Month: November 2025

Ownership: The Rights of the Creator

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By: A.B. Timothy

statue of aristotle in ancient ruins

On X recently, I’ve argued that God has the right, as the owner of humanity, to give and enforce laws as he sees fit. Someone asked me, “Why does God have this right?” The answer is simple: If you create something, you own it. The ancient Greeks understood this (Aristotle’s Politics). If you create something (with materials you own) and you own that thing, certainly creatio ex nihilo (creation from nothing) would give you an even greater right over that thing.

This conversation started in response to my article on why authority is necessary, where I argued that an objective lawgiver is needed. The logically consistent argument from a naturalistic or evolutionist standpoint is for men to rape, pillage, and murder. Rape spreads the rapists genetics, which is the highest and only calling of naturalism. Pillage steals from others and increases the thief’s standard of living. Murder kills off genetic opponents and allows for the genetics of the murderer to be the only ones that persist.

Evolution is unadulterated meritocracy, which, while useful for a capitalistic society where there are laws precluding murder and erasure of the competition, is disastrous when brought into a pre-civilizational Amazon.

If there were truly no standard beyond the feelings of the individual (and evolution were true), we would still be warring tribes in Africa.

To ask why, then, is to ask the owner of a piece of property why they don’t want someone else to come and burn down their property. “What kind of a question is that?” the person might exclaim. “It’s mine, you’ve got no right to destroy what’s mine.” And they would be 100% in the right to say that.

God owns us because he created us. He has given us free will to choose to submit our will to his and enslave ourselves to Christ. But he has also given us that same free will to choose to enslave ourselves to our fleshly desires and pursue pure naturalism.

Now this is the part where I extend the gospel to you, the reader.

The Good News

Have you been living for yourself? Does life seem to repeat the same hedonistic cycle of: Feel Good → Feel Meh → Feel bad → Do something new → repeat? If you said yes to that, you will be stuck in the cycle until you die, I promise, unless you pursue something that is beyond yourself. Every human has a soul, and that soul yearns to be united with its Creator.

That longing you feel after a night of binge eating/drinking/self-pleasuring, is your soul longing to be purified and brought out of the filth it finds itself in. God is the only answer to this longing, and not just any God, only the God of the Bible, Jesus Christ, can fulfil that longing.

This God came down from heaven, lived life as a human but lived it perfectly, was falsely accused of blasphemy, died the most excruciating death imaginable, and raised Himself from the dead three days later.

The best part? He did all of that for you. To give you an out. To give you the resurrection he experienced, Paul, an early convert, wrote in a letter to the church in the city of Ephesus, “Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:” He explained to these believers that even though we were dead in our sins, God made them alive again with Christ, in their salvation. All you have to do is accept His free gift of salvation to be made alive in Christ.

Want to know more? Go watch this video and find out how you can know for sure, today, that you are on your way to heaven. Then, go find a church in your area and get plugged in.

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A Blog About Blogging

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By: A.B. Timothy

“To blog or not to blog,” is a question I remember asking several weeks ago, and today I will be talking about it again.

To Blog

Are you like me? Are you a writer who is looking for a way to up their productivity or their daily output? Well, look no further than the ripcord of writing that is: Blogging.

Blogging is a great way to start or end your writing day. If you start with it, it could translate into great starting momentum for the rest of the words in your actual project to flow from. If you end with it, it could be a great way to gather your thoughts and talk about things that you dealt with during that writing day. Did you struggle with a place name or a character name? Write about it!

Or Not To Blog

Some people don’t want to blog or don’t have the time for it after they just spent all afternoon writing prose. These are totally understandable and reasonable reasons not to blog. Honestly, whatever your reason not to is, it is probably a good enough reason not to, as long as your only excuse isn’t “It’s hard”. Yeah, so is writing! But here you are, writing!

“Do the uncomfortable things, so that when you go back to the things you are comfortable with, you are better at them.” – A.B. Timothy

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Casting an Ever-Wider Net

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By: A.B. Timothy

In the pursuit of creativity, the creative must also become either beholden to a larger apperatis, such as a publisher, or they must become beholden to the audience. To catch all of the fish your marketing sea has to offer, you must cast an ever-wider net.

With this goal of a wider net in mind, below I have written some ideas that you could implement to grow your audience. Working under the assumption that you have already established a social media presence.

Free:

Let’s start with some free things you can do.

Asking A.I. for ideas

Something that I have done is I have gone to Grok (X’s A.I. platform), given it my X handle (@ABTimothyAuthor), and asked it for ideas on how I can grow on X and improve my social media presence. I am sure I would have gotten a lot of the same ideas if I had spent an hour googling social media growth strategies, but Grok was able to give me personalized ideas and concepts to try based on what I already post, what I was doing (building an authorial platform), and what my goals were.

Implementing these ideas, I have seen a boost in my follower growth metrics and in my engagements. Not everyone likes to use A.I.

Go Old School

Watch YouTube Videos from Authors who have built a presence on social media, talk to authors on X about how they have seen the growth they have, and read books on influencing people. I say this is all free because you don’t have to buy mentorship programs, you don’t have to buy these books (libraries exist), and heck, you can even watch YouTube for free on whatever platform you are reading this on right now.

Paid:

Let’s look at some ways you could potentially pay to grow.

Verification

Verification on most platforms these days is a paid process where you give the platform (i.e. Instagram, X, or Facebook) money and they repay you with a badge on your profile and an algorithmic incentive. On X, for example, when I sign up for X Premium, my account will not only look more official because of the blue checkmark, but it will also have a higher priority in the system and will be seen by more people as a result (a wider net).

Mentorships

There are content creators out there already who offer paid mentorship programs where they teach you and help you grow. This is not something I have any personal experience with or can give any more guidance on, so tread here carefully.

Do you have any ideas?

Are you a creative with a social media following that is already impressive for your niche? Are you a content creator who has had several viral videos? Let’s talk about how you pulled it off and how you plan to continue the momentum going forward, in the comments below.

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November Targets!

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It’s the first Tuesday in November, you know what that means! Time for a Target Post!

Social Media Goals

Novel Goals

> X Growth
I plan to be shooting for 115 followers by the end of November. My goal of 100 by January 1st is on track to be blown out of the water, very cool!
> A Weekly Short Story
I plan to continue the trend, sending out weekly original or edited short stories every week in November
> A Weekly Newsletter
I will have a weekly newsletter put out at 3 PM Arizona Time every Saturday this month.
> Daily Motivational/Non-fiction blogs
Last month, this was tough to keep up with and get my word counts in. With my current word count goals, I… WILL BE GOING EVEN HARDER, RAAAAAHH The daily inspiration must flow!		The Shards of Arthur’s Shield <
I will be shooting for the stars this month. I plan to have the rough draft of Arthur’s Shield done by the end of the month, so I can get the editing process started ASAP.
The Early Years of a Great Mage <
I was able to get my 5k written last month, but with the 3k/day goal on my other project, I have dialed this back to 1k/day(best-case scenario) and 1k/week (worst-cast scenario)
Brothers’ Feud <
I got my outline written! Yippee. I will be fleshing out the World-Building on this as we go when I have the chance

How’s it going?

3,000-4,000 words/day sounds like a lot, but according to my NaNo Archive over on my old Facebook page, I used to kick that number in the but for weeks straight, so here’s to a revival of that youthful fervor.

It’s all about sticking to it! Feel free to subscribe to this blog to see how my works progress, and also send your email my way so I can get you added to the weekly newsletter.

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Transparency: AI vs Ghosts

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By: A.B. Timothy

The other day, I responded to one of Ryan Williamson’s articles about AI. He was gracious enough to respond to my response in an article of his own. In that article, he talked a lot about the need for transparency and how the issue was not the use of A.I. alone, but rather the lack of transparency. Below I have written my reply to his reply.

Raising the Flag of Truce

Hey Ryan,

Another great article. It is clear from your work that you are so very well written and—I would have to assume—read in this area. You have written several articles (just referring to the ones you mentioned in your post, not including the ones I don’t know about, of which there are undoubtedly many) on the issue of A.I. in creative works, and you have a breadth of personal experience with this technology. I ultimately agree on many of your takes and am willing to let bygones be bygones on the points we still don’t see eye-to-eye on. I have no plans to “boycott” anything you write, as you have assured me (and I take your word as your honor) that all of the actual meat of your work is human.

There are some things I wanted to bring up for further discussion, however:

You brought up, several times, the need for complete transparency in literature, and I have to wonder, what does that mean for Pen Names? I myself write under a pen name, though I do not hide behind anonymity, using my real face as my public profile picture, linking my real name public X account to my author X account via a post I made almost a month ago. I just do not feel the need to tell each individual about my “real” life. Similarly, I would not lie if someone asked me about my use of AI or Grok, but I don’t feel the need to announce it. This plays into your points about ghost writing and my use of A.I. as a marketing advisor.

On Ghost Writing…

There is a marked difference between using A.I. to write your prose as opposed to hiring a human ghost writer. A.I. is trained on millions of words of other authors’ work, and in many cases, this data has been taken without the permission or payment given to the original authors. A human ghost writer, however, while likely also having been trained on millions of words of other authors material, is using their human faculties to correlate and process that data after, in most cases, they have consumed that data through ethical and reasonable means.

I do not like your idea that this argument is on the same level as “throw away your computer because it was made with blood-cobalt.” That offense, of these foreign nations profiting off of slave or inhumanly-paid labor, is much, much worse than someone reading a pirated book. But if you look at the markets right now, who is demanding the most of those inhumanely collected resources? It’s not the public market, it’s not you or me, it’s A.I. companies. So, continued use of A.I. and support given to these companies is a double sin in this comparison.

Thus, here too, I bring you the offer of a draw, I don’t lecture you about using A.I. you don’t lecture me about typing on blood-cobalt (which also powers your A.I. data-centers).

Arguably, a human ghost writer avoids a number of these issues as it is (in most cases) an adult human being paid for the art they have chosen to create and give up rights to.

On A.I. Marketing

While I understand that A.I. in all forms of art will continue to improve year over year, this attitude that you seem to have of just throwing up our hands and saying, “It will only get better,” is one I cannot agree to. To simply watch the age of men die and do nothing as it burns repulses me. I understand, as you said in your article, you do not view this struggle as poetic or spiritual as I do, and that’s okay; not everyone has to see everything the same way.

A.I. art has gotten good. I won’t sit here and claim it hasn’t because that would be a lie, even the book cover you use in your original post is a great example of A.I. art that can fool the masses and even impress the informed. However, I need to ask, would you have bought that book if you knew the artist went to such lengths to lie about having created that image themselves? You might answer yes, and that’s your choice, but morally (again, I understand morality has little to do with the marketing game as it’s played today, as you pointed out), I couldn’t stand by it. Now, would I go through the hassle of trying to return the book and get a refund if I had already bought it under false pretenses? No. I’ll be honest and say it would not be worth that much of a hassle for me.

Marketing materials as a whole? Go nuts, man. I can’t stop you, and I probably will end up using some of them myself (for the free things.) I think that is where I draw the line. You drew the line at the end product must be a creation of the credited author, SPOT ON! But, I would further that line by saying: the end product is whatever the consumer spent their money on. If I am selling stickers at a booth alongside my book at a con, I would want those stickers to have art drawn and created by paid artists. If part of my marketing is my book cover (which it has to be), I would insist that the art featured there on, must be from a paid human artist.

The prose within the pages of the book goes without saying.

But, free things, like marketing posts on Social Media, blurb art for my blog (See the placeholder art for The Shards of Arthur’s Shield over on my Novels page). Things that cost the consumer no money to see and might only help push people towards my artist-produced work, yeah I don’t mind using A.I. for that.

At the end of the day, I think you said it best when you said “[A.I. Marketing Materials and Human Art] are [both] legitimate business decisions.”

A Final Olive Branch

Here is my idea, and something that people could start working towards in politics:

Art, broadly, already has the Copyright Protection Act to help protect it against theft and redistribution. What if human art had a similar thing? What if there were a Human Art Act, an act of government meant to protect human artists and to help push them? It could put coal at the feet of Social Media companies to start cracking down on art that does not meet a certain threshold of humanity, and could force them to cut down on the artificial slop. Now you made a great point in your article that KDP already had an overwhelming amount of human slop thrown at it year-round, but that is, in my opinion, no reason to just open the flood gates and let loose the A.I. hoardes.

This idea of protecting human art (which would not be perfectly air-tight just as the CPA is not), is something that I would like to imagine we could agree on. The only issue I could see you having with this is the reversing of some of the democratization of marketing you talked about in your article.

This last thing was just something cool I’ve thought of and would love to get your thoughts on it as an A.I. Professional.

Farewell

Thank you for the great dialogue and your very thorough response to my response to your response. I wish you well and pray for the health of your loved ones,

A.B. Timothy, Author

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Mythic Inspiration from Genesis 14

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By: A.B. Timothy

In Genesis 14, we read of a war that Abram(later Abraham) fights in. He is there to save his nephew Lot. He and several of his servants pursue their enemy and slaughter them on the field of battle. Abram if offered a reward by the King of Sodom because Lot and his family were citizens there, but Abram rejected the offer of riches, not wanting the king of Sodom to be able to say, “I have made Abram wealthy.” He only takes as payment what his soldiers have taken from the enemy and eaten already.

Melchizedek offers bread and wine to Abram.

After this, a character of legend appears called Melchizedek, who is said to be the king of Salem (believed by some to be ancient Jerusalem). This Priest-King appears and offers a sacrifice for Abram and his servants and blesses him with, by showing him another name of God: “El-Elyon”, which is “The Most High God”.

This can be an awesome inspiration for a myth in your world. What if there was an immortal priest whose entire existence is going around and blessing people after they do good with a sacrifice in their honor, and a new name for their God that professes an aspect that the believer always knew, but never had a name for?

What kind of Mythic musings have you found in the Bible? Have you considered the importance of the Bible in Western myth? If not, go check out my article “The Bible: The Missing Key to Western Literacy,” where I discuss this further.

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A Brother’s Death

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A Short Story from the “Gifted Cycle” by A.B. Timothy

Richmond, Bodhi, brothers until the very end. One, a stalwart protector of the old crown, a five-century-old monarch, and the traditions she represented; the other, a newly enthroned king of a rebellious union of principalities. There, on the fields of their childhood, nestled between the hills of the Queen’s Spine Mountains of Terra Prima, they stood some hundred feet apart from one another. There along those same hills they had played, they had laughed, they had discussed the mysteries of their reality, and so much more. Now they would have one final discussion, one final battle, though this time, their swords would be very real.

The wind rushed through the grass blades, the sun illumined the field of battle without any needless heat, and the birds had taken up their song, far off, once again. The wind stopped, the sun froze, and the birds went silent as Richmond drew his sword. A heartbeat later, Bodhi had his own blade in his hand. Perfectly matched in their speed, they meet at the heart of the battlefield.

They danced… like the days when the children would dance together to the sound of the birds in the trees, but there was no music to this dance, other than the music of steel meeting steel.

“She loves you… You know.” Richmond’s voice was calm and empathetic to his brother. A frozen stream of white puffed off his tear duct. Richmond watched at least three of the same form around his brother as they danced.

“I know,” Bodhi said, his voice equally calm and empathetic.

“Then why do you not go to her? Be with her? End this war?” Richmond asked.

“My people need me more than I need to be romantically fulfilled by a Terran queen.” Bodhi’s sword sounded on Richmond’s.

“They need you to kill her?” Richmond’s voice rose in offense, the first sign of any emotion in this dance.

“Or her champion… they need me to be the king they crowned, they need a ruler who will put everything he holds dear on the line for his people.”

“Even your own blood?” The double meaning of Richmond’s word caused the first slip in his brother’s guard in the dance that persisted for three minutes. Bodhi caught the slip, and Richmond was only able to scar his cheek with a glancing blow. Taking advantage of this action, which seemed a mistake, would prove fatal for the twenty-year-old swordsman, however, as he felt, between the fourth and fifth ribs, a cold edge of steel enter his chest.

“For my children, I would do anything.” They both sped up to twice as fast as either of them ever had, when Richmond fell to the floor. Blood did not flow; they were in the space between heartbeats, even a beat of their own hearts.

“You have slain me… my brother, but stay with me a while in this place between and hear my heart, hear your brother,” Richmond’s voice was openly sorrowful now, “please.”

“I will stay with you here, for as long as you desire it of me, Richmond.” Bodhi’s voice was stronger than his brother’s, only bolstered, however, by victory.

“Then help me stand and let us dance on the lake of our youth, once again.” Richmond reached up his arm to his brother, who stepped back and hoisted him from the ground. The pair walked south now, away from the heart of death. This was the ultimate fate of their kind: to live the moment of death for all eternity, until they accepted their death.

The pair found their way to the small lake, which had now been converted into a field hospital for the battle, but with the gifts of their time, there was very little blood seeping into the water. Bodhi and Richmond took to stepping across the lake, like they had done in their youth after discovering what they really were. There, they relived memories and danced across the motionless waves of the lake to a music of their own creation, laughing at jokes heard only by themselves and the creator.

Then they rested with their backs propped up by a tree, both picking at the grass beneath them with their eyes afar off. 

“What about that tree?” Richmond asked.

“Oh, the tree where Shona and I kissed… that must have been a lifetime ago,” Bodhi remembered.

“It only feels like a lifetime to us, Bodhi, remember.”

“Ha, yeah, you’re probably right.”

“Whatever happened to you two?” Richmond asked.

“I went off to the army, and she didn’t like that much. She knew about our powers, but she thought she’d never see me again once the government could do its tests. ‘I’d be too important,’ she’d say, ironic. She was right, for all the wrong reasons. I never went back to her, not due to import, but because I was smitten with the empress… then you joined up with me because of your own… gifts. The rest is history.”

“So what happened to us?”

“I’ll chalk the memory loss up to your condition.”

“Humor a dying man, will you?”

“They killed your wife and children… Richy, they killed ‘em dead, ordered you to do it with your own ship.”

“I remember, but duty comes first…”

“Yeah, that’s what you said four years ago.”

“They ordered you to kill your brother… kill ‘em dead, ordered you to do it with your own sword.”

“Oh, come on, Richy, that’s not fair.”

“Isn’t it?” There was a silence that stretched several moments; Richmond broke the silence with a confession. “I love you, Bodhi. You held my heart in your hand our whole childhood, you were my inspiration, my role model, after our father died.”

“I can’t even cry in your death moment,” Bodhi’s voice choked with sobs, “so what are you trying to prove, Richy?”

“I forgive you, Bodhi. I can’t blame you for coming to a conclusion I came to years before. I’m only sorry it took you this long to come to it. How about a pact with your dying brother, hmm? Like a dying wish?”

“What is it, Richy?” He instinctively shoved away the absent tears from his eyes. “In the name of the empress, if it is in my power, I will grant it.”

“End this war… stop the bloodshed, make peace with our queen.” Richmond’s own words were full of sobs now.

“Richy, I can’t—”

“I don’t mean submit to her authority, I only mean make peace.”

“I promise…” He leaned over and hugged his brother on the other side of the tree they had been resting against. “I swear I will see this bloodshed brought to an end, so no brother will ever again have to kill their kin… not while I live.”

“Good… now, I’m ready to go now…” Richmond’s voice was weak and close to giving up, “pull this sword out and… hold me, bubba, please?”

Bodhi could deny his brother nothing now. He stood and walked to his brother’s side of the tree and pulled the sword out, shrinking it once again and putting it on his belt. He fell to his knees and took his brother into his arms and began to sob, kissing his brother’s forehead again and again. “I love you, Richy… I’m so sorry.”

“Know this as I fade now, Bubba… you are forgiven… may you find shelter in her light.” Richmond’s eyes filled first with little white stems of steam, then tears as his heart began to beat again. Bodhi sat there, rocking his brother back and forth, sobbing as he felt the lifeblood pour out of him and stain the grass.

Near a different tree, a line of black was cut in the grass as a split in reality solidified above it. Out from it stepped Her Majesty, Lady Sal of Terra. Her white gloved hand stretched out to Bodhi… “Let us fulfill your brother’s final wish, my lord, let us end this shedding of blood.”

Richmond’s Bubba did not respond; instead, he sat cradling his brother and sobbing into his corpse for an eternity. It took Bodhi much longer to accept his brother’s death.

A Response to Ryan Williamson’s 10/31 AI Discussion

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By: A.B. Timothy

On October 31st, 2025, Ryan Williamson, a fellow writer and someone I would consider a peer, both here on WordPress and on X, posted an article on his WordPress entitled, “Far More Authors Than You Think Are Using AI—Guess How Many Won’t Admit It?” There, he discussed the growing trend in the use of Generative AI amongst writers. I originally meant for this “article” to be a comment on his blog, but it grew too big. So here it is instead:

Hey Ryan,

Great Article, man, very articulate and well thought out from the perspective of someone pro the new technology.

I, as I have mentioned on X, have used Grok (an X-based LLM) recently to help me brainstorm ideas to grow and expand my reach on X and grow my audience. This has helped. I’ve gained several followers, I changed my bio, and have been able to put out many copies of my Free Chapter to new followers. And I have begun engagement-hooking, with images and written hooks for RT’s and Replies. I’ve only begun building momentum with these “tricks” all at the suggestion of Grok. I’ve never taken anything from Grok directly, only used him as a backboard to bounce ideas off of and look for tips.

I say all of that so you know that when I say this next part, I understand that it might be seen as throwing stones from a glass house, on my part. I think a lot of readers have AI trust issues. By that, I am referring to your Spock meme in this post. It may be illogical (it is), but humans are illogical creatures. When I hear a writer has gone ahead and outlined their story with AI or allowed the AI to write portions of it for them, I don’t like it. When writers and artists hide their usage of AI, and then it is revealed that they used AI, I feel betrayed.

Paul Atredies Glimpsing the Golden Path

I imagine this feeling of betrayal is something not unique to me. I believe many others undergo it too. This whole conversation of AI versus humans is something that I have given much thought to. For this reason, I have chosen to pay a non-insignificant amount to a human artist who has been commissioned by people I trust (and who I believe is a peer of ours on X), to create the cover for my debut novel. I want as much humanity in my stories as possible. I see a golden path for humanity, but in only mere glimpses. When it graces my sight, I set my heading for that impossible star, and sail in search of a dawn I only pray will come one day.

Does this mean I think creativity is cooked? No. I believe even if we artists fail today, and the industry is wiped out by gleaming-enticing-objectively “beautiful” piles of AI garbage, someone else, one day, will see the golden path again and lead a jihad in the name of humanity. The right to create, to express dominion over, and to rule God’s creation was given to us. Not the rocks we have tricked into thinking for us.

So, Ryan, thank you for making a thought-provoking article that inspired me to write this response. I pray for good health for your family and loved ones, and hope we can continue to pursue our creative endeavors as peers and men of quality.

With Respect and Humanity,
A.B. Timothy, Author

If you are reading this on my blog, go subscribe to Ryan’s blog over on Ryanwilliamson.com “Beyond the Margins” is always ripe for a good read.

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