Christopher G. Moore · Essays
Essays
These essays are where I think out loud between novels, about crime and its fictions, about Thailand and the wider world I have written from since 1988, and about the writing life itself. They appear first on my Substack, and this page keeps pace with them, refreshing each time a new piece goes out. Read a few here, then follow on Substack to have them arrive in your inbox.
THE COLLECTIONS
Four books of essays
Published by Heaven Lake Press. Each cover opens the book on Amazon.
2011
The Cultural Detective
My first collection of essays. A behind-the-scenes look at the writing life in Thailand, drawing on anthropology, psychology, history, and crime.
2012
Faking It in Bangkok
Welcome to the world of Gangsters, gamblers, ghosts, and fortune tellers. The noir world of the Calvino novels, this time in essay form.
Latest Essays
New from the Substack
August 18, 2026
The Gesture That Needs No Speech
Three Gestures That Changed How I Write
August 11, 2026
“What do you mean when you say that you love me?”
Doubt, naming, and the books that take us outside ourselves
August 4, 2026
The Consent You Already Gave
How the Technology Inside a 2036 Novel Is Already Shipping in 2026
July 28, 2026
No Telephones in Neuromancer
Why Novelists Get the Future Wrong in One Direction
July 18, 2026
The Shameless Class
What the crime novel taught us to see, and what it taught us to miss
July 14, 2026
Thinking in Systems
A response to “What Systems Actually Are” by The Observatory on Substack
July 7, 2026
The Claim That Cannot Be Answered
On culture as one system among many, and what happens when a claim can no longer be corrected
June 30, 2026
Locating the Orwellian Puddle
On the unspoken detail that moves a conscience, and whether it still can
June 23, 2026
The Letter Culture · Part two of two The Room Being Built
AI as the bartender in the writer’s working room.
June 16, 2026
The Letter Culture · Part one of two The Cathedral and the Word Palace
Why the named-author arrangement is failing, and what was carrying writing before it arrived.
June 9, 2026
The War Over Reality
The courtroom, the corpus, and the procedure we stopped trusting
June 2, 2026
Who Designs the Menu Decides the Diner
Sumptuary Law, the Reading Diet, and the Question of What We Are Being Fed
May 15, 2026
An Uninvited Guest with a Very Good Memory
On disclosure, elephants, and who is training whom
May 8, 2026
Map of the Digital Rose Garden
Introduction to an argument against forgetting
May 5, 2026
The Hexagon and the Oracle
Borges, the Library, and the Question He Was Telegraphing to Us
April 24, 2026
The review Amazon erased — and what it proves
On April 21, a literary critic named Kevin Cummings posted a five-star review of my novel on Amazon.