I have good news. And then again bad news.

Because in history there is never unalloyed good news. Or if you prefer, the enemy always gets a vote. And sometimes their vote is stupid, cruel, full of malice and destruction. And when they know they’re losing it’s worse.

The good news, and I’ve said this for sometime, is that we, the lovers of liberty, are winning.

This is so shocking that people my generation and older have trouble seeing it or believing it. You see, for most of our childhood, not to mention my parents’ youth, it was assumed by all the educated people — and all the experts for which there was no counter because social media didn’t exist, and mass media was tightly controlled and suborned — that communism eventually won.

It was assumed a centralized economy was more efficient. It was assumed they had better answers to the problems of poverty, education, discontent and lack of connection of the industrial society. It was assumed that people liked it better, living under tyranny.

This was all assumed because in a way we too lived in a kind of tyranny, not so much governmental (thought that too was more controlled than now. Some of us remember the idiocy of price controls and the thought they somehow “helped”) but of news and communication in general. Because of the centralized nature of the industrialized society, mass communication took place through a narrow pipeline. Which means– Well, what you expect. Since the universities, the bien-pensant and the controllers of the gate into media and the arts, were all infiltrated (or outright in the pay of) communists (mostly Russia though it might be laundered through their satellites, notably the DDR) of course the idea that communists were so caring and had the moral high ground not to mention a better answer to perennial human questions was everywhere. And accepted. (Okay, I didn’t accept it, but I was born contrary.)

By the seventies, the gilding on the lie wasn’t even particularly convincing. But because it was what everybody knew, you couldn’t dissent without being thought crazy.

And the one thing the left is right on, is that if the lie comes from every direction at once, and you can never voice dissent you end up doubting yourself, and kind of sort of accepting it. My default was “Communism sucks and is dehumanizing. It will probably win and enslave mankind forever. But at least I can go out fighting it.”

Judging by all the doomies, I think some of you are stuck there, but it’s time to spit out that black pill.

I realized we would win, of all things, in the depths of the covidiocy, when at long last I did the math. (Maybe that’s why they wish to teach us that 2 + 2 = 5.)

Mathematically, they cannot win. They cannot. They can’t even hold on.

You see, communism (or socialism) is not an economic system. It’s a parasitical form of human organization. It can’t survive on its own.

In that it’s far far worse than the feudalism it comes to resemble, because feudalism was held up and enforced by an idea of Christianity and eternal life. You can live like dirt here, but if you fulfill your obligations and do what you must, you will live like the king in heaven, because your worth before G-d is like the king’s. So, while hierarchical society and um… innovation discouragement led to impoverishment (not as great as we were sold on, mind, and in some places not bad at all) it wasn’t unsustainable. in fact, the best thing about feudalism was a certainty of stability, and of knowing your place in the world, even if that place sucked. (Not as great as has been painted. I don’t want suburbanshee to smack me, but still.)

But communism is not Christianity. In fact, the heresy replaces G-d with the state, and removes all hope of after life. It also removes anyone’s investment in society with it. There is simply no point to anything much. It covers human ideation and imagination with the same sort of uniform grey it covers its buildings. Which– Well, you know?

Communism, the perfected (snork) form of socialism, has managed what nothing else — not poverty, not famine, not slavery, not plague — managed: it made humans stop reproducing. This achievement is so “great” and so bizarre that it gives you an idea of how anti-production and anti-future the mind set it fosters is.

Which brings us to the fact that it will never survive on its own. It is to our great shame, as the most free and arguably wealthiest nation in the world that we let, no enabled, the communist system to survive WWII and conquer half the world bringing with it misery and destruction.

Then again, it’s not really our fault because by the end of WWII we were mostly occupied by the system ourselves. And while they couldn’t impose it fully on use — though it took large bites of several systems — they could control our government and our media (stop me where this sounds familiar!) The people were not complicit, and in fact were sold the gigantic lie that the USSR was our co-equal. (Some of us even now are shocked at how great the lie was, as Russia uncovers more and more of what was beneath it all in their deranged quest to recreate the USSR.)

Anyway, the only reason communism survived is that we allowed it to invade and/or control country after country. And because Russia is a relatively small (in terms of both population and wealth, not landmass) country, it could swallow vast parts of, say, Africa and live on what they pillaged for a while. Oh, not well. Our homeless live better than party pets in Moscow in the heyday of communism. But okay. Not die. And not be overthrown. Also, you know, they followed the Tsar’s regime, and the Tsar’s regime during wars, so by comparison if not much better they were okay. Even a modicum of industrialization, even run by communists, was a little better. Enough not to have a revolution, and to project a much better image to the world. Oh, also we fed it. Sometimes directly with food to keep them from starving, more often by sending food to those countries they controlled, under the guise of various humanitarian proceeds. Most of this, or at least the majority of it, ended up in Moscow.

But the thing is that when America said no, and stopped letting the USSR swallow more and more countries, and because America kept the prosperous countries of Europe from being swallowed, eventually the whole thing collapsed. (And then we gave them more aid, because you know, we didn’t want them desperate. Which caused the pathologies you see today because the regime fell, but the culture wasn’t rebuilt.)

So, in the depths of Covidiocy, I realized that it couldn’t happen here. Not with the forever and ever component. That our victory was baked in, though things might get very bad in between. No, worse than that.

Which brings us to… Since the implementation of the hapless — would be hilarious if it were happening somewhere else, far away — Biden regime, it’s become obvious they’re already collapsing, before they could even get the boot fully seated on our faces, which I honestly expected them to for a decade or so. (As did all the others who had experienced the tender mercies of weaponized socialism. After the election one of my friends who has, announced she would no longer mention politics on social media, in protection. She’s rethought it since, I think. Or at least she’s not been so quiet after all.)

They conducted the most pervasive and insane campaign to destroy the man who won an election from them, they distorted the bureaucracy of state, they ginned up a false plague, they implemented a complex mechanism of election fraud combined with riots and burning to scare the Supremes, and at the end they frauded in front of G-d and everyone, only to lay this rotten egg of a regime.

A regime that was so snake-bit from the beginning (they know, you see how big the fraud was. Sing me not of margin of fraud. From their behavior I’d guess it was around 75% and I’m only half joking.) that they surrounded themselves with state guard and barbed wire for the first half year of their “administration”. A regime that so lacks confidence in the people being “with them” that they enacted a program of censorship in the media and social media that would make Woodrow Wilson proud.

And yet they failed. Their goal — and it was these regimes advanced, covert footsoldiers who implemented it. Trump’s biggest issue was not wanting to trample state rights or overstep the advice of supposed experts, not to mention the “opinions” and work of his “loyal” vice-president. I admire his restraint even as I curse — was to implement the lockdowns and then keep us locked down forever. Their goal was to implement the most thorough degree of tyranny known to man, one that is probably impossible and certainly impossible given the physical plant and culture of the US. They wanted the dystopic dreams of the WEF, the level of control only seen in post war Russia or the more insane periods of Chinese empire/administration. They wanted to move populations around, to pile us all into their probably unworkable 15 minute cities. They wanted to keep us confined to the house and unable to talk to anyone outside of he controlled social media.

I’m not absolutely sure if they wanted to kill us all in the ensuing famine, or if their little fevered brains actually believed that it’s possible to feed people who don’t work and don’t produce from concentrated chow de bug. I suspect they at least try to believe it, so they don’t see themselves as Bond Villains. In the same way I think they try to believe the Earth is boiling, so they can sleep at night, despite all their crimes and plans for more crimes.

At any rate, it didn’t take.

Yes, some places were highly locked down. We know. Our little suburb of Denver certainly was, though not as locked down as downtown Colorado Springs (thank heavens we’d moved by then.) We could go for walks, stop to pet neighbor’s dogs, talk to neighbors in our front yard, watch the neighborhood kids run around in a vast rowdy band the likes of which I hadn’t seen since I was a kid myself. We still couldn’t go to church (I think eventually there will be reckoning, not of man, for the churches rolling over on that), shop most places, or go out to eat. But we could and did go to random drives when I couldn’t take it anymore. Often late at night, but that was our preference, rather than necessity.

But I was fortunate to have to do a cross country drive in the late summer of 2020. Even before leaving Colorado, there were signs by the highway “Such and such town is fully open for your business.” This in a state that was actively suing bar owners and restaurants for allowing no-mask access, or access at all. At a diner, still in Colorado, we discovered absolutely no masks. Just normal people eating. Thank you. I don’t remember your name, but thank you to that diner’s owners, staff and the cheerful — packed — customers. You might have saved my sanity.

And from then on we encountered patches of lock down and patches of cheerfully ignoring the mandates. Not where you’d expect. Some cities or parts of cities in blue states were completely ignoring the nonsense, while some rural places were obviously convinced they were living through the bubonic plague.

But the point is, we didn’t, all of us, head home and stay home. Despite the pervasive propaganda, the majority of places cocked a snook at the fear and giggled at the propaganda. Heck, Europe didn’t fully obey. (Though way more than we did.) And some places (Sweden! Who had Sweden on the bingo card?) ignored all and vexed the authoritarians.

They couldn’t proceed with their plan. Their admitted attempts at implementing “the new normal” failed so pathetically that after admitting it in public several times, they’re now pretending they never had such intention.

Several things broke in their plan. Despite their control, their terror tactics failed. The vast underclass didn’t rise for the riots (they keep trying this, as though they can’t believe it doesn’t work. The first attempt was OWS) and instead, they were stuck with the usual psychopaths, psychotic female followers, and the rent-a-rioter crowd, which could not be deployed outside certain cities.

Even worse, when someone stood up against them — if he does nothing else, for the rest of his life, the Kennosha Kid has earned his place in the history of our times — and killed some of their foot soldiers, they tried to destroy him, but the right didn’t abandon him. It was that, the right’s refusal to roll over that scared the heck out of them for the first time. (Though I think they were genuinely discomfited earlier because we did not, like dystopian novel characters, roll over and let them lock us in forever.)

They’ve been snakebit ever since. Yes, the vax is horrendous in side effects and it’s possible some of them, or most of them knew it. However, I don’t think administering it was a plan of population control. I think it was a plan of “I don’t want to be lynched, and would like my hoary head to go untouched to the grave.”

Because once the lockdown didn’t work forever, and each scary variety elicited more and more derision, not to mention their amazing disconnection from reality causing supply shortages and distribution problems (they never remember people still need to eat) they needed a way to dismount. The vax, for which they thought everyone would be grateful, gave them a way to dismount. Not only did it make lots of money for the compliant and complicit pharma companies, but if everyone took the vax, they could attribute the lack of deaths to it, and go back to normal with their prestige enhanced. No one need ever know how contrived the emergency was, or how little purchase it got in hearts and minds. Certainly the city elites that they mistake for the country, would praise them and be theirs forever. The side effects were bad, but they weren’t concerned about them. After all, the people taking this would be conservatives, who are compliant and also would be very scared of the disease since they are all very old. (Yes, the left really believes this. They believe because they call us “conservatives” we fit the dictionary definition, instead of us wanting to return to the Constitutional Republic of our founding.)

Since then there have been almost cartoonish moments when their plans go awry. As a measure of not getting hearts and minds, the viral spread of Let’s Go Brandon, which came about because people were having impromptu F*ck Joe Biden rallies at every place it was likely to get on camera, was one such. While the original might be profane, it was hilarious watching the bien pensant maintain that Let’s Go Brandon was shocking and shouldn’t be said around children.

Then there are things you know they’re sitting on, which aren’t reported. Like the fact that suddenly our work force is much smaller gets mentioned but not why. Yes, there have been retirements, but that doesn’t account for the shortage of people in pink collar, young and highly female fields. I can’t tell you this is true for real, of course, since all my knowledge is anecdotal, but I’d estimate a vast amount of women decided working wasn’t worth it, and they actually liked family and neighbors. The evidence for this are the strangely waspish and upset articles you see about how staying home with your kids is betraying womanhood, and how being traditional wives is the worst thing ever. They write about it as a vast movement when complaining and trying to convince young people to stop it, at the same time you see nothing about it in the news media. It’s ….. curious for those of us who learned to read pravda in English, so to put it.

Also friends who homeschool report almost shocking growth, that would indicate in some places homeschooling is now the default. Don’t expect to hear about it officially, because the spice must flow…. I mean, money must continue going to schools and teacher’s unions.

But we are seeing those parents whose kids must remain in school rebel against what they realized was not school at all but little pioneer indoctrination camps, with an added dose of pedo grooming which is frankly baffling (Unless you look at other things.)

There is also, I’m sure much to the consternation of Chinese-bought Joe Biden and co, a turning away from China as a trading partner in droves. Yes, I do realize this is terrible for the Chinese people, but feeding that horrible regime is also. There is a quiet re-industrialization of America, and also working with countries not as floridly insane.

This is dismaying to a regime for whom China was their beau-ideal and who thought they could replicate here people locked in apartments to starve, people in camps for being “infected” and people shoved into incinerators alive. Not to mention the digestion of Hong Kong, to which we’ll come back later.

The most clear sign that things are changing though is the rats leaving the ship. There has been a steady trickle of leftists — sometimes vociferous leftists — leaving the left. At this point it’s no surprise. We have a name for it “getting red pilled” and we assume — naively — they’re coming to our side because they’ve seen the light.

While a few have, or have been turned against so hard they fled to our side for protection, the truth is most of them haven’t changed. Not intellectually. This was brought home to me while reading an article by Naomi Wolfe about Trump. While admitting Trump is not the devil she’d believed, it’s all obvious none of her mechanisms of, for lack of a better term, thought have changed. This was particularly brought home to me by her being offended on behalf of all women, mind, by Trump saying Occasional Cortex didn’t know much. How this in any way means he doesn’t think highly of women is a mystery of the Marxist mind, where humans exist only as sex, race and orientation or professional affiliation categories, and you can’t malign one without maligning all others.

This woman hasn’t changed. She hasn’t even remotely started to think. She is what she’s always been. A go along. A “I want to be one of the good people.” A “I want to be on the side of victors.” That last might be the strongest. A vast component of left wing followers are people who are terrified of being killed or even of being called bad names. The left’s “arrow of history” gospel convinced them — as it did most of us, to be fair, but not that late in the game — that communism was inevitable and would win. They’ve been rolling over and showing their soft underbelly to every leftist loon and criminal since.

Also, these people are for lack of a better term, highly social and compliant. And, this is important to realize, they’ve got exquisitely fine tuned feelers for where the majority is. It’s almost an instinct. They sense where any group, any country, any association is. And they try to match. I suspect it is a function of the dinosaur brain, an instinctive component, like the one that makes me uneasy if a majority agrees with me.

They are a type and their movements have been known through every turning point of history. They are the regime’s most faithful servants, until things start to change at which point these people — not the big wheels, though some are medium — turn their coats so fast it creates weather systems.

Here’s the thing — this only happens when things are more than half turned. And yes, I’d missed this too.

The way this type of regime — where they have the outward mechanisms of power (the shell if you will) unsteadily set atop a restive population, particularly when they still have media control — breaks in the way a dune moves, through the mechanics of a sand pile. The grains on the bottom move first, and the whole thing on top looks solid until suddenly it’s elsewhere.

It’s always first slowly then very fast, and the big open displays are always a shock, like when we woke up one morning to the Berlin wall being hacked to pieces. One night you could get shot for trying to cross over that wall, the next day a cheerful crowd was tearing the whole thing down and people were getting in their ladas and travantes and driving west till they hit the ocean.

I’d just somehow missed that not only have the sand grains been shifting, but it’s accelerating. And it’s not going the other way. Sure, there was seeming movement in 16, but not really. those people didn’t shift positions or opinions, which were always “the left will win, but not so fast.” And in their case it’s because they can’t do math and thought the glorious revolution was forever. They will be the last to come over again, and only in extreme and immediate panic. Though I’d bet sphincters of those more sensitive to opinion are, in the colorful Portuguese expression, “too tight to pass a bean” now.

I expect to see some major movements soon. Some of the more precariously placed are hearing the Tumbrils in their dreams and starting to make noise. But it’s still not really visible.

So that’s the good news. The bad news…. are about as bad.

The digestion of Hong Kong and the destruction of the island’s economy was because the Chinese regime was unstable. They’d rather kill the goose that that laid the golden eggs they desperately needed than allow the leaking in social media, communication and other anti-regime chatter through the island. They then proceeded to gin up the covidiocy, yeah, maybe under the impression they could kill us, or at least our economies, but mostly to control the internal dissent.

That’s what a regime desperate for control and knowing it’s losing it does. It’s not pretty and it’s very dangerous.

Our own idiots have tried to start a nuclear war because that is a way to control the populace under war powers and war hysteria. They were thwarted mostly by the fact that Russian maintenance on nukes apparently sucks. (No, I don’t think Putin held his hand. Though he might not have nuked us, but Ukraine. The show of force would be enough for our idiots to do what they wanted. Alas it didn’t work, like so many of their plans.)

People that desperate will do anything. In fact, right now the ball is firmly in their court. Despite their attempts to get us to “rise up” in an easily put down and demonized uprising, we’ve balked them of it. Partly because their ideas of how to get people to rise up are mostly from movies, and nothing works that way in real life.

With the entire apparatus of agents provocateurs at their disposal, they manage, sometimes, rarely, to start a group of five or six to plan something stupid — and four of those five or six will be FBI agents — but nothing ever comes to scary fruition. They are stuck with demonizing an actually peaceful demonstration where the only dead were unarmed protestors. And no, despite the wet and twisted panties on the right, it’s not working, except with the very old, or those already on the left. Convincing people white haired mee-maw was there to kill Pelosi is a stretch. Also, none of the actual violent people, who apparently are known from Antifa (knock me down with a feather) have been arrested.

However they can’t be underestimated. Regimes desperate enough to want to emulate China are terrifying.

Also, the script they’re attempting to follow is combination of Woodrow Wilson, FDR and the Russian and Chinese Revolutions.

They’re not very good at it, and America is far larger, more varied, and more fractious than they expect, so you know, it won’t be as bad as they want to make it.

But it will be bad. I would bet their plans involve both famine and war. (Apparently Biden, the wonder fraud, has been depleting our petroleum reserves at Chinese orders, for instance.)

It won’t work, but I would be surprised, and it will be a sign of extraordinary divine favor, if we don’t lose a couple of million or more. And yes, it might include me and many of the people commenting here.

As for when…. well, the election is a nexus. Already they are trying to break fraud mitigation measures. They probably know frauding again is very dangerous, but what are they going to do? They don’t want to die, and more importantly they don’t want to lose power or give back the uncountable millions they’ve stolen. And the way the world is going chances are they can’t get asylum anywhere. So they must fraud.

And the thing is, though I think we will know it’s fraud, I don’t think we will rise up at frauded results. For one, they’ll be ready then. I think it will be their panicky, terrified reaction to no one taking their “win” seriously that will cause them to go insane.

And their insanity…. well, if we’re lucky they only break things and impoverish us. If we’re lucky we get through this losing only a few million. Under 10% of the population, say.

That’s not the way to bet though.

They’re already losing, but the next ten years or so are going to hurt very badly.

Prepare, prepare, prepare, including moving where you perceive to be safe. (Note there are no guarantees. Do your best.)

And be not afraid. The worst they can do is kill some of us. There are far worse things.

Hold on to the side of the boat. The water is starting to get very rough. But there in the distance, there are calm seas, and sunlight, and fruitful shores.

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 PAM UPHOFF: Twist of Fate (Fall of the Alliance)

Yuri Egorov is a Intel agent on a distant World. His main problem? He inherited the family home–a serious wreck–from the uncle who disliked him. The solution? In the Troystvennyy Soyuz–the Three Part Alliance–a brutal form of slavery, enforced through mandatory brain chips. So, however unsavory to Yuri, buying a worker should be no problem.
But this worker is . . . not standard.
Then a cross dimensional invasion puts his own problems in perspective . . .

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

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

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

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

THE VISITOR – Felockati is anchored to his permanent location underwater and misses the days of roaming his ocean world freely.
But something new drops out of the sky and widens his horizons — all the way to the stars.
YOUR EVERY WISH – Stealing the alien ambassador’s dagger is a sure thing for Pete — just what he needs to pay off his debts.
Until he starts talking to it. There has to be a way to get something for himself out of the deal. Has to be.

FROM DAVID COLLINS: The Giant War

The Earth Space Force Military has a huge problem. The massive alien Ogre that they fought was only an immature little one. The full-grown ones had found some derelict starships and were about to find one with an FTL drive.
Keith and his crew must sneak in and destroy the derelict with FTL before the Ogres can find it. To do that, the Meduala sent a living weapon to assist with the battle. One that the Meduala has spent thousands of years trying to deal with. Is the new weapon more of a problem than the Ogres?
The Ghost Ships that contacted Earth and requested this mission are hiding something critical. They also insist that this mission only uses old low-technology ships that they provided. As soon as the mission starts, all communications are unexpectedly severed. There is no phoning home for rescue. The Ogres spot them almost as soon as they arrive. The small arms they were permitted to carry are no match for an 18-foot-tall Ogre in an armored spacesuit carrying a 350-pound battle exe.

FROM WILLY MARTINEZ: La Siguanaba

This version is in English and Spanish. La Siguanaba is a mysterious figure in Central American folklore that has captured the imagination of many. She is a supernatural woman figure who appears to men in the night, often with a beautiful face and long hair, but hides her true form behind it.
This version of The Siguanaba takes a different perspective. Somewhat of an origins story, this version takes place in the early 1520s during the Spanish invasion of Central America.The tale follows General Pedro De Alvarado. Pedro de Alvarado was one of the commanders under the direction of Hernan Cortez during the conquests of Cuba, the Yucatan Peninsula, and other parts of Central America.After recovering from a battle with the Pipil tribe located in present-day El Salvador, Alvarado embarks on a journey to find Xibalba or the underworld. What he finds is a horrific creature from the underworld itself – in true Xibalba style – in which the Gods present themselves to punish the humans for their actions.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Having a Pint

Meg Turner, vampire accountant and investments advisor, has plenty of living clients, but not many among her fellow undead. That’s about to change: she’s been invited to a regional business fair for her kind. She’ll get to meet and greet more bloodsuckers than she really wanted to (hopefully without having to suck up to any of them). than just the two Vampire cops she helped track down and stake her late, unlamented sire—and hopefully make some friends and answer some questions.
Unfortunately, she’s got a Line Progenitor who’s begun invading her dreams, and a serial killer stalking her future clients to distract her from growing her business. Throw in a sick roommate not long before the conference starts, a mafia messenger boy left on her front porch, and only one car to juggle all of her responsibilities toward her roommate and unexpected guest. And then on top of that, she has the business fair over an hour away that features vampire karaoke, nosy, pushy elder bloodsuckers, and one particular elder who’s friends with her unwelcome dream guest. Seriously, it’s enough to drive her to drink something other than coffee or blood.
Just why did she think this whole conference thing sounded like a good idea, again?

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Shadow of a Dead God

What secrets lie beneath an alien world?

A routine archeological dig on a world once ruled by the mysterious Star Tyrants. For Moon-born Liu Shang, working on a planetary surface might be unsettling, but she could manage — until the dreams started.

Unwilling to drag others into a harebrained search, she headed out alone, contrary to mission rules. Just as she was about to give up, she found an unlikely artifact.

Handling it connects her to the mind of a long-ago rebel against the Star Tyrants’ rule. Nothing will ever be the same.

A short story.

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: THINKABLE

Most of you know that Dave Freer won the Prometheus Award with his excellent Cloud-Castles. (If you haven’t bought it, do. And as always you give this blog a tiny tip when you click through. It doesn’t cost you any more.)

What you might not know, is that Yours Truly is presenting the award, which is your not to be passed up chance to hear the accent that ate the universe. (No, I won’t say Moose and Squirrel. It’s not seemingly. It’s a serious ceremony.)

Since it’s via zoom, I promise I’ll try to get out of my pajamas. If I find my makeup I might even apply some in honor of the occasion.

On the serious side, it’s a richly deserved award and I’m honored and teary that I get to present it. Most of the reason this week has been crazy is my trying to write a speech. (I promise I’ll send it in ahead of time, guys! Even if it’s tonight.) Instead of doing my normal ad lib and forgetting half of what I want to say.

Anyway, the blog post explaining it is here:

Here’s the Zoom link to the 43rd Prometheus Awards ceremony Aug. 19, with past winner Sarah Hoyt to present Best Novel to Dave Freer and Heinlein Society/Trust leaders celebrating Heinlein’s legacy

Look, there might never be another Prometheus ceremony with dueling accents. Maybe, but you can’t count on it. So, you want to see it, right?

Also seeing me make a fool of myself is worth the price of admittance. And with luck, you might catch a glimpse of Indy hogging the camera, or hear Havey scream for pets. Yes, I could lock them out of the office, but then you’ll just hear them screaming and knocking so loudly you won’t hear me. So, in the name of Heinlein, you’ll deal with my cats. And like it. (Most of you actually will. Because you’re as weird as I am.)

Anyway, be (Virtually) there, or forever have to lie about being there.

Joy, by The Balloonatic

Dave Freer wrote a book called “Joy Cometh with the Mourning,” a cozy little murder mystery sold to raise funds for the Anglican church on Flinder’s Island, a small island between Tasmania and the main coast of Australia. The main character is a female minister named Joy who stumbles into solving a murder, with the title being a word play on a Bible verse. By the end of the book, Joy doesn’t only find whodunnit, she also finds herself and her place in life. When I think of Joy, this book is one of the things which pops into my head.

I think most of us, in this political climate where it feels like we are at war, sometimes lose sight of Joy. We get bogged down in the fighting between left and right, in the battle for our children, our lives and our country. In the fight to be left alone to live in peace and let others do the same. We see our childhood heroes and icons torn down – whether it’s our favorite comic book superhero who has now become a symbol of woke, or our favorite toy that is also pandering to the social spectrum that is being pushed on us.

As one of many who suffers from depression, joy felt like something that was just beyond my grasp, lurking somewhere that I just couldn’t reach, fleeing before I could get to it. I got bogged down by the struggle to survive and make ends meet, by a job I hated and an unhappy marriage. Instead of joy, I, as many, found anger and bitterness. The world became a dark place, where people are being pitted against each other – left vs right, black vs white, people of faith vs those of different faiths or no faith, the rich vs the poor, the straight vs the alphabet gang, parents vs those who want to be the ones to raise our children in social awareness, equity and “justice.”

And yet, I think it’s important, when it feels like we are walled in by enemies, strife and hardship to not just fight back, but to search for joy, even if it’s in small moments. To watch the awe and wonder as your nieces and nephews see fireflies for the first time. To pick up your son from his first time playing airsoft as he fills the car with the excited chatter of his day and the fun he had. To go to bed at night and be pounced on by a bundle of fur who says that it’s time for play and pets, and to have her snuggle next to you. To hear the good news of someone surviving against the odds when you thought they were lost. To find your favorite hen perched on top of the woodpile when you were searching the yard for her, sure that she had been snatched by something. To create something that you know will bring joy to someone else.

These are the things that our enemies are trying to take away from us. They are trying to pound us down into despair, where we feel helpless and alone. So yes, we need to prepare, to be willing to fight back, but in our mourning of the past and gazing ahead to the hurdles facing us in the future, we shouldn’t neglect to find joy and treasure those special moments in our hearts and use them to strengthen ourselves for the tough times ahead. As the saying goes, “Stop and smell the flowers,” but also plant flower seeds to bring joy to those around you.

Before we start this, let us get a few things clear: when I find myself seemingly on the side of leftists, I backtrack and do my homework. And I make d*mn sure I’m not running on either emotion or knee jerk or propaganda.

That’s number one. Remember that. It’s important. Because there’s enough emotion on both sides of this issue to make it a complete mess.

Number two: I am not actually on the side of the left. The left talks about “forgiving student loans” but none of the things they’ve proposed does that. Everything they’ve proposed from “we’ll forgive 10k” to “we’ll forgive the loans of those who’ve made $15 an hour for 20 years without breaks” affect maybe 1% of people in any way, shape or form.

They are however dangerous politically, when combined with the right’s knee-jerk reaction of “no. Make them pay” because it makes the left seem like the good guys to a lot of very desperate people who would otherwise scoff at being offered a fake salvation.

Number three: the right is also running on emotion. I realized that when “doctors and lawyers” and “making the work class pay for it” (neither of which are operative or true.) I BEG you to suspend your visceral, emotional reaction and think through what I’m going to present. If nothing else, because a lot of what you’re saying often has little contact with reality. Listen, okay? Just listen. And then think about it. After it you can still be against any kind of forgiveness, but you shouldn’t do it from your gut, or from the images you gathered from the media, a lot of it on the right and running on emotion and misinformation.

So, to start: if you’d asked me 10 years ago if I believed student loans should be forgiven, I’d say absolutely not. Or even seven years ago. Thing is, I didn’t know much about it. And hadn’t seen the insanity up close and personal. (Also it’s gotten markedly worse in the last 5 years.)

I would be running on the fact that Dan and I either had no (me) or paid off (his) student loans (which were piddly because he had scholarships.) And that we’d paid/intended to pay half of each kid’s school costs, leaving them with only half that in a loan. And that we were very careful not taking parent-plus loans. And that our kids’ were responsible.

But I admit to getting a twinge of “uh” when we found out the loans weren’t dischargeable in bankruptcy, unlike every other loan, ever. And that they were guaranteed by the federal government.

This twinge got far worse as I watched younger son — yes, it got markedly worse between the two boys — navigate syllabuses that forced him to stay on another year, if he hoped to graduate, and then play fast and loose with the courses offered, etc. This on top of the costs doubling every year just about. Here I will add that there’s a personality difference. Younger son tends to do things on his own and not ask for help. Older son avoided a couple of traps because we/our friends knew how to get around them. However, for these purposes younger son is more like people who are first in family to get in college, and have no connections, which means the ones most likely to end up with their butts in a big trap.

And then other things added in, including the first thing I said I thought the entire thing was a scam and victims of a scam shouldn’t be punished, people starting to come out of the woodwork to tell me their stories.

The first one to talk about it, before I even reconsidered, was a lovely young woman of Indian ancestry, who came to a Huns get together at Pete’s and who told me things I wasn’t prepared to hear. Including that antifa is big because it pays. And it pays cash and under the table. Kids caught in the vice-grip of loans and lack of jobs don’t have anywhere else to go. I didn’t believe her, and I apologize for that.

Meanwhile, the last six years or so, I’ve seen the “kids” of 30and younger struggle with that trap. The trap is real. And yes, it is far worse than what we went through at their age.

For those my age and younger, it is like boomers telling us that we could make a mint in real estate, and why were we strapped. Roughly, because taxes were cheaper when they were young, and regulations were more lax. And there were more jobs hiring the young. And for politico-social reasons, they had an easier time climbing the ladder.

For kids now, metaphorically speaking, the ladder isn’t there and it’s on fire. Yes, some kids are still doing well. They are mostly those with contacts, connections, and — AT LEAST — family knowledge.

I took exception to the article linked in comments referring to “pampered rutabagas” and i will point out it’s appeal to emotion. The pampered kids either didn’t have loans (our better off friends paid their kids’ tuition entirely. Because they could. We couldn’t. It wasn’t a matter of “sacrifice to pay”. You can’t get blood from a stone) or have mommy and daddy helping with a job and paying those back. (We have a plan to pay the kids’ back, so this is not personal. Younger son has a plan to pay his back. Older does too. But we have a plan to pay them also, and one of us should succeed.)

By and large the people in serious trouble are those who were reaching “above’ where they could afford, and whose parents had limited resources. Which contributes to their being stuck.

I have had people send me stuff and mostly I’m going to excerpt one of those people throughout. Because this reader writes the best of the ones who sent me stuff. And this person’s experience is close to universal in getting all the worst stuff possible. (Some people are lucky.)

WHAT WAS SOLD

What was sold, either for the young going to college or people — a lot of them in IT — whose job had disappeared or been farmed to a cheap HB1 visa worker, (a lot of that in 01 to 03) was a better future. Or later, simply the ability to get A job.

You can bitch and you can wrangle, but the truth is this: until very recently, and many places even now, you couldn’t get a job in retail management without a Bachelor’s. Even if you came in as an employee, you’d not get promoted without that piece of paper.

This is of course the result of our public schools graduating people who can’t read, and our laws allowing companies to be sued for giving competence tests. But note that all this pile of utter stupid is not the fault of the people trying to find a job.

Who are pushed into college in order to maybe, one day, have a job that isn’t a dead end.

HOW BAD WERE THE LIES?

Well, you know or perhaps not, that my degree is in English, with a minor in German, and a half dozen languages rounding out the degree. It’s not the same as an English degree in the US, obviously. That would be a Portuguese degree in Portugal, and my colleagues and I used to make fun of those people, back then.

But once I was in the US in 1985, an English degree, even a bit more than a Masters, is an English degree. Mostly people glanced at it and went “Oh, one of those people.”

So by the 2010s I was well aware of what an English degree was worth. And wasn’t.

Which is why I found myself arguing with a lot of young people not to take it. “At least take business. It’s just as useless, but it sounds better to employers.” Or “Gosh, take journalism.” “Take history.” ANYTHING but English, because I know those are a dead end. In fact, I threatened to disown either boy if they took English.

BUT AT THE SAME TIME I saw, not just commercials, but articles in newspapers and magazines talking about how HUNGRY industry was for English graduates, who had proven their grit and excellent language skills.

If I didn’t know better by then, and have a job, I’d have sent my resume to fortune 500 companies, thinking they’d leap on them with glad cries.

Of course a lot of people didn’t know better.

WHAT THE LOANS WERE LIKE. And here I’m excerpting from my reader (Reader’s stuff in Blue so obviously not mine.) I note reader started when loans WERE dischargeable in bankruptcy. That changed.

The student loan paperwork was not honest. I read the document I was signing. What I didn’t know was what I signed was only valid and binding on my side. The government just changed a law, and poof, their agreement was no longer binding. Queue up Vader from Empire Strikes Back, “I am altering the deal, pray I don’t alter it any further.”

When the government changed the agreement without my approval, where was the hue and cry? When they made company reimbursement for graduate school taxable income, but not loans, pushing graduate schools towards loans, where was the hue and cry? When they took away the bankruptcy option away, where was the hue and cry? When they changed the repayments from supporting other students, to subsidize ObamaCare, where was the hue and cry?

“I am altering the deal, pray I don’t alter it any further.”

When I grumbled, I was told to “pay your debts, deadbeat.”

NOTE that I don’t know if reader is correct that this was designed to pay for Obamacare, but it wouldn’t surprise me, because the government guaranteeing the loans WAS at about that time.

WHAT WAS BEING SOLD

Older son made it through undergrad okay. They made him go five years mind (with perfect grades) because one course just wasn’t available. And if he took only one course then he would have to start paying back loans, while applying to grad school. So, he took a second bachelor’s degree in that last year. Which was an insane option, and of course put more money in loans, but doable? And considering other people competing with him for grad school had Masters well…. it might have helped. (But probably not.)

Younger son, we should have taken notice of the fact that a lot of the courses he’d taken through the same university in a dual high school/college program were disallowed and he had to retake them (despite excellent grades. We should also have looked at the graduation rate for the local can-live-at-home will-save-money school. We didn’t. And I’ll point out we’re smarter than the average bear. And less trusting. Imagine how much worse it is for others.

Reader’s input:

No one talked about the insanity of low graduation rates at public colleges. The local one for me, had a graduation rate in the teens. As in under twenty percent graduated. Under twenty percent!

Public colleges learned real quick to take anyone in, and screw them over with ‘basic high school’ classes, before putting the student in college level. Then, weeding them out, saying, you just can’t cut it, loser! No hint, that there were specific games the colleges played to force failure on 2/3’s of the class.

Putting students in ‘make work’ classes, before even starting the curriculum, supplied the college a year or two of finances, before kicking the young and desperate to the curb. They land demoralized and under thousands of dollars in debt that doesn’t work like a regular loan.

Again, it’s not the connected who fall into that trap. It’s the hopeful and unconnected. Note that in our case, it wasn’t even pretended that son needed to take remedial classes. He didn’t. He obviously didn’t. BUT most of the classes we got ‘we teach them differently’. Because apparently calculus isn’t calculus isn’t calculus.

Note also that a lot of the classes were taught by people um…. imported from abroad, with accents that were well nigh incomprehensible. Or whose standards are bizarre because, not the same culture. Students with a clue, connections, or willing to ask for help, drop those classes. Others…. well, it adds to the cut rate.

Younger son’s college was definitely a cut-them-in-two-years college. So, you know, he wasn’t cut. He was in the minuscule number that stayed on. I think about 10% in his specialty. Cutting colleges have always been a thing, and valid. Provided that after the cutting, you’re dealt fairly with. This didn’t happen. Most of the time the classes were “Can’t get that this semester. Oh, this semester you can get the two classes you need. PSYCH. They’re at the same time. It’s okay, we will offer the second in three years.”

We thought at the time this was a unique combination of son and college. …. turns out from other people I know and hear from, it’s a common and absolutely normal experience.

You might feel, smugly, that the fact that students take 7 years to finish a bachelor’s (Seems to be the average time) means kids these days just ain’t working. But I urge you to think again. I urge you to look closer. It’s mostly scheduling tricks, requiring people take bonehead classes “to make sure you’re prepared” etc. etc. etc. Older son got through in 5, but had to get permission to carry extra credits every semester. And was only granted that, because he was straight A or A+. B students, or A/B students wouldn’t be granted that. Also, btw, taking more credits than normal (because labs, study groups, workshops, discussions, etc are mandatory but not counted towards hours) meant he really couldn’t work, not even part time, something we’d counted on to keep the loans down.
Dan and I worked through college. When we first moved to Colorado, and the Medical School was nearby, a lot of med students waited tables at Pete’s. We’d talk to them sometimes. You don’t see that anymore, because they’re crammed with make work and barely making it through. Undergrad too.

When EVERYONE is having trouble making it through in a reasonable amount of time, or even when a majority is, look at the design. It’s the design.

(Here I want to point out that’s not true for all states/all public schools. Just what seems like a solid plurality of them.)

THE LOANS ARE NOT NORMAL LOANS:

No, it doesn’t work like a regular loan. It’s not simple interest. It’s a weird amalgam of compound in six-month increments. I only have experience with government student loans. The private sector has some even more predatory ones, which frankly, are terrifying.

The latest ‘reset’, not the $10K, but anyone paying over 20+ years will have loans ‘forgiven’, isn’t ‘forgiveness’. It’s a fix outright FRAUD. I call it “Fix the Fraud”.

Lawsuits are already rolling in over the incompetence and mismanagement over the 20+ years. Payments lost, totals incorrectly calculated, steering borrowers to the wrong program to make it easier, and more lucrative, for the loan servicer.

When the Income Dependent Payment (IDP) plan came along, it was so hard to figure out, the workers just steered people into forbearance.  I was one of them. I should have been directed to IDP.

However, either way, the interest would still accrue. In both cases, the interest was just added to the principal every six months.

Which meant, the principal kept rising, because in both IDP, and regular repayment, INTEREST IS PAID FIRST, like a mortgage or car loan, before principal can be touched.

Any refinance, which the media is always pushing, resets the interest clock back to the higher levels.

In IDP, the payment didn’t even make a dent in the interest, with nothing going to the principal. Borrowers easily became overwhelmed with compounding interest. Compounding interest on an amount akin to a car, ending up the price of a house.

This may be fixed, or it may not. The link to what happened in June follows, but the details are so murky. I think, this is only for the first six months, then back to business as usual. I’m so gun-shy, I just hear “I am altering the deal, pray I don’t alter it any further.”

“Historically, when federal student loan payments were paused during a forbearance, interest has still accrued. And when the forbearance ends, all of that accrued interest would be capitalized, meaning added on to the loan principal. Interest would then continue accruing on that inflated balance, accelerating balance growth over time.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamminsky/2023/07/18/biden-rolls-out-new-interest-benefits-as-student-loan-payments-resume/?sh=616f9ff3274c

However, there is a “Gotcha”. To even hope of getting the new relief, a borrower has to consolidate. Then this happens:

“However, if you consolidate your loans during this time, any unpaid interest on the loans you consolidate will become part of the principal balance of your new consolidation loan.”

https://studentaid.gov/announcements-events/covid-19/payment-pause-zero-interest#interest-will-not-capitalize

When I went back to grad school, with company paying the tuition, my student loans were shoved into forbearance. I tried to refuse. I was told I could not. I tried to put the payments I would be making towards the unsubsidized interest and the principle. Heck, when I started making good money, I tired to pay one extra payment a year, to pull down the principle.

Each and every time, I was told “NO”. What I was asking for was impossible. This has since been fixed, but at the time, it was like this. Any payments I made, would be considered advance payments. The accruing interest could only be paid at the end of six months. This turned out to be a lie. It was just easier for the person on the phone to deal with the situation. My only other option, was to pay the Beast off in full. Which is what I’m waiting to do now. My retirement savings will take a hit, and it will count as income and be taxed as such.

If you’re looking at that and going “well, that’s a load of stupid.” You’d be wrong. it’s loads of stupid, one piled on the other. The things other people are dealing with are not quite the same. They’re sometimes easier, sometimes crazier, because it depends on WHEN and where you took the loans, what kind of crazy got thrown on top of it.

IT’S NOT DISCHARGEABLE IN BANKRUPTCY

So what happens if you don’t have savings, no one dies and leaves you the money to pay it off, etc?

It’s not like the Beast goes away when I retire! No, there are special rules on how to garnish it straight from my Social Security payments, including if I have other pension plans. Many people are now looking at retirement with a ravenous Beast over their heads.

No, they want me trickling out money to the Beast. In rough math, I will pay more than three times what I took out. THREE TIMES! Pay your de… ::spits::

How is that not fraud?

The IDP people, at least thought at the end of 20 years, the debt would disappear, so didn’t worry about the growing principal. Then, the discovery came out under an investigation, that the accounting of payments was lost between the different financing groups.

“Oops, me bad,” goes government, “Contractor messed up. We fined them, and they paid us millions in fines. What? You? You just keep paying for another ten years, and all will be good. Shut up, deadbeat.”

How is that not fraud?

Note that this reader who sent me this HAS a job. It could be much, much worse. Even my generation has a lot of people who’ve been in and out of jobs for 20 years.

NO ONE FORCED YOU TO TAKE THE LOAN. YOU COULD HAVE WORKED UNSKILLED

Have you looked around?

What do unskilled people do? Oh…. retail. That’s literally about it. The opened flood gates of illegals have kept even the wages in that really low. And the hours tend to be weird, I’m not sure if because management is sadistic, or because they just don’t care, or because there’s stupid regulations in the mix. Including if you have more than 30 hours they have to contribute to your healthcare.

A lot of other jobs which you could get trained for and have a career path are simply gone. They can get them done under the table. Or they can’t afford to pay all the benes the left passed to “help the workers.”

(And as a side note, miraculously younger son has a good job, and one he loves.That has nothing to do with what he officially studied. It’s a literal miracle, okay? But most people don’t get these. So, again not personal, though his experience made me see some things I hadn’t seen before.)

Yes, you can take technical certificates. I’m starting to look a little askance at how many people are taking welding, and wondering if there are jobs for all of them. I haven’t heard.

The truth is that against what’s said about them, a lot of these people, including people with unpayable loans have heeded the Mike Rowe call and headed for dirty, hard jobs. But they’re not as abundant as to soak up all of them. And no job pays well enough to allow people to pay massive loans and keep on trucking, okay? It doesn’t happen.

INSANITY PILED ON INSANITY

Have you wondered why during the Summers of Recovery colleges were doing great and had huge enrollments?

Well, one of the ways to PAUSE the student loan payments is to head back to school half time. When all else fails, you borrow more, and feed the dysfunctional system more.

Millenials might be the most educated generation in history on paper. Yes, it means that after a while you are taking degrees in underwater basket weaving, because you know, it’s the only thing you can take, while holding down a job and maybe having a kid. But that’s not how you started out.

As for fixing this, helping the college industry, this situation already is assisting them. What helps increase university enrollment? It’s not just the BS that everything needs a degree or some license. If you are enrolled part-time, that damn Beast is kept at bay. Some colleges, knowing this trick, changed their definition of part-time to one class per quarter versus semester. This attracts the desperate to keep the Beast at bay. (“Hey, I’ll take the fem studies, easy A, no real work, just regurgitate and the Beast is at bay.”)

DO you really think it’s a coincidence college enrollment fell while student loans were paused? Or do you think it won’t go back up again now?

This is what the system does: push more people into our dysfunctional, useless tertiary make work factories.

OKAY, BUT THEY SHOULD DO SOMETHING FOR US TO FORGIVE THE LOAN.

Oh, hi there. I didn’t’ realize AOC was a reader. WHY do you feel a need to indenture people to the government?

And don’t tell me they should enlist. The services are mighty choosy these days, for one, even if they can’t make numbers. For another, ask someone who is still or was recently in. You don’t wish that on anyone. And it’s still government servitude. And this government is…. well, fraudulent.

However, now you mention it it puts me in mind of “Doctors and lawyers” — the reason this argument is dumber than usual is because most doctors and lawyers go through another 10 years or more after high school and most of them don’t emerge after that to making crazy money. Most will aspire to about six figures, maybe, with luck.

And right now their massive loans are doing two things: A lot of them are working for the government. It’s their only hope of getting them forgiven in twenty years.

AND they don’t dare dissent from those in power. If you like lockstep doctors who don’t dare say boo to the latest insanity? If you like lawyers complicit with current abuses?

Keep the loans on them. That will teach them. And destroy our society with a bunch of debt-slaves who don’t dare dissent.

Envy of your ideal image of “Doctors and Lawyers” which is not even up to date, is not an excuse. Leave the politics of envy to the left please.

BUT IT’S NOT FAIIIIIIIIR

You’re right. It’s not fair. Fraudulent loans in any other medium, for any other purpose, you punish the fraudsters, not the recipient.

We don’t allow predatory credit card loans. Or home loans for swamp land in FL. And when we find them, we punish the lenders, not the recipients for being defrauded.

No, it doesn’t’ mean your mortgage should be forgiven. Or your credit card debt. Presumably you got what you paid for, with no tricks.

BUT that puts me in mind: when you took those loans, you knew and you know that if you run aground, you just declare bankruptcy. In most states your home and car is protected, even.

So, why is it different for student loans?

Well, the lender is the government. And oh, yeah,the fraudsters are the government, and leftist institutions aided, abetted and accredited by the government. You’re right. This is the fault of the loan recipients. Of course. After all they chose to be born now, under this government and into this totally effed up situation. (Are you for real?)

BUT THE MIDDLE CLASS WILL PAY

Will they now?

Looks interested. WHY?

I mean, I can see that someone crazy in the government would decided to raise taxes with that excuse, but then….. do they need an excuse?

I’ll repeat what BGE said in a comment:

I am a great believer that loans should be repaid, but I’m afraid the notion that the taxpayers will be stuck is not really true. It’s a sunk cost, it’s already been paid for. The vast majority of student loans are held as an “asset” at the Dept. of Education. Student Loan interest had been the third largest source of govt revenue after income taxes and mortgage interest.

Still, I’m afraid that it could be wiped out with the stroke of a pen and not have any cash effect at all since the bureaucracy needed to administer it eats up the proceeds. I suppose the bureaucracy won’t go away — it seldom does — but, and a I hate to open myself up to the accounting absolutists, government accounting is just BS. Most accounting is just BS. Cash matters, cash flow matters, the rest is mostly BS.

What he said. The money is already spent, and worked into your inflation, taking money out of your pocket every minute.

It’s already aggregated to a debt no one can pay. The middle class — and everyone else– has already paid for this bloody stupid mis-allocation of resources.

Anyone who claims otherwise is either naive or appealing to the politics of envy to perpetuate debt slavery. Don’t be that guy.

WHAT I THINK SHOULD HAPPEN

I think student loans should be made dischargeable in bankruptcy immediately. Yesterday if possible.

Further, I think we need investigations of lending practices and what is actually going on in colleges, and there should be lawsuits against many colleges for outright fraud. Hey, maybe some of those struggling lawyers can be given employment.

The end result if that could happen would be a complete reform of our educational system top to bottom, and maybe the building of something where if you can do it, you can get the job and enjoy the results.

Not college for everyone, no. But also not college only for those with the money to pay upfront. And not college that’s free only for illegals and designated minorities.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN?

Nothing. The left is in power, and this is feeding leftist indoctrination and the government. You can’t sue or investigate either.

The left will make some pretend moves. Poor saps will think their only hope of a life is voting for the commies. Youth will be unable to have lives, and will hate everyone older than them with the fire of a thousand suns. Expect us to go Canada with euthanasia.

BUT more importantly, the right will fall in its designated villain role, and make noises about “pay up, deadbeats” so the debt slaves will hate them more.

So, can I at least get you not to put both feet in your mouth? And if you think you’re not being manipulated into your reaction by the mass media, you haven’t THOUGHT.

Think about it. Consider this is a trap constructed by government. Ask yourself how much you trust government.

Do what you can, sure. Give someone a chance. Help them find a job. Offer some kindness. IF you can show someone in this situation a path out. I don’t know what the path would be, but try, okay?

And talk people out of going to or going back to college. It won’t do much, some have to. It’s that or make payments they CAN’T make. Figure out how to starve the beast.

BUT above all, do try not to sound like Scrooge in a modern production of Dickens.

Most people can’t pay the loans, because they were designed not to be payable back. Like everything else, they’re supposed to create a plantation where the slaves vote the right way.

And that’s bad for the slaves, for us, and for the Republic.

G-d bless us, one and all.

*Sorry. I know, I know, student loan post, but today is “not even time for post.” It’s been weird, and it’s been real, and it’s been real weird…. Anyway, I’m doing Winter Prince chapters, so this came across my feed, and I’m posting with permission. Froggy would ike us to know this was written on the fly and boy was the fly mad about it – SAH*

The Ballad of Fed the Fred by Froggy Bottom

Ear pieces, polo shirts,
Twill drive a man to drink!

Agitators, co conspirators,
Whence they came a mystery.
Oh for the love of Adams,
I wish we’d been taught some history!

Now, again, here they come
Trolling on the boards.
Isn’t it time, so they say,
They “get what’s coming for!”

Agitation, constipation,
Freddy is a’frustrate.
No matter what he says
We just don’t cooperate.

IP masking, user blasting,
But he knows no other way
To get us, street dancing,
Rioting all the way.

Poor Freddy, simple Freddy,
What a thankless task he’s given.
To manufacture, a public enemy
But we just won’t be a-driven

Too late, the Freddy finds
He is not alone.
Other names, loudest voices
Are close to him than home.

Pity Freddy, the simple Feddy,
In no group of malcontents.
Silly Freddy, all those around you
Are fellow agitants.

Wave at Freddy, confused Feddy
For we are over here.
Living lives, and getting by
While he’s consumed by fear.

Yes, I’m postponing the post on student loans, till I can write it, probably tonight. Because the weekend didn’t spiral INTO control and that post will take a while to write.

But because I’m still myself, I’m going to write about boomers, why a lot of us blame them for…. almost everything, why my generation (roughly 55 to 64) not only are not boomers, but tend to be the most vociferous in “D*mn it, I’m not a boomer.” Why I’m vaguely amused that millennials call everyone older than them “boomer.” And why I find it bizarre that my kids both hate millennials and identify as millennials, though they both are d*mn close to z and closer to z in attitudes. (And the younger one in date of birth, I think.) And why all this is unfair, because a marketing category is not an age group, and yet, perfectly fair in aggregate, because demographics is not destiny, but it sure as heck is economy. And economics shapes your life in a way you probably can’t think about too deeply without becoming enraged.

So, yeah, friends, in-betweeners, X, millenials and Zers, lend me your ears. I come not to bury the boomers and not to praise them, but to explain to everyone, including the sane boomers in the audience why the fractiousness exists, and to give — under the heading of giving perspective on the lives of others that we normally keep quiet about — an idea of how my non-generation (We certainly are not Jones. We don’t jones for anything that the boomers had. We just aren’t them) has gone through. Without blaming the boomers, because an accident of birth is not their fault.

First of all, and taking in account that I’m the one who says the population is not booming out of control, let me dismiss the idea the baby boom wasn’t real. That’s goofy. (To put it mildly.) You can argue the causes, but for about ten years — no, not the twenty five claimed. Marketing generations are not demographic generations — after World War II, families grew. Blame it on prosperity, which allowed one parent to stay home and raise the sprogs. Blame it on tax credits (it has been argued if the comparable applied today, people would have families of five or six too.) Sure, blame it on the move rural to city, which was tied to prosperity too, and the fact that the newly independent nuclear families didn’t have to put up with grandma’s critique of their child bearing or raising. Or blame it on the men having been away and the relief of the long war being over.

Blame it on whatever you want, but even without looking at the numbers, just by looking at family histories, families of five or six weren’t rare. And three was about average, I think. Four not anything to remark on.

But, you’ll say, that’s fairly normal for the past period. Sure. My mom, who was almost a boomer comes from a family of five (should be six, one lost in infancy) and dad from a family of four. And I’m almost sixty, and both dad and I were very late children. So, yeah “But that was normal before.”

Yes, it was, but now throw in prosperity, moves to the cities and… It’s not the babies who were born, you see, it’s the ones who survived. Even mom who was raised, for brevity of explanation, in a slum where going to your playfriend’s funeral, or more likely his infant sibling’s funeral was absolutely normal, had more of her friends survive than was normal for her parent’s generation.

To put it another way. Up until the late 19th century, women routinely bore 10 children and didn’t get to raise a single one to adulthood.

Even in the nineteenth century, women at the upper class level Jane Austen wrote about, routinely made two or three baby shrouds as part of their trousseau. Because that many deaths were expected. By my parent’s time that had improved — no, not medicine, sanitation. Better drains, a weekly bath, and washing your clothes more than twice a year — to the point that you would regularly raise about half of what you bore. (My family, having steel constitutions rarely lost a child. To compensate, we were always relatively low fertility.)

The improvement brought on by rudimentary sanitation and washing up was such that in the nineteenth century Europe burst at the seams with kids, which led to rapid invention, expansion, and yes, the adoption of a lot of half baked ideas. Because that’s the result of a lot of kids suddenly in a society. Baby busts… well, most of the Middle Ages, lead to slow innovation, a tendency to ossify the social structures, laws and regulations increasingly made by old men, for a world they only imagine exists. Stop me when this sounds familiar.

The baby boom happened at the intersection of the discovery of antibiotics and their popularization and also inoculation of school aged kids, both of which meant an unexpected number of children surviving childhood and surviving it in good health. And people having about the number of children their parents had. BUT — and this is very important — those children grew to adulthood and did so without any significant physical impairment.

What it caused was the same effect as if everyone alive had decided to have double or more the number of children. It was a massive demographic elephant moving through the societal snake.

To do so just as the society went mass-media and mass-selling was…. an interesting confluence, and perhaps evidence that whoever is at the switch has a heck of a sense of humor. (Kind that puts itch powder in your pressure suit.)

Because “generations” which had only been of interest to demographic nerds in the past, were suddenly a thing for marketers, who took a look at the elephantine youth-lump coming at them, and sat up and perked their ears.

I grew up, almost twenty years later, reading old magazines and comics and looking in wonder at the advertising displays of toys. Even as a kid, I could track the median age of the “boom” — the ten years of 45-55 — by what was advertised, starting with silly stuff, but ending up pushing fashions and “the hot stuff” for boys and girls of teen years. Admittedly, teenagers were invented for the boomers. In that while there had always been people 13 to 19, there had rarely been any point trying to sell to them. But now it was possible for a lot of them to have part time jobs. Or allowances. And to buy stuff from transistor radios to cheap jewelry to — were Hulla Hoops ever a thing, or was it just a fad created in retrospect?

You could read the more contemporary magazines and comics, (I did, when I had the money to buy one) and there was absolutely nothing comparable. Heck, some of them, when I was 13 or 14 were still clearly aiming their ads and marketing at people ten year older than me. Which meant that even thought hey were VERY unlikely to still be reading Disney comics, even 10% of them doing so was more profitable than 90% of people ten years younger doing so. Because you know? Elephant, moving through snake.

The unfortunate effect of that demographic elephant which really was tapering off by 56 and was approaching baby-bust by my time (partly because the older boomers married late, so that mitigated the effect. Again, prosperity and moving to cities, and breaking the pattern of marrying young to look after parents) coinciding with marketing breakthroughs, and mass media is that the boomers were the first generation for which the media created a definition and an image.

It will probably shock most people younger to find that most boomers never protested the war, never grew their hair, never engaged in bloody stupid communalism, much less communism. These boomers are justifiably enraged by the image of boomers as hippies, of boomers engaging in counter culture, of boomers being work shy till their mid thirties, etc. etc. etc.

Because it has absolutely no bearing on the life of most people who fall under the “boom” years. OTOH some of it trickled through: there was such a culture of pandering to one age group, such a belief that somehow their opinions had a disproportionate weight in the world, that a lot of them have that nostalgia of “in my time” and “my generation.” This is thoroughly unexamined.

And even the most conservative of them had some opinions and attitudes of the mass-media boomer trickle in, unnoticed. Like, the idea that there was such a generation gap between them and their parents, and that they were right in that gap, or that they had the right opinions and ideas compared to their parents and also to those who came after. That would be me and people like me, born late-fifties and early sixties. But mostly early sixties. People after the use of the pill became universal or close to, and cut the boom short.

We came of age in the eighties. (I consider myself blessed to be born with the shoulders that make quarterbacks cry. I never needed shoulder pads.) We came after. There weren’t that many of us, you see? We went to school in half-empty classrooms, often taught by boomer teachers. (Not all of them useless. My first English teacher, whose name I can’t remember, was of that generation and was excellent.) Our arrival in adulthood was unnoticed by mass media, who were then enthralled with series like “thirty something” in which the boomers discovered parenthood.

It was in fact universal, and not just media boomers that got married and had kids very late. There are a ton of reasons for that, including the first bloom of “must go to college” but also a culture that didn’t consider it quite decent for the woman NOT to have a career. Because if a woman wanted a career, she had to sacrifice early marriage and her most fertile years.

How do I know boomers actually married late, and it wasn’t just an image? Well, at 22 I went through infertility workups, and all of them were designed for affluent women ten years older than I (i.e. problems I could not/was not likely to have at my age.) And when we finally had older son, 6 years later, every year of his schooling we were the youngest parents, by about ten years.

Because demographics and when a generation comes of age matters, and the pill was widely available in 1960.

We came after. Which might be the best description of those born in the early 1960s. We came after. We were not the main show.

Yes, it’s completely insane to hold the boomers responsible for the feeling of resentment we’ve been carrying since our toddler years. (Admit it, guys.) It’s normal, and human to resent them, but it’s still not their fault. They didn’t pick when to be born.

Nor is it their fault that they were as propagandized as everyone else with the image of the “media boomer” and adopted some of that. Nor is it their fault they’re defensive. Wouldn’t you be?

It is also not their fault that the idiots in government and policy, apparently missing the effects of the pill on population, decided that from now on every generation would be a boom, and that everyone needed to cater to the youth’s ideas and opinions because they were “the future.” Nor, btw, that the USSR was propagandizing them heavily, so that a lot of the sixties culture and strange ideas that big government was the way to be free came directly from the Kremlin agit prop.

And let’s admit right now, NOT every boomer bought it. Just the ones that mass media chose to highlight and engrave in the popular consciousness and who, therefore, had a disproportionate influence on the policy and politics of the next… Uh… 40 years or more.

Part of the reason the boomers entered the job market late-ish (in general) is that the previous generation stayed vigorous and healthy longer. Not much. Maybe ten years. But it also means when the boomers came in, combined with “the youth is the future” it made for a relatively fast rise up the ladder. Particularly when combined with the diffusion of computing through business and industry and the fact that boomers were at the right age to learn new technologies.

Again, it wasn’t the same as portrayed in the media. Most 35 year olds weren’t CEOs. But demographics is economics in many ways. So, you know?

There was a boom in many businesses, because there were boomers coming of age, and a huge demographic lump coming through. So … there were jobs and money.

My generation came of age after the Carter contraction, which was worse abroad, because, well, everything is.

We went through high school and college being jeered at by older siblings and teachers and professors, because we weren’t “socially conscious”. We weren’t demonstrating. We weren’t cutting class. By and large we tried to comply with everything demanded of us, including the mouth noises about social consciousness. But mostly?

Going through school, most of my classmates didn’t do drugs (oh, there were a few dopeheads, but not as many as 10 years after us, when it was cool again.) But almost everyone had a brother, a sister, a cousin, who had been lost to drugs, to free love, to rudderless living and lack of taking up anything. Almost all of us had, in the family tree a tie-dyed hole, be it an actual death, or just someone who became a puzzling ne’er do well, of the kind the family had never seen.

And most of us learned by the negative example. To quote PJ O’Rourke, we ignored the sit ins, cut our hair, put on the the business suit and the tie, and went to work. We were the generation of Dress-for-Success. We were the generation of “preppy” being a good thing (except in movies.) We were the kids who came of age to a great dearth of jobs, and sometimes invented them JUST to get our foot in.

Through no fault of the boomers, their late coming of age and our early coming of age created a large number of educated adults with nowhere to go.

I will hold against them — but not too hard. They were propagandized within an inch of their boomy lives — that they were “generation clannish” and we were definitely not their generation.

I have related here that in my thirties, when I was trying desperately to break into writing, I read an interview with a major magazine editor, saying that no one under forty had the ability to write fiction worth a damn. Not enough life experience, you see.

And yes, ten years later they reversed themselves, and were looking for “young writers” to appeal to the “the youth” (who by then largely wasn’t writing, due to a lot of editorial stupidity and marketing idiocy, not to count the Thor power tools governmental malfeasance.) You see, by then some of their kids were in their twenties, and they wanted to help their kids. Human. But annoying as all get out, when you’re part of a demographic elephant.

It was pretty much like that. We came after. We came into jobs or professions where we were treated as kids and juvenile (though we weren’t) because we were 10 years younger than most people there. We were “the kid” and we hadn’t had the same experiences.

And thanks to even more breakthroughs in longevity and long-health, most of us were there till about give years ago when the boomers actually started retiring.

None of this is their fault. But it makes those of us ten years younger grit our teeth when we’re called boomers, and aggregated to the elephant who stomped on us growing up.

It’s not the boomers’ fault, but the marketeers. But it still pisses us off.

To explain how squeezed our generation was: my older son’s class we were BY FAR the youngest parents. The “kids” who amused the other parents. However, FOUR years later, with younger son? We were the OLD parents, ten years older than most parents with kids in his classes. (Part of this was because through no fault of our own, we had kids late, and so straddled a weird jointure. But still.)

And of course, every step of our careers, we’ve faced the beginning of a bust. A bust that was perfectly predictable by demographics, but no one predicted, because marketers aren’t demographers, and just think “this way forever.”

And demographic busts, echo in economic busts.

That means most of us are poorer, have moved more, have been hit with more insane regulation, and less resources than people ten years older than us. Our careers were distorted. We spent a ridiculous amount of time being the kids, the apprentices, the ones doing the donkey work and being ignored. And over the last ten years, suddenly, we find ourselves catapulted into the “the old man or woman” role. The ones who have institutional knowledge. The ones who know where the bodies are buried. The ones who know how things work, because we say them from the downside for so long.

We made do. By and large we’re okay, even if we have about half the wealth boomers had at our age. Not their fault, guys. Again, demographics is economics.

Dan and I were amused at figuring out recently we’re finally in our peak earning years. Which should have been 10 years ago or so. And he’s eligible for retirement in 2 years. Not that we intend to retire, not really. Which will make the current generation’s life more difficult and we know it. Fortunately there aren’t as many of us as there were boomers. Unfortunately there aren’t many of the young ones, either, much less young Atlas’s yearning to lift the world on their shoulders. And the fact demographers lie isn’t helping anyone, either.

It’s all a comedy of demographics, arranged by scientific breakthroughs at the worst or best possible time. We’re just along for the ride.

My age group, of 55 to 64 or so growls when called boomers, because that was not oure experience. That’s not who we are. We came after.

But it behooves us to realize the injuries we suffered weren’t the boomers fault. If you want to blame someone, blame mass marketeers and mass communications, and government.

And the unfortunate conjunction of the demographic elephant moving through the civilizational snake.

Now, the combination of birth control and life extension is likely to propagate this down the line. In fact, we’re seeing it with millennials not marrying and having kids, because frankly most of them can’t afford it. Student loans, sure, but also a contracting economy (whatever the demographers and the stock market says. I heard foreigners stopped buying houses in the US, so get ready for a drop in real estate value.) I think the idiots in charge opened the border to try to fix the demographic issues, not realizing that culture matters and humans aren’t widgets. And therefore further damaging the ability of younger generations to survive, let alone establish themselves.

Part of it is that there is still enough mass media, the expectations for everyone are those of media-boomers. CEO by 30. But that’s not how the world ever worked or is ever likely to work.

And birth control and life extension, even if mostly through antibiotics — not being sick all the time results in longer healthier life — and better nutrition are disruptive technologies. Even before the internet and all the other stuff are done with us.

So, hold on to the side of the boat. Exceptionally rough times ahead. And let of of resentments based on marketing generations.

Those of us who are sane and see the problems need to get our shoulders to the wheel and start helping mitigate the effects of all this disruption.

The kids — the few of them there are — are by and large all right but dealing with a world that is actively hostile to them. Let’s not add to their resentments.

They’re young, they’re not stupid. Telling them to do what you did won’t work, because between demographics, baby bust and tech, nothing is the same. And no one is catering to them, even if the culture still pretends to be youth culture. Mostly it’s catering to imaginary 50 year olds living like college students. Which makes the economy worse because there really aren’t many of them.

Let’s give the kids a hand up.

They’re young. Their target acquisition sucks, and the more everyone older than 30 yells at them, the more they’ll gun for all of us. And I hope it’s metaphorical. They have excellent sight. Let’s not encourage them to hunt us with rifles.

Because, yeah, they are the future. And right now the future is broke, lost and getting very tired of being treated like teens when they’re about 30.

Go and snatch brands from the fire. Don’t pile them on.

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 BLANE MCCANTS: The Hands That Rock the Triggers

On an alternate earth where England’s George III choked to death in 1767, the next couple hundred years played out far differently.
In 1992 sniper Sergeant John Smith—in the face of personal and professional heartbreak—bids adieu to a nine-year career in the Royal Marine Corps. Three years later, he is hired by corporate buccaneer Jean Lafitte to find out what happened to several of his executives, who have gone missing. Smith discovers that East Coast dames are deadlier, the films are tawdrier, and that revenge is a dish served in calibers larger than even he was used to throwing downrange. It’s a far cry from the relatively civilized criminal scene of his hometown, Ft. Detroit City. The deeper Smith digs, the more mysteries he unearths. Before he knows it, he is up to his eyeballs in out-of-this-world drugs, court-martials, Imperial Russian Spetsnaz, and romance. Two things he learns for sure, though: Miss Eva Braun is not much of an actress and the Corps, in the person of his old pal Gunny Scarbutt, still has his back.

FROM JOHN DAVID MARTIN: Charis Colony: The Landing

Dr. Raj Mondal had it all. Born to one of The Landing’s founding families, he had a high-status position with the Colonial Medical Administration. He implemented the Colonial Governing Council’s eugenics policies, which meant he decided who was allowed to have children and who wasn’t, who lived and who died. He was a reliable, loyal citizen of Charis Colony. Until his patient, Mr. Singh, disappeared. Suddenly, Dr. Mondal was suspected of aiding a defector. He and his wife, Shirin, now found themselves in the crosshairs of a vindictive Chief Inspector from Colonial Security. Fleeing for their lives, they seek the help of the very people they were taught to fear most: The McGuire Point Rebels. But how far does the reach of Colonial Security extend? And were the rumors about the violent and barbaric people of McGuire Point true?

FROM MARY CATELLI: Winter’s Curse

Who but a fool would linger after Zavrien laid his curse? Ill luck can kill — and all the more in Zavrien’s enchanted, endless winter, haunted with ice giants and frost fairies.

When the soldier Gareth is cursed, the young wizard Perriel learns how dangerous lingering can be.

But she can hold out a sliver of hope for breaking the curse — if it doesn’t break them first.

WRITTEN BY MAX BRAND, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: 3 Trails to Freedom: A Pulp Western Omnibus

Three rip-roaring western action novels from adventure master Max Brand!

The Long, Long Trail

When outlaw Jess Dreer, on the run for avenging his father’s murder, met Mary Valentine, the town flirt of Salt Springs, it changed them both. It changed others, too, and not always for the worse.

But a change in character means nothing to a clan that’s been crossed, and even less to a sheriff who has spent years in single-minded pursuit.

Regardless of character, regardless of good deeds or noble sacrifices, bullets will fly and justice will be done at the end of the long, long trail!

Wild Freedom

Tommy Parks followed his father over the mountain ridge with a blind faith and love. But his father hadn’t counted on the last winter storm. Now twelve-year old Tommy was alone, in the frontier wilderness, with only his wits and the remains of his father’s supplies to survive against nature, grizzly bears, and the most dangerous creature of all — man!

Jim Curry’s Test

Jim Curry was a loafer, but never did anybody any harm. Until his gun accidentally went off, and killed the most beloved old-timer in the area. It was an accident, but the sheriff wasn’t overly sympathetic, and when Curry breaks the sheriff’s jaw escaping, the townsfolk decide that due process just won’t do…

BY JOHNSTON MCCULLEY, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: The Rangers’ Code (Annotated): The classic pulp western

Cactusville needed cleaning up, Sheriff Tom Thomas knew that. But the deputies he kept sending to do the job always turned up dead.

Until ex-Texas Ranger Dick Ganley took on the job, at least. Or so Ganley claimed would happen. He would not only take out the gang running Cactusville, nor would he stop at identifying and bringing to justice the shadowy head of the gang, the “King of Cactusville”.

No, Ganley had his own score to settle into the bargain, and it was a score that could only be settled by blood!

This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving the book historical and genre context.

FROM KAREN MYERS: Bound into the Blood – A Virginian in Elfland (The Hounds of Annwn Book 4)

Book 4 of The Hounds of Annwn.

DISTURBING THE FAMILY SECRETS COULD BRING RUIN TO EVERYTHING HE’S WORKED SO HARD TO BUILD.

George Talbot Traherne, the human huntsman for the Wild Hunt, is preparing for the birth of his child by exploring the family papers about his parents and their deaths. When his improved relationship with his patron, the antlered god Cernunnos, is jeopardized by an unexpected opposition, he finds he must choose between loyalty to family and loyalty to a god.

He discovers he doesn’t know either of them as well as he thought he did. His search for answers takes him to the human world with unsuitable companions.

How will he keep a rock-wight safe from detection, or even teach her the rules of the road? And what will he awaken in the process, bringing disaster back to his family on his own doorstep? What if his loyalty is misplaced? What will be the price of his mistakes?

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Margins of Mundania

A tween boy’s Christmas gift opens a world of wonder and brings joy to a whole town fallen on hard times. A young New Englander in the early Twentieth Century discovers that some parts of human history don’t bear too close examination. A literary critic in the old Soviet Union must confront his own moral cowardice.

These stories, along with a multitude of bite-sized works of flash fiction, carry you from the most prosaic of events to the moments of awe that offer glimpses of matters larger than ourselves.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Bite Sized (Liquid Diet Chronicles Book 1)

Meg Turner has been a vampire for twenty years. Her favorite food is rapists. Which is how she met Andi Donahue, her new best friend/ girl Friday.

And then the nightmares start. And the bodies start showing up–bled out and raped. Just like Meg was. They don’t have a whole lot of time to stop the killer before he strikes again, and only one way to stop the killer.

But how can Andi help Meg stop a killer she can’t even see?

FROM M. C. A. HOGARTH: To the Court of Love: A Peltedverse Collection in the Fallowtide Period (The Fallowtide Sequence Book 8)

Sediryl Galare’s first official function as the formally invested heir to the Eldritch Empire is to open the summer court, on Escutcheon and on the world of Chalice. But behind every big event are a myriad of stories—some smaller in scope, and some enormous in implication. Join the Eldritch and their allies in this Fallowtide collection for a glimpse into those everyday stories. Who are the musicians of Ontine? What happened to the nobles of Asaniefa who didn’t care to fight the Empress? Will Jeasa and Haladir ever come to an accommodation? And how are the social changes sweeping the world affecting those who wish they hadn’t?

This reader-commissioned collection includes stories written by the author at reader request. Come home to the Alliance with seven tales of hope, renewal, romance, and change.

FROM BLAKE SMITH: A Kingdom of Glass: A Novel of The Garia Cycle

Zara hasn’t seen her family in eleven years, but she doesn’t mind. They sent her to live in a neighboring kingdom when she was small, and she’s adopted her foster parents in their place. She lives the life of an aristocratic Garian girl- riding her horse, shooting her bow, exploring the castle with her friends- and she has nothing to wish for.

Until she’s summoned home, to a prospective marriage she doesn’t want, family she doesn’t remember, and a poisonous royal court that threatens everything she’s ever known. The East Morlans are nothing like Garia, and Zara struggles to find her place among the scheming Morlander aristocrats. Along the way, she makes new friends, meets enemies, and falls in love. But secrets abound in the glittering palace, and Zara must discover who she can trust as she fights for her life and freedom in a fragile, beautiful, kingdom of glass.

SOME WRITERS AND THEIR INCESSANT SELF-PROMOTION:

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Barbarella: The Center Cannot Hold

At last, the secrets of the Unnamable are revealed! Having travelled beyond our universe to reach the home of the Unnamable, Barbarella and her stalwart companions may have the answers they’ve been seeking, but they’re very, very far from home, and very, very vulnerable. Can a war between universes be averted? Will the Architects sacrifice our universe in the name of victory? Can we possibly fit in all the answers we’re promising here? One thing’s for sure, our universe will never be the same again. Learn more in this final chapter! 

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: BEWILDERED