I’m sometimes (albeit rarely now) asked what are the best retailers and lenders of ebooks. Readers (and authors!) all too often just assume it’s Amazon. It’s not…and there are many. Amazon has its hands in too many cookie jars now (the jars are full of money, not cookies, of course), going far beyond being a simple online retailer of ebooks (or being a lender in several programs that scam authors and publishers), so it dominates the world of retail sales so much that you have to wonder if the retail world will soon be controlled by the Bezos bots. I want to correct that misconception.

I can heartily recommend any of the affiliated retailers and lenders of Smashwords and Draft2Digital for your ebook purchases. As you may know, the two have merged (although their catalogs haven’t), so I’ll list them all together. The affiliated retailers include Apple, Baker & Taylor, Barnes & Noble, Gardners, and Kobo (and Kobo Plus, although I don’t know what that subtle distinction is…and don’t really care!); the affiliated library and lending services include Bibliotheca, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Library Direct, Overdrive, Scribd, and Vivlio. Amazon distributes to no one! (They think they’re the be-all and end-all of the publishing universe!)

Those two “aggregating services” (technical term meaning they group reading material together and distribute it to retailers) also do a lot more for authors and publishers than Amazon, including distribution to those affiliates, which continue the service to authors and public at large. B&N, for example, groups books in a series together automatically. (An author or publisher has to ask Amazon to do that most of the time because it’s run by stupid bots—but they usually have no luck in accomplishing that…for the same reason!) Amazon’s bots are also very efficient at discarding qualified, valid reviews!

Many of the Draft2Digital and Smashwords affiliates allow readers to find authors and publishers’ ebooks in unusual places they themselves distribute to—Kobo to Walmart and the lending services to public libraries who often lend ebooks, for example. Moreover, they don’t discriminate between Prime and non-Prime customers—there is no damn Amazon Prime! (That “Anazon service” costs the consumer over $100 per year now.) Draft2Digital and Smashwords also don’t discriminate between traditionally and self-published ebooks. (Amazon pimps the traditionally published ebooks more, especially those from their own subsidiary traditional publishers. So much for supporting self-publishing! The reason is obvious: Most traditional publishers charge almost as much for the ebook versions as the print version, so Amazon makes more money from selling their ebooks!)

One of the worst things about Amazon is, in fact, its KDP for authors of ebooks (this is an acronym for “Kindle Direct Publishing”—the words “direct publishing” form an oxymoron, of course). Long ago, they (meaning the big Bezos bot, I suppose) layered KDP on top of the normal Amazon sales site that consumers love (or, like me, love to hate). That means the username and password used at the Amazon retail site by authors for their own book purchases are the same ones they log-on to KDP with for their publishing activities. Huh? Moreover, in their pond-scum-like wisdom, Amazon’s two-factor authentication on the main retail site, with its email or cellphone options, can only be used with a cellphone option on KDP! Because older authors (or even very tech-aware ones, young or old!) don’t use cellphones (I only use mine in the car for emergency situations, never for internet business), they can’t get their tax info like they used to. (Recently, I spent a lot of time trying to get a work-around to that roadblock.) This is a recent “feature” of two-factor authentication for KDP that even the guy on the help-line I talked to admitted was a major gaffe. Bottom line: Amazon doesn’t give a damn about authors!

All these problems motivated my decision to not offer any of my recent ebooks on Amazon—and I’m definitely boycotting KDP! Sure, Amazon offers some products buyers can’t find elsewhere. I’ve found this especially true of ebooks produced overseas (e.g., Joffe imprint’s Brit-style mysteries that I love to read). Like everyone else, I have to grimace, cave in, and buy those products on Amazon. Otherwise, I recommend you do what I’m doing: Boycott Amazon entirely, whether it’s the main retail site or KDP.

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Menace from Moscow. For your consideration and enjoyment: The end of Penny Castro’s post-apocalyptic adventures. In this third novel of the post-apocalyptic sci-fi trilogy “The Last Human,” the critical and difficult management of geopolitics in a post-apocalyptic world caused by a worldwide bioengineered virus continues: Survivor Penny Castro and her friends’ new task is to recover nuclear-armed missiles aboard a US submarine that sunk off Cuba’s coast at the beginning of the pandemic. As if the train trip from Colorado to Florida across a dangerous, desolate, and devasted US isn’t enough, what awaits them in the Caribbean and beyond will put any fan of sci-fi thrillers on the edge of their seats. From SoCal to Cheyenne Mountain and on to Florida, Cuba, and what remains of the Russian Federation, Penny’s adventures are full of mystery, thrills, and suspense. This novel will soon be available at most online retailers (but not Amazon!) and at most library and lending services.

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

I’d always intended to finish “The Last Humans” trilogy. Unfortunately, circumstances beyond my control affected the second novel and delayed my writing of the third. To describe what occurred, I’ll just quote from the “Notes” section that will appear at the end of the recently published third novel, Menace from Moscow:

“…the trilogy has endured a troubled publishing past. It almost seemed that it was jinxed. The ups and downs I experienced in publishing it were largely beyond my control. You see, a while ago I had this crazy notion that I had to try traditional publishing again to have the full experience as an author. (When I began my publishing career, only traditional or vanity presses existed—today’s self-publishing options aren’t vanity presses!—and I was soon self-publishing my stories because I’d quickly tired of traditional publishing’s oppressive bureaucracy.) After first publishing Rembrandt’s Angel [2017], “Esther Brookstone Art Detective,” Book One with Penmore Press , I wanted to publish Penny’s first novel traditionally as well, but Penmore doesn’t publish sci-fi (even though Rembrandt’s Angel took place in the near future as well—they didn’t realize that, I guess). So, I tried another small press, Black Opal Books. Their acquisition editor loved that first novel [The Last Humans, 2019], so I thought the stories of Penny’s adventures had found a good home. That didn’t happen! I submitted the second novel [A New Dawn] to them; Black Opal was sold; and the new owners sat on the novel for over a year. I finally got disgusted, withdrew the novel, and self-published it [2020]. Then the Bezos bots at Amazon confused the second novel with the first (that’s not been fixed to this date!), one reason I’m now boycotting Amazon as a retailer for all my future books!

I consequently said, “To hell with it!” about completing the trilogy for a long time. Even though I had lots of ideas for the third novel (hints are found at the end of the second), I abandoned the project. But Covid validated my ideas about how a worldwide pandemic could have disastrous effects in our world. (Covid-19 might not have even been made in a Chinese lab, and certainly not one in the PRNK, and it wasn’t dispersed by an ICBM, which might have let it propagate even faster [if that was what the Chinese had intended], but it still efficiently killed millions as it moved around the globe.) Wasn’t it time to finish Penny’s odyssey?

An author’s travails on his road to publishing a novel aren’t that interesting to most readers, but they’re common enough that the NY Times not long ago published an article (Art Section, August 26, 2022), “Finished Writing a Novel? Now’s the Tough Part,” that offers an example of the problems another author had in running that gantlet of traditional publishing. In my letter to the editor that followed soon after, I argued that the author from the article should choose self-publishing the next time because it facilitates the whole process. But enough about authors’ publishing woes! Frankly, I only mentioned them here to explain the delay in publishing this third novel.

In any case, I now therefore feel a great sense of satisfaction after all these “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” because I finished the trilogy. Sure, they’re just three novels among many in my oeuvre, but they’re all special because of the problems I had with publishing them, more than with any others. I wanted to tell the world about Penny’s remaining adventures. I’m sure she wanted that as well. I’ve done that, and she can now have a well-deserved rest with her family….”

There you have it: The sad saga describing one author’s journey to finishing a trilogy!

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Menace from Moscow. In this third novel of this post-apocalyptic sci-fi trilogy, the critical and difficult management of geopolitics in a post-apocalyptic world caused by a worldwide bioengineered virus continues: Survivor Penny Castro and her friends’ new task is to recover nuclear-armed missiles aboard a US submarine that sunk off Cuba’s coast at the beginning of the pandemic. As if the train trip from Colorado to Florida across a dangerous, desolate, and devasted US isn’t enough, what awaits them in the Caribbean and beyond will put any fan of sci-fi thrillers on the edge of their seats. From SoCal to Cheyenne Mountain and on to Florida, Cuba, and what remains of the Russian Federation, Penny’s adventures are full of mystery, thrills, and suspense. This novel will be available at most online retailers (but not Amazon!) and at most library and lending services. For your consideration and enjoyment: The end of Penny’s post-apocalyptic adventures.

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

In last week’s article, I reviewed J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Now, inspired by reading that prelude to The Lord of the Rings trilogy (I’d read the trilogy as a kid, but not its prelude), I’ve continued to read on into Frodo’s odyssey. This article isn’t about that, though.

Instead, I want to tell you about some advice to authors Tolkien offers in his Forward to the Ring trilogy. Okay, he doesn’t present it as advice, but I’ll interpret it in that way as a complement to my little course “Writing Fiction” (Revision 11 is now available as a free PDF download—see the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page at this web site for a list of all my freebies, which includes two full novels in the “Esther Brookstone” series). Let me start with a quote from that Forward:

“Some who have read my book [he considers the entire trilogy as one book here, although traditionally it’s divided into three parts], or at any rate have reviewed them [like today, there were probably reviewers in his day who never actually bothered to read the book], have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible, and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or the kinds of writing they evidently prefer.” Powerful words from a classic author!

First, let me state that I all I have to do is change “my book” to “my books” and “found it” to “found them,” and I’ll have something that also accurately describes my publishing career. Tolkien goes on to say that his goal is to have fun telling stories that he hopes might entertain a few readers. That’s all any fiction writer can hope for if they have any common sense at all—the publishing business is full of vagaries—and it’s all I hope for. In fact, I always state that if each of my books entertains at least one reader, for me that book is a success. Making a lot of money might be other authors’ goal, but my joy is in the storytelling.

Second, Tolkien’s quote certainly applies to the erudite critics of the NY Times who don’t seem to recognize a good story when they see one—or refuse to do so. It also applies to most literary agents who live in the River Styx among the rotting corpses between good fiction and the hell of predicting the marketability of a book. They choose something trashy like Spare (1.4 million copies as of the date I wrote this article) or any other celeb’s scandalous confessions over truly good, entertaining stories. In their defense, the Big Five publishing conglomerates. and all their formulaic old mares and stallions in their stables who should have been sent to the glue factory long ago, only worry about marketability—they’re well ensconced in that literary hell!

Some people will just write J. R. R.’s quote off to despair and despondency—he’d just lived through two world wars! While writers are undoubtedly influenced by current events (the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have been my most recent causes of agita, but the advances of fascism worldwide and in the US certainly mimic Tolkien’s frustrations with the Nazi fascists), his quote and my interpretation of it represents a damning indictment of the current publishing environment as well as his. What’s sad is that his Forward shows that not much has changed: The traditional publishing establishment still tries to control what people read. It’s a more insidious form of book banning than what is seen in Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (or DeSantis’s Florida). I’m actually surprised that the publisher of that pocketbook edition of the Lord of Rings trilogy didn’t leave out that Forward!

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Menace from Moscow. Edits almost done! Here’s a summary:

In the third novel of this trilogy, the critical and difficult management of geopolitics in a post-apocalyptic world caused by a worldwide bioengineered virus continues: Survivor Penny Castro and her friends’ new task is to recover nuclear-armed missiles aboard a US submarine that sunk off Cuba’s coast at the beginning of the pandemic. As if the train trip from Colorado to Florida across a dangerous, desolate, and devasted US isn’t enough, what awaits them in the Caribbean and beyond will put any fan of sci-fi thrillers on the edge of their seats. From SoCal to Cheyenne Mountain and on to Florida, Cuba, and what remains of the Russian Federation, Penny’s adventures are full of mystery, thrills, and suspense.

This book has Draft2Digital in its near future, so it will soon appear at all D2D’s affiliated retailers and library and lending services. I hope readers will enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

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

Readers of this blog know that at the end of an article I usually sign off by writing, “Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!” Although it might be obvious, let me parse this motto’s meaning, which has two parts.

The first might be considered a genre statement, but it’s more a statement about my stories’ settings. (I’m no fan of genres or anyone who tries to categorize my fiction besides me.) Those settings can cover anywhere on planet Earth or go far beyond Earth into the cosmos. What that first part does not contain is the time element, which can go from prehistory (e.g., A. B. Carolan’s Origins) to more or less contemporary times (e.g., The Midas Bomb) or to the far future (e.g., Rogue Planet) or a lot of different times in parallel universes (e.g. A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse). That’s a flaw in my motto, of course, but I didn’t want to make it any longer!

The second part expresses a lot more in fewer Latin words than the first part (the English non-literal translation is a bit longer: “In books, there’s liberty”), and it’s more profound. Books are the traditional and best way to support the fight for liberty vs. autocracy, good over evil, and tolerance over bigotry and hatred. It’s also a statement against book banning, so important nowadays with haters, bigots, racists, and other fascist personalities trying to dictate what people can and cannot read. That such censorship is now ubiquitous and increasing in the US is troubling, to say the least, and I will never condone it. Whatever a book’s themes or topics, a reader is free to choose not to read it, and anything beyond these personal choices should not be a subject of discussion.

So, most everything I write, novels, short fiction, and even these blog articles, can be summarized by my motto. I know most authors don’t have one, but I’m not like most authors! Readers of my many books already know that. I hope the word about my books (and my motto!) gets out so that new readers will join me in this grand adventure we call reading.

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A Time-Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse. From the hard sci-fi perspective, this is time travel done right, using the “Many Worlds Theory of Quantum Mechanics” to avoid paradoxes. It’s also a rom-com because physicist Gail and her newly hired tech Jeff create a time machine that can only go into the future but also become lovers. But “the future” of one universe in the multiverse can seem like the past in another! The two hop from universe to universe living one romantic adventure after another, exploring some of the various possibilities of human existence…and non-human existence as well, each adventure a different commentary about our Earth and our own Universe. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold.

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

[Note from Steve: Some authors give away their published books. Except as an exchange for an honest review, I don’t. But I will give away unpublished fiction, mostly short fiction, and other fiction-related items, in the form of free downloadable PDFs. Here are two new ones you might want to download and peruse.]

The Detectives, Volume Two: The Earl of Penrith. Unlike that long first volume with many detectives and even a mystery that takes place in the future, this volume focuses on just one sleuth, Detective Inspector Earl Wilson, who works out of a substation in the Penrith Police District. Detectives in England’s northern counties generally have to cover large areas of beautiful countryside, and Earl’s Lake District is no exception. By the same token, they usually don’t have to solve a lot of murders—stealing stock and farm equipment are much more common crimes. Earl however has a rash of murder cases to solve, though. To solve them, his DS Sally Hill aids him.

As I was finishing the first story in this collection (there are four, the last never seen before), I thought Sally and Earl might inherit the mantles of Esther and Bastiann from the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series. But I decided that Earl seemed a bit old for the job (he’s about ready to retire too). I chose Steve Morgan and his team instead. But Earl is still an interesting bloke, and you might see more of him in the future.

Given that these are short stories (some are almost novella-length, though), I don’t focus on the CID briefings or relationships among the police personnel. That’s all better treated in a novel. Instead, I focus on the crimes and how Sally and Earl go about solving them. That has to be done in all short fiction, as you have seen in most of the fiction that I offer freely to readers. That’s the essense of most mystery and crime stories.

Writing Fiction, Revision 11. I can’t believe this is #11 already! Over my brief career of writing fiction (when my first novel Full Medical was published in 2006, I was already an old fellow), I’ve been continuously experimenting and trying out new tricks of the trade, so I’ve been passing on what I’ve learned to other writers, newbies or oldtimers who want a fresh perspective, or to anyone who wants to know the truth about this crazy business of writing and publishing fiction.

This new revision includes articles taken from this blog and expands on my recent experiences with Draft2Digital that I’ve used to self-publish my recent novels. It also sharpens my criticism against the Big Five and traditional publishing in general.

It also contains “The Recruit,” a short story you’ve seen in this blog (or in the above collection), but in annotated form to indicate key points about writing elements. This whole freebie is formatted exactly like the novels I’ve produced with Draft2Digital to go along with the article contained therein that explains how to use that easy-to-use software. (If I can use it, you can too!)

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Where can you go to download these free PDFs? At this website, go to my “Free Stuff & Contests” web page and find the list of all my offered freebies and then follow the directions at the end of the list. You can also download the other freebies as well—be my guest. Among them, you will find two complete novels, Defanging the Red Dragon and Intolerance, #6 and #7 from the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series.

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

Some readers know that I give away most of my short fiction in blog posts (see the “Steve’s Shorts,” “ABC Shorts,” and “Friday Fiction” archives) and as free PDF downloads (see the list on my “Free Stuff & Contests” web page). But there are two free novels you can download as PDFs as well.

Defanging the Red Dragon is a a crossover novel: Half takes place in NYC and features NYPD detectives Chen and Castilblanco; the other half takes place in London and features Esther Brookstone and Bastiann van Coevorden. So, it’s #8 in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series and #6 in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series.

There’s just one plot, though: China is trying to steal Australia, the UK, and the US’s plans for new software and hardware upgrades to their nuclear submarines. (Remember the past scandal caused when Australia bailed out on the project with the French? That left egg on Biden’s face!) This novel’s spy-fi with a lot of mystery, suspense and thrills…and it’s free.

Intolerance is a complete shift. Esther Brookstone is involved in three different cases: A cold case from Ireland, the case of an old soldier murdered at a nursing home, and a case involving domestic terrorism. (That last case isn’t completely resolved and continues in The Klimt Connection, #8 in the “Esther Brookstone” series.) All three cases consider various aspects of intolerance, something that seems to be tearing apart civilized societies with uncivilized acts of terror.

Why did I make these novels free? The easy answer: Because I could! But a better reason might be that I didn’t know at the time if I wanted to publish any more Esther Brookstone books. I was going through “a rough patch,” as the Brits might say, and didn’t know if I could continue the mental marathons that novel writing requires me to run. Defanging the Red Dragon was also a holiday gift to my readers, as you can see from its title page. Readers can consider them both gifts, in fact.

While you can still jump directly from Leonardo and the Quantum Code to The Klimt Connection in the “Esther Brookstone” series (I provide enough background in #8 to allow you to do that without reading #6 and #7), a simple click will give you two free novels to read this holiday season. You can even download the two PDFs and give copies to your family and friends (as long as you respect the copyright).

Yes, my fiction is often complex. I sometimes receive that critique and then ignore it. You see, I don’t do simple; I refuse to write fluff. Even my comedy is complex; the rom-com The Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse is hard sci-fi, and a lot in it informs and goes far beyond the fluff one often sees in that rom-com genre. (Did you know a secret op took place in Norway and destroyed the Nazi’s heavy-water production facility during WWII, helping to put an end to Hitler’s plans to develop the atomic bomb?) My stories’ plots, settings, and themes are designed to inform readers as much as (hopefully) entertain them.

I also inform readers and writers with my end notes. While many probably ignore them, nearly every book has them. I discuss what motivated me to write the story and offer references for further reading; I also acknowledge the real people who influenced the novel. I’m guessing people don’t read them because they’re not used to seeing such artistic candor? Most authors don’t bother. But both readers and writers can benefit from the information contained in them.

Of course, this blog also offers a wealth of information contained in these articles about reading, writing, and publishing. While my ideas on those subjects have evolved (and perhaps have become more acerbic and less mainstream?), I modestly believe that they inform readers of the blog about what goes on in this modern world of storytelling. (For writers and maybe readers, my course “Writing Fiction” collects many of those ideas. It’s a free PDF download available on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page.)

All too often, authors only see their writing as a business and determine success by sales figures. I’ve never thought that way. Instead, I believe every author has an obligation to give something back to the community of writers, readers, and publishers (yes, even those associated with the Big Five and its sycophantic cadre of agents, although those authors never do), offering information others can use (or ignore at their own peril!), facts they might not know but can appreciate, and perspectives about our wonderfully diverse world and its peoples that can enrich their lives. I want to do my small part in achieving that.

Of course, I want to be true to myself and stick by my opinions, but I’ll often present the viewpoint of “the other side” in my prose. I will not be the next Ayn Rand or Karl Marx and write pure fiction that’s propaganda, but I might have characters who espouse libertarian or communist ideas. I realize that the spectrum of human beliefs and behavior is a wide one, and I want my prose to reflect that. Human beings are also political, and so I want my characters to be political as well. Fiction has to reflect reality; simple fluff never does!

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Fear the Asian Evil. This third book in the “Inspector Steve Morgan” series might seem ripped from the headlines after reports that President Biden strongly warned President-for-Life Xi about invading Taiwan. The book deals more with China’s long-standing policy of industrial espionage—they’d rather steal ideas than have to invent them—and fomenting unrest in western democracies. While it starts out as a typical police procedural—the sister-in-law of Morgan’s sergeant is shot—it acquires a spy-fi flavor that goes far beyond Christie’s typical British-style mysteries. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold (but not on Amazon).

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

I often think of tweens and teens these days; how they’ll make out in the world we leave them, the new trials and tribulations awaiting them that previous generations didn’t have to survive, and so forth. Like everyone else, they were affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, but their lives were more adversely affected and interrupted than those of adults. Moreover, because they’re on the path of turning into adults, they’ll have intense adolescent problems to contend with long forgotten about by most adults plus a mountain of new ones to climb.

That’s how I became interested in young adult (YA) literature. I’d read Heinlein’s Podkayne of Mars as a kid long ago and immediately liked that novel about teen angst set in the future, something I and my nerdy cohort could easily identify with. Later, with that fond memory, I knew I had to try writing a YA novel. I didn’t embark on that marathon immediately. As I did with my mystery and crime novels, I studied what was “out there.” (That included those Harry Potter books, which taught me what not to do. Thank you, J.K.!) As with the mystery and crime stories, I discovered that sci-fi and YA literature weren’t incompatible, just like Heinlein had indicated.

My first YA sci-fi novel, The Secret Lab, was a sci-fi mystery set on the International Space Station (ISS) far in the future when families with tweens, not just astronauts, form a tight-knit little community living aboard a much-enlarged station. This YA novel’s timeline coincides with what was going on Earth below as the “downies” struggle through the Chaos in the hard sci-fi novel I titled Survivors of the Chaos.

In the two YA sci-fi novels after that one, we followed J. K. Rowling’s trajectory a bit: Tween to young teen and on to older teen, in The Secret Lab, The Secret of the Urns, and Mind Games, respectively. I say “we” because A. B. Carolan rewrote, reedited, and republished The Secret Lab and then authored the next two novels. But, in another major difference with Rowling’s fantasy series, besides those three novels being hard sci-fi as well as YA, their young heroes were all girls. Why is that?

You might think it was because of Podkayne? No, I had more a more profound reason that A. B. fully agreed with: Too many YA authors refuse to recognize young girls’ importance! (That’s true in general, of course, probably more so.) Young women aren’t sexual objects or childhood brides. They’re not men’s slaves. They’re not breeders who should stay home taking care of men’s children. Good things happen in societies when they can be creatives—artists, storytellers, techies, and scientists—even entrepreneurs, and yes, politicians. Our societies only have to give them the chance to realize their full potential to reap the benefits!

I’ll leave it to MFA students’ theses to analyze how many YA heroes are girls. Heinlein, of course, was a pioneer when he created Podkayne. I’d still bet the number of male YA heroes is larger than the number of female ones. Having known and admired many strong women in my long life, and having taught many years in academia where girls are often told they can’t do math or science (today called STEM), it was easy to get motivated and create Shashibala in The Secret Lab, Asako in The Secret of the Urns, and Della in Mind Games. (Readers will note that A. B. and I have followed the timeline of the three books in the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy”—making a YA version of each one, if you will.) These three girls are young female heroes who represent the future power of women that lamentably is only beginning to be unleashed in some of Earth’s current societies.

Hopefully, I can get A. B. to finish the “Denisovan Trilogy.” His Kayla Jones could really kick ass in Origins! (That novel is not set in my usual sci-fi universe, but it’s hero is still a young adult female—something like a wizard, in fact, so take that, J.K.!)

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Three A. B. Carolan YA sci-fi mysteries. They’re listed above. The Secret Lab has Shashibala and her friends out to find a cat loose in the ISS. In the process, they uncover a conspiracy. The Secret of the Urns finds Asako befriending some strange ETs living on an Earth-sized moon of a Jupiter-sized planet. Humans are persecuting the ETs, and Asako wants to stop the persecution. Mind Games has Della trying to find her foster father’s killer. She has to use her ESP powers fully to thwart a plan to take over the fledgling ITUIP (“International Trade Union of Independent Planets”). These three novels, available in both ebook and print format wherever quality books are sold (even on Amazon—they were published before our boycott), would make a great holiday gift for the young adults among your family and friends. Many adults who are young-at-heart have also enjoyed them!

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

I have a few series—seven, not counting A. B. Carolan’s—and Vladimir Kalinin has the role of arch-villain in four of them and in two bridge books between them. He also influences many of the events in a fifth, because five of the seven series are on the same fictional timeline that starts with The Midas Bomb and ends with Rogue Planet. (Both have paper editions if you’re interested.) I don’t know if that’s a new record for one fiction author, but it’s certainly evidence for Vladimir’s long criminal career.

Why do I keep returning to him? (Most recently, I did that in the “Inspector Steve Morgan” series, located midway along that timeline.) It’s complicated! He’s a complex and interesting villain, for one thing. While not afraid to commit violence to further his many nefarious schemes, he shows flashes of caring and compassion that could make readers used to simpler villains scratch their heads. While using his genius to gain influence and riches, a true master of the art of the deal, he also sometimes exhibits admirable feelings for his fellow human beings that can be surprising. His long friendship with Sean Cassidy, the old ex-pat Irish bomber, for example, which lasts all the way to No Amber Waves of Grain, is as solid as any friendship between strong personalities can be. In fact, they’ve formed more of a close partnership in which they trust each other more than their many accomplices.

But Vladimir also obsesses about revenge, a very human emotion. His long pursuit of Putin’s oligarchs is aimed at paying them back for forcing him to flee his native Russia when Putin grabbed power there. He’s also always thinking about revenge against those NYPD cops, Chen and Castilblanco, although he respects them and others for having thwarted him. He does eventually manage to take revenge against some oligarchs and other enemies, in particular the oligarch in Gaia and the Goliaths and the Korean industrialist who killed his protégé in No Amber Waves of Grain. Yet he’s not above trying to assassinate a few US presidents—he succeeds with a second attempt on one in Soldiers of God.

Many literary critics see authors’ villains as representations of authors’ dark sides. That’s not the reason Vladimir has appeared in so much of my fiction, though. Instead, he’s evidence for my belief that no one is purely good or evil. That yin-yang simplification so ubiquitous in fictional fluff isn’t justified because human beings are so complex. If fiction is to seem real, its plots and characters must both seem real as well.

A good thesis for an MFA graduate student (do they even do them?) might be following Kalinin’s career from The Midas Bomb to Soldiers of God and on to his influences beyond that, i.e. following my extended timeline. Because I don’t write all these novels in sequential order, that wouldn’t be a trivial task. And that student might prove that my development of Kalinin, if followed sequentially along that fictional timeline, is as complex and chaotic as his character seems to be!

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Comments are always welcome. (Please follow the rules on my “Join the Conversation” web page. If you don’t, your comment is considered spam.)

Fear the Asian Evil. This third book in the “Inspector Steve Morgan” series might seem ripped from the headlines after reports that President Biden strongly warned President-for-Life Xi about invading Taiwan. The book deals more with China’s long-standing policy of industrial espionage—they’d rather steal ideas than have to invent them—and fomenting unrest in western democracies. While it starts out as a typical police procedural—the sister-in-law of Morgan’s sergeant is shot—it acquires a spy-fi flavor that goes far beyond Christie’s typical British-style mysteries. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold (but not on Amazon).

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

Here’s a question you might be dying to ask: How is it that an old half-Irish curmudgeon (my desktop’s scene is a photo I took of Ireland’s Blarney Castle!) enjoys writing about British detectives? (Some of them are Celtic, though—Irish, Scottish, and Welsh.) I started down that road with Esther Brookstone and have written twelve novels that can be called British-style mysteries, which include the three “Inspector Steve Morgan” novels as the most recent ones.

The answer isn’t what you might think. While I’ve always been an internationally oriented author—about half the “Chen & Castilblanco” series takes place outside the US—and I’ve spent a lot of time outside the country, that international perspective, while unusual among American authors, that doesn’t completely explain my recent focus on British-style sleuthing. In fact, there are two more important factors: One, I loved reading Christie’s stories as a kid, and survived Covid-19 by reading entire series of British-style mysteries; and two, Asimov’s two sci-fi mysteries, Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun, also read at an early age, showed me that mystery tales could be more universal than any other category of fiction. Christie barely probed into the possibilities. (That binge-reading didn’t either.)

Rembrandt’s Angel, the first book in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series was written more as a personal challenge to myself to put together Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, Christie’s two famous sleuths, and create a twenty-first century crime-fighting duo, something I always considered an error Christie made. (Brookstone is a modern Miss Marple; and her paramour and later husband, van Coevorden, is a modern Hercule Poirot.) But those two more general motivations remained.

A writer-friend among Black Opal Book’s authors writes mysteries set in ancient Egypt. Another sci-fi writer writes excellent mysteries set far in the future. (I think I’ve reviewed both these authors’ novels a while ago.) Many of my own Dr. Obregon stories are sci-fi mysteries, and, in my binge-reading, I’ve enjoyed mysteries set in the nineteenth century, some even written by Americans. In other words, mystery provides a large umbrella to tuck stories under. Authors and readers should never forget that mystery has that positive influence on fiction literature.

Yes, mystery stories’ characters can be from any country and any ethnicity, and their settings can be from any time and place, even in outer space.

But in my recent works, I returned to mystery’s roots more as an homage: Christie’s Britain, with new twenty-first century wrappings. Despite reforms and reorganizations (the NCA and Police Scotland represent two major examples), policing in the UK is still steeped in tradition. The “Inspector Morgan” novels are much more police procedurals than Rembrandt’s Angel and Son of Thunder, the first two novels in the “Esther Brookstone” series. I’m guessing that this turn in my writing journey might not resonate with UK readers. So be it. It’s a detour I needed to take to round out that part of my writing journey into the strange lands of mystery and crime writing.

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Comments are always welcome. (Please follow the rules on my “Join the Conversation” web page. If you don’t, your comment is considered spam.)

Fear the Asian Evil. This third book in the “Inspector Steve Morgan” series might seem ripped from the headlines after reports that President Biden strongly warned President-for-Life Xi about invading Taiwan. The book deals more with China’s long-standing policy of industrial espionage—they’d rather steal ideas than have to invent them—and fomenting unrest in western democracies. While it starts out as a typical police procedural—the sister-in-law of Morgan’s sergeant is shot—it acquires a spy-fi flavor that goes far beyond Christie’s typical British-style mysteries. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold (but not on Amazon).

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