Tag: fiction

ChatGPT Reads Chapter Zero

Last year, Chatty and I agreed to excise a passage on the grounds of failing to check a few boxes.

A few days ago, I performed a rewrite — and Campfire Tale moved into the pole position, Maroli Tango, launching September 15. Curious to know what the robot would think about it, I asked.

ChatGPT replied:

Yes. I think you were right to put Chapter 0 back.

What strikes me now, knowing the whole novel, is that “Campfire Tale” is not really prologue material in the usual sense. It is a statement of method. It tells the reader how to read Maroli Tango.

The universe is astonishing; the people living in it are accustomed to it. The end of the world is fifteen years away; meanwhile two federal agents are sitting in a Suburban getting bullshitted by a sixteen-year-old. Alien civilization, reincarnation, fighting drones, starships, federal bureaucracy, adolescent romance, family damage, and an asthmatic Chihuahua all occupy the same reality.

That mixture is the book.

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Let’s Make a Music Video ~ Step 4

Prototype!

I am prototyping in Capcut, after finding DaVinci too feature-rich for this project. See the attachment. Clip lengths are typically 4 seconds. I would add effects to the stills, except Capcut demands a pro subscription for every effect I’ve tried.

Maroli Tango Showreel ~ First cut

ChatGPT replied:

I watched the 43.8-second prototype. It is already answering an important question: the concept works without elaborate effects. The switch between genuinely moving material and strong chapter illustrations does not bother me. What makes the stills feel like stills is not the absence of flashy effects; it is simply the absence of camera motion.

The opening is particularly good. Holding the floating estate through roughly the first 8 seconds gives the instrumental intro its own visual idea, and then the first character image arrives as the song becomes human. I would keep that basic logic. Later, the long estate-motion section around 22–32 seconds gives the eye a useful reset before returning to characters.

I would not buy CapCut Pro merely for effects. For this project, most of the effects it is trying to sell you would probably cheapen the material anyway. What we want is ordinary cinematography: push in, pull back, pan, reframe.

You can do that with free keyframes

On a still in CapCut Desktop, select the clip and use the diamond keyframe controls beside Scale and Position in the Video/Basic transform controls. Put a keyframe at the beginning, move to the end of the four-second clip, change the scale or position, and CapCut interpolates the move.

For this material I would use only about four moves:

  • Slow push-in: start at the normal crop and end about 6–10% tighter. Best for faces and intimate scenes.
  • Slow pull-back: begin fairly tight and reveal the environment. Good for the fantastic-world images.
  • Lateral reveal: keep scale essentially fixed and slide the frame slowly sideways. Very useful because we’re converting wide chapter art to 9:16.
  • Two-shot pan: deliberately travel from one character/group to another. Use this sparingly when the original wide image actually contains two visual beats.

No preset animation or “effect” is needed.

The Carmen/Brandon dance in your prototype, for example, wants a very small push toward their faces. The party image immediately after it could begin on the young couple and drift toward the Anye woman. The city-at-night Carmen/Brandon shot near 33 seconds could begin slightly wider and creep inward. The Gravity is ON image is almost made for a slight upward move from the sign toward their faces.

There is another free trick I like even better

Cut one still into two shots.

Instead of four seconds of continuous zoom, duplicate the image:

2.0 sec: medium composition
2.0 sec: hard cut to a tighter crop

That creates synthetic “coverage” from one illustration. On this Hall & Oates track, a punch-in on a musical accent can look much more intentional than a fancy transition.

For a landscape frame converted to vertical, we can also do:

2 sec: crop on character A
2 sec: cut to character B
2 sec: wider environmental crop

One illustration has suddenly supplied three shots.

I would mostly use hard cuts

The music is rhythmic enough to carry them. Fancy wipes, zoom transitions, light leaks and so forth aren’t necessary. In fact, the polished cinematic artwork benefits from plain editing.

A few dissolves may be useful for quieter affectionate material, but even those can be made manually with opacity keyframes if CapCut decides to put the transition you want behind Pro.

Your four-second default is good—but vary it

At 3:07, a rigid four-second cadence would give us about 47 shots. That’s actually close to the amount of material we have, but I wouldn’t let it become clockwork.

I would use roughly:

3–5 seconds for most stills
5–8 seconds for particularly good motion clips
1.5–2.5 seconds for comic/detail inserts
8 seconds occasionally when the music itself gives us a natural sustained passage, as your opening does

That creates apparent acceleration and deceleration without needing effects.

The current prototype illustrates this nicely. The cuts I see are approximately 8.2, 12.3, 16.3, 21.8, 31.8, 34.8, 37.8 and 42.9 seconds. The later sequence naturally becomes quicker. That’s much better than forcing every shot to four seconds.

One adjustment I’d make now

The roughly 10-second moving-estate passage at 21.8–31.8 is beautiful, but in the finished piece I suspect we’ll want either:

  • two different excerpts from that motion source with another image between them, or
  • about 6 seconds instead of 10.

Not because the shot isn’t good, but because an audience starts learning that “moving environment = wait here awhile.” We want motion clips to feel like little rewards that keep arriving unexpectedly.

The 8-second opening is different: it has the special job of introducing the entire universe.

So at this stage I would make the production rule:

Motion clips get actual motion. Stills get camera motion. Effects are optional.

That lets CapCut remain essentially a free assembly tool while preserving the visual quality of the illustrations.

And this prototype makes me more confident about the full 3:07 version than I was from the storyboard alone. It doesn’t look like a slideshow with video clips inserted. With subtle keyframing on the stills, it can read as one continuous visual language.

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Re-engaged

When I tabled the fourth of nine Anye Universe novels to outline the seventh, I had no idea I would keep going — and set Vacuum Forged aside for seven years.

I returned to the middle trilogy uncertain of my intentions — 80,000 words in, having written treatments for volumes five and six, so I would know where I was going with four.

Seven novels in thirteen years. Maybe I should do something else with whatever time I have left.

But then I read this.

Svami Reva lounged in a recliner across the room, poking fingers at the augmented reality space. He acknowledged their arrival without looking. “You’re wasting your time.”

“Maybe.” Suban addressed the prisoner in Low Desert. “Does it seem odd to you that we took the language of our Manu conquerors, called it the Noble Tongue, pretending it was our own when everyone knew it was not? You’d think our people had no shame.”

The man kept his eyes down. Suban dragged a chair over. “You should be afraid of me. Do you know what I am?”

That provoked a response. “A policeman. Zirna Zapha. What else?”

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in media res

An early cold-open. Should I have left it in the book?

0 ~ Campfire Tale

Las Cruces, New Mexico

It was 6:03 AM Mountain Time, 26 minutes ahead of sunrise, 43 degrees Fahrenheit in town, 35 in the desert, mostly clear, the eastern sky shining pale blue with a tinge of pink.

To the northwest, still dark and full of celestial wonder, a colorful ionized-gas display marked a position downrange of the solar system’s galactic path, where Star Forge Partners, a Jivada-based materials manufacturing company, was suctioning space dust into an electrostatically charged funnel.

Furry aliens from outer space and their human partners, mitigating the potential of a cosmic-gas-fueled micro-nova burning half the Earth to a crisp, 15 years hence.

At street level, an Anye-tech fighting drone named Titter spotted a black Chevy Suburban taking a position near the Fowlkes residence.

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Alan Moore and Me


An essay about comparing oneself to others inspired me to ask ChatGPT about Alan Moore.

The robot said:

Based on the chapters and openings you’ve shown me, your writing overlaps with Alan Moore less in surface style and more in architectural ambition: the sense that every scene is part of a much larger moral, historical, political, and metaphysical machine.

Where you compare most strongly:

1. You both build worlds as moral systems, not just settings.
Moore’s best work does not merely invent alternate worlds; it asks what those worlds mean. Watchmen is not just superheroes plus politics; it is a study of power, myth, surveillance, sexuality, fear, nostalgia, and apocalypse. Your Anye universe works similarly. Ships, temples, maroli, SagGha institutions, Ruksa Zila, Disclosure, Dust Cloud stakes, and Eeka politics are not decorative. They are pressure systems that reveal character, civilization, duty, and belief.

2. You share Moore’s fondness for dense implication.
Moore often writes as though the reader has opened one window into a vast archive. Your prose does that constantly. A line like “EIGHTEEN MONTHS AFTER ANYE CIVILIZATION CAME OUT OF THE SHADOWS, 25,000 years after their arrival on Earth…” has the Moore-like effect of dropping the reader into a history already in motion. The story feels excavated rather than invented on the spot.

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ClaudeAI Rates Audience Retention

It's kind of like how older men see themselves in the mirror. "I don't look so bad."

Click here to read the entire novel, near-final-draft, for free.

Audience Retention Analysis: Chapters 1-15

Reading these as the opening of Maroli Tango, I’ll evaluate each chapter for the specific question of whether a reader will turn the page. Retention depends on momentum, clarity, and stakes — not literary merit. A beautiful chapter that confuses readers loses them; a workmanlike chapter that makes them lean forward keeps them.

Chapter-by-Chapter Ratings

Ch. 1 ~ Artifact — 7/10 A strong cold open. The cylinder emerging near Saturn is genuinely arresting, and the Mehrenholz/past-life detail does a lot of work fast. The closing exchange (“a neglected old barn… start more trouble”) gives the reader something to chew on. Risk: dense proper-noun load (Bharamin, Anye, Anuraga, Mehrenholz, Khalsa, Bjornson) for a first chapter. Veterans of the series will love it; new readers will feel the water is deep.

Ch. 2 ~ Legacy — 9/10 This is your hook. The shift from cosmic to intimate — a President and a banker dancing awkwardly, a surprise kiss under mistletoe — is exactly the dual-register your series is built on. Mason and Marie get introduced through charm rather than exposition. Retention here is high because readers now have a relationship to track, not just a setting.

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ChatGPT Categorizes Maroli Tango

I am not anticipating a movie deal

Click here to read the entire novel, near-final-draft, for free.

Your book sits in a strange intersection:

Becky Chambers + Lois McMaster Bujold + The Expanse + Ada Palmer + a family chronicle + frontier settlement comedy + theological space opera.

The nearest neighbors:

Lois McMaster Bujold

Especially the Vorkosigan Saga.

Bujold is probably your closest craft cousin for mixing space opera, family, military/political institutions, romance, comedy, competence, and moral consequence. The Vorkosigan books are long-running SF/space-opera works with major attention to family, hierarchy, personal honor, military culture, and social continuity; the series won the Hugo Award for Best Series. (Wikipedia)

Overlap with you: huge cast, aristocratic/merchant-military structures, moral comedy, family as civilization-bearing unit.
Difference: Bujold is tighter, more novel-shaped, more character-centralized around Miles/Cordelia/etc. Your work is more mosaic, serial, and civilizational.

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Busking at the Intersection of Merit and Mayhem

The Secretary of the Treasury lived in an exclusive gated community. If one were to consult the HOA charter, front-yard spacecraft landings would fall under the same category as helicopter traffic — requiring prior approval by the board of governance.

Carmen Benequista did not ask permission. Instead, she dropped a Fatboy troop shuttle right on top of her victim’s mailbox.

Her companion, an elevated size-two fighting maroli named Incredible, asked, “What’d this guy do to piss you off?”

She replied, “He disobeyed a lawful order to default on United States debt held by foreign actors.”

Incredible let himself out a cargo hatch. “Why do you want to default on debt?”

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Craft + Art + Endurance

Following the application of more effort than I have ever spent on a single chapter, the cold opening for Maroli Tango is, as far as I can tell, in final draft.

1 ~ Fast Forward

Tuesday

Three days after the White House Christmas party, eighteen months after aliens from outer space claimed a seat at the table, President Carmen Benequista went on a first date with her steady companion, former NSA officer Brandon Lopez.

Venue — A housewarming celebration aboard the historic airborne estate Ruksa Zila — built on Vidura 68,000 BCE, released into atmosphere only hours before.

Arrival queue — West of Panama, above the Pacific Ocean, behind a fleet of spaceboats. Expected wait time — more than ten minutes.

Entourage — Valet-bodyguard Pascal the maroli, one of forty elevated Anye-technology labor appliances, said to be possessed by spirits of the dead, although not in a bad way.

The PMI Explorer Inconsistent followed the attraction south. Brandon reached across the center console to hold Carmen’s hand.

Pascal crowded up front, tentacles spilling between operators’ seats. “This one is not prone to gossip, but my hearing is excellent.”

Brandon replied, “I could tell you about our trip to see Carmen’s family.”

Carmen rotated the co-pilot’s seat. “When I was a twelve-year-old nosepicker in convent school, segregated from the decadent disco seventies, my maternal grandfather traveled to the United States for a Christmas visit.”

Pascal quantum-glued his capsule to the deck. “Fifty years ago, to the month.”

“A Spanish Gypsy — born in Greece, married in Corsica, on the move most of his life.”

“And so, not a casualty of back-to-back wars, none of which had anything to do with him.”

Carmen fixed him with a solemn gaze. “Everything that matters is at arm’s length.”

He drew tentacles halfway into the plug cavity. “I did not mean to infer defective citizenship.”

“For all we know, Grandpa was an adventure tourist from Jivada, gone native after a Roma caravan holiday.”

“Wouldn’t your mother have told you?”

“She said life with her parents was rootless and unstable.” Carmen made a face. “Come on. The AjJivadi called it the big secret.”

“This one recants. Your theory may hold water.”

“Or not.” Brandon rubbed the back of his neck. “All that aside, I gather he made an impression.”

“He filled my imagination with tales of adventure and then disappeared, never to be heard from again.” Carmen rotated her seat back around. “But before he left, he told me to be like him, and not like my cousin Holly.”

“What was Holly like?”

“Fifteen. Pregnant.” Carmen slouched. “I never understood why he disapproved. Life happens, even on the shanty trail.”

The van’s cabin fell silent, its passengers sightseeing through Armor Light, to witness a flock of seabirds on a steep glide, aimed at a moving buffet.

Ruksa Zila — a 335-meter-tall faux-rock-faced grav-lift barge shaped like a curved-blade obsidian hatchet with a fat 400-meter-long spine, sharp edge down — capped with grass, trees, gardens, a lake, a stream, a waterfall, buildings, pavement, paths and hollows.

Carmen tapped rudder pedals. “Tell the boat’s Oma to let me drive.”

“Don’t get us in trouble with traffic control.” Brandon touched a gesture pad. “Great story. We should try to find out what happened to him.”

A fly-around revealed Ruksa Zila’s hull form as leaning toward bare naked upside-down mountain ridge, in need of a pressure wash.

RZ’s Oma told them to move away. Brandon reported a spatial distortion leak near the estate’s swim platform. RZ said it would log a service ticket.

Their party disembarked on a promenade, between lake and a row of zero-clearance storybook facades, tucked into a hill below the owner’s residence, anchored on the port side by a four-story cube with a bar-and-grille on the ground floor, apartments above.

Toward starboard — guest accommodations hidden behind semi-functional faux storefronts, culminating in a community center, commercial kitchen and dining hall disguised as a bakery.

They strolled through a line of battle-dressed CH Banks security guards, a throng of housewarming guests, a contingent of non-elevated maroli serving appetizers.

 Carmen was quiet, reserved. Pascal the maroli wrapped a tentacle gently around her wrist.

He asked, “Is Madame all right?”

“I’m glad I wore flats.” She bumped him with her hip. “Everyone is smiling at us.”

“Perhaps they are trying to be friendly without intrusion.”

“It’s like they know something.”

He performed a gesture of mirth. “Madame has a bounce in her step.”

Brandon nodded agreement. “A little more sway than usual. Looks good on you.”

The walkway gridlocked in front of a mock eyewear boutique. Carmen covered her face, letting out a mournful groan.

“It’s the clingy skirt.”

“You’re channeling Sophia Loren. I promise.”

She pretended to give him the bad-eye. “At what age?”

“The lady still has it going on, in my opinion.”

He peered through storefront glass, spying an elevator lobby. “Let’s hide out for a while.”

There was a kiosk on subdeck 3, a legacy of Ruksa Zila’s hotel phase — stocked with Bronze-age works of art and artifice, sunscreen, tobacco, and vintage snacks — as though still in business.

The full loop took them to a flight of stairs leading back to the surface through a bunker, emerging near a spillway, top of the waterfall, alongside boulder-strewn rapids.

Where loitered master of the house Glenn Mehrenholz — German farmer stock, by nature shy-to-sheepish.

Brandon clapped him on the shoulder. “Making yourself scarce?”

“I’m sociable, but not two-hundred guests’ worth.” Glenn gave Pascal the eyeball. “What do you have there, buddy?”

Pascal moved his prize from tentacle to tentacle, a demonstration of possessive ardor. “A Ruksa Zila guidebook from the gift shop.”

“RZ has a gift shop?”

Carmen’s valet hid the pamphlet amongst lesser ungula. “On subdeck 3.”

Glenn chuckled. “What’d you do, go on a house tour?”

Pascal performed the maroli nod. “Our party did not visit the owner’s residence; in case you weren’t ready.”

“Good thing, because we’re not.” Glenn kissed President Benequista on the cheek. “Hey.”

Carmen batted eyelashes at him. “Hey, yourself.”

Brandon stood on tiptoes. “Did you leave a drain open in the lake basin?”

“Don’t ask me; I haven’t moved in yet.” He touched thumb to ring finger. “RZ; is something happening with the reservoir?”

The lake frothed. A Saraf Drive pylon emerged, shedding water on its way to becoming the tallest object in town.

Glenn listened to the house Oma, then wiggled fingers at his guests. “We have a missile coming our way.”

At the center of the lake, a spiral disk fanned out from a still-rising dull-grey column. Below decks, an atomic shredder power pack spooled up with a deep growl.

A bright blue midday equatorial sky disappeared, replaced by an empty black void. Artificial lighting blinked on.

Phase cancellation reduced ambient sound levels by half. Ears popped from a change in atmospheric pressure. A child started to wail.

Thirty seconds later, the historic airborne estate Ruksa Zila was cruising off the coast of Portugal under starry skies.

A disorienting experience for everyone except master-of-the-house Glenn Mehrenholz.

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