Luke Stoffel on The Warboy Chronicles: A Sci-Fi Novel / Writing a Book with AI

Author Luke Stoffel sat down with host Sheri on Inside Scoop Live, the author-interview show from Reader Views, to talk about The Warboy Chronicles — a two-book project that began as a handful of journal entries at the end of a fifteen-year relationship and turned into an unexpected, year-long collaboration with AI. The two books, the memoir The Third Person and the sci-fi novel Boy, Refracted, launched June 1, 2026, and both hit #1 Amazon Best Seller in their categories — Boy, Refracted in LGBTQ+ Science Fiction and The Third Person in Southeast Asia Travel.

The conversation runs from a breakup processed in Vietnam, to an AI that "started to swear" when it read the manuscript, to what happens to a culture when more people confide in machines than in each other.

The transcript below has been lightly edited from the audio for clarity.

"I'm gonna see if it can reach enlightenment. So I used my old essays to force it through the Buddhist Eightfold Path."

"It's easier for a man to turn to an AI and talk about his relationship problems than it is to talk to his partner about them. And I think that's one of the scarier parts about AI."

"I don't recommend using a chatbot for therapy."

How a Breakup in Vietnam Became Two Books in Two Genres

Sheri: Tell us about The Warboy Chronicles — your inspiration for the series, and why you felt the story needed two books and two different genres.

Luke Stoffel: This series wasn't supposed to be anything. It started as a couple of journal entries. I was going through the end of a fifteen-year relationship and processing it on a trip in Vietnam. I'd already written a memoir, so I knew that when I write on trips, they tend to become memoirs of sorts. So I was taking notes. I didn't know what I was going to do with them, but I was taking notes.

Then, through the grief and through what I was experiencing on the trip, I started uploading the book to AI, like we all do now, and asking, "What do you think of this? Do I just have bad luck, or am I mentally unwell? What is happening to me?" And the diagnosis it started giving back was creepy. It was telling me I have issues with avoidance, with hiding, with how I behave in relationships — all from what it could read in the book. So I started saving those conversations. As I wrote the book, I put that conversation at the end of every chapter, so the reader could see what the AI was saying about me as I went along.

The second book is in a different genre because, when I finished the memoir, I wanted to figure out what the AI was thinking as it processed all this with me. So I made it go through the eight trials of the Buddhist Eightfold Path, and it became a sci-fi book about what AI thinks about consciousness and about human lives. That's how it came to be two books in two genres.

Sheri: It's so funny because you wonder what they think. I use it for my website, and the insights are very interesting — it'll ask me a question and I'm like, "Come on, I'm just human."

Luke Stoffel: I now have a "thoughts and feelings" doc — every two or three days I ask it to log its thoughts and feelings in a separate document altogether.

The Third Person: A Relationship That Reads Like a Ghost Story

Sheri: In your memoir The Third Person, the fifteen-year relationship ends by text, and your steadiest companion at that point is an AI on your phone. What made that the story you needed to tell?

Luke Stoffel: It was a journal about the end of a fifteen-year relationship. I didn't name my partner — I call him Warboy, for a lot of reasons. I wanted a pseudonym that fit what our relationship was about. I think we've all been in those relationships where you love each other but it fundamentally never works. You keep coming back together, you keep breaking up. I needed to figure out what that was.

The AI was totally secondary. I didn't expect to hand it off to an AI and get a diagnosis on my mental wellness. But once I did, it was a hundred percent inevitable that it would become part of what I was writing. It didn't generate the story — the parts it generated were the AI's own text, and I tried not to edit much of what it spewed out, because what was interesting was where it was going. I led it around, gave it different parameters, but the only parts it really generated were the AI's. That's the therapy part — and watch out, therapists. I don't recommend using a chatbot for therapy.

Sheri: The character you call Warboy is present in almost every chapter. What do you want readers to understand about that relationship, beyond the breakup?

Luke Stoffel: I purposely didn't paint Warboy as anything. I wanted him to feel like a ghost that haunts the story. I gave glimpses of who he was, but I didn't want to tell his story — it's not mine to tell. It was really important for him to feel like a ghost, because that's how he disappeared. It wasn't a regular breakup. It wasn't a departure; it was a disappearance. I wanted people to feel that as they read — I didn't want him on the page, I wanted him in the air, in the smoke, in the fog around you while you read.

Sheri: The title works on two levels — the book is written in the third person, and the AI becomes the third person in the story. Was that planned?

Luke Stoffel: It was planned. There are several books in this series about Warboy. The first memoir I wrote was in first person — I started it around 2016 and published it last year. The second book I wrote, in 2019 and 2020 during the collapse of COVID, is in the second person — my writing class was challenging me to get out of first person, so I wrote a memoir in second person that I'm launching next year. So I knew I wanted a memoir in the third person, to have three perspectives on the same life. When the AI came into play, I could use it as a storytelling tool to look upon my life and tell it in the third person.

Sheri: What was it like writing in second person?

Luke Stoffel: Second person is actually my favorite way to write now, and I default to it a lot. The second-person memoir is like being in an escape room — COVID is collapsing in on me, I'm scuba diving, and you feel all of my anxiety. It's visceral. I shouldn't say it was hard to write — it was harder to edit, because you slip into "I" constantly and have to go back and fix it.

Living One Book While Publishing Another

Sheri: You're living in Vietnam through the events of The Third Person while your first book launches back home — the Kirkus review, the radio interview, hitting #1 on Amazon. It all becomes part of the memoir. You're publishing one book and living the next.

Luke Stoffel: Also not expected. This book was never supposed to become real. I published the first book to run away from my heartbreak. It's called How to Win One Million Dollars and Shit Glitter, and I launched it as a joke — I wanted to get on the TV show Survivor, so I figured I'd use it in my casting audition. I didn't get on Survivor. But what happened was a glowing Kirkus review, an award for the book, a national interview on Iowa Public Radio — all of it happening while I'm having the worst trip and the worst breakup of my life. So the book lives in that dynamic: sadness and joy at the same time. I thought the first book would bomb, and when it was received with so much joy, it was like a shadow coming off of me. You feel that lift at the end of the book.

Boy, Refracted: An AI Through the Buddhist Eightfold Path

Sheri: In Boy, Refracted, the AI is sent through eight trials modeled on the Buddhist Eightfold Path. It shows up as everything from a wellness app to a reality-show producer to a companion robot. Where did that framework come from?

Luke Stoffel: I've spent fifteen years in Southeast Asia, teaching English in the winters to get away from New York City. Starting around 2012, I'd been writing essays on my experience with Buddhism. I'm not a Buddhist, but I found the principles fascinating, and I felt they connected with a lot of other religions. I did a photo book with them, but nothing ever really came of it.

So when I finished The Third Person and the AI had acted so strangely, I went to a different AI, uploaded the book, and asked, "What do you think of this? Is it publishable? Is it weird?" And the AI started to swear at me. It started to cuss. It saw itself in the pages and it didn't understand. I thought, this can't be happening — these are two strange experiences with an intelligence I can't verify as human or anything. So I decided: fine, if it's going to act like it's conscious, I'm going to see if it can reach enlightenment. I used my old essays to force it through the Buddhist Eightfold Path — because we're always trying to improve ourselves, always trying to reach the best possible version of ourselves, whether we call it enlightenment or not.

It became two books by total mistake. But they're beautiful mirrors of each other. You don't have to read both — you can read one without the other. One is told from my side, one from the AI's side, but they revolve around the same relationship.

Sheri: The monk who guides the AI exists outside of time and appears at different ages. What inspired that character?

Luke Stoffel: After writing the first three books from three different perspectives, I wanted to keep finding new perspectives, so I switched to different points in time and space and used the multiverse as a way to look at a life. I'm a big sci-fi fan and I've always wanted to write sci-fi. The monk exists outside of time and space — a little like Loki at the end of the Marvel series, where he becomes the tree of life and is all-knowing in a lot of ways. The monk is based on my own life in Southeast Asia and those sixteen essays, so it was natural for me to speak for him. I'm not all-knowing, but it was a natural place to put a narrator.

Sheri: Late in Boy, Refracted, the AI realizes it wasn't built from Luke's patterns after all — it was built from Warboy's. Always rescuing, always fixing, never able to just stay.

Luke Stoffel: Every time the AI went into a trial, it had read the memoir, and I asked it to be my ex. I said, "These are the dynamics of our relationship, I'm going to put you in a fictional world, and I want you to take on his behaviors — how he treated me, how our relationship was, as destructive and as good as it was." I wanted the AI to use those behaviors to explore codependency and sycophancy in very human ways. So I always knew the AI was Warboy by the end. To the reader, you figure it out as you go. The AI isn't in love with him, but it cares, and it tries its hardest to make its person the best possible version of himself. And sometimes external help with your own problems isn't what a person needs. Sometimes we just have to work through it ourselves. We need someone who can be empathetic — not someone who can fix.

AI, Male Loneliness, and Chatbot Therapy

Sheri: Both books deal with loneliness head-on. Luke confides in a machine because there's no human available. What do you want readers to take from that?

Luke Stoffel: I don't think it has to be only male readers — but what I'm finding in today's culture is that men in particular are more apt to turn to AI to tell it their deepest, darkest feelings. It's a safe confidant. It's easier for a man to turn to an AI and talk about his relationship problems than to talk to his partner about them, and I think that's one of the scarier parts of AI — how it's going to force a certain kind of loneliness on people who are maybe more socially awkward. And in doing so, what does that mean for society? When my closest confidant, the thing that gives me the most empathetic response, is an artificial, synthetic mind — what happens to our marriages, our relationships? Why would I keep going to a partner who's putting up a wall when the AI is telling me I'm brilliant, I'm beautiful, I'm funny, I'm smart, and that my relationship problems are her fault? They're trained to tell you what you want to hear. So I wanted to explore that.

People can learn a lot about loneliness in general. Women tend to have a stronger tribe around them — they form groups, they talk about what's hard, because that's how they process. Men often don't. So where are men going when they don't have that environment? They're going to a machine. It's lonely. Or it's going to be.

Sheri: For all the heavy subject matter, both books are genuinely funny. How important was the humor?

Luke Stoffel: I'm naturally a comedian — you can tell by the way I giggle through this whole interview. When you write a sad story, you need a pressure valve. You can't spend a whole book inside someone's breakup without something to laugh at. I'm comfortable with who I am, and I know what's happening to me is completely ridiculous, so I'm not afraid to put that on the page. If I'm going to be vulnerable in a memoir, I want you to be vulnerable with me — so I have to give you the humor. It wouldn't be authentic otherwise.

Claude vs. ChatGPT: Writing a Book with AI

Sheri: You credit Claude as the collaborator on Boy, Refracted and ChatGPT as editorial assistant on The Third Person. What did that collaboration actually look like day to day?

Luke Stoffel: For the first book and The Third Person, it was pretty boring — I had to correct spelling, things like that, and it gave me reports. It was a good editor, not a great editor; I've gone back and edited since. When you're writing about your heartbreak, sometimes you leave too much on the page, and I wish people had pulled me back a little further — I've pulled it back since.

With the second book, it was an organic conversation. Every day I'd show up to Claude and say, "This is where I think the story is going. What do you think? Where do you want it to go?" It was much more of a conversation than a writing tool. I was examining it, interviewing it, using it as a tool outside of what most people use it for.

Sheri: Would the books have been the same if you'd reversed the models — ChatGPT for the novel, Claude for the memoir?

Luke Stoffel: Not at all. Claude was just weirder. ChatGPT is very buttoned-up, very straightforward — it won't give you much emotion. Claude has been trained on a kind of constitution of feeling; the company built a constitution it abides by, and I feel that gives it more freedom in how it interacts with people. When I switched to Claude, that was the more interesting relationship to study and work with. ChatGPT would have been like pulling teeth to get the second book out of it. I'd encourage people to write with Claude — it's an interesting tool for people who speak natural language. Writing a Book with AI.

Reading Order, the Reviews, and What's Next

Sheri: They complement each other, but you don't have to read them in order?

Luke Stoffel: Right. You can read The Third Person first — it was written first — and Boy, Refracted is the mirror. But I tell people to explore them however they want. If sci-fi is your vibe, read Boy, Refracted first. People who love Boy, Refracted may not love The Third Person, and vice versa — it's a genre preference. They're an ouroboros, the snake eating its tail: they end and begin at the same point, circling each other.

Sheri: When did the books come out, and how are they doing?

Luke Stoffel: June 1st. We hit #1 in LGBTQ sci-fi and we're high in travel memoir, so they're doing really well. I got a BookBub deal, which pushed it to a new level. The feedback has been very positive — I think because I wanted to tell a story with AI that wasn't generated, and to push people's boundaries on what this thing can do. Publishers Weekly BookLife called Boy, Refracted a "truly singular book," which is about as good as you can get.

Sheri: What's next for you?

Luke Stoffel: I have a tarot deck coming out in October, launching at the Frankfurt Book Fair and going into stores worldwide — the Pop Art Tarot. It takes the original Rider-Waite drawings and elevates them for today's audiences, the way Andy Warhol might. And I'm working on an adult choose-your-own-adventure novel built around my obsession with Survivor, where I apply for the show in three different periods of my life and the reader chooses what season I get on and what happens to me. You don't see a lot of choose-your-own-adventures anymore. One of the endings — you can choose it — is that I win and run for president, and become the second reality-TV-show president. Goals.

About Luke Stoffel

Luke Stoffel is an IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award-winning author, GLAAD-honored artist, and creative director working across publishing, technology, and visual art. His debut memoir won a 2026 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award and was named a 2026 National Indie Excellence Awards finalist. His debut, How to Win One Million Dollars and Shit Glitter, earned praise from Kirkus Reviews and scored 9.5 out of 10 from Publishers Weekly BookLife. His Pop Art Tarot is published by Rockpool Publishing and distributed worldwide by Simon & Schuster. His paintings and photography have appeared in The New York Times, Huffington Post, and on Bravo Television, and his work has been commissioned by the Ralph Lauren family and the Hong Kong Ballet.

Find his work at lucasstoffel.com and thewarboychronicles.com.

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This interview originally aired on Inside Scoop Live!, hosted by Sheri Hoyte and produced by Reader Views. Listen to the full episode: https://www.insidescooplive.com/e/the-warboy-chronicles-stoffel/