Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 79

Interviewing author Jacqueline Seewald…

Steve: Today I have the pleasure of interviewing multiple award-winning author, Jacqueline Seewald. Nineteen of her fiction books have been published to critical praise, including books for adults, teens, and children. Her short stories, poems, essays, reviews, and articles have appeared in hundreds of diverse publications and numerous anthologies such as: The Writer, L.A. Times, Reader’s Digest, Pedestal, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Over My Dead Body!, Gumshoe Review, Library Journal,...

Internet PR and marketing…

Writers are doing it too. Most people I follow on Twitter are writers doing their own PR and marketing. Is this efficient?  They want to sell their books to me and aren’t particularly interested in buying mine.  But many retweet to their own followers, so maybe it all comes together.

I used to think Gookreads was the place to be. That’s where a lot of readers congregate, so you’d guess they’d be interested in new books, right? GR ads don’t work, though. And GR suffers from the same problem th...

Getting in on the ground floor…

In my old day-job, the projects where I was most comfortable were those where I got in on the ground floor. In other words, I was in it from the start, analyzing the data available and initiating its theoretical explanation.

I couldn’t do that with writing. I’d decided long ago to postpone my storytelling in order to put food on the table for my family, just like my father had done before me with his painting. Few people can make a decent living in arts and crafts, and my parents had taught m...

News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #163…

Summer’s over. Well, not officially yet, but some leaves are starting to change around here. Family vacations are over. Kids are back in school.

The weather was bad, and Mother Nature smacked us around for our pecadillos. As I write this, hurricane Florence is pounding the coast of the Carolinas. Be safe, fellow readers and writers!

Make reading a part of your life and for your friends and family. Reading and literacy are the keys to civilization and intelligent, informed discourse. Reading i...

The great American novel?

I’ve read so many books in my life that it’s hard to pick one that’s better than all others, even when I narrow the list down to American-authored novels. (The list is only a phantasm in my mind—I don’t keep track, and I often find myself reading something I’ve read before.) I know the books I’d exclude, probably incurring the wrath of English teachers and professors everywhere: Moby Dick, To Kill a Mockingbird, Giants in the Earth, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and many other plodding stories in...

Movie Reviews #65…

Operation Finale. Chris Weitz, dir. With Ben Kingsley as Eichmann and Oscar Isaac as Malkin, how can you not have a great movie? There’s no mystery here—the story is a true one, and we know how it ends—but there are plenty of thrills and suspense. The viewer gets a glimpse at the spy techniques of Mossad and a hint about how the Argentine Junta learned the dirty tricks for its Dirty War from the right-wing Argentines and German and Italian fascists who fled to South America.

There’s a warning...

Internet trolls…

[Note from Steve: This is post #2 about my internet woes.]

My life has changed. Once I was participating in discussion groups on Goodreads and LinkedIn. I ended all those associated with the first and will probably do the same with the second. Amazon bought the first; Microsoft bought the second. They allowed the trolls to take over.

I was banned from an old-fashioned authors’ discussion group I’d joined because the trolls objected to my opinions. I’ll admit that 10+ years in the publishing b...

Mini-Reviews of Books #34…

[Note from Steve: I’ve augmented my book-buying algorithm. Yes, I still avoid a book’s reviews, especially those zero-content ones on Amazon. Yes, I will study the blurb and “peek inside” to see if the author can write. But now I also peruse small presses’ catalogs! The following three books I found doing just that for two small presses, Black Opal Books and EDGE Publishing. Try it. My algorithm now takes a bit longer, but it’s nice to weed out all the dregs on Amazon, so a lot of time is sav...

The problem with Google…

Remember those murdered by al Qaeda. The war on terrorists must continue! They corrupt religious beliefs and tear down our sacred institutions. This must end until no terrorist is left standing. That goes for all terrorists, no matter where the infestation grows.

I don’t see any political bias in Google searches, but I see two other problems every day.  I didn’t particularly mind they weren’t present at the congressional hearing with Facebook and Twitter VIPs either (the congressional committ...

Movie Reviews #64…

Three Identical Strangers. Tim Wardle, dir. This documentary is disturbingly sinister and strange. Triplets separated at six months are given up for adoption to three different sets of parents by a creepy adoption agency. They are reunited at nineteen. During all that time, they had no idea they were a threesome. They live it up after they reunite, enjoying a long-delayed camaraderie. Then, as one aunt says, things started turning funky. Separation anxiety at six months and possibly an inheri...