It’s a global economy, now more than ever; so crime’s more global as well: International conspiracies; arms, artworks, drugs, and human traffickers; spies and terrorists—they’re all subjects for mystery and thriller novels that allow a reader to become an armchair traveler who accompanies crime fighters and soldiers of fortune on their international journeys. I went on those journeys as a reader of Agatha Christie and H. Rider Haggard’s novels years ago, but I also created a few of those adventures myself for other readers as well, starting years ago with my NYPD detectives Chen and Castilblanco.

I’ve chronicled quite a few of their cases in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series. Most start in New York City, but about half of them go international…or start there! The Midas Bomb, the first novel in the series, appropriately takes place in the world’s most famous city (there are international flashbacks and back stories involving Castilblanco, though), but the villains are international in origin. That’s an obvious mix to make because NYC is often called the “crossroads of the world,” a city so diverse that over 800 different languages and dialects are spoken there besides English.

Other novels in the series have an even stronger international flavor: In Angels Need Not Apply, Aristocrats and Assassins, Gaia and the Goliaths, and Defanging the Red Dragon, the city, if it’s a character, plays a minor role.

The most international of these novels, Aristocrats and Assassins, is a tale of international intrigue and terrorism that takes place completely in Europe—much of Europe is visited, in fact. It starts with Castilblanco and his wife Pam beginning a rare vacation they’ve promised themselves for a while—she’s a busy TV news reporter and he’s a cop, so their periods of free time don’t often overlap! A group of terrorists are kidnapping European aristocrats. The motive’s not clear, but Castilblanco gets involved. The action involving Chen begins in China, but the two detectives eventually come together to solve the mystery of the kidnappings.

The other “international novels” in the series take place only partially overseas. Angels Need Not Apply is about a conspiracy where a drug cartel, Muslim terrorists, and an American ultra-right militia team up to create major mayhem. Each group has a different motive to create chaos, so Chen and Castilblanco’s struggles to thwart their plans aren’t easy. A lot of Gaia and the Goliaths takes place in France. In perhaps my most prescient take on things to come, an American energy exec teams up with a Russian petrol-oligarch to try to increase the West’s dependence on fossil fuels.

Defanging the Red Dragon is a crossover novel that connects the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series with the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series (it’s novel #8 for the first and #6 for the second). It begins in NYC and continues to DC and London. Castilblanco is present in both the US and UK; Chen holds down the fort in the US. (Esther and her new husband Bastiann van Coevorden had earlier cameos in several “Chen and Castilblanco” novels—Esther in The Collector and Bastiann in Aristocrats and Assassins and Gaia and the Goliaths.)

Unlike what Michael Connolly did with his famous Harry Bosch, I didn’t want to restrict Chen and Castilblanco to one city and turn their cases there into mystery/thriller novels that are little more than police procedurals. There are very few Harry Bosch novels with an international flavor (most take place in LA), but policing these days often has an international flavor, if only for international terrorism. (Even my Family Affairs has this aspect.) I believe authors like Baldacci, Connolly, Child, Deaver, and other old stallions in the Big Five’s stables would appeal to more readers if they went international more often. (In Deaver’s defense, his best book, Garden of Beasts, is completely international, but it’s not in his “Lincoln Rhyme” series!) Maybe foreign readers love stories set in the US, but I bet a lot of American readers like stories with an international flavor. (I certainly do!)

I’ll admit that sometimes my novels might have too much international flavor (e.g., Muddlin’ Through and Goin’ the Extra Mile, the first and third novels in the “Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries”). Perhaps either extreme is bad? If that’s the case, the “Chen and Castilblanco” series is the Goldilocks choice for readers who want some crime stories that are an eclectic mix. (You can leave a comment to this article or use my contact page to tell me what you think of this.)

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“Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” Series. This seven-book series (eight, if you count Defanging the Red Dragon, a free PDF available on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page at this website) takes you from Manhattan in the US to Latin America and Europe and beyond as the NYPD detectives battle the criminal elements of humanity. Chen is a Chinese American from Long Island whose beguiling Mona Lisa smile belies her cleverness and strength; Castilblanco is a sarcastic and tough Puerto Rican American from the Bronx. Both are ex-military and suffer no fools. These novels are available wherever quality ebooks are sold. There are many hours of reading entertainment waiting for all armchair detectives out there who are fans of mysteries and thrillers.

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

Leonardo da Vinci was a Renaissance man, literally and figuratively. His “Mona Lisa” is the best known painting in the world; his inventions and theories—some valid, some not, but all creations far ahead of his time—have inspired inventors and scientists; and his advances in artistic techniques revolutionized the world of art. Even his notebooks have seduced the likes of Bill Gates.

Da Vinci is such an important character on the world’s stage that one might wonder why he doesn’t appear in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series. (Nine novels now if you count the two available as free PDF downloads available at this website. I’m currently working on another Brookstone story; it will probably be only a novella.) After all, if I made Leonardo’s appearance more fiction than fact like in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, I might sell a few more books because people are fascinated with him; but his importance as an artist, self-taught scientist, student of anatomy, and inventor, whether in myth or reality, would always dominate my novel.

I came close, though. Son of Thunder featured Sandro Botticelli, a competitor of Da Vinci. (They might be called bitter enemies!) Between Esther, Botticelli, and St. John, Sandro Botticelli is the least important character in this mystery/thriller novel that’s also historical fiction. Leonardo would have stolen the show, I’m sure. In Leonardo and the Quantum Code, one of Da Vinci’s notebooks plays an important role, not Leonardo per se. (And that’s more as an inventor of some techniques that motivate a physicist to create new encryption algorithms for quantum computers. By the way, I don’t believe true AI can exist without quantum computers!)

In the first novel mentioned, Leonardo only appears as Sandro’s competitor; in the second, he only appears as the author of that notebook that British, Russian, and US agents are after. (I assumed that the one Bill Gates has doesn’t contain what leads to that quantum code!)

Recently, someone studied the background in the “Mona Lisa” and concluded it showed a landscape near Lecco, Italy; other historians have wasted a lot of time trying to decide who “Mona” was as well. (The model for Venus in Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus” has received similar attention but not as much; in Son of Thunder, she’s Vespucci’s daughter, one theory being that she and Sandro were lovers.) The “Mona Lisa” has been attacked by eco-terrorists and other crazies. (Botticelli fans? People who are fans of “The Scream”?). But oddly enough, Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper,” not the “Mona Lisa,” is featured by Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code because Christ (and his descendants!) plays such an important role in that novel so filled with historical errors it should be called a fantasy. (Christ also indirectly plays an important role in Son of Thunder, of course, which I consider The Da Vinci Code done right. In my novel, the Magdalene is just another but very important organizer of the Christian revolutionary cabal setting out to reform the ancient world; St. John is another.)

Esther Brookstone’s preferences in art lean toward painters from the Renaissance and earlier; so she might have preferred featuring Leonardo’s art, not Botticelli’s or Da Vinci’s notebook. I didn’t give into her preferences, though. The Brazilian artist Ricardo Silva is now featured in her gallery because his wild abstracts sell well. And she’s also added three Chinese immigrant artists’ impressionist landscapes as well. (Perhaps more to badger the Chinese government who forced them to flee Hong Kong? Or as complements to the mystic landscapes of Silva’s wife Bobbie?). Esther insisted on returning a stolen Klimt painting to its rightful owner in The Klimt Connection; that Austrian painter is another modernist. In other words, I chose to expand the old girl’s artistic horizons! And, considering the price of most any painting by Da Vinci, one can bet a Da Vinci won’t be on sell anytime soon at her gallery! She’ll just have to continue featuring paintings of saints with halos, perhaps of comparable quality relative to any Da Vinci painting but now mostly forgotten by art history.

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“Esther Brookstone Art Detective.” The nine novels in this series are as much about Esther, a sexier and more agile Miss Marple, and her paramour and later husband, Bastiann van Coevorden, who looks like the actor who played Hercule Poirot, as they fight the good fight against diabolical spies, terrorists, and other villains. They’re also more about travel in and around the UK, Europe, and overseas as they’re about art thieves, art forgers, and trafficking of stolen artwork. Two novels are free, appearing in the list of free PDF downloads found on the “Free Stuff & Contests” webpage (the new Esther Brookstone novella will also be available there). The others are inexpensive ebooks, and the first three also are available in paper format. Enjoy!

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

A.B. Carolan’s having problems finishing “The Denisovan Trilogy” (some of his woes are discussed in Intolerance, a novel that’s a free PDF download found at this website). You’ll only find the first novel Origins for sale. It’s complete as far as it goes, but he’d be the first one to say there are a lot of planets and lightyears to go in order to finish the trilogy. His problem isn’t writer’s block per se; it’s what many authors experience: Losing track of the trees in a very big forest.

Let me explain, starting with an admission: Evidence of this problem is found in one of my very first novels, the sci-fi saga Survivors of the Chaos. (Originally published by the now defunct POD Infinity Publishing, a second edition is available as the first novel in the ebook bundle of another trilogy, “The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection.”) It’s not a major flaw; it’s the nature of the beast, the key word being “saga.”

You see, Survivors, or even that trilogy as a whole, is a grand saga covering thousands of years of human civilization, and that’s the forest. The trees are represented by the individual human (and later ET) heroes (and villains!) who move that saga forward. As I wrote, I had to focus on those individual trees, the keyword being “focus.” A historian can perhaps focus on an entire nation or civilization, but sci-fi readers need specific individuals they can relate to; and those who make a difference, i.e., make change occur, are the ones authors must write about. It’s true that World War II was Churchill, FDR, Hitler, Stalin, and the Japanese generals, but the true stories told in history books and historical fiction novels come down to individuals. In other words, that list of the famous and infamous in that war for many can be less interesting than the story of just one soldier slogging it out as the Allies move toward Berlin.

Survivors has another feature that some might see as a flaw: It and its sequels, Sing a Zamba Galactica and Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hand!, used to be one huge novel. Consequently, you will find Jenny Wong’s story unfinished in that first novel and continued into the second (and third and beyond!); it’s definitely a cliff-hangar in Survivors. This isn’t the major flaw that it could be, because a reader who only peruses that first novel probably doesn’t realize she’s even still alive, so they’d be surprised when she returns in Zamba.

With all these problems, it was a wonder that Survivors got any positive reviews! Instead, I got my most cherished review (because it motivated me to ignore what an ignorant said as she complained about too much narrative, indicating no understanding of sci-fi writing where world-building is always required) from a Pulitzer-nominated author no less! In a nutshell, he liked that saga aspect. (Maybe he was a reader who just thought Jenny had died?)

I think Carolan’s problems with finishing “The Denisovan Trilogy” are similar to those I had with “The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy.” He shouldn’t complain too much [wink, wink], though, because one strong character, Kayla Jones, will be the strong tree standing tall in all three novels no matter how big the forest becomes. She’s “the One” for the trilogy as well as for the Denisovans’ descendants, the shaman who will change human history. (You can write Carolan and tell him to get going using the contact page at this website. I think Google has cancelled his Gmail account. We just text now! But I can pass on any message you have for him.)

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Origins. Even this single novel shows A.B. Carolan can write action-packed sci-fi. (Of course, some readers saw that in Mind Games, another Carolan novel.) Origins is another sci-fi mystery written for young adults but many adults who are young-at-heart have enjoyed it. If you’ve read anything about the Denisovans (a real but more mysterious hominid line like the Neanderthals), you’ll enjoy this story about their descendants on Earth and those among the stars.

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

Do you get tired of every software company offering you what they call AI software? I do! They want to jump on the bandwagon, but almost everything they call AI is gimmicky and nothing like what real AI is supposed to be.

The best current software offered (and let’s not call it AI!) can only surf the web, admittedly faster than I can, pilfering information here, there, and everywhere, and maybe organize what it finds in somewhat logical order. In other words, current whatever-it’s-called is nothing more than yet another advanced search engine. One might be able to ask it to write a story in the style of Steven M. Moore, for example, and it will spit out something; but Steven M. Moore is such a common name, so who knows what it’ll come up with? Certainly not anything like I write simply because I don’t have one unique style. Just compare the novels in “The Last Humans” trilogy with those in the “Inspector Steve Morgan” one.

AI’s hardware and software versions often appear in sci-fi stories (including mine), and it invariably goes far beyond all the current and primitive offerings. HAL is perhaps the most famous example because of the movie 2001, of course, but the computer in Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress easily beats Clarke’s HAL (and neither is actually called an AI).

I don’t believe I was the first sci-fi author to make AIs essential for FTL travel, but I was the first to say they’re needed to manage the appearance of FTL obtained by hopping around the different universes in the multiverse, which requires complex geometric and physical calculations in strange and varied spacetimes. In other words, my AI hardware/software constructs needed superhuman speed for super-complex calculations and the management of billions of terabytes of data to do the tasks no normal human or current AI construct could ever do. (Some abnormal humans manage in my stories, though. They’re often “collective intelligences.”)

In 2001, HAL goes a bit crazy (a bow to human beings’ Frankenstein complex?); in 2010, it redeems itself. Both cases remind some of us of an important question: If AIs are our constructs, will they have a soul? I’d like to ask the Pope if a sufficiently advanced AI could acquire a soul. Where did that AI’s soul in Heinlein’s novel go after he shut down? (I’m not so sure about HAL, but Heinlein’s AI seemed to have one.) Is there a corner of heaven where the souls of truly advanced but dead AIs will be found?

I suppose someone (probably not the Pope) could say that proving a sufficiently advanced AI has a soul could be the ultimate Turing test (assuming human beings have them, of course). We might not want to bring Turing into the discussion, though, considering what the British government did to poor Alan for being gay: How do you chemically euthanize an AI?

I remember way back (Radio Shack Color Computer Days!) when there existed programs that would accept my questions (from an approved list, mind you) and give me some answers that seemed to make sense. Today’s software creations aren’t much more than that primitive software except for being able to take more questions and/or providing more answers.

The real goal in AI development is sentience, i.e., self-awareness. When that occurs, as it did with the Terminator’s net, Heinlein’s lunar computer, and HAL, that’s when we’ll really have to begin to worry, especially if that sentient software has no soul, in a good sense, meaning moral spine. Otherwise, such a computational construct might become an invincible dictator or decide that human beings are superfluous (that’s not an “exclusive or,” of course, as a certain current sociopathic presidential candidate has shown). Current dangers from what we erroneously label as AI software seem harmless and trivial in comparison, real but manageable: Just shut them down! But the future might be very dark for human beings with AI advances.

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“The Doctor Carlos Stories.” These are spread around my oeuvre. Some appear in the ebook collection Pasodobles in a Quantum Stringscape; others (maybe some of the same?) are collected in a free PDF download. In any case, they all feature Dr. Carlos Obregon, medical officer of the explorer starship Brendan controlled by (you guessed it!) an AI. Sometimes the AI plays a major role, as it can in other sci-fi stories I’ve written. It’s always there, though, guiding a starship through the universes of the multiverse to give the appearance of FTL. (How human beings got that technology is explained in Sing a Zamba Galactica, the second novel in “The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection”—an ebook bundle is available that contains the whole trilogy.)

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

This article is another attempt to say something intelligent about book titles. Authors often can be boringly banal and copycats with their titles: “Gone…” something or the other, “Fifty Shades…” of something, or too long a trip through the alphabet—“A is for…,” “B is for…”—all boring, boring, boring, if only by showing their lack of creativity (often on the part of a publisher and not the author, I’ll admit). The standard rule that’s used is “short and to the point” when it should be “make it more interesting than what’s on a cereal box, stupid.”

I’m guilty of creating bad titles too, but I think I’ve had a few good ones. While covers and titles are just window dressing for what’s in a novel, no matter what publishers, reviewers, authors, or readers think, I suppose bad ones can hurt sales figures. (Mine are so low, it doesn’t matter.) A muscular bloke naked from the waist up with one arm around some sexy gal’s waist on a cover, along with “Love in…” or “Romance at…” in the title, could motivate serious readers perusing B&N’s shelves or online pages for their next read to flee to other authors, publishers, and booksellers. (I’ve done exactly that for years. I now think most booksellers have no idea about how to categorize a book.)

Generally speaking, I’ve been lucky with my covers, learning early in my writing career (officially starting somewhere after 9/11) that I needed professional help from a cover artist for them. I choose the titles, though, and often go through various ones from the first working title to the one finally used on the published book. My best is still The Midas Bomb that sums up the plot in only three words; the worst might be Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hand!, which only refers to the last scene of the novel. (I still like it, though, because it continues the theme started with Sing a Zamba Galactica.)

Some titles that I reject during the course of writing the novel are quite acceptable. Consider my novel Rogue Planet. At the time of its publication, or maybe a bit earlier, politicians were blathering about “rogue states,” meaning countries like Iran, Iraq, and Syria that didn’t follow the West’s rules of accepted civilized behavior (they still don’t, of course). That idea acceptably described the novel’s plot, was concise, and extrapolated how theocracies like Iran might even occur among the stars. (That novel might be considered the continuation and extension of “The Chaos Chronicles” trilogy; if that trilogy is my “Foundation Trilogy,” then its novels, Rogue Planet, and Mind Games are part of my “Extended Foundation Series.” Sorry, A.B.) The final published title doesn’t bring to mind anything like Game of Thrones, though, which the novel might do for some readers—they would be right, but it’s hard sci-fi, not fantasy.

One title I thought of before Rogue Planet was Tale of Two Planets. Some readers might appreciate the reference to Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities, his only novel I really liked and admired. Two planets outside the ITUIP (“Interstellar Trade Union of Independent Planets”) are involved, and the two related tribes that colonized them. What follows from that? You’ll have to read the book.

The point is that A Tale of Two Planets wasn’t a bad title; something with Thrones might have been okay; but I settled on Rogue Planet. Combined with Sara Carrick’s excellent cover (both ebook and paperback versions are available), the novel can be read as a stand-alone (despite the connection to the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy”), and Rogue Planet is one of my shortest titles that does its job, (I do follow the “short is better” mantra: There are two one-word titles, counting Intolerance and A. B. Carolan’s Origins but not one with The; and ten two-word titles, counting The Collector.)

All of this is subsumed under one rule: Damn the publishers, etc.; choose the title that works for you!

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Rogue Planet. A prince leads his people to overthrow an evil theocracy and its high priest. Game of Thrones-like battle scenes, romance, and secret alliances await the reader, but it’s all hard sci-fi adventure, not fantasy, set in the same far-out universe of the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy” in ITUIP’s near-Earth space (ITUIP = “Interstellar Trade Union of Independent Planets”). Available in both ebook and paperback format anywhere quality sci-fi books are sold.

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

Celtic Chronicles, the ninth novel in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, represents my most recent nod to these disciplines, while Son of Thunder (St. John’s tomb in modern-day Turkey), the second book in the series, is the earliest. But Declan O’Hara’s scholarly tome about the life of St. Brendan, mentioned in several novels in that series and a few times in the “Inspector Steve Morgan” trilogy, were indirect nods as well. The first novel in the “Denisovan Trilogy,” Origins (hello there, A. B. Carolan, get your arse in gear!) came from imagining what had become of the Denisovans, our hominid brethren.

A reader of any of those novels (hopefully all of them!) might wonder where that interest came from. My training wasn’t in either of these academic disciplines, after all. And, while I enjoyed that “Indiana Jones” series of movies (especially the one with Sean Connery), these films weren’t the inspiration. Neither was The DaVinci Code, although Dan Brown’s novel showed me what to avoid in Son of Thunder.

My motivation goes all the way back to my young-adult years when I became interested in these disciplines and even thought of working in them. I checked out a lot of books about them from our public library, including Margaret Meade’s classic work. My conclusion was that human beings are just too damn complex as subjects of scientific study, so I chose to pursue training in an easier science (at least math and physics seemed easier for me). Perhaps that’s just as well. Social scientists aren’t all that rigorous, and Governor Reagan became determined to destroy the anthropology department at UCSB when I was there.

Nevertheless, the interest remains. I read most of the articles in Science News and often follow that biweekly magazine’s suggestions for further reading, but I usually read the articles about human origins and human quirks first! I don’t know if any of these esoteric subjects will be featured in any of my stories (a desalination platform off the California coast played an important role in The Last Humans, for example) but don’t be surprised if they are. Sci-fi, for example, isn’t all about astronomy or physics, and I have a special relationship with both.

Of course, Esther and Bastiann van Coevorden are volunteers who work on an archaeological dig in Celtic Chronicles. I agree with Bastiann in large part: Digging up artifacts and skeletons seems more like back-breaking labor that this old man shouldn’t be doing. We’ll leave that to the truly dedicated and their students!

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“Esther Brookstone Art Detective” Series. In this nine-novel series (two novels are free PDF downloads available at this website), the reader follows Esther and Bastiann through many dangerous adventures, all related to art in some way. These two sleuths represent my homage to Agatha Christie: Esther is a more sexy, active, and agile sleuth than Miss Marple (she’s a bit younger too); and Bastiann, first her paramour and then her husband, looks like the actor who portrayed Poirot so many times in BBC features. Agatha might not approve of their more dangerous and romantic adventures—she wrote in a different time—but I mean no disrespect (I also read her mysteries as a young adult) because our detective duos are active in different periods in the UK. The tongue-in-cheek humor and bawdy romance might even appeal more than the mystery and thrills.

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

…yet it might not seem like it. I’m also something of a romantic. But only the dearest and nearest people in my life have seen much of those aspects of me. I mostly avoid blatant humor and schmaltzy romance in my reading choices in my informal relationships and that avoidance carries over into my stories.

It’s a matter of degree, of course. For writing, while I suppose it could sell more stories (as if that were a goal), a focus on humor or romance doesn’t appeal to me. The only time I set out to boldly write (and purposely split an infinitive to rub it in to strict editors who haven’t read the new rules!) a pure romantic comedy (isn’t modern courtship always romantic comedy but rarely pure?) was mostly a failure: The first part of The Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse, based on a short story about a mad and atypical female physicist (“mad” in the English sense and “atypical” because girls aren’t supposed to be good at math—of course, I know they can be, because I’ve taught math and science to both females and males!); she hires a brilliant black techie (I wanted to piss off both misogynists and racists); and the story expands to what becomes a “classic road trip” where the two time-travel without creating paradoxes.

I’ll admit that there’s more humor and romance in that novel than most of my other stories (and maybe less quality sci-fi?), but, whether sci-fi, mysteries, or thrillers, or some combination, there’s enough humor and romance in all my tales to make the characters seem human (or believable ETs, as the case might be—sentience requires both humor and romance). One of my favorite authors from my childhood, Isaac Asimov (also an ex-scientist), was a lot more serious than I am, in fact; and another favorite author, Robert Heinlein (you guessed it: also a scientist), in Stranger in a Strange Land, flaunts conventional Christian mythology with irreverent humor and romance that should be a model for sci-fi romantic-comedy writers everywhere (that novel became the hippies handbook!).

After finishing The Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse, though, I realized that writing sci-fi romantic comedy isn’t that easy. Even Heinlein, a master of sci-fi writing, tended to the bawdy and sacrilegious and departed from the humor all around us in our daily lives. (Asimov’s seriousness is also a bit tempered by a few references to android-human sexual relationships in the robot trilogy. From his impish smile, he probably thought that was a great joke!)

In my mysteries and thrillers, Detective Castilblanco’s quips and Esther Brookstone’s penchant for collecting husbands often add humor—he’s a Latino, after all; and she’s an atypical Englishwoman, quite unlike Christie’s prim and proper Miss Marple. Perhaps my Esther deserves to be called that American term, cougar. I play Esther against type like I do Dao-Ming Chen, Castilblanco’s longtime partner, especially in Teeter-Totter between Lust and Murder. I love to do that! It makes characters more interesting. And atypical characters often can add humor even though humor isn’t the goal.

Of course, humor comes in many forms. What makes a reader chuckle isn’t easy to predict, so maybe a good humorist should sprinkle different types of humor throughout a novel? What do you look for in humor?

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A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse. Ever heard of the “Many Worlds Theory of Quantum Mechanics”? It’s not really a theory but a convenient interpretation of that strange theory describing atomic phenomena; it’s often associated with the Nobel prize-winning Richard Feynman, but it was actually invented by Hugh Everett III in a Princeton thesis subsequent to Feynman’s. For the scientific fans among my readers, the key words are “many worlds,” i.e., parallel universes, if you will; and it should theoretically allow you to time-travel without paradoxes. (Nothing says the parallel universes have to run at the same rate, right?) For those who just want a sci-fi rom-com that’s a bit tongue-in-cheek, though, sit back in your easy-chair and ride along with the heroes of this novel as I poke fun at much of human society’s conventions and culture. Available wherever quality ebooks are found. (You don’t have to be a physicist or engineer to enjoy it, by the way.)

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

While I’ve discussed these two topics elsewhere (for example, in my free PDF download “Writing Fiction”—see the list on my “Free Stuff & Contests” web page), I’ll mention them again because I consider them and their balance so important when writing fiction. Some fiction writers emphasize one over the other, maybe depending on the type of novel.

There’s no argument about sci-fi: It often requires a lot of world-building, which is narrative, of course. (I’ll never forget the incompetent agent who, early on in my writing career, couldn’t comprehend this. We Irish hold grudges for a long time! Her comment, “There’s too much narrative” soured me on agents in general and established for me a twist on an adage, “Those who can write should do it; those who can’t, should become agents or editors.”) Other genres might require more emphasis on dialogue (especially if you count “internal dialogue”—what goes on in a character’s mind—as a mental conversation with themselves).

Like all the elements used in writing fiction, an author must handle dialogue and narrative with care and skill. The Goldilocks principle is often indicated: Not too much of one or the other but just right. As you read other authors’ works, you’ll see the amount of each employed cannot only depend on genre but also on the location in the story. World-building is usually done early on, but in the novel I submitted to that incompetent agent, Survivors of the Chaos—she asked to read it, by the way—it had to be used all the way through because the venues so often changed. (This novel is the first of a trilogy, and all three books are now contained in The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection, an ebook bundle.)

In my British-style crime stories (novels in the “Inspector Steve Morgan” series are the most recent), I first briefly emphasize narrative (describing the British settings, including police stations, because they’re unfamiliar to many US readers), and then I move early on to dialogue (direct and internal), which often plays a more important role (especially in interrogations). But the parts dedicated to narrative are less in my US crime stories (like the novels in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series—the free PDF Defanging the Red Dragon is a crossover novel in two series featuring the US detective Castilblanco and the UK detective Brookstone, which requires the acrobatics I performed there to tell that that tale).

And then we have another important aspect of dialogue to consider: How much slang and/or local idiom should an author use? For the same reason as above, I include local expressions to provide local color but provide the US reader a glossary at the front of most of my British-style mysteries. (If I’ve missed listing some that are unfamiliar to you—I’ve read a lot of Brit-style crime stories and am now used to the UK’s lexicon that’s as varied as the US’s at times—please let me know, and I’ll add it to the glossary if there’s a second edition.) Words like “nick,” “wanker,” “pillock,” and “eejit” aren’t part of American English (and maybe not Canadian or Australian either), but they add local color that can become an essential part of a character’s description.

The to-and-fro of direct dialogue has to be handled with care. When he is speaking to her, or vice versa, it’s usually not difficult for the reader to keep things straight, but two males or two females talking can create confusion, so names have to be used more within the dialogue or dialogue tags (what’s outside the quotes). They shouldn’t interrupt the flow if done correctly, only inform.

That flow is critical. The basic rule for writing fiction is to avoid forcing readers into situations where they stop and say, “Huh?” or “What’s going on here?” Think of it this way: A speed-reader (moi, par exemple!) should be able to breeze right through those questions if they occur. Tom Clancy suggests a course of action: Just tell the damn story! Anything that inferferes with that should be questioned by the story’s author. A writer doesn’t need either an agent or editor to tell them that. It should be obvious.

One thing is certain, though: Whatever you do in your fiction writing, don’t let Microsoft’s Copilot write your dialogue, especially in Aptos or Calibri. AI isn’t permitted in manuscripts submitted to traditional publishers, and self-publishers shouldn’t use it either. Times New Roman is still the font of choice you should use for your writing. (Microsoft’s sneaky changes to Aptos from Calibri and addition of Copilot—hell, we just got rid of Cortana!—shows how low that company has sunk!)

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A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse. This sci-fi rom-com provides an example of many of the suggestion described above: It’s a lively mix of narrative (i.e. sci-fi world-building, many worlds, in fact—that’s an in-joke)) and dialogue (in romantic spats or with comic prats). This stand-alone novel is a futuristic “road trip” that avoids the paradoxes of time travel but not those associated with human behavioral quirks. Enjoy!

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

Having one current and three former presidents all in one place, NYC, at the same time, perhaps made good PR for the two candidates among them—Mr. Biden, Clinton, and Obama raked in $26 million at the Radio City Music Hall for Mr. Biden’s campaign, more than Mr. Trump made in an entire month (he’s busy trying to stay out of jail, of course); but everyone knew the Donald was trying to wreck the three Dems’ show by attending the wake for an NYPD officer effectively slain by the NYC Council’s malfeasance (an overzealous bail reform the root cause), having nothing to do with Mr. Biden, of course, so what did Mr. Trump gain? (He’s been diagnosed as a psychotic sociopath by a slew of qualified mental health professionals, so its natural that he only worries about himself after all and not Officer Diller!) But I’m surprised at the Secret Service’s allowing this strange event of modern politics to occur! (After all, the Secret Service didn’t allow the Donald to march to the Capitol on January 6, 2021, a long-planned coup and a much more violent event.)

Because of the strict security surrounding past and current presidents, the US has rarely suffered from a presidential assassination like other countries have. (To be sure, many of those are more than welcomed by lovers of democracy everywhere when an autocracy’s citizens finally come to their senses, if only briefly, and depose their dictator.) The last assassination in the US was JFK, of course, but Reagan came close. Who knows how world history would have evolved if JFK or Abe Lincoln had survived, or Reagan had been killed?

Due to the rarity of such events in the US, I’ve not often considered assassination plots in my fiction. True, the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series began with a failed plot to assassinate Mr. Obama (never mentioned by name, by the way), one of the four presidents listed above, in The Midas Bomb. And, after one attempt on presidential candidate Sheila Remington’s life (The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan), that fictional US president was assassinated later on my fictional and futuristic timeline, an event that led into the first novel of the “Clones and Mutants” series (Full Medical, my very first mystery/thriller novel published in 2006).

Royalty gets better treatment on that fictional timeline: Major members of Europe’s royal families escape death and play roles of heroes in Aristocrats and Assassins (fourth novel in the “Chen and Castilblanco” series); only minor royal functionaries suffer. A king on a planet outside ITUIP (the “Interstellar Trade Union of Independent Planets”) is assassinated, but his son leads a rebellion against the Iranian-syle theocracy that took over afterwards; the son gets his revenge (Rogue Planet). And, because I tried to keep my fictional but parallel timeline ahead of our real one, Queen Elizabeth’s passing on my fictional one was announced a bit ahead of time in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series and the “Inspector Steve Morgan” trilogy.. (My apologies to the royal family. They have a lot of problems now, not the least of which is the British media.)

That’s about it, unless you want to count Putin’s ousting of Yeltsin, hardly a fair fight considering Putin and his evil oligarchs’ devilish plot to kill any chance for democracy in Russia, at least for the time being. Benedict Arnold and John Wilkes Booth seem rather tame compared to the current rulers of the Kremlin.

But don’t fret. My fiction has plenty of villains: Some flash-in-the pans; others, like Vladimir Kalinin, who also takes down a few of Putin’s oligarchs out of revenge. What are good mysteries and thrillers without some really evil villains? (You can meet Kalinin early on in The Midas Bomb, but he has a starring role as villain all the way to Soldiers of God,)

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The Midas Bomb. This first novel in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series has some historical significance in my writing career. The first edition (from the old POD, Infinity, no longer in business) shows that initially I saw the NYPD homicide detectives’ cases as standard third-person mystery/thriller tales. Then I wrote a few more novels in the series, decided to rewrite the first novel in first person as Castilblanco that alternates with the standard third-person to match the subsequent novels in the series. (As mostly a self-published author, I’m free to experiment a bit. In The Last Humans, the first title in the “Last Humans” trilogy, everything was first-person; the second two, A New Dawn and Menace from Moscow, alternated between first and third person. In A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse, I even alternated between the two heroes in first person!) Does this experimentation sell any more books? I doubt it; but I have more fun writing them. And hopefully, dear reader, you’ll have at least as much fun reading them. The Midas Bomb is a good place to start.

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

Democracy Awakening. Heather Cox Richardson, author (2023). This is an interesting but incomplete history about the rise of authoritarian thinking in the US; it’s also a bit simplistic. However, perhaps this simplicity adds power to the author’s arguments?

It doesn’t take much to see the fascists’ plans to convert the US into a fascist state—presidents like Nixon, Reagan, both Bushes, and other politicians’ shenanigans, aided by fascists in Congress (not gender-specific anymore because even women are also fascists hiding under the cloak of patriotism like Donald J. Trump) and the fascist SCOTUS majority. “Make America Great Again!” has been the fascists’ rallying cry in America for a long time! And, as this history shows, as the numbers of the FPA swell ever so slightly (that’s the Fascist Party of America aka Republican Party, now led by the purely fascist Trump, that “f%$#ing moron” as labeled by Trump’s ex-SecState Tillerson whom Il Duce essentially fired), they lash out with increasingly dirty and evil tricks to satisfy their greed and thirst for power from Reagan’s Iran-Contra ploy to supporting the murderous Pinochet and far beyond, reminding everyone in the world how close America’s fascists have come to a complete takeover.

If the reader thought it all ended with the attempted coup on January 6, 2021, you are terribly mistaken! (By the way, one complaint I have about this type of non-fiction: Ms. Cox refrains from using the word “fascist” and “fascism,” the two words most applicable to America’s GOP now.)

Bottom line: This book can be recommended as a simplistic reminder to those readers who’ve forgotten on purpose or otherwise some or most of the facts about fascist movements in the US. We must be ever-vigilant if we are to protect democracy in America because fascism is a contagious disease that’s always around and ready to strike at America’s body politic.

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“Mary Jo Melendez Trilogy.” AOC and her little fascist friends in the US Congress aren’t smart enough to realize that extremists at either end of the political spectrum can become fascists, although they often prove it in deed. The political spectrum isn’t linear: The far-left and far-right bends around at each end and joins up in that point called fascism, as Cuba and Venezuela have proven on the far-left and Hungary and Turkey on the far-right. Of course, China, Russia, and the US are heading in that direction as well (arguably the first two are already there), which is why Mary Jo’s trilogy, although a work of fiction, might make the hair on your nape stand on end. This trilogy will remind readers of many worldwide events in Muddlin’ Through, Silicon Slummin’ and Just Gettin’ By, and Goin’ the Extra Mile as the books carry Mary Jo around this fascist world. Available wherever fine ebooks are sold.

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