I’m not talking about weather, although it’s a bear, right? Heat, fires (my home state, California, has been burning), and heat waves have baked the country. As global warming attacks around the globe and climate change does more and more damage, it’s impossible to keep up with all of Mother Nature’s revenge against us.

No, I want to discuss other elements, i.e., have a more esoteric discussion about the elements of writing fiction. (Readers might not care too much—one can argue they shouldn’t have to—but authors must.) What characterizes a good story? A story’s basic elements are: themes, plot, characters, settings, and dialogue. Let’s briefly discuss each one.

Themes. Even the most basic police procedural has a theme, sometimes more than one: drug trafficking, human trafficking, art theft, political conspiracies and malfeasance, legal chicanery, espionage, and so forth. Other themes can be more droll and mundane: religion, marital relations, professional tensions, etc. These themes are needed to wind through and around plots to make them relevant.

Plots. Those plots can range from simple to complex. I prefer the latter, as both reader and writer. (Some genres, like cozy mysteries and sappy romances are boringly simple, though! I don’t read or write those.) You can’t have a story without a plot if want to call your written opus fiction. (In fact, biographies and histories fare better when they follow fictional guidelines.) A good plot makes a good novel; a bad one leads to readers’ boredom…and rejection.

Characters. I’ve read stories that have only one character (more short fiction than novels, of course), but usually there’s more than one, some good, the protagonists (or heroes), others not so much, the antagonists (or villains). A good novel usually has quite a few characters, especially if the plot is complex. The first requirement is that characters should be like real people, not two-dimensional stereotypes. Both plot and characters in a novel must seem real within its settings.

Settings. Your story’s setting or settings (a novel can consider several) can also be simple or complex. It could be Everytown USA or a large city, on Earth or on another planet. Think of your settings as the various stages where the drama and action contained in the plot take place. Like characters, they must seem real (even on that planet far, far away).

Dialogue. Both internal and external, your dialogue should move plots forward. (Internal means what characters think; external means what they say.) A good story has a good mix of dialogue and narrative, with dialogue providing a window to look into a character’s mind, even when spoken. Unlike other elements, it doesn’t have to seem real! A lot of what we say in our daily lives (spoken dialogue) is filled with boring details. “Good morning. How are you doing? Your hair’s all messed up. What humidity, right?” If a conversation at the water cooler extends to five pages of prose in your novel, you’ll lose flocks of readers. (Actually, water-cooler conversations are rare these days because everyone’s looking at their smart phones!)

This post can only be a summary of story elements (which one is more important can depend on a lot of things, including genre). An MFA course or online course about writing could provide a lot more info (a lot of those, like in King’s On Writing, is outdated and/or just plain wrong), but this article should be enough to get a new writer started, or refresh the memory of old hands and remind them about what’s important. (More can be found in the free PDF download indicated below.)

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“Writing Fiction.” Most of my free PDF downloads are fiction. This one is about how to write it and how to sell it. It also contains guidelines for what not to do. Most of the material here might clash with what a writing guru might tell you (often while robbing you blind!) because, based on my own experiences, I feel I need to be brutally honest. (And I’ll bet most of those so-called gurus don’t have the experience of writing forty-plus books!) Okay, you might think I’m too brutal, so download it, read it, and use what you think is usable in your writing life. I put quite a few hours into creating this little course—being a professor once myself, I felt obligated to pass on my pain and suffering—and it was fun to write. You might find it fun reading as well. It’s had a lot of updates. (The last ones provide a guide to using the Draft2Digital software—self-publishing is very efficient now; even I can do it!—so critics could say I’m targeting those wannabe authors interested in self-publishing (they would be right!). See the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page for a complete list of free PDF downloads, including this one.

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

Social media is looking awfully over-the-top now as the 2024 presidential election nears. For example, Elon’s X (formerly known as Twitter) put out a Kamala Harris ad, still with her voice but with all the words changed. I don’t know if this was a scurrilous use of AI (more a scurrilous abuse by Elon?), but I immediately logged on to my account and deactivated it. (Apologies to my loyal 1000+ faithful followers there who might have been surprised by my actions, but they know as well as I do that X has been going downhill ever since Elon walked in with his kitchen sink—not the gold one, of course—and I’d diminished my activity on X correspondingly ever since he took over. I closed my Facebook account even earlier!)

But AI (even the current primitive forms—see my previous post) changes things, doesn’t it? AI takes bad social media to worse levels. As if that “blue screen of death” seen around the world wasn’t enough—that was on CrowdStrike and Microsoft, by the way, not AI. I wasn’t on the internet at the time, and I didn’t return to it until I backed up my laptop and the “all clear” was given. (What occurred with Delta Airlines seems to be an additional problem…caused by their ancient and sickly software?)

I’m not talking about either X or CrowdStrike/Microsoft here. The first is out of my life (so is Elon Musk); the second can be avoided by minimizing my time on the internet (I already do that!). No, I’d like to discuss a report in The NY Times recently that current AIs are bad mathematicians, as if they were students good in the humanities but terrible at math. No surprise, really, although none of this matters much for authors and readers. (Or, better said, it makes it worse for both equally?)

Unlike most fiction writers, I’ve probably forgotten more math than they ever knew or will know. That’s not bragging. It’s just offered as evidence that I can well believe that The Times is partially correct. The type of recent AI that’s been in development has severe limitations; they mostly stem from the fact that current AI versions are just glorified search engines. Sure, the better ones can create stuff by putting what they find in a search (or what’s fed them) together in a more coherent whole. That’s the artificial part. But there’s little actual intelligence, as in human intelligence.

That’s where the math problems originate: How it puts things together is based on probability, more specifically, a calculation of likelihood that its creation is a correct portrait of reality. You’ve seen that with facial recognition software: Some unidentified face is 69% more likely to be some John Doe than someone else. The rest of math, most of it in fact, lies outside the sphere of probability and statistics, and that’s an exact science, not about likelihoods: Normally, an answer is either mathematically correct, or it’s not. Consequently, current AI can’t do math because it can’t handle exactness; everything’s a maybe, not a solid yes or no. Any AI guru who claims otherwise is a con man. (Or woman.)

But maybe superior AIs in the future can do better? More data too might mean better predictions. Sci-fi writers should have an AI give an answer like the following: It’s probable that X event occurs with a probability of 0.99999 with an error of plus or minus 0.00000342. That might not be exact enough to control a starship slipping through multiple quantum states of the Universe, but for general purposes, it’s better than a paltry 0.69. (Actually, likelihoods differ from probabilities, but you get the idea, right? And the statistics being used to make the predictions can give different results too—Bayesian stats are the most common.)

“What about quantum computing?” you might say. Yep, that could change everything. I’ll let you know after I’m able to purchase my first quantum laptop!

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“The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection.” Futuristic AI plays an important supporting role all through the three novels found in this bargain sci-fi/thriller bundle. The reader can follow human beings flight from a dystopian Earth to first contact on a planet in the 82 Eridani system; an intergalactic war with different and xenophobic ETs; and battles with a deranged human, a psychotic sociopath out to control the galaxy. All the AIs here are artificial (even if partly constructed from living circuitry) and extremely intelligent, unlike current AI software. And man, they can they do math! This three-novel ebook bundle is available wherever quality sci-fi is sold.

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

My opinion of Stephen King improved when he testified against the Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster merger. To be honest, though, that was a “safe protest” for the prolific horror writer because it was associated with traditional publishing (and motivated by self-interest?) It made me revisit the oft-thought question: Should authors be political? Especially in these trying times of nasty bickering and division, not just in the US but also around the world, any reasonable answer to the question might have wings.

We usually can’t analyze an author’s storytelling to determine their politics. I express that no-no explicitly in my copyright statements now: Opinions of my characters are not necessarily mine. In fact, mine might be just the opposite! This should be the implicit policy for every author because, in fiction, our characters can be good, evil, or somewhere in between.

While my recent novels certainly reflect some of my negative opinions about fascism and fascist personalities, most are more like morality plays than political statements. That’s because they’re about good versus evil. It’s also because I believe in reasoned and civil discourse that define a true democracy.

Yet there’s nothing wrong with politics in fiction per se. Orwell’s 1984 is a classic that people should pay attention to; Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is a lesson about how dangerous censorship and book banning, currently all too common now in the US, can become; and stories about violence against ethnic groups, women, and gays are important for our times as well. You can live in solitude in the Maine woods, but you can experience in the evil plaguing our country and the world from your armchair by reading a book. Or educate yourself in many other ways!

There’s a whole universe of political statements, of course. Ayn Rand’s are probably the worst, but military fiction that overly celebrates violence and killing can be over the top as well. And then there’s porn. Yet historical truth cannot be neglected: The Romans were brutal and cruel, as were the Nazis. Is portraying them correctly in the historical sense wrong? Clearly the borders between good storytelling and political propaganda are often blurry and change with the times. Fanny Hill was initially scandalous; the “Fifty Shades” series made it look rather tame. But most prudes, especially in red states, would probably ban both. Huckleberry Finn isn’t racist; it’s only a reflection of Mark Twain’s milieu, which was (and, in many of those red states and elsewhere, still is). To Kill a Mockingbird is racist; it’s author probably wasn’t, and was a friend of Capote. Ender’s Game was homophobic but maybe not as much as the author, but it’s one hell of a story (and much better than other books in the series). Etc. Etc.

A good story can be created by anyone, irrespective of their politics. But let’s not forget that politics can also make a good story!

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Rogue Planet. The intense political theme of an evil theocracy that murders anyone who fights against it doesn’t occur often enough. (Iran and its sycophantic groups in Gaza and Lebanon represent the obvious model, of course.) This stand-alone novel can be considered a logical extension of the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy” to a planet that suffers under such a theocracy that takes over after murdering the old king. Unfortunately for the religious fanatics running that theocracy, they failed to eliminate the old king’s son who becomes the rebellion’s leader. Call it political sci-fi, military sci-fi, or Game of Thrones-like fantasy, it’s still hard sci-fi (there are no dragons…) that might remind you a bit of Dune (…yet no sand worms), and a sci-fi adventure about a rebellion on a strange planet. Available in ebook and paper format wherever quality sci-fi literature is sold.

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

The US does it. The UK and the rest of the Commonwealth countries do it too. English is more than evolving; it’s being destroyed. I noticed this a lot more while writing my British-style mysteries: It seems like every region of the UK (comprised of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales), and even smaller regions, has local variations of the king’s English (who hardly speaks English well himself!). Eliza Doolittle’s Cockney still exists in the back streets and slums of the Old Smoke, and many in Scotland and Wales mix another language freely with what seems to be English if you concentrate on what’s being said.

Back in the USA, I have a hard time understanding a Texan, especially when they try to speak English and not Spanish. And this isn’t a new phenomenon: I grew up in California where American English (whatever that is!) was heard along with Armenian, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Vietnamese, etc., etc. In other words, the US is as bad as (or worse than?) the UK when it comes to using dialects and slang. Only a few UK authors help US readers like I do, creating a glossary; and few US authors (including myself, I’ll admit) ever help UK readers by doing so, most likely because the US has a larger population so it’s harder to keep up with all the variations that so often become acceptable: “pretty” instead of “very”; “way” in place of “too”; “weren’t” instead of “isn’t” and “wasn’t”; “bad” in place of “good,” but meaning the same thing; etc., etc. Most Americans don’t even notice the many corruptions of English, but they must drive our English friends across the pond mad. They can drive me crazy! (“Mad” in the UK often means “crazy” in the US.)

From Belfast to Southampton, you have language variations; from Boston to El Paso, you have them as well. Some publishers insist that their editors demand “standard English usage,” whatever the hell that means. For my small-press published novels, I often fought with these editors and their futile demands that I use “standard English.” Anyone that believes there’s only only one version of English must be smoking a lot of pot (weed, MJ, …) or snorting a lot of coke (blowing powder, snorting dust, …): There is no such thing as standard English, either here or across the pond.

As I stated, in my British-style mysteries, my feeble attempt at peacemaking takes the form of a glossary. I started to include one more to help me write the short stories in Sleuthing, British-Style. (That first collection is one of three and available in ebook format most everywhere; the other two are free PDF downloads—see the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page for a complete list.) I wrote those stories more as a bow to or in celebration of this subgenre because those British-style mysteries saved my sanity during the Covid pandemic when I read entire series sheltered in place.

Maybe these variations in English would never have occurred if there’d been an official committee appointed by the royal family to maintain the purity of the English language? The French have tried to do that with their infamous Academie (was that a creation of Napoleon, like the metric system?—that little corporal was a smart cookie, except when it came to Wellington), but the French’s task is much easier: Not as many people speak that language! (But French in Quebec sounds like sixteenth-century French to me, and French in Switzerland differs from French in Lyon, Strasbourg, and Paris.)

To paraphrase Tom Clancy, fiction has to seem real. And part of our world’s reality is that languages evolve and develop local variants, especially when they’re used a lot. I probably worry about it more than I need to. (Clancy, on the other hand, probably never did…and, in his ignorance, was probably “pretty” happy avoiding the whole problem!) I’m absolutely certain that publishers and their editors shouldn’t make a big deal about it, though. They could suggest my same solution after all: Tell their authors to include a glossary! Hell, they could even add some new jobs to the publishing bureaucracy where a publisher hires blokes who specialize in creating glossaries. They probably would rather force authors to do that than have authors create glossaries on their own initiative; they love to boss us around. after all!

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Two overly edited small-press novels? The Last Humans (the first book in “The Last Humans Trilogy”) and Son of Thunder (the second book of nine in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series), the first novel from Penmore Press and the second from Black Opal Books, perhaps earned this distinction. Whether the over-editing made them better is questionable; both edits did damage to this author’s voice, but that’s just my take. Readers might not care, of course, because the stories are interesting.

The first novel is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller about how a worldwide pandemic changes the world and the life of the protagonist, an ex-USN diver working for the LA Sheriff’s Department. (Yes, I wrote it before Covid, but a lot of things occurred during the Covid pandemic that occurred in this novel, and maybe Covid was manmade too?).

The second novel is Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code done correctly (i.e., more historically accurate), a mystery/thriller novel that’s also historic fiction as Esther Brookstone sets out to prove Sandro Botticelli was never in Turkey, or that he was and found St. John’s tomb! Available wherever books are sold in ebook or paper format. Enjoy!

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

Which books deserve to be called classics? Anthony Scaramucci in From Wall Street to the White House and Back (probably the strangest self-help book you’ll ever read!) touts reading classics, defining them as works that have stood the “test of time.” (Surprised I read this book? It’s a profound and yet sometimes hilarious book that I can strongly recommend despite not sharing the author’s political proclivities.) I suppose that definition is okay as far as it goes…but whose test, how long a time, and fiction or non-fiction, including types?

In several of my “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” stories (both novels – nine of them! – and short fiction), I point out that Esther in her Masterworks Gallery features pre- and early Renaissance paintings because she believes they are works that could have been masterpieces (art’s version of “classics”) but for fickle fate; she restores and sells them in the gallery, making a good living at it there on the Old Smoke’s West End.

What goes for painting also goes for books! Readers should look at the books that are considered classics just like we do, for example, at van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” etc., and decide for ourselves if a more detailed study is warranted because it will bring more meaning to our lives. I’m sure there will be books and stories that critics have passed over, readers finding meaning that no erudite literary expert has ever noted!

Example: I’ve found a lot more meaning, let’s call it profoundness, in Deaver’s Garden of Beasts and Follett’s Eye of the Needle than in these authors’ other books. Those other books are entertaining but not of the same quality for me. In Mr. Scaramucci’s defense, he does recommend “picking books at random to see what’s inside.” That’s exactly how I discovered the two books just mentioned. In fact, most of the books on the “Steve’s bookshelf” web page are what I would call classics. Critics and those erudite literary experts probably won’t agree with me, but to hell with them! What’s amusing is that none of the books in Scaramucci’s reading list at the end of his book are called classics by so-called experts! They are for Mr. Scaramucci, though.

It’s unfortunate that reading is being replaced by computer games; streaming video; Fox News or CNN and MSNBC, usually Fox or CNN/MSNBC but not both; Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly known as Twitter), etc.; and far too many echo chambers catering to competing tribes. We can find more meaning in our lives, understanding of others, and eternal truths in the fiction and non-fiction we read. We can do that in other media as well—art and music, for example—but books have all the other media beat.

Books offer personalized discovery. I would have gone on considering Anthony Scaramucci to be a lightweight MAGA maniac, for example, if I hadn’t read his book; he actually offers lessons about how to give meaning to our lives. Of course, other authors have offered similar lessons, even in fiction. But my life was enriched by having a conversation with an author by reading his book. If anything, that’s a valuable lesson!

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Free fiction! (Hey, I have to compete with Prime Days somehow!) It’s time you examined the list of freebies on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page. All you have to do is click on the file name to download your free PDF! For writers, there’s also the self-help guide “Writing Fiction.” No, I don’t tell you how to write a good story…that’s on you! But you might enjoy and learn a few new tricks by reading about the errors I made in publishing mine. These are all free…so what can you lose?

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

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!