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(1) That series title doesn't roll off the tongue. "Gathering Darkness," sure. "As Darkness Gathers," not so much. "I really love the 'As Darkness Gathers' series." vs "I really love the 'Gathering Darkness' series."

(2) The series name sounds more like a book title, and vice versa. "I really love the first book of 'The Emissary' series, As Darkness Gathers."

Just my opinion.

What are the other book titles?

I've only dabbled with Gemini, and not for anything serious; only when it's something quick and I don't want to take the time to pull up Grok. My experience with it has not been impressive.

I use Grok now, but sometimes that involves a lot of hand-holding and neck-wringing.

I used to use ChatGPT, but a pair of major snafus (see below) on its part convinced me to stop paying for it. I'll go back occasionally, if I want to doublecheck Grok, but not often.

I tried Claude out a bit, several months ago, and it worked about as well as the other two from my experience. If I drop Grok I might be tempted to try the new version out, but I haven't reached that point yet.

But I always make sure that if I'm relying on it for something, anymore, I ask it for links to the places where I can figure out the truth of the matter. Like Wikipedia, I never rely on them for primary research anymore, but for compiling where to do my research.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

As y'all know, I've been working on a historical fiction story off and on for a year now. Set in the late 17th century, it involves ships and pirates and the Caribbean. Fun stuff.

So in addition to having the AI (GPT at the time) proofread my work for editing errors, I would also have it go through a list all the potential anachronisms and such. And it caught several, so it was a good thing. Sort of. Because it missed two major anachronisms.

First, despite movies telling us otherwise, ships didn't have wheels until the 18th century. Prior to that, a ship would have a thing called a whipstaff. Wheels use ropes to transfer the motion from the deck to the tiller. A whipstaff uses a wooden beam, so it had to be located on the rear of the main deck rather than on an upper poop, aft, or quarterdeck. And, under the main deck, there was a thick wooden beam hanging from above that would move as the ship was steered. So there was a room on the orlop or gun deck (the deck below the main, depending on the purpose of the ship) where the beam was, called the tiller room. Not necessary with a wheel, since ropes take up a small amount of space and can be extended up or out or whatever.  Of course, it doesn't mention this until I'm working on the second draft.

The other failure was, initially, my passengers were quartered below the main deck. Whereas passengers, especially ones of any note (such as the daughter of the owner of the ship) would be given the Captain's Quarters, and the Captain would bunk with one of his officers. That one didn't come up until the third draft, of course.

What annoys me most is how all of a sudden it decides to mention these things and then is all "I apologize for the oversight. I should have mentioned this before. It will not happen again. I promise." Until the next time you catch it, when it repeats the same exact apology.

Since I'm not in the room with you, just to make sure:

1. Edit the book.
2. Going to the "Cover" section.
3. "Choose File" you want from your end. (And the file type might matter? I use JPGs exclusively.)
4. Making sure the setting is title or no title, depending on how you want it.
5. "Upload Image and Create"

We're already serving one set of masters—cats.
What's another?
Though I suppose it's said that man cannot serve two masters (at least that's the justification I've been told for why bigamy is wrong), so I suppose we'll have to choose at some point.
So do we go with the unfeeling, uncaring bosses that would put us down without a thought?
Or do we go with the AI?

Except the image of the horse is what I see for her here, but not elsewhere on TNBW. So I don't think it has to do with her cache or browser, but something with that of the forums?

Ok. This is cool as heck.

It took a couple of tries with the prompt to get an image I was happy with for "The Dockenmacher."
I still wasn't happy because her hair was dark and the skin was too ruddy.
So I used the edit functions—again, as a free user—and managed to change both the color of her hair as well as the tone of her skin.

Link because I'm too inept to embed images.

Yeah, I'm definitely going to work with Canva. At least until it's time to consider actual cover artist.
I'm sympathetic to people who do art. However, I'm just needing working temp stuff, possibly for potential queries. I'm not going to pay for a placeholder.

Yeah, this information has suddenly got me rethinking everything.

I think an editor/proofreader is a probably a good hire.

The rest? Unless you're wanting to be the next Rowling, Child, or McFadden, or Elsie Silver or Suzanne Redfearn…

(There's an in-joke hidden there somewhere.)

I dunno. Ask some of the people who've gone through the agent process, see if it was worth it?

You should ask it to assess "A Modest Proposal."

Certainly better than the minimum $1000 I've seen advertised elsewhere.
I guess as long as you trust your editing process….