midjourney. For images I tend to use Midjourney, Ideogram for covers. Ideogram two does better. I do a lot in Freepik, because all the image generation is free now if you have a certain amount of account and it's not even that much.

So I do a ton in Freepik. I love Nano Banana. That's the new one. That's Google's new one, I sent out my release day newsletter the other day with a mockup, where I took a book brush mockup and stuck it in there and said, in a [00:30:00] castle, in this, in that, and it gave me this glorious castle that looked like echoed from the cover. And I'm like, this is amazing. So Nano Banana is awesome. And they keep coming out with new things like every single freaking day. But I just saw Seedance like updated and now it could do what Nano Banana can too. So it's like all of this.

So I am whatever tool I'm using is the best for the workflow at the time. But if there's a new one that comes out, I will just snipe after it and go after it. and that's my new favorite. So I, I am like polyterlamorous, I dunno. Um, I, I'm not devoted to anything. I tried to go off and have a love affair with Claude, and Claude was not it for me, but I like Claude in Plot Drive.

I like working, but I don't like the Claude interface. It's, I'm just all over the place and it's like something shifts and it's okay, we'll go off after that for a while. So I'm trying to think of any other tools that I use all the time, but I think that's kind of the, that's [00:31:00] mostly the main ones.

And then I'm building an app that I have, it's semi-functional, it's functional enough for me to do my socials in. But what I really wanted to do is. upload a book, and cascade through, turning it into a screenplay, turning it into building out like a film dossier. I love the story dossier thing.

I was like, film dossiers. and then turning that into a shot list. And then generating the images. And then generating the videos and, or no, it cascades into the characters. And I already got this working in a different app. And now I'm trying to do it in this one where it pulls in the characters and then generates them.

And all of this, and then pulls that into like the various militude to get the shots right for the movie. So it's possible. It's not easy yet. It's possible. So I don't think we're at push button movies quite yet, but, I think we'll get there. But, the very last tool I use is DaVinci for editing.

I think that's like the whole [00:32:00] picture. It's a lot of stuff. I spend way too much on AI subscriptions a month. And Eleven Labs Add that in there too, for the audio and voiceovers and the audio books. So I like to make the full cast audio dramas now. I'm in love with that, and it's not that hard.

It's not even that time consuming. Honestly, I've got shiny object syndrome, and if that intersects with getting things done, that's a really good thing. Yeah, I think that's all we do. 

Steph Pajonas: And Suno too for music.

Novae Caelum: Suno? Yes. Yes. Suno. 

Steph Pajonas: Didn't wanna forget that one too. I love making music. I love music and I love making music.

And, That's one of my favorite things to do is like to go in there and just put in a really random prompt. What am I gonna get out of this? And see how it is. It's just, it's a lot of fun too. 

Novae Caelum: I know. I could spend days on Suno. I have things to do, but, yeah, I Suno for and it can like separate stems now for pulling in movie soundtracks, and you could edit the stuff.

I'm [00:33:00] like. I'm trying to figure out like, I don't sleep very well most nights, because my brain is very, full. But I'm like, I'm always turning over, "O kay, how do I take this and this tool and make this thing that isn't really possible, except it's gonna be, because it needs to be."

But yeah, and I was looking at, there's another one, MusicGPT think. 'Cause I'm like, I'm trying to API this, so to pull it into my movie app. So that one's actually pretty decent too. But, it's not quite Suno, but it's, it's better than Udio. That one's pretty decent. But yeah, all the tools.

Steph Pajonas: All the tools. And that's what I love about this, is that you get a chance to get out there and try them all, and you tell us about them. And then if I notice that Novae has moved on to something else, that's really awesome, then I just go and see what, see what you're excited about.

Because I know that if you're sticking with a particular tool, it's because it's, generally doing its job and is doing it really [00:34:00] well. And you don't have the need to go over and find out if anything has come out, that's even better. So I'm gonna stick with you and your tools, because that's where I'm going to find the tools that will help me as well.

All right. We're gonna wrap up here in a minute. Danica, did you have any final words that you wanted to ask Novae about? 

Danica Favorite: No, I think, most of our guests, we could sit here and talk for hours. And I'm sure in the future we will have you back, because there are gonna be some really cool things to talk about.

Thank you so much for coming. I really loved it and can't wait to, talk more. 

Novae Caelum: Yeah. 

Steph Pajonas: Me too. 

Novae Caelum: Thank you for having me. 

Steph Pajonas: Me too. Thank you so much for coming. We really appreciate it. Before we go though, I wanna make sure that people can find you online. So tell us about the places that you are the most.

I understand that you are pretty much everywhere, right? Where should we send people who are interested in your work? 

Novae Caelum: My home base online is my name, novaecaelum.com. I'm on Instagram at Novae Caelum author [00:35:00] and Facebook at Novae Caelum author, and TikTok is at Novae. Don't ask in terms of, I don't know.

That was a while ago. but that's the main places. If you want to keep up with tools. I have just started a school with Cassie Alexander. 

Steph Pajonas: How do we find, how do we send people to that as well? Because I know you, I know Cassie really well.

I know you guys are working on video, and like teaching that to authors as well. Or teaching that to anybody who really wants to learn. So where can they find out about that as well? 

Novae Caelum: That is AImarketingforstorytellers.com. Wow. And it'll take you to the school. and the school is our brain dumps.

It's not super structured. We're both pretty busy. But we Zoom with each other and dump our thoughts and we process dump We're going to do, I did that Runway short film, and I'm gonna zoom with her and teach her how to do all that stuff.

You'll get to see that too. We're a little chaotic, but it's fun. 

Steph Pajonas: Chaos is good because, you know why everybody learns from that. Everybody [00:36:00] learns in different ways, right? Some people learn from really structured material and other people learn from the chaos.

And I think that it's nice, because now we have something for everyone. So thank you so much for coming today. We really appreciate it. I'll make sure for everybody who's listening, you wanna come by the blog. Read the blog post about this particular episode, which I will put together. I'll put links to, Novae's stuff in the in the post. I might even go and grab a few images from like your Instagram and whatnot and put them on there too. Get a little visual going so people know what you're doing. Okay. And then, yeah, so come by to the blog and check out that you're also gonna wanna subscribe to us on the socials. We're on Facebook, we're on YouTube subscribe, all that good stuff.

Danica, do you have anything else that you wanna say before we head out? 

Danica Favorite: No, I think you hit it all good. We got all the likes and subscribes, which is what we, try very hard to remind each other to do. So thank you all and yeah. Subscribe, and we will see you next [00:37:00] time. 

Steph Pajonas: Absolutely. We will see you guys all next time on the next episode.

So from all of us, we're gonna say goodbye now. Alright, bye. 

Danica Favorite: Bye.

Speaker: 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.