[Note from Steve: I’m not superstitious, but, for those who are, have a safe day today.  Did you hear about the guy who went looking for the 13th floor in a hotel and fell into an open elevator shaft, all on Friday the 13th?  There: who said I can’t write a horror story!]

Item. Celebrity books.  Or, should I say, public confessions of the rich and (in)famous?  Do you read them?  The bookstores are full of them, if that’s any gauge of popularity.  There’s Trump’s new propaganda piece containing no more meat than his campaign speeches, just another spiel saying, “I’m great, I’m handsome, I’m rich, I’m smart, and I can save America!”  Some are informative: George H. W. Bush’s (the father of Dubya and Jeb), says a few things about Trump, but mostly looks back, verifying what I always knew: Cheney and Rumsfeld had their own hawkish and nefarious agendas and tried to impose their will and further their on agenda in Dubya’s administration.  And others are just ploys to make some money: Leah Remini’s exposé of Scientological shenanigans has become a book tour through talk shows—she needs the money, I guess, but I wonder why people care about her making more money.  Or, worry about a cult.

When people ask me if I’ve read celebrity so-and-so’s book, I usually look at them like they were idiots.  I’m very selective in my reading, and I generally find the practice of a celebrity cashing in on their ready-made brand name a despicable practice.  One of Obama’s books was the last celebrity book I finished (one written even before he became president).  I started one of O’Reilly’s Killing X books (I guess he’s not very inventive about titles), didn’t like it, and stopped (I guess that’s a mini-mini-review—I started because I read some history now and then).  But O’Reilly is just another celebrity author cashing in on his brand name.

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[Note from Steve: You’ve seen these on other product websites—my ebooks are my products—so here’s some candid ones for prospective readers.]

I will entertain you.  The stories I love to read—mysteries, thrillers, and sci-fi (or combos of these genres)—are similar to the ones I write. Mine are unique, of course, original entertainment you won’t find anywhere else.  Sometimes I think my characters are really doing the writing, but I’ll take the credit.

I won’t coddle you.  You might not find enough sex and violence for your tastes, but I often have some raw and non-trivial themes woven into my plots (see my post two weeks ago on the subject).  I write mysteries, but I don’t write cozy mysteries.  I often include romance in my novels, but I won’t write fluffy romances where X finds Y and everyone is left happy, happy, happy.  I might include some weird ETs, humanoids or not, but no vampires, werewolves, zombies, or boy magicians.  There is the good, the bad, and the ugly—fifty shades of gray because most things in life aren’t black or white.

I let you, the reader, become an active participant.  I endorse both minimalist writing and the Goldilocks Principle.  The first says that I’ll provide a minimal character description, for example, and allow you to complete and create your own mental image of that character.  The second means, for example, that the minimal character description is just enough for you to do that, and not too much nor too little.  You can participate in the creative process while reading my stories.  Don’t like that?  I’ll agree it’s not the usual passive experience you might be accustomed to in other books, movies, and TV shows.  Tough!  It’s more like an interactive computer game where you have fun experiencing the adventure.

I’ve minimized the expensive and commercial bureaucracy between you, the reader, and me, the author.  Indie writers can do this, and most, like me, pass the savings obtained in this low-fat business model onto customers, like you.  With the publication of the second edition of The Midas Bomb (coming soon!), ALL my ebooks save one will cost $3.99 or less (I hope to remedy the one exception in 2016).  I offer quality entertainment at reasonable prices.

And I do mean quality!  I’m my own worse taskmaster; I demand quality from Steve Moore, the writer.  Even during my years of stressful day jobs and frustration as a wannabe writer, I had a masochistic work ethic that drove me, and continues to drive me, toward perfection—it’s never obtainable, of course, but it’s always my goal.  That’s always been true, from when I washed highway construction equipment to save money for college, to my most recent cottage industry as a full-time writer (I have a lot of good hired help, skilled people and cherished friends).  And you’re the beneficiary for the latter.

The story is all important.  I’m a storyteller.  I’m only half-Irish in spite of advertising an Irish hat factory (see Hanna Hats on my webpage “Join the Conversation”), but my blarney is intact and healthy.  As part of that minimalist writing philosophy just described, I won’t burden you with pages and pages of verbosity, though—I shoot the starter’s gun on your adventurous marathon run through one of my stories, and you can set the pace you want to arrive at the finish line, without major distractions and a lot of excitement.  I expect this in the books I read, and I cringe when someone tells me a book is a great character study, full of arcane details, or a fantastic travelogue.  Ugh!

I’m not in this for the money.  I’m lucky: I don’t have to make a living at this, but I’d like to break even sometimes.  Now I pump all my royalties back into the next book.  My writing business still runs in the red!  I’m not proud of that because it means I’m not entertaining as many readers as I’d like to do, but I accept it.  I always say that if each ebook can entertain just one reader, it’s a success.  (FYI, among the few reviews my books have, most are positive, if that makes any difference—check some out excerpts on my Home page and “Books and short stories” webpage.)

So there you have them—seven FAQs about my writing.  (Actually, not many have asked for them, so they’re just facts.  But don’t be shy if you do have questions.  Drop me an email or message on Goodreads.)  The above are facts about my writing life you might not have realized before, in any case.  Pick up one of my ebooks and start reading it in order to see if I’m just blowing smoke.  (Caveat: I haven’t smoked anything since 1982 when I went cold turkey.)  You might like what I write.  (And, if that $3.99 price is too much for you, you can read an ebook for free in return for an honest review.  Again, drop me an email.)

In elibris libertas….

It seems unfair that there’s only one day to honor them.  No matter your political proclivities, these men and women have fought bravely for this country to preserve our freedoms, including those freedoms to have and express our opinions freely.

We’ve made some progress.  During and after the Vietnam War, veterans got a bum rap.  I hate to use the trite phrase, but we now recognize their service and thank them for it.  Animosity in the Vietnam era always seemed odd to me; it was the time of the draft and the lottery.  Most had no choice about it.  Now all our service men and women are volunteers, skilled in what they do, and dedicated to keeping our country safe.

Let’s recognize their dedicated service, make sure they and their families are taken care of when they return to us, and applaud all those still in the service to this country today.  Do this each and every day, but especially today.

Gold Rush Mystery.  Mit Sandru, author (Chivileri Publishing, 2015).  When I started this novella, I had some misgivings.  It’s probably just me, but I didn’t like the simple drawings and media interviews at the beginning.  Maybe some will see that as a clever way to do the background and/or get the story started.  I didn’t, but I continued.  I’m glad I did.  It became an entertaining and mysterious story that kept me interested until the end.

The background can be summarized as follows: the author is describing what the first steps might be for establishing a colony on the moon.  In many sci-fi stories, this is a fait accompli, and the protagonists move around in a colony that already exists.  Clarke’s A Fall of Moondust comes to mind; Heinlein, in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, turns this idea upside-down and makes the colony a prison.  This novella starts at the beginning with the first manned colony, but the “colonists” in the Gold Rush project find they’re not the first.  Armstrong and other friends aside, old Luna has had other visitors in the past, and their artifacts aren’t exactly benign to Humans at first.

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I’ve been putting stuff I write in the public eye for more than ten years now.  I’m unabashedly indie; the main reason is that I wouldn’t have been able to write so many books otherwise.  I started out running the traditional publishing gauntlet, reaping over one thousand rejections from many agents, feeling elated when some asked to read a MS, feeling down after they sat on it for months only to say something like, “sorry, it’s just not for me,” and wondering what it took to get past these gatekeepers.  In their defense, they’re just doing the bidding of traditional publishing houses, giving their editors what they think is marketable, and currently restricted by the fact that those same publishers only want to bet on sure horses (authors often ready for the glue factory because they’re so formulaic—what’s Grafton going to do when she runs out of the alphabet?).

POD (that’s print-on-demand) saved me from throwing in the towel at the start of my publishing journey, but that soon became too costly for my meager budget, so my indie adventure turned to ebooks.  Amazon made it possible for almost anyone to go indie and DIY their way to publishing an ebook.  Yep, you can DIY the whole thing, but readers might not like what you offer.  The fact that you can offer a poor product to the reading public doesn’t mean you should.  Your readers won’t like it, and other indie writers won’t like it either, because your poor product makes them look bad too.  You should always make your ebook the best it can be, but, if you DIY, that best still might not cut it.

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[Note from Steve: Alexander McNabb is mainly an author of thrillers, having written Olives – A Violent Romance, Beirut – An Explosive Thriller, Shemlan – A Deadly Tragedy, A Decent Bomber (just reviewed in Bookpleasures and this blog–see below), and Birdkill.  He has been working in, living in, and travelling around the Middle East for some thirty years. Formerly a journalist, editor and magazine publisher, today he is a consultant on media, publishing and digital communications.  Alexander is also a frequent conference speaker, chair and moderator – as well as commentator in broadcast and print media – particularly around technology, media and online issues. When he’s not writing books, he’s posting half-thoughts and snippets on his blog, Fake Plastic Souks, which he started in 2007 during the Arab Media Forum. The title refers to the ‘new’ souks of Dubai, so much more convenient and classy than the real thing.  Oh, and for anyone who hasn’t been exposed to Arabia, a souk is a collection of shops, a sort of traditional mall! Without further ado, let’s throw some questions at him.]

Alexander on writing:

1)  Why, how, and when did you start writing?

I suppose it all started with reading, I’ve always been a voracious reader. But I gave up smoking in 2001 and had to find something publicly acceptable to do with my hands. I realized I’d written millions of words of copy in my career as a magazine editor and publisher as well as my years working in communications. I’d written speeches, op-eds, letters and white papers on behalf of CEOs, Sheikhs, and Kings so I thought I might as well have a go at writing a book. I was, of course, quite remarkably clueless about what that actually entailed. My first book was a spoof thriller called Space, which was very funny but not really a Booker Prize troubler. It took over 100 rejections from British literary agents for me to get the point.

2)  Did you publish the first book you wrote?

Yes, oddly enough, in the end. I took a look back over Space for some editing workshop I was doing a couple of years back and it tickled me pink. So I bunged it up on Amazon for $0.99. It was written as a spoof of the very genre I ended up writing in, but it made me laugh and laugh. It has one review on Amazon, ‘This book is not funny.’  [Note from Steve: Alexander shouldn’t worry—those one- and two-line reviews on Amazon are generally meaningless.]

3)  What is your biggest problem with the writing process. How do you tackle it?

I don’t have a single gnarly problem that lies in wait drooling and waiting to attack.  Each book has had its own quirks and issues to manage. Olives is written in the first person and makes a really solid emotional connection with readers as a result. Beirut had structural issues and my editor made me tear it all down and rebuild it, losing one too many goody and one too many baddy on the way. For Shemlan, the editor took out 15,000 words of flashbacks which I have just restored because I felt, after having considered his advice for two years, the book as I intended it achieves what I set out to achieve.  A Decent Bomber suffered the most difficult gestation – that’s taken two years to write. And then Birdkill followed right after as a massive sigh of relief and just tumbled onto paper. Well, DOCX. You know.

4)  Do you feel writing is something you need to do or want to do?

Writing is most assuredly something I want to do. Marketing, now that’s a whole other ballgame.

5)  Have your personal experiences (or situations) influenced you creatively? If so, how?

Yes, my first three books are Middle East based. My experience with callow British journalists interacting with Arabs; of Jordan and Beirut (that sexiest of cities) and thirty years of wandering around this part of the world have undoubtedly had their effect. Writing makes you a thief, a stealer of things. A glance, a gesture, a phrase, a personal quirk.

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(Alexander McNabb, A Decent Bomber, Amazon Digital Services, 2015, ASIN B01632FH7E)

Ireland is a country steeped in significant history, from the medieval monks who saved the classics of Western Civilization from pillaging Vikings, to its long-suffering population whose courage and positive outlook on life have endured despite centuries of problems and provided the world with many immigrants who contributed greatly wherever they settled.  It’s a country of beautiful, eerie, and primitive landscapes, and those adjectives often well describe its literature and music too.  But one of the bloodiest periods in Irish history is simply called The Troubles.  This book is set in the aftermath of that period where emotions still run high, the old guard remembers the atrocities, and their sons and daughters still have eyes toward retribution.

O’Carolan was the surname of the troubadour-harpist Turlough O’Carolan, who wrote some of the most beautiful Irish music, played and often set to different lyrics by Irish balladeers from the 1700s to Phil Coulter and other Irish performers today.  When O’Carolan wrote, Ireland was primarily agrarian, more so than today.  Entering on today’s stage in this novel is Pat O’Carolan, dairy farmer, a gentle giant who leads a quiet existence on his small farm.  That bucolic peace is interrupted on the day he picks up niece Orla at the train station.  She wants to spend some time with her uncle and his cows and count it toward her degree at the university.  Unfortunately, al Shabab terrorists have other plans.  They’ve learned through torture and murder that Pat has some special skills they don’t have—he was an IRA master bomb maker.  Moreover, the IRA still has old arms caches sprinkled around the area and in England. Thus begins an intense thriller that will keep you turning the pages.

This O’Carolan turns out to be an elderly Rambo on steroids who can take it from the bad guys and give it back to them  many times over (no spoilers there—this is a thriller, folks).  But it isn’t just the bad guys.  There’s an election coming, and old pals in the IRA are trying to play nice for the voters and the media, which leads to a cover-up of their activities from twenty years ago.  Moreover, North Ireland police and the Irish Gardia are on O’Carolan’s tail, along with the terrorists.  He had to make bombs for them because they’d kidnapped his niece.  Gradually the reader learns the terrorists’ agenda—it mixes greed with terror.

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My father’s opinion of politicians was that they are just failed lawyers.  I say, failed something.  You know this country’s in trouble when the most profound statement in that GOP debate came from our inimitable and mostly absent governor, Chris Christie, who has only been eclipsed as a barking attack dog because Donald Trump is around as a noisier barking attack dog.  This acerbic jerk and not a NJ favorite son said that focusing on Fantasy Football was absurd when there are so many other more important problems around.  Wow!  Of course, he was attacking both CNBC moderators and Jeb?, but even from the blathering mouth of this governor the occasional spittle of truth will spew forth.

Continuing with the governor (and forgetting about the Donald, the other aficionado of insulting rants), Christie actually mentioned ISIS and al Qaeda.  The rest of the GOP anointed mentioned terrorism only peripherally as part of that never-ending Benghazi fixation that they’re using to attack Hillary (that last whole grueling one-day session was a three-ring circus, with GOP inquisitors ending with rotten eggs all over their faces—the wannabe House Speaker had said it’s a witch hunt, and he is right).  While I might be giving Mr. Christie far too much credit, he nailed it: terrorism is the number one issue of our time.  All politicians should realize that; every citizen should too.  And it’s not something to analyze in short soundbites on a debate stage—it requires profound analysis and multi-dimensional thinking, both sorely lacking in this electoral season.

Maybe politicians think that they’re impervious to terrorist attacks when they’re sitting in their cozy little condos and houses in Washington?  They have $150 million dollar blimps loaded with electronics to protect them, right?  They have Pentagon experts at their beck and call, experts who have done such a great job against the Taliban, al Qaeda, and ISIS, right?  The politicians figure that the Middle East is just another way for their masters in the military-industrial complex to make money selling projects to the Pentagon that don’t work.  Everyone’s happy as long as they’re making money, right?

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[Note from Steve:  Why do I say I’m in “the writing trenches”?  Because I’m like that grunt soldier in World War One, slogging it out while the dapper generals AKA Big Five authors sitting comfortably in their Big Five tents could care less what happens to me.  I apply a wee bit of Zen philosophy to my situation: what is, is, and there’s little I can do about it except for having fun entertaining you with my cryptic and often acerbic comments about the writing life.  So, read on: issue #107 is on your breakfast plate for today for you to enjoy.]

Item. Outlines or seat-of-the-pants?  When I write a novel, I start out with a few plot ideas, what-ifs, and character sketches, and then write like a madman.  In the course of that writing, cut-and-paste is my friend, what some writing gurus call content editing.  My first draft is my last draft before copy editing (search and destroy mission for incorrect grammar, misspellings, overuse of adjectives and adverbs, etc).  Sometimes this writing technique works really well; other times, it’s a wee bit of a struggle.  Generally my characters help things along and surprise me.

That technique can be contrasted with outlining a novel in its entirety and sticking to it.  That’s more methodical but equally valid.  I don’t think the story would flow as well if I did that, but many people write that way, so there must be something good to say about it.  What technique do you use?  Do you use outlines?  Or do you write like I do, seat-of-the-pants style?  If you’re a reader perusing a work of fiction, can you tell which technique an author uses?  I doubt it.  I’m an avid reader, and I certainly can’t.

Item. Author’s Guild.  First, don’t think this represents ALL authors—it doesn’t.  Far from it.  It’s basically at the service of Big Five publishers and their anointed writers, many sure bets already in the stables but often ready for the glue factory as they write their formulaic schlock (what’s Sue Grafton going to do when she runs out of the alphabet?  Maybe go to Cyrillic?).

On Joe Konrath’s blog, where he often says the above and more, I suggested that writers should start a real author’s guild, an org for writers that actually works for ALL authors, not just the anointed ones of the Big Five.  If you think about it long enough, you’ll realize that it’s a good idea.  We don’t really have an org to protect us.  Maybe readers should start an org too.  The two orgs could work together to guarantee that the nefarious middle, those people standing between good writers and avid readers, can’t dominate the reading world.  That sounds like a better place to be.

Item. Too many lawyers?  You know the joke about the convention bus filled with lawyers going into the ocean.  John Grisham, traditional publishing’s sure-bet horse #1, has made a career with his legal thrillers.  Michael Connelly, sure-bet horse #2, jumped on the bandwagon.  Now the Times applauds two more tales by them titled Rogue Lawyer and The Crossing, respectively (when will the Times push an indie book?).  I’m sure these books are well written—the sure-bet horses always receive great grooming—but I won’t read them.  After the first two lawyer books by these gents, I lost interest.  Sorry, John and Michael.  There are too many lawyers per capita in our society, even in fiction!  (Your opinions might differ, of course, so comments are welcomed.)

Item. Mayhem, Murder, and Music.  Now that I’ve finished the series (the last short story, “TKO,” appeared last Wednesday), I’ll let it set awhile.  You can access all the stories free-of-charge in the blog category “Steve’s shorts.”  Be forewarned that by next year sometime, they’ll disappear and magically reappear in a short story collection with that title.  The disappearance is an Amazon requirement, but I only think that’s fair—other readers will have a chance to enjoy the stories.

Item. A Decent Bomber.  Next week I’ll review this ebook (coming Nov. 5) and interview the author.  It’s a lot more interesting than anything Grisham or Connelly ever wrote (see above) and McNabb sounds like he’d liven up any cocktail hour.  Don’t miss this treat.

Item. Family Affairs.  In case you missed it, #6 in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series” was just released.  The title is the theme, but this is still a novel filled with mystery, suspense, and thrills.  The yin-and-yang detectives (Chen is a conservative Asian with a Mona Lisa smile; Castilblanco is a tough but compassionate progressive, a Manhattan Puerto Rican who has become a Buddhist) have to solve two cases at once in this one before bringing the bad guys to justice…or even determining who the bad guys are.  Available on Amazon in ebook format only.  Reviewers can have a free copy in return for an honest review by querying me at steve@stevenmmoore.com; the ebook is also available via Net Galley.

Item. The Midas Bomb, Second Edition.  You probably balked at the $9.95 price for the ebook version of #1 in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series,” and rightly so.  I would, but it wasn’t my doing.  Many readers have discovered that numbers 2 through 6 can stand-alone (this is true for all my novels), but maybe some didn’t want to start a series where the first ebook is so expensive.  I empathize with that.  So, lucky you, coming real soon you’ll be able to buy The Midas Bomb, Second Edition, for only $2.99, matching the prices of the other novels in the series!  Look for it.  (The original edition, available in both pbook and ebook format, will still be available; the second edition will only be in ebook format.)

The Midas Bomb is, of course, where the adventures of Detectives Chen and Castilblanco all began.  If you have read other ebooks in the series, you won’t want to miss this one!  In addition to the intrepid detectives, the arch-villain Vladimir Kalinin makes his first appearance here.  His presence is felt in many ebooks in many different series.  In this novel, Rolando Castilblanco has lost two partners and is adapting to his new partner, Dao-Ming Chen.  You will also witness the on-again-off-again romance between Castilblanco and Pamela Stuart, who later becomes his wife in the series.

Item. Happy Halloween!  To all youngsters out there and all young-at-heart adults, have a safe and enjoyable spook night.  Make sure your tricks don’t hurt or damage and don’t get sick on all the treats.

In elibris libertas…. 

In essay-land (that includes op-ed, of course), theme rules: you have to have at least one theme to opine.  For writing fiction, not so much.  And, perhaps because I do both, I make a semantical distinction between theme and plot when I write fiction.  A good story doesn’t need themes per se, but it does need a plot.  But one or two themes make for a better story—they enhance the plot.  The theme or themes in a story are motivating issues: spousal infidelity or abuse, mental illness, the horrors of war, how spies make it through the night, sexual aberrations, child pornography, and so forth.  The plot weaves these themes together to create a good story, so a plot is a wee bit weak if there’s nothing to weave!

As an avid reader (even if you’re a writer, you should be an avid reader), you probably have many examples of what I’m talking about if you just stop and think about stories you’ve read.  If you’re like me, you enjoy the added complexity of having some themes woven in the tapestry of the novel.  Often themes and how they’re woven into a plot make a reader stop and remark, “Geez, that’s a twist—I never thought about those issues in that way.”  A good story is more than entertainment; it should be the genesis for those type of internal dialogues.  Of course, some readers don’t appreciate that complexity—that’s fine, because there are many novels, even enjoyable ones, that don’t make you think.  But you probably can’t avoid that type of mental introspection when reading my novels.

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