What do most congressional districts in the US have in common? They’re either reliably controlled by the Dems or the GOP (aka Good Ole Piranhas) because state legislatures have created them to be that way. This process is called gerrymandering.

To quote Wikipedia (warning: I can’t get rid of the links, but they probably don’t work!): “The word gerrymander (originally written Gerry-mander; a portmanteau of the name “Gerry” and “salamander”) was used for the first time in the Boston Gazette (not to be confused with the original Boston Gazette) on 26 March 1812 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. The word was created in reaction to a redrawing of Massachusetts state senate election districts under Governor Elbridge Gerry, later Vice President of the United States. Gerry, who personally disapproved of the practice, signed a bill that redistricted Massachusetts for the benefit of the Democratic-Republican Party. [Author’s note: Whoa! That’s really bipartisan!] When mapped, one of the contorted districts in the Boston area was said to resemble a mythological salamander. Appearing with the term, and helping spread and sustain its popularity, was a political cartoon depicting a strange animal with claws, wings and a dragon-like head that supposedly resembled the oddly shaped district.”

In the 21^st century, state legislatures have made gerrymandering into an insidious attack on American democracy. Sure, there’s generally a party mix in congressional districts (you generally don’t know if your neighbor is a wild progressive or staunch conservative), but one party becomes so favored that the other party’s candidate has an enormous electoral hill to climb. That’s the idea, of course! (Like the onerous burden of extended daylight savings time, good ole Massachusetts is responsible for this invention!)

An NYC district that includes Staten Island is typical. The island is Archie Bunker country, but there are no laughs forthcoming here when congressional elections are held. A Dem candidate for the House won in 2018 (much to Trump’s chagrin, because that district includes part of Brooklyn); the district reverted back to the GOP in 2020 when a radical MAGA candidate won (seems like Trump was the only big loser from the GOP in that 2020 election!). That campaign was the worst mudslinging (to put it mildly) campaign I’ve seen in my lifetime—another consequence of gerrymandering, excessive polarization and extremely dirty politics. (If the Dem candidate hadn’t lowered himself to his opponent’s level, he would have done a lot worse!)

In my own NJ district, the political mix is a bit fairer, allowing the Dem representative to squeak by in 2018 and 2020. (Who said NJ is reliably Democratic? Gov. Christie, of bridge-gate fame, was a Good Ole Piranha, after all.) The generally progressive population in the part of my district nearer NYC is outnumbered by the part that extends into the conservative middle of the state, so the Dem candidate, a middle-of-the-road ex-USN chopper pilot and Naval Academy grad, didn’t have easy campaigns. And she will be targeted again by the RNC.

The important point here is that both these cases are about gerrymandered districts, ones created to further political agendas. Some, of course, are created to corral certain areas so they don’t interfere with statewide dominance by one party or the other. Gerrymandering, like voter suppression, is anti-democratic. Its worst effect is that it allows state legislatures, often dominated by GOP fascists, to determine the shape of districts, even though statewide, Dems are elected, as occurred in Georgia and Arizona. (Those same state legislatures, tens of them now, are striving to pass laws that guarantee voter suppression, using the big lie that there was widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, which never occurred, to justify these onerous laws that take away people’s right to vote.)

American democracy can’t survive when elections are rigged by gerrymandering and voter suppression practices and laws. Congressional districts need to reflect natural boundaries—like town and county borders (assuming those are reasonable, which they often aren’t). Redistricting must result in a more favorable mix of voting demographics. Districts should not be drawn or changed by state pols to guarantee their hold on power.

***

Comments are always welcome.

Extreme “evergreen books.” The “Clones & Mutants” series contains my first novel, Full Medical (2006, but it has an ebook second edition), where the reader meets the children cloned from important political and religious figures as part of their medical plans. In #2, Evil Agenda, one clone and one mutant battle the evil Vladimir Kalinin (he appears in two series, including this one, and two bridge books). In #3, No Amber Waves of Grain, the clones and mutant battle against a Korean industrialist out for revenge, with (surprise!) Kalinin helping. This sci-fi thriller series will leave readers wondering if some of the portrayed events set in America’s near future (2054+) might already be occurring! Available wherever quality ebooks are sold.

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

Mrs. Blake

Copyright 2021, Steven M. Moore

Chapter Three

Unfortunately Blake’s mobile woke him. The aroma of frying bacon filled the air, an aroma that could wake the dead, or at least the nearly dead like Blake. So much for the lie-in.

“Thought I’d catch you before you head off to work,” his mum said, her voice on the mobile muted and a bit raspy.

“Want to share a scramble and rashers?” Sally called out.
“Who’s that?” his mum said.

“Just a minute, mum. Be right there, luv.”

“Are you shagging that Welsh lass, son? Good for you!”

“Mum, please. Give us some privacy, won’t you?”

“Only if you’re going at her now. Otherwise, tell me all about it.”

His mum was always worried he’d never give her grandchildren. He thought she also might live vicariously through his relationships, which had been yet another reason to leave London. He loved her, but sometimes distance was a blessing.

“I’m badly in need of some sustenance. Everything okay with you?”

“Couldn’t be better. Leo’s here. I might be getting serious about him. Maybe we could have a double wedding?”

Blake groaned. Leo? He tried to remember. Ah, the Italian banker, Leonardo Ricci. His mum had mentioned the widower who was an extreme example of the adage that a way to a man’s heart was via his stomach. Blake hadn’t been too concerned about Leo. His mum had her flings, but her true love had always been Blake’s father.

“You’re sixty-seven, mum. You always said there wouldn’t be anyone else but Pops.”

“It was hard to imagine meeting anyone who could compare to your father, but I think he would have wanted me to be happy and would have liked Leo. And he loves to make culinary experiments here with me. We sing arias or dance in the nude—”

“Stop!” Blake tried to get that image out of his head. “I’ll call you later. Although you might’ve killed my appetite, I need breakfast before my work day. Love you.”

“Back at you, Logan.”

She was giggling as she ended the call. Leo?

“What did your mum want?” said Sally as Blake joined her. She slid eggs and rashers onto his empty plate. “And what the hell time did you get home last night?”

“Mum just thinks she has to check on me. And we had some success with the case last night. At least we know who the victim is and where she worked.”

He told Sally the story between bites.

***

“You’re looking a bit worse for wear,” Clarke said when she stopped at his desk to hand him a coffee. “We have a lot of case work today. Get settled a bit, and then I want to interrogate Mr. Chernoff. I’ll have a constable bring him from his cell up to the room. Meet you there in ten. I want to talk to the DCI about the gamblers. He moves in some VIP circles, so maybe he’s recognized some names.”

“I got your request and the list,” the DCI said to Clarke when she entered and took a seat. “I know several people on it. All upstanding citizens who are basically harmless idiots. You have to wonder, why bother? With online gambling, you can play blackjack at home.”

“No sweet young things serving you liquor there,” Clarke said, “wiggling their breasts and bottoms.”

He smiled. “Point taken. The ones I know are men. Dirty old men in your mind’s eye?”

She laughed but then became serious. “I’ve no problem with gambling or sexual appetites as long as neither are addictions that destroy families. My problem with men is when they become abusive arses. You know that.”

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St. Paddy’s Day is here! While many celebrations would (and should) remain at home, this is the day when everyone becomes Irish, enjoying real whiskey that’s thrice-distilled, and avoiding that twice-distilled and smoky-flavored Scotch or the mouthwash-tasting bourbon; a Guinness stout, Killian’s or Smithwick’s red ale; corn beef and cabbage (although that’s basically an American invention); and tea, neither high nor low, and pastries. Let’s forget about the ethnic stereotypes—Irish cops and drunks, for example. You’ll find Irish people all over the world doing multiple things. And let’s learn a bit o’ Irish history, which is long and complex, with Celts, Normans, Britons, and Vikings contributing to it.

The Irish musical heritage is also rich. Consider this a poor review of that wonderful tradition. I’ll refer to my own music collection in the following. Readers can add their favorites in the comments. First some artists:

Máire Brennan

Celtic Women (when they sing Irish songs!)

Phil Coulter

Turlough O’Carolan

Next some songs:

The Fields of Athenry

The Star of the County Down

The Wild Rover

The Rare Old Times

Danny Boy

Black Velvet Band

Goodbye Johnny Dear

Seven Drunken Nights

Liverpool Lou

This music isn’t all jigs and ballads either. Some Irish music is mystical or religious (Brennan’s, for example). Some are bawdy or raunchy and might remind US tourists of pubs they visited in Eire. They all are examples of the Irish’s love for song, music, and dance.

Happy St. Paddy’s Day! Stay safe; drink responsibly.

***

Comments are always welcome.

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

I published my first novel, the sci-fi thriller Full Medical, in 2006 (it now has an ebook second edition). I usually publish two or three novels per year, so you can do the math. (A. B. Carolan allows me to count his—wink, wink.)

Some novels are long; some are short, but they’re not novellas. Some I spend a lot of time writing, especially one I did with a small press. (Generally speaking, they’re usually responsible for publication delays, not the writers.) Generally speaking, time from start to published book isn’t all in the writing. Even for a long book, though, the writing time can be very short. I call those “quick books”; mine also are all “evergreen” now (i.e. as current and entertaining as the day I finished their manuscripts), but that could change.

Perhaps it’s the hounding by my muses (“banshees with Tasers” is a better description—they seem to know how many stories I have left in me!), or characters just taking over to tell their own stories, but I remember these quick books well. Writing them was akin to the Iguazu Falls at the corner of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, with the words gushing forth to form giant artistic cataracts from my thoughts.

The first quick book, and still the winner, is The Midas Bomb (now with a second edition in both ebook and print format—forget that old Infinity Publishing POD!). Here I introduce detectives Chen and Castilblanco. The latter has just lost two young partners, so he’s leery about teaming up with another one, namely Chen. (He actually met her as a patrolwoman during his first homicide case—see “The Case of the Carriageless Horse” in the collection World Enough and Crime. Donna Carrick reads that short story on her podcast—see my “Home Page” at this website for details.) The Midas Bomb is a mystery/thriller, not sci-fi, and has the sleuths chasing several smart criminals. (The title is also one of my best, hinting at two parallel crimes that are related.)

My second best quick book is Rogue Planet. I don’t know why this hard sci-fi novel, with Game-of-Thrones and Star-Wars flavors, didn’t resonate more with readers. Like most sci-fi, it will always be evergreen, and it serves as a bridge book for my extended “Future History” timeline between the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy” and A. B. Carolan’s young adult sci-fi mysteries, especially the last one. Maybe readers would have preferred a Disney-like princess as protagonist instead of a rakish prince? I’m currently thinking about a sequel that would also be a sequel to A.B.’s Mind Games—that might be hard to pull off, but I always like a challenge. (Della from A.B.’s book isn’t a princess, but Prince Kaushal in Rogue Planet is one, and he married his princess Anju.)

My third quick book of note is Son of Thunder, #2 in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series (also part of that “Future History,” come to think of it). It’s the only one mentioned so far that’s traditionally published, which proves the point that writing time spent differs greatly from publishing time waiting. (#3, Death on the Danube, had so many delays just to get a response to a query, possibly because of COVID, that I ended up publishing it myself. Its writing went fast too. It would compete with The Last Humans or its sequel, The Last Humans: A New Dawn, for the fourth spot on the quick-books list, proving yet another point—writing time doesn’t correlate well with book length, at least in my case.)

Readers might be surprised that Son of Thunder is #3 on my list of quick books because the novel is very complex, following three independent stories about St. John (biblical times), Boticelli (Renaissance), and Esther (near future), and then bringing everything together. It’s not only complex, it’s my deepest book, considering the themes treated, which, of course, adds to the complexity, so it surprised even me that its writing went so fast. (Oh yes, it also required finding the most background material out of the three!) Not even with COVID, did I write so much so quickly. (I submitted it to the publisher long before it was published in 2019.)

Is there a difference in quality between these three quick books and the rest of my oeuvre? I doubt it. They might just be better, though, because of a phenomenon known better to artists when they are painting: The more they work on a painting, the muddier the colors can often become! Those first strokes on the canvas and those first words that come streaming out of a writer’s head to land on the page are often the best. I believe most authors will tell you that some novels come easier than others, which means the same thing. And that doesn’t mean the quality is less; it might be better.

One thing is certain: I didn’t choose to write these novels quickly. It just happened. I don’t recommend that any author establish a time limit for writing a novel. That’s silly. And any agent or publisher who tries to impose such a constraint might just receive a manuscript of poor quality, what neither they nor readers want.

***

Comments are always welcome.

New books. Like I said above, A.B. and I usually publish two or three new books per year. Two novels’ manuscripts are now waiting offstage: A.B. Carolan will start a new trilogy with Origins, a sci-fi mystery that goes far back into prehistory as well as into the near future. Its protagonist is a young STEM girl. Palettes, Patriots, and Prats, #4 in the Brookstone series, finds Esther and new hubby Bastiann back home in London but still getting into trouble. It all takes place in merry old England and Scotland. Watch for them. (Both were written fast because of COVID.)

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

With Trump gone, I thought I could just focus on reading, writing, and publishing in this blog, what fiction writers blather about all the time (after all, why shouldn’t a blog reflect its writer’s interests?). With Biden et al saving the nation, I made that assumption. Wow! Was I ever wrong! Narcissus le Grand (Trump the Chump) was only symbolic of a more general problem in the US and around the world: Representative democracy fails to represent the people. Politicians are the problem!

They might not be as evil as Trump (Minority Leaders McCarthy and McConnell, Governors Abbott and DeSantis, PM Orban, Witchy Marine le Pen, and others come very close)—Trump basically represented no one except himself and his family—but I don’t know any current politicians who selflessly put constituents’ interests above their own personal agendas, although I’ll give you that the latter many times just reduce to getting re-elected. Incompetent political hacks are the norm, and pols driven by greed and power are common enough that a lot of people suffer.

Consider NY senators Gillibrand and Schumer, perfect examples of the latter. They jumped on the bandwagon to mercilessly attack Governor Cuomo. That bandwagon is pulled by a lynch mob with greed- and power-driven pols, including the two senators, at the reins and a scandal-crazed media pushing from behind. It’s so weird to see that George Floyd’s murderer receives more due process than Cuomo! Talk about a twisted plot!

I’m not saying that Cuomo’s innocent. He might at least be guilty of creating a toxic work environment. Most people working in a corporation have experienced one—the VIPs there can be real SOBs—I know that because I experienced them in academia and R&D. But people can overreact, innocently or otherwise, making mountains out of molehills. A woman went after one VIP in one of my workplaces for telling her she was “glowing” as a compliment—she was in a family way. That’s perhaps being insensitive, not a sexual assault!

US society often carries political correctness too far, and I’m sick of it, all the more so when people join a lynch mob that allows political hacks to jump in and further their own agendas. That includes Senators Gillibrand and Schumer, of course, who have stepped over a lot of dead bodies on their way to the top. Every pol has committed some of those sins. For example, Gillibrand went after Franken only to increase her own chances in the primaries—fortunately people saw through that scheme of the ex-member of the Good Ole Piranhas.

There’s no reasoned discourse anymore, only ten-second soundbites, often snarky gotchas that make me sick because they only encourage the media’s feeding frenzies. There’s no competence anymore either among politicians, only incompetent hacks posturing to win the next election so they can continue to ruin our lives!

This country and the world have many critical problems that require solutions if humanity is to survive. I repeat: Some solutions are needed so humanity can survive! (I suppose Gaia might have a different opinion about that.) For sane readers of this blog, I shouldn’t have to enumerate them. Ask yourself if your senator and representative are working to solve them. Our representatives are demonstrating many times over that they have no clue at the least and, because of their greed and desire for power, working against humanity at the worst. What do we elect them for? The answer I see now: Obviously not to do the job that needs to be done!

In future blog posts in this category “New Op-Eds,” I will elaborate on this theme. It’s a bipartisan one (although one US party will probably believe that less than the other). This is the least I can do to wake people up so they’ll vote out the pols who do so little for us. I know it won’t help sell my books because some readers will boycott me. So be it!

***

Comments are always welcome.

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

Mrs. Blake

Copyright 2021, Steven M. Moore

Chapter Two

Although the DCI was at their briefing, he let DI Clarke handle it. He only asked a few questions as she handed out assignments to her group of assorted constables and one sergeant. They made him look good, so why interfere?

Clarke had turned out to be his best DI out of three. All did their jobs well, but maybe too by-the-book. Like the DCI, Clarke could be creative and intuitive in an investigation. DS Blake had been a good hire too; he could work wonders in an investigation as well and had done so since his arrival in Riversford. The DCI didn’t buy into the theory that it all those came from his experience in London. He was just a good copper, a natural. The DCI knew Clarke was worried that he might get promoted. She would lose him then, and so would Riversford—there was no other DI position open at the substation.

“And you’re all thinking, what’s this DI going to do?” Clarke said to finish her organizational brief. She held up a small plastic disk. “Gambling chip. After the post mortem, I’m going to try to find out where it came from. Our victim had it clenched in one hand.”

“Think it’s a message?” said Blake.

“Or rigor mortis,” said a constable, getting a few laughs as well as a glare from the DCI.

“I will find out. Hopefully it tells us who the victim is and where she came from. Okay, let’s get going. This girl has a name and a family somewhere, and we all need to resolve this murder case by finding her killer. We owe every victim that much.”

***

Clarke left the Riversford substation deep in thought. The post mortem’s results had been troubling. There had been a small injection site in the victim’s armpit and traces of toxin in her body. She’d been poisoned. They still had no name for the victim. Every murder victim for her needed help from the police because they had no way to bring their assassins to justice. It was up to coppers like Clarke. She was lucky her DS was motivated in the same way.

She drove to a nearby park, ducked out of her Morris, and soon spotted the dapper old man who was sat on a bench, feeding a few squirrels he rewarded for braving the cold. He placed the package of seeds next to him and pulled his watch fob from his vest pocket to check the time as if he were a conductor on a train. He then smiled at her.

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A.B. Carolan’s new young adult sci-fi mystery/thriller Origins (enough genres for you?) will contain a lot of history, from the dawn of human civilization to Argentina’s Dirty War (this book will be published some time in April if all goes as planned). Combining past and future is common in sci-fi. As a young lad, I read Chad Oliver’s The Winds of Time, for example, and it really impressed me.

Of course, the past often plays a role in fiction that isn’t sci-fi, maybe even more so. Son of Thunder, #2 in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series is loaded with history, from the time of Christ to the Renaissance and the near future. In fact, sci-fi or not, and unlike Son of Thunder, a novel can be set in the past completely, and it’s called historical fiction, an extremely nebulous categorization. Is Alex Gerlis’s The Best of Our Spies historical fiction or a spy story? (Spyfi addicts know the answer.) Can Son of Thunder be called historical fiction or is it just a mystery/thriller.

I could use this confusion to argue my point that genres are just key words one can use to describe a book, but my focus here is the following: When does history in fiction become historical fiction? Is there a natural boundary? And should writers care? Readers might be surprised to know that, contrary to perceived evidence in Origins and Son of Thunder, A.B. and I look more forward than backward. We want to question where human beings are going more than where they’ve been. While the past (and past settings) can be interesting, the claim that familiarization with past errors will help us avoid them in the future seems all too often false, primarily because our educational system focuses on past glories and not past problems and their solutions, or simply lies to students by creating a past that didn’t happen at all. (US states in the South, as well as autocratic governments around the world, like to do that in their textbooks, thus lying about a lot of things! And, as with you-know-who, people believe those lies because they’re all they hear and read.)

Black History Month deserves a lot of credit for bringing to our attention many Blacks who contributed a lot without getting credit for it. As an ex-scientist, I knew about a lot of Black scientists in history, and worked with them as well, but I just learned that one Black inventor,  Granville T. Woods, had 60+ patents—Thomas Edison even tried to steal one but lost the case! (Imagine, a white guy stealing from a Black guy! Edison was an ass, of course—just ask Tesla.) But, for the most part, celebrations of Black history, Hispanic history, Irish history—ethnic histories in general—cater to human beings’ nostalgia about their past and ethnic origins. In spite of their database limitations, especially for Asians and Blacks, websites like ancestry.com can make a lot of money providing this service too, although their ties with Big Pharma are definitely suspect. (But maybe that’s just part of the general problem where, because of narcissism, people make their personal information public.)

History’s propensity for awarding the conquerors and oppressors, i.e. the winners and not the losers (I hope that works for the Big Loser, you-know-who) is a good justification for including history in fiction to at least make readers wonder, what’s the real story? Who knows? Maybe my attempt to add details about St. John’s life between the Crucifixion and the disciple’s death (his was a long life) will motivate some young reader to study archeology or Christian history, i.e. what really happened? (And put their own spin on it?)

But I don’t really put a lot of history in my books. I’m not out to rectify all those lies in those Texas textbooks either. Some of my stories have historical flashbacks, or even historical and parallel developments, as in Son of Thunder, but I don’t write historical fiction novels. I might read them (the spy stories of Gerlis come to mind, as well as those British-style mysteries set in the nineteenth century, or even those mysteries by June Trop set in ancient Cairo), but I don’t write them. My stories are set in the future, albeit sometimes the near future. (The Midas Bomb, when it first was published in 2010, was set in 2014, so clearly events overtook that “future” and made it into an alternate history!)

A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse perhaps best exemplifies my style. Because of the Many Worlds Theory of Quantum Mechanics, physicist Gail and her techie Jeff’s time machine, which can only move forward in time (no paradoxes are possible), takes them sometimes into what can be considered parallel or alternate pasts on some of their time translations. Lessons are learned about our possible futures, though, because those parallel pasts provide perspective about where we might be going as well (and events we’ve been lucky to avoid!).

Should authors stop using historical settings in their novels? I’m the last person you should ask that, but I’ll still try to answer: Above all, fiction writers should write good stories, period, ones with powerful themes interwoven through the plots and great characters. Where authors’ imaginations take them should never be constrained by the consumers, the readers, or by agents, acquisition editors, and others who scream about marketability. And here I’ll end with a favorite quote from famous sci-fi author Robert Heinlein: “…maybe I should study the market and try like hell to tailor something which fits current styles. But…if I am to turn out work of fairly permanent value, my own taste…is what I must follow.”

***

Comments are always welcome.

Ebook sales. I only offer them via Smashwords in my email newsletter. You can sign up for the latter using my contact page at this website. This month the “evergreen books” in the “Clones & Mutants” series are all on sale: You meet the clones in my very first book Full Medical (2006, but now with a second ebook edition); you meet the mutants in Evil Agenda; and they combine forces in No Amber Waves of Grain. These ebooks are part of my extended “Future History”–which all contains the “Detectives Chen & Castiblanco” series and the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collectdion” plus several bridge books. All my ebooks have reasonable retail prices (even those published by small presses), but they’re a real bargain in these sales. (Subscribers to the newsletter just use the supplied promo codes.)

I can’t offer these sales on Amazon; I stopped exclusively publishing on Amazon years ago, which is their criterion. I wouldn’t offer them there anyway. That ravenous T-Rex of online marketing is no longer a friend of authors or readers, so much so that, as of March 1, no new books of mine will be offered for purchase on Amazon. This is my small blow to help bring down the T-Rex!

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

[Note from Steve: In the collection Sleuthing, British-Style, I introduce DI Clarke and DS Blake in three short stories as a homage to British-style mysteries. While the following is another story that didn’t make the self-imposed editorial deadline for that collection (as a test case for Draft2Digital), you might also find the following short story equally entertaining. By the way, the title is explained in subsequent chapters.]

Mrs. Blake

Copyright 2021, Steven M. Moore

Chapter One

DI Patricia Clarke joined DS Logan Blake in the alleyway. Her sergeant was watching the pathologist and SOCOs go through their routines. Old Doc Olbers blocked her view, so she asked Blake what he knew.

“Young woman, maybe early twenties or even late teens. Tarty layers of makeup, frilly blouse, miniskirt, and boots.”

“Dressed for a night out,” said Clarke with a nod. “Or she could be a student out to make some extra cash as a waitperson.” She pointed at the scruffy fellow sitting on the meat truck’s tailgate. “Who’s the wrinklie?”

“He was tip-dipping and found the victim. A bit shaken, I dare say. I’m letting him recover with a cuppa, and then I’ll interview him.”

“Good plan. Meanwhile, let’s say hello to our esteemed pathologist.”

“Good morning, detectives,” Frank Olbers said, still performing his Russian Cossack dance to find another position from which he could examine the body. “Nothing obvious as to what killed this poor young thing, and the cold air makes TOD hard to determine. I’d guess between when the party ended and when that gentleman over there found her. Come to my own party tomorrow to find out more.”

“Will do.” Clarke decided to ask the important question for any female victim at a crime scene. “Any sign of forced intercourse?”

“None, forced or otherwise. Nothing recent, at any rate. Not a virgin, but that’s not surprising these days. DNA from her assailant might be available elsewhere. Maybe the bins?”

***

The detectives got more from Arthur Payton, the old homeless man who’d found the victim—not so old really; he just looked old.

“People throw away good food and liquor, officers, so I usually can get by with scraps and drinks people toss into the rubbish bins. Or on the streets if I’m lucky; there are always litterers.” He smiled at them. Blake noted the man badly needed to visit a dentist. “Not terribly good hygiene, I’ll admit, but what can I do? Anyway, I stopped in my tracks when I saw her arm hanging out of that particular bin. I managed to haul her out and checked for signs of life.”

“Did you check inside the bin? For a purse, mobile, whatever?”

Clarke nodded. Her new sergeant could hold his own now. She felt a bit superfluous.

“I just sat and stared at her for a while, thinking she must be someone’s daughter or girlfriend, and that someone will be missing her.”

“I’ll tell Sally,” Blake said to his DI. “They’ll need to search all these bins.”

“Her team will just love you for that.” Clarke winked at her sergeant.

After Blake returned, Clarke decide to leave Payton in Blake’s able hands and go back to the station to start organizing yet another murder investigation. Blake had thought there’d be more peaceful policing in Riversford than in London. The town snuggled in the Thames River Valley in that rural area between Oxford and the Cotswolds, but this would be his fifth murder case in as few months.

She nodded to Sally leaving the alley. At least Blake had a solid relationship with the SOCO as compensation. The two seemed to form a good team, for policing and otherwise.

***

“Mr. Payton, you said you checked for signs of life,” Blake continued. “Do you have medical training?”

Payton laughed. “You think I left a good job at NHS or sumpin’? I learned to check for life signs in the army. You want everyone to get home, marra, the wounded or the dead, but you help the wounded first. Battlefield triage’s their name for it. I call it looking out for your brothers who’re still alive first. The dead don’t rightly care.”

Blake nodded. His father had probably practiced the same thing. “Did you see anyone else around, or hear voices?”

Payton smiled and tapped his head. “I always hear voices, lad. Some call it PTSD. But there weren’t anyone else around.” He held up his paper cup. “If we be done now, is there any chance I can get another cuppa?”

“I’ll be finished here in a bit. I just need to talk to the pathologist and SOCOs some more, and then I’ll take you to get some real food. I’m a bit peckish myself, to be honest.”

Later Blake eyed the scruffy man across the wooden table that had seen better days. “My father was in the army, you know,” Blake said.

They were at a small dive not far from the murder scene. They both had their tea, Blake had ordered a bacon roll, and Payton was busy devouring a full plate of bangers and mash.

“He didn’t come home.”

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We have left the days of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys far behind. Today’s young adult readers are more sophisticated and have a lot more on their plates than their parents and grandparents had at the same age. Although tween and teen angst have also morphed a bit, it’s only the names that have changed—that angst has always been present in one form or another. The same can be said for fads and cultural heroes.

The Harry Potter series started out as fantasy fiction focused on tweens and grew to be directed to older readers as the main characters grew. (The villains remained constant, though, discounting Draco Malfoy, who was but a carbon copy of his nefarious father, an adult.) The last Potter books are dark battles between good and evil. Although more verbose than a Stephen King work, those books are on a par with that Kingsian horror/fantasy genre—Carrie, for example. (King isn’t considered a YA author, but many of his books are YA. It is yet another example.)

The twelve-to-eighteen age group is now reading just about anything (if they read at all and avoid social media, computer games, and streaming video), so does “young adult literature” even make sense? Given that adults who are young at heart also enjoy such targeted books, I have to wonder. My alter-ego A.B. Carolan has adopted a different point of view: the only distinguishing characteristic of young adult novels today should be that their main characters are young adults in that age group worrying a lot about things appropriate to that group! By the very definition of good characterization in a novel, young adults will identify with those characters. That revolution was started with Heinlein’s Podkayne of Mars, and A.B. Carolan continues it.

In that sense, “young adult” isn’t even a genre. It’s only a descriptor indicating the age of the main characters. Thus you have YA romance, YA mysteries, and so forth. A.B. writes YA sci-fi mysteries a la Asimov’s Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun, but, in A.B.’s books, the main characters are young adults (if memory serves, I think old Asimov tried that at the beginning of Second Foundation). Adults can love reading them as well because they were once young adults and can identify with all those YA interests and angsts. I reread Podkayne not long ago and even got more from it than when I read it as a kid. And it has staying power far beyond those Potter fantasies.

A.B. could have written a series that starts with a tween and ends up with an eighteen-year-old just like Rowling. Instead he opted for a different focus: his main characters are different in each book, going from tweens in The Secret Lab to older teens in The Secret of the Urns and Mind Games. These books form a series only because all the books are part of what’s called the “ABC YA Sci-Fi Mysteries”—they occur centuries apart in the same future depicted in the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy.”

I know many YA authors will probably disagree with me on these points. For those who do, we’ll just have to agree to disagree. Young adult literature is no longer the same as those Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books. Denying that change makes no sense and might only upset current readers of that type of books.

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Comments are always welcome.

“ABC YA Sci-Fi Mysteries.” This evergreen series contains A. B. Carolan’s three books, The Secret Lab, The Secret of the Urns, and Mind Games. They are full of sci-fi adventure and suspense as three different young heroines solve out-of-this world mysteries. They can be found in print and ebook format on Amazon and in ebook format on Smashwords and all its affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and library and lending services (Scribd, Oveerdrive, Baker & Taylor, Gardners, etc.). Hint for tweens and teens, and their school teachers and librarians: Reading these is fun…and can serve as easy book reports! And a new book from A.B. is coming soon!

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

Like most authors, I have all my books listed on Amazon. The retail giant has never done much for me (besides giving me agita), and  I realized years ago that being exclusive on Amazon was a bad business decision. That’s a requirement for various benefits the company offers to authors. Those benefits just aren’t worth it if authors are savvy enough to follow this marketing maxim applied to publishing: An author maximizes her or his sales by using more retailers. In the business world of products to buyers, that’s usually hard to do because shipping costs to retailers have to be figured in. In publishing, that doesn’t apply, especially for ebooks.

Amazon distributes to no other retailers because they think they’re the center of the commercial universe. Authors should realize that this perceived monopoly on Amazon’s part is prejudicial to their interests. They shouldn’t be exclusive on Amazon. Doing so isn’t being a smart author. Even most traditional publishers are savvy enough to realize this (they fight with Amazon about other abuses too).

Like I said, some years ago I got smart—I realized that being exclusive on Amazon was hurting me. My sales numbers have never been great (probably because I can’t afford lavish marketing campaigns—which books should I choose?); yet those meager numbers increased once I added retailers besides Amazon. How did I do this? No one has the time to approach every retailer, so one uses book aggregators who not only publish the ebook but distribute to all those retailers! So far, I have used Smashwords and Draft2Digital, which seem to have what I need as affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and library and lending services (Scribd, Overdrive, Gardners, etc.).

For my self-published works, I’d do away with Amazon completely if it weren’t for a few free conveniences: My author page serves as another website where all my books are listed, and each book has its own book page offering a blurb, cover image, a “peek inside,” details about the book (many not found on my website), and some (but not all) of the reviews. That author page is more unique among book retailers; that Amazon book page not so much, and it offers browsing readers something akin to physical bookstore and library browsing. Imagine my panic when these two conveniences were recently attacked by Amazon.

First, some history. As many of my readers know, there is now a “Last Humans” series: The first book in the series, The Last Humans (see the cover image at the top of this web page), was published by Black Opal Books in 2019; the second book, The Last Humans: A New Dawn, was published by Draft2Digital late in 2020 (the reasons for the delay have appeared in previous blog posts). I continue to promote both books (see the bottom of this page), believing the book is all important, not the publisher. (Really, how many readers choose a book because of its publisher? Maybe I’m naïve, but my browsing and previous experiences with an author’s books give me a good idea about whether the book interests me—I don’t care how it was published!)

How did this all lead to my continued Amazon wars? Here’s an itemized list of my new problems caused by Amazon:

– The second book in the series, The Last Humans: A New Dawn, no longer appears in my Amazon Author Central listing, but it appears on my Amazon author page (the first supposedly controls the second, but this is evidence that it doesn’t).

– The first book in the series, The Last Humans, appears in my Amazon Author Central listing, but it no longer appears on my Amazon author page.

– Reviews for the first book now appear for the second book, i.e. all reviews for the two books have been aggregated together.

– The second book has no print version, but its book page says it does. And when you click on that, the first book comes up, showing both ebook and print versions.

This is complete chaos! Whoever’s responsible (maybe a gang of bots?) have done nothing. I’ve written to customer service many times, and the best response reduces to passing the buck and pointing the finger. Admittedly this is a complex snafu…but I didn’t create it! And with all this going on, I naturally wondered if this website’s links to both books still work—they do!

This whole adventure makes no sense. The problems were probably created by Amazon’s bots—no human could screw things up so badly. (I’ve always thought that the real Jeff Bezos is some body-less form in a cryogenics tank, swimming with the real Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and those Google guys, while the one who attacks authors is a bot.) Whoever’s responsible, Amazon is guilty until proven innocent. So far they’ve done nothing. Apparently they only listen to high-priced lawyers and ignore lowly authors they’ve screwed!

My advice to other authors? Don’t use Amazon exclusively for your books! And, in any case, beware of them–they can make your lives miserable.

My Amazon wars continue. Stay tuned.

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Comments are always welcome!

The Last Humans: A New Dawn. In the first book in this series, Penny Castro survived the bio-warfare apocalypse and created a family. In this sequel, her post-apocalyptic idyll on their citrus ranch in California is interrupted by the US government’s plan to stop another attack…and get some revenge. Penny and husband Alex, along with others, are drafted to carry out the plan—in their case, forced to do so by the government’s kidnapping of their young children. But the enemy has surprises awaiting them when a submarine delivers them to that foreign shore. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold, even on Amazon (but not on Smashwords). And rest assured, the first book is still available, in both ebook and print formats.

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