Steven M. Moore's Blog

Have you missed me?

In my last post here, I announced I was taking some time off over the holidays. This hiatus unfortunately extended beyond that. Life is always full of surprises!

I still need some time, but I will continue posting articles about reading, writing, and publishing ASAP.

Like many readers of these blog post, I’ll be taking time off for the holidays.

See you the first week of January, 2026.

All the best to you and yours!

While there’s a lot besides books on Amazon now—it ceased being a reliable bookstore decades ago—and most of it has examples of how big bot Jeff Bezos and his army of little Amazon bots fail consumers (you can add “exploit” and “irritate” to “fail”) as they try to be the marketplace of the world, there are many reasons why Amazon fails authors, so many that authors and readers should avoid Amazon like the plague.

The main reason is that the online service, that started as an electronic bookstore...

It happens. Arthur C. Clarke imagined comsats long ago; we now have a plethora of them. Isaac Asimov imagined androids and robots long ago too; we now have many of the latter and still fear quality ones of the former (because of a still-prevalent Frankenstein complex?). Versions of AI populate many sci-fi stories, often as villains (remember HAL?); while current models haven’t yet reached the level of what’s been imagined, the anemic and primitive software roll-outs still seem to be all the rage...

I’m no polyglot, but I love languages. I’m fluent in English and Spanish. I’ve read Gabo’s and other authors’ works in Spanish, but I wouldn’t dare try to write a story in that language! I once knew enough German to get into trouble when eating at a restaurant in Berlin and trying to serve as a translator for an irate Arab father (who spoke perfect English) and a German waiter (who spoke none but was desperate to please a customer). I used to know a lot more French than Spanish (not anymore!) an...

Fiction published by the Big Five publishing conglomerates, who now fight over what small number of readers are left, could never be called controversial! First, many of their editors and authors are far from being liberal and are okay with the Big Five trying to appeal to every reader by publishing fiction that’s mainly bland pablum. (I rarely read their books anymore as a consequence.) I doubt that someone like Huxley or Orwell could ever publish anything with them these days where fascism dom...

Most everyone has seen videos or visited old houses’ moldy smelling libraries or studies with their old desks and floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with old books. Whether the titles there are just for show or actually have been read, such rooms give a house a lot of character. In our case, our study is a third bedroom filled with two work tables, our laptops atop and printers on the side, and yes, floor-to-ceiling bookcases along one wall and smaller bookcases in back of the office chairs.

We’v...

Our current POTUS has used AI to create images of himself feces-bombing some of the many thousands of marchers on “No Kings” day protesting his fascist policies. Of course, his sycophantic MAGA maniacs just laugh that off, ignoring that it’s neanderthal humor and not in the least presidential. That’s one negative example of AI we’ll probably continue to see in the future.

Using AI invaded publishing long before the feces-bombing images of the “fucking moron” (ex-SecState Tillerson’s description ...

I feel compelled to hammer on this issue. I don’t steal story ideas from anyone. And I don’t use AI software to create more stories “in my style.” (Because I have various styles, I’d likely drive any AI nuts!) I’m also not a famous celeb who pays a ghostwriter to write or even polish my stories.

Every story is mine and mine alone. I discount the contributions from traditional publisher’s editors who all too often tried to ruin “my voice” or multiple voices used in my storytelling. And sometimes ...

“Write what you know” is stereotypical advice writing coaches serve up. It’s complete bullshit, of course! In the collection Howling at the Moon where my short story “Gamin” appears, I write about a copper and urchin fighting crime on the moon. Obviously I’ve never been to the moon, so I can’t know what it’s like. That story sprung from my imagination!

I’ve never been to China either (and until that country becomes a democracy, I refuse to go!). But in Aristocrats and Assassins, NYPD Detective D...