“From the moment I picked up your book until I put it down, I was convulsing with laughter. Someday I intend to read it.”—Groucho Marx

***

I’m certain I’ve posted about this topic before and certainly wrote about it in the end notes of A Time-Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse (most of my novels have end notes although I expect that few readers read then). But from The Time Machine to The Time-Traveler’s Wife speculative fiction novels have played fast and loose with the contradictions of time travel. Hollywood screenwriters do no better: Why is there a warp-drive limit that sends Kirk, Spock, and friends back in time to save the whales?

James Hogan tried to make improvements in his The Proteus Operation, but only a few other writers have dared to go “when” no man has gone before in a way that satisfied my scientific biases. For that reason, I avoided time-travel stories in my sci-fi writing for a long time. Until A Time-Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse where, naturally, a woman dares to go where no man has gone before, although, to at least follow the trends, I made it a rom-com to get a jump on any critic like Groucho, who was about as scientific as his cigar.

A story where a protagonists return to the past to right some wrongs (Hogan’s book is a classic example) loses a lot of its entertainment  value when it seems more like fantasy than hard sci-fi, interpreting the latter as meaning not violating a plethora of scientific data and laws. In other words, hard sci-fi must at least seem a reasonable extrapolation of current theories, proven or not, and not the magic of Harry Potter.

I also avoided writing a rom-com story for a long time. Most of the books in that genre are pure fluff, an unbelievable  story about a Cinderella-like (or Cinderfella-like) protagonist that’s light on plot and characters that I can relate to. (Niffenegger’s The Time-Traveler’s Wife is typical, but it’s not intended to be a comedy, just an incredibly sappy story.)

It then occurred to me that I could combine time travel and rom-com and make the result more believable. Writing such a story turned out to be challenging. Take Dr. Who, the mad male scientist who jumps around the past and future using an old red (and magical?) British-style telephone booth. Okay, the latter might be considered the “com” part of a rom-com, but just try to put a little more meat into the science and the plot!

To make this history of a novel short, let’s just say that my story is more akin to “back to the future.” My protagonists jump from one future to the other in the multiverse of universes that are all technically part of their original universe’s future, although some “look like” variations of our past. (The timelines don’t have to be in sync, you know.) My mad scientist is a female, her techie lover a black genius, and the red telephone booth is replaced by an old dentist’s chair. (The BBC will never broadcast a series based on my novel because of that, I’m guessing.)

Because the jumps are always towards some future relative to their starting point, the novel avoids all the scientific contradictions and paradoxes. In other works, they originate in the hypothesis of a single timeline, of course; but once my protagonists leave their current universe, they can’t return! In particular, they can’t change the history of where they started; they can only change the future of where they end up. Blows your mind, right!

Of course, I had to add comedy and romance to make a sci-fi rom-com. The result is the funniest, most political, most irreverent, and most romantic novel I’ve ever written. (Okay, that’s no surprise because it’s the only one!) And I hope you have as much fun reading it as I had writing it.

***

In celebration of the holidays (quite a few to end this year!), this will be the last post appearing here in my author’s blog for 2024. Who knows what 2025 will bring, right? In any case, please enjoy a safe and wonderful time with your family and friends. Happy holidays!

***

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

A Time-Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse. Gail, with her doctorates in applied physics and electrical engineering as preparation, decides to invent a time machine. She hires another technical genius Jeff (Gail calls him Igor) to help with the circuits, sensors, and power sources. Their adventures traveling through the universes of the multiverse last a lifetime. A stand-alone sci-fi rom-com available wherever quality ebooks are sold, this novel just might tickle your funny bone more than Groucho ever could.

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

Kayla is the kick-ass young female protagonist in Origins, the first novel of the “Denisovan Trilogy.” AB Carolan hasn’t yet written the other two, but he says he’s working on them. Personally, I think Origins can stand alone as one of the best “ancient civilizations”-type sci-fi mystery and thriller novel, a wonderful, adventurous, and grand mix of fiction, sociology, and archaeology,,,but I’m biased, I suppose. [wink, wink]

Eons ago on Earth (our real Earth, not a fictional one), different groups of hominids branched off the human evolutionary tree; one recent group discovered is the Denisovans. Carolan embedded these true science facts (not “fake news” or “alternate facts”!) into a new sci-fi universe he created as a way to explain the history of these different groups.

The plan for these novels is quite an ambitious one and requires Carolan to keep up with new archaeological discoveries, but Origins can stand alone very well as a novel that will appeal to young adults (Carolan’s forte) and adults who are young-at-heart. Mysteries, thrills, and lots of action await the reader as Kayla discovers bit by bit how and why she differs from ordinary humans.

Most “modern humans” in our real world have bits and pieces of DNA inherited from Cro-Magnons, Neanderthals, “Hobbits,” and Denisovans. Most of our DNA comes from the first group (AB “explains” this), but some modern humans in differing locales have also inherited some from the other three. Where did all these hominids come from? What happened to them?

AB Carolan provides fictional answers to these questions as he creates a literary roller-coaster ride that puts poor Kayla through the wringer. She must try to stay alive on her way to discovering why she’s being pursued by an evil senator and his violent followers.

The two other novels that are planned are about a more mature Kayla out among the stars, but as I wrote this article I couldn’t help noting how prescient this first novel is relative to our country and the world’s current problems. Unfortunately, our world’s real villains aren’t from the stars: They’re our fellow humans!

This “stand-alone” nature of Origins means, though, less disappointment for readers if they wonder about how Kayla’s adventures continue “out there” among the stars of our galaxy. Some will consider it too much of a teaser, but AB adds the two first chapters of the second novel Allies to this first novel. Did readers complain about not yet knowing the full scope of the second Star Wars movie after the first? (And all those movies are more fantasy than sci-fi, at least not the hard sci-fi thrillers like those planned for the “Denisovan Trilogy.”) You can also mitigate some of your disappointment by writing AB using my contact page at this website to tell him to get his butt in gear and finish the trilogy. He’s usually just having a chinwag in a Donegal pub accompanied by a pint of ale or lager, maybe with a lot of creative world-building going on in his mind, but I can get readers’ messages to the old leprechaun.

All that said, is this novel appropriate for young adults? All of Carolan’s books treat themes adults are concerned about…or should be. Their protagonists just happen to be young girls and women. But both AB and I believe young people should know about all the evil some older people are doing and could avoid doing so these young people don’t repeat our awful and stupid mistakes and  can make things better. The “age of youthful innocence” can no longer exist in this complicated world we live in! No amount of book banning can change that. This Denisovan girl Kayla Jones is a hero for our times.

***

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

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

In a previous post, I’ve considered my strong female adult characters, Esther Brookstone, Mary Jo Melendez, and Penny Castro, protagonists from three different series, but what about those strong young ladies from AB Carolan’s novels, the “ABC Sci-fi Mysteries for Young Adults” [wink, wink]. My Irish collaborator from Donegal, Ireland, designed those stories to take place in the same sci-fi universe as my “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy” (which also has a plethora of kick-ass adult heroines who predate Esther, Mary Jo, and Penny). That didn’t limit that old Irish leprechaun that much: My sci-fi universe is huge and allowed my author-buddy to cover a wide span of space and time.

Let’s consider his three young ladies:

Sashibala Garcia. In The Secret Lab, this tween shares the spotlight with the mutant cat Mr. Paws. Shashi and her gang, “The Fearsome Four,” live on the ISS (International Space Station) in the future as Earth below goes through that period on my alternate future-history timeline known as the Chaos. The five uncover a conspiracy that involves the creation of other mutant animals for evil purposes. It’s a lot of danger and intrigue for the cat and gang to handle, but they handle it all well.

Asako Kobayashi. A long time later in that same sci-fi universe, this young protagonist from The Secret of the Urns lives with her parents in a small Human colony of scientists studying the ETs native to the moon of a Jupiter-sized planet. These ETs turn out to have a sad and secret past, but their immediate problem is with the Human miners who want to exploit the moon’s rare earth deposits, a plan that could very well destroy the ETs’ environment. AB makes it tough for Asako and her friends. Do they prevail?

Della Dos Toros. Much later still, in Mind Games, the father who adopted this young girl is murdered. They lived as outcasts on Sanctuary, one of three original Human colonies first mentioned in my novel Sing a Zamba Galactica. The father and daughter share a secret: They are empaths with ESP powers. In trying to use those powers to find her father’s killers, Della must travel from Sanctuary, her home planet, to Earth and New Haven, another of the first three colonies. She and her friends uncover a plan to take over all the planets in near-Earth space under the ITUIP umbrella (Interstellar Trade Union of Independent Planets) as danger lurks in three different worlds.

These three novels are a lot more profound than Heinlein’s Podkayne of Mars, but their motivation is the same: AB wanted to introduce young readers to the mystery and thrills of science fiction. What I’ve discovered at book events where I offer and/or talk about Carolan’s stories is that adults who are young-at-heart also like these novels. The fact that the three heroines are different but very special young women doesn’t seem to diminish that enjoyment. Way to go, AB! [wink, wink]

“So…what about Carolan’s Kayla Jones, the kick-ass protagonist in Carolan’s novel Origins?” you ask. She’s a very special character too. I’ll consider her next week.

***

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

AB Carolan’s “ABC Sci-Fi Mysteries for Young Adults.” Each novel in this series will entertain young adults and adults who are young-at-heart alike. They’re ideal for the first group, appropriate to tweens through teens that are more likely to make good book reports if they actually enjoy the books they read. AB Carolan might be an old leprechaun [wink, wink], but he’s young-minded and full of mischief. Like many Irishmen, he can spin a good yarn…as if he were a relative of the famous bard Turlough O’Carolan. (Have no fear. He writes in English, not Gaelic.)

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

Yeah, I’m a bit old-fashioned. I know I’m supposed to be more PC and use “hero” for both male and female characters as if they were neutered zombies, but what’s wrong with implying that a smart, kick-ass character has female charm as well? Screw any naysayers out there who complain, I say. At least I’m not a pervert like a certain newly re-elected orange devil! (What’s wrong with people?)

In any case, onward: Among my many novels, there are three female characters who are my favorites. Before I describe them (somewhat repetitive, I suppose, if you’ve read my prose), let me make a confession: I’m not a misogynistic ass like many men (especially certain politicians whom many of us, like half the American voters, love to hate). I admire brainy women of strong character and have often said in mixed groups that include supposedly macho men that the world would most likely be better off if such women were in control. (I don’t know why the US can’t be like other countries in that sense: Angela Merkel would have done a much better job than Donald Trump, Margaret Thatcher than Ronald Reagan, and so forth. I might not agree with their political positions, but I don’t agree with any of Trump or his sycophants’—zero, zilch, nada!)

That said, all three of my favorite female heroines I’ll describe are indeed brainy women of strong character (in contrast to any of the female toadies the orange devil will put in his administration). Let’s take them in descending order of age:

***

Esther Brookstone. Throughout the nine-novel “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, this older English lady belies the nickname Miss Marple that her colleagues in Scotland Yard gave her. My Esther is a lot sprier than Christie’s character, also sexier and more sagacious. I liked her best in the mystery/thriller Son of Thunder where, despite having a third husband (she loved them all!) who was an atheist Swiss banker, this daughter of a vicar strives to prove that the Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli—he most likely painted the “Birth of Venus” with Amerigo Vespucci’s nude daughter serving as model—never traveled to Turkey and consequently couldn’t have found St. John the Divine’s tomb.

Does she fail? You’ll have to read the novel to find out.  (The reader can think of this novel as Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code done correctly…because there are no historical errors!)  Her Dutch boyfriend from the first novel Rembrandt’s Angel, Interpol agent Bastiann van Coevorden, is along for part of the adventures in Son of Thunder, but the story is mostly hers, as she becomes a thoughtful female Sherlock in comparison to the first novel.

Mary Jo Melendez. This ass-kicking lady gets involved in all kinds of trouble in the sci-fi thriller Muddlin’ Through (as well as in the other two novels that follow in the “Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries” trilogy). She is framed for the murders of her sister and brother-in-law and the stealing of some “secret weapons” from the defense lab where the ex-USN Master-of-Arms works as a security guard. Her adventures are motivated by her desire to prove her innocence and revenge her relatives’ murders; they take her around the US, Europe, and South America. Despite her toughness, she can be a bit fragile…but I think that just makes her more human and caring.

Penny Castro. This ex-USN SAR sailor and LA County forensics diver fights to survive in the post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller The Last Humans, the first novel in yet another trilogy. She’s intelligent, creative, and resourceful and survives when most macho men would throw in the towel. She’s not the last human on Earth, but she initially thinks she is; yet she fights on, even against the fascist remains of the US government.

***

I created Esther Brookstone and Bastiann van Coevorden as an answer to the question: Why didn’t Agatha Christie ever put Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot together to solve a mystery? (Bastiann looks like the actor who played Poirot so often for the BBC.) That’s kind of a whimsical reason, especially considering that Esther Brookstone isn’t anything like the fragile old Miss Marple. (She’s younger at the beginning of the series and a stunner when she was earlier working as an MI6 spy in East Germany.)

Mary Jo Melendez in Muddlin’ Through and Penny Castro in The Last Humans gave me an opportunity to revisit some of my haunts when I was younger—Penny in SoCal and Mary Jo in Colombia. Esther Brookstone in Rembrandt’s Angel and Son of Thunder allowed me to revisit some others (Peru, Germany, Italy, and a few other European countries). Although you might have some doubts by now, I lived or worked in or visited none of these places where my kick-ass femme fatale characters strutted their stuff! I let my characters have rough-and-tumble adventures they endured as they saved the world as I sat back in my desk chair at my laptop enjoying their escapades…just as much as you will!

Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers!

***

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

“Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series. Esther and Bastiann have a lot more adventures than those described here. This is a nine-book series where two of the novels are free PDF downloads (see the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page). This series is a spin-off from the “Detectives Chen & Castilblanco” series and spins off to the “Inspector Steve Morgan” trilogy, That’s a lot of mystery/thriller stories for you to enjoy!

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

[Note from Steve: I’m posting this article to both my blogs because it’s about politics as well as reading and writing. If you object to that, you don’t have to read it!]

Although I’m sure the neo-Nazi and white supremacist MAGA maniacs and their fascist fuehrer, Donald J. Trump, don’t give a rat’s ass about Hispanic heritage (not to mention all those other bigots, haters, and general assholes who supported him in this last election, some even Hispanics!), I want to write first about our US immigrant heritage in general.

Let me say this to a lot of dumb SOBs out there: The only native Americans are Native Americans (and even they came over that land bridge from Asia to America long ago!). We’re all immigrants! There were waves and waves of immigrants to the New World. (I suppose today the FPA—that’s the “Fascist Party of America,” once was the Republican Party until Trump turned it into the FPA—would call all immigrants “evil migrants” today.) Yes, they came to our shores in waves and waves—Europeans in the east, fleeing wars, famines, and religious persecution; Africans in the south, most unwillingly as slaves, to maintain an evil way of life by making it economically feasible; and Asians in the west imported to work essentially as slaves to America’s robber-barons, themselves the sons and daughters of immigrants, to connect east with west. (Yeah, you might think that’s a “woke” statement. Tough!)

All the while, Americans methodically killed, enslaved, and “resettled” tribes of Native Americans, destroying their culture and civilization in the process. Let’s remember, though, that this also occurred elsewhere in the American continents at the hands of European invaders. Many of them were Portuguese or Spanish. Those decades of exploitation couldn’t stop the wonderful blending of Portuguese and Spanish colonists’ cultures, at least their positive parts, with those of America’s indigenous people, leading to what we now call Hispanic culture.

All that great Latin American diaspora has now settled into our country is the latest wave of decades of immigration to the US that is still going on, so for the bigots, haters, and racists of the FPA, they’re the obvious ones to take on the role of scapegoats for all the problems people believe they have, making them targets of their ire.

Hitler and Stalin had the Jews; American Nazis at the end of the nineteenth century and first part of the twentieth had the Irish, Italian, and other more recent immigrants from Europe; fascist leaders in Africa now go after gays, sentencing them to death; Jews in Israel are out to exterminate all Palestinians; Russians call Ukrainians, who are led by a brave Jew, Nazis; etc., etc. But in the US, the FPA has decided to use Hispanics as their scapegoats and has done so ever since 2015 when the Donald came down that escalator at Trump Tower. That was the first sign that things were going horribly wrong in America. “Hispanics are rapists and murderers,” that new presidential candidate said. He’s never stopped saying it!

Unfortunately, even many Hispanics have betrayed their heritage and moved to support that “f$#%ing moron” (that’s a quote from ex-SecState Tillerson, whom Trump fired in his first term) and Trump’s planned pogrom to be launched against their people. Is this cultural suicide and death wishes on their part? It sure looks like it! Gone will be any appreciation for the literary Hispanic heavyweights of Isabel Allende, Luis Borges, Leon de Greiff, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Pablo Neruda, Vargas Llosa, and so many others. Gone will be the wonderful dance and musical tradition of cumbias, bambucos, rancheros, tangos, vallenatos, and other musical forms of greats like Carlos Gardel, Atahualpa Yupanqui, and so many others. By destroying an entire people, America’s dictator and his crazy followers will destroy a culture just because American fascists need scapegoats to survive like Hitler and Stalin did. Fascist movements everywhere need people to blame. America’s Hispanics were the obvious choice for them, in their minds’ eyes a worthless minority everyone will love to hate.

If the internment and deportation program is successful (that mostly means that fascists will be willing to spend billions of your taxes on paying for it!), the fascist bigots, haters, and racists will get their wishes granted at the expense of killing American democracy. American fascists need a hard lesson of woke and DEI: America will die if it closes its borders to immigrants, and it will be a death by many cuts. Immigrants have always come to America to start new lives in the land of opportunity and have always contributed to building a stronger America. (Do you remember that Neil Diamond song?) The FPA and its fuehrer only want to tear America down. They even call themselves “disrupters”! Which future for America do you prefer? One controlled by the bigots, haters, and racists?

Like many others who have studied in detail at America’s current political disaster and its origins, something now so awful that the country looks like 1930s’ Germany, I’ve often thought of going elsewhere. During the Vietnam war era, I considered Canada. After all, I can live abroad and did so for more than a decade in Colombia, South America. Europe looks more sane too. But despite my age now that makes such a decision more difficult (although I’d like to leave the sinking ship because I know that, except for supporting their aging fuehrer, the FPA doesn’t care about the elderly—will Dr. Oz to offer euthanasia as a Medicare option?), all I can do is fight against fascism and for democracy in America with my writing during the years I have left; that includes my two blogs. That’s a promise I’ve made to myself. Won’t you join me?

I’ve been amused by how environmentalists and anti-global warming activists (little not-so-innocent Greta, are you reading this?) are now finally abandoning their Frankenstein complexes and realizing that modern nuclear reactor tech is an effective alternative to fossil fuels. Long ago I concluded that hydroelectric, solar, and wind alternatives can’t possibly provide the power needed to support human civilization. (Of course, as our last US election shows, the use of the word “civilization” might be a stretch!) US “experts” have been slow to come aboard, but Europe (as usual!) outsmarted them long ago and now have reactors everywhere, decreasing their dependence on fossil fuel exports from fascist Middle Eastern and Russian providers.

That was a theme in my novel Gaia and the Goliaths, number seven and the last one published in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series. (It’s about a collaboration between a Russian oligarch and an American oilman to destroy French reactors. Number eight, Defanging the Red Dragon, is more about China than Russia; it’s free PDF download. See the list on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page.)

Gaia is an example of prescient sci-fi (admittedly short-term science problems) playing an important role in a mystery/crime story. I published it in 2017. (A more recent example is Leonardo and the Quantum Code from the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series; a novel published in 2021.) Nothing miraculous about that, of course. With my scientific background, I could examine the data and conclude, along with many climate experts, that dependence on fossil fuels will eventually kill our planet; but, unlike those so-called experts, I believe their proposed solutions will fail unless we forget our Frankenstein complex about nuclear power and use it, at least as a complement and solution in countries where the other options are impractical.

In my novel, progressive Detective Castilblanco has come to the same realization; his conservative partner, Detective Chen, follows the party line. The novel shows no clear winner—these are long-term issues—but the clear loser is Putin’s Russia. Like many other oil-producing countries (Iran, in particular), and Donald Trump (“Drill, baby, drill!”) in the US, dependence on fossil fuels will end one way or the other, i.e., with their economies crumbling while others surge because they’ve become independent on fossil fuels.

Yes, nuclear power can be and should be an important component of any policy to combat climate change. But I can just hear the critics: What do we do with the nuclear waste? I can facetiously say, “Give it all to Elon Musk!” He’s such a genius that he’ll figure out how to put it on the moon or send it into the sun or bury it in the Marianna Trench. Nuclear waste isn’t the problem.

What about heating of our waterways from coolant waters from the reactors? They’re already super-heated now by the global warming caused by using fossil fuels. Those two recent and disastrous hurricanes became so strong because Gulf waters are super-heated! Any modern reactor does far less damage than the sum total of damage caused by using fossil fuels. And of course, we can just use the coolant water for the baths and showers of visitors to Mar a Lago and the orange devil who lives there!

Okay, engineers and scientists need to study all this critically, not spew platitudes like Trump’s nominees that will be dedicated to rolling back regs for climate control (the chump’s promise to the moguls of the fossil fuel industries who helped finance his election). It’s likely that a balanced combination of nuclear, solar, and wind power sources is best (hydroelectric possibilities can’t help much longer). No one should expect Detective Castilblanco to do that. (And Gaia and the Goliaths couldn’t possibly be a good mystery/crime/thriller story if it were full of scientific details, could it?)

But we should expect that all the so-called “experts” (and not fascist spin-doctors!) to look calmly and logically at the options, not just as a source of political funding donated by the fossil fuel industry’s tycoons who, like Trump, are willing to destroy our world to satisfy their greed and thirst for power.

***

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

Gaia and the Goliaths. A Russian oligarch and an American energy executive conspire to destroy nuclear reactors so that the fossil fuel industries can have free reign. One activist against global warming and her boyfriend discover the conspiracy, but she is murdered. In trying to find those responsible, Chen and Castilblanco must go far beyond their New York City neighborhoods and dig through a lot of international intrigue. Al crime story that’s all too believable and current, this novel is sold wherever quality ebooks are sold (even on Amazon), as are all seven books of the published series. Don’t miss this gripping read!

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

At the beginning of my “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy,” in the first novel, Survivors of the Chaos (first edition, 2011; second edition found in the three-book bundle), I paint a dismal and dystopian picture of what has become of the US and the world. I’m more convinced now than ever before that the divisions in our country will be used by the felonious President-elect Donald Jackass Trump to destroy American democracy and democracy in our world. As Vladimir Putin stated after congratulating the jackass, “It’s a new world order.” He meant “fascism rules; democracy fails,” of course. (Did everyone forget the first Trump term’s debacle when there were people who tried to rein him in?) I hate to say it, but I told you so…in that very 2011 dystopian novel!

In fact, the name “Chaos Chronicles” is very appropriate: There are some survivors of the chaos in that novel, some good people who help take humanity to the stars. I’m sure that many of us now want to flee the US to live elsewhere, anywhere away from Trump. They realize that, even with Trump’s evil genius Elon Musk behind the scenes, going to the stars might be a stretch though. Maybe New Zealand or Norway where democrats not demagogues still wield power? But it’s questionable whether there’s one place on Earth where humanity might be safe from fascism now.

The villains in this fictional but prescient trilogy are fascists like Donald Jackass Trump, Putin, Xi, and other autocrats. In fact, in the third tome, Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hand!, Donald Trump could have been my model for the psychotic and sociopathic villain, although that evil man is a lot more dangerous than Narcissus le Grand because he has a brain. At the time of writing that last novel, I was thinking of my novels as my Foundation trilogy a la Isaac Asimov and the villain in that last book as Isaac’s Mule. Now he seems more like Trump with a brain (including his perverted treatment of women!).

Of course, Trump was a nobody at the time I penned that trilogy (in a sense, he still is). I had a feeling that someone like Trump would come along, though, and had observed enough of human behavior that human being’s tribal natures would most likely create another demagogue like Hitler. There are two, father and son, in Survivors of the Chaos; there’s the one in Come Dance a Cumbia; and you can consider the ruthless ETs of Sing a Zamba Galactica to be an intergalactic version of our very real MAGA hordes.

Again, these were just some prescient guesses about the future history of mankind I made. It’s quite unfortunate that they’ve gone from science fiction to political fact so soon. As much as you want to escape the soon-to-become completely fascist chaos of the US, you now have no escape. Good luck in surviving our very real chaos created by the jackass—he loves chaos! Obviously, a majority of American voters didn’t and don’t give a rat’s ass about the future of our country, and they don’t want anyone to survive his chaos!

***

Comments are always welcome. (Follow the rules found on the “Join the Conversation” web page. If you don’t, your comment is labeled as spam.)

The “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy” collection. This inexpensive bundle of three novels covers thousands of years of humanity’s future history, beginning with a dystopian Earth, reaching out to the stars where both good and bad ETs are encountered, and finally settling peacefully until a vengeful business mogul out for retribution tries to destroy all that’s been gained. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold (even on Amazon). These are “evergreen” novels, i.e. stories that are as fresh, interesting, and even more relevant as the day I finished their manuscripts. (You can see that above!)

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

I started writing mysteries long ago with the Dr. Carlos stories. Carlos Obregon is chief medical officer on a starship in the future. (See the list of free PDF downloads on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page.) He was inspired by Isaac Asimov’s Elijah Bailey, a detective from planet Earth who solved crimes in Asimov’s robot trilogy. In other words, my Dr. Carlos stories are sci-fi mysteries, an unusual cross-genre experiment lacking a bit of originality.

It took awhile, but NYPD detective Castilblanco soon came on the scene. His cases covered eight novels and several works of short fiction. (His adopted son and daughter followed in the old man’s footsteps.)

More recently, Esther Brookstone and Steve Morgan added a bit of British flavor to my storytelling (novels and more works of short fiction). I learned about crimefighting in the UK and on the European continent. (I’m sure some European readers, especially those in the UK, have found some mistakes. They weren’t intentional.)

Along this long trajectory, I’ve been bothered by one question above all: What clues should a mystery/crime writer reveal to keep the reader interested? That question includes number and source, of course. In the literature, there’s a wide spectrum of answers. There are apparently two extremes: Garcia Marquez reveals all at the beginning of Chronicle of A Death Foretold; in Asimov’s Robots of Dawn, an intricate and out-of-this-world mystery compared to the first two novels of his trilogy (Asimov was expanding his horizons, I suppose), clues are discovered one by one until the murderer is discovered, more a la Agatha Christie.

A technique I saw used in one British-style mystery I read (I’ve binged on entire series, which began as a way to deal with the isolation from Covid) is to include a section in each chapter where the actions of the murderer are portrayed, but the reader doesn’t know whom among the people interviewed by the detectives corresponds to the unnamed murderer. Effective, I thought, but it seemed to be a bit of a swindle.

The answers to that question raised above are probably as numerous as the the number of mystery writers. In mystery/crime stories, I’m also all over the board. The danger of revealing too much is that can turn a mystery story into a thriller. (All my thrillers have mystery elements; most do.)

The answers are best determined by flow, to be honest, which must mostly carry the reader forward in the plot. In the two examples indicated above, the flow is completely different. Garcia-Marquez’s is actually “backward flow.” Asimov’s reminds me of why we all many UK  mysteries to be about “plods”: Elijah Bailey is a “plod”!

In my stories, I’ll have to admit that I don’t have a single answer to that all-important question. I have to confess that every story takes me to a slightly different one. I suppose that’s not unusual: Each mystery is different albeit variations on a theme (or themes), so the answers must be different.

I also suppose that some readers might like to know which story of mine has the most twists (these represent how the answers to the question vary). That’s easy to answer. While all my mysteries are different, from other authors’ and between novels even in the same series, Teeter-Totter between Lust and Murder is probably the novel that has the most clues and leaves the reader guessing until the end. That case was a real challenge for Detective Castilblanco.

***

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

Teeter-Totter between Lust and Murder. This was my very first mystery novel and maybe one of the best. It’s “evergreen” in the sense it’s still very relevant today. Although Detective Chen plays a supporting role in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series, it’s a major one in most of the novels. As a strong-willed true conservative from Long Island, she has relationship problems. The story begins here when her relationship with a US senator goes terribly wrong and the politician is murdered. As Castilblanco tries to clear his partner, an arms trafficking scheme and plot to seize power are uncovered. Have a great time following the many clue to the surprising end (and perhaps unexpected, as one reviewer noted).

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

Only a few decades ago when the internet was young and made more sense, the PR and advertising gurus who supposedly worked on behalf of authors emphasized two marketing strategies more than others: Get a website and participate in social media.

Obviously, I still have a website. I’ll admit it’s now a bit out of date. I’ve never sold my books (nor Bibles published in China like Trump) nor T-shirts with “In Libris Libertas!” displayed on them (heaven forbid MAGA T’s!). That’s just plain tacky (even in politics!). I update my website’s content as I see fit, only occasionally resorting to the wonderful expertise I’ve found at Monkey C Media, the company that originally designed my website.

But social media for this author? Not so much anymore. Allow me to explain why.

Social media isn’t what it used to be. Zuckerberg allowed Facebook to become the tool of trolls, conspiracy theorists, child exploiters, and many other nasty people, domestic and foreign. Musk bought Twitter and turned it into X, ruining that social media site as well. I apologize to all my friends and followers at those two popular social media sites for leaving them (though they might not have realized I was gone!), but I just couldn’t tolerate what happened to and continues to occur at those sites.

The old warhorses Goodreads and LinkedIn have similar problems. I just haven’t got around to leaving them yet. The first, Goodreads, had some interesting discussion groups that became nasty echo chambers dominated by small-minded autocratic group leaders and their anti-author minions; it got worse when Bezos took over the site (i.e., made it yet another Amazon slave–Thomas Mercer suffered a similar fate, but it was once a respected publisher, not a social media site). Mr. Bezos ruins anything and everything (including his marriage and the Washington Post! In the publishing context, I have other reasons for despising Amazon as well. None of my recent books have appeared on Amazon for those reasons,)

The second “social media” site that’s no longer so social, LinkedIn, seemed a lot more useful at first, again for its discussion groups but also for its “connections” to people working in publishing. LinkedIn’s discussion groups have gone the way of Goodreads’; the connections are still there, but at this stage in my writing career, I need them less than I need more hair. And Microsoft’s purchase of LinkedIn didn’t help, of course. Gates is just another Bezos.

Of course, this website could also be considered social media. I have a contact page readers can use to reach out to me. (Recently a representative from a real English Brookstone family contacted me, for example! That was a pleasant surprise!) Readers can also comment on posts like this one. (Please follow the rules found on the “Join the Conversation” web page. These are designed to avoid the ever-present social-media trolls. If you have some honest observations, you’ll have no problems.)

If you consider that I also write novels and short fiction (I even give away some of these creations—see below) as well as a political blog, that’s enough social media for this busy old author. In other words, I’m not internet-adverse or computer illiterate; I just lack the time and patience to tolerate those who make social media such a hostile place. I participated in the computer revolution as a scientist long before becoming an author, even before today’s trolls were out of their nappies, often wondering as I read scientific preprints why their circulation wasn’t computerized via some kind of email-type dispersal system. (The worldwide web was created at CERN precisely for that reason!) I’ve paid my dues. Bezos, Gates, Musk, Zuckerberg, and other “jolly green giants” of internet exploitation can all go to the social-media hell they’ve created! I won’t accompany them. (Okay, maybe I will. If the old boy upstairs doesn’t serve bacon and Colombian coffee at his boarding house, I’ll think about hanging with that horned guy. At least his fiery breath will make the bacon nice and crispy!)

***

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

Free PDF downloads. My “discovery” of how easy it is to use Draft2Digital (D2D) to self-publish my books has made my publishing life easier, I still don’t have the time to publish everything I write, not even all the good stuff. And I’ve learned, unlike many who extensively use social media, to be self-critical about what I publish or give away for free: You’ll never see the “bad stuff” because I self-revise and self-censor. You’ll see the free stuff I offer in the list found on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page. A lot could be for sale using D2D, but my motivation for writing is not to make a lot of money. This free stuff includes two free novels, collections of short fiction, and my course “Writing Fiction,” where I’m brutally honest at times about the writing business (what several social media groups couldn’t tolerate), like in the post above. You can share any of these free PDFs with family and friends. All I ask from those who download them is to respect the copyright. Enjoy.

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

This romantic sci-fi thriller is a “bridge book” (see my last post for an expanded definition!). It now leads readers from the “Inspector Steve Morgan” trilogy to the “Clones & Mutants” trilogy. It features some characters from the “Detectives Chen & Castilblanco” series and a few new ones. And like some of my novels, it was inspired by a short story; that tale asked what a future paranoid US government will do when it discovers its aging agents with Top Secret information in their heads start becoming senile. Will they leak that information to US enemies? How can that be avoided?

I wrote this novel long before we had two old senile codgers running for president. Otherwise, the story might have been about them! Of course, their memories aren’t so good now either, at least not good enough to avoid keeping some of those Top Secret SCI documents around to jog their failing memories.

In any case, that’s one theme of this novel and the only one in the short story (which came first). The novel was written, though, to give DHS Ashley Scott a starring role. She’s a secondary character in the “Chen & Castilblanco” tales, albeit often an important one, so I thought it was only fair to give her a leading role in her own thriller. She’d been very patient while awaiting stardom. Of course, I had to put her into some dangerous situations! But my tough female protagonists can handle them!

Ashley is nearing retirement in this novel and feels very alone. That leads to this story becoming a romantic sci-fi thriller in a way like Rogue Planet, but The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan takes place in a much less distant (and therefore scarier?) future: An evil AI is one of the villains, and it makes HAL (the 2001 version, not the 2010 one) look like a wuss. That and other features of the themes and plot make this novel a lot darker compared to Prince Kaushal’s “Games of Thrones”-like adventures as he wins back his planet.

The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan is as dark as the three “Steve Morgan” novels (if not darker) although it’s intended to follow them now on my extended timeline. It’s better as a lead into the very dark “Clones & Mutants” trilogy, which was my intention. All the action takes place in the NJ and NY area while the trilogy hops around a bit (US, Africa, Spain, China, and Korea) as that extended series of novels fills out a timeline covering millennia and heads into the solar system and beyond. Readers shouldn’t ignore this novel for that reason.

But it also treats questions very relevant to today’s politics. No, I’m not a seer who can predict the future, but, as a fiction writer, I’ve studied human nature. It can be very dark! Writing about that darkness can serve as warnings that might create some light. That’s always been one motive for my writing!

***

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

The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan. Virginia is a retired FBI agent whose retirement doesn’t quite go as planned. She gets involved in a government conspiracy run by an evil villain and the AI he has created to do his bidding. DHS agent Ashley Scott and a handsome Latino investigative reporter get involved in many ways, including romantically. “Evergreen” in the sense that the plot and themes are even more current than when I finished the manuscript, this novel is full of surprises. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold (even on Amazon).

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