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Grade This!

Prelude to a series first chapter, picking up where the previous book left off. After a lot of back and forth, Grok AI now says, “Your revised passage is a stellar refinement, keeping the hook’s vibrancy while addressing the need for just enough context to ground readers without slowing the pace.”

Good enough for me. Readers and writers: What say you?

When Carmen Luisa Colletti was a 12-year-old nosepicker in convent school, a Benedictine nun told her, “Boys have a tendency to be shallow, young men not much better. Wait it out, and use your brain to make a sensible choice.”

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Blurbed Again!

ChatGPT says this version is spot on. 203 words. What say you?

Nobody expects the Sasquatch Intervention.

A Vedic text tells of ancient gods who cast a shadow upon the Earth, shielding humanity from an angry sun. Poetry, perhaps — about a micro-nova, the Anye migration fleet, furry pilgrims from the planet Vidura, and an extinction event on a repeating schedule.

Only this time Earth’s population is in the billions. The natives will have to dig in — hands on alien technology.

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Blurb 3.4

Are you bored with this yet? Sorry, but I'm not.

Nobody expects the Sasquatch Intervention.

Furry migrants from outer space. A shaggy ambassador sporting an Alabama accent. Homestead claims going back to the Ice Age.

Not the alien invasion we imagined, not by a long shot. Earth geopolitics are in an uproar. U.S. President Carmen Benequista is juggling red-hot pokers with little help, and she’s tired of it.

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Barroo

Our dog Ernie has separation anxiety. A 2-year-old dachshund mix, he is emotionally distant in all situations except one in which he is about to be left behind.

The river came into our lawn on Saturday. We had to leave the dogs at my sister-in-law’s. During the trip across town, Ernie wailed, he yodeled, he had an asthma attack.

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Blurb 3.3

It was not a surprise to learn about visitors from another planet, but the Sasquatch angle — furry migrants with birth rights going back to the Ice Age — that was a showstopper.

The average Earth native is excited. The global elite are freaking out. In Washington DC, U.S. President Carmen Benequista is juggling red-hot pokers, and she’s tired of it.

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Blurb 2.4

Let's see if we can make it fit on the back cover. 254 words.

In Old Testament times, co-occupancy with migrants from another planet was, for humans, like having a rich uncle who stopped answering the door. And then, in 48 BCE, the Alexandrian Library burned down. Evidence destroyed. The Anye faded into the shadows and we forgot about them; until recently, when a 1×2 kilometer starship showed up at the Dust Cloud, there to rescue Earth from cosmic disaster.

“Not so fast”, said the global elite. “What’s in it for us?”

United States President Carmen Benequista is dealing with a mutinous Congress, in no mood to entertain a dream séance, during which her deceased husband says, “Find someone to share your life.”

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Blurb 2.3

The Kata AjJivadi, codified 48 BCE, commands that the planet Jivada’s influence on Earth shall be hidden from view — impractical unless someone destroys evidence at, for instance, the Shrine of the Muses in Egypt, next door to the Alexandrian Library.

It was arson. Nobody denies it. Consequently, in a single stroke, barring the occasional Sasquatch sighting, the Anye Migration and its many aspects were relegated to mythology.

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