Have you missed me?

In my last post here, I announced I was taking some time off over the holidays. This hiatus unfortunately extended beyond that. Life is always full of surprises!

I still need some time, but I will continue posting articles about reading, writing, and publishing ASAP.

Like many readers of these blog post, I’ll be taking time off for the holidays.

See you the first week of January, 2026.

All the best to you and yours!

Most everyone has seen videos or visited old houses’ moldy smelling libraries or studies with their old desks and floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with old books. Whether the titles there are just for show or actually have been read, such rooms give a house a lot of character. In our case, our study is a third bedroom filled with two work tables, our laptops atop and printers on the side, and yes, floor-to-ceiling bookcases along one wall and smaller bookcases in back of the office chairs.

We’ve had a similar setup for years wherever we’ve lived, but it came to a point where the bookcases, loaded with so many books, began to have shelves that sagged. Ebooks were invented just in time to save the situation, though. We still have too many hardbound and paperback books—most of the latter form my collection of sci-fi classics—but we’ve also given a lot of those away for charity and school book sales because my Kindle’s cloud does a great job of archiving old ebooks I’ve read (sometimes a few times for various reasons) and new ebooks I intend to read.

I’ve always been a voracious reader. (I don’t have much respect for an author who isn’t, unless they have some disability.) Long before ebooks and before I could afford to buy many books (back in the third or fourth grade!), I was reading adventure (now called thriller), mystery and crime (for example, Christie), and sci-fi stories (for example, Asimov, Clark, and Heinlein), I was a weekly visitor to the public library downtown (thanks to mom). I inherited my older brother’s sci-fi collection when he went off to college (all hardbound books from some sci-fi book club) and began to make my own paperback purchases, so the books started accumulating. My many years as a book hoarder began, only interrupted by moves across the west to east coast of the US and back a few times, and back and forth to Colombia, for school and work.

For other things, I’m not a hoarder; and the only things competing with books has been sheet music, CDs, and LPs. Almost all books on my Kindle are fiction (there are a few mostly worthless ones on book marketing that I perused when I started to publish). In my bookcases, you’ll find textbooks, reference works, and a few hardbound and paperback fiction book that survived my purge when ebooks appeared. Even with that purge, I still dread any future moves!

I rarely reread others’ fiction so only sentimental attachment makes me keep their books around, but I sometimes reread or scan my own creations when I’m writing the next book in a series or some story related to previously published works (mostly for fear of being repetitive with plots and themes).

But the books I have at hand either in my bookshelves or on my Kindle are mostly old and valued friends, so maybe I’ll revisit them more as I become a doddering old fool whose memory is going. These old friends have kept me sane throughout my life (especially during the Covid pandemic); I hope they continue to do that.

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

I mostly tune out when political ads flood my email in-box or ruin my TV viewing (not streaming video—I have no use for streaming or video games as escapes from reality).

First, it’s impossible for a political candidate or party to summarize the main points of their campaign in a thirty- or sixty-second TV ad. It just can’t be done! So their ads essentially become zero-content or attack ads that waste my time.

Second, I have to conclude that if those ads are at all effective with my contemporaries, the human race is in big trouble! In other words, if most people make their voting decisions about who or what deserves their vote with so little information, how can democracy survive? (It’s dying, of course, but more because of leaders like Trump than their ads.)

Third, I believe those who are pushing a candidate or cause use these absurdly short statements to hide all sorts of things from us. Here’s an example; Trump during his 2024 campaign stating that he knows nothing about Project 2025. Fact: After reading more extensively about this almost 1000-page Heritage Foundation blueprint to destroy democracy in America, I had to conclude that that it’s a hundred times more dangerous than Mein Kampf and that Narcissus le Grand has been faithfully following it during the first months of his four-year term! (For example, destroying the entire DoE or going after trans.) Either Trump is reading and following this insidious plan to the letter, or his handlers are (many of them worked on it!).

It might seem boring at times, but reading extensive exposes of candidates and their causes makes you a better citizen and might just preserve American democracy. Please read serious non-fiction and fiction. Don’t read fluff like fantasies, romances, and erotica. You’ll not learn anything from the latter; you will from the former. Make your reading count at least in two ways: As entertainment and as information gathering. Democracy in America is at stake.

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“Fascist Tango” in Pasodobles in a Quantum Stringscape, Volume Three, and other short fiction. You will find a lot of mysteries, thrillers, and crime stories with a political bent among my short fiction pieces. The published collection Fantasic Encores expands on some characters and situations in my sci-fi stories and covers, but you can download even more, including less futuristic themes, for free (see the list on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page). And while some of my novels aren’t political thrillers, they often have political themes and don’t contain the fluff you’ll find in fantasy, romance, and erotic novels. (Nothing wrong with those genres per se, but you can’t ever call them deep!) Okay, A Time-Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse is a sci-fi rom-com that makes fun of a lot of politics, but that’s an exception!.

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

The list of books you’ll find on my “Steve’s Bookshelf” web page at this website is representative of my reading choices but far too short to cover them all. Consequently, I decided it might be interesting to add about what books I won’t read. (Of course, if you read all my posts—why not?—you might have a better idea about what I will read!)

I rarely read fantasy, not even sci-fi that’s nearly fantasy. The boundary between fantasy and sci-fi is a blurred one, but the “magic” in AB Carolan’s Mind Games differs greatly from JK Rowling’s “Harry Potter” tales.

I avoid romance and erotica stories. I don’t mind either in a mystery, thriller, or sci-fi story, but they have to take second place. My novel, A Time-Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse, is sci-fi with rom-com elements; in other words, it’s not The Time-Traveler’s Wife.

I avoid like the plague books written by famous or infamous celebs, especially the tell-all ones. I just don’t care about their miserable lives. Of course, I mean by “celebs” those generally mentally disturbed people with big egos whose lives and exploits more generally appeal to non-readers who are bored with their own lives. (I don’t know what percentage of the population fits in that category, but I do know that mind-numbing Hollywood blockbusters and streaming video have added to their numbers.) I will read about Enrico Fermi, Alan Turing, or the warrior popes; at least they’ve actually done something noteworthy.

In fact, I’ll also read history and politics as long as they’re as accurate and as fair as they can be. Historical fiction is a bit iffy because it tries to fill in the blanks (that’s the fictional part, of course), but it often fits in the mystery or thriller category too, like my Son of Thunder.

What really turns me off sometimes is how authors pimp their books. I stopped reading James Patterson long ago. (It seems he doesn’t write much of anything original anymore without a co-author, so you have to wonder.)

When celebs try to write fiction and it doesn’t work for me, I also can get upset. Jake Tapper is an example. In his fiction, he can’t decide if he’s a CNN pundit or a true author. (I think he was quite good as a newsman until recently, by the way! Jim Acosta might have been better, though.) Using his bully pulpit on CNN to frequently pimp Original Sin is beyond the pale, though, and I’m surprised CNN allows that. (Of course, CNN is going downhill just like MSNBC and CBS, while Fox News is already in the cesspool.) Yes, Jake, we knows the Dems blew the 2024 election, and Biden should have kept his 2020 promise to be a one-term president, a transition to the new guard. But we only needed that disastrous debate and old Joe’s stumbling about upon leaving the Marine chopper to confirm that running again was a mistake; there should have been a full primary, and then having David Plough et al preparing for four years like Trump’s handlers! Jake’s book might have some use as a record of all the mistakes made by the Dems, I suppose. It’s just that I hate to see Jake pimping it almost everyday. That’s not advertising; it’s akin to brainwashing.

I know which books I don’t want to read the same way that I always do: I read the blurbs and “peek inside,” either online or at a bookstore, to see if the author can write something original in a professional manner. Sometimes I even glance at the book’s cover.  (Celeb books often have awful covers, and most covers for books published by the Big Five publishing conglomerates are horrible.) You can use this tactic too. It’s all about being a smart consumer, isn’t it?

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Comments are always welcome…if you follow the rules on the “Join the Conversation” web page at this website.

Freebies. You don’t need much energy to get them here! Just go to the list of free PDF downloads on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page at this website and click away. You’ll find a lot of short fiction in collections (short stories and novellas), two complete novels, and my course on “Writing Fiction.” Those few clicks are a great way to get to know me and my writing. Of course, my published books (over thirty now) are all available as inexpensive ebooks at various online book dealers (see the list on the “Books & Short Fiction” web page).

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

…if you’ve been looking to peruse my sagacious words about reading, writing, and publishing fiction here: Due to circumstances beyond my control, I had to take a few weeks off (more than a month, to be more specific). I hope to return soon to posting my usual acerbic, pithy, and hopefully entertaining and informative articles.

Of course, if you really need your mental high obtained from reading this blog, perhaps you can find a worthy substitute by reading one of my many books or downloading some of my free fiction available on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page at my author’s website https://stevenmmoore.com.

Otherwise, bear with me. I promise to return soon, never fear. The pen is mightier than most anything!

Social media is looking awfully over-the-top now as the 2024 presidential election nears. For example, Elon’s X (formerly known as Twitter) put out a Kamala Harris ad, still with her voice but with all the words changed. I don’t know if this was a scurrilous use of AI (more a scurrilous abuse by Elon?), but I immediately logged on to my account and deactivated it. (Apologies to my loyal 1000+ faithful followers there who might have been surprised by my actions, but they know as well as I do that X has been going downhill ever since Elon walked in with his kitchen sink—not the gold one, of course—and I’d diminished my activity on X correspondingly ever since he took over. I closed my Facebook account even earlier!)

But AI (even the current primitive forms—see my previous post) changes things, doesn’t it? AI takes bad social media to worse levels. As if that “blue screen of death” seen around the world wasn’t enough—that was on CrowdStrike and Microsoft, by the way, not AI. I wasn’t on the internet at the time, and I didn’t return to it until I backed up my laptop and the “all clear” was given. (What occurred with Delta Airlines seems to be an additional problem…caused by their ancient and sickly software?)

I’m not talking about either X or CrowdStrike/Microsoft here. The first is out of my life (so is Elon Musk); the second can be avoided by minimizing my time on the internet (I already do that!). No, I’d like to discuss a report in The NY Times recently that current AIs are bad mathematicians, as if they were students good in the humanities but terrible at math. No surprise, really, although none of this matters much for authors and readers. (Or, better said, it makes it worse for both equally?)

Unlike most fiction writers, I’ve probably forgotten more math than they ever knew or will know. That’s not bragging. It’s just offered as evidence that I can well believe that The Times is partially correct. The type of recent AI that’s been in development has severe limitations; they mostly stem from the fact that current AI versions are just glorified search engines. Sure, the better ones can create stuff by putting what they find in a search (or what’s fed them) together in a more coherent whole. That’s the artificial part. But there’s little actual intelligence, as in human intelligence.

That’s where the math problems originate: How it puts things together is based on probability, more specifically, a calculation of likelihood that its creation is a correct portrait of reality. You’ve seen that with facial recognition software: Some unidentified face is 69% more likely to be some John Doe than someone else. The rest of math, most of it in fact, lies outside the sphere of probability and statistics, and that’s an exact science, not about likelihoods: Normally, an answer is either mathematically correct, or it’s not. Consequently, current AI can’t do math because it can’t handle exactness; everything’s a maybe, not a solid yes or no. Any AI guru who claims otherwise is a con man. (Or woman.)

But maybe superior AIs in the future can do better? More data too might mean better predictions. Sci-fi writers should have an AI give an answer like the following: It’s probable that X event occurs with a probability of 0.99999 with an error of plus or minus 0.00000342. That might not be exact enough to control a starship slipping through multiple quantum states of the Universe, but for general purposes, it’s better than a paltry 0.69. (Actually, likelihoods differ from probabilities, but you get the idea, right? And the statistics being used to make the predictions can give different results too—Bayesian stats are the most common.)

“What about quantum computing?” you might say. Yep, that could change everything. I’ll let you know after I’m able to purchase my first quantum laptop!

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

“The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection.” Futuristic AI plays an important supporting role all through the three novels found in this bargain sci-fi/thriller bundle. The reader can follow human beings flight from a dystopian Earth to first contact on a planet in the 82 Eridani system; an intergalactic war with different and xenophobic ETs; and battles with a deranged human, a psychotic sociopath out to control the galaxy. All the AIs here are artificial (even if partly constructed from living circuitry) and extremely intelligent, unlike current AI software. And man, they can they do math! This three-novel ebook bundle is available wherever quality sci-fi is sold.

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

Many professors influenced me in various ways as a student; among them: James Hartle, the young physicist who later often worked with Stephen Hawking; the old Jesuit priest who taught Latin American history (I forget his name—like Mr. Biden, this old author can forget a few things, but this priest didn’t avoid the scandals or fail to mention the many leaders who fathered so many illegitimate childdren—and he became the model for Bastiann van Coevorden’s priest involved in that Interpol agent’s marriage to Esther Brookstone, the art detective); and N. Scott Momaday, the Kiowa Native American who taught me to love poetry.

Dr. Momaday is probably best known for House Made of Dawn, his Pulitzer-prize winning novel describing the life of a young Native American who returns to the reservation from the war with what we’d now call PTSD. But he also left us with many poems, short stories, and essays.

I can still see him pacing up there on the stage, book in hand and reading classic poetry in that expressive baritone voice (perhaps you saw him in that PBS special a few years ago?), while I struggled to decipher the content and emotion contained in those journeys through English poetry with this marvelous time-travel guide. As a first-semester freshman, college was new to me, but I needn’t have worried. The lectures took place in a large lecture class with over one-hundred students, so the professor had his group of TAs. Maybe some of them approached Momaday’s competence, but mine didn’t. (I took the experience gained in those first large lecture courses into account when I introduced them in South America, but that’s another tale.) I was still able to ace that first college English course because all I had to do was include a mention of Freud somewhere in the quizzes and reports; the TA loved “Freudian interpretations” and rewarded them in his grading!

Of course, the other thing Professor Momaday taught me was that I am not a poet! While I’ve published a few pathetic attempts (I’m partial to “Ode to St. John” by Esther Brookstone in Son of Thunder and “A Goodbye” by Penelope Castro in Menace from Moscow), I’ve compensated for my lack of skills in writing poetry by creating a few novels instead.

N. Scott Momaday was awarded the Pulitzer after I had him as an English professor. I feel that my experience as his student, though, could beat any obtained in an MFA course. I read House Made of Dawn after that college English course. Only critics can determine how much that influenced my own writing, but Professor Momaday is certainly someone whom I’ll always fondly remember.

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

The Collector. This fifth book in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series is special in several ways: Related to the above, the reader might have fun with Rolando Castilblanco’s poem “On Modern Art.” (I originally wrote it for my father, who became a full-time artist in his later years, specializing in landscapes but often expressing sentiments similar to those in the poem.) It also introduces Esther Brookstone for the first time. My two NYPD detectives go after a criminal organization that uses stolen artwork to finance other nefarious activities, something akin to a prequel to Rembrandt’s Angel, and also dealing with real stolen artwork, in this case from Boston’s Stuart Gardner museum. This novel stands alone, though, and can be found everywhere quality ebooks are sold (even on Amazon!).

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

[Note from Steve: Occasionally an article I create is appropriate for both my writer’s blog and my political one. This article is one of them, and it will also appear at http://pubprogressive.com.]

The reader can consider this article an homage to Harry Belafonte, whose soft but raspy voice made calypso music famous. I was a fan of that man’s music and political activism in civil rights for decades. His inimitable 1956 LP “Calypso” that took the world by storm (only mono, not stereo!), if not the first, was one of the earliest in my music collection that I listened to over and over again (the Beatles’ “White Album” came much later!). He was the quiet man of peaceful yet significant activism who accompanied a grieving Mrs. King and her family during their most troubling time.

Calypso, reggae, and ska moved me; I’m not sure exactly why. While not really Jamaican (Harry was born in Harlem to West Indian immigrants), Harry was very much a representative of that Jamaican diaspora in the UK, US, and elsewhere; he became an icon for that cultural tradition—its suffering, effervescent spirit, food, the rithymic dance and movement, and the successes, from Harry Belafonte to Usain Bolt.

While developing background for my “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, I discovered that Jamaican immigrants might have received better treatment in the US than the UK. After the war, they went to help in the reconstruction of Britain; Teresa May, before she became PM, then tried to score points with her conservative followers by sending them back to Jamaica. This datum led me to create a Jamaican in the Brookstone novels—like the real Harry, Esther’s Harry is a musician who moonlights with his band in a London club playing the music of the Caribbean and his homeland. Now I can consider that character not only an homage to some wonderful music that I love but also an homage to Harry Belafonte.

I’m probably guilty of trying to make the UK more of a “melting pot” than what it really is…or wants to be under Tory rule. Characters like Esther’s Harry; her friend and MI5 tech Ambreesh Singh; and the Brazilian artist Ricardo Silva and the three Chinese artists from Hong Kong, all four featured in her gallery, probably don’t go far enough, though. Steve Morgan’s Kenyan girlfriend Kanzi and his colleague DI Workman (from the “Inspector Steve Morgan” series) add a bit more. For all I know, though, UK readers might opine that I’ve gone too far in transferring my diverse California upbringing to the UK. Yet I still believe Harry Belafonte received love from the UK and many other countries besides that received from US progressives.

Mr. Belafonte passed on April 25 at the young age of 96. He will be missed. I will miss him. The world will miss him. And may he rest in peace while teaching the angels how to play and sing calypso instead of that damnable Gregorian chant!

Even though I know you’re suffering with all the hustle and bustle and blather and twaddle associated with the ubiquitous commercialization of the holidays, I’ll still start this post with some commercials from the sponsors of this blog. (Hey, that’s me!)

Books make good gifts for the readers in your circle of family and friends (assuming they’re readers like you). They’re easy to wrap and send (especially ebooks!), and they’re a far better and less dangerous entertainment than the neighborhood’s lightshows (remember that Chevy Chase movie?), new dog walkers out walking the kid’s new dog without a leash (young dogs have sharp teeth), or neighbors with their AR-style rifles looking to start an argument about how much fire your BBQ produces. In fact, they generally offer better quality entertainment than a streaming video subscription or a new computer game.

All my books are available in ebook format wherever quality ebooks are sold. (The latest ones just aren’t on Amazon, but who says that giant retailer sells anything of quality?) If you want print format, try the mystery-thriller The Midas Bomb or the hard sci-fi thriller yet Game-of-Thrones-like Rogue Planet; or A. B. Carolan’s sci-fi mysteries for young adults (and adults who are young at heart), The Secret Lab, The Secret of the Urns, and Mind Games—all of these are available in both ebook and print formats and reasonably priced. (You’ll spend more at MacDonald’s and have a healthy meal for your mind!)

I can also offer some freebies: Check out the list of free PDF downloads found on my “Free Stuff & Contests” web page—two free “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” novels, Defanging the Red Dragon and Intolerance, are even on that list! (One occurs at holiday time in NYC and London!)

Holiday greetings. Now the above commercial messages weren’t all that painful, were they? And we have them out of the way, so there’s still some time for holiday greetings.

Human beings are so damn creative that they’ve created many ways to celebrate the winter solstice and the beginning of winter. (Maybe more to mourn the dying of the light and have a funeral for the old year?) Most of these traditional celebrations have their origins in the northern hemisphere and are a simple consequence of the Earth’s axis tilt. Those origins are interesting if only because that tilt affects the entire globe, of course, yet the same calendar holidays are celebrated at the same time in southern climes when it’s summer! (I suppose there are older cultures in the southern hemisphere that celebrate their coming of winter in July, but I’ll leave it to readers to tell me about them.)

In any case, to all those celebrants around the globe, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

And that’s all I’ll write about this for the rest of 2022! I have my own shopping to do!

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