Midas Gets a New Last Name//a successful launch of the ebook//Becoming an Art Director

My recent convalescence from an otherwise inconvenient episode of early Fall pneumonia provided me with more “writing time” than I had initially anticipated.

So— ‘making hay while the sun is shining’ allowed me to line out my newest children’s picture book series: “Fables of Old Brought to Light for Children”… which says it pretty well as a descriptor of the series’ aim.

Reflective of that aim, ‘Midas B Goodenkind’ is my flagship character— leading a calvacade of anthropomorphized timeless fables put to name and set to story. Here's the ebook link https://a.co/d/h6h0aFY .

For example— the next character in cue, a young alpine Austrian lad named ‘Wolf Von Fibbenteller’, will take the baton from Midas in a retelling of the ‘fable of old’— “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” You’ll have to stay tuned for that reveal, but you get the idea of where this series is headed.

Over the next two weeks the paperback version and hardback gift edition should be available on Amazon and from Ingram respectively.

The most interesting work I found in creating Midas and his friends was navigating the steep learning curve of AI art. In particular, the most challenging element in that journey was how to design the texture and tone and vision of the main character and then how to carry that through each scene in the story with good character consistency.

I spent many hours learning the best AI software for initial character development and then transferring that character into a AI art tool that would force consistency in style and in character profile.

I'm finding that things in the literary world are decidedly tilted against using AI in anyway for traditionally published and agency represented books. But it is not unethical or illegal if you use AI and give full disclosure AND if you use an AI art tool that gives you permission to use it commercially promising that none of their generated art is based or modeled off any other human's copyrighted work.

So I have decided to use ChatGPT5 and its AI art tool exclusively in my books in this particular series. I don't care really if others may not choose to do so. I certainly would never want to encroach on any person's copyrighted work. for ethical and legal reasons. But, staying in the lane of legalities and ethics... why not use art in this way? It still takes a lot of effort and time to get the characters exactly like you want them.

It took me almost a month of learning and then honing my prompts to get every scene exactly like I had envisioned. I may not have the skill to paint with a brush or draw with a pencil, but I have learned to create consistent character and book scene art... the keyboard being my brush/pen.

I think that in the future "Art Director" will be an accepted and sought-after role in creating commercial books like I am doing now. So... I may be blazing a trail, but I am satisfied with the way I am using these modern tools to bring great stories to life.

My experience was that the AI art tool the ChatGPT5 did a great job of consistently creating my characters and kept the texture and tone of the scenes remarkably well.

Through tons of trial and error, I found that being repetitive and insisting on giving me the EXACT MIDAS in each scene was key in forcing the ChatGPT art tool into consistency. Also, I started a new Chat-session for each scene. You never want to keep building upon previous prompts— CHAT just got exhausted and confused with long threads.

Finally, applying those principles— I found it relatively easy and gratifying being able to serve my own book project as it’s Art Director— the title I gave myself in the book’s cover right under my name as author!

I’ll cut this post short now because the Brewers are about to begin game 5 against the Cubs in the NLDS.

I’ll share more details about becoming an AI art director in a coming post!