Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 8

Trees lost in the forest…

A.B. Carolan’s having problems finishing “The Denisovan Trilogy” (some of his woes are discussed in Intolerance, a novel that’s a free PDF download found at this website). You’ll only find the first novel Origins for sale. It’s complete as far as it goes, but he’d be the first one to say there are a lot of planets and lightyears to go in order to finish the trilogy. His problem isn’t writer’s block per se; it’s what many authors experience: Losing track of the trees in a very big forest.

Let me ...

Current AI software isn’t HAL!

Do you get tired of every software company offering you what they call AI software? I do! They want to jump on the bandwagon, but almost everything they call AI is gimmicky and nothing like what real AI is supposed to be.

The best current software offered (and let’s not call it AI!) can only surf the web, admittedly faster than I can, pilfering information here, there, and everywhere, and maybe organize what it finds in somewhat logical order. In other words, current whatever-it’s-called is noth...

“Tale of Two Planets”?

This article is another attempt to say something intelligent about book titles. Authors often can be boringly banal and copycats with their titles: “Gone…” something or the other, “Fifty Shades…” of something, or too long a trip through the alphabet—“A is for…,” “B is for…”—all boring, boring, boring, if only by showing their lack of creativity (often on the part of a publisher and not the author, I’ll admit). The standard rule that’s used is “short and to the point” when it should be “make it m...

Archaeology and anthropology…

Celtic Chronicles, the ninth novel in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, represents my most recent nod to these disciplines, while Son of Thunder (St. John’s tomb in modern-day Turkey), the second book in the series, is the earliest. But Declan O’Hara’s scholarly tome about the life of St. Brendan, mentioned in several novels in that series and a few times in the “Inspector Steve Morgan” trilogy, were indirect nods as well. The first novel in the “Denisovan Trilogy,” Origins (hello th...

I have a sense of humor…

…yet it might not seem like it. I’m also something of a romantic. But only the dearest and nearest people in my life have seen much of those aspects of me. I mostly avoid blatant humor and schmaltzy romance in my reading choices in my informal relationships and that avoidance carries over into my stories.

It’s a matter of degree, of course. For writing, while I suppose it could sell more stories (as if that were a goal), a focus on humor or romance doesn’t appeal to me. The only time I set out t...

Dialogue and narrative revisited…

While I’ve discussed these two topics elsewhere (for example, in my free PDF download “Writing Fiction”—see the list on my “Free Stuff & Contests” web page), I’ll mention them again because I consider them and their balance so important when writing fiction. Some fiction writers emphasize one over the other, maybe depending on the type of novel.

There’s no argument about sci-fi: It often requires a lot of world-building, which is narrative, of course. (I’ll never forget the incompetent agent who...

I’m surprised…

Having one current and three former presidents all in one place, NYC, at the same time, perhaps made good PR for the two candidates among them—Mr. Biden, Clinton, and Obama raked in $26 million at the Radio City Music Hall for Mr. Biden’s campaign, more than Mr. Trump made in an entire month (he’s busy trying to stay out of jail, of course); but everyone knew the Donald was trying to wreck the three Dems’ show by attending the wake for an NYPD officer effectively slain by the NYC Council’s malfe...

Review of Cox Richardson’s Democracy Awakening…

Democracy Awakening. Heather Cox Richardson, author (2023). This is an interesting but incomplete history about the rise of authoritarian thinking in the US; it’s also a bit simplistic. However, perhaps this simplicity adds power to the author’s arguments?

It doesn’t take much to see the fascists’ plans to convert the US into a fascist state—presidents like Nixon, Reagan, both Bushes, and other politicians’ shenanigans, aided by fascists in Congress (not gender-specific anymore because even wome...

Van Coevorden’s ring…

If you’ve read my novel Son of Thunder from the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, you’ll know that Esther keeps a special ring found in a Turkish cave and used it as a wedding band for Bastiann van Coevorden at their betrothal that takes place at the end of the novel. It later has a few cameos in some novels of the series that follow.

This ring is special, although in that novel there was only one Lord of the ring! Nothing to do with J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy (really one long saga split i...

Questions about Brits I’d like answered…

I’ve written more than a few British-style mysteries (see the web page “Books and Short Fiction), and questions keep arising as I write that show my ignorance about life in the UK, of course, but visitors to this blog—they could be American readers or authors themselves—might have also considered some of them. These questions aren’t answered in any detail if at all in my British-style mysteries. Perhaps they shouldn’t be, or they shouldn’t even be asked by an inquisitive Yank who lives across th...