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Sounds like you've worked out a lot of the mechanics, which is promising.

I feel my original question stands: What do the memories prove? And why does Satan have to care?

Not answering your question directly (but will in another post) but here, taking a slight side-step: A Satan POV would be hard to write. We're having an interesting discussion on another forum about what goes on in the heads of immortals.

For example, a 500yrold vampire who participated in the US civil war, chatted personally with Descartes, and was signatory to the signing of the constitution... what attracts him to a highschool-range girl who's not yet travelled or experienced or even widely read. The discussion amounted to how can the author reasonably convey what's going on in this dude's head. Surely, even a lady vampire in her mid 100's is just as pretty but more on his tier, having survived two world wars and a Great Depression.

A POV from the girl's perspective is relatable to the human condition. A POV from his perspective requires the character to be humanized.

Granted we each see Satan differently, I see a diabolical genius. No way he's risking himself by doing things personally; he'd have a puppet acting in the role you described. Let the puppet have to deal with human memories and mental contamination. Were I he, I'd have spent the years since the flood grooming my puppets to utter loyalty with promises of (insert whatever fetish they have).

If I remember correctly, Tolkien doesn't give a Sauron POV until the end of Book 3, and even then only a brief "He realized his great mistake". If there is a Sauron POV before this, it would be worth looking into

tl;dr: You've set yourself a high-level challenge to try to convince the reader that this dude is someone who can deceive an entire planet when in his head/mindset

All of these and more.
And sometimes you could have the perfect everything but they have a full catalogue and cannot onboard more. Equally if they are about to publish in the same genre.

My advice: Don't write to be published but because you have the greatest story to tell. Writing quality, platform, covers, those can be learned or bought. Market potential shifts every few years, but it's a carousel. Nothing is truly non-market forever

mmm 6 months is a very narrow window; doesn't give you much breathing room if you need a few days to contemplate a scene. May I ask why such a specific number?

At least 60 of those were bots. Don't ask me how I know

I don't know what to say that could help solve this conundrum. For me, removing = simplicity. Simplicity = more time to focus on thriller elements. Thriller elements = evil plan + riddles + action.

Plainly stated: What should your target reader be thinking? If anything in my list, you may need to pivot a bit

Indeed... the trend these days is toward 30day+ trials and hope to drip-feed some income. My non-sub models seems to have a tokenized pay-per-post system, but otherwise I'm a "full" member.

I've been trying to come up with a solution that jives better with the existing business model. This assumes there is a valid business model, and we're not being underwritten by Booksie. In this latter, let's call it a dire case, more drastic efforts may be required.

Hmm... Sometimes you can get a great idea and when you implement it, you find it's trash

When this was in my head, I pictured players would solve the blue squares first... this would turn the next crossing squares blue and be related words.

Example Car (blue) crosses "vehicle" yellow (Both contain a C + relation). Then vehicle turns blue.
Vehicle (blue) crosses "wheel" yellow
etc

The fact is the farther along the relation-chain you go, the more obscure the guesses become. I made one puzzle and put it away for a few days to "forget" the answers. When I came back I could hardly solve it myself.

I need to bring this back to the drawing board and consider actual clues/hints.

I feel your pain... we used to have a lot of magical realism ppl here who would have been great fits for your story.

At the risk of derailing your post, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the current structure.

I'd like to a flag that a busy person (who's really not busy these days, right?) may not post for the first 5-10 days of joining. If he posts late, he may get the "You have a new review" message and log back in to see "You can't see your review unless you pay". Not saying this has happened to me (okay, well it has, but I'm not a new member so it didn't faze me), but I wonder if it is happening out there as a deterrent.

I've been doing mental gymnastics to figure out how this might be addressed without essentially giving away the cow for free but not coming up with anything.

So far shortlist

crossadoodle (hee, cross-a-doodle-doo!)

cross-o-saurus

cluezzle

picto- (word / scrawl / worm etc)

with special nod to an irregular "anticross" event where all the words have to be written backwards

Out of morbid curiosity, was that Gemini? Mine usually gives more light-hearted answers which sound like a TV commercial instead of scholarly

Or... an alternative view is: One expects the author of the verse to die for the truth, not fib a little to escape his doom