Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 102
July 5, 2017
Review of A. H. Richardson’s Murder in Little Shendon…
[A. H. Richardson, Murder in Little Shendon, 978-1-5152-8397-3, Serano Press, 2015. A free copy was sent to this reviewer in exchange for an honest review.]
Oh, those British mysteries! How I love them! From Agatha Christie to Ian Rankin (OK, he’s Scottish, and I go for the Irish stories too), the Inspectors, DCIs, and detectives, pros and aficionados, have always entertained me (so much so that my new book is an homage to Christie). This one’s a who-done-it a la Christie, mostly taking part...
July 4, 2017
2018…
Georgia 6 showed the problems Dems have to face if they want to win the House in 2018. As Tip O’Neill said, “All politics is local,” and congressional districts are more obsessed with local issues and less with state and national ones (or the national ones become local—here in my NJ district, our rep, Mr. Frelinghuysen, voted for the House healthcare bill, incurring the wrath of many in the district and endangering his re-election). That means a Dem or GOP House candidate has to appeal to a m...
July 3, 2017
Monday words of wisdom…
I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.—Thomas Watson, IBM chairman, 1943.
To all Americans, have a safe and happy 4th of July!
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There’s a big book Summer/Winter Smashwords sitewide promo from July 1 – 31. You have be a member to receive the email catalog. Join Smashwords—it’s free, and it provides a large universe of reading entertainment. Almost of my ebooks are sale with price reductions from 25 – 50 %. That includes the first four books in the “Detectives Chen and Cas...
June 29, 2017
Writers’ quirks…
Some writers eschew semicolons. Others split infinitives, use dangling participles, or mix past and present tenses in one sentence. Some will use a comma before “and” ending in series—the Oxford comma—while others adamantly refuse to do so. Some writers are strict followers of the rules about point of view (POV); others mangle them.
Following rules is neither a sufficient nor necessary condition for having a successful fiction book. Telling a good story isn’t a sufficient one, but it’s absolu...
June 28, 2017
Irish Stew #63…
International
Trump’s Saudi policies. Saudi Arabia wasn’t on Trump’s list of countries whose Muslim immigrants, many escaping horrible situations in their home countries, are the targets of his bans in his executive orders, contradicting his belief that all Muslims are terrorists. And Mr. Trump negotiated a weapons deal with the duplicitous Saudis to make the military-industrial complex happy during his whirlwind tour in the Mideast.
The Saudis aren’t our friends. They’re not even the enemies...
June 27, 2017
China Inc….
[This is the second installment about our two main enemies, China and Russia. If you disagree, write a comment.]
Like many countries, China is one of contrasts. Chinese dynasties and empires predate most European history. Great Chinese fleets of mighty ship[s roamed the Pacific long before the Spanish Armada’s and Admiral Nelson’s tiny vessels were even imagined. Those Viking ships which conquered the seas and sowed destruction and fear in the North Atlantic are also gnats in comparison, alth...
June 26, 2017
Monday words of wisdom…
A Buddhist monk approaches a hotdog stand and says, “Make me one with everything.” (Apologies to my Detective Castilblanco, who became a Buddhist.)
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Speaking of Castilblanco, there’s a big book Summer/Winter Smashwords site-wide promo from July 1 – 31. You have be a member to receive the email catalog. Join Smashwords—it’s free, and it provides a large universe of reading entertainment. Almost of my ebooks are sale with price reductions from 25 – 50 %. That includes the first six books in...
June 22, 2017
Book piracy…
Book piracy is a major problem that’s frustrating and discouraging for authors and publishers alike. It’s also a crime. Both pirated ebooks and print books are sold on illegal websites and illegally in many foreign countries. Almost every author is affected by this. Smashwords thinks this is no problem. Paulo Coelho thinks this is no problem. I do. So do many others.
Ebooks are just computer files and can be easily hacked—almost any software can be hacked! While DRM (Digital Rights Management...
June 20, 2017
Putin’s Russia…
The case against Russia is growing. It’s now clear that they interfered in the 2016 election. Pursuing the possible collusion from Mr.Trump or his campaign staff and supporters, whether true of not, is detracting and liable to embolden Mr. Putin and his “patriotic” hackers to do it again in 2018 and 2020. They did it in France too. Not quite cyber warfare, it still distorts the democratic process. That’s Putin’s goal. He has no use for democracy.
Putin is a despot. His only positive quality,...
June 19, 2017
Monday words of wisdom…
The word for “fake news” in Putin’s Russia is simply “news.”—Garry Kasparov
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The Collector. In #5 of the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series,” the detectives set out to solve the murder of a Manhattan art dealer. After twists and turns, they discover that the crime leads to something perverse financed by stolen artworks from the Gardner Museum in Boston as collateral. This intriguing and profoundly disturbing mystery/thriller/suspense novel is the crime-fighting duo’s toughest case so...
