…is rare but probably more common that a lot of people might believe. I’m not talking about the awful slapstick humor found in space operas (Han’s interactions with Leia, for example, are pathetic) but quality humor dealing with the human (and ET?) condition. Damon Knight’s “To Serve Man” is a short story that created a classic Twilight Zone episode, for example. From C. M. Kornbluth’s “Marching Morons” (no, that famous novella isn’t about the MAGA minions who follow that “f&^%ing moron”—ex-SecState Tillerson’s quote is one of the best to come out of that awful president’s administration, by the way) to the robot in a classic TV series (“Danger, danger, Will Robinson”), a reader, viewer, or reviewer can find all brands of humor (the Knight and Kornbluth examples are political irony, of course). And sci-fi authors often make fun of the past and present with their tales about the future, often at the expense of the VIPs from that past or present.

You’d think that predicting the future is serious business, of course, but extrapolating current or past events in a way they can be lampooned (both classic sci-fi examples above do that) is a special art. I’ll admit I’m not very good at it, but I’ve done my share. Most of my efforts can be found in my short fiction (short stories and novellas) buried in a few published collections and a lot of free PDF downloads (see the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page). There’s also A. B. Carolan’s The Secret Lab. Its very title is a bit impish, something a few reviewers missed entirely and then repeated their errors with The Secret of the Urns, if memory serves. And if a mutant cat who can teach kids calculus doesn’t tickle your funny bone, you don’t have a sense of humor, let alone appreciate humor in sci-fi.

A better example from my opus is A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse. This novel is hard sci-fi in the sense that it’s time travel done right (no paradoxes here if you can get beyond the “time machine” being an old dentist’s chair), but it’s a sci-fi rom-com as well that might serve well as a TV soap opera (if it passed the censors, of course, because it also intentionally lampoons a lot of past and current events).

I’ve looked for other examples of humor in sci-fi. Sure, there are bits and pieces here and there, but it isn’t all that common. Maybe we should write more humorous sci-fi stories? There are certainly a lot of politicians and other VIPs in compromising situations to lampoon!

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Sci-fi mysteries for young adults from A. B. Carolan. Assuming these books aren’t banned in your area (or burned?) because some idiot finds them offensive, I believe these novels are appropriate for young adults (and adults who are young at heart!). They extrapolate today’s trials and tribulations for tweens and teens into the far future to allow serious yet sometimes humorous discussions (and quality book reports at schools not participating in book banning). The first three, The Secret Lab, The Secret of the Urns, and Mind Games, take huge steps along the fictional future history timeline found in my more serious sci-fi novels, The last one, Origins, supposedly the first in a trilogy, must stand alone for now until A. B. finishes the last two novels in the trilogy, and it does that quite well with all its action restricted to Earth and a conspiracy involving ancient hominids. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold (some of them even on Amazon).

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

Authors’ weapons are their words and their military campaigns their novels. Considering these truths, I’ve done my part to wage battles against autocrats. The Midas Bomb (2009), one of my early novels, painted Venezuela as an autocratic hell—something it became beyond anything I could imagine—and that theme appeared later as well, most notably in Soldiers of God (2008), where yet another Venezuelan dictator launches the first nuclear attack in the Southern Hemisphere against Colombia. The bad guys in my stories run from the ubiquitous gangsters and vicious killers who plague our societies to very real and infamous monsters like Putin and Xi—the last are real autocratic villains I go after in the “Esther Brookstone” (2017-2022) and “Steve Morgan” (2022-2023) series.

I suppose a Big Five traditional publisher would cringe at my using real autocrats like Putin and Xi as villains. Because I’m mostly a self-published author (especially now after questionable experiments with traditional publishing), I don’t care what traditional publishers and their authors might have to say, especially those among the Big Five conglomerates! Certain politicians on the far right might love Putin, for example, but I don’t expect them to be reading anything worthwhile, let alone my stories! (And if they’re fascists like Putin, I wouldn’t give a damn about what they think of me anyway.) On the other hand, one can argue that using real villains like Putin and Xi makes my fiction seem more real, something Tom Clancy championed for mystery/thriller novels.

As a bow to these legal concerns any of my readers might have, though, I’ve now put in my copyright statements similar to the following: “This book is entirely a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, products, and events are either creations of the author’s imagination, or used as historical and venue background for the story. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, events, locales, or products is coincidental, with a few exceptions, but all are used in a fictional or correct historical context. No endorsement or criticism is implied in mentioning them, nor are any opinions expressed by fictional characters necessarily those of the author.” The last is a bit of humor, of course. Let some corporate lawyer figure out how to sue one of my characters for libel and slander, especially some nitwit representing Putin, Xi, or some other infamous autocrat! Not even our biased SCOTUS fascist judges would vote to hear such a case.

Considering all the above, I think I’ve done my part in waging a just war against autocrats. Villains like Putin, Xi, and their fascist friends and minions now common in many democracies, including the US, don’t receive many positive descriptions in my stories, to say the least. On the contrary, I wage a literary war on them, a war of words! Perhaps if every author did that, this world might be a better place.

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“Inspector Steve Morgan” trilogy. These three novels that logically continue the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series is about evil. The first and third novels are basically about Russian and Chinese evildoers; the second is more about an evil cult because populist demagogues love to form cults of personalities. They are all set in the Bristol area of England in the near future and show how unsung heroes can stand up against powerful tyrannical despots in times of need.

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

I tried traditional publishing a bit. While my two small presses gave me some TLC, and I met some new friends among their authors, there wasn’t enough to keep me hitting my head against the wall. I returned to self-publishing, specifically with Draft2Digital (now merged with Smashwords).

Sometimes I get reminders that this was a wise decision. The formulaic old mares and stallions in the Big Five traditional publishing conglomerates are struggling to keep relevant. Patterson pathetically pimping his most recent book (one always wonders how much of his novels are written by his co-authors!) in prime-time TV is one huge reminder. The lawsuit against the creators of ChatGPT by the Authors Guild (a pawn of the Big Five) and many of these same old mares and stallions is ill-conceived as well. Are they going to chase after every maker of AI software? They’d be better off getting laws passed that make it as illegal to use AI as it is to pirate books.

And then there’s Amazon. While the above gave me pause, what the big Bezos bot and his minions send to my Kindle are ubiquitous reminders of the Big Five’s complicity in trying to ensure that no matter how, they’ll scam the American public. Daniel Silva’s new book The Collector reminded me like a splash of ice water to the face that the Big Five aren’t above using any technique to sell books. Silva’s book not only has a similar title—legal because titles can’t be copyrighted (mine might have been the same as some preceding novels’ as well)—from the hype in the Amazon’s ad, it seems to have a similar plot.

My novel is evergreen—i.e., it’s as entertaining and fresh as the day I finished the manuscript (it’s in the “Detectives Chen & Castilblanco” series, if you’re interested), published in 2009, not 2023 like Silva’s. I have no right to complain to Mr. Silva, although I suspect he wouldn’t give a rat’s ass if I did, and I suspect that his publisher will sell many more copies than I ever will even though his story might be as formulaic as other Big Five’s. I also don’t believe that Mr. Silva read my novel and decided to write something similar.

This is just something mystery/thriller writers have to expect will occur from time to time. If only because situations human beings face aren’t unique, stories from two or more different authors can be similar. My novel deals with stolen art, multiple paintings, but it focuses on what they’re used for. Apparently Silva’s only deals with one, although that’s not important. There’s a woman involved in both books—from Silva’s ad, his seems to be more of a femme fatale like mine in The Midas Bomb; mine in The Collector is a bit more ordinary and more interesting as a consequence, in my opinion. Silva’s plot (using only the information from the ad) seems a lot simpler (read: insulting to one’s intelligence), which might also be a negative for many readers (including me!).

I’ve never been motivated to read anything by Mr. Silva. His fiction, like most peddled by the Big Five, doesn’t appeal to me. But I’m happy to see that I can construct a complex story that just might be similar to one written by a Big Five writer later. That in itself motivates me to keep writing. Those Big Five formulaic authors need new ideas after all!

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“Detectives Chen & Castilblanco” series. These two NYPD detectives’ cases go from local settings in the Big Apple to those of national and international settings. The nine-book series (one novel is free—see the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page to download Defanging the Red Dragon) will provide readers hours of exciting mystery/thriller entertainment.

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

Baldacci, Connelly, and other old mares and stallions in the Big Five’s stables ready for the glue factory have teamed up with Authors Guild to sue the distributors/inventors of this “AI program.” Let me begin with two important points here: First, that program is so far from being HAL that I can’t bring myself to call it AI. Second, all it does is surf the internet, a lot faster than a human, to be sure, “reads” all that it encounters (including those authors’ formalistic drivel), and then produces a story in the novelistic style of one of these authors. I can only give a shrug of indifference because I’ve stopped reading their works! (Many more entertaining and original stories are available!)

That said, is the use of ChatGPT legally or morally correct? First, the legal establishment is still slogging through 20^th-century internet and programming evils, trying to catch up and control them. It can’t keep up: Most techies, legal or otherwise, are far more clever than any judge, jury, lawyer, or politician. (We know from recent events that the latter are especially stupid! And most techies are young and dumb enough to realize that ChatGPT can’t compare with HAL! The name AI isn’t an appropriate description of this software.)

Morally, and for authors and publishers, this debate is akin to the one about book piracy, especially ebook piracy. The latter is more common than authors and publishers like to admit, especially for ebooks because they’re just electronic files. That’s all ChatGPT does: Digest electronic files, manipulate their content, and produce ones in a similar style. If a result looks like Baldacci wrote it, is that any different than some book pirate taking one of his ebooks, turning it back into a Word file, stripping off David’s name and other ID markers, and republishing it? There are websites who sell these knockoffs. (I know because they even sell mine…under my own name.) In other words, ChatGPT is just another way to scam authors and publishers, so morality shouldn’t play any different role with ChatGPT than it does for book piracy, which is more rampant.

Of course, these “famous authors” have more to lose, and the Guild represents them and their greedy publishers a lot better than authors who self-publish (they’re never represented!) or those published by small presses (maybe the presses but not their authors?).

This problem with modern law enforcement is more general: Some activity can be banned easily enough (book piracy, including ChatGPT’s, for example), but the rules are irrelevant because the enforcement part is mostly missing. When that activity is ubiquitous, there just aren’t enough cops on the block. Not even Connelly’s cop hero Harry Bosch can do a damn thing about it!

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The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan. This novel is a bridge between the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco,” “Esther Brookstone,” and “Steve Morgan” series of novels, and the “Clones and Mutants Trilogy” series; i.e., it’s part of my “Future History” series that covers thousands of years of alternate history. DHS Agent Ashley Scott witnesses a murder. Investigating it leads her to a conspiracy with multiple insidious and surprising threads that keep her and readers guessing. Retirees might become extremely worried as well, especially if they’re privy to government secrets! Available wherever quality ebooks are sold (even on Amazon).

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

The general public often misunderstands the progress of science, at best buying into the standard explanation that a theory is constructed to explain a lot of data and then tested over time as more data accumulates to prove the theory right or wrong, ad infinitum. That’s the so-called “scientific method,” and any child in a basic science course might hear or read that much without really experiencing it or understand what it means.

I suppose that explanation is okay as far as it goes, but it doesn’t consider the role of imagination, even among scientists—children are brainwashed to believe that advances just flow from cold, experimental facts, if that. The reality is that a theory originates because one or more imaginative people look at data and say, “How do I explain this?”, and then go about imagining an explanation. (Some people polish that up by calling it “creative thinking,” but imagination is the better word!) Same for new data especially if it contradicts aspects of an old theory.

We should perhaps consider sci-fi as an important way to use imagination as an effective tool to stimulate all creative thinking, a filter for determining what might be possible, which is why so many scientists (or ex-scientists who are still thinking like scientists) read (and even write) good sci-fi. Extrapolation of current science, often far into the future, is what makes that tool so effective. (I’m excluding fantasy and space-opera authors here, especially screenwriters, who rarely worry about contradicting even current science: “Full stop, Mr. Sulu!” or “Warp 9, Mr. Sulu!” are examples of their foolishness; ninja-like warriors fighting with light sabers are others; time-travel romances and cannibalistic ETs; etc., etc. In fact, most of what Margaret Atwood called “speculative fiction” is excluded!) The sci-fi author has to be prepared to win a few and lose a few, though. (Phasers were very much like today’s smart phones; but the transporter is beyond the impossible, albeit necessary for screenwriting purposes in Star Trek.)

I began writing the “Chaos Chronicles” trilogy, my version of Asimov’s Foundation  trilogy, long before my first novel Full Medical was published. (All three novels of that trilogy are bundled now—see below.) Unlike my hero Asimov, who basically swept FTL-travel and ETs under the rug (the first simply is accomplished by “jumps through hyperspace” and is never explained beyond that; the lack of the second is eventually explained in the extended Foundation series as a trick performed by the time-travelers in End of Eternity, but time travel is never explained), as a physicist I worked harder on my extrapolations than Asimov the biochemist wanted to do, at least for the FTL-travel and certainly for ETs. (The ETs might eventually be explained by congressional inquiries actually studying UFO phenomena! One should probably ignore the “mummified ETs” in Peru that excite the Mexican government, and certainly all the tales of abduction and seduction UFO nuts prattle about.)

A few weeks ago in this blog, I wrote an obit for an old professor of mine, James Hartle. (No, he wasn’t any more an ET than I am, but he sure was a hell of lot more intelligent.) Some of his work was with Hawking, and that motivated me when writing my sci-fi trilogy to consider what’s now called the multiverse, the idea that our Universe is only one among many quantum states of an infinite collection of universes. (Much later, this was the basis for my novel A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse, a sci-fi rom-com.) I also knew something about zero-point energy. In standard quantum electrodynamics, that’s what allows a froth of virtual photons to give spin to the electron, for example, and the idea has been extended to the entire zoo of elementary particles, including the mysterious Higgs particle, that are, after all, just quantum states themselves (perhaps of only one particle?). In other words, there could be virtual universes as well.

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Recent attacks on Amazon by the Authors’ Guild and by traditional publishers and their authors are too little too late. Many lament that Amazon controls 60% of book sales, but no one does much about it. In fact, so-called gurus offering advice to authors about self-publishing mislead them as well, recommending Amazon for both self-publishing and PR and marketing. (One recent article I read made no mention of other services that are much better for many reasons, Draft2Digital being the best—see my PDF “Writing Fiction” available as a free download on my “Free Stuff and Contests” web page that considers these options and much more.)

Of course, book sales alone didn’t make the big Bezos bot and all his little evil bots into the monstrous scourge of online merchandising, but that portion of their business has never suffered a boycott from the publishing industry or book authors. Maybe it’s time that it should?

A personal peeve provides me with an excellent example of Amazon’s nefarious influence. I’ll admit it: I’m addicted to British-style mysteries, police procedurals, and other crime stories set in the UK. Unfortunately, the major publishers of these mysteries and crime stories—for example, Joffe and its subsidiaries—use only Amazon to sell their UK ebooks in the US. They’re great bargains! No complaint there. I can often purchase a three-to-six volume bundle of their “evergreen books” (books like most of mine that are as exciting and entertaining as the day the authors finished their manuscripts) for only $0.99! That’s a lot of reading enjoyment for a low price! (Twenty of them for the price of a Big Five paperback, twelve for a Big Five ebook, and great reading compared to most of the schlock the Big Five publishes!) Those UK publishers and Amazon make their money by selling large quantities at a low price, operating more like a supermarket and their suppliers at those stores: Quantity over quality, one might be tempted to say, although the books and their authors’ quality are much better than a supermarket’s fresh produce, at least in the US—better than most Big Five schlock, as I said.

Of course, their authors are the ones who get scammed because Amazon dominates book sales and is only interested in sales figures, and publishers, both self- and traditional publishers, bow to the hideous Bezos beast. Authors are always at the hyenas’ end of the food chain while the lions who publish and sell their books make out like bandits. Very few authors today can make a living writing their stories! But Bezos et al don’t give a rat’s ass because their present greed for immediate profits overpowers any thoughts about future planning when great storytellers throw in the towel.

Readers of this blog might wonder if the Authors’ Guild is like a union that protects authors. They’re not, so stop wondering! The Guild is in the pockets of traditional publishers (that might be better than complete slaves to Amazon, but not much) and their famous authors, those old boring mares and stallions ready for the glue factory in the Big Five publishing conglomerates’ stables, so the Guild does everything it can to put down lesser known authors, especially self-published ones, who have zero representation in the Guild. (My traditionally published novels were sold by two small presses, so I escaped the pain of being lost among the many uncoddled Big Five authors, and small press got me into International Thriller Writers; both the latter and those small presses are much better than any Big Five publisher or their toady, the Guild!)

But the bottom line is the following: As long as Amazon sells books, most authors will suffer the consequences. Readers who want to support authors of small presses and self-published authors should avoid buying books from Amazon. Period. There are many other online book dealers. Let’s stop Amazon!

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“Esther Brookstone Art Detective.” This nine-book series goes from traditional publishing (the small company Penmore Press) to self-publishing (using Draft2Digital). Two novels (see the list on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page) are free PDF downloads. The main character is ex-MI6 spy (Cold War era) and Scotland Yard inspector Esther Brooksone. Together with Interpol agent (and later husband) Bastiann van Coevorden, they represent 21^st century versions of Christie’s Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot (although Bastiann only looks like the actor who often portrayed Poirot). The crimes occur in the UK, Europe, and farther abroad (Son of Thunder takes place mostly in Turkey). Follow the adventures of Esther and Bastiann for many hours of reading enjoyment. (The last few novels are available only where quality ebooks are sold, i.e., not on Amazon!)

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

Yes, this is the title of three short-fiction collections, one published (even appearing on Amazon!) and two free PDF downloads (see the “Free Stuff & Contests” for these and other freebies). Here though, I’m referring to the necessary ingredients a British-style mystery, crime story, or police procedural must have (perhaps seasoned with a bit of dry Irish humor?).

A body. One might not be necessary, but it’s helpful. It might not appear early on either, depending on whether the victim is a toff or common yob (for the terms, see the above collections), i.e., how it appears might have a lot to do with how the author wants you to feel about the victim. Does the victim deserve their fate? If that’s the author’s intention, they’re still expecting the reader to stick with the investigation long enough to find the culprit and send him to the gallows (older mysteries) or life in the king’s boarding houses (AKA gaol in modern Britain).

A new type of crime? This is difficult. Human beings are inventive, and criminals aren’t as dumb as the police would like them to be, but the most types have been around for a while. The new wrinkle might result when a common but lesser crime, not murder, occurs, or from the various classic motivations of greed or jealousy going out of control. Of course, the new wrinkle might also be found in the person committing the crime, not the crime itself.

The investigation. This is where the detective brilliantly (with ups and downs, of course) battles wits with the culprit or culprits. The investigation is most of the plot, of course, and it might have many twists and turns, all to challenge the detective. They might be an amateur, like Miss Marple—mostly in cozies nowadays—or shrewd professionals who are more clever and inventive than any mathematician because they’re practical and understand human failures.

The interrogation. This is the ubiquitous battle of wits that has mostly replaced the classic Christie-style denouement where all the details of the crime come to light. As such, it’s a lot more interesting. The main character can lose the case or cleverly win it. (The first often occurs a few times as the author presents several attempts by the detective to trap the criminal, catching them in some contradiction or lie. It also provides a great opportunity for witnesses, good or bad, to mislead the detective in the wrong direction!)

American mystery writers’ creations often fail in comparison to British-style mysteries simply because they’re more dependent on action scenes than witty confrontations. One exception is an author who’s better known for his sci-fi than for mysteries: Isaac Asimov was a fan of cerebral mysteries and wrote a few. His main character, Earthman Elijah Bailey, is a futuristic Poirot, a master in trapping the criminal with clever interrogations. Asimov created the subgenre of sci-fi mystery, and no since can compare with his creations in that subgenre.

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Dr. Carlos, Chief Medical Officer. This free PDF download collects together most of my short stories involving Carlos Obregon. While some are standard sci-fi thrillers, there are sci-fi mysteries too. (I also have a few other sci-fi mysteries, and I’m working on a full novel.) The reader may consider all these tales as homages to Isaac Asimov. (I read his The Naked Sun before any of his other novels!)

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

In my novel A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse, a physicist and her technician “time travel” by hopping from one universe in the multiverse to another, thus allowing me to avoid the paradoxes associated with so many flawed time-travel tales. After one of these “jumps,” they find themselves on an Earth where only androids remain, a version of the completely robotic world envisioned by Aurora’s Spacers in Isaac Asimov’s Robots of Dawn, the third novel in his robot series. (The first two are Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun. All three are classic sci-fi mysteries that I can highly recommend to anyone who truly loves quality sci-fi, not the schmaltzy space operas like Star Wars.)

I probably didn’t do Asimov’s creation any justice, so I must apologize…to his family now, since the master’s gone. The flavor of my portrayal is correct, but one short fiction episode of my novel can’t begin to describe the completely android world the evil Auroran roboticists of his novel desired. They did have a point, though. The puny explorations of our own solar system have largely been made using robots—primitive ones, to be sure, but robots all the same. Why endanger human lives when robots, especially those so advanced as Aurora’s, can be used to colonize faraway solar systems?

Of course, there’s a twist in that episode of my novel that helps answer that question: The main characters, both human, teach the robots something. While my novel is more a sci-fi rom-com and not a standard mystery disguised as sci-fi, Asimov’s answer is more complete if only because he uses a whole novel to support it…or not! (My novel has more fables to offer the reader and therefore more morals as if I were a modern-day Aesop.)

In fact, the meat of my apology to Dr. Asimov is more inspired by the fact that I didn’t put the discussion of this blog post in the end notes of my novel. While some of its sections (“fables”) refer specifically either to historical events (the demise of Hitler’s A-bomb effort, for example) or fictional settings (the android world, for example), I perhaps should have mentioned that the android world was inspired by Asimov’s third novel and not his first two. (Although one could argue that the “moon colony” section was inspired by Caves of Steel.)

Many of the “classic writers” of mysteries, adventure stories (now called thrillers), and sci-fi novels have influenced my stories. Isaac Asimov is probably the most important one. I can only hope that he’d have forgiven me. I did make him almost a god for that android society, after all. (He becomes Sir Isaac Asimov, the “master creator,” along with Hugh Everett III. You don’t know who the latter bloke is? Look him up. He’s important for explaining all the time travel techniques!)

You might wonder if AI, all the rage right now, is mentioned in my novel. Robots and androids are AIs, after all. Yes, an even larger and smarter AI is in my book, but only towards the end. There I might have to apologize to Arthur C. Clarke or Stanley Kubrick, but my AI isn’t named HAL.

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A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse. An applied physicist uses quantum mechanics to create a practical way to do time travel. Aided by her very intelligent technician, the pair take romantic trips to various universes in the multiverse as they explore alternative spaces and times, running into a lot of trouble in the process. This sci-fi rom-com makes sappy and trite adventures like The Time Traveler’s Wife more like fluffy fantasies. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold (but not on Amazon).

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

I occasionally review movies in this blog (obviously fewer during the pandemic). I’ve often said that the best ones are based on books (the best of them all is undoubtedly The Lord of the Rings trilogy). But there are inherent limitations found in that transfer of media from the written word to audiovisual film. The mere fact that a movie is usually between two and three hours long means it can’t possibly contain all the nuances found in a novel. Hollywood cuts, edits, and rewrites often damage the novelistic adventure when transferred to the silver screen as well.

But a recent very successful movie shows how Hollywood can even fail miserably at original storytelling—in fact, is more likely to do so because screenwriters aren’t novelists. In this case, not a flop at the box office—lots of moviegoers jumped on the bandwagon!—but in creating anything worthwhile for novel readers who expect a lot more. I’m writing about Barbie, of course. It has convinced me that I never want Hollywood to make a movie based on any of my stories!

This isn’t idle speculation about what I’d do if some producer or anyone else from Hollywood approached me. It’s a raging denial of Hollywood’s storytelling capabilities! You can savor a novel; it’s the product of a creative and inventive artist who is following the age-old tradition of storytelling. Hollywood can’t make anything that can compare with that personal relationship between reader and author because Hollywood is too mass-market; yet most moviegoers don’t read books so their expectations are low, playing into Hollywood’s hands—so when a movie is a flop, it’s really a disaster.

This isn’t idle speculation about any reaction I might have in the sense that some readers have told me that a particular title from my oeuvre would make a good movie. We’ve even discussed who would play whom at times, in particular for Detectives Castilblanco and Brookstone. (The mysteries and thrillers might receive better treatment from Hollywood, but my sci-fi would be far beyond the movie industry!) This is all a frivolous waste of time, of course. Hollywood could never do justice to even the shortest “Detectives Chen & Castilblanco” novel! And the complex intertwining of historical periods found in Son of Thunder (second book in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series), arguably my best and most profound novel, would undoubtedly defeat the best Hollywood screenwriters!

In other words, I don’t want Hollywood to even try! And they won’t either, because they must appeal to a largely illiterate and audio-visually dependent yet passive audience that make few demands on quality but are great believers in hype (as in the case of Barbie).

I’ll make a prediction in this post: Hollywood and audiovisual media will destroy storytelling. Even now, the reading population is biased toward older generations. Younger people have the attention spans, so they passively watch streaming video, mesmerized by an audiovisual experience that’s superficial and far from being profound. It’s only a matter of time until the novel becomes an ancient artifact studied in some halls of social scientists. Thankfully I won’t live to see that occur, but it will happen. The process has begun.

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Son of Thunder. Three storylines come together in this mystery/thriller novel with historical fiction elements about the lives of St. John the Divine and the Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli and how Esther Brookstone is affected by them. Perhaps this is the novel Dan Brown should have written instead of The DaVinci Code because the history here is fact-based inasmuch as it can be (of course, his isn’t). In any case, you will find Esther’s adventures described here taking her back through centuries of history as you the reader join her on an armchair journey. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold…and also in print!

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

So you’ve written what you believe is the great American novel, penned the biography of your family relative and war hero, or created a theory of everything, and you want to self-publish it. There’s a lot of bad advice out there from marketing gurus to scam artists, all willing to share their secrets if you’re only willing to pay them.

Who can you trust? You might say to yourself, “Well, this fellow is associated with X, normally a reputable source, so their advice must be good.” Wrong! If X is some fellow whose gig on the side is selling his marketing books to would-be authors, don’t use him. If X is any POD publisher (POD = “publish on demand,” the oldest form of self-publishing beyond vanity presses) that advertises on cable channels, don’t use them! If X is any ancient and struggling POD that’s traveling along the road to oblivion (you can determine that by the number of books published recently…if they’ll tell you!), avoid them. If X is any of the tech giants (Amazon, Apple, or Google), run like hell away! And if X is the venerable NY Times, rest assured that they don’t give a rat’s ass about self-published authors!

Most of the advice on how to self-publish a book out there now is bad advice. Here’s a recent example: In the NY Times’s article “A Story to Tell? Self-Publish Your E-Book,” J. D. Biersdorfer uses a half-page of the 8/3/2023 business section to spew forth bad advice about self-publishing. He obviously knows very little about it. He recommends Apple and Google (bad advice), DIY covers (really bad advice), and generally guarantees that your self-published book will be a flop. While that might occur no matter how it is (“gurus” like Biersdorfer never tell authors that there are absolutely no guarantees for making your book into a bestseller, traditionally or self-published), following his bad advice will only hasten the demise of your book. (Generally speaking, the NY Times will have nothing worthwhile about self-publishing to offer authors interested in it.)

Many reporters worldwide know well that if they want to report on what war is like, they must talk to those who are participating in it. The same goes for self-publishing. J. D. Biersdorfer’s qualifications don’t meet that test. He writes computer manuals, maybe even good ones, but he’s not self-published a single book, at least none displayed on Amazon. And most of his manuals are about Apple products (which is why he mostly supports self-publishing with Apple, I suppose). Obviously reporter Biersdorfer has no good advice to offer any aspiring self-publishing author; indeed, one has to wonder about the Times’s editor’s moral underpinnings in allowing such an article, a completely biased travesty, to appear in the Times!

While Mr. Biersdorfer more than mentions Apple and Google, he doesn’t tell you that they’re not aggregators. What’s that mean? It means that neither service distributes the ebooks they publish! Your ebook only appears at the Apple or Google online store! (Amazon operates in exactly the same way.) While you can become your own aggregator, why bother? If you use an aggregating service (Draft2Digital/Smashwords is the easiest to use), your ebook, will be distributed automatically to many online sites selling ebooks around the world. You must pay a bit in royalties for this service, but it’s nothing like traditional publishers take for publishing your ebooks. Either Mr. Biersdorfer doesn’t know about aggregators, or he’s coddling Apple and Google. In either case, forget about Mr. Biersdorfer’s bad advice (here a lack of any useful advice!).

Here’s the best advice I can give authors who are considering self-publishing: If there’s a charge for the advice (in the case of the Times, you’re paying an exorbitant cost for that paper), be wary and take all advice offered with a grain of salt. There are ways to self-publish that are efficient, easy-to-use, and produce a quality product. Do your homework, though. Too many people out there are waiting to steal your money! Once you have a manuscript properly prepared, formatting, publishing, and distributing your ebook is a lot easier than what Biersdorfer says. In fact, once you’ve written and edited a manuscript, most of your work is done. Why do more?

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Comments are always welcome. (Follow the rules on the “Join the Conversation” web page.)

Good advice (or a lot better than the NY Times’s Biersdorfer, at least). My advice for authors thinking about self-publishing is free! Go to the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page and download my short course Writing Fiction. (The parts containing self-publishing advice are generally applicable to book publishing in general, not just fiction books.) My qualifications? I’ve traditionally and self-published (from old PODs to ebooks) since 2006, producing a number of titles that I’m proud to call mine, including those traditionally published ones. Unlike the Times reporter mentioned above, I’ve done it all, so my advice and opinions are based on hard-earned experience. Because I receive absolutely zero benefit for this course beyond offering authors a helpful hand, this little course provides a better launch pad than the NY Times or any how-to article or book on the subject that charges you for the advice! Peruse my advice and please let me know what you think of the course.

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