Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 88
March 7, 2018
Character bios: Dao-Ming Chen and Rolando Castilblanco…
[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.]
Dao-Ming Chen. Born on Long Island in the state of New York to Chinese immigrant parents, Dao-Ming was an accomplished diver in high school and college. After studying economics and training in the Army ROTC, she became part of an experimental and secret special ops group for women in the Green Berets (U.S. Army). Many of her activities in that group and its...
March 6, 2018
“Literary fiction” and two Latin American titans…
Both Garcia Marquez and Vargas Llosa are titans of Latin American literature (Nobel Prize winners) and good examples of why the label “literary fiction” should be abolished. The first author, affectionately known as “Gabo,” is celebrated for being the inventor of magical realism. Vargas Llosa’s more complex novels have earned him the moniker “the Latin American Balzac.” Neither writes literary fiction, but they’re master storytellers.
First, an explanation of names. Because America is such a...
March 1, 2018
News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #155…
A thank you… to the Montclair Women’s Club for inviting me to talk about writing, publishing, and my novel Rembrandt’s Angel. A good time was had by all. Montclair’s Channel 34 videotaped the talk; here’s the YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=dLNmI9KdD88 Thanks to TV34 too.
Carrick Publishing. Donna Carrick, who runs this Canadian company, interviewed me in her podcast series. Her series of podcasts is called Dead to Writes; you can find them on iTunes: https://itunes...
February 27, 2018
Supporting characters…
Many novels have a large cast of characters. The main characters, protagonist(s) and villain(s), always capture the readers’ attentions, but supporting ones are also important. The main characters interact with them and that makes them all seem a bit more human, assuming they all act like real people to begin with. Every character is an actor on a stage where the stage is your fiction story.
Pirandello wrote the somewhat schizophrenic drama Six Characters in Search of an Author. The problem h...
February 22, 2018
Review of Craig Falconer’s Not Alone
(Craig A. Falconer, Not Alone, self-published?, 12/19/15)
Mr. Falconer’s book doesn’t need another review—at last count, 1850+ readers have jumped on the fanwagon and written their one- and two-line endorsements (called reviews by Amazon)—but I often review books that I buy for R&R reading when they have a lot of positives. Unfortunately this one has many negatives too. So here goes.
First, the positives. There is no Star Wars-like space opera here. Most of the first half of the book is spe...
February 20, 2018
Sci-Fi extrapolation can become reality…
As readers of my novels know, my stories treat important themes. Here’s one: healthcare will become a worldwide problem. It already is in the U.S., of course, because the whole system is based on making money for greedy Big Pharma, greedy insurance companies, and greedy healthcare networks and their associated professionals. But other places will have problems too. Even single-payer systems will have problems as they start having to limit costs in order to cover everyone.
Here’s a recent h...
February 16, 2018
Happy Chinese New Year!
Chinese culture goes back millennia. Food for thought. I salute all my Chinese readers, friends, and relatives. Have a great celebration along with Detective Dao-Ming Chen of the NYPD!
February 15, 2018
Movie Reviews #58…
Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri. Martin McDonagh, writer, producer, and director. Who said a movie can’t tell a great story? Most can’t, or important story threads are left on the cutting room floor, but this one does. If this were a book, I’d call it minimalist writing akin to what I like to practice, because a lot is left to the viewers’ imaginations, allowing them to participate in the creative process. But this movie has a great plot and fantastic characters who are both flawed...
February 13, 2018
Coincidences…
Quite a while ago, a reviewer of Aristocrats and Assassins (in the seven-book “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series”) was generally positive about the book but didn’t like the coincidences. I’ve even had Detective Chen or Castilblanco say, “I don’t believe in coincidences”—this is a common statement from a cop in crime stories.
But coincidences are important in real life, so they’re important in fiction too. You wouldn’t have met your significant other but for coincidence, although I suppo...
February 8, 2018
ABC Shorts: Exchange Student…
[Note from Steve: A. B. Carolan has completely rewritten and reedited my YA sci-fi mystery The Secret Lab and is finishing up YA sci-fi mystery based on my short story “Marcello and Me,” The Secret of the Urns. The first novel will be published in the first quarter of 2018, the second in the third quarter. Here’s one of his YA short stories set in one of my sci-fi universes. There’s nothing that says a story for young adults can’t have some meat to it….]
Exchange Student
Copyright 2018, A. B....
