Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 85
May 9, 2018
Old trees…
As a person interested in environmental issues, I not only believe in protecting our planet and Gaia’s flora and fauna, but I also believe in the great circle of life. We all know it’s like losing a family member when we have to put down a beloved pet. I’m feeling the same way about our cherry trees. They have stood like sentinels on our front lawn for many years, long before we came on the scene. They’re old and diseased now, so we’re faced with “putting them down.”
They’re tough old codgers...
May 8, 2018
Musings on Marvel’s Universe…
A new Avenger’s movie is drawing crowds to the silver screens around the land. It provides me more fodder for asking, “What’s going on?” And then wondering further, “Do readers ever get this excited over a book?”
My books, in particular. I once smiled upon reading a review of Angels Need Not Apply, something akin to “This book is awesome!” Except for the excitement expressed, it isn’t a particularly good representative of reviews that are useful for readers or writers, although it might indic...
May 5, 2018
Feliz Cinco de Mayo!
Les deseo a todos nuestros amigos mexicanos un feliz Cinco de Mayo!
Happy Cinco de Mayo to all our Mexican friends.
May 4, 2018
News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #159…
Comments on blog articles. My apologies: I discovered that you couldn’t make them! If you tried to do so, a message akin to “You must enable Javascript and allow cookies to comment” appeared. That’s not so. There’s nothing in WordPress (WP) settings (my website software) about Javascript or cookies.
This problem was driving me nuts, and became a major distraction from my writing, but I think I solved it. The old long-term memories stay around better than short-term, and some of the former a...
May 3, 2018
Cursing…
I had one correspondent say that my book she read would just be fine without the bad language. I overheard another person say that a musical play would be much better if it weren’t so crude. This has me thinking about the audiences for my fiction stories. Because this is intended to be a PG-13 website, I won’t go into examples here, but I want to analyze authors’ use of cursing all the same.
First point: Cursing is a cultural phenomenon. It’s an old one too, although cursing publicly used to...
May 2, 2018
Pre-release excerpt from The Secret of the Urns…
A. B. Carolan liked a short story I’d written long ago called “Marcello and Me.” He asked if he could make it into a novel. Ha! Now he owns it. The following excerpt from his The Secret of the Urns is the same one that appears at the end of his second edition of my YA sci-fi mystery The Secret Lab. You might not have read that new edition, though—you should, especially if you didn’t read the first edition! By the way, A. B. doesn’t have a website or Facebook author’s page and prefers to keep...
May 1, 2018
Reviewers who can’t write reviews…
I don’t pretend to be a professional reviewer, whether I’m reviewing books or movies. I can’t be a professional reviewer, in fact. No one pays me for book or movie reviews. Reviewing books is my way to give back to the community of readers and writers. Reviewing movies is a service to readers of this blog, especially those who want to see what an average moviegoer thinks about a particular movies. OK, maybe I’m not an average moviegoer, but no one pays me to go to movies and write a review,...
April 27, 2018
Movie Reviews #60…
[Wow! Installment #60 of this regular feature. That means I’ve reviewed 60+ movies (I sometimes review two). I guess Hollywood has made some money off me. I try to give you an alternative to the blathering reviews you find elsewhere—almost anywhere, in fact. Like in my book reviews, I tend to speak my mind, but no really rotten tomatoes thrown either. I don’t give a star-ranking. You’re smart enough to figure that out if you need one. I hope my reviews help you decide what movies are worth yo...
April 26, 2018
How book prices affect readers and writers…
“The older I get, the more acutely I am aware that the vast majority of what is written remains unread.”—Jhumpa Lahiri, writer and Pulitzer Prize winner for Interpreter of Maladies, a short story collection. This quote is disconcerting to me as both a reader (so much to read, so little time to do it) and as a writer (probably most of what I write remains unread, but I haven’t read Ms. Lahiri either). We can search for causes of the decline in reading and literacy; there are many. In this arti...
April 25, 2018
Pre-release excerpt for Goin’ the Extra Mile (Mary Jo Melendez #3)…
Yes, the Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries series is now a trilogy…just as soon as I publish #3, that is (hopefully before 2018 ends). My muses (banshees with Tasers) listened to Mary Jo and the MECHs (“Mechanically Enhances Cybernetic Humans”) and hounded me to resolve everything that readers might consider unresolved at the end of the second book: What’s the future of the MECHs? Do Mary Jo and Mario ride off into the Silicon Valley sunset? Do the American and Russian governments leave things be?...
