Lodestar — Tools Forged for Writers
A small family of writing tools that organize, format, and strengthen your own work — never generate it for you. Built by a working author, for writers who want to build something themselves.
Seven tools, one workshop
Each one stands on its own — pick what you need, or use them together.
Fiction & Book Production
Sadr
Foundation, characters, chapters, scenes, and events, all linked together — plus a built-in writing space that keeps your notes open beside you as you draft. Try the full interactive demo below — no account required.
Deneb
Upload your manuscript and get a report on overused words, adverb frequency, filter words, sentence-length variance, and more — the craft-level issues that quietly weaken good writing. Deneb shows you the pattern and where it occurs. It does not rewrite the sentence or replace your voice.
Rigel
Upload a finished manuscript, choose your formatting — trim size, chapter-opening style — and get back a publication-ready DOCX and PDF, formatted for print. Preview a real sample of the formatted result before you pay anything.
Mirach
For manuscripts with maps, chapter-heading art, or other embedded images — Mirach preserves every image in place and checks it’s actually print-ready before you pay. Preview a real sample of the formatted result, images included, before you pay anything.
Capella
Browse 40 combinations of writing style and dialogue style, each shown with a real sample paragraph — a baseline for newer writers still finding their own voice. Two combinations are free to browse before you buy.
Academic Research
Altair
Worksheets for a thesis’s central argument, literature review, and evidence, plus a split-pane Write tab and BibTeX/RIS citation export — organized around an argument instead of a story. Altair organizes your argument and sources — it’s not a replacement for a dedicated citation manager.
Journalism & Reported Nonfiction
Pollux
Worksheets for a story’s angle, source tracking with attribution status, fact-checking, and pitch tracking, plus a split-pane Write tab and Compile view — organized around sources instead of a story or an argument.
Why Lodestar
The rules every tool in this workshop follows, no exceptions.
Never Generative
Every tool organizes, analyzes, or strengthens your own words. None of them write a single sentence for you.
Built by a Working Author
Every tool exists because it solved a real problem in an actual manuscript, not a hypothetical one.
No Subscriptions — Ever
No recurring charges, on any product. Some tools are a flat one-time purchase; Rigel and Mirach are priced per manuscript (with an Unlimited option); Deneb is priced per report. However it's priced, you keep what you bought.
One Login, Every Tool
A single Lodestar account works across the whole family — buy and use whichever tools you need without juggling separate logins.
Room to Grow
Lodestar started as one tool that outgrew its own name. It's built to hold whatever comes next, not just what exists today.
Built for More Than One Kind of Writing
Lodestar began with fiction, then expanded into academic writing, journalism, illustrated manuscripts, formatting, and prose analysis. Each tool is built around the real structure of the work it serves.
FAQ
Sadr came first — a novel-planning tool built out of Christopher Ray's own writing process. Lodestar exists because that idea didn't have to stop at one kind of tool, or one kind of writer: a workshop that could hold whatever came next, built with the same "I made this myself" feeling as the tools inside it. Rigel, Mirach, Deneb, Capella, Altair, and Pollux are what came next; they won't be the last.
No. Every Lodestar product is non-generative by design — each one organizes, formats, or analyzes your own writing. None of them write a single sentence on your behalf.
No — none of them are, on any product. Most are a flat one-time purchase; Rigel and Mirach are priced per manuscript (with a perpetual Unlimited option); Deneb is priced per report. No recurring charges, ever.
Yes — one free Lodestar account works across every product. Create it once, then purchase and access whichever tools you need from the same login.
We'd rather you know exactly what you're getting before you buy than rely on a refund after the fact. Sadr has a full interactive demo, Capella lets you try two real sample combinations for free, and Rigel and Mirach both check that your manuscript will actually work — real chapter headings, and for Mirach, print-ready images — before you're ever charged. With all that upfront, purchases are final — but if something's ever genuinely wrong on our end, reach out. We'll make it right.
Yes. Across every Lodestar product, you own 100% of what you write or upload. It's never used for our own purposes, and never used to train any AI model.
Just the one you need. Sadr, Rigel, Mirach, Deneb, Capella, Altair, and Pollux are each sold and priced on their own — no requirement to buy the whole family.
Just a web browser. Everything runs online, with no downloads or installs required.