I left discussion groups on Goodreads and LinkedIn not because Amazon and Microsoft took them over, or because trolls and anti-author blasts from them and readers made my life difficult, but also for the lack of common sense displayed. I’ve always had a soft spot for all authors, especially newbies, trying to offer tips on what works or doesn’t, but when comments from anyone, including me, expressing common sense are attacked, I have to start wondering if it’s worth running the gantlet. So, to be on record, let me offer three cases where common sense often seems to be lacking.

Is it logical to pour tons of money into book promotion and marketing? Not really. Few authors, even Big Five authors, can compete with Patterson Inc. In the Arts section of the NY Times on July 17, Patterson’s ad for Sophia among the Beasts is full page (thousands of dollars), with no mention of the publisher. and it has the co-author’s name, Emily Raymond, in tiny fonts much smaller than the half-dozen or so endorsements. Patterson Inc. is obviously more important promo-wise than Patterson’s publisher or co-author (you have to feel sorry for Emily). Moreover, what other author has the ad budget to pay for this kind of promotion?

Is it logical to assume some of an author’s fame will rub off on you at events like Thrillerfest? Not really. Having pics of yourself standing by famous author X, whether X is Patterson or any other NY Times bestselling author (whatever that means), might help fill your scrapbook of memories (does anyone still make them?), but it won’t help you sell books or become another NY Times bestselling author.

Is it logical to try to write stories in every popular genre? Patterson seems to think so (his new book is fantasy, but he’s tried literary fiction, mystery, romance, YA, and children’s lit too). He also has oodles of money to invest on promotion and a truckload of co-authors who hopefully know how to write in these genres. Of course, many genres are related—the combinations like romantic mystery and sci-fi  thriller are quite common. But is it common sense to try to reach out to every type of reader and try to satisfy their individual preferences? Agents and Big Five acquisitions often seem to think so and say so, but an author who tries to do this might have difficulty establishing her or his brand. “To thine own self be true” (Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act 1, Scene III) is a common-sense adage any author should follow. Or, if you didn’t like Polonius, famous Irish writer Oscar Wilde’s advice, “Be yourself.  Everyone else is taken,” is equally good. Write the kind of books you like to read most, not what someone tells you is selling.

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First-time visitors to this blog and/or website might not know that my website gurus at Monkey C Media recently did an update/upgrade (it’s generally transparent to visitors). Having a functioning website with interesting content is essential for authors these days. (After the initial costs, an author still has maintenance costs—all part of doing business.) In this last round, the gurus got my website analytics working again (it’s a mystery why they stopped). I don’t hover over them like some bloggers do, but I like to check them occasionally. This time I had some surprises.

First, the list of countries corresponding to website visitors: No surprise here, the US ranks first. I’m a US author, after all, even though I’d like to think my novel Rembrandt’s Angel could be loved by all readers of English literary works, especially Brits (it’s dedicated to Agatha Christie and her two famous sleuths, Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, and its main character is a Scotland Yard Inspector and ex-MI6 agent). But Great Britain is only seventh on the list! Much more surprising, Ukraine is second. In fact, the US and Ukrainian web surfers have made many more visits to the website than those from other countries. (I’m a bit leery about the Ukrainian participation. Are they from the part that Putin stole?) France and Italy surfers trail far behind at third and fourth, Russia at fifth (again suspicious), and Chile at sixth. Chile? What’s that about? I lived for a while in Colombia and loved Colombia as well as Chile (I visited there during the time of Allende), but I don’t (and can’t) write a novel in Spanish.  Maybe it’s because many of my characters have a Hispanic origin? But why not other Spanish-speaking countries too?

Second (and I think this is a general phenomenon): 81% of my visitors spend less than thirty seconds at the website. These obviously aren’t readers of my blog, which is a frustrating observation. It’s probably due to my home page looking the same from day to day (it’s rate of change is much less than that of my blog, of course). Maybe I should create an internal link on the home page that goes directly to the blog? Hmm. There are already two, one at the left and one at the bottom. Oh well….

Third, there seem to be a lot more bots sniffing around, not just Google’s. That’s good, I suppose, if they report back to their masters something like “Hey, this old guy has new material!” At least I hope they’re capable of sniffing out what’s new. You never know—the bots are only as good as the people who program them.

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Summer arrived at a perfect time in my publishing journey this year…right after three novel-writing marathons when I need some serious R&R, which included the writing plus corresponding edits for A.B. Carolan’s Mind Games (just published by Carrick Publishing) and my sequel to Rembrandt’s Angel titled Son of Thunder (soon to be published by Penmore Press). “Whoa! That’s only two marathons,” you say. No, I also finished the sequel to The Last Humans and will submit it to Black Opal Books; it’s title is The Last Humans: A New Dawn. (Carol Shetler is editor/beta-reader for most of my books before I submit them—kudos to her for always doing a great job that generally keeps me on the good side of editors after submission.)

I do a lot more reading in summer anyway, and this summer I’ll probably do more. You might realize I’m still writing a bit of short fiction too (one of those stories might motivate me for yet another novel)—that’s R&R too, but the true R&R comes from reading, and always has. I read a lot more than I write.

In the beach scenes accompanying this post, you won’t see my Kindle or books, but they’re with me. I love natural settings when I read. It’s great to hear the waves and beach-goers off in the distance. Every so often, my eyes leave the printed page to enjoy the scenery too. What kind of books do I read in that kind of environment?

The answer is a bit nebulous: Almost anything that catches my fancy! I’m still working on several ebooks stored on my Kindle (I’ve reviewed a few of those lately)—“working” isn’t the right word, of course; “enjoying” is more appropriate.  (You can peruse my recent reviews to find some summer reading for yourself.) I also enjoy print books. On a recent trip to the NJ shore where these pics were taken (thanks to my wife), I started Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Island. I had also started Angela Stent’s Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and with the Rest, but I thought it was a wee bit too heavy to lug around, so I’ll read it at home. I’m also working on Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s biopic; he’s an interesting and smart fellow who has done a lot for one so young. Print books are gifts; ebooks I buy myself.

Although Keefe’s book is a true story written in novelistic fashion, you can see that I do both non-fiction and fiction. Historical fiction is a bridge between the two (two of my all-time favorite’s are Follett’s Eye of the Needle and Forsyth’s Day of the Jackal, which I classify as historical fiction—you might disagree).

I’ve been reading most of my life. Agatha and Asimov were read under the covers when I was a kid, my flashlight disturbing the family cat’s slumbers. Burroughs and Haggard were also much more interesting than the drivel they had us read in school (Silas Marner? Ugh!). I even made my way through Michener’s Hawaii—now there’s historical fiction par excellence…fascinating!

I believe a reading life can lead to a writing life. It doesn’t have to do so, of course, but let’s turn it around: I can’t imagine being a writer without first having been an avid reader. Of course, reading, especially in the summertime, provides quality R&R for anyone, especially for this old writer after his novel-writing marathons. I wonder how many more of those I can run? Of course, the speed isn’t all that important, but eventually getting across the finish line is.

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Comments are always welcome.

Rembrandt’s Angel. “One Yard inspector had called her Miss Marple. The nickname stuck in spite of her discouraging it, but she had never dealt with homicides.” Ex-MI6 agent and current Scotland Yard Inspector Esther Brookstone becomes obsessed with recovering a Rembrandt painting stolen by the Nazis in World War II. Interpol agent and paramour Bastiann van Coevorden tries to control her obsession and keep her safe. Their quest to recover the painting leads them to an international conspiracy that threatens Europe. Published by Penmore Press, this mystery/thriller is available in ebook and print format from Amazon and as an ebook version from Smashwords and its affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) Also available from the publisher or your local bookstore (if they don’t have it, ask for it). A sequel is coming.

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

Although media people are often featured as characters on TV shows, movies, and now on the Broadway stage, they’re not main characters in my books. Pam Stuart, Detective Castilblanco’s wife, is almost one—she had the crime beat for a NYC TV station for a long time, which is how she met Castilblanco (see The Midas Bomb). A similar relationship is found between DHS agent Ashley Scott and a freelance journalist in The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan. And I poke fun at a TV reporter in More than Human: The Mensa Contagion.

This lack of including media people in my books might seem odd considering I’m a person who believes a journalism degree is a better one to have than an MFA for writing fiction, especially in the mystery, crime, suspense, and thriller genres. A legal or medical degree might be better for legal and medical thrillers, respectively, but I believe a journalism degree or experience in journalism works best in general. That background provides practice in writing minimalist prose that moves a story along and allows the future writer of fiction to become acquainted with many personalities and situations. Journalism was one career I considered early on. I never thought of doing an MFA.

Pam Stuart centers Castilblanco while performing that delicate balancing act so many women have to do—juggling career, wife, and mother roles. You can add to Pam’s resume being married to a cop who has a dangerous job, one that sometimes puts her in danger as well. Ashley Scott is done with her juggling in Virginia Morgan. She has another problem: retirement looms and she is alone, having divorced early on. Sparks fly when she meets the journalist, though. They experience romance as well as danger in the novel.

But what about news cycles? My stories tend to be ahead of them. In The Midas Bomb, where Pam and Castilblanco’s romance takes off, a dirty bomb is featured. This possible terrorist weapon has never been set off in NYC fortunately, although there have been some close calls. It’s always been in the NYPD’s list of WMDs to watch out for. The book also considers Wall Street excesses too, which still continue. (That’s one of my best titles, by the way. In three words, I summarize two of the book’s important themes. Titles are important.)

My sci-fi oeuvre is obviously ahead of news cycles. Written at the same time as Andy Weir’s The Martian, both More than Human and his book predated the news about plans for future Mars colonies. That’s in the second part of my book (Weir never actually establishes a colony); the first part deals with a worldwide pandemic. The virus produces Homo sapiens 2.0 in More than Human is created by ETs. In other words, in contrast to The Last Humans, where the virus is man-made, the virus in More than Human is beneficial in the long run. Still, let’s hope that neither case becomes a real news cycle!

In a sense, Virginia Morgan is sci-fi too, and it forms a bridge between my detective series (the main character Ashley Scott is an old friend of Chen and Castilblanco’s) and the “Clones and Mutants Trilogy.” It’s more thriller than sci-fi, though, and considers an important question: What if a future US government decides to protect state secrets they think elderly agents might divulge?

I do have some ideas for stories about a main character who’s a journalist. I might write a novel with one yet!

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Comments are always welcome.

“Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series,” the National and International Novels. In Angels Need Not Apply, the two NYPD homicide detectives join a national task force to go after a drug cartel leader who has an insidious plan. In Aristocrats and Assassins, the detectives are in Europe, fighting a terrorist who is kidnapping European aristocrats. In Gaia and the Goliaths, they learn about a plot conjured up by a US energy company and a Russian oligarch and set out to stop it. All these ebooks are available on Amazon and Smashwords and the latter’s affiliated retailers (Apple iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.). Current, pithy, and exciting, this is great summer reading!

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

We just finished Prime Weekend. Did you have any fun? While I have a long list of complaints about Amazon, the main one is about their arrogance in thinking they’re the only book retailer in the world. They’re not, but how can authors and publishers get to the others?

For print versions, authors and publishers often do this the traditional way via bookstores, preferably independent ones. (Big book barns like Barnes & Noble are like Amazon—a book gets lost in them. One B&N put my mystery/thriller Rembrandt’s Angel in the art section. Yes, one BISAC Subject Heading was ART015080ART/History/Renaissance—which is wrong because Rembrandt’s art is technically classified as Baroque—but no one looking for mysteries or thrillers would ever find the book where B&N shelved it!). I suppose some bookstores sell or will order ebook versions if the customer asks for one, but that’s an unusual request.

In fact, most ebooks are sold online. But there are many online retailers besides Amazon, and there are other ebook formats besides Amazon’s .mobi. Amazon doesn’t distribute to other retailers either; they ignore them. (No wonder bookstores are hesitant to deal with Create Space, although many small presses use that printer, if only to store printed books in their warehouses.) Most people don’t like monopolies; authors and publishers shouldn’t either.

A huge competitor to Amazon in just about everything retail is Walmart (even in groceries, which is why Amazon bought Whole Foods). They’re competing with Amazon on many fronts, and one of them is ebooks. (Twenty-five years ago Bezos started selling books out of his garage. Now books are just one of many product lines for him.) Walmart has signed a deal with Kobo, a large ebook retailer that’s a subsidiary of Rakuten. A book buyer can purchase an ebook in most Walmart stores or online with Walmart. In other words, Kobo distributes to Walmart. You can bet Amazon never will!

But who distributes to Kobo? Authors and publishers can do it directly (some small presses and self-published authors do this). Or they can do it indirectly by putting an ebook on Smashwords, which distributes to Kobo as well as Apple’s iBooks and Barnes & Noble. In either case, authors and publishers enjoy Rakuten’s worldwide retail reach, providing an alternative to Amazon’s. And Smashwords increases that worldwide reach, distributing to both retailers and lending services.

There’s a meta-theorem in merchandising: Maximizing the places where your product is sold maximizes your sales. The reason is simple: Even without advertising, more people can see your product.  An additional plus to maximizing your number of retail outlets is that Amazon only sells ebooks with their proprietary ebook format .mobi. Many readers want .epub or .pdf formatted ebooks. I’d avoid the latter—it’s too easy to pirate. But .epub is an important and popular format. (Visit the Smashwords website to see the possible formats for ebooks.)

These ebook retail tactics come with a price. You can’t choose them if you want to have access to Amazon marketing; you have to be exclusive to Amazon for that. That doesn’t bother me—Amazon’s marketing options never did anything for me. I’d rather promote my books to all readers, not just those who buy books from Amazon! Especially overseas, where readers often frequent other retailers.

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Comments are always welcome.

“Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series,” the National and International Novels. In Angels Need Not Apply, the two NYPD homicide detectives join a national task force to go after a drug cartel leader who has an insidious plan. In Aristocrats and Assassins, the detectives are in Europe, fighting a terrorist who is kidnapping European aristocrats. In Gaia and the Goliaths, they learn about a plot conjured up by a US energy company and a Russian oligarch and set out to stop it. All these ebooks are available on Amazon and Smashwords and the latter’s affiliated retailers (Apple iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.). Current, pithy, and exciting, this is great summer reading!

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

“Fine. Thank you.” Seven words travelers often learn when visiting countries outside the US. Maybe even more if they’re brushing up on a language learned long ago, either in courses or via total immersion somewhere. It’s a polyglot world.

There are over 800 languages spoken in NYC.  This polyglot nature of the Big Apple can cause problems for the foreign traveler to the city. Most signage is in both English and Spanish, but what do speakers of other languages do? Most who live in the NYC urban area speak some English, but visitors? Maybe not.

So let’s consider “cultural appropriation.” Is including snippets from other languages in our books wrong? If you answer yes, will you go even further and call it cultural appropriation? And what about characters with a cultural background who speak those other languages…or anything but English?

Language is part of culture, and fiction writers consider all sorts of cultures in their books. I often include snippets of Spanish, but there’s even some Russian in No Amber Waves of Grain. I even consider ET cultures—Rangers, Tali, and Usk in The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection, and Fistians in The Secret of the Urns (A.B. Carolan was inspired by one of my short stories). They have their own languages and cultures. The Rangers’ language is so complex that a speedy AI is needed to translate it.

I don’t apologize for these snippets, and I don’t apologize about creating characters with other cultural backgrounds. In fact, I insist the snippets add necessary cultural background to the story. I don’t expect the reader to know the languages either. No one needs a translation of “Hasta la vista, baby,” but, if a snippet is obscure, I’ll translate it in some way that integrates into the story.

Common food names often aren’t English. “Baklava” is used in Rembrandt’s Angel; “strudel” is used in the sequel, Son of Thunder (soon to be published by Penmore Press). That brings us full circle to NYC where most people know both words.

Okay, you’re not from the NYC area. If I were writing fifty years ago, I might not want to use those words. But America has become more homogeneous over the last five decades, via TV, movies, the internet—and yes, books. Like it or not, globalism exists. We cannot ignore other cultures. English has grown accordingly, as has every language, because business, cultural events, and many other things depend on it.

Books aren’t the only ways to travel around the world. They provide a means to understand the world. I learned more about Chinese culture in the third Bourne book (not the movie), Donna Carrick’s The First Excellence, and Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem than I could ever learn by any other means except going to that country and living there for a time. Truth be told, I never want to go to China because of its political conditions, not even as a tourist, but I can try to understand Chinese culture through books.

I embrace other cultures in my reading and writing. They fascinate me. That doesn’t mean that I practice cultural appropriation. It means that I recognize we are all humans flying along on Spaceship Earth, each one of us an individual with a cultural background. The latter might be disappearing as the planet becomes more homogenized, but we can still celebrate the cultural differences…and those include language.

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Comments are always welcome.

“Detectives Chen & Castilblanco Series,” the NYC novels. In The Midas Bomb, terrorism and Wall Street excesses go hand-in-hand, with an evil genius lurking in the wings. In Teeter-Totter Between Lust and Murder, Castilblanco is out to prove that Chen is innocent of murder. In The Collector, the detectives find that sex trafficking and stolen art provide an unusual mix. And in Family Affairs, Castilblanco helps some family members who are in trouble. All these ebooks are available on Amazon and Smashwords and the latter’s affiliated retailers (Apple iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.). Current, pithy, and exciting, this is great summer reading!

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

I’ve seen some original and interesting titles lately just browsing through Amazon or bookstores. Many authors have learned that titles and covers are eye-catchers.

As examples, let me consider some from my fellow writers (you can email me and critique mine): Sins of the Sister, Waiting in the Shadows, Rose Scented Murder, Reciprocal Evil, Dead Shrinks Don’t Talk, Last Gasp…the list is long. These are all eye-catchers.

Consider Sins of the Sister. Don’t you just want to know what sins the sister committed? (I’m reviewing that book tomorrow, by the way.) Or Reciprocal Evil—who’s reciprocating with whom? (I already reviewed that book.)

Dead Shrinks Don’t Talk grabbed me too. It’s a tautology, of course, but it’s funny—a lot of shrinks talk a lot, drilling down on their patients with questions to discover the origins of their neuroses. Maybe a patient doesn’t like that too much? (Again, see my review of the book.)

Last Gasp didn’t tell me too much, but it did tell me someone was going to die. Who? How? Why? Those kind of questions generated by a title can attract readers to the book too. (See my review.)

Pundits say titles should be short. That’s malarkey because length isn’t a criterion. Whether short or long, titles should grab the reader’s attention. It’s hard to be original in a few words, but originality always helps—a variant on someone else’s title doesn’t cut it for me. Titles in a book series that are A, B, C,… + Is for Something? That’s been overdone. Gone Anything and Girl on the…—they’ve been overdone.

Maybe I’m weird or jaded, but I want title, cover, blurb, and “peek inside” to get my attention when I’m browsing for a book (the “peek inside” might be a physical one in a bookstore and the blurb on the back of the book). On Amazon, I don’t care about the book’s reviews either. (I only care about my own because they provide excerpts useful for promo purposes. A hearty thanks to all reviewers, though, no matter whose books you review. You’re helping both readers and writers.)

I can get by a bad title if I like the cover, blurb, or “peek inside.” I need at least two of the four. Big Five covers are often terrible, especially when they’re abstract art that should be on floor tiles and not the front of a book. It seems they’re often saying, “We’re the Big Five, so we don’t have to have great covers.” Their titles often aren’t that original either, so the blurbs and “peek inside” better grab me. (I don’t care who the author is.)

While I’ve read some books that have turned out okay once I’m into them (mostly when I’m doing my official reviewing with Bookpleasures), for R&R reading I have to be without another book to read to keep going sometimes with a book that just doesn’t work for me. The tests I mentioned above help avoid that.

The title, though, is the first thing I or any other reader sees, especially if we’re in the bookstore or library just examining book spines. Maybe that’s one thing Amazon has over a bookstore or library: the browser sees the title and cover, and, with one click, s/he can see the title, cover, and blurb, and with another “peek inside.” Efficient with one book, but less efficient because of the number of books on Amazon—finding a book to read is easier in a bookstore or library. Or electronically via a small press’s catalog where the reader’s eyes don’t glaze over with information overload.

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Comments are always welcome.

“Detectives Chen & Castilblanco Series,” the NYC novels. In The Midas Bomb, terrorism and Wall Street excesses go hand-in-hand, with an evil genius lurking in the wings. In Teeter-Totter Between Lust and Murder, Castilblanco is out to prove that Chen is innocent of murder. In The Collector, the detectives find that sex trafficking and stolen art provide an unusual mix. And in Family Affairs, Castilblanco helps some family members who are in trouble. All these ebooks are available on Amazon and Smashwords and the latter’s affiliated retailers (Apple iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.). Current, pithy, and exciting, this is great summer reading!

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

When A.B. Carolan was writing Mind Games, he was torn between various names for a principal character. Should he call the android cop Olivaw, Rebus, or Rubik? Rebus won, in honor of Ian Rankin’s inspector.

But both Olivaw and Rebus are cops, so Olivaw fit the bill in that sense. Daneel Olivaw was Asimov’s android detective who worked with Elijah Bailey in the sci-fi mysteries Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun. Given that Mind Games is part of the “ABC Sci-Fi Mystery Series” of books written by A.B., that was another plus for using Olivaw. But I’d honored Daneel in Rogue Planet, so I told A.B. that would be two honorifics, which seemed excessive.

Rubik was an alternative because of the famous cube that became such a fad. It’s really a monument to logic and reason and could be an iconic representation for AI. The android in Mind Games is a walking AI and part of an AI network serving to augment a planetary police force.

I was reminded of Rubik’s cube recently for two reasons. One was my observation that Ms. Ginger Zee, GMA’s weather person, was wearing a dress that consisted of square patches with the same color scheme as the cube—garishly strong but happy colors that looked better on the cube than on her (sorry, Ginger). Just my opinion, of course. I’m no fashion expert.

Many see the cube as a game, but there’s math lurking in its twists and turns. There aren’t many simpler structures in advanced algebra than groups. You have one basic operation (like multiplication or addition—let’s write it as *) and one inverse operation in a group, and the group can either be finite, like the one describing Rubik’s cube, or infinite.

The Rubik’s cube’s group is constructed by labeling each of the 48 non-center facets with the integers 1 to 48. Each configuration of the cube can be represented as a permutation of the labels 1 to 48, depending on the position of each facet. Using this representation, the solved cube is the identity permutation which leaves the cube unchanged, while the twelve cube moves that rotate a layer of the cube 90 degrees are represented by their respective permutations. The Rubik’s cube group is non-commutative because a*b isn’t the same as b*a—doing two sequences of cube moves in a different order can result in a different configuration.

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I’ve expressed before how much I like British-style mysteries, defining them as any crime story featuring a DCI or DI in a commonwealth setting—P.D. James, Louise Penny, and Ian Rankin oeuvres are famous examples. (The android agent in Mind Games is named Rebus for a reason—A.B. Carolan shares my predilection. See Tuesday’s post. The name of the main character is Della. Does everyone remember Perry Mason’s trusty aide?)

Unless one of their ebooks goes on sale, I don’t read any of those famous authors anymore—their ebooks are just too expensive. The Big Five wants to keep readers reading print versions, so they price ebooks high, almost at the same price as print, which is absurd. I won’t pay more than $6 for an ebook (my limit used to be $5, but inflation exists for the book business too).

Small press and self-published authors have ebooks that are more reasonably priced (like mine). I have managed to find economical substitutes for Mr. Rankin’s books. Actually there are probably many, but I’ll talk about two, books from Jill Paterson and Val Penny. Different peas in a pod (pun intended), these authors have created DCIs who are quite interesting. Jill is British but lives in Australia; Val is American but lives in Scotland. I’ve been following their mystery/crime series, Jill’s about Inspector Fitzjohn and Val’s about Inspector Hunter.

Fitzjohn is a quiet detective who grows orchids and is a bit like James’s inspector; Hunter is more forceful and a bit like Rankin’s inspector. Ms. Paterson’s Australian stories are civilized with characters of good breeding, even the villains; Ms. Penny’s stories are grittier and focused on the underbelly of Edinburgh life, with characters who could have appeared in a Rankin novel.

Their stories are quality entertainment. Moreover, they fit into my reading budget. I can buy three or four of their books for the price of one of James’s or Rankin’s. They’re reasonably priced; I get my money’s worth.

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Esther Brookstone in Rembrandt’s Angel (Penmore Press, 2017) obsesses over recovering a painting; in the sequel Son of Thunder (to be published by Penmore Press), she obsesses over finding St. John the Divine’s tomb. Obsession is common enough in fiction, and it takes many forms.

In Teeter-Totter between Lust and Murder (Carrick Publishing, 2013), a senator is obsessed with making the country great again…his definition of greatness, of course. In Aristocrats and Assassins (Carrick Publishing, 2014), a terrorist is obsessed with vengeance against those who betrayed his homeland…and against Detective Castilblanco, whom he met when the detective was a USN SEAL. (Esther’s paramour Bastiann van Coevorden has a cameo in that book.) Obsession is a strong emotion human beings that develops for many reasons.

I know something about milder forms of obsession. I obsess over reading and writing now. The first is easy to satisfy: I pick out a good book and obsess over finishing it—I can’t wait to find out if the thriller’s main character prevails, or how the mystery’s detective resolves the case, or how the sci-fi story ends. Some people would call those books ones readers can’t put down—real page-turners (page-swipers? I’m usually on my Kindle). A story can grab me that way.

Even with my own stories, I can obsess. I wrote The Midas Bomb (the first edition) in a few weeks. I obsessed with finishing the story that my characters were practically writing for me. That often happens to me. (The major changes made in the second edition—Carrick Publishing, 2016—were to put Detective Castilblanco in first person to match other books in the series.)

Let’s call that “getting in the zone” in our writing because “obsession” often has a negative aura for some people. (Esther’s obsessions are positive; the terrorist’s and senator’s are negative.) When a plot seems to unfold without much intervention from the author, its characters really grab the author, and the author is eager to know how the story ends, that’s a good obsession.

But authors have to be careful. Finishing the novel-writing marathon is only part of writing fiction. In addition to making sure other elements work well—title, beginning, and end; characterization; logical structure; and so forth—there are various editing steps and proofreading after formatting, whether the author is self- or traditionally published. And, even though I’m a touch typist, my creative mind often gets ahead of my typing, causing me to leave out words and make typos. In other words, my obsession with writing a novel must carry me beyond that finish line in the novel-writing marathon.

I don’t obsess with every novel—some just represent blood, sweat, and tears as I try to make things work out. That’s part of the writing adventure. We can turn those stories into good ones too with some hard work. Are they better or worse than the ones we’ve become obsessed with? It might not matter to readers. As stated above, their obsessions with a book are a bit different. That’s okay.

Maybe the best novels are the ones both readers and writers have obsessed about. That implies a connection between author and readers that’s wonderful and makes publishing fiction a great human experience.

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Comments are always welcome.

Rogue Planet. Sci-fi books are generally “evergreen” books, at least the ones involving the future of human beings in our galaxy—they never get old. This is one of mine. If you read A.B. Carolan’s Mind Games, you’ve learned how difficult it is for ITUIP (“Interstellar Trade Union of Independent Planets”) to control the colonization of new worlds and bring them into the trade union. Eden is such a world, forced back into virtual savagery after one tribe takes over and establishes a brutal theocracy. It’s up to the son of the deposed king to do something about that. Hard sci-fi with Game-of-Thrones fantasy elements, action, suspense, and intrigue await this novel’s reader. Available on Amazon in both ebook and print format, and in ebook format on Smashwords and all its affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.).

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