According To Hoyt

By Holly the Assistant

(So today is the last day of the Annual ATH fundraiser, by the way.)

I know you all like cute critters, and we had one stop by earlier this week.

A bit of background: many, many years ago this house was built by some very weird people, and many years ago it was remodeled by some even weirder people. We do not have, nor do we need, air conditioning, and a fair part of the house will stay survivable even without heat in the winter. Most of our neighbors are not so fortunate and have more conventional homes. One result of this weirdness is that we are committed to daily opening and closing of the ventilation during the hot season. And I do mean committed: missing the moment by as little as five minutes means we gain a degree or two of extra daytime heat. And the windows mostly no longer work by crank, but must be opened by pushing out and closed by pulling in.

So, at approximately seven-twenty am, as the sun came over the ridge, on Tuesday morning, with less than the preferred amount of coffee in my system, I pulled the screens off our bedroom windows, pulled the windows shut, and put the screens back up. As I put the last screen back up, I noticed something in the corner that did not belong there. On the outside of the screen, mind you, but it did NOT belong there, and that screen had just been sitting on my bedroom floor while I fussed with the window!

Now, bats are all very well and fine, I loathe mosquitoes, but bats belong in the cracks and crevices and tunnels in the rocks on the mountain behind the house, across the creek. They do NOT belong in my bedroom window!

The bat hung out there for a while, as the day got hotter, and I kept the cats and dogs shut out of the room because the last thing I need is a bat loose in the house and a torn up screen. By and by, though, when we checked on him, we found he’d relocated to the bottom of the window screen.

Yes, I need to clean the window. But that’s probably the best detail photo of the little guy we got. Because understandably, we weren’t getting close. There has been a rabid bat in our county already in 2026, my husband went through treatment for a rabid dog bite as a child, and we do not mess with this risk. As a household, we may be slightly more paranoid than average about rabies.

At this point, my husband carefully pried the window open and the little guy crawled out, and ascended the wall.

He crawled around the wall for a while, then flew off. In the middle of the afternoon. I wish him well and hope he eats many, many bugs, and does not return to my house again, but sleeps in the rocks where he should be.

We think he’s a Little Brown Bat, based on size and ears and range of species, and we’re glad to have him and his kin around. Just . . . please not quite so close!

It amuses me which friends and relatives freaked out about rabies and which did not, which fell in love with the bat via photos, and how many did not mention white nose syndrome (no one, but it was the second thing that occurred to me in finding a bat where one ought not be).

I hope you enjoyed seeing our surprise guest!

Thank you all very much for your support of According To Hoyt, and for being a pretty awesome community of commenters. We love having you here. This is your last day of being bugged to support the blog this year, mostly because I pointed out to Sarah that this is a five Friday month and asked her to keep the fundraiser going until the third Friday for those biweekly folks who will get three paychecks. She grumbled, yes, but she hates having to ask in the first place for money.

There is a Give Send Go fundraiser for this specific fundraiser set up. Here is a Paypal Me Link if you prefer that. (Yes, I know. Paypal, but for now, they’re behaving.) If you have a monthly donation setup to the permanent Give Send Go, that is still working and thank you! There are also two substacks you can subscribe to. One is on the side bar of the blog, the other is supposed to be a newsletter, as well as giving you chapters of the current work in progress if you become a paid subscriber. It takes cards. For snail mail: Sarah Hoyt 304 S Jones Blvd #6771 Las Vegas, NV 89107

And if you want to read the whole appeal, it’s here: Toss A Coin To Your Blogger, Oh Readers

Sorry for the long interregnum. The songs were written and in a couple of them actually created as songs, but I was too ill/out of it/busy to actually go upstairs and assemble the videos.

Now I’m only — ONLY — suffering from a massive auto-immune freakout and trying to coordinate a house move sometime in the next month (precise date depending on other things than our volition) so I can resume these.

I only have three songs, and there will be two next week.

Any of my past books — other than Dyce, I’m not that insane — you guys want me to make a sound track for. Because those two next week should finish out the sound track for NML. And I’m sorry I’m going to miss the year with Orphans (probably by six months) because of the very strange health things. HOPEFULLY it will be better from here on, yes?

Anyway, without further ado, these are the newest Sarah and the Clankers songs:

And in reverse order, back from here:

The week in Sarah And The Clankers!

The Week In Clankers

The Clankers did Sing

AND NOW: It’s the second to last blog funding day!

I completely forgot to append it to the post this morning, because I was functioning that well. Anyway, here goes:

If you get something of value from this blog, and are aware of how much work goes on behind the scenes to keep it up and posting and wish to donate:
There is a Give Send Go fundraiser for this specific fundraiser set up. Here is a Paypal Me Link if you prefer that. (Yes, I know. Paypal, but for now, they’re behaving.) If you have a monthly donation setup to the permanent Give Send Go, that is still working and thank you! There are also two substacks you can subscribe to. One is on the side bar of the blog, the other is supposed to be a newsletter, as well as giving you chapters of the current work in progress if you become a paid subscriber. It takes cards. For snail mail: Sarah Hoyt 304 S Jones Blvd #6771 Las Vegas, NV 89107

And if you want to read the whole appeal, it’s here: Toss A Coin To Your Blogger, Oh Readers

And thank you to everyone who has donated, etc. Each and every one of you is appreciated and I’m more grateful than I can say.

Yes, the results were a little thin this year, (though not as thin as it looks, since a lot of you can’t donate to the official site, and two of you unearthed the OLD paypal to donate to. Eh. It still got here.) which I’m taking as an indication that I need to write more fiction. We’ll keep this blog going, but my assistant will take a couple of days a week, so I can get more fiction written. At least for now while I recover from being ill and energy is in short supply. But the blog will be here, and nothing is going to happen to it. And I enjoy (and worry over) every single one of you.

The left is all up in their own heads about culture, partly because they have no idea what culture means. But they’re sure they love it.

Mostly, of course, they confuse culture for race. This is why they insist school kids do essays about their “culture” by which they mean the kids’ ancestry, as though culture were passed on in the DNA. Oh, sure, families have cultures. Sort of. To be absolutely honest since the advent of mass media, public schooling and, particularly, two working parents that is a lot less important/prevalent than it used to be. In fact, unless the parents make a great deal of effort to pass on SOMETHING, the kids mostly absorb the zeitgeist. (Remember to fight for your kids. It’s important.)

But what they want on that essay is stuff like where your ancestors came from. And let’s be honest, after three to four generations, no one cares, except for the special dish grandma does for Christmas, (if an as yet hypothetical and possibly improbable grand-kid revives the Portuguese tradition of bacalhau for Christmas, my sons will lame them.) But the left doesn’t know. The left thinks culture is the same as race.

Language? Religion? All indelibly written in your chromosomes, which must be the left’s excuse for having absolutely no idea how to teach (or learn) foreign languages, and also for screaming at us when we say something about Islam, and calling us “racist.”

It is a complete puzzle how they can believe this since if culture were imprinted on our genes we’d be roaming the planet hunting and gathering. (If that.)

Their second definition of “culture” is food, clothing, dances and maybe a dozen words. “I enjoy other cultures” culture. “Don’t appropriate my culture” culture. “We had multicultural day at school” culture. It is under that definition that they’re convinced all cultures are equally valid. Because well, you might not like crispy octopus balls, but you really shouldn’t tell people they can’t eat crispy octopus balls.

Then there’s the idea of culture they imbibed in kindergarten and nursed all along with the praise of their teachers and professors, their friends, their “cool” group. The “culture” is colorful, preferably dirty and random stuff done by anyone and everyone who kind of walks by.

Culture is not, in point of fact, in their heads any great achievement. But it is super-important anyway. It’s…. well, it’s “cultural”. It’s like their idea of art froze at the level of kindergarten finger painting. But for it to be authentic and important, it must be stupid, covered in dirt and generally worthless. Like…. a public fixture covered in random stickers and graffiti.

In fact, this is why they’re convinced “white people don’t have culture” and the west doesn’t have culture, and the middle class doesn’t have culture and–

Sorry, guys, you don’t have enough ground-in dirt. And you’re not vandalizing public objects. So, you’re obviously and logically uncultured.

Of course, in that sense of culture, of worthy cultural objects, we have that definition also. It’s just I refuse to admit that their having two different definitions of culture makes any sense just because culture means two things for us too? When they think graffiti and dirt is good culture but pulp science fiction isn’t? Bah. They’re idiots anyway.

So, “culture” in the sense of “good cultural product”… of things wroth preserving, I can’t tell you what that is. i can’t tell you because your opinion is ultimately something different from mine (at least minutely.) And in fact the only thing I think should be considered “important” or “culture” are things that have survived the test of time and outlived their original culture. And still speaks to you.

But aside from that, what is culture? Culture is the software humans get installed in their heads. It supplies for us a lot of the things animals get from instincts. Things like how to communicate, how to act in certain circumstances. That type of thing.

Yes, language is part of culture and the assumptions in any given language are part of culture. For instance, if you language lacks a word for orange, you will not even see orange. you will see dark yellow or yellowish red, or whatever. But it’s deeper than that. Body language is part of culture. Your food preferences is culture. And yes, what you believe about your property or other’s property, your right to defend yourself, the rights of others, all of that is culture.

Which is why changing cultures is so difficult. Acculturation requires you to be aware of all the little things that make you and of what is out of tune with the new culture.

Oh, of course some acculturation happens naturally. Humans adapt to the environment they’re in. For me the five year mark was really important. When we visited after five years, I found myself fitting in less there than here. But ti think you end up stuck betwixt and between when leaving your birth culture, unless you make a conscious effort.

But you can most definitely change cultures. And if you come into another country and intend to live there the rest of your life, a decent respect for the people in whose home you wish to live requires you out of pure decency to try to speak the language and fit in as much as it’s possible to fit in. (About 90% and the 10% could be vagaries of your nervous system as well as anything else.) Because it’s possible. Because it’s not built in to your genes. Because you’re human and have will power and the ability to choose. You’re not a robot or an animal with everything encoded in your genes. (And even some animals — Indy! — I’m not sure about.)

And as for high culture. Well, you create what you can. You’ll never have enough ground-in dirt for the left. And that’s fine by me. Life produces enough dirt and random without any special meaning. We don’t need to contribute to the dirt and the random.

If you chose to contribute to the cultural discourse? Make it special. Make it intentional. Make it you.

Why bother otherwise?

Humans are social great apes. That means at a very deep level in our architecture is the certainty that if we offend the group at large, we’re going to get chased away from the band and die in the wilderness.

Mind you the ability to stand apart from the group and say “This far and no further” or even “no, you’re all wrong and I’m right” vary greatly from individual to individual. Some have a lot, some have very little. But in the end all of us, to some extent, flinch at the idea of being at odds with the majority of our group/society.

This has been the weapon used by the left (and the psy-ops troops of the USSR for the longest time. BIRM) to force their corrupt rot into every nook and cranie of society, corrupting schooling, art, even religion with their Marxist anti-reality pap.

When people marvel at the fact that the west is quite literally choosing to commit suicide by surrendering to some of the least functional societies in the world, and surrendering to its own criminals, and paying to appease the non-productive and outright destructive members of their societies?

They shouldn’t marvel. People are not choosing that. They are choosing not to speak out against what they think is the overwhelming consensus of their society, repeated at them through schooling, information channels, even art. Each individually is afraid of getting cast out of the band if they don’t go along with what is objectively social suicide.

This also tells you how and where it’s failing. It’s failing here — largely here — because we know the consensus is not overwhelming and in fact we have reason — seriously guys, no one fights against clean elections, unless the fraud is favoring them. And for a whole, supposedly major party to do it? It’s saying the quiet part out loud — to believe the stuff pushed out of official media and the mass industrial information/art/opinion complex is a very minority ideology. Here, where social media and blogs — blogs! — that talk of books and public affairs have been a force in the land for a good 25 years, we have found places to meet, places to realize we’re not alone.

Why hasn’t it happened in the rest of the world? I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I swear it only took off in the US because of 9/11. Faced with a trauma we had to process, we hit the blogs. Blogs that were about music, or culture or whatever became about politics overnight. And the most successful ones and most of them were from a perspective that ran contrarian to the leftist establishment. Perhaps it took Rush Limbaugh’s seed, planted with his AM radio program, too. Perhaps that had already given people an inkling of not being alone, perhaps it had seeded a bit of courage. In that sense perhaps all of us who hit the blogs (for me for many years only as a commenter, under a false identity because baby needed shoes and trad pub was the only game in town) were children of Rush’s, fanning out into the world. And now of course there is twitter. The rest of the world uses it, to the extent they can, of course, but it’s not quite the same as the hurley burley of American twitter with the limits mostly removed since Elon bought it.

The other side is fighting, because they know that their only weapon, their only strength is the ILLUSION of unity and consensus, against whom most people cannot stand. If that illusion is shattered for good and all, and it’s been getting chipped more and more every year, they have nothing.

The other side is fighting very successfully — it will be successful for a while. But such tactics don’t endure forever — to silence all alternative media in other countries. They tried it here, too, but thank heavens even under the Auto Pen it never took. There are too many of us — a rabble in blogs — for them to silence every one, no matter how hard they tried. And ooh, boy, did they try hard. We also have have the first amendment, our foundational belief in everyone’s right to speak out which also stands as the law of the land, and makes cute ideas like the attempted ministry of truth die aborning. (So may it ever be.)

It’s probably the best time ever to be a dissenter, an Odd, someone who sticks out.

Is it a great time? See the beginning of this post: Sticking out is never easy, not even now. The other side scores some amazing psy-ops victories every now and then, and it seems to be my fate to stand in front of the rushing crowd going “that thing behind you is a man wearing a bear costume. It’s not real.”

The one you all shared with me — okay almost all. But the rest of you came back after a while — was the covidiocy. Most of you, at least after a while went “Wait the heck up” and most of you, those who could at all without losing jobs, stood up and shouted “that’s not real.” I’m very proud to be in your company, all of you.

And I think that’s when the last of my fear of standing out died. Because it was so obviously a psy-ops. So obviously a massive lie.

You have to understand, I started out, when I started this blog and was still deep in the political closet, so conflict avoidant, so afraid of being thrown out of the ape band, that when I said something slightly out of turn I worried for a month over it.

But I had to come out of the political closet. I felt as though I was selling my soul and not even for very much. Just continued publication. And — if we’re going to talk about my pre-Baen career — publication that was a compromise between what I’d like to do and what I was allowed to. Honestly, it felt like I couldn’t be myself even inside my own head.

And so, even I — coward though I was — was forced out of hiding, step by step, bit by bit. And found out that though the walls did fall on my head, it didn’t kill me. So I took another step.

And then Covid broke me. When my mother asked “How can you be so sure you’re right, when everyone else says you’re wrong.” I told her the truth “Because the numbers say I’m right. Because what the people in power are doing makes no sense if this were a real pandemic. There would be people dead in every street corner. Because the facts are on my side.”

Which leads us to where we are today.

I do know that many of you can’t come out of the political closet. Many of you can’t speak out. You’d lose jobs, or families, or whatever little piece of reality you’ve carved out as a niche for yourselves.

I’m not telling you to. I stayed quiet as long as as I could.

But if you’re not held back by such considerations, if it’s just fear of standing out; just fear of disagreeing… Consider the courage to simply be. To simply say what you observe and believe.

It will be very scary at first. Yes, there will be some (Ah!) negative consequences. But you don’t actually get kicked out of the band and into the outer darkness to die.

You just find another band. And you sleep better at night. And recognize the person in the mirror in the morning.

It’s not much, but ask yourself: what kind of movement makes it impossible for people to simply be? To simply speak frankly of what they know and see?

The power is not on our opponents’ side. The only power they have to keep you silent. To make you feel alone.

And that power is waning by the day.

You are not alone. Chances are you’re a part of a vast majority.

Be not afraid. Find the courage to be who you are, to know what you know. Even if you can’t speak out, don’t be afraid to think.

In the end we win, they lose.

DAY 15 of this blog’s annual fundraiser!

Go ahead, go batty…

If you wish to donate: There is a Give Send Go fundraiser for this specific fundraiser set up. Here is a Paypal Me Link if you prefer that. (Yes, I know. Paypal, but for now, they’re behaving.) If you have a monthly donation setup to the permanent Give Send Go, that is still working and thank you! There are also two substacks you can subscribe to. One is on the side bar of the blog, the other is supposed to be a newsletter, as well as giving you chapters of the current work in progress if you become a paid subscriber. It takes cards. For snail mail: Sarah Hoyt 304 S Jones Blvd #6771 Las Vegas, NV 89107

And if you want to read the whole appeal, it’s here: Toss A Coin To Your Blogger, Oh Readers of Plenty.

The preliminary look-see saw nothing. It’s all gone tot he pathologist now and will be a couple of days.

Best guess by specialist at this point is a recurring infection. But he wants me back on the regular to keep an eye on.

So, the door creaked open, then closed again, and the path is what it always was. Thank you to everyone who prayed or even wished me well.

I will write tomorrow. I’m (unaccountably?) wiped out today.

By Holly the Assistant

Or at least I will throw up a recent picture of lovely Circe for you. Look at those toe beans! Are they not the most amazing toe beans?

It’s occasionally hard to believe that this chill kitty is the full sister of the vibrating Quicksilver, but there we go.

How are cats?

Sarah will likely have an update on the State of the Sarah, or a rant about current events, tomorrow, but today she’s a bit swamped.

Hope y’all are staying cool enough this summer, or warm enough this winter, wherever you may be.

And the fundraising blurb, and yes, you lovely weirdos, Sarah does indeed see that you mailed unmarked quarters or put it in a different donation bin or whatever you in fact did do, thank you very much. Circe would say thank you, too, but she’s snoozing.

If you wish to donate: There is a Give Send Go fundraiser for this specific fundraiser set up. Here is a Paypal Me Link if you prefer that. (Yes, I know. Paypal, but for now, they’re behaving.) If you have a monthly donation setup to the permanent Give Send Go, that is still working and thank you! There are also two substacks you can subscribe to. One is on the side bar of the blog, the other is supposed to be a newsletter, as well as giving you chapters of the current work in progress if you become a paid subscriber. It takes cards. For snail mail: Sarah Hoyt 304 S Jones Blvd #6771 Las Vegas, NV 89107

And if you want to read the whole appeal, it’s here: Toss A Coin To Your Blogger, Oh Readers of Plenty.

There are hinge moments in life. Things happen and after that life is never ever the same.

Some of those we are deeply conscious of: weddings, funerals, the birth of a child. There is a moment of sundering realization when you realize not only have you become someone else, and your preoccupations in life will now be quite different, but you’re also aware that there’s no going back.

Weirdly I’m really bad at those. At realizing such things, I mean. The only one I was absolutely sure of was when I held first son, then just less than a day old. I was startlingly, suddenly, aware that this creature would command my attention and was damn well entitled to my protection and undivided loyalty for the next eighteen years. (Yes, it’s cute that I thought it would be 18 years, and not that for the rest of my life the better part of my heart would be running around in someone else’s chest. The illusions of youth, I guess.)

Other than that, I have an habit of traipsing unawares past the point of no return, and leaving a pleasant or at least not unendurable way of life behind without ever realizing it. Even stuff like marrying overseas, I think rationally I knew would change everything, but I truly had no clue it would change me, or that changing me would be necessary to acculturate to my own home, or that the old adage of never going home again applied. And sure, I had many issues with the country itself — not as many as I have now, because now I see it from outside — and its unavigable bureaucracy was 99 of them. But of course I also have family there, and I didn’t realize how many of them I was seeing for the last time on my wedding day, because they died between that and the next visit when I was supposed to meet them, or moved away themselves and our paths never crossed again.

Would I have done it differently, if that had happened? Well, I wouldn’t. But I’d be more aware of the price I was paying and that sometimes five years or more go by between visits, and in that space I lose people like grandma without ever a chance to say goodbye. I’d have taken exactly the same step, of course, and maybe not knowing the price is better, because you don’t linger in pain at a moment of joy. Other such moments: when we moved away from Charlotte. I wasn’t even sure we’d like Colorado, much less that we’d only return (so far at least) to see our local friends once and that 20 years later for a few hours. And that some would have died, or moved away.) And now, of course, the move from Colorado. It is entirely possible I’ve gone to Pete’s Kitchen, on Colfax, for the last time in my life. I don’t know. We keep meaning to visit, but this summer has proved unexpectedly fraught, and I promised to visit my father in the fall. Also my brother isn’t doing well.

There are other hinges you don’t even know are occurring or are in your future. Like, your car of 30 years throws a fit on the highway, and suddenly the engine (and therefore the car) is scrap, and a fixture of your life is gone. Or your kid brings home his childhood friend who is now something more. (I love the Little Pickle, and the change is for the better, but ooh, boy, is it a change.) Or, though it’s not happened to me — knocks on head — there’s some sort of accident or incident and afterwards things are never, ever the same.

Then there are the hinges of fate you sleep walk through. But maybe that’s just me? To this day, and it’s been 33 years, I can’t tell you how or why I thought I could be published and middling successful and this would not affect my day to day life. I never expected stupid things like the neighbors knowing what I did for a living without my telling them (much less their crazy assumptions about writers. Castle has a lot to answer for) or the washer repairman spazzing when he saw my name and I confirmed I was indeed THAT Sarah A. Hoyt, or– a dozen such incidents. I’ve in fact taken to avoiding the neighbors all together and letting Dan be the social director, because he can tapdance more skillfully than I can.

The blog…. the blog was a total different ball of wax, since it started out being just a writing promo thing (I’m nto good at that, you might have noticed.) But the only way I could remain engaged enough to write everyday was to talk about things that matter to me: politics, culture, social issues, and odd stuff like this. And all of that made me far more of a public persona (even as small as this blog is) than I ever intended to be. It comes with some good and a lot of bad, as people not only make assumptions, but people who are, of necessity or temperament, in the political closet tend to avoid me or worse.

It is what it is. The hinge was always there, and I was always bound to open it, I think. And as with me living my natal clump of dirt behind, I’d have done the same, exactly the same way, it I’d known. Only it would have made the whole thing more unpleasant knowing what I was sacrificing.

I suppose there are also false hinges: things you think will change your life forever and then don’t. I don’t think I’ve experienced any of those. Or if I did I no longer remember them. It occurs to me something like winning the lottery might be one of those. I mean, yes, Dan would probably retire, but I doubt much of anything else would change. Oh, yeah, I probably wouldn’t do fundraisers, since those are psychologically difficult. Other than that? I’d write. And Dan would work (Okay, he’d work at things he likes more, but….) We’d visit the kids and their spouses when we have time. And…. that’s about it. Maybe I’d pay my much abused assistant a little more. That’s about it. Not a hinge, though it looks like one from here.

So what is this all about? Well…. I have a couple of tests — one that promises to be distinctly unpleasant — scheduled for tomorrow. Weirdly, the mildest diagnosis possible will result in immediate surgery. But that surgery should fix the problem once and for all. And other than a couple of days to recover, it’s not a hinge.

The second mildest diagnosis is also “We don’t know.” In which case it’s also not a hinge and I stay on fairly high dose maintenance anti-biotics which I seem to be tolerating well enough.

Anything else…. Well…. there’s a panoply of horrors there, and a vista of a future where my life is consumed by health issues (or ended by them, of course, one must say though not pleasant to contemplate.)

Is that likely? Eh. Right now they have absolutely no idea what’s going on, so not only is anything possible, but it’s hard to hazard a guess.

This disturbs me because I’m in the middle of a dozen things and very busy. (Whether I’m very busy to distract from this test which I knew was in my future, I’ll leave as an exercise for the reader.) I am, of course, running my fundraiser (and a more lackadaisacal one I can hardly imagine), and I’m refinishing our bedside tables. Look, we bought them when the kids were little, and they’re pressboard. We were, you see, going to buy good ones in a few years, but there were always other needs. And those d*mn things bubble up if you spill water on them, which given they’re bedside tables is kind of inevitable. We were going to replace them ten years ago, but have you seen the price of bedside tables? So…. So I’m doing what I do to pressboard crappy furniture. What? No, not setting them on fire. There is a perversity in me that means I must make them as fancy as humanly possible. So I’m marbelizing the tops (the epoxy finish at least will ensure that water spills are no longer a problem.) REALISTICALLY marbelizing. Cream/brown marble. And then painting the body of the thing to look like more convincing wood than the wretched paper veneer ever did. (Incidentally I didn’t realize how much I missed refinishing. I haven’t done it at all for almost 20 years.) And because insanity is a thing, I’m also creating a headboard to go with it. Do you want to know? No you don’t. The Little Pickle and Dan are divided on whether to be impressed of have me committed.

I’m also in the middle of Orphans of the Stars (I REALLY need a better title.) and almost done with Rhodes to Hell, and have another half dozen books waiting to be finished. Oh, and we’re moving in a month or so, though Dan is trying to contract as much of it out as possible to keep me writing. (Look, chilluns, it’s a family thing. The kids required us to move, so a move is happening. Oh, it will hopefully also contribute to a better, or at least easier time after. And a better lifestyle to keep our aging bodies in shape. BUT until it’s done, it’s mostly a time and funds sink.)

If the diagnosis is bad, all of those threads will be cut, middair. I might — in fact probably will — do them/continue with them, but everything will be slow and stupid, and hard to finish. And I’ll have trouble remembering why painting the headboard was so much fun, after all. And then things will change. Though finishing the books, particularly the Elly ones will be the highest priority, since I’m convinced if I die with them locked in my head, I’ll end up IN THEM. And I don’t want to be an Ellyan. They’re more complex and bizarre than we are.

Yesterday I told Dan I’d much rather not do the tests. Because he knows me very well, he said in complete calm seriousness, “Fine. Then call them and cancel.”

And part of me very much wants to do that. Even if it’s the worst, if I don’t know I can go on for quite a long while before it brings me to ground, and wouldn’t it be better not to know.

But of course I can’t. If I know even if it’s the worst, there’s a chance it can be stopped in its tracks, in which case I owe doing so to Dan, who really doesn’t want to be left alone, to my kids, who now and then still need me, to the pickles ditto, and even to my dad, who would stand a good chance to lose both children before his number is up.

So, no, I won’t cancel. The door will swing open. The hinge will creak ominously.

Is it a real hinge? Will I walk through the door and be changed forever? I don’t know. No one does. Maybe it’s nothing, and two days of discomfort, and the door will swing closed again and life will go on as usual. (Do I put purple on the headboard grapes? Seems needed, but just a touch, over the blue and the black.)

Or perhaps nothing will ever be the same.

The hinge is creaking, the door is opening, and there is not much I can gain by worrying about it. I’ll just try to meet what’s on the other side with a minimum of fuss, and get as much done as I may.

On the other side.

According to Hoyt 2026 Fundraiser, Day 13

(I will keep this up through day 17, because people have asked due to pay schedules.)

If you wish to donate: There is a Give Send Go fundraiser for this specific fundraiser set up. Here is a Paypal Me Link if you prefer that. (Yes, I know. Paypal, but for now, they’re behaving.) If you have a monthly donation setup to the permanent Give Send Go, that is still working and thank you! There are also two substacks you can subscribe to. One is on the side bar of the blog, the other is supposed to be a newsletter, as well as giving you chapters of the current work in progress if you become a paid subscriber. It takes cards. For snail mail: Sarah Hoyt 304 S Jones Blvd #6771 Las Vegas, NV 89107

And if you want to read the whole appeal, it’s here: Toss A Coin To Your Blogger, Oh Readers of Plenty.

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 MARY HARE: Hearth and Helm: Voices from the Epics

For over two years, the Meaningful Differences substack responded to the inspiration of Homer’s *Iliad* and *Odyssey* and Virgil’s *Aeneid* with stories, poems and essays. This collection comes from that work. From the hearth’s precious warmth to the helm’s unyielding call, heroes and ordinary men and women endure the timeless struggles of duty, loss, leadership, and survival.

**The Aeneid section: ** Aeneas turns back to the flames of burning Troy, searching desperately for Creusa after losing her on the way to the rendezvous. Dido succumbs to cursed love and bitter abandonment, missing Aeneas’s unspoken answer. A skilled slave mother struggles to stay with her nursing twins after frightened women burn some of their ships. And a father shares hard-won wisdom with his son, before leaving him to return to the field: “Learn virtue and true toil from me-fortune from others.”

**The Iliad section: ** When Agamemnon appropriates Briseis, the wrath of Achilles spreads devastation through ordinary lives. A soldier and his once-captive wife confront their own painful echoes of the spoils of war. Hector removes his helmet to bid farewell to Andromache and their infant son as a father, then dons it again for battle. Ordinary sons of herdsmen and shepherds fall in the brutal grind of combat. In the end, Achilles reminds us: Die Must We All.

**The Odyssey section: ** Odysseus’s crew perishes on the wine-dark sea, caught between starvation and divine wrath. The suitors discover too late the cost of arrogance, while the land mourns one of them who tried to do right. Telemachus arms beside his father with sword and spear as they reclaim their house. Penelope tests the beggar’s identity with wary hope: Is It Really Him? A man is nothing without the gods-or the family waiting at the end of the long road.

Blending mythic grandeur with unflinching portrayals of combat, leadership, sacrifice, resilience, and homecoming, these stories-drawn from Substack favorites-illumine the hearts of warriors, their families, and the unsung souls caught in epic events. For military readers, historians, and anyone who loves the *Iliad*, *Odyssey*, and *Aeneid*, *Hearth and Helm* responds with fiction, poetry and essays that honor both the glory of the fight and its profound human toll.

FROM DALE COZORT: Growlers: A Snapshot Novella

In the strange universe of the Snapshots, the CIA runs black ops through the unlikeliest of fronts: a struggling dimension-hopping zoo. When the circus arrives in a crumbling British colony town on an ancient, isolated version of South America, they set up shop in an abandoned elementary school for what should be a simple mission. But nothing stays simple when Nazi-tinged spies from a rival Germany start circling—and the enigmatic Growlers begin to stir. Part spy thriller, part dimension-hopping adventure, Growlers is a fast-paced snapshot novella where the fate of worlds may ride on a few misfit animals… and the reluctant keepers who guard them.

FROM CHRIS THORNDYCROFT: The Fae Wars: Red Dragon Rising: Albion Book 1

As dragons stalk the mountains of Wales and rebel cells with machine guns and explosives wage a desperate war against elven mages and their spell fire, an ancient prophecy is awakening. The final battle for Britain is about to begin.

On a remote island off the coast of Britain, a hidden magical order guards a secret that could change everything. A hero long dead is about to return, awakened to face his ancient, most deadly foe. Once and Future King, promised in Britain’s time of greatest need.

Two years before, portals opened around the Earth, spilling forth an armada of elves, orcs, and ancient creatures from myth. Within weeks, humanity had fallen. Nations collapsed. The survivors were forced into slavery beneath the rule of the Fae or carried on the war from the shadows.

Carys Reed, a schoolteacher-turned-resistance fighter, never believed the stories of King Arthur. She has spent years battling the Fae occupation, not chasing legends. But when she is tasked with helping Britain’s greatest hero recover his legendary sword, she discovers that the old myths were true … and that she’s about to be part of a new one.

The fate of humanity hangs on Arthur’s success, yet the Fae know the danger he represents. The Imperium’s dreaded Security Bureau has dispatched its most ruthless agents, and they will stop at nothing to ensure Arthur and Excalibur are never reunited.

Red Dragon Rising is the explosive first novel in a thrilling new series set in the bestselling Fae Wars universe—where myth and modern warfare collide, and the return of a legend may be humanity’s last hope.

EDITED BY LUCY HARRELSON: Roots & Rivers: A Collection of Myth and Folklore

Beneath ancient trees, beside blackened hearths, and deep within forgotten waters, the old stories still whisper.

In Roots & Rivers: A Collection of Myth and Folklore, legends rise anew through a breathtaking tapestry of voices and traditions from around the world. From haunting retellings of Greek mythology to eerie encounters with cryptids hidden in shadowed forests, to the dangerous bargains of jinn, these tales blur the line between the sacred, the monstrous, and the deeply human.

Across continents and centuries, gods walk among mortals, spirits linger at the edge of firelight, and ancient creatures refuse to be forgotten. Some stories are dark. Some are wondrous. All are rooted in the timeless power of myth and the enduring currents of folklore that connect us across cultures.

Step into the water. Follow the roots. Listen closely.

The stories are waiting.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Law of Magical Contagion

The capper to Siobhan Miller’s terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day was a dog, tied to the stop sign. She hates dogs. She’s terrified of dogs, and that was a big dog. Looking sad and lonely, tied to a stop sign. That was not okay. She was the only one around, so she took him home. Only to find that he wasn’t a dog, but one of the Good People, under a curse. And there were more of them.

And they were all after her. And all she had was the dog (who wasn’t a dog) to help keep her from being taken away from all she’s ever known. Because that dog? He and his twin sister are family that she didn’t know she had, and their appearance has upended everything she’s ever known about herself. Including that she was human to begin with. She has a lot of questions.

Starting with curses, and how and why they sometimes spread.

FROM CAROLINE FURLONG: Theophany

Ten years ago the Savients took over Niban, forcing the independent inhabitants into poverty and despair. Bass White saw the careless cruelty of the Savients kill his mother and his father. When a resistance cell is discovered in his city bloc, the Savients seek to make everyone pay.

With his wife Amie, Bass races into the caverns to escape the Savients’ brutal enforcers: the Atrasai. The couple barely make it to the limits of known territory outside their underground city, however, before the Atrasai catch up with them. It would take a miracle to save them…

…or a combat medic robot.

Join Bass and Amie in this sci-fi story of healing, hope, and wonder. After a decade of fear and pain, even a little light can bring out the best in man and machine. But will the best be enough to heal?

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: The Reason (Timelines Universe Book 1)

January 1993. Somalia. Operation Restore Hope. A Marine platoon pulling a security patrol runs into an insurgent ambush in Mogadishu, and when the platoon commander winds up unconscious from a blow to the head taken when an IED rolls his command Humvee, and the First Sergeant is killed as soon as he exits his vehicle, command falls to a badly wounded gunnery sergeant — initially trapped in the same vehicle with his platoon commander and their driver, but conscious and alert and ready to bring some personal hell down on the RIFs…if he can just get out of this damn vehicle, grab a rifle, and drag himself and his busted-up, non-working leg over to a firing point without bleeding out.

June 1993. Washington, DC. A First Lieutenant with a freshly-healed scar on his head encounters a beautiful redheaded floor nurse at Bethesda Naval Hospital. He’s there to see his Gunny, who’s been stuck in the hospital with a broken femur since he was transported home in February. He’s the platoon commander who was knocked hors de combat by the IED, and he’s been sent to find out why his Gunny is obstinately refusing to accept an important decoration for his participation in the incident.

Turns out that’s going to be quite a job, because Gunny’s got his reason. Will the Lieutenant, and his ally the nurse, be able to convince his Gunny there’s a better reason to accept the decoration?

Might be they’ll need a little help from a friend…

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Other Side of Midnight

Life has been a nightmare for Mitya ever since he was arrested on trumped-up charges and exiled to Siberia. But this labor camp in the far north of Magadan Oblast hides a secret far more terrible than the merely human evils of the Great Terror. For the universe we know is not the only one, and there are places where it interpenetrates with universes where the laws of nature as we know them do not operate, where humanity has no place. Worlds inhabited by beings ancient and terrible, to whom humanity are slaves, playthings, food.

FROM PATRICK K. MARTIN: The Armies of Midnight: Censored

Lord Shyam has come to Ravan with his army at his heels. It is to be his final step in his war against The Enchantress, the woman who destroyed the world and him. Ravan’s queen Eilína Irinadottir, is now trapped in the cage of the dread lord’s revenge. Can she keep herself and her people alive or will they be just more casualties on Lord Shyam’s road of war?

FROM JOHN BAILEY: The Eyes in the Mist (Science Fiction Singles)

In the Swiss Alps, a patch of fog is moving against the wind.

When climbers Thomas Keller and Rudolf Faber descend from the Schneehorn glacier, they witness something that defies the laws of meteorology — a dense, deliberate mass of mist that climbs uphill, carries lights in its interior, and leaves one man changed in ways no doctor can explain. The survivor cannot remember what he saw. The other man does not return.

Journalist Helen Grant arrives in the mountain village of Brunnfeld to cover what local authorities are calling an accident. What she finds is a pattern: missing persons, unexplained behaviour, a blind man who describes things he has no way of knowing, and a radio observatory at nine thousand feet that has been recording signals from the glacier for six weeks — signals that appear to carry structure, repetition, and intent.

As the investigation deepens, a team assembles around the mystery: a British intelligence operative, a Swiss neurologist, an atmospheric physicist, and Helen herself, whose drive to find the truth will eventually lead her into the mist. What waits inside is not what any of them imagined. It is older than the Alps. It has been watching humanity for three centuries. And it has been trying, in the only way it knows, to give something back.

The Eyes in the Mist is a slow-burn Alpine mystery at the intersection of cosmic horror and first contact — a story about the things that look at us from the dark, and what it means when their gaze turns out to be, against all expectation, a kind one.

For readers of John Wyndham, Arthur Machen, and Alistair MacLean.

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

Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.On
a lost colony world, mad geneticists thought they could eliminate
inequality by making everyone hermaphrodite. They were wrong.
Catastrophically wrong.Now technology indistinguishable from magic
courses through the veins of the inhabitants, making their barbaric
civilization survivable—and Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Kayel
Hayden, Viscount Webson, Envoy of the Star Empire—Skip to his friends—
has just crash-landed through a time-space rift into the middle of it
all.Dodging assassins and plummeting from high windows was just the
beginning. With a desperate king and an archmagician as his only allies,
Scipio must outrun death itself while battling beasts, traitors, and
infiltrators bent on finishing what the founders started: total
destruction.Two worlds. One chance. No time to lose.Volume 1The
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.

WHAT HUNS DO, OTHER THAN BOOKS:

Yes, I know it’s weird, but other people do things other than write. I don’t GET it either.

Wire Wood And Leather

https://wirewoodandleather.com/

Morrigan’s Mercantile

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

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

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

If you have questions, feel free to to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: STRONG

According to Hoyt 2026 Fundraiser, Day 12

(I will keep this up through day 17, because people have asked due to pay schedules.)

If you wish to donate: There is a Give Send Go fundraiser for this specific fundraiser set up. Here is a Paypal Me Link if you prefer that. (Yes, I know. Paypal, but for now, they’re behaving.) If you have a monthly donation setup to the permanent Give Send Go, that is still working and thank you! There are also two substacks you can subscribe to. One is on the side bar of the blog, the other is supposed to be a newsletter, as well as giving you chapters of the current work in progress if you become a paid subscriber. It takes cards. For snail mail: Sarah Hoyt 304 S Jones Blvd #6771 Las Vegas, NV 89107

And if you want to read the whole appeal, it’s here: Toss A Coin To Your Blogger, Oh Readers of Plenty.

According to Hoyt 2026 Fundraiser, Day 11

(I will keep this up through day 17, because people have asked due to pay schedules.)

If you wish to donate: There is a Give Send Go fundraiser for this specific fundraiser set up. Here is a Paypal Me Link if you prefer that. (Yes, I know. Paypal, but for now, they’re behaving.) If you have a monthly donation setup to the permanent Give Send Go, that is still working and thank you! There are also two substacks you can subscribe to. One is on the side bar of the blog, the other is supposed to be a newsletter, as well as giving you chapters of the current work in progress if you become a paid subscriber. It takes cards. For snail mail: Sarah Hoyt 304 S Jones Blvd #6771 Las Vegas, NV 89107

And if you want to read the whole appeal, it’s here: Toss A Coin To Your Blogger, Oh Readers of Plenty.

By Holly the Assistant

Sarah has run off to obtain an appliance. So you get me for now.

An older friend lamented this morning in a non-local group chat that she’d missed a boil water order yesterday, but at least she feels fine. A younger friend asked how one even finds out about such things?

It’s a good question, with rather mixed answers, depending on your location, and no one real answer that works everywhere, and struck me as a good thing to bring up here, as obviously municipalities are failing to communicate to new residents how to find stuff out in their towns.

What I’ve learned so far: The HAMs find out about everything over their radios, someone else said local radio stations carry such alerts, so radio’s an option. Some folks still get daily papers. One has a local news blog that updates regularly to skim. There are text alert services in some areas. Someone said that the emergency sirens formerly used for tornadoes are now getting run for all weather events, which gets them ignored, unfortunately, but can be used to note to check the weather app or website. I get emails from the County, rely on Reverse 911 or a County Deputy showing up for Really Important Things (like GO NOW orders), and follow all the various interesting agencies and a couple local gossip groups on social media, and of course my neighbors talk. The hiking group wins the prize for fastest location and identification of any wildfire within eighty miles, interestingly enough. The neighbors get the prize for Large Predator Alerts.

How do you find out what’s going on? If there’s a wildfire, a SWAT situation, a flood, a tornado, or a cougar removing chicken coop roofs?

And since it’s Friday, and possibly your payday, here is your reminder that it is ATH Fundraising Season.

If you wish to donate: There is a Give Send Go fundraiser for this specific fundraiser set up. Here is a Paypal Me Link if you prefer that. (Yes, I know. Paypal, but for now, they’re behaving.) If you have a monthly donation setup to the permanent Give Send Go, that is still working and thank you! There are also two substacks you can subscribe to. One is on the side bar of the blog, the other is supposed to be a newsletter, as well as giving you chapters of the current work in progress if you become a paid subscriber. It takes cards. For snail mail: Sarah Hoyt 304 S Jones Blvd #6771 Las Vegas, NV 89107

Thank you very much for your donations.