Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 160
November 14, 2014
News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #75…
Item: A kinder, gentler Hachette? BS. Last Monday, Nov. 10, the NY Times published a front-page article about how homey Hachette is now with its CEO in a cubicle just like the other worker bees. First, it wasn’t Hachette, but a subsidiary, although the Times insisted on using Hachette; and second, why is the Times doing this? If you take the totality of Times articles about the Amazon v. Hachette war-of-words (more words from Hachette and its sycophants than from Amazon), it’s clear that the...
November 13, 2014
Irish Stew #34…
[Note from Steve: My Irish stews represent an occasional op-ed post, often acerbic, about many current issues, too many to comment on singly.]
Item: Metaphor or admission of stupidity? “…like waving a red flag in front of a bull” is McConnell’s description of a proposed Obama executive order on immigration. Is this why so much BS comes from the new leader of the Senate? Why would any recent immigrant vote for the GOP? Why would any minority vote for the GOP?
Item: Broken record? I’m not sure th...
November 12, 2014
Review of John Hohn’s Breached…
(John Hohn, Breached, 2014, ASIN B00OEXEK0K, ISBN 978-0692250921)
I started reading this author’s new book with great expectations. I wasn’t disappointed. While his first book, Deadly Portfolio: A Killing in Hedge Funds, was good, this one is better. Breached is more an example of mixed genres, both psychological thriller and mystery. Here I use the first differently than what tradition dictates. It isn’t that the protagonist, a character from the first book, Detective James Raker (ex-Detectiv...
November 11, 2014
The veteran’s plight…
While I’ve tried to portray something about what awaits a veteran when he returns home in some of my books (the homeless man Walter Jones in The Midas Bomb, my detectives Chen and Castilblanco, and, more recently, Mary Jo Melendez of Muddlin Through, are some examples of characters who are veterans—Walter and Mary Jo both talk about a wounded vet’s problems with homecoming, for example), my personal experience with veterans has been via what they tell me, my relatives and friends. For example...
November 6, 2014
Small minds, big problems…
TGIW. Midterm elections are over with! Your interpretation of the results might vary—I’ve heard everything from GOP racism and bigotry wins big in the land (maybe), to people are stupid and don’t know what’s good for them (more probable), to people went to the ballot box and voted their frustrations with Washington politics (the most probable). Certainly GOP euphoria should be dampened if the latter is true. In fact, GOP pundit Matthew Dowd has suggested that both parties should be careful in...
November 4, 2014
Election day…
Dear Readers,
My blog message for today is simple: VOTE!
Too many countries in this world are sham democracies, despotic states, theocracies, and so forth. We are privileged to live in a country where regular elections and voting are a great tradition. Study the candidates and issues and exercise your right to vote.
Yours in reading and writing,
Steve
October 31, 2014
It’s the Great Pumpkin’ Promo!
Get some “mind candy” for yourself. Raised eyebrows and big eyes, as you wonder if I’m some kind of scalper, dealer, or seller of Super Storm Sandy pre-owned cars, aren’t appropriate. This is a PG-13 website. I’m an introvert who writes books, not a scam artist. “Mind candy” here means “interesting books,” no more no less.
Running through Nov. 5, three of my 2014 ebooks are on sale, each one for $1.99. That’s a $3 savings on each book! The books will revert to the usual prices of $4.99 on Nov....
October 30, 2014
New physics and old physicists…
At the end of ABC World News one evening last week, Kip Thorne made an appearance. Seems he was a consultant for the new movie Interstellar. The subject, of course, was FTL (faster-than-light) travel, what you need to visit other star systems in subjective times less than several hundreds of human generations. Seemed Thorne was proposing wormholes (Deep Space Nine, anyone?). While most sci-fi authors (including myself) just write a few words of pseudo-scientific technobabble and then get on w...
October 28, 2014
Hysteria and politics…
“Omigosh! He had a 103 degree temperature and went out to party around NYC!” “Everyone coming back from West Africa should be quarantined for 21 days!” “We should seal the borders.” “I rode on the subway with my hands in my pockets so I wouldn’t grab a contaminated support rail.” “That nurse flew to Cleveland and contaminated her whole wedding party.” “Ebola is going to kill us all.” Etc. Etc.
The hysteria about ebola would be comical if it weren’t so sad that emotions and ignorance are trumpi...
October 24, 2014
News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #74…
Item: Attacking Amazon. OK, I said I wouldn’t weigh in on the Amazon v. Hachette kerfuffle anymore, but I must say here that the one-sidedness continues. Paul Krugman, NY Times columnist and ex-economist, wrote in his column last Monday, “Amazon has too much power and uses that power to hurt America.” Holy Jumpin’ Jokers, Batman, they must be worse than ISIS! Do we need boots-on-the-ground, Paul, to invade the Amazon warehouses that are hurting America? Is Bezos going to terrorize Patterson a...
