According To Hoyt

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 A. K. FEENEY: Orphans of Time

“Through water they will come,” she had said. “In fire they will go.”

High in the mountains of the American West lies a glacial lake with a deep underwater secret. Nearby lives Jake Greenwood, a straight-shooting libertarian professor of writing with a troubled past, who just wants a simple life. But on the morning of a summer solstice, he discovers two otherworldly visitors with odd burns washed up on the shore. Guided by a prophecy he received decades ago, he finds himself caught up with them in a global struggle for life and freedom. Can he ultimately save the world—and himself—by telling their story?

Gripping and often lyrical, Orphans of Time is a character-driven story of hope, desperation, healing, love, loss, and salvation. Told from the perspectives of three characters, it seamlessly weaves time travel, dystopian, sci-fi/ fantasy, romance, and visionary elements into a timely narrative.

FROM MATTHEW C. LUCAS: Space Station Halcyon: “Come and Get It!”

Welcome back to Space Station Halcyon!

Joey Mumbai had a hell of a time saving his space station from a code inspector. Who knew that running the place would be ten times worse?

A mob boss just dropped a “little job” on Joey’s doorstep: take out a rival’s shuttle bus when it docks at the station, and make it look like an accident. Seems easy enough. But the pilot is a jacked-up, strung-out, psychopathic rabbit named Captain Hazel. And Hazel has plans of her own for the ship. Meanwhile, a ritual to the eldritch demon that lives in the station’s kitchen has gone terribly wrong. And now eight sentient chicken tenders are running loose with a dream of freedom and a thirst for vengeance. They’d be pretty darned cute if they weren’t so darned murderous.

As gangsters, smugglers, terrorists, and homicidal fried food collide in the winding corridors of Halcyon, Joey must somehow keep everyone alive and prevent an interstellar gang war. All while coping with a rage-filled manatee, a maniacally happy computer, and not nearly enough booze.

A gritty, irreverent, sci-fi noir comedy packed with action, disaster, and questionable life choices, the second book in the Space Station Halcyon series answers the eternal question: “What could possibly go wrong?”

FROM J. KENTON PIERCE: Stormjammer: Book 2 of Shai

From the Prometheus Award-nominated series—Book 1 is a 2026 Prometheus Award Finalist for Best Novel.
The Long Night is over. The ash is clearing. And the orbital defense AI called Damocles still owns the sky.
Shaifennen Roehe is sixteen years old, five feet nothing, and meaner than a sack of wet roosters when the situation calls for it. She is also Hesperides Colony’s most effective corporal, which is either a compliment or a warning depending on how you look at it.
The skizzer swarms—giant predatory insects that are supposed to hibernate through the northern winters—are not hibernating. They are swarming earlier, bigger, and angrier than anything the colony’s histories describe. When one of those swarms hits Twelvety Homestead, Shai loses people she cannot replace. The answer to why the swarms have gone wrong is somewhere on the Southern Continent, and Shai is going to find it.
What she finds is larger than anyone guessed.
A thought-extinct alien species—not quite dead, not quite extinct, and not quite what the history vids suggested. A buried Mutual Prosperity artificial intelligence, waking up, very interested in meeting the colonists of New Vermont Prefecture, and extremely willing to help in ways nobody asked for. And enough pre-war hardware buried in the wreck of an assault shuttle to change every equation Shai’s people have been working with.
Meanwhile, Greenline Town is building airships. And the orbital AI called Damocles is still up there, waiting for someone to make a mistake big enough to earn a response.
Stormjammer is the second book in the Kiss for Damocles series, set in J. Kenton Pierce’s Tales from the Long Night universe. It is military science fiction built the old way: earned action, characters worth caring about, earned victory, and consequences that land. For readers who want their space opera gritty, their libertarian themes embedded in story rather than lecture, and their protagonists capable of punching above their weight class.
The Prometheus Award-nominated series continues. Shai Roehe does not stop. Neither do the problems.

FROM RACONTEUR PRESS: The Muse Within Us: An Anthology of Dark Fantasy and Horror (Raconteur Press Anthologies Book 77)

What happens when inspiration stops feeling entirely human?

Paintings that command armies. Songs that shatter crowds. Ancient poems that speak directly into an immortal ear. A revolver forged from the ruins of Earth, passed from hand to hand across generations, delivering justice with a chorus of the dead riding in its steel.

The Muse Within Us is an anthology of dark fantasy, horror, military science fiction, and literary speculation. These eleven stories all ask one question: does inspiration come from within, or are we tuning into signals already moving through the world?
Editor Wally Waltner has gathered writers from across the speculative spectrum. Within these pages: a sorcerer-seamstress transformed into a dragon by her masterpiece; a court prince whose animation magic revives a forgotten civilization; a musician haunted by crowd-controlling spirits called the whispers, carrying two hundred dead from one show; a Norse scholar who realizes he has been speaking ancient kennings directly into an immortal ear; and a war painter ordered by a god of war to paint ever bigger victories until he refuses and pays the price.Also here: a baker empowered by a minor demon of boiling oil trapped in petrified wood; a mason’s boy whose hands transform into the arches of a destined cathedral; a blues musician whose song outlives him through new vessels; a gunsmith on a dead Earth forging a revolver that carries a chorus of voices across centuries; and a young woman who discovers that flowers blooming where bodies fell grant strange artistic power at a terrible cost.

Some of these muses are generous. Several are predatory. All of them change the people they pass through.

The Muse Within Us because what moves through you may have its own agenda.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: I’m the Beautiful But Evil Space Princess Who Rules A Galactic Empire But Really Wants To Leave People Ruthlessly Alone: Volume 2 (I’m The Beautiful But … Wants To Leave People Ruthlessly Alone!)

Princess Regnant Alice and her companions, after a trip to Prince Daniel’s world Xeros, and a visit to Lost Terra and a meeting with Michael, the mysterious, ancient human, have been directed by Michael to travel to Mahoukai — a world of magical beings who will be able to properly train and guide Prince Daniel’s sister Alouette in the use of her inborn magical powers.

But a nagging question continues to bug both Alice and her father, Roger; what is really going on, back on Capital? Is a revolution brewing? Is the Lord Chancellor, Rupert, somehow involved, and at what level? Eventually they must bid a reluctant farewell to the Mahoukaian Great Mages of Antiquity, and end Alice’s six month absence from her Throne.

And what they find on Capital is far, far beyond anything they might have imagined from 50,000 light years away.

The second volume of the BBESP light novel!

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Rockin’ the USA

It’s not easy being married to the leader of the band, even in the best of times. When everything becomes political, you’ve got a nightmare on your hands.

Laurel had her doubts when her husband signed on to headline Governor Thorne’s Independence Day concert in Candlestick Park. Now that the band’s committed to the appearance, the Flannigan Administration has decided to shut the show down, with prejudice.

Laurel knows she has to fight this attempt to stop the signal. But doing so may put her in more danger than she could ever have anticipated, and risk those she loves.

A story of the Grissom timeline, originally published in Liberty Island Magazine.

This edition also includes a bonus essay on the era of dictatorship in Grissom-timeline America.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Faerie Gifts

A collection of short stories about the intersection between over- and under-hill, between human and faerie.

Fortunate One–Is the ability to see the normally unseen a gift…or a curse?
Steed–When you don’t fit anywhere, perhaps you should listen when the faerie horse says you belong elsewhere.
Kintsugi–When your fiance is a faerie, they don’t want your mortality to get in the way of forever.
Faerie Gifts–Sometimes, the faerie’s gift goes wrong…what’s a new mother to do when a faerie wants to bless her new babe?
Mixed Blessings–A boon to a musician exchanges one addiction for another..
Bargains Struck–When the fairy grants your wish in exchange for your firstborn…what happens when you can’t have a child?
Golden–When the geese aren’t killed, the eggs keep coming.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: No Man’s Land: Volume 1

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.

FROM JOHN BAILEY The Vacation Broker Mysteries: Twelve Resort Worlds. Twelve Puzzles. One Very Observant Salesman. (The Detective Stories)

A salesman has no business solving murders.

Gideon Vale knows this perfectly well.

As a vacation-property consultant for Celestial Retreats Unlimited, his job is to help wealthy clients purchase dream homes on the most beautiful resort worlds in known space. Floating villas above sapphire oceans. Mountain lodges beneath alien stars. Private estates overlooking glowing seas.

The wealthy pay for his travel.

The scenery is spectacular.

The murders are entirely unexpected.

Armed with little more than patience, common sense, and an eye for detail, Gideon repeatedly finds himself entangled in mysteries that baffle local authorities. A billionaire dies inside a locked villa during a planetary storm. A famous celebrity disappears beneath a double sunset. A passenger commits murder without ever boarding the transport where the crime occurred.

Again and again, Gideon discovers that luxury may disguise greed, deception, and deadly secrets—but it can never hide them forever.

Inspired by the classic puzzle mysteries of the Golden Age, The Vacation Broker Mysteries combines fair-play detection, exotic science-fiction settings, and an unforgettable amateur sleuth whose greatest weapon is simple observation.

Twelve resort worlds.

Twelve impossible puzzles.

One very observant salesman.

Welcome to paradise.

FROM KAREN MYERS: The Visitor, And More: A Science Fiction Short Story Bundle from There’s a Sword for That

A Science Fiction Story Bundle from the collection There’s a Sword for That

THE VISITOR – Felockati is anchored to his permanent location underwater and misses the days of roaming his ocean world freely.

But something new drops out of the sky and widens his horizons — all the way to the stars.

YOUR EVERY WISH – Stealing the alien ambassador’s dagger is a sure thing for Pete — just what he needs to pay off his debts.

Until he starts talking to it. There has to be a way to get something for himself out of the deal. Has to be.

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: RETURN

Hi guys,

I’ll do the promo post tomorrow, because Liberty, you know?

If you’re one of the Huns here: we’ve been weighing various options for food. We have a problem since I was diagnosed celiac last year.

Yes, the Rodizio is largely gluten free, but Dan and I would eat maybe a serving and that seems a waste.

Turns out there are a couple of gluten free options here in town, one of which makes the Rodizio seem cheap. The high likelihood right now is that we go there right after Dan’s last panel. If you’d like join, grab us. I’m about to come out for my 11 o’clock thing, which I think is a signing.

See you soon.

Only four, because Wednesday was…. well….

There is a tendency to doomism that annoys me and keeps getting on my nerves. Partly because so many of us who are getting older tend to paint the past in beautiful colors of what we wish it had been, rather than what it was.

There was a post at my friend Kim Du Toit’s blog, and I shared it at insty with something like “This is true, but we have just started to fight back and we have a chance to win this.” Blame it on my having been on the road, and being very tired (road construction and such made this trip almost as difficult as when we used to fly and get routed over half the country) because the post is also not true. I mean, it is, in the sense that our schools have been working overtime on socialist indoctrination, but at the same time they’ve been getting more obvious and therefore easier to fight.

The post is this: Parallel Thinking

And the gist of it is that this isn’t the country of Reagan any longer, because both parties have been converging towards socialism and we’re all doomed. DOOMED I say.

To which I say HOGWASH.

Is there some soft, stupid economics thinking in our ranks. Oh, my dear. When President Trump talks about how he needs to control the oil companies and keeps them from taking “excessive profits” I want to ask him to sit down and let the businessman who actually knows business stand up.

Yes, of course there is a lot of soft socialism in economic thinking and also a lot of “Let the government do it.”

It is the nature of government to run to authoritarian and anti-business solutions. Sure.

I’m not disputing that there’s a lot of stupidity in the nation’s two parties, or that they don’t converge in bizarre and alarming ways.

What I’m saying is: SO HAS IT EVER BEEN. THE DIFFERENCE IS NOW WE THE PEOPLE HAVE A MILLION BULLHORNS TO FIGHT BACK.

Look, popular ideas of the time are popular ideas of the time. No matter how stupid, both parties fall in with bullshit like “progressivist” (meaning the government led “progress”) ideas (We had progressive Democrat AND Republican presidents) and eugenics, and handling the mental health crisis by abolishing madhouses, and– It could go on and on. It is human — and remember people from both parties attend the same school system and all used to read more or less the same newspapers or listen to the same news — to have a bunch of stupid ideas that are the ideas of your time.

And the past — I tell you again and again — wasn’t some golden era of liberty. Sure, sure, both Woodrow Wilson and FDR who in great measure forged these our shackles, were democrats, but a lot of the nonsense they engaged in was supported by Republicans at the time. They could not have done it otherwise. A lot of the opposition and a lot of the people might have disagreed with the specifics, but thought it was right and proper for government to have that level of control.

And people, listen, that we didn’t drop into full communism was probably just a quirk of FDR getting so fascinated by WWII that he let his claws off the throat of the economy. Would it have stuck? Would there have been another American Revolution? I can’t tell and neither can you, but I’m glad I’m not in that time line.

The thing is a lot of that nonsense, from price controls, tot he government sticking its nose into the economic life and stealing the breath of commerce stayed on, until Reagan.

It has been mentioned to me that Maggie Thatcher started the removal of such shackles before Reagan. Perhaps I didn’t pay as much attention to her back then, since the UK was a foreign country, but the US was always my focus of interest, even while I was Portuguese. But I DO remember the shock in in Europe when Reagan started dismantling the edifice of government interference in the economy that was still considered absolutely indisputably right in Europe. Oh, the rending of garments and pouring of ashes on heads. America was going to destroy itself, they said gleefully. Weirdly, the boom afterwards was treated as completely unrelated and having nothing to do with this freeing. (Bah.)

Look, I don’t take anything away from Reagan. In a way he did amazing work, and freed us to an extent that was AT THE TIME undreamed of.

But — and I want to make this very clear — he was working against what we now consider to be LEFTIST consensus of both parties. At the time it was just considered “normative” and “sane.” And oh, yeah “the way things are done.”

Reagan broke that and mind you, to a great extent the left has been on the run ever since. Yesterday on Twitter someone told me there haven’t been Marxists since the eighties, that Marxism was completely discredited. I don’t know where he is, I didn’t look, but I assume it’s a parallel world.

Sure, the Marxist economic measures and ideals were proven wrong and cast down and then went underneath, insidiously, into education, into activism — paid for by USAID, mostly — into studies and papers and into all sorts of crap, till people are learning “Marxist literary analysis” which is kind of like learning “blue fish red fish literary analysis” for all the grip it has on the real world.

Except this stuff has real effects. Combined with maleducation, there’s an entire generation parroting “socialism” and “Marxism” who have no idea how stupid and how ridiculous it is.

And this seems to make it be “everywhere.” It’s not. It’s on the run. It’s a rump movement. It will not stand.

No, this is not the country of Reagan. It is the one he seeded. it’s grown from that. There is no way Reagan could have defunded USAID (which might not have been so egregious before Clinton and Obama, but I suspect always was) or sent DOGE into the bowels of the deep state. The deep state, and the “uniparty” won a victory against Reagan on immigration too, that I don’t think they could carry now.

So, are things better or worse?

Yes. They are better in that the victories of Reagan gave us a place to stand and fight against the statists. They are better because we’re no longer subjected to the overwhelming megaphone of main stream media and each have our little channels to fight back. They’re little but there’s a lot of them. It’s better because the “experts” have scored a own goal with covidiocy and made it possible for us to question their “benevolent” rule.

It is worse because we have entire generations of people indoctrinated into the idea that socialism will give them everything they want. And we have a vast number of unassimilated foreigners among us.

So?

You want the perfect country? That was sometime before the thing with the serpent and the apple.

Here in the real world, it is the duty of people of good will — and working brains — to fight the “current thing” that enthralls all sides of our political spectrum and which would, to allude to kipling, deliver us bound to our foes.

We’ve escaped the traps of the past, with varying degree of injury and sometimes by the skin of our teeth. The fight goes on.

Government we must have, and government will always be the enemy of individual liberty.

That’s the tension in which we must exist. And the fight isn’t done. It will never be done. The fight isn’t easy. It will never be easy.

But it is not lost, and it is not worse than the fight our ancestors fought.

Now we have more and better ways to fight back (and not just the ultimate, terrible, fourth box way.)

Stop lamenting and go use them.

As you know…. probably…. I’m on my way to Liberty con. This year I decided not to drive myself and others insane trying to charge the laptop in the car. It draws too much power and the results are at best frustrating.

So I decided to challenge you with the painter who launched a thousand memes…. of himself.

Joseph Ducreux was a French painter active in the latter part of the 18th century — he was a portraitist in the court of Louis XVI and continued his career after the French Revolution. But Ducreux is increasingly remembered for his series of self-portraits that were surprisingly informal for the age in which they were painted. To contemporary eyes, they almost seem to have been painted for use in memes, a purpose for which they certainly have been used.

You know him for this one here in a goofy take on lyrics:

BUT he did so much more. And most of it silly.

They just about cry out to be memed, but I can’t do it. Could you guys give it a try? That way I can enjoy the results when I get to the hotel:

And of course the template for the well known one:

See you this evening!

I call that picture “the moment before the crash”. Or perhaps “Really? That’s where you’re going to sit while I have breakfast?” And yes, before you say anything (you wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings, and he’s reading over my shoulder!) that cat is a little chonky. Mostly because I’ve been feeding Havey whenever he demands it (twenty one and losing weight fast) and he has one or two bites, then leaves the rest for his accomplices. Who are getting rounder by the day. This too shall pass, right?

That vase is the successor of my beloved Koi vase which rests in pieces until I have time to kintsugi it. This one was purchased for two reasons only: It’s blue and white AND it’s heavy as the dickens, so the little terror hasn’t sent it careening yet.

And if you take in the previous two paragraphs, you’re probably asking yourself: Sarah, why do you put yourself through this?

There are many, many answers. Older son suggested “masochism” and several people — particularly considering the advent of the hyper-smart, very people engaged, full of mischief Misoites (Indy, Circe and Muse) in my life — have answered flat out “insanity.”

But it’s not, you know? They are a calculated addition to my life, one that keeps me what passes for sane around these parts, and more importantly, keep me getting up in the morning and doing things, including writing fiction (And writing this blog.)

But Sarah, you say, how can three (not so) little cats keep you writing? What do they even have to do with you getting up in the morning? Don’t you have a husband and sons for that? And a house that needs cleaned? And started novels that need finished?

Well, yes…. And yet–

Let’s start from where I am: I am a chronic depressive, forever skating on the rim of a deep crater of depression. Sometimes going one or two rings inside, which is where the writing stops and the curling up under furniture starts.

I don’t want to be medicated. Partly because either I’m very different from other people, or other people tolerate side effects that floor me with absolutely no problem, but the fact is I’ve never taken a medicine that doesn’t have some sort of “what now?” symptoms. Adderal makes me b*tchy enough that even I don’t want to live with me. Vyvanse is great, but it turns off the writing, as though it were a switch and it just goes “click” off. Oh, I can still write these posts. But the fiction dies before being born. Then there’s various anti-histamines. I’ve found one — finally — that makes me sleepy but allows me to write: xyzal. (My allergist found this report interesting, as according to him it’s a “cleaner” versions of allegra, which still, like all the other ones just turns off the WORDS. Not the writing. I still have stories. I just can’t put them in words. it makes posts very hard too.) But heck, even your humble ibuprofen seems to have weird effects if I stay on it. (Mostly it makes me incredibly sleepy. It acts exactly like sleeping pills. It makes no sense.) So, I’m not about to try to fix the depression with medications. Heck, I’ve been known to avoid pain killers after major surgery because I resent what they do to my mind.

That means I manage it. And because I’ve been managing my depression since before I had words to call it that, you could say my entire life is designed around it. It’s part of the reason that — arguably — we’ve always bought houses a little above what we rationally should have. One of the weird things I only recently identified is that I must have AT LEAST one room in the house that I love; that makes me happy just going into it. And why I actually spend precious time decorating and trying to make things look purty. And did, even when I had two toddlers and was trying to break into writing.

But that gets into who I am: I teeter forever between being over-managed, ie having a life that runs like clockwork, and trying to stave off chaos with unavailing and frantic activity, while my life falls apart around me.

Of the two I much prefer the first, of course, which is where I tend to fall, once I’m up from the latest illness, and not preparing for a con (Or actually while preparing for a con. Yesterday I cleaned and organized, because the house was getting to me.)

The problem is that left to my own devices I arrange things so that they are incredibly organized. Like…. so organized in terms of my life, that I get up at the same time, eat the same thing, do exactly the same actions every day.

If you’re going “oh, bliss” you might be slightly on the spectrum. Which, I will grant you so am I, which is why I tend to that. BUT–

But at some point you get up and are going through your routine and realize all the joy has drained out of your life. And you don’t know why.

When this happened, the kids were still living at home, but were both in college, both self-sufficient adults (except for the inevitable “mom, I thought we still had cereal?”) And my life had become a clockwork, ticking beauty of scheduling.

We all know the thing to do for that, right? Add Toddler. Let’s say that the time of life wasn’t conducive for that, besides my having the fertility of a small rock. In the Sahara. At the peak of Summer.

… At the time I added something else, which took away some time but helped in other ways.

BUT when faced with the same issue a few years ago, I added the current crop of cats. Look, cats are ideal for adding just a slight sprinkle of chaos — okay, the Misoites might have meant overshooting — because they are mobile, cute, get into things but aren’t going to — for instance — eat a sofa, and will make you smile with their insanity.

It doesn’t have to be cats, though. During a particularly stressful part of my life, having derpfish on his tiny aquarium on my desk, glaring at me because “where are my food pellets, hooman?” was immensely cheering and took away from the sterile quality of an over-ordered life.

For that matter, my husband spent ten years tending a cantankerous (And now enormous) cactus in a corner of his office.

The point is that it’s something alive with the potential to give you at least tiny surprises, and which pulls you out from the tendency to over-order your life.

Left to our own devices, being slightly on the spectrum and very work focused, Dan and I would create utterly sterile lives, where we get up at the same time, eat the same things, work at the same desks side by side, eat the same dinner, go to bed. There’s reassurance in that too, but after a while it starts feeling like you’re just a cog in the machine the day has become.

Now we have some critters who will make us take unscheduled breaks because the belly must be petted (like the spice must flow, but warmer and more fuzzy. Okay, find, and chonky.) And this morning I found that, the dry food having run out in the dispenser, Indy had unplugged it both at the plug in and from the wall. (Why he thought that would help is another question. Or maybe he was just mad at it.) Which is annoying, but also amusing because WHAT EVEN?

And minutes ago Circe was walking around talking to herself, which she does on the regular.

Now, yes, if you’re of an age and situation to do this, kids do the same and are, arguably, more rewarding. But kids will also worry you more. (I know. Mine still do.)

Cats — though note I’m side eyeing Indy who is reading this over my shoulder as I type — rarely grow up to be ax murderers — lack of opposable thumbs — and you don’t worry about their careers and their relationships and what are they doing now? They’re just cats. As long as you keep them from chewing electrical cords, removing child locks from cabinets (I still have no idea what he did to the lock for the under-sink cabinet) and attempting to fix your computer (okay, that’s just indie) they are a safe outlet for chaos, and something you can love too. Because you want to love the thing that bring chaos.

And chaos is absolutely necessary, at least if you’re some sort of a creative. Because otherwise life becomes clean, ordered, and profoundly sterile.

This post comes from the confluence of two completely unrelated events: people wondering why the men of Great Britain haven’t risen yet (with pitchforks and torches) and the fact I’ve been reading a British mystery series set in WWI, which to my eye (as a former European) has pretty accurate inter-class relationships.

First in defense of British men, I have to say that you can’t judge them too harshly, because you have absolutely no idea what they’re doing to resist or how hard they’re doing it. And won’t actually know until and unless the whole thing tips into the pot. Which, as with us a few months ago, and with us again should the left manage to cheat their way into power at midterms, I hope it doesn’t do for their sakes. And I hope it gets corrected another way, for their sakes. Look, vengeance is extremely satisfying… in theory. In reality it hits a lot of innocents, and leaves those who exerted revenge coarser, tired and guilty. And the last will come out in various truly awful ways, because humans express guilty by doubling down so as to retroactively justify their misdeeds.

But the truth is we don’t know what British men are doing. Can’t know. The same veil of secrecy from their government that keeps most of them from knowing how bad things actually are, keeps us from knowing what they’re doing. To understand the veil of secrecy, cast your minds back just four years ago, when you could get your account shut (like Out of Darkness) on Facebook and Twitter for posting a lot of anti-lockdown memes. And you never got it back. This was a time when I — I who am pretty far down the blogging ecosystem — lived in fear of both debanking and IRS shenanigans. (This last was actually tried, not very expertly, but tried.)

They live with this, but taken to eleven. You can actually get arrested for sharing the mildest of the memes I share here on Saturdays.

The thing is this type of control doesn’t actually suppress dissent. What it does is suppress the knowledge that every person on the verge of losing their mind with rage is not in fact alone. Which makes it harder to have any kind of collective action. It was working here, and it’s working there. People, even people who know the controls on expression or how corrupt the vote is, default to assuming it’s all hunky dory. I keep seeing people talk about how NYC voted for a Muslim communist, or how California is voting for this or that, when the most trivial analysis will show that fraud is so thick on the ground their votes are immaterial. And sometimes the people saying they “voted” for this are the very same ones who denounced the fraud before.

Anyway, the problem with this control on opinion, on movement, on money, doesn’t actually indefinitely suppress bloody uprising. Instead it delays it and makes it inevitable that it will be an indiscriminate blood bath. And then people are very surprised and “never saw it coming.”

So we don’t know where on the pressure cooker scale Britain is, and we should do its men (and women. Oooh boy, the mothers should be boiling) the grace of assuming their acts of dissent and resistance are being kept in the dark.

BUT the whole thing of the abuse of girls by migrants is a puzzle to Americans. Both why the men haven’t boiled over, and why the “elites” allowed it to go on with a wink and a nudge. Same with the whole looking down on the people who are ACTUALLY THE NATIVE PEOPLES OF GREAT BRITAIN and treating newcomers and welcoming them as the most important social project ever.

This has layers. And the first is again, please to look in the mirror. There are entire areas we don’t talk about in the US. Yes, we do get very upset at migrants causing deaths of Americans (when we hear about them) even when by surname those Americans are the same ethnicity as the illegals that killed them. But beyond that, we — and by this I mean various ethnic groups — turn a blind eye on continuous murder and misbehavior because it’s worse to be considered “racist.” And thereby we cause the most racist result of all: that in which minorities aren’t expected to behave like civilized people and black on black, hispanic on hispanic, and for that matter black on hispanic and vice versa, crime happens continuously and no one pays attention, because apparently we don’t expect people who can tan to be fully functional human beings. And before you air your uneducated and eugenics-inspired nonsense about certain races not having the ability to behave like civilized people, let me point out the race — by actual genetic race markers — of most American blacks is Caucasian. Yes, they are that diluted. And also that before the great re-enslavement of the welfare state destroyed their families, their crime statistics were about the same as poor whites (as far as we can tell.) Also that as El Salvador is showing, Latins can behave in a civilized way, if you remove the small percentage of animals from their midst and lock them up. The fact we refuse to do this and that our elites preen themselves on not being “racist” by refusing to do this is one of the worst blots on us as a nation.

Which is part of the whole thing. Look, in this type of thing, we say race, they say class. The problem — and reading this mystery brought back almost forgotten memories of growing up in Europe — is that the upper classes in Europe treat the lower classes the way Americans — pardon me leftist Americans — treat black or latin Americans (even the ones born and brought up here): as a sort of troublesome pet whose behavior can’t be controlled, so we let the pet do it and get mad at anyone who points it out.

This is what was in Europe before the “migrants” started arriving by the boat full. The educated, technocratic class, more snobbish than any nobility of birth, looked at the lumpen masses of manual or service workers, and assumed they were a whole other class of humanity, not quite capable or willing to make an effort to be “civilized” or “educated.”

And yes, class really exists in Europe, in a way that Americans can’t process. I’m always highly amused when Americans write ANYTHING that involves nobility of birth, because there is subtle dissonances and an almost glaring inability to get it. The truth is it goes all the way down. Assumptions are made about people based on their class, treatment is completely different at an almost instinctive level, and people put up with things they shouldn’t because they know that’s what they’ll get based on their class. There is no ethics involved, because no one thinks about it. It’s sub-rational.

As an example, I like to point to our trip to France, in which the organizer, correctly, btw, though it would be more fun to travel from Paris to the Riviera by train, so we could see the countryside as we crossed it. So far so good. We paid for a first class, air-conditioned carriage. Only to find out minutes into the the hours long ride that the carriage’s air conditioning system was not working, the windows couldn’t be opened, and there were no blinds on the windows. As the temperature in the carriage rose to the hundreds, older people started passing out, and employees circulated giving us free water bottles.

Which is when I lost my mind. I and another American (might have been a member of my party or not. I don’t remember) got up and each stood at one end of the carriage holding the door open. Which rapidly cooled it to normal levels. Most of the people in the carriage — French — just stared at us. We spelled each other standing the doorway.

We came to find out that carriage has had broken air conditioning FOR YEARS and not only haven’t they taken it out of service, apparently no one ever thought to send employees to stand in the doorway keeping the air circulation going, even though the temperature in the carriage was at health endangering levels.

Why not? Well, because most of the people in the carriage are either lower or middle-middle class. Most probably middle-middle, giving paying for first class. The government has very little concern for them. They’ll get what they get and be happy. And they’re so used to it that it never occurred to them, spontaneously, to figure out a work around.

We get this a lot from the minorities who have long been pets of the left. They have become convinced they can’t solve things themselves, barring a massive overturn in the system. So it all becomes “the government should do something about it.”

In the same way, this was the situation in Britain before they started importing migrants by the boatload. The locals had become convinced over years — generations, just in the 20th century — of oppression by the governmental and functionary elites that they would be treated a certain way and there was nothing they could do about it. And meanwhile the upper classes and anyone in official authority got used to pushing people around and treating them like they’re the scum of the Earth (the mystery I’m reading.)

In America, even a filthy, obviously spaced out guy on drugs is a ‘gentleman’ and even a lady of the night is a “lady” in address. This shocked me profoundly when I was new here. It is not so abroad, practically anywhere else. (Maybe Canada, but they don’t mean it.) And yeah, even when said ironically, those count.

There is a different TEXTURE to this abroad.

And that was the situation before the migrants came in. I don’t know if this has been identified as a social phenomenon but the thing is the newcomers have no status in the society. While the lower classes have LOW status. So the migrants are immediately above.

Also, the upper classes in Europe are profoundly disappointed with the rest of the people in the country in a way that doesn’t echo in America. Look, sure, our “elites” (snort giggle) think badly of the rest of us and those on the coasts look down on the entire middle of the country. BUT that’s not by monolithic class, partly because we have enough church that the children of the middle of the country routinely become coastal elites.

I see this will need unpacking. Sorry, I’m fuzzy today. So, one of the conceits of the left in the twentieth century was that everyone would be educated and thereby become one of them.

Here, because of status churn, and people moving around and changing status constantly (it’s a very large country, and alas leftism is a positional good. Partly because of the assumption above) the leftist “elites” have the illusion this is happening.

In Europe, they’ve given up and of course as always when the plans fail, the fault is of those lower class yobs who refused to be uplifted. So there is resentment there, and hatred. Meanwhile, with the migrant newcomers, the “elites” don’t know that they too will refuse to be uplifted. They don’t KNOW there’s something intrinsically wrong with them. They “know” that about the native population.

So the migrants are immediately above and the native lower classes will get punished for attempting to break the hierarchy.

Layer on top of that the fact that ideological crap from America gets filtered by their newspapers and magazines and taken far more seriously there than it ever is here. (Another case of when America sneezes the rest of the world catches pneumonia.) As we found out through the BLM insanity, they drank up the academic intersectionality theories and are trying to apply them there. (This has led to Portugal developing an absolutely bizarre relation with gypsies of instance.)

And because leftism is a positional good that denotes you’re “well educated” this means that the elites are ALL IN on it. It’s how they prove their upper class status after all. Which means that those rubes on the lower seats trying to hold the poor migrants accountable for anything are just being prejudiced.

On top of this nauseating soup there’s the fact that multiculti requires you to tolerate if not approve of child marriage, polygamy, mistreatment of women and all the other “vibrant” cultural characteristics of the imported scum.

I have on twitter simultaneously read Indian accounts saying Suttee was a lie invented by the British (It wasn’t. There are first person reports from people of all nationalities) and that Suttee was a beautiful cultural practice we had no business disrupting. The flummery is palpable, but they can’t see it, because being “upper class” depends on NOT seeing it.

And therefore right now, the upper classes in Britain, who consider themselves scientific and technocrats, but are actually mostly jumped up functionaries and middle-managers with “excellent” educations, is now engaged in a to the death attempt to make the real world obey the insanity they were indoctrinated with, layered on the assumptions of their class-ranked society.

Literally to the death. Because when the picture in your head is completely at odds with reality, reality always wins. ALWAYS. It’s a tiresome thing but inevitable. And the longer and harder you try to impose the fantasy, the worse the breakage will be.

So, pray for Britain, if you’re the praying kind.

And keep an eye on us, because though we don’t have classes as such, we’ve let the “some people aren’t as capable as others” bullshit creep in. Which is a disservice to everyone, but particularly the “minorities” affected. And that means we’re ripe to let the same kind of nonsense reign. In fact, it’s started already.

Always remember you’re Americans: if the government is trying to boil you in a carriage in the sun, with windows that can’t be opened and the air-conditioning broken? Stand up and keep the doors open so air flows through.

Metaphorically speaking.

The lives you save are almost certainly everyone’s. Including yours.

The idea that with a little more effort we could breed the perfect humans seems to be a persistent defect of the human mind.

It’s of course part of all other attempts to make humans perfect, including “if only we change society this way.” (You will be forgiven if you hear a very old voice saying “you will be like gods, knowing good from evil.”)

What most Americans our generation are not aware of (I think. And note that our generation is those born about 20 years after the end of world war II) is how prevalent eugenics is in the thought and mental scaffolding of the generation just before and the generation that went into WWII.

Germany, sure, took it to an insane, by the numbers “let’s kill everyone we think shouldn’t reproduce” level because that was part of German culture at the time. They’d put themselves to such great effort to come up from behind on industrialization that organization (they used to be considered sloppy and backward in Europe, then they remade themselves) that they became a bit autistic about it, and since everyone agreed the way forward was eugenics, they just powered ahead, past all sanity and instituted those in their very own way. Which ended up with 12 million dead.

But “everyone” agreed the way forward was eugenics. It’s hard to overestimate how prevalent the ideas were, low level, in everything. If you read any writers of the period from the latest 1800s to the beginning of WW II it’s impossible not to trip on it, unless you too are dulled to the idea because it’s in the water you drink. And you might be, because it’s still prevalent in our midst.

It’s an old, old, old idea. In Sparta, the father could reject any infant for any or no reason and the kid would just be flung from the top of a rock. There is thought that maintains a lot of the sacrifices to Moloch were children who were defective and would need life-long care and/or children who were born either out of wedlock or to parents who were too young or too poor to support them. “Sacrifice him/her to the god” gave an honorable way out. My family jokingly told me that if my father had been ancient Greek, a puny, not fully formed critter like me wouldn’t have survived the hour. (Of course, that posits a world in which dad wasn’t terrified of grandmother which means a world that didn’t exist.) I’m fairly sure they were just joking, but the exact same reasoning is used to deny care to children born disastrously premature in most of Europe. And weirdly it’s not even — though it partially is — because the kids would take too much time, money and effort to allow them to survive. Mostly it’s because they still have a high chance of dying and would mess up the government’s health care numbers.

However you see support for that even here and it will be stuff like “well, if the baby is that weak, he’ll be a sickly adult and consume resources all the time.” And, yeah, I do realize I’m not the best the showcase against this, given that I’ve spent approximately 70% of my life sick, and most of the time in a way that can’t quite be pinned down. As in “probably auto immune.” At the same time, I’ve been fairly productive in my life, as well (though not always in a monetary sense) in a way that people who were born full term and in ruddy good health haven’t been. Meaning there’s more to a human than being healthy or not, full term or not, unimpaired or not.

Sure, good health and a strong body help, but there is way more to being human than that. And if you start making health the be all end all of what makes a good human, there’s a good chance you’ll end up with a herd of very healthy animals who cannot create or think or do much of anything innovative. Because those who do noteworthy things are so often impaired in other ways that in popular imagination being sickly or outright insane has become a requirement of genius. I think this is because if you are very smart you are almost certainly “neuro-atypical”. I mean intelligence is qualitative not quantitative, and the quality is weirdness, in general. (Bodies as weird as their minds, as Kate Paulk put it about Science fiction fans.) Partly because if you are very smart but your primary value is to fit in with the herd you’ll manage it. It’s what humans do. Change themselves to fit in. We’re infinitely plastic after all.

Then there are those still who fetishise “IQ” or intelligence, in whatever form. The ones who take IQ measurements of peoples where the majority is illiterate or subliterate as being accurate would be funny if they weren’t so horrifying. For the record, if those IQ measurements were real, i.e. meant the same as those applied to children in our own country, most of those countries would be full of corpses within days. Because people that dumb could not live, let alone live well.

There is a difference between IQ — which is relatively accurate for the possibility of academic success, given people who have come through broadly the same type of Western schooling — and intelligence. And that’s not a call to water down the IQ tests in our country (Though, LORD are they doing that, including their talk of multiple “intelligences.”) For what they were designed to do — predicting success in a specific type of educational or work environment — IQ tests perform admirably. They still have some blind spots, like missing the extreme of genius which often tests like the extreme of moron particularly very young (and for the idiots scoffing, no that doesn’t apply to me. I test technically “genius” but not extreme and I’ve never texted extremely low) which gives us the whole idea of idiot savant. But anything trying to measure humans will have blind spots. Which is part of the reason we can use measurements to figure out how best to employ the talent we do have, but it should not be used to advocate for death or other forms of disbarment (“too dumb to teach” say) for any group of people. Or really any individual.

And then there is the eugenics in breeding. Oh, dear bob. You really don’t want to dive down that insanity, but it’s there. Not so long ago people were lamenting that most people coming out of ivy leagues weren’t reproducing, which they were sure meant that the human race would become dumber. At the time I snorted so hard I almost gave myself an aneurysm. To some extent, yeah, sure, there are some people who get into the ivies for merit (fewer and fewer every year, seems like, since it became a DEI swamp) but having attended some mingles on the prospect of their recruiting sons, let me tell you, most of what they were evaluating for is “Are they of our sort dear?” (We weren’t which was so obvious even we knew it.) And it has nothing to do with raw intelligence. Perhaps a sort of “social intelligence” if you allow for the multiple intelligences (snort giggle) theory. But, yeah, no. You don’t take an IQ to test to enter an ivy league school, and if you did it would be so far down the evaluating criteria it might as well not be there.

However, the laments, and the persistent return of the “lives unworthy of living” because they’re sickly, or young, or old, tells you eugenics is still with us.

It’s no longer out and proud, beating its chest and screaming how important it is that we cull the less “fit” members of the population. It hasn’t been that since the Nazis showed the world how ugly and stupid that was in practice, but it’s still there, lurking under “Of course it would be better if.”

It’s still feeding Moloch all the premature or “not quite right” kids in Europe, and all of those who have a dubious (they’re all dubious though some more than other) pre natal diagnosis and get aborted there and here, and all the people who are chronic depressive or have some bizarre auto immune condition, both here and in Europe, or those who are old and whose heirs get a case of desire to inherit.

And it’s no different really than the stuff that went on before WWII, all the “They shouldn’t reproduce” and “they’re just taking resources” and–

In the end, I suspect we’ll never get rid of the eugenics thinking in humans. Thinking of ourselves as better than others is part of being human, and from there to “how dare they go around breathing and everything while being so useless” is a small step. (I’m bitterly amused by the people who try to say it would be better for unwanted children to be aborted. As an unwanted child married to an unwanted child, I want to tell them to shut up, because being wanted and growing up to live decent lives, and even happy ones don’t co-relate. Some of us — looks significantly — mature past the emotional age of two where being unwanted hurts a lot.)

It might be impossible to eradicate. After all eugenics and the idea humans could be bred for perfection is what fed the entire idea of nobility and the sacredness of kingly lines. (And led mostly to the Hapsburg jaw and far far worse.) Blue bloods were considered the best of the best because they came from the best lines, after all. Whatever was thought “best” at the time.

Again, it might be impossible to eradicate the thought and the bits of hating whatever group is considered inferior in mind or body. However, what we should never, ever, ever, do is make it official by giving the government the power to act on it.

While Germany managed to discredit wholesale genetic culling in batch lots and by classification numbers, governments still keep trying to do it.

Partly because we’ve made governments the payees and grantors of such things as health care, which means suddenly the government has an interest in whether your baby is healthy or your 70 year old is still productive.

People, that’s the way to hell, on greased tracks, in a flaming handbasket.

Once government pays for you to stay alive, government can decide when it should unalive you.

The new incarnation of eugenics is relatively new, yet it’s old as time, and it’s already racking up impressive numbers and piling on impressive injustices in Europe and Canada and some even here.

Whether you call it assisted suicide or therapeutic abortion, it is eugenics and I say to hell with it.

You — yes, you, gentle reader — are descended from geniuses and morons and barely smart enough to survive. You’re descended from athletes and cripples, from the strong and the weak. There is a thing in genetics known as regression to the mean meaning that the extremes tend to breed towards the middle, or if you prefer, geniuses or morons, your kids will tend to be middling. There is also a never mentioned, but any of us who grew up in a village with a long memory knows this, fact that any line no matter how moronic, will throw off the occasional genius. And vice versa.

Ultimately we are all human. Humans are very bad at measuring humans. Much less at deciding who should live or die.

Was it Penn Gillette who said something about being against group justice because that always ended up in picking on the weird kid, and he was always the weird kid?

I think most of my readership are the weird kid. I know I was and am. Giving anyone — particularly a governmental body — the right to kill part of the population not only always ends up in massive numbers of dead humans (almost at random, honestly) but always and forever, it ends in the weird kids being killed.

As weird kids, we should fight against it with all our might.

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 DENTON SALLE: Sailing the Clouds of Morning: Avatar Wizard Book 7 (The Avatar Wizard)

The sorcerer shook himself and glared at Jeremy. “You challenge me to a duel, boy?”
He flared his nimbus, so a sphere of greenish-black power surrounded him.
“I’ll drink your life, and your body will be my puppet.”

Once, the volkh ruled the world like gods. Then, the Dark arose and the war shattered the world. The northern Empire finally triumphed and survived at great cost, losing its golden capital and many of its people. The southern empire, Fabled Sheba, fell and lies in ruins to this day. Mighty relics and artifacts remain there, lost in the destruction caused by the last queen’s final spell.

Jeremy and his companions, with Gerasim’s sister Nataliia and the volkva Tanya, must first travel to the ruins of the City, then to Sheba to fulfill the quest laid upon him. In addition to recovering the rod of power, he needs to return the crown of Sheba to Master Eyasu, lest the tensions in the Sheban diaspora erupt into civil war.

Fly with him in the rebuilt Hawk Ship as they travel south to a city ruined by the desperate acts of opening a hellgate. Then cross the Inland Sea with its wonders to an ancient land, destroyed by a desperate spell. A spell so powerful that, while crushing the Dark’s southern hosts, the land remains cursed to this day. Join with them as they risk their lives and very souls in a dead city, and then risk more dangers to find the secrets hidden in the City of Bees.

Meanwhile, unable to go with him, Galena has to cope alone with her mother’s plots to prevent her marriage to Jeremy. Which may mean reaching out to the scariest person she knows. The lily of the volkhvy, the mightiest sorceress in the world, Vasilia Still-heart.

Click now to return to Jeremy’s world and travel with him on the Hawk ship to the ruins of the City and beyond, where heroic deeds and wonders wait.

FROM KAL SPRIGGS: Valor’s Liberation: A Young Adult Military Science Fiction Novel (Children of Valor Book 10)

“The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” -Thomas Jefferson

The world of Century is under alien occupation, and their military forces seek to end it.

For two years they have built up forces, whatever they could beg, borrow, and even steal. And now they’re going home to kick the Culmor Empire right off their world.

No one has worked harder than Jiden Armstrong to make that possible. Only on the eve of the attack, she’s still recovering from injuries, she’s sidelined, and unable to help free her homeworld.

Except the aliens have a doomsday plan and they’re willing to bombard the planet from orbit rather than let it go. There’s one option left: someone has to lead a team to infiltrate the planet, to descend into a million-year-old alien facility, to awaken long dormant defensive systems, and to protect the world of Century.

Jiden is the only one with the right skills, the right knowledge, and the abilities to pull it off. What no one knows is that something awaits her, buried and waiting beneath the sands of Century, a hidden threat that will challenge everything she is, and she will need every bit of valor to liberate her world.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: I’m the Beautiful But Evil Space Princess Who Rules A Galactic Empire But Really Wants To Leave People Ruthlessly Alone: Volume 2 (I’m The Beautiful But … Wants To Leave People Ruthlessly Alone!)

Princess Regnant Alice and her companions, after a trip to Prince Daniel’s world Xeros, and a visit to Lost Terra and a meeting with Michael, the mysterious, ancient human, have been directed by Michael to travel to Mahoukai — a world of magical beings who will be able to properly train and guide Prince Daniel’s sister Alouette in the use of her inborn magical powers.

But a nagging question continues to bug both Alice and her father, Roger; what is really going on, back on Capital? Is a revolution brewing? Is the Lord Chancellor, Rupert, somehow involved, and at what level? Eventually they must bid a reluctant farewell to the Mahoukaian Great Mages of Antiquity, and end Alice’s six month absence from her Throne.

And what they find on Capital is far, far beyond anything they might have imagined from 50,000 light years away.

The second volume of the BBESP light novel!

FROM CLAIRE MERRICK: The Screaming Tree

Being a teenager is hard. Moving from California to a small town in the South is even harder. Cught in a supernatural war?

Hardest.

The Screaming Tree divides the town of Verity, Tennessee, east from west. Its two knothole “Faces” gaze out like ancient lords over the half they claim as their own. As long as the spirits remain content, the town thrives, but everyone fears what might happen if their feud spills beyond the branches.

When 13-year-old Bea Durant and her father move into their new home, they are presented with the Rules for their side of town: Never paint the house anything but green. Hang a wind chime to be warned of foul moves. No matter how loud or sudden, never investigate the Screaming.

Bea never considered herself a rulebreaker. She has better things to do like make new friends and fit in at a new school. But a reckless decision on a stormy night draws the spirit from the opposite side of town to her doorstep. Specifically, into her bedroom. She’s left with no choice but to shelter the injured mage…and hope his mortal enemy doesn’t discover them. To protect her new home, Bea might have to break every Rule that has kept Verity safe for centuries.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Whine in a Box (Liquid Diet Chronicles Book 3)

Maybe chasing murderers wasn’t so bad after all…

Meg Turner, vampire, accountant, and investments advisor…is a political radical. By vampire standards, at least. She’s young, American, and wasn’t inducted into the unlife in the usual way. Which means she’s not a European feudalist. So, when other vampires started asking to move into her territory, she wasn’t sure how to react, other than to welcome some of them. She has a chance to shape an entire territory, if she wants.

(She doesn’t)

Her allies have other plans, though. And, between those plans being sprung on her without much warning, her nearest neighbor coming under attack (and sending his helpless civilians to her for shelter), her mother showing up on her doorstep, looking for answers to why she’d not gotten in contact in the last twenty years…yeah. She’s got a reason to whine.

And that’s not even counting the rising panic over a brand new virus…that shouldn’t affect her people, but will anyway.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Witch’s Daughter (Empires of Magic Book 2)

Some letters come from the living. Some come from the dead. This one comes with a formula that turns a rowboat into a miracle.

Seventeen-year-old Lord Michael Ainsling — youngest brother of the Duke of Darkwater, builder of mechanical marvels, survivor of fairyland — receives a letter from a man sixteen years dead. The inventor Tristram Blakley has not perished; he has been imprisoned by his own genius and begs the one mind in all of Avalon brilliant enough to understand his work to set him free. All Michael has to do is find seven missing brothers first and walk a magical path..

Fifteen-year-old Albinia Blakley has spent her whole life under her mother’s iron thumb — and her mother is a witch. The day Al finally escapes down a rope of knotted sheets, she lands in a world she doesn’t recognize, with no money, no magic kit, and no idea that the stranger who catches her is about to become her greatest ally.

Together, a girl with more secrets than she knows and a boy who builds machines that try to murder him must outwit a sorceress, navigate the treacherous courts of Fairyland, and unravel an enchantment years in the making — before a family is lost for good.

Witch’s Daughter is a gaslamp fantasy brimming with wit, warmth, and wonder, for readers who love their magic wrapped in velvet and their adventures served with morning tea.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Technoserf

The Madrian Empire rules worlds as numerous as the grains of sand on a beach. When the Madrians conquered Roby’s homeworld, they brought him to this godforsaken lump of a world, to toil at their will.

Now the Gate has failed, leaving them without communications or transport to the rest of the Empire. When Roby identifies the problem, he’s offered a chance to fix it.

Roby now faces a quandry. Even if he can repair the damage, should he? Will he be better off reunited with the masters’ metropole? Or will he only complicate a difficult life?

FROM JOHN BAILEY: The Affair of the Ambassador’s Comet (Inspector Matthias Veyron Stories Book 3)

Above Rigel 5, where the ancient Shepherd Comet blazes for the first time in forty years, diplomats from across the sector have gathered to renew humanity’s most important interstellar trade agreement.

Then Ambassador Corvin Halbrecht collapses at the gala reception — and the comet is blamed.

A rare neurotoxin. A convenient suspect. A cover story built from science no one will want to challenge.

Inspector Matthias Veyron arrives to find a station full of diplomats more concerned with political consequence than the truth, a young scientist wrongly accused, and evidence pointing toward a fraud that has corrupted the compact for two decades.

In a world of grand alliances and calculated appearances, murder is almost always about something smaller.

The Affair of the Ambassador’s Comet is a gripping mystery of science, diplomacy, and quiet ambition — perfect for readers who enjoy Agatha Christie-style detection, atmospheric science fiction, and mysteries with genuine intellectual substance.

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: IDEA