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Sorry to be so late on this.  I got up very late, around eight thirty, and I’m trying to get ready for a dentist’s appointment which delayed everything.  This means this post might be incomplete or too breezy, but I expect comments will be interesting.

I grew up in a country with Earthquakes.  The North is fairly sound – being on granite – but the Southern part can add or lose strips of coast and horrible things can happen to buildings.  If you don’t know what I’m talking about look up The Great Lisbon Earthquake.

I grew up in the North, which means I had only experienced three relatively small Earthquakes by the time I moved to the US.  Experienced is a big word, since I slept through the first (I was three) despite my brother carrying me in his arms back and forth between front and back door, unable to decide whether the narrow street with its tall buildings which might collapse, or the backyard with trees and stone pillars supporting grape vines which might fall (the pillars, not the grapevines.  Well, those too) and crush us was safest.

The second happened at school and was truly minor.  The first started with such small foreshocks that I didn’t realize we were having an Earthquake.  You see, I’d been studying for exams and was really really focused and sometimes it would feel like things shook, but it was only astigmatism and tiredness.  So…

When the phone rang, I ignored the little tremblors, and headed for the stairs.  In my stocking feet.  Let’s say we should all be very grateful that I’m still here to tell the tale.  Mom and dad had a semi-spiral staircase (Only two half curves, and broad) of polished, waxed mahogany.  I was wearing fuzzy socks, since I hadn’t left the room all morning — and as I hit the center of the bend, at a half run, the real quake hit.  I was picked up and flung down to the front hall.  Fortunately I landed on my behind, which has always been exceptionally cushioned, and in such a way I broke nothing, though I was black and blue and couldn’t sit comfortably for weeks.

This is apropos what is going on in publishing and, from what I understand, in the rest of the professions – almost all of them.  I’m saying publishing, because it’s my field and therefore I’m hyper aware of it.

It’s also, btw, a good illustration of what fools we SF writers are.  Or at least we are when we try to focus on an invention and how it changes things.  Say you get flying cars.  The story is going to focus on being able to fly faster, and get there sooner.  You can live I Kansas and work in Denver.  Stuff like that.

But … but what about roads.  What happens when all roads revert to forests.  What happens to neighborhoods, when houses are no longer situated along roads.  What happens to commerce when “city” might be a matter of opinion?

Well, we didn’t – curse it.  They PROMISED – get flying cars.  But we got computers.  I remember feeling back in the nineties we’d got the booby prize.  “Okay, so I can email people instead of the post office.  And I can write faster than on the type writer.  Whatever.  I want my flying car.”

Except that was the foreshock.  I was focused on what I was doing and didn’t realize it.  I headed for the staircase of publishing, at full tilt, in my fuzzy socks…

For those of you not in publishing, let me tell you that looking at it, you should be able to think through how this will affect your field and whether it will be in the near future or you can relax a little.  Only don’t relax too much.  Things hit in weird ways.  I’ll put at the end some of the things I see coming for EVERYONE.

When I came into publishing we were at the height of the push model.  If you wanted to get published and get on the shelves, you not only had to go through the publisher, you’d BEST charm the publisher and do the politically correct thing.  They published any number of books that never even got on the bookshelves.  (No, don’t ask me why.  Maybe a tax thing.)

Meanwhile, as a reader, I was having more trouble finding stuff to read.  What was on the shelves didn’t appeal, and there was nothing I could do.  I spent five years or so re-reading old books, afraid to find a new author who disappeared after three books, and finding the effort of discovering gold in the dross all too much work.

But we had computers.  And then we had Amazon.  My book buying skyrocketed, because I could find all those books that weren’t put on the shelves.

However, by and large, the bookstores and the push model reigned supreme.  You wanted to be on the shelves, you went traditional, and you were a good boy or girl.

However, Amazon made a dent, and the old model started looking like it was in trouble.

But then came the kindle.  The first one seemed like a toy.  I still wanted one, but no one was seriously reading most of the stuff on them.  They were expensive too.  I thought we’d have… twenty years or so before the tech was viable.  No one but Baen was making money from ebooks.

But then came Kindle II and all the others, and the competing readers.  Smashwords, KDP and the other self-publishing programs.

Old style publishing looked a bit scared, but they were standing buff and saying that the ebooks were a fad.  And even though the bookstores were now also stocking according to how you sold in Amazon, the best way to get on the shelves was still to go traditional.  Validation, etc.

…  The shot heard around the world just  echoed.  Go read Kris Rusch, then come back.

Now self-published books can get on the shelves for a very little expenditure.  And the price is very little more than for traditional publishers (unless it’s Baen, but that’s something else.)  And the price WILL come down.

So… what is this all about?

Boom.  Unless publishing houses have been cultivating their brand (and who but Baen has?) they’re going to find themselves at the bottom of the staircase in a world of butthurt.

As for writers?  It behooves us now to bring things also in paper, if length warrants.  Particularly if we have a (very little) name that might make bookstores want to stock us.

Other than Baen – and I have sentimental attachment to the house anyway – I now can’t even imagine why any sane person would want to go with a traditional publisher.  Heck, I’m having trouble imagining why an INSANE person would want to.  Unless they’re masochists (Fifty shades of publishing.)

That is my field.  I’m sure the tremors aren’t done.  I’m picking myself up off the floor going “What?  When?  Did anyone get the number of that truck?”  And I’m awake and aware.  Half of my colleagues won’t realize this for a while.  By then we’ll be off to the next temblor.

Things will stabilize, of course.  Eventually.  In my lifetime?  Who knows?

Some of you might be immune from this, but I doubt you’re as immune as you think.

Look, computer control, distributed manufacturing, delivery of goods long distance, delivery of data at virtually no cost, three d printing, virtual socialization…

It’s a lot like flying cars, but more so.  It brings the possibility of rendering cities meaningless, but also countries.  (Which is I think part of the reason that governments have gone even more obnoxious.)  It will change the way we work, the way we relate to each other, the way we pay for goods (no?  Well, what if you live in a place where cost of living is very cheap but work in one cost of living is very expensive?  Won’t your salary affect local economy?  And long term, will it equalize prices?  Or will there be crazy pockets?  And with international commerce, where do fiat currencies fit in?) the way we fall in love, the way we marry, the way we have children.

I don’t have time to unpack it, but I’m sure you can.  Or I can unpack it in a post tomorrow.  I’m sure the following fields are next on the “hit with the change stick:”  Education, movie making, programming, real estate.

… but the others aren’t far behind, and the only thing I can guarantee is that the order and magnitude will surprise us all.

They’re exciting times to live in, and like all revolutions not a bit scary.

Hold on tight and be not afraid.  No one is promising you won’t have to fight and struggle, but there’s a good chance that the future belongs to those who want to be free.

So, yesterday Glenn Reynolds linked to this story at Hot Air about a home invader (IN TEXAS!) who was so unfortunate (as well as stupid) as to lock the son of the homeowner in the gun closet…  Hilarity ensued.

Only, as I was getting ready to go out and unable to work in those ten minutes or so, I thought it would be a good idea to read the comments.  Which was fine too, except…

Except that I came across something that made me sit down and think.  In fact, I thought all the way in the car to Denver (business) and all the way back, and decided this must be written about.

For those of you not inclined to click on that link, let me summarize.  Story goes something like this: a house in Texas was broken into by three home invaders (a completely different thing from burglars.  Growing up I was always told that the real danger from burglars was to interrupt them in the commission of the crime – please keep in mind that I grew up in a country where gun ownership is not allowed – and so was instructed that, if coming home and suspecting the house was being burgled, I should run next door the neighbors and call the police.  Home invaders are burglars who PURPOSELY go into occupied houses, which is a completely different ball of wax.  In fact, often – from what I read, though I confess I didn’t look at statistics – they’re there for a bit of bizarre sexual assault or other acts of random sadism, as well as property.)

After wrestling with the occupant of the house in residence, i.e. the son of the homeowner, they locked him in the closet.  He got his gun, broke out of the closet, exchanged fire with one of the invaders, the other two fled.  The one who was shot (shoulder and leg.  Cut the homeowner’s kid some slack.  He was probably agitated.  I would be) tried to run, collapsed, was captured.

So far so good and a fairly straight forward story.  And then I hit the comments.

Before I report on this comment I want to point out that from the replies other people made him, he might be a “regular troll” on the blog.  (AFAICT we’re the only blog with active commenters without a resident troll.  This is probably because I’m testy and an overheated Latina.  Deal.  I know it would give us great cache and also that I never let you guys have any fun, but you can MOST ASSUREDLY deal.)

However, the comment bears mentioning because a) if you tell this type of a story at a party, this is almost sure to come back as a talking point.  b) because when I was in college – or high school – while I would PROBABLY not have made this point myself, I would have bought it, hook like and sinker.  c) because not only it’s not a valid “counterpoint” but it’s not even a sane one.  d) because nine times out of ten someone not politically involved will buy it sight unseen.  e) the reason people will buy it.

So, now that you are ready – the comment was made by someone named “nonpartisan” and while I can’t find the comment itself (you can search!) it was quoted enough for me to get the gist of it.  Apparently this critter opened with a gambit that he didn’t think burglars deserve death.  And either in this comment, or in another, he identified himself as a Harvard Law graduate.  The commenters make much fun of this last.  They shouldn’t.  Having received an excellent liberal (!) education in Europe, this seems perfectly plausible to me.

But here’s the part of the comment I could find:

what if you know for a fact that the burglar is unarmed, would you kill him?

a burglar could be a father who is unemployed and at his wits end at finding options to provide for his starving family. Not every burglar is a violent, armed psychotic rapist.

nonpartisan on May 18, 2013 at 9:01 AM

This is exactly the type of story my text books, from middle school on were full of.  The criminal was a misunderstood soul, an exploited work, down on his last dime.  We were hammered with comparisons to medieval people stealing a loaf of bread and being hanged for it.  (Suburbanshee will know better than I, but I’ve come to doubt those stories too.  The Arab world might punish first-time thieves, but I sort of doubt western civilization did.)

When someone brings up a story like that, I’ve been conditioned to feel a pang and go “well, what if…”

Why have I been conditioned to do this?  Well, because that’s a plot for a Hollywood movie, and, beyond my text books, it’s been tossed at us a thousand times in movies and mysteries.  (Did any of you watch Boogie Nights?  Might be one of the worst movies ever made.  We watched it for the same reason we watched a lot of cr*p.  It was in the dollar theater.  Unfortunately once we paid for it, we had to sit and watch it, because Dan feels wasteful otherwise.  No, don’t ask.  It’s a thing.  Anyway, from what I dimly remember, Boogie Nights has that type of thing, where they decide to rob a store, because they’re desperate and stuff.  More on that later.)

We all know about the honest-but-desperate father who goes and robs someone for money to feed his starving brood.

We all know of him – but does he exist?  I’ll remind you that we all also know of Santa Claus.

Right now, off the top of my head, I’m going to say that not only doesn’t he exist, but that if he ever existed, in history, it was probably before the eighteenth century.

Look, in normal human beings there’s  a huge stop before “commit crime to solve my problems.”  There just is.  It might “simply” be fear of retribution, but it’s there.  And when one things of “committing crime” and is desperate enough to break that taboo, there are a bunch of things a normal human being would do LONG before burglary, let alone home invasion (which as we said, is a different animal.)  There’s swindling someone.  If you don’t have the brains for that, there’s credit card number theft.  There’s even up the scale, mugging.  (You get your loot in money.)  Further, burglary, let along home invasion, is a fairly sophisticated crime.  You have to know how to break and enter.  This might have been easy in a medieval hovel, but these days it’s not so much (Okay, I can break into a house in five minutes.  I never claimed to be nice.  What?  Mostly to not be grounded for coming home late.  “But mom, I was in bed all along.  Maybe I was in the bathroom and you missed me?”)

Second, once you break into a house, your chances of walking off with a bundle of untraceable bank notes are slim.  Most people simply don’t sew money into the mattress.  So, if you’re breaking in for money to feed your children (snort) you’re going to have to convert whatever you find into cash.  (I’ll note that I have never heard of ANYONE breaking into a house and making off with the contents of the freezer, so if it’s food they wants, they’re going about it the wrong way.)  This means you need to know fences, or you’re going to be a one-time burglar.

But before that let’s look at how an otherwise law-abiding person could get desperate enough  to become a burglar in order to feed his chil’uns.

Kids, I’ve been broke.  I’ve been so broke that merely being broke would be a relief.  At one point twenty years ago we spent six months paying our Visa with our Mastercard and vice versa.  Twice, we parked in front of soup kitchens, then decided we were NOT desperate enough to go in and went home hungry.

The idea of robbing another person NEVER EVEN OCCURRED TO ME.  In that situation, the hierarchy would go something like this: charities/soup kitchens.  This by itself, might be enough to hold us, until we could get back on our feet.  (who was that guy who moved to a town with his girlfriend and found he couldn’t starve even if he tried to?)  Friends and relatives.  No, I don’t care how broke your friends are, you can usually sleep on the sofa.  Unemployment/Federal/State assistance. (This might come first for most people.  Even for us, unemployment would.)  If you exhaust all of these, if you lose your home, there’s still the charity of strangers.  Look, our city supports a large (!) and colorful (dirt is a color!) population of homeless which I GUARANTEE haven’t done a lick of work in years.  NONE OF THEM IS STARVING.  (And most of them are also not burglars or even muggers.)  There’s soup kitchens.  There’s informal soup kitchens (college students host a dinner for the homeless near my house every weekend.  No. Don’t get me started.)  There’s begging on the street.

And if you’re not going “but all of those are demeaning.”  Yes, they are, but they’re not VIOLENT crime.  And which would you rather be?  A beggar or a burglar?

Neither, right, but begging is at least honest, and I’d bet you most NORMAL people would do that.

It turns out, weirdly enough, that a small percentage of the population commits 90% of the violent (or potentially violent) crime.  It’s not need.  It’s something broken in them.

A lot of these people are heavy drug users or mentally ill.

That said, I’m the first to say our mental health system is broken.

IOW you’re unlikely to find a starving father of four in your home unless he’s also mentally ill and POSSIBLY also an acid dropper.

The problem is that someone with that combination and willing to commit a violent crime has no breaks.  (A lot of mentally ill drug users just want to sit in a corner and talk to the lizards because they’re awesome and stuff.  The ones who get violent are inherently very dangerous.)

So, should you shoot someone who breaks into your house?  Yep.  What are the chances of your killing an otherwise innocent man?  Next to none.  What are the chances of you getting killed otherwise?  VERY high.

So, how come that comment, or the gist of it would have got even me to hesitate when I was much younger?

Because in a million stories, movies, novels, we’ve been sold the story of a creature that if he ever existed is vanishingly rare – so rare that his sightings are more scarce than those of Bigfoot.  – the “poor but honest, desperate father, driven to crime to feed his brood.”

And people tend to think of stories as things they’ve lived.  They “experienced” it.  So, of course, it’s true.

It’s a great story, of course, but I bet you it was much rarer in Victorian times.  (And if you read the bios of Victorian criminals, the being it depicts was almost as rare.  People would go to the workhouse, horrible as it was, rather than commit crimes.  Unless they were one of the few who PREFERRED crime over anything else.)  And it was even rarer before that.

What it comes down to is people have to be told these stories, and be told them over and over again, before they will be scared of defending themselves lest they hurt others.

Civilizations don’t commit suicide unless they’re brainwashed into it.  And destroying a civilization starts with corrupting its story tellers.

Go you, look closely at the stories you tell and make sure you do no harm.

Oh, yeah, and be not afraid.

Note: Will update subscriber content this evening.  To make things clear – I was at workshop Tuesday through Thursday and would have caught up on Friday, except I was cleaning form “fridge burst.”  The weekend is taken up with business relating to managing my business (because I DID build that, and I intend to keep it.)  But there will be content, and there will be a more detailed explanation in the subscriber side.

*For new readers.  No, I’m not now going to switch to just posting chapters.  This is something I normally do on Friday, though sometimes on Saturday when things get… difficult.  It is a free novel I’m posting here a chapter at a time.  You get it free in pre-draft format, glorious typos and all.  If you want the edited, formatted and cleaned up ebook when it is done, a donation of $6 will get you that once it’s ready which could be a year or so (if you put in the field that it’s for Rogue Magic.)  Once I put it up on Amazon or other outlets, I plan to price it at  $9, but I can give readers’ of the blog the price break that amounts to what I’d receive from Amazon.  I will probably also have paper editions, but I can’t promise to send those out, as I think the costs would soon become prohibitive.  For previous chapters, go here.  It is a sequel to Witchfinder which will soon (we’re looking at early July) be taken down (once edited) and put for sale.*

NOTICE: For those unsure about copyright law and because there was a particularly weird case this week, just because I’m making the pre-first draft of my novel available to blog readers, it doesn’t mean that this isn’t copyrighted to me.  Rogue Magic as all the contents of this blog is © Sarah A. Hoyt 2013.  Do not copy, alter, distribute or resell without permission.  Exceptions made for ATTRIBUTED quotes as critique or linking to this blog. Credit for the cover image is © Ateliersommerland | Dreamstime.com

Chapter Eight

Jonathan Savage, Earl of Blythe,

I stood up.  Not in this world seemed to me the ravings of a maid without much experience of magic, and besides the girl couldn’t be much more than thirteen, maybe fifteen, so she could not possibly know what she was talking about.

That the spell Helen had used must have gone wrong was not surprising.  Wolfe had, after all, just been telling me that something had gone seriously wrong and there was rogue magic woven in the spells we sold.  I had no reason to doubt Wolfe who was neither a maid, nor inexperienced in practical magic.

But there is quite a difference between a spell going wrong and taking you to a place you didn’t intend to be and a spell taking you to another world.  There was a difference of degree.  If one steps onto a staircase and the step breaks, one can end up in the lower floor – also, with a broken leg, which happened to me this one time that my friend Marmaduke and I went exploring an abandoned mansion.  We’d drunk a bit much, and if Duke hadn’t hit upon the idea of screaming for a watchman who’d then brought help, I’d be a gonner today.  But damme, what I mean is, if the step breaks, you don’t end up in the cellars, or in the carriage house.

And while the utter prohibition on magical travel to other worlds had been lifted, since the restoration of the princess Royale and my papa’s death, still it was a serious business and overseen and regulated by the king.  When you had such a magically powerful world as Avalon, you had to be very careful that your citizens weren’t up to illegal magics in other worlds less well equipped to detect it.  It was distressingly easy to swindle other worlds, when no one could match you in magic – as my papa had shown.

So having spells out there that could and would take you to other worlds was unlikely.

I started to rise from my chair, and told the girl, Annabel, “Do you take us to my sister’s room.  I trust the hair hasn’t been disposed of?”

“Of course not, Milor’.”

“Good.  It will have to be broken, but—”  I realized that Wolfe had risen too, and turned to glare at him.  “I trust I can get full silence on this.  You realize that I—”

His blunt, peasant-stock face looked like he understood this perfectly well, not just as a warning, but as a reminder that his position was tied to the Blythes.  “I would not dream of saying anything, Milord,” he said.  “And not just because it would affect both your position and mine.  I’m just worried that Lady Helen won’t return safely.  I’d–  I’d like to do what I can to help you.”

There was to it more than the normal old and faithful retainer touch, and I was trying to think of a way to depress his pretensions that wouldn’t tear it in terms of our working together on the things we must work together on, such as the manufactories, when repeated poundings on the front door shook the house.

What I mean is, they weren’t pounding with the knocker.  It sounded like multiple, large men, were pounding on the front door with fists and feet.

Through the din, I heard running feet – I’d suspect Harving – and the door opened.  Then the pounding ceased, but there were voices, loud and officious.  I couldn’t understand what they were saying, not through the study door, but someone seemed to be shouting orders and Harving’s voice, in return, went from his normal to an almost shriek.

This had gone far enough.  I opened my desk drawer and took out my pistol.  If there were ruffians forcing their way into the house they must be stopped.  And if they came to give us news of wherever Helen had gone, they must be listened to.

So I opened the door to my study and stood in the doorway.  And froze.

In the hall were two very tall, rough-looking men, in the black uniform of the newly found Witchfinder Police which was overseen by Seraphim Ainsling, Duke of Darkwater.

The first one turned to Harving and said, “And you said the Earl was not home,” then to me, “Milord Jonathan Savage, Earl of Blythe, you are under arrest at the order of the royal Witchfinder.”

My mouth must have dropped open, and it felt uncommonly dry as I tried to answer.  “What?  Damme, I told Seraphim I’d be there after noon.  Surely this type of unpleasantness isn’t needed?”

They looked at each other.  The one who hadn’t talked till then shrugged.  Then the other one said, “You are under arrest for unwarranted interference in other worlds.”

“I haven’t interfered anywhere,” I said.  I hadn’t even been out of town, except to my country seat, and that not by magical transport, since I ascended.

“That’s all very well, sir, and you can tell it to the Prince.”

“I will tell it to the prince,” I said.  I would tell it to the prince in a way he wouldn’t like.  What I mean is, there are ways in which to ensure your friends keep appointments, and to do it by sending your minions to arrest him is beyond the line of pleasing.  If this was Seraphim’s idea of a joke, I’d make him swallow it.

But something at the back of my head warned that it wasn’t a joke, and that there was something more here than Seraphim’s wish to see me.

I would have to go. There was no doubt of that.  These two were not funning.  On the other hand, I had the matter of Helen on my hands.

I turned and found Wolfe Merritt’s eyes, fixed earnestly on me.  He wasn’t the man I’d choose to deal with this, and bring Helen safely back to me, I thought.  And on the back of that, I realized there was no one I would trust to bring Helen safely back to me, and whom I could command to exert himself in that purpose.

Most of the servants were Papa’s handpicked men and women.  As for my family – well, Mama would faint, the girls were insufficiently trained and the boys – that didn’t even bear thinking about.

So I turned to Wolfe Merritt, as my last hope in the world, and said, “That matter of the… of the hair, Merritt.  I want you to exert yourself in it and… bring it to a safe conclusion as soon as may be.  Find the… er… the missing items and bring them back where they belong, undamaged if at all possible.  You won’t lose by it.”

I then stepped into the hall and said, “I’m at your disposal, gentlemen.”

Moments later, bowling across town in a black carriage with no escutcheon on the doors, I wondered where I was bound and what this could mean.  Most of all I wondered if it was some of Papa’s malfeasance I’d failed to scotch because I hadn’t known it existed, and which was now coming back to crush all my efforts at making our house respectable.

I hoped Wolfe Merritt had taken my hint and would at least try to do something about Helen.  What he could do was anybody’s guess since it might very well involve unauthorized travel to other worlds, at least if the maid Annabel was right.  And I knew he was a good practical magician but didn’t expect his power to be more than what you got in the lower orders, diluted several times in unmagical blood.

But I’d had no choice.  There were no windows in this carriage, and we were trundling along at considerable speed.  It was much like speeding forward in the dark of night, towards an unknown destination.

It occurred to me I’d never asked the arresting officers for magical proof of their origin, and I wondered with alarm where the journey would end.

I’ll try to get it up tomorrow.  For those of you wondering why/what is going on with me this week — I had the opportunity to audit the Superstars writing seminar.  I’ll write about it later but several lectures were very interesting and I’m very grateful to Kevin J. Anderson for letting me audit.

The seminar was only a couple of miles from me, which is good, because we ended up missing about half of it, as I came home to deal with the freezer.

Our 27 cubic feet deep freezer (aka the reason we can afford meat, because I buy it ONLY when on deep discount) gave up the ghost probably about 12 hours before 4 am on Wednesday, when I woke up saying “The freezer stopped.”  Now, this is bizarre unless I have ears like a bat — and a delayed sense of hearing — because a) it had to have stopped way earlier, since half the meat was defrosted.  b) the freezer is in the basement, two floors down from my bedroom AND across the house.  BUT I knew it, and it was a good thing.  Not that I did anything RIGHT then, but as soon as the guys were on the way to their finals and Dan to work, I carried up laundry baskets full of meat, sorted it into three piles: completely frozen (coolers surrounded by ice), mostly defrosted but cool — crammed it into fridge and started cooking what was left out right then — and completely defrosted and warm-ish or what I described as “manky looking” which went in the large trash bag.

Then I left everything cooking and went to the lectures I could not miss.  Then I came back and finished cooking, then I went to more lectures…  You’re seeing the pattern, right?

This went on till yesterday.  Today I woke up what is technically known as dead.  It’s as though the weight of the world JUST fell on me.  Also, I have a short story almost finished, and I’d like to finish it.  It’s grossly late, and probably won’t be used, but if not I have other things I can do with it.

I COULD probably write one chapter of Rogue Magic, but because of the way I’m feeling, that might be the only active writing I got done, and I’d rather finish the short story.  (Today is also what’s know as “a good day to edit” — which I need to do a lot of with Shadow Gods, so that’s fine. — it takes less energy than active writing.)

So, meanwhile, put your links to your indie (or otherwise) published books in the comments, for me to organize into a post tomorrow.  If I have recovered from whatever this is, I might even insti-link (they need a different thing done on the link for that.)

Speaking of which, Peter Grant, husband of our very own Dorothy has his first book Take The Star Road out.  Yes, that’s a quote from me.  Yes, I meant it.  I’m re-reading the book to review.  But I enjoyed it.

Also, I’m giving Never Look Back away free for the next five days.  Get it, get it for you, for your family, for your dog, for your friends, and for total strangers whose email you have.   Spread the word.

I’m hoping to put up another collection or two this weekend, but no promises because the weekend has business of its own.

Also, two questions for you hunnish lot:

1 – Can one of you come up with a Pulpy “human wave” like title for a magazine that hasn’t been used before.  Yes, there’s a reason for it.  I have devious, devious plans.  To clarify: I want it to sound like something that would have been sold around the 30s, 40s, SF/f (it was actually not clearly parted then) and which did NOT exist (so I don’t have to worry about copyrights.)  It should carry the idea humans-good.  Or at least the idea that the future is better than the past.

2- There are a lot of lawyers either, and at least one non fiction medieval researcher.  Can one of you come up with a form of words VAGUELY signifying “Magical Britain” that sounds good as a series title?  See, Witchfinder and Rogue Magic are part of the Magical British Empire universe and have the same feel.  Once I er… clean MBE I’d like to put them all up and link them by a series name.  Since AFAICT all of these are set in Britain or have British citizens and span anywhere from regency to Victorian England in feel (some are in our time, their history just went different) Magical Britain sounds appropriate, but if I just use it straight it sounds like a travel/non fic book.  If we put it in Latin, it’s immediately fantasy.  Of course, if you guys think up other names that might work for the series like “Secret mages” or whatever, go for it.  Just shoot stuff at the wall, we’ll see if anything sticks.  (This is how I got the title Darkship Thieves.  I honestly had no idea what to call the book before.)

I don’t normally put up posts that get partisan, but this one comes d*mn close, because it has to.

I’ve been watching the scandals unfolding in this administration with slack-jawed shock.  I keep feeling like Jill (?) in Stranger in A Strange Land (despite the quotes I’m sure I’m paraphrasing.  Stranger is not one of my favorites and not in heavy re-read rotation.  It must be… ten years since I read it) “there are things you don’t do.  You don’t do them.  You don’t have to tell children not to eat their little friends.”

It’s not even the scandals but the “tip of the iceberg” feel to them, because, well, people who don’t know it’s not okay to spy on journalists – JOURNALISTS – might also be missing other basic social graces.  People who think it’s okay to invent an “it’s all about a video” and talk about putting a filmmaker in jail (and yes, I know it’s technically for “parole violation” but that was not why Hillary promised to put him in jail FOR THE MOVIE) might not have the best grasp of the first amendment.  (Throw them out, lawyers all!)  People who think it’s okay to strong arm medical companies for squeeze to promote a government scam (let’s call a thing used to dig in the Earth a thing used to dig in the Earth, shall we?) that will destroy them (and all medical advances) probably are uncertain on the boundaries of government according to the constitution.  People who think it’s fine and dandy to bug the cloak room in the house of representatives might have other moral flaws.  People who think it’s okay to use the IRS against their political opponents might be using the levers of power in wrong ways in other areas too.  (And btw, I’d be a lot more inclined to believe they knew nothing, if the anti-terrorism guidelines hadn’t been redesigned to TARGET the same groups the IRS targeted.)

And that’s not getting to the instructions given to our anti-terrorist groups rendering them unable to find and stop the very people likely to commit terrorism.  Stopping a crime before it happens is always difficult for the official authorities, anyway.  They’re best at punishing.  But removing the identifiers of those most likely to do it from the list of things to watch for borders on clinical insanity.

And yet the press as a whole isn’t baying for blood.  There are outbreaks here and there, but most of them aren’t even reporting ANY of this.

Part of it of course is the Progressive code of honor, which could be written (on a stamp) as “We watch out for our peeps” – this is philosophically tied to the idea that a Marxist society is inevitable and such hoary chestnuts which MUST at all costs be kicked to the ash heap of history – and also, of course with the fact that for the last thirty years “progressivism” has been a club identifier for “high class” and that a lot of people (in leftist controlled professions like mine) got (sometimes undeserved) wealth and respect based on their adherence to both parroting the “truths” of Marxism, and to this deranged form of Omerta.

But it’s more than that, and it goes deeper.

It goes all the way to the monkey brain, where loyalty to a bad hominid band leader, and being able to stay with the band increased your survival (and particularly your kids’ survival) chances over going off into the wilds on your own, in search of a better band.  (All of us immigrants are immediately weird.)

During a particular dark time in my life (yes, pre-Dan.  Also, I was a teenager and brain damaged in the peculiar way teens are.) Rod Stewart’s “A Reason To Believe” became my favorite song.  Particularly the lines:

If I listened long enough to you
I’d find a way to believe that it’s all true
Knowing that you lied straight-faced while I cried
Still I look to find a reason to believe

And last night, while catching up on the news, after a day spent in workshop classes and – in the one and two hour intervals between, when I got to come home – because our freezer died, cooking the world, (okay, only that part of the world that constituted 1/3 of our frozen food.  It was defrosted but not warm, so it got cooked.  The stuff that was defrosted and room temperature got thrown out.  The stuff that was frozen solid got transferred to the loaner freezer.  Our freezer is waiting on a part that should arrive sometime next week.) that song started going through my head for the first time in years.

Suddenly, it occurred to me the backbrain had it.  It’s not just progressive Omerta.  It’s not just progressive faith they’ll win in the end.  It’s actually not progressivism at all.  It’s human.  (But is it art?)

People want to believe figures of authority are right.  Constitutional monarchies give the people a figure head to believe in, while they can jump on and kick the actual government five ways from Monday.  We don’t have that.  (And no, I don’t want that.  Yes, I was a monarchist before after I was an anarchist, but that was Portugal and in Portugal you can’t wring the idea some people are better than others by virtue of their birth out of the culture.  It’s something I don’t want to install itself in minds here.)  The president was SORTA supposed to be like that.  But it was long ago (and besides, the wench is as dead as the Portuguese monarchist I once was.)

But still, we want to believe people in power, people at the head of any field, any company, any institution can be trusted.  It’s the monkey brain.  Of course in the US it’s very important for our ideas of ourselves to think that government respects the constitution even though that train left the track visibly and madly mid-20^th century, and since then it’s been driving in the weeds, to the point this administration tells us the Constitution is “old” and “outdated” and “Only protects negative liberties” and are trying to replace it WITHOUT a new constitutional convention.  (Which since we’re a nation created by that paper, damn skippy would be needed.)

There is a tendency even in America to believe the successful did “something right.”

For the most successful (I’m not sure he’s the most powerful any longer, and no I don’t mean the scandals, I mean by his own hand.  Foreign leaders have taken the measure of the man, even if the press hasn’t) man in the world, the ultimate check is the press.  The ONLY check is the press.

Only there the Progressive Omerta comes in.

If there were no other reason to (usually) vote Republican, the fact that the press crawls up THEIR butts like ants on a lump of sugar would be enough.  Power corrupts.  Absolute power corrupts absolutely.  People who ignore the constitution and lie with a straight face and whom the press doesn’t check are, ultimately, in absolute power.  Even if they were angels before (and, children, in this case, Chicago politics) they won’t be after.

I have the advantage of hating most authority and only submitting to a limited amount of it when absolutely needed (but I resent it.)  This means, yes, that I DID look crosseyed at George Bush – though usually not for the reasons the progressives did.  (Younger son, when enjoined to write a letter to the president in fourth grade (with strong suggestions it should be about stopping the war) wrote about tariffs and general impediment to international commerce because that was what frosted his cookies (no, I hadn’t put him up to it, though I’m sure that’s what the teacher thought.  This is my kid whom I’d always thought wasn’t political.  He doesn’t talk much, and when he does it’s usually about ancient Greek history; Space flight; something a classmate did.  But I started discovering when he was around 10 he reads a lot of the same blogs I do, he has a thing for economics and he might in fact be my male clone.)  Sometimes he made me mad as fire, and the only reason I ever defended him was the “crazy charges” and BDS.  If they’d been going after him for ineffective and intrusive anti-terrorism measures, I’d have been on the street with all the old hippies on oxygen.

But here is where the right – my type of right.  Yes, there’s another – and the left are different.  People like me start from the principles and pick the person least likely to HURT them.  (We unfortunately never expect them to support them.)  The left, at least since the fall of the USSR and the revelation that stuff just don’t work, are looking for the perfect individual to carry the flag on and MAGICALLY make this stuff work.  They are by nature communitarian and because their system (in reality if not in theory) always depends on strong leaders, they want to believe their leaders are special.

It’s really hard to doubt the person on whose existence you’ve reposed all the hopes of a better society AND your social standing, too.  They have to be perfect or magical, else everything you believe in is a sham.

Everything they believe in is a sham.  And if they don’t wake up right quick, what my grandmother said about bad situations “The one who comes after will make me seem good” applies. (“Miss me, yet?”)

If I gave you time to change my mind I’d find a way just to leave the past behind Knowing that you lied straight-faced while I cried Still I look to find a reason to believe.

And that’s how we’ve come to this labyrinthine knot of tied-together snafus that only CAN’T be a conspiracy theory because a) it’s proven fact and b) conspiracy theories, even those about Loch Ness, are less insane.

Yes, I think that the tech will eventually and of itself limit the power of government over the individual.  What we’re fighting about is how rough the transition will be and how long it will take.

For it to be as short as possible (I’m afraid there isn’t a “painless” option) and for the future to be as good as possible we must give up on wanting to believe that just because someone is powerful he is somehow anointed with goodness.

We must not look for a reason to believe.

Welcome Instapundit Readers and thank you Glenn Reynolds for the link!

For those unfamiliar with According To Hoyt, I’m a working novelist who started this blog at her agent’s instigation, as a “platform” — this was in the days when I was trying to hide my politics so as to make it in the traditional publishing world.  But it’s impossible to write everyday and not reveal yourself a little, and then more.  This seeped into my novels which resulted in the space opera series whose covers you find linked on the side of the blog.  Darkship Thieves won the 2011 award from the Libertarian Futurist Society and the second book, Darkship Renegades is a finalist for the award this year.  I’m very pleased since it’s the only award I ever aspired to receiving.  That said, this is a working writer’s blog and a considerable investment in time and effort, which detracts somewhat from my fiction writing.  If you enjoy my work here, consider donating, subscribing or even if you enjoy science fiction, buying one of the books on the side bar.  (I also write mystery, historical mystery and fantasy, but having forced the houses to disgorge the copyrights I’m going to bring them back later.)

When I was twelve or fourteen I had an explanation for the evil in the world.

Anyone who murdered, tortured, destroyed another human being (while I understand the evils of property damage/theft, it still most of the time falls short of totally destroying someone) only did it because he was a victim of society.

It wasn’t an original explanation.  By which I don’t even mean that I wasn’t the first to come up with it.  Of course, I wasn’t.  However, I didn’t come up with it at all.  I imported it wholesale from my brother who, though he was only ten years older than I, was very much involved in the whole sixties ethos.  It was all society’s fault [man] and if we got rid of capitalism and like put flowers in our hair [man], it would all be so groovy and stuff.

I never fully bought into the “if we just got rid of capitalism” – it didn’t compute.  I was an history geek, and I knew how the other systems stacked up.  BUT I wanted to believe the “it’s all society’s fault” at least society writ small.  “It’s all his family’s fault.”  “His mom spanked him when he was little.”  “He probably has a complex.”

This was fed in part by the fact that villains in books – the interesting ones, at least – do tend to have reasons for what they do.  They were abused or they suffered horribly or…

The human brain likes imposing patterns on the natural world, including very (un)natural human beings.  And we wish to think no one would do ill on purpose.  Or for no reason.  Certainly it doesn’t make a very interesting story.

My son has been reading a(n accurate) biography of Che Guevara.  When it gets to be too much for him, he comes to me and talks about it and says “I just can’t understand how anyone gets to be like that.”

At the same time I’ve been reading – malgre moi – bits and pieces of the freak show that was the Gosnell operation.  I mean, I try not to read details, but pieces of the whole thing will catch my eye even as I’m avoiding reading it (I’m avoiding reading it, because if I get so angry I burn a hole in space/time it won’t be good for anyone.)  Baby feet in jars?  Blind (because too young) babies left to die in pain and cold?  WHAT?

Then there is that whole thing in Ohio – three brothers who, as far as we know, had lived fairly normal lives till then, in middle age decide to kidnap young teenagers (one of whom was the friend of one of their daughters) and keep them as sex slaves?

How does this even happen?  If you say “they were horribly abused as children” or “their mothers twisted them” or whatever the h*ll you want to, I’m going to tell you that yeah, but it’s not enough.  And besides you’re spitting on everyone who underwent equal trauma or worse and grew up to be a decent person.

This is akin to excusing terrorism with “they’re poor”.  First of all, no, the heck they aren’t.  Most of the 9/11 attackers were quite well off, thank you.  And second, you’re spitting on all the poor people who never brought down planes and towers.

There was a time in the seventies when every trial was resolved with “he was abused as a child.”  By which they meant anything from sexual abuse to “he once didn’t get the lollipop he wanted.”

At some level or another, we ALL were thwarted or traumatized or “abused”  It’s impossible to go through life without doing it.  The only way to avoid it would be not to have a body.  Even to have all our wishes instantly gratified is a peculiar form of abuse, since it doesn’t prepare us for the inevitable buffets of the world.  Whether you are G-d’s special snow flake or not, sometimes it will rain on your picnic.

Are the communists perhaps right?  Is the capitalist system prone to creating this type of thing?

Well, not more than anywhere else.  In the Soviet Union, perhaps – perhaps – there were fewer free lance mass murderers, but that’s only because the state hated competition.

There were (possibly more – in some perspectives we’ve been taming ourselves over the centuries) the same sort of cases under monarchies.  There are these sorts of cases under strong man governments.

They are right of course, to an extent, the same way they are right about madness.  But that’s only because ANY society is going to be oppressive.  If you’re not floating in a bodiless place where your every wish is gratified – human meeting human causes trouble and pain and inconvenience for everyone.  If two people meet they won’t always agree.  There will be strife.  That is because Earth is not paradise.  And it will never be.

On the other hand, the madness thing – in a way all humans are mad, caught between intellectual vision and desire and the animal body.  If we didn’t force the animal body to do things it doesn’t want to do (like dance, or write, or the really difficult work, like digging ditches of building skyscrapers–)  there would be no civilization.

But few of us even murder one person, much less groups.

These days the official explanation is “they’re born evil.”  But are they?  We all have potential for great evil.  Trust me, even those who haven’t read my books, be assured that I can dream up horrible scenarios.

So what is the solution?  What explains humans being willing to go out and eliminate vast numbers of innocents?  Or to kidnap young girls as sex slaves?

They think they can get away with it.

I’d say that’s the sum of the thing.

All humans have these thoughts and temptations.  But once you give in… well, once you give in, its effect on you makes it easier to do it again, and again, and bigger.

Once you consider other humans outside the human scope.  Once you stop respecting them for the sake of common humanity, you’re going to end up thinking what you do doesn’t matter.  And you’re going to feel (a little) invincible.  You’re going to kill more, better, bigger.  You’re going to kidnap another young woman.  You’re going to think you’re like onto the gods…

The beginning can be as simple as being fairly sure no one will catch you.

But wait, there’s more.  When the culture promotes the idea that “we belong to the government”; when the culture promotes the idea that it’s perfectly all right to kill the very young, the suffering old, the mentally afflicted, the bodily deformed…  Once you accept the idea that common humanity or not, there are people who aren’t “people” as such…

You let the monster out.  Whether you do it yourself or you vote to have people “whose lives aren’t worth living” put to death, it’s the same.

You’ve stopped respecting humanity and therefore rendered yourself less than human.

Treating people as units, instead of bringing about Earthly paradise always brings about mass graves.  Perhaps because it mimics the thought processes of a psychopath who views others as means to his end.

And the only true victims are the dead, the maimed and the coerced.

UPDATE:  Post on writing technique over at Mad Genius Club: Expose It Yourself

Whenever I write anything about the insufficient attachment in society today to the documents that made us Americans – the constitution and the Declaration of Independence – I get half a dozen people who say that no, this isn’t true.

Sorry.  It is true.  If it weren’t true, I wouldn’t have reviews on A Few Good Men complaining that it’s “too libertarian.”  In fact, while I suspect it is that, or at least some of the characters are that, because the dang thing tends to leak into my work, the animating motive for the revolution in the book is the U.S. declaration of independence and a religious attachment to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

How can any American, born American, under the aegis of those great documents, have a problem with a book that makes the Constitution central to its principles? (And that was the problem in the reviews, not the characters’ peculiarity.)  Unless, of course, we’re so far gone that those words are revolutionary again.

And then there is the other side of this, those of you who are, at heart, constitutionalists, but who say “it’s all over, give up, they’ve won.  I’m just going to—“ and then follows a totally impractical decision: “fight it out on my own”, “go down fighting,” “Stock up for the civil war.”

You can’t fight it out on your own, and any attempts to do so will just give the opposition a chance to crush you and to say that, see, more supervision and policing is needed.  No?  Anyone remember Ruby Ridge?  These people were survivalist loons and, to be honest, weird White-Supremacy cultists – unless their family lied about them, which heaven knows isn’t even unlikely – but from these isolated nuts – who were entrapped, and yes, murdered by the forces of government – an entire “militia movement” was spun and a boogeyman made of all those who thought to restrict government.  Fighting it out on your own?  Bad for you, bad for us, bad for liberty.

“I’ll go down fighting” – if it comes to that, and I hope very much it doesn’t, I hope you do, and I hope I do.  It beats the way that most victims of over-reaching government went in the twentieth century: in the middle of the night, in silence and solitude, with a bullet to the back of the head, buried anonymously in mass graves.  But there’s a reason that happened, and a reason that’s more likely than brave lion going down in a blaze of glory in full view.   I’m not saying the last one can’t happen, but I know how to bet.  Yes, our being armed makes the bet more even, but what government does REALLY well is violence and suppression of dissent.  It’s hard for individuals to even come close.

As for civil war… I’ve written about what civil war would actually mean.  We’re not alone in the world.  While we duke it out, do you believe our enemies will be playing tiddly wink?

Civil war is the preferable scenario to the two above – but not by much and only because the others lead to unimaginable horror.

And right now you’re going “It’s all done, we’re done, we—”

Get up off the floor.  First, if you’re a believer, despair is a sin.  And if you’re not a believer, despair is spitting on the graves of all the men and women who fought in much worse conditions than you face.  The ghosts of Tiananmen Square rise up against you.  The men who in the Gulags carried a hope of freedom accuse you. The victims of communism point fingers at you.  The millions of dead at the hands of marching statism would like to remind you that to give up is to die. And that’s when you should give up.  Not a second earlier.

But worse than that – despair is a sin and an insult on the brave dead…  And it might be stupid too.

You’re going to point to the fact that the left – Marxists – control education and that even in Europe, even in countries that suffered under communism, they think socialism is great.  This is because the left has education and the history books have been revised.  I can tell you having been raised in Europe that people are taught to equate capitalism and monarchy, and all the crimes of monarchy are ascribed to capitalism, and socialism/communism is opposed to this.

Here is the problem for them, though – socialism doesn’t work.  As Thatcher said, sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.  They are.  Yes, there will be fire and blood, but at the end of it there just might be sanity.  Voices that point out that communism/socialism in their end result are much closer to monarchy than capitalism ever was are needed.  People who hold aloft the ideals of individual liberty are needed. It’s not time to fall on your sword, yet.  It might never be, because…

Yes they control the education system in most of the world.  But education is already getting hit with the same sort of catastrophic change that hit publishing.  I’ve seen the signs.  I’ve seen the middle class kids who are home/online schooled up to the last two years, then go to school the last two years, just to establish records for college entrance.  In ten years we’ve come this far.  In another three or four, things will come tumbling down.  And it will be sudden, as it’s been for publishing.

They have mass media.  Yes, indeed they do.  But we have a million voices rising up in protest. We might each be tiny pebbles in an endless lake, but we ripple… More importantly, we have the ability to tell stories that subtly propagate different world views.  The uniform lie has broken.  There is no “what everybody thinks.”  They’re shouting really loudly through the remaining channels to give the impression they’re winning.  But the mirror has cracked from side to side and their doom has come upon them.  They know it.  That’s why they try to sound so confident and secure.

They are not.  Hollywood has the money and the great effects, but it is running out of ideas, and it shows in the endless remakes.  And the tech will catch up with them too.  They’re next, after education.

They have vote fraud – yes, they do – but even in Wisconsin where they had instituted the same rules they’re putting in in Colorado, if the people get riled enough, there isn’t enough fraud to wash that away.  Let’s get the recall going, and if that fails volunteer to watch the polls.  If nothing else, be vocal about what happened afterwards.  Daylight is a disinfectant.

They have the government.  I’ve said before and I’ll say it again, that’s a booby prize. The new technologies are personalized, individualized, mobile.  And more so every year. Their model works best on a unified society where the technologies are best used to serve/talk to/control millions.  When they try it on a modern society, not only doesn’t it work, it fails spectacularly.

They belong to the past.  We? We’re from liberty and we carry it with us. We’re from the future, and we’re headed there.  And despite brief disgusting localized intervals where it goes the other way, the future is always better than the past.

Besides, in the long run?  Guess who is reproducing?  Oh, yes, we’re buying a lot of low-skill, low-ability-to-survive babies.  But low ability to survive is low ability to survive.  Remove the support system, and that population will either break out of learned helplessness (my bet) or become much smaller.

Meanwhile, the responsible people who have strong beliefs about individual freedom (many of whom are religious) are having more kids than just about anyone else and, more importantly, raising them to be responsible people with strong beliefs about individual freedom.  This is because these people have hope for the future.  Thinking we’re all going to die screaming doesn’t encourage anyone to make babies.  And thinking you need someone to hold your hand all through life doesn’t either.

[Yes, you’re going to bring out Islam.  And you’re going to be wrong.  Even in our country, with the cleanest statistics/data collection in the world (okay, maybe Sweden and Norway are cleaner, I don’t know.  But Socialism also ALMOST works there.  Those aren’t – or until recently weren’t – so much countries as tribes with borders.  Things can fly there that don’t fly anywhere else) we guesstimate a lot of our population.  If you believe the birth figures coming out of Muslim countries, you probably also believed the figures coming out of the old Soviet Union.  Remember who benefits from reporting more births: the country which is a net aid receiver, per capita. I tend to believe the rumors that filter out about women finding enough information on the net to control/reduce their own fertility.  In their position, wouldn’t you?]

In the long run this story can only have two endings.

In one of them the entire world succumbs to the unreason of “equality” and controlled economies.  This is the end in which humans go down ululating into madness.

The only way communist systems can survive is the one of the aliens in Independence Day, “They’re like locusts, they destroy each place and they move on.”

If we fall, the rest of the world falls.  And we have no other world.  After the apocalypse (what do you call it, precisely?  It even collapses birth rates to way below replacement) there might or might not be enough to rebuild.  Perhaps it happened before.

But if it did, they didn’t go the way we have, with all this distributed, individually-centered tech.

I think the sun is setting on their world – which is why they bay so loudly, to convince us that the night is coming and they have all the power – and rising on ours.

I think in the end we win, they lose.

Get up off the floor.  This is no time to give up.

*A bit of business — the subscriber space will be updated, hopefully tomorrow morning.  However this is an odd week and there are a lot of appointments and things, so bear with me.  It will come.*

UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit Readers and thank you Glenn for the link! (I am at a workshop this weekend and opportunities to connect are intermittent, so I didn’t get a chance to do this earlier.

Update: for my regular readers — remember this is not my regular job.  What I do for a living is writing novels.  I’m taking about an hour a day and a considerable amount of though away from that for these posts.  If you can, consider Donating or even Subscribing, so I feel less guilty about writing for free!

My husband was talking to me this morning about the snake called fer-de-lance. Please don’t ask why.  If you’re going to ask why my family talks about crazy things, we’ll be here all day.  Why, older boy yesterday was talking to us about the kidneys.  Something – nephrons, I think – caused me to say “weren’t those guards in ancient Egypt?” And from there we went off on an Egyptology tangent, though briefly and amusingly we also entertained the idea of Egyptians in people’s kidneys.  (No, you can’t kill us for being crazy.  At least I don’t think you can.)

Anyway, from Fer-de-Lance we went to Rex Stout.  I told Dan that not only was Fer-de-Lance the first Rex Stout I read, it was the first mystery I read, about a year after I started reading Science Fiction.  This is strange, since dad’s bookshelves were FULL of mystery books, this being his favorite form of reading.  (Though until recently he also read “great books” i.e. those that received much acclaim, until he decided they received acclaim on the basis of politics, not fact.)

The thing is that dad had told me that mysteries were not “appropriate” and “would likely give you nightmares.”  Now, let’s pause for a moment in wonder at a father’s understanding of his daughter’s mind.  By 12, when I started reading mystery, I’d already read a lot of science fiction, most of it dystopic 70s stuff, soaked in sex and violence (and don’t tell me “but most 70s stuff wasn’t like that.”  I believe you, of course, but you have to remember this is what European literary agents chose to buy and publish in Portuguese, and in the seventies – and still – high culture in Europe is all Sturm und Drang.  As I’ve said before, it’s been stuck in the goth teen mood since at least World War I, reveling in how terrible things are an how there is no hope.)  Worse, he knew – had to know, he’d given me the books – that I spent the summer I was eight reading (among other things) Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty Four.  And we won’t mention people like Dumas, or the wonderful collection of – leather bound, with the GORIEST lithographs – Captain Morgan’s adventures.  However, he didn’t want me to read mysteries, because… they had murder in them, and this might bring me nightmares.

Remember what I was talking about?  How parents and children are opaque to each other?  Well, from that end, my being a sensible kid (as sensible as kids get – at least intellectually.  We won’t discuss my emotional development, which seemed even slower when contrasted with my intellectual development) it made no sense at all that dad put those books off limits because they centered on murder so…

Well, the Portuguese culture at the time at least had a really hard time distinguishing between mystery and horror. You can see why, if you read some of the goriest procedurals of the time, and compare them to what I call “blood and guts horror” of the same period.  And someone in the publishing line (yes, there was only one.  We also had only two TV channels, shut up.  There was also only once SF line, it was called Argonaut.  When I had to establish my own press, I desperately wanted to call it that, but Alas, there was already an Argonaut press) was called vampire.  No, seriously.  And the emblem on the back of the covers was a bat.

I did – still do to an extent – have problems with most supernatural horror.  (Not romance disguised as supernatural horror.)  I tend to find that it does give me nightmares.  So, since daddy knew me, these must be supernatural horror.

Here I must explain the weird system of publishing in Portugal, when I was a kid.  Each of these lines put out a translation a month.  That was it.  They also had a limited print run.  If you didn’t grab it the first two weeks of the month and it turned out popular, your best bet was to find it later in one of those postcard-type-racks at some forgotten beach resort (where I cleaned out on Heinlein at 14.  Yes, the covers were faded.  Like I cared.)  They didn’t do reprints.  (It’s a very small market.)  The print run was also usually on the tight side.

Now, if you read knock off regency romances (most of them written by the yard by Portuguese authors using English pen names) or Westerns (ditto) you got four a month and you were spoiled for choice.  But I didn’t.  My brother had told me Romance was the opium of womanhood (more on that later) and the Westerns were so bad even I could see the mistakes – I mean, like entirely made up western states.

So, inevitably there came the Summer afternoon where I was bored out of my gourd, and I’d read all the non fiction and all the old stuff, and all the science fiction in the house, and also in the attic, and also in grandma’s storage spaces.  I was desperate.  And I looked up at the bookcase in the living room with its row upon row of vampire books.

And I found Fer-de-Lance.  I had no idea it was a snake.  I thought “Iron in the lance?  How odd.”

So with much trepidation, I brought it down, curled up on the armchair (back then I tended to curl up like a cat) and started reading.  I kept waiting for the supernatural horror to come in.  It never did.  What did happen is that by three quarters in I was hooked.  I spent a glorious summer catching up on all the mysteries, including Agatha Christie and found some permanent friends.

So – to what purpose this?  First, get out of your comfort zone in reading.  You never know.  Yes, I know you have a TBR pile that dwarfs the Taj Mahal – who doesn’t? – but a change of pace will make you appreciate all of it more.

Case in point, I’d never read Romance until about four years ago, when I took a chance. And even though my taste in Romance is limited (I don’t need to know what went where.  No, really.) I’ve found some pretty enjoyable reads and learned some techniques I ported into my other work.

That vampire bat on the cover might never appear inside.  Give it a chance.

Second – if you’re directing kids’ reading: other than outright porno (and why in heck would you have that — where they could reach, anyway?) don’t limit them.  You can say “I think you’re a little too young to fully appreciate that” (be aware, though that this will ENSURE they read it then, so use it advisedly.)  And you can say “I didn’t think that would be your thing.”  But mostly, make books available and let them find their own path.

Weirdly, though they might share some tastes with you, it will not coincide.  Not precisely.  But the greatest reward of all, and how you know you’ve done your job, is when they come to you, at fourteen or fifteen or twenty and say, “Hey, I found this book, and it’s great, and I thought you’d like it.”

And it’s true.

I went to high school (grades 7 through 11) in a high school that consisted of two buildings.  Like many of that time, it had originally been one building, then the new one was built, but the second was still in use.  It was an all girl’s high school until my year when two boys were admitted.  One of them was gay, the other must have had immense force of character.  (Well, if I’d ever had the slightest inclination towards women – I didn’t – seeing that many women that up close and personal and what they did when they thought no guys could see them would have cured me.)

Anyway, the older building (for a while the carriage house) housed the gifted forms.  The gifted forms which didn’t exist (by decree passed after the revolution, it was illegal to sort students by ability levels because all animals were alike or something.  However, teachers isolated kids they thought were trouble or so far ahead they were trouble, and threw us together into two forms.  Between which a deadly rivalry immediately developed.)  In the last year we were together, (10^th grade most of them went to science, so I lost them) we were in unofficial classrooms (so small if you sat near the window – I did.  Mildly claustrophobic – and wanted to go to the bathroom, you had to walk on top of other people’s desks.) past an attic filled with broken furniture and discarded stuff.

In eighth grade, though, we were in a classroom past two other classrooms – before the building was a school, it was an earl’s palace.  It was confiscated in the great glorious revolution.  No, not that one.  The one that deposed the king – facing the window, with French windows to two small balconies.  It was a lovely room and I’m sure it was someone’s bedroom or private parlor or something.

At the back, behind the teacher’s desk there were a series of doors which were locked.

You might as well unleash a monkey with a wrench on your average suitcase as thirty two gifted teen girls, (well, thirty one.  There was also me) with a rebellious disposition (except me, of course, I was good) in a classroom with locked doors.  We made it our business to open them and look in there.  (To this day I can’t understand what ninny livered people were there before that the doors remained locked.)  It took us a little while, but since Portugal doesn’t have substitute teachers and when a teacher didn’t show up we were told to stay put, alone, in the classroom (Yes, of course, half the people went down the street for a coffee and a croissant.  Not me.  I was chronically broke.) eventually we managed to open the doors.  They were rather unexciting.  There was a closet (we later used it to suggest to our overwhelmed biology teacher she could go in there to escape us.  She thought we were possessed.  Don’t ask. After her we got a fatherly middle aged man with army experience and he didn’t have any trouble at all.)

I think the other one was a sort of dressing room and I don’t remember what the third was.

However, in our exploits, while we were being little (or in my case big) monkeys, we shoved at this big cupboard that looked built in, and which was used for school supplies.  Okay, there was a fist fight (me?  I was more likely to kick.  Honestly I don’t even remember if I was engaged, because what happened next wiped it all out of my head) and one or more people fell heavily against the cupboard, which swung away, creakily, on hinges and long-disused wheels, revealing… a passageway.

Did we go down it?  Are you kidding?  Wild horses couldn’t have stopped us. For one, they wouldn’t have fit into the passage.

We went into it, and found ourselves in this sort of box high up on the side of one of the most magnificent churches I’ve ever seen.  I’m not sure what was the point of the secret passage, unless someone didn’t wish it known she prayed a lot.

The church was all in ruins, of course, and smelled strongly of mouse whee.  No, actually not “of course.”  Considering the school had mandatory classes of religion and moral taught by a priest and getting out of them was trouble enough that most parents never tried, I’m surprised that they didn’t use the built-in-church for mass. (I had to be excused due to getting in arguments.  This involved my father getting a notarized document saying he objected  and getting a lawyer involved (mostly he objected to my possibly killing the teacher.  I was fairly sure Catholic or not, the little red book should not be confused with the Bible) so I spent my time studying with the four protestant girls and three Jewish girls whose parents cared enough to get them out.  Since two of the Jewish girls and one protestant girl was in my form, I’ve since wondered if the reason the parents cared enough was that they had similar experiences to my family’s.  My form were generally trouble makers.  I’m surprised in all the years since I’ve only seen ONE of them in the news linked to a crime.)

In retrospect, I think that the people from the great glorious revolution – no, no, the anti-monarchist one – which was strongly anti-religion sealed all other accesses to the church so well that, barring a drawing of the building by an architect, no one suspected it was there.

Anyway, the church had been decorated in the baroque style (yes, RES, they were going for Baroque) which means that it had enough gold everything that even in a corroded and tarnished condition it looked like Donald Trump’s wet dream.  It also means that the various saint statues were in positions of martyrdom and had expressions that could be either of extreme pain or orgasm, and it was best not to look too closely.  Saint Sebastian, pierced by however many arrows might have seen heaven close, but the smile was still disquieting.

Anyway, to the right of the altar, directly facing the box we were in was the best statue of Senhora das dores that I’ve ever seen  “Lady of the Pains” is the straight translation, but I think in the States she might be known as Madre Dolores, thereby giving rise to a number of women named Dolores.  Her chest is pierced by seven swords, and she looks up to heaven with an ecstatic/painful expression.

This long (good golly, two pages?) preamble is because when I thought of writing of motherhood today that was the image that came to mind.

In one of Patricia Wentworth’s books, I found the definition of motherhood as “A pain over their teething, a pain over their schooling and a pain over their lurvering.”  When I read it, I had only experienced the teething pains, and right now I’m into the schooling, though the younger has made incursions into the lurvering, even if nothing serious yet – but I see no reason to doubt that definition.

By some strange alchemy, their pain, even when they’re as stoic as my older son or as close mouthed as the second, reverberates through me much more strongly than pains I experience myself.  And the emotional pains are the worst.  For the physical ones, I can take them to the doctor, or I can apply bandages.  But for the emotional, even when I can give good advice it usually isn’t the type they can take right then.

And that is a pain, because you bring them into the world, but then… but then they’re their own.  And while I never wanted to control them, I wish I could give them, wholesale the knowledge that I have, that would make their way easy.  But that’s not how humans work.  (I always thought that was a good touch on the part of Anne Rice – yes, I read the vampire series until Queen of the Damned when I judged she’d gone off the deep end.  Even before a feeling had been growing that after reading one of her books I should take a shower on the inside.  That book was the final straw – to make the “child vampire” and the “parent vampire” deaf to each other’s thoughts, because that’s a great part of parenting.  Of course, I’ve known them all their lives.  Of course I should be able to read them.  Weirdly, it doesn’t work that way)

Not that motherhood is all reflected pain and frustration.  There’s also terror.  The first instance of terror was when I found myself massively pregnant with Robert thinking how in heck this thing could come out.  I decided there and then that he wouldn’t.  He could very well go to college in my stomach.  I still find it was uncharitable of Dan to laugh himself sick over that one.

The second moment of terror – and the third – came as I held my newborn son, and realized I was completely and utterly responsible for this creature and his existence in the world.  (Yes, with Dan’s help, of course, but you know what I mean.)

The third comes and goes and is best expressed in the phrase, “I should have stuck to cats.  They rarely grow up to be ax murderers.”

However, through all this, there is the ecstasy.  There are the moments of grace – and most of them are moments of grace – reading their first story, tasting the first dinner they cooked, listening to Robert play piano after he taught himself, watching Marshal as Petruchio in Taming of the Shrew.  Or even (just) our conversations around the dinner table, or when they’re helping me clean the house, or pretty much every moment of their existence.  It is a partaking of the divine joy of creation “Look, look what I made and sent into the world, independent and autonomous, full of the same heartbreaking imperfection as all humans, and the same glorious potential.”

They’re pretty great young men.  They couldn’t have done worse for a mother, but I couldn’t have done better for kids, so as we know, it’s all in perfect balance.

Happy Mother’s day everyone.  You either were one, served as one to someone, or (I’m fairly sure most of you, though some of you – waggles hand –) had one.  Enjoy the fact that humans’ prolonged helplessness as children gives us a chance at a relationship as baffling as it’s fulfilling.  Freud was right.  Most problems start with the mother.  He missed that so do most blessings.  And often they are one and the same.

And all we can do is do the best we can, then hold our breath, give thanks where they’re due and ignore the bad — and keep faith in the future.

May all your troubles be little ones.

“All right then,” he said.  He remained in the shadow, his face hidden by the way the light from the hallway was obstructed by the half open door of the office.  “Time to come with me.”

I looked up from the computer, where I’d been making minor alterations to a trunk story.  “Uh… Why?”  the time was six thirty am, give or take a few minutes.  And my visitor was a bulky man with broad shoulders and wearing something… strange.  It could be armor or a space suit.  Or something.  I thought of the boys down the hall, and that they’re both studying for finals and therefore by definition a little loopy.  “Robert?”

“No.”  He sounded impatient and the voice had a faint hint of undefinable accent.

“Marshall?”

“NO!  I said come with me, woman.”

My mom taught me, before I was out of my pram never to go anywhere with strange men, much less strange men like this one.  The more I narrowed my eyes and looked, the more it seemed that he was rather unsubstantial and I could sort of see the panels of the door behind him.

“I don’t think so,” I said.  “I have these stories that were published in the suburban fantasy anthologies to edit, and then I have to write one where they go out to Vegas and get married by zombie Elvis.  And the cat box needs doing.  And I have two novels that need editing, and one I’m copy editing.  And I have friends novels to read for quotes.  And besides,” I said, with finality.  “I have a witlow.”

I got the impression he’d scrunched up his face in a frown. This was quite a trick, considering I couldn’t see his face and wasn’t even sure he had one.  Something appeared in his hand.  It might be a trident or a lance.  He hit the floor with it.  “And yet, surely you must come.  The forgotten demand it.”

“The… what?”

“The forgotten.”

“They’re not forgotten.  They’re lying to you.  I gave them food this morning while I was making tea.  If the bowl is empty, it’s because Havey eats as much as all four other cats combined, and that includes Greebo, look you.”

There was a hiss from the figure, which strangely didn’t make him seem more catlike, but rather, strangely like a tried-beyond-endurance human.  “Come.”

He struck his lance again, and like in a dream, I found myself standing beside him at the window at the end of the hall.  But instead of looking out onto the roof of our garage, our horribly neglected (as in nothing alive) garden, or even the neighbor’s houses, I was looking at a nebulous landscape wreathed in thick fog.  Here and there, pieces of landscape emerged, like wrecked ships on a shallow sea.

“There,” a huge hand pointed at a patch from which something like Greek architecture emerged.  “Is your pre-Mycenaean epic.  The character has agreed to let you give him … er… her a sex change operation.  What are you waiting for?”

“Well, you see, the resear—”

“And over there.” He pointed at a gloomy bit with French renaissance look about it.  “Is the vampire musketeers.  I mean, the second book is three days away from completion.  THREE days.  Why haven’t you done it?”

“There have been—”

“Over there.”  He pointed at the same architecture but more cheerful.  “Is the musketeer mysteries.  You still get letters every week asking for more, don’t you.”

“Well, I’m editing the second, so we can—”

“And there.”  He pointed out a patch of green wreathed in Kudzu that could only exist in the American South.  “When are you going to finish that charming Southern piece?”

“As soon as I—”

“There—”  The mountainous landscape of Goldport Colorado.  “What’s up with not finishing the thing with the chick and the ghost of her dead lover.”

“A week, at most, I swear.  I just have to find a week.”

He next pointed at a futuristic landscape with monolithic public buildings, “I thought you meant to bring out The Brave And The Free on the fourth of July?”

“Well, I did, but then I got sick, and…”

“And what about Winter Prince, a space opera in a completely different universe where you—”

“Oh, that.  I really want to do it but I…”

“Then there’s A Flaw In Her Magic.  Remember how much fan Austen fanfic used to be?”

“Yes, but I had more time then.”

“And orphan kittens.  It’s waiting for you. They all need to be done.  You can do a novel in a month, and you know it, but you’ve wasted almost six months now doing nothing.”

“Not nothing.  There’s editing and publishing and family stuff.  And I was sick.  And before I do any of the others, I must finish the two books under contract for Baen.”

“Yes, those must be done too, but that’s not an excuse.”

He gave me a disgusted look.  For that moment, I could see his face, shifting between the faces of all my characters, male and female.  Let me tell you, it gives you a cold feeling to see Athena Sinistra looking disgusted at you.

“Get sick less, write more.  Hire someone to deal with the other stuff.  Otherwise all the people from those universes will come and make sure you never get a wink of sleep again.”

Like that, he vanished into thin air like a bubble.

And I went back to my desk.