Archive for October 2014

It’s the Great Pumpkin’ Promo!

Friday, October 31st, 2014

Get some “mind candy” for yourself. Raised eyebrows and big eyes, as you wonder if I’m some kind of scalper, dealer, or seller of Super Storm Sandy pre-owned cars, aren’t appropriate. This is a PG-13 website. I’m an introvert who writes books, not a scam artist. “Mind candy” here means “interesting books,” no more no less.

Running through Nov. 5, three of my 2014 ebooks are on sale, each one for $1.99. That’s a $3 savings on each book! The books will revert to the usual prices of $4.99 on Nov. 6. I realize you’re very good about your diet and avoid all the sugary and/or salty treats you hand out and your kids bring home. This promo allows you to indulge and brag to everyone how healthy you are (no one needs to know about the Snickers or Reese’s Pieces you sneak from your kids’ haul, right?).

The three books are: Soldiers of God (second ed.), Aristocrats and Assassins, and Muddlin’ Through. The first ebook is the bridge between the “Clones and Mutants Series” and the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy.” It was available previously only as an expensive Infinity trade paperback. The second book is the last entry in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series.” A new release in that series is coming up soon, so you can hit the ground running and build to the new release (there’s even a contest with rules specified at the end of A&A that will allow you to snatch up the new release for free!). The final ebook is the first in the “Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries”; the second book in that series will appear early next year.
Of course, this “mind candy” isn’t completely healthy. There’s a chance you will lose sleep and be breathless as you read each book—that’s why they’re also called thrillers, although all three are crossovers, that is, mystery/suspense/thriller. Maybe you should check your BP while you read, but you won’t have to worry about the sugar intake (leave the kids’ bags alone!).

This is a great opportunity to purchase three recent books at a bargain price. Tell your friends and relatives. Remember, you don’t even need a Kindle because Amazon sells a Kindle app that allows you to read an ebook formatted for a Kindle on most any device. Note that lending is enabled for these ebooks—you only need to buy one per family (or book club, if yours works that way).

There are other new bargain ebooks that might interest you too. World Enough and Crime, a new crime anthology, contains my short story “The Case of the Carriageless Horse,” a tale about Detective Castilblanco’s first homicide case. And The Collector, the next Chen and Castilblanco tale, will be out soon, at $4.99, still a bargain compared to the ebooks from major publishers that are generally start at twice this price—I run my writing business on a shoestring budget and pass the savings on to you, dear reader.

Happy Spooky, Freaky, Scary, and Weird Halloween!

New physics and old physicists…

Thursday, October 30th, 2014

At the end of ABC World News one evening last week, Kip Thorne made an appearance.  Seems he was a consultant for the new movie Interstellar.  The subject, of course, was FTL (faster-than-light) travel, what you need to visit other star systems in subjective times less than several hundreds of human generations.  Seemed Thorne was proposing wormholes (Deep Space Nine, anyone?).  While most sci-fi authors (including myself) just write a few words of pseudo-scientific technobabble and then get on with the story, I guess the director of Interstellar wanted to put some fancy ribbon around the technobabble.  I’m sure Prof. Thorne did a good job.

Generations of grad students have struggled with Einstein’s general theory of relativity.  The “classic texts” are Weinberg’s more experimentally grounded tome and the much longer differential geometry-oriented tome written by Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler (yes, that same Thorne).  Both were creatively and simply titled Gravitation.  Between the two, you had more than enough information to solve any problem on a PhD qualifying exam related to that subject, assuming you had learned the material well, of course.  Feynman’s simpler and less mathematical introduction in some of the first editions of the second volume of his famous lectures could be used to get in the mood, so to speak (Feynman did the same with his introduction to quantum mechanics in Vol. 3; with a bit more material, it’s a better introduction than any you’ll find elsewhere).

(more…)

News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #74…

Friday, October 24th, 2014

Item: Attacking Amazon.  OK, I said I wouldn’t weigh in on the Amazon v. Hachette kerfuffle anymore, but I must say here that the one-sidedness continues.  Paul Krugman, NY Times columnist and ex-economist, wrote in his column last Monday, “Amazon has too much power and uses that power to hurt America.”  Holy Jumpin’ Jokers, Batman, they must be worse than ISIS!  Do we need boots-on-the-ground, Paul, to invade the Amazon warehouses that are hurting America?  Is Bezos going to terrorize Patterson and the other 899 one-percent authors throwing their financial weight around and wringing their hands about the evil man?

Should we ask the Secret Service, as bad as it is, to start guarding these irreplaceable, fearful, and unhappy “best selling” authors, faithful disciples of the Big Five, or have SWAT teams move in on all the thousands of indie authors who follow the teachings of Iman Bezos?  Or, Paul, are you just suffering early dementia but aren’t willing to admit it?  If not, you should stick to your usual modus operandi of bloviating about economics and politics and such, i.e. things where you can better pretend that you have something intelligent to offer to your readers.

(more…)

Interviewing romance author Callie Norse…

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2014

[Note from Steve: We have a real treat today.  Readers are probably tired of my pushing thriller, mystery, and sci-fi novels, so Callie Norse, romance writer from the great Midwest, has kindly subjected herself to my interview questions.  She’s the author of the 4-book Carrington series, a series of romance/mystery/paranormal novels; the corresponding titles are For the Love of Lisa, A Love Too Soon, The Anniversary…not to be forgotten, and Flashes from the Past, available in both paperback and eBook formats.  She’s also written the short sci-fi story “Taken,” a story of alien abduction, available as an eBook.  Without further ado, here’s Callie.]

 

About Callie…

Steve: First, let’s get some bio information about you.

Callie:  I’m married. My husband and I live in Northern Illinois, and have three grown sons, and six grandchildren. I worked in banking for seven years, then became a stay-at-home mom. I have always been an avid reader. My love for writing was inspired by my eighth grade teacher, when she asked that we write short stories for class. I dedicated Flashes from the Past to her.

 

Callie on writing…

Steve: Why, how, and when did you start writing?

Callie: I began writing short stories when my children were young. My first manuscript was after the loss of my parents, only 16 days apart, in 1991. I wrote the story of their illnesses and how my siblings and I dealt with their illnesses and eventual loss. The first book of my series was developed out of one of those first short stories.

Steve: Did you publish the first book you wrote? (more…)

What happened to fractals?

Tuesday, October 21st, 2014

I still have a copy of Benoit B. Mandelbrot’s The Fractal Geometry of Nature sitting on my shelf.  That 1982 hardcover edition is $31.90 on Amazon now.  Surprisingly, there is a 2010 Kindle edition, priced at $45.06, technically an eTextbook.  I say surprisingly because the original had many graphics pages.  I guess you’d better have a Kindle Fire or some other color tablet; you won’t see much on the Kindle paper white.  The coffee-table size of the original must have made the Kindle edition difficult too.

That said, I wonder how many millennials know what a fractal is.  Computer science types of all ages might, because displaying fractals is often a programming exercise (best seen on the high-res monitors found with graphics workstations).  However, even for them, fractals might seem akin to the much simpler Lissajous figures—very intriguing graphics, but so what?  Graphics artists might be familiar with fractals as an option when portraying landscapes like mountains and so forth.  The origins of these computer applications can be found as wow-content in Mandelbrot’s book.

(more…)

News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #73…

Friday, October 17th, 2014

Item: Let’s bury the Hachette.  Yeah, I know, Hachette is French and probably not pronounced like hatchet, but I couldn’t resist.  What I’m arguing for is to forget about the Amazon v. Hachette saber rattling.  These behemoths can rattle their corporate steel as much as they want, and the NY Times can write as many biased articles about the controversy as they want.  I’m tired of it.  Moreover, everything’s been said already; I’m not seeing any new thoughts (in spite of Lee Child).  Trad-pubbing v. indie pubbing is the more general issue, but all these controversies are starting to remind me of the Betamax v. VHS controversy.  Market forces (that’s most readers, by the way, and they protect themselves nicely by deciding what to buy) will determine the outcome.  Meanwhile, I’d rather work on my books.  (FYI from 10/17: The NY Times continues its one-sided presentation of this kerfuffle today in spite of the Times’ ombudswoman’s determination that their coverage is one-sided.  Oh well….)

Item: Some common misconceptions.  In my next-to-last sentence, I used the word “books.”  I’m using it as a generic term, like “novels” or “anthologies.”  Of course, all my books are in ebook format.  One common misconception among the reading public is that an ebook isn’t a book if it doesn’t have a pbook version (hard cover, trade paperback, or paperback).  One of the great things about today’s publishing environment is that readers have access to books in many ways—serialized online, ebooks, hard bound, trade paperbacks, paperbacks, audio books—who knows if new ways will appear.  My books, though, are defined by the words I put together to entertain my readers.  How I release them to the waiting public doesn’t morph them into non-books!

(more…)

American vistas…

Thursday, October 16th, 2014

The settings for many of my stories cover a variety of venues, from the NYC area where I now live, to other places in the U.S., Asia, Europe, and South America, to Earth’s solar system and beyond.  My characters have traipsed through five of the seven continents (guess which ones I’ve not considered).  My having lived abroad for many years gives me a broader perspective than some authors, I suppose, but any detailed knowledge could probably be obtained via Google nowadays (some of the scenes from Aristocrats and Assassins and Muddlin’ Through are exceptions).  But many people, myself included at times, tend to forget the scenic vistas we Americans can enjoy right here at home.

This isn’t an article written for Frommer’s.  I just want to reminisce a bit about some sites I’ve seen in this country and some I should see if my time on this planet allows it.  Let me start on the West Coast, where I was born.  While the drought is changing California (one town in Tulare County, my home county, named Porterville, has no water, for example), I lived a childhood of privilege—not one of material wealth, but one of scenic wealth.  Living in the county seat of Visalia, aka the gateway to Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks to the locals, at least (Fresno likes to claim that title too), I could see Mt. Whitney on a clear day.  I could visit those park areas by going east and visit the great Pacific Ocean going west.  The snow stayed up on the Sierra Nevada Mountains, where snow should stay.

(more…)

Review of Lee Mims’ Trusting Viktor…

Wednesday, October 15th, 2014

(Lee Mims, Trusting Viktor, Midnight Ink, 2014, B00HNEPEZC)

[Note from Steve: The author has agreed to do an interview.  Readers can learn more about her and her writing life.  Coming soon!]

This novel is the kind I love to read and write—here you have a pulsating thriller.  But the book is also a two-fer, with mystery and suspense dominating the thriller elements.  Whatever you call the genre, it is an interesting and exciting read.

The background for this story can be found in real-life exploration and exploitation of natural gas deposits.  The protagonist, geologist Cleo Cooper, is a woman with two grown kids and an ex who isn’t quite sure he made the right choice in ending their marriage.  Cooper’s on-off-on-again flings with a Russian hunk, a graduate geology student studying in the U.S. (and the Viktor of the title), seem disconnected with a series of incidents where the author offers many misdirects about what is going on.  By writing in the first person, Ms. Mims slowly peels off the layers of a rather rotten onion that involves WWII deep ocean derelicts.  The protagonist’s discovery mission is what makes this story a classic and entertaining mystery.

(more…)

Gardens…

Wednesday, October 8th, 2014

Many people love their gardens, whether they’re filled with flowers, shrubs, and trees, or vegetables.  More generally, many people love expansive places where they can jog, feed the ducks, or just sit on a bench enjoying the sun or shade while maybe talking to a friend.  What would New York City be without its High Line or Central Park?  What would DC be without its Mall or National Zoo?  What would Boston be without the Commons and Gardens?  What would San Francisco be without Golden Gate Park?

I can go on and on.  My sci-fi thriller Evil Agenda features both the Botanical Garden in Barcelona and “Needle Park” in Zurich, if I remember correctly (that’s one problem with having written so many books—I can’t keep things straight anymore!).  The first is beautiful; the second not so much.  But that’s not the point of this post.  My point is that gardens and parks are used in literature for multiple things, from a tryst between lovers (vampires or otherwise) to murders and rapes.  Even in big cities, there are out-of-the-way places and times where the gardens or parks are deserted.  That makes them ideal for staging certain events that we write about.

(more…)

Seasons…

Tuesday, October 7th, 2014

In the spirit of last Tuesday’s post on global warming and greenhouse gases and the current changing of the seasons (something affecting both hemispheres, mind you), I thought I’d write about a few things we human beings take for granted about Gaia.  One thing is the tilt of the planet’s axis.  Gaia’s is optimal.  It’s the Goldilocks Principle all over again: too little tilt and the equatorial zones could become too hot, with maybe sweltering jungles or dry deserts; too much tilt and the winters everywhere could become too harsh, perhaps making the planet like that Ice Planet in Star Wars (probably without the white apes, because they wouldn’t have anything to eat).

We often complain about the seasons.  My friendsl have likely heard me say, “Gee, I wish it was between 65 and 75 and sunny all year around.”  I’d qualify this by recognizing the need for rain, but raining only at night would be nice, wouldn’t it?  Medellin, Colombia falls into that temperature range most of the time, but temperature in Colombia is a strong function of altitude, which means other parts of the country can be sweltering.  That’s one way to avoid some effects of no axis tilt—just throw some high mountains into the mix.  But high altitudes can cause problems.  People have nosebleeds even in Denver.  Elderly Bogotanos (residents of Colombia’s capital) are often advised to retire to lower altitudes if they can, especially if they have cardiac problems.  Equatorial countries experience many of the effects that an E-type planet with little or no axis tilt might have.

(more…)