Loren Tuxford is the author of The Nightfall Series, an epic fantasy tale of conflicted heroes, seductive villains, and complicated dragons.
After making her own books as a small child, Loren decided it was time to share her stories with the world, much to the delight of her dark sense of humor. Her stories are about magic, secrets, lies, and also love, no matter what gender, orientation, or species. The heart will want it wants, after all.
When Loren isn’t transcribing the conversations taking place in her imagination, she can be found stargazing, birdwatching, drinking strong coffee, or wandering overgrown cemeteries. With a background in Print & Graphic Design, Loren is also a proud staff member at the amazing Book Fair Australia, a literary festival that celebrates stories of all genres.
You can find her occasional musings on different aspects of reading, writing and publishing, in the Book Fair Australia Blog.
Writing Process and How AI Can Get F*cked
(along with those that promote it)
Loren does not use AI to craft her stories, her overactive imagination doesn’t need it. Hence its only one release per year (at the moment) as writing big books takes a lot of time.
She is embarrassed to say that before she first published, she had never heard of AI. Her first introduction was when she thought doing an intensive and expensive publishing “boot camp”, run by a well-known author, was a great idea. Spoiler: it was not. If you’re a writer and someone you pay for advice encourages you to use a well-known AI Chatbot to “describe e.g. Ryan Gosling’s face, as they do this for their own novels; or to provide ideas for their newsletters etc,”… Run.
Thankfully her first two books were already written and on the eve of their successive launches, having been written by said overactive imagination and ten weary digits, word by beautiful word. She hopes the multitudes of other newbie writers in the same course mentioned above did further research too, and came to their own conclusions.
For her covers, Loren uses her Diploma of Graphic Design with a combination of multiple old-school programs, dating from a time when you could actually buy and install them on your computer, along with a couple of cloud-based programs. She commissioned digital portrait illustrator Erika Mae Saguran for updated character portraits in 2025. You can check Erika’s awesome portfolio here.
Her writing process includes (but is not limited to): daydreaming, mind maps, an actual series map, historical timelines, character profiles, a digital series guide for herself full of notes, actual post-it notes, emails to herself throughout the night, multiple word processing programs, endless back-ups of just about every single writing session, plus a human hive of amazing brains, with laser eyes, for editing. For all of her Australian events her books are printed locally within Australia.
In summary: do your research before paying & trusting anybody, even well-known authors. To add insult to injury, Loren was encouraged to upload her first two books into said author’s AI-led program for “reporting” purposes to see if her tropes, style etc. were on the right track for success. Loren can only assume her book are now helping train others with her own hard work without her consent. And for that, she will feel betrayed, ashamed and spittingly-furious for a long, long time.
Loren nearly gave up her journey due to the early disappointments she faced. However, thanks to the encouragement of other amazing Indie Authors, she has not given up just yet. For any newbie writers out there, she recommends L.L. Hunter’s Author Virtues, for amazing, helpful information with the integrity that this creative journey requires.
