Celtic Chronicles, the ninth novel in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, represents my most recent nod to these disciplines, while Son of Thunder (St. John’s tomb in modern-day Turkey), the second book in the series, is the earliest. But Declan O’Hara’s scholarly tome about the life of St. Brendan, mentioned in several novels in that series and a few times in the “Inspector Steve Morgan” trilogy, were indirect nods as well. The first novel in the “Denisovan Trilogy,” Origins (hello there, A. B. Carolan, get your arse in gear!) came from imagining what had become of the Denisovans, our hominid brethren.

A reader of any of those novels (hopefully all of them!) might wonder where that interest came from. My training wasn’t in either of these academic disciplines, after all. And, while I enjoyed that “Indiana Jones” series of movies (especially the one with Sean Connery), these films weren’t the inspiration. Neither was The DaVinci Code, although Dan Brown’s novel showed me what to avoid in Son of Thunder.

My motivation goes all the way back to my young-adult years when I became interested in these disciplines and even thought of working in them. I checked out a lot of books about them from our public library, including Margaret Meade’s classic work. My conclusion was that human beings are just too damn complex as subjects of scientific study, so I chose to pursue training in an easier science (at least math and physics seemed easier for me). Perhaps that’s just as well. Social scientists aren’t all that rigorous, and Governor Reagan became determined to destroy the anthropology department at UCSB when I was there.

Nevertheless, the interest remains. I read most of the articles in Science News and often follow that biweekly magazine’s suggestions for further reading, but I usually read the articles about human origins and human quirks first! I don’t know if any of these esoteric subjects will be featured in any of my stories (a desalination platform off the California coast played an important role in The Last Humans, for example) but don’t be surprised if they are. Sci-fi, for example, isn’t all about astronomy or physics, and I have a special relationship with both.

Of course, Esther and Bastiann van Coevorden are volunteers who work on an archaeological dig in Celtic Chronicles. I agree with Bastiann in large part: Digging up artifacts and skeletons seems more like back-breaking labor that this old man shouldn’t be doing. We’ll leave that to the truly dedicated and their students!

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“Esther Brookstone Art Detective” Series. In this nine-novel series (two novels are free PDF downloads available at this website), the reader follows Esther and Bastiann through many dangerous adventures, all related to art in some way. These two sleuths represent my homage to Agatha Christie: Esther is a more sexy, active, and agile sleuth than Miss Marple (she’s a bit younger too); and Bastiann, first her paramour and then her husband, looks like the actor who portrayed Poirot so many times in BBC features. Agatha might not approve of their more dangerous and romantic adventures—she wrote in a different time—but I mean no disrespect (I also read her mysteries as a young adult) because our detective duos are active in different periods in the UK. The tongue-in-cheek humor and bawdy romance might even appeal more than the mystery and thrills.

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

…yet it might not seem like it. I’m also something of a romantic. But only the dearest and nearest people in my life have seen much of those aspects of me. I mostly avoid blatant humor and schmaltzy romance in my reading choices in my informal relationships and that avoidance carries over into my stories.

It’s a matter of degree, of course. For writing, while I suppose it could sell more stories (as if that were a goal), a focus on humor or romance doesn’t appeal to me. The only time I set out to boldly write (and purposely split an infinitive to rub it in to strict editors who haven’t read the new rules!) a pure romantic comedy (isn’t modern courtship always romantic comedy but rarely pure?) was mostly a failure: The first part of The Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse, based on a short story about a mad and atypical female physicist (“mad” in the English sense and “atypical” because girls aren’t supposed to be good at math—of course, I know they can be, because I’ve taught math and science to both females and males!); she hires a brilliant black techie (I wanted to piss off both misogynists and racists); and the story expands to what becomes a “classic road trip” where the two time-travel without creating paradoxes.

I’ll admit that there’s more humor and romance in that novel than most of my other stories (and maybe less quality sci-fi?), but, whether sci-fi, mysteries, or thrillers, or some combination, there’s enough humor and romance in all my tales to make the characters seem human (or believable ETs, as the case might be—sentience requires both humor and romance). One of my favorite authors from my childhood, Isaac Asimov (also an ex-scientist), was a lot more serious than I am, in fact; and another favorite author, Robert Heinlein (you guessed it: also a scientist), in Stranger in a Strange Land, flaunts conventional Christian mythology with irreverent humor and romance that should be a model for sci-fi romantic-comedy writers everywhere (that novel became the hippies handbook!).

After finishing The Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse, though, I realized that writing sci-fi romantic comedy isn’t that easy. Even Heinlein, a master of sci-fi writing, tended to the bawdy and sacrilegious and departed from the humor all around us in our daily lives. (Asimov’s seriousness is also a bit tempered by a few references to android-human sexual relationships in the robot trilogy. From his impish smile, he probably thought that was a great joke!)

In my mysteries and thrillers, Detective Castilblanco’s quips and Esther Brookstone’s penchant for collecting husbands often add humor—he’s a Latino, after all; and she’s an atypical Englishwoman, quite unlike Christie’s prim and proper Miss Marple. Perhaps my Esther deserves to be called that American term, cougar. I play Esther against type like I do Dao-Ming Chen, Castilblanco’s longtime partner, especially in Teeter-Totter between Lust and Murder. I love to do that! It makes characters more interesting. And atypical characters often can add humor even though humor isn’t the goal.

Of course, humor comes in many forms. What makes a reader chuckle isn’t easy to predict, so maybe a good humorist should sprinkle different types of humor throughout a novel? What do you look for in humor?

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A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse. Ever heard of the “Many Worlds Theory of Quantum Mechanics”? It’s not really a theory but a convenient interpretation of that strange theory describing atomic phenomena; it’s often associated with the Nobel prize-winning Richard Feynman, but it was actually invented by Hugh Everett III in a Princeton thesis subsequent to Feynman’s. For the scientific fans among my readers, the key words are “many worlds,” i.e., parallel universes, if you will; and it should theoretically allow you to time-travel without paradoxes. (Nothing says the parallel universes have to run at the same rate, right?) For those who just want a sci-fi rom-com that’s a bit tongue-in-cheek, though, sit back in your easy-chair and ride along with the heroes of this novel as I poke fun at much of human society’s conventions and culture. Available wherever quality ebooks are found. (You don’t have to be a physicist or engineer to enjoy it, by the way.)

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

While I’ve discussed these two topics elsewhere (for example, in my free PDF download “Writing Fiction”—see the list on my “Free Stuff & Contests” web page), I’ll mention them again because I consider them and their balance so important when writing fiction. Some fiction writers emphasize one over the other, maybe depending on the type of novel.

There’s no argument about sci-fi: It often requires a lot of world-building, which is narrative, of course. (I’ll never forget the incompetent agent who, early on in my writing career, couldn’t comprehend this. We Irish hold grudges for a long time! Her comment, “There’s too much narrative” soured me on agents in general and established for me a twist on an adage, “Those who can write should do it; those who can’t, should become agents or editors.”) Other genres might require more emphasis on dialogue (especially if you count “internal dialogue”—what goes on in a character’s mind—as a mental conversation with themselves).

Like all the elements used in writing fiction, an author must handle dialogue and narrative with care and skill. The Goldilocks principle is often indicated: Not too much of one or the other but just right. As you read other authors’ works, you’ll see the amount of each employed cannot only depend on genre but also on the location in the story. World-building is usually done early on, but in the novel I submitted to that incompetent agent, Survivors of the Chaos—she asked to read it, by the way—it had to be used all the way through because the venues so often changed. (This novel is the first of a trilogy, and all three books are now contained in The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection, an ebook bundle.)

In my British-style crime stories (novels in the “Inspector Steve Morgan” series are the most recent), I first briefly emphasize narrative (describing the British settings, including police stations, because they’re unfamiliar to many US readers), and then I move early on to dialogue (direct and internal), which often plays a more important role (especially in interrogations). But the parts dedicated to narrative are less in my US crime stories (like the novels in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series—the free PDF Defanging the Red Dragon is a crossover novel in two series featuring the US detective Castilblanco and the UK detective Brookstone, which requires the acrobatics I performed there to tell that that tale).

And then we have another important aspect of dialogue to consider: How much slang and/or local idiom should an author use? For the same reason as above, I include local expressions to provide local color but provide the US reader a glossary at the front of most of my British-style mysteries. (If I’ve missed listing some that are unfamiliar to you—I’ve read a lot of Brit-style crime stories and am now used to the UK’s lexicon that’s as varied as the US’s at times—please let me know, and I’ll add it to the glossary if there’s a second edition.) Words like “nick,” “wanker,” “pillock,” and “eejit” aren’t part of American English (and maybe not Canadian or Australian either), but they add local color that can become an essential part of a character’s description.

The to-and-fro of direct dialogue has to be handled with care. When he is speaking to her, or vice versa, it’s usually not difficult for the reader to keep things straight, but two males or two females talking can create confusion, so names have to be used more within the dialogue or dialogue tags (what’s outside the quotes). They shouldn’t interrupt the flow if done correctly, only inform.

That flow is critical. The basic rule for writing fiction is to avoid forcing readers into situations where they stop and say, “Huh?” or “What’s going on here?” Think of it this way: A speed-reader (moi, par exemple!) should be able to breeze right through those questions if they occur. Tom Clancy suggests a course of action: Just tell the damn story! Anything that inferferes with that should be questioned by the story’s author. A writer doesn’t need either an agent or editor to tell them that. It should be obvious.

One thing is certain, though: Whatever you do in your fiction writing, don’t let Microsoft’s Copilot write your dialogue, especially in Aptos or Calibri. AI isn’t permitted in manuscripts submitted to traditional publishers, and self-publishers shouldn’t use it either. Times New Roman is still the font of choice you should use for your writing. (Microsoft’s sneaky changes to Aptos from Calibri and addition of Copilot—hell, we just got rid of Cortana!—shows how low that company has sunk!)

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A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse. This sci-fi rom-com provides an example of many of the suggestion described above: It’s a lively mix of narrative (i.e. sci-fi world-building, many worlds, in fact—that’s an in-joke)) and dialogue (in romantic spats or with comic prats). This stand-alone novel is a futuristic “road trip” that avoids the paradoxes of time travel but not those associated with human behavioral quirks. Enjoy!

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

Having one current and three former presidents all in one place, NYC, at the same time, perhaps made good PR for the two candidates among them—Mr. Biden, Clinton, and Obama raked in $26 million at the Radio City Music Hall for Mr. Biden’s campaign, more than Mr. Trump made in an entire month (he’s busy trying to stay out of jail, of course); but everyone knew the Donald was trying to wreck the three Dems’ show by attending the wake for an NYPD officer effectively slain by the NYC Council’s malfeasance (an overzealous bail reform the root cause), having nothing to do with Mr. Biden, of course, so what did Mr. Trump gain? (He’s been diagnosed as a psychotic sociopath by a slew of qualified mental health professionals, so its natural that he only worries about himself after all and not Officer Diller!) But I’m surprised at the Secret Service’s allowing this strange event of modern politics to occur! (After all, the Secret Service didn’t allow the Donald to march to the Capitol on January 6, 2021, a long-planned coup and a much more violent event.)

Because of the strict security surrounding past and current presidents, the US has rarely suffered from a presidential assassination like other countries have. (To be sure, many of those are more than welcomed by lovers of democracy everywhere when an autocracy’s citizens finally come to their senses, if only briefly, and depose their dictator.) The last assassination in the US was JFK, of course, but Reagan came close. Who knows how world history would have evolved if JFK or Abe Lincoln had survived, or Reagan had been killed?

Due to the rarity of such events in the US, I’ve not often considered assassination plots in my fiction. True, the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series began with a failed plot to assassinate Mr. Obama (never mentioned by name, by the way), one of the four presidents listed above, in The Midas Bomb. And, after one attempt on presidential candidate Sheila Remington’s life (The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan), that fictional US president was assassinated later on my fictional and futuristic timeline, an event that led into the first novel of the “Clones and Mutants” series (Full Medical, my very first mystery/thriller novel published in 2006).

Royalty gets better treatment on that fictional timeline: Major members of Europe’s royal families escape death and play roles of heroes in Aristocrats and Assassins (fourth novel in the “Chen and Castilblanco” series); only minor royal functionaries suffer. A king on a planet outside ITUIP (the “Interstellar Trade Union of Independent Planets”) is assassinated, but his son leads a rebellion against the Iranian-syle theocracy that took over afterwards; the son gets his revenge (Rogue Planet). And, because I tried to keep my fictional but parallel timeline ahead of our real one, Queen Elizabeth’s passing on my fictional one was announced a bit ahead of time in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series and the “Inspector Steve Morgan” trilogy.. (My apologies to the royal family. They have a lot of problems now, not the least of which is the British media.)

That’s about it, unless you want to count Putin’s ousting of Yeltsin, hardly a fair fight considering Putin and his evil oligarchs’ devilish plot to kill any chance for democracy in Russia, at least for the time being. Benedict Arnold and John Wilkes Booth seem rather tame compared to the current rulers of the Kremlin.

But don’t fret. My fiction has plenty of villains: Some flash-in-the pans; others, like Vladimir Kalinin, who also takes down a few of Putin’s oligarchs out of revenge. What are good mysteries and thrillers without some really evil villains? (You can meet Kalinin early on in The Midas Bomb, but he has a starring role as villain all the way to Soldiers of God,)

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The Midas Bomb. This first novel in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series has some historical significance in my writing career. The first edition (from the old POD, Infinity, no longer in business) shows that initially I saw the NYPD homicide detectives’ cases as standard third-person mystery/thriller tales. Then I wrote a few more novels in the series, decided to rewrite the first novel in first person as Castilblanco that alternates with the standard third-person to match the subsequent novels in the series. (As mostly a self-published author, I’m free to experiment a bit. In The Last Humans, the first title in the “Last Humans” trilogy, everything was first-person; the second two, A New Dawn and Menace from Moscow, alternated between first and third person. In A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse, I even alternated between the two heroes in first person!) Does this experimentation sell any more books? I doubt it; but I have more fun writing them. And hopefully, dear reader, you’ll have at least as much fun reading them. The Midas Bomb is a good place to start.

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

If you’ve read my novel Son of Thunder from the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, you’ll know that Esther keeps a special ring found in a Turkish cave and used it as a wedding band for Bastiann van Coevorden at their betrothal that takes place at the end of the novel. It later has a few cameos in some novels of the series that follow.

This ring is special, although in that novel there was only one Lord of the ring! Nothing to do with J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy (really one long saga split into three novels), but a bit of religious mystery never quite resolved, making Son of Thunder a lot more mysterious than other novels in the series. (Esther is still waiting for the Vatican museum’s answer to her queries.)

In fact, the question still remains, now that the series has ended: Should Bastiann keep that ancient relic with its inscription in Aramaic? He and Esther have no male children to pass it onto, although Esther has two older brothers she’s estranged from. (They only exchange Christmas cards.) What will happen to that ring when Bastiann leaves this mortal coil?

I hadn’t thought about that question much. (Seven novels in the series–two are free PDFs downloadable from this website’s “Free Stuff & Contests” web page–follow Son of Thunder, as well as other novels.) But I did what everyone else did not that long ago: Ring in the new year! Okay, that’s a terrible pun. No, this question really arose when I finished The Hobbit (I’d read the Lord of the Rings trilogy as a kid but not The Hobbit).

Van Coevorden’s ring represents a bit of mysticism left over from the most mysterious of all Esther’s mystery/thriller novels. Or, does it just represent a bit of history? Perhaps I should write a piece of short fiction about the fate of that ring and what else Esther and Bastiann found in Turkey? We’ll see.

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Son of Thunder. Esther Brookstone first sets out to prove that Sandro Botticelli, the famous Renaissance artist, was never in Turkey despite what his parish priest claims. The story is told in a document found tucked into the the frame of a Botticelli painting the priest owned; it was tucked behind its frame. She finds out she’s wrong and decides to also search for the tomb of St. John the Divine. Available as an ebook and paper version wherever exciting fiction is sold. (If your local bookstore doesn’t have it, ask them to order it!)

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

I’ve written more than a few British-style mysteries (see the web page “Books and Short Fiction), and questions keep arising as I write that show my ignorance about life in the UK, of course, but visitors to this blog—they could be American readers or authors themselves—might have also considered some of them. These questions aren’t answered in any detail if at all in my British-style mysteries. Perhaps they shouldn’t be, or they shouldn’t even be asked by an inquisitive Yank who lives across the pond in a country with its own many unanswered questions, but I’m interested in the answers.

Here’s my current list:

Do Brits feel like they’re part of Europe or not? I do mention Brexit in my British-style mysteries, more in the aftermath of PM Boris Johnson’s reign than what led to PM Teresa May’s downfall. (In my stories, the latter received more attention for trying to send those descendants of immigrants who helped clean up after World War II back to their home countries. Esther Brookstone’s handyman in her gallery has Jamaican ancestors, and Steve Morgan’s ARO leader has ancestors from Belize.) Brexit caused a whole host of problems, so a related question here might be: Will the UK ever return to the EU?

Did Winnie and his cronies feel like they’d made a pact with the Devil in World War II? This is related to Europeans’ hate-love affair with Putin. The UK is less dependent on Russia’s petroleum exports, but there’s no doubt that part of the world isn’t always comfortable in its support of Ukraine, especially fascist-leaning countries like Austria, Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic.

Churchill’s pact with Stalin followed one old Joe made with Hitler. While Winnie didn’t practice appeasement with Hitler like Chamberlain (or Europeans often do today with Putin), I doubted he liked Stalin very much. Or communists, for that matter (except for Cuban cigars?). Current opinions about Putin, who desperately wants to restore that evil Russian empire, the USSR, and is willing to have thousands of Russian soldiers slaughtered to do it, are mostly negative even among Labour Party members, primarily because the UK thinks of Ukraine as part of Europe even if people in the UK don’t think their country is.

How could Brits have allowed the Iron Lady to lead them into that war for the Malvinas? It was clearly a ploy created by Margaret Thatcher to rev up British pride and make her more popular; but outside the UK, it led many people to believe that Britain was struggling for relevance at best and becoming a bad bully at worst. Participation in a few NATO ops was a lot more noble. Do the Brits also think that Malvinas conflict just Thatcher’s folly? (Note that I don’t call those islands the Falklands.)

What are current attitudes in the UK toward colonialism and their participation in the slave trade? In reference to the Malvinas, there’s some truth in the statement that long ago “the sun never set on the British Empire.” There’s patriotism and pride in that statement. But many outside the UK see the colonial period as causing many problems worldwide, even current ones. From Hong Kong to India, many African nations, Northern Ireland, and Israel, British colonialism left bad feelings bitter hatreds among its subjects. Australia was only a place to send convicts remember, and the slave trade made some Brits a lot of money. Do the UK’s citizens regret any of that?

How did the Brits get rid of Cromwell? That Puritan fanatic created havoc inside and outside England. Perhaps he’s also become a model for religious fundamentalists in the US as well as the UK, although the former are probably more Pope-haters than the latter because the Anglicans (Church of England) aren’t Catholic only because Henry VIII wanted to have a few divorces. Old Oliver was a bit more of a bloodthirsty fascist than Henry, though, especially if you allow for their different eras. Just ask the Irish what they think of Cromwell. How to get rid of fanatical religious leaders of oppressive theocracies like the current Ayatollahs in Iran and future ones like the US House Speaker Mike Johnson and his cohorts seems to be a worldwide problem, hence the importance of this question.

I’m sure that other questions I’d like to ask Brits will keep popping up if I continue to write Brit-style mysteries. Stay tuned.

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My British-style mysteries. The published ones started with Rembrandt’s Angel; the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series ended with nine novels (two are free PDF downloads—see the list on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page). Esther’s stories are linked to the three novels in the “Inspector Steve Morgan Trilogy” and sometimes to my short fiction stories (also found in that list of free PDF downloads). My fascination with British-style mysteries began with Covid-19 enforced “sheltering in place” where I perused many novels that go far beyond anything Agatha Christie ever imagined. (The British publisher Joffe Books has many multi-novel sets that are inexpensive “best buys” in this genre. Visitors to this blog should check them out…and some of mine as well!)

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

Far too often!

The Star Wars series turned me off with its very first film (whatever number that was in their all-too-cute numbering scheme). I knew immediately that it was basically a fantasy filled with references to Japanese ninjas, Edgar Rice Burroughs’s characters (even the names!), and Isaac Asimov’s plot devices (the Foundation). Where were the lawyers at that time who went after plagiarists? (Or the ones even now?) Jedi warriors and fairy-tale princesses with light sabers? C’mon! (Okay, I’ll admit the music was interesting, but I liked that composer a lot more when he was leading the Boston Pops.)

Frank Herbert’s Dune series is even worse as sci-fi but at least it was in book form long before Hollywood screenwriters took a break from writing terrible scripts (e.g. Star Wars!) and tried to adapt those novels to the silver screen (a new Marvel Comics-like version is about to come out). Herbert’s books were already pure fantasy (forget that damn Hugo because it’s also given for fantasy!) filled with magic, mysticism, sandworms, and that miraculous spice existing only on one arid world, a coveted and moneymaking substance that Ponce de Leon might have searched for in Florida if he could get past DeSantis’s anti-immigrant Gestapo. (I’m sure Ron would have arrested him and sent him to New York if that fascist Florida governor and huge presidential primary loser had been around back then.) The Dune series is just more fantasy, whether in book or movie format. (The movies have been worse than the books, but that’s almost always the case!)

Too many people (a majority who have never read a book, by the way…if they can read—Trump can’t) conflate fantasy with sci-fi, and authors and screenwriters exploit them by adding a few starships and blasters to Harry Potter and call it sci-fi. (A silly author like Margaret Atwood might pardon their sins by calling it all “speculative fiction,” of course; she’s become rich peddling her fantasies.) That’s the formula for creating a sci-fi classic, right? Wrong!

Science fiction, sci-fi for short, even if you accept A. C. Clarke’s claim that any sufficiently advanced technology looks like magic (consider Ugh the Caveman finding some time-traveler’s smart phone, basically a little computer!), must be some sort of reasonable extrapolation of current science. Comsats were created by Clarke in his fiction long before Elon Musk littered near-earth orbits with his space junk! Sure, the farther into the future an author goes with his story, the more bold the extrapolation has to be, and it all often approaches Clarke’s limit. But science fiction stories nowadays have generally ceased to be a logical extensions of current science, stories that often contain clear violations of known physical laws, which is what fantasy does (and all the examples above, I might add).

I read very little fantasy now—I graduated from Edgar Rice Burroughs’s John Carter on Mars stories with their Jedi warriors and beautiful egg-laying princesses decades ago. (For all their sophistication, I guess those Martians didn’t have IVF; and John Carter probably never realized an egg back on Earth was already a chicken, so he couldn’t apply that lesson learned to Martian females’ eggs!) I especially avoid fantasy stories if their authors claim they’re sci-fi. (You can comment on this post and tell me if you agree or disagree.)

Or, you might want to read some sci-fi classics written by Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, and others (even some of mine?) to see how good sci-fi can be when it’s not conflated with fantasy! (By the way, the best sci-fi authors, like me, are ex-scientists. When they’re not, they can easily confuse fantasy with sci-fi!)

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“Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection.” There are three complete sci-fi novels in this one inexpensive bundle. The first, Survivors of the Chaos, will seem a bit too close for comfort to what’s going on in the US and the world today. The last leads into the novel Rogue Planet and the Dr, Carlos short stories. (The first book represents well deserved mockery of the current Iranian regime; for the second collection, see the list of free downloadable PDFs on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page.) These are “evergreen books” (as entertaining, fresh, and hopefully still profound now as on the day I finished their manuscripts), but sci-fi in general can never get old, can it?

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

From 1984 to Atlas Shrugged and Ender’s Game, authors have stated their political positions. When their works take extreme positions and/or are morally extreme, one way or the other, readers and critics can react. All three novels just mentioned are political, debatable, but shouldn’t be banned.

This article applies not only to the past, however. In fact, it’s more about authors failing to state their positions now. As Tom Clancy, certainly a successful author if not a philosophical or political sage, said, fiction has to seem real, and I would add that real human beings are philosophical and political animals. I’m not asking authors to take positions I favor; I’m telling them to take positions! Period. I’m not asking them to present both sides of an issue nor take what I’d call the moral high (or low) road either. But authors who write silly fantasies (J. K. Rowling’s a well-known example) and schmaltzy or smutty romances (I don’t read them, so that Fifty Shades crap is the only example that comes to mind) are shirking their duty of being honest observers of the human condition when writing their stories, usually motivated by their desire to make tons of money by appealing to readers’ escapist and/or prurient interests. Of course, they share the blame with the acquisition editors of every publisher under the Big Five conglomerates huge umbrellas.

Some of my readers have told me that I’m too political in my fiction, even friends who know better to believe that I measure my success as a writer by my sales figures. I celebrate those comments! They mean that I’ve done my job!

Too many authors nowadays write pablum for the masses and try to please all readers all the time in order to maximize their royalties, often pleasing no one in the process. They become accomplices in crimes against humanity by becoming completely irrelevant. All three authors of the books mentioned in my first paragraph are relevant in the sense that their fiction teaches a reader something I might agree or not agree with—the dangers of fascism, quirky economic theories, and homophobia, respectively—but what they say is important in current political debates as they were when the books were published. Relevance is the key feature we should demand of fiction in today’s troubling times; and if that has lasting value, all the better!

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Defanging the Red Dragon. I originally wrote this novel as a 2022 holiday gift to my readers. It features my quartet of detectives—Brookstone, Castilblanco, Chen, and van Coevorden—from two series—“Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” and “Esther Brookstone Art Detective”—and counts as the eighth novel in the first series and the sixth in the second. It’s also completely free (as is Esther’s seventh). (See the list of free downloadable PDFs on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page.)

While the dictator Vladimir Putin and his fascist Russian accomplices and enablers are featured more as villains in those two series, this free novel has the fascist Xi and his Chinese spies as the major villains. But there are good Chinese too: Esther’s new artist friends, for example, who play important roles. They had to flee when the Chinese fascists took over Hong Kong.

Considering the title and the importance of those creative and gentle Chinese artists, let me present this novel to you as a celebration of the “Year of the Dragon,” 2024. You won’t find this book in any bookstore, but it’s a complete novel you might not want to miss. Like all good “political fiction,” it will be forever evergreen. Download it now.

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

Last week’s post about James Patterson, Inc., reminded me of some of the pros and cons of first-person stories. They’re usually first-person past, with the main character or chronicler relating what happened, but they can be first-person present as well. They’re good for mystery, crime, and thriller stories when the author wants the reader to learn what’s going on in lock-step with the person telling the story.

It’s also good writing technique even in sci-fi for the same reason. I’m into the third novel of “The Earthburst Saga,” a six-novel series by Craig Falconer. (I bought all seven at once in a bundle. Like my “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy,” that was too good of a bargain to pass up!) After the first, Last Man Standing, I thought, “What’s this author going to do for an encore?” The second novel is different but just as engaging, though. (You may take this part of the post as five-star reviews of the two, by the way.) Emotions and tensions run high as the hero-scientist relates his multiple tales of survival in the first person. (There are a few slip-ups where Ray Barclay seems to know too much about what’s going on in other people’s minds, including his pet parrot, but no one’s perfect!) I repeat: The use of the first person adds a lot to this saga!

A lot of fiction is in third person, past tense, because its use gives all the characters equal opportunity: The author can describe what’s going on from their different points of view (POVs). Of course, this can lead to confusion. Jumping around between different POVs, often called “head-hopping,” shouldn’t occur more often than section to section; some writing coaches say no more than chapter to chapter. When I started out, I was oblivious to this and how it could confuse a reader. An author friend set me straight, and I’ve been careful ever since (but far from perfect, I’m sure). Yet I’ve seen even MFAs make head-hopping mistakes, so either their profs didn’t teach POV or their students ignored the lessons.

The use of first person present or past tense helps avoid POV confusion. It also gives a reader more a sense of direct participation: He becomes the character telling the story. In Mr. Falconer’s first book, I felt all the main character’s desperation and elation, his incredible sadness at seeing dead friends, and his rage when he realizes he’s been duped. A detective and the reader can discover the clues together; a soldier and the reader both hear the sound of gunfire; a tween’s first kiss is experienced by the main character and the tween-reader.

There are negatives for using the first person, though: The reader only experiences other characters indirectly via the character relating the story. One way around this is to use a combination. For example, the author can alternate the first person from chapter to chapter between two main characters. (I did that in A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse.) Or the author can alternate between first person in one chapter and third person in another. (I did that for all the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco novels. Detective Castilblanco is almost always in first person, other characters in third. A. G. Carolan also used that technique in Mind Games.)

Two of my novels, Muddlin’ Through and The Last Humans, illustrate another problem with using first person: They’re both written in first person, but the main characters are women! That might give a male author pause (same for a female author writing as a male), especially in romance scenes! I took that as a challenge the first time I tried it in Muddlin’ Through (I often challenge myself), but it’s not really any different from writing third-person prose: You simply must become the character. (I suppose that’s more daunting for a male author writing as a woman than the reverse. Men tend to understand women less than women understand men, especially if the fellow isn’t very observant!)

The art of writing includes handling POV and person correctly. Many authors can fail to do this. For example, I’ve read many British-style mysteries full of confusing head-hopping. This can be disastrous in the mystery genre. I often have to ask myself, how does this character know this? When the reader is playing detective and looking for clues, it can almost seem like cheating…or worse: The author gives away the mystery before his detective solves the case!

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“The Last Humans Trilogy.” Ex-USN SAR and LA County Sheriff’s diver Penny Castro is on a forensics dive off the California coast when the world almost ends after a biowarfare attack. In the first novel, The Last Humans, she struggles to survive in the post-apocalyptic landscape that remains, but the remains of the US government exploit her survival skills. In the second novel, A New Dawn, she’s forced to leave her new family to prevent a repeat attack from the first one’s country of origin. In the third, Menace from Moscow, she must recover missiles from a sunken US submarine in the Caribbean before the Russians can get to them. Exciting armchair-travel, action, and suspense await the reader of this post-apocalyptic trilogy. All three novels available wherever quality ebooks are sold. (And if you want to see more lessons on writing fiction like this one, please download my little course “Writing Fiction,” a free PDF found in the list on my “Free Stuff & Contests” web page.)

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

Sorry, Mr. Patterson, I refuse to read your latest book. I haven’t read what comes off the assembly lines at James Patterson, Inc., in fact, for quite a while. You’ve continued to be like the greedy thesis adviser who puts his name first on an academic publication so he’ll get all the credit and citations, not his student; i.e., the second author’s name is below yours in small print…and for exactly the same reasons! Mr. Patterson, you haven’t written anything really original or interesting in a long time. Instead, James Patterson, Inc. has turned out book after book, including young adult and romance stories as you, its CEO, continues to attack self-published authors. You’re the leader and the epitome of members from that group of formulaic mares and stallions waiting for the glue factory in the Big Five publishing conglomerates’ stables.

Now you’re advertising Holmes, Marple, and Poe everywhere, even on TV. Wow! How original that book must be? Maybe it’s a time-travel yarn about those famous fictional and real people teaming up on some faraway planet? Or about three kids playing detective, a Hardy boys + Nancy Drew-like story to keep your foot in YA fiction’s door? Or a modern Fifty Shades of something-romance about a lusty, sexy triad? I don’t care what it is. I’m not reading it!

FYI to you and all readers of this blog: I long ago put Marple and Poirot together when I began  the now nine-book long “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, but those were only nicknames for the main characters: Esther is a more active Marple; and Bastiann van Coevorden, the other half of the detective-duo,  only looks like David Suchet, the actor who portrayed Poirot so often. (By the way, Mr. Patterson, Poe was a mystery writer, not a character, so that’s a negative for your title as well.) Also, A. B. Carolan has written YA sci-fi mysteries where one (The Secret Lab) considers a gang of kids on the ISS in the future and another (The Secret of the Urns) has a daughter of a triad as a main character. Because I won’t read Patterson Inc.’s new book, I can’t tell if multiple crimes of plagiarism have been committed by you, but Patterson Inc.’s hyping this new book as something cleverly original just seems wrong, even if it only steals from those awful movies about Holmes.

There was a time long ago when I read your books, Mr. Patterson. I’ll give you some credit: Your early Alex Cross books (where only your name appears as author, so either you weren’t giving ghostwriters credit back then, or you actually managed to write them) taught me that a mix of first person and third person points of view is an interesting technique to use, which I did in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series (eight novels). But the Alex Cross books were your first to become formulaic and boring, causing me to forget about reading anything you or your slave-authors produce. In fact, you’re responsible for me ignoring almost any fiction the Big Five conglomerates produce!

I suppose it’s natural that Big Five authors will try to continue their hold on the book market at any cost. (Sue Grafton never finished the alphabet, though.) That’s sad, but I feel more for those authors Patterson Inc. exploits. They should break the ties to you, Mr. Patterson, and write their own stories. I might read those.

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Marple and Poirot together. The “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series is nine-novels strong, and each one is an original mystery and crime thriller that follows no Big Five formulaic plan. Esther is a more active Marple (and hates that detractors identify her with Christie’s famous character!); Bastiann van Coevorden, her paramour and eventual husband, is an Interpol agent who ends up as an MI5 consultant (he only looks like the actor who played Poirot). She’s very British; he’s very Dutch, not Belgian like Poirot. Their adventures will take any armchair travelers brave enough to avoid the Big Fives formulaic fiction to England, Europe, and even to the Middle East and South America. Two novels, Defanging the Red Dragon and Intolerance, are free PDF downloads. (See the list on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page. Do you think Patterson Inc. would ever give away two complete novels?)

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