Yes, my fiction is often complex. I sometimes receive that critique and then ignore it. You see, I don’t do simple; I refuse to write fluff. Even my comedy is complex; the rom-com The Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse is hard sci-fi, and a lot in it informs and goes far beyond the fluff one often sees in that rom-com genre. (Did you know a secret op took place in Norway and destroyed the Nazi’s heavy-water production facility during WWII, helping to put an end to Hitler’s plans to develop the atomic bomb?) My stories’ plots, settings, and themes are designed to inform readers as much as (hopefully) entertain them.

I also inform readers and writers with my end notes. While many probably ignore them, nearly every book has them. I discuss what motivated me to write the story and offer references for further reading; I also acknowledge the real people who influenced the novel. I’m guessing people don’t read them because they’re not used to seeing such artistic candor? Most authors don’t bother. But both readers and writers can benefit from the information contained in them.

Of course, this blog also offers a wealth of information contained in these articles about reading, writing, and publishing. While my ideas on those subjects have evolved (and perhaps have become more acerbic and less mainstream?), I modestly believe that they inform readers of the blog about what goes on in this modern world of storytelling. (For writers and maybe readers, my course “Writing Fiction” collects many of those ideas. It’s a free PDF download available on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page.)

All too often, authors only see their writing as a business and determine success by sales figures. I’ve never thought that way. Instead, I believe every author has an obligation to give something back to the community of writers, readers, and publishers (yes, even those associated with the Big Five and its sycophantic cadre of agents, although those authors never do), offering information others can use (or ignore at their own peril!), facts they might not know but can appreciate, and perspectives about our wonderfully diverse world and its peoples that can enrich their lives. I want to do my small part in achieving that.

Of course, I want to be true to myself and stick by my opinions, but I’ll often present the viewpoint of “the other side” in my prose. I will not be the next Ayn Rand or Karl Marx and write pure fiction that’s propaganda, but I might have characters who espouse libertarian or communist ideas. I realize that the spectrum of human beliefs and behavior is a wide one, and I want my prose to reflect that. Human beings are also political, and so I want my characters to be political as well. Fiction has to reflect reality; simple fluff never does!

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Fear the Asian Evil. This third book in the “Inspector Steve Morgan” series might seem ripped from the headlines after reports that President Biden strongly warned President-for-Life Xi about invading Taiwan. The book deals more with China’s long-standing policy of industrial espionage—they’d rather steal ideas than have to invent them—and fomenting unrest in western democracies. While it starts out as a typical police procedural—the sister-in-law of Morgan’s sergeant is shot—it acquires a spy-fi flavor that goes far beyond Christie’s typical British-style mysteries. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold (but not on Amazon).

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

I often think of tweens and teens these days; how they’ll make out in the world we leave them, the new trials and tribulations awaiting them that previous generations didn’t have to survive, and so forth. Like everyone else, they were affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, but their lives were more adversely affected and interrupted than those of adults. Moreover, because they’re on the path of turning into adults, they’ll have intense adolescent problems to contend with long forgotten about by most adults plus a mountain of new ones to climb.

That’s how I became interested in young adult (YA) literature. I’d read Heinlein’s Podkayne of Mars as a kid long ago and immediately liked that novel about teen angst set in the future, something I and my nerdy cohort could easily identify with. Later, with that fond memory, I knew I had to try writing a YA novel. I didn’t embark on that marathon immediately. As I did with my mystery and crime novels, I studied what was “out there.” (That included those Harry Potter books, which taught me what not to do. Thank you, J.K.!) As with the mystery and crime stories, I discovered that sci-fi and YA literature weren’t incompatible, just like Heinlein had indicated.

My first YA sci-fi novel, The Secret Lab, was a sci-fi mystery set on the International Space Station (ISS) far in the future when families with tweens, not just astronauts, form a tight-knit little community living aboard a much-enlarged station. This YA novel’s timeline coincides with what was going on Earth below as the “downies” struggle through the Chaos in the hard sci-fi novel I titled Survivors of the Chaos.

In the two YA sci-fi novels after that one, we followed J. K. Rowling’s trajectory a bit: Tween to young teen and on to older teen, in The Secret Lab, The Secret of the Urns, and Mind Games, respectively. I say “we” because A. B. Carolan rewrote, reedited, and republished The Secret Lab and then authored the next two novels. But, in another major difference with Rowling’s fantasy series, besides those three novels being hard sci-fi as well as YA, their young heroes were all girls. Why is that?

You might think it was because of Podkayne? No, I had more a more profound reason that A. B. fully agreed with: Too many YA authors refuse to recognize young girls’ importance! (That’s true in general, of course, probably more so.) Young women aren’t sexual objects or childhood brides. They’re not men’s slaves. They’re not breeders who should stay home taking care of men’s children. Good things happen in societies when they can be creatives—artists, storytellers, techies, and scientists—even entrepreneurs, and yes, politicians. Our societies only have to give them the chance to realize their full potential to reap the benefits!

I’ll leave it to MFA students’ theses to analyze how many YA heroes are girls. Heinlein, of course, was a pioneer when he created Podkayne. I’d still bet the number of male YA heroes is larger than the number of female ones. Having known and admired many strong women in my long life, and having taught many years in academia where girls are often told they can’t do math or science (today called STEM), it was easy to get motivated and create Shashibala in The Secret Lab, Asako in The Secret of the Urns, and Della in Mind Games. (Readers will note that A. B. and I have followed the timeline of the three books in the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy”—making a YA version of each one, if you will.) These three girls are young female heroes who represent the future power of women that lamentably is only beginning to be unleashed in some of Earth’s current societies.

Hopefully, I can get A. B. to finish the “Denisovan Trilogy.” His Kayla Jones could really kick ass in Origins! (That novel is not set in my usual sci-fi universe, but it’s hero is still a young adult female—something like a wizard, in fact, so take that, J.K.!)

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Three A. B. Carolan YA sci-fi mysteries. They’re listed above. The Secret Lab has Shashibala and her friends out to find a cat loose in the ISS. In the process, they uncover a conspiracy. The Secret of the Urns finds Asako befriending some strange ETs living on an Earth-sized moon of a Jupiter-sized planet. Humans are persecuting the ETs, and Asako wants to stop the persecution. Mind Games has Della trying to find her foster father’s killer. She has to use her ESP powers fully to thwart a plan to take over the fledgling ITUIP (“International Trade Union of Independent Planets”). These three novels, available in both ebook and print format wherever quality books are sold (even on Amazon—they were published before our boycott), would make a great holiday gift for the young adults among your family and friends. Many adults who are young-at-heart have also enjoyed them!

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

I have a few series—seven, not counting A. B. Carolan’s—and Vladimir Kalinin has the role of arch-villain in four of them and in two bridge books between them. He also influences many of the events in a fifth, because five of the seven series are on the same fictional timeline that starts with The Midas Bomb and ends with Rogue Planet. (Both have paper editions if you’re interested.) I don’t know if that’s a new record for one fiction author, but it’s certainly evidence for Vladimir’s long criminal career.

Why do I keep returning to him? (Most recently, I did that in the “Inspector Steve Morgan” series, located midway along that timeline.) It’s complicated! He’s a complex and interesting villain, for one thing. While not afraid to commit violence to further his many nefarious schemes, he shows flashes of caring and compassion that could make readers used to simpler villains scratch their heads. While using his genius to gain influence and riches, a true master of the art of the deal, he also sometimes exhibits admirable feelings for his fellow human beings that can be surprising. His long friendship with Sean Cassidy, the old ex-pat Irish bomber, for example, which lasts all the way to No Amber Waves of Grain, is as solid as any friendship between strong personalities can be. In fact, they’ve formed more of a close partnership in which they trust each other more than their many accomplices.

But Vladimir also obsesses about revenge, a very human emotion. His long pursuit of Putin’s oligarchs is aimed at paying them back for forcing him to flee his native Russia when Putin grabbed power there. He’s also always thinking about revenge against those NYPD cops, Chen and Castilblanco, although he respects them and others for having thwarted him. He does eventually manage to take revenge against some oligarchs and other enemies, in particular the oligarch in Gaia and the Goliaths and the Korean industrialist who killed his protégé in No Amber Waves of Grain. Yet he’s not above trying to assassinate a few US presidents—he succeeds with a second attempt on one in Soldiers of God.

Many literary critics see authors’ villains as representations of authors’ dark sides. That’s not the reason Vladimir has appeared in so much of my fiction, though. Instead, he’s evidence for my belief that no one is purely good or evil. That yin-yang simplification so ubiquitous in fictional fluff isn’t justified because human beings are so complex. If fiction is to seem real, its plots and characters must both seem real as well.

A good thesis for an MFA graduate student (do they even do them?) might be following Kalinin’s career from The Midas Bomb to Soldiers of God and on to his influences beyond that, i.e. following my extended timeline. Because I don’t write all these novels in sequential order, that wouldn’t be a trivial task. And that student might prove that my development of Kalinin, if followed sequentially along that fictional timeline, is as complex and chaotic as his character seems to be!

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Fear the Asian Evil. This third book in the “Inspector Steve Morgan” series might seem ripped from the headlines after reports that President Biden strongly warned President-for-Life Xi about invading Taiwan. The book deals more with China’s long-standing policy of industrial espionage—they’d rather steal ideas than have to invent them—and fomenting unrest in western democracies. While it starts out as a typical police procedural—the sister-in-law of Morgan’s sergeant is shot—it acquires a spy-fi flavor that goes far beyond Christie’s typical British-style mysteries. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold (but not on Amazon).

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

Here’s a question you might be dying to ask: How is it that an old half-Irish curmudgeon (my desktop’s scene is a photo I took of Ireland’s Blarney Castle!) enjoys writing about British detectives? (Some of them are Celtic, though—Irish, Scottish, and Welsh.) I started down that road with Esther Brookstone and have written twelve novels that can be called British-style mysteries, which include the three “Inspector Steve Morgan” novels as the most recent ones.

The answer isn’t what you might think. While I’ve always been an internationally oriented author—about half the “Chen & Castilblanco” series takes place outside the US—and I’ve spent a lot of time outside the country, that international perspective, while unusual among American authors, that doesn’t completely explain my recent focus on British-style sleuthing. In fact, there are two more important factors: One, I loved reading Christie’s stories as a kid, and survived Covid-19 by reading entire series of British-style mysteries; and two, Asimov’s two sci-fi mysteries, Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun, also read at an early age, showed me that mystery tales could be more universal than any other category of fiction. Christie barely probed into the possibilities. (That binge-reading didn’t either.)

Rembrandt’s Angel, the first book in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series was written more as a personal challenge to myself to put together Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, Christie’s two famous sleuths, and create a twenty-first century crime-fighting duo, something I always considered an error Christie made. (Brookstone is a modern Miss Marple; and her paramour and later husband, van Coevorden, is a modern Hercule Poirot.) But those two more general motivations remained.

A writer-friend among Black Opal Book’s authors writes mysteries set in ancient Egypt. Another sci-fi writer writes excellent mysteries set far in the future. (I think I’ve reviewed both these authors’ novels a while ago.) Many of my own Dr. Obregon stories are sci-fi mysteries, and, in my binge-reading, I’ve enjoyed mysteries set in the nineteenth century, some even written by Americans. In other words, mystery provides a large umbrella to tuck stories under. Authors and readers should never forget that mystery has that positive influence on fiction literature.

Yes, mystery stories’ characters can be from any country and any ethnicity, and their settings can be from any time and place, even in outer space.

But in my recent works, I returned to mystery’s roots more as an homage: Christie’s Britain, with new twenty-first century wrappings. Despite reforms and reorganizations (the NCA and Police Scotland represent two major examples), policing in the UK is still steeped in tradition. The “Inspector Morgan” novels are much more police procedurals than Rembrandt’s Angel and Son of Thunder, the first two novels in the “Esther Brookstone” series. I’m guessing that this turn in my writing journey might not resonate with UK readers. So be it. It’s a detour I needed to take to round out that part of my writing journey into the strange lands of mystery and crime writing.

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Fear the Asian Evil. This third book in the “Inspector Steve Morgan” series might seem ripped from the headlines after reports that President Biden strongly warned President-for-Life Xi about invading Taiwan. The book deals more with China’s long-standing policy of industrial espionage—they’d rather steal ideas than have to invent them—and fomenting unrest in western democracies. While it starts out as a typical police procedural—the sister-in-law of Morgan’s sergeant is shot—it acquires a spy-fi flavor that goes far beyond Christie’s typical British-style mysteries. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold (but not on Amazon).

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

Book pricing is always debated among self-published authors and the marketing gurus who pretend to advise them; traditionally published authors have no control over it—their publishers determine pricing, often to their detriment. But we can include both groups of authors (and hopefully exclude the gurus) by asking, “What should be the price of a quality ebook?”

Note that I’m focusing on ebooks. I no longer understand print-book pricing because that’s all over the board and no longer makes any sense. Also note the inclusion of the word “quality.” Whether self- or traditionally published, there’s a lot of garbage books out there that are often overpriced to make them appear to be quality literature—most celeb books are trash, for example.

For both, self- and traditionally published, let me start on an equal footing: I’m assuming that we’re deciding on the correct pricing for a fully edited novel, both copy- and content-edited, and one that has an attractive cover. I’m also ignoring additional publishing costs: Forget about trying to recuperate those editing and cover-art costs or anticipated marketing costs. And let me focus on a novel that has between sixty and seventy kwords (many traditionally published novels are padded to the extreme because the traditional publisher wants to make it “worth their while” to put out a print version—that’s a quote from one of my traditional publishers, by the way).

Such a novel in ebook format should be priced in the $3 to $5 range, independent of genre. I have many years of experience that goes into determining that range as a reader and a writer. As a reader, if I see a novel in ebook format priced outside that range, I rarely purchase it. When less than $3, I might take a chance; when more than $5, forget about it!

Traditional publishers’ ebook prices are usually far more than $5, which is absurd! An ebook is just an efile. Self-published books are usually better reading bargains, costing about the same as an on-demand movie, and it provides many more hours of quality entertainment.

My ebooks are generally in the range I’ve indicated. (Fortunately, my traditional publishers also keep their ebooks within that range as well.) Recent ones I’ve published and distributed using Draft2Digital reflect the inflationary pressures of our times (what doesn’t these days?) and are priced at $3.99.

Ebooks are usually purchased online, of course, but no one can claim they’re not browsable before purchasing. Just like in a bookstore, readers can read the blurbs and peek inside to see if they think the ebook is worth buying (or that the author can at least write). I do that all the time (while I mostly ignore the reviews, especially on Amazon).

There are borrowing opportunities for ebooks as well, just like in a public library. Draft2Digital distributes to many library and lending services, and many public libraries now offer ebooks. (They tend to cater to Big Five ebooks, though, which is unfortunate, because those are usually overpriced, so libraries’ number of offers have to be limited because of fixed budgets—the cost of the ebook determines what it costs to lend the ebook.) That’s all an argument for self-published authors to keep their ebook prices in the range I’ve indicated. Smart consumers know value when they see it.

There was a time when ebook sales plateaued and print sales didn’t. Covid changed all that because people favored online purchases. Buy an ebook online and you’re reading it almost immediately; buy a print book and you’re waiting for it to be delivered (or the reader becomes the delivery man). Avid readers often read ebooks only because of that difference.

Authors, please price your ebook novel accordingly and take advantage of digital publishing. You will be a happier author by doing so.

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Fear the Asian Evil. Former Scotland Yard Inspector Steve Morgan’s next case at Bristol PD involves the attempted murder of a journalist who happens to be the sister-in-law of one of his sergeants. Its prelude, though, involves a fishing trip made during a vacation when Steve and his girlfriend’ father find a dead Chinese spy afloat in the North Sea. That leads to frictions with MI5 that distract from solving what should be the routine case of the woman’s attempted murder. The hunt for spies and ordinary policework clash until they come together. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold (just not on Amazon).

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

Many of my books are part of a series, but a lot of the series end as a trilogy. The latter will probably be the fate of “The Last Humans” series (I’m working on the third novel, Moscow Menace), but it could also be the fate of the “Inspector Steve Morgan” series (three books already published).

In any case, it gives me great pleasure to announce the publication of the third “Inspector Steve Morgan” novel, Fear the Asian Evil. Here’s the summary:

Former Scotland Yard Inspector Steve Morgan’s next case at Bristol PD involves the attempted murder of a journalist who happens to be the sister-in-law of one of his sergeants. Its prelude, though, involves a fishing trip made during a vacation when Steve and his girlfriend’ father find a dead Chinese spy afloat in the North Sea. That leads to frictions with MI5 that distract from solving what should be the routine case of the woman’s attempted murder. The hunt for spies and ordinary policework clash until they come together.

When I introduced Morgan in The Klimt Connection, Book Eight in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, I sensed that the complex British copper was a character who promised to provide many suspenseful adventures as he solves complex crimes. Although all British-style mysteries owe something to great trailblazers like Agatha Christie, today’s world is a lot more complex than theirs was, and crime-fighting has taken on a new meaning. If only for its massive bureaucracy (the UK reorganized that for policing in general in the first decade of this century, creating the NCA, for example), a bureaucracy Morgan often battles (particularly MI5’s), crime investigations have to be carefully managed now. I believe Morgan has shown he’s up to the task while he strives to put order in his personal life (in particular, with a new romantic partner). I hope my readers will agree.

All three novels, Legacy of Evil, Cult of Evil, and Fear the Asian Evil, are distributed by Draft2Digital and available wherever quality ebooks are sold (just not on Amazon, which I now boycott for my book publishing). Because everyone is already talking about holiday gifts, allow me to suggest that the entire set would be a great gift to yourself or to anyone among your family or friends who are avid readers of the mystery, thriller, suspense, and crime genres. Here a reader can read about complex twenty-first century crime that goes from murder at the local level to nationwide syndicates and international spy rings. Christie and other mystery and thriller pioneering authors could never have imagined how crime stories have evolved! Modern readers reap the benefits.

As I announced in a tweet (I don’t know how much longer I’ll be on Twitter because Elon Musk seems intent on ruining it!), I’m finishing a short story for my “Friday Fiction” series on my blog (see this Friday’s post). I use short fiction to take a few breathers, a cooling down if you will, after running the marathon of completing a novel (in this case, the first three “Inspector Steve Morgan” novels that may or may not end as a trilogy). Of course, short fiction is like running a few sprints or mid-distance races in comparison to a novelistic marathon. (The real NYC Marathon will take place soon. I was never able to run a real one, but I can still admire all those runners stamina!)

Once I’m done with that short story and posted it, what comes next? I’ve been debating three possible new novels. I had intentions of morphing More than Human: The Mensa Contagion into three novels, adding to the first and second parts of that sci-fi novel. There’s also still the question about what becomes of the combined Human-Mensan expedition to a nearby star (nearby in cosmic terms, of course).

I couldn’t call on A. B. Carolan to help on that, though, an avid fan of sci-fi himself. He’s still working on the second and third books of “The Denisovan Trilogy” to add to Origins. Unlike the Mensan book, there’s two novels there that need to be written to finish that story about galactic empires and their political battles. The first book took place on Earth. I can understand A. B.’s indecision about the next two with all the politics already going on here on Earth! He expressed that when he appeared in Intolerance, Book Seven of the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series. (It’s available as a free PDF download—see the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page here at this site.)

To avoid badgering A. B. and to take a breather from sleuthing, British-style (the Brookstone and Morgan series), I’m going to try to control my ire against Black Opal Books (publisher of The Last Humans) and Amazon (for confusing the first book with its sequel, The Last Humans: A New Dawn) by finishing the trilogy with a novel tentatively titled Moscow Menace. Here, as hinted at the end of the second novel, Penny Castro, the principal protagonist in the first two novels, and her husband Alex will have starring roles once again.

The plot for Moscow Menace is about Russia, of course. Don’t worry. Vladimir Putin is long dead, having succumbed to the same virus bioengineered by the PNRK and unleashed on the US’s west coast only to see it become worldwide and kill billions, even most of its originators. (All that predated Covid-19, although it’s still in question whether the latter virus was bioengineered by the Chinese. At any rate, it certainly made The Last Humans more believable and a warning that no one heeded, among them the Chinese.) Penny and a few others are among the survivors, all a fluke of genetics. (The mRNA vaccines help explain why genetics is important here. And we’ll be studying the consequences of that, i.e. the vaccine side effects, for a long time.)

The post-apocalyptic world of Penny Castro is still one where human beings must struggle to survive, but like in the second novel, this third novel adds the debris from world politics to the trials and tribulations of the survivors. I’ll keep readers posted on my progress. In the meantime, if you haven’t read the first two novels, you have some catching up to do!

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Four sci-fi novels. Mentioned above are More than Human: The Mensa Contagion, The Last Humans, The Last Humans: A New Dawn, and A. B. Carolan’s Origins. All are available wherever quality ebooks are sold (even on Amazon, except for the last). They’ll make fine holiday gifts for all the sci-fi addicts among your family and friends. (See the “Books & Short Stories” web page for descriptions.)

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

[Announcement from Steve: If you’re looking for me on Facebook, for my author’s page in particular, you will no longer find me there: I have ended my long-term participation in that social media site! Zuckerberg and his minions have changed it so much and gone to the dark side that it’s now a complete waste of my time. (I could no longer post to my own author’s page, for example! And I have to put up with too many fascists whom Zuckerberg and friends are all too willing to help, including the Russians in 2016.) My readers can follow me here in this blog—hey, it’s social media too!—and on Twitter, although I might end my affiliation with Twitter too if Musk ruins it like Zuckerberg has done with Facebook. Meta be damned! Amazon (Bezos), Facebook (Zuckerberg), and Twitter (Musk) are no longer an author’s friends. Moreover, their outreach to readers has always been highly questionable. I can no longer recommend any of them to authors. Stick with your blog or, if you must, use Goodreads. (Amazon has ruined that too, of course.) Now…back to my post.]

As I explain in the end notes of my new novel Fear the Asian Evil, I’ve long believed that Xi’s China is a more dangerous adversary for the US than Putin’s Russia, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union. I gave Vladimir Putin his due as a villain in Legacy of Evil, so it was time to make Xi Jinping the villain in this third book of the “Inspector Steve Morgan” series. Putin has had made many mistakes and miscalculations; Xi’s major one so far was the mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic that threatens the Chinese economy. I suppose that’s just because Xi unleashed Covid upon the world.

In the novel, I deal with Xi indirectly by focusing on the MSS (China’s evil Ministry of State Security), specifically on its agents and spies whose goal is to disrupt western democracies and steal their ideas and inventions. (Any autocratic system kills individual creativity. The FPA in America should carefully consider that truism—that’s the Fascist Party of America, once known as the Republican Party.) How are these Chinese operatives financed? I examine one possible way in my novel, one that could be hard to thwart for any security agencies in the UK, US, or any other democratic country. There could be other ways not portrayed in my novel, of course, but what I do portray shows that China presents a clear and present danger for freedom, human rights, creatives’ hard work, and world peace.

It’s interesting that President Biden and others are echoing my concerns about China. The Ukrainians are slapping Russia around—let’s cheer them on!—but we’ve not forgotten and can’t afford to forget about that Red Dragon. It’s time that the US and all western democracies confront all the bad actors in the world, including Iran, North Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia…and China!

My new novel is another mystery/thriller featuring the Bristol PD DI Steve Morgan. It might be called a political thriller with enough romance and suspense added to make a spicy stew. Its themes should be topics of discussion around everyone’s dinner table just like the themes in all the Morgan books. If you want fluff, read a cozy mystery, not these novels. I don’t ever expect all readers to agree with me (my characters express a variety of opinions, many not my own), but if I can start intelligent discussions among you, this book and the other Morgan novels are successes!

Watch for Fear the Asian Evil—coming soon!

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Fear the Asian Evil, Book Three in the “Inspector Steve Morgan” series, will be available this November at all of Draft2Digital’s affiliated retailers (Apple, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and library and lending services (Overdrive, Scribd, etc.), but not on Amazon. Here’s a summary:

Former Scotland Yard Inspector Steve Morgan’s next case at Bristol PD involves the attempted murder of a journalist who happens to be the sister-in-law of one of his sergeants. Its prelude, though, involves a fishing trip made during a vacation when Steve and his girlfriend’ father find a dead Chinese spy afloat in the North Sea. That leads to frictions with MI5 that distract from solving what should be the routine case of the woman’s attempted murder. The hunt for spies and ordinary policework clash until they come together where mutual cooperation finally wins the day.

While you can read this novel independently from all my others, if you missed The Klimt Connection (where Morgan makes his debut), Celtic Chronicles (which leaves some things unresolved for the first Morgan book), or Legacy of Evil and Cult of Evil (#1 and #2 in Morgan’s series), you might want to check them out too. (Hint for Santa’s helpers: A gift of the entire “Inspector Steve Morgan” trilogy will please any avid reader of mystery/thriller novels among your family and friends.)

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

Stephen King and Dean Koontz have made a good living writing horror stories. (The second’s tales are better than the first’s.) Other authors less so. (Maybe not so good a living but still some quality stories in that genre?) All their stories are probably better categorized to be a subgenre of fantasy and not sci-fi.

Mystery and thriller stories do a better job of capturing the actual horror of real life, though. What could be more horrible than a school shooting? Or Putin’s war in Ukraine? Or 9/11? Moreover, fiction dealing with horrible events can provide useful warnings for us precisely because those events could occur in real life!

Even in my sci-fi stories, I prefer mystery and thrills, not unbelievable horror. You won’t find an ET like the one in the movie Alien, but you will find some scheming and murderous ones. I prefer mystery and thrills in my reading, and I prefer to create them in my writing to creating some fantastic story featuring impossible events.

My new novel Cult of Evil has enough horror that it should still creep out a lot of readers, though, especially because such horror could actually occur in real life. The story takes place in the Bristol conurbation of England (Britain’s west coast), but it could easily occur in any port city anywhere. The novel also differs a bit from my other mystery/thriller novels, the first novel in the series included, because it’s more a police procedural featuring Inspector Steve Morgan, also the principal character in Legacy of Evil and making his debut as a secondary character in The Klimt Connection. In contrast to crime stories set in America (Detective Bosch in LAPD and my own Detective Castilblanco in NYPD, for example), the police procedures are English ones, but there’s a lot of surprising commonality between LAPD and NYPD versus Bristol PD. Morgan himself has things in common with the two mentioned American detectives (a military background, for example), but there are also quite a few differences.

Cults, of course, are very real, from L. Ron Hubbard’s crazy scientologists, Quakers, and Seventh Day Adventists, to David Koresh’s and Charles Manson’s fanatical groups and those QAnon believers that plague American democracy. From these examples, one sees cults can be good or bad. Of course, Morgan has to deal with an evil one.

I hope you find the horror in Cult of Evil subservient to the mystery and thrills. I also hope you find it more interesting than what’s contained in a King or Koontz novel. Let me know if you do.

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Now available! Cult of Evil, Book Two in the “Inspector Steve Morgan” series, was published October 17 and will be available at all of Draft2Digital’s affiliated retailers (Apple, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and library and lending services (Overdrive, Scribd, etc.), but not on Amazon. Here’s a summary:

Steve Morgan, a former Scotland Yard Inspector and now one at Bristol PD, has another murder case to solve. A young woman appears to have been tortured as part of some cult’s evil rite and then hung lifeless from a Victorian folly. Is the cult leader the scam artist who took over the woman’s properties and other valuable assets? And to make matters even worse for Morgan, a deadly assassin is hunting him.

While you can read this novel independently from my others, if you missed The Klimt Connection (where Morgan makes his debut), Celtic Chronicles (which leaves some things unresolved for the first Morgan book), or Legacy of Evil (#1 in the series), you might want to check them out too.

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

I didn’t watch the Emmys—those types of incestuous, popularity contests don’t interest me in the least—but I remember someone saying this during the recap on the news. Some uneducated presenter was commenting about how good it was to have good TV to watch. I don’t want to waste my time here picking a battle with him and other zombies mesmerized by audiovisual pyrotechnics—you might hear such sentiments at the Oscars too—but I insist on praising the entertainment and educational value of reading a good book over any TV show or movie and asking even that presenter to consider that alternative.

First, TV shows and movies are formulaic and boring in general. Viewers can’t seem to realize what they’re missing…or they don’t care that the boob tube and the silver screen turns them into zombies. That’s their choice and their loss. Any avid reader can attest that books win over TV shows and movies hands down for the reasons mentioned. And those negatives apply to streaming video as well, which is the worst thing to happen to movies since they were invented (long after books, I might add).

Second, a good novel can entertain and educate a lot longer and more profoundly than any movie or TV show. Let’s consider a typical half- or full-hour show or even a two-hour movie. That half bour reduces to twenty minutes and that full hour reduces to forty. In that amount of time, a director can’t begin to tell a meaningful story, and a viewer doesn’t have the time to digest it even if the director could manage this miracle. A reader can read at his own pace, savoring the nuances of the story; putting it aside to ponder its lessons for a bit; or underline pithy prose sections as they go (even on a Kindle!).

Third, characters in TV shows and movies are often stereotypes and lack the complexity that real human beings have. What’s more, readers can interpret the characters in books, becoming them as they read, whereas with TV shows and movies, viewers are force-fed the actors portrayals of the characters (mostly dictated by a director, of course, because actors aren’t really that smart).

Fourth, there’s no Pulitzer, Nobel, or Booker prizes for a TV show or movie, and, as I said above, the judges of quality for the latter aren’t nearly as qualified and too involved in that media’s narcissism! Plays might be an exception, but dramas, like the novel, are first and foremost literature, not visual arts, and exist in a weird twilight zone between literature and visual arts at the best. In any case, no one should ever compare those prizes, even for drama, with those for commercial media, Emmys and Oscars.

Is this article only the rant of an erudite fiction writer? No, it’s more a suggestion to that idiot at the Emmys to try some quality entertainment, not fluff. In other words, he should read a good book!

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The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection. This special 99-cent sale at Smashwords is better than my previous ones! And today is the last day! This ebook bundle contains three novels: Survivors of the Chaos, Sing a Zamba Galactica, and Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hand! You start your mind-blowing journey on a future Earth run by international mega-corporations and policed by their mercenaries, but a clever director of the interplanetary space agency refurbishes three long-haul space rigs and uses them to send colonists off to nearby stars. Those colonies become the salvation for humanity as human beings team up with good ETs to battle bad ones…and a collective super-intelligence that’s a bit ambivalent as a villain. But the worst enemy, a human, is yet to come; if this is my Foundation trilogy, he’s my Mule. Spanning thousands of years of future near-Earth history, these adventures in space and time will give you hours of sci-fi mysteries and thrills.

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