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. That helps defray my time cost of about 2 hours a day on the blog, time probably better spent on fiction. ;)*

FROM Z. M. RENICK: Nine Times a Cat (The Seelie Court Book 4)

Deputy Emma Greer is back! An encounter with a stranger on Silver Mountain Road convinces her that her hometown of Silver Springs, Colorado, is once again being stalked by the Fae. A shapeshifter has taken up residence in one of the subdivisions and is killing people in order to get around the curse laid upon it, a curse that means it can only change into its cat form nine times.

But there’s more at stake than Emma realizes. This confrontation has been very carefully orchestrated, and her soul is about to become a battleground. Defeat means leaving her home vulnerable to a ruthless predator; victory means the loss of everything she has ever known.

FROM THOMAS DOSCHER, (RECOMMENDED BY DOROTHY GRANT): Repatriation: Part 4 of The Vixen War Bride (The Vixen War Bride Series)

With the misunderstanding surrounding Ranger Captain Ben Gibson’s marriage to the local Va’Shen high priestess, Alacea, finally cleared up, relations between the Rangers and the local occupied alien village have never been better. Because of this, Alacea believes it’s the perfect time for the two of them to move to the next logical stage of their relationship: having a baby. For Gibson, this means one thing.

He needs to get out of town. Now.

Fortunately, he has the perfect reason to do so. Alacea has asked him to try to find out on what planet the village’s commandos were killed so that the villagers can perform the proper funeral rites. Armed with a list of names he can’t read and literally no information on where to start, Gibson and his interpreter, Lieutenant Patricia Kim, head off for the main air and space base on Va’Sh to begin the search.

But they are not the only ones with an interest in Va’Sh’s missing commandos. A secretive organization is moving around in the background, intent on completely undermining the fragile peace between the two worlds.

FROM DOROTHY GRANT: Blood, Oil and Love (Combined Operations Book 2)

In a colony world desperate for resources, a search for new reserves reveals a shadow war!

Lizzes Olsen is a newly minted petrogeologist researching the untapped potential of places on her planet even terraforming overlooked. Unfortunately, the site she’s found is deep in enemy-occupied territory. The same enemy is funding the radical eco-terrorism that turned her university toxic, and training terrorists to kill the Empire’s geophysicists and geologists. Between bombings at home and being hunted abroad, Lizzes’ career, and her life, are in danger.

On the other hand, she has the unlikeliest of allies: a fairy god-Gunny Sergeant, and a very determined Imperial Recon soldier named Twitch who’s out to make her his very own happily ever after. If it takes a hecatomb of her enemies to get her down the aisle, they’re going to make it happen…

FROM MATTHEW C. LUCAS: Yonder & Far: The Lost Lock

Fae Banished to Boston Town, 1798

In a shocking move, the Queen of the Fae has banished John Yonder and Captain John Far to the human world. Rumor has it that they have opened a law practice catering to the Fae. To what purpose, no one really knows.

John Yonder has accepted a seemingly simple case. He need only recover a lock of hair for a Fae courtier. She had given it to her lover, Wylde, who is also in Boston.

Yonder tricks a fortuneteller, Mary Faulkner, into assisting with the case. With a whisper in her ear, he tethers Mary’s mind to Wylde’s, creating a terrible, but potent human compass.

Following Mary’s guidance, the trio sets out to follow Wylde. They set course into an uncertain and rocky future on land and sea, as pirates, slave owners, and a host of others hinder their path to Wylde, the lock of hair, and a possible return home to the Fae.

FROM TONY ANDARIAN: The End of the Beginning: Dawn of Chaos 2 – Hell Gate, Part IV (Sanctum of the Archmage Book 5)

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.

Thousands of years ago, an epic battle was fought between good and evil. The demon lords had opened a door to the realms of hell itself, and their horde threatened to overrun the earth. But the Kalarans, led by the hero Calindra, destroyed their hellgate and drove them from the world.

The Great War has long since been lost to myth and legend. The Church struggles for relevance as the people forget their covenant with the gods. A renaissance of freedom and learning stirs the air in the modern age of Carlissa, led by the royal family, and the wisdom of the Archmage.

All of that comes to an end when a dome of shimmering magic appears in the capital city.

As the people fight desperately to survive the chaos that follows, they wonder bitterly why the gods seem to have abandoned them. Their only hope lies with the magic of the Archmage — and his, with a young 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.

In The End of the Beginning, Randia, broken by loss, must find the courage to complete a desperate quest, or see her land utterly conquered by the demon horde.Sanctum of the Archmage, Volume One – Dawn of Chaos
Dawn of Chaos, Book 2: Hell Gate
Hell Gate, Part IV – The End of the Beginning

Note: An earlier version of this book appeared as part of the novel Dawn of Chaos, published briefly on Amazon in 2017. That book has now been re-written and expanded into a series of six novella-length installments.

FROM AMIE GIBBONS: Psychic Noir (The Big Sleep): A Southern Psychic Mystery (The SDF Paranormal Mysteries Book 8)

Ariana gets the band back together for an epic rescue mission into a terrifying, totalitarian version of Nashville in this exciting new installment of the SDF Paranormal Mysteries.

Practically nothing can escape PI psychic Ariana Ryder’s Sight for long. But one mystery has eluded her for four years. What happened when Grant’s soul vanished without a trace?

They discovered a possibility last Fall. Ariana, Carvi, and AB got sucked into a pocket reality. Suddenly, they had whole new universes to search.

Carvi’s scientists think they’ve found the pocket reality Grant’s trapped in. Now, Ariana just has to go in and get him out.

Ariana gets the old team back together for a rescue mission into the unknown reality. But can they find Grant, bring back his lost mind, and escape a twisted version of Nashville, before the pocket reality collapses, or worse?

FROM BLAKE SMITH: A Small and Inconvenient Disaster (The Markham Series Book 2)

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

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

FROM PAM UPHOFF: Bad Tolz (Fall of the Alliance Book 5)

Bad Tölz. A World named for a city on the Home World . . . Barely controlled by the “True Men” Mentalists of the Drei Mächte Bündnis. An unstable alliance of aggressive Worlds . . . on the brink of civil war.

Fynn, a bastard half-breed adopted by a friend of his dead father, was, despite his irregular antecedents, an ordinary college student. Then the increasing problems in in the Alliance led his new father to pull him into a secret society sworn to protect an Alliance that is crumbling.

When Bad Tölz is invaded, Fynn is all that stands between his World and brutal subjugation.

FROM DENTON SALLE: Stand Against the Dark: Book 4 of the Avatar Wizard

“Many have died trying this, lad. The Elder Powers are neither gentle nor kindly.”

With those words from his teacher, Jeremy began the ritual to bargain with one of the Powers of the World. He could gain much or lose everything as the Dark again endangers those he loves. But first he must survive bargaining with the Lord of Storms and Winter, who brings the cold from between the stars.

Return again to the world of the volkh, where Elder Powers hunt the river of stars, where women walk the path of shadows, where cities fall prey to strange diseases. A world where power comes from either the Dark or the Light. Join Jeremy, Galena, and their friends as stand against the Dark’s return.

Book 4 of the Avatar Wizard continues Jeremy’s adventures in a world where magic works and folklore of Eastern Europe is true.

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.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: LAZY

Sometimes I wonder what world people are living in. And I don’t mean (just) politicians. I’m fairly sure they’re living, if not in another universe, at least in another plane. (“Hell is empty and all the devils are here” — to quote Kit Marlowe.)

No, these are people purportedly not on the left and at least as capable of thought as I am, since they’re working for higher paid publications.

So, for something like two years now I’ve been saying: At least the left doesn’t have the fig leaf of oil SCARCITY as they did in the seventies. It was a stupid and insufficient fig leaf, but it covered everything from rationing to the dork in chief telling everyone to wear an extra sweater.

And then…. and then right on schedule this guy (some dood) on the American Spectator rushes to give them that fig leaf.

While rightly saying that solar and wind are nowhere near at the point they can replace fossil fuels, he talks about how shale oil was such a disappointment, and how they’re no longer fracking because the shale oil boom was the easy to get stuff, and now it’s hard, and that’s why they’re not doing it.

We’re going to need a bigger facepalm.

No, a MUCH bigger facepalm.

In fact, states taken over by the ‘rats (Ah, Colorado) have been putting more and more environmental fetters on fracking. And of course the cartoon characters (it’s a dark cartoon) in the White house are doing everything but telling us they won’t let us get oil, because they want us to freeze in the dark.

Oh, wait, no, they’re actually saying that, even if perhaps not to the US, and even if our media won’t report it, as in, see this: America’s Pain at the Pump is Due to The ‘Incredible Transition That is Taking Place,’ Biden Admits.

The demented house plant thinks we’re transitioning to utopia, but of course the attempt is to transition us to a shithole.

The problem, even for those democrats who think they have good intentions, is that there is no way for their madcap dreams to work, which they would know if once a year or so they got out of their high rises and took a greyhound across America, followed by a field trip to find where food comes from, and how it’s grown. (And while taking them to those fields, give them some sunflower seeds for their pockets. I suspect they’ll help in a couple three years. Well, help beautify the middle of the coutry at any rate. Might be the greatest contribution these idiots have ever made to other people’s life and enjoyment.)

But the salient thing here is “WTF dude?” No, seriously. What a coincidink. Fracking suddenly stopped being a thing when the serene Zhoe Xiden, first (and last) of his kind, China’s Vice-Roi over the barbarous United States of America, ascended with acclamations from cemeteries and manufactured votes to his position over us.

I totally believe that. That’s not sus at all at all.

I don’t know what kind of mind set a person has to be in to buy that, but I think it involves having all the right (left) friends and reading all the right (left) publications.

In cases such as this, I recommend tilting your head sideways and hitting the uppermost ear repeatedly until the Marxist bullshit comes out the other ear. I recommend doing it over a toilet, so you can flush the effluvium away with relative safety.

I’ll also note that in this entire “woe is us” article there is no, zero, none absolutely no mention of nuclear power, or even a glimmer of the fact it exists and could supply most of our energy needs.

The only thing I have to assume is that for this writer, anything the left declares off bounds stops existing.

Frankly, if that’s how you feel, you’re more than half on their side.

As for the rest of us, you can’t convince us we’re running out of oil, or that the election wasn’t stolen in 2020, or even that Jan 6th was a horrific riot and a threat to the Republic. Oh, yeah, you’ll also not convince us we’re a “democracy.”

We’re not stupid. We have a memory. And we’ll believe our own eyes over the left’s nonsense.

*Completely off topic I’ll note that your cheap, quick-render image from Pixabay is now at the level of average sci fi covers in the seventies, at least where I grew up.
Yes, yes, give me a time machine! ;) )

So, what is going on? There was a stopped shooter in Charleston West Virginia. And it’s tempting to go a little crazy and start wondering if the three letters are “activating” people way less stable than the ones that hang out on this blog, and getting them to go hot.

ON THE OTHER HAND, as I’ve mentioned 2020 and 2020 Won not to mention 2020 Too we’ve been driving the entire population insane. And the run away inflation and weird job market — look, yo, yes, I hear everyone is screaming for employees. And that seems to be true in retail and food service, but anyone above that level of specialization or skill, that I know is looking for a job, is meeting serious headwinds — aren’t helping people who are already economically marginal.

In any population, at any given time, there are any number of people who might decide to go out via suicide by cop or in a blaze of ignominy by killing a bunch of innocents. And by the way, this has nothing to do with the availability of guns. Mass killing happens in every culture, though the Portuguese guy a couple of decades back who killed an entire group of people (like 20) with knives is still a puzzle. What were they doing, while waiting to be killed? Never mind.

Yeah, the democrats are trying to bang the drum for “sensible gun control” because it is their last desperate hope. They know what they WANT to do to the population, and it doesn’t work if the population is armed. Sooner or later, the signal goes up, and then it’s Cathy bar the door and they lose. (Note I’m not saying someone will give a signal. I’m saying that something will happen that the majority of the population will interpret as a sign to cut loose Also note this is not a threat. It’s a prediction.) So they are trying to bang their little drum, which means those of you who work in the gun industry know overtime and crazy hours and price jumps are coming, right? Because every time “Sensible gun control” (We’re so far past sense it’s not even funny) is uttered, the national gun industry go brrrrrrrr and the air temperature heats a fraction, from all the factories working over time.

But that, just like their idiotic new boogieman of “White Supremacy” is just that. Idiotic. To call any of these crimes “white supremacy” or think it’s coherent, organized and from the right, you need to be from another planet. Also white needs to have a new, until now unexplored meaning when it’s black-on-Asian, leftist-on-human, Latin on Mostly Latin crimes.

The thing we do know about almost all of these shooters is that they were known wolves. Either they had had run ins with the police before or — frankly — they were screaming cases of mental instability.

Someone reminded me that the shooter years ago, in the navy yard while on a trip in DC called the police to report that the lamps in his room were talking and conspiring against him.

The murderer in Uvalde had an history of cutting his own face, and this didn’t trigger SERIOUS mental health measures. He posted he was going to kill his grandmother (who, on cursory reading MIGHT have been the only stable influence in his life) and no one did anything.

Look, this country has a raging, stomping around insanity issue.

Every country does, to be fair.

The problem in this country — and the West in general — is both the way the Soviet Union used mad houses, and Soviet propaganda corrupting psychiatric theory.

The Soviet Union put political dissidents in mad houses, because if you don’t like happy fun socialist paradise, you’re self-obviously insane.

At the same time it propagandized the west with the idea our crazy people weren’t actually crazy. They were just reacting to the “unnatural” state of capitalism (As opposed to the imaginary communitarian paradise in pre-history that universities have invented and flogged on for decades.)

Enter a serious anti-de-instutionalization drive, and eventually the shutting down of the mad houses, and the new fun “homeless” crisis.

Let me start by saying that in a democratic republic incarceration of the insane is a seriously mind-bending business, because who defines insane, and who gets to pick and extend it?

So, it needs to be approached with extreme care.

But what we’re doing also self-obviously isn’t working. The left — stop me when this sounds like their attempt to abolish the police — thought it could have “community care” for insane people.

But it doesn’t work like that. Even with people that can take a tablet and be “functionally normal” (A friend’s father was schizophrenic. His meds didn’t make him stop hearing voices. It’s just when he was off them, the voices told him to kill the neighbors and put the chopped pieces in a trash bag. When he was on them, the voices told him to clean the house, take his meds, have normal meals, go to work.) not only can they not take meds (and let’s not start putting trackers on meds, okay? DAVOS these are my middle fingers) but their meds needs MIGHT CHANGE. Almost for sure will change.

I don’t need anti-psychotics, but I do need endocrine medication (without which I get very fat, very forgetful, and will eventually die of a heart attack, likely.) and periodically, without my noticing, it needs adjusting. In fact, because the thinking meat is influenced by those meds, I am usually the last to realize I’ve gone hypo-thyroidal again.

Sure, in true “community care” your family, neighbors, etc would notice you’re tilting a bit out of true, rope you in, and confine the thing before it’s too bad.

The problem is that kind of community care doesn’t exist in the US and might not exist anywhere in the twentieth century.

I’m talking about the kind you had in the village, where all the old ladies were forever inventing a much more exciting life than the one I actually lived, and might/might not have had any contact with reality. (Hint, it usually didn’t.) Which btw also means it wouldn’t be super effective.

So, our way to deal with mental illness, is to let mental ill people do what they will, including living on the street, defecating on themselves and assaulting passerbyes, and episodically going on a rampage and killing a bunch of innocents.

And that’s not working for anyone.

Sure the other type of health care had miscarriages, though most of them are not as egregious as the leftist academics claim. Yes, I have read about Mrs. Lincoln, and let’s be fair, other than the fact they had no chemical means of treatment, she was nuts. I don’t care if it’s oppression of women or whatever. Marx needs to be chased out of the theory of mental care, with sticks, and pitchforks. People don’t go crazy because they’re oppressed. People don’t go crazy because the world is unfair. People don’t even go crazy because they’re abused. I’d be very shocked if all of us couldn’t name several friends who had all these problems, and who are fully functional, decent human beings.

People go crazy — regardless of external circumstances — because something goes wrong in their brain. Yes, living conditions, etc. might complicate or make it worse, but seriously, they are not the cause. No one has ever lived or will ever live in a perfect world where all their dreams are fulfilled. That’s just nonsense. And letting people die and kill others while waiting for perfection is bullshit.

(Though under not complicating lives for the susceptible, dear left, you can pick one thing: Either stop importing people from highly machista cultures, or stop in your drive to make males superfluous, guilty (of something) and ostracized. I have trouble dealing with your bullshit and I’m female and have lived here for most of my life. Recently or even second generation males from these cultures are going to go ape-shit. And there’s susceptible people in every population, who will break exactly wrong. Stop messing with people’s lives, and holding everyone guilty of what people who vaguely look like them did before they were born. K thanx bye.)

No amount of gun control is going to solve the problem. No amount of “poverty mitigation” is going to get rid of homelessness.

The problem is mental health. And what you’re doing is applying a bandaid to the pinkie of someone with a sucking chest wound. It won’t help, but I guess it makes you feel happy and give you a commission on selling bandaids.

In fact, because the left can’t resist piling on failed programs, they’re now pretty much turning entire cities over the the homeless, while making it harder to give anyone real mental health care. Obama care made it almost impossible to commit someone against their will.

I guess the left feels sympathy for the mentally ill and the criminals because it’s their people, kind of like I tend to attract Odds, because I am one.

But we have a serious mental health problem in this country. And we need to deal with it.

No, we’re not crazier than other cultures. We’ve just ignored the need for treatment for years.

It’s time to stop the stupid. Of course it won’t happen while under leftist “rule” so expect the crazy and the deaths to increase.

Until it can’t be ignore anymore.

What can’t go on, won’t. It might do so longer than we thought possible, but eventually it crashes.

And so many things are headed that way, I expect an Earth Shattering Kaboom.

Meanwhile look to your mental health and that of those near you. And get ready to take the weight when all this craziness implodes.

Sometimes you have moments — as in the movie — where your entire world can be upended by the words “What if this is as good as it gets?”

No, I don’t mean our situation. As we know from Trump’s administration — hampered and stymied as he often was — our lives can get much easier and much, much better.

But…. the competency of government in general.

I mean, there is something way more terrifying than “what if they are doing this on purpose?” and that is “What if a lot of it isn’t on purpose?” “What if this is their normal level of competency?” and for the crazier stuff: “What if they really thought this would work?”

Yesterday night, I was sitting in front of the computer, minding my own business, and Bill Reader called me. When he calls me after about 9 pm, it is never good. Either his job has gotten crazier, or he had some insight. And trust me, the insights are the absolute worst.

In this case it was an insight.

“Sarah?”

“Um…. yeah?”

“What would have happened if this formula shortage happened under Trump?”

“Well, the press would have been–“

“No, not that. We’d have assumed the regulators had screwed it up on purpose, to make him look bad, right?”

“Well, yes, but you know, we shouldn’t underestimate the fact that the Biden Junta want to hurt us and have a purpose of population reduction.”

“Maybe. I mean, it’s possible. The oil thing is certainly done on purpose, with the intent of making prices skyrocket, and some of that, at least for some of them, is surely about hurting us, but…”

“But?”

“But I’m getting a whiff of terror and panic from them. Like the formula shortage? probably not really intended. The border? They didn’t expect it to be so NOTICEABLE and such a mess. The oil thing? They thought the prices would go up a little, and then renewables would magically step up and we’d realize how much better off we were. The empty shelves? We’d all suddenly realize we wanted to live like monks, and how happy we were.” Pause. “Listen to me for a minute, okay? What if this is the best their competency get? What if everything the government does, and has ever done is really a giant, unmitigated clusterf*ck? What if we hadn’t realized that, because, you know, the press wouldn’t report the f*ck ups?”

And I thought about it. Heck, in private companies, where you directly are responsible and suffer the consequences when something goes wrong, we know the Pareto principle applies, and 80% of employees are dead weight, if not actively harmful.

But when you sever performance from reward, as we’ve seen in oh, teaching, tenured professors, most publishing houses, and, oh, yeah, government work, then what the productive 20% seem to produce is insanity, if not actual destruction.

I mean — looks askance at 2020 — almost everything I directly know — hasn’t been spun through a friendly media — governments do has been counterproductive, or outright bad. I always sort of assumed they were doing it on purpose.

But what if they’re not?

What if it’s a weird mix of incompetence and really believing very hard in all the conspiracy theories, like “the oil companies prevent us from using the really cheap eco-magic solutions?”

What if when it comes to the things the government is supposed to do, this REALLY is as good as it gets?

In years past I’ve argued we should abolish all the scruff and cruft of non constitutional departments.

Department of energy, department of education, the FDA the CDC. And I’ve had people tell me that I wanted people to be poisoned by bad milk, or the like.

But think about it….

There is this “seafood mix” frozen that I used to buy, because it’s the cheapest way to make Portuguese seafood rice (you can still make it with cauliflower rice.) I’ve looked for the last year in every grocery store, and put it back, because you know…. “made in China.”

As someone pointed out, you know that the shrimp in China, are downstream from the cesspool, which is downstream from the place metal manufacturing dumps its effluvium, which is–

And before you say “But surely the FDA is testing those?”

Are they? Are they really? Then explain the pet food that killed cats and dogs, the medicine that we’ve found is often full of plaster or cement, the flip flops — FLIP FLOPS FOR CRYING OUT LOUD — that gave people contact chemical burns?

Or let’s talk about that emergency authorization for vaccines that aren’t quite vaccines, where the FDA, CDC and the lot of them are conspiring to hide adverse effects.

Again, let’s remember that Sinclair’s the Jungle was mostly fiction, designed to sell the idea of government control over food supply.

Let’s remember that these government appendages all of them, mostly hamstring American industry and building, and chase everything of significance off these shores, while putting everything, from our food and medical supplies, to our scientific research, to our very weapons, in the hands of countries that don’t have any of those naffy-naff scruples about not poisoning our public, or you know, having things not explode?

What if this government by bureaucracy has achieved its finest results? What if this is as good as it gets?

And please remember, we’re as efficient as it’s found in this world. Except for much smaller countries, and even there I’d look askance at government.

Look, guys, science, food supply, in fact anything relating to safety and well being, is way too important to leave in the hands of government.

What can’t go on, won’t. When things fall apart, if you don’t remember anything else, remember this: government is a blunt instrument, and it never worked very well.

It works worse the larger territory it covers.

It works worse the more power it’s given over increasingly smaller things.

It worked badly enough in the early industrial state, where everything was designed for mass production. It works much worse with the finer granularity that post-mass-industrial production allows.

We are allowing our society to be Gulliver hamstrung by Lilliputian bureaucrats.

Every totalitarian state functions less and less as time goes on. And every bureaucratic state becomes totalitarian through mission creep.

You cannot trust a giant bureaucracy to keep your food safe, to keep your water pure, to educate your children or to keep our army supplied.

FDRs giant state is a delusion. Big is not more efficient, unless you’re building widgets in a giant widget factory.

Humans are not widgets. They’re unpredictable. They can’t be treated as widgets for anything significant.

When we do build over, build under, build around, remember: if you need government to coordinate, research and inspect, make it small, local government and keep it starved of funds and don’t give it excess power. Also, keep pitchforks on hand for when they get froggy.

As for the leviathan that not only doesn’t perform what it’s supposed to, but is actively harming us.

Remember that too.

Because for government with sufficient power to make things run efficiently, what we get is formula shortages, inability to build houses or bridges, and regulations that destroy everything.

It’s time for another model, worldwide.

And as always, America will have to invent it.

It’s time we got to it.

Good morning boys, girls and dragons. It is sweet to see your glowing morning faces. [note from 2022. Stop glowing. We have enough of that.]

What time is it at According to Hoyt? You’re right. It’s heresy time!

My husband has long ago learned that there are places it is not safe to take me, because he just ends up dragging me out while I’m still trying to get a last zinger in at the speaker.  Yes, that has included churches. We don’t attend there anymore.  But mostly it’s lectures or movies or theater performances, where the person in charge believes we’re in need of hearing just a little more of that ol’ time (what? He’s been dead a long time. And most of his adherents are either fossilized while living or brain dead, so….) Marxist religion.

Yesterday we almost added museums to that list. It came this close. You could smell its tail when it went by.

You see we thought it was safe to go to a WWI museum.  And as you guys know I’m interested in the era. Partly because I think that’s when the wheels came of Western culture and we started skidding on dangerous ice. Without wheels. Downhill. And there’s fire at the bottom of the ravine.

In a way the visit was good — the exhibits are excellent, and we might go back because I didn’t get to look at all the guns as I would have liked to. I’m not an expert, no, but the national variations on light machine guns are fascinating, and I still have to write World War Dragon — because it solidified a) what went wrong. b) why lately — like the last three years — the history has been “tasting” as if it rhymes with WWI.

My talking back, though started with the introductory movie.

I’ve told you guys before the causes I was taught for WWI, which included fervent nationalism, militarization and idealization of the military, as well as Germany coming late to industrialization and feeling hemmed in.  That last is probably true, btw.  Though at this point I’m in no mood to give consequence to “historians” infected by Marxism and therefore prone to running headlong down stupid blind alleys towards brick walls.

I have bad news.  In the forty years since they’ve pounded that arrant nonsense into my head, they’ve added more.  To that list is now added “Social darwinism” (Talk back “Did they confuse it with the SECOND world war?”) “Which believed that evolution applied not only to organisms but to cultures and that the fittest culture would survive!” (Talk back “And you don’t? Why not? What the hell do you believe? Or are you confusing culture with race again?”) Income inequality (Talk back: “As compared to what fluff brain? ANY time before that the inequality was greater.”) And the terrible treatment of the working classes in cities (tb: “Again, compared to what? Have you been asleep while India and China industrialized?”) which led to socialism (TB: “I too love to blame socialism for just about everything. But for world war I it’s a step too far.”) which was sweeping the masses, so practically every worker was socialist (TB: Snort, Giggle “No, butt-brain. The intellectuals were socialists, and it’s not hard to recruit petty criminals and useful idiots to swell your ranks. But no. Most workers were not socialist.”) AND THEN the one that made everything click: “Imperialism. Those darn hyper nationalistic states of Europe were going to Africa and Asia and creating colonies.”  And it clicked.  Particularly since the next point in their description was about how the Balkans didn’t like being under the heel of the Austro Hungarian empire.  (Not that I blame them. I mean, for a brief time Portugal was too, several centuries back.)

And the back of my brain went CLICK.  And now I need to descend into heresy from everything you’ve been taught. Although note, I’m not going to rewrite history. I’m not one of THEM. I’m just going to challenge the way it’s been interpreted and force fed to generations of people.

There is a very stupid meme going around facebook that talks about how terrible it would be if Europe had ever been treated the way that Africa and Asia were treated, and partitioned and repartitioned at random by uncaring colonial powers.

It’s one of those that makes me faintly nauseous, (like the one that claimed the pilgrims had white privilege) because it betrays just how far our schools have gone into not teaching the kids any kind of history beyond “Europe bad” and “everywhere else good.”  It would be less criminal if they simply didn’t teach them to read and write (wait, that’s true!)

Because of course, not only was tribal, mostly pre-historic Europe partitioned more or less blindly by conquering powers: Greeks, Romans, Phoenicians. But it was then repartitioned again and again at the whim of invaders (Goths — yes, their horned helmets were all black. Someone bop the comedian on the head and drag him out in the alley, please — Ostrogoths, Swabians, Franks, Alans and only Bob knows what — he’s very learned Bob — else.)  In fact the “national” borders of Europe are no more “real” to the genetic make up of peoples than are national borders anywhere else.  They are mostly where they ended up.  The fiction that the things inside the walls are “races” or ethnicities is a creation of public schools and national poets and … well, fictionalizing historians. Something the left should be quite familiar with.

This is not to say there should be no borders — more on that later — but frankly if the rest of the world wants to have the same “inside border” cohesion as Europe what they need is not to redraw them and moan about colonialism: it’s a shameless and ruthless propaganda machine to convince school children of bullshit. That should be easy. Communists can do it.

Anyway, the point is that “colonialism” and the “unrest in the Balkans” are not because of nationalism and “people becoming aware of ethnic differences” (I swear to Bob they said that. Do Historians nowadays know bloody nothing of history?) and dragging poor Darwin into that stew (fish stew. with heads in) is just purely mean.

Industrialization and the rapid change of ways of life does come into this because Man — and woman, child, infant and dragon — does not live by bread alone. Some wise Rabbi said that, and He was, as grandma would say, covered in reason (Hopefully the Reason of the Postrel era. It’s gone down hill.) I.e. men who can see time before and after their lives and whose lives are far too brief for their minds, need a narrative to fit into.

For a long, long time the narrative had been religion and a way of life.  “I farm, as did my father, my grandfather, his father etc. etc. etc.”  When you moved away from the village, where you could visit the graves of all your ancestors, you needed a narrative to be part of. Which is where nationalism and to an extent militarism fit in. (To the other extent militarism was always part of it, and now there were dime-novels talking of adventure, which is often in war or happens to military man.)

But there was real unrest at the time.  And while we know of a few where socialists spoke, etc, I don’t believe it was at all “socialist” or “Marxist” even.  I mean, look, I’m running on stories I heard from my grandparents who heard them from their parents (their being children during WWI.)  And other people’s grandparents, too, in other countries.

Oh, sure, the intellectuals loved Marx. They still do. They’re a very conservative constituency.  And the organized Marxists (which at the time flew under a number of banners, including gutting and wearing the skin of Anarchists. They also still do) were running as hard as they could to get ahead of the mobs that were getting pissy.

But the mobs weren’t getting pissy because they wanted socialism. Socialists just happened to be the only organized ones who could claim credit/responsibility/ stir things their way.

The unrest had more to do with a lot of dislocated people living in a large group than ever and running around without a narrative to fit their lives into.

But there were other things….

Glanced by in the presentation is the fact that most of the ruling class of Europe was related to Queen Victoria.  They didn’t talk about it, but here’s the thing, the other problem is that the vast empires of Europe had been vast for a long time, but not really centralized.  It’s possible Americans don’t know this, but large European countries (Sometimes you can swing a cat not needing a passport for the cat) were “one country” only in name.  The regional variations in everything from dialect to cuisine, not to mention the administration of local laws, and even local laws imposed by the local grandee made them effectively several tiny, locally-administered countries overseen/protected by an overlord.

In the nineteenth century that changed.  Not only was the ruling class running in possession of faster means of transport, and the wealth from the industrial revolution, but heaven help us, most of them had IDEAS.  (A lot of those ideas very similar to Marx’s.) They, by gum and golly were actually going to govern ALL of their holdings. Down to the smallest village.  (This had started with Louis XIV, may his name never be sufficiently damned, but in the 19th century they had the ABILITY as well as the desire to stomp on every peasant face forever.)

So what that presentation never connected (they had drunk too much Marx) but should is this:

Just before WWI people were rebelling against distant and often dogmatic rulers, who frankly didn’t know anything and cared even less about local needs and conditions.  This applied equally to European villagers and to Congo tribesmen.

And the European Elite, basically one family, was about as clued in and with it and insulated from the consequences of their bullshit as out would be world elites today.

So, yeah, they were having the equivalent of tea parties and yellow jackets outbreaks, which of course the socialists infiltrated and tried to claim — stop me when it sounds familiar — which explains what actually happened where the presentation used all sorts of passive voice “the respect for established monarchy was broken.”  Uh no.  People were sick and tired of distant rulers who didn’t get them trying to tell them how to wipe their behinds.

So yeah, things were breaking down and the ruling hierarchy found something to distract the people: a long, and bloody war.  Although to be fair, they were probably trying to grab more territory to mis-administer from afar. It just all came together in a perfect storm.

And afterward the Marxists blamed….  nationalism and the free market.  And tried to force internationalism — aka more control from afar — on people and treating people as faceless members of nations, with the guilt and victimhood ascribed to groups, not people.  And when that blew up in WWII… they doubled down.

We’re now in the middle of a massive, new revolution (Call it the digital revolution, though I don’t think that’s exactly right) in the way people live and work, and the old narrative doesn’t fit.  Unrest is breaking out all over, and the socialists, who are now, by and large the ruling elite, keep trying to appropriate it, and ascribe it to the same old same old.

If we double down and prescribe more internationalism, which they do, it might kill civilization and humanity with it.

And to be clear I am for borders.  I see the point of larger countries (commerce and military mostly) but the administration must be as local as possible.  When it comes to government it should always be as small, local and personal/adaptable as possible. Because people aren’t groups, or widgets that fit into groups, be the groups race, cultures, or nations.  Or even villages (trust me.) And because if the local government is doing something particularly idiotic, you can go and have a talk with them.  While if — oh, at random — all of Europe is governed from Brussels, you can’t even vote the bastards out, much less go and have a pointed, finger to sternum, conversation with the worst offender

What we’ve been doing for 100 years now is doing the same thing over and over again (A war? Let’s erase national barriers, and have people governed by impersonal groups far away! That will cure it!) and expecting a different result.

And we all know what that means.

If we don’t break out of this loop, we’re headed to World War Three and afterwards the socialists will try to set up ONE government for the whole of the Earth, because that will stop wars (they never heard of civil wars, the idiots.) [And it won’t work, because they’re sort of like the Jim Jones cult with universities. They have no contact with reality- SAH 2022]

Let’s stop this, shall we. Do not buy the narrative. Speak up, talk back, disrupt the “accepted causes.”

Disrupt the story of the accepted causes of everything really.  And keep talking back. Because everything has been infected with Marxism. And we must drive this heresy train all the way.

Good thing it has no brakes.

You know, this is getting fairly old. When I say something that can be construed either as a warning or a direct threat, say: fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, your head goes on a pike, someone contacts me, either via email or via unapproved comments on this blog, asking me to “give the signal” or asking under what circumstances is it right to shoot back, or–

There are only two explanations for this: either these are glowing in the dark (and all of these seem to, to be fair. And one of them that I answered and asked what the heck he thought he was doing, immediately punted to “ah ah, I didn’t mean anything”) or … insanity?

Let me make this clear, right now, once and for all. That was a direct warning, but not a threat. What is the difference? Well, the difference is that it was a warning in the sense of “if you don’t think that this will have any consequences, you’re insane. Try this again, and there’s a good chance you’ll unleash a wave of retribution that you cannot under any circumstances stop. And it will end badly for you.” Not in the sense of “I have minions all over who will heed my command, and start taking random heads. Mwahahahah.”

Because, you know, the second is crazy cakes.

If the people sending me these aren’t actively glowing, they’re deluded, and they haven’t been following the news. They also might have missed some meds.

Sure, we’re in bad shape. We’re in bad shape, because they have seized the visible levers of power. But they are in worse shape, because …. the levers don’t work. Or they work randomly. And there’s levers of power they can’t see and by their very nature don’t understand.

They’re doing “Well” at breaking things, but not at imposing the control they seek. And their attempts at establishing control are in fact likely to lead to the opposite of what they want. And they might very well provoke the boog they think they want. But not the one they want.

The one they want is one in which a handful of people who read blogs go out and do something uncoordinated and stupid that they can point out and say it’s a legitimate right wing conspiracy. (How can you tell it’s a conspiracy? Why, sir, they conspired right in public, on this blog. Because that’s how conspiracies work, when you want to entrap someone.)

In fact, every time there’s a shooting, or any type of attack, they descend on it like sharks, to point “See, dangerous right wingers.”

And it’s never true. It’s always crazy left wingers. And there’s usually evidence, right there in public, because they’re crazy left wingers. They’re getting desperate.

If you’re not in fact glowing in the dark, why would you want to give them what they want???

Sure, time might come there will be violence. How do you know when that will be? Well, for one it won’t be a late middle aged woman on a blog telling a bunch of people who mostly work with words to go out and… what? kill anyone suspected of being a leftist? Or what? Commit horrific acts that lead to nothing?

No. If things ever get to that point, they’ll get to that point through a sudden, overwhelming response. Think Christmas in Romania. It will be a many-points at once, everyone explodes because things have become intolerable.

But the truth is there is an overwhelming chance we don’t need violence.

Look, the other side is drinking its own ink. Or if you prefer, they’re cultists, in the power of a bizarre delusion. They think their win is inevitable. They don’t understand why it keeps failing. And chances are it will continue failing.

They desperately want to shift it to a state where they know they’ll win, because they’ve won before: the demonization of the other side, allowing it to be shut down.

And it keeps failing.

There is a good chance they wouldn’t succeed, even if they got what they wanted. Because they don’t have the power or the control they think.

Chances are it wouldn’t change anything about history, except kill hundreds of thousands, or millions of people.

Nothing else.

Yes, people will die anyway. Thorough famine, likely — though likely not in the US. It will be tough, not that tough — but playing the left’s stupid game will only get more people killed. And nothing will change, except rivers of blood. And possibly changing the republic in a way we don’t want, forever.

And if you are a glowy? If you’re an agent-provocateur trying to get your fellow citizens to say something incriminating so that you can run a horrible and improbable plot?

I feel stupid even typing that, except that in this day and age, after the “Whitmer plot” after January 6th, nothing — absolutely nothing — is beyond the corrupt cockroaches of our secret services.

So, if you’re one of those corrupt insects: You think you know the game you’re playing. You think you can trick people into doing what you need to set off your twisted plots.

But you won’t get it here. And it’s unlikely you’ll get it elsewhere. You will lose. You might think you have all the power, but you’ve picked the wrong side. This is not a game. You can’t win. Everything is against you. If you achieved your ends, the world you’re trying to build wouldn’t function. You’re at war with reality. You only have dreams and illusions on your side. And they’re evil ones.

Think of what you’re trying to do. Think what it means. This is not a game.

Stop now. The soul you save might be your own.

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. That helps defray my time cost of about 2 hours a day on the blog, time probably better spent on fiction. ;)*

FROM HEATHER STRICKLER: Whirlwind of Stars (Mythic Roads Book 1)

Some worlds end in Fire
Some in Ice.
A whirlwind swept Karsus away.
Sarah Macaran survived. Kidnapped, struggling with strange powers. She stowed away in the Toto’s cargo hold, but Scarcrow and the Toto’s crew have other worries: Dorothy vanished.
Can Sarah unravel the mysteries before the Wind finds her? Or the Witches of the Galaxy take matters into their own hands?

FROM MICHAEL LORTON: The Missionaries

Ron Rothman has nothing to lose. He hates his job; his marriage is disintegrating. When he crawls out of the smoking ruins of an automobile on the outskirts of Bangkok, leaving his wife’s lover dying in the front seat, the police suspect the wreck was not an accident. When he begins an affair with the dead man’s girlfriend, that suspicion becomes near-certainty. Krasaung Phiwang is a detective in one of the most corrupt police departments in the world, but he is an honest man and a good cop. Now his job—and perhaps his life—depends on finding enough evidence to convict the American of murdering his rival, whether he is guilty or not.

FROM WILLIAM MEISHEID: Beginnings: Book One of the Chronicles of the Lawgiver

The year is 1292 B.C. and Egypt has almost recovered from more than a generation of turmoil. Begun by the “Pharaoh who is not named,” the nation was plunged into social and religious chaos by a leader who overthrew the historic gods of the Two Lands in his desire to follow a single supreme and all-powerful deity, which he named Aten.

The powerful priesthood of Amun-Ra blamed and sought destruction of the Hebrews for corrupting the forgotten pharaoh with their heretical religious ideas. However, they sought to accomplish their annihilation in a way that would not destroy the economy of Egypt since the Two Lands had become dependent on Hebrew labor. By killing all newborn males, the blight would gradually be removed from the land within one generation.

Now, during the fourth year of a fledgling dynasty, a new threat is taken from the waters of the Nile by the sister of Pharaoh: a Hebrew child who should rightfully be put death as an offering to Sobek, the crocodile-headed god. However, the princess is childless and abundant signs and portents signal the gods have an opinion in the matter.

Through numerous twists and turns of an eventful day, Pharaoh and his priests seek the will of the gods in council, while Nephura, the Chief Priest of Amun-Ra in Memphis, seeks his own resolution to the problem. Before the day is out the destiny of two nations is forever changed as the name of Moses is first etched into the annals of history.

Discover possible answers to questions that have long remained problems such as what happened to the edict and why wasn’t Moses put to death as required by the law.

FROM GERALD L. HALL: Unwanted Gifts

Stewart Williams was a seemingly ordinary man working for a Defense Logistics Agency office. But he had inherited an extraordinary family gift to create objects seemingly out of thin air and to heal people with a mere touch. When Stewart uses this gift to heal his wife Sarah, help his community, his state and America. His act leads to an year-long adventure with many twists and turns. With the aid of several friends from his church, Stewart and his wife go into hiding from a hostile President B.H. Arnold with a hidden agenda once their identity is discovered. Because of the unexpected consequences set into motion by Stewart’s incredible act, events lead to a massive terrorist attack on America and an even more dramatic response on the part of Stewart and his wife.

FROM DANIEL ZEIDLER: Ghosts of a Fallen Empire

In the distant future an isolated human world has survived the Nomad Wars and the Fall of Imperium. Together with their non-human allies, the Dussakairay and the Bregus, they repopulated and rebuilt their devastated region of the galaxy to form a 40 system Commonwealth. For over five centuries the people of the Commonwealth have known only peace and prosperity, but an ancient enemy has been watching from the ruins of the old Imperium, slowly rebuilding their forces, and waiting for their opportunity to reduce the Commonwealth to ashes. The founders of the Commonwealth may have given up their Imperium, but they did not give up all of the Imperium’s secrets. Now the only hope for the people of the Commonwealth lies with the Ghosts of a Fallen Empire.

Are you looking for a fun and entertaining science fiction story with action, adventure, intrigue, a little humor, and dash of romance? How about one that also has star yacht racing, thrilling space battles, and clever, daring heroes you’ll enjoy rooting for? If you answered “Yes!” or even if you answered “I’m not sure… maybe?” then Ghosts of a Fallen Empire just might be the story you’re looking for!

FROM LAURA MONTGOMERY: Simple Service: Science Fiction Colonization Adventure (Martha’s Sons Book 1)

They’re stranded beyond the known stars. Will Peter Dawe’s perilous mission with a brother he despises end in death?A lost starship’s settlers, isolated on an uncharted alien world, manage to terraform a mountain-ringed valley into a rich replica of Earth. Despite their success reproducing the environment they need to survive and thrive, only tenuous forces hold together the human colony on the world of Not What We Were Looking For. The governor’s appropriation of the western settlers’ weapons for the city strains those bonds to breaking point—and then beyond when Peter Dawe’s father sends him to get the weapons back.

Twenty-year-old Peter Dawe’s restless nature easily endures the lost colony world’s rigors. His genetic modifications make it even easier. So when Peter retrieves the family weapon, he also brings back a motorbike, a piece of technology no longer available to everyone.

It would be a fine prize to keep to himself. He won it. He earned it. He quickly learns that his brother Simon lies in wait to take what isn’t his. Simon wants more than just the motorbike. He wants Peter’s glory.

But when Peter’s father forces him to take his hated older brother on Peter’s next mission, the pair must not only navigate the city’s perils and politics but learn to work together—when neither thinks the other should be in charge. Their success—and their very lives—depend on it. Or will Peter be proven right that he should have faced this task alone?

Simple Service is the first book in the immersive Martha’s Sons science fiction series. If you like gripping action, insurmountable odds, and alien worlds, you’ll love Laura Montgomery’s tale of a man determined not to let family ties sabotage mission success.

Buy Simple Service to pull off the impossible today!

FROM ELLEN KUHFELD: Secret Murder: Who Shall Judge?

In the days of old, life could be cheap.
Death, however, could be very expensive.

“There is one problem. And here he comes, at this very moment.”

Yes, Thorolf Pike was trouble. Declared an outlaw and exiled from his home, he had come from Surtsheim, where his fellow Norsemen lived, to Northlanding, where English settlers lived. Now he was dead, by an unknown hand. Who killed him? And, should the murderer be judged by English law, or by Norse law, for the crime of secret murder?

FROM HENRY VOGEL: The Hostage in Hiding

In a family full of heroes, Nora Connaught is the normal one. She’s never fought space pirates. Never saved anyone’s life. Never done anything remotely heroic.

Now she’s 18, and going off to college on another planet. Nora hopes she’ll finally get to live a normal life.

But life never goes as expected.

After pirates hijack the starliner she is traveling on, putting thousands of lives at risk, Nora must live up to the Connaught name.

Can she cast her own heroic shadow?

FROM HARDING MCFADDEN: Making Monsters: -stories

Welcome, all, inside the head of Harding McFadden! With open arms, he invites you to visit with an assortment of strange guests: a robot on a forgotten world, and a deadly visitor on Halloween night in Sleepy Hollow. The undead at the end of the world, and the last cursed soul thereon in his workshop at the top of the Earth. A barbarian, charging at a beast from beyond the stars, and an incredible heroine, looking eye-to-eye at forever. Here are tales of old friends, and lost loves, the world under our feet, the furthest stars, and points in-between. Won’t you visit for a while?

Five Stars: “It is an amazing book, can’t stop reading it. Harding McFadden and Chester Haas did an amazing job with keeping the reader intrigued through out the entire book. I highly recommend, can’t wait for the next one.” Amazon review of The Children’s War

Five Stars: “A great adventure book exploring important themes for today’s society. Godchick is an interesting and entertaining character that still manages to come off as believable, with relatable emotions and experiences.” Amazon review of The Great First Impressions Trip

Five Stars: “The book was really amazing, I could not put it down. I read some of the stories over and over. It has easily become one of my favorites. Harding Mcfadden has easily become one of my favorite authors. Can’t wait for his next book!!!!!!!” Amazon review of The Judas Hymn

FROM ROB HOBART: The Sword of Amatsu (Empire of the Sun and Moon Book 1)

For four centuries, the Empire of the Sun and Moon has been torn apart by war as its samurai Clans fight for the empty throne of the Emperors. The Gray Wolf Clan is one of only six Clans remaining, but faces a deadly threat from the more powerful and ruthless Jade Dragon Clan. Yet the greatest threat to the Empire is not the bloody ambitions of its samurai. The shadowy followers of the Cult of the Mask, worshippers of foreign demons, burrow through the Empire’s society like worms in rotten meat, growing in power year by year.

As battles rage and conspiracies fester, the fate of the Empire will turn on the actions of a handful of samurai. The young lord Ookami Akira, trained by monks to be a master of war but desperately ignorant of the Empire’s civilization, must learn to be the ruler of the Gray Wolf Clan or he and his people will perish. Kuroi Kaede, a naïve girl forced into an unwilling marriage to Akira, must master the courts if she is to survive. The lowly magistrate Kobayashi Mitsui is the only one in the Empire who recognizes the true scale of the threat from the Cult of the Mask. And the murderous wandering swordsman Kenji may hold the fate of all in his blood-stained hands…

FROM TONY MCKINLEY: The President’s Suit: How Dr. Applebreath and the Little White Ball Saved the World from Nuclear Annihilation

What would be the opposite of a Black Hole, a gravity source so powerful that not even light can escape it? The opposite would be a negative gravity source so powerful that nothing can even touch it! Dr. Applebreath has been developing energy weapons and defenses for decades built on this concept. JJ’s President’s Suit is a lightweight business suit that employs this principle to render the wearer invulnerable to small arms fire by absorbing the incoming energy of approaching projectiles and reflecting them back with equal momentum. Farley’s Anti-Gravity Ballroom enabling dancers to swim and float through the air under the towering ceilings employs the same principle. Then one Christmas Eve, in the Satellite Ballroom that shares all information sources on the planet, our heroes see that nuclear war is erupting between the global super powers. It’s time to save the world, it’s time for The Little White Ball!

FROM KYRA HALLAND: Daughter of the Wildings Books 1-3

In the Wildings, magic can get you killed.But sometimes, it’s the only thing that can save you.

The gunslinging mage. The rancher’s daughter with a dangerous secret. Together, they must stop a renegade wizard before the dark and deadly power he’s discovered destroys everyone who makes the Wildings their home.

And the adventure begins…

If you love magic, adventure, and romance in a unique setting, come discover the wonders and mysteries of the Wildings with magical bounty hunters Silas Vendine and Lainie Banfrey in this innovative epic romantic fantasy-western series. This ebook collection contains three full novels: Beneath the Canyons, Bad Hunting, and The Rancher’s Daughter.

Contains language, violence, and mild to moderate sensual content.

FROM LARRY DENNINGER: Songs for Clara

Rochester, New York, the summer of 1986. While clearing out the attic of his childhood home, Frank Stephens discovers a hidden collection of songs, composed by his father, for a woman named Clara.
But his mother was named Louise, and she died of cancer eight years ago. His father, now living in a retirement home, is suffering from Alzheimer’s, and is likely unable to give an explanation. Even if he could, would he? Their relationship bears scars of lifelong unresolved arguments and grudges. Despite these obstacles, and his sister’s objections, Frank is determined to discover Clara’s identity.
Frank is convinced his father was unfaithful. His search for the truth uncovers secrets and promises, which causes him to reconsider everything he once believed to be true – about his life, his parents, and his future.

FROM WILLIAM ALAN WEBB: Standing The Final Watch: (Last Brigade) (The Last Brigade Book 1)

America might be dead, but Nick Angriff will kick your ass to resurrect her.

Lt. General Nick Angriff has spent his adult life protecting family and country from a world of terrorism spinning out of control. On the battlefield, off the grid, in clandestine special task forces and outright black ops, Angriff never wavers from duty. But when a terror attack on Lake Tahoe kills his family, he’s left with only the corrosive acid of revenge… that is, until a hated superior officer reveals the deepest of all secret operations. Against the day of national collapse, a heavily-armed military unit rests in cryogenic storage, to be awakened when needed, and Angriff is named its commander.

Fifty years later he wakes to find the USA destroyed and predatory warlords roaming the ruins. Stalked by assassins bent on seizing his command for their own purposes, Angriff has to prepare for war while avoiding murder.

Because the only wall still shielding survivors from slavery and death are the men and women of The Last Brigade.

FROM RACHELLE AYALA: Red Hexed: Ruby (Love Charmed Romance Book 2)

When all you need is beauty, and the Devil’s serving boy needs you to play dead—with Hella, the Norse Goddess of Death.

Ruby Rush lost her face to a fire and has been in hiding ever since. When her best friend brings her a magical mirror, she finds herself through the looking glass with Roger Rok, a demigod son of the Norse God of Love.

He’s looking for a berserker sword to stop the end of the world, and in return for her help, promises her a beauty beyond her wildest dreams. But bargains, as well as mirrors and hearts, are made to be broken—especially when Ruby comes face to face with Hella and is whisked away to her icy realm of death.

While Ruby fends with Hella, Roger must deal with the conflicting desires of Odin, Loki, Hella, and Freya while a shapeshifting horsefly turned cockatoo leads or misleads them on their journey to stop Ragnarok.

Ruby tries to protect her heart, and Roger does his best to charm and protect her into helping him navigate modern day San Francisco. As the end of the world draws near, will Ruby discover that Roger’s professed love is not an illusion? More importantly, will Ruby and Roger find what they’re truly looking for?

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.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: CROW

I’m here. I’m okay. I got kidnapped to go to the movies.

Promo post tomorrow.

For reasons known only to the psychiatrist he doesn’t have, last night most beloved husband subjected me to songs from Mama Mia! (As if growing up in Portugal in the seventies I had been insufficiently punished with ABBA.)

This might explain why this morning I woke up with “Mama Mia, here we go again!” running through my head.

Well, it might but it doesn’t, not really. Because what caused it was the “Monkey Pox.” And I know I’m not the only one to remember the “overturned truck of monkeys” where they were being hunted down and anyone touching them was supposed to report because well, they carried some virus. I know I’m not the only one, because a reference was made at Ace of Spades.

So, I assume this is attempt 354 to “reduce the world population” by the idiots who drink their own ink by the bucket. But I’d like you guys to note they’re not particularly competent. They are in fact, drawers at pretty much everything. They are where they are because they’re good at power seeking, but that’s all they’re good at. Science evades them. (They only say they love it to get it into bed.)

I read the articles on the Monkey Pox very carefully. It’s identified as a “very dangerous” disease, but not a LETHAL one and people identified as having it, seem to be okay after a set of antibiotics.

Also, whispered around the edges is that it’s propagating mostly between gay males, and I don’t need to tell you that it doesn’t spread that easily given the very few cases detected outside Africa.

So, why has the establishment set its hair on fire, and started running around like mad people?

Well… Mama mia, here we go again!

Remember despite the unmitigated disaster that was the covidiocy, the left got what it wanted which was to steal the election, to lock people up, to control the economy and determine winners and losers. (And yes, they are indeed doing such a bang up job of it.)

So, yeah, they want more of it.

Expect the panic ramped up to 11. And expect them to try to force “monkey pox” (I understand it’s like small pox) vaccine at us. Yeah, it’s an MRNA vaccine, looks like.

I had small pox vaccination. I also had small pox, back in pre-history when I was actually apparently 2 and a half. (I thought it was three, but the spread map says 2 and a half. Or just before 3 at any rate.) Which is why the small pox vax left no scar.

Your mission if you should choose to accept it is to be obstreperous and difficult and loud right now, right from the beginning.

There are always diseases going around, it doesn’t a plague make. Right now, there’s no proof this is dangerous to humans in general.

They don’t get to force me to take injections of anything, unless I get to inject vinaigrette into ten politicians of my choice. (I have a little list.)

No, they don’t get to lock us up. Oh, they want to. As I told you before, when governments lock up or curfew their populations, it’s never because they’re scared of whatever the excuse for it. It’s because they’re scared of the people. THEY SHOULD BE SCARED. They’re not locking us up.

It’s time to make “Fool me once, shame on me; fool me twice, and your head goes on a pike” a thing.

Go forth and be ornery.

Because the left lives in the stupidest world — the one inside their minds — their new pet concept they’re dying to inflict on you, me, and our unsuspecting kids is “Global Majority”.

What the heck is Global Majority? Well, you see, the lizard people who are incredible racists, keep track of all gradations of skin color. Except, of course, when people of darker skin colors disagree with them, which makes them white.

Lately they’ve become obsessed with the idea of “white supremacy” for instance, which might make some sense if they were living anywhere in Europe up to the early 20th century, or in South Africa till the late 20th century. What it doesn’t make any sense, in fact in fact is in the US, the only truly multi racial, and mostly peaceful society in the world. I mean, I don’t know about you, but except for some very isolated areas, pale blonds are as rare as dark Africans. Most of us are a shade of mutt.

Ah, but you see, “White” is defined as…. well, having a job. Going in on time. Paying your bills. Or what we call “being a functional human being.”

But that’s because the lizard people are bizarrely racist. They think if you’re functional you’re white. Which means they don’t know (or understand) Americans.

And in that, we’re in good company.

You see, since we’ve started rejecting their insanity — okay, we have rejected it for a long time, but now we can fight back, and they’ve gotten crazier — they now pin their hopes on the world.

And they pin their hopes on the world, because the world — you see — is … wait for it: not white.

Therefore, the rest of the world is going to defeat the west because… They’re the majority. The GLOBAL majority.

First, I want to point out that the great thinkers of the left — referred to as “lizard people” because I’ve given up on their understanding people — are pulling the impressive, amazing gambit here that is known as “My big brother is going to come and beat you.”

Second, I want to point out they have to be aliens. Because they’ve never met a human, in the history of ever.

Look, there is no Global Majority. Only the most arrant racists could believe that. These people of extreme and insane pallor (and privilege) look around the world, see tan people, and say “Ah, all of them will band together and be a majority.”

Who was it who talked about ideas so stupid only an intellectual could believe them?

Look, even countries in Europe don’t consider each country a single race. I was born in a country so small you need a passport to swing anything above a day old kitten, but there are at least three distinct “races”. And no, they’re not the ones that the US considers races, though, yes, these days there’s immigrants from various places. But here I’m talking about groups of people who were around since say, the early 20th century. Portugal is at least three distinct cultural/physical “groups.” Great Britain, let’s not go there. France– never mind.

And then there is Africa. You know what? Africa has tribes, and each tribe considers itself a separate race. (Just one of the many reasons that “African American” is a multi-level lie, starting with “no African identifies as “African”” and ending with “Most African Americans are genetically what’s known as Caucasian and have never been closer to Africa than watching Black Panther.”

Asia is a multitude of tribes even more fractured than Europe. Possibly as fractured as Africa.

Then there’s Central and South America where — I hate to break it to the left, truly, I do — not only do most people there identify as “white” no matter what they look like to you, but they also are, for real, white supremacist, preferring paler people and looking down on the dark skinned.

In fact most of the world considers themselves as “white.” The only people who think only blond and blue eyed people think they’re white are naive and stupid American racists leftists.

Global majority my sore patootie.

Dear leftists, if you knew any humans who don’t live inside your head, you’d have noticed the only thing more human than screwing and — if at all possible — making babies with anything that looks even vaguely human (witness all the variety of fossil humans whose remains we find in caves, just before realizing they are also in our DNA) is to point at your brother and claim to be a totally different race/culture/species than your brother.

Global majority! If the world in general understood these idiots, they’d be laughing too hard to speak. Or beating up on the left for calling them non-white.

You know what, left? Keep screaming for Global Majority to come and beat us up. They’ll come right after they’re done exterminating those weirdos in the next village over who are clearly a different race.

The truth, dear idiots, is that you’re locked in here with us.

And the voices in your head aren’t going to help you.*

*No, not even if you give the ‘reality divergent” status as an oppressed minority.