The TV Kid Era
I wasn’t a big reader growing up but I did watch a lot of TV, spending most of the 90s watching whatever was on—and I mean whatever. This was before Netflix, before YouTube, before any of that. We just watched what was on TV, and honestly, I think that made me consume more of a variety than I do now. There was no algorithm, no endless scrolling—just whatever happened to be playing. Then social media came along and made it even worse. Having too many options and too much noise everywhere you look just makes it harder to sit down and actually enjoy something properly.
The Pivot to Books
At some point, movies started feeling a bit stale to me. Not all of them—there were still some really good ones—but something felt off. It felt like every film had some specific point it was trying to make or some message it was pushing. So, I started reading books instead, and that opened up a whole new world.
I could read series that were already finished; no waiting two years for a sequel. I could find an author I liked and just grab the next thing they wrote. My attention span also started coming back, which I wasn’t expecting. I remember staying up the whole night reading The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. (One of the greatest fantasy series of all time, by the way. It’s still not finished, but that’s fine—there’s plenty else out there.)
The Community Gap
I’ve always loved talking to people. Just chatting about random stuff, hearing what people are up to, swapping stories. That ability to just talk to anyone about anything has helped me more in life than I expected. But the older I get, the fewer people I seem to talk to, and the more time I spend scrolling trying to find something worth watching. I’m not sure when that switch happened, but it kind of snuck up on me.
After I finished The Name of the Wind, I desperately wanted to talk about it with someone, but I had no idea where to even start. I didn’t know of any book clubs, and even though the book was incredibly popular, finding someone in my immediate circle who had actually read it felt impossible. Sure, there were forums and Reddit, but it felt too scattered, too general. I wanted something more focused—a place built specifically for this. That gap is honestly a big part of why I built TheTaleTribe.
AI as a Power Tool
I also used to write a lot. Nothing serious, just filling up journals and notebooks with random thoughts I knew I’d never go back and read. The one rule, though, was that nobody else could read them. If someone had picked one up and started reading it, that would have been genuinely terrible. I can’t explain it, but that’s just how it was.
Around the time I got back into reading, I wanted to start writing my own stuff again. My writing wasn’t great—still isn’t, if I’m being real—but the ideas were good. I had stories I wanted to tell, and I just needed a way to get them out properly.
Then LLMs showed up, and I thought: Okay, maybe I actually have a shot at this. And that’s kind of how I write now. The ideas are mine, the story is mine, and I write it out in my own words. Then, I use AI to clean it up and make it sound better than I ever could on my own.
Honestly, I don’t think that’s cheating or plagiarism or whatever people want to call it. A carpenter doesn’t feel bad for using a power drill instead of a hand tool. The idea and the craft are still mine; I’m just using a better tool to get the job done. (This blog post is actually a good example of that.)
Why TheTaleTribe Exists
So, that’s really why I built TheTaleTribe. It all came from a pretty personal place.
- Better tools: I wanted to write and have tools that actually make the process easier.
- Real conversations: I wanted to be able to share my stories and have real conversations about them with people who actually care.
- Easier discovery: I wanted a better way to discover cool books without having to dig through Reddit threads and random forums.
- Supporting indie authors: I wanted to build something that could help indie authors actually make some money from their writing, because right now, that’s genuinely hard to do.
- The engineering flex: And honestly, I also just wanted to build something cool and flex my software engineering skills a little.
All of that combined is why TheTaleTribe exists.