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!

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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.

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(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.

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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.

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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.

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Do you turn news programs off when they start up with “pop news”?  Do you look at the magazines at the supermarket checkout with disgust?  Are you tired of paparazzi pursuing cult figures, and cult figures smacking around the paparazzi?  Are you fed up with the media turning killers into cult figures?  My answer to these questions is yes.  Maybe ordinary people’s lives are just so damn boring and dull that they become fascinated with personalities.  As a result, some become so larger-than-life from the media’s snowball effect that it always amuses me.  While part of human nature, following this seems a poor investment for a person’s time, though.

The Clintons, that shining example of marital bliss and fidelity, are having a grandchild.  Whoopee!  The media immediately creates the question, will this affect Hillary’s decision to run for president?  I don’t care.  You shouldn’t either.  But let’s hope her decision is made independently, weighing considerations that actually have something to do with a presidential run.  George Clooney, that shining example of liberal and progressive Hollywood thought, just tied the knot.  Given the fact that the wedding was estimated to have cost $13 million, it would seem that an elopement was in order so that the money could be better spent on his innumerable causes.  The one-percenters who get rich and then become do-gooders—the Clintons and the Clooneys are but two examples—make me suspicious.  They do their do-gooding after they become rich and famous.  Much appreciated, but why should Clinton’s Global Initiative or Clooney’s charity work and causes receive any more media attention than ordinary people’s where they’re working for charities like food banks and soup kitchens or taking up causes like campaigns to preserve the environment or stop global warming?

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[The first three movies below share a common feature—an aging protagonist who can really kick some butt!  They’re also representative of what I most like to watch, read, and write.  Sure, I read and write sci-fi too, but I split the time with the mystery/suspense/thriller genre.  The last movie is a comedy…of horrors!]

Hostage.  Robert Crais’ books, Hostage (2001) and Taken (2012), are definitely material for movie screenplays.  Hostage is a stand-alone; the movie stars Bruce Willis in a role that’s more serious—he isn’t the flippant smart-aleck so common in his other films.  He doesn’t quite master the suffering hound dog face of Harrison Ford, but he comes close.  He’s an ex-hostage negotiator from LA who left there seeking peace and quiet in the boonies because he lost a hostage—he doesn’t find the peace and quiet, though.  Probably because it’s based on a book, the plot here isn’t half bad.  Some neat twists too.  There’s lots of action and violence, very little romance.  I saw this on Encore, but most people will probably watch it on Netflix.  Recommended.

The November Man.  In this Hollywood version of Bill Granger’s There Are No Spies (1981), from the November Man series, Pierce Brosnan is an ex-spy who has to return to the game.  Speaking of Willis, this is what the movie Red should have been.  Brosnan as the ex-spy is an older version of Damon as Bourne, tough and lethal, but also a man with a heart.  Some strange geo-political maneuverings are going on as we learn yet another version of how the Chechen War started (I presume the book had some other international kerfuffle—never read it).  May Putin suffer the same fate as the Russian villain in this film.  Spoiler alert: there are American villains too!  Don’t look for Le Carre here—this is more action and thrills than intrigue.  Very enjoyable, though.

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I’m amused by the euphemistic phrase “climate control.”  Have we become so politically correct that we can’t say “don’t poison the environment” or “don’t kill Gaia”?  Even the latter phrases don’t put the blame where it belongs.  The very liberal NYC mayor Bill De Blasio is calling to reduce the Big Apple’s greenhouse gases by 80% by 2050.  That’s laughable not only for the date but because NYC’s contribution represents one little drop in a huge ocean of pollution in the Northeastern U.S.  Every wee bit helps, I suppose, but the city and its people don’t produce most of the greenhouse gases and pollution.  It’s industry.  Our slogan should be “control industry’s excesses.”  But industry likes the phrase “climate control” because it avoids blame.  It wants people to forget that it’s industry that’s destroying the planet.  De Blasio is a nincompoop falling into industry’s trap.  But what else is old news?

NYC might be producing tons of garbage and polluting waterways with sewage effluent, but industry is the culprit for that and other pollution as well.  Has been, is, and will always will be, unless controls are enacted to lower greenhouse emissions.  I don’t want to hear any whining about the cost.  Sure, we want to make this reduction as painless as possible—heaven forbid that we use a few millions out of the many billions industry makes in order to clean up the planet it’s made into a dirty mess!  Industry is naïve.  Do they think they’ll still be making these billions when the world’s population is starved of oxygen and simmering on the polluted planet that’s fast becoming another Venus?  Greed obviously has no foresight, no appreciation for future problems in its haste to roll in the dough.  Industry lives for the present, not the future.  It doesn’t give a rat’s ass about human beings, let alone the environment.

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Item: Hachette-bias at the Times.  It continues.  David Streitfeld, a Times reporter, brought out the barbs again in his article, “A Writerly Chill at Bezos’ Fire” (Sunday, Sept. 21).  Let’s ignore the fact that “writerly” isn’t even a word (being able to write isn’t a skill most Times reporters have, so I won’t embarrass Mr. Streitfeld by harping on this).  To summarize: every fall, Mr. Bezos invites well-known novelists to his Campfire, a literary weekend in Santa Fe, NM.

To quote Mr. Streitfeld in all his eloquence, “Writers loved it.  There was no hard sell of Amazon, or soft sell.”  Yet this year some writers won’t attend.  You guessed it: all the thoroughbred horses in the Hachette stable, along with any other one-percenter authors following Doug Preston and James Patterson’s rallying calls for attacks on Amazon, these are the people who aren’t going.  Hugh Howey, sci-fi writer and champion of indie publishing, doesn’t want to go either because readers and writers are caught in the middle of this mess.  PeePee (Patterson and Preston) won’t be invited, to be sure—would Churchill have invited Hitler over for a little campfire shindig?

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I was recently encouraged by NASA’s decision to use Space-X and Boeing to send astronauts to the International Space Station.  You might say, “Well, you’re a sci-fi writer, so I’m not surprised!”  Yes indeed, I have written a few sci-fi stories.  I also write suspenseful thrillers and mysteries.  Only one of my stories takes place on ISS (The Secret Lab), so I don’t have any particular agenda.  In fact, I’ve conjectured that the Chinese will make it to Mars first (see Survivors of the Chaos).  Cancelling the Shuttle Program only convinced me more.

I’m encouraged for two reasons.  The first is that it’s high time capitalism goes into space.  I’m talking good capitalism here, the kind that improves products and services and increases the inventive spirit through healthy competition.  Changing the slogan “We have to beat the Russians to the moon!” to “We Space-X engineers and scientists have to beat Boeing’s” is a positive development.  The more competitors, the merrier, I say, as long as there are enough oversight and control to keep things like o-ring mishaps to a minimum (does that company still exist?).

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