I once played bridge and chess, the latter even on a computer, but found they took too much time away first from courses, then work, and finally my writing. I dabbled in Myst—also time consuming…and maybe too much like writing a novel! But the Fearsome Four in The Secret Lab are into RPGs. How’d I pull that off? (I’m speaking to the first edition. A. B. Carolan, who wrote the previous short story, rewrote and reedited it for the second edition as the first entry in his “ABC Sci-Fi Mysteries” for young adults.)

By RPG, I mean “role-playing game,” not “rocket-propelled grenade,” heaven forbid. Of course, the kids on the International Space Station in the future know all about VR and AI, and that role playing aided by the station’s AI is an intense experience for them, especially when some nefarious person hacks into it. My imagination allowed me to extrapolate today’s situation to that future, and it was far enough into the future that one can’t really check how accurate my extrapolation might be.

Consider The Secret Lab my only bow to computer games. Computers can be found in A.B. and my stories—two main characters in The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection are absorbed by an ET AI—but I don’t care for our current computer games. The reasons are simple: First, their storylines are generally non-existent or extremely limited. They can’t begin to compete with a well-written book. Second, they’re generally all action with no contemplative interludes. The exceptions are those RPGs that take some creative skill on the part of the participants.

Cyberpunk certainly inspired some of my plotting involving computers, but it was more inspired by Frederik Pohl (his HeeChee Trilogy motivated me more than William Gibson’s Neuromancer). In general, I believe that the integration of humans and machines will occur in surprising ways in the future as neuroscience and computer technology advance and the borders separating them become fuzzier. This probably won’t lead to anything as insidious as Star Trek’s Borgs. In fact, it might be driven by health and longevity concerns—the inverse problem of Alzheimer’s is an alert and creative mind trapped in a dying body. Allowing someone like Hawking to continue theorizing for a few more years isn’t a bad goal (in fact, he did so for a while, thanks to technology), although it might seem ghoulish to some.  (This is a major theme in the HeeChee Trilogy.)

There’s one aspect of computer games that’s useful and might have more staying power—virtual reality. That also plays a limited role in my The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection. There a simple meeting can take place with AI assisted VR where the participants can believe they’re together face-to-face, for example, through sophisticated VR and holographic techniques. No games, just VR.

While computer games are mostly frivolous pastimes in spite of the tournaments you used to see on some cable TV channels (there’s a hiatus now because of COVID-19, although I have no idea why they can’t do it remotely), the associated technologies can be generalized. Sci-fi writers’ imaginations can explore those extrapolations farther than game programmers could ever imagine.

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Comments are always welcome.

In these troubled times, anthologies and collections offer readers small and varied bites of reading entertainment if they’re lacking the time to become immersed in a novel. The #WolfPackAuthors’ Once upon a Wolfpack and Howling at the Moon are anthologies of short fiction and poetry that offer very tasty bites indeed, and all royalties go to good causes. Yours truly has a short story in the second anthology. You can complement those two with some of my own, a few at Amazon and others for free—see the list of PDFs on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page where you can download with only a few clicks. Enjoy!

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

Sometimes I watch shows from the major networks, preferring mostly dramas over sitcoms (what you might expect). I often end up criticizing how badly written the screenplays are—movies are often worse though—but I read so much that late at night my eyes focus better on the TV screen than on my Kindle page.

So I noticed when the Asian actors disappeared from Hawaii 5-0 a while ago (maybe that’s why the series ended last Friday?)—I hadn’t watched it much since that happened—and when FBI didn’t choose the Muslim guy as the lead—the female lead is now “on leave” working undercover, so maybe other viewers felt the same way. I also noticed that black actors play stereotypes on sitcoms like The Neighborhood and Bob [Hearts] Abishola, but the actor playing Abishola (she’s a black woman, in case you’re wondering, so Hollywood gives her two strikes to begin with) is much better than the comedian main character (a black man), but black actors are doing better than black directors in Hollywood now.

That said, I’m sure that most of these four shows don’t play well in certain sections of the country that I shall not name here. How we perceive stories, whether told in a book or on the TV or movie screen, is greatly influenced by our backgrounds and cultural surroundings. I loved a recent FBI episode for faithfully portraying the inequities of ICE policies, but maybe some people were turned off by it. There are still some people who want to “purify the nation” by either making non-whites into slaves, or by kicking them out, and you can be sure those people applaud the current administration’s anti-immigration policies (only one presidential adviser seems to be determined to create them, much to the concern of his own relatives!).

Good novels invariably recognize our similarities and celebrate our differences, though, because their writers put that into words and tell stories covering the whole human spectrum. Both my parents’ attitudes and growing up in a culturally diverse California taught me to do that long before I published my first novel (Full Medical, 2006). My long sojourn in South America only added to that background. If you’ve ever wondered why my books hold up a mirror to the wonderful diversity found in our country and world, that’s the reason. Better said, I love the beauty found in that diversity where others, hopefully still a minority, might feel only rage and hate.

One interpretation I’ve made of Clancy’s maxim that fiction has to seem real (to be sure, he rarely carried it as far as I do) is that we need to include cultural diversity in our fiction. The real world is diverse, like it or not. There are differences, and we should celebrate them in our storytelling. Among human beings on this planet, there are more similarities than differences, and we should celebrate that too. Even if TV and Hollywood continues to resist because of some perceived marketing constraint, authors can lead the way in doing just that. Sure, we should avoid cultural stereotypes as much as we can, especially when they overemphasize the differences, but we should celebrate the variety of cultures, especially considering the melting pot that the US has become. And, in fiction, we can show how people can resolve their differences and just get along, to paraphrase Rodney King.

I’m not saying that diversity has to be included in every novel. That’s absurd. However, just from the writing aspect, it can become an important plot device. For example, in reading Saralyn Richard’s two mysteries, Murder in the One Percent and A Palette for Love and Murder (both reviewed in this blog), I often smiled as the main character, a black police detective, moves among the rich white folks of Brandywine Valley. Whether the author did this on purpose or not, this choice was very effective in her stories, because it allows her main character to stand up, be different, and play against the stereotype of the white New York Irish cop, which no longer exists in the city’s police force, by the way, except in the very top echelons. For the same reasons, my homicide detective Rolando Castilblanco is Puerto Rican and his partner Dao-Ming Chen is Chinese-American. Does any of that turn you off? You shouldn’t read these books then. Or maybe you should?

***

Comments are always welcome.

In these troubled times, anthologies and collections offer readers small and varied bites of reading entertainment if they’re lacking the time to become immersed in a novel. The #WolfPackAuthors’ Once upon a Wolfpack and Howling at the Moon are anthologies of short fiction and poetry that offer very tasty bites indeed, and all royalties go to good causes. Yours truly has a short story in the second anthology. You can complement those two with some of my own, a few at Amazon and others for free—see the list of PDFs on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page where you can download with only a few clicks. Enjoy!

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

[A message to readers: I hope these blog posts inform and entertain you during these troubling times. I will keep writing them as long as I can. Considering our tri-state area is the COVID-19 epicenter now, I believe it’s not if but when most everyone around here, including me, becomes ill with this damn virus. Everyone is in danger. A large percentage of cases here are less than forty-four-years-old. We still don’t know much about the virus, how it affects different ages and genders, but it’s more lethal than the flu. So stay smart, be safe, and, if you must socialize, use the internet. Hopefully these posts will add to your experience there. Now here’s the post….]

It’s said that there are only so many plots. Accepting that, originality in how those plots are spun is key: the Devil’s always in the details.

This modern definition of originality is an acceptable one. You can’t copyright a generic plot, after all. We can look back on those Greek dramas or Shakespeare’s plays and find commonality with many current stories. It’s okay to repeat those generic plots as long as the author’s version is a bit different, i.e. original.

But what about that recent nostalgia movement that repeats more recent works? Why is a Broadway musical like Oklahoma put back on the stage again? Or why are musical biopics like Beautiful or Jersey Boys so popular? Little Women now has its fourth cinematic incarnation! And is Disney’s animated feature to Broadway stage to streaming video and computer-generated reality just money-grabbing exploitation of audiences? And the laughs on the remakes of All in the Family and The Jeffersons are mostly from people who saw the originals—people not born yet during the original airings probably don’t care and probably don’t understand what’s funny.

Nostalgia is probably originality’s worst enemy. It even affects tech. The current fad over old LPs and Steve Job’s signed floppy are examples where nostalgia leads to extolling old, inferior technology. I don’t agree that LPs sound better, and I don’t care about Job’s floppies or anyone else’s—I got rid of all of mine, although I still distrust computer clouds. I do have some LPs, but only because I can’t find their equivalents in CDs (yeah, I know, even those are disappearing, but I don’t trust iTunes completely as an archive for my favorite music either).

In the book world, there are revivals of old books all the time. Just slap the “classic” label on a book and there’ll be readers who buy it. Never mind that the stories have plots with modern alternatives in books that are more current and meaningful today. No one cares about how blubber is turned into lamp oil, yet Moby Dick is essentially a manual on how to do just that, and it’s forced upon unsuspecting high schoolers all too often. Instead, we should read stories about how to protect whales…and the need to do so. That’s why Star Trek IV is a better story than Moby Dick! (Yeah, I know—high school English teachers will cry “foul!” here. They almost succeeded in making me hate “literature,” though, so I always take their opinions with a grain of salt.)

(more…)

Not long ago—with COVID-19, it now seems like eons—I was amused when a local Montclair, NJ paper had an ad for an event at the local university here. An “Information Designer and Data Humorist” was going to give a lecture at the business school. My kneejerk reaction? “Hey, that’s me! I’m an information designer and data humorist now. I write novels!” (Generally I don’t write comedic stories, but a new title will be a sci-fi comedy.)

I suppose some people were impressed by that woman’s title. And I suppose some people need their pompous titles to buoy up an insecure or egotistical personality. (I’m not accusing the lecturer of the latter; let’s just say I’m suspicious.) For example, from the president’s daughter and son-in-law to House and Senate committee and subcommittee names, DC is full of pompous titles. The world of sports and Hollywood personalities have their fair share too.

But I’m a full-time writer, so I’m more concerned about book titles—the ones for the books I read, and the ones for my own books. Book titles can be pompous too, or, to borrow one of the bard’s, they can be “much ado about nothing.” They can even be too cute. For example, Paul Krugman’s new book, Arguing with Zombies (reviewed in this blog), is an excellent non-fiction book, but that title is both a bit both pompous and cute…and it made me pause. (It was probably created by someone else. His publisher?)

I originally thought Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code was about spies because of the word “code,” and I thought Jeffery Deaver’s Garden of Beasts was sci-fi horror, the word “beasts” reminding me of one of the Man-Kzin novellas I’d just finished. (These were the first two books from these authors that I read many years ago, the first bad and the second excellent.)

Considering my age at the time I read it (I was in my teens) and family upbringing, I can be excused for thinking that Asimov’s End of Eternity was either post-apocalyptic (I’d just finished C. M. Kornbluth’s Not This August), or something about the Second Coming (all this occurring long before the “End of Days” theme became popular with Christian writers, or faux-Christian writers like Chad Daybell—gee, how fast that man’s name disappeared from the news!). I’d also just concluded that the “Book of Revelation” should really be in the Old Testament because its apocalyptic God wasn’t the loving God of the New Testament.

And that’s the problem with book titles, whether they’re pompous, cute, much ado about nothing, or otherwise: they can, and often do, mislead readers. Worse, they could just be stupid. What the hell is Gone Girl about? If you read the book or saw the movie (I did the last…and regretted it, although I dozed through most of it), you know it really should be Missing Woman if the author wanted to keep it to two words. (Worse, that book, with its success that left me baffled, spawned a whole series of Gone X-titles where other authors tried to benefit from the similarity of their titles.) Stephen King has some doozies too: It could mean anything; Cell is so general that it could be a microbiology text, and It’s so meaningless (is that a pun?); and The Stand implied a copse of trees to this environment-concerned author.

“Classics” weren’t immune to this disease either. While Tale of Two Cities had something to do with Dickens’s plot, To Kill a Mockingbird certainly did not. And what the hell does Wind in the Willows mean (Mr. Toad almost ran me over with that one)? And Jane Austen’s titles are just blah (as are her novels).

Maybe this is just more proof that titles are important. They are for me. And, after all, Harry kept most of his! (That’s the Duke, not the magician.)

***

Comments are always welcome!

Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hand! This is my longest title, but not my longest novel—and has both direct and hidden meaning. It’s the last novel in the Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection, all three books sold as a bargain ebook bundle. Read together, the reader will experience centuries of future history, going from a dystopian Earth run by multinational corporations and policed by their mercenaries; to first contact out among the stars and saving a strange collective intelligence; and finally to this story of how a psychotic industrialist schemes to take over all of near-Earth space (this is my bow to Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy, and this villain is my Mule). Available in .mobi (Kindle) format at Amazon and in all ebook formats at Smashwords and its affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and lending and library services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker & Taylor, Gardners, etc.). Hours of reading entertainment.

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

The movie Thelma and Louise is the quintessential road-trip flick that has some important themes to give it some meaning. So is John Christopher’s No Blade of Grass, although it’s sci-fi. It inspired me to write No Amber Waves of Grain, which isn’t a road trip; and The Last Humans and its sequel, which are, for the most part.

However, my most meaningful road-trip novel might just be Son of Thunder. Like some 3X-matches you’ll see political candidates offer for your donations, Son of Thunder contains three road trips: ex-MI6 spy and ex-Scotland Yard inspector Esther Brookstone, whose put her name on my art-detective series, is on a quest to find St. John’s tomb; so is Sandro Botticelli, the Renaissance artist, accompanied by his parish priest; and St. John himself is jumping around the Roman Empire, a Christian rebel who’s out to destroy said empire with God’s love. All three road trips come together at the novel’s end.

Mary Magdalene, the first female apostle, in her own missionary and rebel role, provides the thematic meaning along with St. John; Botticelli, not so much. Esther’s commentaries touch on themes that have confronted human beings for centuries and that are still current and meaningful today.

Road-trip stories fascinate people because they can virtually travel to many places they either want to visit or feel they won’t have the chance to visit. The latter includes many sci-fi stories, of course. When A.B. Carolan wrote Mind Games, it was clear that it is a special type of road-trip novel where three different planets are visited. I don’t know if young adults like road-trip stories, but they’ll like A.B.’s whether they do or don’t. (As well as adults who are young-at-heart.)

To see how far back road-trip stories go, consider Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and Cervantes’s Don Quijote—none of them written in a modern language (arguably Quijote unified and created modern Castilian Spanish). The African Queen is a road-trip movie full of adventure that lets the screen presence of actors Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey shine. Road to Hong Kong is a comedic and musical road trip with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope acting and singing (guess who sings better). Movies and novels featuring road trips, as noted above, continue to appear even today, and the public never seems to tire of them. They’re one of the mainstays for writers, whether novels or screenplays. They can be funny; they can be depressing. The variety of road-trip stories says something fundamental about human beings. Maybe we’re all nomads at heart?

We certainly started out that way. Modern women and men’s ancestors made several migrations north from Africa into Europe. European Neanderthals returned the favor by migrating back to Africa a few times, according to the DNA, so that we modern women and men are a mix. Several migrations from Asia crossed the land-and-ice bridge and settled the Americas. Polynesians populated the South Sea islands. These were all early road trips, often odysseys in themselves, so there’s something to be said for them to be more than just our genetic makeup. Organized agriculture and the founding of large towns and cities in the ancient world made human beings stay at home more, but maybe that wanderlust is still in most of us. That might explain the love for road-trip stories.

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Comments are always welcome.

Mind Games. This is A.B. Carolan’s third book in the “ABC Sci-Fi Mysteries” series. Androids with psi powers? What could go wrong? Della returns to her home in the Dark Domes on the planet Sanctuary to find her adopted father murdered. All her life he has told her to keep her psi powers hidden, but now she must hone her skills to find his murderer. Her quest takes her to Earth and then New Haven, planets in different star systems. She acquires many friends on those journeys and battles many enemies.  Set in my ITUIP (“Interstellar Trade Union of Independent Planets”), this novel is available in print and ebook (.mobi for Kindles) format on Amazon, and in all ebook formats on Smashwords and its affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and lending and library services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker & Thompson, Gardners, etc.).

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

The eternal questions about death and life are present in fiction because we have to face them in our daily lives. That’s part of being human, and I’m sure if ETs are “out there,” they ask the same questions. Pandemics are common in sci-fi stories that are post-apocalyptic. They often deal with death on a massive scale, which everyone hopes COVID-19 won’t cause—the numbers are startling until you consider they’re like the flu (the difference being that there’s no vaccine and it seems about ten times more lethal). (Fortunately my post-apocalyptic novel The Last Humans was published a while ago, but the virus in that was bioengineered to do maximum damage. Still, I won’t be marketing that book heavily in the next few months!)

There are fiction genres, however, where death isn’t about numbers. In murder mysteries and crime stories, only one or two people die and someone figures out who did the deed. In thrillers, sometimes a conspiracy is involved, but the body count is also small (post-apocalyptic thrillers, like The Last Humans, are an exception). Yet the eternal questions about death and life play important roles.

Putting it a different way, death is part of real life (and mostly affects the living), and fiction, to be good, must seem real. And, in fiction, especially in the genres mentioned, good and bad gals and guys die. Yet authors rarely dwell on the actual deaths, unless the story is a psychological one about a living character’s psychological hang-ups when someone has died. Authors instead focus on how the living handle death: revenge for an unjust death, determination in finding the persons responsible for a murder and bringing them to justice, and so forth.

I suppose authors of fantasy, horror, and supernatural stories are more likely to dwell on what comes after death, but most of us avoid that issue because we just don’t know for certain what happens after. People of faith might insist they know, but that’s not really knowledge—it’s belief. And another person’s belief just might be the “certainty” that there’s absolutely nothing, like Esther Brookstone’s last husband in Rembrandt’s Angel. (The art detective herself is a bit more ambivalent, as readers of Son of Thunder know.)

How the living handle death makes more interesting fiction. Most readers and writers have had to handle it in some way (I certainly have)—with family or friends, at accident scenes, in warfare, in violent street altercations, and so forth. And we all have to come to grips with our own immortality. All these provide situations for our characters, ones that make them more human.

An author can’t trivialize these situations even in comedy. Ghosts can be great fun in comical situations, but generally dealing with death is a serious plot device. The detective, CSI, or ME might be accustomed to death, but death is still a serious business, even for them.

Dealing with death is just as important as dealing with life in our prose. We shouldn’t dwell on death as the story progresses, or the story becomes morbid (although that might be a theme, but if it’s the only theme, it’s depressing). We also don’t want to minimize it because that would minimize a lot of emotions many readers have already experienced. Striking that balance is yet another example of the Goldilocks Principle applied to writing.

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Comments are always welcome.

Rogue Planet. A deposed king’s son must fight to win back his planet from a brutal theocracy. No Game-of-Thrones dragons, just hard sci-fi with Game-of-Thrones action and romance. No magic either, although the theocrats of the planet make the oppressed citizens of the planet believe they possess it. Consider this tale a parable for our times, a warning that what could come to pass if religious fanatics take over. Available in print and ebook (Kindle .mobi) format from Amazon, as well as in all ebook formats from Smashwords and all the latter’s affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and library and lending services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker & Taylor, Gardners, etc.).

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

[Note from Steve: If you’re a lover of Bailey’s, Guinness, Jameson, or Irish coffee, like me you have a tradition of participating in a St. Paddy’s Day visit to a favorite pub…or attending a traditional parade. It’s not recommended this year. It might be depressing to stay at home and enjoy your corned beef and cabbage there, along with some of those traditional drinks before, during, and/or after, but it’s the safest choice. Parades are cancelled around here (New York City’s is usually bigger than Dublin). Pubs and restaurants are either closed or with a 50% capacity limit. Follow the rules. Acquiring or passing on COVID-19 on just isn’t worth it. Please take care of yourself, family, friends, and everyone else. There’s always next year…and if COVID-19 is vanquished, there will be more cause for celebration!]

There are little details that annoy me: a weather reporter describing cold weather improvement by “we’re knocking down the feels-like temp” (I’m not complaining about “feels-like,” just that winter temperatures improve by going up); a furniture store touting its “bestest” sale ever; using “it’s” for “its,” or vice versa, in those moving banners on news programs; statements like “me and my partner were just going to WaWa”; and so forth. I call this language destruction.

Language is always changing, of course. Aramaic and Latin aren’t dead, but they’re on life support and used infrequently, so they stagnate, but modern languages evolve, often not for the better as globalization erodes them. It happens to English, which ironically helps destroy other languages. I had a French friend in Colombia who used “le weekend” all the time and insisted that the Brits had stolen it from the French long ago. Huh? Where’s the Academie Francaise when you need them? And German now tends to avoid all those long words where shorter German words are stitched together by just using the shorter English version.

Social media contributes a lot to language destruction. “R U OK?” seems a bit cryptic when someone inquires about your health. A famous Twitter addict and abuser just continues on and on with badly written tweets, but my complaint is more about the contact—lots of people murder Twitter tweets.

Business and science types and Pentagon wonks are like pollinating bees with their plethora of acronyms too, spreading that sickness far beyond their little niches (COVID-19 has taken away a better metaphor). Acronymese could be the worst destroyer of language if it weren’t used all the time for insider code. One serious problem is that the same acronym can mean multiple things when it comes to learning them. And they’re evolving too. APB has been replaced by BOLO—I always thought word was for an Argentine gaucho’s version of a lasso. DWI has been replaced by DUI—the I in the first case means “intoxicated,” specific to liquor originally, while it means “influence” in the second. The first might not be appropriate if the person caught is on meth, while the second covers multiple things, including that, as well as marijuana, which is legal in some states. And it’s probably general enough to describe  the guy’s girlfriend on his cellphone saying she’s leaving him too.

“Meth” is slang, of course, and slang is often regional and group specific, but it also often changes the meaning of words, which is more language destruction that drives me nuts. I barely understand what a person means when they say “bad” and “awesome” anymore. I think most people still understand me when I say I was a member of a “nerd herd” in high school, but I’m not certain of that anymore. I think I’m a “cool” guy, and that’s not because I went out to get the paper in PJs when the thermometer says eighteen degrees, but I’m not “bad” or even “awesome” in the sense I mean it.

Writers have to be careful in their stories and blog posts. Old standbys like CMOS (acronym for Chicago Manual of Style) are out-of-date for more than the acronym (CMOS is a low-voltage printed circuit technology). Its rules aren’t as archaic as the Academie Franciase’s, but they’re not up-to-date (I prefer the NY Times Manual of Style, but I let editors have their own way…usually).

The primary criterion is that the majority of readers understand our prose. After all, when human beings are long gone (maybe sooner than later with climate change—there will be survivors from COVID-19), it would be nice if ET archaeologists didn’t need a Rosetta stone. But I doubt that they’d ever figure out what WC meant, even if they took advantage of the facilities.

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Comments are always welcome.

Rogue Planet. A deposed king’s son must fight to win back his planet from a brutal theocracy. No Game-of-Thrones dragons, just hard sci-fi with Game-of-Thrones action and romance. No magic either, although the theocrats of the planet make the oppressed citizens of the planet believe they possess it. Consider this tale a parable for our times, a warning that what could come to pass if religious fanatics take over. Available in print and ebook (Kindle .mobi) format from Amazon, as well as in all ebook formats from Smashwords and all the latter’s affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and library and lending services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker & Taylor, Gardners, etc.).

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

In Gabo’s novel Autumn of the Patriarch, he created an amalgam of the most ruthless dictators known to him. While eating your enemies isn’t quite so literal nowadays, current strongmen and those who want to be show many of the same characteristics: paranoia, narcissism, ruthless holding on to the reins of power, and so forth. In short, Gabo’s novel is an extreme example of an author satisfying Clancy’s maxim that fiction must seem real, even in Macondo.

Although I lived in Colombia for over a decade, Garcia Marquez lived in Mexico at the time, so I never met Colombia’s Nobel prize winner, but he’s also an example of advice I’ve often given in these pages: the best preparation a fiction writer can have, if one is necessary, is journalism. Novelists must make their fiction seem real, whether it’s magical realism or gritty realism. Journalists are immersed in real life and report on it. They see people in real situations and they deal with real settings. That’s a huge start for any storyteller.

Moreover, most despots hate journalists, so they get to experience what it means to be in the public spotlight under attack (everyone now knows US media isn’t immune to that). In fact, they often know what it means for their lives to be in danger. Translating that into a novel should be a piece of cake, and that same novel can become their protest against the despot.

Journalists are often minimalist writers too. Gabo wasn’t, but the verbosity in his books is more a reflection of his native tongue—most Latin-origin languages are verbose. No hard-boiled mysteries there. I once served as a translator when a Scottish physicist visited Colombia. I would translate my colleagues’ Spanish into English, and he asked a few times, “Is that all he said?” I smiled and said more than once, “Essentially.” I was cutting out the extraneous material and giving him the minimalist version. (As a humorous note, in Sing a Zamba Galactica, the AI translating the old ET storyteller’s buzzwords does the same thing!)

But even in Colombian, Italian, German, and Russian newspapers, the column structure forces journalists to use minimalist writing. ‘Zines can allow a bit more verbosity, but those few still published in paper version must be more to the point. That’s excellent training for any writer.

I don’t know if Gabo is the only ex-journalist who received a Nobel prize in literature, but many journalists have become prolific fiction writers. Journalism is one way to make some good money writing too, which doesn’t happen all that often for novelists. Something to think about….

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Comments are always welcome.

Soldiers of God. In this sci-fi thriller, FBI agent Caitlin Murphy is the handler for Father Juan Pablo Gomez, who’s working undercover in a fanatical religious group. Her main problem? She’s in love with the priest! They work together to thwart the group’s plans to attack famous sites in the Washington DC area. But is that group only part of a broader conspiracy with a bigger agenda? Available in .mobi (Kindle) ebook format on Amazon, and in all ebook formats on Smashwords (for my email newsletter subcribers, on sale through March) and at all the latter’s affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and library and lending services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker & Taylor, Gardners, etc.) An “evergreen book” as current today as when it was published, if not more so.

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

I make a distinction between young adults who are twelve- to eighteen-years-old and anyone younger than that. I can write about the former, but evidence indicates that I have trouble writing about the latter.

Writing about little kids in an adult novel with adult themes is even more difficult. They usually appear as secondary characters in my stories. And sadly, they occasionally appear as victims.

My hang-up might be a common one: I can remember events in my own childhood all the way back to around when I was three-years-old, but it’s hard to put myself in the mind of that Stevie from so long ago. It’s even harder to create childlike character. I can rarely identify with and get into their minds enough to write a meaningful story.

Young adults have childlike and adult characteristics. It’s easier for me to remember how difficult that time was and create and identify with my young adult characters. Little kids are big trouble, in real life and in fiction.

Most authors aren’t child psychologists or pediatricians. Readers shouldn’t blame them for not creating good child characters. Children, young adults, and adults all react differently to Dr. Seuss. The adults’ Little Mermaid isn’t the kids’ Little Mermaid—Ariel is the same character, but they react differently to that character.

I see this in many animated films. The jokes many times are only understandable for adults because little kids don’t have the life experiences an adult has. So the writers just resort to slime and farts for the kids. Kids get jokes, but maybe not adult jokes.

I have to make a confession: I only have one little kid as a major character in my many novels. I often challenge myself in my writing, and I did so that one time. The result might contain evidence about my struggle, but I hope not. What spurred me on was my observation that the autistic spectrum is wide, a lot wider than most people think, so I created a child character at one end of that spectrum. That character is Manuel, an autistic boy in Silicon Slummin’…and Just Gettin’ By from the “Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries.” He’s almost a main character, and Mary Jo Melendez would be dead if it weren’t for him.

Readers can determine if I successfully met that challenge. Will I write about another child character in an adult novel? The answer is the same one I give to all writing questions: If a little kid fits into the plot, why not? Having done it once, it should be easier the second time, right? But Manuelito is a tough act to follow, so we’ll see.

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Comments are always welcome.

Soldiers of God. In this sci-fi thriller, FBI agent Caitlin Murphy is the handler for Father Juan Pablo Gomez, who’s working undercover in a fanatical religious group. Her main problem? She’s in love with the priest! They work together to thwart the group’s plans to attack famous sites in the Washington DC area. But is that group only part of a broader conspiracy with a bigger agenda? Available in .mobi (Kindle) ebook format on Amazon, and in all ebook formats on Smashwords and at all the latter’s affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and library and lending services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker & Taylor, Gardners, etc.) An “evergreen book” as current today as when it was published, if not more so.

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

Secondary characters aren’t that important in short stories because they can’t be, but in novellas and definitely in the novel they can contribute a good deal to readers’ enjoyment. My perception is that secondary characters prop up the plot and main characters. Perhaps Hollywood argot describes the situation better: main characters are the main actors, and secondary characters are supporting actors, emphasis on “supporting.” Where would Conan Doyle’s Sherlock be without Dr. Watson? Where would Rowling’s Harry be without Ron? And would Asimov’s futuristic detective Elijah Bailey accomplish much without his android partner Daneel Olivaw? (In fact, Elijah disappears from the extended Foundation series, and Daneel becomes a main character, who ends the series!) These are old examples, of course, but there are many more recent ones.

Both editors and reviewers have complained when I kill off secondary characters. I can become so attached to them that I’ll give them their own novels—Ashley Scott, in The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan, and Esther Brookstone, in Rembrandt’s Angel and Son of Thunder, are examples of characters who graduated from secondary roles to starring roles in their own stories. Nobody complains about this;  It’s the killing off that creates the blowback. A reviewer protested about my killing off a secondary character in Aristocrats and Assassins. I actually liked her, but I just didn’t know enough about the inner workings of Mossad (and with Trump’s friend Bibi in charge now, I’m not sure I want to know). An editor protested when I killed off a Turkish inspector, who I also liked (but I knew he didn’t have much of a future with Erdogan in charge). I also have an affection for villains (Vladimir Kalinin lasted a long time before I bumped him off). I’ll take the blowback and admit to character assassination (at least none of these cases happened on Fifth Avenue).

The reason that secondary characters are important is obvious: Every character must seem human, an interesting, complex, human being who could really exist. Secondary characters help the main ones achieve that, but, in doing so, they often appear to take over and dominate the plot, essentially writing their own stories within a story. You’ve seen that occur in movies, but I saw it in books first.

Authors often struggle with this. I have fought with secondary characters. I can usually broker a truce by promising that pushy secondary character a starring role elsewhere, but sometimes I throw up my hands and turn that secondary character into a main character, which requires rewriting a lot of material. (Detective Chen is an example. Yes, Dao-Ming, you convinced me, and I don’t regret it.)

Does this sound schizophrenic? Ask other authors. I’m no psychiatrist, and I’d refuse to psychoanalyze myself even if I were. If those other authors are honest, they’ll admit to these goings-on. In my case, it’s because themes and plots are more important to me than characterization. I’d guess that authors who emphasize the latter might have this occur less frequently? Dunno.

I don’t know how writers managed all this before computers and word-processing software. I’m guessing they’d go through lots of notebooks and reams of paper on their typewriters. Developing characters is like developing plots for me: it requires a lot of content editing before I’m satisfied. And the whole process often leads to new stories as well.

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Comments are always welcome.

The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan. What will the US government do in the future with its agents and other employees who know too many secrets? Find out in this tale about a frightening government conspiracy. While fiction, you might ask yourself, “Could this really happen?” I wrote it, so you already know my answer! Available in .mobi (Kindle) ebook format at Amazon, and in all ebook formats at Smashwords and its affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and library and lending services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker & Taylor, Gardners, etc.).

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