While there’s a lot besides books on Amazon now—it ceased being a reliable bookstore decades ago—and most of it has examples of how big bot Jeff Bezos and his army of little Amazon bots fail consumers (you can add “exploit” and “irritate” to “fail”) as they try to be the marketplace of the world, there are many reasons why Amazon fails authors, so many that authors and readers should avoid Amazon like the plague.

The main reason is that the online service, that started as an electronic bookstore, no longer focuses on selling books! It does try to control book prices and sales to the detriment of the rest of the book industry. It also resells books and sells questionable reprints. Add to that features that are only available if an author or publisher is exclusive to Amazon, and you’ve got to wonder why any author or publisher would deal with Amazon.

Exclusivity has another negative: Although it pretends to also be a book publisher as well as a bookseller, it doesn’t distribute authors and publishers’ books to other booksellers, online or otherwise. There are many retail outlets for books, so authors and publishers can do much better by “going wide,” even if it requires ditching Amazon; i.e., having their books for sale at these many other booksellers a lot of readers frequent. In other words, Amazon is not a book distributor! Instead, it tries to be a monopoly. (I hate it when a reader asks if one of my books is on Amazon as if that’s important. The most recent ones aren’t!)

Another negative against Amazon is Bezos himself, of course. Although I’ll admit it’s hard to measure its negative effects on authors and publishers, Bezos is a card-carrying member of America’s greedy fascist oligarchy. He doesn’t even try to hide this anymore, from supporting the “fucking moron” in the White House (that’s a quote from ex-SecState Tillerson) to his laughable attempt to contribute to the space program where he sells tickets to the filthy rich and his garish and lavish wedding where he took over Venice. (That first wife was smart to give Bezos the boot!) At least Putin’s oligarchs have seaworthy yachts; Trump’s oligarch Bezos built one that couldn’t even make it to sea.

Amazon also ignores customers’ complaints, which is probably the consequence of automation, i.e., the bots and soon-to-be-increased indifference as AI takes over. (For example, the bots got the novels in my “The Last Humans” trilogy mixed up, and I could never reach a human who could fix the problem. I had to give up trying to fix the problem. This is explained in more detail in the list of my books found at this website. I haven’t offered any later novels on Amazon as a consequence. And Draft2Digital does a fine job of going wide, Mr. Bezos!)

Amazon has ruined and will continue to ruin American commerce in general and bookselling in particular if consumers allow it. That’s all on Jeff Bezos! And it’s all on us to battle him! It’s time for all enlightened consumers to boycott Amazon!

***

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

It happens. Arthur C. Clarke imagined comsats long ago; we now have a plethora of them. Isaac Asimov imagined androids and robots long ago too; we now have many of the latter and still fear quality ones of the former (because of a still-prevalent Frankenstein complex?). Versions of AI populate many sci-fi stories, often as villains (remember HAL?); while current models haven’t yet reached the level of what’s been imagined, the anemic and primitive software roll-outs still seem to be all the rage now, the handful of providing companies dominating the stock market.

All this and more relate to some of my own stories, of course, but in this post I want to focus on a recent news item that caught my attention: Google’s claimed advances in creating a quantum computer. From what I saw and read, their efforts looked about as impressive as those first attempts at mainframes now left far behind by the laptop on your desk; they only represent a tiny step forwards despite the hype. (All the cryogenics required seems to imply that we won’t be using a desktop quantum computer anytime soon!)

However, this news item about Google’s efforts made me wonder how fast the advances in quantum computing will make my novel Leonardo and the Quantum Code (#5 in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series) a bit like that old story by Jules Verne, From the Earth to the Moon, relative to last century’s Apollo missions (Verne’s characters traveled to the moon after being shot out of a cannon). Any story featuring future tech can become dated.

In a sense, my novel is a bit like a tongue-in-cheek play (not quite as much as my novel, A Time-Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse): In Esther’s adventure, an old physics professor, an old friend of Esther Brookstone when she and husband number two Alfred were at Oxford, is motivated by some projection techniques he found in a (yet unknown!) notebook of Leonard da Vinci (the Leonardo of the title, of course) to create clever and super-fast encryption and decryption algorithms for quantum computers. The humorous twist, and the old physicist’s joke on everyone trying to steal those algorithms, is that there are no existing quantum computers; his algorithms can’t be used…yet!

While I know enough about encryption and decryption as well as quantum phenomena to make the story seem real, even though it’s clearly fiction, a bit of sci-fi in a rather unconventional mystery/thriller story, the same question might occur to you as it did to me: How soon might facts overtake my fiction? Better said, how soon will that physics professor’s joke on international spies no longer be valid?

I probably shouldn’t worry. As I said above, Google’s quantum computer looked quite primitive. Moreover, my tale still qualifies as a tongue-in-cheek critique of the Russian and US spy networks as well as the UK’s MI5 competency and research projects. Or, is it just another spy thriller that will eventually become irrelevant with the inexorable advancement of technology? Time will tell.

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[Note from Steve: Readers might be wondering about two things: Why don’t I provide links to the books mentioned above? And why don’t I show their cover images like I used to do? The first answer is a bit complicated: I’m in the process of merging old Smashwords accounts with Draft2Digital—those two companies’ merger has caused some technical software problems for me (and others, I suppose). Also, space limitations for this blog don’t allow me to archive and use cover images when needed. Technology often works against us!]

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

I’m no polyglot, but I love languages. I’m fluent in English and Spanish. I’ve read Gabo’s and other authors’ works in Spanish, but I wouldn’t dare try to write a story in that language! I once knew enough German to get into trouble when eating at a restaurant in Berlin and trying to serve as a translator for an irate Arab father (who spoke perfect English) and a German waiter (who spoke none but was desperate to please a customer). I used to know a lot more French than Spanish (not anymore!) and could read Russian; I was sufficiently proficient in both French and Russian to pass two reading proficiency tests in both languages (the other choice was German, not Spanish).

Yes, I’m far from being a polyglot, but I’m a big fan of language, all languages, because they’re what makes us all human (no matter how good AI gets!) and helps us all to hear and read the great works human beings have created over the centuries. (While proud of my own meager contributions, they’re a drop in the bucket among all those famous speeches, tales, treatises, and so forth! And mine certainly can’t be labeled great. Entertaining? Maybe. Enlightening and educational? Sometimes. Fun for me to write? Always!)

Language can be abused, of course. Dictators, wannabe Hitlers or otherwise, can use it to spew thousands of lies on their way to absolute autocratic power. (The Washington Post apparently gave up the counting of our current president’s.) Conspiracy theorists and fanatical spewers of hate abuse language as well, often twisting the accepted meanings of words and phrases to further their own evil agendas.

Language is like nuclear physics, though: Both can be used to improve the human condition; both can also be used in terribly destructive ways. We see both uses of language among authors, some like me, toiling away without many readers to show for it, many others with more readers than they deserve because they create works that are insults to language and thus humanity.

Nowadays, “educated reader” is becoming more of an oxymoron. There’s very little educational value to be found in escapist literature like fantasies, romances, and erotica where we find the majority of today’s readers. There’s a lot more to be found in classic genres like mysteries, thrillers, and sci-fi (but not space opera!). While all such works depend on their authors’ mastery of language, the numbers of all readers are dwindling now in lock step with the increasing abuses of language.

What will become of humanity when good uses of language are degraded so much as to become the bastardization of language found in internet-speak? I don’t want to think about that too much…and I’m happy I won’t be around much more to see language in its final death throes. I’m not happy to think that younger human beings won’t realize that their lack of appreciation for language will make them less human.

***

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

Fiction published by the Big Five publishing conglomerates, who now fight over what small number of readers are left, could never be called controversial! First, many of their editors and authors are far from being liberal and are okay with the Big Five trying to appeal to every reader by publishing fiction that’s mainly bland pablum. (I rarely read their books anymore as a consequence.) I doubt that someone like Huxley or Orwell could ever publish anything with them these days where fascism dominates our American lives. Of course, most of those old authors and publishers are greedy and dedicated to making lots of money, so a reader will find all sorts of opinions in the nonfiction books (except in those books written for celebs by ghostwriters).

One obvious positive about being a (mostly) self-published author I’ve enjoyed in my writing career is my freedom to include many plots and themes that no Big Five publisher or author would even consider. My fiction covers social topics like human-, sex-, and drug-trafficking; conspiracies, crimes, and murders; and many fanatical politicians and their policies. I began reading British-style mysteries because of Covid; I continue to do that because those British authors—and a few others, most of them not Americans!—also dare to write about those plots and themes.

One topic that’s often intertwined with those plots and themes is fascism. My campaign against fascism and fascists began with my very first published novel, Full Medical, and hasn’t ended with Fear the Asian Evil, my last published novel (so far). (I’m mostly writing short fiction now and giving it away. A lot of that is anti-fascist too. See the list on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page at this website.)

Will these plots and themes turn off readers? Undoubtedly some, especially those with far-right and fascist proclivities! In the past, that’s gone from a Midwestern woman who complained about my use of swear words—her email carried the stench of an extreme religious right-wing fanatic—to ardent fascist fanatics—thankfully, no death threats so far. And do I give a damn? Not really! (If it’s any comfort for complaining readers, I have characters who echo their extreme opinions as well. My stories, unlike most published by the Big Five, reflect the reality I observe, not some Big Five editor’s prejudices. And readers have other books to read, including the Big Five’s pablum, if they find mine not to their liking!)

I’m not Superman, but I see my storytelling as one of the only tools I have to fight against what’s wrong in our world. The “fucking moron” in the White House and his horde of MAGA maniacs can try to silence me, but they will fail!

***

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

Our current POTUS has used AI to create images of himself feces-bombing some of the many thousands of marchers on “No Kings” day protesting his fascist policies. Of course, his sycophantic MAGA maniacs just laugh that off, ignoring that it’s neanderthal humor and not in the least presidential. That’s one negative example of AI we’ll probably continue to see in the future.

Using AI invaded publishing long before the feces-bombing images of the “fucking moron” (ex-SecState Tillerson’s description of our infamous president, not mine): AI can be told to study any author’s style and mimic it; I know because my son did it to me (it was an abject failure because I don’t have a unique style—it can change from story to story). Both the study (it’s often buried in the “training” of the AI) and the mimicry I deem illegal, although the legal eagles seem slow to pursue that illegality. (And that’s why I put a disclaimer now on every copyright page informing readers that no AI is used in my storytelling—if I can remember to do so! Of course, the copyright itself, any publisher or author’s, should legally prevent the hackers from using the published material with their AI. Pay attention, copyright lawyers!)

POTUS’s tomfoolery represents real danger, though. Political leaders, diplomats, other officials, actors, composers, writers, engineers, scientist, and other creatives can be mimicked and/or abused by using AI; and viewers usually can’t tell the difference! (While the situation is absurd, that AI version of fat-fascist Trump sure looks real and very much like a modern Red Baron!) And this is only using the current AI technology that’s still very primitive. That’s the present situation. Who knows what abuses the future might bring?

I can imagine an AI version of Vladimir Putin swearing peaceful coexistence with AI while bombing the hell out of some European capital with nukes. Or just helping the real Putin spread more lies while tightening his puppet strings on our POTUS? Human beings already have quite a propensity for evil high jinks. AI is yet another powerful tool in their technological tool boxes.

Even now, AI’s negatives far outweigh any of its positives. The province of Ontario used AI to produce visuals and reproduce President Reagan’s spiel knocking tariffs; his words were real, though, and our current POTUS reacted with yet another boorish and childish tantrum and cancelled all future tariff negotiations with one of our biggest trade partners. (I guess he can feces-bomb crowds and laugh about it; but, like most bullies, he can’t take it!) Whether your reaction to the Canadian ad is positive or negative (forget Trump’s—he’s just a pea-brained schoolyard bully) for either Canada or the US, there’s no denying that AI was used as a tool.

The overarching lesson here? In this period of initial and primitive use of AI, your motto should always be “Trust no one and nothing!” because, chances are, your encounter with AI will not be a happy one and often as disgusting as Trump’s created feces-bombing images.

Now, you might ask why didn’t our infamous POTUS just use AI software to hide the fact that he was destroying the famous East Wing of the White House? Was it just his lack of imagination? (Does the “fucking moron” have any, or does he just depend on more intelligent sycophants?) Or is a truly criminal and fascist mind not able to hide his crimes…with AI?

***

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas…without AI!

I feel compelled to hammer on this issue. I don’t steal story ideas from anyone. And I don’t use AI software to create more stories “in my style.” (Because I have various styles, I’d likely drive any AI nuts!) I’m also not a famous celeb who pays a ghostwriter to write or even polish my stories.

Every story is mine and mine alone. I discount the contributions from traditional publisher’s editors who all too often tried to ruin “my voice” or multiple voices used in my storytelling. And sometimes my name’s not on a story, but my fans probably know why. (Hint with an accompanying wink: A.B. Carolan is a very special Irish friend!)

All the stories, articles, and posts I’ve written during my relatively short time as an author of mystery, thriller, and sci-fi tales or posts like this one are my own creations and influenced or motivated by my personal background, although there are a few writers who have inspired me to write my stories: Asimov, Christie, Clarke, Heinlein, Haggard, James, Lewis, Orwell, Steinbeck, Tolkien, and many others, although that inspiration has only the common characteristic that their stories greatly entertained me as a young reader. (Yes, I read far beyond my age!) Some of these authors even inspired me to be patient and become a scientist first, postponing my storytelling until my “retirement.” (The last is probably the wrong word to describe authoring the many tales I’ve written after turning my back on a scientific career.)

I suppose some MFA student could write an erudite thesis about me and my oeuvre that no one would care about, one that analyzes my many plots, themes, settings, characters, and so forth. I wouldn’t recommend that, though. I’m not dead yet; the what-ifs still come. What’s now lacking sometimes is grasping the right word or phrase as I write. But I have far more ideas for stories than I’ll ever be able to turn into manuscripts that I can publish (or give away, as in my free PDF downloads).

I’ve been creating stories all my literary life and even before. (For example, the idea for Esther Brookstone and Bastian van Coevorden came to me long ago when I asked myself as a young lad reading Christie’s mysteries, “Why didn’t Dame Agatha put her two famous sleuths, Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, together to solve a crime?”)

I’ll continue to create stories as long as I can. But never fear! They will all be my own creations…no one else’s!

“Write what you know” is stereotypical advice writing coaches serve up. It’s complete bullshit, of course! In the collection Howling at the Moon where my short story “Gamin” appears, I write about a copper and urchin fighting crime on the moon. Obviously I’ve never been to the moon, so I can’t know what it’s like. That story sprung from my imagination!

I’ve never been to China either (and until that country becomes a democracy, I refuse to go!). But in Aristocrats and Assassins, NYPD Detective Dao-Ming Chen was in Beijing; and so was Mary Jo Menendez at the end of Goin’ the Extra Mile. Again, these were imaginary travels I made in my mind to write two stories. Chen’s trip to Beijing was related to later action that took place at an air force base in Germany…that I never visited!

I took Esther Brookstone and new husband Bastian van Coevorden on a riverboat cruise down the Danube in the novel Death on the Danube, and my wife and I took a similar trip where I took copious notes and then wrote the novel. Of course, there were no murders on our real trip, but I made good use of the information collected. Authors can use real experiences in their stories, but they don’t have to do so…and sometimes that’s impossible.

But none of that’s the key point here. It’s not the settings; it’s the characters. A fiction author’s characters don’t necessarily come alive by putting them in real settings. They come alive if they seem to be real, whether the settings are imagined or real. All the characters named above seem real (at least to me); and, to achieve that, I had to be a keen observer of human nature. Every fiction author must become an amateur psychologist who spends time observing real human beings.

Yes, I know that’s not easy. I once wanted to be an anthropologist, so I read a few classic tomes on the subject. (Imagine what the old librarian thought when that pudgy kid struggled out with all those heavy books!) But I soon decided that humans are very complicated. I still think that, if not more so, but after observing a lot more people, I believe I can create believable characters.

Plots, themes, characters, settings, and dialogue are the ingredients of fiction. Authors can make all those better with observation and some imagination. Get to it!

***

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

…for authors and book promoters (and interested readers): I get offers all the time from book promoters asking me to use their promotion services, almost as many suggesting I jazz up this website. I realize the latter is getting a bit long in the tooth, but any jazzing up will be done by the same company of website gurus that I initially used to create it, Monkey C Media. The former are a bit more complex to automatically ignore, so allow me to explain. (Penny Sansevieri et al, take note.)

The main problem I have with book promotion services is an old one: It’s “book promotion,” and not “books promotion”! While I might never run that marathon of writing another novel again (that’s a longer race than writing a short story or novella), I’ve already written a few! And most of them are part of a trilogy or longer series. No book promoter I know promotes entire series. (Hell, none of my traditional publishers promote series either! They don’t even promote single books!)

One would think that series represented some kind of contagion, something gross and untouchable. While I have no stats to support this boycott by book promoters, I think that some readers might be interested in series.

Has anyone ever finished a novel and wished there was a sequel, another story involving most of the same characters as the one just finished? Or maybe someone just reads mostly complete series? I do both as a prolific reader…and always have, even before the Covid pandemic. Knowing there’s a series means that I can have a lot of good reading ahead of me!

So, book promoters, I’ll ignore all your damn emails and continue to treat them as spam until you can offer me a promotional package for an entire trilogy or series. I’ve never seen such an offer from any of you, and I expect I never will. So don’t waste your time or mine!

Of course, there are probably many reasons why book promoters ignore series. I don’t know them because there are no stats comparing promos of single novels to promos of series, simply because the latter don’t exist. But I suspect the reasons are similar to why a publisher doesn’t offer contracts for a series except to a lucky few authors: It’s too much of a gamble. They want authors to take all the risks.

Series, though, must sell well simply by observing the huge sales of collections! Joffe, the British publisher, for example, seems to do well offering complete ebook collections to the reading public. (I’m a fan!) True, it’s better when the novels in the collection are “evergreen books” (the entire series was probably released book-by-book at one time, but each novel is “evergreen” because they’re still as exciting and fresh as the day they were written—i.e., they continue to entertain readers.

So here’s what I’ll offer to Joffe or any other publisher to work around stupid book promoters who don’t want to promote series: Choose any one of my series and turn it into a collection! I’m willing to do that for any of my series except “The Chaos Chronicles.” (I already made that into a collection myself.)

Ah, but will a book promoter even promote a collection? Who knows? Will it need any promotion? Again, who knows?

***

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

Last week I wrote about my first mystery/thriller novel, The Midas Bomb. That was my third book, so it definitely qualifies as “evergreen,” i.e., an oldie that is as current and fresh as the day I finished it (my opinion, of course—critics’ opinions might differ), but I try to make sure all my stories remain relevant for many years.

My second novel, Soldiers of God, is an “evergreen book” as well, but this sci-fi thriller turned out to be a bridge book between the “Clones and Mutants Trilogy” and the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy.” Like The Midas Bomb, it does an acceptable job of predicting a future when the villain in The Midas Bomb (who has percolated through three other series that eventually followed the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series that began with The Midas Bomb) employs religious fanatics to further his evil agenda. (In real life, the corresponding villain who has stuck around far too long is our current US president, as seen in that  huge religious revival show that recently took place in Arizona. I can probably safely assume that no readers of my book heeded the warnings contained in its plot; but that far back, there were no current events like we have now to draw attention to any fiction resembling George Orwell’s 1984 either.)

In Soldiers of God, a female FBI agent (not a female version of our current FBI director, thank God!) who fancies a crusading priest in this story set in the aftermath of a presidential assassination (not at all like the young man the far-right wants to turn into a martyr after two failed and real presidential assassination attempts). This is a complex tale about gullible religious fanatics being exploited by fascist schemers. Sound familiar?

Considering our real world where we now have a Pope from Chicago, I have some ideas for a sequel, featuring some of the same characters, that leads into the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy” a bit better. If course, I have a long list of story ideas for a lot of novels. My problem now is finding the energy to write them. Writing a short story or novella is a dash; writing a novel is a marathon. We’ll see how it goes.

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

After a quick review of my oeuvre recently (I often do this to avoid repetition, for example), I had to wonder, “Did I really write that?” Some readers might think that’s just an old scientist being nostalgic about his research papers written long ago during an effectively previous lifetime. But I bet if you’re reading this blog post, you’re thinking about the later version of Steven M. Moore, this crazy author of mystery, thriller, and sci-fi stories.

One of my favorite novels in that fictional oeuvre is The Midas Bomb, the first book in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series (and that’s also one of my favorite series). In this novel, the reader meets NYPD homicide detectives Rolando Castilblanco and Dao-Ming Chen for the first time in a very prescient story. Why prescient?

The Midas Bomb was first published in 2009, just after the bank collapses of 2008; it was my very first mystery/thriller (my previous works were both sci-fi thrillers). Set in what at the time was the future world of 2014 (i.e., six years in my future), it soon became the beginning of a fictional timeline of alternate reality through necessity, my “future history” extended super-series. (That fictional timeline now contains several additional series: “Esther Brookstone Art Detective,” “Inspector Steve Morgan Trilogy,” “Clones and Mutants Trilogy,” and “The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy,” along with the bridge books The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan, Soldiers of God, and Rogue Planet.)

I rewrote and republished a second edition of The Midas Bomb in 2015 with few changes but making an effort to match the style of the following books in the series (where Castilblanco is in first person), so, by that time, events between 2008 and 2014 had become real history. However, The Midas Bomb still remains a prescient tale!

Today’s readers will find in this novel some logical predictions about what’s now occurring in Trump’s second term: Yes, Putin’s a monstrous villain; yes, terrorism’s still a quintessential threat after 9/11; and yes, ICE is putting fear into the hearts of illegal immigrants and separating them from their families. New readers won’t find a crazy NYC mayoral race, though. (Right now, if I lived in the city, I’d probably be voting for Sliwa only because the other three are so bad!) I couldn’t imagine everything that has gone wrong, but I didn’t do too badly!

Readers will find an attempted presidential assassination. They will also find a NYC plagued by crime and violence due to budget restrictions and lack of qualified NYPD personnel. But what does that damn title mean? Maybe readers still wonder about that?

FYI: The Midas Bomb is one of my best titles…if not the best. That’s because those three words completely summarize the main plot! (I’ll leave to future readers the happy chore of figuring out how it does that.)

Some of my titles frankly suck. Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hand!, the title of the third novel in the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy,” is quite a stretch; appropriate and summarizing, yes, but far too long! Angels Need Not Apply isn’t too shabby, though, for the second “Chen and Castilbanco” title.

All of my “evergreen books,” a class that includes all my oldies, are as fresh and current as the day I wrote them, but The Midas Bomb is the evergreen book par excellence because it predicts an imagined and truly ugly fascist future that’s far too close to what has actually occurred in our very crazy and dangerous real world. For that reason, The Midas Bomb will keep its new readers turning the pages; and those who have already read it, might want to do so again!

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