A.B. Carolan’s new young adult sci-fi mystery/thriller Origins (enough genres for you?) will contain a lot of history, from the dawn of human civilization to Argentina’s Dirty War (this book will be published some time in April if all goes as planned). Combining past and future is common in sci-fi. As a young lad, I read Chad Oliver’s The Winds of Time, for example, and it really impressed me.

Of course, the past often plays a role in fiction that isn’t sci-fi, maybe even more so. Son of Thunder, #2 in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series is loaded with history, from the time of Christ to the Renaissance and the near future. In fact, sci-fi or not, and unlike Son of Thunder, a novel can be set in the past completely, and it’s called historical fiction, an extremely nebulous categorization. Is Alex Gerlis’s The Best of Our Spies historical fiction or a spy story? (Spyfi addicts know the answer.) Can Son of Thunder be called historical fiction or is it just a mystery/thriller.

I could use this confusion to argue my point that genres are just key words one can use to describe a book, but my focus here is the following: When does history in fiction become historical fiction? Is there a natural boundary? And should writers care? Readers might be surprised to know that, contrary to perceived evidence in Origins and Son of Thunder, A.B. and I look more forward than backward. We want to question where human beings are going more than where they’ve been. While the past (and past settings) can be interesting, the claim that familiarization with past errors will help us avoid them in the future seems all too often false, primarily because our educational system focuses on past glories and not past problems and their solutions, or simply lies to students by creating a past that didn’t happen at all. (US states in the South, as well as autocratic governments around the world, like to do that in their textbooks, thus lying about a lot of things! And, as with you-know-who, people believe those lies because they’re all they hear and read.)

Black History Month deserves a lot of credit for bringing to our attention many Blacks who contributed a lot without getting credit for it. As an ex-scientist, I knew about a lot of Black scientists in history, and worked with them as well, but I just learned that one Black inventor,  Granville T. Woods, had 60+ patents—Thomas Edison even tried to steal one but lost the case! (Imagine, a white guy stealing from a Black guy! Edison was an ass, of course—just ask Tesla.) But, for the most part, celebrations of Black history, Hispanic history, Irish history—ethnic histories in general—cater to human beings’ nostalgia about their past and ethnic origins. In spite of their database limitations, especially for Asians and Blacks, websites like ancestry.com can make a lot of money providing this service too, although their ties with Big Pharma are definitely suspect. (But maybe that’s just part of the general problem where, because of narcissism, people make their personal information public.)

History’s propensity for awarding the conquerors and oppressors, i.e. the winners and not the losers (I hope that works for the Big Loser, you-know-who) is a good justification for including history in fiction to at least make readers wonder, what’s the real story? Who knows? Maybe my attempt to add details about St. John’s life between the Crucifixion and the disciple’s death (his was a long life) will motivate some young reader to study archeology or Christian history, i.e. what really happened? (And put their own spin on it?)

But I don’t really put a lot of history in my books. I’m not out to rectify all those lies in those Texas textbooks either. Some of my stories have historical flashbacks, or even historical and parallel developments, as in Son of Thunder, but I don’t write historical fiction novels. I might read them (the spy stories of Gerlis come to mind, as well as those British-style mysteries set in the nineteenth century, or even those mysteries by June Trop set in ancient Cairo), but I don’t write them. My stories are set in the future, albeit sometimes the near future. (The Midas Bomb, when it first was published in 2010, was set in 2014, so clearly events overtook that “future” and made it into an alternate history!)

A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse perhaps best exemplifies my style. Because of the Many Worlds Theory of Quantum Mechanics, physicist Gail and her techie Jeff’s time machine, which can only move forward in time (no paradoxes are possible), takes them sometimes into what can be considered parallel or alternate pasts on some of their time translations. Lessons are learned about our possible futures, though, because those parallel pasts provide perspective about where we might be going as well (and events we’ve been lucky to avoid!).

Should authors stop using historical settings in their novels? I’m the last person you should ask that, but I’ll still try to answer: Above all, fiction writers should write good stories, period, ones with powerful themes interwoven through the plots and great characters. Where authors’ imaginations take them should never be constrained by the consumers, the readers, or by agents, acquisition editors, and others who scream about marketability. And here I’ll end with a favorite quote from famous sci-fi author Robert Heinlein: “…maybe I should study the market and try like hell to tailor something which fits current styles. But…if I am to turn out work of fairly permanent value, my own taste…is what I must follow.”

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Comments are always welcome.

Ebook sales. I only offer them via Smashwords in my email newsletter. You can sign up for the latter using my contact page at this website. This month the “evergreen books” in the “Clones & Mutants” series are all on sale: You meet the clones in my very first book Full Medical (2006, but now with a second ebook edition); you meet the mutants in Evil Agenda; and they combine forces in No Amber Waves of Grain. These ebooks are part of my extended “Future History”–which all contains the “Detectives Chen & Castiblanco” series and the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collectdion” plus several bridge books. All my ebooks have reasonable retail prices (even those published by small presses), but they’re a real bargain in these sales. (Subscribers to the newsletter just use the supplied promo codes.)

I can’t offer these sales on Amazon; I stopped exclusively publishing on Amazon years ago, which is their criterion. I wouldn’t offer them there anyway. That ravenous T-Rex of online marketing is no longer a friend of authors or readers, so much so that, as of March 1, no new books of mine will be offered for purchase on Amazon. This is my small blow to help bring down the T-Rex!

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

We have left the days of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys far behind. Today’s young adult readers are more sophisticated and have a lot more on their plates than their parents and grandparents had at the same age. Although tween and teen angst have also morphed a bit, it’s only the names that have changed—that angst has always been present in one form or another. The same can be said for fads and cultural heroes.

The Harry Potter series started out as fantasy fiction focused on tweens and grew to be directed to older readers as the main characters grew. (The villains remained constant, though, discounting Draco Malfoy, who was but a carbon copy of his nefarious father, an adult.) The last Potter books are dark battles between good and evil. Although more verbose than a Stephen King work, those books are on a par with that Kingsian horror/fantasy genre—Carrie, for example. (King isn’t considered a YA author, but many of his books are YA. It is yet another example.)

The twelve-to-eighteen age group is now reading just about anything (if they read at all and avoid social media, computer games, and streaming video), so does “young adult literature” even make sense? Given that adults who are young at heart also enjoy such targeted books, I have to wonder. My alter-ego A.B. Carolan has adopted a different point of view: the only distinguishing characteristic of young adult novels today should be that their main characters are young adults in that age group worrying a lot about things appropriate to that group! By the very definition of good characterization in a novel, young adults will identify with those characters. That revolution was started with Heinlein’s Podkayne of Mars, and A.B. Carolan continues it.

In that sense, “young adult” isn’t even a genre. It’s only a descriptor indicating the age of the main characters. Thus you have YA romance, YA mysteries, and so forth. A.B. writes YA sci-fi mysteries a la Asimov’s Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun, but, in A.B.’s books, the main characters are young adults (if memory serves, I think old Asimov tried that at the beginning of Second Foundation). Adults can love reading them as well because they were once young adults and can identify with all those YA interests and angsts. I reread Podkayne not long ago and even got more from it than when I read it as a kid. And it has staying power far beyond those Potter fantasies.

A.B. could have written a series that starts with a tween and ends up with an eighteen-year-old just like Rowling. Instead he opted for a different focus: his main characters are different in each book, going from tweens in The Secret Lab to older teens in The Secret of the Urns and Mind Games. These books form a series only because all the books are part of what’s called the “ABC YA Sci-Fi Mysteries”—they occur centuries apart in the same future depicted in the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy.”

I know many YA authors will probably disagree with me on these points. For those who do, we’ll just have to agree to disagree. Young adult literature is no longer the same as those Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books. Denying that change makes no sense and might only upset current readers of that type of books.

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Comments are always welcome.

“ABC YA Sci-Fi Mysteries.” This evergreen series contains A. B. Carolan’s three books, The Secret Lab, The Secret of the Urns, and Mind Games. They are full of sci-fi adventure and suspense as three different young heroines solve out-of-this world mysteries. They can be found in print and ebook format on Amazon and in ebook format on Smashwords and all its affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and library and lending services (Scribd, Oveerdrive, Baker & Taylor, Gardners, etc.). Hint for tweens and teens, and their school teachers and librarians: Reading these is fun…and can serve as easy book reports! And a new book from A.B. is coming soon!

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

Like most authors, I have all my books listed on Amazon. The retail giant has never done much for me (besides giving me agita), and  I realized years ago that being exclusive on Amazon was a bad business decision. That’s a requirement for various benefits the company offers to authors. Those benefits just aren’t worth it if authors are savvy enough to follow this marketing maxim applied to publishing: An author maximizes her or his sales by using more retailers. In the business world of products to buyers, that’s usually hard to do because shipping costs to retailers have to be figured in. In publishing, that doesn’t apply, especially for ebooks.

Amazon distributes to no other retailers because they think they’re the center of the commercial universe. Authors should realize that this perceived monopoly on Amazon’s part is prejudicial to their interests. They shouldn’t be exclusive on Amazon. Doing so isn’t being a smart author. Even most traditional publishers are savvy enough to realize this (they fight with Amazon about other abuses too).

Like I said, some years ago I got smart—I realized that being exclusive on Amazon was hurting me. My sales numbers have never been great (probably because I can’t afford lavish marketing campaigns—which books should I choose?); yet those meager numbers increased once I added retailers besides Amazon. How did I do this? No one has the time to approach every retailer, so one uses book aggregators who not only publish the ebook but distribute to all those retailers! So far, I have used Smashwords and Draft2Digital, which seem to have what I need as affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and library and lending services (Scribd, Overdrive, Gardners, etc.).

For my self-published works, I’d do away with Amazon completely if it weren’t for a few free conveniences: My author page serves as another website where all my books are listed, and each book has its own book page offering a blurb, cover image, a “peek inside,” details about the book (many not found on my website), and some (but not all) of the reviews. That author page is more unique among book retailers; that Amazon book page not so much, and it offers browsing readers something akin to physical bookstore and library browsing. Imagine my panic when these two conveniences were recently attacked by Amazon.

First, some history. As many of my readers know, there is now a “Last Humans” series: The first book in the series, The Last Humans (see the cover image at the top of this web page), was published by Black Opal Books in 2019; the second book, The Last Humans: A New Dawn, was published by Draft2Digital late in 2020 (the reasons for the delay have appeared in previous blog posts). I continue to promote both books (see the bottom of this page), believing the book is all important, not the publisher. (Really, how many readers choose a book because of its publisher? Maybe I’m naïve, but my browsing and previous experiences with an author’s books give me a good idea about whether the book interests me—I don’t care how it was published!)

How did this all lead to my continued Amazon wars? Here’s an itemized list of my new problems caused by Amazon:

– The second book in the series, The Last Humans: A New Dawn, no longer appears in my Amazon Author Central listing, but it appears on my Amazon author page (the first supposedly controls the second, but this is evidence that it doesn’t).

– The first book in the series, The Last Humans, appears in my Amazon Author Central listing, but it no longer appears on my Amazon author page.

– Reviews for the first book now appear for the second book, i.e. all reviews for the two books have been aggregated together.

– The second book has no print version, but its book page says it does. And when you click on that, the first book comes up, showing both ebook and print versions.

This is complete chaos! Whoever’s responsible (maybe a gang of bots?) have done nothing. I’ve written to customer service many times, and the best response reduces to passing the buck and pointing the finger. Admittedly this is a complex snafu…but I didn’t create it! And with all this going on, I naturally wondered if this website’s links to both books still work—they do!

This whole adventure makes no sense. The problems were probably created by Amazon’s bots—no human could screw things up so badly. (I’ve always thought that the real Jeff Bezos is some body-less form in a cryogenics tank, swimming with the real Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and those Google guys, while the one who attacks authors is a bot.) Whoever’s responsible, Amazon is guilty until proven innocent. So far they’ve done nothing. Apparently they only listen to high-priced lawyers and ignore lowly authors they’ve screwed!

My advice to other authors? Don’t use Amazon exclusively for your books! And, in any case, beware of them–they can make your lives miserable.

My Amazon wars continue. Stay tuned.

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Comments are always welcome!

The Last Humans: A New Dawn. In the first book in this series, Penny Castro survived the bio-warfare apocalypse and created a family. In this sequel, her post-apocalyptic idyll on their citrus ranch in California is interrupted by the US government’s plan to stop another attack…and get some revenge. Penny and husband Alex, along with others, are drafted to carry out the plan—in their case, forced to do so by the government’s kidnapping of their young children. But the enemy has surprises awaiting them when a submarine delivers them to that foreign shore. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold, even on Amazon (but not on Smashwords). And rest assured, the first book is still available, in both ebook and print formats.

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

Unlike science, technology often seems to have a mind of its own. Betamax was better than VHS, but the latter won (in the US); now both are dead. No OS today is more stable than that old DEC OS, but even the company DEC is gone with its 100K+ employees. New cars full of chips have a lot more things that can go wrong with them than my old 52 Pontiac, and I’m no longer able to fix anything in the former because of their complexity.

Publishing technology moves at a slower pace because readers are often traditionalists, so they’re loathe to try new media. Readership demographics is more a determinant about how fast the march of technology influences publishing, of course. The spectrum going from young to old readers correlates well with the spectrum of preferences for reading media: older readers tend to prefer print format; younger ones ebooks. (Audiobooks apparently have their own spectrum, and it likely correlates well with commuting times and not so much with demographics.)

Disposable income factors in too: print versions cost more than ebooks, at least for self-publishing. (Traditional publishers attempt to skew those stats, charging almost as much for the ebook version of a blockbuster as the print version, although they’ve been attacking self-publishing by selling “evergreen versions” of old blockbusters at competitive prices compared to recently self-published ebooks.)

Many older readers won’t read ebooks or listen to audiobooks; they prefer print formats. I was thinking about this as I struggled to read President Obama’s A Promised Land, a weighty gift and not only for its prose—it probably weighs ten times what my Kindle weighs! It’s an epic book, to be sure, but it would lose nothing in ebook format. Yet gift-givers are traditionalists too—and maybe with good reason? It’s hard to wrap an ebook!

So publishing technology changes slowly, but it changes. That said, what exists on the future horizon for publishing?

The first obvious change will have less to do with media and more with those who produce it. Self-publishing, whether 100% DIY or partial, will be the asteroid that turns traditional publishing into a dinosaur except for coffee-table books non-readers proudly display as home decorations. That’s inevitable as more and more authors become fed up with traditional publishing’s delays, sycophantic agents and irascible, prejudiced editors, and, above all, royalties that are laughable. (Forget the advances. Few traditionally published authors besides the old and privileged mares and stallions in the big conglomerates stables receive them.)

That will be the catalyst for the second change (or it might be the other way around): Traditional publishers dependence on print will hasten their demise. We know brick-and-mortar bookstores are hurting: When was the last time you spent hours in one browsing among the stacks, elbow to elbow with other book lovers? Like everything else, people are now buying books online, even before COVID, and that’s a lot easier to do with ebooks. Print versions require shipping infrastructure, from the USPS, which no longer is dependable, thanks to you-know-who, or some other shipper. At the very least, that represents a significant delay compared to simply downloading an ebook. Waiting is so 20^th century; instant gratification is demanded in the 21^st.

Another format that will kill traditional publishing is the audiobook format. Anyone can make them. Sure, traditional publishers might have the advantage now because they can pay for the expensive narrators, those famous voices taking time from making cartoons to make some big bucks reading some big books, but how long can traditional publishers keep doing that? I’ll bet that self-publishers will find new and better voices—you don’t have to be a Hollywood star (or should I say a streaming-video hack?) to own a pleasant reading voice. And these new voices will get their opportunity as traditional publishing’s control of the book business shrinks to nothing.

This evolution will be slow, but will it be good or bad? The march of technology is neither per se—it’s indifferent. And it is what consumers want in the end, no matter how much traditional publishers try to mold readers’ attitudes and scam them with expensive advertising and other hype. Maybe robocalls in the future?

And it’s also possible that storytelling will die along with books, bookstores, and traditional publishers, because readership will dwindle to nothing. I’d hate to see storytelling reduced to the drivel found in streaming video, but I won’t have to suffer with that. I’ll be long gone before that happens. You and I might be more worried for our children and grandchildren, though. If human beings lose the art of good storytelling, can they really be called Homo sapiens, emphasis on sapiens? In a thousand years, that question probably won’t matter. In 2050, it might be more important—just think of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 as autocrats strive to control us even more, telling us what we can say…and read.

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Comments are always welcome.

A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse. I like to think of this sci-fi rom-com as Douglas Adams’ guide done right. At least time travel is done right and might just be possible. And the time-traveler’s wife is the kick-ass physicist who invents the process! If you missed my guide, you’ll want to rectify that situation, as applied physicist Gail and her techie Jeff develop a process that allows them to jump around various universes in the Multiverse. Robots, ETs, dystopias, and apocalypses await the reader on this incredibly far-out roller coaster ride. Also available at Smashwords and wherever quality ebooks are sold (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.).

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

Both positive and negative events in our modern everyday lives can be used to make our stories more relevant. A hassled and hurried commuter handing a McDonald’s breakfast meal (sandwich and coffee) to a homeless person; an unthinking neighbor letting their mongrel pee on garbage bags without thinking of the essential workers, the garbage collectors, who have to collect those bags; and so forth. These observations can make our prose come alive.

Of course, authors have to observe these events and record them in some way—either using an excellent memory or a napkin or scrap of paper. In short, authors must observe humanity and remember those observations to be able to write about it.

As I pointed out, an author doesn’t have to observe earthshaking events. Little things here and there can add spice to prose. Once, in a day-trip for my old day-job, I saw a thick winter coat get stuck in one of those sliding doors at the airport. There were several openings and closings because the door’s electronic eye detected something there and bounced open again. I imagined that heavy coat as a body. That observation turned into a scene in The Last Humans.

Seemingly mundane observations in your prose can carry readers right into your settings, whether they’re some place on Earth or on a faraway planet. Of course, observing much more drastic events can too. An author can include details that a reader might not know or could not imagine. That works for dialogue as well as narrative. The author needs to create a balanced mix of both and certainly doesn’t want to pad either with uninteresting verbosity, but snippets of details add spice and reality to make a drab meal in fiction into a gourmet treat.

More might be obtained by reacting to an observation. You might be tempted to do something similar for a homeless person and then striking up a conversation to understand their plight. Or you might give the owner of that peeing dog a piece of your mind to see how he reacts, standing up for those essential workers in the process. (I try to salute or wave to them.)

Unless we’re in a rock concert (rare now) or protest march (a legitimate one hopefully, without violence or vandalism) or some other massive event, we usually don’t remember that many people outside our day-jobs and neighborhoods, but we shouldn’t pass up the chance to observe human nature. It’s wonderfully diverse and complex, and fiction that illustrates that is more interesting than fiction that doesn’t. Characterization benefits from observations. Without it, we are led to create two-dimensional characters, cardboard cutouts of humanity.

Plot ideas can also originate in observations. My whole novel Death on the Danube owes its existence to observations. It’s not a memoir of a journey, but I couldn’t have written it without making observations on that riverboat. Rembrandt’s Angel, the first novel in that same series, builds on observations made on trips to South America and Europe. Much of The Last Humans and its sequel, The Last Humans: A New Dawn, is filled with observations I made about my native California years ago—settings, people, and an economy so dependent on agriculture and the water necessary to sustain it.

Is it possible that what gurus call “writing you know” is a misdirect? Maybe they’re really talking about how necessary observations are. Clearly I can’t know what living on a planet in the 82 Eridani system is like (see Sing a Zamba Galactica in the Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection), but I can create pioneer-spirited characters from my observations of real human beings—my own parents, for example, were pioneers during the Depression in the sense that they packed all their belongings in a Model T and traveled from Kansas to California. By observing them, I could extrapolate to those bold star-faring pioneers!

Yes, observations are necessary for good storytelling. Go out and make some…and then use them!

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Comments are always welcome.

Death on the Danube. Ex-Scotland Yard inspector and ex-MI6 agent Esther Brookstone begins her honeymoon voyage down history’s famous river with Interpol agent Bastiann van Coevorden when a murder occurs. Because the river is international waters, he takes over the murder investigation, with Esther helping him out. As they float along with the murder scene, they become embroiled in international intrigue. Available on Amazon in ebook and print versions and in ebook versions on Smashwords and all its affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and lending services (Scribd, Gardners, etc.). #3 in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” Series.

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

The NY Times article (1/1/2021) about Robert Jones Jr.’s debut novel The Prophets described this self-motivation for the author’s writing. I’ve been doing just that for years! I’ve always shared that mantra for my own writing even before I published my first novel, Full Medical (2006). I’m an avid reader, but I’d found a lot of the fiction I was reading lacking in its treatment of important themes and universal truths about the human condition—the good, bad, and ugly of human existence, if you will. I appreciate fiction that weaves such themes in and around the plots. That’s why genres like space opera, fantasy, and romance aren’t high on my reading priorities. Because modern fiction, especially that from traditional publishers, emphasizes fluff, especially those genres I indicated, which are the epitome of escapism, I decided to create my own alternative, writing what I like to read.

I often stop reading when I realize there’s too much fluff. I had no preconceived notions about Brit-style mysteries—most of them are fluff, but they helped me maintain my sanity during the COVID pandemic. I stopped reading Connelly long ago because, while his books are interesting police procedurals like those Brit-style mysteries, they’re basically escapist literature too without serious themes. It’s easy to make a list of the fluff masters: Baldacci, Child, Grafton, King, Patterson, and so forth write fluff in the sense considered here. Their books can be entertaining, a notch above video games and streaming videos, but I lose interest in them quickly.

Agents and editors, especially those indentured servants of the big publishing houses, encourage authors to write “marketable books.” (Of course, these people can’t really define what this means until after the fact—i.e., only by looking at sales figures—and are completely unable to predict which books might gain the attention of readers because very few books they publish become bestsellers.) Here’s a translation that corresponds to their rejection practices: They mean fluff that avoids all controversial themes. That’s their necessary condition (they have no sufficient conditions—nobody has). We live in a world of controversy, though, so Clancy’s dictum—“The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.”—has an obvious corollary: “…and that’s the way readers can understand reality.”

Perhaps such “controversial books,” i.e. those that aren’t fluff, don’t sell well, so the troglodytes of traditional publishing have a point if literature is only about getting rich off readers. Their exorbitant prices certainly indicate that’s part of their business model. The people who have controlled what’s published for so many years don’t want to lose control of that process or authors. They’d be the first to tar and feather Tina Fey for saying, “Do your own thing and don’t care if they like it.” And they’ve been successful making sure authors accept those creative chains for years. Maybe authors like me are butting our heads against the crumbling walls of the establishment by not volunteering to put on those chains, but I have to write the kinds of books I like to read. That means none of the fluff the troglodytes love because they’re so damn afraid some readers will be upset.

I’ve always been encouraged by a Heinlein quote (basically Fey’s idea expressed in language even troglodytes might understand): “…maybe I should study the market and try like hell to tailor something which fits current styles. But…if I am to turn out work of fairly permanent value, my own taste…is what I must follow.” There are two important concepts here. First, there’s the idea of literary independence: Authors should write the kind of books they love to read and break the traditional publishing establishment’s chains. Second, there’s the possibility that doing so will allow an authors’ literary output to have permanent value, while fluff can never do that.

Both Clancy and Heinlein support Heinlein’s advice. Both wrote in an era when traditional publishing was king. Clancy’s Hunt for Red October almost wasn’t published (the troglodytes almost succeeded); a small, coffee-table book publisher accepted it, and the rest is history. Heinlein, an astronomer, became the second most famous sci-fi writer (Asimov is the most famous, but some of his fame is due to his popular science works), and his books, like Clancy’s, will live on too.

I think I write quality fiction, but my hubris doesn’t take me so far that I believe my works will have “fairly permanent value” like Clancy’s or Heinlein’s, but there’s another corollary to all this discussion: By writing stories with important themes, I can enjoy my writing life free from those artificial chains created by those who worry about a book’s market value. I’m only a slave to my desire to write books like those I love to read, old-fashioned and meaningful stories from an old Irish storyteller.

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Comments are always welcome.

When fluff isn’t enough….the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” Series. Seven novels with important themes woven around mystery, thriller, and police-procedural plots as current as the day I wrote them: The Midas Bomb treats foreign terrorism in NYC. Angels Need Not Apply considers cartels, domestic and foreign terrorism, and right-wing militias. Teeter-Totter between Lust and Murder finds the detectives fighting the illegal arms trade and domestic terrorism. In Aristocrats and Assassins, Castilblanco’s vacation in Europe is interrupted by a terrorist group out to supply themselves with nukes. The Collector considers art theft, human trafficking, and child porn. Family Affairs primarily depicts a battle against domestic terrorism. And Gaia and the Goliaths studies the extent that international energy conglomerates might go to as they battle environmental activists. In this series, the detectives often start locally in NYC but move beyond to national and international action. Lots of interesting and entertaining reading here for you to binge on, folks! Available wherever quality ebooks are sold. Note: Subscribers to my email newsletter have a January and February sale for these novels, but the books’ retail prices are also reasonable.

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

[Note from Steve: Readers of this blog have already read about some of the publishing history of The Last Humans: A New Dawn. I continue the discussion of that ebook here, focusing more on the content in this post.]

My readers know that I often separate sections of a novel with a quote: Rembrandt’s Angel uses George Bernard Shaw quotes, Son of Thunder has quotes from St. John the Divine, and so forth (the third book in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” Series, Death on the Danube, is partitioned naturally by cruise days). I also use quotes for that purpose in my new post-apocalyptic thriller The Last Humans: A New Dawn (it’s less post-apocalyptic and more standard thriller than the first book).

When I do this, I have a lot of fun searching for each section’s quote. Mind you, these aren’t quotes about writing or publishing. I’ve collected plenty of those, but, while pithy, they rarely relate to sections of a novel. So my search continues.

My new book starts with the following quote: “The species will continue, whatever apocalypse we manage to unleash. It just won’t be much fun to live through.”—Naomi Alderman. That sets the tone of the novel. As in The Last Humans, we continue to follow the adventures of main character Penny Castro as she struggles to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. She has a family now (husband, an adopted child, two of their own children, as well as a Jewish patriarch), so the story isn’t just about her anymore.

And that’s where Senator and war hero John McCain comes in. Penny finds herself in a POW camp in a strange land in one section, so I start that section with a quote from Mr. McCain: “As far as this business of solitary confinement goes, the most important thing for survival is communication with someone, even if it’s only a wave or a wink, a tap on the wall, or to have a guy put his thumb up. It makes all the difference.”

Here’s my rationale for using this quote (taken from the end notes to the novel): “While this novel is about future politics (more like foreign relations and diplomacy, to be precise), I should add a word about my mentioning John McCain. Most of my readers won’t be surprised when I state that I disagreed with a lot of his political positions. He was honest about them, though, and, unlike some, a true conservative. He also believed in the dialogue so necessary to maintain a thriving democracy. Mr. McCain might have beaten Mr. Obama if he hadn’t rebelled against Republican heavyweights to choose Sarah Palin as running mate. Yet there are many good things that will forever set him above party politics too: His refusal to leave the Hanoi Hilton unless his fellow prisoners were also released; his answer to the woman who asked in the 2008 campaign if Mr. Obama was a Muslim terrorist; and his refusal to vote to end Obama’s ACA, which enraged President Trump—that decision saved millions of Americans’ health care, and I also see it as sweet revenge for Trump dissing McCain during the 2016 campaign for being captured during the Vietnam War (Trump sat that war out to take care of his “bone spurs”). His ultimate jab at Trump occurred in the 2020 campaign after his death when his wife endorsed Joe Biden and Arizona went blue for that Democratic candidate (the Dems also won a senate seat there [all but forgotten now because of events in Georgia]). Of course, that stance in the Vietnam War era is why McCain is mentioned in this novel. John McCain was a true American hero, and everyone should recognize that, no matter what political proclivities they have.”

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I finished The Last Humans: A New Dawn in the summer of 2019. Since then this sequel to The Last Humans has seems to have a curse on it. Let me list why.

First, I signed a contract for it in December 2019 with Black Opal Books. Version 1.0 of that small press provided an acceptable home for the first book, so, even with a buyout and reorg of the publisher, I incorrectly assumed Black Opal version 2.0 would be delighted to keep the series in house. Wrong! I should have been forewarned by the delays incurred in signing the contract (July to December 2019). After that signing, I never heard from them again. I eventually cancelled the contract.

Second, while I was able to squeeze my other orphaned book, Death on the Danube, into busy Donna Carrick’s schedule (Carrick Publishing) after Penmore Press discontinued the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” Series, she had no time available for The Last Humans: A New Dawn until later in 2021. I’ll admit patience isn’t one of my virtues; I don’t like to leave manuscripts that are already beta-read and edited (even before submission to Black Opal!) sitting around. Besides, both books had already suffered the ubiquitous delays associated with traditional publishers—even small presses usually have full queues. That’s part of their business model.

Third, I had no luck in finding another small press that could be a home for either Death on the Danube or The Last Humans: A New Dawn. Not surprising, I suppose. What publisher would want to take on a series without having the first books in the series in their catalog? Some authors receive a contract for an entire series. I haven’t…and don’t want one. I rarely know there’ll be a series ahead of time. Hell, I don’t even know whether a story I’m writing will become short fiction or a novel! Agencies rejected me; small presses rejected me (I found they were often nothing more than PODs that take a big share of the royalties). I became frustrated and paranoid, figuring it might be revenge taken against me because I’ve self-published so many books. Like any good detective or scientist, I looked at the evidence and made my conclusions.

Fourth, the “Last Humans” Series is post-apocalyptic sci-fi about the main character’s adventures surviving and fighting back after a worldwide pandemic pommels the planet. If I wasn’t sure whether readers would want to read about a fictional pandemic when they’re in the middle of a real one, how could I expect any publisher to risk publishing it?

Yes, the book seemed cursed! But my desire to publish the manuscript and then forget about it overrode all caution. I learned how to publish with Draft2Digital (with the test case Sleuthng, British-Style) and used that ebook aggregator to publish the cursed tale. Lo and behold, a fifth stage of the curse slammed me: There are a few gaffes left in the book either I or my beta-reader/editor missed (and possibly not an exclusive “or”—they’re not that obvious, so most readers will never realize they were made), and I’m the one who has to own them. I do so because I’m a perfectionist and always insist the author has ultimate responsibility for the quality of a book, especially if it’s self-published. (To be precise, D2D is actually something between self- and traditional publishing.)

It’s possible the editors at Black Opal version 2.0 would have caught some of these gaffes. Those at version 1.0 certainly made my life miserable with their content editing of the first book—they tried their darnedest to change the content. But I never heard from anyone at Black Opal version 2.0 after signing the contract, let alone their editors.

So this tale is cursed. Remember that if you see gaffes, and remember my odyssey described in this article. I prefer to forget about it! And this series! At least for now. (If you read it, you’ll see a trilogy is possible. Don’t hold your breath.)

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Comments are always welcome.

Email newsletter. Interested in news about my writing life like that contained in this post? Do you want access to Smashwords sales of my ebooks? You’ll have to subscribe to my email newsletter. My online newsletter, “News and Notices from the Writing Trenches,” will no longer appear in this blog. By subscribing to the email newsletter, you’ll be able to receive news about reading, writing, and publishing as well as save on my ebooks. Although they’re all reasonably priced, the sales prices are even more of a bargain. If you don’t have a Smashwords account, consider getting one. You’ll have access to a world of ebooks, many not available on Amazon, including mine…and you won’t have that huge retailer breathing down your neck all the time!

The Last Humans: A New Dawn. You might still want to read this sequel, especially if you read the first book, The Last Humans—just for closure. Here’s the blurb:

Penny Castro survived the biowarfare apocalypse and created a family. Her post-apocalyptic idyll on their citrus ranch is interrupted by the US government’s plan to stop another attack…and get some revenge for the first one. Penny and husband Alex, along with others, are drafted to carry out the plan—in their case, forced to do so by the government’s kidnapping of their young children. But the enemy has surprises awaiting them when a submarine delivers them to that foreign shore.

By the way, and as far as I know, the first book is still available from Black Opal Books. I can’t afford to buy back the rights from them! And I don’t want to do so anyway.

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

In a previous article I posted to this blog, I wrote about my experiment with a new (for me) ebook aggregator, Draft2Digital (D2D), that allows an author to “go wide.” It’s now time to write about an even earlier experiment.

The D2D experiment involved The Last Humans: A New Dawn, my most recent novel and sequel to The Last Humans. This second and earlier experiment involves Death on the Danube, #3 in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” Series. I published that book with my reliable Carrick Publishing run by my good friend Donna Carrick, squeezing it into her very busy schedule, so here “going wide” involved the venerable book aggregator Smashwords, now D2D’s competitor. The experiment was a book trailer.

The two experiments are linked, though. I entered The Last Humans, published by Black Opal Books, in a Readers’ Favorite contest, taking the advice of good friend and author Keith Steinbaum; that post-apocalyptic thriller won a consolation prize, a free book trailer (better said, the cost of the trailer corresponded to that of entering the contest). Castelane, run by Kim McDougall, offers several resources for authors, including book trailers. Ms. McDougall was good enough to allow me to use the freebie for Death on the Danube. Here’s the link.

You might have watched some book trailers before. You can’t get away from James Patterson’s, for example; they’re even on network TV channels. (He has to pay for his, or his publisher does, and those TV ad spots add to the cost. Must be nice to have access to marketing funding like that!)

Like movie trailers, book trailers are teasers. They’re designed to capture readers’ attentions so they’ll say, “I have to read that book!” Without any qualifications as a critic of book PR and marketing, and modesty aside, I rather like my trailer. It captures the theme of the book well. I especially like the little segment about the swans showing how Esther and Bastiann were distracted on their honeymoon cruise by the murder investigation.

The important question about a book trailer is the same for all book marketing: Does it do any good? While mine was free as a contest prize, they can be expensive (especially in Patterson’s case!). As a reader, will you buy a book after seeing its trailer? I know some moviegoers are trailer addicts, but what about readers? Are you tempted by a book trailer? Do you even watch them?

Because of the cost, these are important questions. I’ll confess that my own book trailer is the only one I’ve really paid any attention to (I mute Patterson’s just like I do any TV commercial). And I haven’t noticed any uptick in sales figures for Death on the Danube. Maybe it’s too early to tell? And maybe other authors have good experiences with trailers I haven’t heard about. (Please tell me if you have. Because this is a new marketing element for me, I might be doing things all wrong!)

I prefer reading the book or watching the movie to viewing their trailers. While I’m as much a visual person as the next guy (I visualize fight scenes in a thriller, for example, in my own books as well as other authors’), a book trailer doesn’t turn me on anymore than a good book cover (which I pay little attention to unless it’s awful). There’s the audio component too, of course—I like the sound track in mine—but the total package, while pleasant if done right (and Castelane does it right), just doesn’t move me to buy a book. And, for the same price, an author can purchase a lot more conventional marketing help. But that’s maybe just my incorrect opinion.

Let me know what you think.

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Comments are always welcome.

Happy New Year to everyone. This is the time for resolutions and changes. Here are mine that will affect this blog. First, “News & Notices from the Writing Trenches,” my long-running online newsletter, will no longer be published here. I will continue my email newsletter, which contains recent news about reading, writing, and publishing; information about my books and special sales (available only to email newsletter subscribers); and reading recommendations of other authors’ books. Second, I’m reducing the number of weekly articles from three to one. I’ve already eliminated op-eds (the election is over and it’s time for America to move forward and heal from both COVID and the nightmarish and evil aberration that was Trump), and reducing the number of articles even further will allow me more time to write. You might find that one weekly article to be a little longer and more pithy, though. All of this is subject to change, of course.

Death on the Danube. In #3 in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” Series, Esther Brookstone, ex-MI6 agent in East Berlin in the Cold War, and more recently ex-Scotland Yard Inspector in the Art and Antiques Division, is on her honeymoon with Interpol agent Bastiann van Coevorden. Their idyllic cruise down the Danube is interrupted when a reclusive and mysterious passenger is murdered. Why was the victim even on that river boat filled with couples, in a stateroom by himself? And who killed him? Esther and Bastiann are often called Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot by wags at the Yard, and this addition to the series might remind readers of Christie’s Death on the Nile or Murder on the Orient Express, but this mystery/thriller is very twenty-first century. So tour the Danube with Esther and Bastiann…and enjoy the ride! Available wherever fine ebooks are sold…and there’s also a print version.

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

[Note from Steve: The content below might seem unusual for the holidays, but I end this article with hope, as I usually do with all my novels. So Happy Holidays everyone…and my wishes for all of you to have a safe and prosperous 2021.]

From Crichton’s Andromeda Strain to my own More than Human: The Mensa Contagion and “The Last Humans” series (The Last Humans and The Last Humans: A New Dawn), apocalyptic pandemics have been part of sci-fi. Before COVID, real pandemics seemed to be things in the distant past—the bubonic plague is ancient history (although it and related diseases rear their ugly heads from time to time), memories of the Spanish flu were lost in the ashes of WWI, and Gabo showed love could be found in the cholera of Third World countries—so it has been up to sci-fi authors to remind the public of the potential perils, including the inability of health systems run by inept leaders to handle these plagues.

While COVID is deadly, my greatest fear has always been that recent advances in genetic engineering could also allow evil people to create a deadly virus that could be weaponized (of course, in the real world, there’s always that biolab near Wuhan!). In the Andromeda Strain and More than Human, the evil ones were ETs (they turned out to mean well in my novel, though). In “The Last Humans” Series, they’re US enemies, humans doing bad things to other humans. Of course, some COVID vaccines are genetically engineered too (based on mRNA, for example), so there can be a good flip side, but even the speedy and recent vaccine development would have a hard time keeping up with a new bioweapon.

Does anyone want to hear about fictional pandemics when a real one is going on? Depends. Certain sectors of human society are anti-science and would rather bury their heads in the sand, preferring to ignore real viruses and warnings related to fictional ones. Others are more open-minded and curious about the science. And still others, dedicated to having fun and not carrying about anyone but themselves, just ignore warnings and guidelines to continue their hedonistic lifestyles, endangering their fellow human beings.

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