Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 26

“Friday Fiction” Series: Living on the Third Rail, Chapters Three through Five…

[Note from Steve: Because this is yet another British-style mystery story, the metaphor of the title here refers to London’s Underground aka the Tube. Trains there, unlike NYC’s, actually have four rails with two live ones. The positive third rail is still outside the rails the car wheels ride on and has the higher voltage, which is twice the fourth with negative voltage, nestled between the two regular train ones. Now there’s a factoid that might stump any Jeopardy contestant!]

Living on the Th...

A holiday gift to you from me…

Let me start with the blurb for the new Esther Brookstone novel, Defanging the Red Dragon :

Esther Brookstone, ex-MI6 spy and ex-Scotland Yard Inspector in the Art and Antiques Division, and her husband, Bastiann van Coevorden, ex-Interpol agent, along with NYPD homicide detective Rolando Castilblanco and his wife, TV reporter Pam Stuart, become embroiled in geopolitical intrigue as the West tries to thwart a plan China has for stealing its nuclear submarine secrets. Taking place mostly in the U...

“Friday Fiction” Series: Life on the Third Rail, Chapters 1-3…

[Note from Steve: Because this is yet another British-style mystery story, the metaphor of the title here refers to London’s Underground aka the Tube. Trains there, unlike NYC’s, actually have four rails with two live ones. The positive third rail is still outside the rails the car wheels ride on and has the higher voltage, which is twice the fourth with negative voltage, nestled between the two regular train ones. Now there’s a factoid that might stump any Jeopardy contestant!]

Living on the Th...

Apocalyptic visions…

Huxley had one; in his Brave New World, everyone is happy, happy, happy, taking their soma and not giving a rat’s ass about the futility of their lives. Orwell had one too; in his 1984, no one was happy, even if the entrenched plutocracy ordered them to be, the plutocrats figuring that if they said it often enough they would believe it to be true. C. M. Kornbluth had his too; in Not this August, he painted a desolate land laid to waste by Chinese and Russian invasions. (These are often called dy...

“Friday Fiction” Series: Space-Cat…

[Note from Steve: Consider this story an early holiday gift for you, your children, and grandchildren. A. B. Carolan revisits that wonderful mutant cat Mr. Paws in this story. Some readers met him in The Secret Lab. The Fearsome Four, a group of four teens in the future, who became sleuths to discover how he’d arrived on the International Space Station, end up uncovering a conspiracy instead. I told A. B. about a neighbor’s cat that early this fall started sunning himself and taking catnaps on o...

Recycling characters…

[Note from Steve: Due to supply chain issues—my time will be in short supply as I dedicate more of it to my writing—I will reduce the number of articles posted to this blog to two in the future. Wednesdays will feature an article about reading, writing, or publishing, and Fridays will be dedicated to free short fiction, continuing the “Friday Fiction” series. Thank you for your understanding.]

In books about writing fiction (often much wordier but saying less than my own little course available ...

“Friday Fiction” Series: Arms Control, Chapters Seven through Nine…

[Note from Steve: Let’s hope this “Black Friday” doesn’t involve illegal gun sales–we have enough guns in the US. This story, which ends today, is about them, though–they plague the British too! My British-style mysteries to date probably are more influenced by Dame Agatha and other authors’ creations rather than the hard-boiled American school, probably the major influence for my “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series (the Tums-chewing Castilblanco is as hard-boiled as lollipop-sucking Kojak...

Mini-Reviews of Books #50…

In Trump’s Shadow. David M. Drucker, author. This book was mostly a waste of my time, but I can classify it as reading to “know the enemy.” (The author might be in that group?) The author goes through a list of potential contenders for the Good Ole Piranhas’ presidential nomination in 2024. The only one I can give a slight nod to is the governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, who’s a bit conservative for this progressive looking for a candidate who’s not VP Kamala Harris. (I doubt Biden will run, or ...

Scenes…

Dramas aren’t the only literary works that have scenes. They naturally occur in short fiction and novels (maybe even biographies?). Authors can, in fact, forget about outlining if they move from scene to scene, not that this is necessarily recommended because other story elements are important too.

If a newbie author trying to figure out where to break the prose into chapters and sections when point-of-view (POV) doesn’t do that naturally, scenes can help make that determination. In fact, reade...

“Friday Fiction” Series: Arms Control, Chapters Four to Six…

[Note from Steve: My British-style mysteries to date probably are more influenced by Dame Agatha and other authors’ creations rather than the hard-boiled American school, probably the major influence for my “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series (the Tums-chewing Castilblanco is as hard-boiled as lollipop-sucking Kojak, to be honest). After a bit of reflection about that, I decided to write a story about a hard-boiled British DI. Okay, he has Irish blood, so maybe the stereotype of Irish NYC ...