Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 192
December 6, 2012
Fundamentalism in politics…
Tuesday’s post was about the social singularity that appears in my books and is currently happening in the real world. One aspect of this is fundamentalism in politics. Whether human beings are by nature fundamentalist savages or not, it’s clear that fundamentalism across the world is bringing human rights and responsible government to their knees. Let me elaborate.
The hope of the Arab Spring is being dashed against the rocks by the stormy waters of Muslim fundamentalism. Mubarak might have b...
December 5, 2012
Review of Carolyn J. Rose’s Sea of Regret…
(Carolyn J. Rose, Sea of Regret, ISBN 0983735956)
Sea of Regret is the sequel to Carolyn J. Rose’s An Uncertain Refuge. The theme of the first book was human beings abusing other human beings. The theme of this sequel is human beings abusing animals. In this case, unscrupulous business people’s profit motives threaten a wildlife center on the Oregon shore. There is a quiet intensity to the struggle of the protagonists punctuated by action scenes that clash with the rough-hewn beauty of Ms. Ros...
December 4, 2012
Social singularity anyone?
The recent separatist vote in Spain’s Catalonia, the movement in Texas to secede, ethnic strife in Iraq, and Scotland’s move to independence—what do these events have in common? They’re examples of my theory about the social singularity. In mathematics and physics, singularities are sharply defined. In human affairs, I see it happening in an international fashion and not all at once. But it is happening.
Full Medical, Evil Agenda, and Soldiers of God are my books directly leading up to this fu...
November 30, 2012
News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #38…
[Note: Lots of news today…and comments on that news…for both readers and writers. Enjoy!]
#216: Books as Christmas gifts. I’m not adverse to using the word Christmas and gifts in the same sentence. Sure, Black Friday and Cyber Monday show that the holidays are becoming more commercial. What isn’t? For me, there’s little difference between tee shirts with the faces of Santa Claus, Christ, the Buddha, or Che Guevara—as Yoda would say, “Still commercial they are.”
However, reading is an educationa...
November 29, 2012
Comments on that “fiscal cliff”…
It’s hard to take your machete and make your way through the rain-forest rhetoric about that famous fiscal cliff. Much of the latter has been dedicated to the idea that it’s a great opportunity for Republicans and Democrats to get past their partisanship and engineer a compromise. It’s been done before, with Reagan and with Clinton. Those solutions to the vexing problem of balancing budget cuts with increased revenues were lame, though. This is why the problem comes back to haunt us.
Let’s con...
November 27, 2012
Return of the language purists…
X “provides more quality entertainment than any other resorts on the planet.” “It appears to be the case….” “Remenber: their’s almost not any time left to buy…!” Plus misspellings, double negatives, and wrong word usage—are these and other examples taken from TV ads or those banners scrolling at the bottom of the TV screen indicating a deterioration of standard English?
If we add jive, street slang, and idiomatic mixtures (so-called Spanglish, for example), some language purists might be apopl...
November 21, 2012
News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #37…
#210: Show your appreciation with a review…. I just received a glowing review of Survivors of the Chaos from David W. Menefee, Pulitzer-nominated author and reviewer for BookPleasures.com. Indie authors know what I’m talking about when I say how much I appreciate this review. Thanks, Dave!
Readers of indie authors, you can show your appreciation for your indie author’s hard work and dedication to entertaining you by not only buying his or her books, but by writing a small review for Amazon or...
November 20, 2012
Obama’s “socialist agenda”…
The GOP’s sour-grapes set has started to develop theories on why it lost the election, theories that still use all the code words and hidden innuendoes that made the 2012 election one of the most polarized ones in U.S. history. Mr. Romney has been focusing on “all the gifts” that Mr. Obama made to his constituency of Blacks, Hispanics, immigrants, women, and young people. Mr. Ryan has said that the election was won in urban America.
Fox News pundits are busy spinning the results, trying to pin...
November 15, 2012
Violence in fiction and real life…
Just before hurricane Sandy came roaring into NJ like a banshee on the loose, we went to see Ben Affleck’s Argo. As usual, we arrived early to get good seats. Another early arrival commented that a friend (or was it a relative?) refused to see the movie—she never watched violent movies, he said. That started me thinking.
To paraphrase Tom Clancy, the problem with fiction is it has to seem real. He’s talking about military thrillers, of course, but that statement is true about many fiction genr...
November 14, 2012
Revive a language, revive a novel: lick your dialogue with a foreign tongue…
[Another guest post from thriller author Gina Fava. Writers should especially pay attention. I think she brings up some very important points on this one. Thanks, Gina.]
Does that little voice inside your head ever use a language other than the one you speak everyday? Ever consider dabbling in a foreign language to enhance the novel you’re writing, as in Diane Johnson’s Le Divorce?Or creating a sense of mood with dialect, like Mark Twain did inAdventures of Huckleberry Finn,or just as Dennis L...
