#130: The blog site indiebookspot.com has interviewed me.  To see more about what makes your favorite author tick, see: Steve’s interview.  I recommend this site to all indie readers and authors.

#131: The writers for the TV series Lost, now writing ABC’s Once Upon A Time, have carried creative license too far once again.  In Lost, they lost viewers with their flashforwards, the opposite of flashbacks (the show lived off the latter).  Viewers were also disillusioned by the strange ending of the series—or, should I say non-ending.  Now, in Once Upon A Time, they have been fracturing fairy tales in the tradition of Rocky and Bullwinkle, but without the humor.  That’s acceptable creative license.  However, with Sunday’s episode about the Mad Hatter, their creative license should be revoked.  Through the Looking Glass is not a fairy tale in the usual sense of the word.  In fact, the story of Alice is no more a fairy tale than the books in the Harry Potter series.  It is a fantasy.  It should have its own universe and not be in contact with the one of the Grimm brothers.  Nitpicking?  Maybe…but, I reacted negatively.

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Scott, a frequent commenter to my blog posts, stated in one of his comments, the following:  “It almost seems like you have to be a scientist or almost one to write good SF today!”  At the risk of taking him out of context, this is the theme of today’s post.  To paraphrase Scott, how do we reconcile a scientist’s no-nonsense focused pursuit of good data and elegant theories with the creativity and imagination of a master storyteller?  Is there cause and effect here?  Or, do we just have the synergistic nexus of two different personality traits.

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In my post about health coverage last week, I mentioned that immigration has also disappeared as a 2012 electoral topic.  Immigration policies are complex and their appearances on the political stage have often degenerated into a lot of heated rhetoric.  Moreover, there is a health care policy component to them.  At the risk of making some readers furious with me, let me throw out some ideas.  Caveat emptor:  I’m no expert.  However, the politicos have buried their heads in the sand once again on this issue, leaving the soapbox to others, so here goes.

There is legal and illegal immigration into the U.S.  There are things wrong with both of them, although the first doesn’t generate the debate the second does.  However, it is imperative to consider the things wrong with the first that cause some of the wrong with the second.  Moreover, percolating through all this complex strata we find economic and health care issues (these are also economic to a large extent).

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Einstein’s special theory of relativity differs from ordinary Galilean relativity in that the scientist who ended up looking like a beat poet made the assumption that the speed of light is constant in all inertial reference frames.  That and the key word “inertial” makes the theory “special,” as opposed to “general.”  (This is an over-simplification—the general theory is really a non-quantum theory of gravity, generalizing Newtonian gravity).  Back in September, physicists associated with the Italian Opera experiment shook the world in announcing that Einstein’s assumption was incorrect.  A sensor detected CERN-emitted neutrinos 453 miles away—the distance divided by the time lag gives a velocity.

Scientists hit the hooch, refusing to believe the results.  As an ex-scientist, I did too.  Over a century of experiments had confirmed Einstein’s assumption (it’s still true in the general theory, by the way).  I had a number of people ask me about the experiment.  Some even said, “Wow, Einstein was wrong!”  My response was, “Let’s wait and see.”  One experiment doesn’t overturn a theory—repeated experimental confirmation is required.  The lesson learned here is that, whether he was right or wrong, Eisnstein was just a very able theoretician.  Experiments determine the physics and the scientific method always prevails—theories have to be tested.  In this case, the disbelief spurred experimentalists to check the Opera results.

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#123: FREE & NEW EBOOK!  Special St. Patrick’s Day promotion: free download from Amazon KDP of the new thriller Angels Need Not Apply—3 days only (today Friday, Saturday, and Sunday).  This is a sequel to The Midas Bomb—NYPD Detectives Chen and Castilblanco battle terrorists and a Mexican cartel.  Ex-Navy SEAL Castilblanco shows he still knows how to fight and Ex-Army Ranger Chen shows she knows how to be both tough and sexy.  Download and enjoy with your Guinness or Jameson’s—promotion ends Monday.

#124: See young adult author H. M. Prévost’s review of The Secret Lab and my interview with her.  The Secret Lab, my sci-fi thriller for young adults and adults young-at-heart, is still only $0.99—a bargain download from all of your favorite eBook online dealers.  Even if you’re allergic to cats, you will fall in love with the arrogant and aloof Mr. Paws.  Enjoy.  (Ms. Prévost is the author of the YA novel Desert Fire.)

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[Today’s blog post is a three-peat of one about Irish writers—celebrating St. Paddy’s Day, of course!  Irish men and women have migrated to the far corners of the Earth.  Some have migrated back.  Some stayed home.  They have suffered the boom and bust of late 20^th and early 21^st century economics.  Their Church scandals involving priests and choirboys have made ours in the U.S. seem minor, yet Ireland is still the most Catholic country in Europe.  The Irish, above all, are resilient.  Their writers reflect this resiliency.]

The title quote is by George Bernard Shaw.  Saturday is St. Patrick’s Day, so I thought today was a perfect day to set the record straight: many great writers in the English language that you may have heard about are not English but Irish.

Shaw was one of them.  His plays and other writings poked fun at the English establishment, a commendable thing to do even today.  His biting wit transferred easily into words on the page and probably embarrassed everyone from royalty on down.  On the other hand, the endurance of his work over the years is proof of its quality—it is classic literature in the English language written by an Irishman.

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#121:  FULL MEDICAL NOW FREE!  If you read my novel Evil Agenda in its serialized form in my blog, or in its spruced-up re-edited eBook version, here’s your chance to see where it all began for free!  Full Medical, prequel to Evil Agenda, is now available free in three-day promotion, starting TODAY!  Promotion lasts Friday, March 2, through Sunday, March 4.

For those in the know, this means that Full Medical is in the KDP Select catalog (the first edition is still available from Xlibris only as a trade paperback), so you can also borrow it from Amazon when the promotion is over.  If you haven’t read Evil Agenda, consider the promotion as a way to get The Clones and Mutants Series for only $2.99 (Full Medical for free and Evil Agenda for $2.99).  Inexpensive spring reading…and lots of it!

#122:  If you missed it in my own blog (last December 22), see my guest post “The Eightfold Way” on Penny Sansevieri’s February 29^th Author Marketing Experts blog (thanks to Paula Krapf of AME for the posting).  It’s a list of eight don’ts for writers of novels from my perspective as reader, reviewer, and, of course, writer.  This will also appear as a guest post in AuthorU.org’s blog.  AME offers marketing tips while AuthorU focuses on its community of authors—both sites highly recommended.

In libris libertas….

Author:  [Whispers, like announcing the Masters.]  Readers, today I’m interviewing Caitlin Murphy, FBI agent and main protagonist in my sci-fi thriller Soldiers of God.  [My normal voice.]  Caitlin, you had a thing for the priest, Juan Pablo Gomez.  How’s he doing?

Murphy:  Funny you ask.  I just received a video-mail from him.  He’s looking a bit gray and says there’s a lot of intrigue in the Vatican.  Since Vatican security is more secretive than all of our agencies combined, I knew better to press for more information.  I imagine he has some interesting stories to tell, though.

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(Gary Lindberg, The Shekinah Legacy, 2011, ISBN 978-0-9848565-1-0, Kindle)

To define the genre of this book, think of Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code.  To determine whether you will be entertained by reading it, think better than Dan Brown’s thriller.  All hype aside, this is the book that Mr. Brown should have written.  Why?  It is as an exciting alternative religious history filled with plenty of action and interesting plot twists.  It is based on real research, at least as real as Mr. Brown’s, after all the discussion about how authentic his sources were.  Moreover, where Mr. Brown only incurred the wrath of the Vatican, Mr. Lindberg might incur the wrath of all major religions (I hope not—people, this is just fiction!).

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