Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 55
December 19, 2019
The year’s top books…
In “Another Year in the Books,” the NY Times’s critics confirmed once again that they don’t know much about books people read (article on Friday, 12/6/2019). First, let me state that I haven’t read any books they listed—they just don’t appeal to me. Second, they’re all Big Five books—the Times’s editors and critics ignore small press and self-published books. Third, the latter books feature less trite and formulaic works and more new voices—it’s rare that anyone in the latter group gets past...
December 18, 2019
Series reviews…
Reviewers rarely write them. Amazon promotes series (if only saying what the next book in the series is when you finish a book), but they want reviews for the individual books, which they just treat like other “products.” Smashwords lists series but never promotes them as such—in fact, they basically ignore evergreen books (older books that are as current as the day the author published them), so only the latest books in a series are promoted. And bookstores and libraries also ignore series...
December 17, 2019
Why Star Wars is bad fantasy…
Fantasy films have been moneymakers for Hollywood recently—the Marvel, Harry Potter, and Star Wars series come to mind. The Marvel movies, based on that venerable comic book enterprise, don’t pretend to be serious—both DC Comics and Marvel Comics were once kids’ introductions to fantasy. I like the origin stories the most because I missed them in my comics reading as a kid. The Harry Potter series of books represent Rowling’s verbose description of a magical world, a bit juvenile at the...
December 12, 2019
Writing mysteries and crime stories…
The beginning: a crime is committed. The end: a crime is solved. Fill in the details.
This, of course, is an extreme case of simplification, where the Devil really is in the details. I knew that before I wrote my first mystery, Teeter-Totter between Lust and Murder in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series.” (Technically, The Secret Lab—see below—was the first one published, but that’s a YA sci-fi mystery.) You might have thought that The Midas Bomb, #1 in the detective series, was a...
December 11, 2019
News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #176…
Happy holidays. We’re now heading into year’s end activities. This is often a stressful time for many, so don’t let it be. Like Thanksgiving, it’s time to enjoy being with family and friends. They are more important than anything else. So relax and enjoy the good times, but think about those who don’t have it so good. We’re all on spaceship Earth together.
Art and history in danger? Whether seeing the floods in St. Mark’s Square in Venice or the flames of brush fires driven by ferocious Santa...
December 10, 2019
Binge reading…
Binge reading is fun, and it’s even more fun when you do it with a series. Recently I binged on Bernett’s Kirby/Longdon mystery series, Febry’s rural mystery series, and am currently on Grace’s Kate Redman series—there are enough books in the latter that I probably can’t finish them before 2020, but they’ll be waiting for me then. (Note added during publication: Some books in the Kate Redman series are a bit expensive for my reading budget. I recently discovered J. R. Ellis’s Yorkshire...
December 5, 2019
Steve’s shorts: Dr. Carlos and the Cruise Ship Doctor…
Dr. Carlos and the Cruise Ship Doctor
Copyright 2019, Steven M. Moore
Carlos Obregon hadn’t been on a passenger liner for years. He was bit bored with the whole trip—no shipboard duties, no obnoxious crewmembers to bother him, and no captain he could badger. The food was okay, and at least some passengers offered interesting conversation.
The Chief Medical Officer of the survey starship Brendan was going to a conference. He did that every decade or so, either on the Brendan’s layovers, or by...
December 4, 2019
Reviews for Mind Games by A. B. Carolan…
[Note from Steve: In an attempt to declutter my web page “Books & Short Stories,” I’m going to start collecting some significant reviews for each book or series in the blog category “My Reviews.” When all is said and done, readers can search for a book title or series and see the reviews. This might be doubly important, because good reviews I’ve received are often NOT on Amazon. I exclude all reviews by trolls, of course, most of which have zero content and contain only vitriol—Lord knows...
December 3, 2019
Car, train, ship, or plane?
Inspiration for this post doesn’t come from the Fast and Furious franchise or the new Matt Damon movie, Ford vs. Ferrari. It’s about the relationship between settings and conveyances.
A love affair with cars is much more muted in Europe than in the US. Sure, Europeans love fast cars—just try to drive on the Autobahn sometime, or on those UK and Irish back roads—but trains play a more important role. As a young traveler in frugal tourist-mode before and after conferences, I’d buy a Eurorail...
November 28, 2019
I’m not Dr. Asimov…
Before I get into the subject of this article, let me wish everyone a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving. We tend to lose the meaning of this holiday that leads into the commercial end-of-year rush, starting with Black Friday…or earlier! It should be a time for personal contemplation about having family and friends and to give thanks for what we have in our lives. It’s not political or commercial but spiritual, a time to recognize our common humanity, something we share independently of...
