‘Melted Ice,’ Lyrics To An ‘Ohio’ Like Pop-Rock Protest Song, Written By Grok

(Verse 1)
Sirens cut the midnight quiet
Blue lights flash on barrio walls
They come in waves like winter storms
Kicking doors, no knock, no call

Children hide beneath the bed
Mothers whisper, “Stay down low”
Fathers vanish into black vans
Where the melted ice runs cold

(Pre-Chorus)
They say it’s just the law
They say it’s keeping order
But the cages glow like embers
In the dark along the border

(Chorus)
Melted ice, melted ice
Hearts frozen then cracked wide
How do you look your children in the face
And tell them this is pride?
Melted ice, melted ice
The promise turned to dust
When the badge becomes a blade
And justice turns to rust

(Verse 2)
She was teaching third grade English
He was wiring houses in the heat
Now their names are just case numbers
On a spreadsheet, obsolete

Asylum papers torn to confetti
Dreams scattered on concrete floors
While the news calls it “enforcement”
We call it breaking down the doors

(Pre-Chorus)
They say it’s just procedure
They say it’s nothing new
But every chain-link echo
Screams what we refuse to do

(Chorus)
Melted ice, melted ice
Hearts frozen then cracked wide
How do you look your children in the face
And tell them this is pride?
Melted ice, melted ice
The promise turned to dust
When the badge becomes a blade
And justice turns to rust

(Bridge)
Listen to the buses rolling
Listen to the silence grow
Listen to the names they’re calling
Names we used to know
Somewhere there’s a mother waiting
For a child she’ll never hold
While we scroll past the headlines
And let the story go cold

(Final Chorus – bigger, more urgent)
Melted ice, melted ice
Wake up, it’s not too late
We’re the ones who let it happen
We’re the ones who close the gate
Melted ice, melted ice
Feel it in your bones
When humanity starts melting
No one’s safe, no one’s home

(Outro – quiet, fading)
Melted ice…
Melted ice…
How long will we keep saying
“We didn’t know… we didn’t know…”

Ugh. What Is Stopping Me From At Least Flipping Through My ‘How To Query’ Books

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have three books I need to look over now that I’m getting a lot closer to querying and…yet…I just can’t bring myself to do that just yet. I guess the key reason is I’m not done with the novel yet.

My fear is that I’m going to read something in one of the books that will stop me cold in my tracks. Something on a fundimental basis about how I’m writing this novel that will make me re-evaluate everything.

I would much rather actually have finished the novel to learn something so dire. That way, at least, I will have a finished novel under my belt.

Ugh. I’m probably being paranoid for no reason. But I am prone to overthink things.

Of Race And Androids

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

In the past when I was writing a novel, I would really try to go out of my way to have representation. Not for any woke cancel culture mob identity politics reasons, but just because I think if you’re going to write an American tale, you have to address race.

With this most recent novel attempt, it’s been really, really difficult to have representation because every variation I could think of when it came to human-android relations seemed…loaded and problematic.

But just recently, I came up with a variation that was ok. Barely. But close enough. And that really helps me feel better about the novel because it’s not just a bunch of white people talking to each other.

Anyway, I’m still hoping to wrap up the first act of the latest version of the novel in a week or so. I SHOULD be able to zoom through the “fun and games” part of the novel — the first half of the second act — and even, to some extent the “bad guys closing in” part of the second act as well.

But the second half of the novel just is not as well written out as the first half. Some scenes are just a few lines. The point of that was I needed to get through the outline, to stress test it.

What Am I Going To Do

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I find myself in something of a pickle. I’m an “AI First” novelist, and, yet I’m growing concerned that any improvement in my actual writing ability with be credited to AI.

This is really beginning to eat away at me, Tell-Tale Heart style.

I suppose on solution would be to tweak my workflow some. I might have to rewrite the extended scene summaries that AI generates in my own words so I won’t be tempted to use them directly when I write the scenes.

I want the text of this novel to be judged on its merits, not whether it was “helped” by AI or not. I must say, however, Claude is great as a manuscript consultant. It has really helped me in writing and developing this novel to not be doing it all in a vacuum.

That was one of the reasons why I have drifted for so long when it comes to working on a novel. In the past, I couldn’t even pay people to help me with my writing. They either thought I was a drunk, fool and a crank or they thought what I was writing was trash.

Ugh.

But Claude LLM — and to a lesser extent Gemini LLM — are really helping me improve my writing. As I keep saying, I compare it to how spell checking has really improved my writing as well.

I do a lot — A LOT — of work on this novel and the idea that people would just think it was AI slop because I’m an AI First (aspiring) novelist really grates on my nerves. But everything and everyone is horrible, so, lulz?

Luminal Political Spaces: Anocracy In America

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

America is definitely neither totally fascist nor totally free. Living in such a luminal political space is call an “anocracy.” With the shooting of a hapless driver by ICE today it’s possible Trump may get his chance to invoke the Insurrection Act.

For people like Trump, the Insurrection Act has taken on mythical proportions. They see it as a cure-all to all their woke cancel culture mob problems. Ugh. Anyway, I have long said the only way we get out of this situation is a general strike.

But, alas, not even fucking ICE murdering people in cold blood is going to get us to that point. I think we’re totally and completely fucked.

I think there won’t be free-and-fair elections and this is it. We’re just going to be Trumplandia for the rest of my life. We will get poorer and more fascist as things progress.

It was great living in a free America while it lasted, I guess.

I Hope To Wrap Up The First Act Of This Scifi Dramedy Pretty Soon

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

While I still have three books on querying to flip through, I’m hoping to wrap up the first act of this novel fairly soon. Maybe in a week or so. If I’m really lucky. I’m so fucking moody when it comes to actually sitting down to write that I never can quite tell how long it will be.

But, in general, I have pretty good vibes for this novel. The only thing that makes me wince a little bit is the sex worker part of the novel. And, yet, that gives the novel stakes and, well, it’s point.

While *I* really like the sex worker element of the story, I’m afraid there will be a vocal minority in the audience that will hate, hate, hate it. But it’s too late now. Unless, that is, Black Mirror does an episode that steals a creative march on me and I have to piviot to a different story.

That would really suck, but it’s a real possibility — especially if I don’t get my act together and hurry up to wrap this damn thing up ASAP.

This Greenland Thing Is So Dumb

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

We live in a very, very dumb age. We have a Mad Emperor doing crazy shit here in America and we seem powerless to do anything about it.

The chief example of this is Trump’s fascination with owning Greenland of all things. It’s very, very dumb for lots of reasons because we can get everything we want from Greenland without going through the trouble of upending the entire global order.

And, yet, here we are.

It definitely seems as though Trump is going to destroy NATO in his quest to own Greenland. I suppose that was always the ultimate end goal of Trump’s foreign policy — to destroy NATO.

It’s times like these when I think Trump has got to be a Russian agent, or, at least, a Russian stooge of some sort.

Of Being An ‘AI First’ Author: Spellcheckers & AI Slop

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I gave the first scene of the novel to someone else and they were generally praise worthy. But one thing kind of bothered me. They essentially effused over my writing being better on a practical basis.

This made me blanch because what they were noticing was me leaning into AI to write the scene. So, in essence, what they were saying without realizing was: my native writing ability sucks.

This is enough to throw me into intensive psychotherapy. But maybe not. Not only am I going to make a one final pass of the novel’s text before I query to make sure it’s as much my own style and tone as possible, I also look at it this way: what’s the difference between using AI to help write a novel and using it to spellcheck?

I am a horrible, horrible speller. I always have been, always will be. So bad that the only way I ever got any journalism gigs was…because of the existence of spellcheck.

So, as long as I do as much hard work as possible, I don’t really see there being *that* much of an issue when it comes to leaning into AI when working on a novel. And I do a whole lot of work. I really do.

One thing I probably need to tweak when it comes to my workflow is to totally not use the expanded scene summaries that AI generates for me directly. What I need to do is read those expanded scene summaries…and then do my own writing. I have gotten into the bad habit of using going through and directly using the expanded scene summaries as the basis of scenes.

Bad author, bad. Don’t do that!

Another observation the guy I sent the first scene of the novel to is that my hero was quite “likeable enough.” I hate that. Given what happens in the novel, I fear that is a problem that will only grow. And, yet, who knows.

The key thing that is going to delay me querying this novel is going to be the one last pass I’m going to make of the text to tweak things like hero likability and the vague “AI slop” quality of some of the writing. I’m the writer, I have to actually do as much of the writing as possible.

Ugh.

The Perfect Is The Enemy Of The Good: ‘AI Speak’ Edition

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I am just about to wrap up the first act of this scifi dramedy novel I’m working on and, as such, I’ve looked over some of the beginning scenes. And I’m pleased but for one thing — they definitely are a bit…too…polished.

They suffer from “AI speak” a little bit too much for my liking. I just hate the idea of people rolling their eyes and saying the only reason why my writing is any good is I used AI. (This, despite me still thinking that the way I use AI is simpler to how I might have used spell check a few decades earlier.)

Regardless, everyone and everything is horrible so to prevent me from having to endure the slings and arrows of people accusing me of producing AI slop, I’m probably going to go in and simply rewrite scenes as necessary completely in my own hand.

That way, even if the end product is “worse” at least it will be my writing and not AI.

‘Accidently On Purpose’ — Could Trump Actually Help The People Of Iran Liberate Themselves

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Trump is so nuts I could totally see him accidently on purpose doing the “right thing” and actually helping the people of Iran overthrow their tyrannical government.

If he was successful in doing so, I would be stunned. He would have actually done what needed to be done — help the people of Iran free themselves from bondage. Only a crazy, deranged person like Trump would, with total disregard for the international order, do something so crazy.

And it gets even more crazy in the context of what Trump did with the president of Venezuela. For him to do two crazy things on the world stage back-to-back. Oh boy. And that doesn’t even begin to address the idea that Trump might slide into the DMs, as it were, of Greenland by sending American “Little Green Men” to gradually snatch that huge rocky island.

Anyway, if Trump succeeds in freeing the people of Iran, I will give him proper credit, in an unironic manner.