I want to expand a wee bit on what I’ve said about titles in this blog (much of that is contained in my little course “Writing Fiction,” a PDF available as a free download—see the webpage “Free Stuff & Contests” for other free PDFs and download instructions). In particular, I want to discuss series titles v. book titles and how they should shake hands if possible (big caveat there). I’ll use my own oeuvre for examples (both good and bad) because I know it best, and I know what thoughts I had when I created the series and book titles. Believe me, I’ll learn from this analysis too. (If you feel that this is a veiled marketing effort, you’re wrong. It’s more in line with “confession is good for the soul.”)

My detective series is called “The Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series.” Donna Carrick, of Carrick Publishing, the publisher of this seven-book series (maybe there’ll be more), and I often call it “C&C” for short. That title accomplishes two things: it tells the reader it’s about two detectives—NYPD homicide detectives, in fact—and it fixes in their minds the main characters. That’s all and good, but it fails in one respect: their cases often become national and even international; in other words, they often go beyond NYC where they usually start. That international aspect is an important of the series and makes it much more than a series of books about police procedural, but I’ve chosen to emphasize that national and international aspect in some of the titles.

Consider Aristocrats and Assassins: while there are wannabe aristocrats in the U.S., especially among one-percenters, the true aristocrats are in Europe.  In this novel, that’s where all the action takes place. On the other hand, I failed miserably with Family Affairs and Gaia and the Goliaths because the titles don’t indicate that much of the action is international or has international implications, and it is and does.

On the other hand, these last two titles work in other ways. Family Affairs is all about families—Detective Castilblanco’s, Detective Chen’s, and another character’s (although you have to wait a wee bit for that twist to appear). And if you recognize the word “Gaia” as the Greek name for Earth, you might make the leap and conclude that the novel has an environmental theme, and that is international.  Authors can make these trade-offs between series titles and book titles. I don’t know how well I’ve done that, but it’s a lot better than one-word titles that don’t say much—another “Gone…” book or alphabet book (“A is for…”).  We need to put some thought into series and book titles.

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It’s not just a time for burgers and beer; it’s a time to remember what’s made America a shining beacon for freedom-loving people everywhere, a light to shine upon the darkness for those escaping war, famine, and natural disasters and those who want a better life; and it’s a time to be with our families and friends and those we have welcomed to our shores in celebrating our independence. Help make America sane again! And please, drive carefully and drink responsibly.

Even if you’re creative and want to write your own stories, there are plenty of people who throw up roadblocks—sometimes not intentionally, but irksome all the same. Many “writing coaches” will tell you to “know your market” or “write to sell.” I’m sorry. I don’t ever recommend that advice. You should write what you want to write, what you can be passionate about. That’s why including themes in fiction to make plots more interesting are so important to me, for example. As a reader, I don’t read fluff, even if fluff is the fad; as a writer, I don’t write it either, even though that’s they say that’s where the market is.  Each of my books has at least two themes. And I write want I want.  You should too.

Maybe not following all the writing gurus’ advice is why I don’t have many readers, but those gurus often have some words of advice that just don’t sit well with me: “Don’t worry if you book doesn’t sale. Just write the next book.” Maybe, like me, you’ve done that a few times, not because the writing gurus say so, but because we have many stories to tell…and we want to tell them! Yes, I realize the market can be fickle, but that’s just the point: I have to be true to myself and write the kind of stories I like to read, not those that someone tells me to read or write.

The pundits might also say, “Don’t set the bar too high, because most writers don’t sell many copies of their books.” Yes, those are the stats—we sell even less now on the average because readership is down in general. Older people read more than millennials, according to stats, yet other stats say young people are the most likely to read ebooks (different samples or ways of collecting the stats, I’m sure).  Don’t get the idea that you should be writing geriatric fiction or ebooks for millennials, though. If your book comes out that way, but market pressures should never affect your art.

Older people like exciting fiction just as much as anyone, although they might like it not to be fluff. And young adults probably do too, if they bother to read—that uptick in young readership with Harry Potter is a thing of the past, and the number of them preferring ebooks is irrelevant if not many are reading. Video games, streaming video, music and music videos, and social media take more of everyone’s entertainment time now, but especially for young adults and millennials. So why shouldn’t we write what we want to write, ignoring the pundits who want us to be consoled about our meager book sales by the fact that other authors are struggling too?  Some consolation!

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We all know how Facebook contributed, unknowingly or otherwise, to elect Trump and support BREXIT. If not intentionally, then their business model needs serious fixing; if intentionally, someone needs to go to jail! Other social media sites, email services, and web browsers are also guilty of sharing our personal information with anyone who will pay them money.

How does this affect authors? Why should we be concerned? Because nowadays social media and email are valuable tools in many ways, we would like to know that it can be trusted to keep our readers’ information safe. It’s now obvious we can’t do that.

Verizon owns both AOL and Yahoo now. Google’s Gmail is required by many cellphone providers. All three, like Facebook and Twitter, have privacy policies that allow them to steal information from those emails and sell it. The big boys are up to their necks in data mining. It’s not just the data-mining firms anymore.

Microsoft hasn’t done anything particularly wrong (I don’t know about Bing if it still exists, or their mail packages), but they are terribly annoying. It used to be that I could pick and choose what updates I wanted in Win 8.1 or Win 10. Now I can’t. Even worse, Microsoft now takes over my computer, downloads, and installs crap that I never use.  My choices are “Update and Shutdown” or “Update and Restart”—when that takes valuable time away from my writing, you can imagine how I curse Bill Gates and his band of thieves. I should also mention that they’ve decided not to support certain versions of Office so they can charge me for a new one. That’s not just abuse—it’s highway robbery!

Add to all that the Dark Web where I’ve seen pirated versions of ebooks, including my own, offered for free, and one has to wonder if the internet is an author’s friend. But it doesn’t stop there. Net neutrality is dead. Congress killed it. Authors’ businesses are small potatoes compared to mega-corporations. Don’t you think that internet service providers will coddle the users who will pay more? I already experience daily several periods of slowdowns or drop-outs as Comcast panders to their big money clients. They’d rather have gamers and streaming video watchers hogging the bandwidth than tend to an author’s needs. Nobody reads anymore, right? Literacy and reading be damned.

The only thing an author can do is to speak out against this abuse from tech companies. They’ll probably try to make sure the word won’t get out, of course, but the word is already out. And we can always attack them in our fiction. In libris libertas…and let’s have a saner and safer internet!

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Did you miss The Secret Lab? This sci-fi mystery for young adults features four tweens in the future living on the International Space Station who try to discover the origins of a mathematical mutant cat. Available in ebook format on Amazon and Smashwords and all their affiliated ebook retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo etc) and in a print version on Amazon.  And don’t miss the next A. B. Carolan YA sci-fi mystery The Secret of the Urns—coming soon!

In libris libertas!

Summer reading. Whether on the beach, at a mountain campsite or cabin, or at home on the porch, summer is the time to catch up on your reading. With so many good books and good authors to choose from, what are you waiting for?

The Great Spring Thaw Sale is almost over. Summer has started, after all, although sometimes it doesn’t look like it. For your summer reading, check out the ebooks still on sale at my Smashword’s author page. Have a great summer!

Love-hate relationship with the NY Times. Here’s a recent title from one of their articles (you can guess the date): “22.5 Degree Planetary Lean on the Longest Day of the Year Drives a Debate.” The debate: with all the planets recently discovered, whether a tilt is necessary for life to begin (a common sci-fi theme). The nitpick: The Earth tilts all the time, not just “on the longest day”!

Rules for comments. Some readers of this blog might wonder why their comment hasn’t appeared. There’s a simple reason: they didn’t follow the rules. I love to receive comments on my blog posts, but I have rules—see them on my “Join the Conversation” webpage. If you can follow these reasonable rules, you’re welcome to comment on posts. Otherwise, don’t bother.

Freebies. I only give away ebooks in exchange for an honest review—that goes for all my ebooks, because they all need more reviews. I give away print books for promo purposes (that includes copies to a few public libraries). Otherwise, I don’t give away books, and I find authors and publicists’ logic for doing so specious. If you need a “free fix,” offer to write a review.  Or you can read free short stories from A. B. Carolan and me on my blog, and other free short fiction (short story collections and novellas)—see the list on my “Free Stuff & Contests” webpage and follow the download directions.

Big Five attack? Many of us read indie books and traditionally published books from small presses (I’m a mongrel—I publish with both). The Big Five publishing conglomerates now have a new tactic: new books have premium prices, with ebooks almost costing as much as print.  But they also sell old books in ebook format by established authors at low prices to compete with the afore-mentioned segment of the market.

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I don’t know about you, but I sometimes think about what my life might have been if I chose to follow one of the professions that attracted me as a kid. Beyond the usual fireman, policeman, or doctor, I had a few unusual ones on my childhood list.

I read a lot—comics at first and then short fiction and novels. Many of the latter were sci-fi, so I imagined myself as a space explorer. Dare I say “rocket man”? In other words, a fellow who flew spaceships and went where no one has gone before in the cosmos. The closest I came to that was in my previous life as a scientist. I suppose some of my sci-fi that’s more space operatic owes a bit to those imaginings, but my ETs as an author are a lot better (see, for example, The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection).

I also read mysteries and thrillers (back then the latter were called adventure stories). I imagined myself as a detective, either PI or cop, a fellow walking around with a toothpick in his mouth and solving complex crimes. I suppose my Detective Castilblanco owes some of his characteristics to that imagining. Of course he’s hooked on Tums, not a toothpick, because he likes spicy ethnic foods (so do I).

I loved music, although my tastes were somewhat abnormal, I suppose. At first, my instrument was the trombone. I imagined myself in a dance band or orchestra; I liked both, and I did both, not professionally of course because I realized I wasn’t quite good enough. That trombone solo in Mahler’s third mentioned in the sequel to Rembrandt’s Angel? I could play that. Later, I learned the guitar (folk music took off) and sold that in Colombia to buy a tiple, a typical instrument from that country. Around forty, I learned the piano.  My teacher actually got me to play some Beethoven, but now I just play melody with the right hand and chords with the left, noodling with the help of a fake book (no relation to “fake news”). Music plays a big role in Mayhem, Murder, and Music, a free short story collection you can download (see the webpage “Free Stuff & Contests” for directions).

I also thought I might become an anthropologist or archaeologist. I read all the books about anthropology I could find in our hometown’s public library—Margaret Meade and a lot of others. I decided human beings were just too complicated to study scientifically. That’s how I opted for science and mathematics; both seemed a lot easier than studying human beings.  Some of that predilection for the social sciences went into the short story “Marcello and Me,” which A. B. Carolan has turned into a spiffy new novel (see below—the main character Asako is a sociologist).

With all the above, some readers might ask why I’m now a fiction writer. There are many reasons, of course, but you can probably imagine one: With my characters, I can do all the professions mentioned above! Not only that, so can you, dear reader. Only writing fiction allows that.

The only occupation mentioned that hasn’t been filled by one of my characters is anthropologist, although Asako comes close (much closer in Carolan’s book than in my short story, in fact). Creating such a character seems difficult, but I like challenges. Given all the good books and good authors, does any reader know of any novel where one of the main characters is an anthropologist? I might be onto something here.

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Did you miss The Secret Lab? This sci-fi mystery for young adults features four tweens in the future living on the International Space Station who try to discover the origins of a mathematical mutant cat. Available in ebook format on Amazon and Smashwords and all their affiliated ebook retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo etc) and in a print version on Amazon.  And don’t miss the next A. B. Carolan YA sci-fi mystery The Secret of the Urns—coming soon!

In libris libertas….

As opposed to ETs? Or a contradiction? As a reader, I peruse a novel as if I’m going to review it, which I often do. Reading that way, you’re bound to notice things. One common observation I have is that some authors’ characters don’t seem human, even if they’re supposed to be.

Sometimes I can see that an author does this intentionally, creating a “larger than life” cartoonish character. This often occurs in humorous stories. When it happens in more serious prose, a reader has to wonder. A character doesn’t have to be cartoonish to seem less than human, though.

The spectrum of human behavior is wide, but every point on it is human. You can create a psychotic villain, but his (or her) abhorrent behavior still must seem human. A protagonist might make superhuman efforts, but they still have to be humanly possible given the character’s mental and physical conditioning.

Good fiction has to seem real, even sci-fi and fantasy; within the worlds the author creates, characters must seem real. Some Harry Potter characters have strange powers, but in the wizards’ world, that is normal behavior.  And they have very human emotions otherwise.

We often describe certain characters as two-dimensional. What we really mean is that they don’t seem human. Secondary characters often seem two-dimensional. Authors can make those seem more human in the descriptions of how the main characters interact with them.

This isn’t as difficult as it seems. I’ve been observing human behavior since I was a child, both directly and indirectly in the media. That’s all you need to do. Just make each character’s behavior an amalgam of some of that observed behavior.

In other words, every author should be an amateur psychologist, noting how people react to other people, settings, and situations.  We tend to be introverts, but that doesn’t stop us from being observers. In fact, maybe introverts are the best observers…and best writers. Extroverts will often step in to be part of what’s going on; introverts can sit back and observe both introverts and extroverts. By collecting notes on human behavior, they can create better characters.

Of course, don’t forget to study yourself! A bit of self-analysis goes a long ways. You know that person the best, or should. There’s nothing wrong with including characters with your best and worst traits, for example. Any trick that makes you a better writer is fair game. And knowing ourselves well just might save us the cost of a psychologist or psychiatrist!

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For readers interested in interesting stories and characters—humans and ETs, heroes and villains—The Great Spring Thaw Sale continues. For example, The Collector just went on sale.  Check my Smashwords author page for all my ebooks. Even if they’re not on sale, the prices are very reasonable.  And all books are as current today as when I wrote them.

In libris libertas!

(James Comey, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, Flat Iron, 2018, ISBN 978-1-250-19245-5)

I don’t like to read celeb books. Famous people hire a ghostwriter to turn experiences, opinions, reminisces, and disordered notes about them into a book, and many readers will pay top dollar to read it, which often fattens that celeb’s already bloated bank account. The Big Five publishers rush to publish books like that because of those readers. And, as good as the ghostwriter might be (sometimes they get co-author status in small print), these tell-all memoirs are usually ho-hum and self-aggrandizing tales of the rich, powerful, and/or has-beens.

I so rarely read these books that friends and family take pity on me because they think I might be missing something I’d like. This books is an example. Even though it sounded intriguing when it came out, I’m enough up on the news that I didn’t think there would be much in it that I didn’t already know—not details but the general plot. They also know I wouldn’t spend money on such a book. With the Kindle edition at $14.99 (at least three ebooks worth in my budget, although I have a bundle of three books at $5.99) and the hardcover at $13.38 (you read correctly—it’s marked $29.99 retail, but I guess Amazon decided to “discount” the hardcover more than the ebook at the time I checked…go figure), I would have waited to either buy it used or borrow it from the public library.

That’s my little story about how I came by this book, a big story that Mr. Comey tells about the cesspool that is Washington politics. He is a celeb, of course, maybe more so now than when he wrote the book. But this isn’t the typical celeb’s book. He actually has written something that’s worth reading.

Comey was famous even before the 2016 election and the later skirmishes with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. He helped end the mafia of days of yore and stranglehold of the Gambino family; he prosecuted Martha Stewart; and he created the special counsel the put “Scooter” Libby where he belonged. You probably heard more about those three people, though, than about James Comey. They were more infamous celebs. (The last prosecution explains Mr. Trump’s pardon of Libby as a way to get back at Comey. The next-to-last explains the rumor about another potential pardon for the same reason. Mr. Trump is a vengeful man who holds a grudge.)

The 2016 election changed everything. The FBI was investigating Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server, more for the possibility she had violated national security rules for dealing with classified material (those who have security clearances might still wonder why she wasn’t prosecuted for that) and Donald Trump and his minions’ possible collusion with the Russians (they already knew about their cyberattacks on the U.S.). Mr. Comey was no longer working in the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District (starting there under Giuliani, a man Comey describes with no kind words, to be sure). He was no longer the Deputy Attorney General who became acting AG for an ailing John Ashcroft. He was Director of the FBI since 2013, taking over from Bob Mueller, and Comey was expecting to serve his country in Washington for ten years.

So, what about the book? Let me take a novelist’s point of view. The plot here is well done, interesting and complex. The characters are well drawn, none of them two-dimensional and most of them flawed. The setting, the DC power scene, is well described with all its warts and surreal nature. Make no mistake, this is a novel. But the writer didn’t have to follow Clancy’s advice and make his fiction seem real. Here the reality slaps you in the face and tells you to wake up and smell the cesspool. That’s what DC is—not a swamp—and the cesspool stinks more than ever before. In this autobiographical novel, James Comey writes like a novelist, and his story about his struggles in the halls of power often reads like a mystery/thriller. Comey is telling a story, his story, and he tells it well. (An aside: I like that he uses the Oxford comma in his title!)

I suppose I shouldn’t sing the praises of a man so many people hate, but like Comey and unlike many others in our nation’s capital, I believe in doing what’s right to the best of my abilities. In that sense, those same haters are disrespecting an honorable man who believes he’s done what’s right for the country and the integrity of the FBI as an independent police force. He might be wrong, but I don’t think so. Maybe he could have done things differently and still act rightly. Read the book before you make your decision about that.

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Sometimes a reader or interviewer asks me, “Do you have afavorite novel?”  While I often write about favorites in posts to my Facebook page on Tuesdays, my general answer is that I have a lot of favorites. I don’t measure them by how much I remember about the story, nor by whether I’m motivated to read them a second time, but by the memory of how much the story entertained me and/or made my life more meaningful. All the book hype in the world can’t tell me if that will happen.

I’ve recently noticed many mystery novels have hype something like “…and the reader will experience a story with an unexpected twist.”  Maybe even twists.  Other people I know have noticed this too. Some overly zealous marketer (who doesn’t read?) must have thought, “Mysteries, twists,” and decided including the keyword “twist” in a blurb or its title would sell books. I don’t know about you, but I ignore a book with that kind do hype.

Part of the enjoyment of a book lies in the discovery process—not in someone telling you it’s going to happen, but when you discover it happens. Whether they’re twists in a mystery or action in a thriller or a monster’s curse in a horror story or quirky ETs in a sci-fi tale, discovery is part of the excitement.

I suppose this relates to spoilers. Hype can be a spoiler. Saying “There’s a great twist” is almost as bad as saying who the murderer was, and so forth. Whether publicists write such hype or the authors do, it’s not effective. Just the opposite!

Book hype also occurs in reviews. I’m guilty of that myself sometimes, expressing enthusiasm for a book I’ve read with zero-content words and phrases. First, reviewers are readers, and sometimes they act as cheerleaders, publicists more than critics. I’m speaking to criticism, of course, in the general sense of a careful analysis of book quality—the good, the bad, and the ugly. As reviewers, we can play the hype game, but we’re obligated to back it up with analysis. Very few reviews on Amazon do this. They should be ignored if they don’t. (Unfortunately Amazon encourages this. They’re only interested in the ranking so they can calculate their average.)

So let me write some generalities: A novel has a chance to be one of my favorites if it’s filled with delectable discovery opportunities, a story that is a full meal of new and wonderful tastes. I like to think that I write such stories; I certainly try to do so.  How could I not expect other authors to do the same? And I don’t want some publicist to give away the ingredients of my zesty dish before I can taste it!

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Free fiction. Want to get to know my fiction writing? I don’t give my novels away—they’re already bargains, as you can see on Smashwords—but I can provide you with some appetizers that are free: Check the list of free PDFs on my webpage “Free Stuff & Contests” and then follow the instructions for downloading.

In libris libertas!

Homeward Bound

Copyright 2018, A. B. Carolan

[Note from Steve: There will be more than driverless cars in the future.]

Happy decided she was through with beatings. The welts and open wounds on her back were bright red on her black skin. When Master Cheng stopped whipping her in order to catch his breath, she turned and kicked the old man in the groin and ran.

Her parents had come to the Mars colony because of the Chinese government’s promise of good-paying jobs. Just one problem: the Chinese business model when applied to the colony was such that most workers would die of old age before they paid off their passage. But it wasn’t old age that killed her parents; both had died in work accidents. She became an orphan, and the orphanage sold her to Master Cheng, who was an accountant for a Chinese firm’s branch on Mars.

She ran but didn’t know where to run. On the surface outside the tunnels, she knew she would die without a spacesuit, and she didn’t have one. Most workers didn’t; they were too expensive. But the crowded tunnels, teeming with workers, allowed her to hide in plain sight after she stole a cheap jersey from a tunnel vendor’s rack when he wasn’t looking. She no longer had to run with her arms crossed over her breasts.

Every intersection had direction signs in Chinese and English on the tunnel walls.  She spotted one that said, “Port for Private Yachts.” Because Mars had no surface water, she knew that meant space yachts. Some rich industrialists who visit, Chinese or not, come in small spaceships, she thought. Her Daddy had told her that. Could I stow away on one and return to Earth? Her parents had dreamed of striking it rich and doing exactly that.

Happy was their only child, and they had spoiled her as much as they could. When the colony had started bursting at its seams, the Chinese authorities initiated a policy that permitted only one child. And some had to wait years to receive the license to have one.

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