Food for the Great Anniversary Festival by Jerry Stratton

The day is passed.—The 4th of July, 1776, will be a memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe it will be celebrated by succeeding generations, as the GREAT ANNIVERSARY FESTIVAL!

That’s how the Morning Chronicle of July 13, 1826, quoted John Adams’s July 3 letter to his wife Abigail. It’s a slight misquote: Adams thought the day of celebration would be July 2, when the Continental Congress voted in favor of independence. Instead, people chose July 4 as the anniversary to celebrate. That was when the Declaration of Independence was approved announcing our independence in terms that were as revolutionary as the revolution itself.

A hundred and fifty years after that misquote, and two hundred years after Adams wrote that letter—that is, in 1976—I and my brothers dressed up as Uncle Sam for our small town’s Independence Day parade. That same year saw the first cookbook I remember my mom using: America’s Bicentennial Cook Book, by the St. Mary’s Altar Society of our church.

Do an eBay search on “bicentennial cookbook” or “1776 1976 cookbook” and there are hundreds of these, for communities across the United States. At the moment I’m writing this I see a wide variety of organizations, from the Conway Junior High PTA of Orlando, Florida through the Hartford (Connecticut) Courant newspaper through the Holy Family Altar Guild of Poland, Ohio—and yes, it’s heavily Polish-influenced, filled with wonderful-looking recipes—through Snyder, Nebraska; Dallas, Texas; the Saint Louis Symphony; the Oklahoma State Fair; the Georgia Power Company; and the Yakima Valley (Washington) District Federation of Women’s Clubs.

Several senior citizens centers, hospitals, even the Congressional Club of Washington, DC, all got into the spirit of ’76 by publishing cookbooks.

One of my favorite snacks in 1976 is also one of my favorite snacks today: oatmeal no bake cookies. Everyone had their own recipe, so I can’t guarantee that my mom used this America’s Bicentennial recipe from Adele Yob at our picnics and reunions that summer. But it is the recipe I use most often today.

Adele Yob’s No-Bake Oatmeal Cookies

• ½ cup butter
• 2 cups sugar
• 4 tbsp cocoa
• ½ cup milk
• 3 cups oatmeal
• 1 tsp vanilla

Mix the butter, sugar, cocoa, and milk in a saucepan. Bring to a boil and boil for one minute, then add the oatmeal and vanilla. Drop quickly from a spoon onto waxed paper.

I’ll be bringing some of these to LibertyCon.

Two years ago for LibertyCon 36 I was inspired by Les Johnson’s LibertyCon 35 side comment, about foods that emit the most positrons, to adapt one of my favorite fudge recipes. Per Les Johnson, I used bananas and brazil nuts, both high positron emitters. The original recipe called for pineapple and pecans, and appeared in the Potter County Home Demonstration Council Bicentennial Cook Book courtesy of Mrs. C.D. Baldwin.

Potter County Hawaiian Fudge

• 2-½ cups sugar
• 1 cup cream
• 8 oz crushed pineapple
• 1 cup pecans
• green coloring

Bring sugar, cream, and pineapple to a boil over medium heat, stirring until blended. Cook until mixture reaches 234°-240° (soft ball).

Remove from heat, add pecans and a few drops of food coloring. Let cool slightly, to about 195°. Beat until creamy. Spread into a buttered or lined 8×8 pan. Score into squares while still warm, and cut when cool.

Whether Hawaiian or Positronic, this is a wonderful fudge. The food coloring is optional, but the fudge is an odd color without it due to the high-temperature cooking of the fruit.

I don’t know how much the country as a whole celebrated the Centennial in 1876. We weren’t that far from the end of the Civil War and were only six years from the last Confederate state’s readmittance to the Union. A search on “1776 1876 cookbooks” on eBay unsurprisingly brings up very few results from that era—such books would be 150 years old this year.

But it was definitely celebrated in Philadelphia. If the various promotional cookbooks of the era are to be believed, everyone involved with food, at least, entered into the competitions that were part of Philadelphia’s 1876 Centennial Exposition, and used that in their promotions.

A search on newspapers.com for “centennial cook book” finds a few advertisements for celebratory collections. Most of them are for Mrs. Ella E. Myers’s Philadelphia-centric 403 page cookbook “and general guide”. Nearly the final hundred pages are dedicated to a pictorial history of Philadelphia with a special focus on locations significant to the Revolution…

…to give each purchaser of this book a little souvenir of our nation’s “Centennial Birthday;” something that may be retained by future posterity as a memento of the grand celebration of this “Centennial Year, 1876.”

I have a copy of this book. It would have been and is an amazing souvenir. It’s also filled with wonderful ideas for food. If you have spare space on your grill, for example, you might take a few tomatoes, cut the stem end out to leave a small divot, and fill the divot with butter, salt, and pepper. At 350° it needs about 50-60 minutes. On a closed grill, adjust to your grill. This is very, very good made in an oven, but it is phenomenal infused with the flavor of grilling over charcoal.

Of interest to food historians, Myers also included an early version of “Saratoga Potato Chips”. But because I enjoy my sweets, one of my favorites from this book is her very quick-to-make German Biscuits.

German Biscuits.

TIME, SIX OR EIGHT MINUTES.

Half a pound of dried flour; five ounces of butter; seven ounces of sugar; two eggs; two dessertspoonsful of cream; peel of a small lemon grated.

Beat five ounces of butter to a cream, and mix in the loaf sugar pounded the grated lemon peel, half a pound of dried flour, and the cream and well-beaten eggs, to form a nice light dough. Mix all well before kneading it, roll it in thin, long, narrow strips, and bake on a tin in a quick oven.

Volume measurements in this era, as opposed to weights, were not generally standardized. For dessert spoons I usually start with two teaspoons as the equivalent. Flour, too, while it is often given in amounts by weight, tended to vary even more than it does today with regard to how much liquid it soaks up. Further, “dried flour” is likely a special kind, perhaps a new kind of packaged flour. The term is only used three times among the hundreds of mentions of flour in Myers’s book.

This is my interpretation of those cookies—and they are cookies. Myers uses the terms “biscuit” and “cake” for what we would call cookies.

German Lemon Cookies

• 7 oz white flour
• 4 oz whole wheat flour
• 5 oz butter
• 7 oz sugar
• 2 eggs, well-beaten
• 4 tsp cream
• grated peel of one lemon

Beat butter until creamy. Beat in the sugar and lemon peel. Stir in the flour. Add the cream and eggs and mix to a light dough. Drop by teaspoons onto greased baking sheet and flatten with a wet fork.
Bake 6-8 minutes at 425° until golden.

I took a few liberties with it; while I don’t know specifically what “dried flour” was, most flour called for in 1876 and even in the late 1700s meant a flour that was closer to our white flour than to our whole wheat flour. I just happen to like whole wheat. For historical accuracy, replace the whole wheat flour with however much white flour you need to get a cookie or biscuit dough consistency.

The women of the First Congregational Church of Marysville, Ohio, also got into the celebration with their Centennial Buckeye Cook Book. This is the second-most-commonly advertised “Centennial Cook Book” in newspapers of the era, at least as archived on newspapers.com. The Women featured this quote on their book’s indicia page:

“Bad dinners go hand in hand with total depravity, while a properly fed man is already half saved.”

Of particular interest from a Centennial perspective is the chapter with “a recipe from the households of the President and each of the Centennial Governors of the States and Territories”.

That was the plan. They received only twenty-six responses, not all of them recipes, and nothing from the President. I have not tried any of them, but looking at them right now Massachusetts Governor Rice’s Rice Cake looks both interesting and indicative of a sense of humor.

What I did try was a heavy-on-black-pepper coleslaw from a Mrs. Hawkins.

CABBAGE SALAD.

Mrs. Hawkins.

Two quarts finely chopped cabbage, two tablespoons salt, two of white sugar, one of black pepper, and a heaping one of ground mustard; rub yolks of four hard boiled eggs until smooth, add half cup butter slightly warmed; mix thoroughly with the cabbage and add teacup good vinegar; serve with whites of the eggs sliced and placed on the salad.

I tend to go lighter on the salt than the original. But then, I have a refrigerator.

Ohio Black Pepper Slaw

• 2 lbs shredded cabbage
• 1-2 tbsp salt
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 tbsp black pepper
• 1 tbsp ground mustard
• 4 hard boiled eggs
• ½ cup melted butter
• ¾ cup vinegar

Mix the cabbage, salt, sugar, pepper, and mustard. Mash the egg yolks smooth and mix the butter and yolk thoroughly to make a creamy paste. Stir the yolk and then the vinegar into the cabbage.

Slice the egg whites and toss into the salad. Adjust vinegar, salt, sugar, and pepper as desired.

Also for the Philadelphia Exhibition, the “Women’s Centennial Executive Committee” of Philadelphia solicited recipes for and published, The National Cookery Book of the International Exhibition of 1876. The book is disappointing in that it does not attribute most (or any that I saw) of the recipes. But the solicitation, as printed in the December 2, 1875, Beloit (Wisconsin) Free Press is worthy of remembrance:

It is designed to make this work purely American, excluding, as far as is possible, the receipts common to all nations. The products of our country are more varied than those of other lands, comprising numerous articles in common use at our tables, partially, if not wholly, unknown to the inhabitants of the old world, or used by them only as luxuries. The varieties of climate give to each section its own peculiar products, but the facilities for transportation, which bring to our doors even from far-off California its delicious fruits and vegetables, render the resources of the table common to all, and therefore National.

…

No receipt will be considered too homely, if characteristic of the country. Dishes peculiar to rich and poor—to hunting, fishing, or exploring expeditions, or to camp life, &c., &c., are desired. If comical, and at the same time good, so much the better. Our aim is to give the true savor of American life in all its varieties.

There are several recipes for brown bread in the book, but the recipe submitted by “M.S.A.” by way of the Niles (Michigan) Democrat of January 15, 1876 does not appear to have made it in.

I have been requested to furnish for publication the following recipe for making brown bread. Having used it in my family for years, I pronounce it unapproachable in simplicity and excellence, and am satisfied that every good housewife will number it among her choice recipes. It is certainly worthy a place in the “Centennial Cook Book:” — M.S.A.

3 pints Graham flour; 1 tea cup, or less, of molasses; 1 teaspoon of salt; 1 teaspoon of saleratus; sour milk sufficient to make a stiff batter; steam three or four hours; bake in moderate oven to give a light crust.

I have not tried it; but if you do I’d suggest starting with ¾ cup as the equivalent of a tea cup; and a 1:1.25 ratio for saleratus:baking soda, thus, 1-¼ tsp baking soda—unless, of course, you have saleratus on hand.

M.S.A.’s submission is followed by a notice that it isn’t just fruits and vegetables making their way east from “far-off California”.

A stamp mill with two hammers weighing 200 pounds each has just been put in place for use in the metallurgical department of the Michigan University. Three tons of gold and silver ore are now on the way from California for use in the department.

One of the companies advertising their participation in the Philadelphia Exposition was the Rumford Chemical Works, and their Horsford baking powder. They didn’t call it baking powder except in their awards listing, which included an award from the “Centennial Exhibition, Philadelphia, 1876.”. They called their product a “bread preparation”. It contained a soda and an acid separately, which were mixed together at the time of baking using a special two-sided measuring device that had one side twice as big as the other.

A recipe that grew on me in the few days after I made is not quite as American as apple pie. I was a little disappointed when I first made this apple custard pie. I had it for dessert, and—for someone with my sweet tooth, at least—it’s not really a modern dessert. But it turned out to be a great breakfast treat with a cup of coffee.

APPLE CUSTARD PIE.—Peel sour apples and stew until soft and not much water left in them; then rub thorough a cullender; beat three eggs for each pie to be baked, and put in at the rate of one cup butter and one of sugar for three pies; season with nutmeg.

Less eggs and butter will make a good pie not as rich as above recipe.

My version makes one pie:

Horsford Apple Custard Pie

• 2-½ lbs Granny Smith apples
• ⅓ cup butter
• ⅓ cup sugar
• 3 eggs
• ½ tsp nutmeg
• 2 9-inch pie crusts

Peel, core, and purée apples in food processor until smooth. Stew over medium-low heat until no water pools at bottom when stirring. Or, consider baking the apples whole and using a food mill to get the meat without the core and peel. Let cool.

Blend the ⅓ cup butter into the apple. Blend in the sugar and nutmeg. Beat in the eggs one at a time.

Fill bottom crust with the apple mixture. Layer top crust over, and cut or poke holes for steam vents. Bake at 375° for 45-60 minutes. Cool to room temperature before serving.

Any pastry crust will do. Horsford, of course, wanted you to make their own pie crust, using their baking powder, and you can download the full Horsford Cook-Book as a PDF from my Centennial Meal page to see it. But if you want a pastry from the Founders’ era, “Amelia Simmons” has several in her American Cookery. I especially like her puff paste number 3, although I’ll be using her Royal Paste (number 9) for the cranberry tarts I’ll be bringing to LibertyCon.

Puff Pastes for Tarts.

No. 3. To any quantity of flour, rub in three fourths of it’s weight of butter, (twelve eggs to a peck) rub in one third or half, and roll in the rest.

A later edition amended this recipe:

ERRATA.

Page 29. Puff pastes for tarts, No. 3; for 12 eggs read 6.

In Pastes, the white of eggs only are to be used.

Incorporating the errata and sizing it for a double-crust pie, this is how I make it:

American Paste Number 3

• 10 oz flour
• 8 oz butter (cold)
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 large egg white

Combine flour and salt. Cut in four ounces butter. Mix in egg white by hand until dough barely holds. Form ball and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate one hour along with rolling board.

Flatten dough into rectangle. Divide half remaining butter into six pats, laying three on one side of rectangle. Fold over a third, and lay the remaining three on top, folding the remaining third over.

Roll again to rectangle and repeat with remaining butter. Divide into two squares, wrap, and refrigerate one hour. Press one into disc for 8- or 9-inch pie pan. Fill, and flatten remaining dough for top.

Because it calls for a single egg white, if I only need it for a single-crust pie I store the extra dough in the freezer until I need it. It’s rare for it to need storage for longer than two weeks.

American Cookery was published in 1796, and is the first American cookbook. No one knows who Amelia Simmons was; the only information we have is what is on the cover of American Cookery, and what can be inferred from the text of American Cookery, which is a bit circular from the standpoint of historical evidence. Whenever I read historians trying to describe who Amelia Simmons was, I get the feeling she may also be our first fictional food spokesperson. But regardless of Amelia Simmons’s identity or existence, the opening text of the book is remarkable.

The orphan, tho’ left to the care of virtuous guardians, will find it essentially necessary to have an opinion and determination of her own… It must ever remain a check on the poor solitary orphan, that while those females who have parents, or brothers, or riches, to defend their indiscretions, that the orphan must depend solely upon character.

My metaphor alarm may be overly sensitive, but this sets it off every time I read it. This is as much a description of America at the time—just seven years from the Constitution and only five from the completion of the Bill of Rights—as it is of a generic “poor solitary orphan”.

Also of interest is how different the methods in this book are from modern ones. If you don’t, as many refrigerator manufacturers did, consider refrigeration to be cooking, then cooking changed far more between 1796 and 1876 than between 1876 and today.

One of those early advancements was just beginning to play out. Four of her recipes, two cookies and two gingerbreads, are among the earliest recipes that call for pearlash, an early baking soda-like leavener. You can generally replace pearlash 1:1 with baking soda.

Another of my favorites from American Cookery is, sadly, not one of the nicest looking of the recipes in this book. But I love old-school puddings and I love cornbread. Her “Nice Indian Pudding… No. 2” is, at least as I make it, a bit of a cross between a corn pudding and a custardy corn bread.

A Nice Indian Pudding.

No. 2. 3 pints scalded milk to one pint meal salted; cool, add 2 eggs, 4 ounces butter, sugar or molasses and spice q.f. it will require two and half hours baking.

Note that if you choose to make the third “nice Indian pudding” rather than the second, there’s an entry in the errata for it.

I use molasses for the sweetener. If you can find a source for sorghum molasses, I strongly recommend it. It’s often available at specialty nut shops and at Amish-style groceries.

A Nice Indian Pudding

• 3 cups very hot milk
• 1 cup cornmeal
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 2 oz melted butter
• ½ cup molasses
• ¼ tsp nutmeg

Mix the cornmeal and salt. Stir in the hot milk. Cool to room temperature.

Beat egg into batter, stir in butter, molasses, and nutmeg, and pour into a two-quart baking dish. Place into a larger dish and pour hot water around it to about ¼ inch.

Bake for about 90 minutes to two hours at 300°.

It’s a bit clichéd to call Thomas Jefferson the first American foodie, but he really was. He’s famous for introducing French and Italian food to the United States. Less well known is that he also worked hard to introduce the French and others to American food, even growing American corn in his garden when he was the ambassador to France, to serve corn on the cob to his French guests.

Like Benjamin Franklin, he thought that American Pippin apples were superior to any apple in Europe.

Unfortunately, while some of his recipes are publicly available in their original form, such as his wonderful biscuits de savoye and his famous ice cream—both in his own handwriting—most are only available in archives far from Texas. For these recipes I used the 1976 University of Virginia edition of Marie Kimball’s 1938 Thomas Jefferson’s Cook Book.

Thomas Jefferson’s Cook Book is a wonderful resource, but it has two serious flaws. The first and most obvious is that it provides interpretations of eighteenth and nineteenth century recipes through 1938 eyes, without presenting the original text. The second is that it doesn’t tell us exactly where the recipes come from. Kimball appears to have used the notes of Jefferson’s granddaughter Virginia Jefferson Trist. Trist’s collection was a family collection, and contains recipes from well after Jefferson died.

Martha Jefferson Randolph, however, was Thomas Jefferson’s daughter. So it is entirely possible that her Fish Potato Pie could have graced the White House table while he was president, or that he could have enjoyed it in his semi-retirement afterward.

Martha Jefferson Randolph’s Fish Potato Pie

• 1 lb trout or whitefish
• 1 lb mashed potatoes
• 2 tbsp butter
• ¼ tsp nutmeg
• ⅛ tsp pepper
• ½ tsp salt
• 2 tbsp brandy
• cream or milk
• 9-inch pie shell

Steam fish just enough to shred. Mix with mashed potatoes made as you like mashed potatoes. Mix in butter, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and brandy. If too stiff, thin with cream or milk. Turn into pie shell and bake at 375° for about thirty minutes, until set.

Whatever the provenance, Kimball’s/Trist’s collection of recipes includes early examples of two classic southern dishes: gumbo, and rice and beans. The rice and beans are attributed to a “Baron de Brise”, who may be the most obscure of all of the attributions in Kimball’s book. Morton Gill Clark, in his French-American Cookery from New Orleans to Quebec, attributes the “Podrilla à la Créole” as “a great favorite of Thomas Jefferson, the recipe for which he got from his friend the Baron de Brise.”

That’s pure cookbook history, with no reference and nothing to back it up. It’s also pretty much the only reference to Baron de Brise I could find. I would expect a Baronial “friend of Thomas Jefferson” to have left more of a mark in historical documents. But if Clark is right, this recipe is contemporaneous with Jefferson.

The Baron de Brise’s Rice and Beans

Beans

• 2 cups red beans
• ¼ lb salt pork
• salt and pepper
• seasonal herbs

Soak the beans overnight in plenty of water, and drain. Cover again with water according to the instructions with the beans, add pork, salt and pepper to taste, and chopped herbs.

Rice

• 1 cup rice
• salted water or broth
• 2 tbsp butter
• salt and pepper

Boil rice in salted water and/or broth until light and tender, according to the instructions with the rice. Add butter, and salt and pepper to taste. Press into a ring mould. Bake at 350° for ten minutes. Turn out, and fill with beans.

One of President Jefferson’s most famous acts was the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. It wasn’t an impulse purchase; he’d been worried about the security of our western borders well before the Purchase, both in matters large and small. In 1802, he appointed Hore Browse Trist, Sr., to a position in the Mississippi Territory, which bordered the French territory and so needed customs officials.

One of Hore Browse Trist, Sr.’s sons was Nicholas Philip Trist, who married Thomas Jefferson’s granddaughter Virginia Randolph on September 11, 1824. His other son was Hore Browse Trist, Jr., who remained in the Louisiana area. Mrs. Rosella Trist, to whom the Gumbo is attributed, was Hore Browse Trist, Jr.’s wife, although it’s unclear when they married. Depending on that date, this recipe, too, might have been enjoyed by Jefferson.

If he did, I expect that he considered gumbo a major benefit of having acquired the Louisiana Territory for the United States!

Mrs. Rosella Trist’s Gumbo

• 2 tbsp butter or lard
• 1 tbsp flour
• 1 tsp chopped parsley
• ½ onion minced fine
• 3-4 lbs chicken parts
• 2 quarts water
• salt
• black pepper
• red pepper
• 2-3 tbsp sassafras powder

Melt fat in a large pot. Gradually stir in flour, parsley, and onion until flour is brown. Add and brown the chicken, then add the water and season to taste with salt, black pepper, and red pepper. Boil gently for 90 minutes. Reduce heat and stir in sassafras, stirring constantly without boiling.

This is not at all what I expect to get if I order gumbo in a Louisiana-inspired restaurant today. But it is an absolutely lovely chicken stew, simply flavored. If it did arrive in time, it could have made a wonderful soup for an ailing ex-President.

I’ve made a PDF of all of the recipes I’ve featured here, formatted to print three 6×4 cards per page. You can print them on normal paper or on cardstock. Obviously if you have your own favorite format you can just copy and paste the recipes from this post.

I have many more Bicentennial, Centennial, and Founders-era recipes on my Meals for the Sestercentennial series that I started in 2023, including both the Eye in the Biscuit and the Jellied Guacamole. That series led to my Sestercentennial Cookery which is available in print as well as a free download.

I’ve been doing a few non-food Sestercentennial Year postings starting with the Battle of Bennington last August. Researching those is where I found the opening and closing quotes for this post.

All of the cookbooks I used as references from the Centennial and earlier are available online. If they weren’t available online before I wrote about them, I scanned them in myself and posted them on my web site. They’re linked in the body of the post, but here they are again all in one place. They’re all fascinating.

• The Centennial Cook Book and General Guide
• The Centennial Buckeye Cook Book
• The Horsford Cook-Book
• American Cookery
• Thomas Jefferson’s Cook Book
• The National Cookery Book

There are some differences between the 1976 version of Thomas Jefferson’s Cook Book that I used and the 2007 version available for checkout on the Internet Archive. I haven’t noticed any differences in recipes, but I also haven’t looked, and I just now noticed that the 2007 Archive reprint titles the rice and beans as “Podrilla là Creole” where my 1976 reprint titles it “Podrilla à la Creole”. Having not seen the 1938 original, I can’t say which matches it.

There are restored versions of American Cookery in print. I especially like the one from Colonial Printer & Bookbindery, available from their website and from places like Townsends. It’s a quality facsimile without embellishment, made in the U.S.A.

Each coming festival shall bring to memory’s view their noble end

And blessings on each honor’d name shall from the patriot’s lips ascend.

—“Lines on the Deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams”, by A Lady of Richmond, E.L.S., July 14, 1826.

By Holly the Assistant.

Or maybe not so quick. . . so, the Dragon Awards are open for nominations. And it would be kind of cool, don’t y’all think, for Sarah to be nominated? No Man’s Land for science fiction.

https://applyto.dragoncon.org/fan_awards/dc_fan_awards_nominations.php

But also, there are lots of other deserving creators this year, a number of them from the weekly and special promo posts. Some of our number don’t even stick to books: you may or may not be aware, MCA Hogarth wrote a game!

The best part about this, from my “creators get paid” perspective, is that Finalists get publicity. Winners get publicity. Publicity gets sales. Sales pay creators. Everyone wins!

So please, no fuss or drama, click over and nominate.

Thank you!

Holly

At the height of the Obamanation, there was a con in Philadelphia, and — of course! — we took a chance to visit the holy sites.

At the time there was a legend rampant that if you rang the Liberty Bell, there would be a second American Revolution. Dan caught me trying to lean-not-lean on it and told me to stop it. And I’ll give you the poor thing is strapped down five ways from Monday to the point that it would take a five point Earthquake to move it.

Look, by disposition I seem to always be on the side of chaos and upending. It is a very funny — not funny — joke of the Author that He then requires me to be the sane one, holding the reins and saying “it might eventually be needed. But not yet.”

Weirdly the “revolutionary Fed Speak” has propagated frantically on Twitter, and i want to tell you, it’s an ops, and it’s not an ops for OUR side. (It rarely is. The individualists as always fail to organize.)

Yes, the “socialists” have got some wins in jurisdictions where the voting is so corrupt they could run Mickey Mouse (instead they chose to run Goofy, of course) and win. But that doesn’t mean much for the country at large. I always roll my eyes when I read something about how people under thirty think well of communism/socialism. I’ve been reading this headline my entire life, which means at one point it was my generation they were talking about… on our way to becoming, as a generation, the most irascible constitutionalists on the block.

Not only does socialism sound great when your only experience of life is school and parents looking after you. Once you enter the working world and acquire responsibilities and rights, the socialism peels like snake skin, allowing the individual to grow.

Add to that that a) the kids have been told that anything requiring community is “socialism” including roads and schools. I’ve had someone argue that with me in the past, and thereby class the ROMANS as “socialist”. Then there is the fact that their acquaintance is mostly from school and the teacher probably told them socialism was great, so they’re afraid of letting the classmates know they don’t buy into it.

Anyway, I don’t see any great deviation from norm in the kids, except maturing a little later.

And honestly, the beginning of the twentieth century was more reliant on collectivism and central planning of all sorts. It was back then just the “sensible position” because of the way that industry had been reorganized by central planning and made so much more efficient and prosperous. It seemed logical and obious it would achieve the same to organize government the same way. (I remember the remnant of it in my high school economics class where they talked about how hard it was for the mixed economies to catch up with socialist/communist ones who were eliminating all inefficiencies, by nature.) If you don’t believe me, read early SF and you’ll catch the whiff everywhere. Which is why FDR and the other “progressives” got away with so much.

Now, in the post covidiocy era, we’ve become more jaded about the whole central authority thing. No, not all of us. (For is it not written, the custard heads thou shalt always have with you.)

Yeah, “Socialists” are winning in places where a cat would win with a D after its name, mostly because the fraud machine is that efficient. And btw that means they’re convincing themselves that running to the left is the way to go. Will it work? Well, it depends on whether the “socialism” is the real draw (it won’t work) or they have the fraud that set up that this is just to give cover to the fraud (“see, we told you they wanted socialism. That’s why we won.”)

How do I know that socialism isn’t what people want? Because the left has been trying to sell this since 08 and everywhere that it’s not a safe space for crazy left, it bounces like a weaponized rubber ball. Because people picked Trump. Twice. And not all the promises that “There will never be jobs again, but government will take care of you.”

I think coming out as socialist is their last attempt at appealing tot he masses, which in their head (arrow of history) are of course socialist. Like Occupy Wall Street, which was in the same category, it won’t work. because the masses are not socialist. They might think that’s the name for anything cooperative, but they’re not in point of fact socialist. And the things the crazy socialists say repel.

Anyway, we might yet lose control of the country. We might yet need “a second American revolution.” Heinlein believed it, and you know, I have one, at the end of the USAian arc in DST.

But today is not the eve of that day. Today this is in no way needed. The screaming voices on Twitter are trying to get us to move because that is, in fact, their last chance at winning. (And even then their chances are low.)

So, go out and celebrate the fourth with an absolute clean conscience and happy soul.

Yes, the country got very far down the path to “Progressive-possessed” before any of us were born. But we’re clawing it back, and things are in point of fact going our way.

We are winning this, without the need to roll the dice in a revolution. Which is the best kind of win, I might add.

Note I’m not saying it will be easy — if it were easy, it wouldn’t need Americans — or that we won’t have loses. I’m just saying we will win without massive loss of life.

Be not afraid. As for me and mine, we’re watching the sacred musical (1776) and then blowing up stuff, as it should be. There is 100% chance of wretchedly rendered but very fervent singing of the Star Spangled Banner, too.

May it always be so.

2026 FUNDRAISING APPEAL. If this is one of your regular stops, please consider donating! Because Jerry Pournelle told me I should be making 100k from the blog, given readership and how often I blog. So far I’ve never made more than about $30k per year, but then again, I’m not Jerry. I think he was assuming HIS value add. :D
Whichever. he said to fundraise annually and I’m doing it. It helps convince my family I’m not insane when I got to bed late and get up early to keep the blog fed. (Today? today it’s a matter of doctors. Sorry.)
The full appeal is here: Toss A Coin To Your Blogger, Oh Readers of Plenty paypal link in it is broken (fixing but also here) and forgot to give the snail mail which is Sarah A. Hoyt, 304 S Jones Blvd #6771, Las Vegas, NV  89107.

Oh Readers of Plenty It’s that time of year where I show how obedient and what a good listener I am, and ask people who like what they read here to kick in a few bucks, if they have it to spare.

Your contribution can knock out the rats in my head who insist that this is a waste of time!!!

I have been told, repeatedly, by several of you, that it also helps the rats in your head that do not like feeling like freeloaders.

This is not an emergency appeal, this is not a matter of life and death, (or even death and ice-cream), and I will throw my shiny new chinchilla of hope at you if I realize you’ve hurt yourself to send me a few dollars of thanks.

That said, a workman is worth his hire, and I think I feel Jerry Pournelle glaring at me from heaven since he cannot give me the lecture about how my work has worth and I need to respect that value. So, if you find value in this blog’s work, and you won’t hurt anything by doing so, toss something into the hat!

There is a Give Send Go fundraiser for this specific fundraiser set up. Here is a Paypal Me Link if you prefer that. (Yes, I know. Paypal, but for now, they’re behaving.) If you have a monthly donation setup to the permanent Give Send Go, that is still working and thank you! There are also two substacks you can subscribe to. One is on the side bar of the blog, the other is supposed to be a newsletter, as well as giving you chapters of the current work in progress if you subscribe. It takes cards.

For what is going on: I am actually doing quite a bit better since multiple people have taken it on themselves to nag me into going to the doctor before I am nearly dead.

On the down side, as a result of that I am in the position of waiting to see a specialist (mid month) for a something which responds to antibiotics but comes back when the course is finished, and has the normal doctors saying “huh. I’ve never seen that before.” I am sure I don’t have to explain to everyone here how not reassuring that situation is, but it is being handled.

1. My songs of the clankers are here on You Tube. I am on TwiX here, and of course share links on Instapundit most nights.
   
   
2. There are several non-book tasks I intend to get rolling this year- among them putting the clanker songs on Spotify so various Hunlings will quit asking if they are up yet, and another of which will need to be further along before I open it up. It will be site for all things geeky and also hopefully a good promo site for indies. (Can you feel the anticipation?).
   
3. If I can stop throwing out “interesting” symptoms and becoming a medical curiosity, I should be able to finish Rhodes to Hell and move on to the next Dyce.  Needless to say I’m also working on Orphans of the Stars, the second book of Chronicles of Elly.

And that’s all for now, throw a handful of hundreds in the hat, (go ahead! Make my day!) and lets get back to playing!

Nothing has changed.

Yes, I do think the Supreme Court’s decision on birth citizenship was wrong, and further it was dangerous, because I believe Clarence Thomas over the lot of them. His scholarship is superior to all of theirs.

The truth is that we’re facing a new form of attack. As I said before, when the borders were open, the world cannot win against us militarily but they found they can attack us by sending the most wretched, uneducated and frankly hostile to us (In the Americas and I suspect the rest of the world, they heavily recruited communists for the caravans) people they could find over the border in massive waves. That this had the advantage of lowering our wages, raising costs of living and draining the body politic dry, while presenting us with scenes of squalor was an advantage.

It was an attack by human wave, no more, no less. They’ve done the same to every Western nation. Successfully, in terms of more or less destroying the countries.

It has abated now, and largely stopped. Except for H1B visas, which are a different problem, but not by much, and which this administration is failing to curb.

BUT the human wave attack has taken another form. Not only women performing birth tourism, but in China’s case doing that factory style. And in many ways, too. There have now been found more than one literal “factory” where Chinese citizens are having children via surrogate and raising hundreds of kids in various institutions throughout the land.

This is innovative, technically legal, and evil.

The supreme court ruling against birth citizenship would be an easy solution, of course. but please keep in mind that what we have now is exactly what we have had for the last two or three generations. NOTHING has changed. We just hoped it would.

It doesn’t mean we can’t combat this by other means. Sure, getting the supine congress to act might be a forlorn hope — which is why we must win in November. I don’t know what to do for it other than pray, but we must — but they might. Miracles do happen.

And I bet you anything that Trump is already plotting how to make them act, because he has seen the size of the threat (now if someone can clue him in to H1Bs? I’d appreciate it.)

Probably the absolutely easiest way to combat this threat is actually within Trump’s reach, though it will bring law fare, as well as crying and gnashing of teeth.

NOTHING in the constitution allows us to tolerate dual citizenship. NOTHING. The oath I took at naturalization required that I renounce all allegiance to foreign nations and potentates.

And yet, most Americans today think nothing of someone having or assuming dual citizenship. If that weren’t possible, the baby factories on US soil might not stop, but the having a kid and taking him “home” to be raised would. Because in the parent’s country of origin he’d have no status and no right to any services. And it would create an intolerable situation.

Yes, i do realize it would put a lot of people in uncomfortable positions. But the law is the law. Choose a country and cleave to it.

After that there are various legislative situations. The lowest probability one is the congressional amendment. Sure, try for that too. Try for EVERYTHING. But do not go into lamentations and rending of garments. You are not any worse off than last week.

It’s just the easy solution has been shut off. We’ll have to do it the hard way.

Be not afraid. And keep fighting to the extent you can, even if (just) with words.

In which I have become Sarah, Destroyer of Panels.

I’m back, and as much as I’d like to write a coherent post, it’s not going to happen today. So I’ll do an after action report of sorts.

As usual, I go to Liberty con to see friends old and new, and a lot of you who hang out here in the flesh again or for the first time.

This year I wasn’t as available as is normal, because having been sick in the lead up to the con, I was, while healthy, still what the Victorians used to call “very pulled down.” I.e. I tired easily.

Also, it is one of the scars of 2020 that I can’t handle crowds as well as I used to. Hey, I have recovered to the extent that I no longer have an anxiety attack at spending a day with both sons and their wives, but twenty or so people, surrounded by another 100, with occasional look ins and hugs and such from those 100, is a lot. And required a lot of time in my room in silence.

For this I’m sorry, and hope to have recovered some more (psychologically) and to be in better shape next year.

Also I suspect I’ve aged a lot because most people didn’t recognize me, which is disquieting. I mean someone asked me if I’d seen me….

Meanwhile I got put in the Dystopia panel, this year renamed Destroyer of Worlds. Sigh. I told Rich he could put me in it. I INTENDED to behave properly, honestly.

The best laid plans of Sarahs and con goers….

The panel started with SOME MINOTAUR walking in. This would have been perfectly fine, except that both the moderator and one of the panelists were OBVIOUSLY Liberty con firsters and also the panelist took himself super-seriously. All of which was a serious problem, because the panel was 75% Huns and I realized from their expressions they had something planned and were all in anticipation.

Look, I used to teach. I know the look of a classroom that has set up the BEST prank yet and is practically jigging in their seats waiting for the it to fall.

And here, I won’t pretend I didn’t know something was up. I knew that there was a group gift planned from my close-in fan group on discord, because I accidentally stumbled onto that conference. They were collecting for a collective group, and I knew it had something to do with an eagle, and that I’d been warned to have space in the car on the way back.

I did not realize my adorable, insane, frustrating, amazing, completely ungovernable fans had chipped in to buy me a METAL EAGLE THE SIZE OF A SMALL CHILD. Which is, of course, going to have a place of honor in the entrance patio for the new house. No question. And will wear holiday-appropriate hats. Which considering we’re moving deep into suburbia (husband likes it) means that we’ll be the weird people. Ah, well. His name is George.

I don’t have pictures because husband took them and he’s out on errands.

The problem is that OF COURSE the moderator, not being wise to the Huns was somewhere between irate and confused as Orvan delivered the Eagle and I unboxed and displayed it.

And he TRIED TO GO ON WITH THE PANEL WHILE THIS WAS HAPPENING. At one point he asked me, “Is this normal? Does it happen all the time?” To which my answer was “Definitely not. And yes.” Followed by, “I’m sorry, they’re my fans. They’re adorable but insane and I can’t do anything with them!”

He then thought he was safe and tried to resume the panel, at which point the minotaur delivered the… Chinchilla or hope: A BEAUTIFUL Chinchilla plushie with wings and a flower crown. (Yes, I promise pictures later.) I understand Shesellseashells made it. THANK YOU.

And then the poor man tried to re-start the panel, just as Orvan delivered me a notebook with a cover that said it contained the nuclear US launch codes. By that point I was laughing so hard I couldn’t speak.

And from the audience, from a Hun, came, “Behold, I have become Sarah, destroyer of panels.”

At which point the panel resumed, 15 minutes later, with one very bewildered mod and one very upset panelist. All of which was okay until …. three of them claimed that if something or other happens civilization will die. Even you know, a supervolcano erruption or a year without a summer.

And I lost my mind. Because even Cuba still has a civilization of sorts, despite impairment of being under communism and various interdictions. I refuse to believe Americans are less resourceful. Within three days five guys in a garage will ride in with solutions. And hell, if the onerous regulations are lifted, not only will we come back, but we’ll roar past where we are and maybe finally become a multiplanetary civilization.

Look, not only am I not at home to doomerism, but I’m becoming less tolerant to doomerism each passing day. I’m not telling you the way ahead is all ice cream, skittles and smiles. It’s not. never was. Never in the history of ever. I’m not claiming that I’ll survive a massive disaster — being dependent on a daily thyroid dosage, this is HIGHLY unlikely — but humans were made to strive. And Americans are still the most dedicated to individual liberty of any humans in the world and also the more resourceful.

There wouldn’t be ONLY five guys in a garage, but thousands of five guys (and the occasional crazy gal) in a garage and possibly even an army of grandmothers (biological and not) just putting their hands to what they could and bringing civilization back.

As P. J. O’Rourke said in his trip to Russia: the utter dinginess of the place would not survive a few Americans with bottles of windex and rags.

We will be okay. And I think we’ve turned the corner on the worst. Yes, the communists are coming out of the closet and sure this time it will work. Be not afraid. Their plans always fail. Yes, sometimes they impose a lot of suffering on the way, but the hey day of their destructive philosophy has passed. We have the receipts. Just keep working. And most of all, keep being American. As hard as you can. No, Harder than THAT. Just do it.

….. I think, though, I’m going to have to beg off the dystopia panel in the future.

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

FROM A. K. FEENEY: Orphans of Time

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

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

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

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

Welcome back to Space Station Halcyon!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What happens when inspiration stops feeling entirely human?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The second volume of the BBESP light novel!

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Rockin’ the USA

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

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

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

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

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

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Faerie Gifts

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

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

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

Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.

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

Volume 1
The Ambassador Corps has rules: you cannot know everything, don’t get horizontal with the natives, don’t make promises you can’t keep.
They’re a lot harder to follow when assassins are hunting you, your barbarian allies could kill you for the wrong word, and death lurks around every corner.
The unwritten rule? Never identify with the natives.
Skip’s already broken that one.
Now he’s racing against time to save his new friends from slavery—or worse—while dodging energy blasts and political intrigue. One crash-landed diplomat. A world of deadly secrets. And absolutely no backup.

Some rules are meant to be broken. Others will get you killed.

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

A salesman has no business solving murders.

Gideon Vale knows this perfectly well.

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

The wealthy pay for his travel.

The scenery is spectacular.

The murders are entirely unexpected.

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

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

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

Twelve resort worlds.

Twelve impossible puzzles.

One very observant salesman.

Welcome to paradise.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

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

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

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: RETURN

Hi guys,

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

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

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

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

See you soon.

Only four, because Wednesday was…. well….