Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 150
June 23, 2015
An issue above and beyond politics…
The Pope’s new encyclical about the environment has received praise from most progressives and criticism from many conservatives. The latter, of course, range from naysayers, whatever their agenda might be, to corporate polluters, their lobbyists, and their congressional lackeys, the comments running from that Pope doesn’t know anything about science, to that Pope should keep religion out of politics. Never mind that that Pope closely follows established science! And never mind that moral iss...
June 19, 2015
News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #92…
Item. Countdown to countdown. Teeter-Totter between Lust and Murder, #3 in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series,” is a Kindle Countdown Deal from July 1 through July 7. The $2.99 price will be reduced to $0.99 for this short time. Here’s the elevator pitch: Does Chen commit murder? The long answer is surprising. Look for it. Note: This is more mystery than thriller. (It’s not my first mystery, by the way. The first was The Secret Lab, a YA sci-fi mystery taking place on the ISS in the...
June 18, 2015
Ethics in writing…
Part of being nice (Rule #1 from my article “Rogue Waves in Calm Seas”) is being ethical about how you treat readers and other writers. One of my interests is scientific ethics, but this is a little more general and more complex. Let’s say you receive a bad review from person X. Is attacking that person online ethical? If X is a writer, is it ethical to write a bad review of X’s book in revenge? I hope you agree with me that it isn’t.
I’ve been on both ends of this little debate. I received a...
June 16, 2015
Why worry about hell when you can fly?
I’m mostly an observer now. Back in the day, I flew a lot, mostly work-related trips (I might have tacked on a wee bit of sightseeing, especially in Europe). Now I only see flying as a living hell. No wonder people are doing the train here on the East Coast—it might take a bit longer and be a bit more expensive at times, but at worst it’s only purgatory.
There’s the comfort, rather the complete lack of it. First, you’re charged now for leg room that was there ten years ago. That happens even...
June 12, 2015
Movie Reviews #15…
Aloha. Dir. Cameron Crowe. Bradley Cooper and Emma Stone, A-listers. Slow start, but it improves to ho-hum. Major casting error with Stone, and Cooper flops big time after American Sniper and Elephant Man (why didn’t he win a Tony for that performance?). But I expect the fault lies in the chaotic but plodding screenplay and the directing of same. “Aloha” is the “ciao” of Hawaiian—it can mean many things, including “goodbye,” which is what you’ll want to say to this one. I’ll give it a D only...
News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #91…
Item. PR ploy? Fifty Shades MS stolen? OK, maybe someone wants a bit of the action ($$$ these books make, you dirty-minded people!), so they’ll sell illegal copies on the web. I doubt it. The idea of having two novels, one from the POV of the innocent and gullible victim (those are nice adjectives to describe her) and one from the POV of Mr. Grey, the S & M king (again, nice adjectives to describe him), is purely exploitive—the author and publisher should be ashamed. And I wouldn’t be surpris...
June 11, 2015
Be accessible…
That’s my rule #3 for writers (see last Thursday’s blog post “Rogue waves in calm seas…”), and a rule readers should hold writers to. Because traditional publishing’s top authors rarely follow that rule, indie writers and midlist authors might think it’s beneath them. At their peril! The stereotypical writing recluse like Jack Nicholson’s character in As Good as It Gets is who you do NOT want to be as a writer (actually his character had a few other undesirable traits as well—see the film). T...
June 10, 2015
Mini-Reviews #7…
[Note from Steve: It’s been awhile. I thought I should review some of the books I casually read for broadening my horizons and entertainment, so I focused on Amazon reviews instead of writing mini-reviews (which are still longer than your average Amazon review). I’ll do that less in the future. Like my movie reviews, most of my book reviews will appear here or Bookpleasures, not Amazon. Writers—don’t bother to query. These reviews are for books I choose to read and like well enough to review....
June 9, 2015
Where money is needed in politics…
The Supreme Court (SC) has made some anti-democratic (note the small “d”) and fascist-leaning decisions in recent years (you should recall that German corporations helped bring Hitler to power—some of those still exist!). It’s forced a money-race that is tantamount to the rich elites and their toadies buying elections. Both Dems and the GOP now play the latter game. Hillary not only leads the small pack of Dem candidates (not that small, but certainly smaller than the GOP clown-contingent), b...
June 5, 2015
News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #90….
Item. 99 Cent Sale! These will occur periodically through the rest of 2015. The first deal occurs for Angels Need Not Apply, #2 in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series”; it will be on sale for $0.99 on Amazon June 1-June 7. That leaves you only a few days to take advantage of this reduced price—this ebook reverts to its original price is $2.99 at the end of this period. The elevator pitch: Al Qaeda, a drug cartel, and neo-Nazis combine forces to create mayhem!
Item. Facebook ads. Afte...
