conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about Unified, Medusa's, Previously with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Short Stories & Anthologies?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'Dreams of Distant Shores'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the first five paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Dreams of Distant Shores
  Jake's girlfriend, Blaine, pretty much said the same thing, wailing into his cellphone as he sat with Markham and Scott in a shadowy corner of the Trickle Down Brewery and Pub, "Jake, how could you lose a seven-foot mermaid? You have to find her. I promised Haley! I promised her! That's the focal point of the whole color scheme of her wedding. My best friend is getting married and I want her day to be perfect. I don't care where she went, you have to get her back by Saturday."
  Blaine's voice grew small and far away as Jake stared. She wasn't covered in blue scales; she had two legs under a short black skirt and black tights. But that red mouth, that generous smile, the curve of golden hair along one side of the smile, all that and the fact that she was taller than anyone in the room made his thoughts tangle to an abrupt halt, like an engine seizing up. He ended the call absently, forgetting Blaine. Beside him, Markham and Scott were absolutely still.
  She took their orders. They watched her return to the bar; then their heads swiveled slowly; their eyes met.
  They were silent, watching her again. Markham mused, "She could come to the wedding anyway. Couldn't she? Don't suppose Haley would—"
  The mermaid returned with their drinks. Their expressions transformed her enchanting smile into a broad grin. "Don't worry," she said briskly. "You'll get used to me."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide four more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: What, their faces would ask, do these barking seals, this smell of brine and guano, this vastness no Winnebago can cross have to do with me? Then they would get back into their cars so they could reach the next star on the map before dark. A wanderer herself, Megan knew the lure of the road, the peculiar quest for freedom that had the safe lights of home at the end. The journey was more important than the place; most important was to return home, with crumpled maps, salt and pepper shakers shaped like clamshells, a sweatshirt with whales on it, and to be able to say: I have been there, I have gone on a journey, I have come safely home. The world was a dangerous place for mollusks without their shells, and yet they ventured into it, restless, curious, or maybe following some ancient migratory instinct to return to the place where souls were spawned.
  She studied the drawing. It did need another color, something neutral. "I'm not one of your customers," she said coldly. "Go crab at them."
  Megan stared icily at the curtain, wanting to toss the red wash over the top of it. A coffee wash, she thought suddenly, between the red and the lavender. Cafe au lait. A diagonal line down the rock, spilling into the sand.
  She parted the curtains. The jewelry maker stood at the counter, studying what Jonah had beneath the glass. She paused half a step, blinking. There was too much of him for the shop. Too much of him for the town, she thought. He didn't belong in this tide pool. He was quite tall, dressed in black denim and leather; his short hair was whiter than Jenny's. He wore an earring in one ear. He turned at her step and smiled. He smiles, she thought. His eyes were pale green, the misty color the sea got sometimes when the sun broke behind the clouds. She was too amazed to smile back.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the last paragraph.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: What strikes me more and more about your recent work—apart from the increasing range of your adventurousness—is your obvious determination either to ignore or sidestep the standard tropes of classic fantasy, or to shake them up so as to leave them more than a bit dizzy and disoriented, like Edie and Henry (and, surely, their calmly competent driver, Thompson), when their motoring jaunt takes them down the Road Not Taken and brings them home—or not?—to a familiar world grown promisingly unfamiliar. Or, in your words, to "a world that had shifted, expanded, to let the fantastic in."