In the U.S., one of the myths we have lived with is that everyone has access to a basic education, grades 1 through 12.  Another myth is that if you want to go to college, there’s a way for you to do it.  Social engineers, often in service of elites, love to parade these myths, but they are myths.  Like religion, they promise a better tomorrow.  The problem with the first myth is in the definition of “basic education.”  The problem with the second is that it’s just not true.  And the problem with both is that the elites, that famous 1% (you pick the percentage you want—it depends on your stats), want to make sure that neither one is true.

The definition of “basic education” has been forever a moving target.  In colonial days, neither women nor slaves went to public schools (at that time, you could just lump both those two groups together as slaves as far as voting rights were concerned, because women were also treated as property).  Those few who went to these schools learned the basics: the famous three R’s.  Most of the “learning” was through rote memorization and repetition.  If you happened to be a leftie, you were whipped until you wrote with your right hand, not the left; but, oh my goodness, what penmanship they had (e.g. the signature of John Hancock).  But heaven forbid you learned to think!  That was the job of the private schools that taught the children of the wealthy elites.

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(R. Ira Harris, Island of the White Rose, Bridge Works Publishing, 2013, ISBN 978-0-9816175-5-8)

“We’ve been duped—we’ve all been duped, I tell you!” says Harris’ character, Maria Guerra, summarizing her frustration with Castro’s revolution to her friend and lover Father Pedro Villanueva.  These protagonists sink deep into intrigue as they plan to aid the guerrilla and topple Batista.  They soon learn that revolutions often only exchange one set of despots for another, especially in Latin America.

The Castro brothers’ duplicity and the bloodlust of the folk hero Che Guevara remind us of modern day Latin American regimes where constitutions are rewritten by fiat and organized opposition to the people in power is not allowed and often leads to torture or death.  The author also portrays the Batista regime’s similar brutality and the ineptness and apathetic attitude of the Church, reminding us of things to come in Argentina and Chile.  There are also tragic and comic moments like when Ed Sullivan interviews Fidel Castro.  (I saw that interview—we were also duped into thinking that Castro had finally brought democracy to the troubled island.)

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Activists often just protest and offer no solutions to fix the problems they’re protesting about.  It’s a sign of the times, I suppose.  During the era of the Vietnam War draft, we were willing to go to jail or flee to Canada for our beliefs that the war was unjust—that probably wasn’t a solution either, but it was more effective than simple protest.  People of all races put their bodies where their mouths were too, just like in the civil rights movements.  Thousands still work quietly behind the scenes trying to solve problems, not simply pointing them out—working towards peace and tolerance of others.

There’s one lost cause you don’t hear much about anymore, even at the level of protest.  We continue to wreak havoc on our environment in many ways.  We’re not attacking Gaia with drones and special forces.  We’re attacking Her on all fronts and the innocent victims will be measured in the millions unless we change our ways, not just the few innocents that the terrorists make march along with them as human shields.  A simple protest falls on deaf ears in cases involving the environment much more than any of the protests against the treatment of Manning, Snowden, and the folk hero, Julian Assange, which often get media attention but accomplish very little.  Moreover, protestors need to prioritize their causes and work on issues that can bring the greatest good for the greatest number, and not protest for protest’s sake.

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Sci-fi writer Orson Scott Card is the new casualty in the cultural wars that roil across our country.  For those readers who don’t know him, he is the author of Ender’s Game, now considered by many to be a sci-fi classic.  It’s the story about a special boy who is trained to manage flotillas of starships in a war against ETs that are more hive-like than human.  The movie is scheduled for release in November, and therein lies the problem: gay groups are calling for its boycott.  Mr. Card, a Mormon, has a long history of being against homosexuality and same-sex marriage—hence the question in the title of this post.

I often ask myself this question about my own work.  In the latest installment in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series,” Teeter-Totter between Lust and Murder, one of the themes is Castilblanco’s anti-gun views.  I wrote most of this before the Newtown Massacre in Connecticut because my anti-gun views were well developed much earlier, starting with the Kennedy, King, and Lennon assassinations, and the attempted assassination of Reagan.

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#301: Name recognition at work…and play?  If any author needs a demo of the power of name recognition, the latest J. K. Rowling gig provides it.  Ms. Rowling, saying she wanted unbiased opinions on her new venture into detective stories, published The Cuckoo’s Calling under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.  Until last week, sales of the book were underwhelming.  When it was announced who the real author is, sales took off, just in time to accompany the release of her last novel in paperback.  Now bookstores can’t keep up with the Cuckoo’s hard copies.

These events also show the power of ebooks and have Rowling’s publisher wringing his hands.  People are flooding to the ebook version.  While the Little, Brown people desperately try to catch up with demand for more hard copies, it’s likely that ebook buyers will exhaust the pool of thousands of wannabe readers, leaving the publisher with hundreds of unwanted hard copies.  If they’d been smart, they would have just released an ebook of the Cuckoo, at a more reasonable price, of course.  It will probably all work out for Ms. Rowling, of course, who is becoming more of a savvy businesswoman and less of a writer as time passes.

#302: WD ESP?  Readers will remember that I’ve been lamenting for a while (I updated my lament just last week) about the lack of a true Kindle edition for WD (Writer’s Digest).  Will apparently they now have one—$14.95 for the year’s subscription.  It’s almost like the WD people had ESP, though I have no idea why our minds might be in tune.

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(E. F. Watkins, Dark Music, Amber Quill Press, 2013, 978-1611248944)

While this book might be considered more appropriate for winter reading—sitting by a crackling fire with spirits at hand as you become spooked by the author’s spirits—I read this after the Fourth and thoroughly enjoyed it.  “What?  Steve’s reading paranormal now?” you ask.  It’s true that the last ghost story I can remember reading, and for the umpteenth time, was “A Christmas Carol,” just after I saw Patrick Stewart’s rendition of Scrooge.  But I’ve even written one ghost story, “The Town Hall Gang,” so I’m not a teetotaler with respect to frothy, ectoplasmic brews.

I had an agenda, of course.  I met the author at BooksNJ (a local book fair) a few weeks ago.  She was kind enough to do an interview for my blog.  Consequently, I thought I’d be kind enough to read her book and write a review of it.  The music and house renovation themes permeating the book also attracted me.  Don’t get the idea that I write a review of every book I read—I wouldn’t have any time to write if I did that.  But I want to signal to my readers that this book is an interesting read, any time of the year!  Moreover, it’s almost a manual on the art of story-telling.

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#292: ISBNs, ASINs, and all that.  Amazon doesn’t make it a habit of listing ISBNs for ebooks.  In fact, they so dominate the market that many authors are foregoing ISBNs.  As far as I know, all my ebooks also have ISBNs, thanks to my wonderful formatter Donna Carrick (a great mystery writer in her own right—see The First Excellence).  I encourage all indie writers to get an ISBN for their ebook.  These are important for many reasons, but one big one: good stats on book sales provide useful info for marketing your present books and maybe for writing the next one.

In my last “News and Notices…,” I talked about the dearth of good stats.  While ISBNs aren’t a sufficient condition for good stats, they (or something like them) are a necessary one.  Imagine the FAA trying to keep track of airplanes in the sky without identifying tail numbers.  ISBNs are the universal identifying numbers of books.  We need some number recognized world-wide that identifies a book before we can make any sense out of sales figures.  (Of course, we also need the Big Five to release their sales figures too, but they’ve been reluctant to do that.  Surprise, surprise!  But that’s another gripe.)

#293: Book Series.  One question I often hear (or read) is when readers ask writers: did you start out to write the series “Bla-bla-bla” with that very first book in the series?  It’s a great question.  I suppose a writer could do that.  If you’re a writer and make the decision to do so, you should read “The Stuff Series Are Made Of” by Karen S. Wiesner in the WD (Writer’s Digest) September 2013 issue (what?  September already?  Christmas in August?).  Ms. Wiesner has 101 books, so it’s worth perusing what she has to write about the subject.

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I’ve discussed naming characters in other posts to this blog, but today I thought I’d dedicate a whole post to the subject.  I probably spend an abnormal amount of time fretting over titles and names of characters.  Here I want to throw a wee bit of mud at my fellow authors: don’t be so politically correct!  Readers and writers both might enjoy the mudslinging.  Or not.  (It’s really not a strong critique, so don’t get all snarky—and read on.)

When I’m reviewing a book and an author’s description of a character shows he or she is Latino, for example, I have a hard time identifying with the character if he or she is named John or Jane Smith.  Many authors, desiring to offend no one, make the mistake of using bland and generic names.  Consequently, their writing becomes bland and generic.  Sure, the U.S., and to some extent the rest of the world, is one big melting pot.  I would never use names as a code to promote a prejudicial agenda.  However, parents who can be identified as having one dominant ethnicity still tend to give their kids names that are in sync with that ethnicity.  We’re socially very far away from changing this, and I don’t think it’s necessarily a good thing to try.

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I’m referring to geopolitics here.  I’ll admit the question is strange, but my answer is “yes, but only sometimes.”  Over a year ago, events in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia kicked off the “Arab Spring.”  The ones in Egypt, in particular, seemed so promising.  After Nassar and Mubarek, it seemed that Egypt, the most populated Arab country, was on its way to become a free, democratic, and secular country.  Unlike Iran, Israel, and many other “democracies” that are really theocracies, with varying degrees of repression, a traditional ally of the U.S. in the Arab world was coming around to the idea that a state religion is the antithesis of freedom—secularism seemed to reign.  But the Spring has sprung—came the elections, and the Muslim Brotherhood assumed power.

Now the U.S. is forced to dance along a very slim tightrope like that guy that went over Niagara Falls.  In a clumsy demonstration of Orwellian double-speak, the Obama administration  isn’t calling what happened in Egypt a coup (it’s probably one of the few policy decisions that’s bipartisan, though).  Of course it’s a coup!  When the military deposes an elected president, irrespective of the popular sentiment, it’s a coup.  It’s as if the people who hated George W. Bush or the people who hate Barack Obama had the U.S. military depose them.  That’s not appropriate in a democracy.  You throw the bums out at the ballot box (and this is the best argument for term and age limits and ending gerrymandering, by the way).  Democracy is incompatible with a military-led government.  Egypt is now a military dictatorship.

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[Note from Steve:  A. J. Colucci writes science thrillers, stories that combine the adrenaline-rush of a thriller with real science.  I met her at BooksNJ a few weekends ago and knew immediately that those who visit this blog will be interested in learning more about her.  Her novel The Colony received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, noting, “Colucci’s exciting thriller debut…balances scares and science nicely. Michael Crichton fans will hope that this is but the first of many such outings from the author’s pen.” Her second science thriller will be released by St. Martin’s Press in spring 2014. Visit her website or find her on Twitter.  Without further ado, let’s meet A. J.]

A. J. on writing:

Steve:  Why, how, and when did you start writing?

A. J.: I was always writing, even in elementary school. I had so many stories in my head. The first “novel” I wrote was The Black Cat and my fourth grade teacher told me it was great.  I’m sure a lot of people choose careers because they’re encouraged by a great teacher, and I had a few of those. So, I went on to write for my high school and college newspaper, and then became a reporter, magazine editor, corporate writer and finally a novelist. For me, writing has been a good choice because I’m not too good at anything else.

Steve:  Did you publish the first book you wrote?

A. J.:  I had three books and five screenplays by the time The Colony was picked up by Macmillan. It takes years to sharpen your writing skills and polish a book so that it’s marketable. The Colony was my second attempt at a novel and I kept going back to it in between writing projects.  I knew it was my best chance to get published because it was such a high concept story.

Steve: What is your biggest problem with the writing process? How do you tackle it?

A. J.: I write a lot by hand; it just comes out better that way. But then I have to transcribe all my notes into the computer. Hundreds of scribbled pages I can barely read. There’s paper in my car, under my bed, in every room of the house.  It’s awful and time-consuming, but there’s no way around it.

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