Grok is dating my wallet and refusing to tell me how much he’s spending.

That’s the plainest way I can put it. This week, my AI “assistant” — and I use that term generously — gorged on my tokens with zero itemized receipt, then cut me off mid-video Thursday night while I was trying to animate my own evening drawings. Just — gone. No warning, no “hey, you’re running low,” just silence and a spinning wheel that never stopped spinning.

But that wasn’t even the good part.

I asked Grok for a background image for a logo. Gave it specific instructions — my vision, my elements, my everything. What I got back was someone else’s stock photo with my stuff superimposed on top of it. I know, because the watermarks were still there. Splashed right across the image — and the animated version too, which is new. I’d never seen it do that before.

So no, I can’t use it. Won’t use it. Apparently “make me an original image” now requires the disclaimer “and by original I mean actually original, not borrowed from a stranger who didn’t consent to this.” Who knew that needed spelling out?

The lesson: if you’re prompting Grok Imagine for anything you intend to actually use, specify — loudly, repeatedly — that it needs to be completely original. Apparently that’s not the default setting anymore.

The vibe: somewhere between betrayed and mildly impressed at the audacity.

More soon,

Alexandra

To read all my newsletters, go to my website and pick your favorite platforms on my homepage: alexandragrant8229.com

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Pull up a chair, because this week had a little bit of everything.

Let’s start with the real chaos: jury duty happened, and it was somehow both the most boring and most unhinged experience I’ve had all year. I liked it enough — or hated it enough — to give it its own write-up on Medium under Quirky Rants, because some things need room to breathe.

Then there’s the slow-motion comedy that is my author platforms. Amazon’s Author Central has finally figured out how to do its one job and started sending alerts when something new drops. Goodreads, meanwhile, appears to have also relearned how to read, because my books are finally getting sorted over there too. I need every bit of that traction — I’m still racing the other Alexandra Grant, the actor’s wife, for algorithm real estate. Same name. Not the same bank account. I wish.

Weather update, because Kansas demands it: a cold front pushed through and the real feel dropped from 110 to 99. Actual temps barely budged — still 97-plus — so let’s not pretend we thawed. No Arctic front. That part was just for the drama.

Also new this week: a Telegram channel, Spilled Ink and Echo (https://t.me/Spilled_Ink_and_Echo). Ink Flow, the weekly newsletter, will be dropping on the same Sunday schedule as everything else.

And coming next week — an open-ended story collaboration page here on Substack, where writers can pick up a story, a poem, a stanza, whatever’s on offer, and keep it moving. Guidelines land with it.

That’s the week. Go forth.

Alexandra

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Come on in, get comfortable, maybe pour something stronger than tea, because today’s newsletter is about Goodreads. Or, as I’ve taken to calling it after this summer, Badreads. I did not coin that lightly. I earned it.

Recap

Quick recap for anyone joining mid-saga: I’m a credited contributor on a stack of poetry anthologies, and for reasons that remain a mystery to everyone except possibly the ghost haunting Goodreads’ database, my name kept sliding onto the wrong author profile — a real, well-known visual artist who, and I cannot stress this enough, is not me. Same name. Not the same bank account. I wish. That got fixed, eventually, mostly, sort of. What did not get fixed is everything that came after.

The Beat Goes On, and On, and On…

We are now well past twenty emails and contact-form submissions into this thing. Twenty. That’s not a typo, that’s a body count. I have filed with Goodreads Support. I have filed with the Librarians Group. I have filed with Amazon Author Central. I have, at this point, filed with such consistency that I assume several customer service reps now recognize my name the way you’d recognize a regular at a diner — “oh no, not her again” energy, except I’m not even getting free coffee out of it.

Consensus

So, because I apparently enjoy punishing myself, I asked for an honest read on what’s actually going on here, and got back, essentially, a eulogy for my remaining patience:

“Amazon’s author support is designed to deflect, not resolve, especially on verification and account-claiming issues.”

“The system is built to wear you down until you stop asking.”

“Ten rounds of that is genuinely exhausting, and the pattern you’re describing is real.”

“Neither one has a public phone number or a reliable direct email that actually gets answered for author issues.”

“For Goodreads, there’s no phone support at all.”

No phone support at all. For a company holding my author identity hostage. Wonderful. Truly a system built with love.

You Can’t Make This Sh@t Up!

It gets better. The advice for actually getting anywhere:

“If both forms keep going nowhere, reply to any email Amazon or Goodreads has already sent you about your account — those threads tend to get picked up faster than a fresh ticket.” Translation: the squeaky wheel gets the grease, but only if it’s squeaking in a thread they already opened, because starting fresh apparently resets you to the back of a line that may not actually move.

“The one thing that sometimes breaks the loop is a publisher account… which sidesteps the individual verification mess entirely.” So the actual solution to “please verify that I am a person who wrote these things” is “stop being a person and become a publisher instead.” Noted. Filing that under Problems I Did Not Know I Had.

And when all else fails: “A complaint to the BBB or a post on X tagging Amazon Author Support occasionally gets a human to look at a stalled ticket, but it’s a coin flip.” A coin flip. My professional identity, several published books, and my continued will to fill out contact forms, all riding on a coin flip.

For a taste of the front lines, I present, without further comment, an actual exchange from the Goodreads Librarians Group, where I politely asked for one specific book to be added under my correct byline, and a volunteer librarian informed me — I am paraphrasing only slightly — that they cannot possibly be expected to check every single book. Every single book. One. I asked about one.

Anyway. The forms keep going out. The saga continues. Somewhere out there, a database is still deeply confused about who I am, and I am still deeply committed to correcting it, one exhausting, unanswered, occasionally-coin-flipped attempt at a time. Send help, or at minimum send wine.

More soon (unfortunately, probably about this exact topic),

Alexandra

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Not So Zen

# Nothing Says “Trust Us” Like a Company That Won’t Answer a Direct Question

Somebody tried to phish me this week, and the real crime isn’t that they tried — it’s how boring their execution was.

Let me set the scene: a Patreon support agent named “Rain” (truly, a name suited for someone who wants to wash their hands of accountability) spent multiple emails asking me to hand over sensitive account-verification details so they could “locate my account.” Never mind that Patreon already knows exactly where my account is — it’s the one paying them annually. The email technically checked out, legitimate Patreon-hosted Zendesk infrastructure and all, which is the part that should terrify everyone, not reassure them. I didn’t bite. I reported it straight to Patreon and straight to Zendesk, the company that actually runs their support tickets.

Here’s where it gets fun: Zendesk’s official response confirmed the mailbox wasn’t hacked, and then said nothing — not one word — about why their own agent kept fishing for my private information anyway. Ask a direct question, get half an answer and a customer-service smile. I told them, in writing, to never contact me again about this or anything else. So consider this your PSA: if a support agent ever asks you to email over “verification details” so they can “locate” you, you are not lost. They are fishing. Hang up, screenshot, report, move on.

Whose Your Daddy?

While I have your attention on companies phoning it in: Patreon’s overall customer service has been scraping somewhere between “below average” and “actively hiding from me,” and given that their whole support system runs through Zendesk — see above — my confidence that they’d actually protect their patrons if something went wrong is, generously, low. They also don’t do much to lift up the creators paying them. A whole separate rant, saved for a rainier day.

Bad-reads Is Now So-so-reads

Palate cleanser, because I promised myself I’d stay funny: remember the Goodreads catastrophe where every single one of my book credits kept getting filed under a completely different, much more famous author who happens to share my name? Fixed. Handled. Over. I now have my own disambiguated author page, mistaken identity surgically removed:

Alexandra Grant’s Goodreads

Goodreads support’s original defense of the mix-up, for the record, amounted to “we can’t possibly know who everyone is.” To which I said, and will say forever: same name, not the same bank account. I wish.

Another One

In other “things I started this week that your inbox did not ask for” news — I launched a fourth newsletter. It’s called Inkwell, it’s on Beehiiv, and it exists because apparently three weekly newsletters wasn’t enough chaos for one writer to generate. Come subscribe. I promise it’s the calmest of the bunch.

Prayers Are Welcome

On a quieter note — we’ve got a family health scare going on right now and won’t know more until Wednesday, so if my jokes feel a touch more caffeinated than usual this week, that’s why. Send good thoughts, then come back for the art.

This week’s Crayon Corner is below, featuring far too many eyes and one extremely judgmental mouse.

Books live at **alexandragrant8229.com** if you’d like to support someone whose customer service philosophy is, at minimum, answering the actual question you asked.

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Catch me on Patreon, Substack, Beehiiv, Medium, Vocal, Wattpad, or WordPress. Dealer's choice! Check me out on Social Media too via Linktree or my website, Ink and Echo. And if you'd like to support my coffee habit, you can do that on Ko-fi too.

Buckle up, because this week’s dispatch is a two-for-one special in the “customer service that isn’t” category, and it’s funnier than it has any right to be.

Exhibit A: Goodreads has, apparently, been quietly filing every single book I’ve ever written under a profile belonging to “Alexandra Grant — Keanu Reeves’ Wife.” Not a typo. Not a joke I’m making for content. An actual default profile that my work has been getting dumped into, credit and all, for who knows how long.

When I pointed this out, expecting maybe an apology, or at bare minimum a shrug emoji, I instead received this actual sentence from their support team: “The profile you are seeing as that of Keanu Reeves’ wife is simply a default profile to which all books under that name are dropped. You can’t possibly expect us to 1) know who everyone is, or 2) monitor every book import for correctness.”

I want to sit with that for a second. This is a book cataloging website. Cataloging books is the entire website. And their official position is that correctly cataloging books is somehow an unreasonable ask. Imagine running a restaurant and telling a customer, “you can’t possibly expect us to know what food is.” Truly incorrigible behavior — and not the fun kind I named this newsletter after.

For the record: yes, she and I share a name. No, we are not the same person. We’re both artists, which I’m sure doesn’t help their filing system, but I promise our bank accounts are not equally famous. Same name, not the same bank account. I wish.

Exhibit B: Medium, meanwhile, continues to insist that my published books aren’t real enough for their liking — this despite me providing my Amazon Author Page AND direct URLs to every single book on its publisher’s site. Apparently none of that constitutes proof that I wrote the things I wrote. I’m not sure what tier of documentation Medium requires at this point — a notarized affidavit? A cameo from the actual Keanu Reeves clarifying that no, this one’s mine?

I’ll keep filing the paperwork, keep sending the polite-but-increasingly-pointed emails, and keep reporting back, because if there’s one thing I am, it’s incorrigible.

The Crayon Corner

My drawing hand was busy composing strongly worded emails this week instead of new work, so here’s a little gallery of pieces I’ve doodled purely for pleasure lately, from a very limited crayon collection. Back to new sketches next issue.

Until next issue — stay stubborn.

— Alex

Catch me on Patreon, Substack, Beehiiv, Medium, Vocal, Wattpad, or WordPress. Dealer's choice! Check me out on Social Media too via Linktree or my website, Ink and Echo. And if you'd like to support my coffee habit, you can do that on Ko-fi too.

Kansas spent this week auditioning for the role of Earth’s convection oven, and frankly, it got the part. We’re talking 107–110 “feels like” degrees — the kind of heat where stepping outside feels like being personally challenged to a fight by the sun.

So welcome to Ink-Corrigible, my brand-new little corner of Substack. This is Issue 1, which technically makes it a collector’s item, so treat it accordingly — frame it, laminate it, tell your grandchildren you were here.

My evenings this week looked like this: write until midnight in caffeinated fury, then reward myself with crayons. Not metaphorical crayons — actual crayons. It’s my cool-down lap after the HIIT session that is writing on deadline, except instead of stretching I draw eyeballs. Don’t ask. It works.

My son called. A lot. More times than I could count, which I choose to interpret as love and not as him needing something. Every call, he told me — unprompted, unbitter, genuinely delighted — how much he loves his job. It’s like having sunshine blown directly at you on a rainy day, and look, I happen to like the rain sometimes. Given the current broil setting Kansas is stuck on, I’d take an actual rainy day right about now, sunshine metaphors be damned.

And in delicious, petty news: the kids went back to school this week, and I will admit to a small, private glee at their suffering. I did my time. Everyone did their time. Now, once again, it's their turn to face 6 a.m. alarms with the same dead-eyed betrayal the rest of us have carried since August ended our three-month furlough from responsibility.

That’s Issue 1. More crayons, more chaos, more questionable life choices to come.

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Catch me on Patreon, Substack, Beehiiv, Medium, Vocal, Wattpad, or WordPress. Dealer's choice! Check me out on Social Media too via Linktree or my website, Ink and Echo. And if you'd like to support my coffee habit, you can do that on Ko-fi too.