The pundits don’t know what to do with Trump and Sanders.  The parties don’t know either.  Both candidates are tapping into the smoldering anger that has turned into a conflagration in this campaign.  Both are anti-establishment candidates.  There the similarity ends.  Trump has been a one-percenter all his life, his political choices always determined by his analysis of the deal: what does he get out of it (or America, we hope)?  He’s a narcissistic sociopath (that’s a diagnosis of a mental condition, not an insult…and not one of Trump’s words that needs bleeping) and a real streetfighter—if you hit him, he hits back.

Whereas Trump has absolutely no political experience—even his touted business acumen and displays of one-percenter excesses received a huge initial boost from daddy’s gift—Sanders’s story is the truer American success story.  His father was a Polish immigrant and his mother was second generation in another Polish-Russian immigrant family.  Yeah, those immigrants Trump loves to hate.  Clinton fails by comparison too.  Where Sanders has been consistent and loyal to his principles, she’s been all over the board and unprincipled.  I love consistency, and I respect someone who sticks to their principles.

I’ve been consistent my whole life too, my only tweak being the development of a hawkish counterterrorism mentality because of 9/11 (Sanders has to work on that in particular and foreign policy in general, but I’m still more in tune with Bernie’s worldview than with Hillary’s).  For most domestic issues, Sanders and I are like twins.  OK, maybe I don’t like it when unions tolerate and try to hide incompetence—I don’t like incompetence anywhere and don’t want people to get paid for it—but that’s a nit I won’t bother to pick.  He’s the candidate whose viewpoints come closest to mine; there’s an enormous gap between him and everyone else.

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Smiles go miles, and a handshake trumps a milkshake.

***

Just released! Rogue Planet.  Hidden away from near-Earth planets in remote spiral arms of the Galaxy are Human worlds that have lost contact with more progressive worlds and reverted to strange and primitive customs and traditions, their leaders using religion, superstition, and imported technologies to rule in tyranny.  Survey ships explored and catalogued these planets as suitable for future colonization centuries earlier, but groups with a special interest in ensuring a homogeneous and often despotic society didn’t bother applying for permission to colonize.

Following the ITUIP (Interstellar Trade Union of Independent Planets) Protocol, ships are restricted to observe and maintain a hands-off policy for these rogue planets, even when there is great temptation to intervene.  Eden, where a theocracy rules with an iron fist, is such a planet.  A group of rebels struggles to end the oppressive regime to forge a new future.

Set in the same universe as the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy” and the Dr. Carlos stories, this saga, mixing the best of hard sci-fi and swashbuckling fantasy, once again explores the never-ending battle between good and evil so prominent in my works.  It’s another surprising and entertaining addition to his already extensive collection of sci-fi, mystery, and thriller tales.

Available in all ebook formats for $2.99 (Amazon + Smashwords) and paper for $9.99 (Create Space).

[Lots of news today.  Cherry pick what you find interesting, but be sure and read about the May Day Sale.  And BTW, nothing here is an April Fool’s joke.  Enough jokes are played on the American public by politicians.]

Jellybooks.  If you missed this 3/25 post, check it out.  It’s about data-miners colluding with traditional publishers.  Not a surprise, of course: When there’s a niche on the internet, it will be filled—Darwin’s Origins applied to electronic media.

See your blurb here.  In #115, I made this offer.  So far, no takers.  Think about maybe combining it with an interview.  I’ll send you questions, you can choose the ones you want to answer, and you can even add your own.  The final version has to be approved by you and me, of course.  I’ll let this ride for a while.

May Day, May Day, May Day Sale. Mary Jo Melendez invites you to a Kindle Countdown Sale.  Before she adds her stories to Smashwords, making them available in all ebook formats, she’s giving you a chance to read Muddlin’ Through and Silicon Slummin’…and Just Gettin’ By at $0.99, reduced from $2.99.  That’s $2 off, folks!  Or, two exciting books for $2!  The sale will take place from April 29 through May 5.  This is absolutely the last time these prices will be reduced.  It’s the perfect time to begin stocking up on good summer reading.  (OK, it’s a wee bit ahead of time to announce this, but you wouldn’t believe the acrobatics I have to perform in order to schedule a Kindle Countdown Sale for an entire series, thanks to those Amazon KDP Select restrictions.)

Throwing in the towel. Or, as Roberto Duran said, “No mas!”  (That, or some similar sporting event, might have been the origin for “throwing in the towel.”)  There are many good writers and good books out there.  That’s heaven for readers, of course, but it’s hell for authors.  I saw a recent statistic from Amazon that most authors sell fewer than 500 copies of any one title.  If that Amazon stat is valid, that readers’ heaven will soon shrink because many authors will flee hell by either discontinuing their book production or not releasing new books if they continue writing.  I’m trending toward the second category as a matter of economic necessity.  Explanations are found below.

I’m already cutting back.  Rogue Planet will be my only new book this year, even though I already have two other manuscripts ready.  Below I also suggest things you can do to change my mind.  It’s not just me, of course.  Many authors are in the same sinking ship.  Maybe it’s just that the number of readers is diminishing (Netflix and video games winning them over?) while the number of books is increasing.  For whatever reason, it’s a dire time for authors and promises to be a dire time eventually for readers.

An author’s political views.  I’ve said it many times in this blog, and I’ll say it again: You, the reader, are going to miss some entertaining fiction if you won’t read an author because of his political views.  I write about conspiracies and paranoia sometimes, so I’ll express some paranoia myself: I believe many people won’t read my stuff because I’m a rabid progressive.  I agree with Sanders on most things, for example, although I think he needs to revise his stances on foreign policy in general and terrorism in particular (he can still learn—he’s a smart old curmudgeon).  That said, my own personal viewpoints never stopped me from reading Orson Scott Card, Michael Crichton, James Hogan, Bill O’Reilly, Jerry Pournelle, or Ayn Rand.  (I discovered that at least two of those authors are overrated, but I read them to find that out.)

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Once upon a time there was a writer who spun a few good yarns.  His name was James Patterson.  Along Came a Spider was inspirational—tight plot, interesting main character and secondary characters, and a setting I was familiar with.  Nothing earth-shaking, but good storytelling nonetheless.  It was a textbook combo of mystery and thriller, I liked that cross-genre idea, and I held it up as something to aim for in my own writing.

Unfortunately, it all went downhill from there.  Not only did Patterson become formulaic, he became greedy.  He created a book assembly line and hired lesser known authors to do the hard work, signing his name to the final product.  Like any good tenured professor, he surrounded himself with acolytes willing to increase and perpetuate his fame in detriment to their own careers.  Why bother writing Star Trek knockoffs when you can become a slave for James Patterson?

He is much more than the chief schlockmeister of the publishing world because he’s a factory executive, the CEO of Patterson Inc, with suspense fiction, literary fiction, and children’s lit as that factory’s products.  Now his factory is planning another product line, thousands of novellas, short books that target non-readers–let’s call it pulp fiction.  He’s the Henry Ford of the writing world, confident that his brand name will sell anything the factory produces.  And traditional publishing goes along with it.

It’s ironic that he’s an outspoken critic of Amazon.  That company will sell almost anything; Patterson Inc will sell almost any book, but I’m waiting for new product lines like underwear, condoms, children’s toys, guns and ammo, sporting goods, and so forth.  He’s not satisfied that Amazon sells huge numbers of books spewed from his assembly line.  He wants more royalties and adoration from Jeff Bezos.  In fact, Patterson will attack anyone standing in his way, from Bezos to indie writers.  He’s the Donald Trump of the book world, a master of the publishing deal.

In abstraction, there’s nothing wrong with that, you say.  Free enterprise at work.  I call it another example of capitalism without control.  He was vocal about the DoJ case against the insidious agency model designed by Apple’s Steve Jobs in collusion with the Big Five publishers.  (They soon settled; Apple pursued appeals to the bitter end—for them.)  He has supported Writers Guild in their attacks on Amazon; Preston and Patterson led the cavalry on that one, always trumpeting the lie that the Guild represents ALL authors (they don’t).

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(Rebecca Marks, On the Rocks, Black Opal Books, ISBN 987-1-626943-79-7)

It’s always a pleasure to discover a new and interesting author.  I’m not sure it’s wise to announce a series with the first book in the series—it’s a wee bit like signing a contract with the readers, after all—but I have to say most readers will probably want to read more about ex-NYPD homicide detective Dana Cohen.  She’s Jewish and a redhead, but, like the ubiquitous Irish cops (not so ubiquitous anymore), crime fighting is a family tradition—she even fits that Irish stereotype of drinking too much.  Pop is an ex-LI police chief and estranged hubby Pete is still on the NYPD force, as near as I can tell.  Dana has retired from the daily grind of trying to police the Big Apple’s underbelly.

Dana is that quintessential flawed main character.  She has major problems with Pete—even wants to divorce him (he’s resisting)—but she’s addicted to sex with him. She has that drinking problem but owns a winery, so that’s more irony in her life.  And she foregoes the Irish cop’s usual confession sessions with the parish priest by using bartender “Mac” McCormack as a surrogate, who just happens to hate Jews and Blacks (the manager of her winery is a Black woman).  In an area as densely populated as the tri-state area, you can have all kinds of human behavior, of course—the tails of the statistical distribution in any behavioral direction are well populated.  If LI seems idyllic to you as you think of the rich and famous and their summer houses in the Hamptons, you’re in for a surprise.  But I see news about crime activity there every morning on the news.

In that setting, Dana has to solve a mystery to save her husband who is framed for murder.  Although she has problems with the guy, she doesn’t believe he’s a killer.  But the circumstantial evidence becomes overwhelming, and Pete spends a lot of the story in jail.  In the process of solving this mystery, I think Dana is diminished as a main character.  She can’t seem to get beyond her liquor problem.  Pete’s lawyer Jed and his detective Itzy, contemporary versions of the Perry Mason duo, take on the MC roles.  The lawyer is just a good lawyer, but the gay PI is the real gumshoes in this story.  This bifurcation of the book into two parts—the first with MC Dana and the second with MC Itzy—is a bit weird, but it works.

Another unusual stylistic choice that works is that the whole story is told in first person present by Dana.  First person isn’t that uncommon in mysteries—it allows readers to discover clues and experience twists and misdirects along with the protagonist.  But those things are recounted secondhand by Dana in the second half as Itzy does the real sleuthing—Dana and Itzy providing a Dr. Watson and Mr. Holmes déjà vu.  The choice of present tense was much more unusual, but that worked too.  It gave an immediacy to the story as it unfolded.

Direct dialogue was a bit unwieldy at times.  Not only did that present tense affect things, but a lot of backstory and material that would have been better as internal dialogue or flashbacks made Dana seem a bit preachy.  Jed’s bringing Dana up to date at the end, necessarily done in dialogue, could have been all replaced by following the action in standard third-person fare, but Dana could have been there participating even in first person, making the ending more show and less tell.  The ending, as it stands, seems to be a bit rushed too.  I didn’t buy that Pete was framed to get at Dana either—the villain had better reasons for doing that.

This is not minimalist writing by any means.  Often called hard-boiled in the mystery genre, you’re more likely to think of Christie than Chandler, especially during Jed’s wrap-up at the end that recalls Poirot’s embellished explanations of who did the dirty deed and why.  Never fear, the deeds here go far beyond Christie, though, and touch upon general problems in U.S. society.  On first reading, I found myself skipping overly verbose sections, but I paid more attention the second time through.  It seemed that a lot of that could be left to the reader’s imagination to make her or him more of a participant in the creative process—that’s minimalist writing, my preference but not the author’s.

This might seem like a lot of negatives, so let me downplay them.  Overall this was an entertaining and well-written book.  With her stylistic choices, the author has created a sense of urgency that keeps you turning the pages.  The author has a story to tell and tells it well.  Dana is a flawed but interesting character.  I’m sure she will grow in upcoming books in this series as she lets Ms. Marks see more into her psyche.  I’m looking forward to it.

***

This is a reposting of my review made for Bookpleasures.  The author provided a free copy in return for an honest review.

In libris libertas….

This is the way the world ends: thinking the enemies of our enemies are our friends.

***

With two attacks on the World Trade Center, Oklahoma City, the Boston Marathon bombing, San Bernardino, and many other cases of attempted terrorist acts, it’s clear that terrorism is becoming part of our lives.  Many terrorists are religious fanatics.  How will our nation handle more sophisticated attacks by many terrorists like those in Brussels and Paris when the terrorist cells are spread among our own population?  And how will we stop unscrupulous people who devise schemes to take advantage of the fanatics’ desire to die for a cause?  Soldiers of God treats these questions and more.  This novel is a bridge between two series, the “Clones and Mutants Trilogy” and the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy.”  The first edition is available in all ebook formats and print; the second edition is Kindle only.

[Two different movies.  FYI: Nobody pays me to attend, and I don’t receive free tickets from anyone.  That way I can rap Hollywood’s knuckles as much as I want and give you an honest review.  Oh yes, I don’t often agree with the pro reviewers, but most of them have an axe to grind.  I’m also a throw-back.  I don’t like all that cable TV and streaming video schlock.  I like my movies on the big screen with a good sound system.  You can watch them on your laptop if you want—that’s not my thing.]

Zootopia.  Byron Howard and Rich Moore, dirs.  Ginnifer Goodwin (the rabbit cop), Jason Bateman (the fox con artist), Idris Elba (the water buffalo police chief), and others do a great job with the character voices.  This movie probably has more meaning for adults.  Not only are many cultural and pop references way above little kids’ heads, but the overall theme is a take-off on the Black Lives Matter movement and the ongoing discussion of racism in America (that’s a positive, by the way, not a criticism)—many times prey aren’t prey and predators aren’t predators.  In some parallel universe, the lamb has lain down by the lion and all the animals live in peace?  Yeah, right.  If you’re waiting for an allegory on a par with Animal Farm, you’ll be thrilled.

There’s a wee bit of toon-on-toon violence that left some three- and four-year-olds bawling (the scary critters might look a bit too rabid, methinks), but most kids in the audience seemed to enjoy this movie as much as the adults.  If you allow for the spilled popcorn and cokes the adults had to suffer through, it all balances out to a good time for all.  One of the best Disney animations in a long time, and, even better, it clobbered Frozen at the box office (that movie’s song is almost as annoyingly overplayed as the one from Titanic).  Recommended, unless you hate animation.

10 Cloverfield Lane.  Dan Trachtenberg, dir.  Is it a horror movie, mystery, thriller, or sci-fi?  A tense and apocalyptic experience that beats anything Stephen King could imagine?  My answer is yes to all those questions.  It’s a damn good film, a delightful exception from a Hollywood in decay.  It’s one of the best movies I’ve seen in a while.  John Goodman provides a stellar, award-winning performance as the crazy and violent survivalist and conspiracy theorist.  Mary Elizabeth Winstead almost matches him as the needy woman who runs away from problems but finds herself in the clutches of her kidnapper/savior.  And John Gallagher Jr. provides good backup for her as the surrogate brother who always defends her.

That’s it for the cast—no cast of thousands for this movie—but you’ll be sitting on the edge of your seat the whole movie trying to figure out Howard’s (Goodman) secret.  A real nail-biter, this is the kind of quality movie M. Night Shyamalan can only dream about making.  Bear McCreary’s driving score is a perfect mix, tense in the quite tames and driving frenzy in the action scenes.  Watch for all the details, right down to the lampshades and ice cream.  There’s some twists and misdirects during the ride too.  Highly recommended, but not for the squeamish.

In libris libertas…

This post is a follow-up on my post “Book Marketing—Anecdotes v. Real Stats.”  In that article I was ranting against people treating anecdotal evidence about book sales as reliable statistics.  Now I have something else to be riled about: Jellybooks.  This reader analytics company based in London makes studies of book reading habits and passes the results off as reliable stats.  Sound harmless?  Please, please, don’t bury your head in the sand—it isn’t harmless at all!  Both readers and writers should be concerned.  All readers, not just ebook readers, and all writers, not just indie writers.

Let’s deal with the general situation first.  It always amazes me that people froth at the mouth when they read or hear that the government is allegedly violating their privacy.  The amazement comes from the fact that they let data-mining corporations and private firms peer into their private lives all the time on the internet.  Private companies also manipulate people with false advertising and false endorsements.  A recent case where Lord and Taylor paid bloggers on Instagram to rate a dress highly all at the same time created outrage, but folks, don’t be naive—that goes on all the time.  Any product endorsement is suspect these days, and book reviews are examples of this.

Data-mining firms sell—ho hum, ain’t it obvious?—data they collect about you.  They collect data about your personal lives, your consumer lives, your health histories, whatever.  So does Google, Apple, General Motors, Microsoft, almost any big firm.  (Have a gmail or Google+ account?  You’re handing over all kinds of data about yourself to Google.  Anyone online does.  Wise up.)  This process is far more insidious than what the U.S. government does.  The government’s alleged purpose (I only say “alleged” because I can imagine  abuses—I’m a mystery and thriller writer, after all) is to protect us.  The purpose in the private sector is more insidious—they want to exploit us.  That exploitation is usually associated with making money, and, because consumers in our consumer society have few protections, the perps usually get away with it.

Enter Jellybooks.  Forget the “books” part of the name; I’m tempted to call this company Jellyball, because it’s like a jellyfish with stinging tentacles that are about to grab you and do you damage.  Let’s analyze their business model, ripped right out of the data-mining firms’ playbooks.  The people in charge saw a niche.  What the hell?  That’s free enterprise, right?  They saw that traditional publishers really don’t have a clue about the readers they’re selling to or their reading habits.  Up to now, publishers didn’t give a rat’s ass because they live thirty years in the past where there wasn’t much real competition.  But Jellybooks is convincing them to care.  While the publishers obviously have data on their own sales, that data is about purchases, not how people read.  Jellybooks wants to look at readers’ reading habits in the same way the techie Billy Beane in Moneyball looked at baseball players’ habits so smart product design and sales strategies can be found (and now you know why I’m talking about balls, and they’re not Trump’s).

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Because titles aren’t subject to copyright, I’m stealing Garcia Marquez’s title from his novella (“Cronica de una Muerte Anunciada” in the Spanish original, the version I read).  It seems appropriate to describe the situation in American politics this election year.  The American political system is on its deathbed, many factions are responsible for the attempted murder, and I foretold that many times in these pages.  Yeah, that’s flagrant pessimism and paranoia.  But you know the adage about paranoia, and this situation is horribly real.

Let’s take the 2016 presidency first because many things hinge on the campaign results (not that they matter much in general, only in the details).  On one hand, you have a tired old banshee and her philandering husband who want to continue their dynasty.  They seem to be successful at collecting the delegates and are the favorites of the Democratic establishment.  Their success is largely attributable to pandering to minorities, Blacks in particular, especially in the old South.  Because minorities are known to vote against their own interests, the Clintons are on a roll.

On the other hand, you have a narcissistic and fascist demagogue whose solution for every problem is attack, attack, attack, whether verbally or with physical force.  Because he’s confronting such a weak field of GOP candidates in the primaries, he has steamrollered almost all of them and is successfully bullying his way to the nomination.  He’s strong in the South too, by the way, because the GOP is always strong in the South.

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[Two mysteries today with no earth-shaking themes.  It’s amazing how murders can find their genesis in petty meaningless stuff.  Happens all the time in real life, of course, but I’m not sure the events are worth a novel.  Nevertheless, I like to try new authors, and these two were new for me.  You can read the following and decide, but I found that I had to write the review immediately because it’s too easy to put them out of mind.]

Bone Hook (Lei Crime #10).  Toby Neal, author (Toby Neal, 11/10/2015).  Well plotted, interesting characters, and a setting that’s my second favorite Hawaiian island, Maui (Kauai is the first), but the author commits the sin of a cliffhanger (she apologizes for it in a note at the end, so every reader becomes her priest in the confessional).  Lei is a Maui cop who has a lot of domestic problems but still has to solve a murder that has too many suspects.  The cliffhanger isn’t a major negative, by the way, because it corresponds to the subplot associated with the domestic problems, which are a bit ho-hum because they’re more common these days than dishonest politicians.  I still found the cliffhanger annoying, though.  You might not.  Reading between the lines, maybe previous books in the series don’t have this flaw?  Still, this is only good for a few hours entertainment when you get tired of the schlock on TV.  Sorry, Toby.

Shadows of the Past (Logan Point #1).  Patricia Bradley, author (Revell, 2/4/2014).  Many pros, one con.  This is a well written mystery with a good plot and interesting characters.  The settings are near Seattle and Memphis, about as far apart in distance and culture as one can imagine and still be in the U.S., and that creates some of the tension.  Psych prof and profiler Taylor Martin is scratching a lot of old Southern family wounds by insisting on looking for her long-last Daddy.  In the process, she acquires a stalker and has an on-again-off-again affair with a famous author.  If it were shorter, this could almost be a cozy, but there’s a lot of criminal meat in this romantic stew.  I enjoyed it by steaming by the romance, which wasn’t a wee bit steamy, and looking beyond the religious mumbo-jumbo associated with Taylor finding Jesus again (that one major con).  In fact, it’s a shame all that fluff wasn’t eliminated to have a perfect mystery.  I suppose there’s a big market for this stuff, but for me the price was right: $0.  Sorry, Patty.

***

Like more edgy mystery, suspense, and thrills that treat some important themes?  Have you tried the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series”?  Some of the books are more thriller than mystery, but in either case the two NYPD homicide detectives, often with viewpoints that are yin and yang, make an astonishing crime-fighting duo.  There are six novels in the series that starts with The Midas Bomb, already in its second edition and available in all ebook formats and paper (Create Space)—other ebooks in the series are still Amazon only.

In libris libertas….