Who needs it? Yearning for it is narcissism, of course, or even worse (Facebook is full of people who yearn for it). I suppose some people wanted (or even still want?) to be Johnny Depp. I’ll admit I would but only because he owns a nice island in the Bahamas. (Oprah does too, so there’s no gender bias on my part like maybe what might have occurred at the Heard-Depp trial—now those are two narcissists, but aren’t all Hollywood actors?) But having so much money that I can buy my own private island might bring me problems I don’t need—most people don’t need those kind of problems!

I’m certainly better known for my storytelling than I ever was as a scientist, but that’s not saying much. New Jersey’s own Harlan Coben might remember me—we exchanged a few emails long ago when he still answered them—but any old mare or stallion in the Big Five’s stables has no idea who I am. I respect and admire a lot more scientists than authors, though, than I do Hollywood stars, politicians, and yes, and many authors, primarily because I can understand why the former are famous but not the latter. (Of course, some of the latter are infamous and not famous.)

Fame often isn’t acquired because of skills or so-called “great works”; it comes to many because someone in the background has a vested interest in making someone famous and then controlling them. That certainly happens in both DC and Hollywood (sometimes they’re the same thing—consider old Commie-chaser Reagan who never was a great actor until he ran for president). I suppose that’s better than the incompetent moron who goes looking for fame (like Trump—the “f&^%ing moron” description is SecState Tillerson’s, not mine).

In the world of artists and scientists, though, there are a few heroes who aren’t narcissistic and could care less about being famous (or rich). They just go about doing their thing. I  believe my hero Isaac Asimov was in that group. So were Gandehi and Mother Theresa. Maybe their unassuming modesty instead of blatant narcissism is why they’re famous! (I wonder how old Isaac would feel about comparing him with the other two?)

These are a lot of words, so I will come to the point: Authors who write to become famous shouldn’t be writing. Period. We should all strive our damnedest to tell the best stories we can given our own artistic skills, inspirations, and motivations. The Big Five have made all the old mares and stallions in their stables famous because that suits them—their basic motivation (and maybe their authors?) is to sell books. They only care about good storytelling—any kind of storytelling really—if it helps them to sell books. In other words, their authors are relegated to the role of prostitutes who must keep the johns happy so that their pimps, the Big Five bureaucrats, can make a living.

I know that’s harsh, but these days I feel it’s necessary to be brutally honest. Anyone who tells me how I must write, how I must appeal to the market, and other asinine suggestions can go to hell! I’ll promise to continue to tell my stories as honestly and professionally as possible, but I will not try to satisfy everyone, especially editors, agents, and critics who have their hands in the Big Five’s pockets. Every author should declare his independence from traditional publishing’s oppressive tactics . Thank God self-publishing allows that. ‘Nough said!

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Celtic Chronicles. Novel #9 in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series is special: It’s the last novel in the series, and what a series it’s been with Esther and Bastiann taking us all over the UK and Europe and even to the Third World, from Peru to Turkey. (Yes, like Russia, the latter is Third World—nothing wrong with that; it’s just a fact.) In this novel, Esther and Bastiann volunteer to work at an archaeological dig near their modest castle outside Edinburgh. A student also working there is murdered. Police Scotland finds a Russian oligarch’s number on the lad’s call-list. That Russian is on his yacht anchored off the Scottish coast. As the investigation continues, everything becomes more complex, other characters come into play, and the intrigue and suspense increase. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold (but not on the grand Bezos bot’s Amazon). Enjoy!

On pubprogressive.com tomorrow: “Common-sense Gun Control.”

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

Not mine but Esther Brookstone and Bastiann van Coevorden’s! Celtic Chronicles, #9 in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, will be the last novel in that series.

In the beginning (somewhere in 2015, if not earlier), I began to write Rembrandt’s Angel on a whim without any intentions of giving Esther a series. I had this niggling idea for many years after reading Agatha Christie’s novels as a kid, really a question: Why didn’t she ever put Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot together to solve a crime? Esther and Bastiann became my twenty-first versions of those famous sleuths, Esther a bit more spry and worldly than Miss Marple and Bastiann identifiable with Poirot only because he looks like David Suchet, the actor who played Poirot so well. I also wanted to try traditional publishing again. I was in an experimental frame of mind (that occurs often enough now—see the previous post). Penmore Press liked my idea enough to publish the first novel in the series.

Still in that experimental mood, I decided I wanted to write about the mysterious St. John the Divine. He was the longest-lived of the disciples, but little is known about him after the Resurrection. As it turned out, Son of Thunder, #2 in the series (also published by Penmore), betters Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code in the sense of eliminating his awful conspiracy theories and getting the history right. (I suppose some would call Brown’s novel a negative influence then, but I was already far into the novel-writing mode by the time I saw the movie, which made me read his novel…because usually the novel is better that the movie! With the book, I was able to create my own image of the main character; Tom Hanks didn’t do it for me!)

In Death on the Danube, #3 in the series, my thoughts turned again to Christie’s novels, and I decided to write something like Death on the Nile or Murder on the Orient Express: Bastiann, channeling Poirot, but helped by Esther aka Miss Marple, runs an investigation on a riverboat (its ports of call on the Danube are what we experienced on a real cruise, notes about that serving as background material). To bring it into the twenty-first century (the riverboat actually does that as well), Putin’s SVR assassins make their first appearance in the series. They pester Esther and Bastiann in many of the remaining novels!

I’ll have to admit that all those remaining novels were also experimental. Even Death on the Danube was that as I bid farewell to Penmore Press and returned to self-publishing, using Carrick Publishing for the book and Draft2Digital for #4, #5, #8, and #9. I was now writing those novels, still mystery/thriller stories, even more in the style of British mysteries and crime stories, a tradition initiated by Dame Agatha, but still including thriller aspects that she never would dare to include.

I give away Defanging the Red Dragon and Intolerance, #6 and #7 respectively, as free PDFs (see the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page to see how to download them). Beyond the freebie aspect, the first was an experiment because it’s a crossover novel between another series and Esther’s; the second is one because Esther participates in three different cases that are described well by the title. I decided to give them away, thinking the series was drawing to a close, but Esther and Bastiann still had enough in them for The Klimt Connection and Celtic Chronicles, #8 and #9, respectively, which are published and not free.

Yet Esther and Bastiann deserved to retire! I’ve put them through the wringer in nine novels. They were more than ready to pass the baton to new characters, new sleuths with their own gritty stories to tell, ones that Agatha might enjoy reading to catch up on twenty-first century concerns in the UK and the world.

There were several characters anxiously awaiting their chance to receive those batons from those tired sleuths, but I picked DI Steve Morgan. He played a major role in #8, and he has the right pedigree—ex-Scotland Yard DI, an independent thinker, and a man with little patience for police bureaucracy. This young and tough copper is probably good for a new series (the preview of the first novel is found in Celtic Chronicles), but in order not to jinx things, I don’t want to continue to subtitle Legacy of Evil, that first book, “DI Steve Morgan, Book One.”

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The “Clones and Mutants” Trilogy. While all my titles, including those above, are reasonably priced, you might not want to miss this June’s 99-cent sale on Smashwords! All novels in this trilogy are on sale: In Full Medical (VJ53C), you’ll meet the clones; in Evil Agenda (UD66S), a nubile mutant is added to the mix; and in No Amber Waves of Grain (UV43P), the arch-villain from the first two books teams up with a clone and mutant to thwart another villain and mutant’s plan to destroy the West. All these are “evergreen,” i.e. as suspenseful and entertaining as the day I finished their manuscripts. The sale price $0.99 should appear when you peruse each book’s page on Smashwords, but you can use the indicated coupon codes if they don’t. Enjoy!

At pubprogressive.com yesterday: “Again?” (my plea for common-sense gun control).

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

After publishing a new novel (or maybe in this case two, The Klimt Connection and Celtic Chronicles, #8 and #9, respectively, in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series), I often pause, take a breather for a few days (in this case, it’s like running two marathons!), and think about future plans. Is it time for a reset? I always ask myself. Sometimes the answer is “yes,” and that’s when I write something I believe is entirely different, even experimental, like The Secret Lab or A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse (or even Rembrandt’s Angel).

But with some self-analysis, I realized this time that even with that YA sci-fi mystery (reedited and rewritten by A. B. Carolan) and that sci-fi rom-com, thriller elements still dominate my novel writing. I might call those “Esther Brookstone” novels mysteries (Agatha Christie in a way motivated that first book in that series) and the other two sci-fi novels, thriller elements are ubiquitous in all of them. They’re evident in the “Clones & Mutants” and “Chaos Chronicles” trilogies as well. Why is this?

More self-analysis leads me to a partial answer: H. Rider Haggard! I read a lot as a lad, Dame Agatha for mysteries and Asimov for sci-fi (although his Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun are also mysteries) just two “classic” authors who influenced me, but I can’t forget Haggard. I wonder if he influenced J. K. Rowling as well. By her own admission, Hagrid’s name—that burly giant tippler and surely the most interesting character in the Harry Potter series—came from the old English word for a bad night that tipplers often willingly have, and I suspect the modern English word haggard originates with that old English one hagrid. So, maybe she also used that name to recognize another English author’s contribution to thriller literature? (In Haggard’s day, not that distant from mine as an early reader, those novels were called “adventure stories, not thrillers.)

In any case, when I’ve reread some of H. Rider’s novels (most recently, King Solomon’s Mines) and enjoyed his famous character Alan Quatermain yet again (whom I identify more with Sean Connery now than James Bond), it’s clear that his novels are what we call thrillers today. Sure, H. Rider’s works mirror his times—they’re racist, elitist, and very British (but so are Christie’s!)—yet their thriller aspects entertained me as a young reader who imagined myself in adventures “around the world and to the stars.”

Of course, it might just be that all my novels are just evidence of my belief that storytelling should focus on the stories and ignore genre classifications. I’ll revisit these musings after the next novel, I’m sure!

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The “Clones and Mutants” Trilogy. While all my titles, including those above, are reasonably priced, you might not want to miss this June’s 99-cent sale on Smashwords! All novels in this trilogy are on sale: In Full Medical (VJ53C), you’ll meet the clones; in Evil Agenda (UD66S), a nubile mutant is added to the mix; and in No Amber Waves of Grain (UV43P), the arch-villain from the first two books teams up with a clone and mutant to thwart another villain and mutant’s plan to destroy the West. All these are “evergreen,” i.e. as suspenseful and entertaining as the day I finished their manuscripts. The sale price $0.99 should appear when you peruse each book’s page on Smashwords, but you can use the indicated coupon codes if they don’t. Enjoy!

At pubprogressive.com tomorrow: “Again?” (my plea for common-sense gun control).

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

Congress recently held hearings on UFOs, and the Pentagon informed the politicians about the authenticity of two videos (in the Director of Naval Intelligence’s testimony, to be specific). Are UFOs a national security concern? Are ETs real?

In Sing a Zamba Galactica, #2 in the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy,” two ET civilizations meet, one ours (when Humans are out there living in space, they’re obviously ETs) and another stranger one. This begins a strange collaboration between two intelligences, Humans and Rangers (the reason for the latter’s name is part of the fun); in other words, that was Humans discovering friendly ETs. In the same novel, Humans meet a group of nasty, unfriendly ones. Out of the chaos (not “the Chaos” of the first novel, Survivors of the Chaos), ITUIP is born—the Interstellar Trade Union of Independent Planets, something akin to an EU in the cosmos).

Isaac Asimov, one of my sci-fi-author heroes, didn’t put ETs in his Foundation trilogy; I have them in my trilogy, and in many other stories, from the novella “Escape from Earth” (available as a free PDF download—see my “Free Stuff & Contests” web page for this and other free fiction samples) and other short fiction works (the Dr. Carlos stories and Rogue Planet continue the ITUIP saga) to other novels like A. B. Carolan’s The Secret of the Urns and Mind Games and my More than Human: The Mensa Contagion.

While we’re also ETs in a sense of Sing a Zamba Galactica, our ancestors are the ETs in A. B. Carolan’s Origins. (Maybe Asimov would like that?) Humans from the stars returning to Earth is a common theme in the sci-fi literature—I first saw that theme in Chad Oliver’s Winds of Time. The original Battlestar Galactica TV series had that theme as well. (It was short on special effects but much better than the second version.) I used it in “Escape from Earth,” and A.B. used it in Origins. The later novel, though, takes the concept of Battlestar Galactica and adds to it the recently discovered Denisovans, a primitive offshoot of Homo sapiens’ evolutionary tree. The “real” ETs in that novel become only a mechanism for carrying Denisovans to the stars, something like poachers capturing animals in the wild for zoos.

Whether ETs or UFOs are real or not (I’m inclined to believe the former rather than the latter, unless certain foundations of physics become meaningless), they will continue to capture readers’ imaginations and motivate sci-fi storytellers.

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Celtic Chronicles. This ninth novel in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series. Esther and Bastiann volunteer to work at an archaeological dig near their modest castle outside Edinburgh. A student also working there is murdered. Police Scotland finds a Russian oligarch’s number on the lad’s call-list. That Russian is on his yacht anchored off the Scottish coast. As the investigation continues, everything becomes more complex, other characters come into play, and the intrigue and suspense increase. Published 5/23 by Draft2Digital, this ebook will soon be available wherever quality ebooks are sold (just not on Amazon). Note that #6 and #7 are free PDF downloads (see my “Free Stuff & Contests” web page for those novels and other free fiction).

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

Let’s consider The Last Humans: A New Dawn, #2 in “The Last Humans” series. Or #1 in that same series, or #3 in the “Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries” series. All the openings tell readers there are some thrills to be had. I then go on using back stories and flashbacks to continue the plots, often alternating between these story elements and dialogue and character development that normally will entertain at least a few readers.

This isn’t “traditional storytelling,” by which I mean that ancient oral tradition associated with members of the tribe gathered around campfires in prehistoric times listening to a storyteller. As much as modern storytelling owes to this oral tradition, the written word, especially in more recent fiction after Gutenberg cast into print form, is much more complex. I’m amused when reviewers complain about my novels’ complexity and ask myself, “Are they stuck in medieval times?” Of course, they might think simplicity is what’s needed—many readers love cozy mysteries and bodice rippers, for example, that are just parodies of the human condition with cardboard cutouts for characters. I generally ignore reviews of my books, though, except for promo purposes (excerpts from them). Reviewers are entitled to their opinions, of course, but reading preferences are so subjective that I know I can’t please everyone.

The opening is sometimes called “the hook,” a bit insulting to readers because they’re being compared to fish. Hmm, are books just bait then? All three novels I mentioned above open with action. Other novels might open with psychological stress, using the internal dialogue of a main character. The purpose is the same: Get the reader interested. That’s necessary at the beginning of the novel-writing marathon.

Even with psychological stress, back story (e.g. why the character is stressed) or flashbacks (a quick remembering of the stressful situation) can be used with character description to construct a solid opening. Authors must grab the readers’ attentions, but they also must also explain why it’s important to do so.

I probably do better when opening with action than I do describing a person’s stress. That might seem to be a contradiction to the complexity I desire, but personal thoughts might lead to meandering, which is deadly at the start of the literary marathon. In Celtic Chronicles, I start with Bastiann’s thoughts about Esther’s plans for them to volunteer to help at an archaeological dig. Banter accompanied those thoughts, though, something akin to action, and I kept things simple.

In other words, an author can combine the two, mixing thoughts with action. The fundamental goal is to begin with something that’s happening. The why can come later when the reader needs a breather, unless it’s not that complicated. Critics often say a story is like a rollercoaster ride (an overused description to the extent that it has become a cliché), but that’s what an author wants to achieve—the ups and downs of his marathon race (more like the Boston course than the NYC one) that the readers can run with him. At the beginning of the race, though, the author might want to put the reader at the top of the rollercoaster so the downhill thrill comes right away. Future uphill climbs are then akin to back story and flashbacks.

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Celtic Chronicles. This ninth novel in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series. Esther and Bastiann volunteer to work at an archaeological dig near their modest castle outside Edinburgh. A student also working there is murdered. Police Scotland finds a Russian oligarch’s number on the lad’s call-list. That Russian is on his yacht anchored off the Scottish coast. As the investigation continues, everything becomes more complex, other characters come into play, and the intrigue and suspense increase. Published 5/23 by Draft2Digital, this ebook will soon be available wherever quality ebooks are sold (just not on Amazon). Note that #6 and #7 are free PDF downloads (see my “Free Stuff & Contests” web page for those novels and other free fiction).

On pubprogressive.com tomorrow: “Why we might need a civil war…”.

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

Using the first person in storytelling has its pros and cons like most writing techniques. Using it means both readers and the author can become a character. A reader might be uncomfortable “being” a criminal, of course, but what a way to get inside a criminal’s mind…if it’s done well. Same goes for good and noble characters, of course.

First person is not point of view (POV). POV is about who’s the center of attention in a section or chapter; the reader is observing what’s going on using one character’s senses and mind. First person is already in one character’s POV, hence the confusion. Authors generally tell a story in  one third-person POV that might shift from section to section or chapter to chapter, all in the past tense. But both first-person past and present and third-person present are common as well. (Complicated? Not really. Read on.)

First-person storytelling works well when one character has a lot of internal dialogue, i.e., narrative that represents personal reflections on what has happened, is happening, or will happen. Using it exclusively means you can’t get into another character’s head, but that can help an author to not give anything away, like a detective considering the significance of clues or evidence and others’ mannerisms and actions. (That can also be done in third person, of course.) Sometimes this gets clumsy, though. I wrote the first novel in “The Last Humans” series all in first person—the story is about how Penny Castro copes with being one of the few survivors of a worldwide pandemic—but in the second novel, I had to alternate between first person (Penny) and third person (other characters). I’d had practice doing that, though, because the “Chen & Castilblanco” novels, all seven of them, were written in that style.

I first saw alternating first- and third-person storytelling in Patterson’s early Alex Cross novels. (I don’t know if he kept that up. I stopped reading Patterson. Like many old mares in stallions in the Big Five’s stables, Patterson soon became boring and formulaic.) Many readers don’t like that mix. I can’t understand that. It’s no different than changing third-person POV from section to section or chapter to chapter. Maybe the negative opinions stem from the fact that the third-person POV is more common? (I must have really upset readers of The Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse where I alternate between first-person Gail and first-person Jeff, the two main characters.)

First-person storytelling isn’t as new as some writers or readers might think either. H. Rider Haggard used it in King Solomon’s Mines, for example (published in 1885!), writing as if he were Alan Quatermain. That novel is a saga, and I’d venture to state that first-person storytelling is perfect for sagas. (“The Last Humans” and Time Traveler’s Guide novels can be considered sagas, even though the third book is a bit tongue-in-cheek.) Melville used first-person storytelling in Moby Dick.(1851). Would that novel be the same without that famous opening first line, “They call me Ishmael”?

I just can’t envision Ugh the Caveman sitting by a flickering fire and telling his stories to his comrades in anything but first person in order to make those comrades feel like participants in the story. That was how storytelling originated. Modern writing techniques have come a long way, and writers can experiment with them. I’m not sure I’m ready for second-person present-tense storytelling, though. I’d like to read your opinions, reader or writer.

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$0.99 cent sale! It’s the last week! The “Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries” series and the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy” are now both on sale at Smashwords. The first series contains the mystery/thriller novels Muddlin’ Through (QS68B), Silicon Slummin’…and Just Gettin’ By (SH53M), and Goin’ the Extra Mile (VX88P). The second contains Survivors of the Chaos, Sing a Zamba Galactica, and Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hand! (all three novels are contained in an ebook bundle, GF69F). All four ebooks are only $0.99 each. (If the promo codes don’t appear, you see them here and can use them to get the sale price.) Enjoy!

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

It’s bad enough that celebs produce more hyped and ludicrous books than most other authors (the books are often written by ghostwriters, of course), but they also freely advertise each others’ books along with a lot of other formulaic and fluffy fiction from the Big Five publishing conglomerates. First there was Oprah’s Book Club, then CNN’s and other talk shows’ hosts pimping their guests’ Big Five books (does Jake Tapper read all those books he prattles on about?), and now Charlie Gibson has dusted off the mothballs to create a book-club podcast with his daughter. I doubt any of the mentioned celebs read ten per cent of the books they pimp, assigning that reading to staff to get a synopsis (although old Charlie might make his daughter take a peek—what’s her name again?).

Most celebs can’t write (hence the boon for ghostwriters), and it’s doubtful they can read when one listens to their zero-content reviews. And you have to wonder if the Big Five gives them a cut of the royalties if their clubs discuss a Big Five book. The NYC publishing industry is an incestuous group at best, from the Authors Guild to the NY Times “critics” and the huge Big Five conglomerates. Greed and power beat the crap out of quality and creativity.

Of course, you’ll never see any self-published books or authors discussed by these celebs’ book clubs! You won’t even see small press publications. And you’ll only hear “critiques” like “This book is taking the reading world by storm” or “Bookstores can’t keep this book on the shelves” because the celebs really can’t say anything more intelligent and only serve as PR and marketing services for the Big Five.

None of these celebs’ “opinions” should impress any serious reader. 9In general, celebs don’t impress me, period! That Johnny Depp lawsuit is a farce. C’mon! Both plaintiff and accused are actors. Why would anyone expect actors to tell the truth on the stand? They’re acting!) The only Big Five books I read now are non-fiction tomes that people give me. I won’t pay Big Five prices, especially for fiction that’s drivel and not interesting nor entertaining. That’s more because I’m an avid and discerning reader who looks for quality. (For that reason, I pay no attention to Amazon’s book recommendations either! The Bezos bots’ recommendations are worse than the celebs.) I also react negatively to anyone who tells me “You really must read this book!” Especially if that person read the book because it was recommended by a celeb!

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$0.99 cent sale! It’s the last week! The “Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries” series and the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy” are now both on sale at Smashwords. The first series contains the mystery/thriller novels Muddlin’ Through (QS68B), Silicon Slummin’…and Just Gettin’ By (SH53M), and Goin’ the Extra Mile (VX88P). The second contains Survivors of the Chaos, Sing a Zamba Galactica, and Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hand! (all three novels are contained in an ebook bundle, GF69F). All four ebooks are only $0.99 each. (If the promo codes don’t appear, you see them here and can use them to get the sale price.) Enjoy!

Tomorrow on PubProgressive.com. “The 2022 Midteerms.”

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

I’m probably considered an outlier in that wide statistical distribution of author types, and for many reasons. But an important one is that I don’t have to make a living from my writing, so I can just enjoy it and be satisfied that a few readers will also be entertained by the stories I produce. It annoys me to no end, however, that I never can know how many readers I actually have. There are delays in reporting those numbers because I go wide; multiple retail sites mean more exposure for my books, but these sites are slow to report sales to my traditional publishers and to my book aggregators Draft2Digital and Smashwords. But I will never know how many of my books have been pirated!

I can look at this website’s stats and see how many visitors I have, eventually I might learn how many books people legally purchase (I’d never trust Amazon’s numbers, of course), and I know how many copies I’ve sent to friends and others for promo purposes. But I can never know the amount of royalties lost to book pirates.

Book piracy is frustrating. It’s one reason I decided to give away Defanging the Red Dragon and Intolerance, #6 and #7 in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series. Publishing a book does not solve the piracy problem. If anything, it exacerbates it. Ebooks are just computer software. People buy pirated copies of the latter all the time, no matter the security. Ebooks are worse, though, because they have no security. Amazon’s DRM is a joke and just an inconvenience for readers who want to share books with other members of the family (which I’m OK with because that’s done with paper versions all the time). Smashwords’s Mark Coker just pretends book piracy doesn’t exist. I don’t know about Draft2Digital, but their recent merger with Smashwords will probably encourage them to ignore book pirates as well.

How do the Big Five publishing conglomerates handle this problem? Their tactic is to encourage the purchase of expensive print versions by making their ebooks almost as expensive, but that’s a stupid policy. An expensive ebook is more expensive software that can be stolen and sold for more profit by the pirates. And pirating print versions, while rarer now, still exist. Maybe the Big Five have lawyers on retainer ready to pounce on major pirating enterprises? That’s a vicious circle, though, because that just makes their formulaic and fluffy fiction books more expensive.

I’ve never seen any author’s organization (the Authors Guild only represents the interest of the Big Five and the old mares and stallions in their stables but has no antipiracy efforts) or government legal task force worry about book piracy. Maybe they should declare it a felony? And maybe major pirates in other countries should be pursued by the FBI and Interpol, especially in those countries like China, India, and Russia where piracy is rampant? I suppose I’ll be dead before that ever occurs…or books will no longer exist as frivolous streaming video and Hollywood blockbusters kill all the worthwhile entertainment found in books.

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Comments are always welcome. (Please follow the rules found on the “Join the Conversation” web page. If you don’t, you comment will go into the spam folder.)

$0.99 cent sale! The “Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries” series and the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy” are now both on sale at Smashwords. The first series contains the mystery/thriller novels Muddlin’ Through (QS68B), Silicon Slummin’…and Just Gettin’ By (SH53M), and Goin’ the Extra Mile (VX88P). The second contains Survivors of the Chaos, Sing a Zamba Galactica, and Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hand! (all three novels are contained in an ebook bundle, GF69F). All four ebooks are only $0.99 each. (If the promo codes don’t appear, you see them here and can use them to get the sale price.) Enjoy!

At PubProgressive.com yesterday: “Five Old Men Taking Away Rights!”

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

While I’ve never been to many places you’ll travel to in my novels—the English woman Esther Broookstone travels to Turkey in Son of Thunder, for example—I’ve avoided autocratic states like the plague (China makes a habit of producing real ones). Although I speak some Russian, I never had any desire to visit the USSR (when that language was most fresh in my mind—along with Esther, East Berlin was as far as I got), and Putin’s paradise always seemed less attractive than the USSR. From Mao to Xi, I had much less desire to visit Communist China because the problem of distance, language, and opportunity were added to the above.

If you’ve read enough of my novels, though, you’ll know that some of them take place in China. Mary Jo Melendez goes there in Goin’ the Extra Mile (nice segue, “goes” to “goin,” right?), followed by the MECHs (“mechanically enhanced cybernetic humans”), who try to return the favor of saving her. (That novel, along with the first two in the “Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries” series, are now on sale now at Smashwords for $0.99—in the first one, Muddlin’ Through, an extreme travel story, she also visits both Russia and Ukraine as she and the MECHs flee Moscow and arrive in Poland). My search for background material while writing Goin’ went beyond my usual internet trawling (which often includes travel websites and Google Maps). Two other novels helped me in that search.

The most important book was The First Excellence by Donna Carrick. Another was Ludlum’s third Bourne novel (which had nothing to do with the third Matt Damon movie except for the title). Both novels, but especially the first, gave me a peek inside China that few Westerners can have, even if they take a state-organized tour to ooh and aah about the Great Wall. (This peek inside is probably dated considering when the books were published, but China has only become worse under Xi, even without considering Covid.)

You might not care about my searches to provide realism for my settings, but hopefully this post helps explain why I do this: I believe that readers can enjoy their travels to places like China, England, Korea, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine when reading a novel. Other authors and I are those readers’ travel guides. Other readers, perhaps you, and most certainly I can enjoy trips around the world and to the stars without ever leaving our comfy armchairs, and we all, readers and authors alike, find more variety and get more enjoyment than any streaming video or other Hollywood drama can provide.

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$0.99 cent sale! The “Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries” series and the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy” are now both on sale at Smashwords. The first series contains the mystery/thriller novels Muddlin’ Through (QS68B), Silicon Slummin’…and Just Gettin’ By (SH53M), and Goin’ the Extra Mile (VX88P). The second contains Survivors of the Chaos, Sing a Zamba Galactica, and Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hand! (all three novels are contained in an ebook bundle, GF69F). All four ebooks are only $0.99 each. (If the promo codes don’t appear, you see them here and can use them to get the sale price.) Enjoy!

At PubProgressive.com tomorrow: “Five Old Men Taking Away Rights!”

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

Compared to most other animal species, human beings have long lives, although the verdict is still out whether elephants and whales can compete with us (studying them in captivity can bias things one way or the other). But aging and death is the bane of all creatures, great and small, both going hand in hand with evolution because Mother Nature doesn’t depend on species’ dying or the old and infirm weaned out in predator-prey systems or violence and conflict. It’s not surprising that aging is a theme in much of literature, sci-fi in particular, as well as its opposite, longevity.

Modern science has extended lives (artificially perhaps?) to the point where people often live longer than Mother Nature ever intended. In medieval times, lifespans were more like forty years, not seventy or eighty, and cancer wasn’t even in the medical taxonomy because people wrote it off as “death by natural causes.” In brief, we were probably “designed” by evolution (to pacify those “intelligent design” idiots) to have shorter lifespans, but modern medicine has pushed the limits.

So sci-fi often asks the obvious question: Can our lifespans be extended even further?

This question must be asked in some sci-fi stories simply because the distances between stars, even between the planets in our own solar system, are so great. Brian Aldiss and others answered that question with “generation ships” that just took our earthly lifespan limitations and put them onboard these long-haul starships, an obvious cop-out. A similar alternative is to employ long-term hibernation techniques, yet to be discovered. A more reasonable variation (because the science is already there) considered by James Hogan and others had these same long-haul ships run by androids taking care of frozen ova, sperm, and embryos until the end of the journey (an improvement to be sure because that requires less space for human beings and allows more room for supplies and equipment)—the last two options are also cop-outs because the humans at the end of the journey still have the same lifespan limitations.

Of course, FTL is another literary alternative, from Isaac Asimov’s “jumps” to Star Trek‘s warp drives. The idea always comes down to avoiding those vast distances in some mathematical and physical manner (wild tech bordering on the impossible even if wormholes really exist). All the FTL variations allow sci-fi authors to get beyond the aging and distance limitations and on with their stories, effectively minimizing the actual journeys.

So…we have two extremes: For Aldiss and Hogan, we might say that the journey is the story, or an important part of it; for Asimov and others, the story is still planet bound. Of course, sci-fi stories don’t necessarily fit on the linear spectrum running between the two extremes. Hugh Howey’s Wool, for example, takes place on a future Earth! (As do many dystopian and post-apocalyptic sci-fi stories. Howey certainly wasn’t the first!)

Looking over my own sci-fi oeuvre, I can state that I’ve covered that entire spectrum, though, and more. “The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy,” for example, goes from Aldiss to Asimov. “The Last Humans” novels take place on Earth, as do the novels in the “Clones and Mutants Trilogy.” The first novel in the last series, though, focuses on another solution to aging in a sense, and that solution all starts with the arch-villain Vladimir Kalinin.

Ordered by publication dates, Vladimir first appears in The Midas Bomb, the first novel in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series; and he works his way into more of those novels, the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan (a transition novel) and “The Phantom Harvester,” the “Clones and Mutants Trilogy,” and Soldiers of God (also a transition novel, to the “Chaos Chronicles:). He’s my most long-lived character, and the reason for that is his perfection and use of cloning. (That only becomes fully apparent in Full Medical, my very first novel). I can only hint at his strategy as I finish the “Esther Brookstone” series that takes place decades earlier. Of course, he’s such a complex character that his long life is less about that strategy than what he does with longevity. That strategy, though, is a lot more medically possible than the ones previously mentioned.  “The Chaos Chronicles” continues that extended “future history” timeline, by the way, but apparently human beings at that time weren’t willing to use cloning. The third novel in that series does revisit the concept, though, as part of a madman’s dream of having identical soldiers with ESP powers!

And that is the fundamental question, isn’t it? How ethical is it to want to live forever? So far in real life, not sci-fi, we don’t have to answer that question, although that need might be right around the corner!

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A Time Traveler’s Guide Through the Multiverse. Enrico Fermi wasn’t the last physicist who was both an experimental and theoretical genius, but Professor Gail Hoff will never receive the Nobel Prize. She goes time-traveling through several universes of the multiverse, never to return to her little lab outside Philly. Jeff Langley, her jack-of-all-trades electronics wizard, accompanies her. Their escapades, both amorous and adventurous, make this sci-fi rom-com a far-out road-trip story filled with dystopian and post-apocalyptic situations, first encounter, robots and androids—all that and more await the reader who rides along.

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