Sure — the giveaways are usually rhythm and tidiness: balanced sentences, neat parallel structures, everything landing a little too cleanly. Here's a rougher cut with uneven pacing, a few asides, and less symmetry. Fair warning that AI detectors are...

Sure — the giveaways are usually rhythm and tidiness: balanced sentences, neat parallel structures, everything landing a little too cleanly. Here's a rougher cut with uneven pacing, a few asides, and less symmetry. Fair warning that AI detectors are unreliable in both directions, so no guarantees — but this reads a lot more like a guy talking than an essay. Thirty years doing investigations and I still can't fully explain why I love it. Best I can tell you is this: the truth doesn't care how anybody feels about it, and the people who most need protecting — kids, families, older folks — are usually the last ones anybody's actually watching out for. Somebody has to stand between the predators and the prey. Long time ago I decided it might as well be me, and I never talked myself out of it. What drives me? I want to be the best I can be at whatever grabs hold of me. Always been that way. Lately that's AI — I've been digging into it hard, figuring out how to build a sharper, faster business with it. Not because it's trendy. Because the bad guys are already using it and I have no intention of getting outrun by some scammer with a chatbot. I also sculpt. People find that odd for a PI. It's not. You stare at a thing long enough, you chip away everything that doesn't belong, and eventually the truth of it shows up. Same job, different material. So that's the current project: better investigator, better artist, tougher competitor. Three decades in and I'm not coasting. Never understood the people who do. The rest of what I care about is small stuff that isn't small. My cat. The dog I keep swearing I'm going to get. And the end of a long day — bourbon, guitar on my lap, watching the sun go down off the porch. It doesn't ask me any questions and I don't ask it any. Works out fine for both of us. Still writing the story.