Age of Grievance. Frank Bruni, author (2024).

[Note to readers from Steve: This might be the most unusual book review you’re ever read! It’s in the format of an email because my intention was to send it to Mr. Bruni, which turned out to be impossible. (Mr. Bruni’s website, www.FrankBruni.com, doesn’t have a contact page.)]

Dear Professor Bruni,

After your appearance on Jake Tapper’s “The Lead,” my wife, bless her, decided that gifting me your book The Age of Grievance for Father’s Day would be an appropriate addition to my to-read-list of non-fiction books (I keep them on my shelf afterwards too…as references). In retrospect, I dare say that “appropriate” is quite an understatement! It jumped to the top of my reading list. You sir have put into words many of my own worries about our troubling times.

As one of the first baby-boomers, I grew up amidst the euphoria, hope, and optimism for a better world after World War Two—we’d been able to defeat fascism around the world, after all!—and despite the glitches like we had with the Korean and Vietnam Wars, all occurring before my first graduate degree, I felt like the far horizons for a better America were now nearer and reachable, the race to the moon and fall of the Soviet Union adding to that feeling.

In your book, you explore the broad changes in the psyches of the American public, many of them not at all positive, but you rarely mention how twenty-first century events have changed the minds of the US and world’s youth, replacing that euphoria, hope, and optimism with depression and frustration. This has long been a concern of mine as well. As much as I could, I fought the good fight, but today’s youth will need to have more mettle to continue the fight. Fascism is on the march again, and now it has better tools even if it lacks better leaders.

I was lucky enough to teach college courses and learn something from my students (not what I was teaching, of course) while doing some research in both the US and South America (Colombia, to be specific), and this ennui among today’s youth was already apparent in both groups of students. This isn’t completely attributable to imagined grievances nor immaturity. (I’ve found college students, especially juniors and seniors, to be quite mature until events like those at Columbia University and UCLA occurred.) As a retiree, I’ve become more of an observer of the human condition to facilitate my fiction writing, and all this has indicated that the situation is worsening.

You’re in a position where you can offer some suggestions to these lost generations. For health reasons, I can only do that now through my fiction, mostly via my young adult sci-fi mysteries, but those are read more by adults who are young at heart than young adults (my book events have provided that evidence).

One thing that seemed to work well in my old day-job with young employees and interns on my research teams was for us to chat about things—better stated, take advantage of their desire to talk about things and my willingness to listen to what they said. Reading your book, I felt you were doing that with me: You seem to be able to offer a sympathetic ear in your op-eds and in your book. May I suggest you write another one especially for today’s youth?

I apologize for bothering you with all this, but your excellent book got me thinking.

Take care…and please keep writing.

r/Steve Moore

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Other non-fiction. For an unusual book review, why not an unusual ad? See my “Steve’s Bookshelf” web page for a list of other recommended non-fiction books. (Of course, the fiction books listed there are damn good too!)

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

Tom Clancy once stated that fiction had to seem real. Even good sci-fi needs to follow that rule in the sense that future humans should seem real and doing real things that are possible in whatever future settings are part of the plot. In a fictional universe of the past or in the near present, what better way to make things seem real than to mix the fiction with reality? Real events, real people, and real settings liberally mixed into a tale can help the reader enjoy the story more.

I’ve been boldly doing a lot more of that lately. I’m sure that I’d never get away with it if my recent novels were traditionally published, which is why traditionally published books are often just fluff! But are there any legal problems associated with mixing reality with fiction?

Certainly not with real events! It’s good to weave a story in and around them. They provide historical context, i.e., realism, that the reader can identify with, so as long as they’re historically accurate as seen by current historians, no lawsuits can occur!

For example, I mentioned some of the gospels not included in the standard bible in my novel Son of Thunder (to the traditional publisher Penmore Press’s credit, they let me get away with that); the Catholic Church might complain…but they have no legal options. These gospels exist, and I suspect more will be discovered. The old misogynist fellows running the Church long ago (“misogynist,” to say the least, because they made the Magdalene into a prostitute) settled on only four for their purposes, not necessarily Christ’s nor their followers.

I mentioned Putin’s World War One style incompetent invasion of Ukraine in several novels, including the recent novel, Menace from Moscow (it completes the “Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries,” a trilogy). Putin or his oligarchs might want try to sue me for that (do they even bother to read any fiction?)—let them try! I’ve mentioned the Armenian genocide in some fiction and slavery in various stories as well; Erdogan and DeSantis might want to sue me—let them try!

All these events actually occurred! They’re real and part of real world history. Trying to prevent me from mentioning them, as some traditional publishers might prefer in order to avoid controversy, would be censorship…so maybe I’d be the one to sue!

What about real people? I don’t have to worry about Erdogan or Putin because I don’t live in Turkey or Russia. Other real people might present problems: Authors should be careful about libel or slander. But as long as you say good things, or even neutral things, about a real person, you’re protected, although someone might wonder if you’re claiming to have met someone when you really haven’t. (Your fictional characters can, of course.)

Real settings have similar problems. I can write about St. Stephen’s Green in Dublin in Palettes, Patriots, and Prats without any repercussions and even say negative things about it (I can’t remember any, and, FYI, I’ve been there, so anything I said is a real, personal observation), but I can’t negatively critique a real hotel or restaurant—they could sue me for libel or slander. An author should be neutral or positive in such cases. After all, they’re just places even fictional characters might visit as the story progresses, so they must have had some positive thoughts about them to go there.

Here’s a copyright statement (it’s one from a recent and free PDF download—hence the second sentence—but you can use it as a model for any publication); it should take care of all the lawyers (but maybe not traditional publishers?):

All rights reserved. This free PDF download may be recopied and freely distributed to family and friends as long as the copyright is respected. It may not be sold for profit to anyone or distributed in any manner on the internet from anywhere besides the author’s website, https://stevenmmoore.com.

This novella is entirely a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, products, and events are either creations of the author’s imagination, or used as historical and venue background for the stories. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, events, locales, or products is coincidental, with a few exceptions, but all are used in a fictional or correct historical context. No endorsement or criticism is implied in mentioning them, nor are any opinions expressed by fictional characters necessarily those of the author.

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Son of Thunder. Perhaps more historical fiction than mystery or thriller, this second novel in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series might be considered to be Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code done right (because the poor bloke didn’t know he’d got the history wrong!). Three eras are visited—St. John the Divine’s, Sandro Botticelli’s, and Esther’s—but they all come together in a startling climax at the location of St. John’s tomb. (Its location is a creation of my imagination; that he probably passed on to the pearly gates in modern-day Turkey is probably true.) Like the first and third novels in the series, there’s a lot of travel going on here as Esther’s curiosity takes her far away from her native England.

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

Let me state the obvious: We’re not in danger of creating a real HAL! A takeover of the world by machines who’ll unleash Terminators to destroy all human beings isn’t imminent! While AI is indeed “artificial,” it’s far from being self-aware, true “intelligence”! It barely qualifies as super-efficient and super-fast code, a search engine, version 2.0, that does what you can do any time, maybe all the time, namely, going digital by going out on the internet and exploring databases and websites to gather up all sorts of data and info and organize it into something more logical and possibly more meaningful in the aggregate (emphasis on “possibly”). The only difference? It can that much more efficiently and faster than you ever can.

In other words, the current and very primitive AI efforts amount to information retrieval and organization, not intelligence per se. So, let’s simplify this discussion by calling that software X. (Yeah, I know: X is the new name for Twitter, as if that old name wasn’t already stupid enough. But because Musk’s new toy is just as dumb, I might as well also give AI the more appropriate name X as well. Sorry, Elon, but I don’t have much respect for you and your obvious lack of creativity with names. Space-X is another one.)

People are needlessly worried about X. (Maybe the double meaning now is appropriate?) There’s danger lurking in X, of course, even though it’s not as dangerous as the atomic bomb or global warming. Or even as dangerous as Covid once was after it was (accidentally?) produced in a Chinese lab (a recent NY Times editorial was proof enough for me!), although Xi’s sycophants are using X to create conspiracy theories on the internet as part of their cyberwar on western democracies. Yes, X can be like a dangerous and dumb mafia hitman—anyone with any imagination can imagine so many evil uses for it.

But after all this introduction, the question here is, how can X affect authors and publishers? If X writes a novel in the style of Y (maybe Y = a famous or prolific author—you can pick one of your favs, even me, although I’m not famous) and that novel is published as if it were written by Y, is that a bad thing? Certainly not nearly as bad as HAL (in the movie 2001, not 2010!) or the Terminator (in the first movie in that series!). Certainly not as evil as impersonating a US president who stupidly told US citizens to inject disinfectants as a cure for Covid.

And there’s always something like the Turing test we can fall back on to battle X: How does X write like Y? The software tiptoes around the damned internet for a few microseconds—Amazon is a great hunting ground for books, for example, especially Y’s—and “reads” all of Y’s real opus (i.e. digests previous works known to be Y’s), everything Y has ever written. (If Y = Stephen King, I hope X doesn’t literally get indigestion, emphasis on “literally.”). After determining what Y’s “style” is (for example, if Y = King, “style” means illogical, stupid, gory horror), X then creates a story in that style.

In other words, as far as X “knows” (and judges like Alito and Thomas might stupidly believe), that new work is Y’s. But will any other Y agree with that determination? Will a critic or defender of Y agree? Or even some doctoral student writing about Y’s prolific opus and his style? Or, better still, will even Y agree? I wouldn’t bet on a “yes” answer to any of these questions! (Um, maybe Alito and Thomas’s answers?)

In fact, if Y = King, just for example, maybe I’ll finally like something “he” writes. With him, I rarely arrived at likeability on my reading journey, Misery being the one exception. (Only the title is stupid.) Or if Y = Deaver, I quickly found that Lincoln Rhyme was boring, but Garden of Beasts was entertaining and interesting. How would X incorporate those differences? How might X choose to emulate the better Garden of Beasts than a Lincoln Rhyme book? Today’s software can’t make that determination unless some human tells it to do so!

Of course, the complaints and kudos are about what X eventually produces. The first mostly deal with the fact that some humans will lose money, Y, the author, and his publisher, to be specific. X can’t hurt Y otherwise and might actually improve on Y’s storytelling; i.e., X can surpass Y. Who knows what great novel we’d get if we told X to write a mystery novel about a murder on the seventh planet of Epsilon Eridani in the style of Deaver or King? It could be the greatest sci-fi mystery/thriller ever written in the 21^st century! But it wouldn’t make any member of a Big Five publishing conglomerate rich. That’s the problem with X. Y might not even give a rat’s ass about what X does. (Yeah, Deaver or King might be a wee bit jealous, though.)

Mark Coker (where’s that dude hiding now to count his ill-gotten riches by selling out to Draft2Digital?) never paid much attention to book piracy. All X would be doing is a very clever and sophisticated form of book piracy where it’s Y’s style that’s pirated! We can clean that act up a bit by letting X put its own name on the book as a ghost writer or co-writer and then passing most of the author royalties onto Y. After all, that’s James Patterson’s business model! Hmm…maybe Jimmy and his co-authors are all X’s? Where’s Arnold the Terminator when we need him?

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Comments are always welcome. (Please follow the rules on the “Join the Conversation” web page. Unless you’re X, of course—you can then go to hell!)

Free PDF downloads. X would have to struggle to write in my style simply because I have more than one. Sometimes, just to make sure a reader is awake (and not Y!), I might change styles within one story. (Those tend to be longish, like a novella or novel.) And sometimes, just for giggles, I play at being X, i.e. emulating myself like an AI! The various versions of me don’t publish everything they write, and some of that I just give away. (Call it a really bad marketing tactic?) You’ll find a list of free PDF downloads on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page. That list contains several novellas as well as two complete novels. Once you’ve read my freebies, please consider purchasing a few of my ebooks—they’re inexpensive compared to most anything the Big Five produces. Enjoy.

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

Like many readers, I find that sometimes an author’s earlier novels are just as interesting or even more interesting than later ones. The later ones might prove that the author has honed his skills and become more adept at using the elements of storytelling, but the early ones can present an author’s fresh, new voice in the vast wilderness of fiction writing. I often cite Deaver’s Garden of Beasts and Follett’s Eye of the Needle as examples of the latter; I consider those two novels much better than the authors’ later ones.

As a consequence, I often look for the so-called “forgotten” and “evergreen” books to expand my reading experience. I also hope that my own readers do the same with my entire oeuvre and not pass on my earlier novels just because they’ve been sold for a while.

In fact, I have an entire series, the “Clones and Mutants Trilogy,” where its novels seem to be forgotten. The first book in that series, Full Medical, was also my very first published novel! It’s a sci-fi thriller that could be called dystopian or post-apocalyptic in a sense, but it’s more a warning that was motivated by that famous sheep Dolly. (People seem to have forgotten about her too!) In the order of publication (but not in the order of the extended fictional timeline many of my novels fall on), Full Medical is also where arch-villain Vladimir Kalinin first appears.

That first novel is about clones, a strange origin story, if you will, and far from a clone (pardon the pun) about X-men or characters from the Marvel Universe. (To see how Vladimir is involved with the clones, you’ll have to read the novel and its sequels in the trilogy.) The second novel in the trilogy, Evil Agenda, brings in the mutant; also created by Vladimir, Serena rebels against him. Finally, in the third novel, No Amber Waves of Grain, the heroic clones and mutant team up with Vladimir, of all people, to fight against an evil Korean industrialist born before the two Koreas are united (that occurs on my fictional timeline); this new villain has more enemies among the Chinese, who have their own mutant on the payroll.

These sci-fi thriller novels still seems to me to be as fresh and intriguing as the day I finished their manuscripts; i.e., they’re “evergreen.” They’ve all but been forgotten too, I’m afraid, which is a shame, because they also might mean more to today’s readers than when I published them. And, if you first met Vladimir at the ends of the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” and “Inspector Steve Morgan” series, you can follow the rest of his history in these novels and Soldiers of God. Or you can learn more about him in some of the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series as well as the novella “The Phantom Harvester” (a free PDF download—see the list on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page).

Vladimir Kalinin and his sidekick Sean Cassidy tie most of these stories together, in fact. While that’s unusual for an arch-villain, it’s also evidence that I don’t do “the usual” when writing sci-fi, mystery, and thriller stories. And every one of these novels is “evergreen,” even if it’s been “forgotten” by readers!

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“Clones and Mutants Trilogy.” The clones and one mutant perhaps steal the show in these three novels, but ordinary humans also step up to become heroes. At the beginning, they battle that evil genius Vladimir Kalinin; at the end, they team up with him to battle another evil genius who’s even worse than Vladimir. (Don’t worry. Kalinin has a revenge motive!) All these novels are available wherever quality ebooks are sold.

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

…than to never blossom. Yeah, I’m a macho writer who likes flowers…and floral metaphors! In the title-line, I’m referring to my more-than-two-decades spent publishing my fiction after spending half the twentieth century during other stuff, of course. Although I collected ideas for many years—character- and scene-sketches, the first even with interesting names; dialogue snippets heard here and there, or only in my mind; and themes and plots for sci-fi, mystery, and thriller stories—I didn’t start my publishing career until just before retirement from my day-job, spurred on by the events of 9/11, for the most part. That awful event made me hate terrorists and terrorism, and deciding that the only good terrorist is a dead one! In fact, my very first published novel, the futuristic thriller Full Medical (now the first novel in the “Clones and Mutants” trilogy) was partially about how evil men and women can use terrorism to satisfy their greed and further their power over others. That novel was dedicated to a relative we lost in 9/11.

Whether sci-fi, mystery, or thrills, or combinations thereof, the tales kept coming because, once I opened that creative dam’s floodgates in my mind, my writing life meant a lot more to me than chasing a little white ball around a golf course. (In retrospect, maybe a lot better for my mental health than physical health?) Most of the time, I haven’t worried too much about attracting readers to my creations either. While readers are generally important—generally speaking, what would authors do without them?—and I’m much more an avid reader than a prolific author, there’s no real economic need for me to worry about them too much. In fact, I’ve always felt that if each of my stories—novel, novella, or short story—can entertain at least one reader, then that story is a success.

I’m a late bloomer as a storyteller primarily because I was responsible enough to realize it was unlikely that I could support myself and later my family as a writer. This is more true now because there’s a lot more competition. (I’ve been banned from discussion groups because I say that. Too many idiots nowadays can’t accept the truth!) The Irish blarney in me, though, still broke free from those pessimistic constraints as I neared my early retirement from a stressful day-job. I’m perhaps either one of the most prolific and speediest writers you’ll ever read, or the biggest flop in the history of writing fiction. That’s just one publishing example of true freedom of expression, of course. I accomplished a lot in the last twenty-plus years; I’ve learned a lot and had a lot of fun too. But I’ve also mostly charted my own course.

It’s possible that my stories don’t resonate well because they treat complex themes in fiction that I also worry about in real life. In my storytelling, some of my characters can solve some of life’s problems; real life is another matter. Terrorism is obviously one of those, but there are many others. Not to an evangelical prophet shouting in a vast wilderness of indifference—heaven forbid!—I can summarize all my many plots as portrayals of the endless battles where good is fighting evil. That should be popular and universally appealing to readers, but in today’s publishing environment—of farfetched fantasies, ridiculous romances and hyper-erotic tales, contrived horror stories, cozy mysteries and unbelievable technological thrillers—my expectations were always low: Escapism sells now; real-life situations apparently don’t.

“Clones and Mutants” is just one series out of my seven. Looking back at writing all of them is a sobering experience because I never start a novel with the intention of making it the first in a series. It’s just that, after I finish a novel, I’m often left liking the characters so much that I listen to their pleas to me to tell the world about more of their adventures. And adventures they are; they’re all adventures about that eternal fight between good and evil.

There are so many good books and good authors around now that I’m probably in good company; i.e., there are many fiction writers like me who have had very little success. With addictive streaming video, computer games, and social media wasting people’s time, is it any wonder that the number of avid readers (let’s define them generously as people who read more than twelve books per year) is dwindling to historically low levels? My unsuccessful publishing history is probably becoming more common every year that passes. In general, and for my fellow authors, that would be a shame! In my case, I don’t really care care all that much.

[Note from Steve: The photo is of the wisterias blooming at the Van Vleck mansion in Montclair, NJ early this spring.]

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“Writing Fiction.” In the list found on my “Free Stuff & Contests” web page, you will see that a lot of free PDF downloads are available. Most are free fiction. One exception is this little course that summarizes in greater detail what I’ve learned about publishing fiction in my few decades of doing it. A lot of it amounts to confessions like in the above article, but you might find this little course useful if only to avoid my mistakes. There’s also an appendix on how to self-publish using Draft2Digital (now combined with Smashwords), which is the most efficient way to get your novels “out there.” (I wish it had existed when I was starting!) In regards to the free fiction: It’s quality stuff—I don’t let the reading public see anything that hasn’t been written and completely edited with care—but I can’t afford to publish everything. In particular, there are two full novels and several novellas (a new prequel one features Esther Brookstone). Happy downloading!

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

Some authors, aspiring or “old hands,” might have read my little guide “Writing Fiction” (available on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page as a free PDF download); its advice differs from that so often given by who’s so often called “writing gurus,” because I say it like it is, and so many so-called gurus are generally full of it! You want some agent to secure for you a big publishing contract with a major Big Five publisher? Rarely happens—agents and traditional publishers generally can’t recognize storytelling any better than the average reader! First person stories are doomed? Tell that to Andy Weir! Indie authors make no money? Ask Hugh Howey or A. G. Riddle! You have to be too damn lucky to have any success writing fiction? I’ll agree with that, although I’ve been banned from a discussion group for saying it: It’s on a par with winning the lottery, but you can’t win if you don’t play!

A smart author today gives the middle finger to the whole traditional publishing universe and opts to self-publish, at least in some form, but the question a new author thinking about self-publishing might have is an important one: What media should I use? Today’s authors, self- or traditionally published, have various choices of media. (Okay, traditional publishers force theirs upon you, but you should know what those might be.) Even paper has three versions: hardbound, trade paperback, or airport-style paperback. There are also audiobooks and ebooks. Which media should be chosen depends on who your readers might be (and not who traditional publishers want them to be!). Many older readers (probably too set in their ways, especially concerning ecological choices) prefer paper, but even they might balk at hardbound prices, especially if they only read a book once and then have to find a place on the shelf for it. (Despite what most so-called gurus claim, most fiction readers only read a book once; but they might keep it around for other family members and friends, a “soft version” of book piracy.)

Ebooks are popular with younger readers (and older ones like me who prefer to save our forests!), but traditionally published ebooks are almost as expensive as paper versions, especially trade paperbacks, so why not buy a paper version?

Audiobooks have a limited audience: commuters, walkers, and riders who don’t mind buds in their ears (even if using them means they might be killed by a wild driver?). A traditional publisher might spring for a good reading voice—that’s a requirement—but a self-published author generally can’t afford one (unless they sound like Idris Elba, they should never read their own work!).

So, assuming an author makes the right choice and self-publishes (my little guide mentioned above explains how to use Draft2Digital to publish low-cost ebooks), there are only two practical choices for media, paperback and ebook; and, if you’re only going to choose one, choose ebook. Those readers insisting on a print version will read an ebook if they’re true fans.

As time goes on, though, your media choices will become irrelevant, of course. How much longer will it be before there are no readers? Why would anyone bother to tell stories in that case? Of course, storytelling is a quintessentially human activity (despite idiots who claim that AIs can do it just as well), so that would be a sad day for all humankind!

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The “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series. This series is an example of mixed media. The first two novels, Rembrandt’s Angel and Son of Thunder, were published in both trade paperback and ebook formats, the media used determined by Penmore Press, a traditional publisher. They balked at publishing the third book, Death on the Danube, so I self-published it, again in both media formats. The remaining six novels are either available as low-cost ebooks or free downloadable PDFs (the latter, a media choice not mentioned above but ideal for freebies). The entire series leads into the “Inspector Steve Morgan” trilogy, so it involves twelve novels. That should keep any fan of mystery and thriller stories with a British flavor happy for a long time! Where should you start? Try Defanging the Red Dragon or Intolerance, the two free downloadable PDFs. (You’ll find them in the list of freebies on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page along with many other free downloadable PDFs, including my little guide “Writing Fiction.”)

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

It’s a global economy, now more than ever; so crime’s more global as well: International conspiracies; arms, artworks, drugs, and human traffickers; spies and terrorists—they’re all subjects for mystery and thriller novels that allow a reader to become an armchair traveler who accompanies crime fighters and soldiers of fortune on their international journeys. I went on those journeys as a reader of Agatha Christie and H. Rider Haggard’s novels years ago, but I also created a few of those adventures myself for other readers as well, starting years ago with my NYPD detectives Chen and Castilblanco.

I’ve chronicled quite a few of their cases in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series. Most start in New York City, but about half of them go international…or start there! The Midas Bomb, the first novel in the series, appropriately takes place in the world’s most famous city (there are international flashbacks and back stories involving Castilblanco, though), but the villains are international in origin. That’s an obvious mix to make because NYC is often called the “crossroads of the world,” a city so diverse that over 800 different languages and dialects are spoken there besides English.

Other novels in the series have an even stronger international flavor: In Angels Need Not Apply, Aristocrats and Assassins, Gaia and the Goliaths, and Defanging the Red Dragon, the city, if it’s a character, plays a minor role.

The most international of these novels, Aristocrats and Assassins, is a tale of international intrigue and terrorism that takes place completely in Europe—much of Europe is visited, in fact. It starts with Castilblanco and his wife Pam beginning a rare vacation they’ve promised themselves for a while—she’s a busy TV news reporter and he’s a cop, so their periods of free time don’t often overlap! A group of terrorists are kidnapping European aristocrats. The motive’s not clear, but Castilblanco gets involved. The action involving Chen begins in China, but the two detectives eventually come together to solve the mystery of the kidnappings.

The other “international novels” in the series take place only partially overseas. Angels Need Not Apply is about a conspiracy where a drug cartel, Muslim terrorists, and an American ultra-right militia team up to create major mayhem. Each group has a different motive to create chaos, so Chen and Castilblanco’s struggles to thwart their plans aren’t easy. A lot of Gaia and the Goliaths takes place in France. In perhaps my most prescient take on things to come, an American energy exec teams up with a Russian petrol-oligarch to try to increase the West’s dependence on fossil fuels.

Defanging the Red Dragon is a crossover novel that connects the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series with the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series (it’s novel #8 for the first and #6 for the second). It begins in NYC and continues to DC and London. Castilblanco is present in both the US and UK; Chen holds down the fort in the US. (Esther and her new husband Bastiann van Coevorden had earlier cameos in several “Chen and Castilblanco” novels—Esther in The Collector and Bastiann in Aristocrats and Assassins and Gaia and the Goliaths.)

Unlike what Michael Connolly did with his famous Harry Bosch, I didn’t want to restrict Chen and Castilblanco to one city and turn their cases there into mystery/thriller novels that are little more than police procedurals. There are very few Harry Bosch novels with an international flavor (most take place in LA), but policing these days often has an international flavor, if only for international terrorism. (Even my Family Affairs has this aspect.) I believe authors like Baldacci, Connolly, Child, Deaver, and other old stallions in the Big Five’s stables would appeal to more readers if they went international more often. (In Deaver’s defense, his best book, Garden of Beasts, is completely international, but it’s not in his “Lincoln Rhyme” series!) Maybe foreign readers love stories set in the US, but I bet a lot of American readers like stories with an international flavor. (I certainly do!)

I’ll admit that sometimes my novels might have too much international flavor (e.g., Muddlin’ Through and Goin’ the Extra Mile, the first and third novels in the “Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries”). Perhaps either extreme is bad? If that’s the case, the “Chen and Castilblanco” series is the Goldilocks choice for readers who want some crime stories that are an eclectic mix. (You can leave a comment to this article or use my contact page to tell me what you think of this.)

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“Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” Series. This seven-book series (eight, if you count Defanging the Red Dragon, a free PDF available on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page at this website) takes you from Manhattan in the US to Latin America and Europe and beyond as the NYPD detectives battle the criminal elements of humanity. Chen is a Chinese American from Long Island whose beguiling Mona Lisa smile belies her cleverness and strength; Castilblanco is a sarcastic and tough Puerto Rican American from the Bronx. Both are ex-military and suffer no fools. These novels are available wherever quality ebooks are sold. There are many hours of reading entertainment waiting for all armchair detectives out there who are fans of mysteries and thrillers.

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

Leonardo da Vinci was a Renaissance man, literally and figuratively. His “Mona Lisa” is the best known painting in the world; his inventions and theories—some valid, some not, but all creations far ahead of his time—have inspired inventors and scientists; and his advances in artistic techniques revolutionized the world of art. Even his notebooks have seduced the likes of Bill Gates.

Da Vinci is such an important character on the world’s stage that one might wonder why he doesn’t appear in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series. (Nine novels now if you count the two available as free PDF downloads available at this website. I’m currently working on another Brookstone story; it will probably be only a novella.) After all, if I made Leonardo’s appearance more fiction than fact like in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, I might sell a few more books because people are fascinated with him; but his importance as an artist, self-taught scientist, student of anatomy, and inventor, whether in myth or reality, would always dominate my novel.

I came close, though. Son of Thunder featured Sandro Botticelli, a competitor of Da Vinci. (They might be called bitter enemies!) Between Esther, Botticelli, and St. John, Sandro Botticelli is the least important character in this mystery/thriller novel that’s also historical fiction. Leonardo would have stolen the show, I’m sure. In Leonardo and the Quantum Code, one of Da Vinci’s notebooks plays an important role, not Leonardo per se. (And that’s more as an inventor of some techniques that motivate a physicist to create new encryption algorithms for quantum computers. By the way, I don’t believe true AI can exist without quantum computers!)

In the first novel mentioned, Leonardo only appears as Sandro’s competitor; in the second, he only appears as the author of that notebook that British, Russian, and US agents are after. (I assumed that the one Bill Gates has doesn’t contain what leads to that quantum code!)

Recently, someone studied the background in the “Mona Lisa” and concluded it showed a landscape near Lecco, Italy; other historians have wasted a lot of time trying to decide who “Mona” was as well. (The model for Venus in Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus” has received similar attention but not as much; in Son of Thunder, she’s Vespucci’s daughter, one theory being that she and Sandro were lovers.) The “Mona Lisa” has been attacked by eco-terrorists and other crazies. (Botticelli fans? People who are fans of “The Scream”?). But oddly enough, Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper,” not the “Mona Lisa,” is featured by Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code because Christ (and his descendants!) plays such an important role in that novel so filled with historical errors it should be called a fantasy. (Christ also indirectly plays an important role in Son of Thunder, of course, which I consider The Da Vinci Code done right. In my novel, the Magdalene is just another but very important organizer of the Christian revolutionary cabal setting out to reform the ancient world; St. John is another.)

Esther Brookstone’s preferences in art lean toward painters from the Renaissance and earlier; so she might have preferred featuring Leonardo’s art, not Botticelli’s or Da Vinci’s notebook. I didn’t give into her preferences, though. The Brazilian artist Ricardo Silva is now featured in her gallery because his wild abstracts sell well. And she’s also added three Chinese immigrant artists’ impressionist landscapes as well. (Perhaps more to badger the Chinese government who forced them to flee Hong Kong? Or as complements to the mystic landscapes of Silva’s wife Bobbie?). Esther insisted on returning a stolen Klimt painting to its rightful owner in The Klimt Connection; that Austrian painter is another modernist. In other words, I chose to expand the old girl’s artistic horizons! And, considering the price of most any painting by Da Vinci, one can bet a Da Vinci won’t be on sell anytime soon at her gallery! She’ll just have to continue featuring paintings of saints with halos, perhaps of comparable quality relative to any Da Vinci painting but now mostly forgotten by art history.

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“Esther Brookstone Art Detective.” The nine novels in this series are as much about Esther, a sexier and more agile Miss Marple, and her paramour and later husband, Bastiann van Coevorden, who looks like the actor who played Hercule Poirot, as they fight the good fight against diabolical spies, terrorists, and other villains. They’re also more about travel in and around the UK, Europe, and overseas as they’re about art thieves, art forgers, and trafficking of stolen artwork. Two novels are free, appearing in the list of free PDF downloads found on the “Free Stuff & Contests” webpage (the new Esther Brookstone novella will also be available there). The others are inexpensive ebooks, and the first three also are available in paper format. Enjoy!

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

A.B. Carolan’s having problems finishing “The Denisovan Trilogy” (some of his woes are discussed in Intolerance, a novel that’s a free PDF download found at this website). You’ll only find the first novel Origins for sale. It’s complete as far as it goes, but he’d be the first one to say there are a lot of planets and lightyears to go in order to finish the trilogy. His problem isn’t writer’s block per se; it’s what many authors experience: Losing track of the trees in a very big forest.

Let me explain, starting with an admission: Evidence of this problem is found in one of my very first novels, the sci-fi saga Survivors of the Chaos. (Originally published by the now defunct POD Infinity Publishing, a second edition is available as the first novel in the ebook bundle of another trilogy, “The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection.”) It’s not a major flaw; it’s the nature of the beast, the key word being “saga.”

You see, Survivors, or even that trilogy as a whole, is a grand saga covering thousands of years of human civilization, and that’s the forest. The trees are represented by the individual human (and later ET) heroes (and villains!) who move that saga forward. As I wrote, I had to focus on those individual trees, the keyword being “focus.” A historian can perhaps focus on an entire nation or civilization, but sci-fi readers need specific individuals they can relate to; and those who make a difference, i.e., make change occur, are the ones authors must write about. It’s true that World War II was Churchill, FDR, Hitler, Stalin, and the Japanese generals, but the true stories told in history books and historical fiction novels come down to individuals. In other words, that list of the famous and infamous in that war for many can be less interesting than the story of just one soldier slogging it out as the Allies move toward Berlin.

Survivors has another feature that some might see as a flaw: It and its sequels, Sing a Zamba Galactica and Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hand!, used to be one huge novel. Consequently, you will find Jenny Wong’s story unfinished in that first novel and continued into the second (and third and beyond!); it’s definitely a cliff-hangar in Survivors. This isn’t the major flaw that it could be, because a reader who only peruses that first novel probably doesn’t realize she’s even still alive, so they’d be surprised when she returns in Zamba.

With all these problems, it was a wonder that Survivors got any positive reviews! Instead, I got my most cherished review (because it motivated me to ignore what an ignorant said as she complained about too much narrative, indicating no understanding of sci-fi writing where world-building is always required) from a Pulitzer-nominated author no less! In a nutshell, he liked that saga aspect. (Maybe he was a reader who just thought Jenny had died?)

I think Carolan’s problems with finishing “The Denisovan Trilogy” are similar to those I had with “The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy.” He shouldn’t complain too much [wink, wink], though, because one strong character, Kayla Jones, will be the strong tree standing tall in all three novels no matter how big the forest becomes. She’s “the One” for the trilogy as well as for the Denisovans’ descendants, the shaman who will change human history. (You can write Carolan and tell him to get going using the contact page at this website. I think Google has cancelled his Gmail account. We just text now! But I can pass on any message you have for him.)

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Origins. Even this single novel shows A.B. Carolan can write action-packed sci-fi. (Of course, some readers saw that in Mind Games, another Carolan novel.) Origins is another sci-fi mystery written for young adults but many adults who are young-at-heart have enjoyed it. If you’ve read anything about the Denisovans (a real but more mysterious hominid line like the Neanderthals), you’ll enjoy this story about their descendants on Earth and those among the stars.

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

Do you get tired of every software company offering you what they call AI software? I do! They want to jump on the bandwagon, but almost everything they call AI is gimmicky and nothing like what real AI is supposed to be.

The best current software offered (and let’s not call it AI!) can only surf the web, admittedly faster than I can, pilfering information here, there, and everywhere, and maybe organize what it finds in somewhat logical order. In other words, current whatever-it’s-called is nothing more than yet another advanced search engine. One might be able to ask it to write a story in the style of Steven M. Moore, for example, and it will spit out something; but Steven M. Moore is such a common name, so who knows what it’ll come up with? Certainly not anything like I write simply because I don’t have one unique style. Just compare the novels in “The Last Humans” trilogy with those in the “Inspector Steve Morgan” one.

AI’s hardware and software versions often appear in sci-fi stories (including mine), and it invariably goes far beyond all the current and primitive offerings. HAL is perhaps the most famous example because of the movie 2001, of course, but the computer in Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress easily beats Clarke’s HAL (and neither is actually called an AI).

I don’t believe I was the first sci-fi author to make AIs essential for FTL travel, but I was the first to say they’re needed to manage the appearance of FTL obtained by hopping around the different universes in the multiverse, which requires complex geometric and physical calculations in strange and varied spacetimes. In other words, my AI hardware/software constructs needed superhuman speed for super-complex calculations and the management of billions of terabytes of data to do the tasks no normal human or current AI construct could ever do. (Some abnormal humans manage in my stories, though. They’re often “collective intelligences.”)

In 2001, HAL goes a bit crazy (a bow to human beings’ Frankenstein complex?); in 2010, it redeems itself. Both cases remind some of us of an important question: If AIs are our constructs, will they have a soul? I’d like to ask the Pope if a sufficiently advanced AI could acquire a soul. Where did that AI’s soul in Heinlein’s novel go after he shut down? (I’m not so sure about HAL, but Heinlein’s AI seemed to have one.) Is there a corner of heaven where the souls of truly advanced but dead AIs will be found?

I suppose someone (probably not the Pope) could say that proving a sufficiently advanced AI has a soul could be the ultimate Turing test (assuming human beings have them, of course). We might not want to bring Turing into the discussion, though, considering what the British government did to poor Alan for being gay: How do you chemically euthanize an AI?

I remember way back (Radio Shack Color Computer Days!) when there existed programs that would accept my questions (from an approved list, mind you) and give me some answers that seemed to make sense. Today’s software creations aren’t much more than that primitive software except for being able to take more questions and/or providing more answers.

The real goal in AI development is sentience, i.e., self-awareness. When that occurs, as it did with the Terminator’s net, Heinlein’s lunar computer, and HAL, that’s when we’ll really have to begin to worry, especially if that sentient software has no soul, in a good sense, meaning moral spine. Otherwise, such a computational construct might become an invincible dictator or decide that human beings are superfluous (that’s not an “exclusive or,” of course, as a certain current sociopathic presidential candidate has shown). Current dangers from what we erroneously label as AI software seem harmless and trivial in comparison, real but manageable: Just shut them down! But the future might be very dark for human beings with AI advances.

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“The Doctor Carlos Stories.” These are spread around my oeuvre. Some appear in the ebook collection Pasodobles in a Quantum Stringscape; others (maybe some of the same?) are collected in a free PDF download. In any case, they all feature Dr. Carlos Obregon, medical officer of the explorer starship Brendan controlled by (you guessed it!) an AI. Sometimes the AI plays a major role, as it can in other sci-fi stories I’ve written. It’s always there, though, guiding a starship through the universes of the multiverse to give the appearance of FTL. (How human beings got that technology is explained in Sing a Zamba Galactica, the second novel in “The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection”—an ebook bundle is available that contains the whole trilogy.)

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