I liked this slogan from small-press publisher Black Opal Books the moment I saw it. The Barbara Tuchman quote on small-press publisher Penmore Press’s website also inspires me: “Books are the carriers of civilization….” Yes, I’ve published with both Black Opal and Penmore, but I’m just leading into the theme of this post. They represent different ways to express that theme, something that motivated me to begin writing my stories and putting them “out there” about fifteen years ago.

Maybe that theme is a meta-theme—one that rises above all adages and platitudes about storytelling and explains why fiction entertains and informs us and why we need it as human beings. We have been telling stories since prehistoric times. Storytelling makes us human. Yes, books are the carriers of civilization, but storytelling was an essential stimulus for its development.

When I was in junior high (middle school for people on the East Coast and Mid-America), I was already looking for a career, something I could imagine doing for many years and not get tired of it. One possibility was anthropology or archaeology. I checked out all the books on those subjects our public library had and read most of them. Besides concluding that the subjects were too complex because human beings are complicated and then opting for math and the so-called hard sciences instead, I also learned how the storytelling tradition grew over time and civilized us (and even created cultural revolutions in some cases!).

It all started with oral tradition, of course. I revisited that in Sing a Zamba Galactica, the second book in the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy” (all three books are now sold together in an economically priced bundle). The ETs who human beings encountered on the planet New Haven in the 82 Eridani star system are very strange, and they have an even stranger language, Buzzspeak (the human name for it, of course—they also have an underwater language that contains sonar images). These ETs are superb storytellers. They essentially communicate via stories. The human colonists on New Haven need the help of an AI to judiciously translate and edit those stories into Standard, humans’ language in the future (a descendant of English, Mandarin, and other languages).

I didn’t dwell much on the sociology of those ETs the humans end up calling Rangers (why the name? that’s part of the story!). Although the ETs’ appearance is strange, their culture is beaver-like. And they have a difficult time being alone outside their clans, but they manage. (In particular, the trilogy shows this numerous times, and A. B. Carolan continues to show this in The Secret of the Urns and Mind Games, the latter due out soon.) But they always communicate among themselves by telling stories; that’s how Buzzspeak works…and it’s how they think.

It’s how I think too. Although I’m an ex-scientist, my love for and use of language wins out over experiments, data and its analyses, and equations. And, as the Black Opal Books motto states, I must tell my stories just like those Rangers do.

(more…)

Many of my characters are strong, smart women modeled loosely after those I’ve had the privilege of meeting during my lifetime. The same is true about my ex-military characters. I’ve known quite a few real one too. (Sometimes they’re the same). There’s something about people in the military that appeals to me. I’m neither violent nor aggressive as a person, so the je-ne-sais-quoi I like about their personalities is hard to pin down. The order they embrace in their lives both in and out of the service; their skills at decision making, including snap judgments; and their strength and fortitude—all are admirable.

Some people who know me wonder why I have this admiration for people who are serving and have served our country. They know me as basically a pragmatic progressive (that’s in the vernacular now, perhaps a better replacement for “left-leaning centrist”). Maybe some of these people just equate our nation’s military to conservative, even far-right, political views. Dunno. But I do know it’s not true. Many of my older relatives fought in the Second World War. And many of our finest youth enlisted after 9/11. Their political proclivities didn’t seem to matter. And one thing is for sure: my admiration has nothing to do with politics. It has more to do with efficiency, moral fiber, and dedication, just to name a few things.

My son’s godfather was a member of the Colombian Air Force, or FAC, to use the acronym (military-speak is full of acronyms, one of the negatives—this one means Fuerza Aerea Colombiana). An upstanding gentleman, he represented most of what I admire. Exactly what you would ideally want as a godfather for your son—respectable, dignified, honorable, efficient, and a moral person as well.  He landed a wounded Mirage on its belly and walked away. He also piloted the Colombian president around in that country’s equivalent of Air Force One. He railed against terrorism long before 9/11. How ironic that his son was killed in that horrible attack! (My very first book, Full Medical, is dedicated to that son who was also like a son to me.)

My son’s godfather never rose to extreme heights  in the military echelons of Colombia for a variety of reasons (except in a plane), but one reason was that higher positions were too political. We have that same problem in the US. I admired those military types I knew who were below the political ranks of generals and admirals. (OK, I knew one VIP military man who once was provost of West Point—or whatever they call them there. I admired him too.) All of my characters, at least the protagonists, were in those lower echelons before returning to civilian life.

(more…)

Many residents in Montclair, NJ where I live are associated with the publishing industry—editors, journalists, screenwriters, and book authors. We’re just thirteen miles from the Lincoln Tunnel into Manhattan, so that makes sense. People stay close but move out of NYC to have some room for their growing families, and these people associated with the publishing industry are no exceptions.

There are pros and cons for Montclair authors. The big positive is that these people surround me and enrich my life as a writer. The big negative is that local bookstores have never paid any attention to me. That’s just non-productive whining, of course, and I understand where that attitude comes from: we’re too close to the Big Five, those big publishing conglomerates that, together with their big name authors, still dominate the book publishing business. Bookstores are overwhelmed with Big Five books, so mongrels like me (traditionally and self-published authors) are puny signals lost in the noise created by the Big Five.

One place where the Big Five can’t dominate are those local library shelves that feature local authors. Libraries feature their local authors, even in Montclair. There are many reasons for them to do this. The first is that the library patrons like to see books by local authors. We’re all part of the same community, after all. The second is that local authors often donate books to our local libraries. I’d be surprised if the Big Five or any of their authors do that.

I was reading our great little local newspaper awhile ago, The Montclair Local (it’s killing the older one, The Montclair Times, especially after some big newspaper conglomerate bought it). I was surprised to see Soldiers of God, my 2008 sci-fi thriller, in a pic of a rack in the Montclair Public Library containing books by local writers (that’s a print version from Infinity; there’s a 2014 ebook second edition, and I provided no link to the first because there are major changes between them). Most scientists, even those no longer practicing their professions, are observant, and, as an ex-scientist, I’m no exception. Of course the book has a striking cover (both editions, but the Infinity edition has a Juan Valdes-like campesino in the mountains of Colombia riding a burro toward a mushroom cloud—read the book). My eyes went right to it.

Like many of my “old books” (many consider 2008 “old” in today’s publishing environment, especially online retailers), it’s as current now as when I published it, maybe even more so. And it’s a “bridge book” connecting two series, the “Clones and Mutants Trilogy” and the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy” (now all three books in the latter trilogy are bundled together as one ebook–see below).

I was happy to see the library’s copy still looked OK, but I was also sad to see it in that good condition at the same time. I’ve donated many print versions to libraries, including the Montclair Public Library—most are worse for wear, beaten up and dog-eared (they’re trade paperbacks, after all), so I’ve often replaced many of them with new copies. Hopefully more library readers try Soldiers of God. To be immodest, I’d say it contains some of my best prose. Maybe readers are scared of the mushroom cloud? Buy the ebook then.

But back to libraries. I’ve also donated books on the West Coast, thanks to an old high school chum. (I’d do the Midwest if I had old high school chums who lived there.) I also offer special prices for my ebooks to public libraries on Smashwords, which translates to their affiliated library services getting a break on prices (although all my books are inexpensive to begin with).

You see, my main goal as an author is to write stories that will entertain readers however they read my books. I’m also a great believer in public libraries. My reading life was enriched by them at a tender age.

And doesn’t everyone feel more comfortable browsing through recently published books in a quiet library than in a crowded bookstore? I have nothing against bookstores and know they’re having a tough time in this modern publishing environment, but I hope libraries will go on forever.

***

Comments are always welcome.

Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection. From a dystopian Earth dominated by multinationals and their mercenaries, to star colonies and first contact, and to the future and beyond where a maniacal industrialist seeks to conquer all near-Earth planets, this trilogy contains in one ebook Survivors of the Chaos, Sing a Zamba Galactica, and Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hands! This bargain bundle of three books is available on Amazon and Smashwords and all the latter’s affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, Walmart, etc).

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

When readers and writers think of main characters, they’re often thinking about protagonists, the heroes of a tale. Villains are the antagonists, characters who make life difficult for the protagonists. But they can be main characters too.

Consider the Jackal in Forsyth’s thriller classic, The Day of the Jackal. He IS the main character, no doubt about it. He plays a more important role than anyone who’s after him. [Spoiler alert.] The protagonist, if there is one, might be the French Sûreté detective (I don’t remember his name) who helps stop the assassination of De Gaulle.

Often authors writing series have their villains appear in multiple books for multiple reasons, but I suspect the main reason is that villains can be more interesting than heroes. We analyze them under the lens of our writer’s microscope. We see their complexity in a first book of the series and imagine there’s more for readers (and us!) to know about them. When a villain pops in and out of our stories, s/he helps stitch them together as much as a recurring protagonist. Both their complexities grow, and the two become the yin and yang of the series.

Harry Potter vs. Voldemort is a case in point. Harry naturally grew more complex as he got older. But in each novel of the series, we discover more about Voldemort, the villain, and his complexity grows. Readers will probably think it’s strange that I consider Voldemort Rowling’s best character—his development is more interesting than Harry’s, maybe because we confront it piece by piece. He’s always the same Voldemort, but we learn more about him as the series progresses. After all, Harry’s being trained at Hogwarts. He has to grow, right? And Harry would be a nobody if Voldemort weren’t there to make trouble.

Sometimes my villains seem to take over too. Dimitri Negrini in Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hand!, dominates the entire novel, for example. This maniacal industrialist is a complex villain. If the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy” is my Foundation trilogy, then Negrini plays the role of the Mule of Asimov’s Second Foundation.

There’s one villain who I kept around for a long time, the Russian Vladimir Kalinin. He’s a presence through two series and two bridge books in my “Future History Timeline.” (See the list of free PDF downloads on the “Free Stuff & Contests’ web page.) He also appears in the novella “The Phantom Harvester.” (See the same list.) Not even Detective Castilblanco has that staying power as a character.

And Volodya (nickname for Vladimir) is quite the clever fellow in all his evil complexity and even shows he has a good side too (roses for the dying Lydia Karpov in The Midas Bomb and love for the adopted orphan in No Amber Waves of Grain).

I became attached to old Vladimir even though he’s a scurrilous devil. That happens. And it often leads to readers remembering the antagonists more than the protagonists.

There are many famous villains—Moriarity, the Mule, Voldemort, the Jackal, and so forth. Together we can probably generate a long list of them. When someone asks about my favorite fictional characters, I have to include them. And I just might forget who they battle against.

What about you? Do you have any favorite villains? Do you want to add to my list?

***

Comments are always welcome.

Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection. From a dystopian Earth dominated by multinationals and their mercenaries, to star colonies and first contact, and to the future and beyond where a maniacal industrialist seeks to conquer all near-Earth planets, this trilogy contains in one ebook Survivors of the Chaos, Sing a Zamba Galactica, and Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hands! This bargain bundle of three books is available on Amazon and Smashwords and all the latter’s affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, Walmart, etc).

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

SpaceX’s success with the capsule with Ripley inside (the dummy filled with sensors, not Sigourney Weaver, star of the Alien trilogy) might represent a turning point for the US space program. Since the cancellation of the shuttle program, NASA has depended on the Russians to get astronauts into orbit. After the SpaceX success, that dependence might soon end.

In the bigger picture, another turning point has already occurred. When private companies began launching successful space missions, a paradigm shift occurred: NASA became the science group with astronauts and payloads as passengers, and private enterprise became the transportation agencies.

I’ve always assumed this change was inevitable. Let’s assume it is. Will it be good or bad? Tech companies grow bigger, more arrogant, and more international as time goes by. Capitalism without controls is always bad, but only Europe seems to be reining in the abuses of tech companies. The opportunities for space exploitation, i.e. exploration of space for financial gain like big petroleum companies exploring for oil, offer potentially great rewards and seem boundless, so the same might happen to the space tech companies.  They could get rich by spinning off lucrative enterprises that have wonderful products made extremely expensive because of their origins.

Is this pessimism unjustified? Hopefully yes. But pessimists have the advantage that, if things turn out better than expected, they can rejoice. Yet Murphy’s Law, or its extreme version, Sturgeon’s Law (look it up), justifies being pessimistic.

I explored corporate domination of outer space in the future with my novel Survivors of the Chaos (now part of The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection, a bargain ebook bundle of three novels). This is not uncommon in sci-fi or dystopian literature or movies (Avatar and Elysium are recent examples of the latter). My novel starts in a dystopian future where multinationals have their own mercenary armies controlling the chaos on Earth an their surrogates in space sponsoring all space projects and exploiting their findings. The book ends with three starships fleeing the chaotic Earth to colonize three planets in other star systems.

Such visions of the future are warnings created by pessimists, and these warnings are possible extrapolations of current conditions, including science and technology, of course. These stories are as old as sci-fi itself, but I find them more interesting than utopian drivel. Humans don’t have a good track record for creating utopias; they have a terrible one for creating dystopias and apocalyptic events. And, as science and technology progresses, the latter can become even worse.

***

Comments are always welcome.

Dystopia:

The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection. The three novels take the reader from a futuristic worldwide dystopia to the stars and far into the future. The second novel answers Fermi’s question, “Where are they?” The third shows how Humans and their ET friends battle a mad Human industrialist. The whole trilogy can be considered an homage to Dr. Asimov’s Foundation trilogy with ITUIP (International Trade Union of Independent Planets) playing the role of the Foundation, and the mad industrialist playing the role of the Mule. Lots of enjoyable sci-fi reading await you. Available on Amazon and Smashwords and all the latter’s affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc).

Post-apocalyptic:

And don’t miss The Last Humans. Last man alive? What about last woman alive? Penny Castro, LA County Sheriff’s Deputy and forensic diver, finds she isn’t alone, though—there are a few others who survive the contagion and want to kill her. And the remnants of a US government could be the greatest danger for her and the family she’s adopted. This post-apocalyptic thriller (yes, it’s also sci-fi) will be released by Black Opal Books in both ebook and print versions on March 30 and available at the publisher’s website, online retailers like Amazon and Smashwords and the latter’s affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc), and bookstores (if they don’t have it, ask for it!). You can pre-order on both Amazon and Smashwords.

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

As many readers and writers know, “blurb” is a technical writing term for those little more-than-tweet-length paragraphs used to entice people to read a book. I prefer “read” to “buy,” because people might borrow the book from a library or online service like Overdrive.

A blurb has to do many things. First, it has to summarize the book, or at least part of it. Second, it has to be a teaser, a bit like a movie preview to grab the reader’s attention. And third, it has to be short—not necessarily as short as an endorsement or “elevator pitch” (called that because one is only allowed the time it takes to go down in an elevator to make the pitch).

That third requirement is quite a constraint when considering the first two. I’ve been doing them for 10+ years, and they don’t seem to get any easier. All authors have to market their books now, so I imagine there are “pros” out there specialized in writing blurbs, ready to take authors’ money. And there are also people who tell an author how to do it free of charge.

I wish there were some metric that allows authors to measure how good their blurbs are. I know of none. How will they satisfy those aforementioned requisites? Like many things in the book business, an appreciation for blurb quality is often subjective.

(more…)

Like Asimov, Heinlein, and other sci-fi writers, I’m an ex-scientist who loves to tell stories—all Asimov’s stories were sci-fi, for example; mine are mysteries, thrillers, and sci-fi. (To be fair, Dr. Asimov wrote some excellent sci-fi mysteries! He was also a fan of the mystery genre.) But Asimov might be better known to some readers for his non-fiction popular science books. I once thought of writing them too—it’s writing, after all, and I love to do it—but I was too hooked on fiction to write those kind of books.

Every now and then I occasionally write a blog post in the popular science category, though. I’ve been remiss in doing that, so let’s do one! I can never compete with Dr. Asimov in either sci-fi or popular science, but I’ll do my best.

Let’s talk about scientific scales. Much science in the twentieth century explored scales from the smallest to the largest, from the tiniest bits of matter to galaxies and clusters of galaxies at the far reaches of the cosmos. Astrophysics and cosmology connect the two extremes, and these connections are like good twists in a good mystery.

One might think the smallest scale is determined by quarks—those usually invisible particles that make up protons, neutrons, and a menagerie of strange particles, all organized by the special unitary group SU(8) as proposed by Murray Gell’Man. Instead, I’d propose it’s the Planck length, defined as follows: take the square root of Planck’s constant h multiplied by Newton’s gravitational constant G and divide by the cube of the velocity of light and twice pi (it’s a constant derived from fundamental constants). From the very definition you see that it connects quantum mechanics and gravity. In fact, it is believed to be the length where quantum gravity effects become important. Planck’s length is a very, very small fraction of the size of a proton, and it could very well define the granularity of space-time in our Universe.

The largest scale is the size of the Universe, of course. That’s finite, but it’s expanding, a bit too fast according to conventional theoretical astrophysics, which is a puzzle. Adding to that mystery is the existence of dark energy and dark matter that astrophysicists invented to explain other oddities (these are just names for things the scientists don’t really understand). The presence of dark energy and matter should make the Universe’s expansion slow down more!

We start realizing there’s a lot we don’t know about our Universe. In fact, we don’t even know whether it’s unique. Certain theories add metaverses, and there’s an infinite number of them. Some of those theories were created especially to provide science with dark energy and matter, or help in the quantization of gravity, a vexing problem for astrophysicists.

Infinite numbers of metaverses? An easy way to get at them is to realize that the Universe must have its own quantum state, so, according to the Many Worlds Theory of Quantum Mechanics, at each point on the Universe’s world-line winding around in some higher-dimensional continuum (usually ten dimensions), that quantum state splits up into an infinite number of states, ad infinitum. These many world-lines are called quantum histories. They’ve been used as objects as astrophysicists try to quantize gravity, starting with James Hartle and Stephen Hawking (Hartle was one of my professors at UC Santa Barbara).

All those metaverses, parallel states of our own Universe, lead us to question the concept of infinity itself. Some used to think the Universe was infinite and existed in a steady state, everything arranged neatly so that the more the Universe changed, the more it stayed the same. Let’s accept for the sake of argument that’s not true—i.e. the Universe is finite, although it’s certainly not in a steady state with its expansion. What happens at the other end of the scientific scale? Can we go smaller than the Planck length?

We describe the physical world with mathematics, mostly with real numbers or combinations of them (three space dimensions plus one time, for example). The set of real numbers is a larger infinity than the infinity of integers or even fractions constructed from them. But does the cosmos have to match the larger infinity of the real numbers? In other words, is space-time quantized and countable like fractions? Maybe with the Planck length as the size of a bit of Universe? We could think of these chunks as pixels in space-time. We could no longer say “space-time continuum” because it wouldn’t enjoy the continuity of a real-number based Universe. Every position in space-time would represent a four-dimensional cube—albeit a very small one, to be sure, but the Universe would then be finite at both ends of the size spectrum (technically at the lower end, it would be a countable infinity like integers and fractions).

I enjoy thinking about these questions. I wish someone would answer them!

***

Comments are always welcome!

“Reading Notes for The Last Humans.” This free PDF can be downloaded by visiting the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page at this website. It’s designed to provide useful information to all readers about my new post-apocalyptic novel, and it contains a list of questions that will stimulate discussions in book reading clubs. The ebook is available now for pre-orders on Amazon and Smashwords, and it will be released in print and ebook versions by Black Opal Books on March 30.

While you’re on that web page, be sure to check out the other free PDFs that are available—these are all just a thanks to you for being a reader.

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

[Note from Steve: It’s the Ides of March today…and I wish an early happy St. Paddy’s day to everyone. Have fun, be safe!]

Authors have many items that represent fixed and continuing costs for doing business. These eat into royalties. Costs and profits—writing is a business. (I’m not very good at it, but that’s what it is, even if authors are having a lot of fun writing.) Like a supermarket, authors’ royalty income is small per each item sold, so it’s a profitable business only if lots of books are sold. But those fixed costs are often big ticket items relative to the cost of each item sold, akin to rent, construction, and personnel costs for those supermarkets.

Some costs like editing, formatting, and/or cover art are frequent but erratic and per book, but these add up unless authors only invest their time, i.e. are 100% DIY self-publishers—not a good idea for the items specifically mentioned, by the way. Others are sporadic and larger cost items. Again, unless authors are 100% DIY, a website is in this category—a “homemade” website can be OK, but there are pros who can do a better job.

There’s the initial cost of the website. Authors should hire a freelance guru or some company’s gurus to set up their websites (mine is Monkey C Media in San Diego). That gives authors a great-looking website ab initio, but they need to update and upgrade every so often. More costs. (I’m ignoring domain payments and hosting costs for now—they’re yearly.)

But the costs don’t end with that initial website construction. There are many costs that continue over the lifetime of the website. Authors can’t ignore the website once it’s built, either for content or website upgrades and updates. I’m in the middle of the latter process right now.

First, I prepare for the pros’ upgrades and updates by making their jobs a wee bit easier. I’m responsible for the text on my website. That’s just a continuous time investment because it is 100% DIY. I use WordPress that allows me to easily update the text on the web pages and post articles in my blog—those are things visible to the website visitor. I work a lot on the web pages’ text before approaching the gurus.

Graphics, margins, and such are more complicated. I never learned HTML (I know Fortran, C/C++, MaLab-ese, and UNIX scripts from my old day-job, but there’s a limit!). That means fixing those things, especially dropping in images like cover images and photos, and scaling them (most aren’t scaled properly for the web page), so it’s something I’d rather pay for vs. learning HTML or any of its successors (many cover images are also linked to the book’s Amazon page—I can give them those links, of course).

(more…)

For some strange reason, alternate history is considered a subgenre of sci-fi or fantasy, most likely the former. Maybe the reason is whoever decides these things just didn’t know where to put it? It isn’t as puzzling as that catch-all genre literary fiction, but it’s close.

An alternate history story is the quintessential example of an author using a what-if to write a story. What if George Washington had been assassinated? What if Lincoln hadn’t? What if Hitler had been taken out early on in his nefarious career? What if Eisenhower had been in his illustrious career? What if Alexander the Great had conquered all the known world and his empire had continued into the modern era? What if gunpowder had never been invented? (Feel free to use any of those ideas, by the way.)

I’ve collected what-ifs all my life, but none of them led me to write an alternate history story. In fact, I don’t read  much in that genre unless it really is hard sci-fi, like Hogan’s The Proteus Operation (it’s about a plot to take out Hitler and involves time travel). When I discussed reality in fiction a few posts ago, I didn’t consider alternate history—it isn’t reality, of course; it’s fiction. It might as well be called alternate reality.

I don’t know what turns me off about this genre. I don’t like steampunk either, a genre that has a lot in common with alternate history and has been described as “what the past world look like if the future had happened sooner” (sorry, I don’t know who coined this delightful and logically twisted definition—maybe a reader can tell me in a comment). They all fit in with the idea of parallel universes, or the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, where at each moment in time (actually points on the Universe’s world-line or quantum history), all possible states of the Universe exist and “ours” splits off into just one state, ad infinitum. (The idea of quantum histories might be the salvation for quantizing general relativity, an unsolved problem in theoretical physics. It also leads to the idea of metaverses. FTL travel in my sci-fi is linked to hopping between these metaversal states, a process so complicated it’s done with advanced AIs. By the way, my own oeuvre contains the “future history” timeline associated with many of my books—see the list of free PDFs on my “Free Stuff & Contests’ web page.)

It turns out that in our own special Universe’s world-line, there really was a plot to assassinate Hitler, but only after that monstrous villain had already done immense damage. There was also a plot to assassinate Washington. Neither one succeeded in our Universe’s progression along its timeline, but what if they had? In those universes where they did succeed, what happened afterward? That’s a story for alternate history (or “future history”?).

(more…)

Some prose is so beautiful that it almost seems like music. Garcia Marquez’s Nobel winning novel did that for me—maybe it helped I read Cien Años de Soledad in Spanish, a musical language to be sure—this book will soon become a video series instead of a single movie, which is more appropriate for the century it covers!.

In this article I’m writing about references to music in literature, though, or writers being inspired by music. Musicians take stories and turn them into musical theater and operas. Writers don’t often return the favor. In my free download, Mayhem, Murder, and Music, the individual stories are inspired by music, but that’s not the same as turning a musical piece into a story (see my web page “Free Stuff & Contests” for this and other free PDFs). Maybe some clever producers of audiobooks use a musical background (and sound effects like in those old radio shows?), but the plots aren’t stolen from musical pieces.

Why not? Writers, especially beginning ones, are often given plot ideas in writing groups. (In my third article this week, I’ll even provide some.) Why not the following then? Take Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony—it’s the “Pastoral”—and steal its story, a day in the countryside. The thunderstorm movement could even be a harbinger of horror. Hmm. Maybe old Ludwig stole the idea from such a short story, sans horror? Musicologists can chime in, if any read this blog. I’ll refrain from going to Google this time. Or take Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique and turn it into a story about witches and their victims. In the audiobook version, these pieces can be playing in the background.

It’s a stretch, I know. Mussorgsky did a double take by going from art pieces associated with various stories to a musical piece, Pictures at an Exhibition (Ravel orchestrated the composer’s original piano work to make the piece a popular orchestral extravaganza and filler in concerts), but no writer I know of has done the opposite. Maybe the best we can do is to write stories inspired by musical pieces in a loose sense?

Will the future of publishing change this? I can imagine multimedia ebooks or audiobooks where the stories are inspired by music and/or speech and even contain odors (like the ones you might imagine for that Beethoven symphony right after the storm when the world smells fresh and spring-like). The possibilities are endless for mixing prose with audio, visual, tactile, and other senses. But will the music essentially be the story?

Probably not, but it can always suggest one. What would Star Wars’s evil Empire be without that stirring music in the background announcing Darth Vader on that battleship? And there’s the rub. As the medias mix, will the printed word play second fiddle to the movie? After all, that famous opening scroll in the original movie is the only prose the viewer sees—it’s more like a prologue to a book, but the movie is the story.

And it’s entirely possible that readership will disappear no matter how the stories are generated because the written word is no longer a medium for artistic expression. That would be sad.

***

Comments are always welcome!

Last man alive? What about last woman alive? Penny Castro, LA County Sheriff’s Deputy and forensic diver, finds she isn’t alone, though—there are a few others who survive the contagion and want to kill her. And the remnants of a US government could be the greatest danger for her and the family she’s adopted. The post-apocalyptic thriller The Last Humans will soon be published by Black Opal Books and available at the publisher’s website, online retailers, and bookstores (if they don’t have it, ask for it!). Coming March 30! Pre-orders now accepted on Amazon and Smashwords.

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