(Stephen H. Banks, Chaos Theories, CreateSpace, 2013, ISBN: 978-1482023770)

This debut novel is a sci-fi thriller.  It employs intense and suspenseful action, tight plotting, interesting characters, and chaos theory to weave an Aladdin’s magical rug of a story that will leave you breathless once you hop on it.  It is my kind of novel—profound, yet entertaining.

The style, where interludes of quiet beauty are sprinkled with startling violence, reminds me of old Dean Koontz before he detoured into rewriting the Frankenstein myth.  In spite of the title, the mathematics of chaos theory is replaced by a more philosophical treatment.  The butterfly scene with Tali, a precocious two-year-old who intuitively understands how probability and stochastic processes continuously reshape our world, reminds me of the butterflies in Cien Años de Soledad.  In fact, Tali is the fountain of magical realism in this book, although she’s not the main character.

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#244: Calling all readers!  (Well, maybe not elementary school kids.)  Take a look at the books in my opus.  Let’s start with my new release, The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan.  Thriller and conspiracy lovers, take note.  Women tired of vampire romances, take note.  Baby boomers tired of watching ups and downs in their retirement funds, take note.  This sci-fi thriller is fast-paced entertainment that’s gripping and thought provoking.  (If you live in northern New Jersey, you will recognize the locales.  Talk about a local writer!)

Friend of androids and ETs and going where no sentients have gone before, take a peek at Sing a Samba Galactica.  The “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy,” comprised of Survivors of the Chaos, Samba, and Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hand!, is my Foundation series—all sci-fi thrillers containing enough hard sci-fi, military sci-fi, and space opera to entertain the most demanding sci-fi fan.

And for young adults and adults young at heart, don’t forget the sci-fi novel The Secret Lab, starring Mr. Paws and the Fearsome Four, as they solve a mystery on the International Space Station.  Become involved with traditional sci-fi a la Heinlein’s Podkayne series more than sci-fi fantasy like Star Wars or Harry Potter in space.  No magic, no light sabers, just good old scientific extrapolation that’s fun for everyone.

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#241: Who’s the reader?  I’ve heard that 60% of readers are women.  I suspect that percentage goes down if we eliminate genres like romance and erotica or combinations like vampire-horror-erotica.  Still, authors better not ignore women readers just like politicians better not ignore women voters (authors probably commit that sin much less than politicians).

Another class of readers I’d like to know more about is baby boomers, maybe distinguishing between retired and not-retired.  Presumably, retirees have more time to read than working stiffs.  I think it’s a myth that everybody retires to play golf or tennis.  I count many ex-colleagues who are readers.  I don’t know what percentage of all readers are retirees, or boomers.  You’d think traditional publishing would do something useful for once and determine these statistics.

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#235: Strong and smart female protagonists revisited.  While I’m sure all readers will like DHS profiler and analyst Ashley Scott and her older friend, ex-FBI agent Virginia Morgan, in my recently released The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan, female readers might also identify with some of the lifetime issues these two women face.  The two women have different solutions for these middle-agers’ problems.  Ashley, for example, once divorced and quite independent (for example, Ashley resents her daughter Jacky’s opinion that she is a doddering old biddy when she turns fifty), doesn’t know if she needs a man in her life or not and certainly doesn’t want to just settle for someone comfortable.  These, of course, are all subthemes as the reader plows through a lot of action and suspense.

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Readers of this blog know that I’ve long supported drones and special forces as effective ways to battle terrorism.  Now these tactics are coming into question in the liberal media.  The criticism contains the usual complaint that innocents can be killed.  It also complains about due process, especially for those terrorists who are also U.S. citizens.  The Obama administration has recognized the effectiveness of these policies.  Ironically, both sides of the political aisle are criticizing.  Maybe not ironic, but absurd—it’s as if all those NRA supporters in Congress have suddenly become vocal sycophants of the ACLU.

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There are many wonderful things about ebook self-publishing that make it attractive to writers.  An obvious one that comes to mind is that the writer can minimize what stands between him and the reader.  I’m talking logistics, of course, as well as time delay.  One can consider a situation where event X occurs in the real world and there’s an ebook about it only a few weeks later.  After finishing a manuscript (MS), the delay needed to reach the reading public is minimal.

In fact, readers rule in this entertainment industry.  As a consequence, an author has to realize that every reader is different.  Whether a book becomes a bookseller because of some lemming-like mass psychosis (the Fifty Shades trilogy comes to mind), or because it was released at the right place and right time (Harry Potter comes to mind), or is the best literary offering since To Kill a Mockingbird (no recent book comes to mind), the reading public are the consumers who determine the success of a book.  Any author who tries to predict the future and bend with the stormy winds of literary fashion is crazy.  Writers should write the stories that come from the core of their creative being—if they resonate with readers, that only means that other people enjoy his stories.  This is where minimizing steps between writer and reader come in.

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#232: Follow-up about Amazon reviews.  For more evidence that Amazon reviews in general represent meaningless information for potential book buyers (for more, see my three-part series a few weeks ago), consider the treatment Randall Sullivan’s Untouchable, a bio of Michael Jackson, recently received.  According to the NY Times, a group called Michael Jackson’s Response Team to Media Attacks wrote enough one-star reviews to knock the book off Amazon.  Whether you call this free speech or bullying, this is reprehensible action by this group.

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Another freebie…this short story will introduce you to NYPD homicide detective Sgt. Rolando Castilblanco.  You might not have met him before.  This was written after Pop Two Antacids and Have Some Java, an anthology about some other cases he lived through with his partner, Dao-Ming Chen.  They are main characters in The Midas Bomb and Angels Need Not Apply.  They will also be featured in The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan…coming soon!  A third yarn about Castilblanco helping Chen, who has been framed for murder, will add a true mystery tale to “The Detectives Chen and Castiblanco Series.”  (I’ve decided to not call that a trilogy, because I like these characters too much.)  Enjoy!

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Roles

Steven M. Moore

Copyright, 2012

Roles.  We all play them.  Some of us decide who we want to be and play that role.  Others decide for us and we just slip into those roles.

I looked like a homeless person.  I reeked of bad booze and bodily odors.  The old stained raincoat had an old brandy bottle corked with a paper towel in one pocket and a screw-top bourbon bottle with a few fingers left in the other.  They had wrapped my feet in rags and stuffed them into boots two sizes too big, along with the bottoms of the pants’ legs.

I was playing a role.  I was trying to become a victim.

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(Chris Angus, London Underground, Iguana Books, ISBN 978-1927403020)

As the Brits would say, this book is smashing fun and fiendishly clever.  How to categorize it?  It’s a sci-fi horror tale, a strange double romance, and a war story.  It’s an overseas adventure, at least for U.S. and Canadian readers—readers in Great Britain will have fun recognizing places in new and old London and possibly remembering the horrors of the V-2 bombings; readers in Norway will be pleased to see their country featured even if the narrative reminds them of the dark days under the traitor Quisling.

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Although I doubt any gun fanatic reads this blog, if you think you might be one, read the following characteristics.  Please note that I’m not talking about a gun enthusiast (simple hunter, skeet shooter, authentic target-range aficionado, etc.).  Again, if you don’t understand the difference between fanatic and enthusiast, read on.  For other people, some of the characteristics below might be amusing, others just plain sad…because there’s always truth in humor!

1) Go to a gun show and watch how a buyer picks up and caresses the weapon, whether he buys it or not.  If the gun seems to be just an extension of you-know-what, he’s a fanatic.  Don’t be surprised at the number of men you see doing this, even if their bathrooms aren’t loaded with porno pics.  Note that this doesn’t apply to women unless she has a particular kind of Freudian envy.  Or, she caresses the weapon while smiling at him.

2) If you’re out in the woods and run across a deer hunter—or any kind of hunter, for that matter—and he tries to convince you he needs an assault rifle to bring down his intended targets, you have a gun fanatic.  This definitely applies to women too.  By the way, what the hell are you doing in the woods during hunting season?  Hunters kill other people, even ones dressed in those loud orange clown suits they’re supposed to be wearing.  Without that suit, you’ll just look like game to them, even if the hunter you meet is like that sharpshooting GoDaddy CEO who’s out to kill an elephant.  Although most hunters, like Dick Cheney, can only hit the broad side of a judge, you can’t count on that!

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