Every so often I write an article about book piracy. It affects the whole industry negatively, of course, but it hurts self-published authors more than other authors and publishers. (Most of my books are self-published, hence my personal interest.) One of my doubts about the still-ongoing Draft2Digital (D2D)-Smashwords merger was that Mark Coker, the Smashwords owner, never saw piracy as a problem. It seems that his attitude has contaminated D2D. Let me explain.

Most of my books are self-published ebooks. These are just computer files, and computer files can be copied and/or changed. Moreover, diabolically clever people can turn those files into PDFs, and those, as most people know, are transportable across many electronic platforms, which is an ideal situation for book pirates. Amazon tries to combat this by using .mobi with DRM, but many readers don’t like DRM because they can only use the ebook on the computer they used for downloading the ebook; i.e., they can’t share the book with family members. (I have no problem with that, by the way, and wouldn’t even call it piracy because it’s akin to common praxis with print versions.)

There was even a “legal website,” OceanOfPDF.com, where the above process was done for visitors to that site; they could download a PDF for free. (For those who are slow on the uptake, let me state that “for free” means that the book’s author receives zero payment!) Authors naturally complained, and OceanOfPDF was offline for a while; but it came back, and even two of my most recent books, Legacy of Evil and Cult of Evil, both published via D2D, became available on the site.

I choose to offer free PDF downloads at this site (see the list on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page); they only represent a (big!) investment of time on my part, not money, and are my gifts to readers. An ebook I self-publish with Amazon, D2D, or Smashwords also represents an investment of time and money I’d like to at least recover by selling it and have a bit of spending money left over to invest in future books.

Bottom line: You’re participating in a criminal activity when you become a book pirate. You might consider it only petty theft (your Venti at Starbucks generally costs more than my ebook!), but it’s still a crime. Don’t do it!

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Rogue Planet. Did you like the “Game of Thrones” fantasy novels? This novel about an evil Iranian-like theocracy in the far future and a prince’s fight to overthrow it is hard sci-fi not fantasy. There are no dungeons, dragons, sorcerers, or other fantasy creatures, but you might think the stuggles are somewhat similar and perhaps more believable. Hard sci-fi is an extrapolation of reality not fantasy, after all!

This novel is set on a world outside the International Trade Union of Independent Planets (ITUIP), but ITUIP, created in the “Chaos Chronicles” series, plays an important role. From palace spies to warring armies, there’s enough intrigue and military action to keep the most adventurous sci-fi readers happy. Available wherever fine sci-fi literature is sold, in ebook or paper format (even on Amazon).

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

I read a lot more crime fiction than I write. In my earlier bows to British-style mysteries, I published a list of novels I’d read and could recommend reading. The number of books in this list has probably at least tripled as I kept my Covid-reading pace going, going, going…. But what’s clear about that list is that it’s better described as one for recommended crime fiction and its authors from all over the world, not just British authors (mostly English-speaking authors, of course, although I’ve been known to read a few crime stories written in French or Spanish, and the various English dialects might be considered to be foreign languages as well).

Classification of books is a dangerous game that I try to avoid playing, but there are many types of crime fiction. My use of the label “British-style mysteries” originally described mysteries following Agatha Christie’s blueprint, but even she tweaked and varied her crime fiction stories. Today we can say that they include police procedurals; special agents and spy stories, both domestic and foreign; investigative journalists and PIs; financial and political conspiracies; and many others. Many of their criminals come from all walks of life as well. In other words, the genre offers a lot of possibilities for plots, characters, settings, and so forth.

I’ve written some crime fiction about investigative journalism, most notably the novel The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan, where one main character is an investigative reporter; but I combined that with his sharing adventures with a special agent, a DHS profiler. Most of the “Esther Brookstone” novels contrast the work local police officers do with that of special agents going after national or international criminals. This blurring between the local and the national or international makes the plots more interesting!

Yet the motivations for the criminals seems to cut across all these subgenres of crime fiction; it’s summarized as follows: Human weakness including jealousy and greed leading to heinous acts of evil. That much is common enough, but also more common than not is the uplifting parts of the tales that show a variety of human beings rising up to bring criminals to justice. (Of course, they don’t always succeed, especially if the villain appears in multiple series.)

I usually respond to the question “What do you write?” with “mysteries, thrillers, and sci-fi.” I probably should simplify that answer even more: I write crime fiction. Consider my sci-fi trilogy “Chaos Chronicles.” Those three novels, Survivors of the Chaos, Sing a Zamba Galactica, and Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hand! are all about crimes committed on Earth, in the solar system, and in the galaxy beyond. Those battling the criminals aren’t always professional crimefighters, of course; they’re often not in more conventional crime fiction either. The villains also aren’t typical—they might even be ETs!—but they can be rather nasty at times.

I can summarize this article by stating that crime fiction, at least as I treat it, is a lot broader category than most readers think, and it often covers futuristic situations as well as past ones in historical crime fiction (see that list mentioned above—you’ll find it in the short-fiction collection Sleuthing British-Style). This breadth of crime fiction blows away the formulaic rom-coms, cozy mysteries, and fantasies that now glut the publishing world, from formulaic Big Five authors in particular.

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The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan. This crime novel features a DHS agent and an investigative reporter who uncover a government conspiracy. That conspiracy is run by a devious criminal mind who uses AI embedded in US agencies to further his evil plans that include the assassination of a US presidential candidate. The book is a bridge between the “Chen & Castilblanco,” “Esther Brookstone,” and “Steve Morgan” series and the “Clones & Mutants” trilogy, but it can be read and enjoyed independently. (Most of those novels have the same villain!) Available wherever quality ebooks are sold (even on Amazon).

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

You have to give that big Bezos bot and all his little bots credit: They’re very inventive about creating clever and multiple ways to scam readers, writers, and other customers. Are you surprised that Prime keeps going up and up? Are you surprised that they don’t stand by merchandise sold online?

For readers and writers, Vella is the new kid there on the Amazon block ready to fleece you. Maybe some people think they qualify as avid readers if they peruse Vella’s serialized prose, but no true avid reader would do that. Sure, you can get the first three chapters free, but then you need to buy tokens (Bezos’s version of FTX’s bitcoins?) to get the remainder of the novel. Your stash of tokens represents a zero-interest loan to Bezos until you cash them in, of course. The book’s author (c’est moi, par exemple) gets half the proceeds of the tokens you spend on their book; Amazon keeps the other half. The author still has to write a complete novel that people participating in this scam may or may not finish. Amazon as usual gets a lot for doing very little.

Even worse for readers, it’s impossible to get the Vella link off their Kindles! And that link now takes the place of the one for the Kindle store’s book section! In other words, you must go to the full Amazon site with all its nightmarish swamp of retail clutter to look for your next read, a damn waste of time! Pox on their house!

And Vella creates the same problem for authors as many of Amazon’s other “author services” have created: Exclusivity is required to use it. An author’s book has to be exclusive on Vella and not appear for sale anywhere else. That means a reader who wants to read it can only find the book in Amazon’s Vella list and not at any other online retailer. In other words, Vella is indeed a monopolistic service offered by this greedy retailer to scam readers and writers.

I will treat Amazon’s Vella the same way I treat all of Amazon’s nefarious “author services” that provide nothing positive for readers and writers: Boycott it! None of my recent novels are even on Amazon because I want to distribute them to as many online sites as possible, reaching out to readers everywhere. Amazon is no longer an online retailer readers and writers can trust.

But I’ve digressed. Does anyone want to get into a book and then have to purchase and spend some tokens to continue reading the next installment? How does that even work? If a novel has fifty chapters and I want to read beyond the first three, will I have forty-eight different ebook files? This whole concept doesn’t make sense! And you can bet that the publishers of books authored by Stephen King, David Baldacci, and other famous formulaic mares and stallions ready and waiting for the glue factory in the Big Five’s stables will ignore Vella to protect both their readers and big-name authors!

There are no positives for Vella and a whole bunch of negatives for both readers and writers. I don’t recommend it at all! Amazon continues to be the enemy of consumers with Vella.

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Evil Agenda. Some of my readers might remember that I serialized this second novel in the “Clones and Mutants Trilogy” and later published the full novel, but not on Vella! In other words, I invented Vella before the big Bezos bot and all his evil little bots ever thought of it! I didn’t see a great response to my serialization, and it might have reduced readership of the complete novel. In other words, my version of Vella was a flop as far as I’m concerned.

This novel still has a lot of good points, though, mostly because it’s a logical bridge to the third novel and shows how diabolical the villain Vladimir Kalinin really is. One mutant joins a clone and friends to do battle with old Vladimir in various parts of the world.

Available wherever quality ebooks are sold (even on Amazon, because it was published before my boycott). Of course, you might want to peruse the first and third novels as well, Full Medical and No Amber Waves of Grain. (Gee, I wonder how Vella handles series. The retail site’s bots don’t do too well matching books in a series either. Is it possible that the people at B&N are smarter than Bezos? Maybe Bezos is just an AI who hates humans? Where’s the Terminator when you need him?)

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

After writing my review of Jake Tapper’s new novel (last week’s post), I realized I could summarize it by saying it contains complexity but is lacking in plot. Like some of my own stories, it mixes real-world characters (Evel Kneival and Ronald Reagan, for example) and some based on real-world characters (Rupert Murdoch’s family, for example) with fictional characters. (My latest “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” and “Inspector Steve Morgan’ novels do that as well.) But mine are more than complex; I also emphasize plot!

Yet the question remains: Does complexity get in the way of the two more common elements of storytelling, namely plot and characterization? The answer: It depends. I’d suggest that Mr. Tapper and I share a common belief with many authors that our readers should have to work a bit as well, simply because fiction must seem real, and real life is complex. Ignoring any of our flaws for the moment, I and others (mostly small press- and self-published authors, of course—the Big Five’s authors are always perfect, aren’t they?) are told we have to sacrifice marketability to the masses to remain true to those more important literary standards. Said another way, authors who write pablum like Mr. Tapper and other celebs rarely write complex tales that make readers think about issues that go beyond pure entertainment, existential issues of our time, for example. Mr. Tapper perhaps focuses on a minor one in the grand scheme of things: Sensational journalism created by bending and distorting the truth. That’s too obvious a topic for arguably the best reporter on TV. I’ve considered it a few times but many more themes as well. The latter is why my writing must be complex.

Many people don’t want complexity when they read a book, if they read them at all. Subgenres like sappy romances, cozy mysteries, flighty fantasies, and others have become popular simply because readers can peruse them without thinking about the important topics too much. Books in these subgenres aren’t complex; they’re less deep than most young adult books, in fact!

Yes, complexity isn’t popular because it makes people think. Recently (10/23/2023), I saw an article in the NY Times about how quantum computers can end encryption schemes as we know them. I had to smile. This is the main theme of Leonardo and the Quantum Code (#5 in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series); that novel is complex. (I even define what an “entangled state” really is. Surprisingly, many researchers in that arcane area of science and technology don’t know the simple definition, which makes the topic complex, of course.) If this novel, where Russia, the UK, and the US are after the quantum tool that goes far beyond the one to decrypt the Enigma Code isn’t complex enough for you, or even just right for your reading adventures, you’re my kind of reader. If you say it’s too complex, I’m sorry. Please go away and find a silly romance or cozy mystery to read.

Complexity isn’t everything I look for in my own reading, but it’s important to me as a reader as much as it is for me as an author. Mr. Tapper’s book wasn’t satisfying for me in that sense as much as other mystery/thriller novels (if that’s what it was). And I certainly can’t criticize it for being too complex.

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Son of Thunder. While Leonardo and the Quantum Code isn’t the most complex novel in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, this second book in the series probably is because it’s historically complex. Three stories run through it until they finally come together, similar to Mr. Tapper’s sister-and-brother stories mentioned above, but these are much more meaningful. The reader can think of this novel as The DaVinci Code done right because historical events contained within are real and true (most of Dan Brown’s weren’t, but that was because he was scammed into believing questionable sources!). The earliest story is about the life of St. John the Divine: I conjecture that the missing years between the Crucifixion and his death were spent as a rebel and missionary with time off taken to care of Mary, the mother of Christ! The next story is where Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli goes to Turkey in search for St. John’s tomb. The third is where Esther tries to prove the artist was never there, but she must change her mind when documents found at the “House of Mary” shrine lead her to that very tomb! (That house is indeed a Vatican shrine; Botticelli’s visit was my invention…but it could have happened.) The complexity here is intentional, of course, making this Esther Brookstone story one of the best in the series, a mystery/thriller story certainly differing from any other you’ll read and designed to make you wonder, can all this really have occurred?

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

All the Demons are Here. Jake Tapper, author (2023). It seems that everyone wants to write a novel now. Actually not—most people don’t have the endurance to run that literary marathon—but Mr. Tapper has written three. I read a previous one, The Hellfire Club (I can’t remember if I wrote a review of it because I’m not that motivated to help out Big Five publishing conglomerates), and this one is a mixed bag in comparison.

The historical setting might interest a lot of people of my generation. (As an observer of society in general and a political observer in particular, necessary for my own writing, post-Nixon, pre-Reagan years represent the times many of us came of age like Ike, one of the protagonists—the other is his younger sister Lucy.

However, you might get the feeling that “Hey, I don’t remember that happening!” or “I never heard that song!” or whatever, and more often than not you’d be justified. Check the end notes. Tapper made up a lot of stuff and admits it, and that all became annoying to me. (This includes stuff about Evel Knieval and Elvis Presley.) Join me in feeling a bit swindled.

Those examples are minor criticisms, though, compared to the feeling that it’s hard to know where Jake is going with the plot. It alternates between Ike and Lucy from chapter to chapter, their two stories written in the first person. Do they come together? Beyond certain limitations (mostly with point of view), there’s nothing much wrong with this ping-pong match between main characters. I used it myself a while ago in A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse. (It’s a sci-fi rom-com, so the two protagonists are intimately involved from the start—Mr. Tapper’s never really are.) But Ike’s story revolves around the drunk, show-boating Evel; and Lucy’s around sleazy Max Lyons and his family, a fictional caricature of the Murdoch family. You wait and wait for the two stories to come together. It takes fourteen chapters to even get to where something interesting occurs that brings the siblings’ stories together and make the plot worthwhile. Maybe you should just read this novel for its chapters fifteen to eighteen? Of course, that all occurred on a dark and stormy night!

The reference to Agatha Christie is almost blasphemy, by the way. This is no mystery tale. Is it a historical thriller? Maybe. Is it a political thriller? Perhaps. Or maybe a manual on how to ride a motorcycle? Whatever it is, it’s not a mystery. It’s more an anthem celebrating how honest journalism always wins, as it should, considering it’s Jake Tapper writing!

I’m not sure it’s a thriller either. The book is advertised that way, and the endorsements (Connelly? Coben? Really?) express this, but its thrills are few and far between and mostly in those last three chapters.

I don’t know how to classify this novel, but I have little to recommend it, even if you think Mr. Tapper is the best political reporter on TV now. (He is.)

Note to Jake: I generally don’t purchase Big Five books. This one was a gift.

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A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse. There are a lot of historical events, politics, and comments of human societies, past and present, in this sci-fi rom-com that unlike many time-travel stories does time travel right, by jumping through the multiverse among different possible states of the universe we inhabit. It gives a new meaning of “lost in space-time” to “lost in space,” and the protagonists, physicist Gail and her tech Jeff, have many adventures along the way as their relationship matures. You’ll either hate me or love me for my comments on our past, present, and future as you read about their travels. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold.

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

Post-apocalyptic literature considers a possible if bleak future, so I suppose that one quality might make it sci-fi. It also teaches important lessons and provides warnings about when human beings are currently making mistakes, something it also shares with general sci-fi literature. But it’s often far from space exploration and ETs. The standard trappings of sci-fi, especially those of space opera (like movies from the Star Wars franchise), just aren’t there, though.

It’s hard to write post-apocalyptic literature. First, you have to create a believable apocalypse. A beta-reader for The Last Humans (the first novel in the trilogy of the same name) didn’t find its apocalypse too believable. I’m guessing that the Covid pandemic changed that opinion. The apocalypse in the novel is a bioengineered virus that spreads around the world. If you believe the Chinese, Covid wasn’t bioengineered in their Wuhan lab, but it still spread around the world. We know now that a viral apocalypse is a real possibility!

For that novel, I was more interested in the survivors. The main character, Penny Castro, an ex-USN SAR diver working for the LA Sheriff Department, rises to the challenge of surviving that apocalypse. That first novel (published by Black Opal Books) ends with some semblance of normalcy as Penny and her new family create a new life on a citrus ranch.

Of course, unless an apocalypse kills everyone (then there are no stories to follow!), there are the good, bad, and ugly among the survivors. Penny, her family, and her friends are among the good ones; others might want to finish destroying the world; and still others, driven by different motives, might want to stop them. The second novel in the trilogy, A New Dawn, picks up this theme. That theme continues in another part of the world in the third novel, Menace from Moscow (published just this year), tests Penny and her family again.

Now that I’ve finished this trilogy, I must say that it doesn’t seem to be much like sci-fi! A worldwide pandemic is clearly possible (Covid was one!), and the post-apocalyptic situation that follows that apocalypse is more like a standard thriller story. Penny is a noble warrior, a survivalist who changes history and leaves the world in better shape by doing so. This often occurs in real life: So many of our veterans are heroes in this sense.

In brief, I’ll continue to call this trilogy a collection of three post-apocalyptic thrillers. Readers can call it sci-fi if they wish. In any case, I hope readers will find it both profound and entertaining.

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“The Last Humans” Trilogy. Ex-USN SAR diver comes up after locating a victim for the LA Sheriff Department only to find a world gone mad. Missiles targeted at the US West Coast have released a killer virus that goes round the world on the prevailing winds. Her initial struggles for survival are described in the first novel, The Last Humans. Her battle to prevent an “improved version” of the virus to be released is found in the second, A New Dawn. And preventing enemy-survivors from recovering nuclear missiles tests Penny’s resolve even further in the third, Menace from Moscow. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold. (The first novel also has a print edition.)

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

In my stories, I have several cameos where I become a bookstore owner. Ever since I realized as a tween that I had no future as a major league catcher (my hero was Roy Campanella, by the way, not Yogi Berra), I wanted to become a writer. Barring that, because I was an avid reader, a bookstore owner.

I browsed bookstores as a precocious tween and teen as much as I did our public library, both like an old 49er panning for gold. I’d read books like Brave New World and 1984 long before I had to study them in a special extracurricular early-morning high school class during my senior year. Back then, bookstores had few lounging areas and no coffee and pastries. Times have changed, and they’re mostly more welcoming now. (Many smaller ones still ignore self-published authors, of course. Maybe because of space limitations, they’ve become faithful sycophants of the Big Five publishers.)

I expect online bookstores to be welcoming as well. Amazon fails miserably in that sense (as well as many others, of course). They’re an online version of Walmart filled mostly with cheap trash (or maybe Walmart makes the mistake of emulating them?), denying its origins as a lowly bookstore to become the country’s biggest retailer. The many products of questionable quality that they sell includes many books I refuse to read. (Shlock from the Big Five’s formulaic authors or from some ghostwriter penning a book for a celeb just doesn’t interest me.)

I usually don’t promote commercial enterprises in this blog or on my website, but I’ll make an exception now for Barnes and Noble (B&N). They have become my go-to bookstore, both in its local stores and online where I can easily browse at either one. While you might have other places to browse for new (and old!) books, my book links in the ads found at the end of blog posts like this one generally take you to B&N’s online store.

For the most part, these links are included just as an aid your browsing. You can purchase my books (most of them are downloadable ebooks) wherever quality ebooks are sold as well as “borrow them” from many lending services because I distribute them widely via Draft2Digital and Smashwords (now one and the same outfit). B&N is one of many retailers I distribute to (Amazon no longer is), but it has the advantage that it’s both a physical and digital bookstore! Moreover, I like the way they present my books to readers, organizing series with nary a word from me, for example. And they don’t sell a lot of other merchandise to confuse your book buying like Amazon does. (I don’t know why the latter retailer has such a large percentage of book sales, in fact. They certainly don’t deserve them because they’ve expanded so much into e-commerce hell and done a lot to maximize the torture!)

B&N’s physical bookstores have always been a nice place to hang out too, often containing little snack bars and comfortable seating for readers looking for their next book, or even just to pass the time browsing. In fact, I believe there’s a new policy where different physical bookstores can become creative with the perks they offer to readers who visit.

I suppose I should up my level of cameos? Maybe I should pretend I’m the CEO of a great service for readers like B&N’s? I’m all for a bookstore that helps readers find exciting books to read, after all. B&N offers that in spades!

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“Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries” trilogy. I put the protagonist, ex-USN Master-at-Arms Maria Jose Melendez aka Mary Jo, through a lot of bad situations in these three thriller novels. They’re centered around campaigns by various powers, Russia, China, and the US, who want MECHs tech (that’s “Mechanically Enhanced Cybernetic Humans”). In the first novel, Mary Jo gets blamed for both Russia’s stealing of MECH prototypes and killing her sister and brother-in-law; she must save the MECHs and clear her name. In the second, both Russia and the US are after the MECHs (Mary Jo agreed to let them try to live a normal life in the first novel), and she acquires a stalker just to complicate things. In the third, China tries to force Mary Jo to divulge the MECHs’ whereabouts. Readers will experience near-future mystery, suspense, and thrills as they read about Mary Jo’s wild adventures. Or is it a possible present we don’t know about?

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

…is rare but probably more common that a lot of people might believe. I’m not talking about the awful slapstick humor found in space operas (Han’s interactions with Leia, for example, are pathetic) but quality humor dealing with the human (and ET?) condition. Damon Knight’s “To Serve Man” is a short story that created a classic Twilight Zone episode, for example. From C. M. Kornbluth’s “Marching Morons” (no, that famous novella isn’t about the MAGA minions who follow that “f&^%ing moron”—ex-SecState Tillerson’s quote is one of the best to come out of that awful president’s administration, by the way) to the robot in a classic TV series (“Danger, danger, Will Robinson”), a reader, viewer, or reviewer can find all brands of humor (the Knight and Kornbluth examples are political irony, of course). And sci-fi authors often make fun of the past and present with their tales about the future, often at the expense of the VIPs from that past or present.

You’d think that predicting the future is serious business, of course, but extrapolating current or past events in a way they can be lampooned (both classic sci-fi examples above do that) is a special art. I’ll admit I’m not very good at it, but I’ve done my share. Most of my efforts can be found in my short fiction (short stories and novellas) buried in a few published collections and a lot of free PDF downloads (see the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page). There’s also A. B. Carolan’s The Secret Lab. Its very title is a bit impish, something a few reviewers missed entirely and then repeated their errors with The Secret of the Urns, if memory serves. And if a mutant cat who can teach kids calculus doesn’t tickle your funny bone, you don’t have a sense of humor, let alone appreciate humor in sci-fi.

A better example from my opus is A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse. This novel is hard sci-fi in the sense that it’s time travel done right (no paradoxes here if you can get beyond the “time machine” being an old dentist’s chair), but it’s a sci-fi rom-com as well that might serve well as a TV soap opera (if it passed the censors, of course, because it also intentionally lampoons a lot of past and current events).

I’ve looked for other examples of humor in sci-fi. Sure, there are bits and pieces here and there, but it isn’t all that common. Maybe we should write more humorous sci-fi stories? There are certainly a lot of politicians and other VIPs in compromising situations to lampoon!

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Sci-fi mysteries for young adults from A. B. Carolan. Assuming these books aren’t banned in your area (or burned?) because some idiot finds them offensive, I believe these novels are appropriate for young adults (and adults who are young at heart!). They extrapolate today’s trials and tribulations for tweens and teens into the far future to allow serious yet sometimes humorous discussions (and quality book reports at schools not participating in book banning). The first three, The Secret Lab, The Secret of the Urns, and Mind Games, take huge steps along the fictional future history timeline found in my more serious sci-fi novels, The last one, Origins, supposedly the first in a trilogy, must stand alone for now until A. B. finishes the last two novels in the trilogy, and it does that quite well with all its action restricted to Earth and a conspiracy involving ancient hominids. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold (some of them even on Amazon).

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

Authors’ weapons are their words and their military campaigns their novels. Considering these truths, I’ve done my part to wage battles against autocrats. The Midas Bomb (2009), one of my early novels, painted Venezuela as an autocratic hell—something it became beyond anything I could imagine—and that theme appeared later as well, most notably in Soldiers of God (2008), where yet another Venezuelan dictator launches the first nuclear attack in the Southern Hemisphere against Colombia. The bad guys in my stories run from the ubiquitous gangsters and vicious killers who plague our societies to very real and infamous monsters like Putin and Xi—the last are real autocratic villains I go after in the “Esther Brookstone” (2017-2022) and “Steve Morgan” (2022-2023) series.

I suppose a Big Five traditional publisher would cringe at my using real autocrats like Putin and Xi as villains. Because I’m mostly a self-published author (especially now after questionable experiments with traditional publishing), I don’t care what traditional publishers and their authors might have to say, especially those among the Big Five conglomerates! Certain politicians on the far right might love Putin, for example, but I don’t expect them to be reading anything worthwhile, let alone my stories! (And if they’re fascists like Putin, I wouldn’t give a damn about what they think of me anyway.) On the other hand, one can argue that using real villains like Putin and Xi makes my fiction seem more real, something Tom Clancy championed for mystery/thriller novels.

As a bow to these legal concerns any of my readers might have, though, I’ve now put in my copyright statements similar to the following: “This book 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 story. 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.” The last is a bit of humor, of course. Let some corporate lawyer figure out how to sue one of my characters for libel and slander, especially some nitwit representing Putin, Xi, or some other infamous autocrat! Not even our biased SCOTUS fascist judges would vote to hear such a case.

Considering all the above, I think I’ve done my part in waging a just war against autocrats. Villains like Putin, Xi, and their fascist friends and minions now common in many democracies, including the US, don’t receive many positive descriptions in my stories, to say the least. On the contrary, I wage a literary war on them, a war of words! Perhaps if every author did that, this world might be a better place.

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“Inspector Steve Morgan” trilogy. These three novels that logically continue the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series is about evil. The first and third novels are basically about Russian and Chinese evildoers; the second is more about an evil cult because populist demagogues love to form cults of personalities. They are all set in the Bristol area of England in the near future and show how unsung heroes can stand up against powerful tyrannical despots in times of need.

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

I tried traditional publishing a bit. While my two small presses gave me some TLC, and I met some new friends among their authors, there wasn’t enough to keep me hitting my head against the wall. I returned to self-publishing, specifically with Draft2Digital (now merged with Smashwords).

Sometimes I get reminders that this was a wise decision. The formulaic old mares and stallions in the Big Five traditional publishing conglomerates are struggling to keep relevant. Patterson pathetically pimping his most recent book (one always wonders how much of his novels are written by his co-authors!) in prime-time TV is one huge reminder. The lawsuit against the creators of ChatGPT by the Authors Guild (a pawn of the Big Five) and many of these same old mares and stallions is ill-conceived as well. Are they going to chase after every maker of AI software? They’d be better off getting laws passed that make it as illegal to use AI as it is to pirate books.

And then there’s Amazon. While the above gave me pause, what the big Bezos bot and his minions send to my Kindle are ubiquitous reminders of the Big Five’s complicity in trying to ensure that no matter how, they’ll scam the American public. Daniel Silva’s new book The Collector reminded me like a splash of ice water to the face that the Big Five aren’t above using any technique to sell books. Silva’s book not only has a similar title—legal because titles can’t be copyrighted (mine might have been the same as some preceding novels’ as well)—from the hype in the Amazon’s ad, it seems to have a similar plot.

My novel is evergreen—i.e., it’s as entertaining and fresh as the day I finished the manuscript (it’s in the “Detectives Chen & Castilblanco” series, if you’re interested), published in 2009, not 2023 like Silva’s. I have no right to complain to Mr. Silva, although I suspect he wouldn’t give a rat’s ass if I did, and I suspect that his publisher will sell many more copies than I ever will even though his story might be as formulaic as other Big Five’s. I also don’t believe that Mr. Silva read my novel and decided to write something similar.

This is just something mystery/thriller writers have to expect will occur from time to time. If only because situations human beings face aren’t unique, stories from two or more different authors can be similar. My novel deals with stolen art, multiple paintings, but it focuses on what they’re used for. Apparently Silva’s only deals with one, although that’s not important. There’s a woman involved in both books—from Silva’s ad, his seems to be more of a femme fatale like mine in The Midas Bomb; mine in The Collector is a bit more ordinary and more interesting as a consequence, in my opinion. Silva’s plot (using only the information from the ad) seems a lot simpler (read: insulting to one’s intelligence), which might also be a negative for many readers (including me!).

I’ve never been motivated to read anything by Mr. Silva. His fiction, like most peddled by the Big Five, doesn’t appeal to me. But I’m happy to see that I can construct a complex story that just might be similar to one written by a Big Five writer later. That in itself motivates me to keep writing. Those Big Five formulaic authors need new ideas after all!

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“Detectives Chen & Castilblanco” series. These two NYPD detectives’ cases go from local settings in the Big Apple to those of national and international settings. The nine-book series (one novel is free—see the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page to download Defanging the Red Dragon) will provide readers hours of exciting mystery/thriller entertainment.

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