Don’t miss out. Books make excellent holiday gifts, so don’t miss the chance to give the avid readers on your list many hours of reading pleasure.

First, all ebooks in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series” (seven novels) are on sale right now at Smashwords.  The two NYPD homicide detectives’ cases often start out local and blow up into national and international crises (at least the ones I report on).

Second, The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection bundles together the sci-fi novels that take you from a dystopian Earth dominated by multinationals and policed by their mercenaries to three colonies among the stars…and beyond.  All these books are offered to you at great savings for the holidays.

And, if you’re worried about package delivery schedules, ebooks are immediate downloads, and almost every online site allows you to send them as gifts.  Happy holidays!

Talk. I’m looking forward to my talk at the Montclair Women’s Club on January 26 (82 Union St, Montclair, NJ, 1:30 pm). Female readers outnumber male readers, and I’ll be talking about Scotland Inspector Esther Brookstone, the main character in Rembrandt’s Angel and one of my most interesting female characters. Many of my books feature strong, smart women, so the book isn’t exceptional in this sense, but Esther is one of my favorites.  Hopefully my audience will be happy to meet her too.

Star Wars. “My main reason for making it was to give young people an honest, wholesome fantasy life, the kind my generation had.”—George Lucas.  Note that he said FANTASY.  Star Wars is sci-fi only to the extent that it plagiarized OLD sci-fi masters like Edgar Rice Burroughs (for example, Jedi warriors) and Isaac Asimov (the evil Empire). It also heavily borrowed from Japanese ninja stories. The most original thing about the whole franchise is the music!

The Gabo archive. When the University of Texas bought many documents pertinent to the life of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nobel winner and author of 100 Years of Solitude, among many other fine books, I cringed. The thought that this treasure trove would be in the U.S. was appalling.  I’ve changed my mind somewhat. They’ve digitized over 27,000 documents. I haven’t had the occasion to try it, but I understand anyone can access them online, in either English or Spanish. The Ransom Center probably can provide details. The few documents I’ve seen are fascinating and show the workings of the mind that created magical realism.

The genre myth.  Is The Midas Bomb a mystery or a thriller?  Is Survivors of the Chaos dystopian sci-fi or conspiracy thriller?  Is The Secret Lab young adult, sci-fi, or a mystery?  Aside from its use in bookstores, genre is about as relevant to today’s publishing scene as a mastodon stuck in a bog.  Moreover, it creates immense confusion among both readers and writers.

Readers are used to talking about it, but fans of some of the new and strange subgenres seem to be speaking a foreign language!  We have quantum fiction, for example, which is characterized by use of an element in quantum mechanics, but it’s just everyday life that hinges on some aspect of the quantum nature of reality and doesn’t have much to do with real physics.  We have the various “punk” genres—splatterpunk (horror) and cyberpunk and steampunk (sci-fi).

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There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.—John F. Kennedy.

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The entire “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series” is on sale now at Smashwords until December 24. The NYPD homicide detectives’ cases usually start out in New York City but expand to national and international crises as they fight all sorts of criminals—gun runners, sex traffickers, evil hedge fund owners, drug smugglers, terrorists, and more. The crime-fighting duo also have their own personal battles to fight. These seven ebooks make excellent holiday gifts for the reader on your gift list—maybe that’s you? Use the coupon code when you checkout at Smashwords to receive a fantastic sale price and hours of reading entertainment! And don’t forget The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection, a bundle of sci-fi novels that’s ideal as a holiday gift.

In libris libertas!

I’m going to commit blasphemy by disagreeing with newly famous sci-fi writer Hugh Howey. I can’t remember the source of the article, but in it he stated: “The hardest part of getting a book published is the actual writing.” Maybe the creator of Wool is on such a pedestal now (he’s a self-publishing success story), no one should dare question any pronouncement he makes, but I will do so. Maybe how he published Wool (like episodes from a soap opera) was easy for him, but I don’t recommend serialization…and moreover claim there is a lot of hard work needed after writing a manuscript that he seems to be ignoring.

Let’s assume the author has the best possible MS (trade acronym for “manuscript”) s/he can produce. Maybe s/he’s already paid for some editing and feels ready to send it out. First, if s/he wants to traditionally publish, s/he’ll send it out to agents and publishers (many indie publishers AKA small presses will consider un-agented MSs). That’s hard work but more time consuming than actual financial investment. That choice is mostly justified by the fact that a traditional publisher will front the publishing costs—editing, formatting, cover art, and maybe some initial marketing. If s/he wants to self-publish, which is more efficient, s/he’ll need to spend money as well as time finding people who will do all those things and do them well. Either way, the author’s post-MS life won’t be easy.

I’ll be brutally honest here: While Howey’s plot was a good one, it didn’t seem original because it reminded me of an old short story where the main character is trapped in a missile silo after a nuclear attack (the first person who can tell me the title will receive a free ebook from my oeuvre of her or his choice). It also reminded me of S. G. Redling’s Flowertown, Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, and Brian Aldiss’s Starship (a real favorite of mine). If you’ve read these books and Howey’s, you’ll understand why I say this. Of course, none of that really matters, because Wool is still a great story. Its main weakness can be found in the ashes of serialization, which made it easy for Howey to publish Wool, but should never be rectified by just sticking disconnected parts together to make a novel.

There is a whole spectrum of publishing now, from 100% DIY indie (not recommended) at one end and a Big Five publishing contract at the other (also not recommended for the author who wants or needs some personal TLC—that’s only given to the reliable old mares and stallions in the Big Five publisher’s stable). Anywhere along that linear continuum, the author will find post-MS life is difficult.

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Although I’m encouraged by all the young readers and writers I meet on Goodreads (“young” is a relative term, of course), fiction writers shouldn’t ignore baby boomers and older readers.  People are living longer, and older people are more likely to be avid readers because they’re less likely to be distracted by streaming video, social media, video games, and so forth. Normal seventy-year-olds aren’t fanatical Twitter users either in general, with certain infamous exceptions.

I’ve already written a few books where aging is a subtheme. The first, The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan, is where DHS agent Ashley Scott worries about retirement and being alone, and uncovers, among other things, a government conspiracy that “solves the problem” of aging agents and scientists who might blab Top Secret information in their senility. Scott is Detective Castilblanco’s friend.  He too has thought about retirement as his wife and he adopt a relative’s children (see Family Affairs and Gaia and the Goliaths—the entire detective series is on sale now at Smashwords until December 24).

Rembrandt’s Angel is my main fictional bow to themes involving aging. Scotland Yard Inspector Esther Brookstone kicks some butt even as she ponders retirement; she becomes obsessed with recovering a Rembrandt painting stolen by the Nazis in World War Two.  Esther is in her sixties; her paramour is in his forties.  She proves sixty is the new forty in this torrid love affair which heats up the novel.

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A perv, a con artist, and a fascist walk into a bar. Bartender says, “What’ll it be, Mr. President?”—seen on a church sign.

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The entire “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series” is on sale now at Smashwords until December 24. The NYPD homicide detectives’ cases usually start out in New York City but expand to national and international crises as they fight all sorts of criminals—gun runners, sex traffickers, evil hedge fund owners, drug smugglers, terrorists, and more. The crime-fighting duo also have their own personal battles to fight. These seven ebooks make excellent holiday gifts for the reader on your gift list—maybe that’s you? Use the coupon code when you checkout at Smashwords to receive a fantastic sale price and hours of reading entertainment!

In libris libertas!

Let’s remember Pearl Harbor today–for the brave who perished on that day, as well as a reminder to all of us about the horrors of war.  As sabers rattle again in the world, peace is more in danger than ever.  And now we’re in danger of destroying our world.

[Readers often ask me questions, and I try to respond as quickly as possible, but some things are asked more than others, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to do a FAQs post. Of course, you won’t find answers here to embarrassing or private questions, but you might find answers to questions you were dying to ask—if not, contact me via email. While you’re at it, you can sign up for my email newsletter!]

Why do you have so many books? Not really, but if you want some reasons, here are a few: (1) I love to write; (2) I have many stories to tell; and (3) I started slow, trying for that elusive traditional publishing contract, but made up for loss time with the help of Carrick Publishing run by my friend Donna Carrick in Canada—not exactly 100% DIY on my part, but a very efficient operation with smart women doing what I’m incapable of doing.

Why write mysteries, thrillers, and sci-fi and not more popular genres like horror and romance? (1) I don’t read much horror and romance; (2) I can’t write horror and romance, although there might be some elements from those genres in my fiction; and (3) horror and romance seem to downplay interesting and troubling themes I’m concerned about.

Do you write only fiction? Except for blog posts (even some of those are short stories), everything I write now is fiction. I’ve been doing it for more than ten years.

Do you read only fiction? Nope. I read a lot of non-fiction. My webpage “Steve’s Bookshelf” has many non-fiction books listed. And there are fiction genres I’ve never read.

Are you an indie author? Never 100% DIY and a mongrel now with Rembrandt’s Angel (Penmore Press, an indie publisher), but always indie in spirit. This allows me to maintain my own voice and not write as someone thinks I should write. That’s a freedom not even the reliable mares and stallions in the Big Five’s stables can have!

What motivates you to write? Telling a good story that will entertain readers.

Do you model characters after real people? No, but they might be composites of people I’ve observed. I’m a people-observer, so over the years I’ve developed many character sketches. You might recognize some of your own character traits, but I’m careful about including real people. The one major exception is in Aristocrats and Assassins, a novel in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series,” where the royals in the book are indeed real, but they perform admirably in the novel.

Where do you get your ideas? Similar answer: over the years, even before I started publishing, I’ve collected what-ifs, plot ideas, sketches of characters and settings, themes, dialogue snippets, and so forth. As a result, I don’t know what writer’s block is.

Why not audiobooks? Cost—you need to hire a good reader, and I can’t afford that. Most indie publishers (small presses) can’t either.

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Carlos Obregon, medical officer on the starship Brendan, stars in various short stories of mine. You can find them in the collections Pasodobles in a Quantum Stringscape and Fantastic Encores! Dr. Carlos is Sherlock Holmes at times, while his intern Julie Chen often plays the role of Dr. Watson. But are these short stories mysteries or sci-fi? They’re both, of course, for the most part—always sci-fi, but many also mysteries. This isn’t new in sci-fi. Old master Isaac Asimov created the sci-fi mystery, in particular with The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun, two novels where Earth cop Elijah Bailey teams up with android Daneel Olivaw. Most sci-fi stories have some mystery elements, of course, but putting a traditional crime story in a futuristic context seems to bring out the best of both genres.

One of the best recent sci-fi mysteries I’ve read is Adam Troy Castro’s Emissaries of the Dead. It combines many conventional sci-fi elements into a crime story—weird ETs, strange settings, and an interstellar conspiracy that broadens the scope of merely solving a murder case. Clarke’s 2001 and 2010 are sci-fi mysteries; so is his Rama series until the Rama engineers are outed. My young adult novel The Secret Lab is also a sci-fi mystery. Readers can probably think of many more examples.

Dr. Carlos is an amateur sleuth, of course, and he also takes care of the medical challenges, his main job. The Brendan is in the Space Exploration Bureau’s fleet; the SEB is an agency of the Interstellar Trade Union of Independent Planets (ITUIP), a federation comprised of many near-Earth planets. The evolution of ITUIP starts in the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy” (now available as a bundle) and continues with Rogue Planet. Dr. Carlos lives at the end of this timeline, far in the future. My goal is to include Dr. Carlos in a future novel as an homage to Dr. Asimov, but the reader can get to know him in the short stories.

Dr. Carlos is something of a rascal who often creates his own problems. He’s knowledgeable about Human and ET history, not a mean feat when considering the lengthy future history of near-Earth space I’ve imagined. He might also be considered an expert on trivia. He drives the Brendan’s captain crazy sometimes, and doesn’t always follow SEB rules. In the long run, though, he creates order out of chaos in the short stories describing his adventures.

While some short stories merit expansion into a novel (the short story, “Marcello and Me,” found in the Pasodobles collection, will become an example), I probably need a more complex plot if I’m going to do honor to Dr. Asimov. Hopefully that’s not a problem—I have many ideas for crime stories, and giving them a future setting should be possible. So Dr. Carlos will probably get his own novel.

I love this character. In some sense, he’s an alter-ego who can have adventures that I can never hope to have. But maybe that’s a characteristic of all sci-fi writers?

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Pasodobles in a Quantum Stringscape and Fantastic Encores! have new reviews—see my webpage “Books & Short Stories.” These speculative fiction collections are excellent ways to try out my sci-fi for any reader on your gift list—that might be you? Many hours of varied reading entertainment illustrating my belief that short fiction isn’t dead in the publishing world.

In libris libertas!

Those who are accustomed to my blog posts—minimally, an op-ed comment on current events on Tuesdays and something on reading, writing, or the publishing business on Thursdays—might find it strange that I’m placing this post here on a Tuesday. There’s a simple explanation: reading and understanding what we read are building blocks in the democratic foundation of our country.

A dear friend and I were talking over the holiday about reading “popular science” articles. These are supposedly designed so that an “intelligent layperson” can develop some understanding about an esoteric bit of science or technology. I complained about Scientific American’s overly detailed articles in fields I’d like to learn more about for my sci-fi writing. “Don’t worry about it,” said my friend. “They’ve dumbed down the articles now.”

Some translations are in order. First, there’s no such thing as “popular science” anymore. Science isn’t popular, from outright attacks on it by religious fanatics and politicians who are sycophants for Corporate America, unwilling or otherwise, to teachers telling students that they should study something else because science is too hard (especially egregious when a male teacher adds “…for girls”). In all age groups, many consider science and technology to be the root of all the problems society faces, and there are many others who encourage such an opinion.

Second, “intelligent layperson” is all too often another oxymoron nowadays. I’m not speaking to the obvious cases where someone believes dinosaurs and human beings coexisted and the world with all its wonderful diversity of flora and fauna was all created six thousand years ago. I’m talking about the average Joan or Joe who reads something but can’t understand what they’ve just read. Call it what you will, it’s an indictment against popular culture. At the critical lower levels in our educational systems, teachers over-emphasize getting through the words—understanding is secondary. Certain content is emphasized; there’s not much practice analyzing and digesting new content. Too many people read something that’s devoid of facts but don’t have the background or even common sense to know better.

Third, “dumbed down” is a nice way of saying that essay and book writers know all about the problems mentioned above and bend over backwards to compensate in order to get their message across. The latter is a struggle that’s becoming increasingly difficult, even for fiction writers, where “dumbed down” has destroyed serious literature.

Even if we get people to read with all the other distractions they have—streaming video, social media, video games, and so forth—getting them to understand what they are reading is a high hurdle to jump over. I’ve often read a review of a “popular science” book and asked myself, “Did the reviewer read the same book I did?” That would probably happen with fiction too, but I don’t bother to read those reviews unless I’m making excerpts for the PR and marketing of my own books.

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If I were to run, I’d run as Republican. They’re the dumbest group of voters in the country. They love anything on Fox News.—Donald Trump

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The entire “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series” is on sale now at Smashwords until December 24. The NYPD homicide detectives’ cases usually start out in New York City but expand to national and international crises as they fight all sorts of criminals—gun runners, sex traffickers, evil hedge fund owners, drug smugglers, terrorists, and more. The crime-fighting duo also have their own personal battles to fight. These seven ebooks make excellent holiday gifts for the reader on your gift list—maybe that’s you? Use the coupon code when you checkout at Smashwords to receive a fantastic sale price and hours of reading entertainment!

In libris libertas!

Do you name your cars?  We do. We called our dark green Camry Katie—she was an Irish lass, you see.  We call our dark red Accord Mr. Rose—that’s a pun connecting the color with Axel Rose of Guns and Roses fame.  An old Tercel was called Charlie Red—he was supposed to be copper-colored (Charlie  Brown), but the dealer couldn’t get that color in stick shift.  All our cars have personalities because naming people or things is related to their personality.

Characters names in books have to be chosen carefully for the same reason.  I often do several iterations because, as I’m writing, I say to myself, “X wouldn’t do that!” (Or, at the risk of appearing schizoid, the character might tell me I have it wrong.)  I could change what X does, but it’s often better to find a replacement name that feels right to me (and the character).  As a consequence, I don’t suffer from writer’s block, I suffer from name block.  I find it hard to continue until I find just the right name.

Let’s consider Bastiann van Coevorden, a main character in Rembrandt’s Angel (he also had several cameos in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series,” on sale now at Smashwords). He’s an Interpol Agent and Scotland Yard Inspector Esther Brookstone’s paramour.  I describe the character as looking like David Suchet’s Hercule Poirot, who was Belgian. Poirot is a French-sounding surname, of course, so why didn’t I make Bastiann Belgian or French instead of Dutch? My main excuse is that the Dutch king was involved in Aristocrats and Assassins, where Bastiann first appeared, so I made him Dutch. His mother was French, though, as you’ll discover if you read Rembrandt’s Angel. After all these verbal acrobatics, my choice of name still matches the character’s personality. Maybe “matches” isn’t the best word.  In a sense his name defines his personality, and vice versa. He’s the Hercule Poirot half of the romantic pair; Esther is the Miss Marple half.

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