Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 86
April 24, 2018
Author worldlines…
Recently a house blew up in Hutchinson, Kansas—a tragedy caused when a car hit the house and broke a gas line. There hasn’t been much follow-up since then (news media aren’t good at that), but the tragedy sent me back a few years. I spent the summer I turned twelve with my grandfather learning what farm life was all about (growing up in California’s San Joaquin Valley had already given me a good idea, though) and meeting relatives I didn’t know I had (and have sadly forgotten about). During t...
April 20, 2018
Movie Reviews #59…
Chappaquiddick. John Curran, director. Let’s assume for the moment that conservatives are right in their claims that this movie is an honest portrayal of the young Senator Ted Kennedy. So what? His legacy resides in what comes after the accident during his long career in the Senate.
Of course, the movie is NOT an honest portrayal. First, no one was there when Mary Jo and Ted went off that bridge and she died, so the portrayal of her drowning and Ted’s actions afterwards that night are unknown...
April 19, 2018
Review of Elizabeth Bonesteel’s Cold Between…
(Elizabeth Bonesteel, Cold Between, Harper Collins, 2016)
Romance? Hard Sci-Fi? Space Opera? Mystery? Thriller? Many genre tags are possible for this novel. It has some of the quirkiness I put into my own sci-fi (but maybe not enough?). Forget the bad title and the romance novel cover (bodice ripper in space?). Chief Mechanic Elena from the Central Corps battleship Galileo meets pirate Trey in a bar…. Yes, that sounds a bit like a bad joke and also a bit trite. The Corps has a Shadow Ops divi...
April 18, 2018
News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #158…
Amazon. I have many problems with Amazon, but package delivery isn’t one of them. Like most online retailers, they use many delivery services—the USPS is just one of them. These delivery services generally do a good job (I just wish more of them would at least ring the doorbell). They also make money from retailers, whether you get free delivery or not (it’s rarely free for the retailer). That keeps the USPS in business so the few of us who still send letters, birthday and holiday cards, and...
April 17, 2018
Why print?
There’s a broad spectrum of readers who still prefer a print book—from young children just beginning their reading lives to young adults, and so on. Many readers avoid ebooks as a consequence. The situation is similar in the music industry where stereophiles still like their LPs even though the dynamic range and frequency range of CDs far surpass them—they just prefer analog to digital (or maybe don’t know the “sampling theorem”?). Many people also like to give print books as presents to thei...
April 12, 2018
Art and fiction…
We’re all familiar with Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. We can’t by any stretch of the imagination call that historical fiction anymore—he was duped into using research elements that were later proven to be incorrect—but there’s no denying that Da Vinci’s art plays a role. I recently reviewed the authoritative study of Da Vinci, his life, his art, and his science: Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson—you can find the review here.
There’s no denying the role art plays in Mr. Brown’s fiction. Da...
April 11, 2018
ABC Shorts: Alpha-Omega-1…
Alpha-Omega-1
Copyright 2018, A. B. Carolan
[Note from Steve: Have you read Asimov’s Second Foundation? I think A. B. was inspired by it to write this short short story. Or is it a sort of inverse “Flowers for Algernon”? After you finish, see if you agree with either perception.]
Omega-1191 stared at the image. “It’s so small,” she said. “Was I once that small?”
Epsilon-9349 laughed. “We all were. All clones start out as one cell. You, I, everyone. Alpha-Omega-1 is exceptional, though, becaus...
April 10, 2018
Goodreads, LinkedIn, and all that…
[This article is the second in a series about social media use by authors. Feel free to comment.]
Let’s see: I’ve disparaged Twitter—it’s mostly useless, for authors directly participating at least (your publicist might use it, though); and I’ve given my advice to use Facebook in a limited sense (you could limit it to just an author page—if they start charging, forget about it). What’s left?
Goodreads. This massive website for discussing books and reading used to be a lot better, but it’s gon...
April 5, 2018
News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #157…
Review of Leonardo Da Vinci. Last time I promised a review of Isaacson’s magnificent book. You’ll find it here:
Bottom line: I liked it more than the Einstein or Jobs bios.
Romance and erotica. I don’t write it. If you like it, fine, but I don’t write in these genres per se. A bit of romance is present in some of my novels, but I wouldn’t consider them racy. M...
April 3, 2018
All is not sweet at old Mt. Sugar…
This article is about Facebook and is part one of two in a series on how authors can use social media. Please don’t blast me with your comments just yet: I’m not breaking my New Year’s resolution to avoid political op-eds (they take time to research I’d rather spend on fiction writing). This article is about Facebook and therefore about writing, at least for me. (OK, blast away with your comments after reading the article. That’s OK.)
Like many authors, I have a Facebook author page. You can...
