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Lodestar — Terms of Service

Last updated: August 20, 2026

Part I — General Terms

These terms apply to your Lodestar account and to every Lodestar product.

1. What This Document Covers

This document is the Terms of Service for Lodestar, a family of writing tools — Sadr, Rigel, Mirach, Deneb, Capella, Altair, Pollux, and Menkar — provided by Christopher Ray Writes ("we," "us," "our"). It covers your shared Lodestar account (the single login used across every product) and everything common to all of them. Product-specific terms — covering each product's own functionality, pricing, and data retention — appear in Part II below and form part of these Terms.

Geographic scope: Lodestar is currently offered only to users located in the United States and its territories.

2. Acceptance of These Terms

By creating an account and using any Lodestar product, you agree to these Terms of Service. If you don't agree, don't create an account or use the service.

3. Your Lodestar Account

One account works across every Lodestar product. You can create a free account without purchasing anything, and purchase any combination of Sadr, Rigel, Mirach, Deneb, Capella, Altair, Pollux, and Menkar against that same account at any time. You're responsible for keeping your login credentials secure and for all activity under your account. You must provide a real, working email address — it's how we verify your identity and, at least at launch, how account recovery works.

4. Newsletter Subscription

Creating a Lodestar account does not automatically subscribe you to the Christopher Ray Writes newsletter. At signup, an unchecked checkbox lets you opt in — check it if you'd like to receive the newsletter; leave it unchecked and you won't be subscribed. If you do subscribe, you can unsubscribe at any time using the link in any newsletter email — doing so only removes you from the newsletter and does not affect your account or access to any Lodestar product.

5. Ownership of Your Content

This is the most important section. Everything you write, plan, upload, or otherwise create inside any Lodestar product — your premises, characters, chapters, scenes, manuscripts, worksheets, source records, or any other content — belongs entirely to you. We claim no ownership, no license to use it for any purpose beyond providing the specific product you're using, and no rights to your characters, plot, sources, or prose, now or ever. You retain full copyright and all other rights in everything you create.

6. Our Access to Your Content

As the operator of the service, we have the technical ability to access data stored in our systems — this is true of any hosted software, not unique to Lodestar. Here is exactly what we do and don't do with that access:

7. Payment

Lodestar does not sell subscriptions. Nothing you purchase renews automatically, recurs, or bills you again.

Sadr, Deneb, Capella, Altair, Pollux, Menkar, and the Rigel Unlimited and Mirach Unlimited licenses are one-time purchases: you pay once and retain access indefinitely.

Rigel and Mirach are also offered on a per-manuscript basis. A per-manuscript purchase is likewise a single, non-recurring charge, but it covers one manuscript rather than ongoing access to the product. Each per-manuscript purchase includes up to three exports of that manuscript within thirty days of purchase. See Sections 15 and 16 for the full terms.

Exact pricing, what's included, and any bundle discounts are stated in that product's own section in Part II. Refund policy: all sales are final; no Lodestar product offers refunds on one-time or per-manuscript purchases, except when we fail to deliver an entitlement you paid for because of an error on our end — for example, a payment that completes while the corresponding product access, file, or export never becomes available due to a defect in our systems. In that case, we refund the purchase proactively, upon discovering the failure — you do not need to notice the problem or contact us for it to happen.

This exception covers our own delivery failures only. It does not cover: content or files you lose, delete, or fail to keep a copy of yourself; a purchase window (such as Rigel or Mirach's 30-day, 3-export window) expiring as intended after you received what you paid for; or a dispute over whether a charge was authorized or should have happened at all.

8. Acceptable Use

Personal license — Lodestar is an end-user platform. Every Lodestar license is personal to the purchaser, and the person using a Lodestar product must be the person who bought it. You may not resell, sublicense, rent, lend, share, or transfer your license or account, and you may not use any Lodestar product to provide a service to other people. Individual products state additional limits in their own section in Part II.

Whoever works on a manuscript here must be the end user who purchased the license. This rule is about who is using the product, not about who holds authorship credit. If you are a ghostwriter, a co-author, a translator, an editor, or working under a work-for-hire arrangement, the person actually using the product must be the account holder who purchased it. A client, co-author, or employer cannot work through your account, and you cannot work through theirs.

You are responsible for your own rights in what you upload. You confirm that you hold the rights necessary to use any manuscript or other content you bring into a Lodestar product. We do not verify authorship, adjudicate competing claims of ownership, or take any position on who owns a given work. Responsibility for the legality of that ownership rests with you as the end user, not with us.

Across every Lodestar product, you agree not to:

9. Our Intellectual Property

The Lodestar brand, and each product's own software, design, and branding (distinct from your content, covered by Section 5), are owned by Christopher Ray Writes. You're granted a license to use the service as intended; you don't acquire any ownership in the software itself.

10. Disclaimer & Limitation of Liability

Every Lodestar product is provided "as is," without warranties of any kind. We are not liable for any indirect, incidental, or consequential damages arising from your use of the service. Our total liability to you for any claim arising from these Terms or your use of any Lodestar product is limited to the amount you actually paid for that product.

11. Data Backups and Loss

We take reasonable measures to protect your data, but you're encouraged to regularly export your own local copy of your content using each product's own download/export feature. We are not responsible for data loss.

12. Termination

You may stop using any Lodestar product and request account deletion at any time by contacting us. We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate Section 8. Account deletion removes your access to every Lodestar product on the same account, and their stored data, subject to each product's own data retention terms; see Section 11 regarding your own backups.

The newsletter is separate from your account. If you subscribed to the Christopher Ray Writes newsletter, deleting your Lodestar account does not unsubscribe you — the newsletter runs on a separate system (see the Privacy Policy). To leave both, unsubscribe using the link in any newsletter email in addition to requesting account deletion.

Deceased account holders. If you are an heir, executor, or legal representative seeking access to a deceased account holder's account or stored work, contact us. We do not release an account or its contents on request alone. Documentation establishing your authority must be submitted and reviewed first, and nothing is released before that review is complete.

If we ever discontinue a Lodestar product, we'll provide at least 60 days' notice and continued access so you can export your data during that window.

13. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. When we do, we will notify you that an updated version is available, via a notice shown in the app before the change takes effect.

Reading the update is your responsibility. Our obligation is to tell you that an update exists and to keep the current version available to you at all times. We do not track whether you have read it. Every document in this set carries a Last updated date at the top, so you can see at a glance whether anything has changed since you last looked. Continuing to use any Lodestar product after we have given notice means you accept the updated Terms.

If you do not accept an update, stop using the affected product and contact us. See Section 12 regarding account deletion and Section 7 regarding refunds.

Part II — Product-Specific Terms

The following sections apply to individual Lodestar products, in addition to the general terms in Part I. Where a product's section addresses a matter Part I also covers, the product's section governs for that product.

14. Sadr

What Sadr Is

Sadr is a novel-planning and writing tool. It lets you organize story planning material and draft manuscript text, storing that data on your behalf so you can access it across sessions.

Payment and Pricing

15. Rigel

What Rigel Is

Rigel is a standalone manuscript formatting service. You upload a manuscript, select formatting options, and receive a formatted DOCX and/or PDF file in return.

Chapter Detection

Rigel scans your manuscript for likely chapter breaks — bold or larger text, heading styles, and similar formatting cues — and shows you what it found before any payment happens. You confirm or adjust the results yourself: remove anything incorrectly flagged, or add a break the scan missed. If the scan finds nothing, you can still mark chapters manually. Nothing is ever formatted or charged based on a guess you haven't confirmed yourself. For best results, make sure your chapter titles are bold, a larger font size, or both, compared to your body text — if your manuscript has no visual distinction between chapters and body text at all, you'll need to mark chapter breaks manually after uploading.

Payment and What's Included

Data Retention

Per-manuscript purchases. Your uploaded manuscript is deleted automatically once either three exports have been used or thirty days have passed since your original purchase, whichever comes first.

Rigel Unlimited. If you hold a Rigel Unlimited license, neither limit applies. Your uploaded manuscripts are retained on your account indefinitely so that you can re-export them at any time, with no export count and no expiry.

You can request immediate deletion at any time by contacting us. Your finished, formatted output files are different — they remain available in your account indefinitely, so you can return and redownload them anytime, even after the manuscript deletion above.

License Scope — Your Own Manuscripts

Your Rigel license, whether per-manuscript or Unlimited, covers manuscripts you wrote, including works published under a pen name. You may publish and sell the books you format with Rigel freely, with no additional fee and no royalty — that is what Rigel is for.

You may not use Rigel to produce files for anyone else. Specifically, you may not:

If you format books for other authors — as a freelancer, an editor, or a press — a personal license does not cover that work. Contact us about a professional or publisher license.

16. Mirach

What Mirach Is

Mirach is a standalone manuscript formatting service for manuscripts containing images — maps, chapter-heading art, illustrations, and similar embedded images. You upload a manuscript, select formatting options, and receive a formatted DOCX and/or PDF file in return, with your images preserved and checked for print-readiness.

Chapter Detection

Mirach scans your manuscript for likely chapter breaks — bold or larger text, heading styles, and similar formatting cues — and shows you what it found before any payment happens. You confirm or adjust the results yourself. Nothing is ever formatted or charged based on a guess you haven't confirmed yourself.

Image Requirements

Payment and What's Included

Data Retention

Per-manuscript purchases. Your uploaded manuscript and images are deleted automatically once either three exports have been used or thirty days have passed since your original purchase, whichever comes first.

Mirach Unlimited. If you hold a Mirach Unlimited license, neither limit applies. Your uploaded manuscripts and images are retained on your account indefinitely so that you can re-export them at any time, with no export count and no expiry.

Your finished, formatted output files remain available in your account indefinitely.

License Scope — Your Own Manuscripts

Your Mirach license, whether per-manuscript or Unlimited, covers illustrated manuscripts you wrote, including works published under a pen name. You may publish and sell the books you format with Mirach freely, with no additional fee and no royalty — that is what Mirach is for.

You may not use Mirach to produce files for anyone else. Specifically, you may not:

If you format books for other authors — as a freelancer, an editor, or a press — a personal license does not cover that work. Contact us about a professional or publisher license.

17. Deneb

What Deneb Is

Deneb is a standalone prose-craft analysis service. You upload a manuscript, and Deneb analyzes it for craft-level issues — overused words, adverb frequency, filter words, sentence-length variance, and similar patterns — returning an interactive report and a downloadable PDF summary. Deneb's analysis is rule-based pattern-matching and counting — it is not an AI system, and your manuscript is not used to train any AI model.

Manuscript Limits

Deneb analyzes manuscripts up to 250,000 words, uploaded as a .docx file up to 950 KB. A manuscript over either limit is declined at upload, before any purchase — you'll never be charged for a manuscript Deneb can't analyze.

Payment

Data Retention

Your uploaded manuscript is never stored — it is processed in memory and discarded once your analysis report and PDF summary are generated. Your generated report and PDF summary, however, remain available in your account indefinitely, so you can return and review or redownload them anytime.

License Scope — Your Own Manuscripts

Your Deneb license covers manuscripts you wrote, including works published under a pen name. You may use your reports however you like in revising and publishing your own books.

You may not use Deneb to produce reports for anyone else. Specifically, you may not:

If you assess manuscripts for other writers, contact us about a professional license.

18. Capella

What Capella Is

Capella is a voice and writing-style exploration tool. It lets you browse combinations of writing style and dialogue style, each demonstrated with a sample paragraph, to help you find and learn your own voice as a writer.

No Manuscript or Personal Content Involved

Unlike other Lodestar products, Capella does not involve uploading a manuscript or any of your own creative writing. It is a browsing and reference tool built entirely from pre-written sample content we created — nothing you write or upload is submitted, stored, or analyzed by Capella.

The Sample Passages Are Ours, and Are for Comparison Only

Capella's 40 sample paragraphs are original prose, written by us to demonstrate what each style and dialogue combination sounds like. They are reference material for comparison, not material to use. You may not copy a Capella sample passage, or a recognizable portion of one, into your own manuscript or any other work, published or unpublished.

What you take away from Capella is an understanding of how a given voice works — that is the product. Applying what you learn in your own words is exactly the intended use, and nothing here restricts it.

Payment and What You're Buying

19. Altair

What Altair Is

Altair is a thesis-writing tool. It provides worksheets for organizing a central argument, literature review, evidence, and outline, plus a split-pane writing space. Altair does not write any part of your thesis for you.

Citation Export

Altair stores the citation metadata you enter in the Literature Review Tracker and lets you export it as BibTeX or RIS for use in a dedicated citation manager (such as Zotero, EndNote, or Mendeley). Altair does not generate formatted bibliographies or in-text citations (APA/MLA/ Chicago, etc.) — you are responsible for verifying any exported citation data before submitting your thesis.

Payment and Pricing

Altair is a one-time purchase, at the current price shown at checkout — not a subscription. You pay once and retain full, unlimited access to Altair on your account indefinitely, covering any thesis you write, including future ones.

Disclaimer

We are not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, or academic acceptability of any content you create or any citation data you export.

20. Pollux

What Pollux Is

Pollux is a freelance-journalism planning tool. It provides worksheets for organizing a story's angle, source tracking, fact-checking, and pitching, plus a split-pane writing space. Pollux does not write any part of your story for you, and it is not a substitute for your own editorial judgment, fact-checking process, or legal advice regarding attribution, defamation, or source protection.

Source Attribution and Fact-Checking Are Your Responsibility

Pollux's Source Tracker lets you record an attribution status (on record, on background, off record, not for attribution) and its Fact-Check Tracker lets you record a claim's verification status, purely as your own organizational notes. Pollux does not verify facts, does not enforce attribution agreements, and provides no legal protection for source confidentiality. You are solely responsible for honoring any agreements you make with sources and for the accuracy of anything you publish.

Payment and Pricing

Pollux is a one-time purchase, at the current price shown at checkout — not a subscription. It covers 10 active stories at once on your account. "Active" means a story you haven't marked finished — finishing a story frees its slot for a new one, and a finished story remains fully accessible to you at no additional cost.

Disclaimer

We are not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, publishability, or legal soundness of any content you create, including any source, attribution, or fact-check data you log.

21. Menkar

What Menkar Is

Menkar is a body-language reference library — a thesaurus for physical description. You pick a body zone and Menkar shows you every phrase for it; you can then add an emotion or a type of scene to sort what fits first. It is organized across body zones, emotions, and scene contexts, and every phrase in it was written by hand before you asked for it.

Menkar does not write, rewrite, generate, or analyze any part of your work. It composes nothing in response to what you type. It is a reference book you look things up in, and nothing more.

No Manuscript or Personal Content Involved

Like Capella, and unlike most Lodestar products, Menkar does not involve uploading a manuscript or any of your own creative writing. Nothing you write is submitted to it, stored by it, or analyzed by it. Your searches are not recorded.

You May Use Menkar's Phrases in Your Own Writing, Freely

This is the point of the product, so it should be stated plainly rather than left to be inferred.

Menkar's phrases are common descriptions of physical behavior — the ordinary language of everyday movement and expression, used in combination. No one owns them, us included. They recur throughout published fiction because they are simply how people describe bodies, and we make no claim of ownership over any individual phrase.

So use them. Any phrase in Menkar, in any quantity, in your own writing, for any purpose including commercial publication, with no attribution to us and no further permission. We claim no interest of any kind in the work you produce with it, and nothing in Section 9 (Our Intellectual Property) is intended to restrict this — that section covers Menkar's software, design, and branding, not the reference phrases the product exists to hand you.

The one thing your purchase does not cover is republishing the library itself. The phrases are common property; the work of gathering, writing out, tagging, and organizing them across its body zones, emotions, and scene contexts is ours. Reproducing that collection as a competing reference work, in whole or in substantial part, is not included in your purchase. Using the phrases in your novel is — and that is the distinction, in full.

Payment and What You're Buying

Part III — Affiliate Program

22. Lodestar Affiliate Program

What the Affiliate Program Is

Any Lodestar account holder may enroll as an affiliate and receive a personal referral link. When someone makes a purchase on any Lodestar product within 30 days of clicking that link, you earn a commission on that sale.

Commission Structure

Commissions are a flat dollar amount based on the sale price, not a percentage:

Only one affiliate is credited per sale — whichever referral link was clicked most recently before the purchase. You cannot earn a commission on your own purchases made through your own link.

Attribution Window

Clicking your referral link sets attribution for 30 days. If the same visitor clicks a different affiliate's link before purchasing, that later click replaces yours as the credited referral.

Payouts

Program Terms

Part IV — General Provisions

23. Governing Law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Alabama, without regard to conflict-of-law principles.

24. Contact

Questions about these Terms: help@writelodestar.com.