The simple answer: It’s my literacy project! Baldacci has a more famous one, but he gives away nothing. I figure if I give away my fiction, I can encourage people who can read to actually do it instead of watching the drivel Hollywood producers force-feed us or listening to the blather spewed on TikTok and other social media sites, in podcasts, and Fox News. (Maybe if a certain presidential candidate could actually read a book, he wouldn’t be such a pathetically ignorant and “f&^%ing moron”—the latter is the description of him made by his ex-SecState, not me, by the way. Fortunately, I’ve never met that candidate and have no desire to do so.)

While that answer represents what most motivates me (literacy, not competing with Baldacci, one of the favored stallions in the stables of the Big Five publishing conglomerates), there’s a lot more: A second is that you might like something that’s a freebie enough that you’ll try some of my very reasonably priced books I sell (that includes ebook and print books from two small presses, by the way), especially ebooks. After all, another reason to complain about the price of fast food (those “value meals” from McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, etc.) is that they cost more than an ebook! (Not usually ones from the Big Five, though, which is a type of price gouging they do because they’d rather sell you an expensive print version.) Inexpensive ebooks like mine are like fast food entertainment for the mind, and they cost less than a movie.

Third reason: I refuse to be like James Patterson by turning my book production efforts into an assembly-line factory that exploits readers and authors alike (Patterson’s co-authors). I’m also not going to make a fool of myself on TV ads and other expensive advertising like Patterson either (even if I could afford to do so). In fact, I don’t advertise my books anymore! Why bother? A lot of people are like that current presidential candidate: They can’t even read a one-page briefing! Or don’t want to do so because they prefer chicken wings, cold beer, and football. (Is that the definition of a MAGA maniac?) Of course, Patterson actually got started on his TV ads because he thought he had to compete with Tom Brady (another MAGA supporter who now spends his time saying he’s the GOAT as if anyone now pays attention to what he says). I don’t want to compete against either Brady or Patterson!

My writing now has two goals: Having fun doing it and entertaining a few readers in the process. Those have always been my goals, in fact. I can accomplish both by giving away some stuff. (You might not like short fiction and novels in PDF format, the format for my free downloads listed on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page, but you really have no right to complain. It’s all free!) There might be some new additions to the list of freebies real soon, in fact. Watch for them!

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Defanging the Red Dragon and Intolerance. These two free PDF downloads are complete novels! They’re the sixth and seventh novels in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series. (Defanging the Red Dragon is a crossover novel between that series and the “Detectives Chen & Castilblanco” series, so it also counts as number eight in the latter series as well.)

In the first novel, the Chinese are after submarine secrets, and Esther gets involved. In the second, Esther helps to solve a cold case from Ireland, to thwart a domestic terrorist, and to capture a crazy man out for revenge.

There’s a lot of sleuthing going on in both novels!

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

What this Comedian Said Will Shock You: Bill Maher, author (2024). Just in time for the 2024 elections…wow! I needed this. An irreverent critique of everything going on, especially the political circus acts. It’s something that grabs you by the throat and makes you almost die laughing at the follies of human beings and their cultural milieu. (The ‘almost” will be considered below.)

We often take ourselves too seriously. Okay, life is serious. We’re now in a dash—no marathons now—for November, 2024 when we must decide if we still want some sort of democracy in America or some sort of awful fascist state where some fascist psychotic sociopath declares himself president-for-life and begins to mimic Stalin’s purges. (Neither Bill Maher nor I can know what kind of democracy either: There are so many things wrong with the current one, starting with the US Constitution!)

But we need to laugh a bit before we begin grieving over our dead democracy, especially at ourselves and our compatriots who are letting it die. If this book doesn’t accomplish that, you’re a brain-dead zombie. (Most MAGA maniacs are, of course, but plenty so-called liberals living in their echo chambers are too.)

Because a serious book review is supposed to contain critiques (verbal equivalents of a sharp elbow in the ribs), let me begin attacking Bill with this one: Your title is very misleading! What Maher states here isn’t all that shocking; I agree with at least 87.765 percent plus or minus 3.923 percent margin-of-error of what he says and have probably said more shocking things in my political blog at pubprogressive.com. (Why are the Big Five publishing conglomerates and TV networks afraid of calling Donald Jackass Trump, J. Done-Nothing Vance, and their cronies fascists? That’s what they are!)

Of course, I don’t say it comically; I’m deadly serious. What extremists (fascists come from both the left and the right, moving around that grand circle that’s humanity’s political spectrum to that one single point called fascism) have done to this country (let’s call it “ripping the country apart”) is beyond the pale because its source is the destructive evil lurking there in the dark ready to attack any good people who might be left in the body politic. (Extremists hog the internet with their blathering. Normal people can’t get a word in edgewise, which is why I’m no longer on Facebook or X. In those cases, of course, the extremists also run those websites.)

That leads to another critique: Bill Maher is a bit simple-minded because he can’t imagine any of this country’s problems leading to another civil war. (I think he does mention the possibility of a Nazi-like putsch somewhere, though.) Would he be ready to fight for what’s right and good? I can’t answer that even for myself, but it’s a quandary he should have mentioned…except that it’s not very funny, is it?! (But maybe it’s a better and more practical use for all those damn guns?)

It’s easy to go after Narcissus le Grand and his MAGA maniacs, from the far-right wingnuts who support them, i.e., those evangelicals (unlike Maher, I refuse to capitalize that), Catholics (capitalized only because “catholic” can have a more general meaning—look it up), to white supremacists and a few crazed blacks and hispanics. It’s hard to look the other way at far-left extremists and recognize that they’re also approaching fascism as well, often supporting questionable causes (Hamas in Gaza, i.e. terrorists; eco-terrorists, i.e. tree-huggers who destroy trees; injuring or killing cops, i.e., anyone—everyone seems to hate cops now; believing in communism, with a small c or a big one, is the solution to everything; etc., etc.). Maher wraps all that up in his generic attacks on the nation’s youth (who all too often deserve those attacks of course!), when it’s not about immaturity (unless you want to call old Bernie Sanders “immature”?). The extremes of both political parties push their other more reasonable members toward the middle (maybe a good thing?), but that still allows the extremes to do a lot of damage on their way to fascism, so much so that it will likely destroy our country unless it’s halted.

Okay, I’ve proved myself wrong: What this comedian says is damn shocking because he tries to turn a serious debate into comedy. That should shock anyone who values our democracy. In fact, Mr. Maher is showing his age, not quite the comedians’ Biden yet, but his words seem an awful lot like my father’s. And my father lived in a better time when our family’s Eisenhower Republicans and Truman Democrats could get together for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter and not physically pommel each other. (Maybe go home a bit angry with the relatives, though.)

There are interesting little datapoints sprinkled throughout this book that are significantly serious, though. For example, the tragedy of some Trump MAGA maniacs: Consider Ashli Babbitt, the Air Force vet who needlessly died for Trump on January 6, 2021, believing that if he won, he might help her with the usurious loan she’d stupidly signed up for to save her business. (And Trump said no one died on January 6! She was your follower, you “f&^%ing moron”!) Another tragedy that obviously couldn’t make the publishing schedule for Bill’s book is found in the fireman who attended that recent Pennsylvania rally with his family and took a bullet for Trump while trying to protect his family. Trump doesn’t have to kill anyone on Fifth Avenue in New York City; he manages to do it at his rallies!

These cases and others are doubly tragic because the supporters of that “f%$#ing moron” (an ex-SecState Tillerson quote, by the way, in case you think I made that up) can’t seem to recognize that Narcissus le Grand only cares about himself; he’s a psychotic sociopath. That’s the diagnosis from an ad hoc committee of respectable mental health professionals published years ago. With his advanced age and impending dementia—he’s now the oldest presidential candidate ever!—he’s become even worse!

Unfortunately, Bill, those cases of lemmings among the MAGA maniacal hordes following their fuehrer over the cliffs aren’t comical—they’re an American tragedy in many ways. Treating them as comedy is easy; diagnosing and combatting the reasons why they’ve become mentally ill in that way is complicated and serious work that comedians like you and fiction writers like me can’t possibly do alone. Our society is sick and dying, and it needs some real professional help from many good people to find a cure if it’s going to survive.

And a final (and perhaps more light-hearted?) critique: What’s wrong with Bill’s sense of irony? He writes: “…when a big-game hunter gets trampled by an elephant and then eaten by a lion [it] is ‘hilarious.’” Wrong! It’s simple justice! (And why didn’t it happen to Don Jr.?)

I read this lengthy collection of comedy gigs in parallel with other more serious books. That’s called multitasking by some; I call it comedic relief from the more serious stuff. It’s not healthy to take life too seriously, but it’s also not healthy for us or the country to go laughing to our graves as American fascists set out to destroy this country and the world. We’ll see who has the last laugh, Bill. I’ve already prepared my “I told you so” speech, Mr. Maher. It’s a short one, and I quote a young acquaintance of mine: We’re so screwed!

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A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse. To prove I’m not such a serious fellow and that I can write comedy (or be bold enough to attempt it?), this sci-fi rom-com hopefully has given a few smiles to my readers and will do the same for those who missed it and peruse it now. It treats some serious themes, but it’s mostly tongue-in-cheek. And, by the way, it does time travel right, i.e., without paradoxes. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold. (You might even find it on Amazon among all the overly expensive crap the Big Five publishing conglomerates like to sell…like the above.)

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

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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Comments are always welcome. (Please follow the rules on the “Join the Conversation” web page.)

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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Comments are always welcome. (Please follow the rules found on the “Join the Conversation” web page.)

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!