Many of us start our work day with coffee. Let’s forget about whether there are any health positives or negatives for doing so. Everything in moderation, yada yada yada, makes it a harmless addiction with mental benefits—that jolt of caffeine is a pleasant way to jumpstart our brains.

Of course, there’s coffee and then there’s great coffee. I’ve waged war against Starbucks coffee in these pages because their coffee is mediocre at best and tastes like burnt toast at worst. (Go ahead and sue me, Starbucks. The adage “any publicity is good publicity” applies, and it might be bad publicity for the ex-CEO who’s out to ruin Dem chances in 2020, a gift for “he who shall not be named”). Dunkin’s tastes like dirty water. (A personal opinion, just like my opinion about Starbucks coffee, but honest opinions are often attacked in litigious America. You can’t post a negative review of a business establishment anymore. And forget about writing one about  a doctor who leaves a surgical instrument inside you.)

Our local Montclair diner (where Mikie Sherrill breakfasted on election day) serves a decent cup o’ joe. Good restaurants often do the same (my qualifier “good” depends on that, of course). I prefer the coffee I make at home, though—always good Colombian Arabica roasted just enough to pop out that rich flavor during the brew, and not too much to make it burnt-toast-flavored slop. I don’t drink that much (everything in moderation, yada yada yada)—just two mugs in the morning with a few additional smaller cups if we go out (decaf if it’s late).

I had the wonderful and interesting experience of teaching and doing research in Colombia for many years. The Colombians always told me they exported their best coffee. Didn’t seem like it. Maybe just jerkin’ this gringo’s chain? The coffee there was always good, and that tinto was served everywhere—you couldn’t talk business with anyone unless you started with tintos served in those dainty little cups, smaller than our coffee cups but bigger than espresso cups. (The word tinto is used for coffee in Colombia, not wine. For the latter, one must be more explicit and use vino tinto or vino rojo.)

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[Note from Steve: You can find Part One in the “Writing” archive of this blog.]

In a much earlier post, I was a bit harsh about suggesting you use the NY Times Book Review for the bottom of your bird cages. I actually scan it every Saturday or Sunday (it’s part of the Sunday edition, but we get that on Saturday…and we have no birds now). I scan it on the slight chance that I’ll see some book I’ve read. I’ll have to confess that I’ve never purchased a book that was listed therein, either before the purchase or after. Yes, I’ve received some as gifts, but frankly only a small number pique my interest. Why is that?

First, there are books by celebs—memoirs, confessions, whatever you want to call them. The Big Five publishing conglomerates love’em because enough readers buy them as an escape from their mundane and/or exploited lives, and celebs enrich themselves (but not their ghostwriters) by “writing” them. Boring.

Second, there are books that wannabe political candidates write. There will be many of those as politicians preen and posture looking towards 2020 (I think President Obama had two, Kamala Harris already has one, and he who shall not be named had that book about how to fail at making deals). Independent of party affiliation, they try to establish the prospective candidate’s creds and their good girl’s or boy’s sterling personalities. If they’re reading this (highly unlikely, if only because many aren’t avid readers), let me just announce here that I don’t vote on the basis of promises and/or lies; I vote for the candidates with reasoned and logical policies where they have analyzed what the consequences will be after they’ve enacted them. 99% of politicians fail me in this respect. Their pre-candidacy books usually fail too.

Third, most fiction from the Big Five doesn’t interest me or outright turns me off, especially those wonderful books in that throw-away category of literary fiction. I select fiction to read by considering the book’s promise for entertaining me and/or enlightening me, irrespective of author, not some formulaic genre spiel that has been copied so many times I have to wonder how they were able to avoid being accused of plagiarism. In other words, I want a fresh, good story that keeps me reading. (How many ebooks have I purchased and stopped reading after a few chapters? Books from the Big Five with endorsements from other Big Five authors? Yes, but also from indie and small press authors whose books I often turn to because they are fresh, good stories. And the Big Five books are too expensive.)

Yes, celeb’s books, politician’s books, and formulaic fiction books fill the pages of the NY Times Book Review. I’ve stopped asking why. You’d think they would too if they were really interested in reading and literacy.

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Comments are always welcome!

Aristocrats and Assassins. #4 in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series” is my favorite C&C book. In one very positive review with many kudos, the reviewer also commented that it could also serve as a model in a master class for authors who want to create a series: like all my books, it’s a completely independent story involving the detectives. Casilblanco is finally on vacation in Europe with his wife, and the action stays there. The assassins are terrorists, and the aristocrats are some European royals. Available at Amazon and Smashwords and all the latter’s affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc).

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

Two recent events brought back fond memories. I downloaded Theodore P. Druch’s Pure Gold, a collection of three novellas inspired by hard-boiled crime fiction, and ABC News decided to revisit the Robert Blake case. Although I have written hard-boiled crime stories myself, the fond memories were about a childhood where I “graduated” from reading one Hardy Boys story (The Secret of Wildcat Swamp) to books by authors who comprised the hard-boiled movement.

Pure Gold and Blake AKA Beretta are unrelated, of course. The connection was only made by my weird mind. (Many authors are always a wee bit weird, so I don’t feel guilty about that). I haven’t read Druch’s book yet (started it), but any homage to hard-boiled will probably be entertaining when I read it. My thoughts on Blake’s case are more complicated.

ABC’s biopic (exposé? scandal piece?) is yet another show that resurrects another shocking case as a technique to increase Nielsen ratings. I have no use for this practice because it only appeals to the crowds that love scandal. Blake’s character, though, added to my love for tough guy who fights crime. My Detective Castilblanco is a mix of such characters that my weird mind has created; you can see a lot of those hard-boiled cops and PIs in him.

Blake’s history (I’m sure ABC’s presentation will be slanted)—accused of murdering his wife, acquitted in a jury trial, and then sued for wrongful death by a vindictive family out to ruin his life, which they did—is reminiscent of the O.J. case. Whether you believe either one of these famous stars is guilty or not does NOT matter. They were acquitted of two heinous crimes, and families who reject those criminal court judgments should NOT be allowed to sue for wrongful death after the fact—in other words, they shouldn’t have a consolation prize. Criminal trials have much stricter tests for guilt than civil trials, so their decisions should take precedence. (Adopting that policy in our litigious judicial system would free up the courts quite a bit!) This is a serious flaw in our justice system that everyone forgets about until some TV producer gets the idea of resurrecting the scandal. (ABC isn’t as guilty of this as streaming video services like Amazon, NetFlix, and so forth).

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One advantage for authors becoming minimalist writers is that they can leave a lot to readers’ imaginations. Some readers might not realize it, but their own minds are wonderful instruments for filling in the gaps and creating their own images about what is going on from just a few suggestions offered by the writer. The Goldilocks Principle applies. Not too many suggestions, not too few, but just enough. This technique is especially beneficial when writing scenes containing sex, violence, and other action scenes. Readers’ imaginations can run wild with the cues provided by the writer and make their reading more of a breathless and more personal roller coaster ride.

Unless writers are writing erotica or porn, they can avoid the plumbing issues in sex scenes in this manner. While readers aren’t medical doctors or forensic specialists with a deep understanding of human anatomy, most understand the anatomical issues. Such scenes are still consequential even when the prose is minimalist, but the events leading up to them are often more important. Even in bodice rippers, the seduction is more interesting than the consummation!

While sex scenes might contain violence, especially in mysteries and thrillers but also sci-fi, other scenes can contain it too. How much blood and gore should a writer include? I suppose there’s a niche for those stories that describe a lot of violence—horror and sexual perversion stories come to mind—but I tend to avoid those scenes as a speed reader and get on to the meatier stuff (pardon the bad pun). (Reading preferences are subjective, so some readers might relish that material.) Again, being a minimalist writer, I focus on events leading up to that violence and subsequent events after it occurs.

But such scenes appear in many of my plots. My characters are human (or have some human characteristics, even if they’re strange ETs), so they have to act like humans. For me, the plot involving those characters drives me to include such scenes—in other words, they just lie somewhere on the line that defines the spectrum of all human behavior, even if they’re at the extremes of that distribution.

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[Note from Steve: The reader may consider this post a sequel to a previous one, “Real Events in Fiction.”]

In your area the percentage might be different, but in news about my tristate area (NJ, NY, Conn), the media generally focuses on the negative and ignores the positive—maybe 90% of the news stories are negative, especially those involving the Big Apple. That gives me lots of ideas for mysteries and thrillers, but it’s an unwarranted bias created by the media. Since 9/11, NYC has been one of the safest cities in the world.

Good writers follow Clancy’s maxim that fiction must seem real, but should they follow that bleak reality of local, national, and international news stories to make depressing plots? In addition to cozies and romantic comedies, even more gripping mysteries and thrillers seem not to satisfy Clancy’s maxim when measured against the perceived reality reported on by the news media. In other words, that comparison would imply they’re unreal.

Sure, novels contain bad events. Mysteries have some bodies or evil conspiracies, and crime fighters—cops, FBI agents, and even ordinary citizens—sleuth around to find out who the bad guys are. Thrillers let readers know who the perps are up-front and follow what the protagonists do to thwart their nefarious activities—again, the latter might be ordinary citizens often struggling against overwhelming odds to rise up and stop what’s going on with extraordinary deeds. In any case, both mysteries and thrillers often end in an upbeat fashion, although some heroines and heroes might make the ultimate sacrifice along the way. According to the news media, that usually doesn’t happen in reality (although, to their credit, they’ll report on the sacrifices first responders often make, if they don’t take them to task).

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When I read Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal, I was impressed at the get-go because the author starts with real events—the war with Algeria waged by France under DeGaulle—and continues the plot from there to make a tense, taut thriller. Other thrillers by the same author often followed the same scheme.

Mixing real events into our fiction can help make the fiction seem more real. If the author can get the reader thinking, “Could this really happen?” or even “This could really happen,” the reader’s interest invariably increases. But there are dangers.

Subsequent events in the real world might overtake those included events, for example, and make the fiction based on them seem less real. And the fiction writer cannot change the outcome of those real events in the real world.

A case in point: The painting in Rembrandt’s Angel, “An Angel with Titus’ Features,” is a real Rembrandt. It has never been recovered. My fictional character Esther Brookstone becomes obsessed with recovering it. [Spoiler alert.] If she had recovered it, as some readers wanted, that would contradict the fact that the painting is still missing. (This is one reason why the Botticelli painting in Son of Thunder, the sequel to Rembrandt’s Angel, is completely fictional, although Sandro could have painted such a painting.)

Another real event in Rembrandt’s Angel that was dangerous to include is BREXIT. It’s happening as you read this article, of course (and PM might receive a no confidence vote as I write this), and Esther comments about it as if it were in the past, but I’ll be in hot water if somehow the Brits change their mind and stay in the E.U.! (That’s possible after Parliament’s torpedoing May’s withdrawal plan.)

Forsyth played it safe. His plot was about an assassin whose identity the French and Brits never discover. In other words, we, the readers, can neither confirm nor deny his real existence, or his death, for that matter. All I can say is that so far my two examples that were more dangerous for me to include in my novel haven’t yet caused problems—the painting hasn’t been recovered and BREXIT is still on track, for good or bad (Esther seems indifferent about it).

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Evidence accrues all the time showing how Amazon, the world’s mega-retailer and biggest online bookstore, is neither an author’s nor a publisher’s friend.

Authors Guild, which is more a representative for Big Five publishers’ and their authors’ interests than a true union for writers, has recently added more logs to that bonfire. They’re alarmed that their author members only made an average of $20K in 2018, down from the previous year. I’m embarrassed to say how much I made (not my main motivation, of course), but their reasons resonate a wee bit with me.

Whether self- (indie-) or traditionally published, if you don’t play by Amazon’s rules, they will bury your books. They reward those who do play by their rules (Mark Dawson, for example), but the rules are prejudicial for both publishers and authors because they support Amazon’s monopolistic policies. Their message to Ms. or Mr. Author: make your books exclusive on Amazon, sell pages worth of your writing for pennies to Prime members, and use our marketing services, and we won’t bury your book. Ms. or Mr. Publisher, pay our commissions and fees and use our marketing services (it’s harder for Amazon to demand exclusivity here), and we won’t bury the books in your catalog.

To be fair, Amazon isn’t the only retailer that buries books. While Smashwords doesn’t overtly promote exclusivity (far from it, because they distribute to affiliated retailers, which Amazon doesn’t do), they also bury books too. And they use the same two criteria to justify it.

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A belated welcome to 2019! I’m not suspicious. I was born in an even year, married in an odd year, and our kids were born in even years. 2019 will bring what it will…and I wish all of you a safe, prosperous, and happy next twelve months. Thanks for being readers.

Publishing in 2018. Two articles about publishing caught my interest in the NY Times over the holidays. The first covered the expiration of copyrights. Some classics and many old books will be losing their copyrights. That mainly affects publishers and deceased authors’ estates, but it’s a warning that nothing in this business is permanent. Copyrights are long duration for a reason, but they’re not permanent.

The second article spoke to production problems. It wasn’t about the Times having printing and delivery problems or the hacking of press installations on the West Coast that affected West Coast newspapers as well as West Coast editions of the Times and Wall Street Journal. It seems that Big Five publishers had problems with keeping up with demand for popular books over the holidays. Maybe that helped indie authors and small presses whose offerings have to compete with the NYC conglomerates. I always ask for books for my gifts, and the production shortages didn’t seem to bother friends and relatives working off my wish list. What about you?

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Many Big Five publishers’ book contracts have them now. Most small presses don’t. What are they?

Mostly thanks to Twitter being a haven for far-left and far-right trolls and home for the rants of other special interest groups , some authors have been slammed as they’re tried in the court of public opinion. Whether the actions of these authors is reprehensible or not, this can especially hurt the Big Five’s bottom line, hence the clauses.

In an exposé in the NY Times (Jan. 6), I was surprised to read about this practice. And some authors are rebelling. For example, Ursula K. Le Guin, the famous sci-fi author, wrote a scathing satire against Harper Collins when she saw such a clause in her 2011 contract (ironically that publisher is owned by Rupert Murdoch, whose Fox News has had a few #MeToo targets in its ranks). Ms. Le Guin, of course, had no reprehensible behavior; she just objected to the idea of this morality clause.

The danger of these clauses might be as bad for authors as a Twitter attack: the publishers also get to serve as judge and jury for charges that are time and culture dependent. Consider Lady Chatterly’s Lover or Fanny Hill. There are groups who vocally protested against both books and partially succeeded in banning them long before Twitter or the internet even existed. The point is that censorship should not be placed in the hands of public opinion (where the most vocal can outrant people with common sense) or editors and publishers who can even use these clauses to get out of a contract. If there were advances associated with the contract (rare these days), the author can even be forced to give them back with some of these clauses.

Of course, an author can find a lawyer and sue his publisher. Whether s/he does that or not, the reading public at large doesn’t ever seem to know what’s going on, especially if the author isn’t well known. The publishers can just sweep the censorship dirt they’ve created right under their chief editor’s rug.

For publishers, books are a business. For authors, they might just write for the love of writing. The two are often at odds, especially with Big Five publishers, where books are a BIG, LUCRATIVE business. Bless Ursula for fighting back, but I wonder how many less known authors have had their book contracts canceled.

Small presses seem to be immune to this. I know a few who want to know what role sex and violence plays in a novel up front, but I don’t know of any who include a morality clause in case authors and/or their books are attacked by denizens of the Twittersphere after the fact. Maybe the Big Five publishers who are including these morality clauses should practice a wee bit of preventative medicine? And follow the lead of the small presses?

I’m an avid reader, so I’d like to write something from the reader’s viewpoint on this issue (not considered in that Times article, by the way). I censor my own reading! I won’t read erotica, for example, and I also skip bodice rippers. But I respect any reader’s right to read in those genres. Parents should also recognize that kids mature at different rates. They probably should censor their children’s reading via reasoned recommendations, but they should also censor video games (blood and gore and sexual attacks somehow seem worse graphically than they are in a novel) and the streaming video and podcasts kids often watch. That’s where the censorship belongs, not with publishers who are only reacting in a knee-jerk fashion to attacks from the Twittersphere.

These are just my opinions, of course. What do you think about this issue?

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Comments are always welcome!

Goin’ the Extra Mile. The U.S. made the MECHs (“Mechanically Enhanced Cybernetic Humans”), the Russians stole them, and now the Chinese will kidnap Mary Jo Melendez and her family to get the. Taking place on the West Coast of the U.S., France, and China, this mystery/thriller with non-stop action and suspense is the perfect cure for your winter blahs. Available in ebook format from Amazon and Smashwords and from all the latter’s affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.).

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

They often appear as settings in novels, especially mysteries, thrillers, and romance books. They’re also often characters in their own right too.

Consider New York City. You’ll hear only a sampling of its many languages on any trip there. You’ll have access to just a many ethnic food restaurants too. And, even though crime dominates the local news, after 9/11 it has become one of the safest big cities in the world—vibrant, exciting, and full of culture.

That said, it’s not my favorite big city, although it’s a mere thirteen miles away. San Francisco, Vienna, Dublin, and Buenos Aires head that list.

In my novel writing research, I recently revisited San Francisco in my new mystery/thriller Goin’ the Extra Mile. Most of that book takes place in Beijing, but I had to research San Francisco too because I haven’t been there much since I left my old day-job and settled down to become a full-time writer on the East Coast. That novel was a return to California for me in general, although my upcoming post-apocalyptic thriller The Last Humans will continue that.

From my time spent living in Colombia, you might think Bogotá would be my favorite Colombian city (it too is very big and bustling!). A recent travel page in the NY Times was dedicated to the local sites the traveler can find there, and it’s featured in my sci-fi thriller Soldiers of God. But Medellin is my favorite Colombian city, and Buenos Aires, a European-like metropolis, is my favorite South American city. I might have to write a book with Medellin and Buenos Aires as settings. They’re related in strange ways—the Medellin dialect is similar to the Porteño dialect, and Argentine tangos are the rage in both cities.

Vienna, Austria plays a role in my upcoming novel Son of Thunder, the sequel to Rembrandt’s Angel, although its role is more like a cameo (several, in fact, but you’ll have to be a good detective to find the one corresponding to St. John the Divine). So does Trieste, Italy. Again, these two big cities are not only related culturally, but also historically—Trieste has many Austrian influences because it used to be part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When I spent five weeks in Italy (during my previous academic life), I liked Trieste better than Rome (which also has a cameo in Son of Thunder). But Vienna is special.

Some of the sites in Dublin appear on my “About the Author” web page at this website. I felt right at home in that wonderful city. It’s probably also time for me to write a novel with Dublin as a setting. But with all those great Irish writers (one reason quotes from George Bernard Shaw are featured in Rembrandt’s Angel), I’m reluctant to do so. But I also liked Cork and Donegal, so maybe A. B. Carolan will help me create settings for an Irish tour de force in the future. Maybe with a Garda inspector as main character?

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Comments are always welcome!

Rembrandt’s Angel. Esther Brookstone, Scotland Yard Inspector in the Art and Antiques Division, is obsessed with recovering a Rembrandt stolen by the Nazis in World War Two. Paramour Bastiann van Coevorden, and Interpol agent, tries to channel and control her obsession. The two get more than they bargained for as they discover what the stolen paintings are financing. Follow the adventures of these sleuths who are 21^st century clones of Dame Agatha’s famous characters, Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot. Available in ebook format on Amazon and Smashwords and all the latter’s retail affiliates, and in print format on Amazon or your favorite local bookstore (if they don’t have it, ask for it).

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