Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 133
March 29, 2016
Maybe 1.6 billion Muslims are wrong…
So are 2.2 billion Christians, 1.0 billion Hindus, 376 million Buddhists, 14 million Jews, and so on. I qualify this with “maybe” because I can’t find the actual percentages of believers in these groups who actually want to live in a secular society. Too many want a theocracy where their religion reigns supreme. This is clear in the Middle East (Iran, Israel, and most Muslim principalities, emirates, and so forth, including Saudi Arabia), but it’s also implicit in South America and Southeast...
March 28, 2016
Monday words of wisdom…
This is the way the world ends: thinking the enemies of our enemies are our friends.
***
With two attacks on the World Trade Center, Oklahoma City, the Boston Marathon bombing, San Bernardino, and many other cases of attempted terrorist acts, it’s clear that terrorism is becoming part of our lives. Many terrorists are religious fanatics. How will our nation handle more sophisticated attacks by many terrorists like those in Brussels and Paris when the terrorist cells are spread among our own p...
March 25, 2016
Movie Reviews #25…
[Two different movies. FYI: Nobody pays me to attend, and I don’t receive free tickets from anyone. That way I can rap Hollywood’s knuckles as much as I want and give you an honest review. Oh yes, I don’t often agree with the pro reviewers, but most of them have an axe to grind. I’m also a throw-back. I don’t like all that cable TV and streaming video schlock. I like my movies on the big screen with a good sound system. You can watch them on your laptop if you want—that’s not my thing.]
Zooto...
Creating biased book statistics…
This post is a follow-up on my post “Book Marketing—Anecdotes v. Real Stats.” In that article I was ranting against people treating anecdotal evidence about book sales as reliable statistics. Now I have something else to be riled about: Jellybooks. This reader analytics company based in London makes studies of book reading habits and passes the results off as reliable stats. Sound harmless? Please, please, don’t bury your head in the sand—it isn’t harmless at all! Both readers and writers sho...
March 24, 2016
“Chronicle of a Death Foretold”
Because titles aren’t subject to copyright, I’m stealing Garcia Marquez’s title from his novella (“Cronica de una Muerte Anunciada” in the Spanish original, the version I read). It seems appropriate to describe the situation in American politics this election year. The American political system is on its deathbed, many factions are responsible for the attempted murder, and I foretold that many times in these pages. Yeah, that’s flagrant pessimism and paranoia. But you know the adage about par...
March 23, 2016
Mini-Reviews #19…
[Two mysteries today with no earth-shaking themes. It’s amazing how murders can find their genesis in petty meaningless stuff. Happens all the time in real life, of course, but I’m not sure the events are worth a novel. Nevertheless, I like to try new authors, and these two were new for me. You can read the following and decide, but I found that I had to write the review immediately because it’s too easy to put them out of mind.]
Bone Hook (Lei Crime #10). Toby Neal, author (Toby Neal, 11/10/...
March 22, 2016
Old white men for Trump?
Yeah, I know, a lot of Trump’s followers are old white men—racists, bigots, or just white guys protesting the loss of jobs due to corporations moving overseas, or even white guys who were aligned with Hillary Clinton in 2008 against Barack Obama. But Bernie Sanders is an old white man who isn’t for Trump. And for Hillary, Trump, or the media to say that they’re for Trump or not for a candidate because she’s female is insulting a lot of old white men just like me. As if we needed more insults...
March 21, 2016
Monday words of wisdom…
There are 10 types of people in this world: Those that know binary, and those that don’t.
***
Mystery, suspense, sci-fi, conspiracies, and a multitude of thrills await you with the “Mary Jo Melendez Mystery Series.” Mary Jo, an ex-USN Master-at-Arms trying to get her new civilian life established, is framed in Muddlin’ Through. Her search to prove her innocence takes her around the world from one skirmish to another, a gypsy romance, winning new friends, and a new self-understanding. In the s...
March 18, 2016
How should you price your ebook?
This is an interesting question for readers. Their only vote in the matter is with their purchases. So, let’s analyze that first. Readers rule. They tend to reward the known more than the unknown, though. When readers (and I’m one, so this applies to me) get comfortable with an author, they’ll pay a higher price, but only up to a certain point. When we’re trying out a new author, we want to be rewarded for trying someone new.
That’s human nature and probably explains why authors and publisher...
March 17, 2016
South America…
While my time in South America (10+ years, about as long as I’ve been publishing my fiction) has influenced my novels—most notably Soldiers of God, Survivors of the Chaos, and Muddlin’ Through—I haven’t written much about it in these pages. The desire has always been there, but my relationship with South America has always been complex. What should I write about? That’s not writer’s block; just the opposite. I have too much material.
I worked in academia in Bogotá, Colombia. That was interest...
