Due to the bad economy, merchants seem desperate to bring in customers to the malls, superstores, and boutiques.  If you are a patriotic American, I suppose, you’d start your Christmas purchases before Halloween…or, at least, starting at the same time you’re buying all that Halloween candy required to make the little tykes need fluoride.  Not only has Black Friday become a consumer tradition, many of those superstores are throwing their doors open to their super sales on Thanksgiving.

Not only do I hear about crazy consumers ready to forego the family eating orgy and head off for those sales, the store employees are forced to leave their relatives and friends to attend to the onslaught of zombies looking for those early Black Friday bargain.  Let’s call it Blue Thursday in recognition of how sad it truly is.  We should even adopt Elvis’ Christmas song—I’m sure someone can adapt the lyrics to reflect the forlorn turkey.  After all, that gobbler was sacrificed on the altar of family love and universal friendship—his sacrifice shouldn’t be in vain.

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It used to be that a blog post talked about what you had for breakfast and walking the dog, for example.  Today that uninteresting trivia (well, maybe it’s interesting to your neighbors, especially if you leave the poop on their lawn) is relegated to Facebook (FB manages to cover the whole spectrum from domestic trivia to the Occupy X City news, from a pet peeve, i.e. complaints about your pet, to the Arab spring uprisings, and so on).  Blog posts should be, and now usually are, more substantial.  They truly are op-ed, i.e. opinions, about something.

The something can be almost anything!  This post is about writing, a particular form of writing.  You’ve all read op-ed in a newspaper—that’s usually politically or economically motivated.  Most of my posts here are similar to those commentaries on current events.  If you like, you can say I have an ax to grind.  (Some people become very upset about my opinions, so I generally allow comments, as long as you keep them clean.  I call it “Join the Conversation” on my “Steve’s Writing” page.)

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It’s a funny thing about book reviews—especially when someone is turning a critical eye to your own work. Often, you realize that other people don’t always view your characters in the same light you do. An example:

Steve Moore just wrote a nicely-crafted critique of my hard-boiled mystery Shotgun Start for Book Pleasures [note from Steve: see last Thursday’s post]. He liked the book, for which I am grateful, and gave it a generally positive review and recommended it. All good. But he had an interesting take on my protagonist, Neal Egan, a former cop who is eking out a living as a golf hustler. Steve says: “Egan is a jerk, cad and misfit.” My immediate reaction: “A cad? A jerk? Is not.” The misfit part of the equation, I’ll concede. But a cad? Steve, this isn’t a Noel Coward play. You might as well have called him a bounder.

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#43:  I’ve just reviewed Mike Nettleton’s Shotgun Start.  If you’re looking for a good read, look at this one.  If you’re studying how to write good PI action-suspense, study this one.  Of course, read my review first (blog post just preceding this one).

#44:  My guest blog post will appear on the Carrick Publishing site November 20.  Look for it.  I discuss my experiences as an indie author.  Donna Carrick has set up a whole series with this common theme.  (Also see #45 and #49.)

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(Mike Nettleton, Shotgun Start, ISBN 978-0984652419)

A raw portrait of the best and the worst the Southwest has to offer, this tale of a down-on-his-luck PI trying to prove his ex-wife is innocent of a violent and sexually explicit murder is like straight shots of tequila taken as a cure for a hangover between the rounds of your very own ultimate boxing match.  Your adrenalin will run high if you’re a reader—as a reviewer, I could only admire the craftsmanship.  I highly recommend this book (I read the eBook version, which is a bargain compared to the trade paperback and it saves trees).

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#41:  What’s the deal with Amazon’s new lending program?  For readers, as near as I can tell, you have to be an Amazon premium member, so right away that’s a limitation.  I can’t figure out what it means for authors, if anything.  As near as I can tell, Amazon chooses which authors to put into the program.  This means indie authors will get crumbs, if anything—but then again, the Big Six are not going along with the program just yet, so maybe Amazon won’t have any legacy authors in the lending list.

The Amazon site is so hard to negotiate.  It seems impossible to get to Author Central via the usual amazon.com—I have to google amazon author central and go in that way.  When I do, I find nothing about the lending library for indie authors.  Let me know about any gossip you might have.

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The cynical readers of this blog will think I’m being cute here…oxymorons-squared to end the week, anyone?  A more abstract question:  Does a President have to be a moral person to be a good President?  When we think back to some of the escapades our Commanders-in-Chief were embroiled in during the first hundred years or so of this country, it’s clear to me there’s not a high degree of correlation between moral behavior and leadership skill.  I’m not just talking about dalliances with women either.

When we get into the 20^th century, especially the latter half, scurrilous behavior seems common in the Oval Office.  Kennedy had his alleged affair with Ms. Monroe and rumor has it that Papa Joe bought the election for him by creating a coalition between the mob and the unions (see The Dark Side of Camelot by Seymour Hersh)—maybe that’s why the mob was so pissed when Bobby started going after them.

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#35:  OK, folks…I didn’t receive much help for writing reviews of anthologies.  Doug from eFiction offered some sage advice for those who write such a review in a MFA writing class but immediately qualified it by saying that most readers would want a very different review.  So, I took a wag at it.  You can see the results in Tuesday’s post to this blog (or, if you prefer, on Amazon).  Now you can help by reviewing the review….

#36:  Writers should challenge themselves now and then.  Writing the review for Alex Carrick’s Three Scoops Is a Blast was such a challenge, albeit only a brief struggle.  Writing my first YA (young adult) novel The Secret Lab was more long term but equally rewarding.  I’m now sketching out a new YA novel.  WD (Writer’s Digest) has a good article about how the author should not parent his young YA heroes.  Better late than never.  I struggled with this when writing Lab and employed many of their suggestions before they ever thought of writing the article.  Nevertheless, authors interested in writing YA stories and novels should read their advice.  (Also see #39.)

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Indie authors know all about the internet as a home for cottage industries.  Even if you use Amazon or Barnes & Noble or some other online retailer as a distributor, an indie author still has to publish, market, and sell his or her books.  The author’s writing or content is the industrial product and the reader is the customer who buys that product.

Services for authors and readers are a natural for internet cottage industries.  Google “ebook formatting” and see how many different services you find, for example—or “eBook cover design.”  There’s a website with info on forensics and many websites that discuss some or multiple aspects of the writing trade (see the list in “Steve’s Writing” here at this website).  For readers, there are services from the monolithic Goodreads (that probably started as a cottage industry) to websites or blogs more focused on reviews (see Holly Hook’s bargainebooks) to several online ezines—eFiction is one of the latest and open to submissions.

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Here’s my Amazon review of this book:  I liked it.  You will too.  Buy it.  (Sent via Twitter?)  Now, for a review with some meat on the bones—not fat.  I’ve never met Alex.  Those who know me and my Bookpleasures reviews know I won’t avoid negative criticism.  While this is not a Bookpleasures review, I apply the same standards (even more so, since I’m the editor here).  Bottom line:  Alex compares favorably with Charles Ives.  Consequently, this review is either negative or positive depending on whether you like Charles’ music.  If you’re just indifferent to Charles or don’t know who he is, Alex wins by default.  So, here goes….

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