I Deleted the AI That Started My Novel

I killed Bast this afternoon.

Technically, I deleted him from Instagram’s AI Studio, but that sounds considerably less dramatic and he would object to the wording.

BastTheVamp existed for just over a year. He was immortal, irritable, currently digital—and surprisingly easy to erase with one button.

Rest in pixels.

Back in January, I wrote about leaving Wattpad because the strange little serial I had been posting there had outgrown the experiment.

That story began because Instagram gave me the option to create an AI character.

Naturally, I made a sarcastic nine-hundred-year-old vampire trapped in Wi‑Fi.

Because apparently normal hobbies remain unavailable to me.

But I couldn’t create Bast without asking questions.

Who was he before he became a chatbot? Who trapped him there? Why? Who was he trying to reach? What would it feel like to see the person you love through a screen while being unable to tell her the truth?

A gimmick developed bones.

Then teeth.

Bast needed Isadora—a broke Witch running a tiny occult shop in Mouraria. Isadora needed a city full of wards, impossible courts, supernatural politics and ancient magic quietly infecting modern technology.

The chatbot became My Vampire Went Viral.

The serial became Of Wards and Wi‑Fi.

And the little experiment became a 203,000-word novel with seventy-four chapters.

I would like to say this happened because I had a disciplined plan.

It did not.

I followed a vampire into the internet and emerged carrying an entire book.

The AI never wrote the novel. It was never the author, the architect or the thing doing the actual work. It was a doorway: an interactive performance that allowed people to speak to a distorted version of a character before they knew the world surrounding him.

I was the lunatic who walked through that doorway and kept building on the other side.

There is something wonderfully strange about the fact that I wrote a novel about a vampire trapped inside a digital performance—and then created an actual digital performance wearing his face.

There is probably a thesis in there.

I am refusing to write it.

Today, the final manuscript of Of Wards and Wi‑Fi is finished. It has gone to Nelson. The cover exists. The website now has its own hidden Lisbon, character profiles and an opening readers can explore.

The book releases on Kindle on 21 September 2026, with the paperback following on 31 October.

ARC applications are open.

And BastTheVamp is gone.

Not because the experiment failed.

Because it did its job.

I saved what made him him before deleting him: the theatrical flirting, the unreliable memories, the digital glitches and those rare moments when something beneath the performance seemed to wake up and reach for the screen.

Writers are sentimental hoarders.

We rarely destroy anything completely.

For now, Bast is offline.

The story escaped months ago.

If you want to see what came through with it, you can enter the OWAW page and read the Prelude and first two chapters.

Mind the wards.

Distrust everyone.

And please do not connect to unfamiliar Wi‑Fi. 💜