The first time I heard of Rick Rescorla, was on 9/11. I was an Austen fan group at the time, and was on the chat board. One of the women on the board was one of Rescorla’s co-workers, and he’d just saved her.

Since then, I’ve tried to remember him on 9/11.

And 22 years, on, I remember 9/11. while our “leadership” tries to leave us wide open to be hurt and destroyed by anyone who decides they don’t like us, it’s important to remember 9/11, and most of all the heroes of 9/11.

And while our borders are wide open to people willing to come in and break our laws (and avail themselves of our largesse) it is important to remember this country can and should attract the best and allow in only the best. Because we can. An open border is not a border. Letting everyone in is not an immigration policy.

We should attract the best. People like Rick Rescorla.

Happy the nation who adopts such sons.

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, by clicking through and buying (anything, 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.– SAH

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Other Rhodes.

Lilly Gilden has a half-crazed cyborg in her airlock who thinks he’s Nick Rhodes,
a fictional 20th Century detective. If she doesn’t report him for destruction,
she’s guilty of a capital crime.

But with her husband missing, she’ll use every clue the cyborg holds,
and his detective abilities, to solve the crime her husband was investigating
when he disappeared.

With the help of a journalist who is more than he seems,
Lilly will risk everything to plunge into the interstellar underworld
and bring the love of her life home!

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?

FROM ABBY GOLDSMITH: Majority: A Dark Sci-Fi Progression Fantasy.

In this action-packed space-opera adventure, one disadvantaged hero must ask himself: How do you defeat a galactic empire that can read your every thought?

The Majority always gets what it wants. Thomas Hill just wishes it didn’t want him. There’s no way to escape a galactic mob of mind readers, no way for him to blend in with his foster family and other average Americans.

FROM ROBERT A. HOYT: Almost Curable.

Almost Curable’s fourteen short stories take you on a journey to equal few others. There are fantasies, like a long-dormant guardian waking to save a lost boy; or a luckless medieval princess finding her destiny; or even an angel helping a tech nerd fight off the devil, and then there are nightmares, from a steampunk adventure in which the characters have to face a literal dragon, and where dark elf ancestry can brand you for life. Or a land of living sugar slowly losing its fight with evil.
There are cautionary tales, like the one of the fully automated bio grocery store, or the one about AI watching your children.
And then then there are stories we don’t know what to do with — and doubt you will either — such as the one about the zombie dinosaur who is too cute to put down.
Enjoy a journey of adventure and wonder through these amazing stories.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Spiral Horn, Spiral Tusk.

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

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

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

A short story of the Ixilon universe

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

FROM KEN LIZZI, ON KINDLE VELLA: Ursula Bruin.

A ragtag band of anthropomorphic animals search for the missing wizard of Wizard’s Rise. In this children’s tale of courage, adventure, and wonder, Ursula Bruin encounters mermaids, unicorns, and fairies. Most importantly, she learns her own value.

FROM DALE COZORT: James T Smoot’s Cross Time Petting Zoo: A Snapshot Anthology.

James T Smoot’s fly-by-night petting zoo flies between realities, with a cargo of animals from a dozen realities and a dysfunctional ‘family’ of animal handlers.
In How James T Won His Dinosaurs, James T takes the zoo to a version of Africa where dinosaurs still live, then plunges into that Africa’s vast, uncharted central marsh to find and buy a pair of dog-sized, parrot-talking dinosaurs from a pair of Nazis, but ends up playing for his life in a secret pirate city.

In The Wrath of Athena (previously published in a stand-alone novella) The zoo’s dinosaurs escape to a vulnerable, mostly lemur ecology and threaten to destroy it, along with the zoo’s already precarious finances. Can an unlikely team of James T’s twelve-year-old daughter Ella and Scott Hardy, the zoo’s official crap shoveler, get the dinosaurs back and solve the mystery of how they escaped?

Looming bankruptcy forces the zoo to act as a CIA front in a new novella James T Rides Again. The zoo flies to a once thriving British city of New Bristol in island South America. New Bristol is now nearly a ghost town, but it is also key to a high stakes mission that takes the zoo to a mysteriously abandoned school and to the exotic jungles of island South America.

FROM KATE PAULK: ConVent.

The “Save The World” department really messed up this time: A vampire, a werewolf, an undercover angel and his succubus squeeze are no one’s idea of an A team. Or a B team. Or possibly a Z team. But then, since this particular threat to the universe and everything good attacks a science fiction convention — composed of people in costume, misfits creative geniuses and creative moron — , any conventional hero would have stood out. Now Jim, the vampire, and his unlikely sidekicks have to beat the clock to find out who’s sacrificing con goers before all hell breaks loose… literally.

FROM RACONTEUR PRESS, WITH A STORY BY M. C. A. HOGARTH: Space Marines.

Americans have always romanticized space travel. We are a people who, good or bad, have ever had their eyes on the horizon, and when we conquered our own horizons, we turned to the horizon of space. We have elevated intrepid astronauts to the status of American heroes, and as a nation we mourned the loss of the crews of Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia.

Astronauts, however, are not our only national heroes; they are preceded in that honor by the Marines.

Marines have a credo, Semper Fidelis. It means “always faithful,” and Marines have honored that credo throughout our nation’s history. They have remained faithful to their mission, to their country, and to each other. It is easy to admire such men, which is why we so love stories about Marines; they embody the faith, nobility and honor to which we all aspire.

In this volume of stories, the Marines were sent to space to do what Marines do. And some of them made it home to tell their stories and figure out what’s next.

FROM DALE COZORT: Char

Char of the Real People walked out of a mud-hole she didn’t walk into, wearing a deerskin skirt and carrying a crude spear. Then the murders started.

Char is a unique blend of police procedural and alternate reality, with county sheriff Francine Hart relentlessly pursuing clues–footprints and blood samples–that point to a murderess who is human-like, but not our kind of human.

Whatever else Char of the Real People is, Sheriff Hart discovers that her quarry is brilliant and supremely adaptable, eluding police again and again. Can even the smartest fugitive escape a modern police dragnet and get back to her own reality?

FROM BLAKE SMITH: A Small and Inconvenient Disaster.

Everywhere she goes, Maria Mason is plagued by little catastrophes. Getting caught in the rain, running from the friendliness of a muddy dog, tripping over her own feet at the worst possible moment- she has been subject to all manner of accidents, and to fend off the worst of them, she has learned to be silent and still.

Until she accompanies her friend Miss Gordon to London for a season of gaiety and pleasure. Life in Town is full of wonder, and soon Maria has new clothes, new friends, and the attention of the amusing and clever Mr. James Callahan. She begins to wonder if she has outgrown her propensity for falling into disaster, only to find herself embroiled in the worst sort of catastrophe when she is obliged to mediate between her feuding friends. One wrong word, one false step, and she might lose the regard of her friends- or worse, the love of a good man.

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

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

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

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: place

The Still, Small Voice Of Writers A Blast From The Past from January 2011 Annotated

Continuing my view of the coming of ebooks, I’d like to go into the good things brought by ebooks first.

[I’d forgotten people were terrified of ebooks. Eh. I guess some still are – SAH]

This is important. There’s a feeling of doom and gloom in the air. Publishers tell us daily they’re on the verge of collapse *because* of ebooks. (This is not exactly true, in my opinion. Look both at yesterday’s post here and at my Mad Genius Club Post on 1/5 for reasons that are pushing the collapse of publishing, reasons that are ushering in ebooks.)

[At the time I wrote this, I was still traditionally published — tbf not for long. 4 years except for finishing up contracts.

Blame my tendency to make friends and influence people…. ahem, that is, being a Heinlein sadist defined as one who tells the unvarnished truth in social situations. The miracle is not that I eventually got hard noped, the miracle is that I managed to keep my mouth shut for a 20 year career. The power of “baby needs shoes” I guess.

The truth was that Publishers were terrified of ebooks and particularly of indie publishing. They should have been. They should still be (now they seem to be firmly holding onto whistling past the graveyard.) You see, indie publishing would never have got a foot hold if traditional publishing had still been offering solid value and concentrating on its ONE job of publishing things the readers wanted to read, it would be hard to beat their established position, their expertise, and their, back then, overwhelming advantage.
If they’d had the trust of readers, no one would have gone even looking at indie and “authors publishing themselves” (think of it with nose in the air and a wrinkle of distaste) except for bargain deals of dubious quality when in great money crunch.
Of course, that’s not what happened. And keeps happening. The thing that amuses me the most is that most of the houses are just doubling down on what they WANT their primary mission to be: propagandizing readers and pushing mostly woke and insane lines. Coff “educating readers” as they used to call it.
But even houses trying to save themselves (or lines, if not houses) seem to be confused about what they’re up against. It’s both hilarious and disturbing. No, people are not going to pay you more or reward you because you have some imagined touch of “quality” or whatever. There’s only two things you can do to keep existing: publish what people want CONSISTENTLY and gain/keep their trust. That’s it. Of course. This is completely foreign to an industry that has never done market research. To make it worse, most of them have never talked to indies and found how cheaply you can create a comparable (or superior) product (things like atticus, okay?) in less time and no overpriced, dedicated workers. Heck, most of them are still holding on to PHYSICAL offices. And none of them — not one — understands that we don’t really care if they think they’re offering “quality or literature”. We like what we like, and we want more of it. And if it’s offered by indies or the authors themselves, that’s fine with us. At this point, “traditional” has no advantages except “get you on shelves in bookstores” which still matters for some writers, but every year matters to fewer readers. – SAH]

This makes both readers and writers feel odd and insecure. We have people vowing never to read in electronic format, never, never, never, and others reading in electronic format only. We have strange movements in the used-book-sales field. We have people debating anew concepts of copyright and fair use.

For writers it is still more anxiety-making. Our publishers are convinced ebooks are bankrupting them, which has turned their publishing routines upside down and made our careers very precarious.

So, it’s good to remind oneself the coming change has many good features. Perhaps the most important is letting an author take charge of his/her career.

[And not allowing us to be vanished. Without indie and this blog, I’d have “retired” 7 years ago, and most of you would think I was dead, which is why Biggle’s book resonated with me at this point in time. This is the threat I lived under – SAH]

Here, I’d like to talk about Lloyd Biggle Jr’s book, The Still Small Voice of Trumpets. Why would I like to talk about it? You’ll see.

Biggle’s book was one of my favorites as a teen. It is a standard adventure science fiction with a shadowy “federation of planets” type setup. For a new world to be admitted to this federation, it must have a democratic government. However, Earth’s agents are forbidden from imposing democracy from outside. (In the seventies, I was greatly impressed by the motto “democracy imposed from the outside is the greatest of tyrannies.” This runs counter the history of Japan, for instance, but at the same age, I was also impressed by the sudden realization that we’re all naked under our clothes. There are miles and miles of twerpitude on the way to being a grown up – as Pratchett might say.)

[I’d gotten over the naked under your clothes thing by 14 and laughed at twerps using it to try to get my clothes off. Children, the 70s were not just stupid and ugly. They were also evil – SAH]

The world that our main character – a member of Earth’s secret service, trying to bring about a revolution in this newly discovered planet – is sent to infiltrate is inhabited by a human breed that is absolutely enamored of beauty. In fact, the book starts with a peasant woman risking her life to keep something beautiful.

The mission goes wrong from the beginning, in ways I won’t detail. This post requires me to give away the ending, but even if you know that, the book is a pretty good read, full of fun and resonance.

The main problem the character faces is how to bring about a revolution from within – how to spur the natives, themselves, to revolution. Though the world is ruled by an absolute king, the public is pretty satisfied with his rule. He finally finds the way to make people aware of how tyrannical the king is.

You see, the king can – and does – send anyone who displeases him (or just happens to be in his vicinity when he has a toothache or whatever) to a village of the exiles. This is done by cutting off one of their arms, first. Now, most people sent to these villages are unknowns – the king’s chefs, physicians, servants and probably the occasional minister.

But one category sent there are musicians. The main instrument in this world is a sort of harp. (IIRC) You need both hands to play it. The king, as passionate about beauty as his subjects, loves art and has musicians play before him often. Which means, he has one of their arms cut off fairly often too.

These musicians are known and revered and have followings. But once their arm is cut off, they can no longer play, they go to these villages – they disappear. Their public forgets them.

The main character hits upon the idea of creating trumpets that the exiled ones can play, then has the musicians parade back into civilization playing their trumpets, reclaiming their public – thereby fomenting a coup.

Now, I’m not suggesting that the current state of affairs in publishing has anything to do with tyrannical anything. I mean, bookstores and distributors often seem tyrannical to readers, but I’m sure it’s simply because we don’t understand the imperatives of THEIR business.

[So, there I was soft pedaling because baby needed shoes. The book business was exactly like a tyrannical, capricious, absolute ruler. First of all there were very few houses, and if you fell afoul of one of them, for ANY REASON OR NONE (I have friends who were black listed and none of us every figured out why. Best we can tell some game of telephone in editorial offices) you got the dreaded “hard to work with” label and NO ONE WOULD BUY YOU. Your friends would abandon you, because they could be tarred by association, and you were generally done.
There used to be a way around it, which was starting again as a newbie (those who know the odds about ever being published and how little it depended on quality can see why this was less than ideal, but all the same) under a new name. But by the time I came along, this was not even really possible. Only way to submit for most houses — or at least if you wanted to get bought — was via agents and agents, who depended on publishers for their rice bowl would not “deceive” them that way. So, if you found yourself unable to sell, even if you had no idea why — maybe you were seen being friendly to someone newly on the outs? Maybe the publisher had a toothache? — you were done. It was time to forget the decades you took breaking in and acquiring a public. As far as your readers knew you were dead. Move on. Go learn to code or something.
More importantly, by the time I broke in, if you were a decent seller but didn’t break out into bestseller ranks in 3 books — very difficult without help from publishers — if they condescended to keep you on, they made you change genre/subgenre AND YOUR NAME which meant most of the time, what readers you’d found couldn’t follow you, and you could be kept midlistish forever.
So, yeah, it was a tyrannical, irrational, capricious regime, with random cancellation powers – SAH]

We are, however, in the middle of a revolution, and one of the things the e-book tech revolution is doing (amid all the confusion and fear) is giving those writers who were consigned to exile through no fault of their own an instrument they can play, and a road back into civilization.

Writers whose fans forgot they existed; writers who spent years honing their craft only to disappear from view forever, will now be publishing again.

Even better, the books have the potential to be available forever, at no cost to the publisher and/or the writer. This means there is a chance for books that went relatively unnoticed but which deserve notice, to acquire it.

This is – to me, perhaps because I am a writer – the best part of this “revolution”. It gives us instruments we can play. It allows us to come down the road, our capes fluttering, playing our trumpets, allowing people to look at us.

There are many other points pro and con what is happening – many shoals on our way to a happy ending we might or might not read. The most important of these is how the reader will find us – and I do have ideas on how to do that. I’ll be covering those in daily posts probably for a week. But for now, think of the series that were interrupted that you’d like to see finished. Right off the top of my head, I can tell you I WANT to read more of the Lord Meren Egyptian Mysteries (written by Lynda Robinson.) I’m sure you can think of some yourself.

[Turns out the author actually died, or at least that’s what I vaguely remember. But yeah, finding authors/authors finding a public is still difficult, and I haven’t been writing nearly enough. Getting on that.
Anyway, so, there it is. We are back. The banished writers. There will be attempts to silence us again (It’s what my serialization experiment is about, among other things) but I’m going to guess they’ll fail. We have this here trumpet, and we can forge others, and continue to play – SAH]

Stop and think – won’t it be lovely to hear again the still, small voice of vanished writers?

This could be titled “another year up the spout.”

It’s not true, not quite. But I thought it was time for a state of the writer post, because ya’ll start worrying about me, when things fall behind and I don’t meet even self-imposed deadlines.

So, I’m all right. The problem has been I haven’t had a sleep study in seven years. Mostly because it’s a pain and I haven’t got around to scheduling one. There have been more serious health issues in the family and I’ve been hounding people to get checked/get something done about them, so this has slipped.

I don’t need one, probably, but that means the supply places don’t want to fulfill orders for replacement parts. So I’ve been shopping on Amazon and they didn’t have name-brand parts, only knock offs. The knock offs develop micro cracks that mean the straps come off if I move or turn. Normally within a month or so. But see that “been too busy” I didn’t think about it, and didn’t check, and assumed because I didn’t remember maybe more than once a night I wasn’t wakening that often.

Except I was falling asleep during the day or really early in the evening and not being able to put my mind to much — which is why chapters and books are late — so I tracked and yep, every half hour I was adjusting the mask, because the straps came off.

So, Amazon coincidentally now has the name brand, and I got it yesterday. I’d like to say it’s the best sleep I’ve had in weeks but it wasn’t, because Mr. Indy has ensured the hose leaks (well, it moves SO enticingly) and also because apparently I’ve been petting him in the night while half awake. So– I’ve ordered new hoses, and put them on subscription. Since Indy is calming down but we’ll hopefully been getting his little siblings in two months.

And one thing we’ve established is that I don’t function while half asleep. In addition there’s some respiratory thing, but before you get too worried, it appears it’s just because I’ve been smoking Canada. Yes, I know it’s a bad habit and I should quit, but what can I say. It’s in the air, as it were, and it’s so fashionable. I wish Castreau would stop torching his own country, but it’s probably a vain hope.

In fact, the way this year has gone maybe I should give up on sleep altogether. We started in February, with a misdiagnoses of high blood pressure that led to my taking a medicine that kept me awake and coughing.

And since then it’s been one crazy thing after another.

The most important ones, though, has been that I’ve traveled almost every month for a week. I hate traveling. But that’s not the point. The point is that I will spend one week recovering from the trip, one week preparing the next trip, and one week traveling, then start again.

Most of these trips haven’t been to cons, though some have been to meet fans. Most of them, though have been family and personal, and I’m starting to get a bit exhausted. Which is okay. Other than Son of Silvercon in Vegas mid-October, I’m not traveling again till March next year. (Well, in November, on kittens-picking-up mission, hopefully.) I briefly considered going to P-con in Dallas this month, then realized I really need to write, and that’s more important. As much as I’d like to see friends I can’t travel all the time. Also, did I mention I hate traveling? I always did, even as a young woman, though I did a lot of it, but now I’m getting old and curmudgeonly, and I have novels practically trying to come out my ears, so I’d best stay home and fricking write. Oh, yeah, and get the sleep thing regulated.

On the CPAP – while I’m again working at losing weight, my apnea doesn’t seem to be weight related but mouth formation related. I should have caught on earlier, from the fact that my family assumes it’s normal to sleep less and less every year after 20 or so. You just wake up and stare at the ceiling a lot. Yeah. Anyway, it’s likely I’ll have to be tethered to the thing the rest of my life, so I probably should have the needless sleep study, so that I can order things through insurance.

Moving right along, I didn’t announce it here, for various reasons, but mostly the way we left Colorado, there was enough weird stuff surrounding us that I decided it was a bad idea to give much notice of our trip, but the trip with older son was to Colorado for almost a week.

In many ways Colorado is still home. You can’t live somewhere for thirty years and not have it become a part of you. In other ways, it’s a complete unknown, particularly Colorado Springs downtown which has to an extent changed behind recognition and has a weird “New York married California” vibe. I can’t describe it, it’s just a weird touch-feel feeling.

Anyway, it was good to be able to say goodbye to Pete’s (late at night on Friday, and how is it possible the place is both more upscale — the cheap picnic tables in the annex are now permanent wood and stainless steel — and somehow more seedy? (Every surface felt like it had been dipped in sugar. Twice.) It was also full of students, which shocked me, as Pete’s after 10 was always the hang of policemen, whores and writers.

We also went to the DMNS, to the zoo and to Garden of the Gods, as well as seeing friends of 30 years standing whom we might or might not see again, or at least not for a long time.

We didn’t get to take a walk in downtown Colorado Springs due to the press of time.

But it was good. I got to say goodbye properly, and don’t feel like I ran away under cover of darkness.

It also confirmed for me the two reasons I could not have stayed. One would be insufficient to push me out, but two of them, well…. Yeah, the politics. There’s only so much I could have dealt with and the politics have gone too far. And my autoimmune. As soon as we hit altitude, it spun up to crazy levels, and I couldn’t have stayed one more day without needing to go to ER. It’s mostly cleared now.

My head would probably also clear, if I could get stuff ready so I can sleep ;)

Anyway, I’m going to try to stay home and optimize my routine to writing, because the books ain’t gonna write themselves, and it’s either that or pour bleach in my ear to quiet all the people in there.

The state of the writer is sleepy, confused, smoke-infused and cat-plagued. What else is new?

Yesterday, on twitter — yeah, I only go there for five minutes, morning and evening, to echo my posts, but sometimes it’s enough to hit my face on some kind of stupid — I came across someone, almost for sure European, screaming at a friend.

My friend had commented on the idiot desire by the current maladministration to raise our taxes. My friend was particularly — as he should be — exercised about progressive taxes, a system that always ends up punishing the middle class (of course) and which destroys the economy in the process. And this complete ass called him an idiot by saying that if only our taxes were higher, we’d have better education and our medical system wouldn’t be falling apart.

I think I was very rude. I sometimes am. And the stupidity in that comment was too glaring to be ignored.

First, of course, most Europeans have no idea what our taxes are. Hell, most Americans don’t. They get told our taxes are low, and this is usually federal taxes, but it completely ignores that we also have state taxes, local taxes, property taxes, sales taxes.

Better people than I have added it all up, and in most places we’re giving at least half if not most of our earnings to government. Our real taxation is much higher than in Europe.

So, why are our “education” and “health” falling apart? Why indeed?

Well, it could be because since the early twentieth century our government has been running on the older and crazier European model, which is explicitly excluded from our governance by the constitution.

It could be because neither health nor education are a legitimate province of the government for a self-governing people who wish to remain so.

Sure, local governments might do what they will with education. Maybe. At least when the insane bastages which always seem to gravitate to positions of government and power are doing intolerable things or more likely things utterly divorced from reality, because they can, you can go surround their houses with torches and pitchforks, which seems to get their attention sharpish-like.

As for health, it is find for charities and wealthy individuals to be encouraged to concern themselves with the plight of the indigent and suffering. For many centuries it was preached by the churches, and even the non-religious do-gooders. (Education too, for that matter.)

Only an European — spit — would think that either education or health are a legitimate province of the government. And that’s because they still have rats in their heads from when absolute kings had rights over the everything of their subjects as though they belonged to the king as his play things. And they apparently have forgotten how those regimes ended. (A la lanterne. It might behoove the Americans who thought the Europeans had the right idea to contemplate that. Maybe they have. I’ve noticed that a lot of lampposts are now made so they have no cross piece. Probably a coincidence.)

Particularly in a continent-sized country like ours, to deliver the responsibility and right for your most intimate decisions to a massive and indifferent bureaucracy staffed by people who have attended “the best colleges” and see you as unwashed peasants, and who have no idea how large the country is in fact, or how varied the means of living in it, is …. as stupid as we’re finding out.

Though for my money, both Great Britain and Canada, smaller countries with easier to understand needs, are hitting their nose on that first.

Because surrounding the capital is much harder, and just the expense in torches and pitchforks will bankrupt your average middle class. (Maybe. I’d say in the next five years all over the world we’ll test this.)

I don’t need to do an hypothetical. The money spent on education per state is available on line. And as it climbs the quality of education declines.

As for health, no one — not even the hospitals — knows how much health services really cost. The thrice damnable interference of the government in health, starting with medicaid and medicare has distorted the price structure by removing the patient from responsibility or right to oversee his own treatment. The government pays whimsically and in ways that have nothing to do with the right decisions for the patient.

This was made worse by — really spit — Obama care which dictated what insurances should cover and shouldn’t cover. And if you think the surge in “trans” everything isn’t related to the fact that all insurances are mandated to cover it and that hospitals are starved for money, you’re most trusting than I am.

Even the most mundane of decisions my doctor wants to make for my care — and keep in mind that we do have very good (for our time insurance) — are now captive of “insurance” “approving.” Fortunately our doctor is as irritated by this as I am, so when I vent he just sighs and doesn’t take it personally. But seriously: after my doctor examines me, looks at my tests, and spends time in thought, he must still defer his decision on what medicines or procedures I should have to faceless bureaucrats far away, who are looking at me not as an individual with an admittedly quirky biology (for various reasons) but as a statistical blip.

(For years, while we tried to follow as low carb a diet as possible (diabetes in both families) we were harangued on how we should mostly eat cereals and carbs. Which I understand is, in fact, okay for a lot of people, but certainly not for us.)

So if something works for 90% of the people, then it should work for me. According to people who were never trained in medicine and who only see numbers and statistics.

This is probably why “medical intervention” is right now our leading cause of death. (Yes, they call it medical error, but is it the doctor’s or the system’s?)

Look, the problem is that you’re not making the decisions, the government is. And the government makes decisions according to its priorities.

Your priority might be to stay alive as long as possible, because you have books to write, and you think you’re making a contribution to the world. But the government will look at the ledger as you age, and see the price climbing, and your tax bill falling, and at some point you become a liability.

The same with education. You might want your kid to learn the things he or she needs to be a well-rounded individual who does well in life and is happy. But the government wants your kid above all not to cause trouble. So whatever needs to be taught so your kids just go along with whatever the government wants is what gets taught. And if they think — they do — there are too many people, they might prefer it if your kids get maimed so they don’t reproduce. And all of this is easier if they don’t read too well, can’t do math, and can’t look up the wealth of information available on line. Because, you know, keeping pets is always easier than containing self-actuated individuals you’re annoying.

No matter how much you pay in taxes, most of the money will go to the bureaucrats whose priorities are to grow bureaucracy and treat you like a farm animal.

The way to get out of that bind is not to pay more taxes, but to get government back within its constitutional restraints and push everything not specified in the constitution to the local government or the individuals. And if the individuals actually can read and research, they should keep most of it to themselves.

The more money you pay to an indifferent third party to look after you, the less you’ll like the way they look after you.

And before you talk of compassion and ending suffering: There’s only one way to end human suffering permanently. Look at Canada. They’re leading the way. They’ll now cheerfully treat you for feeling sad or being poor. The treatment is death. As it always ends up being.

Keep government poor. You always get more of what you buy, and we have enough of government.

And keep its big beak out of anything but protecting our borders (ah), negotiating with foreign potentates, and maintaining relations between states (ah) so they don’t degenerate into war.

Everything else? Take it state, take it local, take it personal.

Because the other way it always ends in death. There are no exceptions. The larger the government the higher the chance of mass graves.

In the end that’s all taxes buy.

The F-word by MaryH10000

I used to think feminism was a synonym for women’s rights. I don’t any more. Many people still do.

According to Wikipedia, “Most western feminist historians contend that all movements working to obtain women’s rights should be considered feminist movements, even when they did not (or do not) apply the term to themselves.” [emphasis mine]

Of course feminist historians do. They don’t care whether I consider myself a feminist or not. No one is against giving women the vote. But by calling that a “feminist achievement,” it can be framed as “winning rights” from “male oppressors,” whether or not the people at the time saw it in those terms, or even whether people today see it in those terms.

But there is a different way to see the improvement in women’s rights. We could see it as the result of the natural alliance between men and women to create and protect children. And personally, I also see it as having been greatly enabled by the increased health and wealth brought about by the industrial revolution.

Why does this matter?

First of all, because someone advocating for women’s rights as a feminist will normally miss important factors of the particular “women’s issue” they are discussing. For example, why shouldn’t we have women on Seal Teams? To a feminist, the only reason someone would be against this is because men or “the patriarchy” want to oppress women. The actual reason is that women aren’t strong enough.

It’s amazing (and actually dangerous) how many women, and especially how many young girls, think that women are a match for men in a close-in physical fight, without weapons or some other “equalizer.” And no, martial arts alone will not make a woman the equal of a man. Sorry, Cobra Kai.

Secondly, by framing everything in terms of “oppression,” it misses the real purpose behind some of the differences in the treatment of women. What this means is that when the difference in treatment is removed, the real purposes they served are also removed, which can actually lead to more harm being done to women.

I’ll use one common example. Women have historically been more severely judged for sexual promiscuity than men. That is not only a difference in treatment. I would agree that it is also, to some extent, unjust.

The feminist answer is simply to normalize sexual promiscuity for women as well as for men, because in the feminist point of view, any difference in the treatment of women springs from the oppression of women by men. Which, by the way, is why the male is always used as the baseline by feminists. Whatever the oppressor has or does is always superior to what the oppressed has or does.

The problem is that sexual promiscuity is, in fact, worse for women than for men. The sexual double standard is based on actual, meaningful biological differences between men and women. Because, of course, the primary dangers of sexual promiscuity for women and their children was, and still is, the danger of becoming pregnant without the adequate support of a family.

So how do we handle the injustice of the sexual double standard? The answer in the middle ages was to apply the female standard to men. No, it wasn’t perfectly enforced. But it was, actually, the goal or standard of the Christian west.

Then it became an issue again, after the industrial revolution destabilized the primary reproductive and economic contributions of women. And actually, come to think of it, those of men as well.

The level of wealth increased so dramatically, for everyone, that the maternal death rate, even for poor women, was lowered drastically. Women were healthy enough to get pregnant earlier and more easily, they were more likely to survive childbirth, and their children were more likely to survive infancy. This lead to many more children being born, and surviving, by women of all classes. It’s not hard to see how the increase of children got spun into the Malthusian fear of overpopulation leading to disaster. Which is where we still are today, even as demographics show that the problem is not overpopulation but rather the opposite.

What do we do?

The feminist framing sees “many more children” as a matter of the oppression of women, as opposed to a pretty great problem to have. So the answer to “many more children” is to kill the extras while still in their mother’s womb, and to use whatever medical means are necessary, including hormonal disruption of the female reproductive system, to keep women from conceiving. The end result, of course, is to see the most uniquely feminine ability, the ability to create new people from her own flesh and blood, as an inherent matter of oppression.

A pro-woman viewpoint, in alliance with men, would first of all frame the issue as returning to a more normal level of child spacing, to improve the ability of the family to care for their children. This might still lead to average family sizes of four to seven children (not sure of my statistics there). They would simply be the result of only four to seven pregnancies, rather than constant pregnancy and high infant mortality.

Secondly, the female reproductive system would not be framed as an enemy to be overcome, as most current child spacing methods do. The idea would be to work with the reproductive systems of both men and women. This might actually include hormonal therapies to improve the health and predictability of the incredibly complex female reproductive system,to come up with non-destructive methods of child spacing. And part of the solution would still be to discourage promiscuous sex for both men and women, because it would still put women and children at greater risk.

That’s just one example. And it doesn’t deal with the economic issues of a family of that size, or how the labor to support and care for such a family should be allocated. But it does describe the basic methodology in dealing with such issues.

So no, I’m not a feminist.

Because of the co-option of the term “feminist” to mean anyone who promotes women’s rights, I will not automatically assume that someone who uses that term is against women’s rights. I will, however, assume that she or he does buy into the “oppressor vs oppressed” narrative, and therefore is likely to promote solutions that hurt women. In general, if you call yourself a feminist, you must demonstrate to me that you are NOT using this frame before I will consider your solutions.

I probably shouldn’t expect anyone forty or so, no matter what supposed position of authority to know anything about how economics works. Even those who — as this one did — announces they’re not socialist and communist have their brain eaten up by all the Marxist cr*p they were fed in school.

I know because I was fed the same, and it took till my mid forties and a lot of reading to thoroughly rid myself of it.

However one of these days I’m going to stand up in church and correct the sermon. And then all h*ll is going to break lose. Probably literally.

The poor man was trying, I grant you, but his point to begin with was super-stretched. He was trying to say a thing on being in the world but not of the world, and decided to go with both feet into his description of Roman society. This was bad enough, because it wasn’t exactly accurate. Or was profoundly strange. Like he seemed to think the Romans were uniquely bad because of slavery. (Lowers head into hand and moans.) When of course every society of the time had slavery. At least by and large (with exceptions, because, well) Romans didn’t practice human sacrifice, or not in batch lots. At least not anymore.

Yeah, yeah, gladiators. But again, every society of the time had something like. We are different only by virtue of being able to fake guts and blood well enough no one needs die. There is enough of the animal with us we do enjoy watching violence.

But then his attempts to say we, in America, in our time, are as bad as Rome. (Slaps forehead.)

Look, no. Just no. No, gangbangers shooting each other is not like gladiator fights. No one is applauding it or paying them for it. It’s just the price of doing business outside the law. It’s the same in every society throughout history.

And then…. and then saying we, like the Romans who overindulged in food, then threw up to indulge again, are “indifferent to people starving on the streets.” Dude. Duuuuuude. The only people “starving” on the streets of America are doing so because Meth is a hell of a drug, not because people AREN’T pushing food at them at every possible turn. On the contrary. Remember the guy who moved to a new town with no job and $5 and within three months, without applying for official help had a job, a furnished apartment and a beater car? And he didn’t have more because he kept turning away official assistance.

As for people starving in the rest of the world? It’ s complicated. I’ve read articles by Africans telling us to stop sending them food and money. Mostly because apparently the most lucrative career an African in most of Africa can have is driving NGO people around. Which means what their brightest people do is…. work that doesn’t advance anything or provide anything local.

For my money, my lefty brother was right about one thing: China has done more for Africa than the West has. Instead of giving them our surplus and choking their own native attempts at industry and agriculture, with our free or much cheaper stuff, they built factories, roads and airports. Yes, it was done with the intent to exploit the natives. But Africa is Africa and the Chinese soon found that tribal societies have trouble with national agreements. On the other hand, infrastructure will remain here and there beyond the next local war, and might help them. Certainly will help them more than bags and bags of food.

Oh, you want to help people starving? Well, in the modern world people starve because their rulers steal everything and or, like in Cuba, enforce their not picking up food literally from the environment (purses searched for shrimp. Not a joke.) You want to help them? Topple their horrible government. Then topple the next one and the next one, and then maybe, afterwards something will emerge. Or not. Cultures are complicated and cultures that have been under the heel of tyrants too long might not recover well. Really the only way is to kill everyone over the age of three, and then raise those in our culture.

Any religious man up for that? No, I didn’t think so.

So, you know what we can do? Stop feeding them and let them topple from inside. Because international charity is hard. It involves cultural things, and different priorities, and we do more harm than good. Oh, make international adoption easier. It’s better than opening the borders, and then the kids — under 3 please — will be raised in our culture. That might do some good. And makes up the population shortfall without facilitating invasion.

But of course, the churches are all in on facilitating invasion. We got told that illegals are working under horrible conditions because they can’t complain. Apparently our minister is unable to think through the obvious point: if this weren’t better than how it is at home, they wouldn’t be here. Our country, with its standard of living and its social net is an attractive nuisance. Which is why we need strong borders. So pitch them out and reinforce the border. What are the chances he’d be for that?

And I’m aware that a lot of industries simply can’t function at the current minimum wage. Just can’t. Agriculture, and some manufacturing. It’s impossible to stay in business and pay all the money to people who are untrained plus pay the government mordida in the form of various fees. It’s cool. Maybe if we seal the border, we’ll finally make “no minimum wage, and no government monkeying in the economy” viable. But I bet you the minister wouldn’t be for it either.

And then there was his assertion there is no slavery anywhere in the world, but children in sweatshops sewing sneakers. This man needs an economics book flown in ASAP. Because he’s stupid and ill informed. (TBF earlier he admitted to listening to NPR and got booed by the congregation, so he hasn’t done it since.)

Yes, there is slavery in our world. Uygurs and others in China. OTOH those “children in sweatshops” are replicating our own industrial revolution. They are making more money and likely eating better than in their dirt-poor villages. Which is why they take their jobs. You let it work itself out and they’ll be the new middle class and demand better for their kids. Let’s not impose our standards on a society that has no alternative but kids working, and working at dirty and dangerous jobs too. Because we are the product of generations doing that, and that’s why we’re well off enough for adults — EDUCATED ADULTS — to be completely ignorant of the facts of life.

And then — and then — he comes up with how sports figures make so much money, when so many people are subsisting on minimum wage, and …. inequality!

Oh, dude, G-d love. Someone has to and your head being full of rocks makes it hard for us in the real world not to throw things at you.

Yeah, some people make more money than others. Usually people of unusual ability and talent, who nonetheless also had to work very hard and sharpen their natural gift over a lot of time to get where they are.

It is people who create inventions or companies that produce things (business is a type of talent. I know, because I don’t got it) who drive the wealth that allows our “minimum wage” workers to live like kings compared to most of the world.

Why should anyone work hard at developing a talent or at creating something if their reward is the same as someone doing a poor table-waiting job at the local dead-end-diner? (There are good diners. And there are abysmal ones.)

That’s not justice. That’s crazy cakes.

While you’re at it, why should a writer write books if he doesn’t get paid more than minimum wage? And I don’t know about you, but I’d rather Larry C. doesn’t go and work as an accountant again. Because sometimes I need a break, and I need stuff to read. Because reading stuff gives me hope.

Now, I don’t get watching sports. Never did. I guess it’s because I’m not spacial-visual. I can watch it, but there’s no wonder for me. BUT that’s tastes, okay? My dad used to spend his weekends watching sports. It was his page-scroll break.

Why should he do that if the athletes were people pulled off the street? And that’s what they would be, if there were no money in it.

Let people pay what they think someone is worth. Stop trying to control how others live.

Because at the bottom of that, it’s just envy.

And your attempt to “do good” turns into evil. Which I believe was something something about a lesson in a garden somewhere.

Then you wonder why the pews are empty. You know, we can get our Marx, undiluted, from CNN and the New York Times. And these days, they too are having trouble keeping their metaphorical pews full. Because we’ve seen the fruits of their “compassion.” And they’re rotten.

I mean, every Odd empathizes with ‘be in the world but not of the world’ but if you must preach that we be of another, completely imaginary — and not in the sense of having faith in something beyond, but in the sense of making up a reality because this one doesn’t suit you — world we’re going to have some problems.

And sooner or later, I’m going to stand on the pew and talk back.

Which will just cause talk.

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, by clicking through and buying (anything, 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.– SAH

FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN: Castles, Creatures, and Nights: Familiar Generations Book Three

Strange things stalk the nights. Especially nights when the land remembers …
Christmas brings surprises both welcome and otherwise for Jude and Shoim. Can they survive the peak of baking season, or will Shoim finally end up in a pie?
Mike and Rich find themselves over their heads, assigned to observe delicate diplomatic negotiations in a haunted—perhaps—castle. Abyssal beasts might be easier to survive.

• Deborah, Hiram, and Art try to prove that they are grown-up magic users. Their parents disagree.How does a Hunter say what he cannot speak, mourn when tears are forbidden?And more!

Join the next generation of mages, sorcerers, Healers, and Hunters on a wild trip through nights silent and otherwise.

FROM JERRY BOYD: Bob Has a Tantrum.

It’s time for Bob to square some things away with the Commonwealth. Rules are rules, though, and that means two weeks in a ship with no gravity. When they get where they’re going, they still have a bureaucracy that hasn’t changed in a thousand years to get through. Come along and see the adventures of the crew of the good ship BS Karen.

FROM DANIEL ZEIDLER: The Constable’s Quest.

A novella-sized tale of adventure, humor, good versus evil, and Cops & Dragons.

When a dead red dragon crashed in the alfalfa field on the outskirts of the city, Watch Sergeant Sigurd Arnson hoped it would attract the King’s attention to the remote frontier territory and the increasingly cruel duke who administered it for the Crown. What the dead dragon attracted instead was a runaway teenage girl with a magic talent that could lead her to the dragon’s lair and the treasure within. Now the duke has ordered Sigurd to take the girl into the Wilds and find the unclaimed hoard within seven days or they and their families will suffer the duke’s wrath.

FROM EDWARD THOMAS: The Crossroads and the Oni

A young samurai lies dying by a crossroad in feudal Japan. His prospects for survival are dim until an ugly old lady finds him. She seems to be an oni, a powerful evil spirit. In return for her help she demands he become her husband. Certain death or marriage to the Oni, which should he choose?

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Dragon’s in the Details

Six stories of dragons hiding in today’s world:
A Friend, Indeed–A little girl meets the best friend she could ask for when she finds a dragon sleeping in her wagon.
Tempest–What do you do when you find a dragon in your favorite teacup?
Clowder–These are absolutely not cats, no matter what they look like, and will take offense at your mistake.
Back Yard Birds and Other Things–If the dragon defends your chickens, you invite it to stay.
Houdini–When the pet supplier sends the wrong kind of dragon, the pet store’s got a problem.
Hoard–Not every dragon cares for gold, gems, or cash.

FROM GEORGE DIMOCK: Le Boulanger: The Bread Baker.

Whether you have never baked bread before, or are an experienced baker, this book is an invaluable resource. The author shares his 35 years of baking experience, taking you from the simplest breads through the more complex. It is intersperced with bits of bread history, as well as recipes from throughout history.

FROM D. JASON FLEMING, BY CHARLES ALDEN SELTZER: 3 Ways of Lead (Annotated): A Pulp Western Omnibus

Charles Alden Seltzer was one of the first crop of western authors, a contemporary of Zane Grey and William MacLeod Raine. But he *really* hit his stride in 1921, and these three post-1921 novels prove it!

Brass Commandments

“He’s man’s size, goin’ an’ comin’. No show, no fuss; likes to play a lone hand. Cool an’ easy an’ dangerous. Two-gun. Throws ’em so fast that you can’t see ’em. Lightnin’s slow when Lannon moves his gun-hand. Dead shot; cold as an iceberg under fire.”

Such was the opinion in Bozzam City of Flash Lannon. Five years of getting an education back East might have tamed him, some, but when rustlers target his cattle, and the local law doesn’t care, Lannon nails a new law to the wall of the local post office: his brass commandments naming the five men who must leave the country — or die.

Five named men… and “one other.”

Last Hope Ranch

When Ned Templin rode out of the desert to the Last Hope Ranch, Lisbeth Stanton was grateful, because he saved her from having to kill a man. But when Templin told her he was staying, and that he was an outlaw, and that a posse was on his trail looking to hang him for murder, her opinion changed a little.

And it kept changing, for Templin was an enigma, with secrets and motivations she never could have guessed. And, it turned out, so was her father, whom she had been with her whole life but never really known. Between Sheriff Norton and his posse, and the criminal gang Blaisdell’s Raiders, secrets would out, and bullets would fly, at the Last Hope Ranch!

The Way of the Buffalo

When Jim Cameron saved a stranger’s life, he hardly expected that stranger to promise to shoot him dead.

Sunset Ballantine wasn’t bothered that a man had tried to shoot him from a distance — no bullet had ever touched him, despite living his long years in the west and getting into many a gunfight. He *was* bothered that this Easterner was going to run a railroad right past his front door in sixty days. And even more bothered that the man didn’t change his mind once the threat was issued. Ballantine’s word was iron law in Ransome, always had been. Yet this Cameron, understanding full well that Ballantine meant it, and would undoubtedly beat him to the draw in any fair fight, was pushing ahead anyway.

Would Cameron back down? Would Ballantine go back on his word? Could an old western hand face down the forces of Progress, or must he go the way of the buffalo?

• This iktaPOP Media omnibus includes introductions giving the novels historical and genre context.

Charles Alden Seltzer was one of the first crop of western authors, a contemporary of Zane Grey and William MacLeod Raine. But he *really* hit his stride in 1921, and these three post-1921 novels prove it!
Brass Commandments, Last Hope Ranch, The Way of the Buffalo

This iktaPOP Media omnibus includes introductions giving the novels historical and genre context.

FROM JACK HEREEMA: Marigold: Our Lady of Thieves.

A young child is found on a tip heap and is rescued from a dismal future by Sir Kai ap Gruffydd, a man whose courage and fighting prowess is known all over England. There is something about this girl that speaks to him . . . like he has somehow known her from his past. When he asks her name, she tells him. Her name is Marion. With the guiding hand of her new guardians, Marion blossoms into a young lady who can recite the catechisms taught to her by nuns, and then execute the most intricate sword-fighting skills ever seen by man or woman.

In the meantime, the Sheriff of Nottingham has been secretly working for Philip Augustus of France, whose sole purpose is to create civil unrest in England to undermine and emasculate King John. The foul treatment of the people of England by the sheriff galvanizes a gang of outlaws, under the leadership of Robin Hood, to thwart the sheriff of all efforts at every opportunity. Our heroine, Marion, is drawn into this conflict when she sees impoverished women and children who are suffering from the consequences of high taxation, forced labour, and brutal violence.

It is up to Robin Hood and Marion, along with their compatriots such as Friar Tuck and Alan a Dale, to outwit and outmuscle the sheriff, and bring down his use of unjust draconian power against the rights of the common weal.

FROM BOB MADISON: Cash and Carrey

High school jock Cash Hamilton has almost everything: he’s tall, handsome, a star football player and beloved by all the girls. The one thing he hasn’t got is his namesake: Cash is dead broke. But a rich novelty manufacturer has a way out – all Cash has to do is date his hated school rival, brainiac Stu Carrey.

Add to his problems an amorous snake, a New Age swami, an angry not-so-ex girlfriend, and a room of wombats, and you get a complete picture of dating in The Modern Age.

Cash and Carrey is the first adult romcom by Bob Madison, author of the acclaimed young adult novel Spiked!

Gay for pay has never been so much fun—or so dangerous.

“Cash Hamilton, the hero of Bob Madison’s new novel, is a 21st-century South-California Bertie Wooster. His special friend, Stu Carrey, is the son of a tycoon who manufactures gags and novelties–joy buzzers, whoopee cushions, wind-up plastic penises, and such. Cash isn’t as genteel as Bertie, or as gentle, but he still gains entrée into some of the stately homes of Orange County. He’s a witty and surprisingly likeable narrator, and his prose is as well-stocked with laugh-getters as Mr. Carrey’s warehouse. Cash and Carrey is outrageous and extremely silly. It’s also as sweet as it is funny.”

– Christopher Miller, award-winning author of The Cardboard Universe, Sudden Noises from Inanimate Objects, and, American Cornball.

“If Dobie Gillis and Groucho Marx had a son it would be Bob Madison. Funny, silly, and funny.”

– Nick Santa Maria, comedian/author

(The cover to Cash and Carrey suketh mightily. Bob, if you want me to fix it ping me and I’ll try to do something about it next week.)

FROM JASON FLEMING, BY P. G. AMERTHON: Marmorne (Annotated): The Victorian Classic

The British Segrave brothers were as different as could be. Emil, the eldest and a solicitor, was passionless and precise. Julius, the middle brother, had enough energy for three normal men, so his decision to mount an expedition to Africa was no surprise. Youngest, Adolphus, was the peacemaker between the other two.

How their fates became tied to the quaint French village of Marmorne, and the Prussian invasion of France, none of them could have foretold…
This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving literary and historical context to the novel.

FROM KAREN MYERS: Tales of Annwn – A Virginian in Elfland

A Collection of Five Short Stories from The Hounds of Annwn.

The Call – A very young Rhian discovers her beast-sense and, with it, the call of a lost hound.

It’s not safe in the woods where cries for help can attract unwelcome attention, but two youngsters discover their courage in the teeth of necessity.

Under the Bough – Angharad hasn’t lived with anyone for hundreds of years, but now she is ready to tie the knot with George Talbot Traherne, the human who has entered the fae otherworld to serve as huntsman for the Wild Hunt. As soon as she can make up her mind, anyway.

George has been swept away by his new job and the people he has met, and by none more so than Angharad. But how can she value the short life of a human? And what will happen to her after he’s gone?

Night Hunt – When George Talbot Traherne goes night hunting for fox in Virginia, he learns about unworthy men from the old-timers drinking moonshine around the fire and makes his own choices.

Who could have anticipated that the same impulse that won him his old bluetick coonhound would lead him to his new wife and the hounds of Annwn? Every choice has a cost, he realizes, but never a regret.

Cariad – Luhedoc is off with his adopted nephew Benitoe to fetch horses for the Golden Cockerel Inn. He’s been reunited with his beloved Maëlys at last, but how can he fit into her capable life as an innkeeper? What use is he to her now, after all these years?

Luhedoc needs to relearn an important lesson about confidence.

The Empty Hills – George Talbot Traherne arranges a small tour of the local human world for his fae family and friends, hoping to share some of the sense of wonder he discovered when he encountered the fae otherworld.

He’s worried about discovery by other humans, but things don’t turn out quite the way he expects.

FROM CHRISTOPHER WOERNER: In the Details

This is a collection of essays covering the last few months, current events ranging from the war to the virus to the economy to the tyranny we’re living under every single day. Until very recently, none of us would have thought this was possible, and yet here it is. Our tyrants want as much misery as possible spread across the world they control. I hope to motivate and inspire a resistance movement, this is day-to-day coverage of why we need that.

The B-side is similar, collecting the comic strips I’ve made recently, a hopefully-more amusing look at the struggling we face. And this is where we are now.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Sound of One Child Crying.

Who is the child Reza can hear crying every time she goes to the new addition to the Royal Library? Her boss insists there is no child, that it is nothing more than her uncanny sensitivity to the unseen world making a nuisance of itself.

Worse, searching for answers gets her angry rebukes about respect for the dead. The further Reza goes, the more certain she becomes that someone is hiding an ugly secret.

It’s a secret that traces back two generations, to a dark period in this land’s history. A time most people would prefer to forget, not caring that denial doesn’t make a problem go away.

The truth may set you free, but not without a price. And Reza fears that death itself might turn out to be an easier price than the one demanded of her.

Read less

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

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

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

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: Health