Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 69
March 19, 2019
Scientific scales…
Like Asimov, Heinlein, and other sci-fi writers, I’m an ex-scientist who loves to tell stories—all Asimov’s stories were sci-fi, for example; mine are mysteries, thrillers, and sci-fi. (To be fair, Dr. Asimov wrote some excellent sci-fi mysteries! He was also a fan of the mystery genre.) But Asimov might be better known to some readers for his non-fiction popular science books. I once thought of writing them too—it’s writing, after all, and I love to do it—but I was too hooked on fiction to w...
March 15, 2019
Website upgrades and updates…
[Note from Steve: It’s the Ides of March today…and I wish an early happy St. Paddy’s day to everyone. Have fun, be safe!]
Authors have many items that represent fixed and continuing costs for doing business. These eat into royalties. Costs and profits—writing is a business. (I’m not very good at it, but that’s what it is, even if authors are having a lot of fun writing.) Like a supermarket, authors’ royalty income is small per each item sold, so it’s a profitable business only if lots of book...
March 14, 2019
What if?…and alternate history…
For some strange reason, alternate history is considered a subgenre of sci-fi or fantasy, most likely the former. Maybe the reason is whoever decides these things just didn’t know where to put it? It isn’t as puzzling as that catch-all genre literary fiction, but it’s close.
An alternate history story is the quintessential example of an author using a what-if to write a story. What if George Washington had been assassinated? What if Lincoln hadn’t? What if Hitler had been taken out early on i...
March 13, 2019
Interviewing author Bruce Woods…
Steve: Today I’m pleased to offer readers of this blog an interview with Bruce Woods, author of the new historical fantasy novel Royal Blood and other books. Royal Blood has just been published by Penmore Press. So let’s welcome him. Bruce, why don’t you tell us something about yourself?
Bruce: Thanks. My novels Royal Blood and Dragon Blood are scheduled to be published by Penmore Press. (Royal Blood was previously offered in paperback by Knox Robinson, but that press has gone out of business...
March 12, 2019
Music in the prose…
Some prose is so beautiful that it almost seems like music. Garcia Marquez’s Nobel winning novel did that for me—maybe it helped I read Cien Años de Soledad in Spanish, a musical language to be sure—this book will soon become a video series instead of a single movie, which is more appropriate for the century it covers!.
In this article I’m writing about references to music in literature, though, or writers being inspired by music. Musicians take stories and turn them into musical theater and...
March 8, 2019
Movie Reviews #72…
Greta. Neil Jordan, director. Frances is a waitress who finds a purse on a NYC subway train. She goes to the owner’s apartment to return it in spite of warnings from her Smith College school chum and roommate Erica. There she meets Greta. It all goes downhill from there as Greta first stalks and then imprisons Frances. Greta is a psycho who’s done this before.
Where some reviewers see a campy horror flick, I see a modern Hitchcockian psychological thriller. The viewer will see good performanc...
March 7, 2019
Plot vs. characterization…
Some authors put plot before characterization; others reverse that. I always ask the question in my interviews with other authors. It’s a trick question, you see. You have character-driven plots and plots that aren’t. For the first, the author has to make sure the characters (even if there’s only one) are well-developed and interesting enough. Note that I didn’t add “…to support the plot.” Their development and the interest that generates among readers carries the plot forward, but it can wor...
March 6, 2019
Reviews of recent books…
I write reviews all the time for other authors’ books, but I’m not very lucky in receiving them for my own books. Here’s a few for some recent books.
A reviewer of Goin’ the Extra Mile says…
“WOW! What an exciting story from Steven Moore. A total page turner from the start. There are no doubts who you cheer for and who you want to lose in this exciting espionage story.
BACKGROUND: While in the CIA [actually she’s an ex-USN Master-at-Arms], Mary Jo was sent to reclaim two MECHs (“Mechanicall...
March 5, 2019
It was a dark and stormy night…
Let’s take this clichéd weather phrase as segue to the following question: How important is weather in fiction? As usual, the answer is: It depends.
Sometimes apocalyptic weather is like a main character: tornados, hurricanes, blizzards, volcanoes raining down ash and pumace, and other dangerous events often become villains in thrillers. I still remember from my three-year-old book reading experiences a story about a little red fire engine who had to perform in the middle of an ice storm. Yea...
March 1, 2019
Movie Reviews #71: Green Book…
Green Book. Peter Farrelly, dir. Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) is a classically trained black pianist who is the lead in a trio based in NYC that plays classic jazz and stylized popular tunes. He lives over Carnegie Hall back during the sixties. He wants Frank “Tony Lip” Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen) to be his driver on the trio’s tour south. Tony thinks Shirley means Atlantic City, but the pianist corrects him: he means the Deep South, not a good place for a black to be in the sixties.
Thi...
