Progressive protests start with a few concerned and responsible citizens deciding they’ve had enough. I can’t claim to be the first (the EU has been going after Google for a while), but I’ve hated Google for a long time. I finally did something about it.

Long before their kissing Ronald McDonald Trump’s fat McD’s butt and changing their map names (Denali to Mt. McKinley and Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America), Google’s browser Chrome was annoying me a lot. I’d already stopped using Facebook and X; Zuckerberg had proven himself to be a kiss-ass fascist oligarch backing Narcissus le Grand; and that slimy Elon Muskrat, who has no creds as a serious leader or even an elected office and is a complete fascist, lost my support the moment he walked into the X HQ with his kitchen sink. (The Muskrat probably had it lying around one of his penthouses, having replaced it with a gold one, because he’s emulating his fuehrer’s love for gold that represents their fascist greed and desires for power.)

Most progressives more than likely grimaced when they saw those fascist oligarchs sitting there as special invitees to the Donald Jackass Trump’s inaugurations events, the Muskrat not hiding his obsequious attitude with his ubiquitous Hitlerian salutes. And right there among those fascist oligarchs were the owners of Google whose names, like Voldemort, I’ll avoid saying so their evil will not fall upon you!

So, my personal vendetta against Google is because I know these American versions of Russian oligarchs much better than Putin’s. All of them—that Big Bot Bezos, that slimy Muskrat, the arrogant Sugar-Mountain Zuckerberg, etc., these “made men” in the jackass’s mafia—negatively affect my life and yours (if you’re an American) a lot more than Putin’s. But Google’s SOBs were also affecting me, a writer, every day of my writing life.

Their trackers followed me everywhere I went on the internet. Every search produced pages of unwanted ads, allowing Google’s oligarchs to become even richer by selling everyone’s information and ad space in searches to unscrupulous company CEOs just as abusive and greedy as Google’s masters, as if I’d ever buy anything from the bastards!

How did I strike back? There’s not much an author can do, I’ll admit, but I severed all ties with Google! I use DuckDuckGo now. I never used Gmail for my own fiction writing. (AB Carolan needed an address to register his stories with the Big Bezos Bot’s Amazon, which is generally a waste of time. Since I also hate the latter oligarch, readers can now write to AB by using the “Contact Page” at this website. [wink, wink])

As an FYI and added benefit, DuckDuckGo beats the crap our of Chrome! It has new features I’ll use a lot as an author. (For example, I can make both a “printable version” or a “PDF version”  of a web article, ones that are actually readable. Chrome still depends on MS Edge to do the latter, which often produces a damn mess. What? Is Bill Gates part of this evil oligarchy?)

I haven’t begun to explore all the other options available in DuckDuckGo’s dropdown menu and elsewhere, but it’s straightforward search results without Chrome’s annoying ads by themselves is worth the change! (For example, as an author, I might search for old KGB agent Putin’s favorite Russian poisons. Before, I fully expected that I’d receive offers to buy some samples at least for a few days from suppliers in Moscow if I used Google’s Chrome!) If you’re an author who just wants dependable and factual information without pages of annoying and useless ads, don’t use Chrome!

So, bye-bye greedy Google! I’ve been loyal to you since you were an internet infant in nappies. Now you don’t deserve that loyalty because you’ve become an evil adult supporting corporate fascism and terrorism in America, I want nothing to do with you! I hope everyone joins me to choose more honest and less evil internet service providers so that Google goes the way of the dinosaurs! Or straight to hell where they belong with Donald Jackass Trump!

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Fascism and terrorism. Fascism is a human affliction with symptoms of simple greed and a thirst for power, a mind-destroying illness many psychotic and sociopathic individuals suffer from. Terrorism is its deadliest and most extreme form. Although we are seeing too much of the former in the US and all over the world now (see above), the latter is increasing as well (attacks made by crazed people using cars as weapons, for example). I’ve been fighting the battle against both in my prose from my very first novel, Full Medical, to my last (for now), Fear the Asian Evil, and in most tales in between those two, even those tales geared to young adults (who also need to learn how to fight these deadly social diseases!). All these stories are honest portrayals of the damage fascism and terrorism can do to freedom and peace in the world. Brave people in these stories struggle and fight the good fight, so let them inspire you! (Fascists and terrorists, many of them controlling our own government and companies now, will not enjoy these stories, of course. Their ignorance will return to haunt them because they will pay the price sooner than later!)

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

I’ve written several trilogies. The “Inspector Steve Morgan” trilogy is the most recent; it’s basically a continuation of the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, and “Revenge at Last,” a novella in the free PDF download of the same name, almost made Morgan’s trilogy into a series (and still might, depending on my energy reserves). Three other trilogies,, “The Last Humans,” “The Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries,” and “Clones and Mutants,” are quite different. One difference is that they have strong female protagonists (the last one, several).

I considered “The Last Humans” trilogy in a previous article; it’s post-apocalyptic sci-fi. Another difference then can be found in the type of sci-fi. Mary Jo’s adventures are more thrillers than mysteries; and most of the sci-fi is found in the MECHs, cyborg warriors representing tech that China, Russia, and the US all want to steal and are willing to employ evil agents to do just that. Mary Jo prevents that from happening in three different novels. (Mary Jo is an alias for Maria Jose, by the way) “The Clones and Mutants” trilogy is also a sci-fi thriller where new biological advances replace the robotic ones of the cyborgs.

The sci-fi is all different in these three trilogies, but the general lesson is always the same: There are evil people whose greed and desire for power are willing to make good people suffer to obtain it; so, if no one steps up to stop those villains, they will succeed. That important lesson is one we should all learn in real life during these troubling times when an evil and wannabe fascist dictator has grabbed power in our country and is making many of its good citizens suffer. We need more virtuous heroes and fewer evil fascist villains.

What Penny Castro (protagonist of “The Last Humans” trilogy), Mary Jo Melendez, and the clones and one mutant show in these three trilogies is that ordinary humans can step up and overcome terrible odds to defeat the forces of evil. This of course is a major message in a lot of fiction. My “ordinary humans” are also smart women who are mostly Latinas, and that belies the macho beliefs of ignorant American fascists like our DoD secretary that women can’t fight for what’s right and the far-right opinions in our country that “others” who aren’t extreme far-right WASP zealots like them don’t belong in America.

Of course, this is fiction, storytelling that should entertain anyone who’s not a fascist MAGA supporter. Guess what? I’ve known plenty of women who have exactly the positive characteristics of my fictional heroes. My characters have flaws like everyone does, of course—they’re very human, unlike many zombies in the MAGA hordes, but they also have courage and skills. That’s more than the DoD secretary or any other member of our wannabe fascist dictator’s administration has. If there is a God, He’ll be on these women’s side, not the side of the fascist devils led by the Orange Devil. Fiction must seem real, and fiction about heroes can become real if the real heroes in our society receive our support.

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“The Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries.” In the first novel, Muddlin’ Through, Mary Jo is framed and must struggle to prove she’s innocent. In the second novel, Silicon Slummin’ and Just Gettin’ By, Russia and the US are all after the MECHs (“Mechanically Enhanced Cybernetic Humans”) and she’s pursued by a stalker. In the third, Goin’ the Extra Mile, China goes after the MECHs. Readers will wonder how this all ends. All three novels are available wherever quality ebooks are sold (even on Amazon). These are all “evergreen books,” stories as exciting and prophetic as the day I finished the manuscripts.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Long ago when I began to write the first parts of Survivors of the Chaos (the first novel in the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy”), I had a premonition that fascist oligarchs like Elon Muskrat, the big Bezos bot, and the other tech fascists attending Trump’s inauguration and kissing his McD’s butt, were plotting to own the world. Later even Hollywood movies like Blade Runner, Alien, and Avatar echoed that fear of fascist capitalism I had and Putin and Xi have now popularized in the autocratic world. (I also predicted that China would found the first colony on Mars. The Muskrat has some stiff competition for that and for many other tech initiatives.)

Do I take comfort in saying “I told you so”? Not really. What temporarily saved Earth in the sci-fi universe of “Chaos” from exploitative fascist capitalism was a very intelligent manipulator of the fascist oligarchs of her time, a little but energetic lady who outsmarted all the oligarchs to establish star colonies in three different nearby star systems. That bold move eventually saved Earth from ET invaders much more dangerous and violent than the human oligarchs! (That story is told in Sing a Zamba Galactica, the second novel in what some have called my Foundation trilogy—I’ve always been an avid fan of Isaac Asimov, another scientist who decided to become a sci-fi writer.)

Sci-fi authors who write anything decent point out possible futures and warnings to their fellow human beings, at least to readers who pay attention, in order to warn us about getting our acts together if we want to survive in a hostile Universe made all the more so by scurrilous humans who often create hells on Earth for everyone and, in the future, off Earth as well. We’re very much in that dangerous place today.

I predicted all this in 2011 in Survivors of the Chaos. The details are slightly different, but the real tragedy for human beings in 2025 suffering under Trump and his oligarchs and the other fascists in our world is much worse. Yes, I told you so, but I didn’t quite see how bad it might become…and readers didn’t heed the warning!

Maybe it’s not too late? We still sometimes pay attention to Brave New World, Darkness at Noon, and 1984. I’ve seen Trump’s machinations called Orwellian. Sci-fi warnings are forever… unless the censors of Fahrenheit 451 take over and erase them!

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The “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection.” In the first novel, Survivors of the Chaos, Earth gets a respite from fascist capitalists because the leader of space exploration efforts in the solar system cajoles Earth’s oligarchs into supporting programs to create colonies in three nearby star systems. In the second novel, Sing a Zamba Galactica, first contact is made with some strange ETs who become good allies in a fight against another group of ETs bent on destroying all other intelligent life to control all of near-Earth space, but a collective intelligence appears that complicates things. In the third novel, Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hand!, a psychotic and sociopathic human industrialist and mega-billionaire causes chaos and  havoc as he attempts to create a stellar empire where he’s the absolute ruler. (Any semblance with Earth’s current fascists was intentional, of course!) This ebook bundle of all three novels is available wherever quality ebooks are sold (even on Amazon).

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Despite the attacks from Bezos and his bots that screwed up the Amazon listings of the first two novels in the series, the post-apocalyptic novels found in “The Last Humans” trilogy don’t do badly at their job in portraying a possible and terrible future most of us who are sane wouldn’t want. In that sense, they are a warning of things to come.

Consider the worldwide contagion that wreaks havoc in the first titular novel The Last Humans  (Black Opal Books 2019). Readers won’t learn its source yet, but it’s bioengineered by a US adversary (readers find out which one in the second novel), That lethal contagion that first hits the west coast of the US propagates around the world like Covid did. (After the book was published. A beta-reader even a year earlier thought that was unlikely, but then Covid came along and supported my thesis! And Covid might have been bioengineered as well in that lab in Wuhan, most recently posed by the US CIA! We’d have to grill fascist President-for-Life Xi about that…as if that SOB would admit the truth!) That’s the first prediction for the future this post-apocalyptic sci-fi trilogy posits..

In the aftermath of the apocalypse in that first novel, my protagonist Penny Castro travels around SoCal trying to survive attacks by feral humans, wild dog packs, and the fascist remains of the US government. (They’re bent on retribution in the second novel; and in the real world, we now know there might be a lot more fascists who’ve come out of the closet since 2019.) That SoCal landscape is mostly an arid and fire-burned inhospitable place. I don’t mention how those fires occurred, but the recent ones in SoCal propagated by 100 mph Santa Ana winds certainly qualify. And Penny and her newly acquired family’s trek from the coast over California’s coast range of mountains to I5 was the same one I took many times going home from college to my parents’ home in the Central Valley for the holidays. That’s the second prediction for the future.

What hasn’t yet come true in that first book is the takeover of the desalination platforms by fascist villains who want to control California’s water. As far as I know, these platforms haven’t even been built yet or even planned, but lack of potable water will soon become critical worldwide. (Our fascist president might even support such a measure since he’s so damned worried about water!) California, SoCal in particular, has a huge population, and most of the state would be a desert without irrigation. In fact, the air force base, where Penny’s family ends up as refugees seeking asylum (labeling them criminal migrants and refugees wasn’t even considered because the agri-workers the state’s economy needs died from the contagion as well), sends out tanker trucks to transport water from the San Joaquin Valley’s irrigation pumps.

The other two novels in this trilogy have “predictions” that might come true as well, but those first two mentioned here from that first novel (i.e. two out of the three) isn’t a bad start. Just a sci-fi author’s luck…and my desire to tell a few good post-apocalyptic tales. Sci-fi predictions can also be warnings, of course. Future plagues and consequences of global warming (including blizzard-like snowstorms in southern Texas and Florida!) are clear and present dangers that we shouldn’t ignore (unless you’re our repeat fascist president)..

But back to Amazon’s screw-up: If you go to my web page “Novels and Short Fiction,” you will be able to read about what happened to those first two novels in this trilogy, thanks to the fascist oligarch Bezos and his bots. To this date, Amazon has never fixed this problem despite my pleas to do so. Until they do, readers will have to work a bit harder to buy and download these ebooks. This cock-up is one reason I no longer list my new ebooks for sale on Amazon. In general, your best bet as a reader is to use Barnes & Noble or some other online ebook distributor, not Amazon. (With Bezos joining the other oligarchs kissing the president’s fat butt now, you’ll be a lot more patriotic if you don’t do business with Amazon at all. Your choice.)

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“The Last Humans” trilogy. In the title novel (paperback and ebook published by Black Opal Books), Penny Castro survives an apocalypse. It’s a worldwide bioengineered pandemic that kills millions. She also manages to create her adopted family and unreluctantly fights for what’s left of an ineffective and fascist US government. In A New Dawn (ebook published by Draft2Digital/Smashwords), what’s left of the US government seeks revenge against the plague’s creators, forcefully recruiting Penny and her husband for their plans. In Menace from Moscow (ebook also published by Draft2Digital/Smashwords), she and her husband are forcefully conscripted again, this time to recover nukes from a US submarine in a watery grave just off Cuba…but the surviving Russian government also covets them. (All three ebooks are available wherever quality ebooks are sold, but the third novel isn’t on Amazon.)

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Revolution! A Sci-Fi Fable…

Copyright 2025, Steven M. Moore

The middle=aged man code-named Zorro, host of the meeting, tapped his wineglass to bring the group to order. “Welcome, my friends.”

He smiled at the ethnic mix of women and men seated around the old table in the game room above the old pub’s main floor. All of them were patriots who, as refugees living in Canada, had organized the American resistance.

“We will now take the final vote on whether we’re ready to end the fascist reign of this moron who arrogantly believes he’s America’s new fuehrer.”

“It’s a big step to take,” Tinkerbell warned. As a Federal Appellate Judge, she’d refused to go along with the tyrant’s plans to insist that every federal employee had to take an oath of fealty to the despot. She’d also presided over a trial where America’s DoJ had dared to prosecute one of the principal oligarchs supporting the administration. Consequently, she had to flee for her life when some militia members the American dictator had released attacked her residence. The black eyepatch, showing how close they’d come, matched the one the militia’s leader wore.

Others in the room had similar grievances. Their stories were the glue that bound the group together. But were they resolute enough to commit what the American dictator would surely call treason, even though he’d attempted the same thing years earlier?

“It’s time to vote,” Zorro said.

The vote was unanimous. The invasion of their homeland would proceed as planned. It would be a massive attack moving south on three different fronts: From Vancouver, Windsor, and Prince Edward Island, mixed forces of American ex-pats and Canadian patriots would stream across the border to take over what they would soon call the North American Free States. It would still be a limited invasion, though: No one cared about the old fascist red states, what the invaders called the Fascist States of America and the center of the American dictator’s power. A new wall would be built to quarantine their fascists.

“Shock and awe” couldn’t begin to describe the invasion. The American dictator had to flee in Air Force One to Russia just like that Syrian dictator before him. The fascists in the US Congress and SCOTUS barely escaped with their lives to Florida and Texas where they might be safe for the time being.

Casualties among the invading forces from Canada were eventually buried with honor at Arlington Cemetery. Casualties from the fascist hordes were hauled away to landfills and unceremoniously dumped to rot like the rest of the garbage.

Eleven years later what remained of the Fascist States of America surrendered to the North American Free States that had been joined by the Canadian provinces along the old border, a just twist on the dream that the American dictator once had entertained. By that time, Mt. McKinley had become Denali once again; and the Gulf of America, a name no other country in the western hemisphere had ever used, once again was called the Gulf of Mexico.

Peace was once again restored in the Americas, and no one wanted to remember the threat of the old American dictator now giving worms indigestion in an unmarked grave near Moscow.

Morale? McD’s meals and fascism aren’t a good mix!

“I’ve no use for fascists, no matter how they’re labeled.”—Detective Rolando Castilblanco in The Collector (Carrick Publishing, 2014).

Sometimes readers send me more personal critiques of my stories, although the more public reviews can be snarky as well. Any author has to have a thick skin, of course–there are a lot of trolls out there!—but both kinds of critiques, the personal and public ones, often make me wonder if maybe I should call for someone to do a mental health intervention, maybe offering to send the critical troll with a straitjacket?

A prude who complains about too much sex and strong language is more amusing than harmful. An author can just reply (not recommended for a review), “Hey, you don’t have to read the story!” Someone who complains that the story is out of touch with reality deserves the same answer; obviously they’ve never read Weir’s The Martian or Rowling’s The Deadly Hallows.

Political critiques often have a different tone, sometimes even threatening violence. We live in a very polarized society, so a political theme can make some readers angry and others cheer (for the latter, just send money). In fact, in these times, if an author assumes their readers cover the entire political spectrum (a big assumption because the extreme left and right only read what’s spoon-fed them in their echo chambers…if they even read—MAGA maniacs aren’t known for that because most, like their hero fuehrer, can hardly read or write), there’ll usually be a lot of people upset. (For example, an anti-Semitic ass might have a problem with Sullivan’s Beneath a Scarlet Sky, although I’d bet the author or his publisher carefully chose that title to avoid controversy.)

What the Big Five publishing conglomerates do to avoid this is to mostly publish pablum, of course, i.e., books that avoid all controversial themes and politics. The authors they choose to publish hide their opinions and must be willing to geld themselves to create this pablum. Big Five authors, in other words, with only a few exceptions like Gerlis and Sullivan, must work hard to make sure they write nothing of consequence. They have to treat all topics with kid gloves. “Offend no one” begins everyone’s business model when dealing with these hypocrites.

This always reminds me (showing my age, I guess) of Lucille Ball not being able to say the word “pregnant” when she was exactly that during her fifties sitcom. Or the couple portrayed in that otherwise hilarious Dick van Dyke show sleeping in twin beds. What we have now from the Big Five and their authors is still hypocritical political censorship!

I can’t believe that serious readers approve of this practice. But PR and marketing efforts—especially the thousands spent by the Big Five pimping their pablum—are effectively convincing even serious readers to purchase their fluffy fiction, and they never realize that more serious literature even exists.

Okay, maybe I’m naïve if I consider what I write to be “serious literature.” But I’d be willing to bet that any reader would be hard-pressed to find the quote found at the beginning of this post in a Big Five book! Neither Baldacci nor Patterson nor any other old mare or stallion in the Big

Five’s stables of “sure winners” (who jealously guard their privileged stalls, by the way!) would dare write that and run the chance of bringing a publisher’s wrath down on them! Hell, even most US news media avoids using the word “fascist”! Clearly my anti-fascist themes were on display even long before Trump turned the Good Ole Piranhas into the Fascist Party of America.

I don’t read pablum; never have, never will. So, as a consequence, I rarely read any Big Five fiction story. (I might do a non-fiction book, especially if I get it as a gift.) I suggest you do the same, if only to broaden your horizons. To paraphrase Tom Clancy (whose only decent book was Hunt for Red October, by the way, because the Big Five ruined him as well, once they got their talons into him), fiction must seem real. Pablum isn’t real; it’s a swindle. Be selective in your reading!

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The Collector. This novel considers stolen art and how it might be used to finance human trafficking and sexual exploitation. NYPD homicide detectives Chen and Castilblanco have to deal with yet another complex case. They get some help in Europe from Esther Brookstone and Bastiann van Coevorden (as a prequel to Esther’s own long series). There are some winners in this raw mystery/thriller, but not many. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold (even on Amazon).

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

It’s not just about TikTok. Sure, the Chinese are using it, one, to brainwash its users, especially America’s youth; and two, to collect data about Americans to facilitate that brainwashing and other insidious things. But I saw that early on and never signed up to use it. (I’m paranoid. I don’t believe the fascist MAGA maniacs are the only ones out to get me. Xi’s assassins might be planning their revenge against me for writing Fear the Asian Evil, although the title hides the fact that it’s about Chinese perfidy. LOL.)

Much earlier, though, predating TikTok and Truth Social by years, I began to post on Facebook and Twitter. So-called PR and marketing experts were telling authors even back then that social media was “the thing,” i.e., a wonderful tool to reach out to potential readers. (Now I tend to think that too many people emulate Trump—i.e., they don’t read much and can’t understand what they read.) Some of these “experts” even went so far as to say that a “Facebook page” was more important for authors to have than a website. What BS!

In any case, I continued to participate on Facebook and Twitter (even when the latter became X), but less and less as time went on. I finally realized just how much they provide clear evidence for Musk and Zuckerberg’s fascist tendencies. Walking in with the kitchen sink ended my days on X long before Musk became the super-fascistic cheerleader for Trump’s plan to destroy American democracy. Seeing Zuckerberg’s obvious lack of enthusiasm for stopping Putin and friends’ interference in the 2016 election (fact-checking will now be left to the users) was also sufficient motivation to suspect that SOB’s MAGA proclivities, now in full display as he visits Mar a Lago along with Musk to kiss Donald Jackass Trump’s butt.

It took me less than a half hour to give those two fascists the finger and end my association with their anti-democratic, evil, and oppressive social media creations. Frankly, I can’t understand why any author who lives in and loves democracy and its free speech features that allow us to stick it to fascists and all their autocratic and Machiavellian machinations would use any social media, but especially Facebook and X. An author might as well be bound and gagged and rotting in a prison cell!

What about that famous dialogue authors should have with potential readers, you ask? Forget about it! First, let your artistic creations be your weapons of choice, not social media. Second, it’s not worth losing your integrity (as the Big Five publishing conglomerates and their so-called but rarely “non-political” authors do)—let’s call it “losing your soul to fascism”—by pandering to people who don’t give a rat’s ass about what’s right and wrong, only greed and power. (That’s basically the definition of fascism, of course.) Be true to your art, in other words, and kick Musk and Zuckerberg in their goolies. (Oh right! Like Trump, they don’t have any, at least not in the moral sense.)

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Fear the Asian Evil. This last novel in the “Inspector Steve Morgan” trilogy begins with the shooting of one of Steve’s sergeant’s sister-in-law. The investigation leads Steve’s team to a Chinese plan to destabilize the UK in the Bristol port area. Intrigue and suspense await the reader. (And don’t worry: All novels in my series can stand alone.) Available wherever quality ebooks are sold (but not on Amazon).

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

I’m at a point in my life when it’s obvious that there are many more days in my past than those remaining in my future. In other words, I’m beyond my expiration date or shelf date and must prefer for the inevitable. Maudlin thoughts entering the new year 2025? Maybe. In my stories, human mortality is always part of the plot, though, so it’s difficult to not be morbid at times, especially when I kill off a character!

N Scott Momaday taught me to love poetry, but I could never create any of my own that I considered consequential. (Penny Castro’s poem to her husband, old friend, and adopted children in Menace from Moscow might be my best attempt, but there are a few others sprinkled throughout my books.) Professor Momaday would pace back and forth up on the stage in front of his large lecture class—I was only one of him many students—indicating possible meanings for the poetry after he read it. I was able to conclude even back then, though, that what makes poetry great is that almost every poem can contain multiple yet significant meanings for listeners and readers.

At least, most of the so-called “classics” have that characteristic. (And also those who aren’t classics! In Penny’s case, readers must recognize that her poem’s meaning covers all three novels in “The Last Humans” trilogy.) For me, Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is about the mystery of our lives and the deaths we can never avoid. It differs from the “Rage, rage, against the dying of the light” found in Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night,” which is more like philosophical advice we probably should all follow to deal with our human mortality: We probably only have one life to live, barring reincarnation, so we should make the most of it! Frost’s poem is more about how to follow Thomas’s advice; “sleep” is simply a metaphor for “death.”

And that’s where I am in 2025: I’m going to rage against death as long as I’m able before I take that long sleep, The miles I’ll travel are represented by my storytelling, which I’ll continue as long as possible. I realize the day will come when it’s not, if only because my touch-typing skills will have diminished too much as the arthritis in my joints increases.

I fully realize that I’m a prolific writer whose readership is practically non-existent. That’s okay; it always has been okay. I’ve mostly done my storytelling on my own terms, mostly ignoring agents, acquisition editors, and pundits (like MFA professors, literary critics, and reviewers—the good, the bad, and the ugly). I’m still telling my stories as I want to tell them, and hopefully I’ll be able to write many more that no one reads…before I sleep!

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“The Last Humans” trilogy. In the first novel (written before Covid, but it could have been taken as a warning for the consequences of that real worldwide pandemic), The Last Humans (Black Opal Books, 2019), Penny Castro, an ex-USN SAR and current LA County Sheriff’s Deputy forensics diver, surfaces to find all her deputy-comrades dead. An enemy of the US has attacked the West Coast with a bio-engineered contagion, and it has been carried on the prevailing winds around the world after its initial dispersal (Covid might have been bioengineered as well, of course—ask the Chinese about that Wuhan lab!), creating a worldwide apocalypse that kills millions, although there are a few other survivors like Penny. She struggles to stay alive in this post-apocalyptic world, creating an adopted family in the process.

In the second book, A New Dawn (Draft2Digital, 2020), readers learn who was responsible for that biological attack when Penny and her husband are forced to take part in a revenge plan that what remains of the US government organizes as payback. Contrary to that plan’s goals, though, Penny and friends have something more peaceful in mind. Achieving that isn’t easy, though.

In the third and final novel of the trilogy, Menace from Moscow (Draft2Digital, 2023), the now reformed US government has some nobler goals: Disarming the nukes that went down in a US submarine that sank off the coast of Cuba. Unfortunately, some of the surviving Russians have more nefarious plans for those nukes. Can Penny and friends stop them?

This trilogy represents some of the most personal stories that I’ve written in my long career, if only because so much of the action takes place in my native California, the greatest and still democratic state left in our country (and an economic powerhouse comparable to many other countries!). I grew up there, and I know the state intimately. While some of my other novels are influenced in this manner (i.e., contain settings where I’ve actually lived, not just visited), these three novels are special in this sense. Of course, those Californian landscapes aren’t post-apocalyptic landscapes…not yet anyway!

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

“From the moment I picked up your book until I put it down, I was convulsing with laughter. Someday I intend to read it.”—Groucho Marx

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I’m certain I’ve posted about this topic before and certainly wrote about it in the end notes of A Time-Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse (most of my novels have end notes although I expect that few readers read then). But from The Time Machine to The Time-Traveler’s Wife speculative fiction novels have played fast and loose with the contradictions of time travel. Hollywood screenwriters do no better: Why is there a warp-drive limit that sends Kirk, Spock, and friends back in time to save the whales?

James Hogan tried to make improvements in his The Proteus Operation, but only a few other writers have dared to go “when” no man has gone before in a way that satisfied my scientific biases. For that reason, I avoided time-travel stories in my sci-fi writing for a long time. Until A Time-Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse where, naturally, a woman dares to go where no man has gone before, although, to at least follow the trends, I made it a rom-com to get a jump on any critic like Groucho, who was about as scientific as his cigar.

A story where a protagonists return to the past to right some wrongs (Hogan’s book is a classic example) loses a lot of its entertainment  value when it seems more like fantasy than hard sci-fi, interpreting the latter as meaning not violating a plethora of scientific data and laws. In other words, hard sci-fi must at least seem a reasonable extrapolation of current theories, proven or not, and not the magic of Harry Potter.

I also avoided writing a rom-com story for a long time. Most of the books in that genre are pure fluff, an unbelievable  story about a Cinderella-like (or Cinderfella-like) protagonist that’s light on plot and characters that I can relate to. (Niffenegger’s The Time-Traveler’s Wife is typical, but it’s not intended to be a comedy, just an incredibly sappy story.)

It then occurred to me that I could combine time travel and rom-com and make the result more believable. Writing such a story turned out to be challenging. Take Dr. Who, the mad male scientist who jumps around the past and future using an old red (and magical?) British-style telephone booth. Okay, the latter might be considered the “com” part of a rom-com, but just try to put a little more meat into the science and the plot!

To make this history of a novel short, let’s just say that my story is more akin to “back to the future.” My protagonists jump from one future to the other in the multiverse of universes that are all technically part of their original universe’s future, although some “look like” variations of our past. (The timelines don’t have to be in sync, you know.) My mad scientist is a female, her techie lover a black genius, and the red telephone booth is replaced by an old dentist’s chair. (The BBC will never broadcast a series based on my novel because of that, I’m guessing.)

Because the jumps are always towards some future relative to their starting point, the novel avoids all the scientific contradictions and paradoxes. In other works, they originate in the hypothesis of a single timeline, of course; but once my protagonists leave their current universe, they can’t return! In particular, they can’t change the history of where they started; they can only change the future of where they end up. Blows your mind, right!

Of course, I had to add comedy and romance to make a sci-fi rom-com. The result is the funniest, most political, most irreverent, and most romantic novel I’ve ever written. (Okay, that’s no surprise because it’s the only one!) And I hope you have as much fun reading it as I had writing it.

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In celebration of the holidays (quite a few to end this year!), this will be the last post appearing here in my author’s blog for 2024. Who knows what 2025 will bring, right? In any case, please enjoy a safe and wonderful time with your family and friends. Happy holidays!

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Comments are always welcome. (Please follow the rules on the “Join the Conversation” web page.)

A Time-Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse. Gail, with her doctorates in applied physics and electrical engineering as preparation, decides to invent a time machine. She hires another technical genius Jeff (Gail calls him Igor) to help with the circuits, sensors, and power sources. Their adventures traveling through the universes of the multiverse last a lifetime. A stand-alone sci-fi rom-com available wherever quality ebooks are sold, this novel just might tickle your funny bone more than Groucho ever could.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Kayla is the kick-ass young female protagonist in Origins, the first novel of the “Denisovan Trilogy.” AB Carolan hasn’t yet written the other two, but he says he’s working on them. Personally, I think Origins can stand alone as one of the best “ancient civilizations”-type sci-fi mystery and thriller novel, a wonderful, adventurous, and grand mix of fiction, sociology, and archaeology,,,but I’m biased, I suppose. [wink, wink]

Eons ago on Earth (our real Earth, not a fictional one), different groups of hominids branched off the human evolutionary tree; one recent group discovered is the Denisovans. Carolan embedded these true science facts (not “fake news” or “alternate facts”!) into a new sci-fi universe he created as a way to explain the history of these different groups.

The plan for these novels is quite an ambitious one and requires Carolan to keep up with new archaeological discoveries, but Origins can stand alone very well as a novel that will appeal to young adults (Carolan’s forte) and adults who are young-at-heart. Mysteries, thrills, and lots of action await the reader as Kayla discovers bit by bit how and why she differs from ordinary humans.

Most “modern humans” in our real world have bits and pieces of DNA inherited from Cro-Magnons, Neanderthals, “Hobbits,” and Denisovans. Most of our DNA comes from the first group (AB “explains” this), but some modern humans in differing locales have also inherited some from the other three. Where did all these hominids come from? What happened to them?

AB Carolan provides fictional answers to these questions as he creates a literary roller-coaster ride that puts poor Kayla through the wringer. She must try to stay alive on her way to discovering why she’s being pursued by an evil senator and his violent followers.

The two other novels that are planned are about a more mature Kayla out among the stars, but as I wrote this article I couldn’t help noting how prescient this first novel is relative to our country and the world’s current problems. Unfortunately, our world’s real villains aren’t from the stars: They’re our fellow humans!

This “stand-alone” nature of Origins means, though, less disappointment for readers if they wonder about how Kayla’s adventures continue “out there” among the stars of our galaxy. Some will consider it too much of a teaser, but AB adds the two first chapters of the second novel Allies to this first novel. Did readers complain about not yet knowing the full scope of the second Star Wars movie after the first? (And all those movies are more fantasy than sci-fi, at least not the hard sci-fi thrillers like those planned for the “Denisovan Trilogy.”) You can also mitigate some of your disappointment by writing AB using my contact page at this website to tell him to get his butt in gear and finish the trilogy. He’s usually just having a chinwag in a Donegal pub accompanied by a pint of ale or lager, maybe with a lot of creative world-building going on in his mind, but I can get readers’ messages to the old leprechaun.

All that said, is this novel appropriate for young adults? All of Carolan’s books treat themes adults are concerned about…or should be. Their protagonists just happen to be young girls and women. But both AB and I believe young people should know about all the evil some older people are doing and could avoid doing so these young people don’t repeat our awful and stupid mistakes and  can make things better. The “age of youthful innocence” can no longer exist in this complicated world we live in! No amount of book banning can change that. This Denisovan girl Kayla Jones is a hero for our times.

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Comments are always welcome. (Please follow the rules on the “Join the Conversation” web page.)

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!