According To Hoyt

For no extraordinary promo tonight. Younger son and the Little Pickle (younger DIL) came by bearing board game, and…. it took much longer than I expected.

I’m so sorry.

I slept very badly and had strange dreams. I don’t know if one of them was the memory of when Mom saved my life or if it’s just what was in my head this morning, a distillation of our troubles.

That saving my life thing happened when demonstrations against the government were forbidden, and mom and I (of course) were still going to them. You’d get a notice through the phone grapevine (probably why our phone was tapped, tbh) and pass it on, and you’d be there at the right time and place.

That one was not the one where I ended up inadvertently, because I’m too stupid to run, facing machine guns. It was the one that actually makes sure I dive under parked cars if I’m very tense and a car backfires nearby. Imagine a packed plaza — packed, shoulder to shoulder, many more people than you’d expect — The plaza is hemmed in between tall buildings of 19th century vintage. The bottom floor is retail and banks and cafes and the like. The upper floors were usually either offices or really weird hole in the wall shops that couldn’t afford the floor level. Later on, when I was in college, I frequented an art materials store that was in the upper floor of one of those. The further up you went the shabbier the buildings became, and of course unguarded (and often empty.)

So there we are, and speakers are speaking. I don’t remember about what, because I wasn’t listening. I was there to show that people disliked the regime (I don’t remember precisely which, but I think that was the six months the Maoists had hold of power.) And then there were really LOUD pops. Well, NOT pops. I don’t know how to describe it. It was machine gun fire, but to me it sounded like a giant coughing. Or a series of backfires. I’d never heard it before, so I couldn’t place it. Like hearing a foreign language, you can’t transcribe it.

What happened, and I didn’t know: People had fired on the densely packed crowd from the upper floors of the buildings. Six people (random people, probably) went down.

What I knew is that there were screams ahead, and then people were running. In a vast crowd.

The geography of that plaza has changed, at least in how you get out of it. Though there are now subway stairs roughly where this was. So, the plaza’s bottom (literally as the landscape is hilly and you climbed up to the top of the plaza) was a crossing of four VERY busy streets. At some point probably early 20th century it was decided crossing those streets there was dangerous, and an underground tunnel going four ways underneath was created. It was forbidden crossing up top. (Yes, I did it sometimes, later, when I was in college, because the underground passage became dangerous after dark. More dangerous than the traffic. But that’s different.) So everyone had the trained in reflex of heading for the stairs.

I was young and stupid and also — this is important so mind me — not thinking at all. I was in fact part of a panicking herd. Mom wasn’t. She had seen some stuff, probably well before I was born.

I found myself running in the crowd. I was wearing flip flops, a mistake I never made again, in that kind of expedition. Someone stepped on one, and I was trying to pull my foot free against the press of the crowd. This is when mom reached in, grabbed me, and pulled me to standing flat against the wall of a bank. (With one bare foot.) The crowd ran past us. (Here I want to consider mom was almost a head shorter than I, so pulling me by force was a feat.) She was speaking at me, but I only remember “NEVER run with a panicked crowd.” Weirdly for mom she wasn’t shouting, and she wasn’t mad. It was kind of a monotone, to be honest.

Six people were shot that day. But dozens (I want to say over thirty) were trampled and either died or were seriously injured, particularly on the stairs to the underground passage.

Why I told you this long and involved story. Because it was in my mind. Because it’s what’s happening…. well, mostly to the left. They’re running in a panicked, unthinking herd.

And the reason it’s happening mostly to the left is not a reflection on THEM. Yes, many of them lack morals (and I don’t mean sexual morals. Give yourself a bonk on the head for that.) They were never taught that hurting others is never licit unless it’s in defense or…. well, the concept of just war. Yesterday I read a whole article on why stealing was bad that never said “because it is wrong.” They were NEVER TAUGHT. A lot of them try to be good people anyway, stumbling and blind as they are left. And they are no more stupid than you and I.

It’s just that the personality types that gravitate right or left are DIFFERENT. Because the schools, the media and even entertainment have pushed the leftist/Marxist line for … well, since my parents were little. (Though they weren’t here. That was worldwide.) Most of the West tried to “fight communism” by going halfway there philosophically. It didn’t work. DUH.)

This means that the leftists tend to be “the good boys and girls.” OR if you prefer, those who go along with authority, with group opinion, with the perceived “good” people. (And perceived is the point.) They either can’t or won’t stand out and say “this is wrong.” On top of it, for four generations now, their leaders have been selected by “parrots the party line” which means even those at the nominal top are very susceptible to social pressure.

They’re highly social and agreeable people.

Because of the conditions growing up, the right by and large (neither side is absolute, because we’re human and humans are complicated) chose for “disagreeable” and “Stubborn” and “Doesn’t go along.” Which, btw, is why America is the only country just about with a “more freedom” right in ANY numbers, and probably a vast majority, because I suspect genetically we were chosen from the stubborn cusses. Either ourselves or out ancestors.

So we tend to examine everything, and sometimes be against what the herd is doing because “you and what army?” and not rationally at all.

Why this matters? Because the left is under a barrage of the MOST evil propaganda known to men. The sort of propaganda — EXACTLY THE SAME — that Nazis and Soviets used. Or North Korea, if you prefer.

We in the west were told — or at least I was — that propaganda was evil in war. We don’t any longer have propaganda against even our enemies. Heck, we’re so desperate to be fair, we’re practically giving hagiographical treatment to the mad Mullahs just to avoid propaganda.

But the first time I went through the KC WWI museum, in 2019, reading the exhibits on propaganda and how nasty and bad it was, I thought “It sounds like what the left says about us.”

That was 2019. It’s gotten markedly worse. As the media-industrial complex loses their grip, they amp up the propaganda and fear mongering and screaming and inventing COMPLETELY UNTRUE THINGS REPEATED AT MAX VOLUME about their ideological enemies, aka the right, aka you and me and any poor sod to the right of Lenin.

Yes, I read the would be shooter’s manifesto and it’s crazy crap. The sort of thing foreign trolls post on twitter. Stuff about Trump being a pedo (completely not just unsubstantiated, but provably, demonstrably wrong. For one, if he were, the left would have found it in 16 and screamed it from the roof tops) and stuff about him being a rapist (again insanity.) All of it stuff we laugh at on Twitter, and which runs rampant on Bluesky (Which I will forever pronounce Blooskee, because when I first saw it I thought “soviet.”)

The thing to understand is that this is designed. By whom I don’t know, though I have guesses, and some of the guesses are the experts: Russia and China. (Some are more… local. Those who eat their bread and take their salt, some of them in positions where this makes them traitors, yes.)

This is highly sophisticated propaganda and is hitting hard with a segment of the public. A SMALL segment. I’d estimate no more than 10%. Probably no more than 1/4 of which will be moved to any sort of action.

The people this is hitting hardest are mostly seniors. The same ones that lost their minds on COVID and might still be wearing masks. (And G-d forgive them for having made a substantial part of my mom’s last years a panic driven fear time, where she called me crying because I wouldn’t take the vaccine. G-d forgive them because I’m having trouble doing it.) The seniors are susceptible because a lot of them are lonely and live in front of the TV or, like my parents, the same people who had no TV until I was 8, have a tv on in every room for noise and company. Forget that TV news and entertainment was always left-slanted and often totally insanely so. They don’t know that. And it’s hard to convince them, because they trusted these sources all their lives. To them these are still the respectable sources.

The other day while having dinner we were exposed to a senior ranting about how evil Trump was, rounding up and shooting random dark skinned people, and how we had extermination camps, and… I finally snapped, and in my highly accented voice started talking at Dan very loudly. I won’t go there for a while, because it was DISGRACEFUL, but in my defense he started it. When he hit the thing about Butler being “Trump hired the shooter” I lost my frigging mind, and started screaming about ballistics, which finally caused Dan to stop cringing in embarrassment and laugh out loud and say something about it not being people’s fault if they were dumber than dirt, and “calm down honey.” Eventually the people at the man’s table shut him up.

He’s not a big danger, though G-d knows, some seniors are spry enough. But he didn’t look it, and maybe I should have shut up. Except I couldn’t. Because it was THAT insane.

The other people heavily affected are this would-be-shooter’s demographic. They might be infected by mass media, but mostly they’re being infected by “influencers”, you tubers, social media, and yes, Blooskee where they amplify the fear mongering to hell and back.

Forget that there is a married gay guy in the administration, or that the VP’s wife tans much darker than I. Their echo chamber tells them that Trump is “just like Hitler” which in the bastardized version of reality they LEARNED IN SCHOOL makes perfect sense. Because Hitler’s sins didn’t come from putting the state in charge of everything and plundering a minority to feed his state-beast that eventually went ravening, because socialism always does. His sin was not propaganda convincing normal and NICE Germans that Jews were naturally intrinsically evil and must be destroyed. No, in the version they learned, Hitler just disliked people who tanned. (Nothing about the alliance with Arabs, for instance.) And was for law and order and “militaristic.” These maleducated victims of propaganda therefore see everything through that lens.

And because Hitler disliked (some) gays (Not the SS, of course, in lust with each other and their mommies.) they have decided that Trump is coming for them. This is old. They expected Bush to come and round up gays. IT NEVER MADE A WHIT OF SENSE. But it’s repeated and drummed up in the fever swamps of their hang outs and their thought bubble.

Now they honestly think the round up of gay and trans people has started. WITH NO ONE TO POINT AT. Just rumors and “a friend of a friend.” IOW expert propaganda.

Ginna Carrano was absolutely right. The same type of Hitler-esque propaganda is being deployed against a majority of the country that the Nazis deployed against the Jews. The kind of propaganda that makes otherwise quiet and sane people hate a minority so much they want to kill them all like animals.

Now, it won’t work here, because WE’RE NOT THE MINORITY. Even if the left thinks we are. But that just means it will keep ratcheting up.

Trump is either the luckiest son of a bitch to ever stand in front of a microphone, or G-d has His hand over him. Which is weird, because no, he’s not a saint. But G-d chooses the weirdest instruments. (Read up on King David, if you haven’t.)

But not only have there been three attempts now, you can expect there will be more. And if you are a praying kind, you should pray, and pray very constantly that THEY DON’T SUCCEED. Because if they do, the backlash will be like the nightmares that they’re whispering about now. And a lot of people under the onslaught of propaganda and believing it are not bad people. In fact, my friends, they ARE the good boys and girls, salt of the Earth, just workaday people, whatever their quirks.

Other than praying, I’m going to ask you to do something very difficult. I’m going to ask you to tactfully (as much as possible) talk to your friends under the onslaught and buying into it about the real situation. About the fact that they’re being manipulated, that the people manipulating them are NOT their friends. They’re not the friends of anyone decent. They are in fact our enemies and want us all dead.

Which brings me to another point: Seeing the onslaught of propaganda has made it clear to me how scared the grifters and bloodsuckers who’ve been feeding off the enormous amount of money sloshing around our government are. Which means USAID and SPLC and all that rare a drop in the bucket. I wouldn’t be surprised if all of our deficit is fraud. Which is what the fraudsters are fighting to clear.

If you want to go at your deluded friends with Marxism, point out they’re being manipulated by fat cats who don’t ACTUALLY give a damn about the supposed cause and are growing rich from our tax money. That’s why the war on poverty only generates more poverty. (Yes, there’s other reasons, but feel free to attack it that way. Also that the war machine is rich for skimming, which is why Trump stopping the endless boots on the ground outrages them.) This is known “using a devil to drive out a devil.” They’ve been trained to hate “greedy” people. Show them where the greed is.

This is our fight. We’re actually fighting to keep the good boys and girls alive and bring them to sanity.

Is it possible? I don’t know.

But I hope it is, because if they achieve their goal of killing a significant number of the other side, the resulting backlash will turn our country into something none of us will recognize, nor wish to live with.

Do what you can. And if you’re the praying kind, pray very constantly.

Because we’re walking on the razor edge of the abyss, and propaganda is trying to drive us over the edge.

EXTRAORDINARY BOOK PROMO RESUMES TOMORROW EVENING. SORRY FOR THE HIATUS BUT FIRST MY ASSISTANT GOT SICK, AND THEN MY CPAP WAS MALFUNCTIONING LEADING TO ME JUST ABOUT FACE PLANTING BY 8 PM. BUT WE’RE BETTER, BOTH OF US.

TODAY THERE WILL BE NO EXTRAORDINARY BOOK PROMO, BECAUSE YOU DON’T NEED A BOOK PROMO WITH YOUR BOOK PROMO SO YOU CAN PROMO WHILE YOU PROMO. THERE WILL, HOWEVER, BE SHAMELESS WRITER SELF-PROMO. BECAUSE SOMETIMES I HAVE TO PROMO.

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

FROM SARAH A. HOYT, FIRST STARTED ON THIS BLOG: 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 SCOTT MCCREA: U.S. Marshal Ezra Flint: Flint’s Bullet: A Western Adventure (A U.S. Marshal Ezra Flint Western Book 9)

Another pulse-pounding Marshal Ezra Flint adventure from award-winning author Scott McCrea!

U.S. Marshal Ezra Flint has a target painted on his back when “Killer” Cain Bendo hires four professional gunmen to assassinate him. Now Flint is on the run, searching for his attempted killers while trying to protect his friends, Deputy P.J. Dunn and sawbones Doc Prouty, who defy his orders and try to help. Can Killer Cain Bendo measure Flint for a coffin while still in prison? Or will Flint go from prey… to predator?

Saddle up for the most explosive Flint adventure yet!

FROM RON CORRIVEAU: The Least Significant

An alien thief has escaped to Earth with an object of critical importance to his planet.

With the authorities close behind, the thief plans to hide by blending in among the people. But there’s a problem. His native form would make him stand out, so he’ll need to borrow a human body.

And he has a specific one in mind.

Catherine and Marcus are a young couple enjoying the evening of their engagement in downtown Dallas when Marcus suddenly vanishes from the sidewalk in a burst of shimmering lights. Unable to explain his disappearance, Catherine is soon approached by a mysterious man who tells her the thief he is chasing has taken over Marcus’ body and displaced his essence to another dimension.

Unsure whether to believe him, Catherine reluctantly agrees to help when she learns the man can return Marcus to his body. But, as they begin to close in on the thief, Catherine uncovers a shocking truth about Marcus and the alien planet more fantastic than she ever imagined.

FROM J. KENTON PIERCE: An Apple for the Legion: A Tales From the Long Night Novella

From the universe of the 2026 Prometheus Award finalist A Kiss for Damocles — welcome to the Tales from the Long Night.

Third Decanus Kaur was engineered for this.

The Mutual Prosperity builds its legionaries from the genes of heroes — and Kaur carries the literal face of Tanveer Kaur, hero of the Spring Thunder Campaign, the soldier whose sacrifice helped pull humanity back from extinction. She has trained since birth to liberate the enslaved populations of the Terran Commonwealth. She has memorized the Social Virtues. She has crushed her doubts, disciplined her questions, and proven herself a worthy daughter of humanity’s finest.

Then she lands on Hesperides Colony, and the liberation refuses to go as planned.

The colonists fight like they mean it — not from ideology or fanaticism, but because they have something worth protecting. When her commander hands her a contraband biography of her own mother and tells her to read it, the headaches begin. Because what Tanveer Kaur actually believed, actually said, in her own unedited words — it doesn’t match anything the Prosperity taught her daughter.

Then the volcano erupts.

Cut off from Fleet. No resupply. No evacuation. A dying colony buried under ash, a population the Prosperity considers expendable, and orders that grow more monstrous by the hour. Kaur is twenty-three years old. She commands ten legionaries. And the man who has spent decades teaching her what it truly means to honor her heritage is running out of time to finish the lesson.

An Apple for the Legion is a gripping, character-driven military science fiction novella — precise, dark, and impossible to set aside. A story set in the Tales from the Long Night: a universe where humanity survived the stars and built something that might not have been worth saving.

FROM RACONTEUR PRESS, EDITED BY RITA BEEMAN: Auntie Heroes (Raconteur Press Anthologies Book 74)

They’ve been overlooked, underestimated, and politely sidelined for decades. Fine. That’s fine. Let them keep underestimating.

In the pages of Auntie Heroes, meet ten women of a certain vintage who possess particular sets of skills and absolutely zero patience for the alternative. A fire fairy stepmother navigating werewolves and blended family politics. A retired intelligence operative who knits Kevlar scarves and outsmarts Belarusian thieves in a foreign embassy. A grandmother farming fourteen hundred acres with alien assistance — and handling the unfriendly ones with a shotgun full of rock salt. A sharp-eyed matron in a Lovecraftian coastal town who defeats an elder god with Eternal Father Strong to Save and a can of extra-hold hairspray. A suburban gardener who discovers her neighbor’s invasive kudzu is a Cold War-era biological antenna siphoning encrypted data from Fort Meade — and handles it accordingly.

Across fairy tales, spy thrillers, alien farms, suburban horror, and the salt-choked streets of a town that smells permanently of low tide, these women share one defining trait: they have been here long enough to know exactly what needs doing. And they will absolutely do it.

Stories include: “Stepmother Ever After” by Nancy Frye • “Calhoun Blood” by D.S. Ligon • “The Squamous Among Us” by Spearman Burke • “Salon and Subversion” by Tuvela Thomas • “A Dressing Down” by Aelth Faye • “From the Ashes” by TC Ross • “Knit One, Sanction Two” by Ted Begley • “Pruning with Extreme Prejudice” by Michael Patrick Coady • “Walking the Beans” by Rick Cutler • “The Knitting Circle at Innsmouth” by Malory

The world has a great many hind ends that require a proper thrashing. We’re betting on the lady with the flamethrower.

FROM D. W. PATTERSON: Zero Point

Zero Point: A Novel

Jack Carson had a stroke of luck; a great-uncle had left him land in Arizona.

But that’s when Jack’s luck began to change, mysterious sights and sounds threatened to make his inheritance worthless as a center for the study of physics.

Marta Merritt decided to help, and she didn’t think it a mystery, she thought it was an artifact of a forgotten physics theory called pilot-wave mechanics.

To build the center they would have to find out, and they would have to stay alive to do so.

Zero Point is a novel in a new series of Quantum Adventures which extrapolates future, cutting-edge science from today’s research papers.

For news and future releases see the author’s website, http://www.dwpatterson.com, or hit the Follow button below.

Hard Science Fiction – Old School.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Detritus

Nick Bryant was a junkie. Lived on the streets, and everything. And then, he saved a baby girl from drowning, and fell into the role of protector. As he, the baby, and her older brother get to know one another, he decides that maybe, there’s more left to him than the drugs, and decides to try to live again. And maybe build a family.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: The Lion and the Darkness (Timelines Book 4)

At long last, Ariela Rivers Wolff begins her mission to the Simulated Worlds.

As the Martyr of Sardristra, she finds herself in the position of a Joan of Arc, burned at the stake for preaching a sermon of love to a very violent race of . . . blue, four-legged, four-armed, sort-of-horse analogs. Five hundred years later in their history, she finds a totally-reversed welcome as “Saint Ardreyelya” in the country in which she first appeared. Will she be able to prevent the rest of the world from destroying “her” people before she can convert them, too?

As the Goddess of Mahoukai, she finds herself the deity of a world religion in a world governed by magic. And like all worlds with magic, inevitably there is a Demon Lord. She’ll have to deal with that Demon Lord before the world of Mahoukai can be realized into the True Universe . . . but in the event, the Demon Lord is an infiltrated agent of the very enemies she is sworn to fight in the real world. Can The Lion of God take on a Darkness, single-handed? If not, it may spell doom for the inhabitants of Mahoukai – and for herself.

FROM KAREN MYERS: King of the May – A Virginian in Elfland (The Hounds of Annwn Book 3)

Book 3 of The Hounds of Annwn.

MORE VALUABLE AS A WEAPON THAN A KINGMAKER, HE MUST MAKE HIS OWN CHOICES TO SECURE THE FUTURE.

George Talbot Traherne, the human huntsman for the Wild Hunt, had hoped to settle into a quiet life with his new family, but it was not to be. Gwyn ap Nudd, Prince of Annwn, has plans to secure his domain in the new world from the overbearing interference of his father Lludd, the King of Britain.

The security of George’s family is bound to that of his overlord, and he vows to help. But when he and his companions stand against Lludd and his allies at court, disaster overturns all their plans and even threatens the Hounds of Annwn themselves.

George and his patron, the antlered god Cernunnos, must survive a subtle attack that undermines them both. Other gods and gods-to-be have taken an interest, but the fae are divided in their allegiances and fear the threat of deadly new powers in their unchanging lives.

George and his companions must save themselves if they are to persuade their potential allies to help. But how can they do so, attacked on so many fronts at once? Will he put his family into greater jeopardy by trying to defend them?

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Spiral Horn, Spiral Tusk

A unicorn’s horn for the king, a medal for the admiral — but what for the lass who makes it possible?

Rissa possesses the dolphin-singer gift, which saved her life when the thief-taker found her. If she can guide the fleet to the white whale with the spiral tusk, she might win back her freedom.

But first she must return to land — and the sea has become angry at her betrayal…

A short story of the Ixilon universe

Originally published in Beyond the Last Star: Stories from the Next Beginning, edited by Sherwood Smith.

FROM JOHN BAILEY: THE CONCIERGE OF HÔTEL AURORE (Science Fiction Singles)

In the occupied colony of Nouvelle Bruges, the Hôtel Aurore still welcomes its guests.

The concierge still keeps her records.
The elevators still run on time.
The system still functions.

And that is precisely the problem.

When the Aurigan Compact seizes control of the colony, they do not burn cities or break institutions. They refine them. Every person is classified. Every movement recorded. Every discrepancy corrected.

At the center of it all stands Élise Marceau, senior concierge—overlooked, precise, and quietly indispensable.

She does not fight with weapons.
She does not organize rebellions.
She does not leave her post.

Instead, she begins to make small corrections.

A name adjusted.
A room reassigned.
A transfer that already happened—on paper.

Soon, people begin to disappear from the system without disappearing at all.

As an Aurigan audit closes in and the machinery of control tightens, Élise and her colleagues transform the hotel into something else entirely: a place where the records lie just enough to keep people alive.

In a world where identity is defined by documentation, survival depends on a simple question:

What happens when the system is no longer accurate?

Perfect for readers of intelligent, atmospheric science fiction, The Concierge of Hôtel Aurore is a story of quiet defiance, bureaucratic warfare, and the power of small acts to disrupt even the most perfect system.

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: Complex.

In a short story a few years ago, my husband coined the term Feffers as a short hand for all the sad mouths who yell “Fix Earth First” every time anyone tries to escape the crab bucket this our native rock.

It is the perfect term, since without the first F it’s a pejorative anyway. And heaven knows, I start using it, in a tone like a spitting cat, when I’m following some cool event or development on X and find myself mired in comment after comment of “We could eliminate poverty” (Spoiler: Poverty always wins wars on poverty.) Or “We have so many problems here on Earth” or similar stupidity.

They are wrong. No, I can’t absolutely prove it for the reason that sociological experiments are really hard to run on an entire society. This could be solved by having a portal that allows us to observe parallel worlds that took alternate paths, but younger son refuses to invent the technology. Out of contrarianess I’m sure.

However we have a similar thing, called history.

The truth is that human societies that don’t move out of their space and colonize and change become stagnant and become stagnant in peculiar ways.

Take Africa — oh, please, for the love of Bob, take Africa. No one sane wants it, as China is finding out. — it’s a collection of the most successful, stable, environment adapted cultures. Not saying they didn’t have inside-continent colonization: Zulus. But by and large, the people who remain in Africa, as natives, (to the extent that they’re not mixed by virtue of colonization from elsewhere) are the descendants of those strong enough and fitting in enough not to be chased, pushed or coventry-ed out.

Those who got pushed out, starting in pre-neolithic days, populated the Earth and came up with endless variations on culture, some of which were so successful they returned to colonize Africa.

The ones who stayed? They were perfectly suited to the environment and strong tribal culture. You could say they were optimized evolutionarily, by pushing out all who don’t fit. And the result is…

Well, you can survive in Africa at a relatively low level of productivity and organization. Which is good, because it is what Africa always devolves to. In the words of my friend Lawdog “Africa always wins.”

How do I know this is cultural and not racial? Well, pre- weaponization of race by shitty Marxists, the Africans who got away voluntarily tended to do very well. Even some of the involuntary ones, once pulled away from the general tribal culture, adapted and were high achieving. But in locus, the culture that never left? “Africa wins” is the saddest term I can think of.

Or if you want to pick on another extreme of culture, by a people that even racists can’t claim suffer from some deficiency in that imperfect (and weird) measurement of “IQ” , let’s take the Chinese. One on one, test on test, the Chinese are the highest scoring humans when it comes to IQ tests.

On the more important side, because IQ is a fickle measurement, Chinese who leave China tend to do very well indeed, particularly if they are ISOLATED and on their own. I.e. away from the culture.

But you can’t read a Chinese history book without getting the impression of a movie stuck on repeat. Great flourishing and advances, then erase it all from history and start again, forever. And the culture has certain limiting blind spots of legalism and worship of the written word that make the whole thing unable to get very far. The result? China has been marinading in tears and wasted potential for thousands of years and imports all important advances from abroad.

I firmly believe this is the result of failing to colonize: Failing to go elsewhere and be challenged by different environments, different interactions, different challenges. Humans, like all animals tend to get too well adapted to their environment, too comfortable in their sameness and routine. And then it becomes codified and an iron crab bucket you cannot break.

Our culture (Western culture in this case, not specifically American) is showing some signs of trying to enter into exactly those cycles of destruction and restarting.

We need to break the bonds. We need to go elsewhere, reach further, challenge ourselves, and let those ideas come back to challenge those who stay at home.

Because comfort and safety are not survival-enhancing characteristics for cultures (or humans) in the long run.

As for fixing all the problems on Earth first, most of those problems are only problems as defined by crazy people.

Stuff like inequality is just a sign of freedom. Free humans are inherently unequal because they value and work towards different things. It’s only slaves who are held to complete equality.

Even poverty is not exactly a problem to be solved. First it depends on what you define as poverty. And second, poverty has been the condition of humanity for most of its existence. Trying to overcome it has propelled some of our greatest triumphs. And trying to fix it for other people has never worked. Never.

Whatever problems we have are more likely to be fixed by going out of the Earth: higher, further, more risky. As far as we can go. To the distant stars.

Because it is there that we’ll find the solution to problems we don’t even know we have. And also from there that will come the leavening and innovation that will renew all of humanity and cause us to survive longer and reach further than we think possible.

Shut up Feffers. The rest of us are going to the stars.

So today is release day for Witch’s Daughter and I’m feeling lazy. You can of course discuss whatever you want in comments. There’s lots of good stuff in the news today, and some weird stuff. (Like when isn’t there.)

Witch’s Daughter was started, I want to say ten years ago, just as the wheels were coming off my ability to work, with a series of illnesses and frankly just coping with the altitude, though I didn’t know it was that. For explanation: Other than sending my auto-immune through the roof (Since we’ve been at low altitude I haven’t needed my inhaler, except when I’m ill with something that brings the asthma up) it seemed to be doing something to my cognition, and I have no idea what. Doesn’t seem to be oxygen, or at least my oxygen measured by the finger thingy never got that low. What I can tell you is that while driving to Las Vegas for the con, if we hit above 6000 feet something happened. First I became very confused, as though drunk, and then at 9000 feet I fell asleep. I could not stay awake. No clue what causes that. Sure it’s a form of altitude sickness, but not sure what.

The problem is our last house in Colorado was on a ridge and over 6000 feet, and apparently I was going… um… Odd. I held it together enough for posts and short stories, but I couldn’t carry the idea through for even short novels.

I started them. I mean, the ideas arrived on schedule and were compelling, but I’d get either to the middle or in the case of Witch’s Daughter about 2/3 in and I’d glitch and couldn’t figure out how to close it.

In the case of WD, as you know, if you follow my substack, I had so many internal contradictions and failure to follow through that I couldn’t close if I tried. It took me racing to the finish, then doing a FULL correction and fixes rewrite. Now it’s actually all working and makes sense. (And yes, I’m going to try that with Winter Prince, done on my substack, too.)

Anyway, I have… well, 10 novels off the top of my head that are half or more done, and I’ve declared this year “The year of finishing everything.” (I actually think more novels are waiting in my files, and that this will turn into the “years of finishing everything.”)

Don’t panic thought, Orphans of the Stars (Second of the Chronicles of Lost Elly) advances. The slow down on that was being sick, not the other novels. I’m treating the other novels as the morning/early stuff, then Orphans.

Anyway, you can treat this as an open thread if you wish, but I’m going upstairs to work on Rhodes to Hell. Right now reading back into it, and cussing myself for all the dead ends I dropped in. Need to clean that up. Also, why didn’t you guys tell me the WORLD is profoundly evil? (World as in the world-build.) Apparently I didn’t notice. I’m not saying I won’t write more. It’s a noir, so the evil is there for the pure of heart to fight against, but yeeech.

For now, I leave you with a book that deserves some press on its release day. (And no, you don’t need to read Witchfinder to get this. Regency with magic, tight close in third person, same as Witchfinder, but in this case only two POVs, a self-contained adventure and much shorter. I hesitate to label it a YA because the series isn’t, but it kind of is.)

Paper editions release tomorrow and the day after.

Witch’s daughter – by sarah A. hoyt

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.

But not tonight. My assistant has a case of the never-get-wells that’s floored her (and she’s a kid.) And I am feeling like crud and didn’t sleep almost at all last night. Also had bad news about my brother this morning. No, he’s still with us, but… if you’re the praying kind, a prayer heavenward appreciated.

I’m debating going to bed early.

It’s always darkest before dawn is a funny statement. Is it? The few times I’ve been awake before dawn, it was a gradual lightening, so actually it was a little lighter, though I grant you it might appear darker, in the shadows, in comparison to the growing light.

Yes, that is a fine example of how my mind works. It’s also very relevant to our situation, because a lot of the things that people freak out about in societal and political matters are only visible because we have the net, and we have social media where we can talk back (thank you Elon) and we can see how dark things are in spots because they’re getting light in others.

For contrast see Europe where they’re sleep walking in utter darkness and don’t seem to notice anything is wrong.

But that’s not the point of this post. Or perhaps it is — sorry, I slept about four hours, and once this is up, I’m going to nap — because we are now in a changed information landscape, one for which none of us, not even broadly speaking the two political sides (there’s more than that, but broadly) have any referent or any model.

Which means that you can’t really know what will result from this or that, and only fools think they do. However, due to the fact things are changing towards greater individual knowledge and information (not to mention choice) technologically, the collectivists keep getting their asses handed to them by what they think are their greatest victories.

In a way Wile E. Coyote has become their spirit animal. Their plans are ever more elaborate and infallible. And they bite the planners in the *ss every time.

I’m writing this today because of Virginia yesterday. Fraud? Stupidity? I don’t know. And yes, there will be legal cases, but– Given that and the willful stalling of the SAVE act it’s putting the midterms in jeopardy.

Which normally wouldn’t freak me out AT ALL because well, it’s two years, we’ll come back. Except that the left is so rabidly insane, two years can be near lethal, and also they’ll try to rig everything so they never lose again, and so much of our electoral map is already f*cked beyond belief. And they really are going to try to push for executions and who knows what this time.

BUT then again, they already wanted to criminalize opposition during the reign of the auto-pen. And they wanted to do all manner of horrible things to us. Mostly they managed to do horrible economic damage to the point I was wondering if we’d survive, and we’re relatively economically secure with no kids in the house. And even if they don’t steal any more elections for a while, it’s going to take a long time to come back from it. Worse if they get another turn at the levers.

On the other hand, guys, I was pretty despondent and broken after watching the 2020 election stolen. If I could go back, would I go and fix that, given the power?

Not on your life. As much as it hurt and as much as it cost us, it changed the political landscape completely. Without 2020 2024 and everything that happened since would be impossible. It was their rigging of a color revolution that revealed who they are to a point everything changed.

Will it suck living tadpoles if they win the midterms? Oh, heck, don’t get me started. I saw my beloved Colorado stolen and despoiled.

Will it be the end?

I doubt it. Their time has passed. The tech is ranked against them. And they’re snakebit, anyway. Reality fights on our side, and they can’t find reality with two hands and a seeing eye dog.

It will be tough. Horrible. But it might prove their final undoing.

Be not afraid.

It’s always darkest before dawn.

Go light a fire.

*The Amazon links in this post all use my associate’s link, and therefore I earn a small commission from your purchases, at no extra cost to you.

I have a list my assistant is compiling of authors to promote who answered the call by responding if they were not afraid of being associated with this blog. I will be post them in the evening, ten at a time. Hopefully you find some new reads. If nothing else, you know these people are fearless. – SAH*

Meet Pam Uphoff

I grew up in California, one of those horse-mad girls.

Horse books, Horse drawings, riding lessons . . . the parents finally surrendered when I was thirteen and bought a horse. And another. And another.

I still have two, a granddaughter and great grandson of my first very own, don’t-have-to-share-with-the-sisters, horse.

My reading slipped from horse and dog stories to science fiction, but even though I’m writing science fiction, there seem to be rather a lot of horses in the stories, somehow. And dinosaurs.

My stories in my favorite Fictional Universe, Wine of the Gods, are going up, book by book.

https://pamuphoff.livejournal.com/

Pam Uphoff would like you to consider her book: Fancy Free

In the last parts of the Twenty-first century, AI, Artificial Intelligence is commonplace. Highly able computers, and nothing more . . . until some rare and as yet unidentified trigger creates an actual personality.

Artificial Personalities, APs or hals, are illegal. Destroyed upon discovery. Even Beowulf, the AP the government controls, and uses to hunt down emerging hals, isn’t legally recognized, has no right to existence.
So you’d think that when the Special Grid Security Unit started paying extra attention to the area where a certain cooking show operates, Fancy Farmer—the AP who runs the show—would be concerned.
But Fancy has a bigger problem.
She’s been stolen.

Meet Alma T. C. Boykin

I grew up devouring every kind of book I could get my hands on, then locked onto military history, fantasy, and science fiction. At age 16 I discovered military science fiction in the form of David Drake’s Hammers Slammers series and was hooked. I went to college Back East then returned to the High Plains of Texas and worked for a living, while reading anything that would stay still long enough. That career took me across the US, and eventually dumped me into graduate school. My specialty was history but since I still couldn’t stop reading, it shifted into a subfield that incorporated science as well as traditional history. Readers will find influences ranging from David Drake to Russian fairy tales to Eastern European history in my work, with some geology and agriculture blended in, and a dollop of humor.

I currently live on the High Plains once more, now with a grumpy calico cat and a large number of books. A pipe from the old organ at Stift Vorau, Austria resides on my desk.

https://almatcboykin.wordpress.com/

Alma T. C. Boykin would like you to consider her book: Merchant and Magic (Merchant and Empire Book 1)

When Magic Fails…

Tycho Rhonarida Galnaar trades hides—hides tanned, hides untanned, with and without fleeces, nothing risky. He prefers steady, low-key trade, a quiet home life, and reliable business partners. Slow and steady bring wealth and do not draw the attention of nobles, thieves, or the gods. Especially not of the gods!

Counterfeit coin and cursed grain…

But the gods have other plans. Tycho’s secret—his absolute inability to work or even see magic in a world that depends on it—may be the key to solving a mystery, and saving a city. Tycho wants no part in mysteries or adventure. He’s a merchant, nothing more.

Trade is Tycho’s world. That world changes under his feet.

Meet Mel Dunay

https://jaglionpress.com/

I write plot-first fantasy and science-fiction, where my characters fight tyrants and other monsters, escape murder charges and slavery, and occasionally save civilization as they know it. While they’re having these adventures, they also forge strong emotional connections with their comrades, but they come from cultures that do not treat physical intimacy lightly, and with all that danger around, they usually don’t have time for it anyway. If you like a little humor, a little romance, lots of adventure, and no explicit content, welcome! You’ve come to the right place. I write for readers who want meaningful romantic subplots without explicit content, and adventure that never gets sidelined by the love story.

I’ve traveled all over the world, but now I live in the American Midwest with my extended family. I have no cats, only a vacuum robot named Minnie, who probably would not play nicely with the feline species. My hobbies include film editing, bookbinding and finding writer support tasks for AI. However, I prefer to keep the actual story drafting (also known as the fun part) firmly in human hands.

Mel Dunay would like you to consider her novel: Shadow Captain (Star Master Book 1)

His one chance to escape slavery could trap his brother in a terrible fate! Jetay has been on the run with his brother for a long time, hiding his psychic powers from the evil Red Knights. Living as a slave on a star freighter, Jetay dreams of freeing himself and his brother, and of wielding his powers openly. On a frontier planet, Lady Lanati of the Partisan Alliance seeks his help for a secret mission. It will take him across the stars to the edge of a black hole, with a Red Knight chasing him every step of the way. He might finally get a chance to use his powers for good. But the price of that chance may be too high, putting his brother in grave danger. Can Jetay save himself and his brother without sacrificing Lanati and her friends? If he can’t find a way to save them all, the battle against evil may be over before it begins….

Meet Mary Catelli

https://writingandreflections.substack.com/

Mary Catelli is an avid reader of fantasy, science fiction, history, fairy tales, philosophy, folklore and a lot of other things. (Including the backs of cereal boxes.)

Which, in due course, overflowed into writing fantasy (and some science fiction).

Mary Catelli would like you to consider her book: Even After

Mirror, mirror on the wall — can I be safe when I am tall?

Rumpelstiltskin got the baby.

Rapunzel and her prince never again met.

Snow White still sleeps in the forest.

Biancabella, Snow White’s half-sister, knows that if she is more beautiful than her mother, trouble will follow again. Her appeal to the magic mirror only gains her stories of how hard it is to fight the evil sorceresses and wizards and witches who have banded together to bring unhappy endings.

But with her mother seeking to constrain her, Biancabella knows she may have no choice to use that knowledge to attempt to escape.

Meet Doug Irvin

Doug Irvin has been reading – and writing! – from an early age. In the early ’80’s he had the dubious honor of causing a couple of short story magazines to fold. He hopes that trait has ended!

Irvin writes in a variety of genres, but uses his own name for most.

Doug Irvin would like you to consider his book: A Spaceship For Joe

Joe has a problem. It’s summer vacation, and all his friends are unavailable. One moved away, another is
sick and the others are all gone for some reason or another.
In desperation Joe looks for his uncle, who makes a suggestion that he build himself a fort, and even
volunteers the space and materials for it.
But Joe has other ideas. He doesn’t want a simple fort; he wants a spaceship!
There’s just one problem with that. He built it too convincingly ….

Meet David Lloyd Sutton

Who is sane enough not to have anything like social media.

David Lloyd Sutton would like you to consider his book: Longest Run

Longest Run is set in North America a thousand years after nuclear war has knocked the tectonic plates off the table. Ecologies are in flux. People are trying to cope with the mess they have made. Since that mess includes humanity’s own genetic instability, Brand Levin is willingly engaged in a live-or-die wilderness proving trip; at stake his right to become a parent.

Meet Allene Lowrey

Allene Lowrey has been prone to flights of fancy for the better part of her existence, and has always been one to try putting them down on paper. She loves to play with mythology in her writing, especially in her fantasy.

Ever since she discovered the genre Allene has gravitated toward fantasy epics, although she does occasionally escape gravity’s pull to play around in other SF/F subgenres.

An Idaho native, Allene has also lived in Oregon and Indiana, and currently resides in Saipan with her husband and young son.

Twitter: @arlowrey MeWe: @allenelowrey.84 Blog: allenelowrey.com

Allene Lowrey would like you to consider her book: Einarr Stigandersen and the Jotunhall: A Young Adult action-adventure Viking fantasy (The Adventures of Einarr Stigandersen Book 1)

A foiled elopement. A giant’s treasure. An impossible quest that will almost certainly get him killed.

Once upon a time, Stigander Raenson was heir to a thanedom. Until a curse drove him, his family, and his crew out of their homes. For years, they have all wandered the cold seas looking for treasure, glory, and a way to end the curse.

Now Einarr, Stigander’s only son, lives a vagabond’s life on the sea, never giving much thought to the home he barely remembers. That is, until an unexpected squall and a pirate attack send them to winter at the Hall of his father’s childhood friend – and his beautiful daughter. The Jarl intends to marry her to an old man, but they only have eyes for each other.

A desperate gambit lands them both in trouble. Now Einarr has just a single season to convince the Jarl that he would be a worthy match for the Lady Runa, the Jarl’s only child. Will he return in one piece, or will the Jarl’s impossible quest be Einarr’s undoing?

Meet Herbert Nowell

http://herbertnowell.com/

Herbert Nowell would like you to consider his book: Lost Daughter of Amazons (Leo and Zoe Book 1)

Leonides Tzimiskes served in the Imperial Legions for twenty years and riding into the sunset to collect his reward, a frontier villa and farm.

Then, in the town of Nikaia a young woman claiming to be a lost daughter of an Amazon challenged him to solve a local problem.

Now Leonides must choose between continuing to a life of ease that comes with a villa and rescuing people who might not want it.

And he must choose knowing that if he chooses the latter he might not live to collect the former.

Meet Leigh Kimmel

I started writing stories in grade school because everyone was tired of listening to me tell them all about the world next door, where things went a little differently. Of course it was a long, hard road from those first eager scribbles about hidden worlds under or behind the ordinary one to my first professional sale. And then the sharp disappointment of watching it melt away to nothing when an embezzler stole the publisher’s finances and the magazine died stillborn. Sometimes it seemed like success existed only to be snatched away from me, so that I could be scolded and punished when I expressed dismay at yet another sharp disappointment. But finally a few magazines and anthologies survived long enough to see my words into print.

Meanwhile, I discovered the success that could come from publishing non-fiction. For a brief time I was bringing in a decent income writing articles for ready-reference publications. And then the housing market crashed, libraries cut their budgets, and that stream of income dried up.

So I built websites. I blogged. I built under and fought the tendency to become bitter. And all the time I kept on writing about the world next door, where things go just a little differently than in the fields where we know.

Facebook: leigh.kimmel

X: @LeighKimmel

Leigh Kimmel would like you to consider her book: The War That Came to Houston

In the midst of preparations for a critical mission, Leland Andersen can’t afford the return of a childhood nightmare. Yet night after night the vision torments him, of an astronaut dying in flames.

Nora McKinzie is a Houston police officer — and a member of an ancient order founded to fight eldritch entities wherever they might flee. When she receives a warning that a sworn enemy is on the move again, her obligations come into conflict with each other.

Both of them are present when Johnson Space Center comes under attack by terrorists. And they both know that the official explanations don’t hold together.

Two people, one deadly secret — and an enemy from beyond time and space.

A novel of the Grissom timeline.

Previously serialized under the title A Separate War.

A dog returns to his vomit and a sow to her mire, and Sarah and the Clankers are back together and… well… not precisely live (not half of the group, at least) again.

This whole thing is fascinating, because I realized I’d skipped two important songs, the one for the birth of Selbur’s baby and the other Ad Leed listening to the gem playing. (The problem is you tube won’t let me reorganize the playlist. Sorry.)

And then, once I’d done that, it just kept pouring out, so there’s two more songs. I’m not going to apologize for the Looking For Home song. As weird as it is there isn’t anything even vaguely perverse going on, it’s the nature of the people of No Man’s Land, is all. This book is ridiculously wholesome despite itself. And if you read the book, you’ll sigh and say with me “Skip, you idiot.” Actually that also applies to the last song. Anyway.