Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 208

Black Friday and Blue Thursday?

Due to the bad economy, merchants seem desperate to bring in customers to the malls, superstores, and boutiques.  If you are a patriotic American, I suppose, you'd start your Christmas purchases before Halloween…or, at least, starting at the same time you're buying all that Halloween candy required to make the little tykes need fluoride.  Not only has Black Friday become a consumer tradition, many of those superstores are throwing their doors open to their super sales on Thanksgiving.

Not...

Why blog?

It used to be that a blog post talked about what you had for breakfast and walking the dog, for example.  Today that uninteresting trivia (well, maybe it's interesting to your neighbors, especially if you leave the poop on their lawn) is relegated to Facebook (FB manages to cover the whole spectrum from domestic trivia to the Occupy X City news, from a pet peeve, i.e. complaints about your pet, to the Arab spring uprisings, and so on).  Blog posts should be, and now usually are, more...

Sleazy is as sleazy does (guest post by Mike Nettleton)…

It's a funny thing about book reviews—especially when someone is turning a critical eye to your own work. Often, you realize that other people don't always view your characters in the same light you do. An example:

Steve Moore just wrote a nicely-crafted critique of my hard-boiled mystery Shotgun Start for Book Pleasures [note from Steve: see last Thursday's post]. He liked the book, for which I am grateful, and gave it a generally positive review and recommended it. All good. But he had an...

News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #8…

#43:  I've just reviewed Mike Nettleton's Shotgun Start.  If you're looking for a good read, look at this one.  If you're studying how to write good PI action-suspense, study this one.  Of course, read my review first (blog post just preceding this one).

#44:  My guest blog post will appear on the Carrick Publishing site November 20.  Look for it.  I discuss my experiences as an indie author.  Donna Carrick has set up a whole series with this common theme.  (Also see #45 and #49.)

#45: ...

Review of Mike Nettleton's Shotgun Start…

(Mike Nettleton, Shotgun Start, ISBN 978-0984652419)

A raw portrait of the best and the worst the Southwest has to offer, this tale of a down-on-his-luck PI trying to prove his ex-wife is innocent of a violent and sexually explicit murder is like straight shots of tequila taken as a cure for a hangover between the rounds of your very own ultimate boxing match.  Your adrenalin will run high if you're a reader—as a reviewer, I could only admire the craftsmanship.  I highly recommend this book...

Mitt Romney is not "plain vanilla"…

When asked to associate the GOP candidates with ice cream flavors, Herman Cain responded, "Mitt Romney is vanilla, Rick Perry is rocky road, and Michele Bachmann is frutti-tutti."  He admitted the last might get him into trouble.  I'd like to put him through a wringer on the first.

I know Mitt.  I lived through his governorship in MA and his bumbling attempt to unseat John Kerry (or was it Kennedy?).  He is not plain vanilla.  First, he flip-flops all over the place (that's why I think of...

News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #7…

#41:  What's the deal with Amazon's new lending program?  For readers, as near as I can tell, you have to be an Amazon premium member, so right away that's a limitation.  I can't figure out what it means for authors, if anything.  As near as I can tell, Amazon chooses which authors to put into the program.  This means indie authors will get crumbs, if anything—but then again, the Big Six are not going along with the program just yet, so maybe Amazon won't have any legacy authors in the...

Moral politicians and political morality…

The cynical readers of this blog will think I'm being cute here…oxymorons-squared to end the week, anyone?  A more abstract question:  Does a President have to be a moral person to be a good President?  When we think back to some of the escapades our Commanders-in-Chief were embroiled in during the first hundred years or so of this country, it's clear to me there's not a high degree of correlation between moral behavior and leadership skill.  I'm not just talking about dalliances with women e...

The legacy of the military-industrial complex…

It's one of those historical ironies that the ex-General and GOP hero Dwight Eisenhower warned our country about the military-industrial complex.  Of course, Ike was the type of Republican whose subspecies is now extinct—in many ways he was a progressive and certainly moderate.  Nowadays, he would have as much chance of winning the nomination of his party as favorable comments about gun control or solar power appearing in a Dick Cheney speech.

In last Saturday's NY Times there was an article e...

News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #6…

#35:  OK, folks…I didn't receive much help for writing reviews of anthologies.  Doug from eFiction offered some sage advice for those who write such a review in a MFA writing class but immediately qualified it by saying that most readers would want a very different review.  So, I took a wag at it.  You can see the results in Tuesday's post to this blog (or, if you prefer, on Amazon).  Now you can help by reviewing the review….

#36:  Writers should challenge themselves now and then.  Writing...