[Poll] You Pick the City, I’ll Bring the Automations
Photo by Lucas Beck on Unsplash I need your help picking cities for the rest of 2026. I’m planning more 3-day intensives (more on those in a sec) and I want to go where you actually are — not where I think you are. I’m not being coy about this — I will literally book […]
Agentic AI Is Coming for Knowledge Work. Writers Still Get to Be Weird.
Photo by Jakub Żerdzicki on Unsplash Last week I mentioned that I knocked off about four months of work in a weekend using Claude Code. I migrated 32,000 images, audited a Ghost website, updated plugins across 60+ sites, cleaned up AWS storage buckets, migrated courses, and fixed bugs on StorytellerOS while I was eating lunch. […]
Things I Did with Claude Code This Weekend
This is Author Automations: Advanced, where I share the messy, technical reality of running multiple businesses while building software and occasionally remembering I also write books. If you’re overwhelmed and want to start smaller, the regular Author Automations newsletter is and judges no one. Go to https://authorautomations.com/account and switch off the Advanced Automations notifications and […]
Your Data Is Trapped Behind a Login Screen (And Some Robots Want to Help)
Here’s a thing that will make you feel seen: you’re running an actual business, but you can’t easily get your hands on your own numbers. Your KDP sales live in a dashboard you have to visit manually. Your Amazon reviews and rankings are scattered across product pages you’d have to check by hand. Your royalty […]
The $2 Automation That Lives in Your Pocket
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash Years ago, I was the executive director of a lively nonprofit in Austin. Everyone wanted to take me to coffee and pick my brain (which sounds considerably more gruesome when you think about it for two seconds). You can’t say no to all of them because networking matters, but […]
The Question I Get Asked Most (And My Honest Answer)
Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash I spoke at the Women in Publishing Summit this week, and about three minutes into the Q&A, someone asked The Question. You know the one. It comes up at nearly every conference, every panel, every workshop I teach. Sometimes it’s phrased politely, sometimes it’s loaded with suspicion, but it […]
The Jar Is Already Full (And I’m Not Making Resolutions)
I don’t do resolutions anymore. I know, I know—it’s the first Saturday of a brand new year and you’re probably expecting something about fresh starts and ambitious goal-setting and making 2026 your best year yet. That’s not what you’re getting today. Pour yourself some coffee (or tea, I don’t judge) and settle in, because we’re […]
The Brain Behind the Operation: Why Airtable Is the Secret Weapon for Author Businesses
I have a confession. I used to be a spreadsheet hoarder. One Google Sheet for my series bible. Another for tracking releases. A third for character details (that I never updated). A fourth for event schedules. And somewhere in the chaos, a lonely CSV file holding pen name information that I’d exported from… somewhere? I […]
Hey Siri, Don’t Forget: Add Tasks to Notion from Your Apple Watch
It’s post- (American) Thanksgiving, which means we’re officially in the chaos zone. Every commercial is screaming about doorbuster deals, your inbox is 80% Cyber Week notifications, and you’re supposed to have your holiday prep done already. (I haven’t started. Not a single thing. Send help.) I’m personally holding out hope that I can train a […]
How Claude Became My All-Day Work Partner (And Why MCPs Are the Secret Sauce)
I’m not going to sugarcoat it—I’ve basically been living inside Claude lately. Not in a creepy “send help” way, but in the “finally, a colleague who never rolls their eyes and always thinks three steps ahead” way. Claude has become the calm, capable ops partner I always wished existed. Six months ago, Claude was a […]
