Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 21

UFOs…

Congress recently held hearings on UFOs, and the Pentagon informed the politicians about the authenticity of two videos (in the Director of Naval Intelligence’s testimony, to be specific). Are UFOs a national security concern? Are ETs real?

In Sing a Zamba Galactica, #2 in the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy,” two ET civilizations meet, one ours (when Humans are out there living in space, they’re obviously ETs) and another stranger one. This begins a strange collaboration between two intelligences, Hu...

Opening, back story, and flashback…

Let’s consider The Last Humans: A New Dawn, #2 in “The Last Humans” series. Or #1 in that same series, or #3 in the “Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries” series. All the openings tell readers there are some thrills to be had. I then go on using back stories and flashbacks to continue the plots, often alternating between these story elements and dialogue and character development that normally will entertain at least a few readers.

This isn’t “traditional storytelling,” by which I mean that ancient oral t...

First-person storytelling…

Using the first person in storytelling has its pros and cons like most writing techniques. Using it means both readers and the author can become a character. A reader might be uncomfortable “being” a criminal, of course, but what a way to get inside a criminal’s mind…if it’s done well. Same goes for good and noble characters, of course.

First person is not point of view (POV). POV is about who’s the center of attention in a section or chapter; the reader is observing what’s going on using one ch...

Celebs’ book clubs…

It’s bad enough that celebs produce more hyped and ludicrous books than most other authors (the books are often written by ghostwriters, of course), but they also freely advertise each others’ books along with a lot of other formulaic and fluffy fiction from the Big Five publishing conglomerates. First there was Oprah’s Book Club, then CNN’s and other talk shows’ hosts pimping their guests’ Big Five books (does Jake Tapper read all those books he prattles on about?), and now Charlie Gibson has d...

Book piracy revisited…

I’m probably considered an outlier in that wide statistical distribution of author types, and for many reasons. But an important one is that I don’t have to make a living from my writing, so I can just enjoy it and be satisfied that a few readers will also be entertained by the stories I produce. It annoys me to no end, however, that I never can know how many readers I actually have. There are delays in reporting those numbers because I go wide; multiple retail sites mean more exposure for my bo...

China…

While I’ve never been to many places you’ll travel to in my novels—the English woman Esther Broookstone travels to Turkey in Son of Thunder, for example—I’ve avoided autocratic states like the plague (China makes a habit of producing real ones). Although I speak some Russian, I never had any desire to visit the USSR (when that language was most fresh in my mind—along with Esther, East Berlin was as far as I got), and Putin’s paradise always seemed less attractive than the USSR. From Mao to Xi, I...

Aging…

Compared to most other animal species, human beings have long lives, although the verdict is still out whether elephants and whales can compete with us (studying them in captivity can bias things one way or the other). But aging and death is the bane of all creatures, great and small, both going hand in hand with evolution because Mother Nature doesn’t depend on species’ dying or the old and infirm weaned out in predator-prey systems or violence and conflict. It’s not surprising that aging is a ...

I did it first!

Or maybe not? A new movie considers “Everything, Everywhere, All the Time” (that’s the title!), and the article “Workings of the Multiverse (Latest Version)” by Dennis Overbye in the “Science Times” section of the NY Times (Tuesday, April 26) is essentially a movie review. I might be wrong, but that movie sounds like my sci-fi rom-com A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse.

My novel began as a just-for-fun short story I wrote (that essentially became the first two chapters of the novel, ...

Give up TV to find good and satisfying stories…

[Note from Steve: You can consider this article a follow-up to my 4/22 post. Like my novels, the two articles can be read independently!]

Thank God for books! Even before Covid, I was watching less and less TV. Frankly, it sucks now! Except for PBS and few news programs on CNN (OK, ABC News offers some entertainment value as I count how many times David Muir says “of course”), there’s not much network TV has to offer. Cable is worse and has more ads than the traditional networks, and ads are soo...

Book reviews: the “Ravenscroft” series…

“Inspector Ravenscroft” Series. Kerry Tombs, author (10 novels from Joffe Books). Many of my readers know that my “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” novels (see below)  have progressively become more in the British style as the series progresses. Maybe not so well known are my short fiction collections of tales written in the British style. (There are four: The first three are titled Sleuthing, British-Style and the fourth is simply titled The Detectives. See the “Books & Short Stories” web page....