Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 35

Available now: A. B. Carolan’s Origins…

In my post “Changes to My Website” (4/23) and a few previous posts, as well as my website’s pages, I’ve explained why no new books of mine will appear on Amazon in the future. For this reason, A, B. Carolan’s new novel Origins: The Denisovan Trilogy, Book One is now available in all ebook formats at Smashwords and its affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and library and lending services (Overdrive, Scribd, Gardners, etc.), and not on Amazon.

Also in previous posts, you’ve seen a previe...

Start of significant change?

There’s no doubt that the jury’s decision in the Derek Chauvin trial is historic. But let’s revisit how long it has taken: the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964 and was followed by cops beating up marchers in 1965 at Selma, with little or no legal action taken against the cops; and Rodney King was beaten by LA cops in 1991, with getting off free. Finally, after about sixty years of police violence against Black men and boys, a cop is convicted. Is this the start of significant change, a change...

Royals…

Did you watch Prince Philip’s funeral procession and ceremony last Saturday? I didn’t. I was never into a lot of pomp and circumstance for any reason. First, in my first three years of high school, I had to play trombone in Elgar’s march of that name far too many times, sometimes in 100 degree heat. (At my own graduation, I wore Bermudas and sandals under that damn toga!) Second, I’d seen too many little girls want to be princesses (that song in Frozen was super-annoying, but not quite as much a...

Reviews of books in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series…

[Note from Steve: This series overlaps a bit the timeline of the “Detectives Chen & Castilblanco” series, a branch on a tree if you will. It was motivated by my desire to pay homage to la grande dame Agatha Christie and her two famous sleuths, Miss Marple (Esther’s role) and Hercule Poirot (Esther’s paramour Bastiann van Coevorden’s) now together. Of course, Esther and Bastiann are very much twenty-first century sleuths, so there are thrills and suspense as well as mystery. By the way, some of t...

The most hated Democrat…

No, it’s neither Mayor Bill de Blasio, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, nor Gov. Gavin Newsom. It’s Joe Manchin, a US senator from Pennsylvania who’s so alone on the far-right edge of the Democratic Party that he might as well be in that Good Ole Piranhas’ fascist gang. And, because of the fifty-fifty split in the Senate, he can become a virtual autocrat because of the leverage that allows him to blackmail the Biden administration. Such is the current situation in the US these days—one person torpedoing all f...

Changes to my website…

…past, present, and future. I’m always tweaking things, so I thought it might be appropriate to discuss some recent changes that you, the reader, might find important.

Generally speaking, my “Home” web page is the least permanent, if only because I announce events and books to be published or were recently published there. For example, I recently announced updates to my list of free PDF downloads, which include the new Sleuthing, British-Style, Volume Two (two novellas)—Volume One is available ...

Reviews for the “Detectives Chen & Castilblanco” series: national and international…

[Note from Steve: These two NYPD cops work to solve homicide cases. The novels in this series can be divided between those set in the NYC area, mostly Manhattan, and those spilling over to US and foreign venues. This list includes reviews for the latter novels. I’m guessing there might be other reviews out there, on book-blogging sites, for example, so consider this a sample.

BTW, several reviewers complain about my mixing of first-person with third-person point of view (POV) in this series. Tho...

Recommended uses for the NY Times “Book Review” insert…

Nowadays I barely scan the “Review.” I haven’t purchased a book reviewed or featured in ads there in ages. (I’ve received some hardbounds as gifts which I often give away to schools when I finish—these are mostly non-fiction doorstops, lengthy tomes weighing ten times my Kindle.) When I finish scanning (max five minutes), I usually say to myself, “What a waste of time!” and wonder if there are other uses for this Sunday insert. I’ve come up with a few over the years: If you have a bird, paper th...

The science behind the sci-fi in A. B. Carolan’s Origins…

Sci-fi often extrapolates current science or “invents” new science we might see in the future. A.B. Carolan’s new book Origins (see last week’s preview) does both, but it’s mostly based on ongoing scientific discovery about human beings’ past. Denisovan and Hobbit hominids have had more press lately than Cro-Magnons and Neandertals because they’re new discoveries. They flourished thousands of years ago, and bits of their DNA are found in modern humans’ DNA (modern humans are mainly Cro-Magnon de...

“Detectives Chen & Castilblanco” book reviews: the “Manhattan novels”…

[Note from Steve: These two NYPD cops work to solve homicide cases. The novels in this series can be divided between those set in the NYC area, mostly Manhattan, and those spilling over to US and foreign venues. This list includes reviews for the former novels. I’m guessing there might be other reviews out there, on book-blogging sites, for example, so consider this a sample. S indicates spoilers.

By the way, several reviewers complain about my mixing of first-person with third-person point of v...