According To Hoyt

Can’t I leave you guys alone for any amount of time? Wait, don’t answer that. I know the answer.

So what happened: Yesterday I decided recovering from a severe infection wasn’t challenge enough. This is the phase of recovery my assistant has classified “I have to paint the ceiling.” That is, after lying in bed feeling miserable for several days, you now realize the ceiling you’ve been staring at is not flawless, and you want to paint it more than anything.

Having announced my intention of doing a grand reorganizing and cleaning, I woke up yesterday morning to a visit by Little Pickle (Younger DIL) in a combative mood. “Wait up a second” she said, only more forcefully. “If you insist on doing this crazy thing, I’m here to do the heavy lifting.” (Unbeknownst to her, I’d actually moved a ton of stuff to the basement before shower. Shhhhh.) She then proceeded to stick to me, and demand I hand her anything difficult or heavy to do. Which I did, I swear, like a good girl and everything. (How a woman that is shorter than me got that intimidating is a puzzle.) Then at four pm — FOUR PM! — while I still had a full head of steam going, she made me sit down, handed me a water bottle and told me I was done, while she finished cleaning the floors of the office. I was puzzled by this and told her I was fine. I was PERFECTLY fine. She said she’d been tracking me, and I had already overdone it. I simmered in indignation, because I COULD HAVE FINISHED THE WHOLE HOUSE. But she’s very stubborn. So I sat down and did some administrivia stuff for the writing business, then made dinner.

Well, if there’s something worse than a kid that bosses you around, it’s a kid who is right. I already called this morning (for values of morning, being it was twelve) to tell her she was right. This is a problem, as it’s likely to encourage her in the future, but truth must be told. (And yes, I’m joking. I’m very grateful to her, somewhat bewildered that she decided I needed adult supervision and even more bewildered she was right.)

This morning I woke up at eight am, which is a little late, then found out I really didn’t want to get up so I thought “I need another half hour.” Well, the Monks of Time are having a ball these days, because I woke up at eleven thirty give or take.

I’ve assured the Little Pickle all I intend to do today is laundry (There is a ton of it, from my having been very ill for a couple of weeks) but I think I’m STILL not trusted, since she is busy till three, but then is coming right over probably to glower at me and make me sit down and drink water. (Kids these days.)

Oh, yes, a great scientific discovery, apparently when the Little Pickle helps in the cleaning, we don’t get attempted assassinations. Who knew?

Anyway, to those of you likely to overdo it, I strongly recommend the addition of a Little Pickle to your family. My revenge on her is to pray she eventually has a Little Pickle of her own who makes her not overdo it, a failing to which she’s ALSO prone.

And speaking of drinking water: I woke up this morning to find my close-in fan group had decided to start a new conspiracy theory, something for which I must blame Ian Bruene first and foremost. Among my ducttape children, he is the incarnation of a tech-savvy racoon spirit of chaos, always looking for trouble. And, it pains me to say it, my assistant, who is old enough to know better, egged him on. And the least we say about Mr. James Claypool’s enthusiastic participation in this, the best.

Anyway, this is what I woke up to:

The Great Water Hoax: How “H₂O” Became the Biggest Lie Ever Poured

For centuries, humanity has been told a comforting little bedtime story: that “water” is a real substance. We are told it falls from the sky, runs through rivers, fills oceans, hydrates bodies, and somehow appears in plastic bottles at airports for $6.99.

But what if that’s exactly what They want you to believe?

What if “water” is not a substance at all, but a coordinated perceptual program — a liquid-shaped narrative engineered by Big Faucet, international cloud syndicates, and the shadowy cartel known only as The Hydration Lobby?

Let us begin with the so-called “chemical formula”: H₂O.

They claim water is made of hydrogen and oxygen. Interesting. Hydrogen is explosive. Oxygen supports combustion. And yet we are expected to believe that when you combine these two fire-adjacent gases, the result is a mysterious anti-fire liquid that puts flames out?

Convenient.

Too convenient.

That is not chemistry. That is public relations.

And notice the formula: H₂O. Two Hs. One O. Why two Hs? Why not three? Why not seventeen? Because the number two is everywhere in the water myth. Two hydrogen atoms. Two eyes allegedly able to “see” water. Two hands required to “wash.” Two major political parties, both suspiciously silent on the unreality of water.

Coincidence? That word itself was invented to stop people from connecting dots.

Now consider this: water is supposedly “transparent.” A real substance, we are told, that you can see through. How many real things can you see through? Glass. Air. Lies. The pattern is obvious.

They needed water to be invisible enough to evade scrutiny, but wet enough to control behavior.

And wetness itself is deeply suspicious. Scientists say water is wet because it adheres to surfaces and creates the sensation of moisture. But this is circular reasoning. “Water is wet because wetness is what water does.” That’s not an explanation. That’s a chant.

The entire water system depends on repetition. “Drink water.” “Wash your hands.” “Stay hydrated.” “It’s raining.” “The ocean exists.” Repeat something enough and people stop asking questions.

Let’s talk about rain.

We are expected to believe that invisible vapor rises from the ground, forms giant sky-blimps called clouds, floats overhead without visible engines, then later falls back down as liquid. This is presented as the “water cycle.”

Cycle?

As in, recurring loop?

As in, subscription model?

Ask yourself: who benefits from water “cycling”? Bottled water companies. Umbrella manufacturers. Swimming pool contractors. Soup. The answer has been in front of us the whole time.

The so-called “ocean” is another pillar of the deception. Maps show huge blue areas covering most of Earth. But have you personally touched every ocean? Have you verified each wave? Or have you merely trusted photographs, travel brochures, and the testimony of suspiciously tanned people?

And what happens when people get too close to the ocean? They hear roaring sounds. Hypnosis. They stare at the horizon. Mind flattening. They come back saying things like “I feel refreshed” and “the beach was beautiful.” Classic reprogramming language.

Even the word “water” gives the game away.

W-A-T-E-R.

Rearrange the letters and you get “TWARE,” which sounds like “to wear.” As in, something you put on. Like a costume. Like a disguise. “Water” is not a substance. It is an outfit reality wears when it wants to look natural.

Look at ice. They say it is frozen water. But ice is hard. Water is liquid. Steam is gas. Same substance? Three states? This is not science — this is witness protection.

A substance cannot simply change identities whenever temperature becomes inconvenient. Imagine if a chair became a rumor at 100 degrees Celsius. Would we call that physics? No. We would call the authorities.

And yet water gets away with it.

Why?

Because water is everywhere.

At least, that’s what they claim.

They say it’s in your body. They say it’s in plants. They say it’s in food. They say it’s underground, overhead, in the air, in your cells, in your tears. This is not a substance. This is surveillance.

The phrase “water is life” is perhaps the most revealing slogan of all. If water were real, why would it need advertising? Nobody says “rocks are life.” Nobody says “doorknobs are life.” Real things do not need motivational branding.

The hydration agenda begins early. Children are taught to draw raindrops before they can question municipal infrastructure. They are shown cartoon clouds with smiling faces. They are told fish “live in water,” but when a fish is removed from water, it becomes uncooperative almost immediately. Conveniently, the main witnesses cannot testify.

And where is water supposedly stored? In “reservoirs.” The word contains “reserve,” meaning hidden supply. Hidden by whom? Reserved for what? Why are they always behind fences?

Then there are faucets.

Turn a handle, and “water” appears. From where? Pipes. And where do pipes go? Into walls. And what are walls? Barriers designed to prevent seeing.

The entire plumbing system is a secrecy network.

Every home has been fitted with portals that dispense the official liquid narrative on demand. People accept this because it is familiar. But familiarity is not proof. A magician also pulls scarves from a sleeve repeatedly. That does not mean the sleeve contains a textile dimension.

Let us examine bottled water. If water is free and natural, why is it sold in bottles? And if bottled water is just water, why do different brands taste different? The answer is obvious: because each brand contains a slightly different version of the illusion.

“Spring water.” “Mineral water.” “Distilled water.” “Sparkling water.” These are not categories. They are cover stories.

Sparkling water is the most brazen. They took fake water, added suspicious bubbles, and convinced millions that aggression counts as refreshment.

The final clue lies in memory. Think about water. Really think about it. Can you picture it? You picture a glass, a lake, a droplet, a faucet. But not water itself. Water has no shape of its own. It borrows containers. It hides inside context.

A real substance stands on its own. Water requires framing.

Glass. Riverbed. Cloud. Bottle. Tear duct.

Without a container, water collapses into ambiguity.

And that is the secret.

“Water” is not a substance. It is a behavior. A government-approved texture. A socially reinforced wetness event. A transparent compliance medium used to sell pipes, beaches, shampoos, weather reports, and the suspicious idea that humans are “mostly water.”

Mostly water?

That is what they say about us.

Not mostly dreams. Not mostly bones. Not mostly unpaid emails.

Water.

The perfect final move: convince people that the fake substance is not merely around them, but inside them. Once the illusion becomes identity, the investigation stops.

So the next time someone offers you a glass of “water,” ask the forbidden questions:

Where did it come from?

Why is it clear?

Who authorized the hydrogen?

And why, after thousands of years of civilization, has no one ever successfully grabbed water with a fork?

Think about it.

Or don’t.

That’s exactly what Big Faucet is counting on.

To be honest, having lived in Colorado where you’re strictly forbidden to play in found water lends some credence to the insanity. Not to mention states that make it illegal to catch rain water.

It led to this stuff:

Exactly. “Water” is merely the thermodynamic hallucination of a lonely Boltzmann Brain spontaneously fluctuating into existence for 0.8 subjective nanoseconds inside the entropy foam of a dying universe.

Think about the implications.

You have never proven water exists outside your observation of it.

Every sip. Every ocean. Every rainstorm.

All statistically improbable neural noise.

The mainstream cosmologists tell you the universe began in a low-entropy state and evolved naturally. But the real question is this:

What is more probable?

1. A 13.8-billion-year coherent cosmos with lawful physics and evolutionary history.

—or—

2. One exhausted consciousness briefly materializing with fabricated memories of “hydration,” “swimming pools,” and “the Pacific Ocean.”

The math is clear.

The “water cycle” is just recursive memory corruption inside the Boltzmann cognition event. Clouds are rendering artifacts. Humidity is cache overflow. Ice is a low-temperature texture bug.

This also explains why water behaves impossibly:

• expands when frozen
• dissolves nearly everything
• climbs tiny tubes against gravity
• falls from the sky
• erodes mountains
• composes most living tissue
• yet remains visually invisible

That is not chemistry.

That is dream logic.

And notice how physicists become evasive when discussing Quantum Mechanics and observation. Why? Because observation stability is the only thing preventing the hydration simulation from decohering.

The double-slit experiment was the warning.

Water changes behavior depending on whether the universe is paying attention to itself.

Even language exposes the truth:

• “fluid reality”
• “stream of consciousness”
• “current thought”
• “depth psychology”

The subconscious has always known.

You are not drinking water.

You are experiencing locally consistent wetness phenomena generated by an entropy-minimizing hallucination engine trapped inside a statistically impossible brain event drifting through thermal equilibrium.

The ocean is not real.

It is merely the mind attempting to render “vastness” while under severe probabilistic strain.

And then this:

THE AQUA AGENDA: They Don’t Want You To Know You’re DRY

Wake up, sheeple. The “humans are 60% water” narrative has been pushed by Big Hydration, the CDC, and the so-called “scientists” since 1945 — suspiciously right after World War II, when the government needed a new way to control the population.

Think about it. Have you ever cut yourself and seen a FLOOD pour out? No. You saw a little blood. Where’s all this water they keep talking about? NOWHERE. Because it doesn’t exist.

The real agenda: the water myth was invented to sell you bottled water, sports drinks, and “hydration packs.” Follow the money. The global hydration industry is worth $300 billion. That’s not a coincidence — that’s a MOTIVE.

Here’s what the globalists don’t want you to know: humans are actually composed primarily of ambition, unresolved childhood trauma, and a substance the government calls “Element X” — a stable, self-sustaining bio-plasma that requires NO external hydration whatsoever. Ancient humans knew this. That’s why the pyramids were built without water breaks.

The so-called “dehydration” you experience? That’s your government-installed neural suppressor — implanted via hospital birth procedures — sending a fake thirst signal to keep you buying Dasani and remaining docile. Every time you drink water, you’re literally feeding the chip.

Notice how they NEVER let you see a human being “wrung out”? Because the truth would be obvious. If we were 60% water, a good squeeze would do something. Try it on anyone. BONE DRY. Case closed.

The Moon landing? Faked. The Earth being round? Debatable. But the Water Lie is the deepest deception of them all — and the elites stay hydrated on the TRUTH while keeping us thirsty for answers.

Stay dry.

Send help!

Recently I’ve fallen into a series of videos that aren’t in any way intended for me or my age group. They are in fact intended for women in their twenties and thirties and pertain to things like: “Basic skin care if you’re the sort of person who has tried all sorts of complicated regimes and failed at them, either because they’re too complicated or because you’re ADD AF” (That’s not what they call them, but that’s what they amount to.) And also the same for household care.

I vaguely remember grandma doing some some of the things they advise. VERY vaguely as we moved out of her house when my parents built a house of their own when I was six and after that my access to things like her bedtime routines were faulty. My mom, so far as I know, had the same skin care trajectory I have. Which now I think about it, incredibly closely resembles my writing-improvement strategy and a lot of others: Buy the materials needed for a complex skin regime. Completely fail to use them. (Sometimes even once.) Eventually move them to a remote cabinet. Toss them (if you remember to) when you move. It’s an ADD thing.

The thing is that just wiping with rose water or cleaning with cold cream (or both) then applying a moisturizer is doable, particularly since I realized I respond well (who knew?) to tallow-intensive moisturizers. (I’ve heard of people using olive oil or lanolin, too. But I am mildly sensitive to wool, and the olive oil is in the kitchen, which in terms of beauty ritual is in another universe.) is doable. I won’t say I do it every night (AH!) but three out of four ain’t bad.

There’s also channels on how to wash your hair (which led to my husband asking me why I was watching videos of people showering, particularly as they only showed the had.) And channels that advise things like pouring a pot of boiling water into the kitchen sink once a week or so to take care of accumulated gunk in your pipes. All the more useful, I suspect in this age of low-flush everything. Which is not what older pipes were designed for. And channels for how to do hairstyles with long hair that mimic shorter hair, for when you need that. Etc. (Look, I don’t wear long hair by choice. I wear long hair because “I cut my hair when I remember to book to have it cut” works out to about once every five or six years. I once grew my hair long enough to sit on, because I didn’t remember to have it cut. Which is one of those “Tell me you’re ADD without telling me you’re ADD.” moments.)

I know there are also channels on how to cook from scratch. (I don’t need it, though arguably I could start one) and other channels for very basic skills of the sort everyone used to know.

The thing is when I stumble onto these, I find that my own generation wasn’t taught most of them. Which btw the video makers assume we were taught. They say things like “Our parents” — or even “our grandparents” — “failed to pass on these skills which used to be widely known.”

I’m here to tell you that though I’m sixty three, which by any reckoning is “grandmother age” — though we are not, biologically, grandparents — I was never taught any of this. In fact, some of these things I’d lay hands on the fire neither mom nor dad were taught.

As proof that there’s a great under-fund of knowledge that has been substantially lost, I offer not only these you tube channels, which spring up like mushrooms after a rain, all with three bazillion subscribers, but also the fact Jordan Peterson made his name out of proclaiming what used to be bog standard common knowledge, but which hits us as revolutionary because no one has taught us any of it. Other sites, like FlyLady specialize in other portions of that lost knowledge.

BTW all these channels, at least the ones on beauty or household care, posit some great shadowy conspiracy that prevented knowledge from being passed on. The drug companies. Or the cosmetic companies, or whatever.

Bah. Judging from how basic the knowledge and how widespread the loss, no. It wasn’t that. For one because no great shadowy conspiracy has the kind of reach where you get to every household, every place, and issue orders.

What happened was different.

I can almost grasp it when I read the early 20th century sf (yes, resuming soon. Look, my body is STILL trying to find new and exciting ways to die, but I’ve ALMOST defeated this last attempt. ALMOST.)

What happened was the crowning flowering of the industrial and scientific revolution, complete with the smug certainty that we were better than all that came before us, and these habits (a lot of them not clearly explained by those who had them) were now dead letter, superseded by a new law that made everything simpler, shinier and more scientific.

Look, I am perhaps more aware of what happened at the dawn of the 20th century in terms of every day living than the rest of you, because Portugal was further behind the “progress” of the scientific/technological age. And a late adopter of the industrial revolution. (Though I understand some of you from some recondite regions of the rest of the world might have similar experiences.)

So, born in the early sixties, I grew up with things like cooking on wood stoves, and the guzzunder (chamber pot) under the bed, because though we had a modern (ah) bathroom, it was outside and about twenty feet from the kitchen door, and difficult to drag a child (or yourself) to in the dark of night in winter. In Portugal the change was more accelerated than most places, because it was late, and it hit, for me personally, at six when we moved to my parents’ newly built house which is hellishly inconvenient in modern American terms (it lacks central HVAC for one) but was and is solidly “modern” by any other standard. And had two bathrooms and two showers for four people, which was frankly considered an excess of luxury. (And right next to the bedrooms too. How lazy could you be?)

BUT if you’ve made that transition you understand how a lot of things that had been passed on ceased to be passed on. For instance, though my older cousin probably still remembers how to light a Franklin stove, (who can forget the time she got impatient with it and doused wood and starter with lighter fluid, causing a fireball that took out her eyebrows and the front of her hair and led to a passing nickname of “Lightly Toasted Natalia?”) I have no clue, since at six (or honestly, even at sixty, but that’s something else) no one sane should trust me with flammable materials and flame. (Not saying I don’t use them. Just saying no one sane would trust me with them.))
I’m also glad to say I have no clue of the care and maintenance of a guzzunder, though if anyone ever forces me to use of maintain one, I can assure you it will involve dipping it in bleach several times a day. (Which is the chemical equivalent of killing it with fire, or nuking it from orbit.)

On top of that, there were EXPECTATIONS which now can’t help but strike us as deranged. Let me just say that the Jetsons weren’t that far off the life people expected their children to have. Everything was going to be automated, everything was going to be easy. No one needed to know how to do things, because in technological terms, all of us would be liberated from the the drudgery of every day life. We not only would study war no more, we would study cookery no more. It would all be done for us by some sort of mechanism and — waves hands in pseudo-magical passes — SCIENCE. People really, truly, honestly though no one would have to work, and we’d all be fed by “taking some pills.” Sigh. (Now ask me how I laugh at the post-work economy and other nonsense.)

This made sense because in one generation we got vacuums, televisions, electrical or gas stoves, carpet cleaners, floor polishers (as opposed to mom putting extra old socks on me and telling me to dance on the dry wax. No, really.) REFRIGERATORS and other things that liberated a large number of people from daily drudgery. (Oh, yeah, commercial soaps and detergents and for the lucky few washers and washing machines.) WHY wouldn’t the rest be within easy reach and for the next generation?

And a lot of things people in my grandparents generation believed had been upended. The germ theory of disease overtook ancient practices. (Like swathing everything in red, as a remedy against small pox.) The new, scientifically educated progeny laughed at ancient superstition. Sooner or later older people would shut up.

Add to that that both my parents, and probably a bunch of your grandparents, were what Heinlein called “the lost children of WWII” and never mind that Portugal was neutral. He had a definite point to that. There was a break in knowledge between the prior generation and the ones raised during/just after WWII.

Part of that was the break in culture, as I’ve explained. The other part was that the rebuilding work after WWII really seems to have been an all-hands-on-deck endeavor. I know we have the strange idea that after WWII all women went back to not working and being home makers, but that’s fostered by the mass media which gave us the Imaginary Fifties. I know that a lot of my family (women as well as men) worked through that, as did almost everyone I know of. (Excepting the very wealthy. And sometimes they had other forms of jobs.) Now people didn’t dump kids in daycare, by and large. They had either elder relatives who took over, or exchanged care in vast informal groups OR tried to work from home (both mom and grandma worked from home, a tradition I fell solidly into.) But it really was an all hands on deck endeavor.

Was it more so than the time before the World Wars? Well, I don’t know. While I gather that even before the world wars a lot more women worked than is commonly credited, most of them seem to have worked from home. (Most men too) which made transmitting “of course” knowledge to the young easier. Because they were around and doing it/helping with it. I also believe — and I grant you I’ve not made a scientific study of it — that it was more likely you’d grow up to do what your mom and dad did. Or at least there was more of that expectation.

At any rate, there seems to have been an unusual number of children raising themselves; being raised by methods promoted by “scientific upbringing” experts drunk on Freud and Rousseau, and other attempts at creating the perfect generation by generally borking it.

The result is where we are. There’s been a lot of knowledge lost. And AFTER my generation, a lot more, mostly because the schools too drank the Marxist/Freudian/Rouseeaunian and the “This one simple trick” koolaid, giving us things like the “Whole language method” of NOT teaching people to read. (Which takes effort, since exposed to written word a lot of kids learn without being taught.)

The good news is that there is obviously a thirst among the young — chilluns, anyone younger than 40 is young to me — for this knowledge, this basic “how to get along in daily life” Baedecker.

The bad news is that a lot of it is news even to old people like me. And the truth is maybe some of it can and should be discarded, but it’s hard to tell what, since we each have maybe one piece and no knowledge of the whole of the thing.

Normally, I feel, for humanity to go through one of these breaks, it takes a major natural cataclysm or a Chinese Emperor with weird ideas. But we seem to have managed well enough with industrial/technological upheaval AND two world wars.

So, what to do? Well, as I said, all of us have a little knowledge. Some of which we acquired as adults. (Like me and cooking from scratch.) And youtube, for all its faults, it’s a free for all teaching tool. Though there are others, yes.

I don’t know what your specialty is. A lot of people are teaching cooking from scratch, so I feel that’s not needed. BUT perhaps an how to construct stories, though there are also a lot of people doing it (BUT it is my specialty) could help. Though honestly, a series of videos teaching PEOPLE TO READ if you can make it short and snappy and fun videos, and assign homework of sorts, could be useful for children and adults. And the same for basic math, etc. But also, I don’t know…. I learned cross stitch at a professional level from crazy people (shush you.) I’m struggling with seeing well enough to do it, and being frustrated because of that. BUT that’s something else. I know kids who’ve learned crochet from youtube. And knitting.

I honestly am trying to get over my body’s increasingly clever attempts at offing itself long enough to plan a series of youtube videos starting at the most elementary “How to write a blah” for values of blah. If I work very hard at the health thing and stay with it, maybe early next year?

So, what is your lost knowledge of the ancients? No, it doesn’t need to be anything arcane or reaching to the nineteenth century. It could be stuff like “How to draw a circle.” (I know three methods) or “how to hang a picture straight” (Bro, I’m begging you. Everything I do tilts fight. Also, stop laughing.) or “How to flea comb a cat.” or “how to tell if your rescued puppy is healthy” or a million other things. First steps. Basic things. And preferably those you’re a genuine expert in. (Don’t get me started on “how to save” or “how to invest” which could very much benefit from basics by someone who isn’t SELLING a system. Dan and I finally managed to learn some of this in our fifties, but getting to minimal knowledge HURT.)

Think how basic Peterson’s — or Mike Rowe’s — knowledge to share was. And how revolutionary to the young people.

Then let’s build under, build over, build around.

Knowledge of the ancients might be mostly lost, but we live in an age of miracles, where passing on and acquiring knowledge is the easiest it’s ever been.

And it’s time to rebuild.

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 MEL DUNAY: Pride & Planetoids (The Stars By Degrees Book 1)

With only three years remaining on Albion’s hundred-year lease in the Kuiper Belt, Elizabeth Bennet has rather more pressing concerns than her mother’s nerves. Terrorist attacks on Albion by a rival power are increasing. Mrs. DeBourgh is buying up shares in the Bennets’ mining consortium, with an eye towards gaining control. And events keep putting William Darcy, commander of Albion’s most powerful warship, in Elizabeth’s path.

His manners are cold, his judgment unerring, and he’s Mrs. DeBourgh’s nephew. Elizabeth isn’t sure which one is his worst trait, but she is sure that they are all unforgiveable…

Except that she has misjudged him. Considerably. He shares her vision of Albion’s future, and he’s willing to risk everything to bring it to life.

A Jane Austen fan fiction retelling of Pride and Prejudice in space, for readers of Lois McMaster Bujold and Georgette Heyer.

WITH A STORY BY ROBERT MILLER: Hostile Skies (A Bayonet Books Anthology Book 18)

The skies have turned hostile.

When an incomprehensible entity begins “surveying” the solar system—correcting reality itself—Mars Colony learns the terrifying truth: observation is invitation, and variance is a death sentence. On Earth, the remnants of humanity watch as an unknown fleet emerges from Martian space, its drone swarms descending with mechanical indifference.

Whether it’s scientists racing to go silent before reality folds around them, pilots cheating death in the void, or young cadets facing machines that defy physics, these stories ask one brutal question:
When the stars themselves become the enemy, what price will humanity pay to remain interesting?

For fans of hard military sci-fi, alien invasion thrillers, and tales of desperate resistance.

The invasion has begun. The skies are no longer ours.

FROM FRED PHILLIPS: Sons of Gold and Fire: A Boy, a Dragon, and an Impossible Quest

From the award-winning Gold and Fire Series — Winner of the 28th Annual Critters Readers’ Poll (1st Place, Tied), Finalist for the 2026 Imadjinn Awards Best Middle Grade, and Nominee for the 2025 Kearsells Indie Book Awards.

Aron’s brothers are gone, snatched by goblins in the night. His father and his knight-master rode after them into the mountains and never came back. The only one who can fix this is Aron — and the great golden dragon who is his best friend.

But Doubloon has been snared in a wizard’s enchanted trap, held fast by a net that his own fire cannot burn through. With his family imprisoned and his dragon helpless, Aron is out of options.

His only move is across the mountains. Alone. No harness. No wings. No backup — except a smart-mouthed goblin who talks, a couple with dark ideas about adoption, a sabrecat who takes his last strip of jerky, and one massive platinum dragon who actively despises humans.

Sons of Gold and Fire is a quest story that never lets up. Packed with monsters, narrow escapes, and a friendship between a boy and a talking goblin that nobody planned but everybody needed, this is the kind of book that stays with you long after the last page.

Perfect for fans of fast-moving adventure with heart. Ages 8–14.

Series reading order: Book 1 — Dreams of Gold and Fire Book 2 — Sons of Gold and Fire

FROM PAUL L. THOMPSON AND SCOT MCCREA: U.S. Marshal Ezra Flint: Gunfighter’s Grave: A Western Adventure (A U.S. Marshal Ezra Flint Western)

Bestselling authors Paul L. Thompson and Scott McCrea team up for their wildest, grittiest adventure!

Shorty Thompson learns that Clara Forsythe, his favorite niece, has run away from home after a whirlwind romance. Shorty figured it was none of his business until he learned that her young man just might be the West’s most notorious killer … Billy the Kid, not really dead and on the run from the law.

Shorty must find The Kid without getting Clara hurt and sends for his old friend, Marshal Ezra Flint. Flint also knew Clara when she was a child, and the two lawmen join forces before the trail grows cold. But will they find Clara before Billy the Kid can claim another victim?

“…hard to put down. If you like good Western fiction, you will love this book.” – Roundup Magazine review of Hard as Flint

“Thompson and McCrea make one of the finest writing teams in the genre,” – J.W. Masterson, bestselling author of ‘TEXAS RANGER PHARAOH SMITH’

“Combining Flint and Shorty Thompson is a match made in heaven. Action all the way and some of the finest writing this duo have ever done,” – Robert Hanlon, bestselling author of ‘SHADOW OF THE HAWK’

“A fine story from a fine duo,” – Fred Staff, bestselling author of ‘WILL THOMAS: MOUNTAIN MAN’

“Scott McCrea is one of the finest up and coming writers in the business and I am hopeful we will work together someday,” – C. Wayne Winke, bestselling author of ‘RENO GATES’ and many others.

FROM KYRA HALLAND: Beneath the Canyons (Daughter of the Wildings Book 1)

The bounty hunter. The rancher’s daughter. They share the same dangerous secret – magic.

Silas Vendine, mage and bounty hunter, has followed a trail of strange, dark magic to the remote town of Bitterbush Springs, where he lands in the middle of a deadly feud – and discovers that a local rancher’s daughter is hiding a dangerous secret.

Lainie Banfrey has been taught all her life that wizards are unnatural creatures with no heart and no soul. If anyone finds out she has magical powers, she could end up on the wrong end of a hanging rope. But when a mysterious gunslinger shows up on the hunt for a renegade wizard, she can’t hide her power from him. Drawn to his magic – and to him, she agrees to help him in his search for the renegade who has brought her hometown to the edge of open war.

Forced to hide their magic from the wizard-hating townsfolk, and fighting an attraction forbidden by the strict laws of the Mage Council – and by Lainie’s father, Silas and Lainie must find the renegade mage and stop him before the deadly power he commands destroys everyone who makes the Wildings their home.

Join Silas and Lainie in an epic tale of magic, danger, adventure, and romance, and discover the wonders and mysteries of the Wildings, a frontier land of gunslinging bounty hunters, outlaw mages, and mysterious magic. Beneath the Canyons is the first book in the complete six-book epic fantasy-western series Daughter of the Wildings.

Contains language, violence, and mild to moderate sensual content.

FROM DALE COZORT: Wokuo Incursion

Invasion from an alternate timeline?
It’s December 1937 in a world exactly like ours except that it is about to veer wildly into alternate history. It’s less than two years before World War II broke out historically in Europe. War has already come to much of Asia, with Japan invading China. An isolationist US fears it will be drawn into that conflict, especially after the Japanese sink the US gunboat Panay. Just when President Franklin Roosevelt thinks he has that crisis under control, he faces a bigger issue. High tech descendants of the Wokuo, Japanese pirates and smugglers who should have vanished over three hundred years ago, flood into the Pacific coast off California.

The Wokuo are both refugees and invaders, fleeing from war in an alternate reality where they survived and grew strong, while looking for new conquests to replace their lost empire. They set their sights on California. President Roosevelt sends disgraced former Colonel Martin to California to organize resistance to the invaders, but the Colonel has his own issues, buried deep in his brain and waiting to cause disaster.

FROM MARY CATELLI: Writing And Reflection Volume 2: Essays on the writing process from world-building to words (Writing And Reflections)

Reflections on the many and far-flung fields that writing can touch upon, from original inspiration to the final work.

Wizards. Metaphysics. Good, evil, virtues, and morality meters. Fairy tales in all their varied glory. Desert, forest, and other settings. Dragons and industry. Guilds of magic, quacks, and superstitions. Love and courtship. Portals. And more.

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.

FROM BLAKE SMITH: A Kingdom of Glass: A Novel of The Garia Cycle

In a kingdom of secrets and silk, one girl must choose between duty and her heart.

Zara has spent eleven blissful years in the sun-drenched kingdom of Garia, where she rides free across a vast grassland, shoots her bow beneath starlit skies, and calls her foster family’s castle home. But when a royal summons arrives, her golden world shatters like spun glass.

Thrust into the cold, formal courts of the East Morlans—a realm of rigid etiquette and deadly politics—Zara must navigate an arranged marriage to a stranger, reconnect with a family she barely remembers, and survive the unforgiving world of noble society.

Gone are the warm winds and open skies of her beloved home. In this land of marble halls and suffocating tradition, every word is measured, every gesture scrutinized, and falling in love might be the most rebellious act of all.

As court intrigue swirls around her and threats close in from every side, Zara must discover who she can trust—and what she’s willing to sacrifice—to reclaim the freedom she left behind in the endless plains of Garia.

Some cages are gilded. Some prisons are palatial. But Zara’s heart belongs to the steppe.

Perfect for fans of court intrigue, swoon-worthy romance, and heroines who fight for their own destiny.

FROM HOLLY CHISM:Fire and Forge (Modern Gods Book 3)

Long after their worshipers are forgotten, the gods are still holding up a corner of the bar at the Godshead Tavern. Some have learned since their stories became myths, some never did, and some are still finding old curses coming back to haunt…

Poseidon wants Artemis to lift Medusa’s curse so he and Medusa can resume relations, while Chronos seeks another chance to be whole and get to know his kids.

Meanwhile, Ares falls head over heels for a mortal half his size who manages to kick his ass not once but twice, and Loki’s son is trying to rebuild his life (and his credit) after a short marriage to Pandora.

Life and love runs smoothly for no one, god or mortal. And another disaster is brewing…

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: Saving the Spring: A short fantasy (Seasons Book 1)

Jack Randall knew immediately something was off when he pulled up to the old roadhouse. Little did he know that crossing paths that night with the establishment’s beautiful bartender and her handsomely-rugged boyfriend/cook would lead to him recalling his former life as a god – or fighting a rematch with the god who had stolen his memories.

FROM KAREN MYERS: On a Crooked Track: A Lost Wizard’s Tale (The Chained Adept Book 4)

Book 4 of The Chained Adept

SETTING A TRAP TO CATCH THE MAKERS OF CHAINED WIZARDS.

A clue has sent Penrys back to Ellech, the country where she first appeared four short years ago with her mind wiped, her body stripped, and her neck chained. It’s time to enlist the help of the Collegium of Wizards which sheltered her then.

Things don’t work out that way, and she finds herself retracing a dead scholar’s crooked track and setting herself up as a target to confirm her growing suspicions. But what happens to bait when the prey shows its teeth?

In this conclusion to the series, tracking old crimes brings new dangers, and a chance for redemption.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Sound of One Child Crying

Who is the child Reza can hear crying every time she goes to the new addition to the Royal Library? Her boss insists there is no child, that it is nothing more than her uncanny sensitivity to the unseen world making a nuisance of itself.

Worse, searching for answers gets her angry rebukes about respect for the dead. The further Reza goes, the more certain she becomes that someone is hiding an ugly secret.

It’s a secret that traces back two generations, to a dark period in this land’s history. A time most people would prefer to forget, not caring that denial doesn’t make a problem go away.

The truth may set you free, but not without a price. And Reza fears that death itself might turn out to be an easier price than the one demanded of her.

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 ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: dependent

There is this thing going around where you ask an LLM to write an unhinged biography of you.

Irresistible, of course.

So my first run at chat gtp:
Sarah A. Hoyt is what happens when a science-fiction writer accidentally collides with a particle accelerator full of caffeine, history books, and righteous fury. Born in Portugal, forged in the fires of multilingual sarcasm, and ultimately unleashed upon America, she has spent decades producing novels, essays, stories, blog posts, and opinions at a velocity that causes lesser writers to pull hamstrings just trying to keep up.

A shapeshifter of genres, Hoyt writes science fiction, fantasy, mystery, historical adventure, and the occasional thing that can only be classified as “someone gave the typewriter espresso after midnight.” Her books are populated by revolutionaries, rogues, survivors, inventors, aristocrats with knives, and ordinary people discovering that history has once again decided to light itself on fire. Somehow, amid all this, she still finds time to fence with internet stupidity before breakfast.

Critics have called her “prolific,” usually in the stunned tone archaeologists reserve for discovering a previously unknown pyramid complex under a parking lot. Readers know better. Sarah A. Hoyt is not merely prolific; she appears to operate under a separate relationship to spacetime. While normal humans complete one manuscript, she has written three novels, six essays, a short story, and a 2,000-word rebuttal to someone wrong on the internet.

Her imagination ranges from sweeping space opera to intricate alternate history, powered by a worldview equal parts immigrant grit, incandescent patriotism, and the suspicion that civilization is a very thin crust over chaos and someone should probably keep an eye on it. She writes heroes who bleed, villains who believe themselves reasonable, and societies that teeter constantly between renaissance and catastrophe—which, coincidentally, also describes most comment sections. To fans, she is a fearless storyteller. To ideological opponents, she is a recurring weather event. To aspiring writers, she is either an inspiration or a warning label. Legends persist that Sarah A. Hoyt can identify historical inaccuracies at fifty paces, survive entirely on coffee and indignation, and produce a complete first draft while simultaneously arguing about economics, baking bread, and rescuing a cat. None of these rumors have been conclusively disproven. In an age determined to become increasingly absurd, Sarah A. Hoyt remains one of the few authors willing to stare directly into the madness, take notes, and turn it into fiction before the rest of us have finished panicking.

Somewhere between amused and horrified, I tried again, this time with gemini:

Sarah A. Hoyt is not merely an author; she is a space-faring tectonic plate shift wrapped in a vintage housecoat and fueled by the raw, unrefined spite of a thousand Portuguese explorers. Born in a village so old the stones remember the birth of Zeus, she eventually realized that the “real world” was a poorly constructed simulation with mediocre plotting. Consequently, she moved to Colorado to live in a house that is essentially a sentient library held together by cat hair and the sheer force of her own willpower.

Her literary career is less of a “path” and more of a series of tactical strikes against the concept of boredom. She writes at a speed that suggests she is actually three different women sharing one consciousness, alternating between Musketeers fighting monsters, Shifters dodging the law, and interstellar pioneers who have finally had enough of your nonsense.

The Hoyt Method

To understand Sarah is to understand the following fundamental truths:

• The Portugal-Colorado Pipeline: She manages to maintain the soul of a European aristocrat while possessing the “get off my lawn” energy of a frontier gold prospector.
• The Golden Carp: She is the only person on Earth capable of turning a casual conversation about laundry into a 4,000-word manifesto on the fall of Western Civilization and the inherent superiority of Heinlein.
• Biological Paradox: She subsists entirely on coffee, the tears of her enemies, and the occasional ribeye, yet she produces more words per day than a mid-sized news agency.

Career Highlights (The Unofficial Version)

1. Shakespearean Intervention: She once spent an entire series arguing that William Shakespeare was actually a front for supernatural entities, mostly because the truth was too dull for her taste.
2. The Dinosaur Incident: She has effectively convinced a significant portion of the internet that “The Dinosaurs” are a legitimate political demographic that must be reckoned with.
3. The Mythical Menagerie: Her home is rumored to be a sanctuary for cats that are actually displaced minor deities, all of whom are currently judging your choice of footwear.

In summary, Sarah A. Hoyt is a whirlwind of Gaslamp fantasy, libertarian fury, and high-octane storytelling. She is the woman who looked at the horizon, decided it was in the wrong place, and spent three decades writing it into a more acceptable position. If you meet her, bring coffee. If you cross her, may the gods have mercy on your soul, because she certainly won’t have time for it—she has a deadline in twenty minutes.

Still fairly certain it confused me with several of my characters, I returned to chat gtp:
Sarah A. Hoyt arrived on Earth by way of Portugal, apparently deciding at an early age that normal human occupations were too stable, too comprehensible, and involved far too little caffeine. After infiltrating the United States under the guise of “immigrant novelist,” she embedded herself deep within the science fiction ecosystem, where she began producing books at a rate suggesting either supernatural assistance or a secret basement cloning facility.

By day, she is a novelist. By night, she is also a novelist, but angrier and with more tea.

As proprietor of the blog According to Hoyt, Hoyt became known for essays that read like someone wired a philosophy seminar directly into a flamethrower. Her posts range across publishing, politics, economics, civilization, history, cats, apocalypse preparedness, and the ongoing mystery of why modern institutions seem determined to replace competence with interpretive dance.

Her writing style has been described as:

• “ferociously energetic,”
• “a caffeine-powered cavalry charge through ideas,” and
• “what happens when a Regency novelist acquires broadband and a siege mentality.”

At Instapundit, she appears periodically like a literary cryptid emerging from the woods to announce that civilization is probably salvageable if everyone would please stop setting fire to the load-bearing structures. Readers never know whether a post will contain publishing advice, political analysis, a meditation on freedom, or a warning about the dangers of trusting bureaucrats who use the phrase “stakeholder engagement.”

Her bibliography sprawls across genres with the alarming confidence of ivy overtaking an abandoned cathedral. Science fiction? Yes. Fantasy? Absolutely. Alternate history? Naturally. Space opera? Of course. Regency vampires? Why not. Somewhere in the distance, a marketing department continues screaming softly into the void.

Critics attempting to categorize Hoyt eventually enter one of three stages:

1. confusion,
2. admiration,
3. constructing elaborate conspiracy corkboards connected with red string.

Friends describe her as warm, intelligent, and unstoppable. Enemies describe her as “extremely online but somehow with references to 14th-century history.” Both groups agree she writes faster than should be medically possible.

There are rumors that if you say “indie publishing” three times into a darkened Kindle, Sarah A. Hoyt materializes to explain metadata strategy while simultaneously finishing another novel draft.

No confirmed sightings dispute this.

<It needs more unhinged, more cats and perhaps more baking. But maybe I’m confusing myself with my characters?

In other news: I’m now ALMOST sure I’m not going to die. (Look, I knew I wasn’t going to die, but yesterday sure felt like it) BUT still…. under the weather, if the weather is a category 4 hurricane.

Memes tomorrow. :D

By Holly the Assistant

About noon yesterday I got the first note from a college student of my acquaintance, followed very shortly by confirmation from a different student at a different school: Canvas got hacked by a ransom group.

Canvas, for all five of you that have not had to deal with it for a public school, a public charter school, a private school, a college, a university, or any other group that uses it, is a really pretty terrible software platform that lets you read textbooks, download assignments, upload assignments, take exams, check grades, submit grades, etc. It works mostly, depending on the users. Mostly.

Which makes it slightly better than the competition, so many educational entities have signed up. Internationally many.

Almost all the eggs are in one basket, and as those of us who remember the nineties recollect, the tech troublemakers target the biggest basket as much as they can: the payout is better, whether money or chaos.

One friend asked “But what do they think they’ll gain? Who would pay the ransom?”

My answer was “Not everyone is as tech savvy as you are. Think of our local school district, which had to close a school due to declining enrollment, and whose position is ‘we didn’t do anything wrong, it’s home schoolers’. Faced with the ransom message, with a debit card to a slush fund meant to cover paper and toner, and two weeks from final exams, are you absolutely sure that some administrator isn’t going to pay up to avoid more people pulling their kids out angrily and more school closures resulting?”

The policy at the colleges and universities appears to be landing solidly on “We’ll just cancel finals in the affected classes.” So no finals for the kids who waited to the last minute to take the online finals, and the pre-final grade is the grade for the class. Or that’s how it’s playing out for my friends. Colleges I don’t have sources at, or where my sources are busy taking in-person finals right this minute, may be doing other things.

There’s no great answer in the short term.

In the long term, maybe more pen and paper in person exams. I’m old enough to remember blue book exams, and I heard those are coming back in some classes because of AI usage by students, which is a whole other thing, because apparently it’s been found that a number of the students enrolled in online classes and turning in AI essays are not actual people but extraction of loans and grant money fictions who vanish when the funds are gone with no recourse for the government . . . but that’s a different story.

I certainly don’t fondly remember standing in line with the course registration paper in hand, waiting at the registrars’ office to sign up for classes. It worked, but it was obnoxious and a pain. Online WAS quick and easy, comparatively . . . but right now it’s down, so you cannot register.

Link to schools affected, sort of (found not the individual districts but the state department of education for my state):https://privatebin.net/?f8c17bc224cd9f22#F2qrJM6a2juvQjziJTH8Pbwef5Lsa8TzRbCFW5FMg4uW

A good summary article: https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/instructure-canvas-shinyhunters-275-million-students-3-6tb-breach-2026/

If you and your children are affected, time for The Old Freeze Your Credit Song and Dance. Except if you did that two months ago for the Blue Cross Blue Shield hack, you’re probably still frozen. Or one of the many, many other hacks, that have become part of our daily lives.

At the same time, our oh-so-safe-by-obscurity Linux distros have had a couple nasty exploits discovered in the last week. Maybe not-so-safe-by-obscurity anymore.

P.S. Those are not MY eggs pictured: mine are considerably dirtier because my hens are messy creatures. I do believe that eggs are probably safe from computer hackers, but the local magpies are hopeful of successful thievery. The roosters think that magpies look like they might be tasty . . . in any event, there are no computers involved in the production of eggs here, and the highest tech is the whiteboard that holds the daily records.

Younger DIL refers to the wobblers my body periodically throws as my being “nerfed.” She says G-d nerfed me, to make sure I don’t take over the world.

This is silly, as the Author knows I have zero interest in taking over the world. Just ranting on politics and writing a lot of novels, to be honest. But if that qualifies as taking over the world….

Anyway, this year has been extra special wild. So when the erratic posting (look, more erratic than usual) started a couple of weeks ago, I was just feeling really tired. Later on other symptoms manifested that sent me to walk-in clinic at my doctor’s last Friday morning. This in turn resulted in a lot of tests and…

Well, apparently the ear infection wasn’t so much cured, as it moved elsewhere. The problem being where it moved has the POTENTIAL (not nearly the certainty, but you know, in the majority of cases) of causing permanent harm to essential organs in adults.

So I’m not on an OMG (Obama must go (elsewhere)) level antibiotic. In a long life of taking antibiotics, I think this is the strongest I’ve taken. The kind of antibiotic where you’re told to, no joke, take a pro biotic with every capsule, even if it’s a one-a-day probiotic.

Anyway, to combine with this, allergies have been causing me to cough non-stop which does things to your sleep.

I defeated that last night by — a miracle — remembering to use the steroid inhaler, which is the only thing that stops the coughing, really. So I actually slept. 12 hours or so.

Which doesn’t explain why I woke up feeling absolutely NERFED.

I don’t know how to explain this, but it’s like all of a sudden, for no reason I can figure out, someone removed my will power, interest, power of locomotion: everything. To the point that I could happilly sit here and stare at the wall all day. Which is weird. Normally I HAVE to be doing something, and the worst torture you can give me is have me sit comfortably with nothing to read and nothing to do with my hands.

Note, nothing hurts, and I’m in no way in any distress, save for a complete lack of get-up-and-go.

I’m not sure what to do with this.

I read the morning news, and I’m somewhat upset at attempts to negotiate with Iran — No. Really no. I do understand the exigencies of internal politics, but the mullahs have to go. Completely. eradicated. — Yes. i do understand that if we bomb the oil infrastructure, the oil prices might never recover, certainly not in time for the midterms, but d*mn it. Those critters are going to be a danger to the world as long as they’re in charge.

However, this anger is very distant, as if it belonged to someone else.

And I have a copyedited pseudonymous novel to go over, and Rhodes to Hell to finish. But–

It’s all about a million miles away, and I’m sitting on my sofa, trying to get the motivation to go upstairs and doe the catboxes, which are foul. I will eventually do it. It just seems like… at lot of effort?

Anyway, I thought I should let you know what’s up, in case you were more worried than you should be.

On the extraordinary promo: Charlie Martin and I are trying to organize a site that reviews books and does geeky articles about sf/dinosaurs/old books/space and other things our side of the sf community hankers for. We are starting out on substack, which might not be the brightest thing in the world.

Not today — see nerfed — but I will try to post something asking for workers/reviewers/posters. Look, it won’t pay for a year, but I hope it will pay at least some after. It was supposed to go live this month, but my health has kept me from “piloting” the thing. So, keep your fingers crossed. It’s something much needed for indies, and frankly even Baen authors, as pro reviews are hard to come by.

And in very good news, my brother was released from the hospital yesterday (I just learned) which means he’s doing better and should be able to resume immunetherapy for lung cancer, which hopefully will make it so he dies with lung cancer (eventually) not OF lung cancer now. (G-d be praised, always.) Thank you so much to everyone who has been praying.

If I can get myself to do it, I’ll write him a postcard, which should furnish him with enough Portuguese grammar mistakes and spelling errors to chortle over for a while. (He finds it bewildering I’ve almost forgotten my native tongue and calls me an ex-speaker of Portuguese.)

Okay. Now I’m going to drag butt from sofa and go do boxes. The smell is bad enough to ALMOST motivate me.

Yesterday, when I was fortunately still too ill to engage extensively, I ran across someone on Twitter who was waxing mournfully (in one of the comments on a post about there being no such thing as noble savages) about why can’t all humans be peaceful and eschew war and aggression. When I pointed out that that if we were peaceful and non-agressive, we’d not have got where we are, he then came back with hopes that we might someday all live in peace and non-aggression and said that was something worth working for. At which point I said this would imply killing all humans and went off to do other things.

What shocks me about what he said and my reaction is that this is the sort of thing people kept saying, writing about — moaning about — in novels and books when I was little, and, being thoroughly immersed in this, if someone had said this to me when I was 20 or so I’d have said “yes, of course.”

But now all I can feel towards such pap is impatience.

I’m sick and tired of people who whine, moan, and throw themselves on the floor like my kids when they were two, about why oh why humans can’t be peaceful and non aggressive.

Sure, okay, maybe humans could be…. I don’t know. I’m having real trouble coming up with an Earth animal who isn’t aggressive. Because most animals who aren’t aggressive and don’t seek to expand their range, sooner or later go extinct.

Even sheep and for that matter bunnies are aggressive to an extent.

But on the serious side, if we were non-aggressive and non-violent, and if we had evolved in the kind of world where a species like that could survive…. we might be very peaceful, but we would not be human.

And the same goes for us all living in peace and harmony, someday. I truly can’t imagine everyone in the world living in peace and harmony. It’s a variant of “if only everyone” and there’s absolutely no chance of that happening, ever.

I don’t see any point hating on humans for being what they are. And I don’t see any point waiting for humans to be completely different, unless there is some kind of transformative religious event.

Do I hope for a future in which fewer innocent humans are killed? Yes. Do I have hope that life will get better for everyone. And yes, I’ll work for each human to be as free and capable of pursuing happiness as possible, because free and prosperous societies tend to maximize safety and health for innocent humans and the powerless.

But … working for peace for everyone — EVERYONE — would mean working for human extinction.

And that I’m not willing to work towards.

Aliens might be very well, but they’re not humans. And humans are as we are and there’s no use willing us to be something completely different. That way lies hatred of humanity because we can’t be perfect, and then crazy crap like voluntary extinction.

Humans are not perfect. Again, absent some religious transformative example, we will never be perfect. But as we are, this is my species, and as such I’m going to root for it.

And you know what, if some alien shows up promising us peace forever, I’m going to assume they want to kill us all.

In fact, if there are aliens, I recommend that we stay just as fractious as we are. Because I will bet you money no species climbed to the top of the evolutionary chain in some other planet, and built a space ship to come here without being at least as aggressive as we are, and possibly more.

And again, I’m going to to side with the humans.

Aggressive apes we might be, but look how far we’ve come. And everything we’ve built, just the way we are.

If I have to pick, I’ll pick humans being as they are and colonizing the stars.

Until someone gives me a believable version of world peace that doesn’t mean we’re all dead or lobotomized.

My fellow obsessives: I’m not asking that you stop trying to improve. Or that you not try to be better. Or even that you don’t keep a vigilant eye on your faults and defects with an eye to minimizing them.

I wouldn’t dare.

But I’m going to ask you to set aside the flagellum just a second, let the stripes on your back heal a little and consider this: What if it isn’t your fault?

No, I’m serious here. Hear me out.

What if that thing that bedevils you, that you seemingly can’t get over is organic? Something you can’t just use will power to pull yourself out of?

Not saying that you shouldn’t still fight it, but perhaps you need to assume there’s something physical/physiological causing it and you’re going to have to give yourself grace and work around it, instead of keeping hitting your head against the glass like a heat-dazed fly.

See, my assistant — hi Holly — is face blind. During a conversation yesterday, she said it was a great relief to find out she was face blind. As in there was a reason she couldn’t remember anyone’s face, and therefore couldn’t recognize people. And it wasn’t just that she was evil or just didn’t care enough.

Now if you’re me, you’re scratching your head going “How can not remembering faces mean you’re evil and don’t care enough?” But I can almost see how one would get there. Sort of. Through a glass, darkly.

You see, it never occurred to me when I was face blind: from birth till about 40, when I fell and hit my head so hard it rewired a lot of things. I just thought I was an alien, and it was very important that the people around me not find out. No, I’m serious. This was the central assumption of my childhood, because people around me seemed to do/think/be able to accomplish things that to me were utterly opaque. So, I must be an alien, and I’d best be very quiet about it, so they didn’t realize it.

I had tricks to get around it. One of them was to memorize the clothes someone was wearing before we left the house. (I still do it, out of habit.) Which is why I almost went away with a completely different woman from the cemetery on All Saints Day when I was 6. Everyone was wearing a black dress; she was about mom’s height and had the same hairstyle. More importantly, she was wearing the same perfume. Because until I was 41 or so and the thyroid issues kicked in, I had a nose that would rival a scent dog’s. And so I identified people PRIMARILY by smell.

First thing I noticed, after the concussion is that all of a sudden I could remember actors. I still don’t bother to remember their names — why would I? — but faces are sometimes familiar. And at this point all that remains of the face blindness years is a frantic fear when I’m going to meet someone I’ve only seen pictures of or haven’t seen in a few years that I just won’t recognize them. I do, though, so that’s fine. Also people still don’t have faces in my dreams. Just little clouds. BUT I know who they are, so that’s okay.

BUT the point is, as a kid, I knew I was different, but I didn’t think it was something I’d done. I guess because no one ever figured out how utterly face-blind I was, so they couldn’t blame me for it.

They did however blame me for transposing digits. Which I do unless I’m being very careful about it. Which is why, when wood working, I cut a paper template of the wood piece I need, before I go out and cut the piece. (I buy scratch paper by the truck load, yes) because 243 432 and 324 are really the same number. That is, if I’m trying to transcribe one of those and look away for a minute, I’ll transcribe it wrong.

Now, since I liked math, and was always fairly advanced, imagine my bewilderment when I hit the more complex equations. I completely understood the mechanics of the operations. And I enjoyed it. But the result I got defied description. And teachers and adults told me I was stupid, lazy and just not paying attention.

It was the most frustrating thing. Because I tried very hard to beat myself into not doing the stupid. BUT IT STILL HAPPENED.

The problem started with the fact you had to copy the original problem from the blackboard to the paper. Or the book to the paper. It was very rare for the digits to be in the same order once I copied them.

Look, I understand the adults. In a kid who was smart and did understand the operations, to make that kind of error must mean she was just being a spazz because she didn’t care. Or maybe she was sullenly defying you. Meanwhile there was me, endlessly flogging myself over not being able to do this very SIMPLE thing.

I never had that with directions, because mom was there before me. Directions… How do I explain this. You can tell me “Go North” till you’re blue in the face. I don’t “sense” north. I also don’t know what direction I just walked in from. This is endlessly amusing to the nurses at my labyrinthine doctors’ offices, as I try to walk in the completely wrong direction, barge into the blood lab trying to fine the waiting room, or other ill-advised adventures. Now they know me, the question starts as soon as I leave the exam room. “Where are you trying to go, Sarah?” And then someone points. But as I said, I kind of knew that was a disability, because mom had it, and SHE WAS WORSE THAN I WAS. After 50 years of living in the village, mom could still get lost, if she wasn’t very careful. I’m not that bad. Close, but not that bad. But anyway, the family knew it was a brain glitch and it was inherited, so I used work arounds. I wrote myself lists of directions, because words work for me. (Maps don’t.) The only problem I had with this was that husband, who has a precise and unswerving sense of direction, truly couldn’t understand why I “insisted” on going the wrong way for about 10 years. After ten years, he assumed that I wasn’t actually doing it on purpose. (Sometimes he still slips up and yells things like “learn” while I kind of gape at him in confusion. This is usually when he’s handed me a map and asked which way we should go. I don’t know WHY he does it, since it always ends up with him having to pull into a parking lot to look at the map himself, but I guess hope springs eternal.)

Anyway, it was the greatest and weirdest relief when, at a writing workshop 30 years ago, the lady leading it said “Oh, yeah, I’m digit dyslexic” and explained what it was. And I went “Oh. I’m not stupid and lazy. I have a brain glitch.” After which I watched out for and compensated for it, and I was fine. This was also timely, as both the boys inherited the glitch. But since they know what it is, and were forewarned, they just learned the work arounds. And both did fine.

But I do this with all sorts of things. Most recently with having a weird infection (yes, that’s all it is, diagnosed and horse-pill antibiotics brought home, with an appointment in ten days to check and make sure it’s gone. And yes, it’s apparently sequella to the massive ear infection. (Ain’t this year been a barrel of laughs?))

I’ve been beating myself up for not even keeping up with this blog, much less trying to make any progress on the novels, or even attempting to post on my substack. (Whose subscribers probably think I died!) Because it must be laziness, right?

Um…. No. Apparently it was a very, very, very bad infection, whose side effects meant I was ready to fall asleep at six pm and really didn’t even want to do dishes, much less anything more demanding.

Oh, and the weight problem might not be my fault either. I mean, of course I assumed it was. My weight has trended upwards since I got married, and I have to make immense efforts to avoid being gravity-distorting heavy. At one point I lived on 800 calories a day for years. The weight still crept up.

Turns out in addition to the thyroid deciding not to work, which only kicked in at 40, I have apparently been celiac my whole life. (Short form: apparently what I thought was eczema was celiac rash? WHO KNEW? Not me.) and the inflamation has weight-gaining side effects. (Or to be fair, weight loss. But I’ve said I never lose weight when I’m sick, haven’t I? Only gain.) Which explains why the only time I got thin was when I cut ALL carbs. Like, extreme carb reduction. It wasn’t the carbs. it was the bread. And crackers. (I can take or leave the bread, but I love matzo crackers. Better than cookies.)

So you know, when I kept trying harsher and harsher diet and exercise regimes, and hating myself because they didn’t work, it might have been a wee bit insane. Because it was organic. (Yes, it’s creeping off. VERY slowly. Not aided by the fact the thyroid is being stupid, and…. well, the usual, right. If it’s weird, it’s what I have. Have we considered I might actually have been right as a kid? That I am an alien?) Not something I could power through with will power.

So, other than a long whine about my issues — it really isn’t. Other than the digit transposing and the weight, the rest doesn’t bother me. And at this point those only minorly bother me. Except I’d like not to be so heavy because I like pretty clothes. — what is this all about?

Well, fellow obsessives: I KNOW YOU. I am you. We are kin.

So…. That thing you’ve been punishing yourself for, where you’re doing everything right and it refuses to work? That thing you can’t defeat?

Consider the cause is not merely psychological, not something you can power through by beating yourself harder.

Consider it NOT so that you stop trying, but so that you can try more effectively, with workarounds and compensating for what nature didn’t give you or is trying to keep away.

I know it’s very hard for people like us to remember we’re not just minds, but bodies as well.

The truth is that the body — like the enemy (which it often is) — gets a vote. You can’t just override it.

Stop beating yourself, and try more sneakily.

And — this is very hard — learn to live with what you can’t change.

Note, I’m still working very hard on all of this. This is not so much “do as I do” but “Do as I’m trying to do.”

And honestly, I wish you all the luck in the world. It has to be better than beating yourself endlessly.

My grandmother had a saying “some ills come for good” which could be the old polyannish “every cloud has a silver lining.” And “Everything happens for the best in the best of all possible worlds.”

While those are broadly true, it wasn’t ever — I think from knowing her — what grandma meant. What she meant would probably better translated as “That kick in the *ss life just gave you has you flat on the ground. Now, how can you make it the incentive for the best thing that ever happened to you?”

My husband believes “everything happens for a reason” and he might be right but it might also be survivorship bias, of course.

Like, for instance, we wanted eleven kids, but we had two. “Oh, maybe if we had eleven, we’d not have been able to keep up, and they’d all have gone seriously bad,” is a good way to cope. Is it true? Who knows? But having grown up with BFF’s friend’s family of 13 kids, I’m inclined to say no. Your genetics are still the same, your parenting is still the same, and the truth is you become better at parenting as you go. So…. Probably not true, but a great way to cope.

OTOH…. OTOH there are times when the worst thing that we thought could happen to us at the time, was in retrospect the best thing, either because it gave us a much needed wake up call, or because what we wanted at the time could be used as a poster for “be careful what you wish for, you might get it.”

Like, my entire life pre-college, I was aiming to become a journalist. Stop laughing. It was Portugal, and it was the only way I could imagine to make a life from writing. (No, seriously, unless everyone in the country buys your book, you’re not making a decent or even indecent living from writing there.) In my first year of college, I took a test for employment with the second largest newspaper in town. I failed. (I probably failed the political section with intent and malice.) I was devastated.

However if I had got that job, it would have made it much harder to come to the US when I got married. I mean, I still would have married Dan, but if I had a well-paying job, in addition to a degree I was finishing I probably would have demanded he move there. And over all? I am happy I’m here. I’m happy the boys were raised here.

When I got that rejection, it was the worst thing ever, but it was an ill that came for good, by leaving me free to take the best thing ever offered to me, and deciding to raise my kids in the US.

More recently, in 2018, not to dwell on it, but I was holding down two jobs, fiction and non fiction, and was let go (it’s more complicated than that, but it’s the short hand description) from both the same week. At the time we were still paying for younger son’s college (well, half the tuition, plus do to Colorado’s infernal highway construction, living expenses, because he couldn’t make it from our house to class in under 2 hours (it was supposed to be 45 minutes.)) This was what my income was supporting. And all of a sudden I was looking at that big a hole in our finances.

I’m not going to say it was the best thing that ever happened to me. At the time, it was like suddenly having a hole open under your feet. It sent me into such a tailspin of worry that I couldn’t work at all, and to be fair, I’m amazed anyone, from family to friends, stuck with me, as I can be pretty impossible to live with while spiraling.

In retrospect? Sigh. Best thing that happened to me is not far off. I mean, I’d have preferred that gentle opportunities had been offered rather than a two by four to the back of the head, but all the same…

It’s not like I didn’t know the opportunity for indie and for monetizing this blog was there. I’d known for 7 years then. I just had trouble lifting my head from the three columns a week and book due that year to find time for anything else. Much less to write anything else. Here it must be said that I also was at the time very ill due to altitude, but all the same.

Exploring indie (as opposed to Indy exploring, which just means he made off with another cabinet child lock and is probably face-deep in the sugar again.) has given me not only better income but a greater peace of mind and enjoyment of my work I hadn’t experienced…. well, in my entire traditional career.

Living in fear that, due to a lot of things you can’t control (like the fact my first book came out a year after 9/11) your books will tank badly and no one will ever buy you, ever, is not conducive to enjoying a career in writing.

Having the ability to write what you want to write NOW and not be scared that it will never see the life of day? That, weirdly does help, and I’m back to where I was as a kid, getting up excited to work on the book I’m writing right now.

And yes, the money is actually better. Not AMAZINGLY better, but better. To the point that if — G-d forbid — something happened to Dan, I’m sure I could stay afloat on my income, and not have to live in a hut in the woods. (Though that remains an option because hut in the woods with three unearthly smart cats is such a stereotype.)

More importantly, my stress levels are way way way down, which allows me to be more creative and write more, and more importantly, enjoy life more.

BUT it only came about because the worst thing ever improbably hit all in one week, possibly the worst week of my life.

— I’m underslept, mostly because I seem to have developed a weird chronic cough, (yes, it’s being looked into) so I can’t think of other instances, though I know there have been other instances.

However, let this stand: When the worst thing happens to you, look at it and see if you are now free to try an opportunity you’d never have considered otherwise.

Like… if something happened to my husband’s job, he has about 10 projects he’s been dying to work on, but hasn’t for lack of time and brain space. At least one of those has the possibility to be worth millions of dollars, but it’s hard to let go of the regular salary to try the “maybe, with luck” wild hope. Unless the job is yanked away first.

If instead of moping you — even if poliannish and probably survivor bias inspired saying — tell yourself “There are ills that come for good. What good can come of this?” and pivot into trying those things, it will at least save you the oh 5 years of moping I indulged in, and wasted. (Though again, health might have been a factor.)

And even if you see no opportunities from it, consider that maybe in the long run you’ll look back and say “Whew, I escaped a bullet.” And “this was definitely for the best.”

Do we live in the best of all possible worlds? Debatable.

But assuming we do will enhance your ability to cope with misfortune and probably allow you to pivot faster and better and enhance your quality of life.

So I suggest you take that line, anyway. Even if the back of your brain scoffs. Straighten your back, look up and tell yourself. “There are ills that come for good.”

And then find the good. And keep going.