Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 17

Next projects…

As I announced in a tweet (I don’t know how much longer I’ll be on Twitter because Elon Musk seems intent on ruining it!), I’m finishing a short story for my “Friday Fiction” series on my blog (see this Friday’s post). I use short fiction to take a few breathers, a cooling down if you will, after running the marathon of completing a novel (in this case, the first three “Inspector Steve Morgan” novels that may or may not end as a trilogy). Of course, short fiction is like running a few sprints or...

Emphasis on China…

[Announcement from Steve: If you’re looking for me on Facebook, for my author’s page in particular, you will no longer find me there: I have ended my long-term participation in that social media site! Zuckerberg and his minions have changed it so much and gone to the dark side that it’s now a complete waste of my time. (I could no longer post to my own author’s page, for example! And I have to put up with too many fascists whom Zuckerberg and friends are all too willing to help, including the Ru...

Mysteries and thrills but not horror?

Stephen King and Dean Koontz have made a good living writing horror stories. (The second’s tales are better than the first’s.) Other authors less so. (Maybe not so good a living but still some quality stories in that genre?) All their stories are probably better categorized to be a subgenre of fantasy and not sci-fi.

Mystery and thriller stories do a better job of capturing the actual horror of real life, though. What could be more horrible than a school shooting? Or Putin’s war in Ukraine? Or 9...

Mini-Reviews of Books #51…

Crystal Blue Murder. Saralyn Richard, author (2022). This third novel in the “Detective Parrott” series (Murder in the One Percent and Palette for Love and Murder were the first two) builds on the previous ones but can stand alone. I’ve been waiting for it for some time, and I was not disappointed. It’s an excellent mystery, crime story, and police procedural with thriller elements that’s better than the first two novels, and that says a lot because those first two set the bar rather high.

There...

Random deliveries…

Some readers visit this author’s blog (https://stevenmmoore.com), others my political one (http://pubproressive.com), and some do both. I thank you all.

You’ve probably come to expect posts here on Wednesdays and Fridays and at the other blog on Thursdays. For various personal reasons, I can’t guarantee that I’ll keep to that schedule in the future. I haven’t run out of topics to write about for either blog, but those reasons mean the posts might be random deliveries in the future.

I hope you’ll...

“What are we going to do? Read books?”

I didn’t watch the Emmys—those types of incestuous, popularity contests don’t interest me in the least—but I remember someone saying this during the recap on the news. Some uneducated presenter was commenting about how good it was to have good TV to watch. I don’t want to waste my time here picking a battle with him and other zombies mesmerized by audiovisual pyrotechnics—you might hear such sentiments at the Oscars too—but I insist on praising the entertainment and educational value of reading ...

“MacGyvered” and “pumpkin spice”…

No, this post isn’t about a racy pumpkin who’s become a spy! But you might be able to guess that the quotation marks indicate something unusual. If you do, you’re correct. This post is about English slang…or should I say American slang because I write British-style mysteries?

I’ve touched on dialects and slang in various posts here over the years and in my little course “Writing Fiction” (see the list of free PDF download on my “Free Stuff & Contests” web page). Are slang words dialect? Not real...

Jobs for writers…

When I was young, I loved to draw and write. (Obviously, I still love to do the latter!) But when I started to think about how I might make a living in my teens—what any responsible lass or lad should do—I chose to focus on what’s now called STEM, figuring that would give me a lot more opportunities for gainful employment than writing fiction. Not that I didn’t love science and math—I did, and it came easy for me, so it was easy enough for me to acquire the necessary skills—but I loved writing e...

Why I read non-fiction…

I’m like many people: I’d like more time to read. I have an excuse many readers don’t have, though: I’m often writing fiction, articles for my blog (like this one!), and answering email correspondence relevant to my writing life. And while my Kindle tells me I read a lot, about a book a week for fiction, but I want more reading time.

I often review books I read, unless I can’t say anything good about them. (If it seems that will be the end result for a book, I won’t review it.) Other endorsement...

The Queen…

Needless to say, this Yank who’s half-Irish feels a bit strange as I write this post about Queen Elizabeth II. With her death, the era determined by her monarchy ends. Or, did it already end even before? Princess Diana’s untimely death, the many scandals that have rocked the royal family, and the British people and media’s treatment of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex effectively ended that era. The monarchy had already shown its irrelevance in the modern world.

The Realm and Commonwealth will sur...