We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Rain Carrington. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Rain below.

Rain, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. It’s easy to look at a business or industry as an outsider and assume it’s super profitable – but we’ve seen over and over again in our conversation with folks that most industries have factors that make profitability a challenge. What’s biggest challenge to profitability in your industry?

There have been many challenges as a romance writer in the MM community. The latest and most worrying, however, is AI.

We’ve already seen sales by real authors drag because people unknowingly buy the AI books that can be put out in bulk. Many times, these books come in a dollar cheaper or more than our books, even though they’re approximately the same length. They can be “written” and uploaded by the dozens each day. These “authors” can make a lot of money before being outed, only to change their pen names and put up another thirty the next week.

The readers, however, are not stupid by any means. (readers are the smartest people on the planet, for a reason!) They figure it out pretty quickly. Now there are groups devoted to knowing real authors and only buying their books.

Problem solved, right? We beat AI! Right?

Wrong. AI is getting better and it’s harder to tell all the time. And why is more infuriating than anything previously mentioned.

Companies like Meta have been using our books to train their AI programs. Taking OUR words, pirating them, and using them to teach their AI programs how to write romance, horror, suspense, and more.

A company Meta used is a pirating site, and on it, I alone found thirty-two of my books. My PA right now is trying to get them taken down, but the damage is done. I unknowingly helped teach the program to write the books that are actively taking money out of my pocket.

The only thing we can do now is count on our very loyal readers to do their research, and for us to keep fighting. Our books mean something. We bring whole worlds to the page and weave stories that bring emotion and joy to our readers. AI may be our biggest challenge so far, but we are the only ones that can gauge and write REAL human emotion.

Rain, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Well, I’m a 55-year-old woman who got into this industry rather late in life. I was 44 when my first story came out for sale, though I had been writing on fiction sites online for a couple years previously.

On these sites, adult fiction sites, I read amazing stories crafted by people from all walks of life. I soon fell in love with the M/M stories I read, and turned to published novels when I ran out of stories on the sites.

There I found an author I just loved and still do. I reached out to her on Facebook and found her to be a warm and caring person who encouraged my writing.

I did my research, of course. I have always been great friends with gay men, and heard their steamy stories, but I wasn’t in their bedrooms, and didn’t always get the gist of how they did…certain things. So, I started watching gay porn.

GASP!

Well, it was illuminating!

I started writing like crazy, weaving books into other books, plucking celebrities into my worlds, and making them into what I wanted them to be.

I also got on Photoshop and started to make my own covers, which I love just a little less than writing itself. It was fun, and my covers were terrible at first, but I kept at it.

Bringing my love of gay porn and making covers together, I reached out, nervously, to one adult film star, then another, asking if I could use them on my covers. They both agreed, and I became fast friends with both, and with one of them, we still keep in touch today.

It’s been a wild ride, as I’ve made lasting and wonderful friends of other authors and readers. This community has the best people I’ve ever known. We care for one another, we listen, we love.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

For an author, it’s bringing forth the characters and worlds from our dreams. We often find ourselves, for no reason, thinking of a scenerio when we’re in the woods, or in the city. We see a person, and wonder what their life is like. Are they happy? If so, how did they become that?

For me, there were always stories in my mind. Characters begged me to tell those stories, to make them come to life. Sometimes, I put them through things that I went through in real life. In that way, it becomes therapy, to relive something through someone else, and being separated enough from it to look at it much more rationally.

It’s been therapy for me, it’s been a rollercoaster ride of emotions. It’s a shield for me too, against a harsh and terrible real world. If this real world gets too bad, I can go into my writing and fix it. I can make it better with a battle or with a word.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

Frankly, I don’t believe there are non-creatives in the world. We all have art in our hearts. Maybe it’s working on a car to bring it back to life, or a person, repairing a heart to keep it beating.

Mathmatics is a form of art, doing equations, problem-solving. What is an artist? Taking a paintbrush, a pen, to turn something blank and lifeless into something that is alive, active, and inspiring.

A teacher is an artist, a creative, making young minds see new ideas. An artist is not apart from that. Taking a blank canvas and making it BE.

Enlightenment, also, comes in many forms. People seek religion for a bit of it, but they seek art as much. To look at a painting and see things the person next to you doesn’t see, would never see, that is enlightenment. To see things others don’t. To feel things others fail to feel. They have their own ways of finding it. For an avid reader, they find theirs in books. For a writer, we find ours in books written by others, and the stories out own minds craft.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.raincarrington.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/raincarrington/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rain.carrington/
• Other: Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/raincarrington.bsky.social
  The MM Wire: https://themmwire.circle.so/u/307a1854
  Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/rain-carrington
  Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Rain-Carrington/author/B00G71I5NK?ref=dbs_m_mng_rwt_byln&qid=1743075776&sr=8-1&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true&ccs_id=1dc0d992-9163-48b7-9d33-005e7b08a1db
  Patreon: https://patreon.com/user?u=92212540&utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLink

Image Credits

Rights all held by Rain Carrington aka Heather Pfalmer