Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 188
March 1, 2013
News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #44…
#244: Calling all readers! (Well, maybe not elementary school kids.) Take a look at the books in my opus. Let’s start with my new release, The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan. Thriller and conspiracy lovers, take note. Women tired of vampire romances, take note. Baby boomers tired of watching ups and downs in their retirement funds, take note. This sci-fi thriller is fast-paced entertainment that’s gripping and thought provoking. (If you live in northern New Jersey, you will recognize the loc...
February 28, 2013
When does our world end?
If there’s no last-minute agreement on “the sequester,” does the world end tomorrow? [I’m writing this not today, February 28, but on the previous Saturday, so it’s fun to think about what’s going to happen.] Of course, cuts will be made across the board, and the GOP and the Dems will point fingers at each other. But I predict that the sky won’t fall in.
What is clear, though, is that Obama is not Rocky, Biden is not Bullwinkle, and Boehner and McConnell are not Boris and Natasha. Our cartoon...
February 27, 2013
Flight from Mother World, Chapter Nine…
Flight from Mother World
Steven M. Moore
Copyright, 2013
This novella cannot be reproduced for any reason without the express consent of the author. It has been serialized and e-published in the author’s blog for the sole enjoyment of his online readers. It is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to persons living or dead, Humans or Rangers, is purely coincidental. Any settings are purely the creation of the author’s imagination, as far as can be determined.
***
Chapter Nine
Mother Worl...
February 26, 2013
The medical-industrial complex…
You probably know a handful of good doctors and nurses, caring people who go the extra mile with their patients and their families. I certainly do. (I know a few ogres and ogresses too, but I won’t dwell on those bad apples.) In general, at this personal level, I find health care in the U.S. to be more than adequate. I was blessed for many years with employer-sponsored insurance (and with a robust single-payer system in Colombia that tried its best at the personal level, even when limited by...
February 22, 2013
News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #43…
#241: Who’s the reader? I’ve heard that 60% of readers are women. I suspect that percentage goes down if we eliminate genres like romance and erotica or combinations like vampire-horror-erotica. Still, authors better not ignore women readers just like politicians better not ignore women voters (authors probably commit that sin much less than politicians).
Another class of readers I’d like to know more about is baby boomers, maybe distinguishing between retired and not-retired. Presumably, reti...
February 21, 2013
Let’s move to the middle…
Here’s the problem with national politics: Historically, candidates, be they presidential or senatorial, often pandered to the extremes of their respective parties, were elected, and then moved to the center to govern the country. From left-center to right-center, there wasn’t much of a difference, and ideology wasn’t king. Nowadays, the pandering continues through and after election. Left-wing and right-wing ideologues guarantee gridlock in Washington, each claiming to rule over the playgrou...
February 20, 2013
Flight from Mother World, Chapter Eight…
Flight from Mother World
Steven M. Moore
Copyright, 2013
This novella cannot be reproduced for any reason without the express consent of the author. It has been serialized and e-published in the author’s blog for the sole enjoyment of his online readers. It is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to persons living or dead, Humans or Rangers, is purely coincidental. Any settings are purely the creation of the author’s imagination, as far as can be determined.
***
Chapter Eight
Mother Wor...
February 19, 2013
Complexity and incompetence…
One of the recurring subthemes in my ten-novel opus is how society’s problems are becoming more complex and the people, official or otherwise, who are supposed to solve them, more incompetent. One has to be careful, of course, because average competency could stay the same while the complexity exponentially increases, or vice versa. My perception, nevertheless, is that both complexity and incompetency are increasing.
In physics research, we used to say that all the easy problems have been solv...
February 15, 2013
News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #42…
#235: Strong and smart female protagonists revisited. While I’m sure all readers will like DHS profiler and analyst Ashley Scott and her older friend, ex-FBI agent Virginia Morgan, in my recently released The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan, female readers might also identify with some of the lifetime issues these two women face. The two women have different solutions for these middle-agers’ problems. Ashley, for example, once divorced and quite independent (for example, Ashley resents her da...
February 14, 2013
Irish Stew #21…
Item: Obama’s domestic policy. You’ve already read many of my ideas on Obama’s foreign and defense policy (see Tuesday’s “Drones and Special Forces”). I’d like us to get out of the Middle East ASAP, much faster than the glacial movement now occurring in Afghanistan. I’d also like us to stay out.
But it’s Obama’s domestic policy that ticks me off. Some of my thoughts coincide with Bob Kuttner’s, one of my heroes, in his post “The Sorry State of the Union,” published 2/11 in Demos, his think tan...
