Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

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: Sketches (Chronicles of the Fall Book 28)

A collection of short stories and character sketches . . . Characters who’ve demanded stories . . . mostly about families. Some natural, some built, some just sort of happened . . . and some failed.

Some warm and cozy. Some black humor and rather gory–if that’s not to your taste, skip “Last Kid Standing”

FROM CJ RUSSELL: This Was Not in the Brochure (Home, Retirement & Other Misadventures Book 2)

Kay came to Golden Hour for peace, privacy, and a quiet retirement on Proxima b.

Instead, she arrives to find her cottage damaged by a storm, her promised tranquility temporarily relocated, and a homeowners association with very definite opinions about how retirement should be conducted.

Soon Butler, her schnauzer, is accused of disturbing neighborhood tranquility. Dimples, her dragon, is classified as a potential territorial menace. Notices multiply. Committees flourish. Meanwhile, sea serpents are apparently nobody’s problem.

Kay has no intention of becoming involved. She moved across interstellar space specifically to avoid this sort of thing.

Then the notices keep coming.

This Was Not in the Brochure is a dry, warm science-fiction comedy about retirement, ridiculous rules, unexpected neighbors, animals who refuse to cooperate with bureaucracy, and one woman discovering that sometimes the only way to get a little peace is to make just enough noise.

FROM DALE COZORT: Snapshot-42 Book One – Stalingrad Run

At the height of World War II, an apparent time anomaly cuts Europe and part of the Middle East off from the rest of the world. Trapped in Northern Iran, with no way to contact the world he knew, United States Army Engineer Jim Edwards is forced to flee from both the Germans and the Soviets. His only companions are a mysterious Russian woman who may be trying to assassinate Stalin, and a man who calls himself “Loki�. Is he any more trustworthy than the Norse trickster god he’s named after?

In a desperate bid to get to Great Britain, Jim finds himself in a treacherous race across Nazi-occupied Europe. His mission? To prevent the Nazis from overrunning Europe, then sending their war machines against an alternate United States that’s still armed with black powder muskets. The freedom of mankind’s future may depend on his success.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Normalcy Bias: Look closer…things aren’t always what they seem to be.

Look closer. The things that you’re assuming you’re seeing? May not be what you think. Is that really a mouse, or is it a Brownie? Is that really an owl? Is that polished gemstone a stone…or an egg? We take so many things for granted. Some of them may be harmless, but many are a lot less so. I wonder how many people ignore red flags every day, because they only see what they expect to see? This collection takes what’s “normal� and asks “What if it’s something more?� Contains a Liquid Diet Chronicles prequel short story.

FROM JOHN BAILEY: The Courier to Paradise (The Aurigan Conflict)

One courier. One spy. One impossible coincidence.

Twenty-eight years ago, the colony world of New Exeter was destroyed by the greatest solar storm in recorded history. During the frantic evacuation, infant twin brothers were separated forever.

Or so everyone believed.

David Haverstock has grown into the Commonwealth’s most dependable diplomatic courier—a man trusted to carry secrets because no one ever notices the courier.

Across the frontier, Daniel Vanmeer struggles to make ends meet as a commercial pilot until Aurigan Intelligence reveals a shocking truth: David is his identical twin.

Their solution is simple.

Replace one brother with the other.

Steal the Commonwealth’s most closely guarded military secrets.

It is, on paper, the perfect espionage operation.

Unfortunately, Daniel discovers he likes being a spy considerably less than the recruitment brochures suggested.

Even more unfortunately, two retired transportation bureaucrats begin asking awkward questions about station regulations, luggage receipts, and improperly posted platform numbers.

Soon the greatest intelligence operation in Aurigan history is collapsing beneath a mountain of paperwork, misplaced briefcases, mistaken identities, unexpected romance, and one very determined courier who refuses to let someone else live his life.

Inspired by the classic adventure comedies of the 1940s, The Courier to Paradise combines mistaken identity, Cold War intrigue, romance, and gentle humor in a fast-moving science-fiction adventure set in the Anglo–Aurigan universe.

If you enjoy clever espionage, classic capers, and heroes who triumph through courage, kindness, and common sense, you’ll love The Courier to Paradise .

FROM JULIE FROST: Joy Shall Be in Heaven

A Guardian Angel to serial killers
His newest Charge
And a grimoire with a Free! Demon! Inside!

Nachumiel’s job is to be the Still Small Voice whispering into the ears of sociopaths, in a vain attempt to turn them from the path of destruction they’re merrily traipsing down. Fresh off yet another assignment up to his hips in blood and buried in corpses, he’s beginning to wonder if he garners assignments like this because he’s a massive screwup who can’t damage these people any more than they already are.

His new Charge is different—but not in a good way. Gerry finds a malevolent spellbook holding a demon bound within, whose power even other demons are afraid of. Now Nachi has to team up with his argumentative opposite number and endeavor to undermine both Gerry and his damnable new friend before a child is sacrificed and the grimoire demon unleashes Hell on Earth. All he can try is what has always failed in the past…

And hope he doesn’t end up bleeding out on the floor himself.

FROM KARL K. GALLAGHER: Cold Grey Hills of Earth (Fall of the Censor Book 8)

Centuries ago, the ruthless Censorate reduced Earth to cold, lifeless grey hills and empty ocean basins—a brutal warning to every subject world: obey, or be annihilated.
Now, a rebel fleet fights to reverse that devastation. Led by Marcus Landry, they seek to breathe life back into a dead planet—restoring hope not just to Earth but to every oppressed world under the Censor’s iron grip.
But standing in their way is Admiral Pinoy, loyal enforcer of the Censor’s will. He will stop at nothing to crush the rebellion before it inspires a galaxy-wide uprising.
As Earth’s fragile new beginning hangs in the balance, Marcus must protect these tender green shoots of freedom—because failure means extinction not only for Earth, but for every world yearning to break their chains.
In a war where defeat means annihilation, who will claim the cold grey hills of Earth?

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Never Bind a Fox

If you inherited an antique puzzle box from your world-traveling uncle, would you open it? And if you did, what would you do with the things you found inside it?

Everything started when Terry inherited just such a box, beautifully lacquered with images of foxes. With some help from his buddies, he was able to get it open and discover the treasure inside it: a plate, a comb, and a tiny booklet in Japanese. For a group of college students more accustomed to art-book grimoires and cosplay-prop wizards’ trunks, it seemed like great fun to act out the spell that little booklet described.

Then Yumiko showed up. Cute, cheerful, and a cook like none of them had ever known, she seemed like a dream come true. But then things started getting very strange….

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: A Midsummer Night’s Hunt: A short fantasy (Seasons Book 2)

Thirty years ago, Jack Randall hit a critter with his truck while driving in northern New Mexico, and mangled it so badly he couldn’t tell exactly what he’d hit. But he knew it didn’t look human.

Now, Jack and his wife Sarah have been called back to the area because some sort of creature is killing sheep and cattle on the ranches, and a Navajo resident who remembers Jack’s encounter thinks he might be an expert on the subject.

Of course, Jack and Sarah aren’t what they appear to be…and it will take all of their special skills, and those of their friends Rufus and Joelle, to get to the bottom of the problem.

The second short story in the Seasons series, following Saving The Spring.

FROM MARY CATELLI: Magic And Secrets

A woman, sent to a far off duchy, finds a mysterious wolf haunting the forest, and learns there are secrets no one even suspects.

Playing with props for amateur theatricals has more consequences than any of those doing it dream. . . act with care.

A king’s tyranny sends a woman searching desperately for a legend of lions, there being no other hope.

FROM TALEENA SINCLAIR: A Death at the Front: A John Recht Novel

After years of war, there is a chance for peace.

John Recht’s life has been defined by duty to his nation. Now the Great Kaghat of the Horde has died, and John is summoned to be a part of the peace talks. Leaving his quiet country estate, John must confront the ghosts of his past as well as his enemies in the present. John and his allies must be watchful and wary as they encounter A Death at the Front.

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

Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.

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

Volume 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.

FIRST VOLUME OF THE BOOK NO MAN’S LAND — this is not a complete story, it continues in volume 2

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: RIGHTFUL

You might think this is a characteristic of societies that vote that people govern by the consent of the governed. You might think, and you’d be wrong.

Every society, no matter how constituted only keeps a government with the consent of the governed. The only question is how hard and fast the governed need to not consent before the government falls.

It seems to depend on various things. One of them is the ability of the governed to know they’re being taken on a ride in the handcart to hell and that they’re not alone in objecting.

This is why so many of the countries behind the iron curtain fell suddenly (and with an echoing boom) when the ultra-advanced tech of typewriters and fax machines put an end to government monopoly of the news.

The other one is How sh*tty a government are the people used to? Arguably China is used to government that treats individuals as disposable, like Kleenex. So their point of “effing enough is enough” is set much higher than ours. The other side of this is that they’re used to working around and ignoring their government so much they might not notice how crappy and murderous it has gotten until they’re being mowed down in batch lots everywhere.

The other one, of course is How armed is the populace? Because, of course, once the populace notices and takes the bit between their teeth, if they have no means to make the bastards pay it’s going to take longer and get much, much, much bloodier. I mean at this point even a backward peasant can figure out IEDs. Much less people like Americans who played with fireworks as children and learned the ways of controlled explosions….

The interesting thing is, just like there is a lot of ruin in a nation, there is a lot of delay/lag between people realizing everyone has had about enough and having the means to do something about it, and actually doing something about it.

Even the American revolution took forever, and they tried every possible means to reconcile with their absent landlords. Seriously. Even fairly humiliating attempts at reconciliation were made.

It’s still notable when it broke, it broke. Or if you prefer: When in the course of human events….

Why am I giving you a lecture on the consent of the governed? It’s because by definition, we’re being governed without consent of the governed.

“What?” say you. “But Sarah, we have elections.”

We sure do. Do you trust them? And if you do, what kind of oxacan ditch weed are you smoking, and also stop boggarting it.

We don’t have a warm body democracy. That would be an improvement. We have a “name and vague address” democracy, conveniently using the mails so that you don’t even have the bother of busing people to the polls, but can sit in a comfortable office filling ballot after ballot. Or get them pre-filled from China (so convenient) or somewhere. Even more convenient, we don’t have a voting day, we have a voting month to month and a half, which means the same warm body, if needed, can vote 8 hours a day in several precincts. EVEN MORE CONVENIENT we have absolutely no control over the counting. Even if you insist on voting in paper — like a minority of my co-citizens (and myself) did at my precinct, you feed it into a machine that counts it and the results are…. transmitted somewhere? Put in a thumb drive, according to what happened in a Georgia precinct this year? Who the hell actually knows?

So we have an imaginary bodies democracy. Honestly, sometimes I feel only an atavistic belief in what is SUPPOSED to be prevents me from voting for all my characters which, to be honest, are more real than a lot of people voting.

What’s interesting in this is that though both sides scream “fraud” when they lose, only one side continues to say there’s a lot fraud when they win. Only one side has tried to curb fraud at all, while the other side keeps fighting tooth and nail not only to keep all the means of fraud, but also to add new means of fraud. Also their devotees continuously talk about how it’s VIRTUOUS to cheat, because after all its in the service of their doctrine of inevitable world revolution.

I know that seems…. strange. And it is, unless you assume that one side cheats a hell of a lot more than other. (Possibly because until recently if the right tried to cheat, the press would be all over it. Heck, they still are, even when the “fraud” is mostly in the minds of the left. (Clears her throat in the thoroughly discredited and never sensical “Russian collusion.”)

Which brings us to where we are: I believe the right, or at least the right that bothers to vote is by far — by far — the majority of this country. I believe the left only holds on to governance and power with fraud.

I am not alone. In fact, I’m shocked and dismayed that anyone — ANYONE — can’t see the facts above.

Frankly those citing polls as a justification for why the vote must be right are either fools, naive or knaves. Probably evenly distributed. Because the polls have had trouble getting anyone half-sane, much less anyone on the right, afraid of the “revolutionaries” of the right, to answer them as far back as 15 years ago.

Frankly, the fact that this time the leftists outperformed the polls is prima-facie evidence of massive “pre-loaded” cheating. There is no way in fricking hell that leftists would resist “virtue signaling” by telling pollsters how they’re voting. No. Way.

So, here we are, and we have a massive problem. And the problem isn’t just that the left, desperate and insane, is now openly socialist and also OPENLY hates and wants to destroy our country and hates and wants to kill or replace its citizenry (or both.)

It’s that voting is the way we give people the right of life and death: Over our industry, our commerce and by extension us. More importantly, we give them command of the best, most effective army this sorry world has ever seen.

And one of the sides outright open wish to annihilate us and make us disappear from the face of the Earth is on a collision course with the citizenry’s dawning realization no one asked for this.

There is a lot of sullen resistance in a nation, before it comes to blood in the streets, but they are pushing every button, now including a series of “coincidental” events that read like attacks by the people they idolize, lionize and vastly prefer to us.

Add in that most of the west is in this situation, and that China has illusions of world domination and the usual Communist lack of information of their own state and capabilities. What do we have?

Oh, dear LORD. What do we have indeed.

IF we can brush through this without falling in the pot — of blood — and without having another try at the past unpleasantness we don’t discuss in this blog, and yes, I am aware where we are it would take a miracle (that’s why I pray) we must fix our fricking electoral process.

No more bending backwards so that every warm body can cast a vote. I’m not suggesting literacy tests, though hell, it wouldn’t hurt and these days they can be kept fairly open, because everyone has phones, and everyone knows everything. I’m suggesting one day, paper ballots, purple fingers. Exceptions for the troops and allowing people who will be unavailable on the day to vote (but nothing counted) before the day, with proof they will be unavailable. And no more same day registration. And no more vote by mail.

I’m begging, in fact, with tears in my eyes that we don’t disenfranchise real people by drowning their votes in those of imaginary characters, foreigners, and the dead.

Because when the government can fake the votes, they think they can rule forever and they do despicable things to their own citizenry. Just look at the former Great Britain or our neighbor to the North.

I don’t, never have, given a good goddamn about the state of Caesar’s wife. BUT our voting system must be OBVIOUSLY and clearly above suspicion. It must be impossible to vitiate and be known to be so.

Because with easy communications and the most heavily armed and most comfortable with explosions citizenry in the history of the world, the alternative is a blood letting that will make the 20th century step back and say “whoa.”

Do I expect that to happen? No. But I’m a depressive. I expect us to go all the way to Starship Troopers. In fact, at this point, Starship Troopers might be the least bad alternative. But again, I’m a depressive. And miracles have happened the last 10 years that I never saw coming.

So why am doing this?

Just to make it clear where we are, as of right now.

It is not the duty of those who suspect fraud to prove it. It is the need of those who claim there is no fraud to prove so, to ensure that the system is seen to be fraud proof.

They seem to have mistaken the assignment. And we’ll all pay for it.

Do I have an excuse for this? AND for the real post being unholy late?

Well, yer ‘onor, you see, it was like this. It was 4 in the morning and I couldn’t sleep, and this strange song attacked me, and it had to be written.

And then, on four hours of sleep, being a cat with ADHD you didn’t expect me to have the ability to resist making a video and putting it up on youtube? Did you? Did you really? Why? It’s like you don’t even know me.

… Real post momentarily now that this is out of my system.

And, yeah, this is dedicated to … You know who you are.

Did you know that Staying Alive is the song one is trained to administer CPR to? Keep that in mind.

I was somewhat shocked everyone thought yesterday’s post was super-cheery. Um… I did tell you the world isn’t ending. And hey, remember I tend to go pessimistic. We could by a miracle thread between catastrophes and emerge wonderfully. I don’t think it will happen, but–

For perspective on how optimistic I tend to be, at the beginning of Obama’s first term, someone said by the end of the term we’d be missing not just change but major bills. This was in the comments of a now defunct site. After a series of semi-joking riffing on what we’d be missing, I said “We. We will be missing.” I meant it. I’ve read the grim history of left-lurching regimes and fully expected it.

And at the beginning of 2021 I expected… worse. Far worse. And I write this without suffering amnesia and fully remembering how bad things were getting at the end of the reign of the autopen, including living in constant fear of debanking. (I still resent not being able to use gofundme which is a far more functional software than givesendgo. BUT I can’t afford to have everything confiscated, after fundraisers.)

So, what is this post about, other than trying to re-depress you?

Well, first of all I’m not trying to re-depress you. As I said, I trend depressive. There’s a chance miracles upon miracles occur and we brush through this tolerably well. As BGE said in the comments, G-d looks after fools, drunkards and the United States of America. And thank G-d for that.

But we’re entering scary times of turmoil, and there are things you need to do to stay alive. Oh, I don’t mean just physically alive, but really alive. Though the physical is pre-requisite.

I hope — and honestly, expect — that most of the physical fighting and physical danger — if it comes — will be localized and restricted, because honestly the other side simply doesn’t have enough people. Yes, yes, of course, the caravans of “migrants” were supposed to furnish that. But it turns out most of them make pretty good brawlers, but not particularly herdable much less forged into a unified force. So, instability and petty crime, not armed insurrection.

For that you know what to do. Most of you are probably better preppers than I am at that. And a lot of people on our side have been covering such things all year, in anticipation of things going weird.

Now for other forms of “staying alive.

UNLESS you’re an idiot who can’t shut up, runs a blog where she speaks politics and tells the truth as she sees it, you’re unlikely to be targeted. But it doesn’t mean it can’t happen. After all, we remember how many completely normal people suddenly find themselves in the cross hairs of the woke monster. See, Covington kids, for instance.

So how do you prepare to survive that?

Well, would you believe that increasing your online profile would help?

No, seriously, the safest places to be when the regime might take umbrage with you is either at the very bottom of visibility or at the very top. At the very bottom is safe because it will take truly spectacular bad luck to find yourself in the crosshairs. At the very top, your disappearing would cause too much of a ripple, so they hate you but they suffer you. The most dangerous place is just well known enough and still obscure.

I MIGHT be somewhat safe mostly because of the gig at instapundit, though this blog helps a bit as well. I have plans to become stompier that I would if these elections hadn’t gone this way. “Stompier” as in making more noise online. A lot of it fiction in a new way. You’ll see. But possibly also here. Of course here is not always under my control. I either wake with posts in my head or don’t. And when I do they tend to be my riskier posts.

Anyway, if you can, make yourself really big on line. If you’re not of the type to do so, or don’t want to, I completely understand. It’s a pain in the behind. And the chances are small someone will pick on you.

Keeping yourself alive mentally: remember most of the communists 5 or ten year plans failed. And those communists were intellectual giants compared to our present afflictions. It’s understandable — and healthy — to be mad at them, but ultimately? most of their plans won’t come to fruition. It’s good to know how horrible those plans are, but don’t let them get in your head.

And as part of this: I’m one of those people who has an acute fear of confrontation. I’ve managed to overcome it in this medium and in writing, but getting me to tell, say, a waiter, he brought the wrong dish is almost impossible, because I become embarrassed. How bad is it? I’ve eaten steak that was served by a waiter who was not paying attention when I said “please no bread, I’m celiac” and came to the table with a slab of bread on top. I removed the bread, scraped the steak, all of it knowing it wouldn’t be enough, and submitted to two weeks of itching after rather than tell him “Uh, I can’t eat this.” The second time it happened, DAN told them I couldn’t eat it and explained. They haven’t made the same mistake since.

But anyway, that’s how bad I am at confrontation. However, I’ve decided part of the reason the left proclaims their daft views in public at the top of their lungs in the tone of self-congratulation that denotes expecting “everyone clapped” is that they really think they’re unopposed. Because myself and others like me will not talk back. (And this helps the fraud, because it gives the impression that their support is much larger.) So I’ve made a decision that when someone is carrying out in public, I will approach and very politely and firmly point out I don’t agree, and I’m not going to listen to their nonsense. So far it has worked twice, and they’ve neither tried to draw me into an argument nor screamed swear words at me. This is good. Now, I do this in the understanding that I’m self employed and old. I do realize those of you who are young and depend on professions that are solid left (Or seem to be) can’t do this. Don’t put yourself or your job in danger. BUT do be brave enough to risk social confrontation.

And on this, I must beg you if you have kids, talk to them. Explain what you believe and why. If you don’t, they will assume you can’t defend your beliefs. Don’t be amazed they go the other way. Yes, I know, you’ll have to contradict everything they’re taught in school. That is rather the point.

If you’re a worker in culture — or can be! — writer, artist, someone else who can and always wanted to create, throw yourself into it. If you’ve been doing it, do it more like you mean it, and study how to promote it. Your work reflects who you are, even when it seems not to, and fiction can be far more persuasive than any careful explanation.

Maybe we don’t have enough time to change the culture to feed into the politics to get us out of this particular bind, but then again, why not? The best time to have started was twenty years ago. The next best time is today. Chop, chop, get to it.

Mind you to explore new ways of doing things. AI “slop” might be all that, but make it tasty and people will want it. That “slopcore” music channel I loved has gone all dark and “AI is evil” so I unsubscribed. Any of you feel like creating a new one, all positive on tech and full of fun? I’d appreciate it.

Which brings us to tech: if you’re in tech, now is the time to push on that too. One of the chances for that miracle, in which we walk through the red green alliance’s dominance dry-shod is that we tech our way out of it. That our tech people are good enough and fast enough that in the end it doesn’t matter what they do, there is too much wealth to be able to break us.

I’m not a techy, I can’t tell how that would happen, but I can “sense” the shape of it, if that makes sense?

No one can predict genius breakthroughs, as Heinlein pointed out in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, but we do know they happen. And like genius breakthroughs in the arts you are more likely to have one if you’re working really hard and trying a lot of different things.

If you’re neither a writer nor an artist, nor a techy, you can still support those who are. Sure, sure, money is lovely. I’d like some, myself. (Look, the cats like the expensive gooshy food, okay?) BUT if you don’t have that, there’s stuff you can do. I don’t think I’d ever have finished No Man’s Land without the Chinchilla of Hope gang. I’m sure there are unloved writers and artists whose work you like that you can encourage. And then as Mary says in every promo post comment section: reviews. I’m not joking. Ratings and reviews are invaluable to tweak the algorithm so we can actually be discovered and sell. (Please? My Amazon and youtube would love you.) And as for the tech guys, let me tell you, the number of times I just listen while my own tech guy explains what he’s doing until he talks past the snag in his mind… They also serve who sit and imitate a rubber ducky.

Oh, yeah, and speaking of serving. You know your politicians are surrounded by loud lefties pulling them one way (even those on the right.) Consider calling/sending a polite card whenever one of these critters does something you APPROVE of. Yes, you should be hitting them on the head in the more common case when they do the stupid, but seriously, the carrot works too.

And as SNelson tells us, and it’s true, you can volunteer with your local lodg- I mean branch of the stupid party. (I don’t recommend volunteering with the evil party unless you are something special in the way of op-sec. If you are, more power to you.) On the one hand, you can watch polls and help with their get out the vote effort, and such. On the other, you will be making connections, and maybe be able to pull things towards greater election security. Heck, if all else fails, you can document the fraud. If you have the time and are a people person, do consider that.

Holly will give you more “subversive” things you can try, in terms of social interaction. Yes, I’m volunteering her. (I Holly! Honestly, I don’t pay this poor woman enough. I’d say I’ve made her hair white, but the color it started out, it was hard to tell. :D) She is far more “social in a feminine way” than I am, and I know she has ideas because she was giving them to me. (I don’t even think I could start. No seriously. My idea of being subtle is I don’t scream “NO.” before telling you I’ve had about enough of what you’re saying. Also most of my social interaction is with Dan, who already knows what I think, and the cats who don’t care) I’ll let her do it on Friday.

Most important though, through it all, remember, yes, the pudding heads shall always be with us, but very few are truly on the side of the civilization killers.

If you strive to be a decent, hard working, sane human being, you’ll be doing more to preserve civilization than the minority that wants to destroy it can undo.

They can hurt us — badly — but they can’t take us down unless we cooperate, by giving in to despair and letting them into our head.

If you can’t think of anything else to do — as Jerry Pournelle told me in 08 (miss him every day) — go clean and organize your space. I know this sounds like make work, but what I found in 08 is that a really clean and organized and nice-smelling house makes it hard to despair. Besides, you can organize (and hide) the canned and the ammo, and make sure you can get to the essentials if you need to evacuate temporarily.

And if you can keep your head above water, be ready to lend a hand to those who can’t. (We don’t probably have too much worry for the next two years, but economic shenanigans are always a possibility.)

We found at the height of “bad things” (Part of the reason I know the whole affordability thing was a psy ops, besides Temu Obama telling us outright is that recently it has not been nearly so dire) that we had to budget what we could afford to give to people in trouble, in our extended circles. Because it easily climbed to 1500 a month, and no, we can’t afford another mortgage, thank you so much.We had to budget it way down. And taking in account times might get bad, we’re going to sit down and make that budget again, in case it’s needed. And make one for supporting artists and others we believe in, because they have to live, as well as get ego boos. (And no, this is not a hint. If I get in trouble I’ll let you know. I appreciate everyone who supports me, I SWEAR I’ll post on substack too soon, as well as link Holly so she can update when I’m moving, a family member dies, etc. etc. (Can this year at least SLOW down a little?) But I’m making it.(Thank heavens No Man’s Land did so well. Now to finish Trade Goods.) I’m speaking in general though. I have too many friends who are great writers and artists and not making nearly what they should. We plan to support them, yes, in the measure of the possible.)

These things (and others I’m sure you’ll suggest in the comments) will help you feel better about yourself, about the world and what you’re doing. And they will make a difference too.

It will help you stay alive, not just physically but in purpose. And not boil your acts of resistance down to backing into a corner hissing and clawing and hating on them. They deserve the hatred, but you deserve a better life than that.

If all else fails, remember that staying alive is a great tune to remember for CPR. Even when the CPR is on the culture. (A friend informs me so is “Another one bites the dust” which can also be very cheery when sang at the appropriate time.)

And to cheer you up:

I have possibly the weirdest collection of white pills you’ve ever even thought of taking. No, seriously. But they are important and I want you to at least consider swallowing them.

Do not make me chase you all over the house and scruff you.

Realistically, there is no reason that the left can’t hold the US by fraud, as they’ve held California, as they’re holding my beloved Colorado, or most of the Pacific Northwest or a lot of New England, or–

Except there is. It’s easy to hold a state by fraud, as people who really are unhappy with it take off. A whole country, and one as varied and complicated — and well armed — as ours? Well, that’s different.

Your first white pill, and it’s the most important one, because it’s the basis of all the others: Remember you don’t live in a novel, and the enemy doesn’t get all its plans to work just because they’re plans. Remember the USSR had great plans too.

The only thing leftists are good at is psy ops. Even their fraud is not particularly competent. It’s just that our system is strangely vulnerable and has been vampirized for 100 years.

Your second white pill is that they’ve gone blatant not because they’re secure, but because they’re desperate. They had an enormous level of control through mass media, and that’s been dissolving. At this point all mass media is good for is battle space preparation to hide the fraud, and even that will fade.

Your third white pill is that their paymasters will want payment chop chop tout de suite. Now some of this will be terrible for us too, except where I don’t think it will stand for long.

The Cartels are already sending caravans to the border. This is why it was so important to capture TX and make it a sanctuary state. I have this weird feeling Texans are not going to take well to this, and spicy might be an understatement for their reacion.

China will want to start a civil war here in order to be able to take Taiwan in Spring. China is not… in a good state, they’re in a hurry. They also don’t understand our system of government and are going to be very puzzled at how little power their lackeys actually have. Or not understand they don’t have power at all till January.

Then there’s the Muslim Brotherhood who doesn’t get us at all, and who will start acting like they are in England. The likelihood of Cowboys and Jihadis is high and rising.

And that’s just the beginning. And if you think “but those are bad things” — sure they are. But don’t forget they can’t accomplish any of them unless they disarm us. They are ALREADY attempting to pass highly restrictive gun laws in TX. It’s not going to go well.

This is their golden grail, which they tried ever since Clinton and particularly under Obama, and they keep losing battle after battle. It’s not going to get easier for them. (And seriously, I can’t help. I lost all my guns in a boating accident. So this doesn’t affect me at all.)

But it goes beyond that. WAY beyond. Look, it’s soon going to become really obvious they frauded themselves in. Because they always do the same thing when they get in by fraud: they try to punish the population that didn’t vote for them.

In California, in NYC, everywhere they have frauded themselves, people KNOW it was fraud. Because no government legitimately elected acts that way.

It’s not going to be any different here.

And for at least two years — pray very hard, because you haven’t seen attempts on Trump yet. Not like you’ll see. — they really don’t have much chance of succeeding at most of their attempts to punish us. BUT they have a really great chance of removing their mask completely.

If we’re lucky — really lucky, but we can hope — by 2028 there will be an overwhelming push for clean elections that even they can’t withstand. Hopefully without flipping the switch. Hopefully.

I suspect the first troubles will begin within a month, almost certainly by Christmas. (Did you know ammo makes lovely stocking stuffers.) And yes, as expressed in the comments, if we’re lucky all the trouble is in highly concentrated spots.

To be fair, I think it will be. We saw in 2020 they have neither the people nor the training. And I think their paymasters are going to get stingy on money soon. (Look, they’ll expect results these sh*theads can’t deliver for at least two years, and probably ever.)

Particularly because their sportive shenanigans in Europe stand a good chance of sending the Europeans looking for their grandfather’s old jackboots behind the barn.

They suffer from the mindset of all savages and think that because we haven’t really fought back yet, it means we can’t. They will indulge in all sorts of stupid and petty cruelty.

No minority standing over a heavily armed majority and inflicting petty cruelties for the heck of it has ever succeeded. The miracle we need to pray for is that the blood won’t run in the streets, that’s all. Mostly their blood, but there’s always collateral damage.

Take a deep breath. I said it was going to get choppy. I said to get ready for all sorts of disruptions. But I think we come out of this okay, with the advantage of having seen all the masks come off.

Look at the coats that turn and REMEMBER them.

Yes, there is a chance we don’t get our country back in the rest of my (natural) life. Maybe. If we have to get really angry, if the switch flips, if we have to find a leader who looks more like Bukele than Trump, then yeah. it’s going to be a long time.

But it’s not going to be a long time to get rid of the commies. Just to right ourselves afterwards. So keep that in mind.

And you, me, all of us, are going to be needed to ensure what we have at the other side of this unholy mess is as close to our Constitutional Republic as we can make it. It was a good design, and we should get back to it.

Europe… well, they’re likely to create their own solutions. Ours wouldn’t work for them, anyway.

In the meantime: take care of yourself, we’re going to need you. Stay engaged. Build. Create. Work. Do all the things our opponents seem incapable of doing.

And in the middle of the turmoil, try to stay as happy as you can. They hate that.

Be not afraid. They think they’ve conquered us with “this one easy trick” but they haven’t. Yes, they can hurt us, but they can’t hold us.

Anytime now, real soon, they’re going to find out they’re riding a tiger. We know how that story ends.

They were scared at their loss of power before. Imagine how they’ll feel when they realize what they’ve done.

As always when dealing with emotionally incontinent barbarians, keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark, but…

Be not afraid. We got this.

Go out there and be as American as you can possibly manage.

I don’t want to talk about fraud. Heaven knows it starts feeling stupid to say “but it was fraud.” And some of you out there are saying “Oh, yeah, when the left wins Sarah always says it was fraud.”

Which is true. What you’re missing in that calculation is that I also think there’s massive fraud when the right wins. I just think the right beat the fraud in those cases.

I think there’s massive fraud because, even when machines aren’t used, it’s insecure by design.

Motor Voter prioritized getting everyone in the States registered to vote whether they could prove they were citizens, whether they were here on a visitor visa, whether they even WANTED to vote. If you go to get a driver’s license, which is absolutely necessary because driver’s licenses or non-driver ID gets used as a national ID card, you get registered to vote. This happens even if you present as your ID a foreign passport with a temporary Visa. And even if you can’t speak a word of English.

Why on Earth would any country do that? Well, because the law requires them to do that. After all, you might be a dual citizen of another country. Or you might have grown up in a foreign language enclave. Wouldn’t want to upset those poor lambkins, would you? No siree bob. No discriminating against people who sure as heck look like they aren’t even vaguely acquainted to the US.

“But Sarah,” you say “Most of those people won’t vote. Ever.” Yeah. Most won’t, but it doesn’t mean their registration doesn’t get voted. Like the 130 some year old woman in Colorado Springs who is still reliably voting.

Like most — right? — Americans, and because I grew up reading American fiction, I viewed this as “our little flaw” which mostly happened in Chicago and was funny ah ah. And it might have been, mostly, without the added floodgates of Motor Voter. I mean, we know at least one presidential election was stolen before that: JFK’s. But it was the occasional election, not endemic, right?

I thought that until 2012 when I volunteered to poll watch. 1/3 of the people who came in were told that they had already voted. ONE THIRD. I was told in Denver it was 2/3. At least in some precincts. I don’t know if it’s true. I wasn’t there. And people were sent away happy because they were allowed to “provisionally vote.”

They didn’t know the provisional votes aren’t counted unless the election is close enough for them to matter. And the bad votes CANNOT BE GOTTEN OUT.

Fraud? Dear Lord. In 2012 we were already choking on fraud.

There was hope in this though. With all the fraud, the left BARELY squeaked a victory in Colorado. BARELY. And they knew how much fraud was in it, because then they — AGAINST THE RESULTS OF AN ELECTORAL REFERENDUM — instituted “vote by mail” as the default system. The most easily fraudable system. On the excuse of “saving money” which as we all know is the left’s main worry, isn’t it? Fiscal responsibility. Right.

Then came twenty twenty, aka the hokey stick election. And every election more states go vote by mail, which ends up putting more and more states in the “taken over by the puppet masters” camp.

I’m still surprised we got in 2024 and I THINK the only reason we did is that we’d figured out what the fraud was in 2020 and obviated that.

BUT THE ELECTION WAS STILL CROOKED FOR THE DEMS.

Sarah, you whine, why do you think only the dems do it?

First of all, I don’t. It’s the dems and the controlled opposition. But IF THE RIGHT WERE FRAUDING to any significant amount, the press would be on it like flies on sh*t. You know it, I know it, my cat, Havey knows it, and he was never that smart and is now dead.

So the left is mostly fraud. They know it. As hard as they fight against even minor clean ups of elections THEY KNOW IT. Without the fraud, they’re done.

So. There was fraud. Of course there was fraud. There always is. But fraud enough for the results? Becuause it wasn’t done the usual ways 2024 is clearly a new animal. So, I’m going to tell you what the reasons I have to suspect the fraud was NEXT LEVEL.

First of all, the numbers — if they are true. The caveat here is that we’re not on lockdown, husband is not off work, and I can’t get him to make a program to pull numbers as he did with Covid — are impossible. There is no way in fricking heck the Dems pulled a new 10 million voters out of Marx’s dead ass. That’s fricking impossible. Particularly since there have been a number of self-deportations, etc.

Also if true, there is this: The 15% band. Is it true? I don’t know. but one of my friends on the night said that there appeared to be a 15% swing everywhere he was looking.

Because a lot of you aren’t mathematical, let me explain: for the 15% to be a steady band across the country? it would take a miracle. Like, a pigs are flying overhead to winter in FL type of miracle. It’s not possible. Particularly in elections that are local by nature. It’s never that steady. Some places the swing would be 5% or 10% or 2%.

It is however indicative of a PROGRAMMATICAL fraud. I.e. something programmed in.

I don’t think I’ve confessed this — have I — but my husband decided he wanted our weekends back, and therefore one evening wrote two programs: one to post the memes (I still harvest them manually) and another to post the promo post. To those looking to exploit this: give it up. It creates a draft and I still go over it. And the promo one is buggy, so I usually still enter half of them by hand. It just took my time to post memes and books from all morning Saturday ad all my time after church on Sunday to a couple of hours divided between the days.

Why I’m telling you this: for the programs to work, I had to alter my workflow. Like I put coffee memes, non political memes and political memes in different folders. And the program seems to gag if you don’t have the link to Amazon on the first line of your promo email. (I don’t know why, no. And that’s a bug to be fixed.)

Programs are stupid. In the sense they don’t think. They’re a mechanical process, even if software. So they tend to produce uniform results.

This 15% thing if true is the thumprints of a computer program all over it, and prima-facie evidence of tampering.

But wait, there’s more. Two very weird things happened in these elections, one of which is “uh” and would cause Sherlock Holmes to go poke the dog till it barked night and day. The other is just impossible. Like, bloody insane impossible.

The highly unlikely one: the cities reported first. The big machine cities, where they’re finding votes in car trunks for two weeks after? They reported first. That’s enough to make you go “Uh, I wonder”…. Of course, if the fraud was already baked in, they COULD.

The absolutely utterly impossible: the left outperformed the polls. As skewed to the left as the polls are that’s … unlikely. As incapable of shutting up with their incessant signaling as every leftist everyone knows is, that’s impossible.

Those are the number reasons to think there was significant — hellishly difficult to prove — fraud.

Outside the number reasons… I’m not good with numbers, actually. I’m good with patterns. It’s a ’tisms thing and you wouldn’t understand I mean most of you understand completely at an inner, personal level.

The reason I stopped sleeping running up to the elections were the patterns, some of which I didn’t fully understand.

One, the dems were stealing signs again. I don’t mean retail stealing opponent signs. I mean stealing signs as a coordinated campaign from above.

This is stupid if you’re doing it to influence people. I don’t think that’s how people decide whom to vote for. HOWEVER it is a masterful way to do battle space preparation for fraud. When your guys wins by ONE BAZILLION VOTES people go “Well, I didn’t see any signs for opponents” and it quiets them down.

So I was expecting fraud, fraud, fraud, delicious fraudy fraud.

The other thing was the “plans” that DataRepublican revealed for the “color revolution” i.e. to strike back at Trump if he declared the results fraudulent AND the revolts and destruction in Europe.

Look, I recognize patterns when I see them. In 2020 it was the BLM peaceful yet fiery protests. They were never big enough or widespread enough to threaten the country. BUT THEY WERE ENOUGH TO SCARE JUDGES. So that when the blatant fraud was brought before them, they found reasons to refuse the cases.

In 2026, it was the protests in the rest of the west, the attempted coup in Poland, and the threat of doing the same here. And no, I’m not blaming DataRepublican. I do think she got a “leak”. I’m just not convinced the leak was not deliberate on the other side. (She’s amazing and almost magical with data, duh. But this is people things.)

Which means Trump feels his hands are tied on revealing/persecuting the fraud unless it’s in your face obvious. Which it is, but not in ways that are easy to explain to the man on the street who thought 2020 was too opaque to be obvious fraud.

I’ll add to this that my repost of the 15% twix above brought someone self-idenfying as part of the “intel community” and telling me there was no fraud, because some weird hacking convention created by a guy who used to write for the Nation “proved” it. He came in calling me names, and ended by snarling “prove it.” which is so movie villain it’s impossible to explain.

So — my conclusion is that there was fraud. Massive fraud.

Massive, hard to prove fraud, which members of our government are afraid to contest for fear of a revolution/civil war. I think that’s nuts, btw. The left can’t. They don’t have the numbers nor the weapons. Their only weapon is the threat and the “look at what we’re doing to Europe.” But Europe isn’t the US. They don’t have our guns. They don’t have our veterans and they don’t have our widespread spaced out population. But they wanted to do project the impression they could and I think succeeded.

Now, before all of you threaten suicide or doom hard: No, I don’t think we can prove fraud. Or at least not right now in a way that the dear little LIVs will get it through their heads. The normalcy bias holds.

But I’m not without hope. In fact, it’s almost impossible for us to lose this in the long run. AND as a side effect this might manage the purge of the rest of the quislings in the party, or a major portion of them.

Yes, yes, I know they’re proclaiming that MAGA is dead. Same as the last fifty times. This is mostly the establishment republicans who still expect us to come home.

But the fundamental mistake is thinking that Trump has MAGA. It’s the other way around. MAGA — aka revenge of the tea party — has Trump. And if this goes on, we’ll have someone far more like Bukele. Now, I don’t want that here. BUT the left should want it even less. And that’s what they’re bringing about.

Anyway, tomorrow let me go over reasons for hope, and also why you should beef up (eh) your canned and your brass. And make all your emergency plans.

And shut your trap and sit tight for at least a month. My gut feeling is a month. (Though it could be longer.)

And not to doom. No dooming here.

In the end we win, they lose. But buckle in. It’s going to get mighty choppy and rough for a little while.

Unless we get luckier than I think possible. (Which has happened before. See 2024.)

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 C. M. CRAIG: Astral Adventures

Rob Falcon is about three seconds from being eaten.

He is fourteen, the only midshipman aboard a pirate-hunting warship, and currently strapped into a lifeboat that has just been launched into open space with a jelly slime wrapped around it. He blows up the slime. The blast tears a hole between worlds and drops him face down in the surf of a beach where the trees come up to his chest and the whole population is nine inches tall.

Will Foster is one of those nine inches. He is twelve, he lives in a tent on that beach, and the entire island blames his dead parents for the tidal wave that flattened the town four years ago. Nobody feeds him. Nobody stops the mayor’s son from beating on him. And he is still the only person who wades out to check whether the giant washed up in the water is breathing.

Rob needs a signal strong enough to reach his captain. Will needs off this rock. What they get instead is a mine full of gnomes with pickaxes, a ninja with a knife made of light, a ten-year-old who has been forced to a hundred and thirteen feet tall by a bracelet he can’t remove, and a pirate captain in a scavenged suit of armor who already knows Will’s name.

Nobody gets rescued in this one. They have to do it themselves.

A shipwreck story where the castaway is the giant. First adventure in a world of astral galleons, gear-driven pirates, and a song at the edge of hearing that only a few people can pick up. Written for the kid who says he doesn’t like reading, and for the parent who is tired of hearing it.

Complete story. More to come.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Last Pendragon (Legends Book 1)

“The last thing I expected when I went to grieve in the mountains was to get chased by werewolves, kidnapped by a dragon, or meet a legend. But that was exactly what happened.”–Sara Hawke

Sara Hawke, a highly-educated former PhD candidate in Linguistics, is plunged into a situation that strains her skepticism: first she meets a pack of werewolves while camping on the night of the full moon, then she’s rescued by a man the werewolves seemed to fear. Her rescuer then decides that she’ll be good company until he decides to let her go. Then he tells her that she has the potential to be a sorceress, and offers to teach her.

Along the way, she learns that legends aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be, and are occasionally more than they seem…

FROM JOHN BAILEY: The Last Jade Crown: The Jade Dragon Protocol, Book Three (The Four Banners 4)

THE CROWN WAS NEVER MEANT FOR A KING.

Two years after the Emerald Relay affair, Major Hiroshi Takamura has returned to the quiet pursuits of retirement. His antique aircraft needs attention, his latest book needs defending, and several governments would be happier if he remained somewhere else.

Then a museum curator disappears.

A fragment of ceremonial jade has been stolen.

And an old enemy returns with a warning that could change the future of four civilizations.

The object of the search is the Jade Crown of Harmony, an ancient artifact created by the first explorers of the Four Banner worlds. Its four components embody wisdom, craftsmanship, science, and exploration—the principles upon which an interstellar alliance was founded.

But the crown is only one part of a much greater system.

Chairman Liang Zhenyu has spent years preparing to complete the Jade Dragon Protocol. He does not seek conquest for its own sake. He wants to end war, eliminate political instability, and bring permanent peace to a troubled galaxy.

His proposed solution appears irresistible.

Ships will cease fighting. Weapons will fall silent. Governments will be guided by a system capable of anticipating conflict before it begins.

But what happens when a machine that promises to protect civilization begins deciding how civilization must live?

As Takamura and his companions pursue the crown across the Four Banner worlds, they uncover a secret deliberately buried by the original explorers. The greatest safeguard against tyranny was built into the system itself—but activating it will demand something that rival civilizations have rarely demonstrated.

Trust.

With the Longhua Directorate closing in and the future of an entire region at stake, Takamura must solve a mystery that cannot be settled by superior firepower, clever deception, or the defeat of a single enemy.

Because peace without freedom may be the most dangerous victory of all.

THE LAST JADE CROWN is the thrilling conclusion to The Jade Dragon Protocol , a science-fiction espionage adventure of ancient mysteries, interstellar intrigue, political ambition, and the enduring struggle to keep power in the service of people.

The final question is not whether civilization can achieve peace.

It is whether civilization will remain free to choose it.

FROM JOHN E. SIERS: Daughters of Two Worlds (Children of the Lunar Free State Book 2)

Two worlds. Extraordinary daughters. One dangerous future.

Aurora Drew escaped Tatanna as a frightened child. Seven years later, she’s returning with the knowledge to change her homeworld forever. But bringing modern medicine to a primitive society isn’t without its dangers, and the past she thought she’d left behind may be the greatest threat of all.

On distant Xanadu, teenagers Kang Seri and Li Zhiruo have developed extraordinary telepathic abilities through their connection with the mysterious aliens known as Kitties. Their gifts make them unique—and potentially invaluable to the Lunar Free State.

Because the enemy is watching.

Confederated forces are preparing their next move, and the fragile peace on Xanadu is about to be shattered. As hidden threats emerge and old enemies return, these young women may hold the key to defending everything their people have built.

On two worlds, a new generation is coming of age. And the future belongs to those willing to fight for it.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Mesopredator Hustle

A dying star, and a station harvesting its planetary nebula for resources vital to a centuries-old war.

Amidst this beautiful but deadly stellar environment, a spy has infiltrated the star-lifting operations, creating “accidents” to take the lives of the crew. Can two troubleshooters from Engineering, one a human and the other a member of the feline Chongu, track down the killer when Security is certain the real problem is carelessness?

A short story of the Chongu Empire.

FROM LIANE ZANE: Helsing: Demon Slayer (The Dragon’s Paladins Book 1)

Book One of The Dragon’s Paladins

A shattered world. A relentless hunt. A collision of dark angelic forces.

Dianne Markham never asked to be part of a supernatural war. All she wanted was to survive a broken world and find something real. But when demonic forces strike her cruise ship as it docks in Split, Croatia, her pursuit of peace becomes a desperate, bloody fight for survival.

Enter Ryan Helsing.

A decorated Army Ranger with a past forged in fire, Ryan is battle-tested, emotionally scarred, and sworn to protect a hidden race of angel-blooded warriors. His orders were supposed to be simple: retrieve Dianne and escort her to a fortified sanctuary in the Albanian mountains.

Instead, it becomes a lethal race across a crumbling Europe. Hunted by forces both human and inhuman, Dianne and Ryan are drawn into a deadly web of ancient bloodlines, harmonic technology, and dark angelic forces.

As the unseen enemy closes in, Dianne realizes she carries secrets even she doesn’t understand—and she might be the key to the coming war. Ryan will risk everything to protect her, even if it means confronting the echoes of his haunted past and risking the very sanctuary he is sworn to defend.

Helsing: Demon Slayer is a pulse-pounding romantasy thriller. Whether you are returning to the overarching Elioud saga or stepping into the universe for the first time, this standalone road-escape delivers high-stakes action, visceral survival, and a fierce first strike against the dark.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: Saving the Spring: A short fantasy (Seasons Book 1)

Jack Randall knew immediately something was off when he pulled up to the old roadhouse. Little did he know that crossing paths that night with the establishment’s beautiful bartender and her handsomely-rugged boyfriend/cook would lead to him recalling his former life as a god – or fighting a rematch with the god who had stolen his memories.

FROM PAUL MICHAEL DURIVAGE: The Crossing

HE LEFT THE HOUSE. IT NEVER LEFT HIM.

As a child, Evan slept behind a locked door while wet footsteps crossed the hall. His parents called it the pipes. He knew better.

Evan grew up, left Connecticut, and built a life with Sarah and their daughter, Lily. Now he works with the Church, helping families confront things they cannot explain. Sarah knows how much his work has taken from their marriage. She does not know how much of his own past he is still keeping from her.

Then a call brings him home to Ripley, Ohio. A young woman is badly injured inside St. Jude’s. She is speaking in the voice of a priest’s dead mother.

Evan recognizes the black water. The river mud. The demon that knows where to hurt him.

As he fights to free Emily Hart, Sarah hears their daughter’s voice calling from an empty room. Lily is standing beside her, holding her hand. The danger has followed Evan home.

To save Emily without losing his family, Evan will have to trust people he cannot keep safe and stop deciding what they can bear to know.

FROM ROSS HATHAWAY: Grimm’s Anatomy 2: Leaving Is Not Loss

Mercy General has finally learned how to treat supernatural patients without turning them into monsters, myths, cautionary tales, or billing disputes.
Naturally, someone decides to standardize it and turn it into software.
Dr. Tessa Ward and Nurse Hattie Boone helped create Witness-Based Narrative Stabilization, a deceptively simple approach to supernatural medicine: listen to the patient, preserve what matters, and never confuse the story with the person trapped inside it.
It works.
That is when the trouble starts.
A regional healthcare system wants to expand Mercy’s methods using Continuum, a new technology designed to make sure critical information follows patients wherever they go. Allergies will not vanish between hospitals. Dangerous histories will not disappear under old names. No patient will ever be lost again.
Unfortunately, some things should stay in the past.
When Megan Bell arrives with back pain, insomnia, and a hallway that has mysteriously grown six feet longer, Continuum discovers that twenty years ago she was known as the Maiden in the Tower.
Megan escaped that story once.
Now the healthcare system remembers it for her.
As old diagnoses regain authority, forgotten identities begin shaping reality, and well-intentioned safeguards become increasingly difficult to distinguish from cages, Tessa faces a problem medicine rarely admits it has:
Sometimes forgetting can kill you.
Sometimes remembering can do something worse.
Darkly funny, strange, and unexpectedly human, Book Two of Grimm’s Anatomy returns to Mercy General, where werewolves still get pneumonia, ghosts still need discharge plans, bureaucracy remains incurable, and the most dangerous diagnosis may be the one everyone agrees is true.

FROM STANLEY WHEELER: Accidental Wizard: The Accidental Adventures Series

Two brothers. One dead wizard. And a spell nobody warned them about.

Twins Chris and Kenny only meant to walk through the giant fallen log at the end of Grandpa’s trail. Instead, the world explodes into fire and thunder, and they crash-land in a medieval kingdom on the losing side of a war. A dying blood mage summoned them on purpose, and now Chris is expected to take his place.

There’s just one catch. In this world, magic is paid for in blood. Every spell Chris casts — fingers of fire, a flick that stuns, a stone that breaks locks — opens a fresh wound. They call it the mulct, and the bigger the magic, the bigger the price. Meanwhile Kenny is handed an enchanted sword and mail shirt and told he’s a knight now. Ready or not.

To get home — and to stop a dragon-sorceress whose army is already crossing the Wide Waste — the boys have to find a staff sealed inside a mountain since Merlin’s day. Between them and the prize: flying blood wolves that hunt mages by scent, a valley of shape-shifting trolls, a traitor on a war-wolf, and a one-eyed pirate they were sure they’d already blown up.

Fast, funny, and packed with courage, quick thinking, and brotherhood, Accidental Wizard is Book Two of The Accidental Adventures Series. Adventure the way it’s supposed to be: the good guys outnumbered, outmatched, and not backing down.

FROM ELISE HYATT: A French Polished Murder (Daring Finds)

PIANO FORTE, MURDER FORTE She restores furniture. Murder restores itself.

When furniture refinisher Dyce Dare decides to spruce up an old piano as a gift for her boyfriend Cas Wolfe, she expected wood stains and varnish—not stained reputations and varnished truths. But that’s exactly what she gets when she discovers a mysterious letter hidden inside, pointing to a murder that’s been gathering dust longer than the piano keys.

Suddenly, Dyce’s biggest problems aren’t just that her well-meaning friend gave her son a miniature motorcycle (what could possibly go wrong?), or that said son has formed an unbreakable alliance with Pythagoras, a neurotic black cat with enough anxiety to power a small city.

No, her biggest problem is that someone out there doesn’t want this particular skeleton dancing out of its closet—and they’re willing to add Dyce to the body count to keep it quiet. As danger creeps closer to her doorstep and her parents’ mystery bookstore, Dyce discovers that old murders are like vintage furniture: they may be hidden away, but eventually, someone always finds them.

A French Polished Murder – When the music stops, the real mystery begins.

(Warning: Contains refinishing tips, parenting mishaps, and one cat who absolutely refuses to be a proper sidekick.)

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: BRAINY.

Because my brother was older than me, my tastes in music were weirdly dislocated in time. Okay, it saved me from Disco. They were also a little odd, because my brother was odd.

Before we could even afford a tape recorder (or were sure they weren’t a myth) when his transistor radio was the height of luxury, I fell in love with this song heard on his radio, and he enabled me into going across the street to the general store that became a tavern after 9pm (and this was around 10 pm) to call the requests program (he dialed and paid for the call) and ask for Dock of the Bay by Ottis Redding. I remember the announcer was so amused he asked me to repeat it. I must have been around four.

And yes, he used to sing this to me with all the silly flourishes:

At some point, we discovered John Denver. Weirdly the favorite was not Rocky Mountain High, but that song about the exotic and exciting land of West Virginia. In my pre-teens I used to belt this while walking home alone from middle school, along the ride overlooking the train line.

Tonight, I guess I’d rather be in Colorado:

And we had no idea what or where MacArthur Park was, or why it would melt or why leave a cake in the rain, but we loved the song anyway (yes, in this version.)

He sang this to his future wife (of course).

When I was ten and unbraided my hair, it came to my knees and being a kid, I would often forget to dress and come running downstairs dressed only in my hair (there’s a picture somewhere. You can’t see anything.) My brother nicknamed me Lady G. and sang this for me.

He said this was our song, and improbably, though we were never that old together and we were never both men, it feels right.

I just got word that my brother, Alvarim, died this morning.

We meant to go visit this fall, because I feared it might happen, but with the move and all, we were low on money and…. it didn’t happen.

We were so far apart in age that we were practically both only children, and he was ALMOST a third parent. And no, that’s not the best picture above. He hated having his picture taken, and I was weird. BUT–

For a long time I was his shadow. doing what he did, because that was the way to be in my mind. I followed him everywhere. I pretended to read the same books, and then later on read the same books and for a while we spoke almost exclusively in quotations from those books, driving my poor parents nuts.

He read to me when I was sick as a small child, was very patient with my notions when I was a teenager, and since we always thought no one would be stupid enough to marry either of us, we’d planned to get old and crazy together in our parents’ house.

It didn’t happen that way. He was very good to my kids. During the lean, tight years he’d send us money to buy them gifts.

We diverged politically as I came into my own mind, but the love was always there. And despite our differences, until he grew too ill to read much, when I visited, every five years or so, the book on his bedside table, often an history book or a classical mystery, was the same — in translation — as the one I’d left on my bedside in the US.

He died, and I never got to say goodbye and I don’t know what to do with this.

And my poor father, burying his first born little more than a year after losing his wife.

At least he came back to the church before he died.

Please, if you’re the praying kind, pray for my brother, Alvarim Marques de Almeida.

And pray for my father.

This is new year 1980. Of the people in this picture, a good half are dead.

Alas, I remain.

I’m not going to be okay for a long time. I will come around, but forgive me if I’m a little weird now and then.

And pray for me too, if you’re the praying kind.