Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 62
July 30, 2019
Surprises in website analytics…
First-time visitors to this blog and/or website might not know that my website gurus at Monkey C Media recently did an update/upgrade (it’s generally transparent to visitors). Having a functioning website with interesting content is essential for authors these days. (After the initial costs, an author still has maintenance costs—all part of doing business.) In this last round, the gurus got my website analytics working again (it’s a mystery why they stopped). I don’t hover over them like some...
July 26, 2019
Movie Reviews #76…
Spiderman: Far From Home. John Watts, director. Fair warning to fans of the Marvel Universe: About the only good thing I can say about this movie is found in the few good glimpses I saw of Prague, a European capital I haven’t been to yet. Even for that, I would have been better off buying a Frommer’s tour guide.
The title comes from Peter Parker/Spider-Man’s visits to Venice, Prague, and London with his high school science group. I never understood how that came about, but I was ready to flee...
July 25, 2019
ABC Shorts: The Double…
[Note from Steve: Leave it to A.B. Carolan to turn an ordinary business trip into a space adventure. A wee bit of Irish humor….]
The Double
Copyright 2019, A. B. Carolan
Filton hated spaceports on backward planets. As head of regional sales for the planet Sanctuary’s largest android factory, he had to visit them, even some outside of the trade union.
He also hated it when his wife Dal and daughter Shalin accompanied him on a business trip. Even though he often enjoyed their company at meals d...
July 24, 2019
Mini-Reviews of Books #42…
A Matter of Trust. Nancy Hughes, author (Black Opal Books, 2017). Kingsley’s husband goes farther than his usual trip to the convenience store and ends up in a horrible accident. She moves away from where they were living to take a job in a different bank. There she meets Todd, another new employee who’s a VIP. As head of the commercial loans department, she comes across some strange loans and wonders what’s afoot. He sleuthing becomes dangerous for her health.
Kingsley is a strong, smart fem...
July 23, 2019
Summer reading…
Summer arrived at a perfect time in my publishing journey this year…right after three novel-writing marathons when I need some serious R&R, which included the writing plus corresponding edits for A.B. Carolan’s Mind Games (just published by Carrick Publishing) and my sequel to Rembrandt’s Angel titled Son of Thunder (soon to be published by Penmore Press). “Whoa! That’s only two marathons,” you say. No, I also finished the sequel to The Last Humans and will submit it to Black Opal Books; it’s...
July 20, 2019
A message from the Moon muted over the years…
Today is a solemn but sad day, full of nostalgia and yearning. Fifty years ago, I was part of the party-like atmosphere in College Park, Maryland, as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first human being to set foot on the Moon. No good and wonderful event since then has brought the US and the world so much together to share our common humanity and hope for the future.
Space is the final frontier., but we have shied away from it and Armstrong’s hopeful and inspiring message, putting our...
July 18, 2019
The news…
Although media people are often featured as characters on TV shows, movies, and now on the Broadway stage, they’re not main characters in my books. Pam Stuart, Detective Castilblanco’s wife, is almost one—she had the crime beat for a NYC TV station for a long time, which is how she met Castilblanco (see The Midas Bomb). A similar relationship is found between DHS agent Ashley Scott and a freelance journalist in The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan. And I poke fun at a TV reporter in More than...
July 17, 2019
Review of Leonardus G. Rougoor’s The Clock…
The Clock. Leonardus G. Rougoor, author (Black Opal Books, 2017). Siblings Elizabeth and Matthew Janssen, seventeen and eighteen, take a long summer vacation on Cape Cod with their parents. On their arrival, they start to explore their vacation cottage and discover a secret room containing an old grandfather clock with instructions inside on how to operate it as a time machine.
The time-travelers eventually discover two past murders and one suicide, the murders committed against Alice and Joh...
July 16, 2019
An online retail giant, but not a distributor…
We just finished Prime Weekend. Did you have any fun? While I have a long list of complaints about Amazon, the main one is about their arrogance in thinking they’re the only book retailer in the world. They’re not, but how can authors and publishers get to the others?
For print versions, authors and publishers often do this the traditional way via bookstores, preferably independent ones. (Big book barns like Barnes & Noble are like Amazon—a book gets lost in them. One B&N put my mystery/thril...
July 14, 2019
Happy Bastille Day!
The 18th century saw the beginning of many independence movements waged against aristocratic excess and oppressive colonialism. Americans are forever linked to France due to their help in the colonies’ war against the British. The hero Lafayette comes to mind. Perhaps motivated by that war as well as their own plight, the French threw off the chains of aristocratic oppression, starting at that famous Paris prison. Democracy was on the move. Later the nexus between Americans and French was fur...
