Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 93
November 9, 2017
I made this!
We have a justifiable pride when we complete a DIY project (that’s “Do It Yourself” for the acronym challenged). I remember putting together several Heathkit electronic devices—that defunct company sold many kits for DIY projects from radio amateur equipment to stereo component and color TVs (my mother’s first color TV was a Heathkit). You have to be careful with DIY, though, when you write a novel. In this month of NaNoWriMo (“National Novel Writing Month”), the ultimate take on DIY in the w...
November 8, 2017
News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #152…
C&W v. books. Don’t get me wrong. I like some Country and Western music—Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, and Dylan’s C&W period, for example. But I also like to read a book on a long flight, either a PB from one of those airport stands or on my Kindle. And during those in-flight movies, when everyone glares at you if you put that little overhead light on, I snooze. I can’t read or snooze with some wannabe C&W stars singing with a Nashville twang, though. Pox on Southw...
November 7, 2017
…and then there’s Trump…
Conservatives, progressives, GOP, Dems…and then there’s Mr. Trump. At the best, the president’s politics have no classification beyond creating a narcissistic cult of personality for a wannabe dictator. At the worst, he’s the nominal leader of an alt-right conspiracy that threatens the very future of America and the world. That doesn’t leave much wiggle room—no good here, just the bad and the ugly. Morricone’s fascinating score has become a funeral dirge for free society.
The president wants...
November 6, 2017
Monday words of wisdom…
I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.—Thomas Watson, IBM chm, 1943
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Now’s your chance to read epic sci-fi! The “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy” is now a bundle. You can read all the books in the “Chaos Chronicles Collection,” a $5.99 ebook that costs less than the ebook for the first novel in the trilogy. The novels, Survivors of the Chaos, Sing a Zamba Galactica, and Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hand!, take you from the Chaos years of an Earth dominated by multinat...
November 3, 2017
Movie Reviews #55…
Surburbicon. George Clooney, dir. Is there such a genre as “violent comedy”? The Cohen brothers must think so. They contributed about 2/3 to this noir story, probably the most important part. Clooney and Heslov added an initially parallel story about a black family moving into a white suburb. Mind you, this supposedly all took place back in the fifties when, as we know from Hidden Figures, not even NASA was integrated. Unlike some movie reviewers (do I dare put myself in that scurrilous group...
November 2, 2017
Science in science fiction…
I loved those original Star Trek episodes because the best were based on sci-fi stories written by seasoned sci-fi writers, ones like Theodore Sturgeon and Harlan Ellison. They were often morality plays too, that is, good stories with some important themes mixed in. (Who could forget the message that racial prejudice is just plain stupid in the classic episode about the two black-and-white guys fighting on and on, one black on the left and white on the right, the other just the opposite?) The...
October 31, 2017
Conspiracy theories and all that…
[Note from Steve: Have a safe and happy Halloween. Parents, please take care of your children, and please don’t drink and drive—someone else’s children might be your victims.]
They’ll get a boost with the partial release of the JFK assassination papers (the CIA is holding some back, which will only add to the conspiracy, of course). Here’s the short list: Was someone else involved besides Oswald? I always thought it was suspicious that Jack Ruby silenced Lee Harvey…to keep him from spilling t...
October 30, 2017
Monday words of wisdom…
Gaia doesn’t have to end in a nuclear bang. She can end in the whisper of climate disaster.
Freedom for Catalonia!
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Smashwords book sale. Mystery, suspense, sci-fi, conspiracies, and a multitude of thrills await you with the “Mary Jo Melendez Mystery Series.” Mary Jo, an ex-USN Master-at-Arms trying to get her new civilian life established, is framed in Muddlin’ Through. Her search to prove her innocence takes her around the world from one skirmish to another, a gypsy romance, winning ne...
October 27, 2017
Mini-Reviews of Books: Celina Grace’s Echo…
(Celina Grace, Echo, Kate Redmen #6, Isaro Publishing Ltd, 2015)
I’ve read other books in the Kate Redmen series (maybe all of them?) as part of my love affair with British mysteries (my most recent novel is an homage to Christie and her two famous sleuths, Miss Marple and M. Poirot). This novel has an important theme: the sexual abuse of children. When it’s done by VIPs, they often get away with it. When the system puts little girls and boys in the hands of VIPs as part of social services, i...
October 26, 2017
Why not a memoir?
I’ll admit I’ve had an interesting life full of adventure in the modern sense of that word. Not everyone spends over ten years living abroad and immersed in another culture (I came to understand jokes, songs, and dreamed in Spanish—I’ve only read Garcia Marquez in the original Castellano). Not everyone spends a night sleeping in a Sibundoy Indian chief’s house next to two girls (don’t get any lecherous ideas there—it was too cold for hanky-panky, and two anthropologists were in the next room)...
