Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 140
December 9, 2015
Review of Linda Hall’s The Bitter End…
(Linda Hall, The Bitter End, 2015, ASIN B017RM1R9G)
Emmeline (Em) Ridge is a female boat delivery captain. In other words, she’ll follow rich people around the oceans and deliver their sailing yachts to them because they want to get from point A to B faster. In the first book in this series, she had just lost her husband but still managed to solve a mystery. Fate gives her another blow by involving her in a new mystery related to an uncle’s disappearance. Here we go again. Ready for a fun rid...
December 8, 2015
Who are the criminals?
This ramp-up to 2016 elections has been noted for outrageous statements from the wannabe presidential candidates, most notably from the GOP side. Just recently Ted Cruz opined publicly that all the criminals are Democrats. He went on to say that’s why liberals or progressives are so easy on crime and want to reform prisons and reduce sentences. This buffoon’s bombastic and bloviating blathering (I can alliterate with the best) might have its genesis in the Canadian’s desire to out-trump Trump...
December 3, 2015
Don’t look over my shoulder…
This post isn’t about the NSA or a peeping Tom (both are creepy and spooky, but something akin to the first is necessary considering terrorist threats to this country and the world). I’m talking about a NY Times article two weeks ago (11/22/15) about a Times columnist looking over Lee Child’s shoulder as he wrote yet another Jack Reacher book. We’ll forget about Child’s possible business motivations for allowing this. We’ll even forget the following question: OMG, another Jack Reacher book? (...
December 2, 2015
Movie Reviews #21…
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay #2. Francis Lawrence, Dir. All bad! I felt like I was a passive spectator of the video game Call of Duty, only it was about an inept bunch of futuristic warriors. Never could get past the idea of bows and arrows, but I guess it makes sense if there’s no NRA around in futuristic dystopias (I always look for the positives, even in a dystopia). The slimy gray zombies were the final touch, though—completely unnecessary (a plot gimmick in the original book?). This pond...
December 1, 2015
Tax reform?
It seems every GOP presidential candidate now has a tax reform plan. Guess who it favors? Their reforms are all various schemes for shell games designed to redistribute wealth from the middle class to the wealthy, of course. No one wants to tax the poor because even the GOP knows you can’t squeeze blood from a stone (of course, they still won’t raise the minimum wage either). But at least the GOP is up front about enriching the elites and robbing the middle class. The Dems just might be worse...
November 25, 2015
Movie Reviews #20…
Movie Reviews #20…
[Apology from Steve: Either I missed reviewing some recent movies I’ve seen, or we were too busy this fall for a lot of movies. No matter. Here’s a long one for the Thanksgiving holidays in the U.S. If you’re traveling during these days, have patience and be super careful. Have a wonderful time with family and friends. And, whether you’re religious or not, there’s always something to be thankful for in your own life and room for a thought or two about those who are in dire...
November 24, 2015
Economics of the modern world…
“Ask five economists and you’ll get five different answers—six if one went to Harvard.” –Edgar R. Fiedler
This quote appears in The Midas Bomb, the first book of the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series.” The series has six books now, but the first was unusual because it was a bit prescient about the perfidies of Wall Street banks. (A second edition will be out soon, completely rewritten to better match the other novels, and will be more reasonably priced.) I was aghast when Bear-Stearns...
November 20, 2015
News and Notices from the Writing Trenches # 109…
Item. Anne Frank. Strange happenings here. Was that book only based on her diary? The recent extension of the copyright has been celebrated by some and decried by others. The case opens the Pandora box of copyright law yet again. Of course, the only reason that there’s a polemic is that there’s a lot of money involved. For some reason, I thought this was all settled when the movie came out, but I guess I’m wrong. Makes you think about copyrights for your own books if you’re an author. Be sure...
November 19, 2015
Not one serial killer…
I’m not sure if I should be proud of it, but I just realized I don’t have one serial killer in my novels. About half my books are in the mystery/suspense/thriller genre, and many of the sci-fi books have nods to that genre–for example, are Soldiers of God and No Amber Waves of Grain mystery, thriller, or sci-fi? Readers can worry about the genre labels; I just write the story. But it’s interesting in a self-analytic sort of way that I write a lot of crime fiction yet have no serial killers.
T...
November 18, 2015
“C’est la guerre!”, part two of two…
One criticism leveled at Muslims is the observation that one of the tenets of Islam is not to tolerate secular thinking. This is silly and simply a vestige of followers of an ancient religion incapable of adjusting to the modern era. I don’t know any world religion that can’t be described as anti-secular thinking simply because most religions are old and have these vestiges. Certainly the great three in the Middle East—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—are anti-secular. They all have that prob...
