No, I’m not going Trumpian on you. I just thought I’d mention that I sometimes add things to my stories to see if readers are paying attention. There are my Hitchcockian cameos where I appear as a bookstore owner, and even a cameo for Prince Harry (one astute reader noticed that one). You can have some fun trying to find these! Hint: In the “Esther Brookstone Art Dectective Series,” two novels strong now with Rembrandt’s Angel and Son of Thunder, Esther, an ex-MI6 and Scotland Yard Inspector in the Art and Antiques Division (in the second book, she has just retired), you’ll find the cameo in the first book.

My sci-fi stories have cameos too. Although I’m not an eternal like the main character in Asimov’s End of Eternity, his famous android detective Daneel Olivaw has a cameo in one of my sci-fi novels. And Asimov himself has one in a my new time-travel novel (recently sent to beta-readers).

Some of my deviousness is more subtle. Arch-villain Vladimir Kalinin, who has appeared in several novels, uses many aliases in the stories he appears in, but Raven was a bow to a famous American horror and mystery writer. In that same time-travel novel, I pay homage to a famous hard-boiled crime novelist and two of his characters.

Oh, by the way, the Queen of Hearts is in that time-travel story too. Alice Through the Looking Glass is one of my favorite stories—even in Disney’s silly and classic cartoon version. I like sly cats too, and Tweedle-Dee and –Dum so often describe harmless idiots (or ones not so harmless, like McConnell and Graham). And, while I have no lobr for a cruise ship commercial that brutally edits the song, I consider Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit,” one of my favorite songs, as an anthem for my creativity.

Here I’ve offered a different use of the word deviousness! These examples from my writing are just me having a wee bit of fun with my art. (Andrew Lloyd Weber did that in Unmasked, a recent musical biopic we saw, where he wrote a song about the song everyone hates, “Music of the Night”).

None of these examples of deviousness is quite as profound as Sandro Botticelli using himself as a model in his own painting (mentioned in Son of Thunder) because some might not consider them an improvement of my art (or Weber’s), but to hell with that opinion! It’s all about fun (probably even Botticelli had fun with his “cameos” in his paintings).

And let this be a question for every author: If you’re not having fun with your storytelling, why do it? You probably will be frustrated if you think you’re going to get rich, you will often get mad at trollish reviewers, and you will consider everything after finishing your MS a complete drag. If you don’t have fun with your writing, there’s not much left where you can have it.

***

[Note: Some clues to the references above might be found in the cover images.]

Comments are always welcome.

“Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries.” Ex-USN Master-at-Arms Mary Jo has had a harried life. In Muddlin’ Through, she takes a security job at a NJ firm and is framed for her sister and brother-in-law’s murder by a secret US agency when Russian agents steal the MECHs (“Mechanically Enhanced Cybernetic Humans”). In Silicon Slummin’…and Just Gettin’ By, she not only has US and Russian agents again to contend with in her new CA security job, but also a stalker. And in Goin’ the Extra Mile, China steps in to pursue the MECHs, kidnapping Mary Jo’s husband and children to find out where they are. These three novels of heart-pounding action typify what I mean by “evergreen books”—novels that are as fresh and current as the day they were published, if not more so. Available in .mobi (Kindle) format on Amazon, and in all ebook formats on Smashwords and its affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and library and lending services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker & Taylor, Gardners, etc.). Come and meet the MECHs!

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

Books in bookcases that you tilt to open secret rooms, books with weapons or drugs inside, books that contain secret codes—these are ways books appear in genre fiction plots. A Bible or Koran in a religious character’s study, Kama Sutra or Marquis de Sade’s Justine in a sexual predator’s lair, or Josemaria Esciva’s work for a religious fanatic—these are more examples of books that might be found mentioned in a novel.

One reason I loved the movie The League of Extraordinary Gentleman was that it had many literary references. Books within a book can make that book better too. Even a house that has a library or study with many books is a positive, and stories like Shadows of the Wind turn me on.

Something comes to mind, though. I save my sagging bookshelves now by reading mostly ebooks. Those “books within a book” examples can apply to ebooks too, of course—in fact, you might find code hidden in an ebook easier than in a print version. But why bother? Have you ever looked at the “Documents” folder on your Kindle? Most people don’t, and spies might not even think of looking there!

And I’ve never seen an e-Bible or e-Koran. Why not? Maybe they exist. Dunno. I’d probably have them on my laptop, though, so I could refer to them when I’m writing. I took the quotes in Son of Thunder from an old print Bible on my bookshelf (I only had to refer to St. John’s gospel, of course).

“Books within a book” is a phrase that covers a wide gamut, of course, because authors use books as props in many ways. Their might be less of them as time passes, though. But I thought LPs would disappear from books too. They won’t, because they’re still popular. And that’s the point. Print books are still popular.

Some of this popularity is due to Big Five policies where the e-book version is offered at a reduced price if the reader buys the print version, sort of a lame BOGO in my mind’s eye. There are plenty of readers who want to read print versions and eschew ebook versions. That preference is doomed. For one thing, it’s bad for the environment. For another, print versions don’t last. Any librarian will tell you that. I’ve donated new versions for dog-eared ones with torn covers at our local library, but that tactic has limitations. The Midas Bomb has a second edition that has both print and ebook formats, but other second editions are only in ebook formats. Hopefully the acquisitions librarian considers buying ebook versions—I offer them at a reduced price for libraries on Smashwords!

I think print versions will go the way of the dinosaurs for many reasons. Books might disappear altogether with the onslaught of video games, streaming video, and VR total immersions. But if books have any staying power, it will be via ebooks loaded onto those tiny computers we call smart phones—maybe with sound, odors, and video clips included? Those phones are getting bigger, and Samsung offers one that folds. Maybe for coffee table books?

I’ll never know how it all turns out, of course. I won’t care about tech when I’m dead. I’m not sure I care much about it now!

***

Comments are always welcome.

“Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries.” Ex-USN Master-at-Arms Mary Jo has had a harried life. In Muddlin’ Through, she takes a security job at a NJ firm and is framed for her sister and brother-in-law’s murder by a secret US agency when Russian agents steal the MECHs (“Mechanically Enhanced Cybernetic Humans”). In Silicon Slummin’…and Just Gettin’ By, she not only has US and Russian agents again to contend with in her new CA security job, but also a stalker. And in Goin’ the Extra Mile, China steps in to pursue the MECHs, kidnapping Mary Jo’s husband and children to find out where they are. These three novels of heart-pounding action typify what I mean by “evergreen books”—novels that are as fresh and current as the day they were published, if not more so. Available in .mobi (Kindle) format on Amazon, and in all ebook formats on Smashwords and its affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and library and lending services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker & Taylor, Gardners, etc.). Come and meet the MECHs!

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

I often wonder what copyrights are good for in today’s publishing industry. Almost all fiction books (and probably all books) list the author(s) as the copyright holders. Whether authors are self- or traditionally published, what recourse do they have? If someone “steals” their intellectual property (that can assume many forms), is an author going to take that someone to court? Better said, can an author convince a lawyer to take that someone to court?

Unless a book is making a lot of money, I doubt it. In that case, I guess a lawyer might even do a pro bono representation, or, if the author is already rich, s/he can pay a lawyer a lot of money. Today it seems doubtful that most authors would be willing to spend money on a lawyer, though.

Maybe movie rights on the line? Ah, but that usually means the book has made a lot of money! Hollywood won’t even look at a good story unless it’s already popular. In fact, popular is the only requirement for Hollywood—the story doesn’t even have to be good. The Goldfinch and Gone Girl come to mind. So we’re back at square one: most authors will have to shrug and forget about legal recourse because wiping out the royalties they’ve received just isn’t worth it.

I guess I don’t know how copyrights work…or are supposed to work! I’m a mongrel, so I have some traditionally published books as well as self-published books. Will my publishers go after someone who steals my material? They have even less motivation to do so! They might for some book, again because it’s making a lot of money (not mine!). But usually not in general. Of course, a traditional publisher usually takes in 85% of the royalties compared to the author’s 15%, so they might be a bit more motivated than their author.

But really, on a per-book basis, does it make sense for either author or publisher to fight a copyright violation? Not usually. Book pirates and other unscrupulous people know that, of course, and go wild, stealing intellectual property at will.

What constitutes a copyright violation? We can find analogies in the music business. We have seen cases where one singer takes a melody, puts different words to it, and then publishes it as a new song. It might even be less that a melody, just a guitar riff or background beat. That’s what a book pirate does when he takes a PDF version of a novel, strips off the author’s name and copyright info, and sells it as his own. And it is a copyright violation as much as stealing prose from a fiction book.

Unless an author is also a lawyer who can represent her or his own case, it just doesn’t make sense to go after the crook. That still doesn’t change two facts: (1) a copyright violation is morally reprehensible, and (2) it means an author is losing royalties, no matter how few they are. It is stealing, it’s a crime, but nobody apprehends the perp and it doesn’t make economic sense to go after him anyway.

But the music industry has shown a way to go after copyright violators: class action lawsuits. Get enough authors and publishers together and we can create a case that will interest any lawyer, or even a team of them. Of course, that still depends on the amount of money involved, not the number of plaintiffs. Other than class action lawsuits, I believe copyrights are useless. Does all this negativity depress you? In the famous words of Mick Mulvaney, get over it! Your only reward for telling your stories is usually only the storytelling itself. That’s all there is. Get over it!

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Comments are always welcome.

Mind Games. Androids with ESP? What could go wrong? As a gifted teenager tries to find the murderer of her adopted father, she discovers an evil conspiracy bent on controlling all of near-Earth space. A.B. Carolan’s terrifying novel gives new meaning to technology run amok where government programs have unintended consequences. This is the third book in the “ABC Sci-Fi Mysteries” and is available in print and Kindle format on Amazon and in all ebook formats at Smashwords and its affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and lenders and library services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker & Taylor, Gardners, etc.).

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

In the 1/23/2020 edition of The NY Times, there appeared the story about how three-year-old Muhammed Horyz Nadzim was elected to Mensa, that snooty Brit-originated group of so-called geniuses (the story might have appeared elsewhere as well). I guess that Mensa needed some publicity, and more power to the kid. But his mother had the right attitude, saying that whatever her son went on to become, she would be proud of him.

You see, that Mensa and other snooty organizations like Phi Beta Kappa are irrelevant to most people’s lives, including mine. That kid will have to decide what he wants to do and strive to make it happen, just like anyone else. And whatever he does, Mom will be proud! Ivy colleges, exclusive men’s clubs, and society pages don’t create productive and contributing members of society. People must create their own realities. Sure, some people like Papa Bush or Albert Einstein are born with silver spoons in their mouths or are gifted with extreme intelligence and/or skills, but if they don’t set out to do something, that something won’t be handed to them. They have t work for it. (Let’s ignore those few that inherit old wealth. They’re mostly irrelevant too.) That’s more true today than ever before in human existence.

Yes, I had the above Mensa in mind when I created the title for my sci-fi novel, More than Human: The Mensa Contagion, but only in the sense that the “Mensa” in my title was a bit of a stick-it-to-you directed toward that organization of so-called geniuses. You see, the “Mensa” in that title is really the name of a constellation that can be seen from South Africa. From that direction an ET virus comes that creates Homo sapiens 2.0, a new breed of humans that ends up creating a new society on Earth that makes a lot more of a difference than any members from any exclusive club ever will.

I choose my book titles carefully. In my works in progress (WIPs), I have one working title at the start and collect other possibilities as I go. While I do the same thing for characters’ names, a book’s cover and title are the first things readers see at online retailers. They’re important. (In bookstores, it might be the print version’s spine, which is part of the cover.)

There is a trend toward short titles these days, but they often fall short (I couldn’t resist the pun) because they fail to indicate the book’s content. The best title is a short blurb, something that catches the eye of readers and tells them what the book is about. My best is The Midas Bomb, book #1 in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series.” It’s short and states what happens in the book, the best of both worlds. (Read the book to see why.)

More than Human: The Mensa Contagion for all its length is only half-right. “More than Human” implies Homo sapiens 2.0, but I wanted to qualify that. “The Mensa Contagion” accomplishes three things. First, it differentiates my book from Theodore Sturgeon’s famous sci-fi novel about ESP (I’ve only rarely included ESP in my sci-fi tales). Second, it indicates the source of the ET virus. And third, like I said above, it’s a slap at that other Mensa. You can see how much fun one can have with titles!

Why is my title only half-right? Because the book is really in two parts. The first deals with the contagion’s arrival and its consequences. The second describes what those new humans end up doing—they colonize Mars! I suppose that second part might be more attractive to some sci-fi readers than the first. It’s probably what led one reviewer to say the book reminded her of Kin Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy. I’m humbled by that statement, just like I am by reviewers who compare me to Dr. Asimov. In fact, More than Human: Mars and Beyond was one candidate for the title! But I wanted to say how Homo sapiens 2.0 came to be as well as describe the source of the contagion. The stick it to that other Mensa was just frosting on the cake.

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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 morphed a bit, it’s only that the names 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 King-like 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 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 that revolution.

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. 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.

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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 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 librarians: Reading these is fun…and can serve as easy book reports!

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

First, a definition: An “evergreen book” is one that is as fresh and current as the day the author published it, or even more so. 1984 is a good example. Okay, a historical event might not be current as far as plot goes, but the themes in a historical fiction can be. “…the day the author published it…” means the copyright date of the first edition. For example, my very first book, the sci-fi thriller Full Medical , was first published in 2006, but it now has a second edition. Both versions are evergreen. Many books you’ll see on my web page “Steve’s Bookshelf” are early books or unique books from authors’ oeuvres, books that are evergreen.

Maybe critics consider evergreen books to be inferior in an author’s oeuvre because of the assumption that an author improves with each book. Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird belies that assumption (her other book was a late prequel), and my Full Medical is as good as later books with its cloning theme all the more important today. Critics pontificate a lot because they can’t write fiction.

The only problem with evergreen is age discrimination. For example, it’s now 2020, so any book with a 2019 copyright or older is considered old by readers, reviewers, and marketing services. People discriminate against “old,” and they’ve defined “old” to include evergreen. Some books are old—sci-fi from the early twentieth century with bug-eyed Venusians invading Earth is old, but these books can also evergreen because their themes can be current even if their tech isn’t.

You might think that if a book has an ebook version, it’s evergreen. After all, ebooks are a recent phenomena in the publishing world. That’s not a hard and fast rule, though. Even the Big Five “reprints” old books, including many “classics,” as ebooks, and some of them, like Jane Austen’s drivel, are hardly evergreen. As SOP, a reader can only tell a book is evergreen by its blurb and using a “peek inside.” (I suppose, in that sense, no cozy mystery is evergreen, because I never find fresh or current themes in those books. I can just hear the screams!)

Second, age discrimination means, in particular, that readers don’t normally buy evergreen books. I don’t know about other authors, but that kills my business model. I set out on my publishing journey with the assumption that I could finance the next book using the royalties from my previous books. That does not work for me, and it probably doesn’t work for many other authors either. I guess everything has to be new and shiny bright for today’s readers?

Whether self- or traditionally published, there are costs, many of them the same. One big one is the author’s website. Another is editing. Finally, there’s marketing. All necessities. There are incidental, smaller costs as well, too many to enumerate. Per book, they don’t have to add up to much unless you OD on marketing (marketing “experts” love us to do that!). If this business model makes any sense at all, I should be well off. It doesn’t, though, because no one pays attention to evergreen books.

I guess I’m an exception. I’m an avid reader, and I find a lot of worthwhile reading in evergreen books. I recognize that I can’t read that many books per year (I average between 50 and 100), so chances are, by the time I “discover” a book, it’s already evergreen! (There are hundreds of books published every week, just in case you didn’t know.) I read evergreen, but others don’t.

Readers who don’t read evergreen don’t know what they’re missing…including my own books. But that’s life in the writing trenches.

***

Comments are always welcome.

Zari Reede’s Sins of the Sister. Now evergreen (published in December, 2018), but a damn good book! Talk about current themes. Part mystery, part thriller, this story about a detective and her sister will keep you guessing. It moves at a fast pace, so hold on to your recliner. I won’t say much more for fear of spoilers, but this is a great example of what readers might miss if they don’t do evergreen. Available at Amazon.

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

I’ve taken a stand against the anti-cultural appropriation crowd in this blog before, but with the attacks on the new book American Dirt, it’s time to reaffirm that stand! This book is controversial, but only because its subject is immigration, which is hotly debated now in the US and around the world, mostly by far-right drum-beaters who want none of it.

The consequences of the anti-cultural appropriation crowd’s unfair and egregious attack on an author and publisher is just creating a meaningless distraction that plays into Trump’s hands. Their vitriol is having exactly the opposite effect of what they want: the book was #4 in sales on Amazon last time I checked! in spite of Oprah’s recommendation and defense of the book from another Hispanic author, threats on the author’s life (her publisher cancelled a book tour) only reaffirm how far they’re willing to go to stifle free expression. Now even Book Club Oprah is cowed by them.

Of course, the whole anti-cultural appropriation is a storm in a teacup, meaningless malarkey. First, Jeanine Cummins, the book’s author, has a Puerto Rican grandmother. While I prefer to call Puerto Ricans Americans, unlike some politicians (notably POTUS, who probably uses the s-word in private), reasonable people will say that Ms. Cummins has every right to tell stories related to her Hispanic-American heritage. The anti-cultural appropriation nuts dispute that.

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[Note from Steve: Lots of spoiler alerts here. Of course, they just might pique your interest in some evergreen books. Proceed at your own risk.]

Vladimir Kalinin has a lot of staying power in my books. He makes his debut in The Midas Bomb, and his presence is felt through the rest of the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series,” The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan, the “Clones and Mutants Series,” Soldiers of God, and several works of short fiction, including “The Phantom Harvester” (see the list of free downloadable PDFs on my “Free Stuff & Contests” web page). He might be all that other Vladimir wants to be—debonair, ageless, strong, and wily. But that other Vladimir has neither the brains nor a softer side; that other Vladimir is a psychotic sociopath in comparison.

Kalinin, like many of us, is a product of his upbringing. As a boy in the time of Yeltsin, he murdered an old soldier for an overcoat because he was cold. He was on his way to wealth and power in Russia when that other Vladimir and the oligarchs went after him and made him flee his home country. But he wasn’t to be denied. Through legal and illegal Machiavellian machinations, Kalinin becomes a force on the world stage who drives authorities crazy by creating mayhem, even among Putin and his oligarchs.

While his cloning business provides him longevity (Full Medical), it also was thwarted by several main characters. His plans to develop super-soldiers produces one who hates him (Evil Agenda). And his plans for world domination using a weapon derived from an ET artifact go boom (Soldiers of God)! There’s no lack of grandiose plans, and he’s got an able aide in an old IRA bomb-maker. Yet he doesn’t quite make things click…fortunately.

Kalinin fails once to assassinate a U.S. president (The Midas Bomb) and goes after a candidate who doesn’t want to play along with him (The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan), but he gets her later on when she becomes president. That doesn’t make any difference in the long run because ordinary citizens always seem to step up to foil his plans.

Like many villains, Kalinin is a lonely man. His aide and confidant is a constant in his life, but he can’t ever seem to have a meaningful relationship. He might have had one with the Russian terrorist in The Midas Bomb, but she is killed by Castilblanco. And he loses his protégé in No Amber Waves of Grain.

You can’t say Kalinin doesn’t try. And his revenge against the oligarchs is largely successful. It’s mostly carried out in the novels Gaia and the Goliaths and No Amber Waves of Grain. In general, his failures are because he doesn’t have good help; except for that close aide, they’re largely incompetent.

Kalinin is a complex character, good at times but mostly evil, with weaknesses that work against his brilliance. It was fun to watch him develop through many books. Sometimes villains are more interesting than main characters, for both readers and writers.

***

Comments are always welcome.

Angels Need Not Apply. Vladimir Kalinin is only in the background doing his scheming in this novel where a terrorist from The Midas Bomb and a cartel leader team up to create mayhem and murder. The cartel leader is a villain I created before I saw a picture of El Chapo, but it’s uncanny that they look similar except for my character’s Yosemite Sam mustache. I’d say my villain is more evil than El Chapo too, and that’s saying something! Available at Amazon in .mobi format and at Smashwords in all ebook formats as well as the latter’s affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and library and lending services (Overdrive, Baker & Taylor, Gardners, etc.).

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

I have many book marketing woes. Everything I try confirms two things: (1) Self- and traditionally published small press authors have a tough time getting their books noticed; in fact, most authors do, even Big Five authors, unless the authors are among the Big Five’s anointed. (2) For the rest of us, having a successful book (whatever that means these days) is like winning the lottery because of #1. It’s fortunate that I derive so much joy from storytelling that I can say, “To hell with marketing ideas and sales figures—just let me write!”

That’s all rather general and not uncommon for most authors with very few exceptions, famous and otherwise. However, some authors, especially newbies, think that all they have to do is rip off a novel and they’ll become rich (one measure of book success, I suppose). But I have some particular woes that are worth mentioning and should give those authors pause for thought.

In what comes after, authors now must do most of the marketing. By “after” I mean after publication and before the author passes on to write advertising for harps. The latter caveat is because death doesn’t do any author any good, literally or in her or his books’ successes. Those books might become wildly popular, as in Jane Austen’s case where twenty-first century fans of her schmaltzy nineteenth-century romance novels are all the rage among some readers. Believe me, old Jane, wherever she is, doesn’t give a rat’s ass, although whatever publisher owns rights to her books is tickled pink right now. We see many examples of nostalgia movements. All the creators of those works involved are probably asking, “Where the hell were the readers when I was alive?”

But I digress. Not only do most authors have to market their books after they’re published, they’re the only ones who will do so, and that costs money most of them don’t have. Maybe Grisham can afford to take off for a year on a nationwide tour (he did for his first book—he was already a rich lawyer—and he’s still doing them, but he doesn’t pay for them anymore), but most authors cannot do that. And, assuming an author is traditionally published, the publisher will rarely pay for any kind of book marketing, let alone nationwide or international tours. For self-published authors, they’re on their own a priori.

Marketing help just focuses on one book. I have yet to see one publicist who will help authors promote their entire oeuvre (maybe Jane if she were still alive, or Grisham himself in his later tours?). Many genre fiction books are evergreen—they’re as fresh and current as the day they were written. Okay, maybe historical fiction can’t be called current, but its themes often are, and they usually interpolate between real historical events in a clever way. I suppose authors with just one book are okay with that, but ones with more than one book shouldn’t be.

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The twists and turns in a mystery story often delight readers of that genre. I like to include surprises at the beginning as well as the end too. The one at the beginning of Teeter-Totter between Lust and Murder is one of my favorite beginnings, while the shocker at the end is too, a denouement that Christie might have enjoyed if she were writing today. Because thrillers are close cousins to mysteries, the surprises abound in them too—the closet scene in Aristocrats and Assassins was a lot of fun to write.

But are you ever let down when the twist not only surprises but fails to resolve things? Or resolves them in a way that shows the crime wasn’t all that bad after all? The author has led you to believe something insidious is going on, but it’s not? I prefer just the opposite in both my reading and writing. If anything, I want the PI or detective to uncover something more insidious, not less. And I prefer it to be something that could be prejudicial for a lot of people—many potential victims who were saved by the principal character’s actions.

Serial killers just aren’t that interesting to me as characters in my writing for that reason. No major novel of mine contains that kind of character. The key word is “serial.” That means the crimes occur in linear fashion. Sure, the perp can speed things up as he becomes more arrogant and taunts the police. Those plots make me say, “Hmm, they’re going to have to stop him before he strikes again.” Too predictable. By the way, the serial killer is usually male, so casting a female in that role could represent an interesting novelty. It might be fun to guess who the killer is too—some surprises can be created in that way—but in general plots with serial killers are overdone. Yet, if the author ends the book with the capture and conviction of the supposed killer but includes another killing with the same MO, setting the stage for another boo, this creates a total lack of resolution and deceives the reader, a type of cliffhanger that leaves me frustrated.

I can summarize my points in the following way: I have a lot of fun when an author moves from small crimes to bigger ones and the big ones are solved almost by accident. That shows the main characters, the PIs or detectives, are human and didn’t realize what they were up against. Real life is like that.

I can even summarize more succinctly and even amplify: I love complexity. When something small unexpectedly becomes big, that’s complexity. When things become nonlinear or oscillatory—the plot goes back and forth and up and down—that’s complexity. Often a local crime has national and international ramifications, and a team of characters have to rise to the occasion and halt what’s going on. And it all has to be resolved in the end, or I feel swindled.

I admit this might be rare in current mystery or crime novels, more than the simple sequence of A = a crime occurs and B = the perpetrators are caught must be present to catch my interest…and B can’t be a swindle. That simple sequence might be appropriate for a short story, but novels need more meat to them for me to be all in.

These are observations I’ve made over a lifetime of reading mystery and crime stories. They’re my preferences, not rules written in stone. And what some readers take as too complex is what others take as too simple. That’s what’s wonderful about reading: every reader can react differently to a story.

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Comments are always welcome!

The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan. Plenty of resolution in this bridge book between my “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series” and the “Clones and Mutants Trilogy” that’s full of important themes—retirement (what will U.S. government agencies do in the future with agents who know too much?), autumnal romance (can people over fifty find love?), and shadowy conspiracies (are they the government’s or some other actors’?). The action and suspense start on page one and don’t stop. Available in ebook format on Amazon and Smashwords and all the latter’s affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and lending and library services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker & Taylor, Gardners, etc.).

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