The evil Bezos’s bots have struck again! Because my older books are “evergreen,” meaning that they’re as current, relevant, and hopefully entertaining as the day I wrote them, I decided recently to check to see if there were any new reviews written by recent readers. (I now only read and use reviews to extract material for marketing purposes, but readers should keep writing them to help other readers.) Not only were there no new reviews, but the bots had removed the old ones!

If you peruse the reviews on my “Books & Short Stories” web page or in the “My Reviews” archive of this blog, almost of those have been removed on Amazon…and for no reason! Or maybe the evil Bezos and his minions, those evil bots, think I’ve died? Or did these satanic creatures decide that any review written before some date should be discarded (reviews can and should be evergreen too!)? I should check that latter theory—I wouldn’t put it past Amazon—but I won’t waste anymore of my time worrying about that sham of an online bookstore. I’ll just up my boycott of them. And please help me with that. B&N is a far better online bookstore for all my books, and you can find all my novels there!

Some Prime readers can read books for free or “borrow” them to see if they want to read them (I guess the “peek inside,” which is enough for me, isn’t enough for them). That’s another way Amazon shafts authors. Sure, authors get 70% royalties for ebooks priced above $2.99, but most small presses provide a lot more TLC for the 15% they take than Amazon has ever done for that 30%, which is zilch!

I’ll also boycott any marketing person who dares to tell me Amazon offers the best way to become a successful, bestselling author. (That includes Penny Sansevieri and her AME minions, Laurence O’Bryan and BooksGoSocial, and many others.) That’s a load of BS! Amazon does nothing for writers except scam them! They can’t even display books properly, so they fail at something that any local bookstore can do much better with their eyes closed! (See that same web page for an explanation of what they egregiously did to me with “The Last Humans” series—it’s all in red type! I checked that too. No change!)

And an author has no recourse. You can never talk to a real person at Amazon. Customer service is also handled by bots and doesn’t even begin to deserve that name.

If I ever publish more fiction (I’ve been giving it away recently), you can be sure it won’t appear on Amazon! (#4 and #5 of the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series began that boycott after the fiasco with “The Last Humans” series.) I’ve wasted too much of my writing life attempting to work with Amazon!

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Rogue Planet. On a faraway planet, a kingdom is overthrown and a young prince fights back against the usurpers who establish an evil theocracy. Although this gives this novel a Star Wars or Game of Thrones flavor, it’s not fantasy—it’s hard sci-fi. Set in the same sci-fi universe as the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy,” the action and suspense goes far beyond any space opera. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold, and it has a print version as well—ask for it at your local bookstore or order it from B&N.

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

I certainly wasn’t the first sci-fi writer to portray a viral pandemic, but my More than Human: The Mensa Contagion follows the progression of a contagion in human populations that was a preview of what we’re experiencing with Covid: Deadly at first and not so transmissible but then mutating to a more benign version that has “learned” not to kill so efficiently so the virus can survive.

Of course, this is no accident. Before I started that novel, I studied many aspects of viral pandemics, basically how viruses do their thing. I was super-specialized as a scientist; as a sci-fi writer, I’ve had to become more of a generalist because sci-fi themes cover most of science (assuming they’re not fantasies or space operas). Some topics I’ve had to study are: cloning, dirty bombs, possibilities for FTL travel, AI, and robotics. (You can have some fun trying to matching these up with fifteen years of works.) Becoming an amateur and armchair scientist in this self-educational enterprise, I suppose I’ve made some mistakes. (For the experts reading this, assuming they also read sci-fi, are always welcome to correct me.)

In a similar novel (similar only in its pandemic theme), The Last Humans, a virus was bioengineered and weaponized to have killer characteristics like the original Covid and speed of transmission of the new Omicron mutation. That usually doesn’t happen in nature because natural viruses tend to evolve from one extreme to the other,. But I imagined that a bioengineered virus could do both and be carried around the world on prevailing winds, no matter where the original target happened to be.

These books were warnings, of course, at least from the viral point of view. I will never claim to be prescient, but I can always say, “I told you so,” because I did. I studied the science!

And that brings me to an important question: Do people who diss science, don’t believe it, and believe the many falsehoods about our natural world and universe instead, do these people read sci-fi? Do they ever read anything beyond the lies and conspiracy theories propagated on social media and outlets like Fox News? I suspect not., At the most, they think Marvel Comics characters and Harry Potter tell us how the real world works! Their take on the real world is pure fantasy. Maybe these people could benefit by reading hard sci-fi, not fantastic tales from Hollywood, TV, or social media that just amplify and pander to their ignorance?

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You’ll find the ebook versions of the novels mentioned above at most online retailers that sell quality ebooks. A print version of The Last Humans is also available.

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

Consider this article a follow-up to the one titled “My Lost Novels.” While #6 in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series is a free PDF download and #7 will be, I’ll preview both books here. The previews follow the summaries for each novel.

Defanging the Red Dragon. Esther Brookstone, ex-MI6 spy and ex-Scotland Yard Inspector in the Art and Antiques Division, and her husband, Bastiann van Coevorden, ex-Interpol agent, along with NYPD homicide detective Rolando Castilblanco and his wife, TV reporter Pam Stuart, become embroiled in geopolitical intrigue as the West tries to thwart a plan China has for stealing its nuclear submarine secrets. Taking place mostly in the US and UK, this suspenseful story has multiple twists and turns and is also the tale of two cities, New York and London, and the bustling life found in both, from the rich and powerful to the most scurrilous criminal elements. Here’s the preview:

The waiting ended. Esther was the first to see the twinkling light on the ocean’s horizon, but she didn’t tell the other two.

When Crosby saw it, he brandished the knife again.

“Out, old woman! They’ve come for us.” He seemed relieved. “Don’t worry. I’ll make it quick. We have to go through a thorough basic training after enlisting.”

She exited the car and stood by the door. He came around the front, the Chinese man following him. When they passed dead center in front, she hit the alarm button on her key fob. The headlights and taillights started flashing, and the horn blared and alternated with a siren moving up and down through several octaves. The two were momentarily blinded, and Esther dashed off into the brush and tall seagrass at the side of the car park. She didn’t get far, though.

In the dark, she could only make out the dark form, a shadowy threat, and part of that shadow corresponded to a rifle. Military-style automatic, she thought. She weighed her chances against this new foe. One on one, but he has a gun.

The alarm stopped, so she could hear what he said. “Quiet, Mrs. Brookstone!” came the hissed whisper. “We’re getting into position. Come with me.”

They moved closer to the boundary between beach and vegetation determined by a tall berm about half her height. She felt much better now, and even more so when she heard the whump-whump-whump from a helicopter that reminded her of that first extraction in East Germany. A loud megaphone warned the two from the car and any scrotes on the beach to freeze and put up their hands. That warning was answered by gunfire.

“SCO19 from the Met?” she said to the stranger.

“MI5, madam. Can you shoot a gun?”

“Damn right I can!”

Intolerance. Esther Brookstone, ex-MI6 spy and ex-Scotland Yard Inspector in the Art and Antiques Division, becomes involved in solving a cold case, a murder committed in Ireland years earlier; in thwarting a plot to kill immigrants and refugees; and in a murder case involving a famous Irish author. Her husband, Bastiann van Coevorden, an ex-Interpol agent and now a consultant for MI5, and various others help her in these cases. As one character proclaims, “God help me. She turns up everywhere.” Life after Brexit has become very dangerous in the British Isles! Here’s the preview:

Seamus, swinging the chain like a wild man with a whip, met Ben as he put foot on the landing. He didn’t even have time to shoot. Ben fell backwards, taking his colleague with him. Nate saw Seamus moving down the stairs toward him. He picked up that second man’s gun and emptied the whole cartridge. Yet Seamus kept coming, blood pouring from his huge chest.

Nate ducked under the chain and punched Seamus in the chest. That enraged the man, who tossed the chain over the stair rail and grabbed Nate. The DI felt his ribs crack and his breath leaving his lungs, but he managed to pull unbalance his foe. They tumbled down the stairs. Nate landed on top of Seamus.

“You okay, Guv?” Ben called down to Nate, who was slow to get up.

“Cracked ribs, I think. You?”

“Could be better. I think that damn chain broke my jaw. Thank God for the helmet.”

“And thank God this bastard is dead. And here we were only going to interrogate him.”

Of course, they were going to do that with caution. After hearing Kat’s tale, Nate had been sure that Seamus was their man.

Nate looked at the body. Would they ever have the full story? What had gone through this crazy man’s mind?

Nate sat on the first riser and called for EMTs, SOCOs, and the pathologist. They would take a while to sort things, but for him the case was closed. He then remembered someone else he needed to call, someone he felt very close to.

“Hello? Sara? We have Tommy’s killer.”

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To get these two novels…. It’s easy: Go to the list of free fiction you’ll find on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page, click on the title you want, and start reading…or click on the PDF download button to get your own personal copy. Tell your relatives and friends about the novels. They can either do the same thing, or you can copy your PDF and give them a copy. I only ask you to please respect the copyright and not sell any copies you make for profit.

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

I’ve written a few novels you might not know exist, so I’m calling them the “lost novels.” How did they get lost? The primary reason was Covid. I’m always writing new fiction, more so during the pandemic—short stories, novellas, and novels—and the manuscripts of the novels started piling up, forming a log jam I had to undo. Consequently, they’re all self-published (the most efficient way to publish!), so I’d like to remind all readers of this blog that they exist.

First, there is The Last Humans: A New Dawn. Not only was the publication of that novel delayed, Amazon’s bots lost it (see the explanation on the “Books & Short Stories” web page—I’ve also discussed the problem in other blog posts). It’s the sequel to The Last Humans, of course. I used Draft2Digital (D2D) to publish it, and it’s available (ebook format only) at all that aggregator’s affiliated retailers, including Amazon (although it’s hard to find there (again see the aforementioned web page).

The next two lost novels were also published using D2D, but, after the previously described attack of the Amazon bots, I didn’t trust Amazon (authors can pick the D2D affiliates they want to use). The ebooks Palettes, Patriots, and Prats and Leonardo and the Quantum Code, #4 and #5 in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, can be purchased online most everywhere else, but not from Amazon. (You might have missed Death on the Danube, #3 in the series, as well. That does have a print version, and it’s available on Amazon and at most online retailers.)

Now we come to the interesting part: The next two “Esther Brookstone” novels will be really lost if you aren’t paying attention. In the middle of December, 2021, I offered Defanging the Red Dragon, #6 in the series (technically, it’s also #8 in the “Detectives Chen & Castilblanco” series) as a free PDF download, a holiday gift for my readers. The subtitle is “A Brookstone-Castilblanco Holiday Adventure” because it takes place during the holidays. Otherwise, it’s yet another crime novel in the series.

“Esther Brookstone” #7 is so lost that it isn’t even available yet! When the manuscript for Intolerance is ready, I’ll also turn it into a free PDF download. Watch for it!

Neither #6 nor #7 have spiffy covers, by the way. The Last Humans: A New Dawn and #4 and #5 in the “Esther Brookstone” series do. The reason to skimp on the covers for #6 and #7 is simple: If they had spiffy covers, I’d have to charge something! (That’s the major reason I charge $0.99 for the collection Sleuthing, British Style. I started giving away short fiction a while ago, but that collection was a test run for D2D.) I believe covers on PDFs are like those cover pages for faxes—they’re something you might as well skip when you print the document. (You don’t know what a fax is? Lucky you, missing all that screeching when you mistakenly dial a fax number! Faxes were quite useful before cellphones, though.)

You can get your copy of Defanging the Red Dragon easily enough. Just go to my “Free Stuff & Contests” web page, peruse the list of free downloads, and click on the title. Voila! That’s what you’ll have to do for Intolerance too. Keep checking that list. (Okay, I can’t claim that these two novels are completely free. You’ll have to expend some energy to make that click!)

I think I’ll update this article and repost it every January. I don’t want my novels to ever feel lost again!

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Defanging the Red Dragon. The sleuths Chen, Brookstone, Cadstilblanco, and van Coevorden are all together in one novel! In this sixth book in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, they have to try to stop a Chinese spy ring that’s out to steal military secrets, but a few other cases become a distraction for the quartet: Finding the gang member who attacked Castilblanco’s daughter in NYC and combatting Asian hate in England, for example. You can download this novel for free—see the end of the article above. Intolerance, #7 in the “Esther Brookstone” series, will be available soon!

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

Twitter now is under new management. While I expect some changes as a result, compared to other social media sites, authors will find Twitter the easiest one to use. Unlike my political blog at pubprogressive.com (I post my more political articles there now), Twitter is a mixed message board for me: I mix political tweets with ones about reading, writing, and publishing.

First, let me say that it’s the best way for authors to learn to write blurbs and construct “elevator pitches.” They can learn to distill the important information into concise, to-the-point messages.

Tweets allow prospective readers to decide if your fiction is something they want to try and old fans to keep up with what you’re doing in your writing life. Even political tweets (I have more of those than explicitly book-related ones) show that your books might contain some important themes readers can identify with (no author can appeal to everyone…or should).

Unfortunately, a certain orange-skinned, straw-haired moron gave Twitter a bad name, weaponizing it. Authors might want to avoid his example, of course. That doesn’t mean writers can’t treat controversial themes in their tweets—that shows a writer doesn’t write fluff like cozy mysteries, bodice rippers, or escapist fantasy. Authors who show they’re human with reasonable opinions can attract more readers!

As with all of a writer’s social media presence, those people who follow the writer on Twitter are super-important. A writer doesn’t have to pander to them—they can follow and unfollow as they see fit (a writer has no control over that)—yet they’re the writer’s immediate audience on Twitter. Something attracted each one to follow, and Twitter is good about letting the tweeter know what that is.

A writer needn’t tweet a lot. Responding to readers and other authors’ tweets can be a lot of fun and a good way to gain followers. Saying what works in for you, helping another author, and so forth is a worthwhile activity in any meeting of readers and writers, and that’s what Twitter is, a meeting place where ideas are exchanged and information is shared. The less you peddle your books and the more you socialize, the better off you’ll be.

Most of all, an author should just relax and enjoy the tweeting. Rest assured it can be relaxing and a lot more fun d than editing or other marketing!

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“Esther Brookstone Art Detective” Series. Six novels now…and soon to be seven. Books one and two are from Penmore Press, #3 is from Carrick Publishing, #4 and #5 are from Draft2Digital, and #6 is a free PDF download. All ebooks are available most everywhere quality ebooks are sold, and you can order print versions for one through three at your local bookstore. Defanging the Red Dragon, #6, can be obtained by visiting my “Free Stuff & Contests” web page at this website. #7, Intolerance, is coming soon and will also be a free PDF download. Sound confusing? Blame Covid—the pandemic played havoc with this series! I won’t apologize for something Covid did. Get vaccinated and help end the pandemic!

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

Once again I can celebrate: I didn’t read one book on the NY Times’s list of top books for 2021! I sometimes by chance have read a few non-fiction books on that list, but not this year. And fiction books? Very rarely. Why is this?

It’s simple: I filter out all books from the Big Five publishing conglomerates the NY Times reviewers focus on because I’ve learned that I’m rarely interested in any book published by the Big Five…or reviewed by the NY Times, which rarely supports small presses or self-published authors (of course, they’ll take their money when spent on ads). That saves me a lot of time and money.

I’m an avid reader, but I prefer not to read the Big Five’s schlock. (Whether they will become the Big Four is still in question, I guess.) That probably includes all the fiction Times reviewers recommend, those books that for whatever reason manage to get a nod from the Big Five agents and acquisition editors. The old mares and stallions in the Big Five’s stables, who are ready for the glue factory because they write formulaic crap, are automatically out; they try to appeal to everyone by avoiding anything controversial. The latter’s not their fault, I suppose. Those agents and acquisition editors force those old authors into a rut they can’t escape. Or this is a just an extreme case of the Peter’s Principle.

I’m not going to say my stories are any better—I’m a lot more modest than most Big Five authors—but I write stories without any external constraints imposed by traditional publishers, especially the insidious ones of the Big Five. And the mafia of reviewers at the Times, most of whom never wrote a book and aren’t able, is in the pocket of the Big Five publishers, the best lobbyists the Big Five could have. To hell with them!

Think the above put-down of Times reviewers is a bit harsh! Okay then, keep on paying premium prices for Big Five schlock. Otherwise, please protect yourselves against the pandemic of the Big Five’s books by finding and supporting self-published authors and those who write for small, independent presses. Their works are much more worthwhile. That would be a great resolution for 2022! Happy New Year to all my readers! May you find the truly interesting stories.

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The trilogy that grew. The “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series became a trilogy in spite of the publisher of the first two novels…and then it grew. It’s still a trilogy if readers insist on reading print versions. The first three novels, Rembrandt’s Angel, Son of Thunder, and Death on the Danube, take one of the most unusual crime-fighting duos in the mystery and thriller genres from a wild, mature romance to a honeymoon cruise that will motivate readers to ask for more. And there is more!

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

As much as I find the NY Times “Book Review” worthless to me as both reader and author, the Times published an interesting editorial about Amazon on Sunday, December 5. (It wasn’t in the “Book Review,” of course. Heaven forbid they say anything against Amazon there!) While more verbose than necessary—the Times’s reporters and contributors tend to bloviate in general—that opinion piece laid out the case against Amazon and pointed out how Bezos’s retail behemoth is destroying American publishing, if not the world’s; and how, as it destroys bookstores, it no longer deserves to be called one.

One charge against Amazon in that article describes how I’ve been victimized all too often by the retail giant: Bots have taken over that “online bookstore.” There are no humans in charge, so you can’t find a real person to help you, no matter how hard you try. My most painful experience where an attack of Amazon bots occurred was when they confused the two books in “The Last Humans” series. I could get neither human nor bot to fix that. (Fair warning if you want to purchase both books on Amazon—you’ll need a lot of patience and need to follow the instructions in red on my “Books & Short Stories” web page to do it. You’ll make your life easier by buying them from B&N.) Probably not surprising, but that was the straw that broke this camel’s back: I’ll never put any more new ebooks up for sale on Amazon again!

(more…)

Let me start with the blurb for the new Esther Brookstone novel, Defanging the Red Dragon :

Esther Brookstone, ex-MI6 spy and ex-Scotland Yard Inspector in the Art and Antiques Division, and her husband, Bastiann van Coevorden, ex-Interpol agent, along with NYPD homicide detective Rolando Castilblanco and his wife, TV reporter Pam Stuart, become embroiled in geopolitical intrigue as the West tries to thwart a plan China has for stealing its nuclear submarine secrets. Taking place mostly in the US and UK, this suspenseful story has multiple twists and turns and is also the tale of two cities, New York and London, and the bustling life found in both, from the rich and powerful to the most scurrilous criminal elements.

I should add that this all takes place around the holidays sometime im the future—no jolly old elf in a sleigh with his ho-ho-hos in this novel, though, just solid mystery, thrills, and suspense that tie together two of my major series, the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series and the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective:” series, in a nice, big bow just for you.

I hope this is a holiday gift you will enjoy. You’ll find the novel in the list among my other free PDFs. I had a little problem making it available. Microsoft had decided to eliminate one of my options that allowed readers to download these PDFs: The OneDrive sharing option is no longer available. (Big Tech strikes again!) Thankfully, I don’t need OneDrive, so good riddance. I have found a work-around (thank you, WordPress!). You only have to click on the title to bring it up in a PDF viewer (at least on my PC laptop; who knows what happens with Apples and smart phones?)—use the download button if you want to have a permanent copy (for your e-reader, for example). (This works for all the older PDFs as well—just remember to hit the back arrow in the PDF viewer to return to the website.) If this doesn’t work for you, you still have the option to email me using my contact page and list the free PDFs you want me to send to you.

Readers of the books in both series know they’re related. Brookstone and her husband van Coevorden have cameos in the first series, and Chen and Castilblanco have some in the second. Many readers are also TV viewers and surely have noticed that crossover series have become more prevalent. I don’t know where scriptwriters got that idea. Maybe from wanting to turn an hour’s drama (really forty minutes or so if you subtract out time for the ads) into something like a full-length movie? It occurred to me that no one had done that for two series.

In a sense, I suppose my “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy” and A. B. Carolan’s first three sci-fi mysteries for young adults have the same relationship as the two named above, but what they have in common, my sci-fi universe, is a setting, not characters. TV crossovers feature characters, in addition to settings. I wanted to experiment with both.

Why not publish this novel normally, with Draft2Digital, for example? The answer is simple: I wanted to make it free, so why bother publishing normally? I already had set up a mechanism for readers to access free fiction, after all (until Microsoft forced me to find that work-around!). And many authors make the first books in a series free. I’ve stood that on its head and made the last one in both series (for now) free! The motivation is the same: Motivate readers who might be interested in the other books!

It wasn’t easy to put all four detectives in one novel. I think I pulled it off, though. If you agree or disagree, let me know. By the way, the subtitle is A Brookstone-Castilblanco Holiday Adventure in order to recognize the principal detectives and indicate that the series were joined…for at least this one time! Each series might go its separate way again later.

Happy holidays!

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Comments are always welcome!

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

Huxley had one; in his Brave New World, everyone is happy, happy, happy, taking their soma and not giving a rat’s ass about the futility of their lives. Orwell had one too; in his 1984, no one was happy, even if the entrenched plutocracy ordered them to be, the plutocrats figuring that if they said it often enough they would believe it to be true. C. M. Kornbluth had his too; in Not this August, he painted a desolate land laid to waste by Chinese and Russian invasions. (These are often called dystopian visions, but dystopia is only what follows an apocalypse, even if the latter is only societal.)

By the time I graduated from high school, I read these tales and other apocalyptic visions…the “red menace:” was a part of my childhood. We’d have drills when we’d hide under our student desks so the USSR’s bombs wouldn’t hurt us. While I believed that the USSR could attack us—JFK took us to the brink—I was punished for telling our teacher he was stupid if he thought a small desk could provide adequate protection.

You see, even back then I knew that apocalypses are bigger than any single person; when we say an event is apocalyptic, it affects thousands or millions. Despite that realization, I also realized that the really interesting stories that should be told about apocalyptic events are the ones about how individuals react before, during, and after the event.

In the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy,” there are two apocalypses. The first is manmade, a collapse of the social order I named the Chaos. Recovery from that ends when ETs use a bioengineered virus to terraform Earth and remake it to their liking. That involved attempting to eradicate all the planet’s native lifeforms, including humans. Fortunately, the recovery from the Chaos continues on three extrasolar planets colonized by humans. Apocalyptic pandemics also play a role in “The Last Humans” series (see below), although the virus is manmade in that case. In More than Human: The Mensa Contagion, a more benign ET virus creates Homo sapiens version 2.0, so the apocalypse is short-lived and in the end beneficial.

Viral apocalypses aren’t as dramatic as crashing asteroids (the dinosaur’s apocalypse), or a nuclear holocaust, and, in the worst-case scenario, leave no story to tell, unless some ET archaeologists stop by later to wonder, “How did this once robust civilization die?” One needs survivors, and that’s where the individuals come in. There are several types of apocalypses like that describe in A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse; they are visited by the heroes in that tale.

The quintessential tongue-in-cheek apocalyptic survivor story, though, can be found in C. M. Kornbluth’s novella “The Marching Morons,” where, unlike my More than Human novel, the apocalypse is reverse evolution—most human beings become incredibly stupid with the exception of a few unlucky souls who have to run everything. (This is akin in a way to Brave New World, I suppose, and was uncannily prescient about the Q-Anon movement.)

Above all, apocalyptic visions in the sci-fi literature are excellent warnings. The better the stories are, the better the warnings. Hollywood has poor apocalyptic visions. We’ve lost a lot in going from Huxley and Orwell to that snow train and cowboys destroying killer asteroids. Special effects in a two-hour movie can’t begin to portray realistic apocalypses or probe into characters’ reactions to them. That can only be found in a book.

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Comments are always welcome.

“The Last Humans” Series. This post-apocalyptic series has been hammered due to the vagaries of modern publishing. The first book, The Last Humans, was published by Black Opal Books, a small press (I think it’s near bankruptcy). In it, Penny Castro survives an apocalypse when a US enemy attacks with a bioengineered virus that works too well, going round the world when the target was only the Pacific Coast of the US. Imagine Covid on steroids! In The Last Humans: A New Dawn, Penny is still in survival mode, but she’s forced to participate in a revenge mission against the country that unleashed the virus. I published that novel with Draft2Digital. In any case, both ebooks are available wherever quality ebooks are sold. (And I might eventually make this a trilogy, especially if Black Opal cancels my contract with them.)

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

[Note from Steve: Due to supply chain issues—my time will be in short supply as I dedicate more of it to my writing—I will reduce the number of articles posted to this blog to two in the future. Wednesdays will feature an article about reading, writing, or publishing, and Fridays will be dedicated to free short fiction, continuing the “Friday Fiction” series. Thank you for your understanding.]

In books about writing fiction (often much wordier but saying less than my own little course available as a free download), I’ve never seen this topic mentioned (my course doesn’t either, but I might include the topic in a future edition). “Who!” you say. “That’s not creating new fiction if you reuse characters.”

Wrong. Fiction writers recycle characters all the time. That’s what series do. While creating believable and interesting characters is important, more fresh material is always found in the plots and doesn’t have to exist in the characterization, except for the development of characters in time.

And why stop with series? Consider my arch-villain, Vladimir Kalinin. Books in three different series, “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco,” “Esther Brookstone Art Detective,” and “Clones and Mutants Trilogy,” along with two bridge books between them, needed an evil villain (although he has some redeeming qualities in No Amber Waves of Grain, the third book in the trilogy). Ergo, he’s present, creating problems for multiple protagonists.

Because these books move along an extended timeline, you could argue that they represent one huge series, but a series generally recycles the good guys, not villains—that’s how we define series! (The same observation might make you wonder how old Vladimir lives for so long. That question begins to be answered in Full Medical, my very first novel and first book in the trilogy.)

But outside a series, should the good guys be recycled? Why not? Esther Brookstone and Bastiann van Coevorden, protagonists in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, play important roles in the detective series. (I often call them cameos, but they’re really more than that. Cameos are what I give myself!) Turn-about’s fair play, so sometimes Chen and Castilblanco appear in the “Esther Brookstone” series, most notably Chen in Palettes, Patriots, and Prats.

All of this has to make sense, of course. I’ve worked hard to make that happen and like the results. You might have fun trying it as well.

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Comments are always welcome.

Origins: The Denisovan Trilogy, Book One. Perhaps you’re familiar with A. B. Carolan’s sci-fi mysteries for young adults (and those adults who are young at heart!). If you’re a science fan as well as a sci-fi fan, you’ll have heard about Homo denisaovan too. What’s that got to do with A. B.’s new trilogy? Read the first book in the trilogy, filled with thrills and suspense, and see. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold, just not on Amazon.

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