The making of

I “wrote” a novel. AI wrote it.

The name on the cover is David Berkowitz. The author is Type.ai. This site is an honest record of that experiment—and the book itself.

A special thank-you to Noel Guinane of Blood and Treasure fame for sending me the link to Type.ai and inspiring this project.

  1. 01

    The premise came from life

    David Berkowitz has spent his whole life sharing a name with one of America’s most infamous killers. That lifelong punchline became the seed of the story.

  2. 02

    Type.ai wrote—and suggested

    David credits Type.ai with writing the book. The supplied conversation excerpt also shows its brainstorming contributions: recurring identity tests, three competing Davids, a publisher prank that escalates, and a possible return to the grandfather’s grave.

  3. 03

    David asked. Gemini challenged.

    David’s prompts asked for stronger ideas, tougher feedback, and eventually a clean reading edition. Gemini’s reviews pressed on culpability, continuity, the treatment of violence, and how much resolution the ending should allow.

  4. 04

    The experiment became a reading edition

    The later publishing conversation covers the dedication, synthetic covers, PDF and EPUB formatting, and removing production notes from the book. The story and the account of its making have different places on this site.

The experiment’s receipts

What did it cost?

David’s breakdown of the book and this website, in US dollars. These are his reported expenses and estimates, not an audited bill.

Type.ai · one monthThe writing subscription.
$24.00
Credit topoffAdditional writing credits.
$20.00
Lovable · website buildEstimated build-credit cost, not a verified charge.
~$5.00
Cloudflare · domainaiwrotethisbook.com.
$11.17

Estimated book + website total

~$60.17

$55.17 in reported expenses, plus roughly $5 in estimated Lovable build credits. This is a creation-cost snapshot, not a forecast of ongoing costs.

Plus lots of Gemini tokens. The planning and revision conversations were included in David’s existing ~$20.00/month Gemini plan. That shared subscription is not added to the book-specific total; no separate token cost has been assigned.

Inside the Type.ai work

More than putting words on a page

The uploaded material pairs a master manuscript blueprint with a short Type.ai brainstorming exchange. David’s request was simple: “Please help me spark ideas for my writing.” Here are contributions from the reply, alongside connections to the blueprint. This is an excerpt, not the full drafting history.

Three Davids, three claims on a name

Type.ai · excerpt

“Your grandfather represents the name before history; the serial killer represents the name stolen by history; the narrator represents the name trying to survive history.”
Type.ai proposed treating the three namesakes as competing presences rather than background information. It suggested letting them interrupt, contradict, or silently judge one another. The supplied blueprint makes the grandfather an ancestral moral anchor and the killer a cultural shadow; the opening chapter sequence includes ‘The Three Davids.’

An identity crisis that repeats

Type.ai · excerpt

“Every new encounter could force the narrator to prove he is—or isn’t—the other David.”
The suggested ‘name test’ turned a biographical premise into a repeatable scene engine: attendance rolls, search results, dating disclosures, publisher emails, and prison questions. Type.ai also floated bank-account confusion, misdirected fan mail, and a family debate about changing the name. Those are brainstorming possibilities, not a list of confirmed scenes.

Let the publisher prank take over

Type.ai · excerpt

“Make the publisher saga the book’s central comic escalation”
Type.ai suggested building outward from one small joke into an invented prison world, a warden, prison currency, religious citations, and a literary career for the wrong person. In the blueprint, that escalation becomes Warden Briggs, PrisonPay™, fake scripture, and the book-within-the-book Son of Hope.
“The comedy deepens when the prank starts producing genuine connections with Lane, Andrew, Hannah, and John—and the narrator wonders whether he is deceiving them or giving them the story they desperately want.”

A child asks the question adults avoid

Type.ai · excerpt

“His child asks whether names can be inherited like eye color—and whether a person can inherit someone else’s crimes.”
One scene spark brought the name’s moral weight into family life. The blueprint gives Maya the role of ‘the moral mirror’ and places a version of that question in Chapter 5, over pastries. It turns David’s familiar routine into something he cannot comfortably answer with a joke.

Return the name to the family

Type.ai · excerpt

“It belonged to a family before it belonged to the news.”
Type.ai offered a possible final return to the grandfather’s grave, where the narrator would reconsider who owned the name before the headlines. The blueprint identifies the grandfather’s dignity as David’s internal need. The later Gemini notes revisit a cemetery return while asking for less tidy emotional resolution.

Make the documents part of the story

Type.ai · excerpt

“The form itself can dramatize the question of who gets to author a name.”
Type.ai proposed alternating narrative with journal entries, email threads, dating transcripts, search results, stage directions, publisher pitches, and family anecdotes. It also flagged duplicated publisher correspondence and staged-play passages in the raw material. The supplied blueprint develops emails, forged verification records, wire transfers, and court documents into a plot with a paper trail—not just decorative inserts.

A changing book

From a name joke to a moral debt

The sources reveal different layers of the project. They do not establish a date for every Type.ai exchange or prove that every proposal was adopted. Read this as a map of the evolving ideas, with later revision directions identified where the conversations support them.

  1. The comic possibilities

    A name turns strangers into collaborators

    Type.ai · brainstorming excerpt

    The visible Type.ai reply starts with identity confusion as a comic engine. Its proposals range from repeated ‘name tests’ to a publisher prank that begins creating real relationships. The emphasis is on finding scenes, voices, and a form for the raw material.

  2. The manuscript architecture

    A joke acquires a paper trail—and a victim

    Uploaded master blueprint

    The blueprint frames the story across four acts: The Inherited Mugshot, The Warden’s Commissary, The Paper Golem, and The Author’s Trial. A yellow origami dog moves from fabricated lore to the signature of an assault. A foreign-rights advance connects the prank to David’s business account. Aly’s conservation work and family responsibilities give the consequences a life beyond his self-image.

  3. The editorial pressure

    Less accident, more agency

    Gemini · manuscript reviews

    The reviews pushed David’s culpability into the foreground: make the verification forgery deliberate, make accepting money an act of self-deception rather than mere carelessness, and give the yellow dog a domestic origin through Maya. Some elements appear in the supplied blueprint, but it still describes the banking step as ‘bureaucratic carelessness’ and the dog as David’s invention. The documents show an uneven revision process, not every suggestion neatly applied.

  4. The later revision direction

    From spectacle toward accountability

    Gemini · Act IV and continuity notes

    Later notes ask for a less sensational Frankfurt confrontation, a flatter deposition, and a quieter ending. They also insist that Aly’s decency not become automatic forgiveness. The uploaded blueprint still contains a lunging antagonist and a logline about saving a romance—useful evidence of why the continuity review mattered. This is a record of changing intentions, not a claim that those later choices are all present in the reading edition.

From the planning chats

Workshopping with Gemini

The planning and revision notes came from conversations with Google Gemini. These excerpts trace the changing editorial direction—from raising the stakes to stripping away spectacle. Quotations are from the conversations; the surrounding summaries describe the suggestions, not proof that every change reached the book.

Making the joke consequential

David

“Can you read the manuscript and give me feedback on what will make this better”
The first review pushed beyond polishing sentences. Gemini proposed a concrete bridge between the publisher’s verification demands and David’s invented warden: have David actively forge the paperwork, using his professional design skills. A misunderstanding would become a conscious act of fraud.

Gemini · excerpt

“Making David actively fabricate the state paperwork deepens his criminal culpability and shows his professional branding skills crossing the line into active fraud.”

The yellow paper dog

Gemini

“Connect the motif directly to his domestic life with Maya.”
Rather than letting the origami dog appear as an arbitrary literary symbol, the review proposed a child’s diner-napkin craft as its origin. David would borrow something innocent from his kitchen and turn it into invented killer lore—giving the object a much more personal cost when it resurfaced.

Crime as content

David

“review again and give me feedback - make this a surefire hit that is the book of the year”
The ambition of the prompt was bigger than a tidy thriller. Gemini suggested widening the target from a shady publisher to the entire true-crime economy: streaming rights, audio documentaries, prestige-media language, and the sale of voyeurism as empathy. These were editorial proposals, not a promise of literary success.

Gemini · excerpt

“The reader needs to watch him actively seduce himself into corruption.”

When the wit has to stop

Gemini

“Conduct a strict "irony audit" across Chapters 18 through 24.”
Once the story reached real violence, the revision advice was to remove David’s advertising metaphors and self-protective jokes. The corporate machinery could keep its cheerful jargon; David’s perspective needed to become cold and literal. The proposed replacements were ordinary details: photocopiers, floor cleaner, legal forms, and silence.

Gemini · excerpt

“Let the corporate world (Hannah, Apex, European press) retain its absurd buzzwords, but David himself must be a stone wall.”

An uncinematic antagonist

Gemini

“Bailey works because he is an archivist, not a movie hacker.”
The suggested menace came from mundane public records, not technical wizardry: building permits, corporate registrations, and bus timetables. Later revision notes pushed the physical confrontation toward something clumsy and unglamorous, driven by archival obsession rather than action-movie prowess.

Checking the blueprint against the draft

David

“What needs updating here”
The continuity review flagged an outline that skipped Chapter 11, an inmate number that changed between versions, and a logline still promising romantic restoration after the ending had moved away from it. A follow-up also found conflicting advance amounts, shifting office locations, and a grandfather whose name changed. The conversations were working notes, not a clean or infallible record of a finished manuscript.

No automatic forgiveness

Gemini

“professional recognition and human decency without forgiveness or romantic reconciliation.”
That phrase described the intended direction for Aly’s courthouse response. Her kindness was not supposed to erase David’s actions or turn her into his reward. The same review called for Lane’s cooperation to remain practical and self-protective, rather than rewriting her as a redemptive ally.

Turning down the spectacle

David · excerpt

“our discussion on de-sensationalizing the Frankfurt Messe sequence and flattening David's deposition”
The later Act IV discussion revisited the earlier, more theatrical book-fair ideas. The goal had shifted toward restraint: less spectacle, less heroic confession, and a deposition whose force came from the plain accounting of what David had done.

Gemini · excerpt

“trading melodrama for the chilling, procedural reality that gives those scenes their weight.”

Leaving the ending quiet

Gemini

“No closing moral epigram, no neat summary. Just the ink drying on the paper.”
The ending notes resisted a final speech that would explain the moral. A clerk’s rubber stamp, an unanswered occupation line, a ledger, and the return to a cemetery were asked to carry the weight instead. Later feedback called for the restitution coda to stay open-ended rather than feel like a clean slate.

A book, not the production notes

David

“can you create the whole pdf yourself? and if it isn't clear, remove all the notes - just the content of the book?”
The publishing conversation drew a line between the reading edition and the process behind it. David asked for the structural notes to come out of the book, the dedication to sit inside it rather than on the back cover, and the front and back covers to occupy their own full-bleed pages. The making-of material belongs here; the reading pages are for the story.

Judge the result yourself.

Read an excerpt