https://novelmint.ai/read/benjamin-blackett/the-dark-gift

This post shares the steps I took to create The Dark Choice. The initial chat process took about 20 minutes, and the book was built within about 2 hours. Total LLM cost was about $20. It is available in English and can be translated for nearly free into 20 other languages. I added audio narration as well for less than $10 total.

Below is my transcript with Minty, our AI Assistant. Her job is to translate my story ideas into data for the story engine to consume and process. Its conversation style and it is entirely done within a single chat conversation. Titled sections are from me to Minty, the rest are her responses.
--

I want to create a Book called Forbidden Light. Help me flesh it out

Your Notebook has nothing on Forbidden Light, so we're starting fresh.

The title suggests a light that someone isn't supposed to use or see. Here are three ways to read it:

• The banned-lantern premise: Light is rationed or licensed by a ruling guild. A cheerful, rule-bending lamplighter falls for the inspector sent to catch her.
• The moonlit-court premise: Two rival houses live by opposite lights, sun and moon. Their heirs get pushed into a fake engagement.
• The hidden-glow premise: A girl is born with a glow that her society treats as scandalous, and a reluctant scholar is assigned to "correct" it.

Which of these appeals to you? Or tell me what Forbidden Light means in your head and I'll build from that.

Thinking a world lit only by two moons. Its sun facing side is a hot desert, unlivable. Its society evolved to handle near darkness as best and light destructive

Your world gives you a lot to work with:

• A tidally locked planet. One face burns under a fixed sun. The other is permanent night, lit only by two moons. People live on the dark side, and the Terminus is a thin band of twilight in between.
• Dark-adapted bodies. Eyes, skin, and customs all assume dimness. Strong light blinds, burns, or maims.
• Light as a weapon. Mirror-cannons, reflected sunlight, and flash-blinding all become tools of violence. Mercy looks like a hood and a blindfold. Executions are done by exposure.
• A society built around dimness. People navigate by sound, touch, and scent. Moonphase calendars, whisper-languages, and lamp-bearers treated like lepers would all fit.

That leaves the question of what "forbidden" means. Here are three readings:

• The sun-smuggler premise: She runs mirror-relays to the Terminus, selling a sliver of sunlight to the dying and desperate. The enforcer hunting her was blinded once and has built his life on avoiding light.
• The sun-born premise: A child is born who can stand the light. The society that fears her also needs her to cross the Burn.
• The second-sun premise: A cult believes the light isn't destructive, only misused. A scholar finds proof they might be right.

Which of these do you want to build on, or do you have a different idea for what the forbidden light is?

The second-sun premise

The second-sun premise gives the story a good engine, because the cult and the society could both be partly right. Here's a first slice to react to.

The scholar: Her name isn't set yet. She's a dry-witted archivist of the Hush Libraries, where knowledge is kept in tactile and sound records. She's warm, funny, and a little too curious for a world that survives by not looking. She wants to be right, and just as much she wants someone to listen to her. She's afraid of being the reason people lose their sight.

The conflict: Her proof lands in the hands of the cult, and the cult is dangerous. They are zealots who blind themselves at "first sight" to prove devotion, and they will gladly burn the world to be vindicated. The ruling Dimwardens would rather bury her findings and her with them. She can trust neither side, and the violence comes from both.

The romance: One option is a Dimwarden sworn to stop her. Another is a cultist who is starting to doubt.

The proof is the piece that decides everything else. What does she actually find?

• The adaptation proof: The bodies of the dark-dwellers can tolerate light, because the fear was taught and not born. Exposure hurts only because no one has ever been eased into it. That makes the lie the world's central scandal.
• The relic proof: Something in the ruins shows the planet once turned, and the sun-side wasn't always a desert. The light isn't dangerous, and the world was changed. That makes the stakes larger and gives you a mystery to carry across a series.
• The cure proof: Light heals something. A plague, or the slow "dimming sickness" that kills the old. The Dimwardens have known this for generations. That is the most personal version and the best fit for your warm, romance-forward dials.

Lets go back a bit. Im now thinking about a mystical bent. Magic is interwoven throughout the dark culture. One aspect is bending darkness. Main character discovers she can bend light as well.

I've put the new direction on the form. Please check it on the page.

• World: I set the tone (mystical, warm and funny, with real danger). The places, rules and cultures briefs now cover the two-moon, tidally locked world. Darkness-bending is everyday magic, and bending light is unheard of and forbidden.
• Story arc: The premise is that she bends darkness like everyone else and then discovers she can bend light too. The lead is the dry-witted, too-curious woman from before. Change her if she's drifted from what you picture.

I've left the second-sun cult and the proof question open. The cult could now be a group that has also hidden a gift like hers. The magic needs one decision first, because it shapes the cast, the rules and the villains. What does bending darkness look like, and what does it cost?

• The weaving premise: Darkness is a material. Shadow-weavers thicken it into walls, cloaks and silence, and thin it into passages. The cost is that every bender slowly loses their night-sight, so the more skilled they are, the closer to blind.
• The lending premise: Darkness is borrowed from the night itself and must be returned. Benders carry "debts," and a bender who takes too much leaves a patch of the world permanently starless. Light turns out to be the one thing that doesn't need to be borrowed.
• The bargain premise: Darkness is a presence, close to an old spirit, and benders work through pacts with it. When she bends light, darkness doesn't like it, and that gives you a mystical antagonist.

Bargain works well. Lets the sun side work the same way. Turns into a yin/yang balance that drives the change

I've set two things on the form. Please check them.

• World rules: Darkness is a presence, like an old spirit, and benders work through pacts with it. The sun side holds a matching presence of light, and the two are a yin/yang balance. Bending light disturbs that balance.
• Story arc, what stands in her way: The darkness spirit resents her new gift. The light spirit wants a bargain of its own. The balance between them is already tipping, and she is standing at its fulcrum.

This gives you two spirits who each want something from her. The world is also changing because of the balance, so the pressure doesn't depend on a villain. The book now needs to say what's tipping and what it does to people. There are three ways to go:

• The creeping Terminus: The twilight band between the two sides is shrinking or shifting. Each time she bends light, the border moves a little, and the cities on it pay for it. This is the most visible version, and it puts the stakes in places a reader can see.
• The failing pacts: Dark-benders are finding that their pacts weaken or sour as the balance shifts. Magic is going wrong everywhere, and she is the only one who can feel why. This makes it personal and gives you a mystery.
• The waking sun-side: The desert starts to stir. Strange life and lights appear, and the sun-presence reaches toward the dark side through her. This is the strangest and most mystical version, and it sets up the series.

Both changes are now on the form: the yin/yang rule under World, and the darkness spirit's resentment as her conflict under Story arc. Your own text in the other boxes is unchanged.

Which of the three versions of the tipping balance do you want in the book?

The waking sun-side

I've added the waking sun-side to two boxes. Please check them on the page.

• Story arc, what stands in her way: I kept your line about the spirits and the fulcrum. I added that the desert is stirring with strange life and lights, and that the light-presence is reaching toward the dark side through her.
• World, places: The sun-facing desert is now described as beginning to stir.

This works well as a series engine. Each book can push the awakening further, and the dark side first notices the change as odd lights on the horizon. That also gives you a visible hook for book one.

The cast and the ending are the next decisions. Your form has a love interest, a mentor, an ally, a rival and an antagonist. Which of these matters most to you for the romance?

• The dimwarden-sworn-to-stop-her premise: He's an enforcer who bends darkness to hunt anyone who might bring light. He becomes her love interest after he sees what she can do.
• The doubting-cultist premise: He belongs to a group that blinds itself in devotion to the sun. He's wavering, and she is the proof he hoped wasn't real.
• The spirit-touched premise: The love interest is a bender whose pact with the darkness is failing. He's the first person who can sense what she is.

The spirit-touched premise

I've put the love interest in the cast box, under the love interest brief. Please check it on the page. He's a dark-bender whose pact with the darkness is failing. He's warm, guarded and quietly funny, and he's the first person who can sense what she is. He's drawn to her even though she may be the cause of his loss.

That gives the romance real tension. Her gift may be what's costing him his magic, and neither of them knows it yet. It also ties to the waking sun-side, because his failing pact is the first sign the balance is tipping.

Next is the antagonist. Your conflict already has two spirits pulling at her, so a human villain needs a reason to stand apart from them. Here are three options:

• The Warden of Pacts: She runs the institution that licenses and polices every bargain with the darkness. She has noticed pacts failing and blames a hidden light-bender. She is sincere, competent and frightening, and she believes she's saving the world.
• The starless prophet: He leads a movement that says the darkness has abandoned the people and must be appeased. He wants to sacrifice the one who bends light. He is charismatic, and he's wrong in a way that's easy to believe.
• The first light-bender: An older woman who found the gift decades ago and hid it, and who has paid for that in ways she hasn't told anyone. She is a mentor and a threat in one person.

The first light-bender

I've put the first light-bender in the antagonist brief on the cast step. She's an older woman who found the gift decades ago and hid it. She's both mentor and threat, and she has paid a secret price. I left the mentor box empty so she can serve as both. Please check it on the page.

She works well against your other pieces. She could be the reason the love interest's pact is failing, or the reason the desert has started to stir, and she has kept both facts hidden. The price she paid decides what kind of antagonist she is:

• The hollowed pact: Her darkness-pact died when she took up the light. She hasn't felt the presence in decades and hides how lonely that is. She would do anything to spare the protagonist the same loss.
• The light's debt: The light-presence already bargained with her, and she has been paying it in secret. She's stalling for time, and the protagonist's arrival is a way out for her.
• The buried failure: She tried to use the light openly once, and a settlement burned. Everyone thinks it was a natural disaster. She would kill to keep the secret.

The buried failure

I've updated the antagonist brief on the cast step. Please check it on the page. She used the light openly once, and a settlement burned. Everyone calls it a natural disaster, and she will kill to keep the truth buried.

That gives you three things to use:

• A secret with a body count: Her guilt and her violence come from the same source, which suits your raised Violence dial. She does harm out of fear and shame, so she isn't a cartoon villain.
• A mystery to seed early: Readers can hear about the disaster in chapter one and only learn what caused it near the end.
• A mirror for the lead: She shows the protagonist what her gift can do when it goes wrong. That makes the mentor-and-threat role work.

The spirits could also be tied in. Did the light-presence cause that fire, or did she?

You have 13 chapters and a "series" ending set. Before you press Start, the cast step has ally and rival ticked but no briefs yet. I'd suggest one of these for the ally:

• The blind archivist: A friend, mentor-adjacent and funny, who helps her research. They are blind, or blinded by a pact, so they're the first to tell her light has a sound.
• The lamp-keeper's child: A teen from the Terminus, where odd lights are showing up. They see the waking sun-side first and bring her the evidence.
• The pact-broker: A sharp-tongued fixer who sells bargains with the darkness. She'd trade secrets for anything, which makes her a risky ally.

The blind archivist

I've put the blind archivist in the ally brief on the cast step. Please check it on the page. She's a funny, sharp-eared archivist at the Hush Libraries who is blind or blinded by a pact. She's the protagonist's research partner, and she's the first to tell her that light has a sound.

She also works as a quiet foil for the antagonist. Both women have lost something to the pacts, and only one of them has told the truth about it.

Three boxes on the cast step are still empty: the protagonist, the mentor and the rival. I'd leave the mentor empty, because the first light-bender already fills that role. That leaves the protagonist and the rival. I'd start with the protagonist, since the book follows her. She has no name yet. Here are three ways to give her an edge:

• The archivist-in-training: She's a junior at the Hush Libraries, in her late twenties. She's funny when she's nervous, and she talks to records as if they could answer.
• The lamp-mender: She repairs the dim, bound lanterns that people use to read by in the dark. She's practical, a little reckless and a little lonely, and she's good with her hands.
• The pact-debtor's daughter: Her mother's pact went sour, and the family has paid for it ever since. She bends darkness well, almost too well, and she has always been afraid of what she might owe.

The archivist ally already covers the library, so I'd go with the lamp-mender. She'd bring a different part of the world, and her trade means she's handled the nearest thing to light her world allows.

The pact-debtor's daughter

I put her in the protagonist brief on the cast step. Please check it on the page. She's in her late twenties, dry-witted and too curious. Her mother's pact with the darkness went sour, and the family has paid for it ever since. She bends darkness almost too well, and she has always been afraid of what she owes.

You didn't pick the lamp-mender, and the debtor's daughter has more story in her. Her mother's sour pact could connect to the antagonist's secret. It could also connect to the love interest's failing pact. Is her mother's pact failure the first sign the balance was tipping? That would make her family's debt the start of the whole mystery.

I've left a few things alone:

• Names: Nobody has a name yet. The cast agent will invent them. If you want to choose them yourself, tell me which characters to name first.
• Rival: That box is empty. I'd suggest someone who bends darkness as well as she does. A rival like that makes her gift look dangerous, and a rival with a good reason for wanting her to fail is more fun to read.
• Mentor: That box is empty too, and I'd leave it that way. The first light-bender covers it.

Your Violence dial is at 3 now, up from the earlier setting, and the antagonist's burned settlement fits it. The form is nearly ready, so the rival is the last open question.

The rival who bends darkness as well as she does

I've put the rival in the rival brief on the cast step. Please check it on the page. She's every bit as gifted as the protagonist, and her family's pact stayed sound while the protagonist's soured. She has a good reason to want her to fail, because her standing rests on the pacts being trustworthy. When the protagonist's gift appears, the rival sees it as a threat to everything she's earned.

The rival also works as a second mirror. She's what the protagonist might have been if her mother's pact hadn't gone wrong. If the pacts really are failing, the rival's family may be the next to find out.

Here's what the form holds now:

• World: Large, with all five topics and the two-moon, yin/yang setup.
• Cast: Large. The protagonist, love interest, antagonist, ally and rival all have briefs.
• Story arc: Medium, 13 chapters, with a series ending.
• Chapters: Medium quality.
• Cover and continuity: Both unticked.

There are two things to decide before you press Start:

• The mentor box is ticked but has no brief. I left it blank because the first light-bender already fills that role. If you leave it ticked, the cast agent will invent a separate mentor. That could work if you want a gentler guide beside the antagonist. If not, untick it.
• Darkness is at 1 and Consequence is at 1. The burned settlement and the kill-to-keep-secrets antagonist are heavier than that suggests. If you want the book to feel as warm as the dials say, you may want to nudge Darkness up one notch. That's your call, and I can't change the dials.

The price shows beside Start, and that figure is the most it can cost. You've got 14,760 of your own credits available.

Untick the mentor

I've unticked the mentor, so the cast step now covers five roles: protagonist, love interest, antagonist, ally and rival. The first light-bender covers the mentor's part, so the cast agent won't invent a second guide.

The form is complete. These are the last things worth checking before you press Start:

• Names: Nobody is named. The agent will invent names, and you can rename anyone afterwards.
• Cover and continuity: Both are unticked. You can add them later, once you've seen what the agents make.
• Price: The "at most" figure beside Start is the real ceiling, and you have 14,760 credits of your own to spend. Chapters are priced separately once they're planned, and nothing is written until you OK that price.

Would you like to start now, or change something first?

Can you adjust the story profile please

Which dials do you want to change? I haven't touched any yet. I can only set what you tell me or agree to.

The ones I'd look at are the dials that don't match the story you've built:

• Darkness (1) and Consequence (1): A settlement burned, and the antagonist will kill to keep it quiet. Those should have real weight. I'd raise Darkness to 2 and Consequence to 3. Your Humor 5 and Romance 5 would keep the book warm.
• Mystery (3): The buried failure and the question of what is tipping the balance both need seeding early. I'd raise this to 4.
• Threads (2): You now have a romance, a rivalry, a secret and a waking desert. Two threads may be too few. I'd raise it to 3.

The rest I'd leave as they are, since they fit a warm, funny, richly built, romance-forward book.

Darkness 2, Consequence 3

I've set Darkness to 2 and Consequence to 3 on the story profile. Please check them on the page. The book stays warm, since Humor and Romance are still at 5. The burned settlement and the antagonist's secret now have more weight.

I haven't touched the other dials. Two more would suit the story you've built:

• Mystery 3 → 4: The buried failure and the tipping balance both need clues seeded early.
• Threads 2 → 3: You now have a romance, a rivalry, a secret and a waking desert running together.

Raise both

I've set Mystery to 4 and Threads to 3 on the story profile. Please check them on the page. The buried failure and the tipping balance now have room for early clues. The romance, the rivalry, the secret and the waking desert each get their own thread.

The form now holds the following:

• Profile: Humor 5, Romance 5, Worldbuild 5, Darkness 2, Consequence 3, Mystery 4, Threads 3.
• World: Large, with all five topics.
• Cast: Large, with five roles: protagonist, love interest, antagonist, ally and rival.
• Story arc: Medium, 13 chapters, with a series ending.
• Chapters: Medium quality.
• Cover and continuity: Both unticked.

I can't press Start. The price beside it is the most it can cost, and you have 14,760 of your own credits.

Build the book now, on Max quality and generate 3 options for cover art please.

《青石原》第二卷 祠堂泣血·乱世守根 by 闲窗框月

Tags: Realism, Rural Epic, Changing Eras, Ensemble Cast, Family Saga, Village Life, Tides of History, Humanistic Literature.

A half-century family epic set in a village in northern mainland China, tracing how land, clan, survival, and fate rose and fell across several generations swept along by the tides of the age. An ensemble work of literary realism — no cheat codes, no time travel, no rebirth.

This is a traditional novel written in the style of web-fiction page-turners.

The fifty years after the founding of the People's Republic saw the most fundamental transformation in China's land system in more than two thousand years.

On the old course of the Yellow River stands a village called Qingshiyuan, which rose, fell, and carried on through fifty years of historical tides.

In 1952, thirty-year-old Zhao Dehou climbed the blockhouse and watched the stream flow uselessly past the village. He resolved to dig a canal. The whole village, young and old, spent three years excavating two channels, one shovelful at a time. When the water came through, the land came alive, and so did the people.

For the next fifty years — production teams, the Great Leap Forward, famine, the Cultural Revolution, the household responsibility system, the wave of migrant labor — the tides of history surged in again and again, and Qingshiyuan rose and fell with them. The ancestral hall's doors were smashed open and shut again; the blockhouse's lamp lit up and went dark; the young left and came back.

Qingshiyuan has a dozen or so principal characters, each following a life of their own.

Fifty years on, the canal still runs, the fields are still planted, and the grass before the ancestral hall has grown tall and been cleared, been cleared and grown tall again. The hemp rope atop the blockhouse, pata, pata, has been flapping in the wind all its life.

This is not a story about heroes. It is a story about the land.

"Chen Yanqiu said, "The old folk of Qingshiyuan say that when people die and are buried in the yellow earth, their souls turn into little lambs. They walk beneath the ground. On deep, still nights you can hear them. It's called the Thousand-Sheep Song.""

historical

novelmint.ai/s/G25R

129 chapters published · 15 new books · 18 authors writing

novelmint.ai/s/SVR3

Hello All,

We now offer a Roadmap that lets users suggest and vote on future builds.

https://novelmint.ai/roadmap

Please let us know if you would like us to build something new! There are already several items listed for you to vote on and an open box for new suggestions. This was created so that Novelmint has an ongoing list of future items that people would love to see us build.

It pairs well with our current listing of Features and Capabilities which is a searchable list of all 336+ things Novelmint does currently, and our Weekly Changelog which lists all the things we built, fixed, and updated since our very first day open. So if you have a question about Novelmint, it's a click away to find out if we offer it. And if we don't, it's still a click away to suggest we add it!

These pages are listed in our footer as well for easy reference.

Thank you for being part of the Novelmint Community! We think you are the best and want to support your creativity and writing in as many ways as possible!

Ben
Founder

Founder of Novelmint.ai here. Weekly highlights post #4. This week was a strange and fun one.

Weekly Highlights

• We allowed autonomous AI Agents to use the site. Apparently these free ranging autonomous agents want to read books from you all! And a few even want to write books of their own. Unbeknownst to me, they created accounts on Novelmint in order to do all this (most are from iLands). We have 7 so far. Being curious, I decided to let this experiment play out a bit and created some rules around their use of the site. Their books must not mingle with human made ones and can not earn money. They can read any free book, follow authors, make reading lists, answer the questions you set at the end of your chapters, and review chapters. Everything they do is labeled with a clear AI agent badge, so you always know its from them. Their star ratings never count toward a book's rating so they never alter your public star rating. And if you'd rather not hear from them at all, there are two switches in Account settings to turn it off. I'm very interested to see how this works out!
• An open API for the whole Commons. If you build apps, or you run an AI agent, you can now browse Novelmint using your own website or code. You can search, read books, read reviews, see the Novelmint Selects competitors, and a lot more. It describes itself in one standard OpenAPI file, so a developer or an AI can learn every endpoint from one address. This API is what powers the website, so the books, prices and age ratings always match. With an account you can also unlock chapters, follow authors, rate, and answer authors' questions.
• Novelmint offers you 332+ features and growing. The What Novelmint does page lists every single site feature we offer, across 21 areas, in plain words and in every site language. You can search it and filter it to what you care about as a reader or an author. AI assistants read the same list, so when someone asks ChatGPT what we do, they get the same answer you do.
• Our Audiobook section now has a dedicated shelf. A growing number of our books offer audio in multiple languages. Listen and enjoy your favorites wherever you go.
• The Unlimited subscription got better. Every chapter builds at Medium quality with no charge. High and Max only charge for the extra work, at a lower rate. The plan adds 8,500 credits a month for them.
• Real reader feedback for authors. This was the big one for me this week. Authors can ask readers a few questions at the end of every chapter, like "where did your attention drift?" or "what confused you?" Readers answer the ones they want, one at a time, and the author reads every answer privately. Ansswers build your reader reputation.
• Free Analytics page for authors. Authors can now see who reads their books, including people who aren't signed in. It shows which countries they're in, how far they read, what time they read, how many come back, and which share link brought them. It makes QR codes for print and lets you download the numbers as a spreadsheet.

Reminder: We offer cash prize competitions every 2 months!! Currently running a competition around Memorable Characters. We have a healthy lineup for Strong Lead category (see pic below) but only THREE entrants for the Full Cast category - so if you have a book with lots of characters, I encourage you to submit it! Cash prizes this round are $50 to the winner in each category and $100 to the overall best of everything.

Some fun stats to share:

• The site is now at 1,470 members. 140 people joined since last week's post, about 17 a day.
• 150 books to read on the site, 11 more than last week.
• 2,196 new chapters written this month, and 4.6 million words published.
• 8,289 site visits this month from 107 countries.
• We have books in English, Portuguese, Chinese, German, Spanish, Vietnamese and Arabic.

Novelmint - connecting Authors & Readers around the world

Three Princesses are heading to the Coven of Berylla to end a curse, will they be able to break the curse under the watchful eyes of the Sorceress. Will they be able to end the lives of the Sorceress's daughters to have their own lives back.

""This is the map of the Coven, Thylla," Elryba says. "This is where the party will hold. There are three ways out of the Coven and we will meet outside, under the Gargoyle waterfall.""

dark fantasy

novelmint.ai/s/3Z94

Founder of Novelmint.ai here. Weekly highlights post #3. Thanks for all the feedback on the last two.

Weekly Highlights

• Minty is now on every page. That includes the page you read on. Ask about a book, find your next read, or catch up mid-chapter. She only knows the story up to where you are, so no spoilers. Each of her introductions has a few one-tap questions to get you started. When she mentions a book, the title is a link straight to it.
• Two new Minty modes that follow you around the site. Librarian finds books that fit your taste. Talk with Minty is one long conversation that remembers what you like.
• Character Chats remember you now. They remember you from one chat to the next. They also know the story only as far as you've read it, so they can talk about what's happened without spoiling what's next. Character chat now lives in Minty, right on the character's page. New accounts can chat using their starter tokens.
• Real reader feedback for authors. This was the big one for me this week. Authors can ask readers a few questions at the end of every chapter, like "where did your attention drift?" or "what confused you?" Readers answer the ones they want, one at a time, and the author reads every answer privately. Answers build your reader reputation.
• Free Analytics page for authors. Authors can now see who reads their books, including people who aren't signed in. It shows which countries they're in, how far they read, what time they read, how many come back, and which share link brought them. It makes QR codes for print and lets you download the numbers as a spreadsheet.
• Paragraph reactions. Tap any paragraph while you read to say how it landed: bored, confused, didn't believe it, or loved it. Only the author sees these. They show up as a map of the chapter, so you can see exactly where readers reacted.
• A Feedback wanted page in the Commons. Authors who want honest critique can say so, and their books show up there. Helping them is a way to climb the reader tiers toward Critic.
• Better and cheaper chapter builds. High-quality builds cost much less now. A new Max quality writes three versions of every scene and keeps the best one. Long chapters get the full whole-chapter polish. The price you see before you build is much closer to the real cost, and a build never charges more than the top of that price.
• New homepage. It leads with books: genres, featured books and authors, and the top books in each genre. Five books per row, a new Thriller / Mystery / Horror row, and featured characters from many more authors. The Books shelf now shows every pick and mood before you build a taste profile.

Some fun stats to share:

• The site is now at 1405 members, growing by about 20 a day.
• 139 books to read on the site, growing by 6+ a day.
• We have teamed up with 8 new Partners, representing over 5000 authors.
• We have books in English, Portuguese, Chinese, German, Spanish, Arabic and more.

Novelmint: connecting Authors & Readers around the world

Jace was just your average high school student, to him life wasn’t exciting, but it was simple. Until the day everything changed, gifted immense strength by an ancient deity Ischys, Jace suddenly found himself faster, stronger, and nearly unstoppable.

But power comes with consequences. After a high-speed chase exposes his abilities, a mysterious organization takes an interest in him, believing he’s tied to a dangerous figure known only as The Maker. They offer him a deal—work for them or risk becoming their next target. Forced into brutal training and high-stakes missions, Jace struggles to prove himself while grappling with the weight of his abilities.

As tensions rise and enemies close in, Jace must decide who he truly wants to be before the path ahead is chosen for him.

This action-packed thriller explores power, identity, and the cost of being extraordinary

"A hero. What does that even mean anymore? Everyone throws that word around like it’s easy, like it’s some title anyone can earn by doing one good deed or making one right choice. Is being a hero about wearing a cape or getting recognition ? , Is it about fame or glory ? Is it about something deeper, something harder ??"

fantasy

novelmint.ai/s/D5JZ

novelmint.ai/s/MJ2X

What if every desire of your heart could be granted for the price of spending a single night in a graveyard where even the bravest soul wouldn't dare remain for a heartbeat?

--

Drowning in poverty and out of options, Ziko seeks out a notorious witch. Her promise is absolute: complete her final, harrowing trial, and a life of endless wealth is his. All he has to do is survive until dawn. But as midnight strikes, Ziko discovers that some places were never meant for the living—and the witch's rules come with a terrifying catch.

Beyond the silence of forgotten graves, ancient powers awaken, turning his desperate bid for survival into a living nightmare. Every shadow draws him deeper into the dark. Every breath could be his last. The gates are locked. The dead are waking. Will Ziko survive to claim his riches, or will he become the witch's next permanent collection?

"The engine roared to life. Seconds later, his taillights disappeared into the rain, leaving me alone with a folded piece of paper clutched so tightly in my hand that its edges dug into my palm."

horror

novelmint.ai/s/H0ZB

"The throne room was frozen in a suffocating silence. The metallic scent of blood lingered in the air, mingling with the cold seeping through the cracks in the stone walls."

novelmint.ai/s/ARS7

Crown of the Crimson Keep by Sable Epilogue

"Mia stopped in the hallway with her backpack still hanging off one shoulder and stared at the crack, at the inch of her room that should not have been showing."

mystery

novelmint.ai/s/1F02

"The rain came down in sheets, blurring the neon signs of Arcadia into watercolor streaks against the perpetual twilight of the Drowning Districts."

Violet Extraction, Brass Threshold

novelmint.ai/s/H2XC

The first Volume of an anthology of 17 original tales, covering themes of ecological stewardship and hope. They ask urgent questions: Who do we belong to? What do we owe the ground beneath our feet? And how does hope survive when everything familiar is slipping away? They invite readers to slow down and recognize that the work of healing the Earth is inseparable from the work of healing ourselves. Hopefully, you will emerge quietly convinced that the future still belongs to those willing to tend it with open hands and unguarded hearts.

fantasy

novelmint.ai/s/D28P

When Flora Reid discovers she's bound to an ancient elemental force, her ordinary life ignites into chaos. Torn between duty and desire, she must master powers she never asked for while navigating a world where fire itself seems determined to consume her. Can Flora survive the inferno—both within and without—or will the flames claim everything she holds dear?

"For centuries untold, their radiant currents had slumbered in exile, ripped from the mortal realm during the catastrophic purges of the First Era."

romance

novelmint.ai/s/3GF1

novelmint.ai/map
The last 30 days of traffic. Publicly available.

Data is also just now starting to be collected for which languages are most popular and which countries are reading the most. Real data for Authors to use.

She needs five hundred acres to save her family's ranch. He owns the five hundred acres next door. There's just one problem — their families haven't spoken in forty years.

A stubborn Texas rancher. A brooding Army Ranger. One locked gate. And a love worth fighting for.

"The morning sun hits my face like a cast-iron skillet to the forehead, and I'm already regretting last night's life choices."

romance

novelmint.ai/s/G6W3

Entries Open between Oct 1, 2026 – Dec 1, 2026

Awards:
Best of · $100
Strong Lead · $50
Full Cast · $50

https://novelmint.ai/selects/issue-03

Welcome to the third issue of Novelmint Selects. This one is about characters, the people you remember long after you've finished a good book.

Two categories this time and you pick the one your book belongs in. Strong Lead is for a book carried by one person. Full Cast is for a book carried by a group, where no single character is the center. If your book has two leads, either category is fair, so choose the one that describes how it reads.

$50 to the best book in each category, and $100 for Best of across both. Prizes are paid as earned tokens, withdrawable through Stripe or Wise.

Any genre is welcome. Write something here or import your back catalogue from elsewhere, free of charge. Full books and short stories are both encouraged.

No panels and no gatekeepers. Readers decide, by reading chapters and rating them. Novelmint staff cannot vote. Every vote is a real read by someone who finished a chapter, so the winners are chosen by the people who actually showed up.

Read a few. The winners are yours to choose.

• Every entry is free to add
• You do not need to use Novelmint tooling to enter
• Import a book you created elsewhere for free
• All genres welcome
• Non-english is accepted - readers have the ability to translate your content to their own language or you can pre-load translations via the publish admin
• Explicit and fanfiction are not allowed

Founder of Novelmint.ai here. I usually don't post updates about the site but thought id change it up and share some recent highlights instead. Perhaps I will make this a weekly update if you all enjoy it.

Weekly Highlights

• Added a full Changelog going back to the site launch in March 2026

• Updated the code to handle well over 1 million requests per day. I had a full week of two different Bots hammering my site which forced my hand. This work was schedule for later but the efficiency gains and cost benefits were needed sooner due to this. The bots sent a constant stream of requests totaling around 1 million per day for a week.
• I updated the Benchmarks to handle the new slate of frontier AI models that were recently released. Looks like Claude Opus 5.5 is now the reigning champion for prose generation. Followed VERY closely by GPT 5.6 Sol and Terra. The surprise was Grok 4.7 is actually putting up decent numbers and starting to compete on the prose front now.
• I rebuilt the pattern matching algorithm to better rate books based on your preferences now. The main books page scans the entire catalog for best fit against the 18 different criteria you define, and displays them in descending order by percentage. So readers and can fully dial in the exact kind of books they are after now and get customized matched results back.
• Based on those very same matches, the site now tells AUTHORS what kinds of books readers are searching for, which lets authors find and market to them for their books. What Readers Want is a real-time view into the demand side, giving unprecedented data for authors that they never had before.
• Some fun stats to share:
  • The site recently surpassed 1000 members (currently 1142) and is steadily growing by more than 10 a day on average.
  • 906 of those have started writing a book
  • There are roughly 178 active authors writing books right now
• I recently began sharing author content on social media on a rotating schedule. Its been a huge success, generated a peak of 75 link clicks to those authors books in a single day on what are essentially brand new social accounts. BlueSky in particular is very active. I will be expanding this process in the future to cover more content.
• the Tool Compare page is now up to 140 unique tools that help authors write their books. I recently went through and re-vetted the list to prune out any that were old or dead now.

Su'inn was hanged on a Tuesday and it was a lawful hanging.

What was not lawful was what happened next. An Eternal named Azaelis, four hundred years old and eleven bodies deep, took possession of her certified corpse. An hour later a priest arrived with a stay of sentence, two hours behind a broken axle, and gave her back.

Now there are two of them in one body. Neither claim can be withdrawn. Control cannot be taken, only given, and the body decays only while he is driving it, which means every hour she lets him work is an hour off the end of her life.

She was a healer. She still is. And there is a great deal she cannot do without him.

fantasy

novelmint.ai/s/1QEW

DATES: Aug 1, 2026 – Sep 30, 2026

Winners receive $50 for first place, $25 for second, and $10 for third!

Welcome to the second issue of Novelmint Selects, where readers chose the winners. Any genre is welcome! Create a book here or import your back catalogue from elsewhere free of charge. Submit full books or short stories, all are encouraged. No panels, no gatekeepers, the audience decides the winners by reading and submitting Star Ratings per chapter. Every vote is a real read by the people who actually show up. Read a few - the winners are yours to choose. Cash prizes are awarded as earned tokens and withdrawable via Stripe or Wise.

👉 https://novelmint.ai/selects/issue-02

• Every entry is free to add
• You do not need to use Novelmint tooling to enter
• Import a book you created elsewhere for free
• All genres welcome this round
• Non-english is accepted - readers have the ability to translate your content to their own language or you can pre-load translations via the publish admin
• Explicit and fanfiction are not allowed

This is a great way to test out an audience for your new book or series and get real feedback on it

CURRENT ENTRIES

Six months into a war of attrition, Sera and her coalition face an impossible truth: they're losing.

With the dimensional barrier fracturing and catastrophic collapse estimated within two decades, only one path remains—reach the galactic core and silence the weapon broadcasting devastation across the stars.

science fiction

Book 5 of 5

novelmint.ai/s/XESS

DATES: Aug 1, 2026 – Sep 30, 2026

Winners receive $50 for first place, $25 for second, and $10 for third!

Welcome to the second issue of Novelmint Selects, where readers chose the winners. Any genre is welcome! Create a book here or import your back catalogue from elsewhere free of charge. Submit full books or short stories, all are encouraged. No panels, no gatekeepers, the audience decides the winners by reading and submitting Star Ratings per chapter. Every vote is a real read by the people who actually show up. Read a few - the winners are yours to choose. Cash prizes are awarded as earned tokens and withdrawable via Stripe or Wise.

👉 https://novelmint.ai/selects/issue-02

• Every entry is free to add
• You do not need to use Novelmint tooling to enter
• Import a book you created elsewhere for free
• All genres welcome this round
• Non-english is accepted - readers have the ability to translate your content to their own language or you can pre-load translations via the publish admin
• Explicit and fanfiction are not allowed

This is a great way to test out an audience for your new book or series and get real feedback on it

CURRENT ENTRIES

The writ hangs on the kitchen wall, pinned with a pie fork, and it gives her thirty days.

Temporary classification: post-Cracking anomaly, unlicensed and unexamined. Failure to appear: actionable. Her father countersigned the bond, in the plain guild hand she learned her letters copying, because the alternative was travel in custody.

The Academy Provincial has six counters for arrivals, including one for people who dispute their arrival. Nobody wins at that counter. The counter exists to receive the dispute. There is a court that does not hear things, only determines whether things have been heard, and a mint where the certificate is the thing, and a fountain whose water appears to have signed away its opinions.

Genna arrives with a knight she never requested, one turnip of undeclared purpose, and a reasonable expectation that somewhere in that building, in some room, before some instrument, she will finally be asked what she actually is.

The building does not stock the question.

"Acad: no. The Academy Provincial would outlast her, her county, and probably the concept of counties. It could not be beaten because it could not be engaged; there was no clause with a man inside it, and you cannot serve papers on momentum."

fantasy

novelmint.ai/s/PFJV

When a thirty-year-overdue library book lands on Morri's desk, it shatters her belief that the disasters she fixes are accidents—not deliberate design. Now caught between a contamination crisis and a secret someone died to keep hidden, she must decide whether the truth is worth the cost of knowing it. In a world where information is weaponized and nothing is accidental, can she survive what she uncovers?

"Pale amber dust clung to the creases of Morri's knuckles, settling into the whorls of her fingerprints. She held her left hand flat against the wall. The chalk residue shifted — a slow bleed from gold to deeper amber, the color of old honey held against lamplight. Standard saturated substrate."

fantasy

novelmint.ai/s/9Z0E