[Note from Steve: This is the last free short story in this series (there might be others forthcoming outside the series, of course).  If you missed the other short stories in this series, they’re all archived in the blog category “Steve’s Shorts.”  This one is inspired by Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Boxer.”  (Fair warning: it’s rated R, or maybe PG-13 if you watch cable.)  I was an S&G fan from their first album.  Can’t say which version of “Sound of Silence” I like best (first or second album’s), but the duo started out in that sixties revival of folk music in the Village and made soft rock a new genre in music.  Even back then, I spent time “counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike.”  Hit after hit, but “The Boxer” was one of their biggest.  I was sad when they split—that marvelous synergy disappeared from the national music scene.]

Jake Billings finished sweeping the floor of the gym, sniffed at the foul air, and locked up.  The last punk had left.  Always thinking boxing’s their future.  He had once thought that.  Not hard to understand for a kid living on NYC’s mean streets.  Runner for the mob, pimp for the whores on 7^th avenue, drug dealer—these were the kind of occupations awaiting a poor young man looking for a future.  Boxing had seemed a safer place to be.

You start out fighting because you have to defend yourself.  Even to stay out of gang life, you have to fight.  They call you a faggot if you don’t join.  They might bugger you if you don’t join.  Some die fighting them.  If not them, the cops, who think every poor kid’s a future danger to society.  Cops aren’t much better than the gangs sometimes.  Some are OK and try to help; others will beat the crap out of you if you look at them wrong.

They’d called him Basher Billings.  He’d known how to fight.  He had learned fast.  Liked the fact that there were rules—it’s much safer when your opponent can’t pull out a gun or knife.  His first four matches ended in three knockouts and one TKO.  Then Sam, a good cop who hung around the gym, advised him to quit.

“You’re taking some hard hits, Jake,” the cop had said.  He’d fought a bit in the Marines.  “You’re going to turn your mind to mush.  Even with a helmet, I’d have ringing in my head.”

“The big money’s still there to be had,” Jake had said.  “It’s my way out of these neighborhoods.”

Sam had shrugged.  “Don’t ever say I didn’t tell you.”

Jake had thought about it, though.  But his agent Sid quashed the idea.  “We have a big one coming up.  Big money for both of us if you do what I tell you.”

Jake hadn’t liked the idea.  The agent had someone talk to him, someone called Biggy.  “Your nanna might have a little accident if you don’t do what you’re told, boy.”

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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 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. Gardners?  If you’re a UK reader or writer, you probably know all about Gardners.  If you’re a Yank, maybe not.  I didn’t.  Smashwords’ new distribution agreement with this UK ebook provider to bookstores and libraries is welcome.  First, it compensates for the loss of Oyster (I wonder what Google is going to do with it?).  Second, Gardners’ business model is far better than Overdrives’.  Third, iit opens up some new horizons for one’s ebooks in the UK.  Starting Oct. 22, Gardners will start offering ebooks in the Smashwords catalog.  Buyers and borrowers will have complete access.  Because many of my ebooks are international in scope (about half are available on Smashwords), I’ve always thought that UK readers might enjoy them.  This also might be a challenge to Amazon’s KDP Select.  We’ll see.

Item. The Times’ continuing bias.  The NY Times’ biased attacks on Amazon continues.  As reported here, the Times’ expose quoting disgruntled Amazon employees was countered by the company’s other employees, and Jeff Bezos remarked that the Amazon described in the article isn’t the Amazon he knows…or wants.  Now Jay Carney, Amazon spokesperson, and some editor from the Times are in a pissing war of words over the expose because Amazon discovered the main whistle-blower quoted by the Times was laid off and out for revenge.

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Authors often speak about doing “research” for a book.  From the science and technology point of view, that’s a misuse of the word “research,” but I’m seeing that incorrect use increasing with the years.  Kids writing a report for school “research” it; they mean they’ll google a bunch of stuff and write about it (or just copy).  People wanting to find what to do about insect bites will “research” that.  You used to go the library and use the reference books for all this; the internet and search engines changed everything.  It still isn’t research.

There’s no creative invention when you’re finding information for use in your book.  There’s no R in the sense of R&D; there’s not even any D!  You might say, “Eureka,” when you find a tidbit of arcane information you can use in your story, but it’s just background material.  Let’s call this process “fact gathering.”  While you might be a botanical expert on killer plants, anyone can just google that—I wouldn’t recommend that you do true and original research by trying potions made from those plants on yourself!  So, the first writing question of the day is: how much fact gathering should you do?

I generally do some before I even start writing a story.  As it proceeds, I might find I need to do some more.  In mystery/suspense/thriller novels, I usually focus on two or more important themes that have social implications.  That requires fact gathering.  Settings can require it to.  One can write stories in these genres without any fact gathering, but I can’t.  I’m sure there are readers who would just prefer to bury their heads in the sand when it comes to society’s problems, or not care where the characters are—they shouldn’t read my stories!

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[This one’s inspired by Billy Batson’s powerful imagery found in “I’ve Got a Long Way to Go” as sung by Hedge and Donna.  I saw that singing couple on a Pete Seeger show years ago, liked them a lot, and bought their LP—that old vinyl technology for recording music for those born after the CD revolution.  It’s the first LP I managed to get into my iTunes database.  The story is partly based on real events and occurs at a time when PTSD didn’t exist as an acronym.]

Glory Road

Copyright 2015, Steven M. Moore

Paul saw the explosion just before he heard it.  When he awoke, he was no longer in Vietnam.  The nurses and doctors were U.S. Army people, but the hospital was in Tokyo.  He figured that out without seeing much—just blurs and splashes of pastel colors.  He felt very much alone.

A bit later, a soft hand took his wrist.  “How are you doing, soldier?”

“Not great, if I’m here.  You’re from the South.”  He liked her soft voice, but was the tone pitying or compassionate?

“Good ears.  You’ll need them,” the nurse said.

“Because I can’t see?  Is that permanent?”

“When we get you back to the States, we’ll find out.  Right now, count yourself lucky.  Others in your patrol lost their lives.  You’re pretty much intact, except for the eyes and losing a few fingers.  I think they dug a round out of your back.  That will be sore, but the least of your worries.”

“Right hand,” he said, wiggling his fingers enough to feel the heavy bandage.  He already knew his eyes were bandaged.  “Why am I here?”

“On the way back,” she said.  “You’re going home.  Your trek down that glory road is over, at least as far as Vietnam is concerned.”

***

Paul relived the attack many times in many hospitals before he ended up back in Indianapolis, his home.  Jersey was the lieutenant, he was the sergeant, and the others were new at combat.  Ricardo Santos, called Jersey because he was from there and spoke with the accent, was OK, but some of the new recruits didn’t like him.  He asked a lot of everybody, but the new guys had lost the lottery and some were bitter about it.  One in particular, Jimmy Coulter, a Southerner, didn’t like taking orders from Jersey.  Paul had tried to mend fences, but there was always tension.

But was it bad enough to shoot Jersey and me in the back?  Catching them both by surprise, he had turned enough to see Coulter and wound up facing the blast.  The shot was insignificant as Jersey took the brunt of the explosion, shielding Paul.  Is Jimmy dead?  Paul hoped not.  He wanted to find the bastard! Read the rest of this entry »

Dome City Blues.  Jeff Edwards, author  (Stealth Books, 2011).  The author says he wrote this in 1992.  That’s hard to believe.  If so, there’s some really good futuristic extrapolation.  It shares themes with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (the movie Blade Runner) and Pohl’s Hee Chee trilogy (more akin to the first book in that series, though).  Hard-boiled private detective David Stalin (too much attention is paid to the last name) lives on a polluted Earth and hops among the domes that now constitute Greater Los Angeles.

When he loses his wife, the PI retires, until a beautiful woman wants him to prove her brother isn’t a serial killer.  Channeling Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade (in spite of the pollution, cancer, including lung cancer, is a thing of the past), he had to unravel the mystery in spite of the LAPD’s closing the case—the brother’s suicide note admitted culpability.  A bit predictable I suppose, but I thoroughly enjoyed this book.  Do I like it enough to look for the other books in the series?  Probably not, because it’s hard to imagine any sequel can match this.  (Caveat emptor: R-rated for multiple reasons.)

The Inn.  Scott Dyson, author (Deadlock Press, 2015).  Is this the longest story I’ve read by Mr. Dyson?  It’s a novella, and there’s a lot of horror, mystery, suspense, and thrills in these few pages.  I loved it, and It’s not a genre I often read (the horror part).  No zombies, vampires, or werewolves (thank God!), just one seemingly ordinary human being doing horrible things to other human beings.  Some scenes reminded me of Hayton’s novel Breathe and Release reviewed here and that real life atrocity with the three girls in Ohio.

The band director, his student teacher (a woman not much older than the students), and the band are on a road trip.  They plan to perform and then spend a day at a nearby amusement park, crashing two nights in the inn.  I can’t say much more without writing spoilers, but I will send out a warning: if you were a member of a high school band, any nostalgia might fly out the window as your read this.  Or, some readers might say, “This is a lot more exciting than our band trips were.”  Mr. Dyson’s writing is fresh and original.  Fans of the genre will enjoy this one. (Rating?  How would you rate the TV show Dexter?)

Fires of Alexandria.  Thomas Carpenter, author.  (Black Moon Books, 2013) I finished a Churchill bio recently (see Monday’s pseudo-review); lots of history, so it led me to think “historical novel.”  This is what Amazon came up with, it looked interesting, and I bought it.  I guess it’s one time Amazon’s “Peek Inside” failed me, or I just failed to register certain things.  This is NOT a historical novel.  It’s something called “alternate history.”  That’s a genre or subgenre (of what I’m not sure), and I was never attracted to it, unless it was sci-fi involving time travel.  I felt duped (self-duped?), but I read it anyway.

Heron (AKA Hero) of Alexandria was a real dude who flourished in AD 62, according to the Britannica, and was a geometer and inventor.  The book takes place just before the “flourishing” in AD 50.  X’s take here is that Heron was actually a dudette (that’s not a spoiler because it’s introduced early), and s/he (that new pronoun isn’t used in the politically correct sense here) invents a lot more than water clocks in this novel.  The “big mystery” is who torched the library in 48 BC?  Julius Caesar is generally credited with accidentally doing that when he set Mr. Ptolemy XIII’s navy on fire and the wind blew the wrong way (only papyri in dock warehouses were burned on that occasion), but X has another theory.  The “big adventure” is that Heron’s inventions help kick Romans in their butts, and Alexandria falls to a new leader, a barbarian from the north (that is a bit of a spoiler, but not much).

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The TV guide in our NY Times has little capsule reviews for featured films.  They’re often humorous.  I saw this one a few days ago.  It’s a common sentiment but definitely not a tautology (something always true).  For example, The Martian (movie) is much better than the book, because the director and principal actor make it so (see tomorrow’s mini-review).  Gone Girl (movie) and Gone Girl (book) are equally bad.  Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (movie) was good, but the book IS better.

It’s useful to analyze which media can tell a story better.  Because I review both books and movies, I have a clear idea on the pros and cons of each one.  That doesn’t mean I can predict whether the book is better or not, but I can often hazard an educated guess, so maybe it’s worthwhile to list some of those pros and cons for readers/moviegoers.

Movies are visual and aural.  We often choose glitz, special effects, and action over cerebral introspection and quiet settings.  We like our professional soundtracks too.  In books, the first has to be described in words and the second is, of course, absent, unless you’re “reading” an audiobook.  On the other hand, books can be introspective—we can get into a character’s head easily in a book, but not so easily in a movie.  Great actors can use body language to project some inner thoughts, but that is limited in its possibilities in comparison to a book.

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[Note from Steve: July 2015 data show 58, 270 homeless people, including 13, 875 families and 23, 490 children slept in NYC’s shelters.  These are the sheltered; the numbers don’t count the many who wander aimlessly and sleep on the streets, heating grates, and park benches.  Many of them have mental and health problems.  A good number are veterans.  Mayor De Blasio recently changed his opinion and recognized the problem, but it isn’t just a problem for NYC.  Nevertheless, in this story, the homeless person isn’t the victim.  The story was inspired by Kris Kristofferson’s “Sunday Mornin’s Comin’ Down.”  Enjoy.]

Sunday Mornin’

Copyright Steven M. Moore, 2015

                Jimmy kicked the can down the street and enjoyed the tolling of the church bells as he made his way to the soup kitchen.  He saw the lines, decided he’d rather panhandle some change for breakfast than wait for the slop they served, and headed for his favorite corner.  It was shady in the morning and had plenty of street traffic as New Yorkers headed for a day of worship or a day of labors within and among the brooding skyscrapers.  The day still had a lazy feel to it…God’s day, a day of rest, and work for those who provided city services, often 24/7.

He decided to save some time and cut through an alleyway.  “C’mon, old boy.  Who knows?  We might find a trash bin or two with some edible scraps.  Saturday night’s always a good scrap producer.”

He’d named the mongrel Emyouteetee, for M-U-T-T.  Colleagues were surprised when they asked about the name and he told them it was the name of a famous Buddhist monk.  One old fellow named Benjamin had even held the dog’s head and looked into his eyes, searching for divine revelation.  Out of guilt, Jimmy had almost told the old man about the name because he and Jimmy often shared weed, but Benjamin had seemed so at peace gazing into the dog’s eyes that Jimmy hadn’t wanted to ruin the spell.

James Earl Pennington, Jr. had served in both Afghanistan and Iraq.  Except for the nightmares, he thought he was sane.  The medics had saved his left arm and leg in the battlefield hospital, but not his left eye.  He spoke southern Pashto, Iraqi Arabic, and Colombian Spanish, but most of his night school students had spoken either Arabic or Spanish.  He was facile with languages because of his mother, a Louisiana Creole, who spoke her maternal dialect, French, and Spanish, as well as English (he had no idea who Mr. Pennington, Sr. was).  The Army had considered him a natural for a home-grown translator, but that had put him into squads that combed the streets of towns and villages looking for the enemy.
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It’s an ode to biographers instead, and maybe a dirge for the death of an empire.  I just finished Manchester and Reid’s Churchill, Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965 (Last Lion #3).  Phew!  Manchester died before this was finished, and Reid completed the tome.  And tome it is.  Goodreads had it listed as 1237 pages.  That’s a wee bit off because approximately 200 pages are dedicated to notes, bibliography, and index.  Still, with about a 1000 pages of real text, all in a tiny, tiny font, this is a marathon for readers.  But imagine the years spent writing it!  It reminded me of the story of all those Irish monks slaving away and copying the classics while Vikings burned, pillaged, and raped their way through ancient Europe and Eire.  They saved Western civilization.  The two authors I mentioned recorded some of its darkest moments for posterity.

Mind you, old Winston and FDR don’t come across as saints here (but if the pope can canonize a murdering missionary, we can accept these leaders’ sins as blips for two strong personalities who saved the world from the Nazi horrors); on the other hand, we’re allowed to see a lighter side of Papa Joe, the butcher, a man who set the tone for all the mob-style bosses who have since ruled the Soviet Union and Russia, including Putin.  Bottom line: it took those three musketeers and some good generals they commanded, including an aggressive, often self-serving general, Ike, an American of German descent, to beat the Germans.  We gloss over history, often turning it into myths, but this book tells it like it is.

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[Note from Steve: this blog newsletter appears most Fridays.  If you miss an issue, back numbers are filed in the blog category with the same name.]

Wattpad.  I’m trying it.  I posted “The Call,” a short, short story seen here in “Steve’s Shorts.”  It’s probably not going to do much for me.  AFTER I joined, I googled “pros and cons of wattpad” and found it’s a mixed bag.  It seems to be used more by authors seeking traditional publishing contracts, and focused on romance-related stories.  I’ll be a duck out of water, I guess.  Any experiences with this?  I figure, if I’m giving away some free short stories, I might as well try to increase the audience.  BTW, I was motivated to do this because I saw that Margaret Atwood gives away free stuff here.  I’m not holding my breath because Atwood clearly already has a vast following.

Critique groups.  Wattpad isn’t a critique site.  It’s more like American Idol—the idea is to collect followers and create a brand name from the author’s perspective.  From the reader’s, it’s more about finding free stuff to read.  I couldn’t find anything like critique groups.

When I started way back when, I had a lot of writing already behind me, so I tried to help young authors at the now defunct critique site EditRed.  I put in some time, but I probably didn’t help all that much.  Of course, many MFAs are based on the critique group paradigm, and there are many other sites now on the internet.  If you’re a newbie author, they could be useful, I guess, but you’re always running through a gauntlet of “experts” who think the right way to write is how they write.  In other words, your voice, in the colloquial and technical sense, can be drowned out by the cacophony of “experts.”

I guess a critique group is better than NaNoWriMo.  Why anyone in her/his right mind thinks s/he can write a novel in one (!) month is beyond me.  In both cases, though, your time is probably better spent writing and self-critiquing what you write after perusing published suggestions about how to do it.  Know the rules before you break them certainly, but don’t let any so-called experts squash your creative spirit.

Indie v. traditional?  “I’ve always maintained that no publisher should make more money off a book than the writer does.”  Sounds like an argument for going indie, right?  Traditional publishing’s contracts give meager allowances (which the author has to “earn out” before s/he gets royalties), 10 to 15% royalties, and exclusivity clauses that you have to buy out if you want rights to your novel later.  Moreover, there are fewer benefits offered for signing said contracts every year.

With the indie paradigm, an author holds all rights, and s/he receives 35% to 70% royalties from Amazon (Smashwords percentages are less than Amazon’s except for ebooks sold on their website, but even ebooks they distribute as wholesalers to retailers receive more royalties than traditional).  Financially, that means that every indie writer can make more than his publisher because there is NO publisher.  (Yeah, I know many of us create or use a phantom publisher—that gives us something to fill in on that Amazon or Smashwords form.  Phantoms, real or virtual, don’t make money off a book after it’s published—only the indie author.)

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This was part of a two-part question in a discussion thread on Linked In—the two questions were this one and whether Author Guild serves self-published authors.  There are good discussions on this social media site about the book business, but I’m usually a lurker because the monitors often have obvious agendas I find annoying (many aren’t writers, of course, but PR reps and marketers, cruising for clients).  I came out of the shadows for this thread and answered the person’s two questions with no and no.

From op-eds in this blog, readers know why I say no to the Author Guild question.  They are first and foremost an org promoting traditional publishing and traditionally published authors—in other words, they feel threatened by indie writers and attack them and their favorite media, ebooks, whenever they can.  They supported the Big Five and Apple in the agency-model price-fixing lawsuit launched by the Justice Department.  They have launched repeated attacks against Amazon, recently in support of Hachette.  They’ve let old has-beens like Patterson and Preston lead the charge against ebooks and indie writers.  So enough for that question.

The other question can’t be answered because there’s a dearth of reliable stats (nothing about the Guild is reliable, of course, including the stats they pull out their you-know-whats).  The genesis of my no can be found in the fact that almost every prize you can sign up for on your own is an award in a contest that’s merely a money-making scheme for the organizers of the contest, from the Lorian Hemingway Short Story Awards to the Writer’s Digest contests.  I get invitations to submit all the time.  They immediately go into the email trash bin on my computer or physical trash bin if they come via snail-mail.

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