Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 84

Character bios: Caitlin Murphy and Asako O’Brian…

Caitlin’s story starts in Soldiers of God, a novel that’s a bridge between the “Clones and Mutants Trilogy” and the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy” (someday I might write a sequel). I have many strong female characters, but this FBI agent is sometimes a bit fragile as well as generally strong, the first because she falls for a priest, Juan Pablo Gomez, who she runs as an informant. Subplot one. Vladimir Kalinin, the ubiquitous villain in many of my novels, and most recently in one extended fiction...

Music and writing…

I’m a music addict. Like my reading, I dabble in many genres—a lot of classical (wasn’t that nineteen-year-old cellist Sheku Kannah-Mason great in the Meghan-Harry wedding?), folk, jazz, some rock, some C&W, and other pop. I even have a short-story collection where the stories are all inspired by musical pieces (see “Mayhem, Murder, and Music” in my list of free PDFs on the “Free Stuff & Contests” webpage—just follow the directions for downloading).

I was reading and storytelling a bit before...

Memorial Day 2018…

It’s been a big weekend! I’m sure you’ve traveled safely and imbibed responsibly, and will continue to do so.  Did you also honor those who gave the ultimate sacrifice to keep our country safe?  That’s what it’s all about.

Character bios: Penny Castro, Esther Brookstone, and Bastiann van Coevorden…

[Note: This article is part of the new series of blog posts, “Character Bios”—you’ll find them all in the blog category of the same name.]

Penny Castro. Born in New Jersey, Penelope “Penny” Castro gave up a athletic scholarship as a swimmer to join the U.S.N. where she became a search and rescue diver.  That experience landed her a job with the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department as a forensic diver. She is a survivor of the biological attack on the West Coast that soon became worldwide. In the...

News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #160…

Spam. In my last newsletter, I explained why comments to this blog disappeared for a while. I fixed that, but I’ve been getting a lot of spam recently, so I’ve been adjusting my spam filter accordingly (sometimes with active participation). Apparently WordPress understands a lot of written languages; I don’t. While I’m a man of the world, I’m not a polyglot and only know a few languages.

It’s fun to receive comments written in lots of different alphabets, but I can’t trust WordPress’s spam fi...

Mysteries and thrillers…

Many of us love them, but the modern versions have changed a lot.

First, as genres categorizing stories, they’re too general.  Add “psychological” or “legal” to each one and you’ll have too common subgenres. Add “romantic” to each one and you’ll have two more. Second, they’ve become more violent and sexy, the latter now including LGBTQ themes and S&M, so much so that Victorian readers would be shocked. That just means that they’ve kept pace with changing times, of course, and become more real...

Forms of fiction…

I won’t go into relatively new forms, like flash fiction and some memoirs and celeb books (with the fiction sometimes discovered after publication). I won’t deal with the genre question (I got into trouble on Goodreads for doing so). I’ll only discuss the traditional forms—short stories, novellas, and novels.

The best (and maybe only reasonable) way to separate them is via length. (I’ll probably get in trouble for that too.) Length is measured in thousands of words, abbreviated kwords, whethe...

ABC Shorts: Refugees…

[Note from Steve: One thing I immediately liked about A. B. Carolan was his wry humor. He sent this very short short from Cork, Ireland. Didn’t say what he was doing there, but I imagine some pubs were included in the visit. He wrote this before President Trump’s meltdown with Secretary Nielsen. Prescient. Have fun!]

Refugees

Copyright 2018, A. B. Carolan

Grigl materialized in an alien vehicle that was flying over an ocean. It didn’t seem to be an efficient way to move lots of passengers beca...

Contests and award programs…

There are little ones and big ones.  The former are generally moneymakers for the organizers—the author is either charged an entry fee or pays a “reading fee” (even if reader-judges are volunteers!).  The latter generally have some august committee of erudite scholars and narcissistic old women and men who have no idea what good storytelling is.  I don’t have much use for either the little or the big.

Sour grapes? No.  I haven’t entered any little contest in over ten years, and that was only...

Social media, readers, and writers…

I used to participate in discussions on Goodreads and LinkedIn. I no longer do so. The reasons are many. Here’s one: both have gone downhill since Amazon and Microsoft bought them, respectively. That might explain why there seem to be some moderators who are little tyrants; I’m open to discussions, but they aren’t. Same for members of their discussion groups.

In Goodreads, these few moderators assume their group is their little fiefdom; in LinkedIn, they’re often against indie authors and sma...