Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 168
June 12, 2014
Outside, looking in…
I’ve been a bit distracted by the Amazon-Hachette foofaraw, just like everyone else. More as an amused spectator, I suppose, but I thought I’d finish my more personal take on the subject today—well, at least a related subject, the discussion about whether a creative person should also be an astute business person. PR and marketing people, ready to take that creative person’s money, come down on one side of this question obviously. Ignoring them and their agendas, let’s still take a look at th...
June 11, 2014
What Happened to those Characters? A Nation of Immigrants (Alicia Castro)…
[This is the eighth installment in a series of short stories titled “What Happened to Those Characters?”. Each one revisits a character or characters from one of my novels and takes a peek at what happened later. This one is about Alicia Castro from Angels Need Not Apply, the second book in “The Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series.” Enjoy.]
A Nation of Immigrants
Steven M. Moore
Copyright 2014
Alicia Castro-Grant unlocked the passenger’s door at the repair shop. Her tall and lanky adopted so...
June 10, 2014
How authors can beat both Amazon and Hachette…
I was tempted to make this a humorous post too, a parody of “How Book Publishers Can Beat Amazon,” an op-ed column (two or three columns, in fact) written by lawyer Bob Kohn in last Saturday’s (May 31) NY Times. Last Wednesday (June 4), the lead editorial in the Times also attacked Amazon. Pretty clear where their sympathies lie. Moreover, they’re clearly not on the side of readers or writers! Of course, they claim they’re protecting them…bla-bla-bla. Back to that temptation: it occurred beca...
June 9, 2014
Review of Joan Hall Hovey’s The Deepest Dark…
(Joan Hall Hovey, The Deepest Dark, BWL Publishing, 2014, ISBN 978-1771452151)
One great pleasure I have as a reviewer/author is discovering writers who show me new and exciting ways to hold a reader’s interest. Sometimes the writer is a newbie; other times she’s an old hand like Joan Hall Hovey, whose book is the first of hers I’ve read. And then I’m happy to recommend my discovery to other readers.
Taut plotting, great characters, and chilling suspense make this thriller a book you can’t put...
June 5, 2014
What is Obama doing?
Let me start by stating a wee bit of political taxonomy for those readers who desperately want to pigeonhole me: I’m socially progressive, fiscally conservative, and a hawk about terrorism. Note that I qualify my hawkishness. We don’t need more Irans (overthrow of one democratically elected government), Iraqs (neo-conservative world building), or Vietnams and Afghanistans (supporting corrupt regimes in a long war for little gain). I don’t think we need to kill more young men and women with su...
June 4, 2014
What Happened to those Characters? The Hippocratic Oath (Colin Murphy)…
[This is the sixth installment in a series of short stories titled “What Happened to Those Characters?”. Each one revisits a character or characters from one of my novels and takes a peek at what happened later. This one is about Colin Murphy from The Midas Bomb, the first book in “The Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series.” A new addition to that series, The Collector, will be released soon. For now, enjoy the present stories...and this short story!]
The Hippocratic Oath
Steven M. Moore
Copyr...
June 3, 2014
The spy who came from the cold…
[I enjoyed writing the humorous piece about that inimitable and desiccated mummy James Patterson last Thursday, so I decided to do another one. This is about Edward Snowden, hero to some, traitor to others. I find Mr. Snowden much more interesting than Mr. Patterson....]
The handsome, smiling, and dapper super spy, ex-NSA, CIA, and DIA agent, Edward Snowden, placed his bet, the wheel spun, and he lost again. He wondered if he should hawk his watch. He didn’t know if this Monte Carlo casino wou...
May 30, 2014
News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #66…
#378: Big bad Bezos. Most authors are sitting on the sidelines (including yours truly) wondering which gladiators, Amazon or Hachette, will win the skirmish. A few like James Patterson and other Big Five mouthpieces are calling for a government lawsuit against Amazon, but everyone should remember that Hachette is a French conglomerate and the other company Amazon allegedly is stiffing is a German one. Should the U.S. government try to referee a battle between feuding international corporation...
May 29, 2014
Is it fun to be James Patterson?
[Like Mr. Patterson, I usually don’t write humor. Sometimes you stretch your wings though….]
I really admire you, Mr. Patterson! You’re my idol because you’ve shown that one can become a one-percenter through writing. Moreover, you’ve assumed the mantle of oracle for the Big Five by speaking out against all the riff-raff who dare threaten legacy publishing. You only recognize excellence, so you attack any author who isn’t a best-selling writer—all those authors with small publishing houses, mi...
May 28, 2014
What Happened to those Characters? The Profiler (Virginia Morgan)…
What Happened to those Characters? The Profiler (Virginia Morgan)…
[This is the sixth installment in a series of short stories titled “What Happened to Those Characters?”. Each one revisits a character or characters from one of my novels and takes a peek at what happened later. This one is about Virginia Morgan from The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan, the bridge between “The Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series” and “The Clones and Mutants Series.” Enjoy.]
The Profiler
Steven M. Moore
Copyrig...
