Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 99
August 17, 2017
Go out of your comfort zone…
Many writers are introverts. That’s a nice way to say we’re nerdy. People say I talk funny, use big words, and derive pleasure from unusual activities. Guilty as charged.
If you accept this stereotypical description of a writer (many stereotypes are over-generalized and over-extrapolated statements based on limited data sets), do you accept the premise that PR and marketing is hard for writers? I find it difficult, and I’d rather be writing. Even these serious blog articles (OK, some aren’t s...
August 16, 2017
News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #148…
[Note from Steve: Do you enjoy reading this newsletter? Please tell family and friends about it! And you can always comment just like you can for any other blog article.]
What do you prefer? Standard fiction comes in three forms: short stories, novellas, and novels. I write all three because I never know when I start a story what it will become. You can read some of my short fiction in the blog category “Steve’s Shorts” and in the PDFs free for the asking found in those listed on the webpage...
August 15, 2017
Creeping capitalism…
Let’s get one thing straight: while I’m a progressive, I still believe we need to strike a balance between capitalism and socialism. We need to offer equal opportunity in this modern world, and we also need to recognize individual abilities and reward those with the new ideas. These are NOT antithetical goals and any political activist who tries to paint them that way immediately loses my respect. The world isn’t black and white, and it isn’t even just fifty shades of gray. It’s a technicolor...
August 14, 2017
Monday Words of Wisdom: Special Edition…
Domestic terrorism in Charlottesville is on my mind. Alt-right, neo-fascists, white supremacists—call them what you will, but the vehicular homicide committed in a narrow street in this beautiful college town is no different than what occurred in Nice or elsewhere as terrorists use vehicles as weapons to maim and murder.
The U.S. president doesn’t have the moral spine to call it what it is and denounce these groups because he panders to those criminal elements in our society. He needed these...
August 11, 2017
Book review of Peter May’s Entry Island…
(Peter May, Entry Island, Quercus, 2014, 978-1-62365-663-8)
Because I’m half-Irish by ancestry, I once tried to learn Gaelic. I failed. So it was interesting to learn in this novel that speakers of Irish and Scotch Gaelic can understand each other, but, thinking about that some more, I guess it’s like when I spoke Spanish in Italy and got along fine.
This is a small point about the huge panorama of this novel. It’s a tour through history as Sime (pronounced “sheem”) MacKenzie, a homicide dete...
August 10, 2017
Mysteries and thrillers…
The standard explanation of the difference between these two genres is perhaps familiar. A mystery is a story about a crime that’s committed and some sleuth(s), pro or amateur, figure how it was done and who did it, given clues, suspects, and witnesses. A thriller is a story about a villain or conspiracy that must be stopped; the reader generally knows who the bad guys (or gals) are planning the dirty deed.
Those words cover the standard explanation, but most readers know they’re often limite...
August 9, 2017
An interview with Scotland Yard Inspector George Langston…
Steve (in a whisper reminiscent of an announcer at a Scottish golf tournament): I’ve traveled to London to interview Mr. George Langston, the Scotland Yard inspector who runs the Art and Antiques Division. He has written a chronicle about a few of Inspector Esther Brookstone’s cases. You’ll find them contained in Rembrandt’s Angel. (Louder) How are you today, George?
George: A bit weary of being called Esther’s Dr. John Watson for her Sherlock Holmes. Esther works for me. Watson and Holmes ha...
August 8, 2017
The mental health crisis…
One item proposed in the GOP Senate’s “Better Care Act” was more cuts to mental health care. Fortunately that didn’t pass, but these cuts have been going on for a long time. Mental hospitals have closed and there never seems to be enough competent staff. People with mental health problems have nowhere to turn. Some have worried families and friends who don’t know where to turn either. Others live homeless on the streets of America’s cities. And others have come home from wars broken in mind a...
August 7, 2017
Monday words of wisdom…
These days, it is minimally staffed and funded firms who invest in new authors. The giants avoid such risk, only picking the writers once their names are made….—The Guardian
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Rogue Planet. Hard sci-fi with Game-of-Thrones fantasy, shaken and stirred. This sequel to the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy” is a stand-alone that differs from the trilogy’s novels. Prince Kaushal of the Second Tribe is a survivor of the First Tribe’s rebellion and creation of theocracy so brutal that the Interstellar Tr...
August 4, 2017
Movie Reviews #48: Dunkirk…
Dunkirk. Christopher Nolan, dir. It’s hard to tell how much Hollywood destroys history in this one. The story told here focuses on three persons—a no-name Frenchman posing as a Brit (Damien Bonnard), a British fighter pilot Farrier (Tom Hardy), and the crusty skipper, Mr. Dawson (Mark Rylance), on his way to Dunkirk with his son and the son’s friend. This focus makes the huge evacuation a personal story for these men who are probably only representative of the many personal and untold stories...
