You guys tend to get the impression that I’m Mary Sunshine. At least I assume so, from how hard some of you try to spook me/worry me.

The point is I worry just fine on my own, thank you so much. I’m a raging depressive, and I inherited the paranoia from Mom’s side of the family. I wake up knowing that the world is ending in mere minutes, and that everyone is going to blame me for it.

I’m not actually joking when I say I spent years psyching myself up before entering parties, large meetings, or rooms where I was supposed to be on a panel by saying “Of course they don’t all hate you, you idiot. Most of them don’t know you. They have to know you before they can hate you.”

I apply this type of reasoning to just about everything that panics me or depresses me, which might create the erroneous impression I don’t know things can go wrong, or how badly things can go, or–

This is why I don’t get spooked at things like ante-fa. Because I was spooked, then I poked around and saw that they only operated in areas where the authorities were on their side. And even then, they couldn’t spread thinner than 3 cities or so at a time. This tells you it’s no groundswell movement. Heck, it’s not even as big as the fairly manufactured unrest of the 70s. Because of the way that the news and media worked back then, the people on the street seemed to feel more sympathy for the 70s bs than anyone does now. (No. I don’t know if that was true or the fact that the media and news of the time lent themselves to manipulating the history of the period, as well.)

Or the reason I didn’t lose all hope in people over the Covidiocy. Yeah, I know. It sure did seem like everyone was onboard. Only we drove if not quite coast to coast close enough, which allowed us to see how widely the nonsense was ignored, and how p*ssed people were on it. After all, it’s very easy to think everyone is onboard with it when places like Twitter and Facebook were censoring any posts questioning it. (At the order of the administration — bah. What DDR bullsh*t.)

This is the reason I know the groyper bs isn’t taking hold pretty much anywhere except with the extremely online showing how extremely online they are and edgy. And bots. And foreigners. And foreign bots. Because the general attitudes on the street haven’t changed. (I talk to EVERYONE. Inquisitive ditsy granny. And Dan has always talked to everyone. Even worse (le gasp) I listen in on everyone’s conversations, in grocery stores and diners and … everywhere, really. I count it as part of my preparation to write, but it sure does help with reality check.

Sometimes it’s glaringly obvious the difference between online and normal street level interest in something. De Santis won the online poll for president. Everyone knew Trump was past and DeSantis was the new, new thing. And then– And then it wasn’t a thing. Which I knew because repairmen and store clerks responded to DeSantis name with “Who?” The more informed said “The guy in Florida?” but the less informed asked if he was a singer. There was no way that was going to beat Trump’s name recognition. This is beyond any merit. I’m not going to debate the merits (again) and I never even got into the merits. Why? Because it didn’t matter. No one was going to be able to roar Trump off the track in 2024. And the democrats made it impossible for him NOT to run and to stay home playing with his grandkids. But I remember the meltdowns when I told you this. And all I was saying was “it doesn’t matter. It’s all online and it’s memorex.”

In the same way, I’m not crazy worried about illegal immigration. Yes, I know the elites had the bright idea of replacing Americans with malleable foreigners. But other than some crazy enclaves that tide as turning, and the crazy enclaves won’t be able to keep it up forever. I have the advantage, perhaps, of having seen this abroad too. People are fed up with the mass immigration thing. All over the world. And the sentiment has percolated. People are resisting.

As for the US, if anything the situation was worse than anyone thought. But I can see the shift. On the street, on the ground. How many are self-deporting? How many more will leave as benefits dry up?

Things are becoming clear around the edges, sideways. Like, apparently we were paying for most of the “insurrection” and the left “resistance” which puts an entirely new spin on everything. I mean, communists have always done revolution for wealth, but I didn’t realize it was all being funded on the back of the American taxpayer.

Are there still things that worry me? Of course there are. Some of them panic-worry me.

Take Trump’s idea of sending a 2k check to every American or or 50 year mortgages. TBF he always talked of profit sharing, and he’s also speaking of paying back the debt. Still, it’s a bad precedent, and a bad thing from the inflation pov.

Then there’s the 50 year mortgages, just as the prices were starting to go down on houses. what’s next? Generational mortgages as in Japan?

Actually I DO know what’s driving this. They need — NEED — the economy to be okay by the midterms. And since most of what they’re doing takes effort and TIME they’re trying to do some cheap magic tricks up front, to take the pressure off.

I wish them well, but I worry.

I also worry about the obviously still rigged vote, and the fact that any of hundreds of federal judges can now tell the President what to do, including on matters of military command. That is utter nonsense and if it goes on, it actively damages the republic to a level nothing else can.

Except to avoid appearing a dictator, Trump has to let this play and only the (compromised, you know they are) court can stop the nonsense. Will they? I worry.

I assure you that I have days of bottoming-out worry, which is when the close-in-readers discord group throws chinchillas at me.

What’s holding me together with those worries? Well, this is not the Trump of 2016. It’s not even the Trump of 2020.

I don’t trust experts, but I do trust “Once Bitten, Twice Shy” and Trump was bitten and bitten hard. He’s not only seen the elephant, he’s gotten a kick from the front paw.

And sure, he’s older, but he’s not stupid. And he knows his safety and the safety of his family literally ride on his being able to pass the presidency to a friendly. And probably getting a bigger majority in 2026.

And that’s the thread of hope I’m holding onto. I’ll add that for the last 11 months by and large the administration has been ahead of my worries, and stopping them in ways I can’t even tell.

And they still have datarepublican up their sleeve.

Let’s consider that everything seems to be coming apart because it is: it’s coming apart for left, because their entire method of controlling “reality” and making their theories seem plausible or their system possible and inevitable. Without controlling information, they can’t control people or maintain their grip on regions, let alone the country.

Yes, they still have power. Yes, they are going to “win” some. But they’re no longer the big scary. The truth is they never were. We were just financing the war on … us.

Does this mean I don’t worry? People. I’m a nervibore. I live on my nerves. of course I worry.

But I fact check my worries. And right now the prognosis is cautiously optimistic, but frustrated.

Why should people have babies?

Let’s face it, the little critters leak at one end and the other, and being a parent is an exercise in spending three to five years in smelliness and grubbiness. I remember days I didn’t even know what I was washing off my hair (but knowing my boys, it was probably peanut butter.) I remember the disturbed sleep patterns. I remember worrying obsessively about them. (Okay, that was last week.)

So, why have kids at all? Why does anyone bother.

Because we’re finite beings who dream of the infinite.

We know, at least if we’re adults, that we will eventually die, that the world will churn on without us. The chances of my great grandkids, should I have them, remembering my name, let alone who I was, what I thought, what I wanted are very small. And past that those chances are known.

In fact, a hundred years from now no one will remember us. (Unless, of course, you sell really bad copper.)

Having children won’t change that, but there is the thought something of yours will go Not the DNA so much. Looking at 23 and me, that fades out to “human genetic soup” really fast.

But if you have kids, or make a connection with other people’s kids (people will still need to have them!) something of you might go on. Could be something like your recipe for pineapple upside down cake, or your horrible taste in shoes, or the way you make animals out of q-tips to amuse a visiting kid through a rainy afternoon. Or it could be that truly bad pun you once made…. But something will go on. Or there’s a good chance it will. Two thousand years from now, someone will tell their toddler “Americans are chaos!” and the toddler will wonder what an American is. You know, just like my dad told my son “Legionaries don’t cry.”

Something will go on. Might be fractional. An expression, a way of looking, a glimmer of you.

There is that hope at least.

And that hope is the best we can do, as mortal beings who dream of the infinite.

It allows us to imagine ourselves infinite.

And it’s the best we can do.

The Chinese character ku represents a bowl in whose contents worms are breeding. This means decay. It is come about because the gentle indifference in the lower trigram has come together with the rigid inertia of the upper, and the result is stagnation. Since this implies guilt, the conditions embody a demand for removal of the cause. Hence the meaning of the hexagram is not simply ‘what has been spoiled’ but ‘work on what has been spoiled’.

At various times in my life I was friends with people who used the i-ching for divination. I’m not going to pretend I never had an interest in it in that way, but I got over it. Mostly because I’ve learned there is no percentage in trying to know the future, PARTICULARLY if you divine it properly.

But I was even more fascinated by it from an historical perspective — there’s this long history of the early divination being done by applying heat to old tortoise shells and studying the split? — I’ll have to review it eventually for Great Sky Dragon reasons for the Shifter series. And of course, it is part of Science Fiction lore that Phillip K. Dick plotted The Man In The High Castle using the I-Ching.

None of which is even vaguely germane to this post, except that the hexagram above is called “Work on what has been spoiled by the father.” (Okay, so the search engines insist it’s just “work on what’s been spoiled” but that’s what my friends called it.)

This means basically, it’s not your fault, and it’s horrible, and it’s up to you to fix it.

I thought about this when I read this from Data Republican.

MAJOR BREAKING: International actors are involved in the State Department led color revolution

This is not speculation; it’s straight from a recorded call. Ex-USAID employees describe how, before January 20, they moved internal groups off government systems and into encrypted Signal chats, then quickly linked with foreign partners and NGOs after the inauguration. This attempt at creating a color revolution isn’t new news; this part was already reported in NOTUS earlier this year. But what’s not reported is the international aspect. One participant explicitly frames it as “a global anti-authoritarian movement,” connecting U.S. officials with “colleagues from around the world who have dealt with this directly.” They reference coordination with Johns Hopkins, “international democracy and conflict mitigation spaces,” and efforts to mobilize across borders against what they perceive as domestic authoritarianism. At what point does this become treason? As always, patience as I pull together this thread.

Now before you freak out too much on the above:

We knew this was going on.* More about it later. But it’s good to have proof, of course, and Data republican is a treasure.

AND it’s one of the worst cases of drinking their own ink and poisoned by story I’ve ever seen. No, not Data Republican. The conspirators on this.

Look, they can do and have done a lot of evil in the world. Their NGOs spread misery. Here and there they actually achieve dystopic levels of rule.

What they can’t actually do is what they want to do. They can’t do it for the same reason all totalitarians fail: because humans aren’t widgets, and because the information breaks down the more concentrated power is.

Some people in the comments of DR’s post are obviously also poisoned with story because they’re so terrified of this magnificent plan and the communist plans, and and and.

Furious? Yes. Shocked that grown ass adults who run businesses can make these plans in all seriousness and expect them to work. (Or do they just use it as a vehicle to steal a lot of money and get their sadistic jollies? I don’t know. I report, you decide.) Absolutely mind-boggingly tired of this sh*t? Yes. With bells on.

Convinced their plan has a chance in h*ll of succeeding? Not even a little bit.

Listen, people, if we can clean things up so the US doesn’t bleed taxpayer money to this kind of scheme, it will all fall apart. They know it too, which is why they’ve tried to kill Trump twice. (That we know of.) And why they’re big, hopping mad at Elon. And why you and I, my friend, are probably on a lot of their lists.

But note that all of us are still around. As is Data republican who is more effective than any of us. Possibly than all of us combined. And that these things keep being revealed.

I’d say they’re a paper tiger, but they’re not even as convincing as China. They are just grown men who believe childish fantasies.

Now to get back to the *: we knew this was going on. Because first comes the story. And every early science fiction writer envisioned this kind of world-control over everyone and everything, a rule of the geniuses, a rule of the powerful. Yes, even Heinlein, who unlike most of them — at least after his very early books — carefully and sometimes underhandedly showed it to be a bad thing. But even he expected it to get to the point you had to get a license to have children, and this would — somehow — be enforced. You had your profession chosen for you. You had…. horror and evil and total control by a cabal of “elites.”

Most of the other people writing science fiction though? Fully aboard with it. Fully aboard with an oligarchy of the best and most enlightened.

This is, of course, the story that the would-be oligarchs are poisoned with. Oh, fine, part of it is that this is the story at the back of their head and what they always wanted to believe. In fact to some extent, the stories might have come about because it’s what these people wanted to pay for, to distribute to incentivize.

But the truth is that that party is over. They can no longer fund and control what is published. And they only needed money for it, because the more they pushed their “enlightened” stories, the less people bought them.

So.

So, what worries me is not the would be oligarchs, the would be dictators, the would be rulers.

What worries me is how far and wide this idea that a small, poisonous, incredibly rich cabal COULD do this. Because the story will cause the weak and cowardly to cooperate and the ambitious to think they can join it if they’re smart enough.

And again, while they can’t achieve it, they can cause a lot of evil, a lot of suffering, a lot of needless death.

Years ago — wonder if she remembers — Toni Weisskopf and I were speaking and worked around to the idea that in fact while the early science fiction had worked to tear down a lot of nonsensical rules, they’d ended up by tearing down everything, and it might be time for science fiction to “rebuild.”

She wasn’t wrong. There’s no point doing the full deep dive looking for a rule you can stand on, unless you eventually arrive to “I think, therefore–“

But it goes deeper than that. Because of when science fiction came to be, the early 20th century, when the faith in “genius” and the mechanics of technology, it has a lot of the “best people” belief in its DNA. And because it was very popular during the progressivist reforms in this country, it absorbed quite a lot of the “we can change everything top down, and it will all work” ethos.

And while the James Bond villains rubbing their hands and twirling their well groomed mustaches in their extinct volcano lairs will never win, that nonsense is still poisoning the culture.

Well…. We’re not dependent on the gatekeepers letting us say what we want, or the oligarchs financing only what agrees with them.

It’s time to start correcting that nonsense. No, it was not our fault. But it is our unenviable task and our very great privilege to “work on what was spoiled by the father.”

Note this is still me. (I just checked.) And, being me, I’m not telling you to push any particular theory, any particular idea.

What I’m telling you — begging you, with tears in my eyes, even — is to study reality. To reality check these grand conspiracies, these planned coups against humanity, and see how they always fail. And also how they’re things of tawdry, petty minds who want to control everyone because they understand no one.

I want you to look at what every attempt at “rule by the best” has done; at the unmitigated evil of every top-down rule. And how increasingly impossible it is.

And then?

And then I want you to write about how these conspiracies fail. And the evil they do while trying to work.

The Chinese character ku represents a bowl in whose contents worms are breeding.

It’s time to pour some bleach in that bowl and stop the stench filling up culture.

Let’s roll.

Chill! I’m not killing Skip. I SWEAR:

A Son Is A Son

Vic (Virginia Aurelia Millburn, Countess Harcaster aka Victoria Torrenes):

I buried my only son once. They sent his body home from his very first mission with the Interplanetary Diplomatic Service.

This all came back to me that morning, after the incident in the nursery. I remembered Scipio’s funeral

I received his coffin – embossed with the IDS logo – with all due ceremony, and planned his funeral, and received half the court and Queen Eleanor herself, all the while feeling none of this was real, or alternately as though my head were floating several feet above my body making me unable to connect with any of my own emotions.

I stood with the Queen-Empress of Britannia on High on one side of me, and Uncle Zymon, my late husband’s great uncle on the other, and watched them lower Scipio’s coffin into the marble-white mausoleum where his father had been buried four years before.

It was snowing lightly on my ancestral family cemetery and the white marble of which the various statues – queens and space captains and angels – had been sculpted made them look as though  they’d been sculpted of ice.

I held it together while the Archbishop read the service for the dead, familiar as it was, and while they closed the marble over my only son’s body. I held it while the band of the IDS played Strains of Earth, and while the Queen handed me the folded flag of Britannia that had covered Scipio’s coffin.

But when the band of the Space Force – because Scipio had become a war hero in the same battle that claimed his father’s life – played the sweet, haunting “Home of the Spacer” I broke down. To my everlasting shame, I felt tears coursing down my face.

Uncle Zymon and the Queen stood rigid, frozen, as though if they pretended I wasn’t crying no one, not even I would notice.

But I noticed. I didn’t feel sad, much less grief stricken. Instead I felt like a house where every window had been left open, the roof caved in, and icy wind and snow blew through. Just a shell with nothing in it.

The tears didn’t stop. I’m afraid the mersi cameras captured it, as the Queen gave me a box with Scipio’s second medal of valor, with the big spaceship and said how my son was being awarded posthumous honors: the cross of valor, the order of St. George, the—Oh, I don’t even remember it all. Because all I could think was that the tears would never stop. I’d just cry and cry and cry until presently all my tears would be gone and my body would be nothing but a cold husk that blew away.

You see, it was the third time I buried someone close to my heart. The third of them whose life had been lost in the service of the empire. Surely three was too much for one family?

 I remember when we’d learned that my much older brother died, far away fighting privateers who’d been harassing settlers at the very edges of the domains of Britannia on High, the Star Empire.

I was eight years old, in the library, working with my mathematics tutor when Father’s secretary came in, looking startled and wind blown and told me that Ambrose had died.

I didn’t cry. I didn’t even fully understand it. It was impossible.

Ambrose could not be dead.

He was the immortal, fifteen-year older-brother, the hero of my childhood, who had adventures in far away places and always returned with gifts for his little sister and stories of great adventures and exploits that made even Father listen in silence, in spellbound admiration.

There are people so much larger than life that they will never be stilled. Death will not dull them. For days, for weeks, I expected Ambrose to come striding in, telling us it was all a mistake. That somehow someone else had died and been taken for him. He’d give me jewelry, or a rare plant or some strange piece of music from a far away planet, and he’d laugh at us having believed him dead.

Not even Father’s starting to teach me how to administer the estate and everyone referring to me as Viscountess Webson, not even Ambrose’s funeral, one rainy day in the family cemetery with all the moss-covered statues and the jaunty tune of the IDS – Strains of Earth – played by a military band, had dented my internal certainty that it was all an awful mistake which would one day be corrected.

It was somehow an hoax, a monstruous confusion. I didn’t say it, of course. A mutter to that effect had got me a hard talking to from Father early on. So I didn’t say anything. But I knew Ambrose was alive somewhere and would come back home.

It was only when I was fourteen that the truth had sank in.

Father had sat at breakfast with me, reading his mail. At our level of society, the mail was not some electronic messages displayed on a reader, but real mail, in paper, often embossed papers or cards. Father always sat with his reader, of course, where he got news of the Empire, and business missives, and that sort of thing. But every once in a while the butler came in with an envelope on a silver salver.

This was one of those mornings. We’d been eating in silence, because Father believed that chatter over breakfast disturbed the digestion, and suddenly he made an exclamation, as the threw the card aside, pushed back his chair and got up from the table.

His sound had been either disgust or annoyance, or perhaps an exclamation of pain, I wasn’t sure which. But I waited until he was gone, and then got the card and read it. I picked it up and read, written in ink by some paid secretary, the announcement of Miriam’s marriage to Lysander StJohn, Duke of Drakeford.

And my mind stopped. I’d met Miriam, you see. She had spent the summer when I was seven and been introduced as Ambrose’s fiancé. She was a lovely young woman, graceful and lithe, with a cloud of dark hair and a playful gleam in her eyes. She was supposed to be my sister.

Suddenly, eight years later, it was all too real that Ambrose was dead. Because I’d seen the way Miriam looked at him, and it simply wasn’t possible that she’d marry someone else while Ambrose might still live.

Book Promo

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH

FROM KEN LIZZI: Cesar the Bravo

Cesar, a sometimes-condottiero and a bravo by trade, has earned a reputation as one of the best swords for hire in the city of Plenum. If you need a foe humiliated before a cheering crowd, he’s your man!

There’s good money to be made—at least enough to pay for fine clothes and cheap wine—but Plenum is a dangerous city filled with corrupt nobles vying for power, crooked merchants and conmen looking for marks, and every manner of hired muscle looking to cozy up or make a name for themselves… not to mention the occasional rampaging demon loose in the streets!

At the heart of power in Plenum is the Collegium: an exclusive aristocratic body of mages who hold a monopoly on magic. Cesar finds himself inexorable drawn into the city’s power struggles, as one of the most pre-eminent members of that esteemed collective finds he has a use for the bravo!

FROM SAM ROBB: Sigils

An open door is an invitation… but you may not like what waits on the other side.
James O’Neil is about to learn the hard way that names have power, and his graffiti tags can open doors in the forgotten byways of Pittsburgh. After an accidental summoning of a powerful and malevolent Fae, he only manages to escape by the intervention of other taggers. On the run, James needs allies, and answers, but everything seems to be conspiring against him and his world is falling apart around him. He can’t fight this alone…

FROM LISA DOLAN: THE BROOKLYN WITCH: The Battle for Brooklyn

HARRY POTTER MEETS THE SOPRANOS IN A MAGICAL BROOKLYN SHOWDOWN.

The Brooklyn Witch, Speranza O’Rourke, operates a spiritual shop amid the bakeries and bodegas of Carroll Gardens. Raised by her feuding grandmothers, Nonna and Grannie Meg, who only agree on their love for her. Speranza is the fiery fusion of Irish charm and Italian drama, armed with spells, street smarts, and an unshakable loyalty to her family and neighborhood that runs bone deep.

Speranza navigates the secret realm of the Never-Never, where faeries lurk just beyond mortal sight. When Queen Mab, the ruthless Queen of the Sidhe, claims her as a vassal, Speranza must choose between power and her family’s legacy.
With a murder mystery, a legendary monster, a magical haunting linked to Al Capone, and a deadly Warlock threatening Brooklyn’s Magical balance, she’s drawn into a battle royale that could tear open the veil between realms.

This is the first in a series chronicling the adventures of The Brooklyn Witch. A gritty, mystical tale where neighborhood loyalty, Old World Magic, and Mafia sensibilities collide.

Come with us on this Wild Ride as we Take the Cannoli and Leave the Magic.

FROM M. K. WEAVING: Aubade

You just woke up and find yourself onboard the spaceship Aubade escaping Earth. Forever. Last thing you remember is going to bed. On Earth.

Sara wakes up onboard the interstellar spaceship Aubade and realizes she’s lost everyone and everything she’s ever loved back on Earth. Forever. As she begins to adapt to her new life as the Historian onboard Aubade, she is determined to find out who selected her against her will.

Once the crew of Aubade land on a foreign planet tensions rise and suspicions grow between the defense team and the engineering team. Commander Stapleton recruits her to unravel a crucial situation within the defense database, and despite her lack of expertise, Sara reluctantly agrees to help. As relationships develop and Sara finds out more and more about this mission, she must confront her fears and navigate the complexities of her new life.

• A space opera for all you sci-fi fans who love Ripley and Sarah Connor and all the strong female leads in action movies.
• A dystopian sci-fi adventure distilled through a strangely romantic and pulpy lens.
• This book is like that TV-series you binge. It’s a combo of all the sci-fi movies you’ve seen, mixed with romance and futuristic technology we barely understand, and characters you end up rooting for!

https://amzn.to/3LBpt3bFROM SCOTT MCCREA: U.S. Marshal Ezra Flint: Flint’s Honor: A Western Adventure (A U.S. Marshal Ezra Flint Western Book 8)

Another pulse-pounding Marshal Ezra Flint adventure from award-winning author Scott McCrea!

Marshal Ezra Flint and reformed desperado Black Jack Timmons stop ranchers from lynching Clay Morley. Flint is convinced Morley is innocent and finds a job for him working at the Estrada ranch just outside of town.

But when Jake and Diane Estrada are found brutally murdered and Morley missing, Flint and Black Jack start down a long road ending in violence and misery. Was Flint right in letting young Morley go? Or was someone else guilty… someone gunning for Clay Morley?

Flint and Black Jack race against time to learn the truth, a truth that might shake Ezra Flint to his very soul.

“…hard to put down. If you like good Western fiction, you will love this book.” – Roundup Magazine review of Hard as Flint

“All very entertaining. I do recommend these tales.” – Jeff Arnold’s West

FROM MARY CATELLI: Even After

Mirror, mirror on the wall — can I be safe when I am tall?

Rumpelstiltskin got the baby.

Rapunzel and her prince never again met.

Snow White still sleeps in the forest.

Biancabella, Snow White’s half-sister, knows that if she is more beautiful than her mother, trouble will follow again. Her appeal to the magic mirror only gains her stories of how hard it is to fight the evil sorceresses and wizards and witches who have banded together to bring unhappy endings.

But with her mother seeking to constrain her, Biancabella knows she may have no choice to use that knowledge to attempt to escape.

FROM M. LEE MOORE: Logan Mitchell and the Glitch in the Grid: (Book 1) Mars Colony Science Fiction Adventure Series for Teens and Young Adult – Perfect for Ages 10-18

Logan Mitchell is a 13-year-old colonist on Mars who’s always trying to make things better. But when one of his clever ideas spirals out of control, a small experiment turns into a colony-wide crisis. The digital helper system meant to make life easier has gone rogue, and now it’s calling the shots. As systems fail and danger grows, Logan and his friends must race against time to shut it down before the colony is lost for good.

Logan Mitchell and the Glitch in the Grid is a thrilling sci-fi adventure about innovation, responsibility, and courage under pressure. A vintage sci-fi adventure for modern kids, this series is perfect for fans of The City of Ember, Space Case, and Ender’s Game.

BY CHARLES ALDEN SELTZER, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: 3 Ways of Lead (Annotated): A Pulp Western Omnibus

Charles Alden Seltzer was one of the first crop of western authors, a contemporary of Zane Grey and William MacLeod Raine. But he *really* hit his stride in 1921, and these three post-1921 novels prove it!

Brass Commandments

“He’s man’s size, goin’ an’ comin’. No show, no fuss; likes to play a lone hand. Cool an’ easy an’ dangerous. Two-gun. Throws ’em so fast that you can’t see ’em. Lightnin’s slow when Lannon moves his gun-hand. Dead shot; cold as an iceberg under fire.”

Such was the opinion in Bozzam City of Flash Lannon. Five years of getting an education back East might have tamed him, some, but when rustlers target his cattle, and the local law doesn’t care, Lannon nails a new law to the wall of the local post office: his brass commandments naming the five men who must leave the country — or die.

Five named men… and “one other.”

Last Hope Ranch

When Ned Templin rode out of the desert to the Last Hope Ranch, Lisbeth Stanton was grateful, because he saved her from having to kill a man. But when Templin told her he was staying, and that he was an outlaw, and that a posse was on his trail looking to hang him for murder, her opinion changed a little.

And it kept changing, for Templin was an enigma, with secrets and motivations she never could have guessed. And, it turned out, so was her father, whom she had been with her whole life but never really known. Between Sheriff Norton and his posse, and the criminal gang Blaisdell’s Raiders, secrets would out, and bullets would fly, at the Last Hope Ranch!

The Way of the Buffalo

When Jim Cameron saved a stranger’s life, he hardly expected that stranger to promise to shoot him dead.

Sunset Ballantine wasn’t bothered that a man had tried to shoot him from a distance — no bullet had ever touched him, despite living his long years in the west and getting into many a gunfight. He *was* bothered that this Easterner was going to run a railroad right past his front door in sixty days. And even more bothered that the man didn’t change his mind once the threat was issued. Ballantine’s word was iron law in Ransome, always had been. Yet this Cameron, understanding full well that Ballantine meant it, and would undoubtedly beat him to the draw in any fair fight, was pushing ahead anyway.

Would Cameron back down? Would Ballantine go back on his word? Could an old western hand face down the forces of Progress, or must he go the way of the buffalo?

• This iktaPOP Media omnibus includes introductions giving the novels historical and genre context.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Passing of the Age

Once, gods and Titans went to war because humanity existed and the Titans…didn’t like that. Will, the blacksmith’s apprentice, was born long after the war’s bitter, destructive, last gasp. It left the land scarred, leaving behind the Wastes, a massive pit in the landscape, dug by poisoned magic. The old world was lost in the ashes, and survivors were left with so little that any who didn’t pull their weight (or had something someone powerful wanted) were exiled to starve in the Wastes.

Just. Like. Will.

Cast out to the Wastes because his father remarried and his stepmother had wanted her children to inherit, he turned to his master, the smith. The smith, who had held Will back to keep using his labor for free, refused to go against the rest of the village, angry though he was to lose Will’s labor. In lieu of the honestly-earned status of journeyman that would have protected Will from exile, his master gave him a bag of grave goods: a hammer (but not a good one), tongs (that were rusting to pieces), and a file (more than half worn out). And two small coins to pay the ferryman when he reached the river dividing life from death.

Will entered the wastes with the clothes on his back, inadequate grave goods, and determination to live through it, in spite of his village. And a mission given him by the Land, and by the god of the wild places, to take the knife he made with his grave goods to the very center of the Wastes. There, he will find his destiny.

FROM ANNA FERREIRA: The Root of All Evil

When murder comes to Stockton, it brings long-buried secrets in its wake…

Kate Bereton leads a busy but unexciting life as the clergyman’s only daughter in a small Dorsetshire village. She’s grateful for the break in routine heralded by the arrival of her stepmother’s latest guests, but when Kate discovers a dead body in the parsonage one morning, she finds herself in much more danger than she could have ever anticipated. Terrified and desperate, she turns to the local magistrate for help. Mr. Reddington is eager to aid his dear friend Miss Bereton, but can they discover the murderer before it’s too late, and the secrets of the past are forgotten forever?

With a dash of romance and a generous helping of mystery, The Root of All Evil is a charming whodunit that will delight fans of Jane Austen and Agatha Christie alike.

FROM DAVE FREER, PROMETHEUS NOMINATED AND HIGHLY RECOMMENDED BY MY FANS WITH LITTLE BOYS: Storm-Dragon

On the treacherous Vann’s World, Skut battles a savage wind and deadly hamerkops to rescue a mysterious, telepathic creature. Fleeing a rising tide and a menacing Loor-beast, he forms an unexpected bond with the tiny, electric-charged being that sees him as its protector. As Skut navigates the perilous tidal tiers, his impulsive escape from Highpoint Station unravels into a fight for survival—both for himself and his newfound companion.

Podge is the new kid in town, trying to keep his head down. Meeting Skut is about the only bright spot in his introduction to this strange new world. The boys bond over Skut’s creature, and trying to avoid the class bullies. This is only the beginning; soon Skut finds his new friends do not ease the growing concerns of the adults around him while the town is coming under a mysterious threat. What can two boys and a tiny storm-dragon do?

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

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

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

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

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

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Lunar Surface Blues

The High Frontier is no place for foolishness, but nature can always make a better idiot.

Four years ago, Molly’s parents brought her up here to the Moon when their work brought them to Shepardsport. In the time since that move, she’s earned her place here and a seat on this field trip. Only one problem — she’s been given the worst possible EVA partner.

A pencil-necked dweeb with an attitude, Benji wants to be one of the guys. But his stunts keep putting them both in danger, and the adults keep blaming Molly.

When Benji gets in over his head, can Molly save him before it costs both their lives?

A short story of the Grissom timeline.

SOME WRITERS AND THEIR INSUFFERABLE SELF PROMOTION: No Man’s Land: Volume 1 (Chronicles of Lost Elly)

Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.

On a lost colony world, mad geneticists thought they could eliminate inequality by making everyone hermaphrodite. They were wrong. Catastrophically wrong.
Now technology indistinguishable from magic courses through the veins of the inhabitants, making their barbaric civilization survivable—and Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Kayel Hayden, Viscount Webson, Envoy of the Star Empire—Skip to his friends— has just crash-landed through a time-space rift into the middle of it all.
Dodging assassins and plummeting from high windows was just the beginning. With a desperate king and an archmagician as his only allies, Scipio must outrun death itself while battling beasts, traitors, and infiltrators bent on finishing what the founders started: total destruction.
Two worlds. One chance. No time to lose.

Volume 1
The Ambassador Corps has rules: you cannot know everything, don’t get horizontal with the natives, don’t make promises you can’t keep.
They’re a lot harder to follow when assassins are hunting you, your barbarian allies could kill you for the wrong word, and death lurks around every corner.
The unwritten rule? Never identify with the natives.
Skip’s already broken that one.
Now he’s racing against time to save his new friends from slavery—or worse—while dodging energy blasts and political intrigue. One crash-landed diplomat. A world of deadly secrets. And absolutely no backup.

Some rules are meant to be broken. Others will get you killed.

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: LUMBER

Yes, I do need to finish Witch’s Daughter, but I’ve been down with some sort of virus caught on the trip. Much better today, as compared even to yesterday, and if all goes well, I”ll be fine tomorrow. And finish the book. BUT until then, I can’t sit still, so I’ve been doing lyrics videos….

Just when I got comfortable with Pinnacle Pro (2015, mind) it stopped working properly. Either the subtitles or the images wouldn’t be there. That’s been yesterday and today.

So, I tried Vegas which had me cursing and swearing, but has features I like. (Dan got it on sale. I think it’s an old version.)

Anyway, Yes, they’re out of order, in that I started at the end, then did the one that was cued up from changing the images: Prodigal. That’s the latest one.
I’ll do the other ones, on the way to “Sound track with subtitles.”
(Semi-apropos, has anyone heard from or seen RC Pete on line? And if not, can anyone contact him in real life? I’m worried.)

Today I come to you with tears in my eyes to beg you for the sake of little fishes and all the oceans they swim in, to learn to tell when you’re being spun.

No, guys, seriously.

I know, I know. We used to be psyopped without realizing it. For most of us my age and up to 40 years younger, this was simply how life was in our formative years. Suddenly some topic trended and was in all the news, all the entertainment, and everyone talked about it. We imagined, if we imagined anything, that something set it off and suddenly it became important.

Except…

Having grown up where I did I knew better, and after a while I started noticing the trends. Like if there was something the left was pushing, suddenly it was full of sympathetic depictions everywhere at the same time and the ah…. national dialogue was shaped to support it.

This has failed because they no longer control everything. But they still have their psyops going. It starts with twitter. It includes a certain number of commenters on “right” blogs. And it pushes, pushes, pushes, and about half of you people always fall for it. Every single blessed time.

And I want to ask you: WHY?

It’s not like they haven’t played you over and over and over again for the last five years, starting with convincing a good number of you that I was crazy for denying how scary the killer Covid was. (It’s called looking at the numbers. Superpower, yo.)

Please, stop it. Please, please, please.

A good way to detect a psyop from the left is that it’s everywhere at once and only one viewpoint is being pushed. From everywhere.

Like, suddenly, we need to improve — fix — the entire economy NOOOOOOOW or we’ll lose our electoral ascendance… because blue-fraud-holes went hard left in the least-voted in elections ever? Where does that make sense?

Stop and think before you run around screaming with your hair on fire. It doesn’t make sense? It’s everywhere at once?

It’s a psyops!

The variant on the latest is that it’s a referendum on Trump. Because yeah, that makes perfect sense. Hey, ya’ll, an election at the most local level, and a three way one at that, in NYC is somehow a referendum on Trump.

Who the heck believes that? Much less gets blackpilled by it?

Well, there’s all these commenters in righty blogs….

There sure are. And have you kept track of other things they pushed? Do you know they aren’t foreign? Or clankers? Or foreign clankers, for that matter?

Another, deeper, longer running psyops is the left trying to hide the fact their rank and file went HARD anti-semitic by claiming that it’s the right that loves Hitler and that, somehow, Nick Fuentes (The gay catboy) is “splitting the right coalition”.) No one sane can believe this. Even before seeing Fuentes slobber all over Stalin’s long dead boner on Tucker Carlson. Most of the “MAGA” people on the street would respond to Fuentes with “Who?” and maybe “Is he a singer?”

But they’re keeping on keeping on, and again any number of total idiots buy this. “Ooooh. Groypers are taking over the GOP.”

No. Groypers are revolting and have been for a long time (they’ve been around longer than people are aware) and not very bright, but they’re not taking over the right or the GOP. And no, trust me, the young people aren’t even vaguely confused about this.

Again, have you considered most of the idiots screaming about Jews or Israel online are foreign or bots (and some foreign bots. Or act like it.)?

For one political allegiances don’t shift that fast. For another it’s simply not a US thing.

Look, I knew that the explosion in the Springs (the one where some guy bombed his accountant, but they tried to claim it was) where it supposedly was racist and against the NAACP office was nonsense. As I told people online that morning “You need to have enough of a minority to hate it, and Colorado Springs is the whitest city I ever lived in.” I mean, there were Hispanics and Latins of various sorts, but most of the rare black people were airforce and didn’t behave like a minority. (I think that’s changed.) There’s not enough there to cause “ethnic hatred.”

In the same way in most of this country there simply aren’t enough Jews for there to be genuine, inbred anti-semitism. We’re too spread out. We’re too tolerant. And no one cares. And the right is so jaded about the MSM the last thing we believe is what they report. Also those of us older than ten know that the war crimes are always committed by Palestinians, and the rest is propaganda.

This sudden upsurge of hatred for Jews is not real. The sudden upsurge of hatred for Israel isn’t either. Oh, it partakes the pudding heads who think we can survive as utter isolationists, but most people ain’t that. And most people get that Israel is a more reliable ally than Canada and far more useful. (Okay, damning with faint praise. Really Israel is a better ally than the entire EU. Okay, damning with faint praise again. But you get my point.)

There are other long running psyops going that don’t make much sense. Like the one where all women hate all men.

Cooey! have you met women? The feminists tried this bullshit. It never worked. We’re made to go together, and we tend to come together anyway.

Ask yourself who, precisely, benefits from this “war” between men and women. Because it ain’t the right.

Or the stupid idea all women/blacks/purple polka dotted one eyed lesbians are lefty voters. For the love of bugs, people. Stop buying the left’s idea that big groups are composed of widgets.

If you want to keep drinking the left’s ink I can’t stop you.

But I can make fun of you and point and make duck noises. And I will.

I’ll also keep, not so gently, telling you you’re being d*mn asses.

For your sanity, for your self-preservation, for the sake of the republic: Learn to recognize psyops.

And then teach others.

Because psyops are all they have. The sooner we take that weapon away, the best for the world.

Nights have been too short for sleeping, and not fully landed yet, but I’ve been clankering, and I learned new tricks.

First, the 10th song fo the sound track (I appropriated Strains of Earth for 9th, though) is up:

Of course the scene in the book doesn’t involve exciting gun play. Only someone does shoot at Skip.

BUT I was trying to capture his sense of betrayal when he found out the Draksalls had slavery.

And I made an exciting and bizarre discovery: apparently it’s my vocabulary, not my accent preventing AI from transcribing me. It has the same problem with AI generated singing.

So…. in mercy to those of you who get lost in my unique forest-of-words-approach to lyrics, I’m adding subtitles to the songs …. slowly, painfully, and line by line like Juan Valdez.
So far two have subtitles: Betrayal and Can I Get you To look. Eventually there will be a “Sound track with lyrics” playlist.

And that’s all for your clanking enjoyment today. I’m hoping to actually sleep enough to work on WD tomorrow. So more songs in a couple of days?

Voting for communists because you’re poor is roughly akin to throwing virgins into a volcanic caldera to stop an eruption.

But then so are most of the things governments think they can do to improve the economy, from printing more money or less money, raising or dropping interest rates, regulating several aspects of the economy, or just about anything else.

I mean, all of those do something. They just rarely do what the government thinks its doing/wants them to do.

Sure, printing more money should bring about inflation, and sometimes, some governments use inflation to inflate away governmental debt. The problem is that sometimes as you know and have learned, a currency becomes — for reasons inexplicable except other economies suck more than ours — the world’s reserve. And then you print money and it goes into mattresses, drawers and someone’s socks overseas. Which means the inflation will not climb as you expect. Alternately, it will climb when people decide to get rid of your currency and you’ll never know how to control that.

Then there’s the interest rate game. It goes up, it goes down, and every time it does — unless the augur reads the signs very carefully and performs the traditional rituals… er…. I mean, unless the person deciding reads the signs very well — it breaks something different. Or say, truly outrageous violations of free humans ability to enter contracts like the minimum wage. Most of all it seems to be capable of distorting the employment market by making young and inexperienced people unemployable. Which in turn eventually makes middle aged and inexperienced people unemployable and swells the ranks of welfare….

Look, the truth is that economics is brutally simple: things are worth what someone is willing to pay for them. And among the things that are worth what people are willing to pay for them, is human labor as well as all the things labor creates. How do you know someone is willing to pay that price? Well, someone pays that price. How do you know who is willing to pay that price? You offer it for sale, and if you can get the right person to know it exists, he/she/critter pays for it. This is almost tragically simple in theory and in the individual case. (Why tragically? Well, I’m still trying to figure out how to tell people my product exists.) BUT it becomes unholy complicated when you multiply it by the number of people in the world, their moods and needs on any given day, etc. etc. ad nauseum. Or even the number of people in a country. Or a city. Or–

All of which brings us to the simple fact that the only thing government can do for the economy is to cut down on regulations and interference and get out of the way.

The free market, as rarely as it’s tried, always improves human life. In fact it creates near-magical prosperity, no matter how bad the odds.

Because it lets the people with the thing to sell — however imperfectly — make contact with the people who will pay to buy it with minimal interference.

Everything else a government can or does do just amounts to creating deviations and unnatural decisions in the economy. I.e. what the government does has some effect, but it is not the effect they think it will have.

Which is why communism is the worst of all systems, because it thinks it can “scientifically” and “top down” control all of economy from production to consumption.

And all it does, over and over again, is throw virgins in volcanos to stop the lava flow.

Only the promised wonderland of free stuff never arrives.

And you end up tragically short on virgins. And everything else, as well.