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Fair question, and thanks for reading anyway. Yes, I used AI. I brought the core idea and steered the story, and I used AI to brainstorm with me and help put it into words. That's part of why I'm giving it away free.
As for who E. G. Gore is: say it out loud. Harold is loosely based on me. Not an art teacher exactly, but a regular guy who works hard, makes things with his hands, and watched his money get worth less every year without anyone explaining why. That part isn't made up.
Honestly, though, Harold isn't the point. He's how the idea gets told. The book is about the money: what if that's the root of it all, and what would it take to fix it? If it makes you look at a dollar a little differently, it did its job.
The book hasn't been printed yet. I'm using the egregore to refine it: putting it out free, letting readers like you push back, and fixing it before the first edition. If the writing gets in the way of the idea anywhere, tell me where, and I'll fix it before it goes to print.
In esotericism, the term "egregore" has been used to denote a "group mind"[2] or "collective consciousness" of a religious community.
That's a little bit hubristic to identify oneself with.
Fair, but you'll have to read further. The egregore idea is in the story itself. Harold and Noah Fiatt end up sharing a mind, and the first thing that mind says is "We." The book is about what happens when people stop being separate links that can be picked off one at a time.
The pen name follows the same idea. I'm not claiming to be a group mind. The idea came from me, the words came with help from AI, and the fixes are coming from readers like you. E. G. Gore is whoever shows up and makes it better. Right now that includes you.
Not to be accusatory, because I appreciate effort spent on creative endeavours and don't want to discourage you in any way. Also, publishing to the bitcoin time chain is pretty interesting in its own right, not to mention your website looks polished and neat. Kudos on the launch.
That said, I personally don't have much interest in reading machine generated fiction, which I believe this is. And if it is, I wonder what is the value I am supposed to get by reading it.
When I read a novel, I am more interested in the novelist and their story than the one literally on the page. But who is E.G Gore? The cliche ruminations of an art teacher felt contrived and would suggest they aren't one themselves.
With your work, I am reading to prove my assumption wrong. I hope a person did wrote this. What I hope to find is some kind of originality that it could only have been a human that weote it. So far I don't see it.