[Disclaimer: I’m not paid to see these movies, and I’m not paid for these reviews.  They only represent my opinion about what I’ve seen on the silver screen.  Use these reviews as an independent and objective source for your movie-viewing activities.  You might disagree with me—if so, comment.]

Birdman.  From what I’ve read and heard outside the theater, people either love this movie or hate it.  I’m in the second camp.  It’s an awful movie where talented people overact, both in the play within the movie, and in their “real lives.”  It’s ironic that Michael Keaton, the first Batman, plays a washed-up movie superhero trying to make a big splash on Broadway.  His rampage in the dressing room reminds me of Elizabeth Taylor’s overacting in Virginia Woolf.  The only saving grace is Lindsay Duncan, as scurrilous Broadway critic Tabitha (great name for a witch, right?), who reminded me why I hate most critics who exemplify this twist on the teaching adage, “Those who can act, do so; those who can’t, offer scathing and unfair critiques, usually with zero content and obvious bias.”  (I guess I’m the latter too, but I don’t get paid for being acerbic.)   She does manage to say something positive, though; to say more about when and how would be a spoiler.  Don’t waste your money on this one, though: F–.

My Fair Lady.  I can almost see the eyebrows rising.  I commented somewhere (my blog maybe?) that this play and West Side Story are the Broadway musicals I measure all Broadway musical plays by.  So I jumped at the chance to watch the Hollywood movie version yet again, even though I have it on VHS somewhere in my man cave (probably brittle with age by now, but I still have a VHS tape player).  It was listed by the NY Times last Saturday as the top thing to watch, so I went to TCM (TMC?  I can’t keep all the cable acronyms straight anymore) and watched.  I then reflected on the Times blurb (to be fair, maybe provided by TCM?).  The tone in that blurb started rankling me.  There were too many kudos for Warner Brothers Studios, how great the movie was (true), and what a great service the studio, producer, and director performed in bringing the great Broadway show to the silver screen (mixed bag).

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I wish there was one, a turn-the-crank algorithm that allows me to produce one every time I write.  I, of course, can’t claim to have written one, no matter what definition you use.  Why am I qualified to write this then?  Because I read a lot, even books considered “bestsellers” (Flash Boys was the last one, but that’s non-fiction.)  I can’t discover a formula.  Take the genres I write in.  I’ve read much better mysteries than Gone Girl, for example.  What made that a “bestseller”?  Hype maybe, but when you compare to other bestsellers, it’s hard to determine some commonality.  Why?

First, what do I mean by bestseller?  It’s a bit like porn, I suppose…I usually know one when I see it (although, like the case of Gone Girl, I just have to take other people’s word).  To Kill a Mockingbird, the author’s first and only book, is still a bestseller; so is The Hunt for Red October (although less so).  So bestseller has something to do with number of copies sold (or checked out in public libraries).  It probably has little to do with the NY Times Book Review, though, which would rank Clancy higher than Harper Lee due more to the rate of sales, not the total number of books sold.  Presumably Lee’s Mockingbird will still be popular long after Collins’ Mockingjay goes the way of all badly written sci-fi schlock; the first book has staying power, whereas the Times emphasizes quick returns for publishers (why not?  They’re a publisher!).

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[Note from Steve: This is my “official newsletter” that appears most Fridays.  It often contains acerbic comments about reading, writing, and the writing business, as well as some self-promotion—why not?  As always, read at your own risk…and comment when you feel like it.]

Item: Those clever devils!  In my last newsletter, I mentioned Michael Connelly’s book The Burning Room (a Harry Bosch novel).  I confirmed I paid $3.99 for it, although at the time of the newsletter it was up to $4.99.  It’s back to $3.99 (12/9/14).  Lee Child’s Personal (a Jack Reacher novel) is $9.99 (just squeezing under my $10 limit), but I bought it for $3.25 (also confirmed).  Either the Big Five are playing retail pricing games, or Amazon’s taking their well-deserved victory lap and jockeying prices up and down to drive the Big Five nuts—probably both.  My conclusion: my new limit is $5.  When I see a big name author’s ebook between $2.99 and $4.99, I’ll probably buy it.  That way I won’t feel swindled when I don’t like the book (Child’s) and will be pleased when I do (Connelly’s).

Item: Do the Brits really know English?  Lee Child is a Brit (born in Coventry), but sometimes he seems linguistically challenged (any writer is at times, of course).  In Personal (see above), he has Reacher make the self-appraisal that he speaks (and presumably writes) as a man of the world, an international crime fighter with no discernible accent, whereas his platonic partner, Casey Nice (Child channeling Ian Fleming with the antithesis of Pussy Galore?), is hobbled in London with her Midwestern American accent.  I found that whole charade hilarious—probably not Child’s intention.  Remember that Jack Reacher is the character who suffers from chronic diarrhea of conjunctions, or unfamiliarity with commas, depending on your point of view, because “and” is likely to appear so many times in his sentences.  So here’s my question: Is Child a typical Brit?  Do they really have trouble with the language?  Or, do they just stumble when trying to sound like Yanks?

Item.  French hypocrisy?  Speaking of language difficulties, ever been to Paris and try to speak French to Parisians?  I once asked a bus driver for the time, and he pointed angrily to a clock tower we were passing, not wanting to respond like a normal, civilized person (my French, at the time, was a whole lot better than Bush’s Spanish, enough to make a report in a police station to indifferent and lazy gendarmes who didn’t give a rat’s ass that I’d been mugged).  It’s better outside Paris, of course, but Parisians make New Yorkers seem like the most polite people on the planet.  With their famous l’Academie, they try to preserve the purity of the language too, even though “le weekend” and other Frenchified anglo-saxon words make that an impossible task.   I just wish they’d try to speak and write English correctly as much as they insist that we try to speak and write French correctly.

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Item: Hachette v. Amazon fallout?  Not much seen, actually.  I bought a copy of Michael Connelly’s The Burning Room, though.  This ebook cost me $3.99, I think, but it’s now listed at $4.99.  In either case, that’s in the “sweet spot” between $2.99 and $4.99, the latter price not bad for a new book of this length.  So…maybe the fallout will be subtle, with Hachette and other Big Five publishers realizing that they must sell ebooks at reasonable prices in order to compete—no one wants to pay almost the hardbound price for an ebook these days.  And, to benefit from Amazon’s domination of the ebook market, the Big Five have to change their business models in order to survive too.  Changes in author royalites also coming?

Item: Deaver’s experiments continue.  Prolific author Jeffery Deaver, like James Patterson, has more money than God, so he can afford to experiment with us mere mortals.  First, he writes a garbage-dominated rendering of a 007 adventure (literally and figuratively).  His next experiment was writing a book in reverse; I stopped after the first two (last two?) chapters, disgusted with the whole idea.  Now he’s come out with The Starling Project, a book that’s not a book, at least traditionally speaking, because it’s only available as an audio book (most audibles have a book version).  With voices from Alfred Molina and friends (and maybe sound effects?), is this the future?  If so, indies will be priced out of the competition.

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I love to chat with other authors, even if it’s via the internet.  (In fact, I’m ugly and big enough that I might scare them in a face-to-face meeting!)  Linda Hall, whose excellent book Night Watch I recently reviewed, mentioned that my style was a bit like Raymond Chandler’s.  She was referring to my mystery/thriller/crime/detective series featuring NYPD homicide detectives Chen and Castilblanco (the series is now featured in my new look).  Oh, the memories!  I thought back to those many “hard-boiled detective stories” I read in my youth.  Linda is right in seeing their influence, but I use a different stylistic description; to me, “hard-boiled” means something more general, minimalist writing.  You’ll find it even in my sci-fi stories.

Minimalist writing is a technique to get the reader to participate in the creative process.  I want every reader to develop his own mental picture of Detective Castilblanco, physically but also in mannerisms, language, and actions, for example.  I have to paint a wee bit on the canvas, suggestions, as it were, but the reader has to finish the painting.  Is this lazy writing?  I suppose some writers would call it that.  It includes “hard-boiled,” of course, but goes much farther.  The truth of the matter is, unless you actually know Castilblanco and have been around him for years, your mental picture generated from my words on the page is just as valid as mine!

Long ago, I concluded that was what writers of hard-boiled detective stories were trying to do.  In that sense, those wonderful old and wonderful Sam Spade Bogart movies were less successful, because a movie viewer differs from a book reader.  A book has no visuals, beyond the cover.  While many might identify Sam Spade with Bogart, a reader of those tales who never saw the movies will have his own internal visual.  The written words on each page stimulate the human brain to create an imaginary picture of the character.  Every kid knows this  (I’d read my Tarzan comics and then go in the backyard  and jump off a cliff onto a threatening lion with a knife in my mouth—the cliff was a stepladder, but the knife, my Dad’s bait knife, was real).  Your mental picture of Castilblanco will differ from someone else’s.  Sure, there will be common elements—everyone will have Mr. C chomping on Tums, for example.

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It’s been said that the measure of your time on this planet is how long people remember you after you’re dead.  Notice I didn’t say that measure had to be positive.  A person could be a scurrilous SOB and be remembered for a long time—Hitler and Stalin come to mind, for example.  The other extreme might be Gandhi or Mother Teresa.

Creative people have an advantage in this respect because memory of the person can fade fast (even with the internet, very few people really know you, on the average), but the memory of their creations can live on and on.  Michelangelo comes to mind.  Maybe in some far future people will even forget his name, but his creations could be eternal, to a close approximation.  Sculptors, painters, musicians, and, yes, authors, can enjoy a kind of permanence that others can’t.

That might be a motivation for creating works of art and literature, a motivation that today could range from the altruistic desire to leave your artistic message to future generations, to the simple financial desire to bequeath something of dollar value to your progeny.  For the creator of artworks and literature, the “discovery problem” might not be solved in their lifetime.  Fortune is fickle, though, so some of their survivors, those holding the rights to their works, might become rich when their ancestor’s discovered.

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If you traveled this holiday, be thankful you arrived…hopefully you’ll have a safe return.  If you managed to eat and drink in moderation, be thankful for that–many people fail miserably.  If you were constantly thinking of bargain sales all this week, you should get a life–that’s not in the spirit of this holiday.

The Thanksgiving holiday is just that…a day of thanks.  You might be an immigrant mother and father living in fear that ICE will come knocking at your door.  You might be homeless and/or hungry.  You might be a poor soldier eating his or her MRE, wondering if a bullet or IED will be your Christmas gift this year.  You might be a single mother working two shifts and another job on weekends but still wondering who’s going to play Santa to your kids.  You might be a patient in a hospice with stage four cancer.

All I can say is that there’s always someone worse off than you.  That’s why everyone of us has something to be thankful for.  You can rest assured that your situation could be a lot worse.

So, celebrate the holiday today, even if you have only a few small things to be thankful for.  That’s what this holiday is about.

Above all, be thankful that you’re still alive.  Just being alive is the greatest adventure one can have in this Universe.  Our time on Earth is all too finite, but it’s our time.  Live it to the fullest you can…and be thankful you had the opportunity.

[Regular blog posts will resume next Tuesday.]

Gone Girl.  OMG.  Some good acting (the woman detective and the shyster lawyer) mitigate the pain, but this is still a slog—bad plot, stereotyped characters, some ridiculous dialog, and a hackneyed score make me wonder, why bother?  You shouldn’t.  Because the author of the book wrote the screenplay, I assume the book is just as bad (never read it—too damn expensive—and now I never want to).  Maybe all those fans see something I don’t, but my knee-jerk reaction was that this was the stereotypical story of the excessively jealous spouse.  The entire universe is contained in that microscopic black hole—no problems important to society are permitted in.  Typical of Hollywood, I guess, and too many books in this genre—boring pablum for the masses!  Not recommended.

Interstellar. Another slog, almost three hours of it!  A real bladder-buster where you keep wondering, “Is this going to get any better?”  Forget the fact that the herky-jerky screenplay should have been trashed like the one of Ishtar.  I hate to admit that the outline of this movie loosely follows the first two books in my “Chaos Chronicle Trilogy,” a journey from a dystopian Earth to star colonies, but all resemblance ends with its mind-numbing technobabble and bad acting—or maybe good actors wasted by a bad screenplay (why I don’t mentioned actors’ names here)?  Only hard sci-fi addicts will understand what the Nolan duo is trying to do and realize they fail miserably.  Everyone else will wonder why they wasted almost three hours of their lives on this drivel.  If you want some good hard sci-fi, watch Avatar, Alien (not its sequels), Blade Runner (and most other movies based on Phillip K. Dick stories), and possibly a few others that Hollywood didn’t succeed mutilating.  Not recommended. (more…)

I have written three series and am starting a fourth.  A recent WD (that’s Writer’s Digest for my readers who aren’t authors) article interviews four series writers.  One of the writers is Ian Rankin, author of the Inspector Rebus novels; he’s someone I discovered when I was polishing my mystery, crime, and police procedural writing skills.  Unfortunately (and typically?), the interviewer led these four down a few blind alleys, so I can’t recommend this article beyond saying my interest was more in what Ian Rankin had to say about generalities than series per se.  The fundamental question remains: should you, as an author, set out to write a series?

My answer is an emphatic no!  One reviewer of Aristocrats and Assassins admired the fact that that novel can be read independently of the others in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series.”  I blush to say that the review went so far as to recommend that I give a course on how to make a series book also a stand-alone.  While anything in writing is reducible to some algorithmic logic with great difficulty, here’s my short course (and maybe what that WD article should have been?).  I might reiterate points in the WD article—dunno; like I said, I was only interested in what Rankin had to say about things in general.  I also might repeat points I’ve talked about in other articles about writing.  Bear with me—I promise to be logical about it.

Don’t set out to write a series!  That’s stupid.  Where would Harper Lee be if she set out to write a series?  Moreover, where would Lippincott be if they’d forced Ms. Lee to contract for a series?  (Well, maybe, still in existence, and not a dead body cast aside by Wolters Kluwer, but that’s not the point here.)  Yeah, I know, Steve Moore, like Ian Rankin, has that great detective/crime/police procedural series, “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco,” and you want to do something similar, you say.  (More on why that’s not a pigeon-hole to put C & C in later.)  The temptation is great.  Let me just say that The Midas Bomb, Full Medical, and Survivors of the Chaos, first books in their respective series, were NOT written with a series in mind.  The only book I’ve ever written with that in mind is Muddlin’ Through, and only because when I finished it my muses were already whispering in my ear that Mary Jo Melendez’ story wouldn’t end with that novel.

What bad things happen if you set out to write a series?  First, you are tempted simply to break a long story into two.  I did that a wee bit with Survivors of the Chaos, but I added a lot to that first book (the first part and large portions of the second), so much so that it became a stand-alone on its own merit.  I shelved copious amounts of material, in fact, thinking that only my heirs would see it, but my muses wouldn’t let up.  All that original material and material corresponding to Soldiers of God was written before Full Medical and The Midas Bomb.  I hoodwinked my muses, though, by putting most of those first books in the same alternate universe—different times, of course.  That’s a setting, not a series, and it spans centuries. (more…)

(Linda Hall, Night Watch, 2014, ebook ISBN 978-0-9877613-6-1, pbook ISBN 978-0-9877613-7-8, ASIN B00NKPI2WK)

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again.  One of the great pleasures I derive from reviewing books is discovering new authors I mightn’t notice otherwise.  Here we have an example.  Ms. Hall is a gifted writer and this novel is well written, entertaining, and different.  It’s a mystery with a different wrinkle.

Emmeline (Em) Ridge is a female boat delivery captain.  In other words, she’ll follow rich people around the oceans and deliver their sailing yachts to them.  En route to Bermuda, she is captaining a new fifty-two-foot luxury sailboat when she’s awaken below deck to learn that a crew member, Kricket Patterson, is overboard. It’s Em’s first sail after acquiring her captain’s license and not an auspicious start for the new captain.  Kricket’s the daughter of the owner of the yacht, but when the parents arrive to identify the recovered body, it turns out that she’s someone else who has Kricket’s passport.

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