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.

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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!

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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.

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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!)

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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!

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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!

I call some of my novels “bridge books”: They offer readers a span that takes them from one series to another like the GW bridge connects NJ and Manhattan. Sometimes new series intervene, though. There’s no bridge from the “Detectives Chen & Castilblanco” series to the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series nor from the latter series to the “Inspector Steve Morgan” trilogy—in a sense, there should be because these are all big series. (Esther appears in “Chen & Castilblanco” and Steve in “Esther Brookstone,” the first more a cameo than the second, which covers Morgan’s transfer from Scotland Yard to Bristol PD.) But The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan is a bridge novel, originally from “Chen & Castilblanco” to the “Clones & Mutants” trilogy and now from “Steve Morgan” to “Clones & Mutants”; and Soldiers of God is a bridge from “Clones & Mutants” to the “Chaos Chronicles,” a trilogy (now available as a bundled ebook).

Rogue Planet, however, might seem like a bridge to nowhere. (Something like the one in Alaska that was an old senator’s boondoggle, an extreme example of Republican party grift the party bosses would prefer voters forget.) I suppose it could be called the fourth novel in the “Chaos Chronicles” series, but it shares characteristics with the previously mentioned bridges that are on that extended timeline many of my novels share…yet it can stand alone, as most of my books can.

I wrote Rogue Planet to show that all that “Game of Thrones” look can be found in hard sci-fi as well (minus sorcerers’ magic and impossible creatures like flying dragons, of course—hard sci-fi must seem real and possible, not like impossible fantasy). My novel takes place on a faraway planet in the far future of the same sci-fi universe as the “Chaos Chronicles” trilogy after an Ayatollah-like leader of an evil theocracy has deposed a good king. That king’s son is a bit of a rake, but he becomes the leader of the resistance, a bit reluctantly. The Ayatollah figure is the villain, of course.

What remains mostly hidden in the novel is that this romantic sci-fi thriller is also a bridge book…even though no series follows! There are hints in the interlude section where Prince Kaushel travels to ITUIP’s capital world looking for help for the revellion. (ITUIP = “Interstellar Trade Union of Independent Planets,” created in the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy,” and the prince’s planet is beyond its boundaries in near-Earth galactic space.) ITUIP doesn’t want to get involved, so the prince and his friends must go it alone.

You will find most of the Dr. Carlos stories collected in “Dr. Carlos Obregon, Chief Medical Officer,” a free collection you can download. (See the entire list on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page.) Rogue Planet is a bridge to those stories. Read the novel and Dr. Carlos stories to find out why.

Rogue Planet is also a bow to the “Chaos Chronicles” trilogy and Isaac Asimov. If you’re at all familiar with that great sci-fi storyteller’s oeuvre, you’ll see why as you finish Rogue Planet. But, more than anything else, Rogue Planet offers evidence that fantastic adventures do not require dungeons and dragons, which is why I rarely read fantasy!

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Rogue Planet. My “Game of Thrones”-like romantic hard sci-fi thriller’s principal character is a bit of a rogue himself, the legal heir to a throne on a planet taken over by an evil theocracy (modelled after Iran, of course). Readers who like fantasy will probably like this novel as much as hard sci-fi addicts do. Available wherever fine sci-fi stories are sold…in both ebook and trade paperback formats! Enjoy! (Fair warning: For some reason, B&N doesn’t sell the trade paperback version, so I swallowed my pride and just linked to Amazon, which does. Because B&N used to sell the trade paperback, I imagine you can order it there at the store. Ah, the wonderful vagaries of book publishing!)

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

What’s wrong with this path, it and some variants so often followed? The answer: It depends…and mostly in hindsight after the story becomes ancient history. No one can deny that The Lion King’s Broadway version was (and still is!) a marvelous experience. The music was there even in the original classic Disney cartoon version, but those theatrical costumes and antiphonal drums at the beginning of the Broadway version put me on the edge of my seat, something no film version could ever accomplish! I can make similar comments about West Side Story.

Of course, that’s cheating on my part: Novels weren’t involved in either Broadway show I mentioned. So let’s consider Water for Elephants, which went through all three stages but had limited success on Broadway. The movie version was damn good, but the Sara Gruen 2006 novel that began that sequence of differing media versions was better. I have to admit that I only saw the movie, but the majority of pundits claimed it followed the novel well. And you could tell; I’d claim, as I often do, the movie was good because Hollywood’s screenwriters didn’t tamper with the novel’s theme, plot, characters, and settings that much. (Maybe the Broadway show had limited success because it’s hard to put a circus on a Broadway stage? The producer(s) should have paid attention to The Lion King, which managed to put all of Africa on the stage.)

Unfortunately, rabid book-banners attacked the novel, so I suspect that Hollywood tried to PG the movie and the Broadway producers neutered it as well. It was absurd for censors to go after even the novel, of course, especially considering that their attempts at preserving tweens and teens’ innocence are almost always futile: Today’s young adults know a lot more about grown-up things than older adults can even imagine and aren’t prudishly embarrassed to discuss them either. Hell, call me precocious if you want, but I was reading books like Tom Jones and Fanny Hill back in the day before my physicist colleagues ever imagined the internet! And I never minded talking about such things. I’m not a pervert (like an infamous political figure who shall remain anonymous here…akin to Voldemort, although Rawling’s villain didn’t lie as much!).

Book-banning bumpkins aside, a successful novel-movie-Broadway show triple play is hard to pull off. I can’t remember if Disney tried to CGI The Jungle Book (Rudyard Kipling, author), but some steps in that triple play, even with CGI and no matter the order, often fail. But if the movie or play is based on a novel, there’s more chance for it to succeed…unless the producers don’t follow the novel! Let’s face it: Novel to screenplay or Broadway show makes a lot of sense. The novelist has already done a lot of the work! Okay, some of it isn’t usable—neither movie nor Broadway show is good at internal dialogue, for example—and the three medias are vastly different. But theme, plot, characterization, settings, and direct dialogue are common to all three, and a good novel handles those masterfully (emphasis on “good,” of course).

Hooray for novels!

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Rogue Planet. The fantasy classic Game of Thrones will probably never make it to a Broadway stage. Neither will my “Game of Thrones”-like romantic hard sci-fi thriller Rogue Planet, although it would be easier to stage (no magic and no dragons, similar swashbuckling action). My principal character is a bit of a rogue himself, the legal heir to a throne on a planet taken over by an evil theocracy (modelled after Iran, of course). Readers who like fantasy will like this one as much as hard sci-fi addicts do. (There are some bows to Isaac Asimov that you sci-fi fans will enjoy!) Available wherever fine sci-fi stories are sold…in both ebook and trade paperback formats! Enjoy!

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

Visitors to this website probably know that I give away a lot of free fiction in the form of downloadable PDFs. (The list of them is found on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page. Just click on the titles you want to download.) Most of these PDF downloads correspond to short fiction collections or single, long novellas, but there are also complete novels available—two “Esther Brookstone” novels so far. And I’ve just added two new items: Revenge at Last and Sleuthing, British-Style, Volume Four.

“Revenge at Last” is also the first novella in this three-novella collection of the same name. It’s something like a sequel to the “Inspector Steve Morgan” trilogy, which in turn was a spin-off from the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series. In the novella, Morgan gets a new boss, DCI Mark Hunter, and a new murder case, its female victim being a rock group’s sometimes soloist and business manager.

The second novella in this collection, “Kill Shot,” features Owen Wilson, one of Steve Morgan’s detective sergeants, who describes the murder case of a young IT expert who was also an avid amateur athlete. Owen was forced to become Senior Investigating Officer on a previous case; he must also do some heavy lifting now on this one.

The third novella, “Memories of East Berlin,” finds the inimitable Esther Brookstone, now retired, and Philippa Bernard, Hal Leonard’s lovely French girlfriend, now working for the DGSI, attending a short watercolors-painting course at a university in Berlin. Esther recognizes someone from her distant past when she was an MI6 spy in East Berlin.

The second new PDF download, Sleuthing, British-Style, Volume Four, continues this series of short fiction collections with three new novellas set in the UK but also with new characters. In “The Hit-and-Run Victim,” Detective Inspector Maggie Olson gets involved with the victim, an ER doctor, but investigating that case leads to something much more insidious. In “Playtime in the Park,” investigative reporter Ben teams up with ER nurse Christy and old Detective Inspector Ed Stevenson to investigate why someone attempts to murder a visiting businessman from NYC. Finally, in “The Viking’s Axe,” Detective Inspector Mark Meadows and his two detective sergeants work hard to discover who killed a fifth- and sixth-form school professor with an ancient battle axe.

Please note all this short fiction has been carefully content- and copy-edited and formatted to give you many hours of reading enjoyment. As with all these free PDFs, I only skipped those last few final steps needed to publish these two collections with Draft2Digital/Smashwords. Consider them gifts to you, my readers. I hope you enjoy them.

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The “Inspector Steve Morgan” Trilogy. While Steve’s arrival at Bristol PD from Scotland Yard is described in The Klimt Connection (eighth novel in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” Series that’s more about Morgan’s secondment with MI5),  the three novels, Legacy of Evil, Cult of Evil, and Fear the Asian Evil, describe three murder cases that the detective inspector and his team at his new nick strive to solve despite facing all sorts of obstacles. (The novella described above considers yet another case.)

Morgan is one of my most complex characters. There might be more of his cases coming!

Enjoy.

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

Anyone who has examined this website’s list of my books knows that I’ve been writing fiction for a while now. Full Medical, the first novel in the “Clones and Mutants” trilogy, was published in 2006, but its dedication page shows that I started to get serious about my writing fiction (but still having fun!) shortly after 9/11. So let’s say I’ve been spinning yarns for a quarter century now, a duration much longer than I ever spent in one day-job (where I actually made some good money!).

This body of work was made possible by work habits that I developed early on and are hard to break now. My day (even many a weekend day!) isn’t complete until I’ve written something, even if it’s just jotting down a what-if, theme, character or setting description, or plot idea. I suppose some people might call that an addiction (my wife might be your candidate, but she’s also a great cheerleader and has a lot of patience with me).

While these habits are hard to break, I am slowing down: I’ve avoided running that literary marathon required to write a novel for a while now. I’m still relaxing a bit after finishing “The Last Humans” trilogy’s last novel, Menace from Moscow, by focusing on short fiction and political op-eds (because I’m concerned about what the 2024 election means for future of American democracy and our world).

But what has all this writing done for me? Certainly not bring me riches! I’m probably the most prolific writer that most people never heard of. You might think that’s explained by the fact there’s a lot of competition now, and you’d be partially correct. Some of it’s quite good, and I read some of those other good books. Some books are just terrible, though, and I don’t waste my time on them. (Even Trump’s second wannabe assassin self-published a book! Maybe the FBI should have read it, but I wouldn’t…and Mr. Trump couldn’t—he didn’t even read his national security briefs!)

There are other factors beyond competition, though. Covid ended my public book events. I’ve even halted the meager efforts I used to publicize the launch of a new novel, primarily because many of mine are part of a series, and no book marketing service seems to know how to market a series (I don’t know how to do that either, to be honest…but shouldn’t they know? My series certainly aren’t as long as Sue Grafton’s, although she never made it to Z.)

Perhaps giving away a lot of my short fiction (see the long list on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page) might be  considered a marketing gimmick, but it really isn’t. Two sales facts counter that idea: Published short fiction collections rarely sell well; and the so-called PR and marketing “experts” don’t know how to advertise these either! Okay, I suppose there’s a third fact, a largely irrelevant one when considering how easy it is to use Draft2Digital/Smashwords: Making a PDF document from an MS Word file is so easy—one click and I’m done. (Yeah, I know, I still have to content- and copy-edit the manuscript, i.e., worry about making it all readable, but I can skip the worry about finding a cover and somebody willing to market the story or stories.)

Surprisingly, what I’ve done by eliminating the stuff that’s the most time-consuming (writing the novel, preparing its manuscript for publication, planning an advertising campaign, and so forth) has been liberating and allowed me to rediscover my voice for writing short fiction. I suppose most writers start by writing short fiction. (I too did a lot of it at the start, but many of those short pieces became parts of novels…and that still occurred over the years.) Maybe writing short fiction is how I’ll end my days when arthritis in my hands diminishes my touch-typing skills too much. (Best damn course I had in high school!)

But writing is still my addiction, a positive and fulfilling one. And it’s a lot more fun than playing golf, especially with global warming going on!

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

“The Last Humans” trilogy. A bioengineered virus spreads around Earth and kills billions. Penny Castro an ex-USN SAR expert and LA County Sheriff’s forensics diver, survives and creates a future for her blended family after many adventures in what’s left of the US and two countries overseas. These three post-apocalyptic sci-fi novels, The Last Humans, A New Dawn, and Menace from Moscow, blend together warnings about global warming, biological and nuclear warfare, and failed political systems that will make you wonder about humanity’s future. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold. (The first novel is also available in print format.)

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

It happens. Companies competing to monetize space? Yeah, that’s Boeing vs. Space-X at least, with the latter winning now, but don’t forget European, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and other companies. Star Trek communicators? Smart phones can do almost everything Captain Kirk’s device could, although he never had AI on it and you can. (In fact, it will soon be on new iPhones whether you want it or not!) Comsats? Arthur C. Clarke predicted them, but he couldn’t have imagined Elon Musk littering valuable real estate in Earth’s orbital space with his clouds of tiny comsats. Worldwide pandemics? Michael Crichton imagined an alien one in the Andromeda Strain, but Covid proved that human beings can manage to create that without any help from aliens. (And Covid was even bioengineered if you believe it came from that lab in Wuhan, China.)

Surviving a worldwide plague was the theme of The Last Humans, the first novel in my trilogy, “The Last Humans.” It’s yet another example of sci-fi becoming sci-fact, as discussed in the NY Times (9/10/2024) article “10,000 Feet Up, Scientists Found Hundreds of Airborne Microbes,” with the subtitle “Hints that winds may help spread diseases around the world.” That novel’s prediction that a US enemy’s bioengineered virus now unfortunately seems entirely possible. It also means that even the short propagation time it took for Covid to infect the planet can even be shortened quite a bit as the contagion rides in the prevailing winds…like in the novel! Who knows what contagions our enemies are cooking up right now? I made an extrapolation from current science to create a story…and a warning, but we might not be lucky enough to be saved by new vaccine technology (mRNA) in the future. Or will anti-vaxers come to power and ban all vaccines like Robert Kennedy Jr. wants, giving humanity a death sentence if any future contagion is unleashed?

Of course, warnings from sci-fi don’t need to become sci-fact to be useful. Another warning in that first novel of my trilogy (with repercussions there and in the two following novels) was about water management and how massive fires make it even more difficult. 2024 is beginning to look like it will be the worst year in Earth’s history for climate problems, but it was already bad in 2019 when the first novel was published…bad enough for me to make some bold predictions!

Another example of sci-fi becoming sci-fact: I generally treat AI as a technology that’s helpful for humans in my sci-fi tales, but not always. Current AI might be artificial, but it’s not intelligence. True AI can be damn scary (just consider HAL in 2001 and the machines’ takeover in the Terminator series). In combination with other technologies, it might become even scarier. (A. B. Carolan’s Mind Games considers androids with ESP. Now that’s scary!)

Sci-fi plots often are extrapolations of current science…or even the same current science used in an evil manner. The threat of nuclear war, an old one, is often a theme. It’s considered in the third novel of my trilogy, Menace from Moscow. Perhaps we should pay more attention to these warnings from sci-fi authors?

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

“The Last Humans” trilogy. A bioengineered virus spreads around Earth and kills billions. An ex-USN SAR and LA County Sheriff’s forensics diver survives and creates a future for her blended family after many adventures in what’s left of the US and two countries overseas. These three post-apocalyptic sci-fi novels The Last Humans, A New Dawn, and Menace from Moscow, blend together warnings about global warming, biological and nuclear warfare, and failed political systems like fascism that will make you wonder about humanity’s future. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold. (The first novel is also available in print format.)

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