One of the best parts of being a writer and having your stories published is when they get illustrated, and you get to actually, really see the characters you’ve been imagining.
Of course, not all stories get illustrations. However, now with DALL-E, I can fix that…
This illustration for “One Alien’s Wreckage” took approximately three clicks and 45 cents to generate. It shows the human grandmother and lepidopteran mother of Am-lei — one of the main characters in my book Entanglement Bound — when the mother was just a baby.
When I managed to generate this piece of art, I found myself totally transfixed and really… deeply and powerfully moved.
This art depicts a very specific and tender and meaningful moment in the timeline of characters I’ve written about a great deal.
Being able to generate art, almost instantly, for one of my stories — and having it turn out so truly beautiful and emotionally resonant — is downright magical.
I’m really loving getting the chance to collaborate on art with all these new AIs, like DALL-E and Midjourney.