Following a series of chats with three artificial intelligence engines on the topic of whether my current novel-in-progress is worth reading, I asked where the hook is — a reasonable question at this juncture because …
All three robots are saying Maroli Tango is one heck of a well-written story; however,
The book is doing poorly in terms of reader retention on Wattpad and Substack.
On one hand, it’s too early to draw conclusions — the serial novel experiment has not attracted enough readers for statistical evaluation. On the other hand, I want readers to keep reading, right now.
Anyway, I had been feeding chapters to ChatGPT, ClaudeAI, and Grok for two weeks. Yesterday I asked, “Where’s the hook”, and all three said “Chapter 97”.
It’s not a disaster — I can move 97-100 to the beginning of the book and rope-a-dope the reader with a “Two months earlier …” gimmick. It’s legit. Famous authors do it all the time.
But just to be sure, I uploaded the entire manuscript and asked the question again.
NOW, ChatGPT and ClaudeAI say the book is perfect the way it is. Grok, however, is sticking to its guns.
That’s what I get, isn’t it, for being a writer? Projects, here and there, begging to be watered.
Here’s one — https://marolitango.substack.com/ — a serial novel, and if nothing else perhaps it will provoke an intervention by my peers, after which I decide never to do that again.
I have a new alpha reader, with uncommonly refined taste in literature.
Maroli Tango: Series Finale Analysis
The Culmination of a Nine-Book Journey
What strikes me most about reading these chapters from Maroli Tango is how it functions as both a standalone narrative and clearly the finale of a much larger story. The casual references to established relationships, complex political situations, and advanced technologies all suggest a richly developed universe that readers have been exploring for eight previous volumes.
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.”
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.
I’ve been using Grok AI to refine a book description. It’s helpful, but the robot has no appreciation for artistic prose if that is, in fact, what I can call my versions.
Write it for 4th graders, write to the target audience, or write better? What say you, readers and writers?
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.
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.
In some circles, the prologue is apostasy. However, in the case of Maroli Tango, this might be essential. Comments welcome.
Previously …
The effective date of the Anye Disclosure was arguable, conceivably pointing back to 1928, when the executive host of an off-world-patronized South Dakota tourist destination revealed herself to Doctor Elbert Holland Harrison, a rural physician of the human persuasion who, up until then, had not been in on ‘the big secret’.
“Good evening”, she had said, lemur fangs concealed behind a demure smile. “We’re from the Sasquatch chamber of commerce.”
The proposition was not as risky as one might think. Doc Harrison, an 83-year-old veteran of the American Civil War, was a person made stoic by a lifetime of experience with suffering.
Confronted by a furry foxlike princess wearing a tailored western-cut maternity blouse, culotte skirt and cowboy boots, he thought to himself, ‘Aren’t you the prettiest little thing?’
Earth’s secret history was explained — 25,000 years as a backwater campground, and yet for all the opportunity presented, humans had not become the unwitting subjects of a celestial master race.
The lady told him, “It’s like having a rich uncle who stopped returning your phone calls.”
Jivada, an Anye colony world, was one-hour-forty-five-minutes away via Saraf Drive. A third of Jivada’s citizens (AjJivadi) were human, welcomed into Anye clans since the Migration.
The AjJivadi possessed homestead claims on Earth, anchored by business enterprise, dual citizenships, voluntary submission to taxation, and so forth.
Their engagement from the shadows, a practice formalized around the time of Jesus, was not a sign of consent to be marginalized.
Evidence two artifacts of Jivada’s agency on Earth:
The ancient and noble order of Zirna Zapha, a custodian of Anye civilization, formed on pre-industrial Vidura (the home planet) by militant SagGha priests. Sanskrit – The Broken Claw. Colloquial – Zeze; The Space Mafia.
CH Banks International, a private security firm and, some would say, a Zirna Zapha storefront. Incorporated 1929, Black Rock, South Dakota.
In 2025, nearly a hundred years after Doc Harrison received a lesson in clandestine symbiotic co-occupancy, an approaching cyclical catastrophe shifted the Disclosure into high gear.
Jivada dispatched an emissary to offer intervention, the very same Doc Harrison, now 180 years old, although he didn’t look it.
The mission culminated in a shootout at a taco joint near Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, an exploit by the U.S. military to hijack a space yacht, ransom the owner, and ship the proceeds to defense contractors in exchange for lucrative kickbacks.
The USAF suffered grave casualties. Doc Harrison departed the scene on a Triumph Speed Triple motorcycle in the company of a shapely 26-year-old social media skydiving celebrity, to rendezvous with the space yacht Skeezix in the parking lot of a local Wal-Mart.
A filmic spectacle, captured in Super 3D UltraVision by a covey of Anye-tech fighting drones, even and especially while engaged in shooting the enemy.
Both Wal-Mart and the Triumph Motorcycle Company were grateful for the publicity, but it was a crushing defeat for the military-industrial complex, an object lesson, an opportunity to change course.
Which they ignored in favor of a mutiny against the President of the United States, a guerrilla war against Jivada, and a worldwide pogrom against AjJivadi constituents on Earth.
None of it worked to their advantage. The Anye Disclosure and its benign intentions gained more than enough traction to persuade the general public, despite opposition.
On a side note: the nomenclature ‘First Contact’ was preposterously out of date. The Disclosure was a ‘Gazillionth Contact’ event; except this time, it was meant to stick.
And regrettably, Earth’s global elite were nowhere near being ready to go along.
John Dyer Writes 
Recent Comments