According To Hoyt

By Holly the Assistant

Yesterday, I saw the first harvest warning from local law enforcement. The annual harvest has started, slow down for farm equipment, your itty bitty plastic car will not beat a two lane wide hunk of slightly rusty metal older than you. More politely worded, of course.

The schools are gearing up to start: Bus Drivers Wanted!, law enforcement checking the school zone signs still work, the big downtown college welcome back fair, where local vendors show off what they have available to separate the college students from their financial aid, er, show off their wares, and the state fair is advertising heavily for the upcoming festivities.

Climate wise, it’s still summer. The hottest days of the year should lie ahead. (This year has been a touch odd, weather wise, here. Not unprecedented, just not normal. Eh, it’s one of those states where the ‘wait five minutes and it’ll change’ really does apply to not liking the weather.) The garden’s been weird, and the late frosts and birds wiped out all the tree fruit so far.

For a long time, as home schoolers, we met the back to school season with rejoicing: cheap notebooks and the good pencils! National and State parks empty of people! Weather still good and crowds gone! But as the kids grew up, it started to affect us more: back to school also meant return to enrichment activities, early enrollment college classes, actual regular college classes, etc. Now it’s fitting in a couple responsibilities I have to local and state youth organizations that need to get wrapped up before the youth are tied up in school, and the opening of the local civic symphony season.

Which is, that last, why you’re getting a fairly short note today. I’m running off to a pre-season music workshop this morning. Sarah is . . . I think working on furniture, weather allowing, though she might be supervising house painters and flooring contractors. I got an update on a book last night, along with “ragweed pollen, my head is killing me”, so she’s still alive, though the ragweed should probably be watching for axes.

If you are in the areas that have been burning and are now getting the misnamed monsoon thunderstorms, please keep your eyes open for burn scar mudslides. I know of at least one road closed indefinitely in my region. If you are in the area of I-70 that decided to wash out, be mindful of your roads, as well.

And please keep us posted, all you with medical events and natural disasters. We do note and worry about you.

One thing our otherwise USA struck visitors for the world cup seemed not to get was the… permeability of American society, compared to any other society on Earth.

As bound up in status and monkey games as we seem to be at times — and as much as I b*tch about that — we are absolutely loosey goosey and easy-going compared to the rest of the west which is in general far more amenable to take people as individuals than the rest of the world. And as crazy as our reliance on credentials and the proper programs and stamps on the proper papers was — I think we’re walking back from a lot of THAT crazy — we have nothing on the rest of the world on that front. We never had.

No? Well, while where I come from seems to be a country of obsessive autists, they don’t take themselves seriously. And they don’t take their obsessions seriously. They might know a thing or two beyond the standard things they learned in school, but no one will take them seriously at it, because they don’t have the credential, and the stamp.

While here… Well, here… The best guy I ever found to help with my civil war (particularly weapons and uniforms) research, back when I thought I was going to do a novel set in that time period was… my plumber. Okay, he was a pretty special plumber, the one guy in the city willing to work on Victorians that had been messed about five ways from Monday by previous owners and had who knew what happen to them. But still… my plumber. He came in, saw some books on my desk (which was in the master bedroom, next to the bathroom) and we started talking. And I found the depth and breadth of his knowledge. He published a newsletter. He had thousands upon thousands of subscribers. And some of them were probably, low key, academics who were plagiarizing his research for papers, wanna bet?

And how many times, on an online discussion, do you ask the world’s weirdest question. Say “Does anyone here know about the pickling techniques for the lesser Georgian peanut (I MADE IT UP. STOP LOOKING IT UP) and get someone who tells you this is his hobby and he’s researched it for the last ten years, because he finds it fascinating? And he’s done real experiments in his kitchen, and–

Do we ask for his credentials? Where he studied? No. We might ask for references, at least if we know we just made up the Lesser Georgian Peanut, but that’s all. And if their references check out, we are sure as shooting going to make them our source for this thing.

Look, part of this is that we are so wealthy — no seriously, in lifestyle just about any American state is better of than 99% of the world — and have been for so long, that we had time for people to develop interests and hobbies away from work. Most of the time — until recently — most people weren’t coming home so exhausted from work that that they couldn’t function. And we eat enough and are healthy enough that we have energy to devote to things beyond mere survival.

Now, if you do the deep dive into this, you’ll find we have other things, mostly derived from the fact that we’re a consumer-oriented society. Just about everyone is trying to sell you something, and they try to push where you’re weak: things that make your life easier and more convenient. Every time I go abroad, one of the things I’ve found is that daily life is less convenient. Even accounting for the fact that of course we don’t know how things work there, it always seems harder to get hold of say ingredients for making dinner, or implements you need to cook, or whatever it is you’re used to being an absurdly easy task.

Granted, our life became a little less convenient after 2020. I’m still salty over the fact that all night diners no longer seem to exist anywhere, or that it’s almost impossible to find a store open at midnight. But still, traveling internally if you forget something, be it underwear or a hairbrush, we can find it at the nearest Walmart. But abroad, even if you know the equivalent of their Walmart (they don’t have an equivalent, not really) it is impossible to find it with any sort of expediency because the store that sells that is only open between three and five PM on even Wednesdays and leap Saturdays. (What’s a leap Saturday? No one knows, so it’s never open.)

Anyway, making our life way easier left us energy and time and enough curiosity to go poking about various hobby horses. All of which of course got exponentially easier with the internet.

But beyond that, there is an attitude that goes with this. It’s not “Well, so and so is an important man. He knows everything about ancient Greek nose picks because he majored in ancient Greek nose picks at uni” but “Hey, this guy has done a deep dive on ancient Greek nose picks, and he has all the references and receipts, and he’ll tell you all about it at the drop of a hat, or even if all hats are glued to heads with hot glue.”

In other words, we Americans recognize people who know things. It’s like “Nerdmaste, the geek in me recognizes the geek in you.”

I think this is why the the internet here has a completely different texture than in the rest of the world. Why we discuss current events, economics, politics and the underpinnings of our society on line. Why places like instapundit exist, aggregating a view of the world away from the MSM. Why… well, why we’re ourselves.

You see, this is important, this willingness to both research anything simply because it interests us, and to respect others for their obvious achievements/research/knowledge, regardless of official approval of such things, is what creates our current society. It is in many ways what made us too hot to hold after the color revolution of 2020. What made our come back work without going hot.

Is it something that can be exported tot he rest of the world? I don’t know. As I said, it has its roots in prosperity and in convenience, and in us being ourselves so long.

But maybe … just maybe, with Elon’s freeing of twitter, maybe we can export a bit of our ability to be unexpected.

Time of export the weaponized tisms. If anyone can do it, we can.

Let’s teach the world what is actually worthy of respect.

(A Blast from the Past from https://accordingtohoyt.com/2018/08/28/the-masks-are-coming-off/ Huns, I am having a wild time looking back at what was going on in previous Augusts on my Blast from the Past days. Plus ca change, plus ca reste la meme. Although I think we see it a little bit more easily now, since we’re looking.)

For years, being a conservative or — in my case — a libertarian (no step on snek) in the arts, in writing, in publishing, in any cultural enterprise was an exercise in going insane.

You knew what was going on in private, you knew how hard they could hit on what absolutely minor and ridiculous points, but the public in general was not aware of any bias, and if you complained, they thought you were paranoid.

This was particularly the case when you were small potatoes, or  when what they were doing was rejecting short stories or asking you to change your books.

Sure, I could sense the principles behind it, and how changing my books would make them say something I didn’t want to, but at the same time there was the weird feeling “um… is this true?  Or am I imagining it?  I’m a small-time writer, writing in a tiny-small-time field.  How could they possibly micromanage it to this extent?”

It was particularly hard for me because I grew up under socialist (national then international) regimes, with occasional outbreaks of outright Ocasio-Cortez er… I mean Communism.  This both allowed me to see the holes in it (no, truly, even at 13 or so, studying Marxism in five high school courses will cause you to see the holes) and, once I’d decided I was against it (I was actually fairly left, in the US meaning until my mid-twenties.  Couldn’t help being.  Young, stupid, and raised in a soup of leftists “facts”) I started seeing all the little ways the establishment — educational, cultural, arts — pushed people towards the idea of for lack of a better term “the inevitable certainty of Marxist victory.” The inevitability and echo chamber are essential, because Marxism is not particularly convincing if you look at it.  If you’re sure it will triumph, though you’ll pick up a vast majority of “the scared” (which are way more than the “convinced”)who want to be eaten last or not at all by adopting the philosophy now and being strident.

So, coming from that background, my “feelers” detected all sorts of things.

In my entire — 34? well, if you count hidden pen names and work for hire more like 40 novels, but never mind — I had very few edits.  Mostly the books get copy edited, not edited.

About 3 books were “edited” which amounted to “remove this scene, move that one” “I don’t think this sentence says what you think it does” and “this will heighten tension.”  Those were as far as I could tell very innocuous.

Only two books had rewrite requests, and both of those, had I followed through on the rewrite would have changed the books completely, in one case yeah, to fit with feminist and “race” narrative (they wanted the Masai woman from the first book to accompany the two white guys to India on the adventure because “she’s as good as they are” — which no one was disputing, though perhaps less equipped for yet another culture change — and when I objected that if we took her to India we would get into issues of Indian racism, I was told that only whites were racist), and in another case to have my character LEAD rather than oppose the future analog of the French revolution.  My refusal to do those re-writes, because then the books would say what I didn’t want them to say severely damaged, if not broke, my relationship with the respective publishing houses. (Yes, and I know some of you will recognize the book and go, “but that was… it can’t be.”  What you don’t get is that I don’t have that big a name, and that the house isn’t MAJORITY libertarian/conservative.  It just allows it and it depends on who you’re actually dealing with.)

But this was all done covertly, behind the scenes, and of course none of us could talk.  First because we’d seem like paranoid loons.  I mean, we’re complaining about things no one saw.

Second, because we would never work in that town again.

As this started to change, so did the pressure on writers become more open and more obvious.

This case is… well, let’s say I’ve known more like this than not.  Houses are actually willing to lose money as long as they can micro-manage the message.

And boy, do they micro manage.  Yep, at that level.  None of their “intended” bright future can be questioned, not even the incidental bits, like “a female president wold be the best thing ever.” or “Leftists are always wonderful.”

And no, of course they’re not doing it on purpose, in the sense that they’re not trying to consciously push every little detail of the message.  That would be exhausting, and also require them to be super-geniuses (they aren’t.) I’ve known and been friends with a lot of lefties before the current frothing times.  Haven’t dropped them, though some of them have dropped me.  It’s not that they consciously police every detail.  It’s that they are immersed in this “vision” that includes every little detail of the socialist paradise and its coming, and they absorb the latest directive from the echo chamber. So when they see something against that, they flinch and want the painful part removed.  Like, in the French Revolution book, I suspect someone looked at how I was denying that equality of outcomes was a good thing, and got very upset “no, no, she’s supposed to be supporting these.” probably even considering what I had done an error, not an intended thing.

But that’s traditional, and look, guys, I have friends in journalism and in education, and I know they get the same exact pressures.  “No, no no.  You can’t teach that.  You must teach this.”  “No, you don’t want to report that.  Or at least remove this word.  Otherwise it gives people the wrong idea.”

Heck, sometimes headlines get changed and strange assemblies to discuss some current events get caught (so much of these when kids were in school.)

So here’s the bad news: our culture has been immersed for almost a 100 years in a cohesive, monolithic narrative.  A narrative that moved steadily left, with no relenting.  This is why those of us who are older than about 35 grew up in a world where voicing a dissenting — conservative or libertarian — opinion got you labeled “crazy”and “uneducated”.  If you were denying what everyone knew, confirmed multiply from unrelated fields like news, research (oh, so easily manipulated, particularly in the soft sciences) and entertainment, then obviously you were either crazy or uneducated or, yah, stupid.  This is how leftism became a positional good.

The good news?  The barriers are coming down, the doors are blowing open, and now we know we’re not alone, we know we’ve been lied to and manipulated.  Sometimes we don’t realize the magnitude of the manipulation which, yeah, can be staggering.

And yeah, I know, some people on the right are convinced indie channels like Amazon are out to get them.  We know facebook and twitter and yeah Google are.

I contend Amazon isn’t — yet.  None of the cases I’ve seen are convincing.  Also, when it comes to indie publishing, they can hit a few, mostly on covers and titles, but they can’t do this kind of micromanagement that trad pub does.  Why?  Because they can’t.  Because they’re not dealing with 10 or even twenty books a quarter.  To police every indie novel, every story that goes up?  I would take a massive work force, and not the third-world-country-uncertain-in-English one that Amazon hires.

Won’t happen.  Not saying that we don’t need alternatives, and yeah, we’re working on that.

But that’s exactly the thing.  PRECISELY.  In exact detail.  There are alternatives. Or there will be, once things become untenable.  And as the masks come off, as each corrupt medium and source goes full turnip, people shy away from it.  Not just us, mind you, but the Muddled Middle.  How many people think CNN is reliable anymore?  The crazier they go, the more they make their agenda obvious, the shakier they get.

And when they reach a certain point, alternatives become viable.  Even when we think they can’t.  Look at journalism, which we thought was immovable.  But it’s not.

The USSR had to regulate typewriters, because they were dangerous to its stability of uniform message.  So were copiers and mimeographs.  Mimeographs, which in the west caused only a ripple of really bad fanfic could bring the ability to control information down.  Then fax machines came in and it was goodbye.

The current technology has issues, but one thing it’s doing is making it difficult for the left to maintain the unified narrative and view of the world without which it CANNOT survive.

Sure, I won’t guarantee they won’t win some elections.  Given their amazing fraud machine, they might even win most of them.  And yes, I know how dangerous that is, because it can take us into actual blood on the streets and much much worse, a reaction-regime which is not America in any recognizable way.

But in the end, regardless of how rocky it gets, we win, they lose.  Because they can only survive where every voice repeats the same and logic never intrudes.  And that’s not the world our technology is shaping.

Be not afraid!

*You will forgive me, but I have to tell this story the way it arrived, which means, yes, it’s religious. the non-believers are free to view it as a cute mythological tale. The religious: I don’t presume to add to scripture. This is just a story. – SAH*

In that day in the garden when reality shuddered and the great I Am descended in terrible glory upon his creations, the animals hid. The lion cub and the lamb crouched beneath a bush trying to make themselves small and quiet, while their mothers sought the total darkness of the trees and spied, with wide and frightened eyes as wind rose throwing clots of Earth into the air bruising the delicate flowers and startling the insects.

Above thunder like a ripping of gigantic cloth sounded, deafening, and the sky that had always been blue turned raging violet and angry red.

Even then, in those moments, the lioness and the ewe knew something had changed. The ewe felt a dread of her old friend, though she could not say why, and the lioness found herself thinking that this, the companion of her untroubled days smelled like food. They looked at their babies a few feet off and worried. Then forgot it as the thunder sounded again, and a sound as if of footfalls, and the voice that spoke louder than all creation and through all creation asked “Adam, where are you?”

Then came the truly terrible moment, as the man and the woman appeared, from behind bushes that never sufficiently covered them, and with trembling voices — they were, really — little more than children, admitted they’d done what they weren’t supposed to. They’d eaten the one fruit they’d been told to abstain from.

When the judgement fell, swift and terrible that the humans were cast out and all creation fallen with them, silence fell, and then a voice asked from the trees, “But Lord, we did obey.”

From behind bushes and trees, crouching fauns and trembling lions nodded.

For a moment it all hung in the balance, the garden, reality, all of it, holding their breath. Neither man nor woman spoke, still caught in the fear.

Then the voice came again, trembling through every fiber of existence, “Very well. Those who so choose can remain in the garden and wait till the fullness of time when all is restored. Though other, fallen versions of yourselves shall meet the humans in the world, and greet them with bared fang and sharp claw, with fearful flight or open hatred.”

Behind their bushes ewe and lioness crouched, and a fawn went so far as to browse a mouthful of grass.

But then came a voice they all knew. Not the Great I Am’s Voice, nor even the Human’s, but the voice of a big shaggy brute whom the human called Dog and the woman called Shedding Menace. He was a creature who spoke little, even to the man to whom he responded with little grunts and sharp barks. But now he spoke, “Lord, if they are going to meet fang and claw, I beg of you, who made me obedience incarnate, that I be allowed to go with him.” He turned his trusting eyes to the man. “I’ll follow at his heel. Since he has neither claws nor fur, I’ll protect him with my claw and fang, and sleep beside him on cold nights.”

The Lord looked at the brute, loyal and simple, and said, “But you who are the most obedient shouldn’t be punished for his disobedience.”

“It is no punishment to go with him,” the dog said. “He is what he is, and if he disobeyed, yet he is the one I will obey. It would be punishment indeed, Lord, to be parted from him. I beg you not to visit it on me.”

In the face of such great devotion, written in the face of the beast, the Lord could but relent. “Very well, Dog. You go with man, you guard his steps, you warm his nights, you be with him when all is against him. This mercy I grant him from you and all your get, until the end of time.”

Then the Great I Am’s finger pointed and man and woman and dog started towards the exit of the garden, the dread threshold that would henceforth be closed to them forever more. The rest of creation came from their hiding spots to watch, shocked that those made so high, the image of himself, could fall so low.

But at the portal a creature waited, small and soft, little larger than the rodents. It was a creature of shadow and movement and had, they all thought, always more resembled the serpent itself than the mammals among which it lived.

Its voice sounded forth high and melodic, “I too, my Lord, would go with them.”

There was an hesitation while the garden paused. “You, Cat?” Himself asked. “But you, unlike Dog are not made to be obedient. You are beautiful and soft, and loyal always only to yourself, forever seeking the spot by the fire, the morsel of food, the lap when it’s available.”

“That is just it, Lord. I don’t obey any authority, and they fell through not obeying. I feel we belong together.”

“And yet, what good will you be to them? The dog can guard their flocks and defend their young. What can someone as small as you do?”

“I will keep watch so no serpents approach them. I should have killed that one Lord. I always felt your order not to kill in the garden was a grave mistake.” It spoke patronizingly, looking up, and the rest of the garden trembled of the fury to come. But only amusement came from himself. The cat unsheathed its sharp claws and licked superciliously at its paw. “And I will eat the vermin that will come to eat that which they bring forth with the sweat of their brows.” It paused. “But mostly, I’ll climb into their laps when they’re sad, and they’ll feel that despite their disobedience, they are loved.” It looked up at Himself with glittering green-jewel eyes. “I will be, if you allow it, a mirror of your love. Just like the dog. I will remind humans of what the garden was like.”

There was a long silence. Then a question, “How can a creature that prefers its comforts choose exile?”

“Because,” the cat said. “I don’t know how it happened, but when they gave me milk and stroked my fur, I felt that forever my comfort would be with them. And I should be theirs.” The glittering jewel eyes sparkled. “I think perhaps that is your doing Lord, and a reflection of what you are to your creation. If they go without me, I will be comfortable, but that feeling of belonging and being loved will never come back. I will choose the feeling and the humans.”

“They will hurt you sometimes, you know? Their children and their children children will. They’ll forget the garden and the pact and see only that you are a creature of the shadow and the dark, and fear you and hurt you.”

“They will hurt each other, too, Lord, which doesn’t mean they belong alone.”

A gust of wind like a sigh filled the garden. “Go with them, then. You and dog and your cubs cubs until the end of time shall be bound to humans as you were in here, so they carry with them forever a memory of the garden, and the sense that they can return here.”

The man, the woman and the dog, and the little striped cat winding around the woman’s ankles exited the portal into the world outside.

And the Lord, setting the angel at the gate, with his flaming sword, looked after the four of them walking into a world where thorns would pierce and fire would burn, and sighed, “And with the memory of the garden,” He said, speaking to the angel, but really to Himself. “They shall have a memory of the fall, because neither dog nor cat live as long as humans. And each death will feel like the expulsion from paradise again. And that will be the price for such priceless gift.”

*For Pixel, Randy, Petronius, DT, Zebie, Friday, D’Artagnan, Miranda, Euclid, Greebo, Helena and Havelock, little pieces of the garden and of love eternal given to us for all too short a time. – SAH*

I was trying to write a story for y’all yesterday (well, for me but to share) but it wouldn’t gel. Now it attacked.

Possess your souls in patience.

*Because I’ve promised to give warning, since weird things seem to happen as soon as I clean, I’m going to be doing a quick clean after this, because the litter boxes are disgusting and the stairs are CRUNCHY. (With Litter.) So, you’ve been warned. – SAH*

Book Promo

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

FROM PAM UPHOFF: Filling in the Blank (Chronicles of the Fall Book 24)

A short story thirty years before the main events of the Fall of the Alliance.

Amnesia? Drugs? Magic?
Ilari Mikhailov has just lost nineteen years of his life . . . and apparently he’s been busy.
Now does he confess that? Or try to slide unnoticed into a life he doesn’t remember?
Not helped by the realization that he wasn’t a very nice person . . .

FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN: The Bard’s Curse: Bard’s Song Book One

In a world where words are power, a bard’s curse weighs heavy on those who draw his wrath.

Tuathal, master bard and prince of two realms, journeys north to his half-brother’s court. When Pyder of the Ford breaks the laws of hospitality, Tuathal’s satire brings ruin in its wake. But more than just righteous anger moves over field and forest. What began as an insult reveals far darker things moving in the realm Fiachta NoDomnail, low king of the Dunalaid.

A wandering bard and prince, Tuathal faces a war that will burn down all that his kindred have built. To stop it and lift a bard’s curse may cost more than he is willing to pay.

Words have power, but darker powers than those of man also have a say.

FROM LEE ECKHARDT: KOSMOPOLIS: A Novel of Berlin

It is the summer of 1927, the peak of Berlin’s ‘Golden Twenties’, an age that is soon to come crashing down – although no one knows it yet. One citizen of golden-age Berlin is Erich Zeller, shell-shocked veteran of the Great War and a ‘confidential agent’, the European version of a private detective, who is seriously down on his luck. That is why, when new client Kathe Eichhorn asks him to locate her cousin Rosa Losch, Zeller takes the case – even though he instinctively knows Kathe is lying to him. Asking no questions, he searches the heights and the depths of the great German kosmopolis, never suspecting where the case will lead him or what it will ultimately mean to him – for not only will Kathe Eichhorn prove to be much more than just a client, Rosa Losch will prove to be much more than just an innocent missing person. She is, in fact, a key part of an international conspiracy that involves the governments of two nations – both of which are willing to kill to keep the conspiracy a secret…

FROM D. A. BROCK: The Lone Star, The Red Banner, and the Rising Sun: Republic of Texas Navy Book 4

December, 1941.

With the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor and across the Far East, the war is now a true World War. The Axis nations appear to be at the height of their power, while the Allies are scrambling to recover from disaster after disaster.

In the middle of all this is the Republic of Texas. After nearly two years of war, the Texas Navy and Marine Corps have grown far beyond what the pre-war world could have imagined. Do they have what it takes to stay relevant in an alliance dominated by America, Britain, and the Soviet Union?

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Schrödinger Paradox: Cataclysm

The end is coming.

Unlucky jerk Tom Beadle was on watch at NASA when the collision alert sounded: a new asteroid, bigger than the dino-killer, headed for Earth. Big problem, but that’s why we have NASA, right? Except, after decades of budget cuts, NASA has no way to shove it off course. That job has to be contracted out. Will the private sector company his best friend from college works at succeed where the government option failed? Might be best to have a backup plan, just in case…

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: A Fox in the Henhouse (Timelines Universe Book 2)

Delaney Wolff Fox is a spy. A cute spy. A deadly spy.

A spy you want at your back when stuff gets real.

From a palatial office in Johannesburg, to a fancy whisky bar in Sydney, Australia, to a beautiful private beach in southwest Florida, to the great and wild city of New Orleans, Captain Delaney Fox, United States Space Force Marines (Intelligence Division) finds herself beset by assassins at every turn, while first saving an alien government’s valuable artifact from the South African cartel that’s stolen it, and then being assigned to guard said artifact while it completes a world tour, on loan from that same alien government.

But like the proverbial fox in the proverbial henhouse, you can count on Delaney to complete the mission and come out with the prize, intact and in hand – even if the “farmer” isn’t all that keen about her doing so.

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

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

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

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

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

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

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Grandmaster’s Gambit

The disastrous war of 1913 is over, and young journalist Isaak Babel has used his fame as a war correspondent to win a peacetime job covering an international chess tournament in New York City. However, trouble is aboard the airship Grossdeuschland, in the form of the notorious Bolshevik terrorist Koba and his henchmen. Men with a dark plan, and New York City will not welcome their visit

FROM CELIA HAYES: Return to Alder Grove

Love in all the wrong places – Caro Robertson was a professional researcher, employee and occasional on-air reporter for a national public radio outlet; the perfect job, the perfect condo, the perfect fiancée. She had the college education, the job, the social position, the perfect life … and then in one fell swoop, everything went sour. Wrong. Disastrously wrong. In the space of a single week, she lost her beloved pet, the perfect fiancée and then her job. What was left for her, but to return to Alder Grove, the little town in Texas where she lived as a child and try to rebuild that life and a new career?
Mark Bascomb – owner of a small fabrication business, small-town handyman, veteran and high-school drop-out; everything in life that Caro Robertson wasn’t. Could they find common ground with each other, a common interest, even love, when they are so different?
Find out when the sparks fly in Alder Grove, in this short romance novel by the author of the Chronicles of Luna City, and the Adelsverein Trilogy.

FROM JOHN BAILEY: The Three Worlds (The Aurigan Conflict)

The Kingdom of New Norway is dying.

When the Aurigan Empire launches a devastating offensive, defeat becomes inevitable. There will be no relief fleet. No miracle weapons. No last-minute rescue.

Instead, the king authorizes Operation Long Winter—an extraordinary evacuation that sends scientists, engineers, military leaders, and thousands of civilians into exile while one forgotten fortress remains behind to buy them time.

At Fort Harald, Colonel Halvorsen and a handful of instructors prepare the least likely defenders imaginable: cadets who have never fought a real battle.

Their sacrifice becomes the first link in an extraordinary chain.

Across three occupied worlds, refugees become resistance fighters. Small victories become organized rebellion. Secret networks spread from colony to colony, carrying hope farther than any fleet can travel.

Years later, when liberation finally comes, history remembers the great victory.

Only a few remember the people who made that victory possible.

The Three Worlds is an epic tale of courage, duty, and ordinary men and women who refuse to surrender their future. Perfect for readers who enjoy David Weber, Jack Campbell, and classic military science fiction rooted in honor, strategy, and the resilience of free people.

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: Language

I’ll do the promo post AND a regular post tomorrow. I found myself unavoidably detained away from home for most of the day. Nothing bad, just one small thing after another. If it makes you feel better, Miss Muse is most seriously displeased with me. She was waiting at the door from the garage with the look of “Hooman? How long have you been out? And did I sign permission for this?” And is now punishing me by not being on my lap.

To you and to her: I’m sorry. I’ll try to give warning next time.

Goodbye Havelock Vetinary Hoyt, aka Fuzzy Pooka, aka Squeaks, aka Fuzz Butt, Last of the cats the boys grew up with, Last of Colorado cats.

Look, I know, I’m not stupid. I know he was weedling on himself — pretty much all the time — and he couldn’t see or smell very well, He still called for his buddy, Greebo, his closest cat-friend, gone six years now. And just this week, he seemed to be expending all his effort into making his back legs work.

But I still hoped he’d go quietly, in his sleep, in one of the places he loved, like the extensively battered too small little bed.

It wasn’t to be. He was now in pain all the time, and we couldn’t let it go on. For humans it might have the advantage of expiating sins, but cats can’t sin. They have no moral judgement. And for our pets, the only rule they know is “keep my human happy.”

He did that. He was a good cat. The best cat possible. And we’re going to miss him every day of the rest of our lives.

Havey, when we brought him home from the mini-golf course. Well, after 3 baths, one of them professional. We got him from a mini golf course. People were hitting him with sticks for playing with balls. My younger son plopped down on the floor, called “kitten, kitten, kitten” and Havelock ran into his arms. he’s been ours ever since. When we got him he looked yellow. We think he was living from the dumpster of the Vietnamese restaurant next door. He was covered in CAKED grease. After three baths, he was white but still greasy. From this point on, the boys and I rubbed corn starch on him and brushed him out till he was clean and magnificent. One of the most beautiful cats ever.

He was the cat that people who didn’t even like cats loved. One minute they were reluctant and the next they were petting him and threatening to “num num num” his fuzzy ears.

And he loved people. All people. All the time. This cat never met a stranger. Being hit with golf clubs didn’t sour him on humans. I doubt anything could.

He wasn’t our brightest cat (that’s Indy.) It took him ten years to learn to go down stairs. Before that he’d throw himself down head first, go ass over teakettle, then squeak (until he got ill, his voice sounded like an 8 week old kitten) indignantly at us for keeping such a feature in our house, that forced him to hurt himself.

He never understood my body was also me, so he had to be as close as possible to my head, preferably ON my face. And when I got up to go to the bathroom in the night, he’d shadow the feet closely to make sure they didn’t run away with me. (Yes, this resulted in many clunks as I accidentally kicked his little, hollow head.)

In the house before this one, where we had one of those balcony things, overlooking the living room, he tried to jump twenty feet from the railing to Dan’s lap down a floor and a bit. I plucked him out of the air, I still don’t know how. This scared him so much he fortunately never did it again.

He used to bring me his mechanical toys when they were broken and make the “fix it, mom” sound. One day he brought me a beetle. I had to explain. He was disappointed in my lack of ability to raise the beetle from the dead.

He answered to his name. Wherever he was hiding in the house, however badly he was feeling, he’d come when I called “Havey! Havey Bavvy!”

He mostly delighted in being petted. He’d do anything for pets.

He went with younger son and I on either side, petting him. I hope Greebo was on the other side, waiting for him. Look, I’m not even sure if there’s an other side for cats, but I hope there is, and that Greebo was there, waiting for him. They were the best of friends, Greebo’s intelligence and protective instincts looking after Havey’s boundless affection and love. And I hope little Helena, his foster daughter the little time we got to have her with us, is there too, to let him cuddle and groom her.

In that time, where there’s no time, it will be only a little while till Dan and I are along. If we deserve it. If we’re good enough to meet again the gallant and innocent little souls that went before us.

By Holly the Assistant

(Say a prayer for Sarah and Dan, as today they perform the final duty of any pet owner to their Havey.)

(Photo by Jeff Henry, National Park Service)

Once upon a time, not so very many years ago, the summer skies were mostly blue and clear . . . not in 1988*, but before that, and after that.

But that isn’t far enough back. I’m lucky to live in a place that still has living memory of when was far enough back, at that.

An elderly friend told me that when she helped her daddy pull cattle off the range for the winter, they always fired the range, because the Indians had told her daddy to do that when he first came out and settled. The transition of the land from nomadic to ranching/farming is just outside of living memory, today: the oldest generation here are the first settled children born here.

The experts decided at some point that fire was very bad, and banned the regular fall burning.

And here we sit, under an orange sky, with a red sun, in June, July, August, September . . .

Somehow, we need to get back to the ranchers firing the range when they pull the cattle, and burning all the stuff that needs to burn, when the fall rains and snows will put fire out, and the burns will be light and skippy like they were back before the experts got involved because they happen so often they burn the tinder fast and don’t get into the larger plants.

It seems increasingly clear that absolutely everything has had the same problem of incorrect experts infesting the system. People who didn’t have the entire picture, only parts, and wanted to fix the problems, and did fix the problems, they could identify, but in so doing broke the entire system and left us with a world prone to conflagration.

Medicine. Education. Research. Publishing. Government. Food. Transportation. Culture.

All it takes is a spark, and there are so many sparks blowing around right now. Who knows how things actually work? When did they actually work? In what ways did they not work that left openings for improvements that were actually the seeds of destruction?

Much of it was a multi-generation process of breaking working systems to improve them, in the name of progress, in the name of scientific advancement, in the name of modernity, equality, charity, environmentalism . . . and some fields have definitely improved immensely at the same time as they have created the conditions for destruction. It doesn’t seem to have been pure malice, but misguided and/or ignorant do-gooderism, with a touch of malice slipping in here and there.

Like Sarah always says, Build over, build around, build under. Keep building, and try to rediscover what used to work in the areas you can see starting to smolder that you can touch your own self, and build from that.

*Yellowstone Fires. The Yellowstone Fires were a direct result of the long time policy of suppression of fires being lifted. There was too much to burn, and did it ever burn.