Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

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*

FROM MACKEY CHANDLER: Let Us Tell You Again

The continuing story of April, Jeff, and Heather after they conspire to rebel against North America and their efforts to find friends and a safe haven in the stars. Continuing to close the time gap to the later Family Law series of books.
Heather and her peers impose a ban on armed ships beyond L1 in the Solar System and a prohibition for explorer ships going interstellar heavily armed. There are continuing stories of future characters still stuck on Earth.
Heather has a lot of help from her friends but it isn’t easy being the queen.

FROM PAM UPHOFF: Friends and Family

Lady Olympiada Vinogradov’s Grandfather has died . . . and now she’s going off to some tier four mining World with her mother and stepfather. Ought to be a great adventure! And far away from people who might notice she has dangerously strong Mentalist talents that could get her chipped.

But before she goes, she needs to rescue her friends. But taking them along with her to an unpopulated wilderness full of dangerous animals, to a base totally dependent on imported food and fuel might not be a good thing as the Three Part Alliance slides closer to collapse . . .

But with friends and family, what could possibly go wrong . . .

FROM DENTON SALLE: Tales Yet Unsung: Short Stories in the Avatar Wizard World

Return to the world of the Avatar Wizard with this collection of short stories. See how Jeremy’s mother first met Arianna, how Arianna convinces Master Anthony to marry her, and other tales not revealed in the main story of Jeremy’s path to mastery of the Volkh arts.

Come along as Jeremy rides with the Weather bringer’s Hunt, climb with Harald as he seeks the forge of the Sun, and read how Helena’s mischief almost catches up with her. See the changes that come to the Keep as Arianna has her kits and both of Anthony’s sisters are courted. Go home with Danil as he and Harald venture south to the rich wheatlands to repair the great canal. Visit low dives as Jeremy and Gerasim steal a bard.

In addition, a glossary of people, places, and words has been added at readers’ requests. Please note a few of these stories were published in anthologies in shortened form. This is the ‘canonical’ version.

FROM J. M. NEY-GRIMM: The Kite Climber.

An army poised for battle. A hamlet of innocent villagers in the wrong place at the wrong time. A young kite climber who seizes a ridiculous chance…

The troll-lord’s army abducts young Andraia and forces her to serve as a kite climber—a girl light and nimble enough to climb the tethers of the great war kites, and clever enough to relay the report from each scout stationed aloft.

But when Andraia sees her home village sitting squarely before the army’s intended charge, she knows she must lie and—more importantly—make the cruel officer supervising the kite climbers believe her lie.

Since at least one climber will tell the appalling truth, Andraia needs more than mere ingenuity to outwit him.

Amidst the brutality and violence of the troll-horde, Andraia must learn that even a vulnerable and frail ally can sometimes deliver the wining blow in a fight. If she fails, everyone she loves will die as the troll chariots crush her home.

The Kite Climber is a fairy tale of Old Giralliya brought to vivid life. If you enjoy appealing characters, fantasy worlds that feel real, and high stakes, you’ll love J.M. Ney-Grimm’s story of a young teen mixing genius with daring in a desperate bid to save her friends and family.

FROM KYRA HALLAND: Mages’ Home

Once, they were hated and hunted by mage hunters and Plain folk alike. Now, former bounty hunters turned renegade mages Silas and Lainie Vendine finally have the life they dreamed of – a home and ranch of their own where they can live in peace and raise their family, and the friendship and respect of their non-magical neighbors.

When a company from across the western sea comes to Prairie Wells, bringing marvelous new inventions, Silas and Lainie figure it only means more prosperous times ahead for the town and for them – until an old and vicious hatred of mages rears its head.

As troubles stirred by unseen enemies divide the town, many of Silas and Lainie’s neighbors turn on them. When danger strikes at the heart of their home and family, Silas and Lainie must fight to protect everything they love, everything they’ve worked for, before it’s all destroyed.

If you love fantasy filled with romance and adventure in a unique setting, come join Silas and Lainie Vendine in this new tale from the Wildings.

Mages’ Home is the first book of Defenders of the Wildings, a follow-up series to the epic romantic fantasy-western series Daughter of the Wildings. It is a self-contained series and can be enjoyed even if you haven’t read Daughter of the Wildings.

Contains language, violence, and mild sensual content.

FROM TIM GILLILAND: Lawyer to the Stars: Book One of Damien Durne’s Accidental Adventures on the Frontier of the Galaxy

What makes a Human?

 A frozen world on the edge of civilized space has a deadly secret. The indigenous people, known as the Ixtyl were human-looking to be sure, but they had characteristics so unique there was doubt they were naturally acquired. Human? Or genetically modified creatures? Humans, including Indigenous peoples, were heavily protected by law. Genetically modified creatures were not. They were like lab rats who would have no rights, no hope, and no future. The tribe lives on a planet rich with an invaluable ore: One men are willing to kill for. When Certified Genomist Damien Durne is called to investigate the Ixtyl’s genome, to certify whether they are human or not, he is flung into an intrigue of lies and murder, with an ultimate goal of genocide.

FROM CHRISTOPHER WOERNER: Discontent Provider

This is a collection of the last few months of pamphlets and booklets, all polished and edited and seasoned. As always, it’s mostly current events and analysis of the leftist horrors filling our days. We would never have expected the misery to be so vast so quickly with no sign of ending, but here it is. This is what I’m here to record and make notes of, passing them along to you.

The A-side is fairly straightforward current events, the B-side is several months of thought, trying to figure out how leftism itself works. We all have explanations but none of those seem to be complete, at least as far as I can tell. I didn’t really do any better, but at least I tried. It also includes a few notes from history, various art forms and even some religion, which I don’t usually get into. I’d hoped to organize them together as a few coherent essays but that’s too much like work, man.

This is what we’re here for and it’s not going to get better any time soon. We need to put up some resistance immediately, that’s the only hope we have.

FROM DAVID COLLINS: The Void Shaper: Starship Medusa book 3 (Space Ship Medusa)

In the first book, On Mars, Jason stumbled across the escape pod to a 3,500 year old derelict spacecraft. The AI for the ship then informed Jason that due to him having traces of alien DNA, he was now the Captain of a massive alien Starship. That ‘should’ have been good news. But the bad news was that Jason’s DNA has an additional trait, one that shouldn’t be there… The last time that anyone had one of the forbidden DNA traits, it started the war that left the ship a derelict. To fight the aliens that want him dead, Jason must become something from their nightmares…

The second book starts with the ultimate bad hair day (with fangs). With the ship finally with a full crew, and outfitted with the most creative weapons that Earth had managed to come up with. They take off to their first interstellar destination, a Mauron (Gorgon) shipyard, that turns out to be run more like a penal colony. While their ship is in the repair bay, they get attacked by a state of the art Felinog battleship. The Felinog were not counting on the unusual Earth weapons that had been added, and some very creative tactics. Who is the Darkness? Who are the Claws? Where does Jason and his ship fit into their conflict? What new secrets hide beneath the strange ship they find, in a world of darkness?

In this third book, now with over half the crew having transformed into aliens, they need to escape from the void prison that they accidentally created. While stuck in another dimension, they pick up several new alien refugees. If they screw it up, they will be stranded a very long way from home. A home where the Finilog are waiting for them, having failed to kill them the last time they met, they have scheduled a jousting match, with straships. The battle will be between the Medusa, the former derelict ship of Jason, using historical Earth technology, against the most advanced weapons the Felinog have come up with.

Jason has discovered that he can create strange shapes out of several different voids. He knows that to solve this puzzle will give him mastery of the void portals. That will be needed to escape from the void prison. But what are these shapes, and why do they completely terrify everyone that has seen one, except for Jason?

FROM GUY ANTIBES: Plight of the Unicorn (Gags & Pepper: Protection Agents Book 1)

Gags, a young magician back from the magicians war, and Pepper, a just-as-young thief band together to create a protection agency, guarding goods in transit as well as providing bodyguards. On their first day of business, a beautiful woman contracts them to protect her husband. The woman asks Gags about his background, and Gags traces his personal story as an inexperienced magician thrown into a magicians war. Along the way, Gags tells of gaining a deep understanding of magic and losing a precious friend in the midst of war, betrayal, and the establishing enduring friendships.

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: WILLING

(Promo Post Tomorrow.)

Where I live it is a beautiful, sunny, crisp September day. It always gives me the creeps.

Before September 11 I was a Libertarian. After, I moderated a lot. The crazy days we’re living through are slowly taking me back there.

Too many mixed emotions for a coherent post today. Apparently the raid on Trump supporters have now extended to his lawyers, and the number is up to 50. This is no longer a fishing expedition but a noxious campaign of intimidation.

I wonder how far down they will go, and when it stops with an Earth Shattering Kaboom. Because you know and I know they’re messing around. And we all know what inevitably happens.

And reading that, this bright and early September morning, the rage came back. 9/11 happened, and Americans died, because the ANTI-Americans Clintons were in the White House, and because our intelligence agencies which at their best are wet kleenex, and at worst are wet kleenex soaked in arsenic decided that the possibility of a terrorist attack on US soil was not nearly as important as securing the eternal glory of the Democratic party. Or perhaps enough of the high enough, political enough military commanders wanted a reason to act. I don’t know. But I wouldn’t put it past them, given what they’d do later, including lying to a commander in chief they disagreed with.

No, I don’t think 9/11 was an inside job. I also don’t think our response made any sense. Yes, we should have responded, with enormous and “disproportionate” force. And risking as few of our men as possible. Break things, tell them we’ll come back if they do it again. Rinse, repeat.

Somewhere along the line — possibly after WWII –the US became convinced its military power was a sort of charitable enterprise, designed to make the world Utopia. Instead of protecting our people and our interests. That has to change. It has to change if we are to survive.

This year the anger and grief choke me. I have written a guest post for Victory Girls.

And my post from last year still stands.

Twenty one years on, I trust our government less than I did. I trust America more than I did.

I trust us — those who are Americans by choice and nature, by birth and love — to endure, and to set things right eventually.

Make no mistake, though. We have our work cut out for us.

Today…. Today I’ll give myself time to mourn and be angry. For those who died, and for those of us who have to live with the shattering of our illusions.

Tomorrow, we get back to the fight.

The Military Oath of the USA by maryh10000

I served for four years in the US Air Force. As a member of the military, I took an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. Here’s what that meant to me.

I did not swear an oath to the President of the United States, although he was my commander in chief. As a member of the military, I was obligated to obey my superior officers, and the commander in chief is the most superior of all. But my oath was not to him or her. It was to the Constitution.

I did not promise to fight for freedom, per se. Although I do believe that upholding the Constitution does support freedom.

What does it take to be considered a citizen of the United States? You have to enter legally and meet certain requirements. And you have to support the Constitution of the United States.

Here’s what you don’t have to do. You don’t have to look like me. You don’t have to believe in the same religion as I do, or any religion at all. You don’t have to come from any particular place on the planet, nor do you have to be a native English speaker. You don’t have to be married or heterosexual. You can wear a hijab if you want to, or a bikini or hot pants. If you’re a man, you can wear anything you want, including a dress or fishnet stockings. If you’re a woman, same thing. None of these things make you more or less a citizen of the United States, as long as you support the Constitution.

If I had been put in combat (which I personally never was, and was highly unlikely ever to be) I was prepared to fight and kill and die for you, even if I strongly disagreed with how you chose to live your life, as long as you supported the Constitution. Read that again. That’s what it means to be a USAian military person. That’s the oath I took. I meant it.

Does the USA get into wars we shouldn’t? Yes. Is that something I thought about as an Air Force officer? Yes, it was. It influenced when and whether I enlisted, and whether I stayed in. It’s part of the reason that I, personally, do not believe in the draft. But I recognized that I did not have all the facts, and I had to trust the people in charge, at least while I remained in the military. There was no other option. The most control I had then was to vote and support people I trusted or to leave the military. Good people can disagree on military policies, and I don’t know everything.

This is why it is essential that the people in charge of the military keep the trust of people like me. Because if I don’t trust them, I will not fight. That is also why it is essential that the people in charge of the military support the Constitution. Otherwise, there is no reason for me to fight. There is no United States without the Constitution.

Because. We are not defined by race or sex or religion or place of origin or even shared history. The United States citizen is not defined by adherence to a clan but by adherence to the Constitution. Period.

This is what is currently being called the right-wing extremist position. It used to be called common consensus patriotism in the United States.

That is all.

maryh10000

Sometimes I post any “Things were actually worse before. With minor bobbles — we’re in one, yes — things generally are moving in the direction we want them to.” (Note even during our bobble, and despite the strangling hand of the vile progs at the controls, we’re still experiencing movement in the right direction. Just slower, and limited.)

And it never fails. Like a rock drops to Earth, like a dog returns to their vomit, someone in the comments does the equivalent of “Argle, barle, prrrrrgaht, things were wonderful in my neck of the woods when I was little. We had faith, community, love, and everyone cared about everyone else. It was a golden age of hand holding and singing kumbaya and we got up in the morning, ate our cup of dirt and sand to the Lord.”

Look, I’m never going to convince you, because you’re so sure of it, but what you experience as all those things as a kid is 90% the fact that you’re a kid. Your vision of the world is simple. You could grow up in the world’s most infectious crab bucket, but you’d think you were loved and protected, because…. you were. Kids don’t have to strive against adults to get to have a job, or to do their job, or to retain any amount of their earnings. Those are adult concerns. Kids experience the “everyone looked out for everyone else” that is the basic mode of both crab buckets and families. And of course you project that on the rest of the world, because that’s how you see it.

Also until the sixties and the counterculture, the mass-cultural-media complex spent a lot of time spreading the idea that the world was like that: tidy nuclear families, who loved, loved loved each other, and where every father was wise, every kid a lovable scamp, every mother well put together and a great cook.

It was that carefully constructed, no dissent allowed from the perfect image, view of the world that the media created more or less wholesale that made the sixties attacks on the culture so devastating. Because most people had never experienced that kind of perfection (and most adults knew that for sure) it was easy to convince them the world was a terrible place and that all the happy stuff was disinformation.

(It should be much easier for us to shatter the image of the grey, decaying world they now push. Particularly if we ignore the loud voices in social media. We know we’re being manipulated. And that most people are decent, if not all in the same manner.)

Those of you, meanwhile, who say that the time between the wars, and extending through the fifties was a golden age because of how much the life of the average person improved? You have a point. More than a point.

The average person went from actual fear of hunger and living on the edge of it, to “reducing” being a popular pastime. The average person experienced the difference antibiotics made in life span. The average person went from wanting a chicken in every pot, to wanting a car in every garage.

The problem is not that. The problem is attributing the prosperity to centralized government and top down control, which a lot of people — and all the “progressives” — do.

That wave of unleashed prosperity came from a time of relatively untrammeled capitalism around the turn of the last century.

Not fully untrammeled, and more and more hobbled as time went on, but the ability to let people make and build and grow was greater than it became in the mid-to-late twentieth century. And the results were astounding.

The problem is, because some of those fruits only became visible to the public as things centralized, people attributed them to the centralization, not the previous freedom.

As I told you, when Obama care was being rammed through: No, people won’t love it. The reason people loved this type of thing in other countries is that it was instituted just as breakthroughs like antibiotics, and other really practical and life saving modern-medicine innovations became ubiquitous.

So people, who of course don’t analyse things very deeply, attribute these great innovations to the centralized “fee” medicine, and will defend it with their lives, because they think if you take it away they go back to pre-antibiotic, pre-vaccine, pre-hygiene era.

It’s nonsense, but it’s what people do.

In the same way the fifties, with the rest of the world destroyed and the US relatively prosperous, allowed a lot of the past eras innovations to be mainstreamed. And people equated that prosperity with center-out, up-down government control.

I suspect it’s where the myth of the infallible government expert and the “Smart” government bureaucrats came from.

In fact, what the tightening of the governmental controls, continuing at least till the eighties (look, people, before the eighties few people realized you “could” have a modern society without price controls. You have no idea how many myths Reagan demolished) did was to make that freewheeling innovation that rained prosperity on the world slow to a crawl. The innovation only happened wherever the government wasn’t looking. And in the last two years, government started reversing the tide of innovation and prosperity.

It’s a sad thing that prosperity and innovation got associated with the big government that killed it. And it’s time to destroy that myth.

Because top-down control mostly kills. And the thing governments are best at is taking money and oppressing their own people.

While it would be nice to have one that fulfilled its constitutionally mandated duties, we should restrict them to that.

Keep government small, poor and limited, and you’ll see a golden age flourish like nothing the world experienced before. Or don’t, and watch civilization perish.

The best laid plans. You see…. Dan is on vacation this week. Stop laughing, I meant nothing of the kind. Just that I meant to write a post, but instead we spent the morning doing things that needed the two of us– stop laughing. These were things like shopping, and dealing with some house-related stuff.

When I came home wordpress was acting up. I’m posting this by grabbing a draft post and updating it. I can’t use the write function at all. Which is… ah…. interesting?

I need to back up the blog, as soon as that feature deigns working.

Curious thing, I was talking to Jack Wylder about the potential for this stuff last night.

Anyway…. Hopefully it’s just their usual stupid updating, and I can write a post tomorrow.

A lot of us have a sense of things falling apart. This is both real and crazy. Neoneocon puzzled me yesterday by having a “the center cannot hold” post, all lamenting that America as she was is gone. She’s both wrong and right, and from the morose tone more wrong than right.

On a little thought I came to understand it. A lot of us have a sense things are falling apart, and we’re right, they are. But it doesn’t follow the falling apart is bad. Or that what emerges will not be American. Stop staring at me. I haven’t lost my mind.

Look, a lot of us are ah “Mid century modern.” We were born from the early fifties to the late sixties.” Ignoring boomers and such (I was never a boomer, but Obama born a year before me is an echo-boomer. It’s all in who your parents are.) there was both an aestheic and a feel to the mid century.

A lot of you think of it as a golden age, but I’d like to suggest to you that this is because you were children and most of your idea of what that time was, now, rests in the left attempting to depict it as “an evil right wing time.” It wasn’t. Things were already falling apart, they were just hidden. And the things that weren’t falling apart were things that were inherently anti-American, or at best un-American.

It painted itself as a golden age, and it was a prosperous age for America, particularly, on account of us being the only ones standing in the post WWII devastation. (However, in terms of creature comforts, we have a lot more now. And yeah, we have more living space, our houses are more functional, etc. etc. We’re also more free. More on that later.)

But the ideas we had in childhood… well… Things would get incrementally better, and we were going to the moon. And we’d have space colonies. And– and– and–

A lot of them didn’t come to pass, but things did get better, despite our news and academia ramping up the whining, cringing and screaming. And our government being revealed as more and more incompetent, and at times (the seventies, now) conducting a cold war on the people.

So …. this is hard to explain. I have a friend who in the depths of the Obomination told me that the start we had on the space program was all wrong. We basically borrowed the German space program, and sure, it took us to the moon, but it was centralized, and regimented, and government-led, and therefore ALL WRONG for America.

I’ll point out he’s right, and that at the time everyone thought that it had to be all those things: Centralized, regimented and government-led.

Because the fifties, sixties, and heck up through the early eighties, since mass communication was mass communication, the government and big corporations projected an image of flawless competence, and of being able to do a lot more with centralization and standardization.

To an extent this was correct because of the …. technology of the era. News were centralized because it was easier and more economic to have news agencies from which every newspaper pulled; it was easier to print millions of newspapers all over, with the same, unexamined, news going everywhere. And it was easier and cheaper to make one kind of shoes in a factory somewhere, than three thousand different pairs of shoes in little factories all over.

This is what led the Soviets and other sh*theads to believe that command, absolutely centralized economies were best. Those floundered on information issues, but to an extent all the economies and politics of the mid-century had information problems. The US was JUST chaotic enough that they weren’t as bad as in the USSR, but they were there. And the media sold stories that weren’t so, hence “FDR saved us from the Great Depression” making it to the history books. Or our wretched intelligence agencies being considered efficient, while they were buying bullsh*t from the Russians wholesale. (A lot of their missile capacity was just trucks driving long tubes across the country. One wonders if the CIA was that inefficient or already corrupted. I mean, we do know McCarthy’s biggest sin was being already MUCH too late.) I remember sitting with my host brother in a living room in Ohio in 1980 and speculating that the CIA and the FBI probably knew things about us we didn’t know. For you kids, yes, we used to think they were that efficient. Which is easy to believe, when the information you get is controlled by a few news agencies, most of them fully into the centralized government idea. We were in fact lunatics. Even if they could collect all that information, they could never have processed.

I confess I too bought the idea of the golden fifties, for a while, until I started reading stuff written by people of the time, from the autobiographies of unimportant people (Your library probably has a ton. People publish grandma’s biography and give a copy to the library. Look under local) to collected letters. What emerged was the image of a country trying very badly to sovietize.

There is a reason for that. The edifice of government we live and have lived with for almost a hundred years was made and put in place by FDR who was a great admirer of the Soviet Union. Which is why he cast in on their side in WWII. (He also personally disliked Germans. Otherwise he might have gone the other way, yes.)

There were precursors, of course. And remember ACW is a forbidden topic, but yes, Lincoln set in motion the primacy of the Federal government. I do understand why — spare us his necessities — but yes, it was a corruption of the American system. Then Woodrow Wilson in World War I did some rather horrendous things with propaganda and centralization. And then FDR. Well… FDR.

In his defense, every politician of the era, including nominal republicans thought that we needed “progress” defined as center-out top-down systems for everything. In FDR though, it notched into a type of personality that made the whole thing insanely expansive, authoritarian and yes, toxic. (It wasn’t wrong for Obama to compare himself to FDR.)

In his not defense, if that’s what he wanted, he should have moved to Europe where they were already largely like that. This system was anti-American enough that it never fully “took” here, the way it did in Europe.

Yeah, it corrupted almost everything including government, education and manufacturing. But it didn’t reach all the way down. Americans stayed armed. Americans stayed religious in numbers that dwarf Europe (And please, do not bleat. Yes, a ton of people these days don’t identify as belonging to any organized religion. Are you kidding? This surprises you after 2020? I despise myself a little that I still do belong to an organized religion, but in our case, we’re very old, and we’ve had worse happen to our organization.) AND more importantly, Americans stayed individualistic by and large. And no, you can’t imagine how much unless you can compare them to Europeans, who on average are less do-for-yourself than your average welfare case in the US. (Remember how Obama hates that in use. He too has seen other countries.) Americans stayed patriotic, instead of embracing the “citizen of the world” mentality. (Except for the over-educated and stupid.) This too isn’t true in Europe.

The problem — from the left’s point of view — is that in the last twenty years, and definitely in the last two, the system has proven not to work.

Some of us always knew it, of course. BUT most people until the last two years or so, still thought that “top down, center out, authorities know best” was a flawless and efficient system. Most still thought “US Intelligence Services” wasn’t an oxymoron.

Some of us, making us of the leaks around the edges, the blogs, the other means of information, already had a sense that none of that was working. Except even we might have overestimated them.

But the last two years more or less rubbed everyone’s face in it. These systems aren’t working. They’re falling apart. Russia and China, pointed at as successes of centralization and top down are in fact florid disasters, and would probably have collapsed long ago if we didn’t support them in various ways, mostly with food, and by buying an endless wash of shoddy products (in China’s case.) Oh, and also by treating them as peers, with non-laughable currencies.

It’s like the image in Terry Pratchett where you have the beautiful golden throne, but it’s in fact rotten wood covered in gold leaf.

Neither their nor our centralization has produced anything but bad information, a ton of weird plots, an immense amount of waste, and a lot of human suffering. It’s entirely possible that the US Federal government is not good at much of anything but extracting money from its citizens and making it hard to do business. Oh, they could be good at guarding the borders, but they seem to not be interested in that. Possibly because it’s a function specified in the Constitution.

Someone said that centralization inevitably leads to fascism. They’re not wrong. A powerful centralized government eventually controls education, which leads to control of industry and news. Which leads to fascism. Or crony capitalism. They’re the same, though possibly different phases.

Part of what annoys our left is that they think they were so close to imposing this on us.

The truth of course, is they never were. It was just vitiated information, which is a side effect of centralization, making it appear like that.

But the devil is in the details, and in the details they never had us.

America is a spirit of hunching your shoulder and telling your “masters” to go p*ss up a rope. And THAT spirit is still very much alive, which is why in 2020 in the face of the most determined gaslighting and panic porn and for the love of heaven mass house arrests, all designed to demonize Trump and make us vote for the potted plant, we hunched our shoulders and voted for Trump in such numbers that they had to fraud at the last minute, in quantity enough to be visible.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, combined with how their cunning plans keep falling apart, has had the left in a panic ever since.

Yes, things are falling apart. Most of what’s falling apart, though, is the house that FDR built, an un-American, where it wasn’t outright anti-American, structure, which couldn’t long stand in the land of the Free. It already stood too long. And yes, it needs to come down.

Fortunately the Constitution which was perfect for an agrarian people is equally suited to a chaotic, decentralized post-mass-industrialization people.

Our Constitution is supposed to herd together the individualist cats JUST enough to make them live in peace and generate prosperity. And to that it is supremely well suited. We just need to get rid of all the cr*p our law system has accreted through the mass-industrial age and get back to the Constitution.

Honestly, since the collapse of centralized anything is worldwide, it might only be us standing in the end, with both the disposition and the laws to make the new age work. Which would be…. about normal.

Yes, everything is falling apart. But it’s not OUR THINGS. It’s not America. It’s the nonsense built on top of us, while lulling us with false information.

The collapse is inevitable, as is the rebuilding. And we have a better than even chance of making the future more American than ever.

So, be not afraid. Put your shoulder to the wheel and push.

All this smoke just means the American Phoenix is about to be re-born.

“Sir,” his servant said, bowing very properly. “Your car is waiting.

Kyle looked up from his computer game and blinked. You see, he didn’t have a servant. Or a car. In fact he lived in a spare room in his parents’ house, and worked just enough — usually as a day laborer or temp, to get whatever game he wanted.

Had he fallen sleep in front of the computer? Was this a dream?

The servant wore a tux, or something like that, and he stood expectantly.

Well, if it was a dream, Kyle was going to make the most of it. It seemed more fun than any game he’d ever played.

“Sure,” he said, getting up. “Sure… er…. Jeeves.”

The servant didn’t protest being called Jeeves. Somehow, he’d acquired a little silver tray, with keys on it, and extended it to Kyle. The keys had a weird emblem, with a dragon on it. But they looked classy. Definitely a dream.

The car was waiting outside, in his parent’s driveway, making their BMW look like chopped cabbage. The Car — in Kyle’s mind it was written in capitals — was low slung, curvy, bright green and glistening.

He pressed a button on the keys, and the driver’s door opened with a silent, gliding motion.

Inside, the seats were dark green leather, pliable to the touch. Not like other car seats. More like some very nice leather jackets. The kind Kyle had never been able to afford.

The wheel was covered in a similar material, and was a pleasure to hold.

Afterwards, Kyle couldn’t explain where and how he’d decided to drive. Or how long he’d been away. Driving The Car was like dancing with a beautiful woman. It wasn’t the destination but the journey. They glided together over roads, and he had a memory of sitting in the car, watching the sun set on the water.

When he got back home his parents must have been asleep, because all was quiet.

At breakfast his mother asked him about the car in the driveway. “Oh, it’s a friend’s,” Kyle said. “I’m keeping it while he’s on vacation.”

He was stung his parents accepted it so easily. Like they thought he wouldn’t have the initiative to steal it or something.

That afternoon he went for a drive again, and he stopped by the sea. For the first time, he noticed a golden castle atop a cliff. He blinked at it, in confusion, as he didn’t remember a castle there before, and he was sure his parents had come to this beach with him a couple of time when he was little.

When he got home, his servant was laying out a tux and snowy white, frilled shirt on his bed. “What–” Kyle started.

“It is your clothing for the ball, sir. I assume you’ll want to attend the ball.”

There was an invitation on his desk. It was gilt edged, and written in elegant calligraphy, and invited him to Miss Drake’s come out ball. It was signed by Mr. and Mrs. George Drake.

“Now, sir,” the servant said. “It might be best if you attend, but try not to catch Miss Drake’s attention. While she is very beautiful and very wealthy, if you try to attract her and fail, she will surely eat you.”

Kyle was sure he’d misheard it. Just like he knew without asking that the ball would be in the castle, by the sea.

Indeed, when he got to his favorite parking spot, near the sea, there were valets, ready to park the car. And the path up the cliff was illuminated with beautiful orb lights.

The castle looked far more modern inside than you’d expect. The vast salons had tables set up with food for the guests. All except for one, which was the ball room.

And that’s where Kyle met Dulce Drake. She was–

He stared at her, and he was lost. Flame red hair. A body that he thought only existed in the best drawn computer games. And she wore a cocktail dress the exact color of his car.

He asked her to dance and she agreed, and somehow even though he’d never learned ballroom dances, he could do it perfectly, gliding with her in the ballroom, and being so perfect together that all other couples eventually ceased dancing and just stopped and watched.

He left that night with his mind in a glow, his feet seemingly walking on air.

“Now, sir,” the servant said, materializing in his room, as Kyle came out of the shower. “I’m afraid you shouldn’t have done that. Now Miss Drake will surely eat you.”

He handed Kyle a letter. It was written by George Drake and it pointed out the terms for winning his daughter. Kyle had to have a job that would support him, he had to have an aim in life, and more importantly, he had to defeat her in her dragon form in single combat.

Somehow it all made sense to Kyle. He had no resume to speak of, but he wanted to glide with Miss Drake in the endless ballroom again. So he went out and applied at the first place that said “Help wanted.”

He worked very long hours and learned a lot — it was, as it turned out, a pet shop — including the care and feeding of small animals and… well, everything. After three months, they promoted him to assistant manager, and then the representative for one of the pet food brands asked him if he wanted to come work for them in testing the foods to see what the animals preferred.

At the end of a year, inexplicably — except for the fact that he worked very, very hard, and tried to learn everything — he was doing quite well at the pet food factory. Everyone told him he was headed to VP of the brand.

And he received an invitation to the ball at the castle. Once more, Dulce Drake favored him, and he danced with her all night long.

He went home and drew up a plan to start his own pet food business, all fresh and mostly raw food. It would have to be stored in the refrigerator, which would cause a problem for stores carrying it, but not an insurmountable one. He took his plan to a bank and was almost shocked they gave him a loan.

And after the next ball, he was told he was now at Miss Drake’s mercy. They walked outside to the terrace, and she shifted, without his knowing how, into a giant red dragon, who flamed at him.

Kyle didn’t know what to do. He’d never fought anything except in games. And he didn’t have a magical sword, which he felt would be necessary for killing a magical dragon. Also, he didn’t want to kill her. She was a giant, flaming dragon, but in her eyes, he saw fear. Fear he would let her win, fear he would leave. Just fear. He didn’t want to kill her. He didn’t want to hurt her. The last thing he wanted to do was make her unhpapy.

So he ran around, avoiding her flame — he had got pretty good at running around, when he was managing the pet food factory — until he finally ducked under her flame stream to get to her head. She was furious at him, he sensed, but also starting to tire.

He ducked under the flame and kissed the side of her scaly face. “My darling,” he said, “I love you no matter what form you take. And I would never hurt you, but you must stop this.”

There was an hesitation, a shimmer in the air. And then suddenly he was holding Dulce Drake, in her shimmering green dress. And she looked up at him, still afraid but somehow reassured.

When he kissed her, the guests applauded, and George Drake invited him to his office to discuss the future.

They were married a year later, much to the confusion of Kyle’s parents, who didn’t even know he’d been dating. And the servant and the car, somehow, came with the house her parents gave her.

Kyle never asked where they’d come from initially. He thought there were questions best not asked of fate.

The servant and the car had saved him from life in death, and given him Dulce.

And he wouldn’t say she never again turned into a dragon, but he was always able to gentle her back into her sweet human form.

And we won’t say they lived happily ever after. But they were more happy than not. And they raised three sons and two daughters, neither of which needed the assistance of a magical car to grow up.

And that’s all anyone can ask for.

One of the best ways to understand the left is thinking of them as a cult. No, not a religion, or not precisely, but part of a religion. The cultic part.

Let me try to explain. Kind of, as far as I understand it. I come from a very ancient country, and was raised in a somewhat ancient religion with more shadings than normal for it of an even older religion.

Religions are composed of two parts:

Belief, which can be sincere or perfunctory, as in, you really believe these things are true, or you act as if they were true because you were taught them in childhood and see no reason to DISbelieve them. (Cue Jorge Luis Borges “I pray the rosary every night because my mother taught me to. I have no idea if I’m speaking into a disconnected telephone.”) In fact I was taught specifically that if you can feel nothing, the performance of the belief is enough.

Cultic actions. Cultic actions tend to outlast the belief by Praying the rosary might be cultic. Well, it is. It’s a ritual performed as part of the religion, but it’s one that can be performed in private, and only puts obligations on you. These might not survive the fall of a religious belief. But the public ones do. Which is why the Catholic church penetrating into Europe quietly co-opted a lot of the rituals and habits of the previous populations, anyway. And often stripped them of their more bloody elements.

So, for instance, in the North of Portugal, at summer solstice (Or there around, because it’s a fixed holiday) everyone celebrates St. John. How do they celebrate it? Well, they take to the street with bunches of nice smelling herbs (mostly basil) or not so nice smelling elephant garlic, and little (or very big) plastic hammers that go honk when they hit someone’s head. And everyone is supposed to dance all night and move slowly from the center of town to the beach, to see the sun rise. Oh, and everyone makes massive bonfires, and it used to be considered legal marriage to jump together over the bonfire. (When I tell you that Pratchett and I grew up with a lot of the same customs.) OBVIOUSLY there is a Celtic ritual back there that was Christianized. The ritual was going to be happening, so you might as well give it another meaning. (Along the way it accrued the old-Catholic significance of “Summer Christmas” which in the North of Portugal means that the kids get to build ELABORATE landscapes, with the nativity in the center. They cell cheap clay nativities for that. I used to go all in on this — it’s not historically accurate, btw, so you have a lot of freedom — and have artesian fountains and train tracks and…. Although it’s usually a thing boys do, but of course, I’m a geek and this was building TERRRAIN. I just hadn’t found my people, yet.)

I was thinking of this today because today is Labor Day. In Europe it happens on the first of May, and in the seventies it often got froggy. It was started AFAICT through the various machinations of the USSR to try to get a world labor uprising. The US spiked the usual “fun” they had in Europe by making it in September. (It might have been older than the USSR. I’m too lazy to go look it up. But it was definitely Marxist and aimed for “workers revolt.”)

In the seventies in Portugal, all that played on television was the endless parades of USSR troops passing in front of podiums with red drapery. Other than the popular game of “Who is missing this year, and is he in the cooler already?” we really didn’t have much to do with it. So it became, as it did here, a nice day off.

Now, it’s a fossilized thing for the left, because it reminds them of those days when they believed the workers would rise up. Now they still talk about the workers rising up, and come the revolution, but that’s cultic, buried, and there’s no longer belief behind it. In fact, they rather hate “those who work” the vast masses who started disappointing them by not being internationalists in WWI and continue to disappoint them by wanting a prosperous economy with lots of jobs and NOT TO EAT BUGS.

But the cult that now is part of the anti-work movement, still celebrates Labor Day and at least in Europe it’s still political and filled with hammer and sickle crap.

And it occurred to me a lot of their stuff is cultic. It makes absolutely no sense, but they have to do this in public, to continue to belong.

So, you know, “Abortion is healthcare” which wouldn’t fool a baby. (It just kills them.) Yesterday on facebook I had a special critter telling me that the right deserves everything they can throw at us, because we denied her “health care.” By which she means, she might be inconvenienced by having to go to the next state over to kill a third trimester pregnancy. (But you know, I’ve seen her picture and profile, and she’s either my age or looks it, so– The chances of her getting pregnant are minimal to say the least.) Also she assured us that Justice Thomas — looks at who he’s married to — is next going to “outlaw” gay marriage and mixed race marriage.

I don’t even have a glimmer of a clue where they got this mixed race stuff, except of course, they fought so hard to keep the races separated and missed, and THEREFORE it must be what we all secretly want? Ritual.

As for gay marriage, yeah, it’s a ridiculous decision, even if I think it’s the right RESULT for conservative reasons (Stop staring at me. No, it has NOTHING to do with trans. Most gays hate the trans thing, actually, (because per-se it denies same-sex attraction or accommodations for that) so I wonder where the heck you people got that. Also, I was around during the gay marriage debate. Y’all weren’t predicting trans. You were predicting multiple marriage. (Which exists, but it takes very special people and as one of my characters pointed out, might be its own problem) or bestiality. I think gay marriage once it became obvious something was needed is the best of it, provided (and so far they haven’t) they don’t force churches to perform them. Because “civil unions” as tried in France and the rest of Europe become the default mode for straights too almost immediately. Which means they lose the old and societal expectations of marriage FOR EVERYONE.) and it amounts to “the president changed his mind, so we’ll figure out a way to do it.” It needs to be there, but the legal reasoning might want to shift a bit. At any rate, I don’t see anyone chomping at the bit to strike that down. And to be fair, it has more need to be uniform across the country. You can’t stop being married because you moved for a better job. That’s what’s known as insane. Abortion can absolutely be by state. (Though seriously, this means my beloved Colorado is going to have two industries: pot and killing your newborn baby, since it’s now legal (or not investigated which comes to the same) for two weeks after birth.)

Anyway, that stuff is fossilized cultic stuff, like chanting certain phrases during a ritual. (Admittedly her idiot friend who came to defend her after I agreed — amiably — that her mother should have had an abortion, (since obviously there still was no evidence of brain activity. Stop staring at me. I was low on coffee) was funnier. She came in hot and heavy by saying I was supporting a despot (Have any of you caught me supporting Brandon? Maybe I was asleep at the time?) and then told me I wasn’t even American. When I accidentally blocked her when I blocked her friend (!) she managed to send off a message telling me I was a nut. And you know, she should know from nuts? Again, ritual. Absolutely no thought there.)

Cranberry pointed out in comments the problem is that what accretes to the cult keeps spreading, and came up with the way this works. Some of you have known I said “they drink their own ink.”

Okay, here’s what Cranberry said:

The truly dangerous thing is that they are compounding their delusions.

Russia hoax: I believe they set that up because they believed Republicans have a knee-jerk hatred and mistrust of Russians. (During the Cold War, it was people like Cambridge (MA) Democrats who were making junkets to the Soviet Union, returning to tell us the Soviets were harmless. ) But the thought that DJT was a Russian collaborator was bizarre, and not convincing. Thus, the years of “Russia Russia Russia” hype on tame news outlets served to drive Democratic paranoia through the roof, but did not sway normal Republican voters.

So they concluded it was a cult of personality. They entirely missed the grievances of their fellow citizens who identified with the deplorable label. DJT did not lead the dissatisfaction. He is a symptom, not the cause.

Again, I blame Hollywood. For decades now, they’ve cast Nazis as the villains, especially in action blockbusters. In the real world, anyone who’s willing to be a Nazi is and has been a pitiful loser. Calling anyone a Nazi is an insult, but being serious about the insult is a sign of delusion.

It’s as if I were to call someone a Roundhead or a Cavalier. It doesn’t make sense today, in this country. Would I be insulted if someone called me a Roundhead? No. But I would avoid talking with that person, as I’m old enough to know that some frames of reference are too skewed for communication. I think this silence is not only practiced by “our” side, but also by Democrats who do not share in the delusion.

So, all this talk of civil war… I don’t think so. We aren’t in the same frame of reference. If we were the monsters they claim we are, maybe…but we aren’t. (note the use of the subjunctive there. “condition contrary to fact.”) It seems to be wishful thinking on the side of those disconnected from reality.

I saw that too. They came up with “Russia” before the election, because they figured that would lose him conservative support. It didn’t, because we AREN’T a cult but a political movement.

First of all, the Russia stuff made no sense whatsoever, since Trump wasn’t favoring Russia. But second, the Russians aren’t the USSR and this isn’t the cold war, and we don’t act ritually to cast out the “Russia” influence.

I mean, for the idiots who can no longer interpret language, let me assure you we don’t want a president that is influenced by any foreign power. So it probably was a bad idea to fraud in one that is owned by so many foreign powers his only aim was to destroy the country, except the left loves that. Because the Marxist cult tells them (and schools teach. YOU REALLY SHOULD BE MONITORING WHAT YOUR KIDS ARE TAUGHT) that we’re only rich because we stole from others, So if we go down others go up. And because of this cultic belief, millions of the poor will die this winter and next worldwide, before the greatest consumer (and therefore buyer of goods) in the world rights its ship.

Anyway, that is their problem. We didn’t react to “Russia” in an unthinking manner by turning on Trump, because we’re not a cult. But their followers are a cult — or at least have fallen into cultic behavior — so it was impossible for them to process “this is a trap for the right.”

This is a problem, because as Cranberry said, it compounds. This is the reason they came up with “We must not only help the Ukraine, as we would any small attacked country, but we must all but take up arms against Russia.” This was a thing, because they thought the right, since they support Trump, must now support Russia, and therefore, we’d rise up for Russia, and they could put down internal dissent with the excuse of seditious pro-Russia elements.

The number of discussions I’ve had with some idiot lefty who goes “But aren’t you pro-Russia.” “Well, no. Putin is a KGB horror. Why would I be pro-Russia? Sure, Ukraine is corrupt, as are all Eastern countries, but which part of this is I must be pro-Russia.” (I do think the way we’ve gone about helping Ukraine is retarded and mostly a way to enrich let’s go Brandon and his allies, but then again so is everything they do.) THE LEFTISTS LITERALLY CAN’T PROCESS THIS. They’ll just stare at you, maw wide, unable to work through it.

Because they said we’re pro-Russian, and they engage in cultic, no-thought behavior, therefore we must too.

In the same way the people who thought that Obama was “sort of a god” (Meh. He was the Light Bringer… “Oh, Lucifer, son of the morning, how hast thou fallen?” Or if you prefer Marlowe “Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”) think the reason we elected and largely (waggles hand. I think the nomination is his if he wants it. And I think he’s now wiser to what’s going on and will bring in the scythe. BUT it might be beyond any one man to clean up) support him is because it’s a cult of personality. So if they destroy him, we’ll fall back into line.

They don’t understand we “supported” Romney and McCain only as opposition to Obama, and we… won’t be fooled again. We elected Trump to wreck their game. And while he didn’t do as thorough a job as we wished, he did get them all to drop the mask, and what they are and what they do to us is becoming daily more obvious and waking up…. everyone.

In fact, the blue model of governance (Or if you prefer, the centralized model, or if you prefer the “fossilized mass industrial model.”) is falling world wide. For various reasons but among others because it needed — required — ever rising population (I think that’s why they’ve been so opposed to space exploration) and ever falling diversity of population. We were supposed to be standardized. (Yes, they encouraged every fringe “Oddity” in the west, as a means — they thought — of making us fall. But it spread to them because the Future comes from America.)

We didn’t go that way.

But more importantly, because the standardized, centralized model requires that communications be thoroughly centralized and controlled. And we didn’t go that way. (Though they KEEP TRYING.)

This is because the blue model never actually worked very well, even in its heyday. And the only way to project the illusion it does is to keep pushing lies in the media. Which are no longer being believed.

So, the model is failing worldwide, and rapidly. Frankly, if the US hadn’t supported it with food and money and everything for the last almost 100 years, it would never have taken hold except in small and backward places.

The problem is the cultists can’t process it. They have embedded all the lies in their ritual and are now coming up with cunning plays based ENTIRELY on those lies, which are assumed/revealed truth in their circles.

(I’d bet you the stupid speech was one of those.)

And when the plays fall they come up with ever more “cunning” plays that include the latest word from above.

It is, ultimately, a ghost dance. They’re performing the ritual harder and harder, in the hopes of a result that never happened, but will happen now for sure.

It would be funny if I were watching this, say, from a Mars colony.

As it is, they’re going to manage to take a lot of us down with them when they finally collapse.

And then we’re going to be left with a bunch of cult members who can’t think, and who must be brought to reality and civilization, one by one, via a Road to Damascus wakening.

Except…. We can’t control or command those.

Honestly, it would be easier to send them en masse to China, where the regime is as they believe we should be. But China is racist (also a’hole) and they eat everything, and in the famine ahead… well. They’re not the only ones where that might happen. But they’re the obvious one.

So what do we do with them? I suspect really there’s very few, there at the core of it. Maybe two or three million. Maybe we can buy land from Brazil and send them out to establish their own colony.

Brazil is so unorganized, they swallowed real live Nazis without a burp. Now only distinguishable by the fact that you find someone called Pifia Pafia Pefia Peixoto de Herman. And some might have slightly lighter hair. I don’t think they’d even notice our progressives, when they inevitably stray from the colony in search of food (because it turns out critical theory doesn’t feed anyone.)

I know, I know. But I really don’t know what else to do. Is there a way to sacralize their profane beliefs to the Constitution and the Republic?

I don’t know.

I know their collapse is going to bid fair to take us — and the world — down with them.

So, be not afraid, in the end we win they lose.

But keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark, and make preparations for a graduated series of worst case scenarios.

And keep your head up. We’ll get ‘er done, even if we’re facing NPCs chanting “Russia, Russia, Russia.”

You see, they ARE talking at the end of a disconnected phone.

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*

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Darkship Thieves.

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.

And in Hardcover, and paperback which for some reason isn’t linked. (I’m becoming VERY not amused at the paperback, hardcover and Baen edition not linking with this kindle. And forget that my VERY first review in this format although five stars thinks Athena is a Mary Sue. ATHENA, psycho extraordinare is apparently what I want to be when I grow up. Shoot me now. Yes, it’s a five star review, but do people THINK?
Maybe I’m cranky in my old age, but if one of you left that review, I urge you to consider: Thena causes more problems (In fact, in a way she causes the collapse of Eden.) And she’s — trust me on this — not me. In many ways she’s my antithesis. (Except for being a hothead, but I don’t think that’s enough for a self-insert character.)

FROM PAM UPHOFF: Friends and Family (Fall of the Alliance Book 9)

Lady Olympiada Vinogradov’s Grandfather has died . . . and now she’s going off to some tier four mining World with her mother and stepfather. Ought to be a great adventure! And far away from people who might notice she has dangerously strong Mentalist talents that could get her chipped.

But before she goes, she needs to rescue her friends. But taking them along with her to an unpopulated wilderness full of dangerous animals, to a base totally dependent on imported food and fuel might not be a good thing as the Three Part Alliance slides closer to collapse . . .

But with friends and family, what could possibly go wrong . . .

FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN: Noble, Priest, and Empire: Merchant and Empire Book Seven

Valdher of the Wilds, Lady of the Forest

Unwanted survivor, failure, Halwende cost his father money and should never have become heir. When Valdher chooses him as priest, no one is prepared for what follows, least of all Halwende.

Sneelah of the Snows, Lady of the Ice

Young in his power, Aglak Rothbard settles long-simmering disputes. With force. Icy-cold force, just like the goddess he serves.

One man seeks to open the raw, new lands in the north for settlement, as his Lady commands. The other seeks to balance rapid change and the desires of a deity reluctant to release her hold on the north. When long-forbidden magic is brought back to light and used for ill purposes, both men and their deities must work together for the good of the Northern Empire. Two men and their patrons, strong in power and stronger in will. Who will be master of the northern lands?

When Cervi and Snow-cat collide, the forest trembles!

FROM PAUL CLAYTON: Crossing Over

REVIEW by Donna Gielow McFarland for Readers’ Favorite. Crossing Over by Paul Clayton tells the story of an American family trying to survive the beginnings of the second civil war. Set some time in the not-too-distant future, the existence of two simultaneous presidents has split the country along ideological lines. The protests are becoming violent, sections of the country have formed their own militias, along with the militias of the two warring parties. In the midst of shortages of food and other necessities, gangs and thugs are terrorizing formerly safe neighborhoods. Realizing that it is no longer safe to remain in their home, Mike McNerney decides to pack the camper and flee to Canada with his wife, Marie, and disabled teenage daughter, Elly. Unfortunately, everyone else has the same idea.Once I started reading, I could not put down this well-written and compelling short novel. Clayton’s premise is chillingly realistic. The book does not focus on the politics, but instead focuses on regular Americans who not long before led totally normal lives, and who are quickly turned into refugees as they try to escape the crime and violence taking over the country. The scene at the Canadian border was highly believable, as was the deterioration of Mike and Marie’s relationship as it crumbled under the stress of their ordeal. Complicating matters is the need to protect their beautiful daughter Elly, who is naïve enough to wander off with any stranger. Crossing Over should stand as a warning to anyone inclined to think that violence is the answer to political disagreement, as it paints a picture of how America could slide into chaos far too easily. There is some mature subject matter and language. Recommended for readers who are brave enough to read it.

From Tom Veal: The Monkey and the Amazon: A Tale of Illusions.

Alexander the Great is dead. For a dozen years, his generals have fought for control of his empire. One of them, Seleukos, has lodged himself in Babylon, Alexander’s capital, where he awaits the onslaught of his most powerful rival, Antigonos One-Eye, General of All Asia. At his court are two insignificant figures: a homely slave girl reputed to be the daughter of an Amazon warrior and the pet monkey of an ambassador from distant India. Each possesses a secret that it would be death or worse for the world to know. Then they find themselves allied and endangered in a city filled with magic and intrigue.

ILLUSTRATED BY CEDAR SANDERSON, WITH STORIES BY LAWDOG AND JL CURTIS: How Not to Shoot Fish, and Other Deer that Got Away

Twenty-one tales of hunting, fishing, and trapping make this volume of stories big enough to hold a drink in one hand while you read it. Tales range from side-splitting hilarity to poignant musings on dogs too good to be true. Fully illustrated, each story is accompanied by a picture of the critters, landscape, or events within. Tide yourself over until the next hunting season with stories of how it was, and is, when you’re out in the wild testing the wiles of hunter versus prey.

WRITTEN BY J. ALLAN DUNN, WITH INTRODUCTION BY D. JASON FLEMING: The Man Trap (Annotated): A pulp adventure-western

When Jimmy Crewe returned from his prospecting expedition, he discovered that his best friend (and the man who funded his expedition) had disappeared. As he looked into it more, he found that a series of men, in several cities across the country, all with certain similarities, went missing in circumstances that, when compared, roused the suspicious mind. Now, Jimmy is going to find the answer to this mystery — what is the man trap, who is luring these men in, and why?

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

FROM TONY ANDARIAN: Hell Gate: (Sanctum of the Archmage: Dawn of Chaos, Book 2)

A new constitution prepares Carlissa for an era of enlightenment. The harsh traditions of the past fade, and a promise of freedom stirs the air. In the space of one terrifying day, that promise is shattered in a bloodbath of fire and magic.

An ancient enemy returns with the opening of the Hell Gate. Chaos reigns as the people rally to fight a desperate battle for survival, and many wonder bitterly why the gods seem to have abandoned them. Their only hope lies with the magic of the Archmage — and his, with a free-spirited princess who never wanted to rule. She must find the strength to set aside her bard’s calling and take up a battle against impossible odds, or surrender her land and people to the Black Magus and his demons.

Dawn of Chaos: Hell Gate continues to bring the award-winning Sanctum of the Archmage role-playing games to the world of fantasy fiction. Order it now and don’t miss this exciting first novel in the saga!

Note to Readers: Hell Gate was originally released in 2017 by Andarian Publishing as part of, and under the title, Dawn of Chaos. It was re-released in 2021 by Andarian Publishing as a four novella serial under the following titles. This book combines that serial into a single novel.

    The Return of the Horde

    The Ring of the Killravens

    The Massacre of Lannamon

    The End of the Beginning

Dawn of Chaos is now being re-released as a trilogy under the same name. Hell Gate is the second book in that trilogy.

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: OBSERVE

Someone said they wanted my take on Dork Brandon’s Power of the Shrill speech. I’d give it, I would, except other people have done it so monumentally better. Like, take the paper of Record, the Babylon Bee, and page down to the Biden Swallows Cyanide Capsule In Underground Bunker.

Practically everyone had a take on this, and even though Powerline tried to be its usual restrained self on it, even they sounded like it was really hard to type around their jaws which were hanging all the way to the floor. (This is very funny, though: The Week in Pictures: Leni Riefenstahl Edition)

So, what’s my take? Well… I’m still spending my nights awake, and it certainly wasn’t the clown show speech. (Okay, okay, clown show designed by Leni Riefenstahl, and probably with Brandon’s suit tailored by Hugo Boss. I wonder why Brandon won’t grow the mustache already? BUT still clown show.)

Most people looking at it are going: Was that supposed to be serious? A minority are going “Was that supposed to accomplish something?” And a considerable number are going “Was that the unleashing of the dogs of war?”

Yes, it was supposed to be serious. I’ll point out that these are the people who spent six months coming up with a slogan that would totally turn the nation against their opponents, and probably get everyone behind their program forever, and came up with… Ultra MAGA. I mean, if they’d been paid to come up with a cool name for the new Republicans they couldn’t have done better. I immediately started riffing on “Ultra Maga, Assemble! By our combined powers, we’ll take back our land” and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one.

These are also the people — through their proactive Moloch feeding branch, Planned Parenthood — who said it was okay that “Anti-Vaxxers” (I beg to differ. Having survived TB and small pox, I believe in vaccines) stole ‘my body my choice’ because we have a new slogan ‘Just Say Abortion'” Which might be more mentally deficient than “Just say Vagina” and that’s a lot.

To understand the complete insanity of this, you have to enter into the complete insanity of their beliefs. Which means you have to assume they are in fact a cult, whose beliefs are so powerful they can’t see reality with a periscope. Heck, they can’t find reality with two hands, a sonar and a seeing-eye dog. Even though reality is right in front of them.

And most of their beliefs are straight-up bizarro-insane. But they believe really powerfully.

Now, first I want you to note the reason I know their beliefs is that I was indoctrinated in them (most slid off my back like water off a duck, some stick around to pollute my thinking until I chase them down and disprove them) in Europe, in my exceedingly high-grade education. I also want you to note I turn sixty this year.

However, they’re all absolutely convinced that Marxism is the philosophy of the young and hip, and it is the future of mankind.

If you point out that all Marxism has failed, either fast, such as where it went hard, or slow, such as European socialism where it was “A mixed economy” ratcheting ever leftward, they shout at our and talk about the arrow of history, a peculiar belief that rests on various redacted histories that show a progression towards socialism/communism (note redacted.) and then use this to say… the future belongs to them. (They really need Hugo Boss’s ghost. Right now, most of them look like unmade beds.)

Because they’re the future, d*mn it. And if you oppose them, you must be old and ignorant.

My jaw dropping moment during SP was when they told us they were waiting for us to die. I was by far the oldest of that group (I could have legally babysat Brad, and Larry could be my kid) and I was… three years older than the youngest leading light on that side. Geesh, I hope they’re not waiting with sandwiches by the phone, particularly since my people tend to make really old bones and be lucid to within a week or so of death.

But it’s like that in reality too. They keep telling us they’re the party of youth, for instance. (Looks at Brandon, the Hairy one, and Kamala who is suffering from early senility probably starting at birth, mumbles “if you say so.”)

They’re also convinced their opponents are mired somewhere in TV land 50s. Honey. I’m now grandmother-age, and “Say vagina?” I have sworn like a sailor since my early 20s. And I heard much worse things since I was 10 or so, in 70s Europe. “Say abortion”? No, really. I’ve seen a ton of signs painted with “Abortion stops a beating heart.” This is not grandma born and raised in the 1800s you’re talking to. And even then, my grandmother, village all-purpose healer of man and beast would have choice words for you lunatics.

So, yeah, if you go with their assumptions, (And we won’t go into their economic and historical delusions, which are one part ignorance and ten parts spiteful wishful thinking) the Dark Brandon speech was brilliant. Shut up, Brilliant!

I suspect it will make great campaign ads for the GOP through 2024, and in the dimly lit interiors of their minds they know already that they stepped in it, hence the attempts to walk it back.

Does this mean he didn’t unleash the dogs of war?

Well, he tried. But frankly the attacks on GOP headquarters and life centers were already going on, and will continue, until people have had enough. If they try summer of 2020 cr*p they find out REALLY FAST how fast “people have had enough.” Because we’re not locked down. And WE’VE HAD ENOUGH.

So…. worrisome? Sure, mostly because it shows how insane they’ve gone. And once things get this crazy… well, they’re off their rocker, and the rocker is collapsing in unpredictable ways.

Is it fatal. Possibly. For them.

I’m still not sleeping. Rough waters ahead.

BUT the other side is insane and repulsive, so we’ll probably come through okay.

Be not afraid. In the end we win they lose.

However, keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.

It’s only sensible.