FROM M. C. A. HOGHARTH: Haley and the Catfish Invasion: A LitRPG Short Story.

Haley and Nana return in a second heartwarming adventure! Having embraced her new meta class, Haley is ready for anything… except, possibly, a plague of seafood! It turns out it’s harder than she thought to sit back and let other people handle the problems she really, really wants solved….This second installment in the adventures of a post-apocalyptic world with a game system imposed on it by magical aliens contains yet another recipe, because (once again), that’s the kind of story this is. Curl up with some cornbread and watch Haley craft her way through another quick read!

FROM DAVID WELCH: Stained Glass Jaws

Tye Gallagher is a man on the road to fame and fortune. Born in the ghetto, he’s found a path to success through boxing. Blessed with an iron chin and rib-breaking body shot, he’s put up an undefeated record, and managed to fight the reigning champion to a draw. He’s preparing himself for his reign as heavyweight champ, and few think anything can stop him.

But fate is fickle, and Gallagher’s first loss sends the man careening into a downward spiral. Stripped of the illusions of fame, Tye finds himself facing a failing marriage, shifty management, unforgiving media, and an inner rage that has dogged him for most of his life. Lacking the security of a stable upbringing, he finds himself in a battle he’s completely unprepared for. The only friend he has left is, strangely enough, his former rival. Gallagher not only has to try to rescue his crumbling career, but decide what of type of person he wants to be after all the ego and bluster have been ripped away. And without any real examples to fall back on, it is the fight of Tye’s life to see if he can become anything more than just another also-ran…

FROM KAREN MYERS: The Ways of Winter – A Virginian in Elfland.

TRAPPED BEHIND ENEMY LINES, CAN HE FIND THE STRENGTH TO DEFEND ALL THAT HE VALUES MOST, OR EVEN JUST TO SURVIVE?

It’s the dead of winter and George Talbot Traherne, the new human huntsman for the Wild Hunt, is in trouble. The damage in Gwyn ap Nudd’s domain reveals the deadly powers of a dangerous foe who has mastered an unstoppable weapon and threatens the fae dominions in both the new and the old worlds.

Secure in his unbreachable stronghold, the enemy holds hostages and has no compunction about using them in deadly experiments with newly discovered way-technology. Only George has a chance to reach him in time to prevent the loss of thousands of lives, even if it costs him everything.

Welcome to the portrait of a paladin in-the-making, Can he carry out a rescue without the deaths of all involved? Will his patron, the antlered god Cernunnos, help him, or just write him off as a dead loss? He has a family to protect and a world to save, and little time to do it in.

FROM MICHAEL MORGAN: Ladies, Fish, & Gentlemen

Ana’s mother always insisted on the proprieties for young ladies, but she never prepared her daughter for the snake pit of Los Cristobal. Political factions wrestle behind the illusion of a free city, each plotting to seize control for King and Country. Beneath the city, a secret society has begun unlocking the powers of ancient sorcery, but they lack something. Something secret. Something stolen from them by Ana’s father, and now they are coming to take it back. Sometimes, a young lady must do some very unladylike things to stay alive.

Ladies, Fish, & Gentlemen is a swashbuckling historical fantasy tale with magical realism undertones set in a pre-colonial North America that never was. Shamanistic ritual, the miracles of Holy places, and lust for the power of resurrected technologies drive men mad in the struggle to control the destiny of the New World. A footpad, a vampire, and the native Kiawah people may be Ana’s best allies against the coven of sorcerers trying to murder her.

“Pull harder Sofia!” Ana gasped in pain as the staves of baleen pinched the puckered line of new scar across her side, and squeezed her burned flesh.
“Mistress! Apologies, Mistress. Please let me loosen it,” Sofia begged in sympathy as Ana’s face lost its color.
Ana shook her head as she pulled in a slow breath. The strain in her voice was clear over the calm façade, “A knight has his armor, as do we women. Our battlefields and methods may be different, but both require the appropriate costume. My dress, and then my hair.”

“A small jump to her left took Ana out of the line of attack as her sword drew a crimson line that bisected her attacker’s ear. A step to the right lent her body weight to the tip of her dagger as it punched into the man’s side through the armhole of his polished back and breast armor. The hilt of the main gauche was torn from her grip as the man’s momentum took him through the doorway and the slope of the staircase took control of him. Ana raised her right knee and drew her dirk left handed as a third soldier entered the room.”

The Ladies of Los Cristobal series is Girl power at its best.

FROM JL CURTIS: Country Boys (and Girls) will Survive

Shady Rest Mobile Home Park wasn’t anything much… Small, old, and butted up against the Okefenokee swamp, with an ‘eclectic’ group of tenants, it was the target in a long time feud.DK Thorne, a medically retired Marine, did his best to keep the place afloat, the tenants happy, and fight off the County. He was managing to do that until the local witch said ‘things’ were coming from the other side of the ‘veil’…And they did, but country boys and girls know how to survive.

FROM HENRY HAYDEN (DO YOU DISCRIMINATE AGAINST CATS?): Notebook: Write that Down! (So Sez Henry)

BY OTIS ADELBERT KLINE, EDITED BY D. JASON FLEMING: 3 Weird Tales: A horror pulp trio of terror!

Otis Adelbert Kline was an assistant editor on *Weird Tales* from its founding issue. He was also one of WT’s regular authors from that same issue.

Collected here are three stories first published in that legendary pulp magazine.

The Thing of a Thousand Shapes

Uncle Jim was dead. So what was that… thing… that was in the room with his casket? Kline’s first published story, and the very first (two-part) serial *Weird Tales* ever published, almost reads like a mission statement for that storied pulp.

Bride of Osiris

When Jim Buell’s fiancée was kidnapped right in front of him, in broad dayling on the streets of Chicago, even he could not predict his quest to rescue her would lead him to the center of a human sacrifice cult!

Lord of the Lamia

When John Tane rented that house in Cairo, he almost immediately became host to an unwanted corpse, and was made into a pawn in a game he had no wish to play. But before the game is over, he will turn the tables on the plotters that surround him, and become… The Lord of the Lamia!!!

    This iktaPOP Media edition includes new introductions giving genre and historical context to the novellas.

FROM J. ALLAN DUNN, EDITED BY D. JASON FLEMING: On The Knees Of The Gods (Annotated): The Classic Pulp Fantasy.

Peter Brent, American, steps through a laurel hedge in Greece in 1939 — and is transported back to the days of the gods! But getting Zeus’s attention isn’t always the best idea…

    This iktaPOP Media edition contains a new introduction giving historical and genre context.

BY EDMOND HAMILTON, EDITED BY D. JASON FLEMING: The Fire Princess (annotated): The classic pulp lost civilization adventure novel!

American secret agent Gary Martin was given a task: hunt down the rumors of a warrior princess and her plans to rally the nomadic tribes of East Asia to begin a war of conquest, discern how true they were, and put a stop to it if it was real. The fact that Imperial Japan had already sent their most effective spy in the same direction was worrying.

What Martin did not expect was to find himself in the middle of a lost civilization, captive of a warrior princess who was in love with him, and realizing she had access to terrible ancient technologies that could ruin the world!

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

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: Pear

One of the most charming insults since I came out of the political closet going on 12 to 14 years ago was that I was “a little peculiar.” It was said by a Britisher of course, and it was charming and almost endearing compared to the bilge, sewer water and outright maligning that’s come my way.

Weirdly I haven’t lost ALL my talent. That’s normally what happens first. But there are a few holdouts on that side (mostly those who have read me) who say I can still write I’ve just gone insane, peculiar or sold out. (Oh, that last is charming too. Like there’s money on our side. Okay, there is, but it’s from the public, not the easy, have a packet of cash from a supporting billionaire.)

OTOH I’ve been informed I’m retarded because I retain my accent (moved here after the age of 18, so it’s fairly normal) or because I typo like I breathe. (Dyslexic. In every language I speak.) Hilariously some of the world brains claiming that don’t realize I’m ESL.

I’m not saying this to complain. (TRULY) It doesn’t hurt. Not even when I laugh (and I laugh a lot.) But all of the above is the mildest that’s been thrown at me.

I’ve been accused of crimes real and imaginary, including of having been part of a tyrannical government that fell when I was 11. I’ve been accused of being a Nazi sympathizer as well as racist, sexist and homophobic of course. I have been told I hate Asians (how anyone who reads my books can think that is beyond me. I do, however, dislike dragon-shifter gangsters. Be aware of that.)

It got so bad that at one time my kids were playing online with their gamer group which is international — keep in mind they were under assumed names, as all gamers are. I think my kids have ten handles each at least — when they suddenly heard my name bandied around as this terrible horrible bigot person who wanted to hurt women writers and keep them from being published, and who was probably violent. They decloaked, beat the others around the room and left the group.

Again, not saying this for pity or to whine. At this point all of this is situation normal, as is the fact I have to keep my current address secret including the state I’m in (I figure it will come out in no less than three years. Enough people know the state and city and fandom TALKS. But I’ll keep it quite the next two years if I can.) Because some cartoon characters find SWATing funny. And because some cartoon characters with power and the dem illusion of invulnerability think cutting out the internet access of opponents is a great idea. (Here’s my middle finger, Polis.)

I’m used to this now. I wouldn’t know what to do if tomorrow I started being treated as everyone else. I’d probably check the obituaries to see if I’d died and not noticed.

The point is, and what’s important here: THIS IS THE PRICE YOU PAY TO BE OUT AS BEING TO THE RIGHT OF LENIN.

And this is as a 3rd light in science fiction and mildly amusing blogger.

But I’m educated (ooh, boy. And other useless things) well read, an artist (ah, not really, but a passable craftswoman) and an immigrant from a schrodingerly Latin country (It’s Latin when it suits them) so I’m obviously and clearly someone who should belong to them. Since I insist on staying outside the fence and doing a cha cha at the sheep within, it can’t be tolerated and everything plus the Elon Twitter sink must be thrown at my head.

Imagine how larger the price is if you’re someone who opposes them in politics?

Particularly if you’re a woman, black, a New Yorker, or someone who is rich and successful and has been submerged and passing his whole life as being on the left. (I’ve come to the conclusion Trump, like me, was in the closet for political reasons. It’s how you become that peculiar.)

I think the price is higher, and what you become, overnight, unbeknownst to yourself even, is much much worse.

And when I say it doesn’t hurt and I’m not complaining: It’s true now. But the first …. six years after coming out of the closet were rough. People I loved despite our different opinions suddenly and out of the blue savaged me. People I thought were friends stabbed energetically. Professional contacts complained of the pain and angst of working with such a terrible character (my favorite being the ex-Baen-proofreader who talked about how hard it was to proof my vile, politics laden books. She left before DST. So it was Draw One In The Dark And Gentleman Takes a Chance. Not that any of the others are politics laden, but I could see that there is a libertarian slip showing in the DST series. But…. SHIFTERS?) Just every morning was more or less “What fresh hell is this?” It’s still happening, now of course because I won’t swallow the fraud. Even people nominally on our side — who apparently believe that Biden got the most votes in a presidential election ever, and was the president who is so popular that he lost almost nothing in midterms and that all these years it was Obama dragging him down (think on that a minute. Say it with a straight face) — are now doing the “distance and throw things at her” some of them having started before the election (things that make you go “um”) –are still doing this now and then.

So, you know. it’s okay. I’m used to it. But dear Lord, I know and can sense how much worse it is above.

No, this isn’t a sympathy for Trump thing. You can have it or not, I don’t care. Until fraud is out your opinion — and mine — don’t matter. It’s a “Yeah, he’s peculiar. A lot of our champions are/were peculiar. AND WHO ELSE DO YOU THINK YOU’LL GET?”

Humans are social apes. Over the last 100 years the leftist pov was enforced so strenuously that to go against it was to step outside the ape-band. Or at least it was in everyone’s perception.

This might no longer be true, with the band itself, but it is true with any of those in the band that screech. All the media, all the entertainment, all the education, even political figures who are supposedly not on the left, will revile you, make fun of you, and discount your intelligence the minute you announce you don’t buy into the left’s beliefs and oh, yeah, you’re anti-communist.

(The inverse is true. Occasional Cortex, a woman who can find her own ass with two hands, a seeing eye dog and ass-finding GPS 2 times out of ten is universally applauded as smart and a trend setter.)

TO STEP OUT AT ALL you must be pretty peculiar, in the sense that you’ve stopped immersing yourself and trying to fit in with the other apes. You’ve stopped scratching when they do and howling when the etiquette dictates. You’ve had enough of it. Having thought about it and come to the conclusion you have to follow your own internal prompts, you have in a way stopped being part of the band. That’s peculiar for a social ape. In fact it’s downright insane.

It’s also useful when the band as a whole is determined to do stupid things (like the one child policy, or “green” energy or jumping off a cliff, or become whatever the current version of the dems is: Mao-eco-facist, at an approximation.) They need these peculiar, standing out apes to move them to a course where the band will survive.

But until the wheel turns completely, the ones who stand out and try to push us away from the precipice will be weird. They will have peculiarities other than “disagrees politically.” (Usually fairly harmless. Ted Cruz quotes science fiction movies and books and can’t read a room to save his life. Probably literally. It’s a wonder he survived this long as a politician.)

They will also not be great as politicians. Smooth career politicians are unlikely to step that far out of the “mainstream” even when the mainstream is running around with pants on its head making choo choo noises. Whatever else politicians are, they’re highly social. Now, there might be some geniuses out there, who are politicians and genuine goats and under cover, but probably not a large number of them..

The time is late. The danger is very real.

All our champions will be peculiar. And if you keep screaming at them with the rest of the band and saying “You’re peculiar” then you won’t get any.

I don’t mean to say we must run Trump. Again, who we run makes no difference until we get the fraud out. Certainly not for national offices.

BUT if we want people, particularly people of money and fame — howdy, Elon, hey — to stand up against the establishment, we must stand against the establishment. We must not revile them.

If they’re going to get bilge from both sides, why would anyone sane stand out? (Sane for a definition of can see the train coming at speed.)

It’s my theory if the times weren’t so bad and crazy, we’d have NO ONE with any power and influence. Heck, we might not have me.

This is completely different from the way the other side treats their weird (and considering how they’re the voice of the pack it’s amazing how many rank weirdos they have. And I mean rank) members: I submit Beto, the fake Latin, and Tank Abrahams the crazy fake governor of Georgia. Do they revile them? Even when they do or say the craziest things? Nope. They pet them, love them, call them George and suggest they run for president.

And this when their weird members have far less excuse both in a “stand outside the pack” way and in a “so stressful to have all your friends turn on you” way.

So… Put down that handful of poo, and think before you join the bien pensant in hurling it at the champions of the right. And give them room to sometimes be weird or say strange things (and in this I’m including Cruz, deSantis, etc.) without immediately turning on them.

Paranoia is a perfectly sane reaction to growing up surrounded by foes. But it can be exaggerated. I realize not giving people another chance to stab you is a good thing. But count out the first two. The first is happenstance, the second is coincidence. (And this doesn’t mean going after people on words said sometimes reported out of context, but on real, verifiable deeds.)

Stand down. Don’t kill the weirdo. He or she might be your only chance at getting out of this bind.

Post-Mortem by Thomas Kendall

               “To the MAGA diehards, I say: is this really what you want? A Republican Party that can’t decisively whip the Democrats even in an extremely favorable year?”

               Oh, for fuck’s sake.

               I wouldn’t describe myself as a MAGA diehard, and yet on behalf of people who still actually want to make America great again, whatever slogan is attached to doing so, allow me to respond:

               No, Rod. What we wanted was for the party to have our back when 2020 was stolen using possibly the most blatant fraud in US history. The party declined to do so, largely because establishment GOP leaders had always seen Trump as a threat to the gravy train. We were told it looked bad. We responded that elections that had more mail in ballots returned than sent out, elections where the counting stopped in the middle of the night to throw out Republican observers and allow the delivery of massive drops of Democratic ballots with no chain of custody, that looked bad. We were told there wasn’t enough evidence. So someone literally put up a website called “hereistheevidence” tabulating the evidence. It had no noticeable effect.

               We told the rest of the conservative movement way back then that the consequences of not going to the mattress when fraud was as obvious as it had ever been, and likely as obvious as it ever would be, given the operations were scaled hastily and the legislative moves to support them had been blatantly illegal, were going to cost us all more than we could possibly bear. The party shook their heads and took the easy way out, to preserve their precious respectability.

               And now you turn around, two years later, and have the unbelievable fucking nerve to blame this on MAGA?

               This blog predicted the midterms were going to be muted, at best. It predicted it even though basically the whole rest of the Right, including people who should have definitely known better, were predicting a mid-term drubbing for the Democrats. What magic crystal ball did we look into to tell this? None. We had eyes, we remembered what happened in 2020, and given that information, it was not difficult to come to the conclusion that this game, once rigged, was going to stay rigged. Oh, people tried to beat the house. The number of votes was at or equal to a presidential election in places (and plenty of voters turned out too!).

               I think I speak for all of us when I say we hoped we were missing something. We hoped that we could beat the margin of fraud. We hoped against hope that a miracle would happen. But we’ve had precious few miracles since 2016, and the last time we got one, the national party revealed their true monoparty biases and collaborated to do their best to undo it. Well, congratulations to the monoparty and its supporters, because it looks like you may actually have finally done it. But I’ll get to you sods in a moment.

               As for what we do about the pickle all this has put us in, honestly, this is one of those situations where all of the answers are bad, but fuck it, here they are:
               Option 1, and what seems to be the most popular with various sites right now, is easing Trump out and trying to move forward with candidates who carry forward some of the spirit of MAGA without the baggage. Am I capturing that plan properly? And on paper, given all of this context-free momentum around DeSantis, I’m sure this seems swell… except for some tiny details.

               Even if the establishment GOP doesn’t find a way to neuter him first, the Democratic fraud machine which has literally handed you your asses twice now is not going to let DeSantis win. Not if he remains actually worth voting for, anyway. His huge margin is in one of the few states that actually has cleaned up its elections. Part of the error here is thinking Florida is purple. It isn’t. In fact I know of no states that have done substantive work to fight voter fraud that have been purple since they did it, but can name two that have become reliably red—Texas and Florida. Whereas I can name states that have become purple or even blue by making voter fraud easier (sidebar: sorry about Colorado, Sarah; Arizona, please keep fighting!). The idea that winning on one of the only even playing fields in the US will translate to winning in a rigged system is breathtaking magical thinking. That said, I’ve been watching various blogs grooming DeSantis as Trump’s replacement since January. Now with 20 point margins under his belt, he’s a shoo-in. I’m not sure what it is you’re planning to gain by making this switch. I hear people saying he’s a better candidate for X, Y, and Z reasons. Maybe they’re right. DeSantis certainly doesn’t seem to make the kind of dumb-as-rocks hiring choices Trump did, although also, he did have Trump’s poor example to learn from. I think it’s kind of an academic question, though.

               On the other hand, I’ll admit, at this point, to a kind of fatalistic fascination with watching you try to get someone worthwhile into the White House. By all means, be my guest. In a strange way we have nothing but time at this point. We won in our Flight 93 election—but like Flight 93, the plane has still crashed. So sure, given we’re on the train to a socialist Hell as we speak, and I cannot imagine a way it will make things worse, why not do it to pass the time? You’ll have my support in the vote, for all the good it does. You’ll probably have the support of most of the party. Although, hilariously, having watched Trump, if DeSantis or whoever it is is actually worth their salt, I’m not sure they’ll  have your support by then. If the Democrats get scared enough, they’ll run the game they did with Trump on you. They’ll use out-of-context quotes and baseless accusations to build an evil facade around DeSantis—just as they did with Trump— make him the picture of Satan incarnate with independents—just as they did with Trump—and send you braying to the Hills for another worthwhile conservative to elevate and abandon the moment your enemies run the exact same playbook they run every time. Like it’s new. Like it’s never been done before, every fucking time. God above, they did this with McCain, they will surely do it with him. And speaking of, while I’m on the subject, we may as well deal with this now—

               When it doesn’t work…

               And you come back to us in two years blaming us again…

               When you come back—despite your snipes at the Bulwark and the pre-Trump GOP—  telling us that what’s dragging the Republican party down is all this MAGA stuff, and if we only ran a more moderate candidate…

               That’s when you’re reaching for option 2.

               Option 2 is that you actually find Republican candidates so non-threatening to the Left that they don’t try very hard to fight them. This is what the establishment GOP wants us to do very badly, and by 2024 or 2028—supposing the country lasts that long—what I’m predicting is that if you walk down this road, you also are going to be demanding it, just to get a win on the board. I am guessing that you disagree, but you forget that Trump was DeSantis before DeSantis was DeSantis (honestly for as many of Trump’s mannerisms as DeSantis has started parroting I almost wrote “before DeSantis was Trump”). I look at you now, throwing Trump overboard using the same pejoratives the Left has used against him all these years, and through that window I can see you in 4 or 8 years tossing out DeVilsantis in favor of your new flavor of the week.

               So this next part goes out to your future self, and the establishment GOP standing behind you, and to all misguided simpletons in the conservative party already harboring these thoughts in their dark little hearts and eager to really earn that “stupid party” moniker. I’m going to be brutally honest about a few things. First of all, this is the strategy the party has basically been using since Regan left office. In that time it’s given us such gems as two flavors of George Bush, both dubious and  the surviving one is getting more dubious all the time, John McCain, and Mitt Romney.  Speaking frankly, if I rolled them all up and squeezed, I might get enough actual conservative bona fides for a mayoral candidate in a medium sized conservative town.

               Second of all, you’ll notice that it had, even so, stopped working. The Left moved so far Left that they preferred to have people live under authentic Leftism rather than Left Lite. Left Lite barely squeaked in here and there, and eventually just stopped being able to. And they got called Nazis for 4 to 8 years for making basically the same decisions as Democrats except for occasionally acknowledged their own personal religious beliefs.

               Third of all, despite this fact, we know that you expected actual conservatives to continue supporting the national party—which was basically never Trump before there was a Trump to never— because it was, again, speaking frankly, the equivalent of driving off a cliff at 20 MPH rather than 100 MPH. I think I remember Bill Whittle actually making that comparison more or less verbatim, and I remember the days when it made sense. We figured that was how things had to be, since no actual conservatives seemed to be winning elections.

               Then 2016 happened. And now we know. The national party wasn’t and isn’t trying and failing.  They were trying to fail. And to their detriment, in 2020, as I said, perhaps finally succeeded.

               I have bad news, though. I can’t in good conscience collaborate with the experiment to force an unwilling country to go voluntarily socialist by not offering them anything else. There was a little window where we had an actual conservative agenda to vote for and the fraud apparatus was caught off guard and now we see the game, you understand?

               So the next time you elevate a Mitt Romney or a John McCain, don’t bother asking for my vote. You’re not getting it. You got it a few times and it was a few times too many. I let you, nominally in my name, erect the TSA and pass the Patriot Act. I let you, in my name, send corn-fed heartland kids to die because Democratic policies rendered our intelligence agencies unfit for anything except spying on Americans and getting directly and—do I have to specify this?—grossly inappropriately involved in federal politics. I defended your retrospectively retarded argument that the only solution was to build nations where no nations have, best as I can tell, ever successfully been built (given our commitment to teaching them the merits of urinal art-installations I can’t blame the natives). If that evened up the offspring score between the military-supporting right and the barren-via-abortion Left that was—certainly I’m sure to the Left— all to the good, and you were just the kind of patsies to take that bargain.

               Maybe, just maybe if you corrupt the concept of “conservative” enough you’ll find someone the Left will actually let you have a pyrrhic victory by voting in. I’d start by looking under damp rocks, that’s where I’ve seen the best establishment GOP candidates. And won’t it be a blast, watching the same perpetually failing socialist policies and government overreach be passed by someone with an R after their name instead of a D? I’m sure the Left would like a break from the accountability… such as it is.

               But you will not do it in my name. Whoever it is, I won’t back and I won’t pretend to back. I’ve seen through the game, and now I’ll vote only for people I would actually want to represent me, or failing that, don’t seem to actively hate me. And if there aren’t any, I’ll figure out something to write in as my protest vote. Because it’s a terrible thing to be forced to make a bad choice, but it’s corrosive to the soul to voluntarily acquiesce to things antithetical to your fundamental beliefs just to try to score a meaningless win in a battle between two groups that both hate you. Fuck all of you, on both sides, right back. Donald Trump was my first middle finger to both of you gangs of criminals. He was not my last.

               And, at long last, coming back to your present self, Rod, there is option 3. Option 3 is that you forget about candidates as your focus entirely, because at this point, who you feed into the meat-grinder is an incidental fact. Chasing the feedback from a system designed only to ensure you won’t win is a madness that can only lead to more madness. So instead, turn towards fixing the actual problem. It’s tentative, and I can’t swear it will work, but as I said, in a sense we have nothing but time, now that the party has driven us well and truly over the edge. We could at least try to do as I said in my last article, and begin cleaning up the elections in every place we have any power to do so. The Democrats have had us in a Leftward ratchet for a long time. We could stand to try building a ratchet of our own. We don’t have a lot of leverage, but on the other hand, did we have something better to do?

               Get the fix out. Or you will lose. And you will keep losing. You will lose when you should have won. And the only wins they’ll let you have will be ones that aren’t worth having.

Image by syaifulptak57 from Pixabay

I debated long and hard on whether to write this. By and large I like you guys. And also yelling at people might cause them to tune me out.

However, let us be absolutely clear: I write this blog to tell the truth as I see it, and give what guidance I can when I see it. If that causes people to stopper their ears, it’s none of my business. It is what it is. My writ, as far as I have one is to tell you the truth the way it’s supposed to be told. Whether you take it up or not, it’s in your hands. Whether you get made at me for it or not, it’s in your hands. NOT my circus, not my monkeys.

So… Sarah pulls off gloves, turns the picture of Heinlein to the wall so he won’t hear the worst of it. Picks up broom. Holds it like a Samurai sword.

We’ll open by quoting Wy Knot from The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, by way of an opening: Oh, you ROCKHEADS. You DESERVE TO STARVE!

I’ve been wanting to say that for a day and a half. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get something else out of the way.

My groups have gone round and round on the election, and finally the gentle (AHEM) being who comments here as Ian Bruene (Sp? Hon, I can’t spell my OWN name half the time.) distilled and encapsulated better than I could.

So, I think this is my distillation of lessons from the midterms (written as speaking to a generic audience):

1. Iowa and Florida did the hard work to clean up voting. They had blowout victories.

2. Guam doesn’t have voting power. Thus not worth frauding. They had a blowout victory.

3. Iowa had tons of abortion, reeeeeee campaigning. The result was to turn redder.

From that we can make some conclusions:

1. It’s the fraud. Anyone who is taking the abortion talking point can kindly stuff it.

2. It’s the fraud. If you aren’t interested in doing the hard local work to clean it up, you aren’t interested in winning.

3. We have a mild win. Why are y’all casting it as the defeat to end all defeats? I don’t care how much of a losing fetish you have. If you must indulge it hire a dominatrix and do it in private.

Ian Bruene

To this I’d add two notes: there are contests still undecided. By doing the normal GOP and GOPe bullshit of going “Oh, this is perfectly legit with just a bit of fraud” you are ensuring those contests are frauded dem. And that we lose the Senate.

And the other note is: Isn’t it weird we got like ten instances of Trump attacking DeSantis in the last few days? Has anyone sourced and CONTEXTUALIZED THOSE?

Mind you I’m not putting it past Trump to say those things. He’s blunt and touchy. But he doesn’t do stuff like that out of the blue. Is there provocation, overt or covert? Because if you think DeSantis isn’t ambitious you’re nuts? Or is someone telling Trump there is?

It would be okay for you guys to assume he’s just crazy in 16 but NOW? You know better. Yeah, he was bombastic but not without provocation. So, before you cut him off as the left so desperately wants us to, and with it decide there was no fraud in 2020 or now, and go back to that well worn prison of the mind…. can you INVESTIGATE? Because you have to admit it is weird. And at the same time, the left has stopped attacking DeSantis. Things that make you go “Uh”

And yes, it was fraud. I’d guess from looking at numbers, 20% to 25% fraud. This is what they had prepared in 2020 (the biggest most inclusive fraud netowork.) but Trump won more votes, so they had to fraud at the last minute, openly.

This time it was SEAMLESS as planned.

AND I TOLD YOU ABOUT IT. I TOLD YOU THAT WE HAD TO TRY BUT IT WAS POSSIBLY USELESS. And you all told me they couldn’t fraud that many contests. WHY NOT? the machinery was ready.

Seriously, I do realize believing in that much fraud makes you feel helpless and scared. And Americans don’t want to believe that. But convincing yourself it was “just a little fraud” and “it must have been close” is the way to death. Comfortable death, in which you don’t have to do anything but death nontheless.

So, close the organ. Stop singing.

Because I personally am not ready to lie down and take it. If I die, it will be with an ax in my hands and a f*ck you in my lips. I’d never be able to face gggggggggrandma, the Viking bint otherwise.

So what can we do?

Well, you guys know I’m a depressive. And I guess I allowed myself to hope more than I should have that we could take the last exit off this highway to Venezuela. So, I’m still recovering and my vision is grim as heck.

I suspect this is the black dog talking: (WHO THE HECK TRAINED THE BLACK DOG TO TALK?) but I feel at this point Starship Troopers is the best case scenario. And that’s for us. The rest of the world… Do you ever feel like the timeline we’re in, someone came through and made sure Germany lost the war, but the timeline keeps trying to merge to the “main” untampered with one?
Yeah, that for the rest of the world.

So, if it’s that and we go all the way there (I really… there is a voice somewhere, in the back of my mind screaming we won’t.)….

Let’s start with the worst possible option: From the song I put up before: When it all goes to hell we swear allegiance to the flag, whatever flag they offer, with fingers firmly crossed, and teach the children quietly for someday sons and daughters will rise up and fight where we stood still.

We wouldn’t be the first people to do that. And the other is still going, when empires fell.

But meanwhile, there’s stuff we can do.

First, it’s going to get bad. It’s going to get very very bad. These dead alive coup-perpetrators want us all dead, because they were programmed in their youth by the USSR to take the US down. It’s already bad. It’s going to get worse.

ANYTHING you need done on the house, try to get it done as soon as possible. (There will be a post on that later.) Anything you can do to complete your preparations, do it now, even if it pinches (it’s pinching us): You need food and fuel and passive and aggressive defenses for your food and fuel.

It’s going to be a bad winter, and either way it’s going to be a hard landing.

DO NOT BUY THE NARRATIVE. I noticed it was in all the papers. DO NOT buy it. It was a tsunami, which means that even with the fraud we made some gains. Keep your eyes on the disputed ones, and make a noise such that they will hear us from the future. Talk back at every possible chance. Explain. Explain again. DO NOT GO PASSIVE. The quiet road is the one to hell.

And then stand ready. These people can’t govern a mouse in a barrel. They surely can’t govern the US of A.

Things are going to fall apart. And then we need you to rebuild.

Be not afraid. Weary, tired, angry — oh, lord the anger* — but not afraid. And hold fast. They can’t win. But we have to ensure we don’t lose.

I was so HOPING for the miracle of a soft landing.

But we’re going to do it the hard way. We’re going to do it in hard and extreme mode. May G-d help us.

This will stay up as long as I can, and the light will stay on, and I’ll figure out other things we can do as time goes on.

GO prepare, and refuse to buy the mintru, and remain UNGOVERNABLE. You’re Huns, it shouldn’t be hard. If an authority told you to breathe you’d die of asphyxiation. This is your superpower. Go and use it. (But not like that.)

*The anger!

Yes, I’m all right, though irritated beyond belief. That’s not the reason for the radio silence though. That was a bunch of unexpected family stuff, and expected doctor stuff. (No, nothing wrong, at least not that we know of yet. There is much going on not understood and we’re pursuing it. Faint but pursuing.)

I’ll be back in an hour or so with a post, but just so y’all know this is what’s running through my head.

As well as “o, calm, dishonorable vile submission.”

As I write this late on the 8th, the tsunami is resolving itself into a wavelet.

Or rather, the tsunami has been overfrauded into a wavelet. And it might be frauded away to a Dem win before I wake tomorrow.

This shouldn’t be a surprise to any of us who were awake and remember this:

And we know damn well it was a Trump landslide before that.

So for the Republicans to have picked up any seat, this was the tsunami to end all tsunamis.

I know the usual idiots are out there, already saying “It was abortion: the Womyns came out in force to vote dem.”

Are there women who are single ticket abortion voters. Sure. Most are older than I and are determined to make sure their actions and choices are validated a-postriori. They’re an ever dwindling minority. Married women vote more and more for the right every time. Single women? Who knows? But I suspect there’s been a shift in that too after the last too years. And most of them don’t see that career path ahead they once did.

Then there’s the other bs which is of course “The people don’t want to be free.” That’s bs. The people, every time they can express their displeasure do so. But having the vote taken away from them via fraud means THEY each individual thinks he or she is alone.

Things like “Let’s go Brandon” sweep the nation, but there’s no major legal or financial movement to protest the fraud, because each person thinks “I guess all these idiots are so beaten down they like beaten down, and I’m the only one who is angry.”

Meanwhile the perpetrators know what the people think, and erect barricades in DC to protect themselves from the anger they sense but can’t seem to bring out into the open.

Yes, we’re getting the house, and probably not the senate. Which means a good five/six seats fraud. I’m in a group right now with people crunching numbers, and the fraud is evident. The races the democrats cared out got flipped by turning just those votes for the dems. That’s the flexibility of dominion at work, and the way they can turn a vote into the other.

We have a massive, huge, bizarre fraud problem. This morning, in my red district, 90% of the people chose to vote on machines. Because it’s so much faster and more convenient. And of course, completely unverifiable and unsafe.

Frankly in the primaries, my husband — my very own personal husband — went in ahead of me, and when asked if he wanted paper or machines, took the machines.

Because of course he did. It was early, he was tired, work has been feral, and he wanted to vote with the least amount of fuss. So machines.

And he’s not stupid and lives with a political junkie, who has told him all the problems with the machines multiple times. And for heaven’s sake, he’s a programmer. He knows anything linked to the net can and will be hacked. Heck, around the election of 2020 he poked around what was going on and pointed out the only reason for the machines to be set up was they were had to be to facilitate fraud.

But two years later he’d forgotten and headed for the machines. How much more the people who hear about the machines, and are under the vague impression that has all been disproven?

Of course they assume their friends and neighbors are tyranny freaks who want to be stepped on so badly they don’t care if they’re starving and freezing.

I can’t give you the numbers. I’ll try to get a friend who is a number person to do a post for me soonest. But the numbers stink. Or to quote Larry in 2020 “Fuckery is afoot.” And how.

We have a serious fraud problem.

LET ME SAY THAT AGAIN: We have a serious fraud problem.

Which means we can’t vote our way out of this one. You know what? It was always a possibility, always baked in.

When you say “If it’s not close they can’t cheat” you’re forgetting the magical power of computers.

More importantly you’re forgetting the magical power of fraud by mail.

Yeah, Colorado is intent on getting rid of its last republicans. And it CAN by the magic power of fraud by mail and same day registration.

Same goes for California. Washington. Oregon. Hawaii now PA.

“But those are Democrat” you say.

Are they? HOW DO YOU KNOW?

I’d estimate that even Colorado is AT worst Purple. But fraud by mail.

Look at the way those places are governed, as though they had not a care for the governed. Why not? The fix is in. The states are completely controlled. There is no fighting free.

What I want to ask you is this WHY DID WE LET IT HAPPEN?

No, I don’t mean as citizens. When your state is swallowed, the only sane thing is to move.

As a nation.

Do you think those states are enjoying a Republican form of government? No? THEN WHY DID THE REST OF THE COUNTRY LET IT HAPPEN?

Where were the pundits, the opposition party, EVERYONE?

Colorado went vote by mail only by executive order “to save money” (After they frauded in a dem win, which I watched first hand.)

WHY did no one, from the courts on go “Uh, that’s not a safe form of voting. No other country does this. We wouldn’t allow a recently pacified country to hold their elections this way, because it’s rife for fraud?”

WHY didn’t vast groups of other states sue them?

Because their dirty house impacts everyone?

Because they were busy going “Those d*mn Californians” “Eh, Those hippie Coloradans. They’re all stoned.” “Oh, PA is ignoring the SC. Everything is fine then.”

WHAT THE ACTUAL H*LL?

Guys this is cancer. This is how cancer grows.

Every day your body throws out one or more cancers. EVERY DAY. A cell or two. But your immune system says “that’s wrong” and they disappear before multiplying madly.

Our immune system failed. Parts of our body politic are now permanently captured.

And cancer metastasizes. Other parts are now merely infected. Only the “important to the dems to hold power” races are turned. The others are allowed to be R, when the numbers make no sense.

Meanwhile our immune system goes “well, fortunes of war. Nothing to see here. I guess it was abortion. I guess other people like tyranny.”

And our pundits go a little more left to attract what they think is the center.

And our corporations follow suit. And we become more of a fascist corporatist state.

They can’t win. It’s all going to come apart, because they can’t govern. But they can prevent serious opposition if they convince us they won. If they convince us the future belongs to them.

Already today there were people talking about completely erasing their media presence, disappearing, etc.

That’s the wrong way. It is the actions of people who think they’re in the minority, that the dems won legitimately, even that they will rule forever.

Yes, I know, they will come after some of us. And try to make examples. But they’ve actually proven pretty drawers at carrying out large scale repression, the same way they’ve proven themselves drawers at large scale governing.

There is a danger of maybe horrible harassment. But the more of us who stand up, the more of a network we have. We’re here for each other.

Remember I did this before, in the bad old days of telephone trees. Remember too there were still dissidents in the USSR when it fell. And there are dissidents in Cuba, despite everything. They remain because they keep in touch with others, in and out of their countries, and it would make too much noise to take them down.

And we’re needed.

Lord help me. Lord love a duck. Do you know how much happier I’d be walking away from politics and writing my little stories, most of them not political. And some political but not in ways they’ll get. (Not even joking. In my most floridly Libertarian phase, I was accepted first by a communist editor. He saw things that weren’t there. And didn’t see others.)

But I’m standing here. And I’m going to continue standing here.

Why? Because I might be the only one yelling this, but I’ll continue yelling it: YOU ARE NOT ALONE. PEOPLE DON’T WANT THIS. THE FRAUD IS IMMENSE. NO. BIGGER THAN THAT.

I might be — I will remain — the only part of the immune system pointing at the cancer and saying “That’s not of us. This is not the American people. This doesn’t behave like the American people. This is killing us.”

BUT YOU ARE NOT ALONE. And America is alive and well.

They can’t win. But we can lose. We can let cancer eat us and leave us rife for breaking apart, or for turning into a weird patchwork of fiefdoms, none of us free, though some perhaps not incompetent.

For that we need to accept cancer as normal, healthy activity. We need to ignore impossible numbers. Giant fraud. We need to believe that states with all vote by mail are perfectly free of fraud.

We have to surrender to the cancer.

I’m not surrendering. I hope you’re not either. Tomorrow, particularly if we wake up to a Dem “win” you need to be out there, laughing at people who say it was the womyns or that people love them some tyranny.

You need to be out there putting spine into the idiots, and pointing out that they’re acting as if these idiots can govern forever, when things are already falling apart.

I TOLD YOU IT WAS GOING TO GET ROUGH. Did you think I was joking?

This is where you stand up. You hold your light up for the world to see. You say “I know it’s fraud.” And ignore the insults hurled at you.

Because it’s fraud. It’s cancer.

To fight cancer, you first have to identify it.

Your lives, your fortunes, your sacred honor.

Did you think it would be easy? Did you think it was just a game?

Ladies and gentlemen, let’s make so much noise, light such a big fire they will see us from the future.

And find their way to liberty.

The re-release this month is A Few Good Men. I briefly considered changing the name to Uprising, but since it was published first under A Few Good Men, well…

And no, the title isn’t Baen’s fault. It was the only title that came to me. Hey, I never claimed to be good with titles.

Anyway, Caitlin Walsh and I are planning (plotting) a comic book of a few good men. Well, a graphic novel, because I think it’s going to run to at least 100 pages to get even all the plot down. Might be 150. Hard cover, kickstartered. (Which means we’ll have to look up the prices, etc. to set the amount.) I think it fund and be fine. She is very talented, and I have started to get comic scripts. We’re going to do the first 20/30 pages, as soon as I get her a script.

For those who haven’t read my science fiction, this is the book of the USAian revolution at least in part of the Earth.

So, because today I’m torn between despair and hope more than usual, here is a sketch that Caitlin made, and a uh maybe a bit spoilerish but not too much for a book that’s been out ten years excerpt of AFGM.

My soi-disant father must have been very good at training servants, whatever else he might have been bad at. And perhaps that was not a big surprise, since after all he meant to make servants of every person under his rule.

What I mean is, they came in to clear the remains of dinner and didn’t seem even slightly discomfited that Nathaniel Remy appeared to have dissolved into thin air. Perhaps they thought I’d let him out without anyone noticing. At any rate, they were the least inquisitive people imaginable.

I’d lingered over fruit and coffee, thinking I’d just made the biggest mistake of my life, but unable to feel sorry for it. If I held out, I’d be holding out in the name of what? Not being a joiner? Being contrary to the end? There was nothing to gain by that, and so much to lose. I looked at the pile of gems on my desk, and thought that at the very least I owed it to all those dead people, those destroyed people, not to go without a fight.

I locked the gems away on my desk drawer, I called the servants to clear the table, and I went to bed.

And woke up with Nat Remy calling out, “Lucius? Are you decent?”

“What?” I was awake immediately, as I was whenever someone came into the room, but this seemed rather early for a moral enquiry. Goldie jumped on the bed, tried to lick my face and in the darkness, I patted him and pushed his hindquarters down.

“Are you dressed? Dressed enough to be seen by people?”

“Oh. Yes.” I was in shorts and a light shirt, and though no one would call it a formal outfit, I’d need to go to the most distant and strange parts of the Earth to be arrested for indecency.

“Good,” he said. And then “Light.” Lights came on.

He stood in front of the secret door, which was closed. Martha stood on his right, and Abigail, blushing, on his left. Why was she blushing, I wondered? She was very young, and maybe she’d never been in a male’s bedroom before. On the other hand, my bedroom was hardly indecent and I, sitting on the bed, patting the idiot dog, might be disheveled, but otherwise wasn’t even mildly titillating. Then again perhaps she’d taken in the implications of Nat’s secret passageway, in which case . . . it was none of my business. Surely she didn’t think it had been built in a week. Martha just smiled at me in a matter-of-fact way, then walked across the room and opened the door. Sam came in. By this time, I was feeling seriously alarmed.

“Is anything wrong?” I asked.

Sam shook his head, and it was he who spoke, “It was judged easier to have Abigail and I carry proxies for the other members of the twelve than to have all of us get together here, or have you flown elsewhere. Our intelligence gathering tells us there’s been a flurry of activity by Scrubbers. We’re not sure what they’re up to, and we are not about to take risks we don’t need.”

The other members of the twelve. The Sons of Liberty were all young hotheads. And Sam and his wife knew nothing of what their children were involved in. And I was innocent as a babe unborn. My house was not just filled with Usaians. It was filled with dangerous revolutionaries. And liars. And yet, I thought better of Sam for doing something about the injustices and crimes that crossed his desk every day, rather than sitting still and letting evil go on.

Sam had the grace to blush a little at my expression, then shrugged. “Sometimes, telling the truth will only endanger all those who depend on you, and to whom you swore to keep silent so they’d not be found out.”

I inclined my head and didn’t say anything. He cleared his throat. “Nat tells us . . . That is, he says you’re willing to admit to believing everyone should be assumed to have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as a fundamental right. And that the purpose of government is to protect it. Before he left the meeting, previously, he secured people’s vote that you be allowed to join our organization on probation, if you professed such beliefs.” Was his smile totally ironic? “Of course, I suspect two or three of them, at the time, thought it was more likely for them to get hit by a meteor that had lain in ambush in an alley, waiting for them to walk by. But we got them to agree to your full induction, and we’ll do it before they can retract that. That way you’ll be a full member. And we’ll avoid another internal battle.”

Nat cleared his throat and I thought he had suppressed laughter and it occurred to me that if any members of the council thought that they were too stupid to hold office and perhaps too stupid to live. Nat Remy was not a honeypot, and he might be the world’s worst missionary. But he had inherited from Sam a kind of bullish gentleness that would keep bringing a point up, ever so gently but so continuously that the subject of their efforts couldn’t help but surrender.

I didn’t doubt that I’d been steered to this point. I’d need to be an idiot to not have noticed. But I was sure of one thing: Sam hadn’t cooked those records. Contrary to popular belief, a complex narrative spanning centuries was hard to create without leaving huge holes. Heck, it was hard to create a simple lie spanning hours. Which was why most novels were enjoyed despite the holes in the narrative. And those records held. Which meant, whether he’d arranged for me to ask for them or not, the reasons I was doing this were real.

“So,” Sam drew himself up straighter. “Lucius Dante Maximilian Keeva, do you believe in Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness as individual rights?”

“Yeah,” I said and tried to avoid the three Remy siblings staring at me from my right side. They all looked rapt, as though they had no idea what came next.

“And have you read, and do you believe in, the Constitution of the United States of America, and believe, if followed, it would create a nation that would respect such rights?”

“Yeah,” I said. Because it was easier than to explain I thought it had terrible loopholes and flaws, but would create a state superior to anything else before or since—at least as far as my reading of history went—and infinitely superior to the stability we’d endured for three hundred years.

“Do you realize the Usaian religion is proscribed in most of the Earth and that, if revealed as a member, you could be summarily or publicly and lengthily executed?”

“Yeah,” I said, at which point it occurred to me that I was being asked life-changing questions, while I sat on the bed, with Goldie lying across my legs. It didn’t seem right. It seemed like it should take place in an elaborately decorated hall, with flags flying and bands playing.

“And are you ready, nonetheless, to become a member, and to work towards the reestablishment of a republic under that constitution, even if it should mean the loss of—”

I fished the answer from what I remembered of my reading. “My life, my fortune and my sacred honor.”

Someone sniffled. I thought it was Abigail. I hoped it was Abigail.

“And do you promise to keep secret and support your fellows in this fight to the limits of your ability, and not betray anything or anyone to the authorities no matter what persuasions are used?”

“Yes.”

“Then Lucius Dante Maximilian Keeva, welcome to the brotherhood of free men.” And then, to my profound and stunned shock, Sam Remy stepped close and kissed me on the cheek. And I’ll be damned if his children didn’t repeat the performance.

“And now,” Sam said, “that you are one of us, do you agree to let us use the seacity as the basis for the start of our great work?”

I nodded. I had realized, sometime while reading those awful gems, that I wasn’t going to be the Good Man by the end of this. Not if it worked. I’d be lucky if I still had my life at the end of this, particularly if we won. And yet it was worth it. If I had my life it would be enough, anyway. I’d never wanted to be the Good Man.

“Then, ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great joy to proclaim the revolution.”

Looks like we’re in for nasty weather….

The Only Way Out is Through….

Don’t put your trust in revolutions, they always come around again…

But Sometimes All You can do is all you can do, no matter how black pilled. Get the f out and vote! and pray for a miracle. G-d protects fools, drunkards and the United States of America.

And Sometimes the Miracles are made of Human.

And sometimes the butcher must be paid. pray that’s not our fate.

Be Not Afraid

Be Not Afraid

Sursum Corda!

The Game Is Worth The Candle; the prize is worth the running

Keep Your Clothes and Weapons Where You Can find them in the Dark!

G-d Bless You And Keep You. Go Vote, Go Document, Go Report and Pray for the best.

Radio Free Colorado — in Exile — signing out, with tears in my eyes. Go you fools, Go Save the Republic, and stop listening to this old woman.

A friend of mine this week posted something in one of my many (I really need to weed and concentrate on paying writing) chat channels. It was “As Sarah has warned us we’re all becoming poorer.”

I confess that as with most things that go “As Sarah said” I don’t remember giving that warning.

And you know and I know that the economists have pointed out in the end inflation is a theft from the middle class, but it’s hard to explain the mechanism. I mean, no one is coming to my house and taking away things that are now more expensive, right?

Ah, but in a way they are. Worse, they’re taking away things from the nation, that we’re used to and have always had.

Before I get to what occasioned my friend’s comment, let me explain how rich America was (and still is in many ways.)

When I came here I had no illusions about everyone being millionaires or the streets being paved with gold, thought that is still the belief of many foreigners. I’d been an exchange student here at the end of Jimmah’s misrule, and I knew how tough it was for my middle-class host parents. (I don’t think we went out to eat the entire time. Not even for fast food. As an example. Mom and dad were house rich and cash poor.)

However, I knew it was a country of strange and unstinting abundance.

What do I mean? Well… Your cheaper hotels were at the same level as the most expensive ones in Portugal for comfort and prompt service.

You had all you can eat buffets. All you can eat! whoever heard of that? Your thrift shops overflowed, not with the tattered and torn, but with last year’s fashions, last year’s electronics. Your public areas, and even your grocery stores had bathrooms and water fountains. Everything was large, easy, comfortable.

In that sense America didn’t disappoint me. It largely still doesn’t, not compared to most places. The free market makes you be kind to customers and attract them to your area, while in socialism everyone who comes to your store is another drain. (Same as health care.)

When Dan and I got pneumonia in Portugal in 88, even though because of family and connections we got the best health care available, my SIL — an MD — advised us to more our return forward, so we could maybe survive the pneumonia (yes, it was that bad.) So we flew back to Charlotte NC and — because we had no insurance — we went to a doc in a box. Who prescribed anti-biotics that saw us right within another week. This was literally unobtanium in Portugal at the time. We could get it, but it would take a month and by then….

Abundance. Our poor live better than the middle-class in Europe not just because our houses are better built and have heating and cooling and there are a million food-assistance programs (when the kids were teens under Obama we signed up for a non-means-testing one via the church which allowed us to buy all our groceries for $80 a month, save for cleaners and cat stuff. We were thanked for signing up, because the more people in it, the cheaper they could make the bulk-purchased food. (We dropped out of that ONLY because we had to go low carb for health reasons. A lot of the food was pre-prepared and super convenient, but carb-laden.)

At our poorest, we would get A hotel room for the weekend in Denver, and take a vacation with the kids, in comfort for about $500 total in today’s dollars. (When it started, it was around $200 on the budget.)

You see, embassy suites, which catered to business travelers, had super-cheap prices on the weekend. At least some weekends, and I checked the next weekend pretty much every week. And it had two rooms. The kids could sleep on the sofa, so it wasn’t crowded. And they had FREE BREAKFAST. Who’s heard of that? With real cooked-to-order stuff, not just some rolls and butter? Abroad? very few people. And those well off.

So we would take the kids down for breakfast at ten (look we had no television at home, so they loved the morning cartoons.) and then hit the town. Pre-paid memberships to museums and zoo. Free tours of mines and factories. About the most expensive thing we did was the amusement park, which was $5 entry and $11 for all rides. (Doubled by the time we stopped going, seven years ago, but still.) Dan and I didn’t even get the full rides. We got maybe $5 extra between us, but the kids got ALL the rides. Sure, it was the off-brand park, with the older rides and where most people spoke Spanish. So? It was fun. Abundance.

So, how is all that imperiled by inflation?

I’m glad you asked!

We get back to what my friend reported: she recently traveled and the hotel rooms were…. slightly less clean. There were obvious repairs in the shower. The staff was fewer people, and less attentive.

I’ve been experiencing this too. Places are getting dingier. Linens will look worn. Furniture slightly battered.

I also experienced buying a house in “flyover country” and were shocked. The one we bought still needs repair and we’re getting to it a little at a time, but–

We looked in smaller and more remote places. You know, those that were hit by the Chinification. Factories closed. People were left unemployed. People moved away. And the people left behind had no money for house maintenance, let alone improvement. I am cursed with being the granddaughter of carpenters.

Granite counters and nice walkin showers are good to have, and yes, we plan to put them here in a few years, but those won’t be needed to buy a house.

It’s more that the bad roofs, the flooded basements “oh, it’s nothing. It’s dry most of the time”, the basement ceiling held up with an old board that’s half bent…..

The prices were great. Some places were beautiful. I loved the small towns. But I’d have to build the house back form ground up, and I’m too old for that.

That it was universal means those people weren’t slobs or neglecting issues on purpose. They were TIGHT. When you’re tight you do the barely necessary.

Right now, businesses are tight. So, you hire fewer servers, you hire cheaper personnel. You don’t clean hotel rooms every day, and your personnel is on a schedule that means cleaning standards would horrify them even three years ago.

And at home? Well. You don’t eat as well. You don’t repair things that need it on time, and therefore end up needing bigger repairs later. You drive the car into the ground. (To be fair, we always did. Buy used and drive for ten to twenty years.) You don’t buy that zoo membership, and anyway, the zoo is looking unkempt, and why don’t they have as many animals? You go out less partly because you don’t have the money, partly because your favorite place went out and it’s not as much fun anymore.

You don’t replace clothes as often. You don’t replace tech as often. The thrift stores get far worse stuff.

We all get poorer.

Inflation and energy are a noose continuously tightening around everyone’s neck.

And the dastards in power will tell you it’s the companies getting stingier, the oil merchants making “bigger profits” (even for them transport costs more, but it’s also taking some money now because they know it’s going to crash.)

It’s not true. By printing money the government has their hand in your pocket. In everyone’s pocket. Everyone gets poorer. Except the very rich who are never touched by this.

Tell that to everyone you can reach. Immiseration is nasty and subtle. And these thieves need to be necklaced with it.

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. – SAH*

IF YOU’RE DOING A SALE FOR CYBER MONDAY SEND THE ANNOUNCEMENT TO THE EMAIL ABOVE AND PLEASE DO PUT “CYBER MONDAY” IN THE TITLE. I INTEND TO HAVE A PROMO POST HERE AND AT MGC.

FROM MAGGIE HOGARTH: Haley’s Cozy System Armageddon: A LitRPG Short Story (Haley and Nana Book 1)

For fans of Cinnamon Bun and Welcome to Blade’s Rest.

A Girl, a Grandma, and a Lot of Cookies
When the apocalypse hit, Haley was ready to embark on her life-long dream of becoming a wizard! But the system has other plans for her…

Enjoy a feel-good slice-of-life short… come away smiling!

This story is good for all ages and comes with a recipe so that when you get to the end of it, you can make the cookies and re-read it while eating the cookies the characters are eating. Because that’s the kind of story it is.

FROM KAREN MYERS: To Carry the Horn – A Virginian in Elfland (The Hounds of Annwn Book 1)

AN ENTIRE KINGDOM BUILT AROUND A SUPERNATURAL NEED FOR JUSTICE, ENFORCED BY THE WILD HUNT AND THE HOUNDS OF HELL.

What would you do if you blundered into a strange world, where all around you was the familiar landscape of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, but the inhabitants were the long-lived fae, and you the only human?

George Talbot Traherne stumbles across the murdered huntsman of the Wild Hunt, and is drafted into finding out who did it. Oh, and assigned the task of taking the huntsman’s place with the Hounds of Hell, whether he wants the job or not.

The antlered god Cernunnos is the sponsor of this kingdom, and he requires its king to conduct the annual hunt for justice in pursuit of an evil criminal, or else lose his right to the kingship, and possibly end up hunted himself.

Success is far from guaranteed, and no human has held the post. George discovers his own blood links to the fae king, and he’s determined to try. But Cernunnos himself has a personal role to play, and George will have to sort out just why he’s the one who’s been chosen for the task.

And whether he has any chance of surviving the job.

Find out what it’s like to live in a world where you can help the Right to prevail, even if it might cost you everything.

To Carry the Horn is the first book of The Hounds of Annwn.

FROM CELIA HAYES: Lone Star Glory: Continuing the Entertaining and Mostly If Not Always True Adventures of Texas Ranger Jim Reade and his Blood Brother Delaware Scout Toby … Republic of Texas (Lone Star Sons Book 2)

Time and place? The Republic of Texas, at mid-19th century
Who and what? Texas Ranger Jim Reade, and his Delaware blood brother, Toby Shaw – tasked with solving puzzles, finding the missing, guiding the clueless, and protecting the innocent!
“So,” Toby observed, an hour and a half later. “What have you seen, from this?”
The two of them stood, a few steps from a crude scarecrow cross-frame of poles, from which hung an extremely ragged linen shirt, formerly belonging to Elisha Reade – a shirt from which some small patches had been cut to mend items of a newer vintage. But there was enough of it remaining to serve, hanging from the cross-pole thrust through the sleeves, as a target for Jim’s trusty Paterson revolvers … A good few shots had been at close range. As close as the range in which Jon Knightley had exchanged – or claimed to have exchanged – revolver-fire with his wife.
“A curiosity which I had already suspected,” Jim replied. He was tired. His shoulders slumped, and his ears rang from the frequent report of his revolvers. “Jon Knightley murdered his wife – his latest wife…”

Lone Star Glory – continuing the adventures of Texas Ranger Jim Reade and his blood-brother Toby Shaw of the Delaware, in the Texas of legend!

FROM J.L. CURTIS: Rimworld – Diplomatic Immunity

Fargo’s latest attempt at quiet retirement is going haywire quickly.

Hiding the officially missing Dragoon heir at his cabin is about to get interesting.

A GalPat change of command brings new attention to his militia and their capabilities, just as he’s falsely accused of murder. Facing a stacked prosecution, he finds that friends have hidden abilities when they come to his aid, including hiding the heir.

When he comes back out, he’s got an agenda and an heir to get home in one piece… A young man thought lost, whose homecoming will shake an entire empire. And hopefully Fargo will survive the experience.

FROM DOROTHY GRANT: Going Ballistic (Combined Operations Book 1)

When her plane tries to come apart at apogee during a hijack, ballistic airline pilot Michelle Lauden handles the worst day she could imagine. When she gets down safely without losing any passengers or crew, though, she finds her troubles have just begun!The ground below is as unsafe as the air above. The country she’s landed in has just declared independence from the Federation. The Feds intended her passengers to be the first casualties in the impending war – and they’re not happy she’s survived to contradict their official narrative in the news.The local government wants to find her to give her a medal. The Feds are hunting her to give her an unmarked grave. As they both close in, Michelle’s running out of options and time. The only people able to protect her, and hide her tracks, are an accident investigation team on loan from the Federation’s enemies… the same enemies who sent her hijackers in the first place. And they have their own plans for her, and the country she’s in!

FROM JOELLE PRESBY: The Dabare Snake Launcher.

New money, old tribes, and international megacorps race to build the first space elevator. With a little Dabare magic, it just might work!

The Sadous, an oil-rich West African family, are handed a plum contract as repayment for a decades-old favor that could make the next generation even richer if the family doesn’t tear itself apart first. Two engineer daughters of the Sadou family, Pascaline and Maurie, upon whom the burden of success rests, have troubles of their own. One wants nothing more than to leave and make her own name as an engineering prodigy, while the other is troubled by fever dreams and snakes. Ethan Schmidt-Li is an ambitious megacorp executive with eyes on a big promotion—only to get more than he bargained for when put in charge of the company’s make-or-break project. These are some of the people that Tchami “Chummy” Fabrice has brought together to an ambitious end—constructing the world’s first space elevator in Africa and ensuring the space industry that it catapults will enrich the continent and all involved. They have the carbon nanofiber, prime land around Kilimanjaro, and a captured rock in orbit for the tether. The hard part will be getting all these different people working together long enough to see it built.

At the publisher’s request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).

FROM DAVID COLLINS: Green-Sight

This humorous Isakai parody has Logan Russel transported to a different world. Now as Lord Green, The Sage of Power, he is granted ridiculously over-the-top powerful magic. The problem is (there always has to be a catch), his life depends on the whims of a sketchy god, and to stay alive, he must uphold “the green-flag.” Unfortunately, the god never told him what the “green-flag” was. He must also avoid doing any actions that raise either a “black-flag” or a “red-flag”. Again, the god neglected to tell him what those are… There are a lot of things they could be…


Among the bevy of women he finds along the way to assist him on his quest, is a blind woman cursed with “Dark-Sight”. This may be his first clue to understanding what the flags actually represent. The blind woman can only see a shadow based on the darkness that resides within people, and absolutely nothing else, not walls, floors or the furniture in the rooms. To her, Logan is the invisible man, a voice from nowhere. Does her vision represent the black-flag? If so, can he possibly find someone with “Green-Sight” so that he can understand what he is allowed to do so that he stays green and alive?

AN EXPLANATION GOES HERE — IN VAIN I HAVE STRUGGLED…. DISENGAGES P&P FANFIC — I WAS INTENDING TO GIVE KINDLE UNLIMITED THE GO-BY AND GO WIDE. I STILL THINK THAT’S A GOOD IDEA, PARTICULARLY GIVEN HOW AMAZON HAS A TENDENCY TO BEHAVE, AND THE PATH IT’S TRENDING. BUT– A VERY IMPORTANT BUT — I REALIZED MOST OF MY FANS ARE GETTING STRAPPED AS HECK. AND I WANT PEOPLE TO BE ABLE TO READ MY BOOKS.

SO I HAVE PUT DARKSHIP THIEVES/RENEGADES ON KINDLE UNLIMITED. I’M GOING TO INVESTIGATE WAYS TO DO THAT AND GO WIDE WAS WELL AS SOON AS MY HEAD POPS ABOVE WATER FOR A FEW MINUTES (THERE’S MEDICAL PUZZLEMENT GOING ON REQUIRING FREQUENT INTERACTION WITH HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONALS.) BUT FOR NOW, YOU CAN HAVE IT ON KU.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Darkship Thieves. (Note they still haven’t mated it to the Baen edition. Sigh.)

Athena Hera Sinistra never wanted to go to space. Never wanted see the eerie glow of the Powerpods. Never wanted to visit Circum Terra. She never had any interest in finding out the truth about the Darkships.
You always get what you don’t ask for. Which must have been why she woke up in the dark of shipnight, within the greater night of space in her father’s space cruiser, knowing that there was a stranger in her room. In a short time, after taking out the stranger—who turned out to be one of her father’s bodyguards up to no good, she was hurtling away from the ship in a lifeboat to get help.
But what she got instead would be the adventure of a lifetime and perhaps a whole new world—if she managed to survive….
A Prometheus Award Winning Novel, written by a USA Today Bestseller.

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: YAWN