Literacy is not equivalent to reading and writing. You can be literate without even reading a book. (Baldacci’s literacy project is a misnomer in that sense.) Today’s younger generations might be literate but most are not readers. I can’t blame them too much because they have so many entertainment alternatives now besides reading a good book. I pity them instead because they’ll never have the wonderful experience of reading a good story that grabs them and makes their imagination run wild. Their minds need the crutches of technicolor images and bombastic soundtracks because they’ve never fully developed those imaginations…or even tried.

Adults who have stopped reading earn more pity. They often offer other excuses—lack of time, waning attention spans, too much reading in their working lives, and all those temptations that affect younger generations. I used to do book events (Covid ended that activity), and the scientific observer in me noticed back then that audiences were getting progressively older.

Many older adults, myself included, started reading at a young age. We didn’t worry about literacy or experiencing new places and cultures (although that was a side benefit our parents could applaud); we simply wanted to be entertained, and we did that with heroes and villains much more developed than those two-dimensional caracitures found on TV and in the movies. Audiovisual media eliminates all the good stuff that goes on in our minds when reading, a book’s author doing a far better job of explaining their actions and struggles than any Hollywood director, no matter how gifted they are at their trade. That director is not a writer, and they can’t compete with an author who stimulates a reader’s imagination!

Avid readers will understand what I’m writing here in this post; non-readers never can. And that’s sad…for the writers and readers among us and for the future of human beings on this planet. Storytelling and reading stories are essential to making us human; by not telling stories and reading them, we have lost some of our humanity. Given the current sorry state of humanity, we can ill afford to lose even a little of what makes us human.

When someone says to you, “I saw a good movie the other day,” counter that with “And I read a good book, which is more fulfilling, so why don’t you try that?” In other words, let people know you’re an avid reader. Some might just wonder what they’re missing!

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The Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries. In the first book of this trilogy, Muddlin’ Through, ex-USN-Master-at-Arms Mary Jo is working in corporate security and is framed by a secret organization to cover up their incompetence for letting the Russians steal the MECHs (“Mechanically Enhanced Cybernetic Humans”); she struggles to prove her innocence. In Silicon Slummin’…and Just Getting’ By, she takes a new job in security at a computer games company, but CIA and Russian agents are after her; they want to know where the MECHs are. In Goin’ the Extra Mile, Chinese agents kidnap her, and the MECHs set out to save her. Action, intrigue, and thrills characterize Mary Jo’s travels as readers follow her adventures around the world. These “evergreen books” are as fresh and entertaining as the day the author finished their manuscripts. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold.

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

Most readers who visit this website and especially this writer’s blog know that I’ve been boycotting Amazon KDP (“Kindle Direct Publishing”) services for a while. No recent books have been published by KDP or even appeared for sale on Amazon. In general, Amazon is not an author’s friend—far from being one; in my case, its abuses and atrocities have led to my complete boycott. (My latest books have been released by Draft2Digital and not distributed to Amazon as a retailer.) The atrocities have been committed by the big bot Bezos and his inept little bot buddies working like an evil Santa Claus and his evil elven helpers.

Here’s the latest atrocity, and it can affect most authors: I once used KDP (originally called Create Space), the Amazon POD service, for my trade paperback versions. I don’t have many. (I no longer publish them, because they kill forests. Don’t like that as a reader? Tough!) POD or “Print On Demand” means that Amazon prints them as orders come in. Now Amazon’s evil bots have decided to charge more for the printing. They offer two options to authors, neither one good.

First option: We authors can increase the prices of our print versions to cover the extra printing costs. Second option: We can cover those extra printing costs by receiving fewer royalties.

The first option is a non-starter: I won’t raise my prices! I chose the lowest price possible originally allowed by Create Space (later KDP) to make my print versions’ prices more attractive for readers than anything offered by traditional publishers, including the Big Five’s overpriced trade paperbacks. This motivation was especially strong for A.  B. Carolan’s sci-fi mysteries, The Secret Lab, The Secret of the Urns, and Mind Games, designed for young-adult audiences (adults who are young-at-heart seem to enjoy these books as well). The print version of each novel is priced at $8.99. This is low enough that a young-adult reader can even purchase the book by  themself. Raising that price diminishes that option.

So, my only possible option is the second, and I’m willing to take that hit for my readers. I will get fewer royalties and have the satisfaction that my readers and I have stuck our thumbs in Bezos’s greedy eye, but I’ll certainly tell everyone I can that this egregious action taken by Amazon is more proof that this publisher-retailer is far from being an author’s friend and never the friend of the consumer. Pox on Bezos’s house!

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Sci-fi mysteries for young adults. The three novels, The Secret Lab, The Secret of the Urns, and Mind Games, all take place in my usual sci-fi universe, the same one created in the Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection, Rogue Planet, and Dr. Carlos stories. Whether in ebook or print format, they’re set at different times in the future, and they’re ideal additions to your young adult’s summer reading list and school-year book reports. Give your tweens and teens some exciting sci-fi reading that will stretch their imaginations.

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

“So You’re Looking for a New Book to Read?” (in the 5/3 NY Times “Arts” section) provided me with a good laugh. I have to confess that many things the NY Times states about reading, writing, and publishing just provide me with more evidence that their editors and critics are full of it! Unfortunately, that history of arrogant advertising also proves they think avid readers are too stupid to choose their own reading material, an insulting attitude that the Times exhibits with many news items, not just those about art and culture. Hey fellows, NYC isn’t the center of the Universe!

Of course, the Times is no worse or better than other news sources—or Oprah, once upon a time—so perhaps we should analyze why media in general believes people need to be told what to read…or do. Is the public who reads the media’s pablum really incapable of making its own decisions? After all, the media often sugarcoats this advice by implying that you’re not a cool person if you don’t do X, whether X is reading a certain book or voting a certain way. When considering books and other consumer items, the Times is just aping the apes of Madison Avenue (that’s insulting the great apes, of course), but Madison Avenue is NYC, and so is the Times. They all think they’re the center of the Universe, so it’s natural that the editors just echo the very organizations they think are so necessary to keep their rag alive. Our last president, king of the White House prevaricators going from Jackson and Grant all the way to the present day, learned how to lie from Madison Avenue, after all.

But back to you readers. The following might seem harsh, but let me state that if you need the NY Times editors and critics or anyone else to tell you what to read, you’re no avid reader. (You’re excused if you’re being bullied by an overzealous high school or college English professor, of course.) Avid readers insist on making their own decisions about what books to read, and they will resent anyone who tries to dictate that to them. (I’ve resented a few English professors in my time as well as the Times’ editors and critics!) Any article in the Times that tries to do that (including the one I mentioned at the beginning) would be better used to paper the bottom of your bird cage.

So, you ask, why do I read articles from the Times about books sometimes? Am I a masochist? No, just hopeful. I can only hope that they or some other media sources might say something intelligent about reading, writing, or publishing. And, at the very least, journalistic media usually gives me something to complain about! Similarly, beyond the ad that follows this article and unlike Big Five authors’ advertising blitzes (even video teasers are used nowadays), I’ll not pay the Times or any other media to advertise or say good things about my books. The following ad is more just a reminder to you that I’ve written a lot of them, and you might find some of them interesting!

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The “Inspector Steve Morgan” trilogy. NYPD detective Castilblanco (a seven-book series) led me to London-based art detective Brookstone (a nine-book series), and she led me to Bristol-based Inspector Morgan. Although he only has a supporting role in The Klimt Connection (“Esther Brookstone” #8), he became a principal character in the three very different cases forming this trilogy: Legacy of Evil resolves and expands some things from Celtic Chronicles (“Esther Brookstone” #9), Cult of Evil finds Morgan’s team chasing a maniacal cult leader and scam artist, and Fear the Asian Evil expands their fight against autocratic elements that began with Russian operatives in the first book to Chinese agents and assassins in the third. You’ll never see any of these books mentioned in the Times (self-published and small press books are rarely mentioned), but I offer them for your consideration in choosing your reading entertainment.

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

They naturally appear in mystery and thriller stories, and mine are no exception. Some are evil—China and Russia’s come to mind—and some aren’t supposed to be but can be warped. Many have appeared  in some my novels–the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Democracies should want their security agencies to be beyond reproach and just do the necessary work to keep the countries safe. Most of them do, of course, but there are bad apples in any barrel. “Bending the rules” to get a positive result might be a good policy once and a while, but doing that against the greater good is always questionable.

While I feature mostly UK and US agencies in my novels, I realize that the complete acronymic zoo can be confusing to readers. To help remedy that problem, I define these agencies and their acronyms at the beginning of some of my novels. You might also find the following list helpful in your other reading as well:

British national police—the Metropolitan Police System (“the Met” aka “Scotland Yard”) and its regional affiliates

British national crime agency—National Crime Agency (NCA)

British internal security—MI5

British external security—MI6

Chinese security—Ministry of State Security (MSS)

French internal security—DGSI

French external security—DGSE

Irish Republic’s national police—An Garda Siochana (Gardai or “the Guards”)

Russian internal security—FSB

Russian external security—SVR

US internal security—ATF, DEA, DHS, FBI

US external security—CIA, sometimes FBI

Notes:

The Metropolitan Police System, also called “the Met” or “the Yard” (for Scotland Yard, which is often used for both the Met and the independent but closely related City of London Police), and their regional affiliates represent the general policing organization for England and Wales; it covers general crime throughout that region with its many police districts, but it also covers background checks and crimes associated with the Official Secrets Act and railroad terminals and some local airports. Individual cities’ police departments are now considered part of the overall system (e.g., Bristol or Reading PD).

Police Scotland was created in 2013 to unify policing in all of Scotland, and it’s basically a copy of the Metropolitan Police system with all its own divisions and bureaucracy.

MI5 and MI6 were created during World War II. (The MI stands for “Military Intelligence,” and “Section Five” and “Section Six” are now just reduced to the numbers in general parlance.)

The National Crime Agency was also created in 2013 to lead efforts against organized crime, including human-, sex-, and drugs-trafficking.

One can equate MI5 + NCA to the FBI. ATF, DEA, and DHS, which are relatively recent in the US.

DGS is short for Departement Generale de Securite, and the I and E mean interior and exterior, respectively (these are the successors to the Surete).

FSB and SVR are the remnants of the old KGB, Putin’s old employer.

Of course, when in doubt, just use Google to check what an author means (or see if he got it right!).

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The “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series. This nine-novel series might even have a few more security agencies and services not listed here because some novels are quite international in scope, including the first, Rembrandt’s Angel. Esther’s long career is portrayed in this series, from her work as an MI6 spy in East Berlin to various adventures after retiring from Scotland Yard’s Art and Antiques division. Two novels, Defanging the Red Dragon and Intolerance, are free (see the list on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page). The others are available as ebooks, and the first three also have print versions. Enjoy!

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

I use “evergreen” to indicate a work of fiction that is as current and exciting as the day its author finished its manuscript. “Classic” is a catch-all term, overused in many ways, often incorrectly as if it were a superlative (like its cousin, “literary fiction” in many ways), and it often just means “a book you should read whether you like it or not,” the latter often coming from snobs and high school English teachers.

To Kill a Mockingbird might be evergreen, especially considering that improved race relations in America are something MLK would still be dreaming about, but it isn’t a classic either in any sense of the word because there are a lot of fiction books who portray the sorry state of race relations in America a lot better! Mockingbird is also probably just too old to be meaningful relevant as well, and it certainly isn’t entertaining. Okay, maybe it’s a classic in that sense of an English teacher bludgeoning her students by forcing them to read it.

As a historical novel—the only way it might be considered a classic—it’s less of a classic than Tolstoy’s War and Peace or Hugo’s Les Miserables, but old historical novels like these three often are ponderous and boring and therefore appropriate bludgeons for English teachers to use in America’s classrooms in their goal to make students hate reading. And while Macron probably read Les Miserables (self-serving and silly protests of French citizens against his increase of the retirement age are probably more violent than those in Hugo’s work), and Putin might think that he’s creating a new version of Tolstoy’s work that that it only has war and no peace. One can be sure, however, that Putin’s most ardent fan Trump never read that Bible he held upside down after walking across the park to that church. (That great book might qualify as both a classic and evergreen, by the way, but not in Trump’s hands because he couldn’t even bother to read his security briefs!)

Yes, I know there are publishers who make a lot of money selling fancy leather-bound tomes of boring “classics” that they insist should be on every educated person’s bookshelves. I’ve perused one of those, all of Shakespeare’s dramas (I studied the bard’s work for an entire semester in college—the professor made the dramas interesting; old William, not so much), but generally it’s less useful to me than Brainy Quotes and more useful as a doorstop. I also recently purchased the “original” pocketbook edition of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (I guess they can still call it original if it’s just a reprinting?), but that was more because I’d missed The Hobbit when reading Tolkien as a kid. (Those are both classics and evergreen, of course, and done far better than most fantasy books that have followed.)

The aforementioned publishers of those bulky leather-bound and colorful tomes (the perfect medium for any decorator wanting to create a color-coordinated and decorous perception of well-read ladies and gentlemen) create “classics” for people who can’t bother to read but want to put on airs and pretend to be cultured. “Evergreen books,” on the other hand, are stories avid readers actually read and maybe read again and again. You have a right to disagree, of course. “Evergreen book” isn’t standard literary terminology, after all. But it should be!

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A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse. Most sci-fi books are evergreen, and this one is too (although, within my oeuvre, it’s fairly recent). This sci-fi rom-com has historical fiction elements (the twists on historical and future events taking place in parallel universes), so maybe students can convince their English teachers it’s also a classic? (Okay, it’s a bit raunchy at times—dare I say “gay”?—so Ron DeSantis might want to ban it, so I suppose the students have to live outside Florida.) In any case, it’s time travel done right. Using the many worlds theory of quantum mechanics, it completely avoids the classic paradoxes as physicist Gail and her lab tech Jeff hop from universe to universe and shag to shag on their romantic road to exciting adventures and discoveries. Gail isn’t the meek and mild time-traveler’s wife, and Jeff is more brains than brawn. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold.

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

Authors and publishers often use ebook bundles to give new life to “evergreen books” (novels as current and entertaining as the day the author finished the manuscript). Readers love them because they’re often real bargains. (I recently bought a multi-volume set from British mystery publisher Joffe for $0.99. That’s a lot of good reading for a buck!)

Some readers might want to know if I recommend that an author, self-published or not, should bundle their novels, evergreen books or not. Basically, upon doffing my author’s hat, I’d say no to all. That advice would be just a consistent corollary of my more general one that an author should not give away their work, prose that they’ve spent a lot of creative time and effort on, not to mention the publishing stresses incurred. (I’m referring to published works, of course. I give away free PDFs, after all, most of them little cost to me, beyond time spent writing the stories; and they’re just a mouse-click away for the reader to download, not requiring any more of my time spent either.) In brief and more to the point, no author should ever give the perception that they don’t value their own work!

“Wait!” you say. “You’ve published The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection.” Yes, indeed, I’ve done that. Each novel in that trilogy is sold individually for $2.99 or $3.99 (I can’t remember the prices right now), so buying all three would up to an investment a lot of readers don’t like to make, especially when trying a new author or one’s evergreen works. I sell the ebook bundle for $5.99, though, so the reader does receive a decent bargain. But the price isn’t $0.99 (that Joffe set was far more than a trilogy too) nor free! I value those three novels because they represent an early spurt of sci-fi creativity I’m proud of. They represent my Foundation trilogy, in fact. (Unlike Asimov, though, there are ETs in my trilogy, and they play important roles.) They required that I find and organize a lot of interesting background material, and they established the sci-fi universe that I’ve use in other sci-fi thrillers (most notably Rogue Planet, A. B. Carolan’s sci-fi mysteries for young adults, and the tales about Dr. Carlos, starship Brendan’s medical officer). They’re also a strong pillar for my long “future history” series of series and novels that begins with The Midas Bomb and ends with Dr. Carlos, representing many years of storytelling. (And my main motivation to publish the bundle was to write a second edition of the first novel, Survivors of the Chaos, in order to weasel out of a contract I had with an old POD publisher!)

Will I publish other bundles in the future? Maybe. Every trilogy, especially the evergreen ones, is certainly a potential candidate, of course Stay tuned.

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The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection. While many parts of Survivors of the Chaos and Sing a Zamba Galactica originally my first efforts writing a major epic, the first book in the trilogy wasn’t the first I published. (The last novel was written as I developed my preliminary efforts into a trilogy.) The sci-fi universe created here appears in many other stories, including Rogue Planet and A. B. Carolan’s first three YA sci-fi mysteries. You can now read the entire trilogy—I think of it as my Foundation trilogy (unlike Asimov, my stories have ETs)—in this three-novel bundle. It’s available wherever quality ebooks are sold.

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

I’ve written about this topic many times before, including in my little course “Writing Fiction” (a free PDF download—see my “Free Stuff & Contests” web page). As the years pass, I always seem to come up with something more to say about it, so here goes:

I’ve seen some really bad titles and covers. Traditionally published books often have traditionally bad covers more akin to what a high school kid might produce using PowerPoint. (I guess the Big Five publishing conglomerates would be among the first to not want readers to judge one of their books by its cover. I rarely do.) Traditional publishers do a bit better with their titles. (Or, they pay more attention to their authors’ wishes, even if they aren’t the privileged old mares and stallions waiting in their stables to go to the glue factory.) They (or again, their authors) often blow the title as well, though. (Whether you like Sue Grafton’s “alphabet-soup series” or not, her titles were very boring and mundane; and Gone Girl and its imitators are laughingly silly and forgettable.)

One reason traditional publishers like print, I suppose (I insist on looking for logic even in what’s illogical!) is that hardbound books have flyleaf covers that often end up in the garbage bin (often the appropriate place for them), so their quality doesn’t really matter. Only the avid and aware reader notes the absurdity of the flyleaf on a hardbound edition. Small presses, if they publish a print version, generally only produce trade paperbacks, so they’re a bit more responsible about creating a nice cover. My three traditionally published books done by small presses, for example, have excellent covers. (There was input from me for The Last Humans, published by Black Opal—the rest of the trilogy was self-published—but that was not wanted for Rembrandt’s Angel and Son of Thunder, published by Penmore Press—as a consequence, I’ll admit that the latter two covers had to grow on me a bit. All my self-published print versions have good covers as well, thanks to cover artist Sara Carrick.)

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A recent study shows that about 40% of banned books have a LGBTQ protagonists; another states that 40% have black ones. The tween protagonist in The Secret Lab has a lesbian friend; the teen in Secret of the Urns comes from a triad, i.e., a non-traditional family comprised of two men and a woman, and she has a sexual fling on a tourist planet; the young hero in Mind Games is an orphan who ends up with an older man; and the STEM teen in Origins is black and has a child out of wedlock. I suppose all A. B. Carolan’s books could be in trouble with the book-banners, if not already banned.

I assume that the studies mentioned focus on young adult novels. If they don’t, there are a few other novels in our literary tradition that might become or already be targets! (I had one crazy lady from the Midwest go after me for using profanity in The Midas Bomb. I basically ignored her. The book takes place in NYC and is for adults, but the mother of a teen interested in purchasing the book at a book event assured me that her daughter could read such books. After that diatribe from the Midwestern lady, I asked the mother to make sure.)

Thank God I didn’t live in a red state when I was a kid! (Texas is #1 among book-banning states, Florida #2, and others do their part in censoring literary works.) I was able to read more or less what I wanted to read, not what some fascist personality allowed me to read, for both fiction and non-fiction. I got my hand slapped in US history (this in the true-blue state of California) because I’d about and reported on the case against FDR for not warning Oahu about the eminent attack on Pearl Harbor so he could public sentiment on his side to enter the war. (I received an A+, though, because I researched the hell out of that, not initially believing what I’d read! It’s still an open question as far as American history’s concerned, but not in my mind.)

Next thing you know, especially if the fascists control all of national education, we’ll have a nationwide ban on Podkayne of Mars! Sexual mores on Mars as portrayed by Heinlein are a bit risque, you know. If not Podkayne, think what they’ll do with Strangers in a Strange Land. That might even get the fascist evangelicals involved! I read them both in junior high (middle school for easterners).

It’s true that book-banners attack school librarians, school teachers, and parents from both the left and the right, but the right is now the worst offender, and mostly in the red states where they already have an autocratic state governor, legislature, and court judges. Book-banning is basically a fascist activity, of course, as part of the control of all media—just think of Hitler and Mao and more recent autocrats like Putin and Xi. In the US, radicals on the left want to ban Huckleberry Finn; radicals on the right—well, they go after a lot more. And what they can’t ban, they try to rewrite, destroying the author’s story and voice in the process.

They can threaten librarians so much, especially if they take a stand against censorship, that they’re even afraid of going to work. Moreover, they’ve even demanded that books be removed from libraries that aren’t even there! I’m willing to bet the book-banning crazies haven’t read half the books they want to ban because they just take some radical fascist’s word that they’re bad for young minds.

In a democracy, book banning has no place. Reading what one wants to read is an essential freedom; censorship is the weapon of autocrats. If you don’t want to read a particular book, and if you don’t want your kids to read it, you and they don’t have to do so. I’ve yet to see a school that doesn’t let a parent or kid opt out from reading a particular book because of its content.

There are universal lessons to be learned from books, even fiction (good fiction has to seem real, and by doing so, they deal with real issues). In particular, books specifically written for young adults often are teaching moments for their readers. Like A. B. Carolan’s sci-fi mysteries, basically focused on the eternal battle between good and evil, YA stories offer a lot, so much so that they’re popular with many adults as well. (Let’s call them young-at-heart to distinguish them from the old fascist book-banners in the red states.)

Book banning doesn’t preserve our democracy; it contributes to its destruction!

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Mind Games. What could go wrong with a plan to give androids ESP powers? Find out in A. B. Carolan’s entertaining sci-fi mystery about a paranormal teen who searches for her foster father’s murderer. While all A.B.’s books are excellent reading experiences for readers of all ages, this third book from him might be the best one of the four. It’s full of thrills and suspense, a tour de force loaded with futuristic politics we have yet to experience on our planet. Available in ebook and print formats (I don’t know why B&N doesn’t show the print version, but it exists), it represents excellent book-report material for your young adult, and any hard-sci-fi-loving adult will enjoy it too.

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

I’m always astounded when some author informs me that they don’t read all that much because they want to spend all their time writing. I even read a lot and wrote when I had an intense day job. And I certainly don’t accept the excuse of binge-watching streaming videos or binge-playing computer games. And I also don’t want to hear or see the excuse that it’s because they don’t want to plagiarize other authors’ work. Are you a writer or not? If you’re a writer, you have to be a reader. Reading others’ stories makes writers’ storytelling better. Period.

Reading other fiction doesn’t have to take time away from your own writing or lead to plagiarizing. I can guarantee you that ever story I’ve written is free of plagiarism—theories, plots, characters, dialogues, and setting are all my invention and pieced together to make a unique tale that no one could have written except yours truly.

Yet, after finishing a story, sometimes a long time after, I might return to a story and observe how other writers have influenced my fiction writing. It mostly involves style, not content, but I also realize I’ve answered some long-standing personal questions.

In retrospect, the “Chen & Castilblanco” series of novels was influenced by the hard-boiled style of American crime dramas from the first half of the twentieth century, but only in the sense that I generalized that to establish my minimalist style. That style is often found in my sci-fi tales as well—descriptions of characters and settings, for example, with just enough information so that readers can create their own imagery and sounds as they read, thus participating in the creative process. Also, if a pronoun is obvious, I don’t include it. (That might be more influenced by my mastery of Spanish and my one-time mastery of Russian where the verb form often indicates the pronoun. One doesn’t say, “Tu hablas castellano”; one says, “Hablas castellano.” In Colombia, they often use “castellano” in place of “espanol,” especially in the interior where nearly pure Castilian Spanish is spoken.) I paid homage to those hard-boiled authors of American crime literature in one “space-time jump” found in the sci-fi rom-com A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse. (Some sci-fi authors also receive homage in that novel as well.)

Recently I read J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit for the first time. (I missed it in my childhood reading.) I decided that fantasy story must have influenced George R. R. Martin’s “Game of Thrones” series. (Does his use of “R. R.” indicate that?) Tolkien’s dragon Smaug is a lot more fun than any of Martin’s. (My review of The Hobbit is found in the blog archive “Book Reviews.”) I don’t like that kind of fantasy. Magical and mythical creatures turn me off (not as much, though, as creating fantasy-world rules as the novel progresses, as in Rowling’s Harry Potter tomes). I suppose the halfling Hobbits might be considered magical or mythical, but I see them as mini-humans. (Others did too, because one hominid offshoot discovered about the same time as the Denisovans was nicknamed Hobbits.)

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With the exception of the MEs and a few others in the US and crime pathologists in the UK found in my mysteries (the first group contains an ER doctor, an important character in The Midas Bomb), the inimitable Dr. Carlos Obregon, Medical Officer of the starship Brendan who stars in several short stories, and some nurses and EMTs, I don’t feature any medical professionals in my fiction. After a lifetime of dealing with them, I can’t consider myself an unbiased observer of their behaviors. The most amiable and compassionate one I ever had was my GP and upstairs neighbor in Bogota, Colombia. (The completely incorrect term now used, “Internist,” didn’t exist back then).

Like Chile’s Salvador Allende, my doctor Ramon was a Marxist. He lived on the third floor of our apartment building just above our second-floor apartment; Allende’s ex-Secretary of State, who had fled Chile when Pinochet took over, had the other apartment on the third-floor; he and his wife were just above the apartment leased by a Jewish rabbi. (I forget who was on the fourth floor, but the building was a mini-UN, in any case. Our helpful and lovely building super had the small apartment on the ground floor, the rest of that area filled with lobby, storage area, elevator.)

I’ve dealt with a lot of doctors from so-called “internists” to super-specialized physicians with personalities having characteristics varying between compassionate and relatable to cold android-like snobs. The bad and incompetent ones whatever behavior dimension one cares to explore far outnumber the good and competent ones. That’s bound to produce a bias in my writing.

I don’t like to use stereotypes in my writing either. And there’s always the danger that readers’ experiences with medical professionals might be altogether different from mine.

I’ll have to admit that, despite any personality quirks they might have, some medical pros have saved my life a few times (this “cat” has used up several of his nine). I should also state that part of the problem that this observer sees is with the medical profession itself. The modern version of medicine has one over-riding problem: It’s so overly specialized that many patients require a cadre of specialists to treat their variety of ailments. The result is that too many physicians were elitists deluded by self-importance and having the notion that society owes them homage as super-geniuses and riches for their professional care. (Curiously, I’ve found that male doctors are usually worse than female ones in holding these erroneous beliefs.) Patients have to remember, though, that medical professionals are human beings, and their numbers, while far too few in the US (for doctors, primarily because of the dearth of medical schools, their number controlled by that evil guild, the AMA), cover the entire spectrum of human behavior (although I feel that’s skewed to the worst, at least for physicians). The bad ones provide many good models for villains, though, my most notable one being the cult leader in Cult of Evil (see below) and the doctor found in the free novella “The Phantom Harvester.”

As a reader, I usually stay away from fiction that deals with medical professionals too. (That again might be due to my bias. In particular, I don’t like to see an author make them into super-heroes, comedians, or curiosities.)

Medical professionals are just ordinary people working in a particular sector of our societies. Authors perhaps shouldn’t pay any more attention to that sector than others. Let the stories come where they may. If you have an interesting on to tell about a medical professional, be they a protagonist or antagonist, go for it…but don’t force it.

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The “Inspector Steve Morgan” trilogy. The new copper at a Bristol PD substation (he’s introduced in The Klimt Connection, #8 in the “Esther Brookstone” series) and his team have murders to solve. In Legacy of Evil, they discover a conspiracy organized by an MP and a Russian oligarch. In Cult of Evil, a David Koresh and Charles Manson-style doctor exploits lonely women and must be stopped, but a terrorist also complicates Morgan’s life. In Fear the Asian Evil, a local conspiracy that has been organized by Chinese agents is discovered as Morgan and his team try to find out who shot a reporter related to Morgan’s sergeant. Available wherever quality ebooks are solid (just not on Amazon).

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