*BEFORE THE POST AN ANNOUNCEMENT:
Due to WordPress being less functional than normal, would you please sign your comments with your usual handle? (Also, yelling “we’re number one” is allowable, of course.) It might, though knowing the Huns it’s not guaranteed, limit the amount of friendly fire around here.*

I was sharing the link for the substack installment of Witch’s Daughter (Winter Prince tonight. This week and next are rocky, as they could/should be titled “fun with doctors.” For us or the cats.) and came across a discussion about “My feelings are valid.”

I really have no clue where this came from, except of course people wishing to use their feelings as cudgels on other’s heads.

I mean, assuredly, your feelings are “valid” in the sense that you have feelings, and no one can tell you not to have the feelings you have or that you do not in fact feel that way. By virtue of being an internal (and often not entirely controllable) phenomenon feelings are out of the reach of others. Others can’t deny them, or tell you don’t have them.

So, in that sense they are “valid” in that they exist. Or maybe exist. (How the heck do I know. I’m not you.)

But the question that comes to mind after establishing that is “Yes, and?”

Most of the “my feelings are valid” crowd are claiming that because they have these feelings, you have to change whatever you’re doing that gives them unpleasant feelings. And that is… what is the technical term? Oh, yeah: batshit insane.

To be clear, no matter how you feel, other people can’t do anything about it. This means they can’t do anything about your feeling sad/despondent/insulted because they did something you think triggered your bad feelings. You can say that people did it on purpose, and maybe they did, but the same principle that dictates that we can’t invalidate your feelings, also dictates that we can’t control them.

The truth is that while your feelings are real, they are fundamentally disconnected from external reality. They exist, but they are created by a confluence of who you are, your entire past and what actually happened.

Take the ridiculous attacker (probably Clamps trying to evade the block. I didn’t have enough interest to look it up) who came by to leave his first comment saying something like “This fat bitch won’t allow dissent in her comments. Enjoy your echo chamber, you fake American.”
I think I was supposed to feel really bad. Note the fat, which will hit about any modern woman — except I know I’m fat, know it’s not entirely under my control, since it relates to thyroid, and feel no guilt about it. Also, I’m too old to care about being a slinky sylph — and bitch — Which frankly I’ve been called by better people — and the not allowing dissent in my comments, which is of course anathema to a libertarian — except this libertarian doesn’t feel the need to invite the drunken uncle to the wedding. I allow you guys to duke it out, but insults like that would catch you a ban even if not first time, and not directed at me — and then the “fake American” — except I have the passport, and I’ve studied the culture and the history, and frankly? No one has the right to judge if I’m fake or real, and certain not an asshole troll. So, did I feel bad? A little. I felt bad I didn’t have the time to go in the back panel to ban him permanently after approving his first comment to say “Oh. I’m sorry. Does this blog make me look fat?” But hey, we can’t all have everything we want.

So, that comment went way off the mark. (And is not even the worst I’ve come across. Everyday some enjoin me to attempt impossible anatomical feats or worse. I honestly don’t even read most of them now. My assistant has permanent orders to delete the crazy ones that start off with name calling and profanity. Not that they affect me, really. They just give me a feeling of wading through a sewer.) It made me giggle and want to answer back in that way in the worst way possible. (Which I suppose is why I’m quoting it. Because I still think “Does this blog make me look funny?” is hilarious.)

Or take when Mary Three Names called me “racist” for using the term Chicom. I think I was supposed to feel guilty and immediately apologize. Except I know for a fact that communist is not a race — it’s a mental illness — and therefore I just made a post mocking her insanity and had ever-so-much-fun. (Which is why “bitch” is probably an appropriate descriptor. Meh. Sometimes it’s needed.)

These insults went wide, because I’m not your standard issue person my age and type or national origin, or whatever the heck you wish. And because frankly my writing career has most resembled a series of kicks in the teeth. So after a while what you’re kicking is scar tissue and doesn’t hurt.

However, I have friends — some of them my age, and with similar experience — who simply couldn’t take either of those accusations without dissolving. These friends largely stay out of politics, and often don’t even read them, because they could not engage and give as good as they got.

Their feelings are valid. And yes, the current climate causes their feelings. But it doesn’t mean, as much as I love them, that all of reality should stop in its tracks and everyone should — or can — start being nice to wrap them in cotton and spare them.

For one, because that’s impossible. For another, because their feelings are theirs, and an intersection of who they are and what else they’ve experienced. I can’t fully understand why they’re so sensitive, or how they became that way. But I don’t have to. I just have to realize they are that way, and when I get annoyed because they run and hide at the slightest thing, I can use my realization to stop feeling angry at them.

Because ultimately, your feelings are valid, but you’re the only one who can change them.

Say you love the color purple, and are deeply hurt and offended whenever someone says that purple sucks. Your feelings are real, of course. But you can’t demand that everyone, including strangers, respect your feelings and abstain from saying purple is an ugly color. Trying to do that will turn into a full time job, not to say a crusade. And if you could police the entire world, all you’ll achieve is having people trash-talk purple behind your back. Knowing that, you’ll probably feel even worse.

What you can do is — instead — learn to cope with the fact other people hurt purple. You don’t have to like it, but you can learn to accept it, and thereby stop feeling hurt and offended. They don’t hurt purple to offend you. They just hurt purple.

Then there is the other aspect: We can agree your feelings exist. Or at least, we can’t say they don’t.

However, we don’t have to agree with your diagnosis or your feelings.

Most of the craze of transing kids is because “kids’ feelings are valid” and if a little boy says he’s a little girl, that means he’s a little girl.

Uh…. no. It means he says he’s a little girl. Which means he might feel it — or not. Kids, literally say the craziest things. My kids spent an entire summer being an Alien and an Evil Twin (BUT as he kept telling me, not the ALIEN’S evil twin.) — or he might be pretending, or he might be playing. But even if he feels he’s a little girl, this isn’t necessarily an informed opinion. No, your two year old son doesn’t know what a two year old little girl feels like. How would he? He’s not one. What he knows of little girls has nothing to do with growing up to be women, and he has no more concept of sex than most of us do of advanced physics. So, if he feels like a girl, he probably likes pink, or would like to wear a dress for about an hour (before he needs pockets, or wants to climb a tree.) “Feeling like” doesn’t mean what you think it means.

It might also not mean what the person themselves think it means. Look, I have no beef with adults transitioning (well, not people older than 21. I think if you can’t drink, you really shouldn’t be allowed to overload on opposite sex hormones either. If the brain isn’t fully grown up for one thing, it’s not fully grown up for the other) but when an adult “feels like” the opposite sex, is that true? Or are they feeling something they interpret as feeling like the opposite sex?

We used to have very complex tests to make sure people really would be better off as the other sex, to avoid irreparable harm. But in the era of “Your feelings are real” all you have to do is say you feel it really deeply and boom, you’ll get hormones.

This is a guarantee of irreparable harm, because feelings change and sometimes you find that the other half isn’t what you felt like. You really felt like you’d like your life to be easier, say, but it turns out this patriarchy isn’t all it’s been advertised to be, and men don’t have it easier.

In the same way, the mass of loonies who stop people say expressing opposing opinions, because they feel attacked. Just because you feel attacked, it doesn’t mean you’re being attacked. And if your reasoning for feeling attacked is something like “The speaker is conservative, and therefore hates gays, women and people of color, so since I’m one I’m being attacked.” the attack is mostly between your ears and part of your defective thinking meat. If you actually clean out the ear wax and listen to what people are saying, chances are you’ll find that the speech doesn’t have anything to do with you. Instead it’s about things like the rule of law, the abstract advantages of free speech, or even things like taxation. Which aren’t about you and therefore boring, and might make you feel bad in an entirely different way.

Feelings are feelings. I feel, you feel, we all feel. But feelings are a worst way to run a society or determine a political system than moist bints submerged in lakes and distributing magical swords. And just as uncontrollable.

“Respecting other feelings” belongs to the realm of polite party manners, not the realm of adult society. In adult society, where we discuss important things and even more important principles, someone is going to get upset.

I often get upset at gross injustice. And I work through my feelings by writing blogs about it, because at my age, lack of connections and avoir-du-pois I really can’t do much more than push the ripple out and make more people aware of the injustice. It isn’t’ much, but it does help me deal with my feelings.

Which is what we all, as adults, have to do. I might feel that a vast portion of the population would be better off dropped from helicopters, but the question is: how do I identify them? Further questions are: whose army would help me with this task? And further questions: How could I buy that many helicopters. And then: wouldn’t it be terrible for marine ecology? And then: I don’t even know if commies can be safely eaten by sea creatures. (Yes, that is facetious. I am not, in the words of facebook, coordinating harm.)

So, instead, I accept that my feelings are real, but there is no way to assuage them, and instead make a lot of St. Augusto de Puma memes and afflict other people’s feelings, and let them deal with that.

Because yeah, your feelings are real. And they’re valid in the sense you feel them, and we can’t stop you feeling them.

But they entail no obligation on anyone’s part to change them, or make you not experience bad feelings.

If you’re a little kid, have a lollipop.

If you’re an adult, learn to cope with your own feelings. Other adults weren’t put on this Earth for your joy and comfort. Find something to do and stop angsting about how you feel.

Or, if you can’t, do what my more sensitive friends do, and abandon the field of battle. Restrict your activities to things that don’t inflame your feelings.

Because the only one who can do anything about your oh, so valid feelings, is you.

And you’re the one who should.

(Why bats? I don’t know. But just as last year, y’all donate more when I put up a picture of a bat. It’s entirely possible this is done to drive me batty.)

NOTE TODAY’S POST, A BARN-BURNER BY PHANTOM IS BELOW THIS POST.

Now, what is a nice blogger like me doing with a fundraiser like this?

Well… I hate doing fundraisers. I used to jokingly put out a thing on the 29th of February every 4 years. And I averaged about 2k per year in blog donations. Which is nothing to sneeze at and hey, it financed our trips out to eat, but as the blog started taking more and more of my time, the family grumbled more and more about unpaid work.

You see, when I started out, the blog was supposed to promote my books, which would then pay for the time on the blog in a delayed and round about way. But then the blog was supposed to be a few lines of something short and quirky….

Only I don’t do short and quirky, and it seems like the publishers and agents really overestimated the raw hunger for a blog JUST about writing and a writer’s life. And also, I have a hole in my head when it comes to politics, so this blog went political and stayed political. It turns out that’s not a great way to promote books (to be fair, it turns out no type of blog is) and my audience for the blog and my audience for the fiction were almost completely separate.

Ten years in (I’m a slow learner) I realized that I was spending about half the time I have for writing on the blog…. and it didn’t pay at all. On the other hand, it helped me think, and it gave me a social life of sorts. But all the same, I mean, people get paid for opinion pieces. And for running homes for wayward commenters, too. (I mean, I’m inferring the later. I never actually heard of one, as such.) And the family grumbled I should be getting paid. To be fair, the late great Jerry Pournelle was upset I wouldn’t run a fundraiser. He said given my levels of engagement, I should be making around 50k a year.

I didn’t run a fundraiser because I was sure I would get $20 and a coupon for a pack of gum.

Then I had to run a “need” fundraiser, and my family’s injunction on that was that if it worked, I was to do a fundraiser every year. Which I’m trying to fulfill. No, I have no idea what they’ll do if I don’t, but I suspect it will involve reducing my blogging to 3 times a week at most.

The fundraiser last year was a mess, partly because of gofundme going stupid and kickstarter not being much better. So, I couldn’t keep donation levels straight, and when I finally got lists, it turned out anti-spam measures made it impossible to mail our rewards. I’ve put the lowest level on the blog for download and the others are coming, save for the mass (and math) deaths and tuckerizations, which are coming too, just slower.

So, this year I am not, (emphasis not!) doing that. Instead, I have three ways of donating, which are all more or less self fulfilling.

The first way to support this blog is Give Send Go: Link Here.

I offer no incentives there, because GSG forbids it. All I can do is promise I will do at least 4 blog posts a week, though one of those might be memes. (And the others might have guest posts or something of the kind some weeks — though not most weeks.) And I’ll try to make them as good as I know how.

The total…. well, it’s supposed to be the total fundraising for the whole thing (And yes, from what I can tell it’s more or less on track, though slower than last year, but then I started it on the fourth.) And it’s that because it’s around what Jerry said it would be.

This is not a need fundraiser, it’s a “Sarah would like to get paid for her 7 days a week of tending the blog, even if she can never get paid for the 10 years without fundraising.”

I do however understand that times are tight for everyone, and I will not hold it against anyone who doesn’t donate. Do not hurt yourselves!

I’m not closing the GSG and I intend to keep a link to it on the side bar, in case you win the lottery and want to gift me a million or you know $5 for coffee. whatever.

The second way to donate, also with no obvious incentive, and for those of you who really don’t like electronic payments, is by mail. We accept checks, cash inside chocolate wrappers (you know who you are) and cat toys. Okay, I don’t particularly accept cat toys, but Indy cat will thank you from the bottom of his silly heart. Some of them will even get Havey-cat to play.
Anyway, that’s: Sarah A. Hoyt, 304 S. Jones Blvd, Suite 6771, Las Vegas, NV 89107

Then there is Chapter House, a blog where I will be serializing novels: It’s seeded with two beginnings of novels. I’ll be adding 2 chapters each a week. (Yes, you’ll get two chapters each on the Chapter House novels by Friday. Yes, this Friday too. I’ll try to have Witch’s Daughter done on Wednesdays, but depending on the week that sometimes will slip. [This week and next week the theme is “fun with doctors!”]). These are as written, and yes, with their typos upon them, (And Witch’s Daughter is particularly bad on typos and weird phrasing, I noticed yesterday.) But when they’re done, you’ll get a chance to download a cleaned up ebook to download. For those of you with Amazon-dislike, this should work. (I’m going to try to find a work around for non-subscribers to buy the ebook too, but I’m not quite sure how.)

Anyway, to subscribe to Chapter House, the link is: Here.

And while I’m fully aware that Patreon is… iffy, I’ve been asked to have a Patreon account. There I will give away the things more commonly given away in such accounts. Yes, the setup says a lot about my cats. This is because let’s face it, they’re cute, and I’ll end up doing cats if I can’t think of anything else.

Also, I’ve bought the basic setup from fluent pet and intend to teach Indy to talk with buttons. (Like the try to teach chimps to talk.) Let’s just say that Indy is the smartest and most interesting cat I’ve ever shared my life with, so I’m curious what will come of it. Also in a few months, when we get Indy a younger sibling, he or she will join that fun. I have no idea if it will be entertaining, but we can hope. Also there will be snippets of work in progress, beginning of stories that attack me out of the blue and the like. I promise to do something once a week. Heck, it might be a recipe. (NO, NOT FOR CAT! What kind of a sick mind do you have?)

Anyway, to donate on Patreon, please: Go here.

If you lose your mind and subscribe to all of the above, it remains for me to warn you that you might get an overdose of Hoyt. While studies on these are inconclusive, I should warn you there is a slight chance of insanity. At least judging by my closest friends and family, I seem to have that effect on people. You’ve been warned.

Why the Metric System sucks by Phantom

One Metric Banana In Length

I’ve said, since Canada adopted the metric system in the 1970s, that it sucks. It is a stupid French utopian idea, and I hate it. 

At a very basic level, metric doesn’t mean anything to me. How big is a centimeter? I have to check every single time. It has no meaning, it’s an arbitrary thing.

Imperial is based on real things. How big is an inch? My thumb, pretty much. My foot is about a foot. My stride is about six feet. Close enough to get me in the ballpark, anyway. Weights and measures are the same thing. An ounce, a quart, a pint, these are every-day amounts of things you use in food etc. A pound is roughly how much bacon you want for family breakfast. A kilogram is 2.2 times as much as you want, which is stupid.

How much is a milliliter? Um, who cares? I’m not a doctor, I don’t titrate drugs in exact amounts. I’m not a machinist, 1/64th” is about the finest measurement I ever need. If I need to do better I get out the micrometer and do things in thousandths. Which is decimal not fraction, just like metric right? The only difference is 1/1000 of something I know instead of 1/100 of something I don’t.

But I am constantly told I am a troglodyte and I must get with the Modern Age. Because… well no reason, really. Just because. Shut up, old man.

So now, to my vast enjoyment, here is a study showing that I am right and all the stupid French Revolution utopian bastards were wrong.

If you had to estimate the dimensions of a room without the benefit of a tape measure, you might walk its perimeter heel to toe, counting your steps. To estimate the height of a wall, you might count hand spans from floor to ceiling. In doing so, you’d join a long human tradition. Most human societies around the word—perhaps all—have employed similar body-based measurement strategies, according to a first-of-its-kind study published today in Science. And these informal body-based systems can persist for centuries after a culture has introduced standardized units of measure because, the authors argue, they often lead to more ergonomic designs of tools, clothing, and other personalized items.

“Nobody has ever done this kind of systematic, cross-cultural study of body-based measurement before,” says Stephen Chrisomalis, an anthropologist of mathematics at Wayne State University who penned an editorial accompanying the new paper. “It brings together a huge amount of data that [show] not just how common they are, but that they tend to fall along certain patterns. That is actually an extraordinarily important finding.”

Everybody, all over the world, throughout history, used the hand, the foot, the span, the yard, etc. Only the French were so ridiculous to invent a system that relates to nothing. The meter is the length that it is because some guy said so, and for no other reason (and he made it that way because it wasn’t a yard.) A yard at least started as the distance from the king’s nose to his outstretched index finger, which is something.

If you are making any object for use by human beings, be it a chair, a spoon, a car, the human body dictates the design. The proportions of the body also dictate artistic sensibility. If the proportions conform roughly to those of the human body the thing will be appealing. If they do not, it will be ugly. Which makes a yard or a foot useful information. A yard is how far your arm can reach.  A shoe is a foot long.

That this is news to the academic world, an “extraordinarily important finding” quoth the authors, seems to me to represent an abject failure of the education system as a whole. 

It seems as if none of these people studying these things has ever made anything with their hands. If they had, they’d know you don’t proceed to make a thing by manufacturing all the parts to a listed tolerance. You start with what the thing is for. From there you decide how big the parts are. Then you proceed in logical fashion from the most awkward part to the easiest. 

Chair seat first, then the holes for the legs, trim the legs to fit the holes (because it is EASIER to trim the leg than to trim the hole), then the leg braces, then the back, then the arms, etc. Each piece is measured from the previous piece, or from the body of the person who is going to sit on it.

Tables, chairs, boats, all made the same way, each one unique. Because it doesn’t matter if no two are the same. It only matters if it fits the person it was made for.

Making a standardized object in a factory out of standardized, interchangeable parts is a profoundly unnatural process and only began in the 19th Century. Such a process requires all kinds of things that had never been required before. Two of those things were accuracy and precision of physical dimensions. The tapered pin that goes into the tapered hole must be accurate to within a few thousandths of an inch for diameter, roundness, taper and length. In the 18th century such things could not even be measured. In the 19th they were commonly being produced in lots of ten thousand. The Singer sewing machine, patented in 1851, is an example of a device that would have been impossible to make at all 100 years before.

But no one in Academia these days seems to appreciate what that means. Even the notion of measuring by rule of thumb does not occur to them, apparently. What did they do when they built those sailing ships to cross the Atlantic the first few times? Inch, foot, yard, fathom. That’s what. We’re humans. That’s how we do it.  Except the French, whose one driving need throughout history is that they have to be different.

THE DAILY BLOG WILL BE BENEATH THIS POST!

Yesterday I had a really strange interaction with a friend: he pinged me and said he saw I was doing a blog fundraiser and did I think he should do one too?

I scratched my head because, well, you see, his blog is paid. I pointed out that in my opinion it was in poor taste to fundraise on a subscription blog because you’re already getting paid. Unless, of course, there is a major emergency. Then it came out he didn’t realize this blog wasn’t paid.

No, I’m not a hundred percent sure how this blog would be paid? But then when I started writing it, back in pre-history, it was sort of supposed to pay for itself.

So, it was to be a cute blog, about my cats and my daily life, and my writing, and what I liked to do, and it would drive mad sales to my books and–

Does this work for any writer, ever?

I don’t know, I know that in the early oughts editors and agents were convinced it was the ticket to the big money for unknown mid-list writers. You just had to start a blog and automagically you’d be a best seller. In fact when submitting to a new house, while they were considering and negotiating, they often asked if you had a blog, and/or how many followers you had in whatever media. (This of course drove the purchase of chinese bots, and that– anyway. I don’t actually know if publishing houses have become aware of this, yet, or if they’re still buying people based one “two million followers on twitter.”)

One of the things we found, at any rate, is that a twitter/facebook/blog following correlates poorly with fiction sales.

However, before all that, I’d gone off the reservation in the strangest manner possible. It was the perfect storm, in a way. I had to write a blog every day, or at least a few times a week, because that was the formula. But I had no idea what to write about. I didn’t want to write about my then elementary and middle school kids, because…. well…. I didn’t want them to be prey. (And the one time I did it created a firestorm at their school.) I didn’t want to write nothing but cats (though of course, cats are always fun) and writing about my writing process is weird most of the time.

“Write about something you think about all the time” they said. I guess they would think it would be sex? (Though how that would sell my books, which aren’t really sexy I don’t know.) But it turns out I have problems based on when and where I grew up, so what I think about all the time is politics. You see, I feel about Marxists the way people in seismically unstable regions think about the ocean. You don’t turn your back on the ocean when a sudden Mare Viva (Live tide, in Portuguese) can flood the beach and drag you out to sea, and you don’t turn your back on Marxists when they’ve infiltrated a culture and are running in possession of weaponized envy. Because they could suddenly destroy everything that makes life possible.

And so this blog became more and more veiledly — and finally nakedly — political over time. Which is fine. I mean, I hate the filthy stuff, but in this place, at this time we do need to keep our eyes and mind on it, because we have no redundancy left and we can’t afford many more Marxist shenanigans.

The problem with that is that while this blog has its own fans and its own community, it’s only so so at selling fiction.

Mind you, it still does sell some. It’s the closest thing I have to publicity. I mean, no one has figured out what works for book publicity yet. This …. um…. there’s maybe a 25% cross over to buying my fiction.

The problem is this: it’s not so much it takes all my time (only about half of it) but that it’s notoriously hard to take time off, or run off and do something else, or–

Pretty much every morning I wake up and do a blog, unless I did it the night before, before posting at a instapundit. And then during the day I keep an eye on the comments, because we all remember the eruptions when I didn’t, right?

So, I do on average 30 hours a week on the blog? (I work weekends, too.) Sometimes more, sometimes less, but around there.

And the problem is that my family gets very testy about my doing that unpaid. For years they kept telling me everyone else ran a blog fundraiser, why didn’t I?

The real reason I didn’t is that I thought I’d get 20 dollars and a pack of gum, so why bother.

Not only family, but friends, like Jerry Pournelle kept telling me the work I did here I should be paid.

Well, last year, after the massive rescue fund raising, I decided to actually do it, and sons says it should be over the fourth of July, so…. And it worked. Even though because I had to do it on paypal, the incentives and lists were…. anyway. MP3 soon, and collection soon, and then I’ll give critiques pending. The rest? I’ll kill you at my leisure. And if you send me your snailmail, I’ll mail you books, probably next month. (We’re going to be without the ability to drive for about a week. Long story.) But it still worked, by and large.

Now, I can’t go back and do fundraising for the ten or so years I worked for free. I do feel guilty about that because it would mean the boys would have no student loans. But it is what it is. At least I can get paid now.

Because, well, I like this community too. And the give and take in comments about my posts has often changed my ideas or sparked new ones. Which I think is important, particularly as I age.

BUT if I’m getting no compensation it becomes hard to explain to husband why I can’t just go off on a trip somewhere and forget the blog for a couple of weeks or why it’s midnight and I’m finishing tomorrow’s post, or why–

And it becomes even harder to convince myself I shouldn’t JUST be writing.

Anyway, because I’m a florid disaster at keeping track of pledges and due stuff, (VERY easy with Gofundme, because they kept track of stuff for you, but not so with anything else I’ve found. And I’m not using Gofundme for the same reason I’m not using Paypal) this year I revamped into a practically self-fulfilling format.

The first way to support this blog is Give Send Go: Link Here.

Because of Give Send Go policies I CAN’T offer incentives. If you donate there, be aware you helped me get paid for this blog (and the ten unpaid years) and kept me going for a year. Yes, that amount looks outrageous, because it’s what I hope for out of the whole campaign. I just wanted the total somewhere. Also because I’m not closing the campaign, at the end of fundraising days (7/19), but just putting a link on the side of the blog, so anyone wishing to impulse-donate can do so.

The second way to support the blog…. Well, you see, I used to do serialized novels on the blog. That fell by the way side, partly because the world went nuts (and my life too) and partly because there were other things I wanted to talk about on that day, and also the hits on the stories were always lower. I’ve been meditating for some time on how to do this in substack and get paid. So… I’ve created Chapter House. It’s seeded with two beginnings of novels. I’ll be adding 2 chapters to Witch’s Daughter on Wednesdays, and 2 to Winter Prince on Fridays. If you subscribe (Paid Subscriber, I mean), you’ll get each chapter hot off the press, and be able discuss it as it unfolds and yell at me if you think I should go another way, and download each book in various formats, as I finish them. If you just take a free subscription… You get to see the beginning of each chapter? And you will get, if I can, a short story or so a month.

Oh, and if you subscribe, you also get to know you’re supporting the writer. This might or might not give you the warm fuzzies, but it MIGHT. Anyway, to subscribe to Chapter House, the link is: Here.

And if you don’t want to do givesendgo and — I guess some people do? — have a patreon account and that’s how you’re used to donating, I’ve created a patreon. This will only get a post a week (probably Wednesdays, because it’s my I do all the blogs day.) and it will be what the blog would originally have been: You will get stories about my cats, or bits I started writing that didn’t go anywhere, or deleted scenes from the current book, or… stories about my cats. Because my cats are cute.

So, fully aware of the problems of patreon (Which is why not putting original to be published work there), I’ll do something exclusive there once a week. If you want to sign up for supporting me on Patreon: Go here.

And that’s it. Mostly I just want to get paid for my work. Which also relieves the pressure some on the other work, because I can pay for fiction editors and for someone to keep me on track. (And yes, someone to revamp this blog and my writer website. I have someone. I just need to coordinate it.)

And I kind of like that.

I think I’ve told the story here of shopping for a carafe for the coffee machine and finding the world’s strangest review, right?

If I haven’t, older son and I are cheap coffee fiends. No, this doesn’t mean we buy cheap coffee, just that we sometimes (coff or always) buy our coffee machines at thrift stores, provided the machines are very good quality. We, of course, clean them well before first use. Anyway, I no longer remember the brand, but in son’s last years in our house, we bought a very good machine at a thrift store. And, once cleaned, it served us well.

Until the day I was too sleepy to make coffee, and therefore dropped the carafe which shattered. This of course created an emergency and I had two choices: Buy another coffee maker (but there was nothing decent in the thrift stores near us) or buy a new carafe. Failing to find a replacement carafe in the local store, I hit Amazon. The carafe was $25, aka about five times what I paid for the whole thing to begin with, but since we loved the machine (and it was originally very expensive) I decided to order it.

Before I did, though, I hit the comments. There weren’t many one stars, but I find those are important to read. So I did.

Er…. So, the most vociferous one said that the quality had gone way down. This person had used their previous carafe for years to dig in their flower beds, but this one had lost the handle after a few uses. No, it wasn’t a joke review. I checked his other reviews and they seemed…. sane. Weirdly.

So, why am I telling this story?

Today we were looking for lids for our bathroom trash cans. (Indy, okay? He digs everything out, spreads it around the bathroom and bedroom floor, and thinks that q-tips are the bestest toys.) In the reviews we found they were being used for all sorts of other things, including as rodent defense in the garden.

None of the uses were as completely nuts as using a carafe for gardening, and they all made sense in context, particularly for the price, but Dan and I started talking about how people will pick something and do a completely unexpected thing from it, and sometimes it works and eventually a specialized version is made for it.

I can’t for sure prove that Americans do this more than other people. In fact I know that in totalitarian countries (in the former USSR for sure) people have to use very strange things to survive, because the things they actually need aren’t available. And we grew up improvising very odd things out of other very odd things.

However, in America it’s done not out of necessity, but usually out of abundance and sheer inventiveness. Like, you know, seeing these woven metal trash can lids and going “Hey, they’re very cheap. These would be perfect to protect my gourds from squirrels.”

I wonder if this is why we tend to innovate more: both the benefits of the free market and of a natural culture of “doing for oneself” which has most of us growing vegetables, raising chickens, and “yes.” And often not finding exactly what we want at the price we want it for our strange arrangements.

I can’t prove Americans do it more. But to the extent we have free market, (Yes, I do know how curtailed it is. Except compared to almost everyone else) it has unleashed both prosperity and leisure which allows us to innovate more.

And it’s a wonderful thing, even above and beyond the fact it amuses me greatly.

Sure most of the time it’s a failure, just like most mutations are ultimately harmful. But in the few times they aren’t, real progress is made that couldn’t be achieved by a thousand planners in a thousand think tanks.

Just because someone sat there, staring at a listing and went “What if I do this?”

Some years it’s easier to celebrate the 4th of July than others. This year is one of the others.

Unlike a lot of my co-religionaires (Usaians, unreformed) I don’t believe the republic is dead. It’s not that I don’t believe most of our government is corrupt and probably irredeemable (but what do you expect of people who frauded their way in? Respect for our laws and founding documents?) but that I believe we’ve been in this place or worse before, and came back at least to an extent.

It was an enlightening experience to read the things Woodrow Wilson did during World War I, and the Forgotten Man by Amity Schley is a very enlightening book. Or endarkening, because it will not put you in a good mood.

The current clowns’ malfeasance is neither new nor particularly original. In many ways too, it’s less competent than that of their ideological ancestors. Partly because they are less competent, partly because these days it’s easier to find out what they did, so even if they were actually competent, they’d come out as half assed.

And if you think there was no fraud back in those days, you truly need your head examined. What the fraud was is harder to discover, but reading biographies of the time… well. Will the cemeteries who voted for FDR please stand up?

There have always been people who consider themselves experts on how everyone should live, and this disease of the former “nobility” of Europe was made worse by mass industrialization and Marxist thought, both of which convinced pinheads they knew what the future was, and “if only everyone” did what they wanted, paradise would arrive. The fact that they believe that it’s possible for “everyone” to do this or that justifies my evaluation or their intelligence, regardless of the letters after their name, or their supposed IQ.

You can look at it one of two ways: One is that the Republic has been dead since shortly after it’s founding. There’s a name for that. What is it? Oh, yeah. Stupid.

Look, sure, there is a platonic ideal of the republic. It’s bright, free and perfect. Don’t judge me immune to its appeal. For most of the nineties I was a pure Libertarian, all shiny and chrome.

Then 9/11 took the paint off and reminded me of what I should have known all along. The world is a dangerous place, and a nation needs a government to deal with security and external threats, if nothing else. (Where external threats begin and internal threats end is a good question, she says, looking at his serene majesty Zhou Bai Den, Vice-Roy of Emperor Xi the Pooh.) Losing my beloved city to (among other things and facilitated by Fraud by Mail) feral homeless reminded me that sometimes there is a justifiable reason to violate individual liberty, and also how hard it is to decide where the line is and/or to trust any government with that.

Since then I’ve been locked into “As small as possible, as local as possible, and with functions constitutionally limited, and for the love of Heaven clean up the d*mn vote, so that the kleptocrats know people are watching them and can turn them out on their… ear.”

It’s not shiny or perfect. Neither is the republic. It never was. It never will be.

But in this world of imperfect things, and as imperfectly implemented as it has been, it has afforded — overall and seen from a distance — the common man a measure of authority and ability to climb through meritocracy that no other place has for as long. This in turn has poured out wealth, food and innovation onto the world in a continuous stream.

The other way to look at it is that the American Republic was founded as a way to rule a far-flung, poorly-connected nation of agrarian people. It’s no wonder that the industrialization, mobility and ease of travel of the twentieth century hit it like a shock, and that for a while there “top men” who could manage everything from the center and make it better was an alluring bait. And did we ever swallow that bait and run with it.

But the truth is — as the founders knew — that centralized government is not more efficient for anyone; that the information problem doesn’t get easier if you just relay things top down; and that the beautiful efficiency of the managed state is smoke and mirrors: it can only look like that if they have full control of the press now and for eternity.

Technology giveth and technology taketh away. The fax machine and the typewriter were banned in the USSR for a reason. Even those ineffective tools put cracks in the wall of propaganda.

Here the ease of travel and increased mobility of things were already casting the “Daddy knows best” government into disrepute. After all, Reagan did get elected, in face of a propaganda barrage of how he would kill us all. And since then, imperfectly, haltingly, we’ve started clawing things back. Look at the gun rights battle. Note it’s not just there, but there it’s the most visible.

And this has only accelerated since Trump pulled the masks off the Left and their collaborators/ass coverers in the press.

Yeah, sure, they frauded him out. But think about it: they’ve never had to spend four years running after an opposing president with elaborate accusations and (as proven) bullsh*t, and then lock the entire country down, and then still have to close the polls and fraud so blatantly that not seeing it is an exercise in willful blindness.

A confidently frauded in government doesn’t spend most of its first year behind barbed wire. A confidently frauded in government doesn’t throw grannies in jail for parading in protest for the fraud. A confidently frauded in government doesn’t choreograph Triumph of the Shrill or think that “Ultra Maga” is a negative thing (Ultra Maga, ASSEMBLE!) and a confidently frauded in government doesn’t spend every waking minute trying to discredit and imprison the guy they frauded out of power. Oh, and a confidently frauded in government doesn’t throw the borders open in a desperate effort to replace the citizenry.

This is the last gasp of a tyranny that thought they’d last forever, because they had the universities and the press. Now they have the mechanisms of power. They’re pushing their levers, but people aren’t responding as they used to. Partly because there are other means of information; partly because we know we’re not alone; partly because once you see the corruption you can’t unsee it.

Right now, like the last stage of a South American regime, they’re desperately trying to fill their pockets before they have to run for some tropical island, to hopefully live out their days in wealthy ignominy.

Obama was the last leftist for whom (partly because of the racial thing, and because no one dared pointing out the king was naked, because the king was tan) the press could fake a cult of personality. It might even have fooled some young leftists, but I saw the unsold books, the unsold calendars, the unsold cards, all on the tables at 10% the original price. Your mileage may vary. I suspect the cities bought into the evil idiot more.

From here on, it gets harder for them. Yes, they have the fraud. But it will have to get more and more blatant. As boycotts have proven, the left is much much smaller than advertised as a percentage of the population.

But why haven’t the people risen? Because Americans have had one civil war, and in many places it’s still remembered very clearly. Because as a people we’re always — always — slow to war. Which is good because when we go to war, we do it so devastatingly.

Can the Republic be restored without war? I don’t know. And neither do you. We’ve come back from the brink before and maybe it can happen again. Or maybe it won’t, in which case it will be terrible, devastating and even more perilous than it is now. (I have nightmares.)

But it’s important to remember the Republic is the people, and not the thin coating of scum who are barely managing to stay on top as is.

And the Republic — the best thing to ever happen to mankind — deserves to be celebrated. As does the wisdom of those men over two and a half centuries ago, who through argument, negotiation and sheer determination discerned a novel form of government which even at its worst is better than the best that came before.

If you’re a pessimist think of the Fourth of July as your chance to light a fire that will be seen by generations yet unborn and encourage them to try something like our Republic.

And if you’re — merely — realistic, think of how much the left hates the Fourth of July and everything it stands for and what that means.

Today, go out and let off some fireworks, to show that through this perilous night our flag is still there.

Still there and long may it wave over the land of the free and the home of the brave.

*There will be a post appearing below this (I’ll be writing it, but dating it earlier, so it’s below) for the blog funding campaign for 23/24, which starts today and will run through the nineteenth of July. Now go out and have fun.

Having proven myself unable to actually mail rewards on time or anything close to it — even email rewards — (though this year has been exceptionally bad on the personal front. Yes, I can tell you how, if you have a pint and two hours) I’ve decided to completely revamp the fund raising, so it’s “self fulfilling.”

THAT SAID, LAST YEARS DEBTS WILL BE PAID. I WILL PUT THE MP3 HERE FOR DOWNLOAD SOMETIME THIS WEEK, AND THEN THE LINK TO DOWNLOAD THE COLLECTION OF USAIAN STORIES. IF YOU DONATED TO LAST YEAR’S FUNDRAISER AT A LEVEL TO GET A FULL TUCKERIZATION AND/OR MENTORING, PLEASE CONTACT ME AT sahswag@outlook.com. AND IF YOU WANT PHYSICAL BOOKS, AND DONATED AT A LEVEL TO GET ONE (OR MORE) PLEASE SEND ME YOUR SNAILMAIL TO sahswag@outlook.com.

Anyway, meanwhile this year we’re going with three places to donate.

If you just want to keep this blog going, ensure I have some compensation for my work here every day, and that my husband has less cause to growl at my being head-down in the blog at all hours, there is a place to donate at GiveSendGo.

Note by the rules of GiveSendGo, I’m not allowed to offer incentives. All I can promise is that I’ll work at this blog as hard as I can for the next year.

Also that goal is for the TOTAL fundraiser, so I don’t expect to hit it on GSG, no. But it’s important to know what the total is. Years ago Jerry said I should be making 50k out of the blog and tried to push me to fundraise. This is not even really adjusted for inflation.

I also know everyone is having a tough time right now, so note THIS IS NOT AN EMERGENCY, it’s just an attempt to be paid for my work.

If GSG doesn’t appeal to you, there are two other options: I have started a serializing blog on Substack, called Chapter House, where I put two novels — Witch’s Daughter and Winter Prince — already started in public. Starting tomorrow I will start adding two chapters a week to each of them till done. I’d like to start a third — mystery — novel, but we’ll see how I do with these first.

Note that if you just hit subscribe on that, it will be the UNPAID subscription. Which means you won’t get the new chapters, though I’ll try to put up a new or old short story there once a month or so. For the paid subscriptions, and to help the blog’s funding roll, go here: PAY FOR SUBSCRIPTION.

I have no idea if substack is NORMALLY retarded about making it difficult to subscribe for money, or if I did something wrong in setting it up. I suspect the later?

AND also being updated tomorrow, with something, probably a cat story (TBH) is a new Patreon. (Note I’m also trying to provide non-political gathering spaces for those who want to hang but have turned off politics.) Sarah’s Patreon.

Will all the stories be about cats? I doubt it. You’ll probably get random cut scenes and art, too, just because. BUT stories about cats is the worst case scenario, and I want to provide truth in advertising, since I’m a crazy cat lady with a writing problem.

If you want to support the blog by check (or cash, wrapped in aluminum foil. You know who you are. And yes, more than one of you.):

Sarah A. Hoyt

304 S. Jones Blvd, Suite 6771

Las Vegas, NV 89107

And that’s it for day one. The image above is free and released under creative commons, of course, as always.

I should by now have paid all the stuff from last year’s fundraiser. I will. Sometime this week or next. Except for mass and math deaths and tuckerizations. But it’s been slow and weird. (If you’re not sure, feel free to email me at sahswag@outlook.com.
Yes, I owe one of you a zoom meeting to discuss your novel. Sorry. It should have been Thursday, but you know what happened. I’ll email you today.

I will, as soon as younger son puts the file up somewhere, so I can link, give away the moose and squirrel MP3 (Explanation, because I’m hosted BY wordpress, I cannot upload it here. It’s one of their security things.) And I’m actively assembling a collection of USAian short stories, which is the reward for $60 or more donation, if I remember correctly.

All of this has been hit by Helena-kitten’s death. Sorry. But like this post it’s taken hours to write, because I feel like I can’t think in a straight line. So sorry. Bear with me, please. I really feel it sucks that I’m this late, but it’s been a very…. chaotic year.

Now, of course, I meant to start this year’s fundraiser two days ago. That also got whacked hard.

However, let’s call this a slow rolling unveiling of funding for the year. And conscious of how hard it is for me to actually get anything together to mail or email (thanks to anti-spam measures, and the fact I’m too retarded to use email bulk services (no, seriously. I don’t understand half of what they’re talking about in the sign up) this year all the ways to support me, are things that I can fulfill on line.

The one funding effort already up is a substack serialization blog called Chapter House. As those of you who’ve been around for a while know, I used to serialize novels, until the wheels came off. But also, it’s difficult to do novels on what has become more and more a political blog. A lot of you who are aficionados of the blog couldn’t care less if I do or don’t write fiction. And a lot of people who like my fiction would prefer not to think about politics.

Frankly, a lot of people who LIKE the blog’s community are taking a break from politics for years, perhaps for life. (I don’t blame them. If I were less paranoid I might try it.) They would like to still rub elbows, but not in a political blog.

So, Chapter house is starting off with two novels that were started in public, more or less. One is Witch’s Daughter a fantasy which is about 1/3 done, I think. The other is Winter Prince, a space opera. For completeness, there should also be a mystery. Look, give me time. I’m committing to two chapters a week for each of the novels. This should be doable on the weekend, but this year has been a flaming disaster inside a dumpster floating down a river of fire. So…. Let me see how I cope, and if it works, I’ll add a mystery.

What I had so far (with Witch’s Daughter slightly backed up) of the two novels is up for free:

Winter Prince.

Witch’s Daughter

Future posts will be paywalled, but there will be some free ones, along the way, including an opportunity to buy the books (I’m not sure how to manage that yet!) at the end before I put them up on Amazon. Regular subscribers will also get the opportunity to download the books with no DRM at the end, before they go up on Amazon, as part of the subscription benefits.

Free ones: I’m hoping for a short story or so a month.

Anyway, that’s the first fundraising effort. It’s kind of like me trying to get advances for the novels, okay.

Chapters start next week.

And no, I have no clue why both main characters are redheads. That just happened to be the thing when I looked for books already started in public. (Rogue Magic and Elf Blood will eventually be put up under the Fantasy slot. If I can add a mystery it will be A Fatal Paws, an Orphan Kitten mystery.)

There will also be a givesendgo, which will be purely fundraising for the blog. Because of the rules of givesendgo, I can’t promise you anything in return, except that I will give my all to the blog. But I will try very hard to do that. (At least my half, the other half being fiction.) I will leave that up, and get a donation button linked, so you guys can donate whenever the spirit moves you.

This is separate, obviously, from the fundraiser for Helena. Thank you for that. I need to get it transferred since between the tests and ICU and the cremation and urn expenses the month was very owie. That one was an in-need fundraiser. The fundraiser for the blog is a “This blog happens almost every day” (I’m conscious of having been lax lately. Again, year from heck, please bear with me) “and I’d let to get paid for work other people do for pay” (Opinion writing.)

For some of you who have asked, I will also put up a Patreon. I know, I know, but– People HAVE asked. So, that’s fine. Patreon will probably have more personal reminiscences, pictures of cats, stories of cats, including a rainbow bridge retrospective for some of them, and recordings of Indy trying to learn to “speak” with buttons. (No results guaranteed. He’s brilliant, but also stubborn.)

If you want to support the blog by check:

Sarah A. Hoyt

304 S. Jones Blvd, Suite 6771

Las Vegas, NV 89107

I’m going to try to set that stuff up after I post this. Be nice, I’m terrified of setting these things up.

I will do a fourth of July post. Soonish.

In the meantime have a picture of upside-down Indy in daddy’s lap. (He’s been very clingy with Daddy which is kind of funny, since Daddy was primarily Helena’s and Indy mine. I mean Indy still spends time on me, but he’s now clinging more to daddy.)

This is the famous “Rub my belly, please” pose. I get it early morning, since he likes to sleep between us but closer to m.

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 JERRY BOYD: Joy to the Squirrels

Bob thought he was going to get to enjoy a little down time on Charlie’s planet. You don’t need to be told that our shepherd had other ideas, do you? Bert and Ernie find a bot, new, but old, with quite a story to tell. Then Jossi and Lakki blow their cover, and need rescuing. A lot of work to get done, to get back to Earth in time for a wedding. Come watch Bob and the crew get it all done.

BY ED LACY, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Enter Without Desire.

Marshall Jameson was an aspiring artist at the end of his rope. On New Year’s Eve he wandered into New York City on his last pennies, and stumbled onto a radio game show, won it… and found the perfect girl.

How could he know his good luck would lead him step by step into murder? But Elma was worth it, worth murder, and more!

• This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving genre and historical context to the novel.

FROM DAVID COLLINS: Convention War

The Earth Space Force Military has a problem. Something so dangerous that they need the ultimate distraction. A way to keep all the news stations away from it. They need them to focus on it rather than the massive alien ‘thing’ being lowered into a pit in the desert near Area 51.

They have decided that Keith and nine of his crew will be that distraction. They choose to drop off Keith, the hero starship captain, and a bunch of alien women off at Comic-Con for a surprise appearance.

FROM ROWENNA MILLER: The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill.

In the early 1900s, two sisters must navigate the magic and the dangers of the Fae in this enchanting and cozy historical fantasy about sisterhood and self-discovery.

There is no magic on Prospect Hill—or anywhere else, for that matter. But just on the other side of the veil is the world of the Fae. Generations ago, the first farmers on Prospect Hill learned to bargain small trades to make their lives a little easier—a bit of glass to find something lost, a cup of milk for better layers in the chicken coop.

Much of that old wisdom was lost as the riverboats gave way to the rail lines and the farmers took work at mills and factories. Alaine Fairborn’s family, however, was always superstitious, and she still hums the rhymes to find a lost shoe and to ensure dry weather on her sister’s wedding day.

When Delphine confides her new husband is not the man she thought he was, Alaine will stop at nothing to help her sister escape him. Small bargains buy them time, but a major one is needed. Yet, the price for true freedom may be more than they’re willing to pay.

FROM RACONTEUR PRESS, WITH STORIES BY STEVE DIAMOND, JOHN VAN STRY, JACK WYLDER AND OTHERS: Pinup Noir

Everybody loves the femme fatale; the tough-as-nails dame with the smoky voice and the legs that go on forever – almost as much as they love the cynical gumshoe with the strict moral code and the tiniest soft spot in his heart.

Hard-boiled detective fiction – America’s gift to literature – was introduced to the world in the middle of the Roaring Twenties, allegedly reached its height in the 1950s; and if you listen to the pundits, died out with the pulp magazines.

Hogwash. Hardboiled detective fiction lives on in its offspring: the roman noir, film noir, neo-
noir, Mediterranean noir, and last – but certainly not least – cyberpunk.

Join these 8 authors as they explore the world of the hard-boiled detective and the dames they love.

FROM CHRIS KENNEDY, MARK WANDRY, KACEY EZELL AND OTHERS: The Phoenix Initiative: First Missions

War is Coming!

Nigel Shirazi, the Speaker of the Merc Guild, knows that war is coming and he’s not ready. He needs to build up the mercenary forces after years of war, and he’s proclaimed the Phoenix Initiative to give people who want to start new companies the opportunity to do so. CASPers are cheaper and financed at lower rates, and the government of Earth is offering bounties to take the mercs from alien races off the planet. Now is the time!

Hearing the call to arms, a diverse group of startups, including a number of non-conventional ones and ones that originated on some of the colony worlds, have just taken their first missions. These are some of their stories.

Welcome back to the Four Horsemen universe, where only a willingness to fight and die for money separates Humans from the majority of the other races. Edited by bestselling authors and universe creators Mark Wandrey and Chris Kennedy, “The Phoenix Initiative: First Missions” includes seventeen all-new stories in the Four Horsemen universe by a variety of bestselling authors—and some you may not have heard of…yet. Are you ready to strap on a CASPer and go out to make your fortune? Then it’s time to read the stories of these mercs and learn the lessons they’ve already figured out for you!

FROM DENTON SALLE: In the Hall of Eternal Music

“With this sword, I can even slay the volkh lordling, were he not hiding behind his dwarven puppet”

Jeremy and Galena traveled with Bolgor to his home city, only to find the legendary city of the dwarves torn apart by politics. What was to be a pleasant visit turned into a struggle against the Dark attempts to corrupt it from within.

The young wizard, his bear-shifter lady, and his dwarven sword brother must find a way to deal with different political parties, monsters, and assassination attempts. They have to find the instigator in a different culture with very different rules. Rules that separate Jeremy from Galena. Among a people many of whom think the volkh are frauds.

And the fall of this city to Darkness would lead to a new reign of terror as its satellite cities fall and a new Dark Empire arises in the North. Only Jeremy and his friends stand in the way of a new age of war and the bloodshed that will bring.

Click above to join Jeremy as he faces the latest challenge of the dark. A challenge that threatens not only those he loves but an entire civilization and perhaps the world. If you like adventures set in a unique magical world, you will love the latest in the Avatar Wizard series.

FROM LARS WALKER: Troll Valley

Chris Anderson has everything. He’s the son of the richest family in town. He lives in a beautiful, loving home. He even has a fairy godmother. Chris Anderson also has nothing. He was born with a deformed arm, and when he gets angry he sees visions that terrify him. At the turn of the Twentieth Century, in a nation wrestling with faith and science, tradition and change, Chris will be forced to confront his own nature, and learn the meanings of freedom, love, and the grace of God.

FROM JOSH GRIFFING: The Hyperion Signals

In June of 2165 technicians find a way to send messages faster than light. They call it The Hyperion Signal, and if messages can move at translight speeds, why not machines and men as well?

We drive ourselves to the next frontier, and the next. And at each frontier another wonder lingers.

In Pyre and Ice, the job of terraforming Titan’s frozen wilderness falls to Jotunheim Station, but the threat within the station is as deadly as the cold outside. It takes integrity, courage, and teamwork to see the mission through.

With translight ships, we set out across the galaxy, seeking out marvels our mere telescopes only hinted about. The first two ships to make the translight quest were Petra and Henley, sent to survey a world where strange trees grow Under a Wayward Sun.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Rockin’ the USA

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

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

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

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

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

BY PHILIP K. DICK, BROUGHT BACK BY D. JASON FLEMING: The Variable Man (Annotated): The libertarian pulp sci fi classic novella

He fixed things — clocks, refrigerators, vidsenders and destinies. But he had no business in the future, where the calculators could not handle him. He was Earth’s only hope — and its sure failure!

• This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving genre and historical context to the novella.

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: SPROUT

Okay, the first is not exactly a meme. But you know, it’s important.

And now? Laissez les bon memes rouler!