I laugh when I see PR and marketing gurus and other pundits’ blather and twaddle about the need for copyrights and registering them. I suppose one could argue that copyrights are the good face to the bad one of book piracy. Some authors register; I don’t The moment I slap a copyright statement on something I write, it’s supposed to be protected. Bollocks! There’s nothing like an unenforceable law to cause me mirth!

For example, on all my free PDF downloads, there’s a copyright statement. The most recent novel in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, Intolerance, has a 2022 copyright. But knowing human beings like I do, I go ahead and state that the person who downloads one of those free PDFs can make copies and circulate it to family and friends as long as they “respect the copyright.” What the hell does that mean?

First, it means that I can’t do much if you don’t, whatever it means. You could sell multiple copies of that free PDF and make some extra spending money. Or you could use some software package to strip my name off the document and replace it with your own (good luck trying to convince someone you write like me!). Or you could take excerpts and claim they’re your own stories (my novels have flashbacks or back stories that could lend themselves to that scam as short fiction).

The first thing is key, though. A copyright doesn’t give any author any protection for their intellectual property! Stealing a book is like stealing a car: It’s against the law, folks, but it doesn’t guarantee that the victim can recover their car!

Some US authors register their work with the Library of Congress as well. I suppose there’s something similar in other countries. For many self-published authors (I’m a mongrel with both self- and traditionally published works), the fee for that costs more than the royalties they’re likely to receive for a book (fact of life!). How do you send an ebook to the Library of Congress anyway? It’s an archaic institution focused on print books! Most of my books have no print version.

For traditionally published authors, the publisher will sometimes perform that registration, but that’s another upfront cost small presses are now often passing on to their authors in their desperation to survive as an endangered species in a world of huge, predatory publishing conglomerates. I suppose the latter might pursue legal action if one of their old formulaic mares or stallions in their stables is pirated, but they won’t spend the money for a lawyer to protect lesser known authors (who often write better books!), especially newbies’ books that aren’t selling well (it’s all about that greedy bottom line, not art…and lawyers are expensive!).

No, that whole copyright thing is a joke in the publishing industry, just as it is for most intellectual property. Authors, publishers, and governments won’t prosecute violations in general. So you can find just about any book you want online for free. Those who do so are only punished by their guilty conscience, if they have one!

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“Clones and Mutants.” This series starts with my very first novel, Full Medical, as it paints a dystopian picture of what our healthcare system can become as greedy people get rich off innocent people’s health problems and unscrupulous politicians try to preserve their power. The clones here are also abused innocents. In Evil Agenda, the villain behind the conspiracy of the first novel, tries to give himself even more power; and, in No Amber Waves of Grain, he almost redeems himself by helping to thwart an even more insidious villain. These are “evergreen books,” as current and troubling sci-fi thrillers as the day I wrote them, and all three books in this trilogy are available wherever quality ebooks are sold.

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

No, I’m not talking about my sci-fi bundle The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection this time, although that bundle is definitely a bargain for all sci-fi readers.

Instead I’m describing Intolerance, Book Seven in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series. Like Book Six, Defanging the Red Dragon, it’s another novel that’s a fee PDF download (see the list of free fiction on my “Free Stuff & Contests” web page at this website). Why? Here’s the summary:

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!

So you have three cases then in one novel. Esther and hubby Bastiann are very busy. That in itself is unusual because most novels aren’t three-part stories. I’ll often include back story or a flashback to revisit Esther’s prior adventures, as you’ve seen by reading some of the previous novels, but that’s more to show she’s been obsessed with solving crimes perpetrated against innocents for a long time, even as an MI6 spy during the Cold War. I’ve experimented a bit here, though, giving Esther and Bastiann only secondary roles.

Esther’s not in danger in this one either. She’s involved in these cases because, at this stage in her life, she has a lot of friends who carry on her campaigning against injustice. Of course, she’s the common denominator for the cases. The first reflects her opinion that both bigotry and hatred are despicable, the second involves two newlyweds whose wedding led to the first, and the third involves one of those newlyweds more directly. So they are intertwined.

A question readers sometimes ask is why, with my love of Ireland, I don’t use that Emerald Isle as a setting for a mystery/thriller novel. This novel comes fairly close with two of the cases mentioned above. The first is about an Irish sculptor and the second about an Irish writer (two if you also count the murder victim). The amateur detective Declan O’Hara appeared in my novella “Poetic Justice” (now available as one of eight novellas found in Sleuthing, British-Style, Volume Three, also a free PDF download), and he and his new wife DI Margaret “Maggie” Bent received an encore in this novel. (These are independent stories, though.) Maggie has her hands full chasing the right-wing scrotes who are murdering migrants and refugees, while Declan tries to find his old author friend’s murderer.

Do you find all this too complex? Sorry, I don’t write fluff. All my stories are complex, even the short fiction. And this novel is free, so you don’t have any right to complain (chortle, chortle).

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“Clones and Mutants.” This series starts with my very first novel, Full Medical, as it paints a dystopian picture of what our healthcare system can become as greedy people get rich off innocent people’s health problems and unscrupulous politicians try to preserve their power. The clones here are also abused innocents. In Evil Agenda, the villain behind the conspiracy of the first novel, tries to give himself even more power; and, in No Amber Waves of Grain, he almost redeems himself by helping to thwart an even more insidious villain. These are “evergreen books,” as current and troubling sci-fi thrillers as the day I wrote them, and all three books in this trilogy are available wherever quality ebooks are sold.

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

A quick Google search told me how many have been made for the big silver screen: the ones starring Peter Ustinov (1978) and now Kenneth Branagh (2022) are the only ones. Murder on the Orient Express has fared better. Like all Hollywood remakes, one might ask: Why is another version needed?

At least one can say that Dame Agatha’s Egyptian tale has staying power. I read the original under the covers with a flashlight as a kid, my SOP for reading many books I shouldn’t have been reading at my age. I was a bit precocious, I suppose, but Christie’s novels are fairly tame in comparison  to many of today’s mystery and thrillers (including my own!).

Murder on the Orient Express is like Death on the Nile in the sense that private detective Hercule Poirot is trapped, on a train in the first book and on a steamship in the second, so he’s lucky enough to have only a handful of suspects. Of course, he applies his investigative brainpower in both.

I also read many Miss Marple originals. While Christie teamed each one of her sleuths up with a few inspectors, she never made Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot into a team to solve a murder case, something I always wondered about because it was an obvious thing to do. That was one inspiration for the entire “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series; but Death on the Nile and Murder on the Orient Express, to a lesser extent, were direct inspirations for my Death on the Danube, which unites Miss Marple (Brookstone) with Mr. Poirot (van Coevorden), the steamboat setting changed to a riverboat (which didn’t exist in Christie’s day) as the couple try to enjoy their honeymoon.

Esther Brookstone is a sprier, younger, and feistier Miss Marple; and Bastiann van Coevorden, while a brainy investigator like Poirot, only looks like David Suchet (famous for the BBC’s Poirot series). Together they make an accomplished crime-fighting duo, something I believe Christie’s Marple and Poirot would have become as well if they had ever joined forces.

The “Esther Brookstone” series, now seven novels strong, has modern themes that Christie couldn’t have ever imagined in her day. That doesn’t detract from her oeuvre, but it makes the “Esther Brookstone” series about a twenty-first century Marple-Poirot crime-fighting team an original and hopefully entertaining number of novels for my readers.

So…go ahead and see the movie, but let me just say that no movie can ever capture the subtleties in Christie’s mysteries…or mine!

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More than a trilogy! Someone thought the first three books in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, Rembrandt’s Angel, Son of Thunder, and Death on the Danube, should finish the series as a trilogy. Surprise! They don’t. There are seven novels in the series now, but those first three have print versions, so readers can call them Esther’s “print trilogy.” The first five are also available in ebook versions. #6 and #7 are free downloads. That particular someone might have wanted to stop at a trilogy, but he couldn’t stop a good woman like Esther from seeking justice for those whom criminals, spies, and terrorists abuse and attack!

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

You hear and see that phrase a lot now because there a lot of jobs available in this pandemic economy. Employers are desperate for employees; and employees are taking advantage, moving up and looking for their dream job. I landed mine long before Covid, though. I always wanted to be a storyteller, and that’s what I started doing even before I left a completely different day-job. True, I couldn’t have fed a family with the royalties I’ve earned, but it is my dream job.

What few readers I have—I have no way of counting all of them because I know some are reading borrowed or pirated books, hopefully the former and not the latter—all my readers make my storytelling worthwhile because the real motivation for writers of fiction should be that their stories entertain, thrill, and educate those readers who want quality entertainment, huge thrills, and interesting and universal themes in their fiction reading. To me, that’s worth a lot more than a huge royalties check.

Of course, it would be better if more writers doing their dream job could have the benefits of a real job, i.e. make a decent living with good benefits while doing it. Nowadays, that’s nearly impossible. While that doesn’t bother me—I write a lot of fiction that I just give away now—it’s not a dream job many people can afford to pursue. And readers will suffer from that situation.

One can make money writing, of course. There’s journalism and investigative reporting, for example. Writers can create ad copy and verses for greeting cards. They can write and edit all sorts of manuals for today’s high tech devices. But none of that is storytelling.

In my new novel Intolerance, Declan O’Hara reprises his role of writer that he had in the novella “Poetic Justice.” He’s an Irish writer who makes most of his money with investigative journalism, creating his poetry and mystery novels on the side. Something like that is what most writers have to do if they want to make enough money to live on. That fate in itself is sad enough, but Declan lives with it and keeps his cool, as does his new wife, Detective Inspector Margaret Bent.

I suppose this situation is a turn-off for many would-be authors who see fiction writing as their dream job. They and many others might call me a masochist. It’s true that now our love for storytelling has to be so strong that we’ll stick with it no matter what occurs. I plan to do just that, and I hope others can manage to do the same. After all, it’s my dream job, even though it’s not really a well-paying one; and I’m an avid reader too, so I need other authors’ stories.

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The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan. This novel forms a bridge between the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” and “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series and the “Clones and Mutants” series. DHS agent Ashley Scott is looking towards retirement but finds danger instead as she discovers a vast conspiracy. She also finds romance with an investigative journalist. The conspiracy, which involves a plan to assassinate a presidential candidate, sends them both running for their lives. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold.

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

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!