Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

I was — blamelessly (standing on the corner, reading my Bible.) — hanging out in my discord group, when someone posted a link to a twitter post. This Twitter post:

If you follow the link, you’ll find other additional qualities that are now not just right wing but “white supremacy.” This of course includes everything needed to make you a good employee, such as showing up on time, planning, actually executing plans, etc. etc. ad nauseam.

And you’re going to say “Yes, Sarah, but the left are massive racists, so to whom is this a surprise. And of course, you are right. It takes a special kind of mind to think that the ability to show up on time or do what you’re supposed to do at work is constricted to white people or a sign of white supremacy. In fact, if you think that, you are by definition a white supremacist since those are the traits required to be successful and therefore to think that only whites have them is … well… white supremacy beliefs. Or as I like to put it “Those who confuse culture with genetics are taking the side of Hitler in the long fight between nature and nurture.” (Which is particularly hilarious when these are the people who accuse just about everyone else of being “basically Hitler.”)

The problem is that there is more than that going on. Yes, the left really believes that these traits are white supremacy, but the left also believes quite honestly (if neither rationally not reasonably) that such traits are evil and should be eradicated, as well as never taught to those under their control, such as public school kids.

And that’s more complicated to explain. It is in fact, not just first world delusions, but gentry delusions.

The left has a raging case of nostalgie de la boue. Yes, I’m speaking furrin’ at you again. Fortunately this is the future, and you have a computer at your fingertips.

I remember reading — in some bewilderment — this longing, drooling article, Jonesing for Times Square in the seventies in some NY city paper (I’m not being cute, it’s been 30 years, and I’ve slept since then) in the late nineties. How it was more fun, more authentic, because you could bump into pimps and whores and get shanked at any corner, in daylight. And I remember thinking “These are the illusions of people so well off that they get their kicks by slumming, in controlled, carefully dosed portions never realizing that these conditions condemn those worse off than they are to live in hell 24/7.”

I suppose that goes along with most lefties, particularly most communists being rich kids. (No? Go track it.) Perhaps they feel guilty for their privileged upbringing. Or perhaps — I’ve seen this very often, in the arts — they are tormented by the idea that they’re missing something: that their lives, as well off as they are, are pretend lives, not serious.

You hear it in the sneering put down of “First world problems.” (Not used in a funny and self deprecating way, but applied to other people’s struggles. To make you think they mean nothing.) Because you know, not having to deal with lack of clean water, or children dying of diarrhea or the other conditions obtaining in the third world made your problems — say, unemployment, or a shitty job, or even a bad marriage — less “authentic.” Less important.

It all goes back, of course, to the basic communist belief about humanity. Humanity is evil bad. There is no such thing as a good person, which is why people need to be watched and controlled continuously by an omnipresent, omnipotent government. (Why people are supposed to be evil in individual cases, but wonderful in aggregate in a government, I don’t know, except that communists always imagine they’ll be the ones in power, and of course, they have superior moral sense.)

And to the other basic communist belief: wealth cannot be created. It can only be distributed endlessly. which means anyone managing to accumulate more wealth is taking it from someone else. (That’s right, that computer you are reading this on was passed on and redistributed from Knut the nut who first built it from river mud in the fertile crescent. Oh, wait. No, he couldn’t build it! Dang it. He stole it from a fish in the fertile crescent when he asserted his imperialistic colonialist domain over the Euphrates. or something.)

If you combine those, the people using the discipline that in our current world allows people to get ahead (absent DEI (Or as originally acronymed DIE, later ditched for being too on the nose, I’d guess.) means that you’re using a “trick” to accumulate more of the wealth for yourself, which makes it evil and also white supremacy. (Since as we know every successful person ever is white. Because they’re declared white, no matter what their color actually is. Some things never change.)

It would be hilarious. And in fact we’ve laughed about it more than once, when we go “White supremacy is… spin the wheel”. But the problem is that it’s also tragic, destructive and insidious.

It’s tragic because taken to its ultimate conclusion it enforces a kind of “cultural revolution” destructiveness, when the most skilled craftsmen and best workers had to abase themselves and promise to stop being that good. China did lose a good deal of multi-generational skills and knowledge, and we’re in the process of losing it also, because after all to do the thing precisely and with pride is supremacy, and evil, and oppressive.

Look, I’ve seen Europe, which has a more advanced case of this, going from having the most astonishing artists in the world to lionizing people who do bad line art in public spaces, art which at the time I viewed it, would have shamed my 10 year old son who didn’t even have any artistic ambitions (that was the other.)

And I’ve seen what it’s done to fiction. No. Really. I had a meme on Saturday about “Human slop.” You don’t have to be an expert to find that screeds screaming about the oppression of left handed Tahitian Lesbians of uncertain parentage in fact reflect very little about the human condition, much less contribute anything to the continuing exploration of what it means to be human in the world, which is the de-minimis requirement of decent fiction. As for the word use… well!

But it goes deeper than that. It goes to teachers who don’t teach, because teaching and actually enforcing learning is white supremacy or right wing (and right wing is bad, remember). (It inevitably results in students who can’t read, and now four generations in, in graduate students, or professor, who likewise can’t read. Or at least not with any fluency.) It goes to jobs exported overseas, because your workers were convinced to be as bad as slave workers in China.

It goes into unsafe cities, because requiring people not to kill or rob is bad and right wing.

In fact, this nostalgie de la boue, this craving for the low and evil and dark is ultimately a wrench unscrewing all the underpinnings of civilization.

And it is built so deeply that even after you free yourself of every other leftist illusion, you still find it trying to destroy your novel or your art by making it pointlessly dark or despairing. Because you internalized that as being “thoughtful” or “important.” (Ask me how I know. Years. it took me years. And in the early published books, a lot of revising.)

Look, in every time in the world, the gentry amused themselves by going out among the peasants and enjoying the “low” entertainment. But at least the gentry paid lip service to civilization. They might sneer at the “bourgeoisie” who refused to have affairs and who were honest in their dealings. Or at least the most corrupt ones did. But they also sent their second sons to fight and die for civilization. And the smarter gentry, the ones who survived, kept private virtue in their own lives. The others met either the tumbrils or bankruptcy. Until their nostalgie de la boue was exercised only by the young and foolish for a limited time.

This however is the gentry infecting the poor, the innocent, the hapless and those who don’t know their nonsense is just that: nonsense.

It’s time to wash the leftist mud from societal beliefs and build again. Because the alternative is not some beautiful egalitarian paradise. It’s actually just mud… and misery, and all the evils humanity built civilization to escape.

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: The Pine – Wicker Feud (Chronicles of the Fall)

A short novel of events centuries before the Chronicles

Fifty years ago, a judge had a strong precognition, and executed a young lord, heir to the leadership of the Wicker Family, for crimes nearly serious enough for such a harsh sentence. But now the judge has died, and Lord Friedrich Wicker is free to take out his revenge on the surviving Pine Family. And he’s planning on killing every single one of them . . . Especially the seventeen-year-old Lord Karlheinz Ingolf Pine.

FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN: Hunter and Hart: Familiar Generations Book 11

“Uncle Jude, Beth saw a glowing white deer.”

When his student reports her classmate’s tale, Jude feels a chill. Deer from Celtic mythology rarely bring good fortune, even when seen by multiple people. Still, he hesitates. Could it be a transformation? An illusion? A practical magical joke? The duties of father, husband, Hunter, deputy, and employee keep Jude—and his Familiar Shoim—occupied.

Then the first teen, a sorcerer, goes missing.

Tangled magic and a summoning “from long away” draws Jude’s family deeper into danger. When the deer and the magic behind it threaten his wife and children, the stalk among shadows turns into a Hunt. One that draws on lore of the Old Land and power from the New.

Ancient darkness and modern evil both lurk behind the glowing white hart. The Hunter in Shadows must go wary, or he may loose more than just his life in the gathering storm.

FROM DALE COZORT: Nazi Treasure Hunt Book One: Marsh War

Marsh War is an alternate history novel set in the aftermath of an alternate World War II where Hitler went for Moscow rather than the Caucasus in spring 1942. As a result, World War II in the east stalemated deep inside Soviet prewar territory. The Soviets were too weak to push the Germans out, even when the western allies pushed into Germany. Diehard Nazis fled to the German-held Soviet Union and held out there for years until the western Allies crossed into Soviet territory and destroyed them.

With the Soviet Union battered and partially occupied, the United States emerges from World War II as the World’s only real Great Power. Great, right? Not really. In 1949, two years after they destroyed the last conventional Nazi resistance, the US still occupies large parts of the western Soviet Union and has been sucked into the treacherous politics of the Polish/Soviet border regions, with nominal allies close to war with each other over economically valuable and ethnically mixed areas.
Stalin pursues his intrigues in this dangerous region, while Nazi remnants scheme to regain power.

While the US settles in for a postwar boom, US occupation forces in the Soviet Union search for missing German scientists, Nazi advanced technology and looted Nazi treasures. They also search for missing loved ones and brace for a coming war they are woefully unprepared for.

FROM LAURA MONTGOMERY: PLANTING LIFE: Shut the Kingdom (Near Future Science Fiction Adventure)

Nominated for the 2026 Prometheus Award for Best Novel.

The road to Mars has to start somewhere. It might as well be central Virginia.

Jack Darien scorns his parents’ path. After the disaster at his father’s Mars settlement, the high school senior scraps both his lifelong interest in space exploration and his college plans. Even his rescue of a college student from assault doesn’t make him see his own future any differently.

Jack becomes obsessed, however, when one strange comment from the attacker draws him to unravel secrets at the former Superfund site that is now Webb University, the school where his returning father teaches and eco-restoration reigns. What starts for Jack as a distraction from thinking of his future turns into a dangerous journey that puts him, his mother, and sister at risk. As for his father, Jack decided long ago the man was on his own.

Jack’s determination to chart his future clear of his father’s failures hits a snag when he learns the school’s hidden mystery. Unfortunately, those determined to bring Webb down learn it, too, and ratchet up their own efforts toward Webb’s destruction.

Planting Life is an immersive young-adult science fiction adventure. If you like unearthing secrets, a dogged hero, and reckless courage under threat, you’ll love Laura Montgomery’s near future coming-of-age saga.

FROM LEE ECKHARDT: THE EMPTY PLACE: A Novel Of Suspense

The Hamner place, an abandoned farmhouse near the Beaumont Ranch summer camp. The Hamner place, where, it is said, an entire family was murdered, slaughtered by a deranged serial killer who was never caught. Fifteen-year-old Evan Houghton has always believed that to be camp legend, but as the summer wears on he becomes less sure – Rod Chamov, the camp’s oddball, claims he can see lights in the Hamner place, strange green lights that no one else can see. No one, at least except Katherine Matheson, who has a psychic gift that tells her that there really is a presence in the Hamner place, an evil presence that is patiently waiting for a victim. Could it be the spirit of the serial killer? The ghosts of his victims? The reality is more incredible than either Evan or Kathy could ever guess… Note: Katherine Matheson appears again in ‘You Can’t See Us’ NOTE: Katherine Matheson appears again in ‘You Can’t See Us’.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: On Account of a Dame (Timelines Universe Book 9)

Welcome to the New Jazz Age!

It’s the Roaring Twenties all over again — well — the 2120’s, that is. Where New York City has reverted to its Jazz Age roots of two centuries before. What’s missing? Prohibition, and gun control. What’s not missing? Tough guys, and the dames who (sometimes) love them. Gin joints. Speakeasies. Dance halls. The Social Register is still a thing, and the Beautiful People litter the society pages of the local hypernews sites.

Enter a typical gumshoe private detective — a member of that high society himself, yet a man who left society long ago for other pursuits. And his latest client, a rich young woman of leisure, who needs her new husband followed.

Throw in the recently-crowned queen of one of Chinatown’s tongs, a beautiful investment wizard from upstate, and a hundred million dollars in assets, and suddenly it’s all

On Account of a Dame

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Fire and Forge (Modern Gods Book 3)

Long after their worshipers are forgotten, the gods are still holding up a corner of the bar at the Godshead Tavern. Some have learned since their stories became myths, some never did, and some are still finding old curses coming back to haunt…

Poseidon wants Artemis to lift Medusa’s curse so he and Medusa can resume relations, while Chronos seeks another chance to be whole and get to know his kids.

Meanwhile, Ares falls head over heels for a mortal half his size who manages to kick his ass not once but twice, and Loki’s son is trying to rebuild his life (and his credit) after a short marriage to Pandora.

Life and love runs smoothly for no one, god or mortal. And another disaster is brewing…

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Bowl of Red (The Shifter Series Book 4)

Dragon shifter Tom Ormson wanted two things: to serve killer souvlaki at his Colorado diner and enjoy married life with his pregnant panther-shifter wife. Instead, he got unwanted psi powers and a dragon triad syndicate demanding his leadership.

When Kyrie’s grandfather is found murdered, police officer Rafiel—Tom and Kyrie’s closest friend—must solve the case while being pulled into a power struggle for lion clan leadership. With all shifter clans in turmoil, separating allies from suspects becomes a deadly game.

The suspect list grows wilder by the minute: murderous chicken shifters, a skull-collecting otter who teaches art history, a Minotaur delivery man, chaos-causing spider monkeys, and an alligator shifter who might be a double agent. Meanwhile, Rafiel’s dragon girlfriend visiting town might get caught in the crossfire.

In Goldport, Colorado, the special of the day comes with a side of shapeshifter chaos. Just don’t ask about the capybara incident.

FROM KATHLEEN KEITH: The Miserable Marriage Handbook for Women: How to Survive and Grow While Trapped in a Miserable Marriage

Perhaps the most important relationship book of the decade, The Miserable Marriage Handbook for Women addresses one of the biggest secrets in our culture—the appalling way that women are treated by their husbands or partners in the privacy of their homes. If you are in a miserable marriage, getting out of one, or haunted by memories of a destructive relationship, this book is for you.

‘You Are Not Alone’ are the words author Kathleen Keith uses to begin this book in which she shares the Survive and Grow Steps she developed to rescue herself from a miserable marriage and save her sanity and her life. The author pulls back the curtain on the fundamental issue for every woman trapped in a miserable marriage—we know that the ‘really nice guy’ we are married to, isn’t. We know it’s a lie. No one believes us if we tell the truth about our life with him.

And no one is sympathetic to the word ‘trapped’ because only those of us who have experienced the misery of life with a narcissist, passive aggressive, addict (anger, substance, porn, gambling, online gaming) and abuse, know how trapped we are.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Khuldhar’s War

The war was over, but where was the peace the victors had promised?

Geidliv the Tyrant was dead, and the rogue nation of Karmandios now lay in ruins, its people prostrate before the occupying armies of the five allied nations. But now the winners are quarreling among themselves, and where brothers fight, enemies will enter to widen the gap.

Merekhet is a man torn between competing loyalties, tormented by guilt over his past failures. Raised the scion of a Karmandi noble family, he discovered upon puberty that he was in fact the son of a senior war commander of the telepathic People of the Hawk. Yet he could not entirely disavow his mother’s people, and thus became entangled in Geidliv’s regime and his nephew Khuldhar’s doomed attempt to fight it.

Now Merekhet has evidence that Geidliv used telepathy and the bioscience of the mer-people to create a living weapon from Khuldhar’s genetic material and hid it in plain sight. Worse, a former ally now estranged is seeking that weapon, and must not be allowed to capture it, lest all the world of Okeanos fall to far greater tyranny than Geidliv could ever have hoped to create.

Merekhet must regain Khuldhar’s confidence, and together they must find the five young men who are the keys to Geidliv’s final vengeance weapon.

FROM JOHN BAILEY: The Long November: A Novel of Friendship, Duty, and the Battle of the Wabash (Historical Fiction)

In the autumn of 1791, three young men from a German settlement in western Pennsylvania answer the new republic’s call and march into the Northwest Territory with General Arthur St. Clair’s army. Jacob Bauer is a blacksmith’s son, quiet and methodical, who reads the ground around him the way he reads iron. Eli Schaeffer is the miller’s son, warm and quick, whose easy charm conceals a steadiness that only reveals itself under pressure. Nathan Reist is the schoolmaster’s son, bookish and earnest, who has read everything available about the territory and the confederation they are marching to meet—and who understands, more clearly than any of them, what they are walking toward.

On the fourth of November, 1791, they find out.

The Battle of the Wabash—known to history as St. Clair’s Defeat—remains the worst defeat ever suffered by the United States Army at the hands of a Native American confederation, a catastrophe born of inadequate preparation, corrupt supply contracts, and a commander who had been warned explicitly what the wilderness required and could not, in the end, provide it. The confederation force under the brilliant Miami war chief Mihšihkinaahkwa—Little Turtle—had been watching the column for weeks. They chose the hour and the ground, and they were not wrong.

The Long November follows Jacob, Eli, and Nathan through the campaign and its aftermath: the road-cutting and the short rations and the first desertions, the four of November itself and what it demanded of each of them, the brutal retreat through the Ohio country and the weeks at Fort Jefferson while Nathan fought fever and Jacob refused to leave. And then, across the years that followed—the return home, the marriages, Nathan’s book, the slow arc of the republic learning from what had been lost—the novel asks what it means to survive something and carry it, and what the men who did not survive were owed by the nation they served.

Written in the tradition of American historical fiction at its most serious—plain prose, honest about cost, heroic where heroism is earned and not where it is not—The Long November is a novel about friendship as the most durable form of courage, about the difference between duty written on paper and duty owed to the man beside you, and about the particular kind of gratitude available only to those who have been somewhere that showed them what home was worth.

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: SCENT.

Hi, guys.

Promo post in a few minutes, but:

My husband says I should have made my feelings on the Prometheus this year clear at some point, so I’m doing it now: While of course I was disappointed No Man’s Land didn’t win, (Mostly because, I’ll be honest, it would give it a sales push. There are things I need to do, most of all bring the second one, but my brain got eaten by furniture refinishing — research for Dyce, I SWEAR — and packing.) I was not in the slightest bit surprised nor upset.

You see, J. Kenton Pierce’s novel was much more of a LIBERTARIAN novel, as well as an amazingly mature work for what I believe is his first novel. A Kiss for Damocles: Book 1 of Shai (Tales From the Long Night).

The problem, you see, is that while I believe that No Man’s Land is award worthy (And probably the one in the series most worthy of it, since I was working on the technique to show the whole, complex culture without bogging down the story) the Prometheus is a LIBERTARIAN award. And therefore the most Libertarian novel should receive it.

That the other awards have traded their birthright for a pot of (hackneyed) message and trendy nonsense is not the Prometheus fault, and while it remains the only award that MIGHT go to people to the right of Lenin, it must remain true to its charter which is both excellence AND political orientation.

As for Dave Freer’s win for Storm Dragon, well, the novel is both Libertarian and well… Dave Freer is possibly the best writer of science fiction alive and working today. And that level of sheer excellence MUST be recognized. And, again the Prometheus is the only award available for those of us not anointing ourselves with eau de collectivism.

Why am I saying this now? Well… Because today is the ceremony recognizing these wins. I might or might not be in the audience, since the phone having died made an already hectic schedule more insane (because I now need to acquire a new phone asap.) but I’ll certainly be there in spirit, (waving my pompoms and doing a little dance. No, you don’t need to picture that. Horrific I know. Have some brain bleach.)

Below is the announcement:

Don’t miss the 46th Prometheus Awards on Zoom Sunday Aug. 16

The 46th Prometheus Awards ceremony, open to the public, will take place via Zoom at 1 p.m. Sunday Aug. 16 (Eastern time).

The hourlong awards show, honoring outstanding science fiction and fantasy that explores libertarian and anti-authoritarian themes, will include the first Special Prometheus Award for Young Adult Fiction along with presentations of the two annual categories for Best Novel and the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction.

Among the 10 speakers: Prometheus-winning novelists Travis Corcoran, Dave Freer and J. Kenton Pierce; and leading libertarian thinker and law professor Ilya Somin, giving the keynote address on libertarian currents in science fiction.

Accepting the Hall of Fame award for Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World will be Pulitzer-winning writer-editor Jack Miles and Huxley’s two adult grandchildren, Tessa and Trev Huxley.

Corcoran, a two-time Best Novel winner (The Powers of the Earth, Causes of Separation), will present the Special Award following his speech about the vital connection between literacy and liberty and the importance of Young Adult Fiction to encourage and inspire new generations of readers.

Pierce, based in Pennsylvania, will accept the Best Novel award for A Kiss for Damocles.

Freer, based in Tasmania, Australia, will accept the Special Award for Storm-Dragon.

Here’s the direct Zoom link for the Prometheus ceremony:

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87824388418?pwd=CsoznF4wtlLNTYvEotlIpVJkCoGb9I.1

For more information about the awards show, the lineup of speakers, and capsule descriptions of each winning novel, check out the latest post at the Libertarian Futurist Society website (www.lfs.org) on the Prometheus Blog page:

https://www.lfs.org/blog/by-the-numbers-the-many-reasons-to-watch-the-46th-prometheus-awards-ceremony-this-sunday-aug-16-on-zoom-heres-the-link/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Possess your souls in patience.

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

Book Promo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FROM LEE ECKHARDT: KOSMOPOLIS: A Novel of Berlin

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

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

December, 1941.

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

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

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Schrödinger Paradox: Cataclysm

The end is coming.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Grandmaster’s Gambit

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

FROM CELIA HAYES: Return to Alder Grove

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

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

The Kingdom of New Norway is dying.

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

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

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

Their sacrifice becomes the first link in an extraordinary chain.

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

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

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

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

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

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

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

If you have questions, feel free to to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: Language

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

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