I’ve done my part…
Authors’ weapons are their words and their military campaigns their novels. Considering these truths, I’ve done my part to wage battles against autocrats. The Midas Bomb (2009), one of my early novels, painted Venezuela as an autocratic hell—something it became beyond anything I could imagine—and that theme appeared later as well, most notably in Soldiers of God (2008), where yet another Venezuelan dictator launches the first nuclear attack in the Southern Hemisphere against Colombia. The bad guys in my stories run from the ubiquitous gangsters and vicious killers who plague our societies to very real and infamous monsters like Putin and Xi—the last are real autocratic villains I go after in the “Esther Brookstone” (2017-2022) and “Steve Morgan” (2022-2023) series.
I suppose a Big Five traditional publisher would cringe at my using real autocrats like Putin and Xi as villains. Because I’m mostly a self-published author (especially now after questionable experiments with traditional publishing), I don’t care what traditional publishers and their authors might have to say, especially those among the Big Five conglomerates! Certain politicians on the far right might love Putin, for example, but I don’t expect them to be reading anything worthwhile, let alone my stories! (And if they’re fascists like Putin, I wouldn’t give a damn about what they think of me anyway.) On the other hand, one can argue that using real villains like Putin and Xi makes my fiction seem more real, something Tom Clancy championed for mystery/thriller novels.
As a bow to these legal concerns any of my readers might have, though, I’ve now put in my copyright statements similar to the following: “This book is entirely a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, products, and events are either creations of the author’s imagination, or used as historical and venue background for the story. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, events, locales, or products is coincidental, with a few exceptions, but all are used in a fictional or correct historical context. No endorsement or criticism is implied in mentioning them, nor are any opinions expressed by fictional characters necessarily those of the author.” The last is a bit of humor, of course. Let some corporate lawyer figure out how to sue one of my characters for libel and slander, especially some nitwit representing Putin, Xi, or some other infamous autocrat! Not even our biased SCOTUS fascist judges would vote to hear such a case.
Considering all the above, I think I’ve done my part in waging a just war against autocrats. Villains like Putin, Xi, and their fascist friends and minions now common in many democracies, including the US, don’t receive many positive descriptions in my stories, to say the least. On the contrary, I wage a literary war on them, a war of words! Perhaps if every author did that, this world might be a better place.
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“Inspector Steve Morgan” trilogy. These three novels that logically continue the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series is about evil. The first and third novels are basically about Russian and Chinese evildoers; the second is more about an evil cult because populist demagogues love to form cults of personalities. They are all set in the Bristol area of England in the near future and show how unsung heroes can stand up against powerful tyrannical despots in times of need.
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
