Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 13

Choosing what you read…

“So You’re Looking for a New Book to Read?” (in the 5/3 NY Times “Arts” section) provided me with a good laugh. I have to confess that many things the NY Times states about reading, writing, and publishing just provide me with more evidence that their editors and critics are full of it! Unfortunately, that history of arrogant advertising also proves they think avid readers are too stupid to choose their own reading material, an insulting attitude that the Times exhibits with many news items, not...

Security agencies and services…

They naturally appear in mystery and thriller stories, and mine are no exception. Some are evil—China and Russia’s come to mind—and some aren’t supposed to be but can be warped. Many have appeared  in some my novels–the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Democracies should want their security agencies to be beyond reproach and just do the necessary work to keep the countries safe. Most of them do, of course, but there are bad apples in any barrel. “Bending the rules” to get a positive result might be ...

“Evergreen” vs. “classic”…

I use “evergreen” to indicate a work of fiction that is as current and exciting as the day its author finished its manuscript. “Classic” is a catch-all term, overused in many ways, often incorrectly as if it were a superlative (like its cousin, “literary fiction” in many ways), and it often just means “a book you should read whether you like it or not,” the latter often coming from snobs and high school English teachers.

To Kill a Mockingbird might be evergreen, especially considering that impro...

The Jamaican diaspora…

[Note from Steve: Occasionally an article I create is appropriate for both my writer’s blog and my political one. This article is one of them, and it will also appear at http://pubprogressive.com.]

The reader can consider this article an homage to Harry Belafonte, whose soft but raspy voice made calypso music famous. I was a fan of that man’s music and political activism in civil rights for decades. His inimitable 1956 LP “Calypso” that took the world by storm (only mono, not stereo!), if not th...

Ebook bundles…

Authors and publishers often use ebook bundles to give new life to “evergreen books” (novels as current and entertaining as the day the author finished the manuscript). Readers love them because they’re often real bargains. (I recently bought a multi-volume set from British mystery publisher Joffe for $0.99. That’s a lot of good reading for a buck!)

Some readers might want to know if I recommend that an author, self-published or not, should bundle their novels, evergreen books or not. Basically,...

Titles and covers…

I’ve written about this topic many times before, including in my little course “Writing Fiction” (a free PDF download—see my “Free Stuff & Contests” web page). As the years pass, I always seem to come up with something more to say about it, so here goes:

I’ve seen some really bad titles and covers. Traditionally published books often have traditionally bad covers more akin to what a high school kid might produce using PowerPoint. (I guess the Big Five publishing conglomerates would be among the ...

Are A.B.’s books banned?

A recent study shows that about 40% of banned books have a LGBTQ protagonists; another states that 40% have black ones. The tween protagonist in The Secret Lab has a lesbian friend; the teen in Secret of the Urns comes from a triad, i.e., a non-traditional family comprised of two men and a woman, and she has a sexual fling on a tourist planet; the young hero in Mind Games is an orphan who ends up with an older man; and the STEM teen in Origins is black and has a child out of wedlock. I suppose a...

How reading can make your writing better…

I’m always astounded when some author informs me that they don’t read all that much because they want to spend all their time writing. I even read a lot and wrote when I had an intense day job. And I certainly don’t accept the excuse of binge-watching streaming videos or binge-playing computer games. And I also don’t want to hear or see the excuse that it’s because they don’t want to plagiarize other authors’ work. Are you a writer or not? If you’re a writer, you have to be a reader. Reading oth...

Mini-Reviews of Books #54: Five critiques of modern politics…

Untouchable. Elie Honig, author (2023). This book could be considered a sequel to Hatchet Man, although superficially that was about DJT’s AG William Barr. (Will there be another to make a trilogy?) I make this connection because both books compare DJT to mob figures whom the author has prosecuted during his career. But Barr only figures as a secondary character because he was only one of the many tools DJT has used to avoid prosecution of his mob family: Too many layers of nefarious scumbags, a...

Medical professionals…

With the exception of the MEs and a few others in the US and crime pathologists in the UK found in my mysteries (the first group contains an ER doctor, an important character in The Midas Bomb), the inimitable Dr. Carlos Obregon, Medical Officer of the starship Brendan who stars in several short stories, and some nurses and EMTs, I don’t feature any medical professionals in my fiction. After a lifetime of dealing with them, I can’t consider myself an unbiased observer of their behaviors. The mos...