Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 109
February 22, 2017
Steve’s shorts: The Crossword-Puzzle Murderer…
The Crossword-Puzzle Murderer
Copyright 2017, Steven M. Moore
“Hiya Rollie.” I had to step aside as the ME, Big Tiny, stepped out of the small apartment into the corridor. “Prelim findings should be on your smartphone.”
“You can’t just tell me?”
Big Tiny carried a large super-mocha-double-double something-or-other in his large rubber-gloved paw. Whereas a defensive nose tackle is more muscle than fat, he was the reverse. A happy man, though, in spite of his profession.
“I’m off to another cri...
February 21, 2017
Is China or Russia more dangerous?
When considering Russia’s brutal oligarchy v. China’s fascist capitalism, it’s hard to decide which one is worse. Trump seems to have a bromance with Putin and has long attacked China, but lately he seems to be waffling on both (although the bromance might get him or his administration in trouble). The split personality of his waffling is baffling too because some in his administration are talking about more sanctions against Russia. Moreover, the original tirade against the one-China policy...
February 20, 2017
Monday words of wisdom
The United States is the only major nation in the industrialized world that does not guarantee health care as a right for its people.—Bernie Sanders
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It’s Presidents’ Day—let’s remember some big-league presidents who made this country great, but let’s not forget that the position is far more important than any position-holder, especially those who embarrass us by not respecting it and not doing their job well.
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Did you know the complete “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series” is now a...
February 17, 2017
Movie Reviews #44…
Lion. Garth Davis, dir. Great movie, like many movies based on books and not cobbled together screenplays. The book in question, a true story, is A Long Way Home by Saroo Brierley with Larry Buttrose. The movie stars Dev Patel as the older Saroo and the awesomely cute Sunny Pawar as the young Saroo. Rooney Mara plays grown-up Saroo’s girlfriend, Nicole Kidman and David Wenham, Sue and John Brierley, the couple who adopted Saroo, Priyanka Bose his birth-mother, and Abhishek Bharate the older b...
February 16, 2017
The ugly stench of censorship…
One parallel with 1930’s Germany that jumps out for any sane observer of today’s toxic political environment is censorship. This runs the gamut of a mob shouting down a speaker (they should have let the guy in Berkeley speak his mind so everyone could see what a bigot, hater, and idiot he is), to the statement from Stephen Bannon AKA Goebbels’s spawn that the media is the opposition. The latter, and Kellyanne Conway’s statement about “alternative facts” and blast that everyone in the media wh...
February 15, 2017
Steve’s shorts: Nth Contact…
[In the sci-fi realm, we have subgenres like hard sci-fi, militaristic sci-fi, space opera, fantasy, and so forth. Star Trek episodes and movies can be considered everything except the first (reasonable scientific extrapolation is too often lacking). Star Wars movies are more akin to the last two. But the old stories that we now call space opera were a lot of fun. Consider this a bow to space opera with a wee bit of militaristic sci-fi and tongue-in-cheek. As they say, knowing the past can pr...
February 14, 2017
The missing romance?
Valentine’s Day is here. For the last month I’ve been receiving emails from 1-800-FLOWERS, book offers for romance and erotica books, restaurants with special prix fixe menus for a romantic dinner, and so forth. Romance sells in the commercial world—or businesses think it does, at least. I continuously reevaluate my writing career, so maybe it’s time to ask myself, am I doing a disservice to readers? Should I include more romance?
I’ll have to admit that I’ve never used the genre label romanc...
February 13, 2017
People who, like us, live in a dying civilization have th...
People who, like us, live in a dying civilization have three choices. We can attempt to avert the decline as a child builds a sand-castle on the edge of the advancing tide. We can ignore the death of beauty, of scholarship, of art, of intellectual integrity, finding solace in our own consolations. Thirdly, we can join the barbarians and take our share of the spoils.—mystery author P. D. James
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Gaia and the Goliaths. An environmental activist is murdered on a street in Manhattan after a pro...
February 10, 2017
News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #139…
Are you a public library patron? My local public library helped turned me into an avid reader when I was a kid. I’ve given many print versions of my books (I don’t have many—I’m working on that) to public libraries around the country. Public libraries seem as popular as ever. They offer valuable services to the community too—beyond books, internet access for those who can’t afford it, reading programs for kids, opportunities for the public to meet writers, editors, and other people in the pub...
February 9, 2017
Pride in our writing…
It’s often interesting to do some soul-searching. Why do we write? We all take pride in what we write. Or just call it satisfaction after spinning a good yarn. (I’m obviously talking about fiction, but you can extrapolate to your circumstances.) Some people, even readers, might think that our pride or satisfaction makes us narcissists. Admittedly some writers carry that pride a wee bit too far.
I can see it in some blurbs or descriptions of books. Here’s a recent one: “Compelling! Provacative...
