I’ll explain the title of this article in a bit. First, let me say I’ve been meaning to write one about book banning, either for here at my author’s blog, or at pubprogressive.com, my political blog. It was going to be a general article about the dangers associated with such practices that I consider an insidious influence on authors and publishers and the antithesis of freedom of expression. It’s curious, for example, how America’s far-right rails against government intrusion when they’re all for controlling what people can read. Of course, no sane person should ever look for logical behavior from America’s far-right, or from their evil lord and master Donald J. Trump, who has shown how illogical one person can be, among other things too despicable to put in an article about writing and publishing.

Book banning in general is bad. Fahrenheit 451 shows how it’s tied to fascism. Freedom of expression is the opposite of book banning, to put it simply. Censorship should always be questioned in any society that pretends to be democratic. You might not want to read Fifty Shades of Grey (I don’t either), but I have no right to stop you if you do. No person or group should be allowed to do that.

And you don’t have to use fictional extremes like Bradbury’s famous novel to see the dangers either, real dangers. Banning of works like Huckleberry Finn, or of any other tale about minorities, by the anti-cultural appropriation nuts is just plain wrong. Mark Twain could write about Jim because he’d observed how black men and women were treated in Missouri—they still are treated badly, because it’s a rock-solid member of the FSA—see the meaning of that acronym at pubprogressive.com. And my own inclusion of Asian, Black, and Hispanic characters in my novels is also justified by own observations made everywhere I’ve lived and traveled.

Okay, so much for generalities. What America’s far-right is doing with book banning is dangerously close to what far-right regimes do in the rest of the world. It’s another reason why America is looking like 1930s Nazi Germany right now. And it’s akin to how Iran’s evil theocracy treats freedom of expression because America’s far-right book-banners are often radical religious fanatics as well. Hopefully America’s far-right will come to its sense and stop this insane emulation of Iran, which has reached an acme of persecution with its thirty-year fatwa against Salman Rushdie. What happened to that man shouldn’t be the fate of any author. Or, is that what America’s far-right wants? Murdering an author goes far beyond banning his books!

But what about the title of “Origins Redux” for this article? Last week I wrote about the origins of some of my books. The attack on Rushdie made me ask myself, “Will I be attacked by rabid Catholics because I had my character Declan O’Hara write a historical novel about St. Brendan? Will they attack me for writing one myself about St. John?” “Absurd!” you might say. But isn’t that similar to what Rushdie did? You don’t think Catholics can have far-right sentiments? You just have to look at SCOTUS to see far-right Catholic fanatics in powerful positions in the US government! I’m willing to bet if a book-banning case come before them, they’ll vote against the author or publisher!

If you say that no one will come after me because I don’t sell many books, you’re correct. But authors freedom of expression must be protected no matter how well their books sell. All authors and publishers are adversely affected by book banning. One banned book anywhere can make every author and publisher constrain what they put into words. I rebel against constraints!

Iran provides an evil and extreme example of how far-right censorship in America could go. And it’s so absurd! Readers are always free to choose not to read materials they find offensive. They shouldn’t try to force their reading preferences and prejudices on anyone, though. That lead to fatwahs like Iran’s against Rushdie. ‘Nough said.

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Come globe-trot with me! Your last chance to get a bargain-buy of three evergreen novels from three different series that will take you, the reader, to many different countries. Aristocrats and Assassins (UN52Q) finds Detective Castilblanco and his wife on an European vacation that becomes deadly. Why is a terrorist kidnapping Europe’s royals? In Death on the Danube (AR72S), you’ll cruise down that famous river along with Esther Brookstone and Bastiann van Coevorden on their honeymoon voyage…right into danger, as the two sleuths try to find a murderer. And in Muddlin’ Through (TV85M), you can go along on a dangerous tour with Mary Jo Melendez around Europe and South America as she tries to prove she was framed for her sister and brother-in-law’s murder and tries to save the MECHs (“Mechanically Enhanced Cybernetic Humans”). All these globe-trotting adventures that will leave you breathless and asking for more are on sale now at Smashwords for only 99 cents. (Use the indicated promo codes if you don’t see that price.) Sale ends August 31. Bon voyage!

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

The Brits must hate me. Despite their parasitic royal family, I’ve loved them since I read Dame Agatha’s mysteries as a young lad, but, like other writers before her and during her time, diversity, if present, was a bit skewed in her novels, to say the least. I also noticed this in the H. Rider Haggard stories. In fact, non-white men and women were often cast as either servants or villains as they were in real life in the old British Empire.

It was difficult to reconcile all that with the diversity I saw growing up in California. I didn’t consider African, Asian, and Hispanic Americans as separate groups. They were just my fellow Americans—neighbors, business owners, community leaders, and family friends or relatives. I’d wager that California’s diversity still leads all the states today and is what made the great state’s economic engine the best in the US (and ranked high in the world compared to entire countries).

While it might be contrary to what the anti-cultural-appropriation folks would like, I’ve always included diversity in my novels. That came naturally. I’ve never said to myself, “Steve, you need to add some diversity.” I say, “In my experience, what does a character’s background have to be to make the best story?”

Thus my NYPD homicide detectives are a Chinese-American and Puerto Rican (the latter are already Americans), intentionally playing counter to the Irish-cop stereotype (even though I have Irish blood). Castilblanco’s dancing ability mirrors two fellow students I knew in college; Chen’s stoic demeanor mirrors a Chinese girl I knew in high school (like Chen, there were moments when the stoicism took a break). They often work with a big black ME modeled after Vince Wilfork, the ex-Patriots nose tackle, who I admired more than the prima donna, Tom Brady.

I first intentionally added diversity, though, when I started the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series with Rembrandt’s Angel. While Esther and Bastiann are twenty-first century versions of Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, putting Christie’s two famous detectives together like I’d wanted to do since I’d read her novels, I added diversity where it seemed appropriate in what’s traditionally been a lily-white England. Admittedly, most of this is achieved with immigrants from ex-British colonies—India, Jamaica, and Hong Kong, in particular—and featuring Ambreesh Singh, the brilliant MI5 techie; Harry James, a member of Esther’s art gallery staff and accomplished musician; and three accomplished Chinese artists who are Hong Kong refugees.

That still didn’t satisfy me, so when I introduced Inspector Steve Morgan in Book Eight, The Klimt Connection, I thought it was logical to give him a black girlfriend, the athletic Kanzi Kimachu, whose family origins are in Kenya. Her immediate family members now are as British as the royal family, although even the latter has added some diversity recently, despite some of their obvious resistance.

This might make you wonder: Why bother with a character’s family history or origins? I’m not championing Ancestry.com here! (This blog and website are commercial-free.) But, like it or not, family history and origins can influence how people act in real life. Because fiction has to seem real, it must contain diversity.

***

Comments are always welcome. (Please follow the rules on the “Join the Conversation” web page. If you don’t, your comment will be considered spam.)

Come globe-trot with me! Three evergreen novels from three different series will take you, the reader, to many different countries. Aristocrats and Assassins (UN52Q) finds Detective Castilblanco and his wife on an European vacation that becomes deadly. Why is a terrorist kidnapping Europe’s royals? In Death on the Danube (AR72S), you’ll cruise down that famous river along with Esther Brookstone and Bastiann van Coevorden on their honeymoon voyage…right into danger, as the two sleuths try to find a murderer. And in Muddlin’ Through (TV85M), you can go along on a dangerous tour with Mary Jo Melendez around Europe and South America as she tries to prove she was framed for her sister and brother-in-law’s murder and tries to save the MECHs (“Mechanically Enhanced Cybernetic Humans”). All these globe-trotting adventures that will leave you breathless and asking for more are on sale now at Smashwords for only 99 cents. (Use the indicated promo codes if you don’t see that price.) Sale ends August 31. Bon voyage!

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

No, I’m not writing about that first book in A. B. Carolan’s “The Denisovan Trilogy” (he still has to write numbers two and three). Instead, I’d like to discuss how some of my novels originated. In most of my novels, I include endnotes titled “Notes, Disclaimers, and Acknowledgements” where I often discuss the novel’s origins. For the novels I consider here, I’ll add a bit to their correponding endnotes.

More than Human: The Mensa Contagion. There’s a short sci-fi story (I forget the title—maybe a reader can help me here) where some future astronauts encounter a group of ETs and turn them into mindless dolts by vaccinating them against a virus they’d detected in all of them. (That obviously predates Covid where mindless dolts refuse to vaccinate and a chief mindless dolt recommended injections of disinfectant.) You see, the virus was responsible for making the ETs smart! (Our earthly chief mindless dolt needs that virus!) This is an extreme case of positive symbiosis.

With hindsight, I think that story might have been the real origin of this novel. The virus in my novel is from the stars and is designed to make Earth more hospitable for ETs on their way to colonize it. (Like in our own exoplanet studies, those ETs have no way of knowing whether intelligent life already exists here, although, as you’ll see in the book, it’s questionable how intelligent life really is here, especially if you consider all the aforementioned Earthly mindless dolts.) Instead, the virus creates Homo Sapiens 2.0, arguably a smarter version.

A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse. I was never comfortable writing about time travel—most of the stories about it don’t even try to avoid the paradoxes (for example, The Time Traveler’s Wife and that stupid TV series—was it on Starz?). While I enjoyed Heinlein’s Door into Summer, with hindsight I believe that my problems with reading it as a kid made me want to “do time travel right.” This novel is the result. My scientific background made it possible: “The Many Words of Quantum Mechanics” is front and center in this novel, and it was the tool that allowed me to avoid the paradoxes, but the characters provided all the fun.

Rogue Planet. While I promoted this book as a hard sci-fi version of Game of Thrones, which of course is pure fantasy, I believe the book’s true origin lies with my negative reaction to the first Star Wars movie seen so long ago that I never imagined I’d be writing anything other than scientific papers. (I believe I took my little daughter to see it—she’s a lot older now! It probably affected her a lot differently than it did me.) ILM’s creation is also pure fantasy, not hard sci-fi. Light sabers? C’mon! The Force? Please! I had to create an answer to all that nonsense by writing a novel that did things right. I did…after quite a few years.

Of course, there are no dragons in this novel a la Game of Thrones nor any real magic, just an evil theocracy modeled after the worst evil theocracy this world has ever seen, Iran, with some ISIS flavor added. (I wrote it before MBS reached puberty—has he ever managed that?—so I couldn’t use that murdering SOB as a model for the evil leader of the theocracy. Of course, in the eyes of Allah, MBS is the equivalent of dog feces.)

Rembrandt’s Angel. The origins for this novel hark back to my long stay in the Beantown area. I doubt that many readers have visited the Isabel Stuart Gardner Museum where that huge art heist occurred. (The FBI has never been able to solve that case.) Long before the film Monuments Men (probably a good book as well—I need to read it), this student of history knew that the Nazis had stolen many paintings during WWII, a lot of them from Jews—and you know where most of those paintings were sent! Some have been recovered and returned to the surviving relatives (if there are any). The Rembrandt painting in the novel is real, and it’s never been recovered, so never returned, as mentioned in the novel’s endnotes.

My wondering as a lad about why Dame Agatha had never put Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot together to solve a complex case was also a motivation…and led to the novel, again after a long wait. But that Beantown art heist left an impression on me and taught me plenty about the scurrilous people who steal art and sell it to rich collectors who take pride in having something no one else can see and enjoy.

Do you read endnotes? Do you even care about a book’s origins? I reluctantly accept “no” as an answer to both questions. You don’t need the origins to enjoy the stories, but maybe you’d enjoy them more if you did!

***

Comments are always welcome. (Please follow the rules on the “Join the Conversation” web page. If you don’t, your comment will be considered spam.)

Come globe-trot with me! Three evergreen novels from three different series will take you, the reader, to many different countries. Aristocrats and Assassins (UN52Q) finds Detective Castilblanco and his wife on an European vacation that becomes deadly. Why is a terrorist kidnapping Europe’s royals? In Death on the Danube (AR72S), you’ll cruise down that famous river along with Esther Brookstone and Bastiann van Coevorden on their honeymoon voyage…right into danger, as the two sleuths try to find a murderer. And in Muddlin’ Through (TV85M), you can go along on a dangerous tour with Mary Jo Melendez around Europe and South America as she tries to prove she was framed for her sister and brother-in-law’s murder and tries to save the MECHs (“Mechanically Enhanced Cybernetic Humans”). All these globe-trotting adventures that will leave you breathless and asking for more are on sale now at Smashwords for only 99 cents. (Use the indicated promo codes if you don’t see that price.) Sale ends August 31. Bon voyage!

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

The settings in my novels are a bit more varied than those of my life, but they often reflect my wanderlust, some travels done for work (around the US, South America, and Europe), others as a tourist. About half the novels in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series start in New York City near where I now live (the pair are NYPD homicide detectives) but go elsewhere. The books in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series often take place in the main character’s England but also in other places around Europe and South America. The novels in the “Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries” series have settings in the US, South America, Europe, and China.

I’ve visited some of those places during my wander-years, living and traveling. For others, Google and Google maps as well as travel websites have been my tour guides. (Hopefully the reader can’t tell the difference!) I loved to directly experience diverse cultures and different places, though, my traveling now regrettably reduced to zero by Covid and old age, and believe readers will too, if only in their reading. After all, reading fiction is always about adventure!

I hope readers will help celebrate my wanderlust by traveling with me in novels I’ve written. To make your travels economical ones, all the month of August I offer three “travel guides” on sale at Smashwords, each only ninety-nine (99) cents! (See below for details.) For whatever reason—crazy air travel delays, a new Covid variant, economic insecurity, gas prices—you might not want to travel this summer. But you can…with me! With these three novels, you can travel a lot for only 99 cents!

In Aristocrats and Assassins, Castilblanco takes a rare vacation with his wife. A terrorist, an old nemesis of the ex-SEAL, is kidnapping European aristocrats. To find out why, you’ll have to travel along with Mr. C with me as your tour guide. (By the way, Mr. C’s vacation is such a bust, his wife takes advantage of her husband’s business trip to see London in Defanging the Red Dragon, a complete novel that’s a free PDF download—see my “Free Stuff & Contests” web page.)

In Death on the Danube, I got about as close as I ever have (at that time) to writing a romance novel, because Esther Brookstone and Bastiann van Coevorden celebrate their marriage with a honeymoon cruise down that favorite river. (My wife and I took a similar cruise—see the end notes of the novel for details. I surpassed the romance in this novel with the sci-fi rom-com A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse, which takes you on quite a different voyage!) The trip becomes similar to Dame Agatha’s Death on the Nile or Murder on the Orient Express as Bastiann investigates a murder that has a moving crime scene.

The third novel that could be considered a travel guide is Muddlin’ Through. Ex-Master-at-Arms Mary Jo Melendez is framed for the murder of her sister and brother-in-law and spends the rest of the tale traveling to various countries in an effort to clear her name. It turns out Russia has stolen the MECHs (“Mechanically Enhanced Cybernetic Humans,” battle-field cyborgs par excellence) from the US government, and a secretive CIA-like organization will do anything to get them back, including killing Mary Jo.

Of course, these novels are more than travel guides! I’m particularly fond of the stories. They’re all mystery/thriller novels where I can proudly say, “I wrote’em!” Let me know whether you like them too.

***

Comments are always welcome. (Please follow the rules on the “Join the Conversation” web page. If you don’t, your comment will be considered spam.)

Come globe-trot with me! Three evergreen novels from three different series will take you, the reader, to many different countries. Aristocrats and Assassins (UN52Q) finds Detective Castilblanco and his wife on an European vacation that becomes deadly. Why is a terrorist kidnapping Europe’s royals? In Death on the Danube (AR72S), you’ll cruise down that famous river along with Esther Brookstone and Bastiann van Coevorden on their honeymoon voyage…right into danger, as the two sleuths try to find a murderer. And in Muddlin’ Through (TV85M), you can go along on a dangerous tour with Mary Jo Melendez around Europe and South America as she tries to prove she was framed for her sister and brother-in-law’s murder and tries to save the MECHs (“Mechanically Enhanced Cybernetic Humans”). All these globe-trotting adventures that will leave you breathless and asking for more are on sale now at Smashwords for only 99 cents. (Use the indicated promo codes if you don’t see that price.) Bon voyage!

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

Famous fiction authors often gain their fame from their series. (I have a few myself, although they haven’t made me famous.) But often their out-of-series books, those that stand alone, are so much better. Unfortunately, they’re often forgotten by the reading public. (As are most of my novels, whether in a series or not!) The novels I consider in this novel are also “evergreen books,” ones as current and entertaining today as when the authors finished their manuscripts. (Many of my books are evergreen.)

Let’s start with Hoyle’s The Black Cloud (1957). You don’t know who Hoyle is? He was mostly responsible for the “steady-state theory of the Universe,” long since proven wrong (the three-degree Kelvin background radiation was the nail in its coffin), but his sci-fi novel is eerily possible and quite original, the cloud being an ET villain that in hindsight was partial motivation for the Swarm in my “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy.”

King’s Misery (1987) is undoubtedly the horror-meister’s best novel simply because what happens in it is entirely possible. Maybe all author’s should think twice about having rabid fans…or about living in rural New England? (Say what? That’s where Bernie and Stephen live! I used to live there. While the New York area’s winters are often terrible too, they’re not as bad as New England’s.) Maybe to King’s credit, his testifying against the Simon and Shuster merger with Penguin/Random House because it would negatively affect hours (maybe of his ilk, but certainly not me—I don’t care!) might rise to compare with the good warning this novel provides (or was it just self-interest because King is published by Simon and Schuster). Again, with hindsight, I’ll have to admit how King’s author was treated influenced my depiction of Declan O’Hara’s plight in the novella where I introduced that Irish writer. (I made up for that in a few novels, though; in particular, he’s happily married now to the MI5 agent Maggie Bent.) (You might have read more about my opinions of King in my little course “Writing Fiction” — a free PDF download found on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page — which dares to say what King never had courage to say in On Writing.)

With the changes in the lottery rules (the last Mega Millions reached an obscene level!), the possible winnings have increased. Baldacci’s The Winner (1998) will make you wonder how legitimate those lotteries are and, in particular, whether they’re rigged to favor certain players. This is one of David’s best novels and far better than those in his formulaic series; only two others are better (and they’re standalones as well, not in any of his series—see the “Steve’s Bookshelf” web page). I don’t like to gamble or consider suckers who do, even with the lottery, so this novel inspired none of mine. It’s worth the read, if only to cure you from gambling in general and playing the lottery in particular.

I love well-written historical fiction (Declan’s novel about St. Brendan is an example—a non-existent one mentioned in several of mine that do exist), especially about WWII. Gerlis has some good novels in this genre that I’ve enjoyed reading, classic mixes of real history with fictional parts interwoven. His compare favorably with Deaver’s Garden of Beasts (2004), an earlier novel that sets a high bar for the genre (and makes his Lincoln Rhyme series pale in comparison!), only comparable to Follett’s Eye of the Needle. All of these books involve spying, and they probably influenced my portrayal of Esther Brookstone’s days in East Berlin for MI6 during the Cold War.

Authors are influenced by books they read; I’m no exception (and I read a lot!), although sometimes that influence is so subtle I can only detect it in hindsight (overloaded brain…because I read a lot!). But the evergreen books I’ve mentioned should be remembered when you’re looking for a good book to read. Don’t forget those evergreen stand-alone novels! (I hope you’ll remember mine as well.)

This, of course, is a short list of evergreen books, their publication dates running from 1957 to 2004, so any retailer that only features recent books (e.g. most brick-and-mortar bookstores) won’t display them (all too often they favor celebs’ tell-alls and political scandals, the Big Five’s bread and butter). They’re still in print, though, and they can often be found in ebook second editions.

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Comments are always welcome. (Please follow the rules on the “Join the Conversation” web page. If you don’t, your comment will be considered spam.)

Come globe-trot with me! Three evergreen novels from three different series will take you, the reader, to many different countries. Aristocrats and Assassins (UN52Q) finds Detective Castilblanco and his wife on an European vacation that becomes deadly. Why is a terrorist kidnapping Europe’s royals? In Death on the Danube (AR72S), you’ll cruise down that famous river along with Esther Brookstone and Bastiann van Coevorden on their honeymoon voyage…right into danger, as the two sleuths try to find a murderer. And in Muddlin’ Through (TV85M), you can go along on a dangerous tour with Mary Jo Melendez around Europe and South America as she tries to prove she was framed for her sister and brother-in-law’s murder and tries to save the MECHs (“Mechanically Enhanced Cybernetic Humans”). All these globe-trotting adventures that will leave you breathless and asking for more are on sale now at Smashwords for only 99 cents. (Use the indicated promo codes if you don’t see that price.) Bon voyage!

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

There are so many options for self-publishing a book nowadays, going from 100% DIY to paid aggregators like Draft2Digital to Smashwords (I purposely omit Amazon—I avoid the Bezos bots as much as possible), that the question in the title hardly makes any sense anymore. To put it more bluntly: Why in the hell would any author bother with traditional publishing?

I have to confess that I’ve succumbed to temptation myself and experimented with traditional publishing: Penmore Press published Rembrandt’s Angel and Son of Thunder, the first two books in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series (they were followed by seven more, not from Penmore – see below for the latest); Black Opal Books published The Last Humans, the first book in “The Last Humans” series (the second was self-published). (I added Black Opal because Penmore didn’t publish sci-fi, and still doesn’t.) I could list many reasons that explain why I parted ways with these small presses. I won’t go into all of them in this article.

First, the positives for traditional publishing: If you want to try it, pick a publisher that doesn’t require that you have an agent. In other words, avoid agents. Period! Too many are pariahs who have the hubris to think they’re qualified to be gatekeepers for acquisition editors who want agents to keep slush piles small, which they do with a vengeance, making most traditionally published fiction formulaic, schlock, and a waste of time. Dealing with an acquistion editor directly is far better than dealing with an agent. Even if you can find a good and caring agent—an endangered species, to be sure—your agent will always stand between you and the acquisitions editor like a palace guard wielding an AR-15. Moreover, an acquisitions editor of a small press might also be an author who understands you.

More importantly, small presses are a lot more efficient than those publishers that have been swallowed up by one of the Big Five’s publishing conglomerates, but lack of efficiency is my biggest complaint about all traditional publishing. After writing and editing a manuscript and purchasing an appropriate cover, my latest self-published novels are being distributed in a day! No traditional publisher can beat that! It took me several years to see those Penmore and Black Opal books published. I’m sure that any Big Five publisher is much worse. They only rush to press for worthless celeb and scandal books that appeal to the salacious interests of some readers. A good story, on the other hand, runs a long gauntlet of delaying steps, going from acceptance to published book when any traditional publisher is used. I know because I’ve experienced it!

Frankly, I tried Penmore and Black Opal because I wanted to experiment with traditional publishing. For both of them, I looked at their small list of published books and decided mine could find a nice home there among them. I’ve met some interesting authors by doing so, and the acquistion editors at first seemed enthusiastic about my prose. I regret none of that. No one should ever regret a learning experience.

But now I’m cured. I will stick with self-publishing in the future and try to forget about the pain of traditional publishing.

***

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

Legacy of Evil. Due to today’s efficiency in self-publishing, my latest novel from Draft2Digital was published soon after Celtic Chronicles, Book Nine in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, but it’s more of a sequel to The Klimt Connection, Book Eight, where you first met the protagonist. Former Scotland Yard Inspector Steve Morgan receives his first murder case after a transfer to Bristol PD and a stressful secondment to MI5. An old man’s murder is soon followed by three related ones. Their investigations lead the DI and his team to probe the operations of a national crime syndicate as well as uncover a Russian oligarch’s plans to destabilize the UK. Eventually, both MI5 and NCA become involved. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold (just not on Amazon).

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

Thor: Love and Thunder. (Taika Watiti, director.) I finally went to see a movie at a local AMC. The theater had aged badly during the Covid-19 pandemic (no surprise—no ticket sales implying no upkeep), but the seats were still comfy and the projector and sound system seemed to be as I remembered it. However, because this is what’s first in my list that I took home about my experience, you’ll understand why in hindsight I wished that I’d waited for a better movie.

The last really good movie I saw was PBS’s Around the World in Eighty Days (my review is this blog’s 3/4/2022 post), and that was on TV, not the big screen. When you consider how many movie reviews I’ve made over the years—this is the 86^th—you know my movie watching on that huge silver screen has diminished considerably.

When I was ready to make the leap, even though Covid is taking off again, I didn’t want to do it with Tom Cruise’s Top Gun sequel. I suppose the cinema moguls thought that repeating that first zero-plot extravaganza would bring in viewers. Not this viewer! First, I hate sequels. Second, I can’t stand the egotistical and narcissistic Scientologist, who like other actors in that secretive cabal, can’t act. So, as someone who grew up with Marvel Comics, I opted for Thor, hoping for another origins flick like Wonder Woman and The Black Panther.

Big mistake! While there are a few flashbacks to Thor’s origins, the movie was a terrible mishmash of Marvel mythology—Norse gods, Greek gods, demigods, the female king of Asgard (Tessa Thompson), ETs, and that comical and ribald guardians-of-the-galaxy crew (Chris Pratt et al.). The plot is trite and boring: An evil villain, Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale), wants to kill all the gods with his special sword. (He has a point—pardon the pun—at least in this movie with its many Marvel-ous distortions.) Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and friends want to stop Gorr. End of plot. If you don’t take any of this seriously—a kid using a teddy bear as a weapon put me over the edge—you might have some fun.

I knew this was a bomb when I observed that the best moments belong to Russell Crowe playing Zeus as an old gay guy, complete with faux-Greek accent (on second thought, he probably insulted all three groups, gays, Greeks, and the gods of Olympus). I suppose the ladies in the audience, from twelve to eighty-two or thereabouts in our audience, loved to see Thor in the buff when Zeus whips off all his clothes.

Maybe this movie could serve as a lesson for future screenwriters on how to turn a trivial and trite good-versus-evil plot into two torturous hours of pointless special effects? At a cost of $250 million to make, the movie has to gross $500 to be considered a success. I doubt that it will. But who knows?

At least it was something for us to do on a very hot day—campy fun at times and best when not trying to be serious, where the movie failed miserably. Oh, I forgot to mention that, besides the overwhelming special effects, the music was good when I could hear it over the battle grunts and dying screams of all the warring parties. Otherwise, this movie was an experience I prefer to forget as soon as I can possibly do so. Maybe the minions will help me erase the bad memories?

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

Legacy of Evil. Due to today’s efficiency in self-publishing, my latest novel from Draft2Digital was published soon after Celtic Chronicles, Book Nine in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, but it’s more of a sequel to The Klimt Connection, Book Eight, where you first met the protagonist. Former Scotland Yard Inspector Steve Morgan receives his first murder case after a transfer to Bristol PD and a stressful secondment to MI5. An old man’s murder is soon followed by three related ones. Their investigations lead the DI and his team to probe the operations of a national crime syndicate as well as uncover a Russian oligarch’s plans to destabilize the UK. Eventually, both MI5 and NCA become involved. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold (just not on Amazon).

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

As my American collaborator Steve Moore indicated in a recent blog article, I received some good advice from that old ex-Gardia Michael O’Hara. My difficulties with continuing “The Denisovan Trilogy” are a bit more complicated than described by Steve in that post or in his novel Intolerance, though (the latter is available as a free PDF download—see the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page).

First, my protagonist Kayla Jones, known as “The One” by the descendants of Denisovans known as “The People,” has become a reluctant shaman among all the galactic descendants of ancient hominins. She’s wise beyond her years too. She now has more of an adult role but believe it’s been foisted upon her,  so in telling her continuing story, I must try to capture the confusion she feels. I suppose there are young adults with those same concerns who can serve as models around or near Donegal, Ireland, but I have yet to meet them.

Second, Kayla is also a very young mother who loves her son. Like many modern women, she must balance family with work, and her work now is serious diplomatic business! I know of real women who have been in similar situations, but they’re older than Kayla, whose youthfulness can create many difficulties.

Third, my experience, and yours as well, I dare say, cannot possibly compare to Kayla’s. Her role has to be played out on a cosmic stage, and it’s one of diplomatic and military turmoil and intrigue that we can only imagine, you as a reader with my guidance, and I as a wizened old author living a reclusive life far, far away from that stage. Of course, in that latter task, I can call on the cosmic imagination of my US colleague, Steve Moore, whose creations cover fictional settings from today’s current world to ones far into the future.

I’m guessing my problems with continuing the trilogy were also felt by J. K. Rowling at the end of her Potter series, which, even though she’s English and not Irish, broke out of the constraints to write stories of more international interest, especially in the US. Did she have similar problems with Harry like I do with Kayla? An interesting question, to be sure, but, of course, J. K.’s problems might have been easier to solve. That Potter series is pure fantasy. I write sci-fi, and my stories must seem real, at least a lot more believable than the magical world of Harry Potter. Nevertheless, I’d certainly discuss all this with her if J. K. ever visits Donegal!

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

Origins: The Denisovan Trilogy, Book One. While A. B. Carolan agonizes over the next two books in the trilogy at his favorite Donegal pub, you can enjoy reading this sci-fi mystery for young adults (and adults who are young-at-heart!). Young Kayla Jones has dreams she can’t understand. Her future seems determined as the brilliant STEM student looks forward to a research career, but her past gets in the way. As if the chaos afflicting the world and leading to her adopted father’s death wasn’t enough, assassins begin to pursue her. With some friends who come to her aid, she’s on her way to discover a conspiracy that can be traced to prehistoric battles waged by hominins bent on conquest of a primitive Earth. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold (just not on Amazon). And don’t forget that Carolan’s first three novels are now on sale this month at Smashwords.

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

Are you thinking about upgrading from Windows 10 to Windows 11? Did you purchase a new computer, and you’re now forced to use Windows 11? In either case, you could have problems!

I put myself in the latter situation recently. I’ve stuck with Windows, version after version, because I hate Apple’s egotistical attitude of not making it easy to play with devices from other equipment providers—Apple likes to pretend that its products are the only ones in the technological universe! But now the almost equally infamous Microsoft has rewarded my loyalty by hassling me with yet another crappy, untested version of Windows. Mind you, there are some new things I like…when they work!

Did you think Win 10 was bad with its interminable updates? Microsoft vowed that it would be the last Windows version, and there would only be updates. But every week? Sometimes even more often? Of course, what they did was release a buggy beta-version of Win 10 and let users debug it. They’ve done the same thing with Win 11! If you buy a new computer, you’ll get the latest version of Win 11, and it still has lots of bugs that will bite you. And many of them are caused by the OS not playing well with other products, just like with Win 10. When that happens, every help desk at all involved with Microsoft, from the computer manufacturer, in my case HP; makers of printers; external keyboards and drives; and Microsoft itself, point their fingers at everyone else! (For most of these online help desk, there aren’t any live people to help anymore!)

After hours and hours of googling in my search for fixes, I’m finally at the point where I can use Office 365 products (as problematic as they are!)—create an email, document, slide, or spreadsheet—and feel that my computer files are more or less secure. I’d already lost hair in the normal aging process, but tearing out more in frustration with hardware and software problems doesn’t help.

What was worse is that being familiar with Win 10 didn’t help much either. At least I knew how to unlink that useless OneDrive. Why anyone would want to use Microsoft’s cloud after the Russians hacked them is beyond me. I’ve always only used my own remote external drives as backups. I’m not changing from sanity to insanity now.

Printing was a bear too—an angry grizzly that just wouldn’t be tamed. I bought a new HP laptop. Wouldn’t you think it would work with an HP 2035 printer? Nope. Neither HP nor Microsoft helped with that either. Of course, that printer was defective from the very beginning—it never could print PDFs properly—but it was more or less working with Win 10. It didn’t with Win 11. It turns out you’ll find lots of people complaining about printing problems with Win 11, so it’s hard for me to tell who’s at fault, HP or Microsoft—and, of course, they can’t tell you either (especially HP that made the printer). In any case, I solved my problem in a drastic fashion by purchasing a cheap Brother B&W laser printer that cost me about 25% of what I doled out for that junky HP 2035. That little Brother works far better than the HP 2035 ever did! It even prints PDFs!

There were times during this whole painful process when I thought about taking my new machine down to the recycling dump and returning to a typewriter…if I could find one outside a museum (maybe in Tom Hanks’ mansion?). I also at times yearned for my old Radio Shack Color Computer, my first ever personal computer. It didn’t have a bloated and cumbersome Office 365, but its word processing and spread sheet were simple to use and very functional. I could even write machine code for that! New machines are so complicated that no one person understands a particular model.

“Why did I buy a new computer and bring all this aggravation down on myself?” you ask. The answer is simple: I went through three keyboards with the old laptop, the one that came with it and two USB ones—keys dying and labels wearing off, for the most part. (I write a lot!) Imagine using an external keyboard with a laptop: You have to reach farther to type! At my age, I don’t need carpal-tunnel anything. My new machine is supposed to get me through a few more novels at least before I say goodbye to this world. Now I’m not so sure it won’t die before I do, though. Stay tuned.

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

Origins: The Denisovan Trilogy, Book One. While A. B. Carolan agonizes over the next two books in the trilogy at his favorite Donegal pub, you can enjoy reading this sci-fi mystery for young adults (and adults who are young-at-heart!). Young Kayla Jones has dreams she can’t understand. Her future seems determined as the brilliant STEM student looks forward to a research career, but her past gets in the way. As if the chaos afflicting the world and leading to her adopted father’s death isn’t enough, assassins begin to pursue her. With some friends who come to her aid, she’s on her way to discover a conspiracy that can be traced to prehistoric battles waged by hominins bent on conquest of a primitive Earth. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold (just not on Amazon). And don’t forget that Carolan’s first three novels are now on sale this month at Smashwords.

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

While I’ve written about this topic before, I still see a lot of confusion out there. Let’s go over the basic ideas again.

Most fiction is written in a main character’s point of view (POV): The fictional world of a novel is seen from the eyes, ears, and other senses of one or several protagonists, or even a villain’s. But that POV can change from chapter to chapter or even section to section, either because there isn’t just one main character. Authors (even famous ones) mangle POV, their “head-hopping” often causing confusion for readers.

Another POV is omnipotent or God’s-eye view of what’s going on. In other words, the author knows all and let’s the reader see all that he knows. It’s limiting, and it can make internal dialogue awkward. I can’t recommend it.

POV is related to but not the same as person. If I write a story or parts of one in first person, it’s clear that the POV is of that first-person character. If I write a story in third person (much of fiction is written that way), there can be multiple POVs.

Because I like to experiment, the entire “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series has Castilblanco in first person and other main characters in third person with their corresponding POVs (without head-hopping in the same section…unless I’ve made an error).

In The Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse, I alternate between the two main protagonists, Gail and Jeff, in first person—it’s a sci-fi rom-com, so I thought readers might be interested in observing the intimate thoughts of each one.

Mangling POV and person is easy to do; managing it is hard. A teeny mangling isn’t a great sin, though, unless it creates confusion in readers. If readers stop to wonder how Sam knows what Samantha is thinking (and Sam doesn’t have ESP!), the author has a problem.

Many authors don’t understand POV and person. In some of my interviews, I’ve asked the interviewee, “How do you use POV?” I receive a broad spectrum of answers. It’s often not considered an element of storytelling as important as plot, characterization, dialogue, and so forth, so it’s often neglected and mishandled. When I started putting my stories “out there,” I mishandled it. An author friend set me straight. Checking for head-hopping is now part of my copy-editing check when I finish a manuscript. I go through every section and ask myself, “Whose POV am I using?” and “Is there more than one?” If I can’t answer either question, I know I’m in trouble.

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

Legacy of Evil. This first “Inspector Steve Morgan” novel, both a British-style mystery and a suspenseful spy thriller, is hot off the press (meaning Draft2Digital). Former Scotland Yard Inspector Steve Morgan receives his first murder case after a transfer to Bristol PD and a stressful secondment to MI5. An old man’s murder is soon followed by three related ones. Their investigations lead the DI and his team to probe the operations of a national crime syndicate as well as uncover a Russian oligarch’s plans to destabilize the UK. Eventually, both MI5 and NCA become involved. (Esther Brookstone doesn’t go away completely. She has a cameo here.) This book is available wherever quality ebooks are sold (just not on Amazon).

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