Yes, AI helped write my books. Here's what it didn't do.
I've got five books out now, on puppies, itchy dogs, surgery and vet bills, and I'm finishing a sixth on cats with kidney disease. When that comes up, the next question is usually some version of "Oh, so AI wrote them?" I get it. Amazon is filling up with books nobody read before they were published. And parts of mine were AI-generated. But "AI wrote it" skips most of the work, so here's what actually goes into one, using the kidney cat book, Still Purring.
Research used to be the part that took months. Pulling papers, reading the guidelines, chasing the numbers I half remember from school. Now AI does that digging in an afternoon. What it can't do is know which of those numbers I trust after 26 years of treating these cats, so I check the sources myself. The ones in this book are papers I can point to: Lappin 2005, Quimby 2013, Syme 2002 and the ACVIM 2018 guidelines.
Then the outline. AI drafts it, and I move things around until it's the order I'd explain it in an exam room. What does the owner need to know tonight, and what can wait until the recheck?
Then the rough draft, and this is where people assume the book is done. It's not even close. I go through every chapter and approve it, change it or throw it out. This one came with 87 review cards, questions only I could answer, and the video opens with a few of my answers exactly as I typed them, typos and all, next to the page they turned into. A lot of it I just talk through with voice-to-text, because I say things better than I type them, and then I read it back and fix it again. The real details come from me: what an exam actually costs here in the Houston area, how I handle a euthanasia at home versus here at the clinic, what I tell people when the bloodwork turns. The last chapter is about Stoli, my own Russian Blue. He was dumped in our lobby as a kitten with a broken leg, lived on three legs to almost 16, and took his fluids at home without ever fussing. No AI knew that story.
Then I keep working on the voice. Early drafts read like a pamphlet. I keep pushing until it sounds like me sitting across from you. A panel of simulated readers (also AI, each playing a different kind of cat owner) goes through it chapter by chapter, and I rewrite whatever they trip over.
The artwork is the same story, and it's the second half of the video. Every picture is a decision I made. The first four calicos were pretty, and none of them were Callie. The second round was painted from a real calico, and I picked number three. Stoli had to look like Stoli. Then came 63 paintings for the chapters. I sent 16 back for cats that drifted off-model, and then I noticed the AI kept sneaking English cottage windows and blue-and-white Delft pottery into what's supposed to be a Texas kitchen. So 45 got painted over. That's a lot of credits spent on the wrong pictures.
By the numbers
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87 review cards
Questions only I could answer, on one book.
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63 paintings
For the chapters.
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16 sent back
Cats that drifted off-model.
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45 painted over
English cottage windows and Delft pottery in a Texas kitchen.
So yes, AI was in the room for all of it. It did the typing and the painting. The medicine, the judgment, the stories and the taste are mine, and that's the part that makes a book worth reading. The research that used to take months takes days now, and I'd rather spend that time on the part only I can do.