A few words about the people behind the screen…

I have been promoting the Bailey’s Bedtime Stories series online for some time now, sharing the books with different groups and communities. Until Thursday, I had never experienced any real negativity.

Then came a rather unpleasant reminder of just how casually cruel people can be online.

People who know absolutely nothing about you, your work, the journey behind it, or the circumstances that brought you to that point can, within seconds, type a few words and dismiss something you have spent more than a year creating.

And apparently think nothing of it.

Over the past year, I have worked seven days a week. I have taken on multiple jobs alongside building RedBelly Bean Publishing. I have written, adapted, designed, illustrated, edited, formatted, learned new software, made mistakes, started again and worked incredibly hard to produce ten children’s books that I am proud to put my name to.

I am not a traditional illustrator. I cannot pick up a pencil and magically reproduce the characters and worlds that exist inside my head.

So I use technology.

I use creative software, digital tools and, yes, AI-assisted tools as part of that process. They help me achieve things that my hands alone cannot. But they don't dream up the characters for me. They don't write the personalities, build the relationships, spend hours changing expressions, obsess over page layouts, rewrite sentences, check print files or make hundreds of tiny decisions along the way.

A tool is a tool. There is still a human being behind it.

And that seems to be the part some people have forgotten.

There is a huge difference between reviewing something honestly and simply being cruel.

I recently bought a freestanding floor fan online for just under £40. When it arrived, it was about 12cm high and absolutely nothing like I had expected. I returned it and left an honest review because I didn't believe it represented value for money and I wanted other buyers to know what they were purchasing.

That is criticism with a purpose.

Calling somebody's creative work "shit" or dismissing it as "AI slop" isn't constructive criticism. It isn't a review. It contributes absolutely nothing.

It is simply someone sitting safely behind a screen deciding that their momentary judgement matters more than the person receiving it.

And perhaps we have become far too blasé about that.

There are poor-quality books in the world. There are poor-quality AI-generated books. There are also poor-quality traditionally produced books. Nobody is obliged to like what somebody else creates, and nobody should be frightened of genuine, constructive criticism.

But before you gleefully tap out something deliberately hurtful, perhaps remember that you have absolutely no idea what it took for that person to get there.

You don't know the hours.

You don't know the sacrifices.

You don't know how many times they nearly gave up.

You don't know what they had to learn, what they had to overcome, or how much courage it took to finally put their work in front of strangers and say:

“I made this.”

By all means have an opinion.

But having an opinion does not give you licence to be cruel.

There is a human being on the other side of that screen.

And if the only thing you can contribute to someone trying to create something positive in this world is a few vicious words typed from the safety of your phone, perhaps it isn't their work that needs examining.

Perhaps it's your behaviour.

Create. Encourage. Critique constructively. Be kind.

The world already has enough people throwing stones.

I'd rather be one of the ones building something.