Alan Turing (1912-1954) was a famous British mathematician known for creating the “Turing machine” concept and using it to prove the “halting problem” for these machines was undecidable, the Gödel’s theorem of computer science. Because of a fairly recent movie, he justifiably is now considered a national and world hero for breaking the Enigma code by extending the deciphering capabilities of the “Polish bombe,” a mechanical technique used against the Nazi U-boats’ damaging offense launched against freighters crossing the Atlantic during World War II. Like Oscar Wilde and many others, he was treated terribly by the British, basically forced to commit suicide. (The Brits didn’t decriminalize homosexuality until 2008 when what is now known as “Turing’s law” was passed.)

Ever since Turing, and maybe even before, coding has always been good employment for mathematicians or other people with mathematical skills. Of course, here I mean coding to be encryption and decryption of messages, not designing iPhone and Android apps! The goal is always to create unbreakable codes, and these techniques are used by many people, not just spies and the military. There are simple codes your kids can use (for parents reading this post, I’ve taken pity on you and won’t mention specifics), and more complex ones that need large primes. Most of the latter could be broken by a quantum computers.

Turing is also considered the father of artificial intelligence (the machine algorithm that bears his name is considered a test for that). Sci-fi stories seem to care more about AI systems, especially those used to guide starships and give robots more human characteristics. (Asimov, however, was too early to consider either one!) Few authors care about quantum encryption/decryption, and “quantum computers” have almost become a cliche like “FTL drives,” with few worrying about the nuts and bolts involved.

Consequently, the real purpose of this post is to emphasized that my new Esther Brookstone novel, Leonardo and the Quantum Code, is only partially about quantum encryption/decryption and certainly not sci-fi. It’s a mystery/thriller novel, like the pervious novels in the series, where coding algorithms are inspired by Da Vinci’s work in an unknown notebook of his. (It’s estimated that there are 50+ such novels.) An old mathematician friend of Esther’s, Donald Townes, is working on these algorithms, and someone wants to steal his results. There’s a trio of villains, in fact: Russian spies, American spies, and a strange man named Vladimir Kalinin, a Russian ex-pat.

Turing is briefly mentioned in the book; he’s also mentioned in Death on the Danube for his gayness and the Brits’ crime. He’s a tragic character, but Townes is too, for his wife has just been murdered. He begins to turn his life around by the end of the book, though, unlike Turing. While I wanted to show scientists are human beings and can exhibit the whole spectrum of human behavior, I rewrote the novel so that he doesn’t suffer as much as Turing.

In fact, the novel is a bit light-hearted at times, in keeping with the title. Saucy Esther, of course, helps keep it from taking itself too seriously, unlike Palettes, Patriots, and Prats, which is mostly serious. The theme of cyber security, is deadly serious, which is enough.

I’ve tried to strike a good balance between Moliere and Le Carre. The coppers aren’t quite “Keystone Cops”; and the spy-vs-spy antics aren’t as tongue-in-cheek as Mad Magazine’s or as noir as Le Carre’s Little Drummer Girl. The mystery-novel aspects aren’t as fluffy as a cozy’s or serious as a psychological thriller either.

I’m proud of this novel. It just might be my best so far. Above all, I think I managed to write another entertaining and educational book in the series. You’ll have to read it to see if you agree.

***

Comments are always welcome.

“Esther Brookstone Art Detective.” Esther takes you around merry olde England, Europe, the Middle East, and South America in her five-book series. Esther’s main characteristic is becoming obsessed with righting wrongs, from searching for a missing Rembrandt in the first book to risking her life to help a friend in the last. And this saucy ex-MI6 spy and ex-Scotland Yard inspector acts on those obsessions! Her novels can be found wherever quality ebooks are sold. (The last two are not on Amazon, though.)

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

How stupid can people be? Obviously, from all that’s going on, damn stupid! Stupid enough that they prefer to commit suicide and take others with them rather than use a thoroughly tested and tried solution to a public health emergency, one that is extremely lethal. We hear and read about the rationalizations for this stupid behavior akin to lemmings intent on suicide, following their brethren over the cliff. The lemmings are actually smarter; they’re driven by instinct. The anti-vaxers are just marching morons who swallow political and social misinformation. Let’s analyze some of their rationalizations.

The vaccines don’t yet have FDA approval. The FDA made a huge mistake with that new Alzheimer’s drug, so that approval might not mean that much in the grand scheme of things. But there is approval for all three vaccines available in the US as an urgent response to a deadly pandemic. In other words, while the lack of full approval might sound like a good rationalization, it’s not! Why is it so hard to understand that we are in a public health emergency in this country and around the world? You only need to consider how many people in the US and worldwide have died from Covid-19 to realize how dire the situation is…unless you have the IQ of pond scum!

Sure, we have many distractions, but those should blow past intelligent people who are smart enough to stay focused on this public health emergency. For example, there’s “Ayn” Rand Paul, who seems to be competing for the “biggest ass in Congress” award (he has a lot of competition!). He basically called Dr. Fauci a liar and communist and accused him of collaborating with the Chinese government’s lab in Wuhan. Even if true—that is, the unproven theory that the virus escaped from that lab—someone needs to put a gag on this idiot! This SOB isn’t an epidemiologist; he’s a moronic and radical libertarian who’s just trying to make political points, just another example of how the pandemic has become politicized.

Robert Kennedy, Jr. is yet another example, but at least he’s pretending to offer advice about taking the vaccine, not trying to make political points amongst Trump’s fanatic followers. (Or is he?) He’s against every vaccine! If he’d had his way, this stupid ass would have continued the smallpox and polio epidemics. (Of course, he might have been stinking up diapers back then, instead of stinking up public health now.)  Unfortunately, stupid people commiserate and follow his moronic advice.

Read the rest of this entry »

[Note: This series will focus entirely on combatting fascism in America and around the world with my only weapon, words. (I’m not an NRA member.) It’s not anti-fa in the sense of that extreme left group; it’s pro democracy. If you consider that my words don’t agree with your political preferences here, you’re part of the problem! To the rest of you, don’t worry about me. The fascist plutocracy of the 0.1% doesn’t do their own dirty work; and their toadies who do, don’t read very much, like their lord and savior, Donald J. Trump. So I doubt these essays will even hurt my book sales, mostly because that same plutocracy has already determined they will be low!]

First, what is this word? Most definitions are too restrictive. Here’s part of Wikipedia’s: “Fascism is a form of far-right, authoritarian ultra-nationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and of the economy….” Why is this too restrictive? Because fascism in America isn’t yet completely authoritarian or completely ultra-nationalistic; the American plutocracy practices all the rest, just like the German one did before Hitler came to power. Hitler was the German plutocrats’ tool; Trump was the American plutocrats’; and there will be more, if not Il Duce himself.

Restriction of voting rights—that’s fascism. Doing everything to perpetuate white privilege—that’s fascism. Ignoring 90% of Americans, their complaints and wishes, to give the 0.1% in the fascist plutocracy the lion’s share of the wealth—that’s fascism. Trampling on people’s rights to adequate health care, control of their own bodies, worshipping as they wish, and freedom from gun violence, or any violence—that’s fascism.

As a writer, I spent a lot of time in every story I’ve written looking for the precise words. I know something about that, just by experience, so I know “fascism” is the precise word to describe what’s happening in America right now. It doesn’t matter that the emperor thinks he wears the clothes of democracy—this goes for Biden as well as Trump—because he (and invariably the toady is male, which might be part of the problem) is either doing the fascist plutocracy’s bidding (Trump), or he’s stymied by their control of other institutions (Biden), thus moving along that agenda of that fascist 0.1%: Not allowing anything to be done to help the 90% and ensuring the wealth gap between them and that 90% keeps increasing. Remember Hitler and Putin were both initially elected. Trump just completed that infamous trio of toadies working in behalf of America’s 0.1% fascists.

The US is now controlled by an evil mafia-like organization just like Russia; that fascist plutocracy, and these fascists, like the Nazis before them, use autocratic toadies like today’s Good Ole Piranhas as their battering ram to break down the walls of democracy. Like that forty-year-old condo in Florida, those walls suffered from shoddy construction practices from the very beginning: Those “Founding Fathers,” steeped in aristocratic privilege, kept slavery alive and created fascist institutions like the Senate and Electoral College to protect their privileged existence. Today those venerable chains of authoritarian thought mean that no matter who’s president, the fascist 0.1% always wins.

Read the rest of this entry »

He’s back! He’s a psycho; a power-hungry, greedy devil; and a bad-ass villain who sometimes manages to do some good. That more or less sums up his appearance in Leonardo and the Quantum Code, Book Five of the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series.

I needed a foil for both Janos Rakoczy, Hungarian assassin extraordinaire and the true villain in that tale; and Esther Brookstone, ex-MI6 spy and ex-Scotland Yard inspector, who’s the saucy main character. And there he was, waiting in the wings, smiling like the Cheshire cat, who also alternates between visibility and invisibility. (Alice and her friends are even mentioned a few times in the novel because Esther’s second husband and close friends from her Oxford days are also featured; Alice’s stories started in Oxford!)

Kalinin’s appearance in this novel is logical: He’s at the beginning of my fictional timeline in The Midas Bomb and goes all the way to Soldiers of God, the bridge book between “The Clones & Mutants Trilogy” and “The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy.” In fact, his actions have an influence on everything on that timeline even beyond Soldiers of God! He appears off and on in the various novels, this Cheshire cat, throughout the “Detectives Chen & Castilblanco” series and dominating the “Clones & Mutants Trilogy.” He even appears in The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan and the novella “The Phantom Harvester” (available as a free PDF download—see my “Free Stuff & Contests” web page).

At the end of Gaia and the Goliaths (#7 in the detective series), you already saw some of his DIY skills, even though his constant companion, old Irish bombmaker Sean Cassidy, is often there to help. (He might have been unstoppable if he’d had more people like Sean; too many he hired failed him.) But we also learn more abut his hatred for the Russian leaders who made him flee his homeland, including Putin.

He shows some good human qualities in No Amber Waves of Grain (#3 in the “Clones & Mutants Trilogy”), and there are many glimpses of this in manty of the stories where he appears (I still love that rose scene at the end of The Midas Bomb). I’ve never appreciated cardboard-like two-dimensional characters in my reading—most human beings are complex—so I try to make my characters truly human in all my stories I write (ETs are an exception, of course). Because Kalinin appears so often in them, readers can see that in spades with him.

Kalinin is a survivor and self-made man. He’s suave, sophisticated, and very lethal .He’s the James Bond of villains. I hope you enjoy seeing him in action once again in Leonardo and the Quantum Code.

***

Comments are always welcome.

“Esther Brookstone Art Detective.” Binge-reading plus a treasure hunt: What’s not to like? Esther Brookstone takes you around merry olde England, Europe, the Middle East, and South America in her five-book series that also travels through three publishers. You start with saucy Esther, an ex-MI6 spy and Scotland Yard inspector, and her paramour Bastiann van Coevorden, an Interpol agent; you move on to their exciting honeymoon cruise on the Danube; and you then return to Esther’s home turf where the old married couple’s adventures continue. The two sleuths are 21^st-century versions of Christie’s Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot. Esther’s novels can be found wherever quality ebooks are sold. (Palettes, Patriots, and Prats and Leonardo and the Quantum Code are recent additions to this series, and the last two are not on Amazon.)

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

Bezos, Branson, and, to some extent, Musk, are the three rich boys; and who knows what their expensive toys cost? At least Musk actually did something that blows the other two out of the sky: He put NASA back into space without kissing the butt of that old KGB agent, the evil Vladimir Putin.

With Branson’s flight, the hype was over the top: “Democratization of space” and “opening space to everyone” were examples of CNN’s hyperbole repeated again and again by Rachel Crane, whom CNN might now regret hiring (did she qualify just by being an astronaut’s daughter?). Ms. Crane also seems to think that the Mojave Desert is in New Mexico.

I suppose Bezos’s flight will be equally hyperbolic (and I’m not talking about the orbit—besides, that’s a parabola after the rocket motors shut down). He’s already touting he’ll be going higher. And, who knows, the price of his future tickets will undercut Branson’s, because that’s what Amazon does at the beginning of a retail competition. Or maybe he’ll buy out Branson.

Let’s analyze the Bezos and Branson efforts a bit more. Did they really accomplish anything beyond giving those two billionaires a great rollercoaster ride? Wouldn’t all that money have been better spent on finding solutions for global warming?

The answer to the first question is easy: Elon Musk’s successes with Space-X are an integral part of the space effort now and—let’s admit it—saved NASA’s butt, especially for sending personnel to ISS. NASA’s dependence on the Russian mafia’s capo Putin was at best a risky business.

The second question is a bit more difficult to answer? The short answer: We’ll never know now because that money has already been spent! A longer one: Space exploration can never be more important than combatting climate change! Global warming endangers all life on Earth. CNN stupidly stated during the Branson spectacle that one day we would be the UFOs for ETs on some strange planet. BS! That will never happen if life on Earth is reduced to one-celled microorganisms after the planet becomes too much like Venus. We can’t lose sight of the existential challenge of climate control just so two self-centered billionaires can get an emotional rush.

They say Branson is very much an environmentalist. He has to prove it to me by forgetting about the media’s love affair with him and ending his foolish toy-building. Until then, he’s only a narcissistic showman who enjoys being in the limelight far too much.

What about Bezos? Maybe I should just refer that question to his wife? Although I’m a writer who now boycotts Amazon, I have more reasons beyond that boycott than Amazon’s shoddy treatment of authors. Now with his expensive space toys, I have another.

Branson will charge $250K for a ticket into space. What will Bezos charge? As I stated above, he might undercut Branson at first and then pass him—that’s Bezos’s style. In any case, your average Jill or Joe won’t be doing tourism in space anytime soon. And they definitely won’t be footing the bill for a return to the Moon or a trip to Mars. No, Bezos and Branson are more than rich boys with expensive toys. They’re rich billionaires looking to make even more money off space.

I wrote about those in my Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection‘s first novel. The UNSA’s chairwoman outsmarts them, though. Hopefully NASA will do the same for Bezos and Branson. Musk needs some competition. All of space exploration would be less expensive if these three billionaires were actually competing!

***

Comments are always welcome.

“Esther Brookstone Art Detective.” Binge-reading plus a treasure hunt: What’s not to like? Esther Brookstone takes you around merry olde England, Europe, the Middle East, and South America in her five-book series that also travels through three publishers. You start with saucy Esther, an ex-MI6 spy and Scotland Yard inspector, and her paramour Bastiann van Coevorden, an Interpol agent; you move on to their exciting honeymoon cruise on the Danube; and you then return to Esther’s home turf where the old married couple’s adventures continue. The two sleuths are 21^st-century versions of Christie’s Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot. Esther’s novels can be found wherever quality ebooks are sold. (Palettes, Patriots, and Prats and Leonardo and the Quantum Code are recent additions to this series, and these last two are not on Amazon.)

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

Happy Bastille Day to all my French readers! Vive la France!

***

When I started polishing my stories at the beginning of the third millennia (that sounds better than turn of the century), thinking about publishing them, I already had computers to help me. The internet was still in its infancy, but word publishing software wasn’t (in fact, MS Word was probably better then because it wasn’t so bloated).

There are three types of editing: content, copy, and proofing. Copy editing is the last thing you do before formatting, mostly spelling and grammar checking (I’ll admit MS Word’s new “Editor” does a better job of that now, although it still doesn’t like my hard-boiled, minimalist style). Proofing is the first thing you do after formatting and before publication.

In this post, though, I’ll focus on how I content edit. My method requires word processing software, and always has. It will sound chaotic, but it’s entirely logical.

I content edit as I go. My first draft is my last before copy editing. But “as I go” might be a bit confusing to some people. I get a manuscript (MS) going good, leave it for a bit, and create snippets of prose I add to it the next day. I might cut out a paragraph or an entire chapter, putting them elsewhere in the MS, or sticking them in an auxiliary file for possible future use…maybe with changes, maybe not, and maybe even in another story!

Perhaps I should call this creative chaos organic growth in a large sense, and not content editing? Planting, weeding, transplanting, pruning, etc. Growing up in California’s Central Valley, I could have become a farmer who does exactly that. As a writer, I’m that farmer who’s tending to a different crop, growing novels.

This is not a linear process! Some readers might think I just sit down and write until I have a first draft. That’s not how I write. (I wonder if anyone writes that way.) I might even write the ending several times—nothing wrong with that because Beethoven did it with his Fifth Symphony—each of my endings requiring more content editing, and each one possibly done before the novel is finished.

While I often discuss storytelling in terms of bards of yore spinning their yarns beside some prehistoric campfires, I couldn’t do that. They were the better storytellers, I suppose, at least in using a completely linear process (although they often repeated the same stories again and again, I suspect, embellishing sometimes, which is content editing).

I find this writing technique effective and efficient, even though it might seem to other writers and readers to be chaotic. It allows me to return to a story days or weeks later, or keep two or more MSs going at the same time. How do I keep the stories straight? Simple. They’re there in the computer with all the related noted, patiently waiting for further additions…and content editing.

Now you know how I produce all those novels…and are probably thinking that it’s better to have the final polished product in hand!

***

Comments are always welcome.

“Esther Brookstone Art Detective.” Up for some binge-reading? Here’s a series that should delight all US and UK readers! It starts with ex-MI6 spy Esther Brookstone as an inspector in Scotland Yard’s Art and Antiques Unit. Her paramour and Interpol agent Bastiann van Coevorden accompanies her on many adventures, eventually becoming Esther’s fourth husband. He tries to control her obsessive desire to fight crime and bring criminals to justice, keeping her focused and out of trouble, but she’s an active and headstrong woman. Wags in the yard have nicknamed Esther Miss Marple and Bastiann Hercule Poirot, but they’re 21^st century sleuths who are more than a match for today’s criminal elements. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold, including the new Book Five.

. Around the world and to the stars!

I’ve decided to be more efficient. Instead of sending a lot of tweets out via Twitter (which those website folks would love me to do, I’m sure), I’ll put them all here in one blog post. There are probably more people following this blog than are following me on that website anyway; and, if not, the audience here might be, generally speaking, more educated (Trump’s right-wing trolls still water down Twitter’s IQ quite a bit).

Will Biden become the world’s worst mass murderer? It’s looking that way! His administration is dragging its heels about evacuating the Afghans who helped coalition forces, the US and its NATO allies. Everyone from cooks to translators, about eighteen thousand of them, are in risk of losing their heads as the Taliban take over the country. Biden et al don’t seem to give a damn. In their haste to outdo Trump and leave Afghanistan, they will only outdo him in how many people Il Duce effectively murdered. The withdraw should have had mechanisms in place before it began. So what if Kabul ends up like looking like Saigon? We got our asses whipped in Afghanistan too, so it should look like Vietnam! No wonder we don’t have many friends in this world.

Did Trump support hit squads? If you’re not troubled by the fact that the elite Saudi paramilitary group in charge of dismembering Kashoggi and murdering other MBS enemies was trained in the US by a State Department school for murderers, you should be. Trump had love affairs with  many despots, but MBS and his cronies held a special place in his heart. Can’t you just see him dancing with the scimitar-loving guards? You should see it now as a warlocks’ dance, Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique” providing the musical score.

Will 2022 voters be able to vote? Not if the Good Ole Piranhas, America’s national fascist party, has anything to do with it. Their plan for winning elections? Suppress the vote, making sure all those black and brown people can’t show up. McConnell et al are focused on taking back the House and Senate, and they will try any fascist technique they can imagine to do that. Let’s get rid of the filibuster so we can get something done! Better yet, let’s get rid of the Senate! The Founding Fathers sure screwed us by creating that and the Electoral College, the heavy-duty tools in the fascists’ toolbox.

What happened to climate change? With everything else going on, we tend to forget about the greatest existential threat to humans and all life on Earth. Southerners, who see worse damaging weather events occurring every year now, should have a clue, but they’re too busy with supporting Q-Anon conspiracies, denigrating women who deserve control of their bodies, attacking black and brown people, and other far-right causes. Westerners, who live through hundreds of brush and forest fires and an ever increasing drought, ignore Mother Nature’s warnings. Tired of mask? Just wait to you have to huddle inside because to go out means dressing up like a spaceman due to the heat and pollution. Of course, inside is dangerous too when that power needed to run our ACs becomes rationed. We’re probably beyond the tipping point, but any more delays for a serious attack on global warning will just cause more deaths, and condemn future generations an unlivable planet.

Who do you call, ghostbusters, the police, or a social worker? The first is a joke, of course, but so is the third, a tragic one. When some violent SOB threatens to kill his wife and children, I don’t think social workers will help. When a mental case decides to take his AK and spray a crowd, social workers won’t help. Defunding the police, a far-left death wish, just shows how stupid people have become. Yet the recent mayoral race in NYC came down to just that: One leading candidate was against violence on the city’s streets, and proposed policing reform (needed in many cases), not defunding; another, to appeal to that AOC crowd, which compromises with no one, nationally or locally, prefers social workers. Some of those followers tout social workers as the answer, not cops. The mentioned far-left candidate had her own personal security guards, of course; no social workers for her! God help us!

Will 12 to 30-year-olds allow Covid to continue to kill thousands? It seems like an easy choice: A vaccine that can save your life vs. your anti-vax sentiments, for whatever the reason. Let’s forget about absurd reasons like believing the vaccines contain microchips to turn you into a zombie. Some people, most of them young idiots (or their parents), just think Covid won’t be deadly for them because they have a strong immune system. Moreover, the older ones want to continue to have fun in their lives. If these people were the only ones to die, I wouldn’t mind too much, but they’ll kill others—people with cancer on chemo therapies who can’t take the vaccine, little kids 12 and under, and so forth. Geez, maybe Biden won’t be the greatest mass murderer in US history? It will be the 12 to 30-year-olds who refuse to be vaccinated!

Misconceptions propagated by medical “experts”? Dr. Walensky, along with many other medical gurus, mislead the public. What we see reported on are Covid variants, the delta variant is but one example, that are either more transmittable or more deadly (so far, the vaccines still work with these mutations, but who knows?), but viruses don’t choose to do us more harm by mutating, i.e. become more successful from their point of view (they don’t have one, by the way). All sorts of mutations occur; the ones that aren’t better for the virus’s pandemic succcess don’t proliferate. It’s Darwinian evolution in action at the viral level, pure trial and error, not some sinister enemy wanting to destroy us. In fact, the latter would never be a contagion’s goal, if there were one—what does it do after the hosts are all gone? By ignoring this aspect of Covid, the CDC and other medical organizations are falling into the hands of creationists and other anti-Darwinists! Read the rest of this entry »

Come join the party! You know, those parties where the guests scoot around town to find clues and finally reach something worthwhile at the end. In this case, the treasure is five large gems (modesty aside), and the clues are a bit obscure.

I’m referring to the five novels in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series. Unlike the related “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series, all novels published by Carrick Publishing (#1 even has a paper version), the novels in Esther’s series have been published in three different ways, mostly because of circumstances beyond my control.

The first two novels, Rembrandt’s Angel and Son of Thunder, were published by Penmore Press; the third. Death on the Danube, by Carrick Publishing; and the last two, Palettes, Patriots, and Prats and Leonardo and the Quantum Code, by Draft2Digital (D2D). As far as the publishing history goes, the only commonality for all five books is that I’m their author!

I apologize. This treasure hunt won’t be easy for readers. Penmore and I parted ways on friendly terms; I suppose they had good business reasons for making the changes they made, and I certainly had mine for finally deciding I could do without them. Carrick Publishing has published many of my books and done a bang-up job doing it, but I was impatient to get my Covid backlog of manuscripts published, so I turned to D2D for the last two novels to avoid their queue. (Apologies are in order for Carrick Publishing too.)

The first three novels all have print versions; the last two don’t because (1) my attendance at live book events has diminished (where I “exhibit” print versions), and (2) I firmly believe that print versions’ days are numbered (the only publishers that are sustaining them are the Big Five, and only because they come out with print versions long before ebooks to make more money, which makes no sense because they charge almost as much for the ebooks!)

The last two novels aren’t on Amazon. I’ve explained in this blog why that’s so in several posts, and you can find part of that explanation on my website too, but I’m boycotting that retail giant for now. (There are also reasons beyond how they treat publishers and authors.)

In any case, there you have the treasure hunt, whether you believe the treasure is worthwhile or not. It’s not that difficult, though. Most online retailers sell all the ebooks. Exceptions are Amazon and Smashwords for the last two novels, but all can be found at iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc. Print versions are only available on Amazon and at your favorite local brick-and-mortar bookstore (if they don’t have them, ask for them); you’ll have to be satisfied with novels one through three, though. You could consider those novels a trilogy, I suppose, but you won’t know what happens to Esther and Bastiann beyond their honeymoon trip down the Danube!

While you might not think so, I really do consider these five novels my gems. They represent the pinnacle of my storytelling, in particular, the last novel, Leonardo and the Quantum Code, which combines all my genres in one novel in a way. (You’ll have to read it to see why.)

Like all my series, though, you can sample these gems in any order. While I refer to previous events in each successive novel (especially #5, which depends a lot on #3 and #4), I always provide a short explanation of each event so each novel can stand alone. (In all my series, I mention those previous events primarily as a reward for those readers who read the series in order. They’re not that necessary because everyone knows a series exists because an author is reusing some of his previous characters.)

However, rest assured, I never intended to create a treasure hunt for you to follow the adventures of Esther and Bastiann, only to create more stories about that Christie-like duo, Esther (Miss Marple) and Bastiann (Hercule Poirot), for your enjoyment. Again, I apologize.

***

Comments are always welcome.

Leonardo and the Quantum Code. Trouble again finds Esther Brookstone on her home turf. An old friend from her Oxford days is developing encoding and decoding algorithms that involve entangled quantum states and quantum computers, all motivated by some of Leonardo Da Vinci’s ideas found in a newly discovered notebook of the artist. His project is financed by MI5, but both the Americans and Russians want his results…and so does a mysterious stranger. Cloak-and-dagger suspense abound in this fifth novel of the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series. Soon available wherever quality ebooks are sold (but not on Amazon).

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

To those who lament the PA Supreme Court’s decision to free Mr. Cosby, I’ll paraphrase what someone said (I don’t remember who said it or which side they were on): The US does not have a justice system; it has a legal system. Mr. Steele should never have prosecuted Mr. Cosby, and that DA did a disservice to Ms. Constand by doing so. The previous DA had promised Mr. Cosby no prosecution, and that was legally binding, so he went ahead with a deposition in a civil trial, figuring he wouldn’t need to plead the fifth in a criminal one. Mr. Steele then used that deposition to prosecute him in the criminal trial! The Supreme Court’s decision was spot on.

Mr. Steele caused this mess. Two things are evidence for disbarring this lawyer, unless he’s already left the legal system. First, he was in a hurry. The statute of limitations meant that time was running out. But that leads to the second reason: He was also running for office and needed a high-profile case in a hurry to improve his branding in the marketing sense. Mr. Steele was the real culprit in this case.

The media has avoided this issue and shares some culpability for the fiasco. They ignore the facts when it’s convenient for them to focus on what they consider a better story, the outrage of the victims. They’re culpable too, no doubt about it.

This is a miscarriage of justice on Mr. Steele’s part as well as the media’s complicity in covering up his errors. But perhaps we should add one more ambitious lawyer to the mix? Ms. Allred has made a career of representing abused women. Her moral crime is giving them, including Ms. Constand, false hope. Or maybe Gloria is just naive? I repeat: We have a legal system, not a justice system. Both Steele and Allred are lawyers. They should know the difference.

Given that, women have become so frustrated now that #MeToo goes after their abusers in the court of public opinion where all the people they accuse are guilty until proven innocent. The media are their willing accomplices. That runs the risk of backfiring—public opinion is fickle and often starts to pity the accused. It reminds me when, decades ago, many people running childcare centers were accused of being pedophiles, guilty until proven innocent. I’m not saying some accusations aren’t justified, but there’s a bandwagon effect that so often accompanies those tactics, and people get turned off by them because some lives are unjustly ruined, not quite as badly as with a lynch mob, but near to it.

Mr. Cosby isn’t innocent in the moral sense. The court never claimed that. Too many women came forward, suffering psychological pain in the process. Perhaps Mr. Cosby lured them; or perhaps they were looking for him to shed some star power on themselves. Who knows? And it doesn’t matter. They felt abused. But there was a bandwagon, and it started to roll far too late.

Victims shouldn’t wait to come forward. Otherwise, they risk allowing their abusers to win the public’s pity and sympathy they don’t deserve. By waiting in Mr. Cosby’s case, they sent “America’s Dad,” an eighty-year-old man, to jail. And the Mr. Steele did that illegally.

The women involved were victims, victimized not only by Mr. Cosby, but also by Mr. Steele, Ms. Allred, and the media. Please, please, don’t wait to come forward if you want to punish your abuser. Otherwise, there will be opportunists with an agenda ready to abuse you even more, giving you false hope when our legal system can’t do so legally.

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Comments are always welcome.

Leonardo and the Quantum Code. Trouble again finds Esther Brookstone on her home turf. An old friend from her Oxford days is developing encoding and decoding algorithms that involve entangled quantum states and quantum computers, all motivated by some of Leonardo Da Vinci’s ideas found in a newly discovered notebook of the artist. His project is financed by MI5, but both the Americans and Russians want his results…and so does a mysterious stranger. Cloak-and-dagger suspense abound in this fifth novel of the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series. Soon available wherever quality ebooks are sold (but not on Amazon).

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

I’m not a famous sci-fi author (some would argue I’m not even an author!), but I share at least one thing in common with the three most famous ones, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert Heinlein. (Many so-called sci-fi addicts haven’t read their stories, though. They’re from my generation or earlier, but no more recent ones are as good…including me!) What do we have in common? They were all scientists, and so was I. Asimov was a biochemist, Clarke was…well, let’s just call him an applied physicist/engineer, and Heinlein was an astronomer; I once made my living as a physicist, working in R&D.

Clarke was the misfit in that famous trio because he had a few ETs in his stories, most notably in the Rama series; the other two didn’t, as far as I can remember (and I’ve read a lot of their books!). Asimov explained away his avoidance of ETs in the entire extended Foundation series (it goes far beyond that famous trilogy) by using his novel, The End of Eternity: the eternals of that story arranged everything so that humans would be alone…for all eternity! Heinlein just avoided ETs altogether without explanation, although he wrote about some very wild creatures out there among the stars sometimes.

Clarke almost avoided ETs in Rama, but he couldn’t resist bringing them in end at the end to prove God is an engineer. Other less famous sci-fi authors have avoided ETs too. I suspect they, and this might explain the big three’s hesitancy, realized that ETs are hard! Writing about them is difficult, in other words. I know that from personal experience.

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