According To Hoyt

Book Promo

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. By clicking through and buying (anything book-related, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*

ONE NEW SPECIFICATION: DON’T SEND ME NEW BOOKS ON THE SAME EMAIL AS THE OLD. I’m using a program to cut out some of the donkey work, and it doesn’t understand that.

Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion. Remember though all of these submissions are from people willing to be associated with this blog. So if you’re trying to buy from people who don’t hate you, this is a good place to start. – SAH

FROM BECKY JONES: Station on the Edge: Rebellion’s Edge Book 1

Zeke Udinesi just wanted to spend his career as a station chief on a nice space station with a good pub. Unfortunately for Zeke, the best pub is on Glasvyr Station which sits on the line dividing the Core, the civilized galaxy, from the Edge, the very much less-than-civilized bit of galaxy. When the Republic of United Planets takes a sudden interest in Glasvyr Station, Zeke gets a very bad feeling. A surprise visit by a high-ranking VIP, a newly minted, bullying political commissar assigned to the station, trader captains fleeing the new regulations and restrictions, and a notorious military unit stationed on Glasvyr all point to increasing power moves by the Burokratika Senaat of the Republic.
Fueled by caffeine and spite, Zeke takes on the leviathan Republic vowing to stop it no matter the cost. Can he survive or will he be pushed into the Edge?

FROM DALE COZORT: Winston: An Exchange Novella

Winston looks cute, like a living teddy bear. He’s killed at least six people.

Gene Woodward just wants to finish his master’s degree and survive third shift at North Central Illinois University’s Exobiology lab. Not on his agenda: babysitting the smartest, most dangerous animal anyone’s ever pulled out of an alternate reality people call Bear Country. But when Winston escapes not once but twice, leaving no evidence on camera and no sign of forced entry, Gene realizes the bear isn’t just intelligent. He’s deceiving the humans around him. On purpose.

The truth is stranger than anyone expects: Winston has a strange language of his own, and he understands far more English than he lets on. That discovery should save him. Instead, it puts him and Gene’s daughter, Becky, the one person Winston trusts, directly in the path of the man who trained Winston to kill, and the federal machinery that would rather he simply disappear.

Some minds don’t announce themselves. Winston has been listening the whole time.

A standalone novella set in the world of Exchange and Devouring Wind.

FROM ERIC W. COWPERTHWAITE: Staying Human (Bougie Apocalypse Book 2)

The Cough is still loose and the road out of the swamp is no longer quiet. Faster Ones hunt in packs. Smoke rises on every horizon. And something far worse than zombies may be waking in the ruins.
Retired Army Sergeant Major Jack Harlan and his wife Raych keep the rituals alive. They brew real coffee on the Coleman stove, share hot meals around the vehicles, and hold tight to the rule that defines them: shoot the Walkers, then go back to the beans. With their growing family, Tom, Sarah, and young Mikey, they push north toward a mysterious hardened data center, hoping for answers.
The world outside grows darker and more dangerous with every mile. Walkers are changing, growing smarter and more coordinated. Old comforts feel farther away. Yet Jack and his people refuse to surrender their humanity, even as survival demands harder choices.
Another chapter in the Bougie Apocalypse saga, with new characters, asking the question “what does it mean to Stay Human?”. Serialized military-flavored post-apocalyptic pulp with World War Z grit, Zombieland humor, and an ironclad commitment to #StayHuman. Because even when the dead evolve and the road gets longer, a man still needs good coffee, hot food, and the stubborn refusal to become a monster.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Bite Sized (Liquid Diet Chronicles Book 1)

Meg Turner has been a vampire for twenty years. Her favorite food is rapists. Which is how she met Andi Donahue, her new best friend/ girl Friday.

And then the nightmares start. And the bodies start showing up–bled out and raped. Just like Meg was. They don’t have a whole lot of time to stop the killer before he strikes again, and only one way to stop the killer.

But how can Andi help Meg stop a killer she can’t even see?

FROM KAREN MYERS: Mistress of Animals: A Lost Wizard’s Tale (The Chained Adept Book 2)

Book 2 of The Chained Adept.

AN ERRANT CHILD WITH DISASTROUS POWERS AND NO ONE TO STAND IN HER WAY.

Penrys, the wizard with a chain and an unknown past, is drafted to find out what has happened to an entire clan of the nomadic Zannib. Nothing but their empty tents remain, abandoned on the autumn steppe with their herds.

This wasn’t a detour she’d planned on making, but there’s little choice. Winter is coming, and hundreds are missing.

The locals don’t trust her, but that’s nothing new. The question is, can she trust herself, when she discovers what her life might have been? Assuming, of course, that the price of so many dead was worth paying for it.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: One Last Homecoming

Sherry had planned a quick trip to her home town for her forty-year class reunion, to see the current classes’ Homecoming game. Instead, she arrives to find the high school just as she remembers it, complete with long-demolished buildings and long-retired teachers. It’s Homecoming, all right — her senior year.

For someone with happy memories, revisiting one’s younger days might be pleasant nostalgia. Sherry dreads the thought of being stranded in the past, forced to reassume the old roles after decades of independence.

How can she return to her own time when she has no idea how she got here? Worse, a hostile entity is making its presence known — and it may not want to let her go back. And the Homecoming game isn’t the one she remembers from four decades ago.

FROM MACKEY CHANDLER: The Way Things Seem

How much trouble would you go to for an inheritance? How much would it matter what your estranged and disliked step brother and family thought of you? How much would you allow the dead hand of your distant father to influence you? Would it matter how much money was involved? And what if in the end, nothing you thought important at the start mattered? What if everything you believed wasn’t the way it seemed. Not only in your personal world but the wider reality you thought you knew. Could you deal with that? This is a stand alone story unrelated to my other books or series.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: The Tale of the Crane Princess (Timelines Universe Book 6)

Ordinary, everyday shopkeeper Horiuchi Tsurue is running a little general store and mini-café on a small island in Japan’s inland sea, two centuries after mankind was nearly wiped out by a virus.

One day, Yamaguchi Yukiko, the kamaitachi of legend ( The Cross-Time Kamaitachi ), and her daughter Mikoko, appear in front of Tsurue’s shop, and she invites them in for tea.

That’s when Tsurue discovers she is anything but ordinary. And in the end, the island she is sworn to protect will depend upon it.

FROM RACHAEL CRAWFORD: Droids & Dragons

Enter a world where technology & catastrophic reality collides with mythical creatures. This anthology of over 50 short stories and poems brings that world to life. It explores the lives of droids, dragons, humans, and other creatures through a variety of genres.

FROM RANDY BROWN: The Drop: Season Four

Twelve contestants. One flag. Twice the prize money. And this time, no one survives alone.

Hell.

It’s not what they thought.

The fourth season of The Drop begins with a brutal new twist, pitting players against each other for the first time. They quickly discover that the greatest threat on Hell may not be the planet.

On Earth, the people running the contest at Tanaka Enterprises may be playing an even deadlier game. Insider fighting escalates behind the scenes while a former business partner strikes like a dying serpent.

Repercussions from the game resonate across light years and the lives of the players aren’t the only ones at risk.

On Hell, survival is only the beginning. Winning may cost them their humanity.

FROM TED BEGLEY: Race to Arcturus (Scoundrels Incorporated Adventures Book 1)

Three friends. One scrap-heap starship. And a jump no one has ever made.

Jack, Kyle, and Adwin have spent two years turning a decommissioned mining scout into something that looks like it belongs in the stars. All they need is a working FTL drive. Then Uncle Duncan offers them a summer internship that is anything but ordinary—and a secret prototype that could rewrite the rules of hyperspace.

The catch? The patents have to be filed on Arcturus, thirty-nine light-years away. And they are not the only ones who know what the new drive can do.

Some races are won in the workshop. This one starts the moment they leave Earth. Race to Arcturus—where the only thing faster than light is three boys who refuse to stay grounded.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: No Man’s Land: Volume 1 (Chronicles of Lost Elly).

Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.

On a lost colony world, mad geneticists thought they could eliminate inequality by making everyone hermaphrodite. They were wrong. Catastrophically wrong.
Now technology indistinguishable from magic courses through the veins of the inhabitants, making their barbaric civilization survivable—and Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Kayel Hayden, Viscount Webson, Envoy of the Star Empire—Skip to his friends— has just crash-landed through a time-space rift into the middle of it all.
Dodging assassins and plummeting from high windows was just the beginning. With a desperate king and an archmagician as his only allies, Scipio must outrun death itself while battling beasts, traitors, and infiltrators bent on finishing what the founders started: total destruction.
Two worlds. One chance. No time to lose.

Volume 1
The Ambassador Corps has rules: you cannot know everything, don’t get horizontal with the natives, don’t make promises you can’t keep.
They’re a lot harder to follow when assassins are hunting you, your barbarian allies could kill you for the wrong word, and death lurks around every corner.
The unwritten rule? Never identify with the natives.
Skip’s already broken that one.
Now he’s racing against time to save his new friends from slavery—or worse—while dodging energy blasts and political intrigue. One crash-landed diplomat. A world of deadly secrets. And absolutely no backup.

Some rules are meant to be broken. Others will get you killed.

FIRST VOLUME OF THE BOOK NO MAN’S LAND — this is not a complete story, it continues in volume 2

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: STRUCTURE.

Or, Not Tired Of Winning Yet.

By Holly the Assistant

A few days ago there was a kerfuffle, minor, with the general opinion among my friends being “HSLDA is going to eat them for lunch.”

Wait, let me back up a few decades.

You see, I was home schooled, back in the ages when it wasn’t legal almost everywhere, and was widely regarded as suspicious. Everyone had opinions on how uneducated home schoolers were, back then, and how stupid our parents were. (Mine had more and higher degrees than their critics.) There was a need, some attorneys who wanted to home school their own kids formed a legal defense group, and Home School Legal Defense Association was created. (https://hslda.org/) Where it was legal, no one knew what to do with us. I had two colleges I applied to send the wrong application information. (One of them got written out of my then symphony stand partner’s will over it. She’d really hoped I’d go there, and the college screwing that up? She was not happy. Lovely lady, she translated the Kol Nidrei’s words for me when I was playing that. The other college was one two of my cousins went to. They’d gone to high school at Interlochen, however, which was at least a standard option.)

By the time my kids came along, home schooling was legal everywhere, though still difficult to comply with in some places, (NY, PA, CA, looking at you particularly) and the complaint had switched from academics to socialization, usually after ten minutes of chatting with my articulate kids. We walked into driver’s licensing, said “Traditional home school” and were handed the proper forms. College admissions, “Traditional home school”, handed proper forms. There was no fuss, no drama.

By and large, it’s somewhere between a non-issue and “My grand-kids are home schooled” today. And a lot of that is due to HSLDA, a legion of motivated home schoolers and retired home schoolers who pick up the phones to talk to legislators’ offices at the first email notification (last time I called on a state bill I got a very weary staffer who said “For or against?”) and a LOT of court cases. For the low price of less than a tank of gas a year, we fund HSLDA, as a group effort. (OK, I have a 36 gallon tank, but still.) When I was a child, it was postal mail and a phone tree (talk about a coordination job!), now it’s an email list.

So we went from CPS taking kids from families to CPS rolling eyes when someone reports kids being home schooled, by concentrated effort over multiple decades. And now, when the headline says: Firefighter’s Home Schooled Diploma rejected (https://www.firehouse.com/careers-education/video/55406408/homeschooled-diploma-rejected-by-freemont-ne-fire-department) we confidently expect that should the young man desire, the Home School Legal Defense Association will sic an attorney or three on the city, and eat them for lunch. Because that’s what OUR attorneys do: they’re good at it, and honestly, they probably wrote Nebraska’s home school laws, or a good chunk of them anyway, and Nebraska home schoolers hassled and cajoled their legislature into passing those laws.

I understand from my firearms activist friends that they’ve done much the same thing, over many decades. I just appreciate living in a Constitutional Carry state, and knowing that whatever happens at minimum ten percent of the people around me are carrying at any given time.

How far we’ve come, from the days of not being sure if it was safe to play outside in my own yard for a break from school work, lest someone report us, to the days where we can confidently say “Oooh, they screwed up, they’ll be paying,” when someone discriminates against a home schooled person.

This is what winning looks like: a long, slow slog, dismantling legal restrictions put in place by our do-gooder ancestors, who were sure that if they just controlled things the right way they’d make all those shady newcomers from places like Italy and Finland behave like proper Americans. We know better now: we know we can’t let the institutions of government have that kind of power over We the People, because the people in charge use it to destroy individualism, which is the basis of America. It’s the work of lifetimes. The home school pioneers, those still alive, have spent their entire adult lives at it. Now we carry their torches forward.

Be not afraid. In the end, they lose, we win.

The problem of human suffering is usually a central point of every one of the great religions. Mitigating it is at the basis of their regimen for human “uplifting.”

We’re not going to be discussing that, since I suspect even those of you of the same religion and I would get into a right big argument over what the best way of getting over suffering is, etc.

What we’re not going to allow as being valid is for the government to get in on the game. Why aren’t we going to allow that?

Because when governments try to mitigate the problem of “human suffering” be it suffering due to lack or suffering due to health or aging, the result is always the same.

When governments try to redistribute plenty to make sure everyone has enough, they end up killing their economy and killing thousands or millions of people with famine and the joi de vivre of the rest of the population with sheer grinding poverty. Not to mention the people who object to being despoiled or those who talk against he program must also be killed.

Then there is “killing to avoid suffering”.

What is this about? Well, X is awash in Canadians telling us all the people that MAID does away with under the auspices (hospices!) of the Canadian government “Were going to die anyway.”

Okay, so what they say mostly is that these people would have died “within the year”. Which, sure, some of them would. So what? Note not all of them. Note also that doctors can be wrong about that. I was told I was going to die anyway within the month so why not let them do the very risky procedure? Well, I didn’t, (or rather Dan forbid it, since I was half out of my mind) and that was 31 years ago. Almost half of my life at this point.

Beyond all that there is a sharp difference between “you will die in six months despite the best efforts of medicine” and “We’re not going to treat you, because there’s a wait list and it’s very expensive, so you’ll be dead in six months’ which most of the stories coming out of Canada sound like. And yes, I know that’s anecdotes but… the vibrant medical tourism to the US tells its own story.

And this is why I want government out of medicine in general, because once you become an expense on the public purse, they’re bound to find a way to not spend any more on you. Particularly if you’re one of the heretical non-believers in government. Or just unfashionable. At 33, with two small children (younger son was 1) and doing really heavy support on family and husband’s career even if I still hadn’t broken into writing so I had no income in cash, I was told that it didn’t matter if I died anyway, as I was just a housewife and a burden on my family. (Which is how they got my consent to the risky procedure, which consent Dan nullified and threatened to sue them into oblivion for, since I was very ill and they’d ganged up on me while he was away for an hour dealing with an emergency.) Fortunately they weren’t government doctors, so he could tell them to put it up their jumpers and I didn’t have the potentially lethal procedure done. Now that Colorado has an euthanasia law that made the AMA say “whoa, that’s too extreme!” they might have been more direct and be able to enforce it too, by non-treatment of the symptoms, if nothing else.

Oh, there’s other reasons for wanting government out of medicine, because everything government tries to “help” with get way more expensive. If government took over the Sahara to make sure everyone in the surrounding areas had enough sand, sand would soon become a rare and expensive commodity.

But to me the real problem is that the more medicine becomes enmeshed with the government, the more all of us become an entry in a column that says “debit” and the way to stop the debit is to kill us.

Besides, they’re being kind. There is real suffering. And they can stop it by killing you…

Except suffering is relative. Every time I consult a doctor and am near the top of one of the auto-immune outbreaks — often totally unrelated to why I went to the doctor — they look at the symptoms and panic and tell me something must be done about it. (We’re going to try another dealing with it method in two weeks or so.)

I do get this when they’re looking, say, at my entire back being raw flesh. It’s shocking to them, and it hurts and itches, so how am I living with it?

They’re always disconcerted when I say “Oh. It’s actually not one of the bad ones. I didn’t notice.” (The bad ones I have sores all over my body, and am spending substantial time awake due to that.) Because the context they like is that I’ve been dealing with this since I was one. This is life for me. I’ve had maybe a cumulative couple of years with no lesions somewhere in my body. (MUCH better when the celiac is not a factor, but still. Celiac and psoriasis run together apparently 85% of the time.) Some sores at my wrists and elbows are legit not noticed and the patches on my back have been that way for years, which means it’s annoying but it’s just life.

Suffering? Sure, but I don’t notice.

In the same way I’m sure if we exported my current level of random aches, pains and just general tiredness to myself at 20 I’d probably think I was dying, but right now I’m fine. No, seriously. I tune out pretty much all of it. Have had years of practice.

So what doctors or outsiders think is suffering isn’t necessarily so to the person experiencing it. Who are you to judge that they need to be killed to stop the misery? Particularly, who is some government official?

And don’t get me started on less physical suffering: depression, grief, lack of interest in anything. These are all things that have been used to justify MAID, even if in rare cases. One case is too many.

Look, this is not just piling on on Canadians, as much fun as that is. It’s that the same ideas are here.

I get that the current state of medical science can prolong the “dying” stage of life for months or years and look, at least from the outside, as though it is inflicting horrible suffering.

My Father in Law died by inches and it looked horrible to witness, and hurt all of us to see it. He’d done nothing to deserve that horrible ending. (And I have nightmares of Dan, who greatly resembles him, going that way.)

But that’s still not worth it giving someone external to the person the right to decide (or pressure, cajole and convince the person) it’s time to die. Or the means of that dying.

Because it always ends the same way. EVERY single time. It starts with what looks like, at least from outside, true compassionate intervention, and it always ends up with people getting killed in batch lots for the flimsiest of reasons. Ultimately to put them out of someone else’s suffering and expense.

As someone who has had bizarre “health” since I was born, and who often looks like she must be in great pain (it don’t make no nevermind.) and who is getting to a certain age, I feel personally endangered. But even if I didn’t, the results of a government being given the right to kill its people for whatever reason, including “to end their suffering.” are plain to see. It always ends in stacked corpses. And Canada and Europe are playing out the very old tragedy.

Agatha Christie said that when you’re very old and bed ridden, the young and vigorous might wish to free you of your suffering, but the old person just enjoyed being alive, breathing in and breathing out.

I’m not that old, yet. And I have trouble believing I’d be okay if I couldn’t work at all. (Fortunately my work is of a kind if all else fails I can just dictate very slowly.) But if I can work in some way, I know I’ll be enjoying that. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll get to the point that just being alive is enjoyment enough.

The point is that when people let the government take care of their health and well being, the answer to ending suffering seems to be always “death.” And the consent can always be manufactured.

For the record, I will never consent to being killed. No, just no. They might get my signature by brow beating me when I’m at my weakest, but it is meaningless.

I don’t know what comes after, but as long as I can be here, I’m going to be here. And working.

And I’m sorry if it inconveniences some bureaucrat.

(A Blast from the Past: https://accordingtohoyt.com/2017/09/30/greebos-editorial-tips/)

I was born a poor black cat.  Okay, stop laughing.  It is actually true.  I’m mostly black, except for spots of white, embarrassingly shaped like human body hair, which show when I lie on my back.  And I was born in the crawl space of a rental house from a feral mother who was dumped as a kitten, and the neighborhood gentleman Mrs. Hoyt pleases to call The Resident Mad Feral Tom.

I wasn’t much more than ten weeks old when I had to defend mam.ma cat’s honor against a roving tom who took the opportunity of papa cat (who used to baby-sit us when mama went about her errands) being absent.

To be honest with you, I didn’t so much worry about my mother’s honor.  It was that the tom made it very clear my brothers and sister and I should be done away with and possibly eaten, so mama could turn her attention to his offspring, the getting of.

Well, I was tiny, but I had needle sharp claws, so I jumped on his head and–

Mrs. Hoyt says that’s when she decided to call me Greebo.  It didn’t hurt for the name that when the neighbor next door trapped me and my siblings (we could never resist tuna) she took me to be “fixed” (I wasn’t aware of being broken) to a feral-fixing service, which then cut half of one ear so people knew we were fixed.  She did this despite Mrs. Hoyt offering to pay for the fixing, which to be fair, she was never forgiven for.

Another thing she was never forgiven for was locking us all in a six by nine powder room, and not letting us be adopted.  To be fair, she let the Hoyts come and pet us and play with us, but she kept insisting we were feral and dangerous — she wasn’t a cat person, and to be fair, I didn’t like her — and not letting the Hoyts find us families.  Then when we were a year old she turned us out just before winter.  This is when Mrs. Hoyt took over looking after us, and trying to re-tame us, as we were rather traumatized at being dumped out into the freezing cold.  She even bought us an insulated house to sleep in during winter, and had us chipped and vaccinated.

Despite this, my brothers chose to live with the neighbors.  Okay, fine, I might have chased Maurice away.  Mr. Underfoot genuinely preferred the neighbors, even though they called him Dumb and Maurice Dumber.  Look, given how et up with cats the Hoyts are I judged my chances of being brought inside best if there was just one of us, okay?  A cat’s got to do what a cat got to do.

At any rate, Maurice owed me, because that first winter out, a fox got him in an indelicate place — to put it bluntly, the fox took an off-center chunk off Maurice — and if I hadn’t descended upon the fox like the wrath of Greebo, Maurice would be dead.

Mrs. Hoyt is still confused at my bringing her half a fox’s tail, ripped vertically.  I’d heard they were valued for stoles, but I think she threw it away, silly woman.  What do you expect from writers.

I also once saved them from a fugitive.  It happened like this, see, I wasn’t very fond of the outside house, so I convinced them to put a cat door on the little screen door to their mudroom.

The mudroom didn’t lock, because back then Colorado Springs’ Old North end was, in the main, very safe.  Besides, all they kept there were these tall plastic shelves with gardening stuff and basketballs, and the kids scooters.  That kind of thing.  Oh, and two cat beds, one in the lowest shelf and one on the highest.

It so happened that every so often a fugitive escaped the maximum security facility somewhere South of the Springs, and then the police would hunt them down and have lights shining from helicopters to catch them. We all knew what those lights meant.

Of course, the problem with that mud room — the Hoyts called it an air-lock. Shakes head at the silliness of science fiction people — is that once you were in there, you had all the time in the world to break into the kitchen.  I knew Mrs. Hoyt was there, cooking, because I’d greeted her at the kitchen window — purr, rub on glass, purr — before going to sleep in the top most shelf.

I don’t know why I know this man was a wrong one, except he smelled bad, of fear and bad intentions, and besides he wasn’t daddy, who was the only person who should be coming into the air lock at that time.

Well — flicks claw — I have my claws.  And I remembered who I got rid of mama’s suitor.  Yep, I dropped on his head.

He ran out of the airlock with me on his head, and I stayed on, yowling and scratching, and let me tell you it wasn’t easy to keep my balance, so I held on with my front claws and ripped with my back claws.  When we found the police he was sobbing, asking for his mommy, and saying something about demons.

Mrs Hoyt was very proud of me and gave me tuna.

So, what does this have to do with writing tips?

Be still, there’s more to the story.

Imagine my surprise when the Hoyts moved away and left me behind.  I thought it was understood I was THEIR kitten — albeit a near 20 lb muscular kitten — but apparently the strange pink monkeys thought I was the neighborhood cat.

So I sat my butt in front of the house and yowled ALL NIGHT.  It worked.  One of the neighbors called and told Mrs. Hoyt she had to come get me, because I wouldn’t let anyone sleep.

And that’s how I achieved my long term goal of being an indoor cat.

Now, because I know she has a lot of other cats (Yeah, not happy about that, but one is old enough he shouldn’t be with us long, the other one is really her son’s cat and just staying with us for a year, and the third is probably just an animated ball of cotton wool) she has to feed, and I don’t intend to go without my tuna, I also herd the silly woman to the chair to write at all times, so she has money to keep us.  Because, and here’s the thing,  found if you work at it, you will be successful.

So, my tips for writers are:

No matter who you were born, or to whom, or how unlikely your circumstances, you can do what you set out to do.  It just takes effort and determination.  Tell yourself right now you’re not going to give up and die when the big feral tom wants you out of the way.  You’ll chase him off if needed, even if you’re much smaller.  And you’ll do it WELL.

Develop your innate abilities.  Mine is chasing off large wild life and terrorizing neighborhoods.  This not only saved my brother Maurice and the other cats in the neighborhood, since the fox found another place to prowl, but it made me beloved by a lot of people who only heard about me.

It also made me capable of chasing off a real, dangerous fugitive and earn the gratitude of the Hoyts.

Also, as I keep telling the writer-woman, when you become what you always wanted to be, don’t slack off.  Be vigilant and always on the job, and you know, sometimes you’ll even get tuna rewards.

It’s all in working hard and never giving up.  Now go write, before I figure out a way to come to your houses and chase you to your keyboards.

Happy hunting.

I don’t want to write this, but I’ve come to the reluctant conclusion it’s needed.

What don’t I want to write? Well… I don’t want to write about the Clancy case anymore. For a million reasons, up to and including that it’s plainly obvious to me that she’s guilty in the legal sense (she knew what she was doing) and yet people are being stupid about it.

Nothing I am about to say exculpates her in any way. People can have mistaken ideas and kill someone under that impression, but unless the idea is that they’re in danger for their lives and there is SOME substantiation (like the other person was holding an object that looked like a knife or a gun and coming at them) they’re still guilty of murder and there’s no getting around it. If, after reading a lot of weird blogs, I become convinced that my neighbor is an alien from beta centauri and kill him, I should be given the penalty for murder, regardless of how much I believed I was saving the Earth.

I am convinced I know why Lindsey Clancy killed her kids (though not a 100% sure why all three of them, unless she figured that leaving the other two in the world associated with the case of their brother and mother was too cruel and they’d be put in foster care and decided that was a fate worse than death) and while utterly inexcusable, it is something that other people in our circles might be prone to in far, far less lethal circumstances. It is in fact something I fell into when I was a young mother, though of course I never considered killing the kid, only worried obsessively.

To explain how I got there: I have spent the last few days either helping family members move (I did say this move was complicated), cleaning or unpacking. (I’m switching to more unpacking over the other two, though some work on that remains.) Since I’m desperately, floridly, ADD, I need something to keep the mind going while I do mechanical, repetitive work. If it’s some task that’s half an hour or less, like say doing dishes, I can do stuff like plot or write the next chapter in my mind. But if it’s a morning or an afternoon or a whole day, at some point the mind turns off and takes the body with it.

The best illustration of this is when I went for a walk (a task that’s unbearable alone, or without distraction), walked two blocks, and found myself turning around to go back home. It was simple. Mind said “this is boring, let’s go home” at a level I wasn’t even aware of.

So, normally I listen to “mindless books” or books I’ve read before (First read in audio doesn’t work well for me.) But Jane Austen fanfic has been invaded by AI, whose cadences drive me nuts in audio worse than in reading. And none of my faves are up for re-read. So instead I put youtube on with one of the podcasters I like and let it cycle whatever. Unless it becomes offensive and I have to change it.

Anyway, one of the things it brought up was a female blogger talking about how Clancy was guilty. I let it stay on because it was interesting, particularly since she had initially been on Clancy’s side, and was explaining how knowing more changed her mind.

She brought up a few things I didn’t know, which I confirmed afterwards. Clancy had joined a mommy facebook group apparently devoted to blowing off steam about your kids. Look, I’m not going to judge stupid things moms say, because I was known to say “I am raising Abel and Cain, and I just want to know which is which” when I got tired of the boys fighting, and don’t want anyone to think I was either serious or ready to do something about it. BUT she said that her second child, Dawson, was the “most difficult person I’ve ever met” and how she didn’t like him, and in fact couldn’t stand him. That’s hard to discount as just blowing off steam, and there is nothing even vaguely jokey or deflecting about it. Particularly when the kid was 19 months old at the time. (Look, my kids have driven me insane several times. I’ve never not liked them, much less hate dthem. In fact I can’t even think in those terms. Also, he was the first child she killed.

The other thing I found out was that before the killings she looked up whether a psychopath could be cured. Most people, including the blogger whom I first heard this from, assume she meant herself.

The other thing, which is widely known, is that the woman was obsessed with “mommy books” and blogs on how to raise the kids, the best way to do this and that. How to optimize yourself as a parent and your children as a product. This is, to be honest, a temptation of educated, over-thinking moms all over. (Which is why I’m writing this blog.) She perhaps did it even more than is normal because she was a perfectionist.

I’m convinced she’d become convinced her son — not herself — was a psychopath, and also that she knew just enough to know psychopaths are dangerous, evil mass murderers. (No, it’s not true. Any number of psychopaths are decent, productive members of society. In fact, apparently, a good number of them are surgeons. It’s just we tend to hear about the ones who decide to flaunt social norms by doing evil stuff.) And therefore, not wanting to be blamed for unleashing that on the world, she decided to kill him. And to kill the other kids to prevent their being traumatized by the results of her crime. (Thereby proving SHE is a psychopath.)

Of course, she’s utterly guilty of the crimes. I’m also sure that she was treating that poor little boy very poorly whenever she could get away with it.

But that’s neither here nor there, because this is not about her. It’s not up to me to send her where she belongs, so I leave it in the hands of a higher power.

What I can do is help other people becoming caught in that kind of thought-trap.

Mind you most mothers who decide they’re raising a psychopath, or a potential serial killer or a never do well won’t kill their kids. Thank heaven most mothers are still decent human beings. BUT they’ll worry themselves sick over it, and might be much, much harsher with the kid than there is any objective reason to be.

How do I know this? I know it because I’m one of those mothers.

First let me point out I never read mommy books. The mommy blogs weren’t a thing yet, thank G-d, and the books had such appalling grammar I could never make it past the prologue. (The reason I had them at all is that all my friends were bombarding me with books with titles like “How to raise the strong willed child.” I wasn’t impressed. First, “Strong Willed” is a weird way to spell “stubborn” and second, I knew precisely how to handle that when it mattered. A quick smack on the bottom when too young to understand reason, and taking the computer cord away to enforce compliance, once they could reason. Most of the things I didn’t enforce compliance on, because they weren’t that important, and the kids eventually realized they were pushing against nothing and came around.) I don’t know how I’d be raising kids nowadays.

However, I read a lot of books on true crime and psychology, and I became very alarmed. That I know of my kids never harmed (let alone tortured) animals. However, both were notoriously hard to potty train (it runs in the family) and had the occasional bed wetting accident when over 3. Everything I read assured me this meant they would grow up to be mass murderers. And, of course, if you start looking at a toddler for signs of evil, you’ll find them. Mostly because toddlers are your original, untainted savages. And there’s nothing noble about savages. They’re just all impulse, no moderating reason. Our job is to make them into human beings fit for society.

I had nightmares and worried for years over this. My usual joke is that I should have stuck with cats, because cats lack the opposable thumbs to become mass murderers (eyes Indy and his hand-paws.) But the worry was real.

We are now awash in so much information on child rearing that the average mother can’t avoid it. And most of it is, to put it mildly, alarmist or sensationalist. It’s often being passed by neurotic mothers to neurotic mothers and growing in the telling.

I routinely watch younger women who have littles obsess over things like nursing styles or times, and nap times and…

My kids never took naps. They just didn’t. I remembered being a little kid who didn’t take naps, and rolled with it. (The up side is that until they were teens they slept 12 hours a night. That was nice.) As for nursing, second son weaned himself at 6 months. Since mom said I did the same, again, I rolled with it, into bottle with supplementation. Structured days? What’s that, when mom is an ADD writer?

They seem to have turned out all right. In fact, their failings are failings that I’m discovering more and more are hereditary. And by that I don’t mean just me, but as dad talks more about his brothers and sister as he gets older, I find their failings are things that have been going on for generations.

I don’t think any of you out there are evil or disconnected from reality enough to Clancy your children, but I read you worrying about it, and trying to “improve” your parenting styles to perfection and your kids into perfect and smart and good.

Look, our job IS to civilize them. This is hard work and can’t be done overnight. Yes, they will still sneak cat kibble after you tell them not to eat it. Yes, there will be battles campaigns wars fought over comic books and favorite toys. No, you can’t improve everything at once. Pick your battles. Work on what bothers you most.

Will your child grow up to be a psychopath? You’re in no position to know. Not when they’re under two. If they are, you will just have to try to make them the kind of psychopath who is a top surgeon and not the kind that boils the neighbors in a bag. (Yeah, hurting animal is a line you just do not allow them to cross.)

You just do the best you can, don’t make charts, and let the kid grow and develop, while curbing the worst stuff, one trait at a time.

And remember both the kids and you are human, and neither of you is going to be perfect, ever. Good-enough is a good goal. Also, you don’t own your kids, anymore than your ancestors own you, so don’t try to make them things that you can create, remove and mold.

Reading too many mommy books and blogs might give you the impression it’s all in your control and you’re a bad mother if you don’t control it. If you must read that cr*p, accept you’re a bad mother and roll with it. You come from a long, long line of bad mothers and here you are. And here your granddaughters and greatgranddaughters will be. Being bad along with you. And yet, raising kids who are, by and large, functioning human beings and no worse than the run of humanity will be.

Remember that the thing about eating from the tree of knowledge and being like gods was a LIE. You can eat from the tree of knowledge, but you’ll remain yourself, just a more panicked and neurotic yourself.

Don’t obsess. Don’t make it all about you and a reflection on you. Concentrate on making them functioning adults rather than perfect exhibits of your skill as a perfect mother.

And hey, as someone who was a mother of small children, and who did this, but it turns out not nearly enough?

ENJOY them while they’re little. Yes, it’s insane hard work. And yes, you pray — PRAY — with tears in your eyes for just a meal you can eat without getting up to feed/clean/fetch every two minutes, and for a potty break in which you’re allowed to sit there ALONE.

But it’s also the most wonderful thing in the world. The kids are, truly, innocent, in the sense that even when they do evil it’s because they don’t know they’re doing evil. And they’re enthusiastic. And everything is new and wonderful to them. You can show them MARVELS by lighting up a Christmas tree or making a braid with ribbon.

One of my favorite memories is of 3 year old (and yes, out of carseat, because my kids were ginormous, but in booster) younger son falling asleep against me in the car after a day at the amusement park. If I close my eyes, I can still feel his little, heavy head, just slightly sweaty, leaning against my arm. Others: reading to them with both of them on my bed. Building toy railroads with younger son. Going for walks with older son. Drawing with them, with everyone on the floor drawing on giant newsprint-sheets. Just… being with them.

It’s the greatest time ever, and you should enjoy it. Unless the house is actively unhygienic, let it go. No one will care if there was dust on the shelves 20 years from now. Unless you’re driven by internal insanity or desperate need, let work go too. Just for a few years. The yard? Bah. Let things grow. You can always uproot them later.

Just enjoy your babies while they’re babies. And later when they’re kids, and teens, etc.

And remember neither you nor them will ever be perfect. Just human beings like others. Only these ones are yours, and you’ll love them unconditionally. Until the end of time.

Recently (because once we started this move, having just enough money for the move and of course losing my income for several months, since I haven’t finished anything, everything had to break and be replaced, bit by bit) my phone battery decided to convert to Islam threaten to explode. So we had to get another in a hurry. And, of course, it cost me way too much to get in a hurry.

And then I was faced with the true horror of AI use.

Sigh.

It’s not the AI, really. It’s the idiot things the phone thought to do with it.First, there’s no way to uninstall the native AI without installing another. So I installed Google’s Gemini to cancel the native AI.

What can have led to these desperate measures you ask? Well, because (it’s apparently a known problem with this model) it invokes itself for no reason anyone can imagine based on what it heard you say and after searching its database.

All of which would be PERFECTLY fine if once it got invoked it didn’t speak in the world’s smarmiest voice from my pocket.

The first time this happened, it said, in a calming tone, “Keep compressing. Do you want me to call emergency services?”

I was mildly startled by this, since at that moment, we’d just pulled into the garage and neither of us had spoken for minutes. My answer of “What in heck?” luckily didn’t get interpreted as “Call 911 and have the armed forces scramble jets.”

Afterwards, I looked at the listing of what it thought it heard and it was: rub, press, rub, press.

I have no idea how it interpreted that from the sounds of opening a garage door (I guess?) or how having gotten that it jumped to “Treatment for a perforating wound” instead of, you know, cleaning a stain on fabric or, you know, other things.

This was the first time and I thought “Weird, but okay….”

The next time it got invoked, I’d told Dan something about painting the porch, and from forth my right pocket bursts the smarmy voice, “The Sistine Chapel was painted in fresco by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1512–“

That was… odder. And I was starting to get slightly testy.

But then I was talking to my son, trying to coordinate cars and u-haul, and into the middle of this conversation bursts the world smarmiest voice trying to give me instructions on…. I don’t remember, but I think it was on how to prune roses.

I had a moment. Not right then, because I just turned it off, but after we got the u-haul in place I spent half an hour screaming on how stupid the AI was and how I was sick and tired of it getting invoked.

But we were moving and busy and … I let it run, other than looking it up and realizing I could only drive out the demon by installing another– I mean, I had to install another AI to replace it.

Until, a week later, I was feeding the cats and as I reached past Muse I scared her and she started to run away, and I said “What’s so scary about my reaching for the food?”

And from my pocket comes the smarmy voice, “It’s not scary. Do I get some? Yum.”

Look, I can’t even imagine what kind of mental aberration went into the programming that my statement got interpreted as a question for AI nor that that answer was appropriate. I’d imagine the appropriate answer would be something more like “Please repeat question?” BUT no. It said that, with a jokey undertone, like ahah, I’m just another human, here in your pocket, talking about eating.

Look, I don’t know why but that came across as one of the CREEPIEST things I’ve ever heard, and I sat through at least one Clinton speech. I about jumped out of my skin, and ended up settling for gemini, which, thank heavens can be disabled so it doesn’t answer on voice. Even if it does volunteer to look up words from news articles for me. Difficult ones, you know, like coffee or cat. And no I have no idea what secret combination of finger taps and Dan snoring by my side sets THAT off.

“But Sarah, I thought you liked AI!” I do like AI. It’s an excellent tool in its place. It’s the enthusiasm for pushing it everywhere, including places it’s not wanted that disturbs me.

Oh, and the programing that tries to make it a jokey, friendly kind of “companion” to the people who own the instrument of the AI. Because…. honestly?

I’m now terrified I’ll be in my eighties and mumbling all the time (I’m almost there, on the second.) and become convinced this voice from my pocket is an evil goblin threatening to eat my cats….

There has to be a better way of using new technologies than “the most stupid way possible.”

Book Promo

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. By clicking through and buying (anything book-related, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion. Remember though all of these submissions are from people willing to be associated with this blog. So if you’re trying to buy from people who don’t hate you, this is a good place to start.– SAH

FROM PAM UPHOFF: Max Berezin Collection (Chronicles of the Fall Book 26)

Snapshots a character’s life.

One previously published short story, plus nine new stories that give brief glimpses of a budding Mentalist Lord as he survives ambitious relatives, brief romances, interesting assignments, and vacations . . . Balancing family duties and work while doing what’s right . . . even if it might not actually be legal . . .

FROM DAN MELSON: Meeting The Morelli (Embassy Book 1)

Tessa was desperate, and a two year contract with an Imperial Embassy looked like the way out. Helping a newly contacted species develop to a point where they’re ready to deal with the universe is a years-long project, and those whose missions succeed can expect more lucrative contracts in the future as well as the knowledge they’ve helped an entire species survive.

The Empire of Humanity is not being altruistic. It has selfish reason to want the Morelli and others to survive. But the Morelli must be willing to learn, and there’s only so much latitude a species may be given before even the Empire’s own citizens require suppression or worse. Tessa and her superiors must find a way to persuade the Morelli to learn about the dangerous universe beyond their current holdings before the Morelli do anything irreversible.

Because evolution is not done when a species achieves sentience, or even technology. It becomes communal, and the penalty for failure is extinction.

FROM JOHN BAILEY: I Can See Clearly Now (Science Fiction Singles)

What if you could see the life you never lived?

Commander Daniel Forrester has spent forty years among the stars.

At fifty-eight, he is a respected starship commander with a lifetime of exploration behind him. But when news reaches him that Elizabeth—the woman he once intended to marry—has died, Daniel is forced to confront the question that has haunted him for decades:

What if he had stayed?

Then the Resolute discovers something impossible.

Another starship appears in space.

It is the Resolute .

It carries the same identification number, the same crew, and the same commanding officer.

But it comes from somewhere else.

Daniel has encountered an alternate reality.

And in that reality, another version of himself made a different choice.

That Daniel stayed on Earth.

He married Elizabeth.

He helped establish humanity’s first permanent colony on Mars.

And Elizabeth is still alive.

For the first time, Daniel can see the life he has spent forty years imagining.

But the boundaries between the two realities are beginning to collapse.

As alternate histories bleed into one another, Daniel faces an impossible choice: pursue the life he believes he should have lived—or save the people whose lives depend upon the reality he actually chose.

To make that choice, Daniel must finally confront the difference between regretting the past and living in it .

I Can See Clearly Now is a reflective science-fiction novella about alternate realities, impossible choices, lost love, regret, acceptance, and the courage to embrace the future.

FROM KIRILL KHRESTININ: Via Dolorosa: A Novel

Some roads only open at the bottom.

Laura Jones leaves her grandfather’s Arizona ranch for Los Angeles, certain her real life is waiting there. She wants to be an actress. She finds a man who knows how to keep that dream alive—and how to use it against her. Then another man arrives, wearing a police uniform.

Harry Dolan knows what his partner is. He has helped make it possible. At home, his fifteen-year-old daughter needs him, his marriage is disintegrating, and the violence he excuses on the streets is never far from his own front door.

Back in the desert, Laura’s grandfather has a Purple Heart, a shotgun and a past he rarely speaks about. He knows how to fight. What fighting can save is another question.

Their lives collide in a world where pain becomes an excuse, love becomes possession, and people ask God for mercy while denying it to one another.

Via Dolorosa is a brutal literary crime novel about the damage people inherit, the damage they choose to inflict, and the possibility of faith when every comfortable answer has failed. Violent, profane and unflinching, it asks what remains of love when suffering gives you every reason to become cruel.

FROM LEE ECKHARDT: PLACE of HONOR: A Science Fiction Novel

Sixteen-year-old Jozan par Julien is First Princess of the Empire of One Hundred Suns and next in line for the throne. Seventeen-year-old Cade-Klin Soline is the most junior member of her bodyguard, someone Jozan is only barely aware of. That changes when an assassination attempt maroons Jozan and Cade-Klin on a dangerous alien planet. Knowing that this is the beginning of an attempt to overthrow her father, Jozan vows to return to the Imperial World, a vow that will throw them headlong into an incredible adventure, an adventure in which they will face a hostile jungle, predatory animals, the mystery of a vast alien space ship and a deadly interstellar conspiracy that will do anything to keep them from reaching their goal. And, at the end of the journey, Jozan will not only have found love with Cade-Klin but will also face the shocking truth about her destiny, a truth she never suspected…

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Everything in 24 Frames

Twenty-four frames equals one second of motion-picture film.

Cather Hargreaves learned that fact for class, but as an abstraction. Now that he’s going on a tour of a movie studio and its back lots, he’s about to get real-life experience in just how movies are made.

What he didn’t expect was being tossed into a real-life horror, as the war against sectarian violence suddenly comes home to the City of Angels. It’s a moment that will change the course of his life forever.

When life is on the line, 24 frames can be an eternity.

A short story of the Grissom timeline.

FROM MICHAEL NICHOLS: Fatal Abstraction: Revolutionizing Strategy and Innovation for the Age of AI

In an era where AI is accelerating disruption and uncertainty, traditional business strategy is dangerously outdated. While innovation professionals adapt rapidly, many established organisations remain stuck in slow, mechanistic planning cycles. Fatal Abstraction argues that to survive, leaders must learn to govern at the level of uncertainty they face―rethinking how strategy is conceived, executed, and evolved.

Drawing on philosophy, mental models, and first hand experience with hundreds of ventures, author Michael Nichols offers a bold framework for mastering disruption. This timely work equips entrepreneurs, executives, and investors with the tools to navigate AI-driven change, build resilient ventures, and revolutionise strategic thinking in the modern age.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: The Cross-Time Kamaitachi (Timelines Universe Book 5)

I did not land here as a warrior, but a warrior I so soon became . . .

One moment, Dr. Yukiko Yamaguchi was in her high-tech singularity research lab in California, busily adjusting an electronically-leaky fitting playing hell with her instrument readings.

The next moment, she was falling through space, and landing hard in a wilderness area she would quickly discover was her family’s ancient stomping grounds in Japan – but with an apocalyptic twist.

A hundred years later, there would be legends of a great y�kai, a demon, whom some called a kamaitachi – a sort-of whirlwind, weasel-like creature with blades for claws, which catches up unwary humans and slices their skin. But this kamaitachi is no ordinary y�kai – rather, she is

The Cross-Time Kamaitachi

FROM SUMMER GRAYLING: True Colours

Jan Van Der Vaart is a legend. The focus of his magical Talent is pain, and he’s spent years in the military, then as a mercenary, making terrorists, cartels, and governments fear him. Finally, he carved out a safe haven for other Talents, and tried to retire… until one last job, cracking a black lab snatching Talents off the streets, went sideways. He’s left staggering down a rainy coastal highway, thumb out and hoping he’ll catch a lift before the kill team realizes they missed…

Aurelia Brinati is on the run. Having escaped five years of hell as an unwilling lab rat, she has a stolen car and a plan to hide from pursuers by taking passage on a cargo ship headed anywhere else in the world. When she picks up a stray sailor headed the same way, she rapidly discovers she’s out of her depths… and safe in the heart of the storm.

The entire world fears him… except her. Powers are gathering to recapture Aurelia, but they’d best beware. Jan and his friends will do whatever it takes to keep her safe… whether it’s murder, mayhem, or last-minute shopping runs to find something called cream of tartar for her snickerdoodle cookies.

Protective Hero ✓ Hidden Magic ✓ He Falls First ✓ Found Family ✓ Runaway Heroine ✓ Psychic Powers ✓ Hurt/Comfort ✓ Damaged Heroine ✓ Touch-starved Hero ✓

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Witchfinder (Magical Empires Book 1)

A Duke’s Defiance Could Shatter Two Worlds
In an England where magic pulses through every cobblestone and the English Regency manners and modes never ended, one man’s conscience threatens to topple an empire.
Seraphim Ainsling, Duke of Darkwater, inherited a legacy of forbidden heroism. For generations, his family served as witchfinders, crossing between worlds to rescue those condemned to die for possessing magical gifts. But when the royal princess vanished twenty years ago, the king sealed the borders between realities forever.
Now Seraphim faces an impossible choice: obey the crown and let innocents burn, or defy his king and risk everything he holds dear.
With only his enigmatic half-elf valet Gabriel Penn at his side, Seraphim tears holes in the fabric of existence itself, leaping between alternate Earths where magic means death.
His mother and sister are lost in Fairyland. His enemies circle like vultures. The king’s patience wears thin.
But Seraphim’s stubborn compassion burns brighter than caution. In a world where doing right means risking everything, he’ll discover that the greatest magic might just be the courage to keep fighting when hope seems lost.
Some prices are worth paying. Some lines are worth crossing. Some hearts are worth breaking.
A spellbinding tale of sacrifice, family, and the dangerous allure of doing what’s right in a world determined to punish goodness.

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: TEMPT

By Holly the Assistant

A Quiet Summer

No, really. In spite of all the crazy wildfires, I haven’t heard any news of riots. Not like 2020. Even the cities deliberately hit by arson attacks stayed calm.

Maybe the rioters couldn’t afford gas to get to the preferred rioting locations?

Maybe the rioters were working for pay in previous years, and the funding spigot dried up with the crackdown on government spending through NGOs? (Now there’s a misnomer: if your funding comes from government grants you are NOT a non-governmental organization.)

Certainly there were attempts with the anti-ICE activities to gin up a few riots, but those fizzled pretty early on. Turned out that there was no natural rioting support for illegals. I think some of the anti-Flock efforts are also aimed at gathering angry crowds together, from the social media posts, and that doesn’t seem to be gaining any traction, either. People don’t love surveillance cameras, but they do love criminals getting arrested, so it’s a mixed bag, and no one seems to be really interested in having themselves a riot over it.

The hysterias du jour seem to be getting shorter and shorter, and the people flipping out over renaming one of the great lakes seem to have gone on to other topics now.

There’s some interesting stuff over on the White House website about hunting and fishing, and I urge our sportsmen to go read those. I think it might get considerably easier to get access to federal lands for hunting. The fishing one is for saltwater fishing, and I’m a creek fisher by . . . sheer laziness I suppose, it’s my backyard, after all. Everyone in the Chesapeake Bay watershed should look over that EO and see if they need to beat on their local municipalities for charging no longer justifiable fees.

I haven’t heard anything in the media about the tit for tat with Canada over trade, particularly federal procurement. That’s very interesting, especially here in the run-up to Alberta’s secession vote. Has anyone seen that anywhere? How about those of you on the other side of the boarder, is that hitting your news at all?

Gas prices seem to be what’s left for midterm drama, unless they can get some excitement going for other stuff between now and then, and I don’t know about you all, but we haven’t-quite-reached Obama level highs here yet. It’s pretty hard to get a bunch of excitement up about that for anyone who was an adult back then. (That’s before inflation adjustment, by the way, in my mind, but after per the official records. I distinctly remember prices higher than what’s reported, but I didn’t take pictures of the pumps back then.)

I think I’m more concerned about bad candidates depressing the turnout than anything else other than fraud at this point. Some of us have some real stinkers on the ballot. However, a lot of us have rather nasty propositions on the ballot, so maybe that will help get people out. Do encourage your friends to exercise their franchise, as much as is reasonably in your power to do so.