Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

Sorry to be absent yesterday and to do this late, but yesterday was the last of the wholly dedicated days of helping family move, which is the other half of our move, and it’s been a lot over the last three months, and I kind of folded.

Then I spent three hours in the night wide-awake, which is what tells me I’m actually worried about the midterms. Yes, I know. On X, Cynical Publius, whom a friend calls “The only decent one of the Roman Statue guys” says that the whole idea the democrats will sweep the midterms is a psy-ops.

Look, he might very well be right. After all, when is the last time you heard of the GOP being “well ahead” before an election (except maybe locally.) And perhaps it is just my impression, but I think the “The GOP is losing badly” polls get more certain and exaggerated every election cycle. I mean they learned from 16 — ish. They’re no longer saying absolutely no chance but that the left takes all. But they still are, just more low key and sounding more intellectual.

So, it’s entirely possible the left is dead in the water, knows it, and is doing the “We’re totes going to win” out of reflexive attempts to demoralize the right.

The thing is, for my money, it was never an attempt to demoralize us. Look, which of you won’t vote because the left tells you all is lost? You vote harder and with an FU, right?

I think the polls and the triumphalism was ALWAYS to hide the fraud. Because if the polls were accurate and the left didn’t convince us all it was going to win anyway, people would look more carefully at the fraud.

“But Sarah, the fraud can’t be that gynormous”. If it weren’t they wouldn’t have fought so hard against the SAVE act. They wouldn’t have been so crazy as to push every state they can towards vote by mail. And coming from one of those states, let me tell the fraud was already massive before that. Now, of course, Colorado is in the grip of Sauron till the abomination of fraud by mail is defeated.

So, how reliable are the polls? Even internal ones?

I don’t know. Therefore I don’t know how much gravity to lend the story that the GOP is now running adds in locales that should be safe. I honestly have no clue.

We have things going for us, including la grande salida (this time for real) which is where people leave rather than worry about ICE. Or leave because it’s harder for them to suck the benefits teat. (It’s really not possible for them to live here, at the wages paid to illegals, without also massively imposing on the social safety net.) But that doesn’t matter much. Why not? Because the registrations of those that registered will be there, and someone will vote in their name, particularly in “loose” and vote by mail systems.

Then there is … the machine. Just the machine of fraud and deception built since Clinton passed the Motor Voter act.

How efficient is it? How much of its founding has failed? And how much will the people involved in it pay heed to all the hunting down and persecuting of those involved that has taken place more every year? I don’t know. And neither do you.

I do know that the steady drum beat of “The economy is the worst it’s ever been” is affecting the young, who at any rate for a variety of reasons, most of which are “progressive” dominance, from anti “child” labor laws to failing schools to the massive not-dischargeable-in-bankruptcy loans, are finding life very difficult to get foothold on.

Is the economy bad? I don’t know. In our region, the gas is not as bad as it was under Biden, and we can afford eggs, which were once upon a time unobtanium, and which we were called “treatlers” for complaining about. (Only the democrats could make eggs too expensive to afford. Apparently the repeat of a trick first performed by FDR, at that.) Looking around I won’t say things are hopping. I don’t see the big take off we saw under Reagan. But then again, even under Reagan the take off was not instant, and I beg to note that Carter didn’t as comprehensively destroy the economy as the auto pen did. Partly because he started with a relatively stronger one.

I know that despite our town being very friendly to homeless (Grrrr) the infestation seems to be receding apace. (I wonder how many of those were illegal, or how many of the addicted-and-crazy were being ignored due to all the support going to illegals. It’s probably a “yes”.)

I also know that in this safe seat, the only ads I see are crazy — and I mean crazy — attack ads against the GOP. There are no “this is our program and it’s so much better.” There are also no GOP ads. So– Does it mean anything? I don’t know.

And what the heck is with the caravan of “migrants” (Yes, invaders) from Honduras winding towards our border? What do they thing they’re going to accomplish, when the border has been sealed since Trump took over?

Achtually I have a theory. I think the left thinks it can’t lose on that one.

First you have to remember that they drink their own ink and they’ve been going on and on about how people are very, very upset at Trump for all the deportations and sealing the border. They’re right actually. The people are very upset about the deportations being so slow. But the logistics of it always dictated they would be. Though that’s not why the left thinks we’re upset. They have seen all the movies. They’ve made all the movies. You know, about how the innocent illegals are being shot down on the street. They’ve written and read all the articles about how even citizens are being shot and deported.

They’re spitting mad and appalled. And they lack a theory of other minds, so they figure EVERYONE is mad and appalled.

So they figure they send a massive caravan at the border. If the border patrol resists the invasion, people will get shot — the left will make SURE a pregnant woman or more get shot. It’s the playbook! — and people will be furious at this administration and sweep the left into power in a wave of righteous indignation.

Or… the caravan is just turned away, they mine the sad stories, and the people are heartbroken and sweep the left into power in a wave of righteous indignation.

I’m not worried about that. In either case. It’s the left thinking in movie plots, in which “All the people” rise up in response to whatever the crazy thing is that they’ve dreamed up to be mad about.

OTOH we also think in movie plots. The post Holly shared yesterday I was surprised that I expected greater fighting and leftist violence if Trump won, despite the fraud. (And I didn’t expect him to win because of the fraud, which is why I went to bed at 3 am election night. I don’t expect the election night this year to be better.)

Now, Trump’s going after their funding sources stopped some of that. Definitely. This is why we haven’t had another Summer of Burning Love. (Though I wouldn’t put it past them to be saving for 2028.)

OTOH I was scared and I guess I too tend to think cinematically. I am, after all a story teller, and “They they gradually adapted to this as the culture slowly changed, until opposition…” is not a great plot to fit into a novel. Not even a massive novel, like No Man’s Land.

I take my fear as a picture of just how fraught things felt back then.

Which is why I would much rather not go back to it. By the time a piddly league pundit like me is worried about debanking and conceiving stratagems to get around it? Things are very fraught indeed.

Did we do enough to obviate the fraud? Who knows? Crystal ball cloudy. Ask another day. Mid November, for choice.

It’s not very cinematic, but we’re just going to have to vote against the commies (even if there’s no one to vote for in our area) and keep on keeping on.

Sursum corda. Keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.

In the end we win they lose. It might just take a while.

The biggest delusion of the left is not that you can redistribute wealth and make everyone prosperous. That one is bad, yes, but not the worst. Heck, even their belief that wealth cannot be created, cannot be destroyed, can only be distributed is bad but not that bad.

Their worst illusion is that they can infinitely tweak humans and human societies to be exactly what they want them to be.

They believe, absolutely, at bone-deep level that humans and cultures are infinitely plastic. Which lays at the heart of their worst offenses against the west specifically and of how they’re taking civilization apart. (And why they hate us, they really hate us, because we don’t just obey, but that’s a side effect.)

If you read books written in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, you find the roots of this confusion. You read a lot about various problems and how they could be solved “if only we had more education.” Education, and the proper formation of conscience, most often from a Christian perspective was the Great White (eh) hope of the time. And it is this very same class of people, disillusioned with Christianity and the Western ethos for a variety of reasons, of which WWI was not the only but also not the smallest, fell prey to Marx’s shiny ideas. And that whole new evangelism got aggregated to “we need to educate them/fine tune them/fix them.” They’ve been running on that track ever since.

Our own progressives were a strain of that movement. And remember that progressives included both GOP and Dems back in the early twentieth century. Both Woodrow Wilson and FDR tried to reengineer the United States, its people and its culture to meet what they thought was the inevitable future. (I’m so tired of arrow of history people.)

The progressives — I know, I’ve talked to them — of today point to early victories, like racial integration of society and the acceptance of women in business environments.

I’m not sure those victories are as great as they think, and I rather believe they exaggerated the triumphs of their ideological ancestors. The US tends to integrate after bigotry anyway, and bigotry only arises when having to integrate a large group. The separation of races was part of governmental policy and thus enforced. I suspect if that hadn’t been so, it would have disappeared after the civil war. (I’d like to see that time line.)

As for women in business, women were always there, in some form or another. Lower class women worked by their men’s side and upper class reared women with no other prospects often took jobs, and not just the normal governess, etc, but secretary, which could be very elastic and encompass a lot of functions we now consider separate, up to and including manager. Also women always owned businesses, etc.

What the progressive governance managed was “mandatory promotions for women” combined with an “education” program to make women, including yours truly when she was young and much much dumber believe that wanting to be a “wife and mother” was a sign you were stupid. And wanting to be a stay at home mom was the surrender of all your intellect. Heck, even wanting to work in more feminine areas was considered at best gauche and at worst surrender.

Did that work? Depends on what you consider working. Worked d*mn well in the sense of driving a wedge between men and women. Of making women resented and hated by anyone in business, because every man has a story of Mary-one-thought getting promoted above him because of what’s between her legs. Is this fair? In a lot of cases I’ve been “privileged” to observe, yes. In all of them? Hell no. Some women get promoted because they are competent and work hard. The problem is the other kind overwhelm that number by far, and also that the ones selected because “Has hoo-haa” tend to be the dumbest, most back-stabbing bitches in creation. (Kamala Harris might be their epitome. During the primaries in 2020 she shived Biden in the back in public, and then he still gave her the position because skin color and xx chromosome. Yeah. As for dumb, listen to her unscripted. She’s college dumb. Dumb who learned words to paper over the fact that she’s utterly uninterested in EVER having a thought.)

It also worked damn well to tank marriages and births. Which I suppose is a victory for the new “progressives” who JUST want humanity extinct already.

And that’s part of the problem. Can you “engineer” a culture. Sure, to an extent, if you take in account its basic tenets, its tendencies, its points of strain. Hence, “engineering” American culture towards integration of the races was easy in the early twentieth century. Because it already took the full faith and credit of the united states to keep them apart. Engineering American culture to give women a fair shake was easy too. Because the seeds were there in the Constitution where “Men” was, as every such word in an Indo-European language, meant to be understood as “women too.”

The problem is when the engineers a) don’t know their own minds. b) push too far.

You see, as it became clear that the workers weren’t rushing to the causes of the left, the left heeded the gospel of Gramsci as a retcon of Marx. Races other than white are the blessed ones who understand and will husher in socialism. This… uh… was interesting. What it has managed, particularly through the efforts of Obama, the Little Man Who Wasn’t There, or whoever had their hands up his backside. Like Kamala, he epitomized every man raised to a position he didn’t deserve due to his skin color alone. And that… well, that caused backlash throughout the land. No one listening to that man, unscripted, saw “Harvard” at all. And the tight hold on his grades and academic records just confirmed the resentment. He communicated to the culture his relentless racial hatred and divisiveness — which I’m convinced is actually his own, being deflected resentment for the African father who abandoned him but whom his red diaper grandparents didn’t allow him to hate — complete with the burning summer of love, in which black neighborhoods were burned by white college kids, in a rebellion that was supposed to represent black people. The result is that we’re more divided than we ever were, even if that’s not as much as the media portrays or people think in general.

Their efforts have now surged ahead to basically erase white as a race, make people feel guilty for being white, and generally shit on the principle of human equality (under the law and of opportunities.)

… Then there is the racial politics. Most people were okay with gay equality, though I’ve heard a few grumble if they knew what was behind it they’d have opposed it. I’ll be honest, it wasn’t what was behind it. It was what was coming regardless. The left had been trying to turn boys into girls and girls into boys on the lowdown for decades. Meaning they tried to push women into what they considered “male” positions (because they confuse male with powerful. Don’t get me started) and trying to guilt men into the caring positions. Turning their efforts biological was always going to happen.

And that was a step too far. For our culture. For any culture. Why? Well, because in the current state of the biological art you CAN’T turn men into women and women into men. At BEST you can produce facsimiles of various degrees of believability. Now, this might be enough for people who are genuinely gender dysphoric to feel better, and that’s fine. But the pushing of it into a trend, and infecting ditsy and dumb (a state of the stage of development) teens with it was a step too far. You’re taking away people’s hope for grandchildren. In any culture, at any time, that’s a step too far. (Says the woman who’ll probably never have them for other reasons.)

On top of that our entertainment is running on a “other races were always here, and they’re better.” Do NOT get me started on what Netflix is doing to Pride and Prejudice. And the erasure of history.

This is late stage leftism attempt to engineer societies. They did it in communist countries by destroying statues and outright rewriting history. They try it here too. But they are also doing it by creating “race integrated” historical movies. The stupid, maleducated people will believe it if there’s enough of it.

Of course, the problem is that the project is starting to come apart. Alternate means of entertainment and mass communication are spiking their charges. And they’ve managed, G-d help me, to make white people conscious of the fact they are a race. And that’s in the US.

Abroad… Well, I wonder how much is happening that we never hear about. Though so far the turn to the right of Europe is the kind that seems to be more “American Right” than the traditional European jackboots left that respects national leanings and history. It’s both salutary and it scares the spit out of the left. As it should. A lot of what they’ve done this century and a half is to keep the “infection” of Americanism from overtaking the world. And I think they might have thrown a boomerang at their own faces.

I’m not in the business of gazing into crystal balls. The future I write about is just for fun, and predicting it is, as is, very difficult. Or if you prefer “Making predictions is difficult, particularly about the future.”

And no, I don’t know how the midterms will go. Maybe it’s all a psyops, maybe not. Americans are affected by presentism and I don’t put it past us to vote for communism because gas is too high. Kind of like the donor not donating because Republicans didn’t pass the SAVE act. Like he has a better chance of it from the left.

At the same time, for the left this is the THEIR flight 93 election. If Trump improves his position in the legislature, we are going to pass the SAVE act, and we are going to make their embezzlement strategy void. This would literally destroy the left. All they have is fraud and slushing piles of stolen taxpayer money. Even with all the money being on the left they’ve been losing the culture war by degrees (and getting more hysterical and desperate and visible to the clueless) every day.

They can’t afford to lose. They’re going to do that scene from zombie movies, where all the zombies pile on the train trying to stop it.

Let’s hope they fail, but it will be an all out effort, and they still have considerable money and fraud. (None of the vote by mail states are coming back from zombiedom until that is eliminated, for instance.)

And all we can do is pray. (I’m once more asking you to pray, particularly if you’re an atheist. I figure the novelty will get His attention. Even if your prayer is “Yo, if You’re there, we could use help with this.”)

But whether they win this midterm or not affects only how bloody and fraught our path will be, not the destiny.

They can’t win because what they have actually succeeded in doing by trying to engineer humans and society is breaking the culture. And cultures under stress revert to their fundamentals.

So the English will become more obstreperously English (And if you don’t think that matters, you haven’t studied history, or seen soccer hooligans.) The Germans will become more German (by the numbers, javohl) and the French…. oh, the French have been broken since the nineteenth century and heaven knows what they’ll do, though if there were a place to bet, I’d lay small amounts of money (I don’t GOT large) on their going hard-core religion and king. Yes, you heard me right, king. I expect by the end of the 21st century France will have an absolute king and be trying to convince the rest of the world to follow suite. Shrugs. Is France.

And America? America is about to go hard core, hard driving American. And that should scare the hell out of the left, because America, as laid out in the Constitution and the Declaration is the Anti-Marx.

I’d just prefer we don’t do it starved and tired, on bleeding feet and by our broken fingernails. I’m sixty four, and I can no longer pack for 12 hours without being comprehensively wrecked the next day (helping family move. Or why this blog is so ridiculously late.) I think I’m way to hold to run around the hills with a Kalashnikov, as fun as that sounded in my twenties. So I hope I don’t have to.

Anyway, the point is you can’t engineer humans, and you can’t engineer their cultures.

Or in the immortal words of Alex the Chick: Humans aren’t widgets. To which I’d add the immortal words of Javier Milei: Carajo.

Humans aren’t widgets, carajo!

No matter how much you educate them or in which principles, Christian, or Marxist, or Born Again Good Housekeeping, the venal ones will be venal, the honest ones will be honest, the competent ones will remain competent and the neurotic ones (hi!) will spin endlessly, chasing their own tails.

And cultures are not widgets. They’re structures of modus vivendi arrived at by evolution in much the same mode as biological evolution, to be the best suited to a people and their environment. Now a lot of them are poisonous, counterproductive or have passed their sell by date.

Which doesn’t make them any easier to change. They WILL change in response to new technology or new information, but governments and “intellectuals” putting their thumbs on the scale doesn’t change them. It only breaks them.

And cultures at the breaking point revert to their most fundamental. (Which we’re seeing with Islam, btw. They’re a problem not because they’re strong, but because they’ve hit reality and changed tech at speed and can’t adapt.)

Fortunately our fundament is, at bottom, decent and functional.

The way there though…

Hold on. Be not afraid. And keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.

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, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. By clicking through and buying (anything book-related, 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.*

ONE NEW SPECIFICATION: DON’T SEND ME NEW BOOKS ON THE SAME EMAIL AS THE OLD. I’m using a program to cut out some of the donkey work, and it doesn’t understand that.

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. Remember though all of these submissions are from people willing to be associated with this blog. So if you’re trying to buy from people who don’t hate you, this is a good place to start. – SAH

FROM BECKY JONES: Station on the Edge: Rebellion’s Edge Book 1

Zeke Udinesi just wanted to spend his career as a station chief on a nice space station with a good pub. Unfortunately for Zeke, the best pub is on Glasvyr Station which sits on the line dividing the Core, the civilized galaxy, from the Edge, the very much less-than-civilized bit of galaxy. When the Republic of United Planets takes a sudden interest in Glasvyr Station, Zeke gets a very bad feeling. A surprise visit by a high-ranking VIP, a newly minted, bullying political commissar assigned to the station, trader captains fleeing the new regulations and restrictions, and a notorious military unit stationed on Glasvyr all point to increasing power moves by the Burokratika Senaat of the Republic.
Fueled by caffeine and spite, Zeke takes on the leviathan Republic vowing to stop it no matter the cost. Can he survive or will he be pushed into the Edge?

FROM DALE COZORT: Winston: An Exchange Novella

Winston looks cute, like a living teddy bear. He’s killed at least six people.

Gene Woodward just wants to finish his master’s degree and survive third shift at North Central Illinois University’s Exobiology lab. Not on his agenda: babysitting the smartest, most dangerous animal anyone’s ever pulled out of an alternate reality people call Bear Country. But when Winston escapes not once but twice, leaving no evidence on camera and no sign of forced entry, Gene realizes the bear isn’t just intelligent. He’s deceiving the humans around him. On purpose.

The truth is stranger than anyone expects: Winston has a strange language of his own, and he understands far more English than he lets on. That discovery should save him. Instead, it puts him and Gene’s daughter, Becky, the one person Winston trusts, directly in the path of the man who trained Winston to kill, and the federal machinery that would rather he simply disappear.

Some minds don’t announce themselves. Winston has been listening the whole time.

A standalone novella set in the world of Exchange and Devouring Wind.

FROM ERIC W. COWPERTHWAITE: Staying Human (Bougie Apocalypse Book 2)

The Cough is still loose and the road out of the swamp is no longer quiet. Faster Ones hunt in packs. Smoke rises on every horizon. And something far worse than zombies may be waking in the ruins.
Retired Army Sergeant Major Jack Harlan and his wife Raych keep the rituals alive. They brew real coffee on the Coleman stove, share hot meals around the vehicles, and hold tight to the rule that defines them: shoot the Walkers, then go back to the beans. With their growing family, Tom, Sarah, and young Mikey, they push north toward a mysterious hardened data center, hoping for answers.
The world outside grows darker and more dangerous with every mile. Walkers are changing, growing smarter and more coordinated. Old comforts feel farther away. Yet Jack and his people refuse to surrender their humanity, even as survival demands harder choices.
Another chapter in the Bougie Apocalypse saga, with new characters, asking the question “what does it mean to Stay Human?”. Serialized military-flavored post-apocalyptic pulp with World War Z grit, Zombieland humor, and an ironclad commitment to #StayHuman. Because even when the dead evolve and the road gets longer, a man still needs good coffee, hot food, and the stubborn refusal to become a monster.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Bite Sized (Liquid Diet Chronicles Book 1)

Meg Turner has been a vampire for twenty years. Her favorite food is rapists. Which is how she met Andi Donahue, her new best friend/ girl Friday.

And then the nightmares start. And the bodies start showing up–bled out and raped. Just like Meg was. They don’t have a whole lot of time to stop the killer before he strikes again, and only one way to stop the killer.

But how can Andi help Meg stop a killer she can’t even see?

FROM KAREN MYERS: Mistress of Animals: A Lost Wizard’s Tale (The Chained Adept Book 2)

Book 2 of The Chained Adept.

AN ERRANT CHILD WITH DISASTROUS POWERS AND NO ONE TO STAND IN HER WAY.

Penrys, the wizard with a chain and an unknown past, is drafted to find out what has happened to an entire clan of the nomadic Zannib. Nothing but their empty tents remain, abandoned on the autumn steppe with their herds.

This wasn’t a detour she’d planned on making, but there’s little choice. Winter is coming, and hundreds are missing.

The locals don’t trust her, but that’s nothing new. The question is, can she trust herself, when she discovers what her life might have been? Assuming, of course, that the price of so many dead was worth paying for it.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: One Last Homecoming

Sherry had planned a quick trip to her home town for her forty-year class reunion, to see the current classes’ Homecoming game. Instead, she arrives to find the high school just as she remembers it, complete with long-demolished buildings and long-retired teachers. It’s Homecoming, all right — her senior year.

For someone with happy memories, revisiting one’s younger days might be pleasant nostalgia. Sherry dreads the thought of being stranded in the past, forced to reassume the old roles after decades of independence.

How can she return to her own time when she has no idea how she got here? Worse, a hostile entity is making its presence known — and it may not want to let her go back. And the Homecoming game isn’t the one she remembers from four decades ago.

FROM MACKEY CHANDLER: The Way Things Seem

How much trouble would you go to for an inheritance? How much would it matter what your estranged and disliked step brother and family thought of you? How much would you allow the dead hand of your distant father to influence you? Would it matter how much money was involved? And what if in the end, nothing you thought important at the start mattered? What if everything you believed wasn’t the way it seemed. Not only in your personal world but the wider reality you thought you knew. Could you deal with that? This is a stand alone story unrelated to my other books or series.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: The Tale of the Crane Princess (Timelines Universe Book 6)

Ordinary, everyday shopkeeper Horiuchi Tsurue is running a little general store and mini-café on a small island in Japan’s inland sea, two centuries after mankind was nearly wiped out by a virus.

One day, Yamaguchi Yukiko, the kamaitachi of legend ( The Cross-Time Kamaitachi ), and her daughter Mikoko, appear in front of Tsurue’s shop, and she invites them in for tea.

That’s when Tsurue discovers she is anything but ordinary. And in the end, the island she is sworn to protect will depend upon it.

FROM RACHAEL CRAWFORD: Droids & Dragons

Enter a world where technology & catastrophic reality collides with mythical creatures. This anthology of over 50 short stories and poems brings that world to life. It explores the lives of droids, dragons, humans, and other creatures through a variety of genres.

FROM RANDY BROWN: The Drop: Season Four

Twelve contestants. One flag. Twice the prize money. And this time, no one survives alone.

Hell.

It’s not what they thought.

The fourth season of The Drop begins with a brutal new twist, pitting players against each other for the first time. They quickly discover that the greatest threat on Hell may not be the planet.

On Earth, the people running the contest at Tanaka Enterprises may be playing an even deadlier game. Insider fighting escalates behind the scenes while a former business partner strikes like a dying serpent.

Repercussions from the game resonate across light years and the lives of the players aren’t the only ones at risk.

On Hell, survival is only the beginning. Winning may cost them their humanity.

FROM TED BEGLEY: Race to Arcturus (Scoundrels Incorporated Adventures Book 1)

Three friends. One scrap-heap starship. And a jump no one has ever made.

Jack, Kyle, and Adwin have spent two years turning a decommissioned mining scout into something that looks like it belongs in the stars. All they need is a working FTL drive. Then Uncle Duncan offers them a summer internship that is anything but ordinary—and a secret prototype that could rewrite the rules of hyperspace.

The catch? The patents have to be filed on Arcturus, thirty-nine light-years away. And they are not the only ones who know what the new drive can do.

Some races are won in the workshop. This one starts the moment they leave Earth. Race to Arcturus—where the only thing faster than light is three boys who refuse to stay grounded.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: 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.

FIRST VOLUME OF THE BOOK NO MAN’S LAND — this is not a complete story, it continues in volume 2

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 to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: STRUCTURE.

The problem of human suffering is usually a central point of every one of the great religions. Mitigating it is at the basis of their regimen for human “uplifting.”

We’re not going to be discussing that, since I suspect even those of you of the same religion and I would get into a right big argument over what the best way of getting over suffering is, etc.

What we’re not going to allow as being valid is for the government to get in on the game. Why aren’t we going to allow that?

Because when governments try to mitigate the problem of “human suffering” be it suffering due to lack or suffering due to health or aging, the result is always the same.

When governments try to redistribute plenty to make sure everyone has enough, they end up killing their economy and killing thousands or millions of people with famine and the joi de vivre of the rest of the population with sheer grinding poverty. Not to mention the people who object to being despoiled or those who talk against he program must also be killed.

Then there is “killing to avoid suffering”.

What is this about? Well, X is awash in Canadians telling us all the people that MAID does away with under the auspices (hospices!) of the Canadian government “Were going to die anyway.”

Okay, so what they say mostly is that these people would have died “within the year”. Which, sure, some of them would. So what? Note not all of them. Note also that doctors can be wrong about that. I was told I was going to die anyway within the month so why not let them do the very risky procedure? Well, I didn’t, (or rather Dan forbid it, since I was half out of my mind) and that was 31 years ago. Almost half of my life at this point.

Beyond all that there is a sharp difference between “you will die in six months despite the best efforts of medicine” and “We’re not going to treat you, because there’s a wait list and it’s very expensive, so you’ll be dead in six months’ which most of the stories coming out of Canada sound like. And yes, I know that’s anecdotes but… the vibrant medical tourism to the US tells its own story.

And this is why I want government out of medicine in general, because once you become an expense on the public purse, they’re bound to find a way to not spend any more on you. Particularly if you’re one of the heretical non-believers in government. Or just unfashionable. At 33, with two small children (younger son was 1) and doing really heavy support on family and husband’s career even if I still hadn’t broken into writing so I had no income in cash, I was told that it didn’t matter if I died anyway, as I was just a housewife and a burden on my family. (Which is how they got my consent to the risky procedure, which consent Dan nullified and threatened to sue them into oblivion for, since I was very ill and they’d ganged up on me while he was away for an hour dealing with an emergency.) Fortunately they weren’t government doctors, so he could tell them to put it up their jumpers and I didn’t have the potentially lethal procedure done. Now that Colorado has an euthanasia law that made the AMA say “whoa, that’s too extreme!” they might have been more direct and be able to enforce it too, by non-treatment of the symptoms, if nothing else.

Oh, there’s other reasons for wanting government out of medicine, because everything government tries to “help” with get way more expensive. If government took over the Sahara to make sure everyone in the surrounding areas had enough sand, sand would soon become a rare and expensive commodity.

But to me the real problem is that the more medicine becomes enmeshed with the government, the more all of us become an entry in a column that says “debit” and the way to stop the debit is to kill us.

Besides, they’re being kind. There is real suffering. And they can stop it by killing you…

Except suffering is relative. Every time I consult a doctor and am near the top of one of the auto-immune outbreaks — often totally unrelated to why I went to the doctor — they look at the symptoms and panic and tell me something must be done about it. (We’re going to try another dealing with it method in two weeks or so.)

I do get this when they’re looking, say, at my entire back being raw flesh. It’s shocking to them, and it hurts and itches, so how am I living with it?

They’re always disconcerted when I say “Oh. It’s actually not one of the bad ones. I didn’t notice.” (The bad ones I have sores all over my body, and am spending substantial time awake due to that.) Because the context they like is that I’ve been dealing with this since I was one. This is life for me. I’ve had maybe a cumulative couple of years with no lesions somewhere in my body. (MUCH better when the celiac is not a factor, but still. Celiac and psoriasis run together apparently 85% of the time.) Some sores at my wrists and elbows are legit not noticed and the patches on my back have been that way for years, which means it’s annoying but it’s just life.

Suffering? Sure, but I don’t notice.

In the same way I’m sure if we exported my current level of random aches, pains and just general tiredness to myself at 20 I’d probably think I was dying, but right now I’m fine. No, seriously. I tune out pretty much all of it. Have had years of practice.

So what doctors or outsiders think is suffering isn’t necessarily so to the person experiencing it. Who are you to judge that they need to be killed to stop the misery? Particularly, who is some government official?

And don’t get me started on less physical suffering: depression, grief, lack of interest in anything. These are all things that have been used to justify MAID, even if in rare cases. One case is too many.

Look, this is not just piling on on Canadians, as much fun as that is. It’s that the same ideas are here.

I get that the current state of medical science can prolong the “dying” stage of life for months or years and look, at least from the outside, as though it is inflicting horrible suffering.

My Father in Law died by inches and it looked horrible to witness, and hurt all of us to see it. He’d done nothing to deserve that horrible ending. (And I have nightmares of Dan, who greatly resembles him, going that way.)

But that’s still not worth it giving someone external to the person the right to decide (or pressure, cajole and convince the person) it’s time to die. Or the means of that dying.

Because it always ends the same way. EVERY single time. It starts with what looks like, at least from outside, true compassionate intervention, and it always ends up with people getting killed in batch lots for the flimsiest of reasons. Ultimately to put them out of someone else’s suffering and expense.

As someone who has had bizarre “health” since I was born, and who often looks like she must be in great pain (it don’t make no nevermind.) and who is getting to a certain age, I feel personally endangered. But even if I didn’t, the results of a government being given the right to kill its people for whatever reason, including “to end their suffering.” are plain to see. It always ends in stacked corpses. And Canada and Europe are playing out the very old tragedy.

Agatha Christie said that when you’re very old and bed ridden, the young and vigorous might wish to free you of your suffering, but the old person just enjoyed being alive, breathing in and breathing out.

I’m not that old, yet. And I have trouble believing I’d be okay if I couldn’t work at all. (Fortunately my work is of a kind if all else fails I can just dictate very slowly.) But if I can work in some way, I know I’ll be enjoying that. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll get to the point that just being alive is enjoyment enough.

The point is that when people let the government take care of their health and well being, the answer to ending suffering seems to be always “death.” And the consent can always be manufactured.

For the record, I will never consent to being killed. No, just no. They might get my signature by brow beating me when I’m at my weakest, but it is meaningless.

I don’t know what comes after, but as long as I can be here, I’m going to be here. And working.

And I’m sorry if it inconveniences some bureaucrat.

I don’t want to write this, but I’ve come to the reluctant conclusion it’s needed.

What don’t I want to write? Well… I don’t want to write about the Clancy case anymore. For a million reasons, up to and including that it’s plainly obvious to me that she’s guilty in the legal sense (she knew what she was doing) and yet people are being stupid about it.

Nothing I am about to say exculpates her in any way. People can have mistaken ideas and kill someone under that impression, but unless the idea is that they’re in danger for their lives and there is SOME substantiation (like the other person was holding an object that looked like a knife or a gun and coming at them) they’re still guilty of murder and there’s no getting around it. If, after reading a lot of weird blogs, I become convinced that my neighbor is an alien from beta centauri and kill him, I should be given the penalty for murder, regardless of how much I believed I was saving the Earth.

I am convinced I know why Lindsey Clancy killed her kids (though not a 100% sure why all three of them, unless she figured that leaving the other two in the world associated with the case of their brother and mother was too cruel and they’d be put in foster care and decided that was a fate worse than death) and while utterly inexcusable, it is something that other people in our circles might be prone to in far, far less lethal circumstances. It is in fact something I fell into when I was a young mother, though of course I never considered killing the kid, only worried obsessively.

To explain how I got there: I have spent the last few days either helping family members move (I did say this move was complicated), cleaning or unpacking. (I’m switching to more unpacking over the other two, though some work on that remains.) Since I’m desperately, floridly, ADD, I need something to keep the mind going while I do mechanical, repetitive work. If it’s some task that’s half an hour or less, like say doing dishes, I can do stuff like plot or write the next chapter in my mind. But if it’s a morning or an afternoon or a whole day, at some point the mind turns off and takes the body with it.

The best illustration of this is when I went for a walk (a task that’s unbearable alone, or without distraction), walked two blocks, and found myself turning around to go back home. It was simple. Mind said “this is boring, let’s go home” at a level I wasn’t even aware of.

So, normally I listen to “mindless books” or books I’ve read before (First read in audio doesn’t work well for me.) But Jane Austen fanfic has been invaded by AI, whose cadences drive me nuts in audio worse than in reading. And none of my faves are up for re-read. So instead I put youtube on with one of the podcasters I like and let it cycle whatever. Unless it becomes offensive and I have to change it.

Anyway, one of the things it brought up was a female blogger talking about how Clancy was guilty. I let it stay on because it was interesting, particularly since she had initially been on Clancy’s side, and was explaining how knowing more changed her mind.

She brought up a few things I didn’t know, which I confirmed afterwards. Clancy had joined a mommy facebook group apparently devoted to blowing off steam about your kids. Look, I’m not going to judge stupid things moms say, because I was known to say “I am raising Abel and Cain, and I just want to know which is which” when I got tired of the boys fighting, and don’t want anyone to think I was either serious or ready to do something about it. BUT she said that her second child, Dawson, was the “most difficult person I’ve ever met” and how she didn’t like him, and in fact couldn’t stand him. That’s hard to discount as just blowing off steam, and there is nothing even vaguely jokey or deflecting about it. Particularly when the kid was 19 months old at the time. (Look, my kids have driven me insane several times. I’ve never not liked them, much less hate dthem. In fact I can’t even think in those terms. Also, he was the first child she killed.

The other thing I found out was that before the killings she looked up whether a psychopath could be cured. Most people, including the blogger whom I first heard this from, assume she meant herself.

The other thing, which is widely known, is that the woman was obsessed with “mommy books” and blogs on how to raise the kids, the best way to do this and that. How to optimize yourself as a parent and your children as a product. This is, to be honest, a temptation of educated, over-thinking moms all over. (Which is why I’m writing this blog.) She perhaps did it even more than is normal because she was a perfectionist.

I’m convinced she’d become convinced her son — not herself — was a psychopath, and also that she knew just enough to know psychopaths are dangerous, evil mass murderers. (No, it’s not true. Any number of psychopaths are decent, productive members of society. In fact, apparently, a good number of them are surgeons. It’s just we tend to hear about the ones who decide to flaunt social norms by doing evil stuff.) And therefore, not wanting to be blamed for unleashing that on the world, she decided to kill him. And to kill the other kids to prevent their being traumatized by the results of her crime. (Thereby proving SHE is a psychopath.)

Of course, she’s utterly guilty of the crimes. I’m also sure that she was treating that poor little boy very poorly whenever she could get away with it.

But that’s neither here nor there, because this is not about her. It’s not up to me to send her where she belongs, so I leave it in the hands of a higher power.

What I can do is help other people becoming caught in that kind of thought-trap.

Mind you most mothers who decide they’re raising a psychopath, or a potential serial killer or a never do well won’t kill their kids. Thank heaven most mothers are still decent human beings. BUT they’ll worry themselves sick over it, and might be much, much harsher with the kid than there is any objective reason to be.

How do I know this? I know it because I’m one of those mothers.

First let me point out I never read mommy books. The mommy blogs weren’t a thing yet, thank G-d, and the books had such appalling grammar I could never make it past the prologue. (The reason I had them at all is that all my friends were bombarding me with books with titles like “How to raise the strong willed child.” I wasn’t impressed. First, “Strong Willed” is a weird way to spell “stubborn” and second, I knew precisely how to handle that when it mattered. A quick smack on the bottom when too young to understand reason, and taking the computer cord away to enforce compliance, once they could reason. Most of the things I didn’t enforce compliance on, because they weren’t that important, and the kids eventually realized they were pushing against nothing and came around.) I don’t know how I’d be raising kids nowadays.

However, I read a lot of books on true crime and psychology, and I became very alarmed. That I know of my kids never harmed (let alone tortured) animals. However, both were notoriously hard to potty train (it runs in the family) and had the occasional bed wetting accident when over 3. Everything I read assured me this meant they would grow up to be mass murderers. And, of course, if you start looking at a toddler for signs of evil, you’ll find them. Mostly because toddlers are your original, untainted savages. And there’s nothing noble about savages. They’re just all impulse, no moderating reason. Our job is to make them into human beings fit for society.

I had nightmares and worried for years over this. My usual joke is that I should have stuck with cats, because cats lack the opposable thumbs to become mass murderers (eyes Indy and his hand-paws.) But the worry was real.

We are now awash in so much information on child rearing that the average mother can’t avoid it. And most of it is, to put it mildly, alarmist or sensationalist. It’s often being passed by neurotic mothers to neurotic mothers and growing in the telling.

I routinely watch younger women who have littles obsess over things like nursing styles or times, and nap times and…

My kids never took naps. They just didn’t. I remembered being a little kid who didn’t take naps, and rolled with it. (The up side is that until they were teens they slept 12 hours a night. That was nice.) As for nursing, second son weaned himself at 6 months. Since mom said I did the same, again, I rolled with it, into bottle with supplementation. Structured days? What’s that, when mom is an ADD writer?

They seem to have turned out all right. In fact, their failings are failings that I’m discovering more and more are hereditary. And by that I don’t mean just me, but as dad talks more about his brothers and sister as he gets older, I find their failings are things that have been going on for generations.

I don’t think any of you out there are evil or disconnected from reality enough to Clancy your children, but I read you worrying about it, and trying to “improve” your parenting styles to perfection and your kids into perfect and smart and good.

Look, our job IS to civilize them. This is hard work and can’t be done overnight. Yes, they will still sneak cat kibble after you tell them not to eat it. Yes, there will be battles campaigns wars fought over comic books and favorite toys. No, you can’t improve everything at once. Pick your battles. Work on what bothers you most.

Will your child grow up to be a psychopath? You’re in no position to know. Not when they’re under two. If they are, you will just have to try to make them the kind of psychopath who is a top surgeon and not the kind that boils the neighbors in a bag. (Yeah, hurting animal is a line you just do not allow them to cross.)

You just do the best you can, don’t make charts, and let the kid grow and develop, while curbing the worst stuff, one trait at a time.

And remember both the kids and you are human, and neither of you is going to be perfect, ever. Good-enough is a good goal. Also, you don’t own your kids, anymore than your ancestors own you, so don’t try to make them things that you can create, remove and mold.

Reading too many mommy books and blogs might give you the impression it’s all in your control and you’re a bad mother if you don’t control it. If you must read that cr*p, accept you’re a bad mother and roll with it. You come from a long, long line of bad mothers and here you are. And here your granddaughters and greatgranddaughters will be. Being bad along with you. And yet, raising kids who are, by and large, functioning human beings and no worse than the run of humanity will be.

Remember that the thing about eating from the tree of knowledge and being like gods was a LIE. You can eat from the tree of knowledge, but you’ll remain yourself, just a more panicked and neurotic yourself.

Don’t obsess. Don’t make it all about you and a reflection on you. Concentrate on making them functioning adults rather than perfect exhibits of your skill as a perfect mother.

And hey, as someone who was a mother of small children, and who did this, but it turns out not nearly enough?

ENJOY them while they’re little. Yes, it’s insane hard work. And yes, you pray — PRAY — with tears in your eyes for just a meal you can eat without getting up to feed/clean/fetch every two minutes, and for a potty break in which you’re allowed to sit there ALONE.

But it’s also the most wonderful thing in the world. The kids are, truly, innocent, in the sense that even when they do evil it’s because they don’t know they’re doing evil. And they’re enthusiastic. And everything is new and wonderful to them. You can show them MARVELS by lighting up a Christmas tree or making a braid with ribbon.

One of my favorite memories is of 3 year old (and yes, out of carseat, because my kids were ginormous, but in booster) younger son falling asleep against me in the car after a day at the amusement park. If I close my eyes, I can still feel his little, heavy head, just slightly sweaty, leaning against my arm. Others: reading to them with both of them on my bed. Building toy railroads with younger son. Going for walks with older son. Drawing with them, with everyone on the floor drawing on giant newsprint-sheets. Just… being with them.

It’s the greatest time ever, and you should enjoy it. Unless the house is actively unhygienic, let it go. No one will care if there was dust on the shelves 20 years from now. Unless you’re driven by internal insanity or desperate need, let work go too. Just for a few years. The yard? Bah. Let things grow. You can always uproot them later.

Just enjoy your babies while they’re babies. And later when they’re kids, and teens, etc.

And remember neither you nor them will ever be perfect. Just human beings like others. Only these ones are yours, and you’ll love them unconditionally. Until the end of time.

Recently (because once we started this move, having just enough money for the move and of course losing my income for several months, since I haven’t finished anything, everything had to break and be replaced, bit by bit) my phone battery decided to convert to Islam threaten to explode. So we had to get another in a hurry. And, of course, it cost me way too much to get in a hurry.

And then I was faced with the true horror of AI use.

Sigh.

It’s not the AI, really. It’s the idiot things the phone thought to do with it.First, there’s no way to uninstall the native AI without installing another. So I installed Google’s Gemini to cancel the native AI.

What can have led to these desperate measures you ask? Well, because (it’s apparently a known problem with this model) it invokes itself for no reason anyone can imagine based on what it heard you say and after searching its database.

All of which would be PERFECTLY fine if once it got invoked it didn’t speak in the world’s smarmiest voice from my pocket.

The first time this happened, it said, in a calming tone, “Keep compressing. Do you want me to call emergency services?”

I was mildly startled by this, since at that moment, we’d just pulled into the garage and neither of us had spoken for minutes. My answer of “What in heck?” luckily didn’t get interpreted as “Call 911 and have the armed forces scramble jets.”

Afterwards, I looked at the listing of what it thought it heard and it was: rub, press, rub, press.

I have no idea how it interpreted that from the sounds of opening a garage door (I guess?) or how having gotten that it jumped to “Treatment for a perforating wound” instead of, you know, cleaning a stain on fabric or, you know, other things.

This was the first time and I thought “Weird, but okay….”

The next time it got invoked, I’d told Dan something about painting the porch, and from forth my right pocket bursts the smarmy voice, “The Sistine Chapel was painted in fresco by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1512–“

That was… odder. And I was starting to get slightly testy.

But then I was talking to my son, trying to coordinate cars and u-haul, and into the middle of this conversation bursts the world smarmiest voice trying to give me instructions on…. I don’t remember, but I think it was on how to prune roses.

I had a moment. Not right then, because I just turned it off, but after we got the u-haul in place I spent half an hour screaming on how stupid the AI was and how I was sick and tired of it getting invoked.

But we were moving and busy and … I let it run, other than looking it up and realizing I could only drive out the demon by installing another– I mean, I had to install another AI to replace it.

Until, a week later, I was feeding the cats and as I reached past Muse I scared her and she started to run away, and I said “What’s so scary about my reaching for the food?”

And from my pocket comes the smarmy voice, “It’s not scary. Do I get some? Yum.”

Look, I can’t even imagine what kind of mental aberration went into the programming that my statement got interpreted as a question for AI nor that that answer was appropriate. I’d imagine the appropriate answer would be something more like “Please repeat question?” BUT no. It said that, with a jokey undertone, like ahah, I’m just another human, here in your pocket, talking about eating.

Look, I don’t know why but that came across as one of the CREEPIEST things I’ve ever heard, and I sat through at least one Clinton speech. I about jumped out of my skin, and ended up settling for gemini, which, thank heavens can be disabled so it doesn’t answer on voice. Even if it does volunteer to look up words from news articles for me. Difficult ones, you know, like coffee or cat. And no I have no idea what secret combination of finger taps and Dan snoring by my side sets THAT off.

“But Sarah, I thought you liked AI!” I do like AI. It’s an excellent tool in its place. It’s the enthusiasm for pushing it everywhere, including places it’s not wanted that disturbs me.

Oh, and the programing that tries to make it a jokey, friendly kind of “companion” to the people who own the instrument of the AI. Because…. honestly?

I’m now terrified I’ll be in my eighties and mumbling all the time (I’m almost there, on the second.) and become convinced this voice from my pocket is an evil goblin threatening to eat my cats….

There has to be a better way of using new technologies than “the most stupid way possible.”

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, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. By clicking through and buying (anything book-related, 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. Remember though all of these submissions are from people willing to be associated with this blog. So if you’re trying to buy from people who don’t hate you, this is a good place to start.– SAH

FROM PAM UPHOFF: Max Berezin Collection (Chronicles of the Fall Book 26)

Snapshots a character’s life.

One previously published short story, plus nine new stories that give brief glimpses of a budding Mentalist Lord as he survives ambitious relatives, brief romances, interesting assignments, and vacations . . . Balancing family duties and work while doing what’s right . . . even if it might not actually be legal . . .

FROM DAN MELSON: Meeting The Morelli (Embassy Book 1)

Tessa was desperate, and a two year contract with an Imperial Embassy looked like the way out. Helping a newly contacted species develop to a point where they’re ready to deal with the universe is a years-long project, and those whose missions succeed can expect more lucrative contracts in the future as well as the knowledge they’ve helped an entire species survive.

The Empire of Humanity is not being altruistic. It has selfish reason to want the Morelli and others to survive. But the Morelli must be willing to learn, and there’s only so much latitude a species may be given before even the Empire’s own citizens require suppression or worse. Tessa and her superiors must find a way to persuade the Morelli to learn about the dangerous universe beyond their current holdings before the Morelli do anything irreversible.

Because evolution is not done when a species achieves sentience, or even technology. It becomes communal, and the penalty for failure is extinction.

FROM JOHN BAILEY: I Can See Clearly Now (Science Fiction Singles)

What if you could see the life you never lived?

Commander Daniel Forrester has spent forty years among the stars.

At fifty-eight, he is a respected starship commander with a lifetime of exploration behind him. But when news reaches him that Elizabeth—the woman he once intended to marry—has died, Daniel is forced to confront the question that has haunted him for decades:

What if he had stayed?

Then the Resolute discovers something impossible.

Another starship appears in space.

It is the Resolute .

It carries the same identification number, the same crew, and the same commanding officer.

But it comes from somewhere else.

Daniel has encountered an alternate reality.

And in that reality, another version of himself made a different choice.

That Daniel stayed on Earth.

He married Elizabeth.

He helped establish humanity’s first permanent colony on Mars.

And Elizabeth is still alive.

For the first time, Daniel can see the life he has spent forty years imagining.

But the boundaries between the two realities are beginning to collapse.

As alternate histories bleed into one another, Daniel faces an impossible choice: pursue the life he believes he should have lived—or save the people whose lives depend upon the reality he actually chose.

To make that choice, Daniel must finally confront the difference between regretting the past and living in it .

I Can See Clearly Now is a reflective science-fiction novella about alternate realities, impossible choices, lost love, regret, acceptance, and the courage to embrace the future.

FROM KIRILL KHRESTININ: Via Dolorosa: A Novel

Some roads only open at the bottom.

Laura Jones leaves her grandfather’s Arizona ranch for Los Angeles, certain her real life is waiting there. She wants to be an actress. She finds a man who knows how to keep that dream alive—and how to use it against her. Then another man arrives, wearing a police uniform.

Harry Dolan knows what his partner is. He has helped make it possible. At home, his fifteen-year-old daughter needs him, his marriage is disintegrating, and the violence he excuses on the streets is never far from his own front door.

Back in the desert, Laura’s grandfather has a Purple Heart, a shotgun and a past he rarely speaks about. He knows how to fight. What fighting can save is another question.

Their lives collide in a world where pain becomes an excuse, love becomes possession, and people ask God for mercy while denying it to one another.

Via Dolorosa is a brutal literary crime novel about the damage people inherit, the damage they choose to inflict, and the possibility of faith when every comfortable answer has failed. Violent, profane and unflinching, it asks what remains of love when suffering gives you every reason to become cruel.

FROM LEE ECKHARDT: PLACE of HONOR: A Science Fiction Novel

Sixteen-year-old Jozan par Julien is First Princess of the Empire of One Hundred Suns and next in line for the throne. Seventeen-year-old Cade-Klin Soline is the most junior member of her bodyguard, someone Jozan is only barely aware of. That changes when an assassination attempt maroons Jozan and Cade-Klin on a dangerous alien planet. Knowing that this is the beginning of an attempt to overthrow her father, Jozan vows to return to the Imperial World, a vow that will throw them headlong into an incredible adventure, an adventure in which they will face a hostile jungle, predatory animals, the mystery of a vast alien space ship and a deadly interstellar conspiracy that will do anything to keep them from reaching their goal. And, at the end of the journey, Jozan will not only have found love with Cade-Klin but will also face the shocking truth about her destiny, a truth she never suspected…

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Everything in 24 Frames

Twenty-four frames equals one second of motion-picture film.

Cather Hargreaves learned that fact for class, but as an abstraction. Now that he’s going on a tour of a movie studio and its back lots, he’s about to get real-life experience in just how movies are made.

What he didn’t expect was being tossed into a real-life horror, as the war against sectarian violence suddenly comes home to the City of Angels. It’s a moment that will change the course of his life forever.

When life is on the line, 24 frames can be an eternity.

A short story of the Grissom timeline.

FROM MICHAEL NICHOLS: Fatal Abstraction: Revolutionizing Strategy and Innovation for the Age of AI

In an era where AI is accelerating disruption and uncertainty, traditional business strategy is dangerously outdated. While innovation professionals adapt rapidly, many established organisations remain stuck in slow, mechanistic planning cycles. Fatal Abstraction argues that to survive, leaders must learn to govern at the level of uncertainty they face―rethinking how strategy is conceived, executed, and evolved.

Drawing on philosophy, mental models, and first hand experience with hundreds of ventures, author Michael Nichols offers a bold framework for mastering disruption. This timely work equips entrepreneurs, executives, and investors with the tools to navigate AI-driven change, build resilient ventures, and revolutionise strategic thinking in the modern age.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: The Cross-Time Kamaitachi (Timelines Universe Book 5)

I did not land here as a warrior, but a warrior I so soon became . . .

One moment, Dr. Yukiko Yamaguchi was in her high-tech singularity research lab in California, busily adjusting an electronically-leaky fitting playing hell with her instrument readings.

The next moment, she was falling through space, and landing hard in a wilderness area she would quickly discover was her family’s ancient stomping grounds in Japan – but with an apocalyptic twist.

A hundred years later, there would be legends of a great y�kai, a demon, whom some called a kamaitachi – a sort-of whirlwind, weasel-like creature with blades for claws, which catches up unwary humans and slices their skin. But this kamaitachi is no ordinary y�kai – rather, she is

The Cross-Time Kamaitachi

FROM SUMMER GRAYLING: True Colours

Jan Van Der Vaart is a legend. The focus of his magical Talent is pain, and he’s spent years in the military, then as a mercenary, making terrorists, cartels, and governments fear him. Finally, he carved out a safe haven for other Talents, and tried to retire… until one last job, cracking a black lab snatching Talents off the streets, went sideways. He’s left staggering down a rainy coastal highway, thumb out and hoping he’ll catch a lift before the kill team realizes they missed…

Aurelia Brinati is on the run. Having escaped five years of hell as an unwilling lab rat, she has a stolen car and a plan to hide from pursuers by taking passage on a cargo ship headed anywhere else in the world. When she picks up a stray sailor headed the same way, she rapidly discovers she’s out of her depths… and safe in the heart of the storm.

The entire world fears him… except her. Powers are gathering to recapture Aurelia, but they’d best beware. Jan and his friends will do whatever it takes to keep her safe… whether it’s murder, mayhem, or last-minute shopping runs to find something called cream of tartar for her snickerdoodle cookies.

Protective Hero ✓ Hidden Magic ✓ He Falls First ✓ Found Family ✓ Runaway Heroine ✓ Psychic Powers ✓ Hurt/Comfort ✓ Damaged Heroine ✓ Touch-starved Hero ✓

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Witchfinder (Magical Empires Book 1)

A Duke’s Defiance Could Shatter Two Worlds
In an England where magic pulses through every cobblestone and the English Regency manners and modes never ended, one man’s conscience threatens to topple an empire.
Seraphim Ainsling, Duke of Darkwater, inherited a legacy of forbidden heroism. For generations, his family served as witchfinders, crossing between worlds to rescue those condemned to die for possessing magical gifts. But when the royal princess vanished twenty years ago, the king sealed the borders between realities forever.
Now Seraphim faces an impossible choice: obey the crown and let innocents burn, or defy his king and risk everything he holds dear.
With only his enigmatic half-elf valet Gabriel Penn at his side, Seraphim tears holes in the fabric of existence itself, leaping between alternate Earths where magic means death.
His mother and sister are lost in Fairyland. His enemies circle like vultures. The king’s patience wears thin.
But Seraphim’s stubborn compassion burns brighter than caution. In a world where doing right means risking everything, he’ll discover that the greatest magic might just be the courage to keep fighting when hope seems lost.
Some prices are worth paying. Some lines are worth crossing. Some hearts are worth breaking.
A spellbinding tale of sacrifice, family, and the dangerous allure of doing what’s right in a world determined to punish goodness.

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 to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: TEMPT

When I was a little girl and an history nut (now I’m an old woman and an history nut) I found out about the (supposed) at least Spartan standard for whether an infant lived or died. The baby was brought from the birthing chamber and put at the feet of his father. If the father took him up, he was a baby, a son of the household (or a daughter, but this being Sparta, sons mattered more.)

The books I read treated this with some approval. The father inspected the baby for defects, and would of course know if the baby was illegitimate, and thus only the fittest survived. The eugenics thing was still strong in Europe. Probably still is. And in Portugal it made perfect sense for the father to be the one deciding because he was, after all, the one expected to pay for the kid’s raising.

I thought it was unspeakably barbaric. And I’d like to ascribe this to my being so enlightened and smart, even at eight or nine, but really, it was probably because my family provided the ribbing about how any sane father would have rejected infant-me, born extremely premature and very hard to keep alive. And how this was why I was still a weakling and caught every disease possible and some impossible. The idea that culling would apply to oneself, like hanging in the morning, sharpens the mind something wonderful.

Anyway, I was very grateful to live in a civilized time when keeping me alive, at least in the measure of the possible, was expected by both society and law. After all, I was a lot, both personality and health, and it was for the best that drowning me in the bathtub or abandoning me in the woods wasn’t acceptable.

Some — dear Lord — 20 years ago, Libertarians who were friends of mine became very alarmed that our standard for who was human and a life worth keeping had changed. Now, it had effectively become “You’re human if mommy says you are.”

No? Look at when a pregnant woman gets killed. Whether the child gets counted as another homicide depends on whether the child was wanted or not. A lot of states have not only abortion till birth but, like Colorado — COLORADO! — you’re allowed to kill the baby for some time after birth with no consequences.

You’re human if mommy wants you.

If mommy doesn’t want you, you stop being human even as labor pains start. She can say “My body, my choice, I want the fetus terminated.” If mommy wants you, on the other hand, she’ll send your sonograms at two months around with “Look at my baby. He has my nose.”

And that decision can change in a minute. Sometimes on a dime.

This is not tenable. It is particularly not tenable for a secular humanist society. (Religious societies have their own answers to abide by. That’s different.)

It’s not tenable because “humanist” rests on “humans” and if what a human is depends on the whim of the woman (and usually a woman who is stressed, hormonally off-ballance and possibly exhausted and ill) the foundations of the society crumble.

My generation — forgive us — were lied to, with a lie we couldn’t personally disprove. We believed that until some time (12 weeks, I think) the growing baby was “a tube with no feelings and no brain” and no human characteristics. This is also untenable in the time of more and more developed sonograms. My older son looked like a peanut in the sonogram at 10 weeks, but now you can see features, little fingers.

So you fall back on ever more specialized definitions of why it’s okay to kill this person whom society says is not a person if mommy says he isn’t. The excuses are amazing. The relationship broke up and mom can’t afford him/her. The mother is mentally wounded somehow, and the birth will hurt her mental health. The baby has this or that defect. And of course, the baby will need complete support to stay alive after birth. (Like all of us did.) And of course, until x or why stage of development they can’t think as we define thinking. Etc. etc. etc.

But all of these definitions are thin when you consider “till birth and sometimes after.” Or for the “too expensive” “too much work” “too weak” “not compos mentis” …. we’ll all hit these at various points in our lives, and sometimes we recover from that, and sometimes we don’t. That standard will allow us to kill most of the disabled, most of the ill, and 100% of the aged. Looks towards Canada. And don’t think it’s not been noticed. Hell, when I was in the hospital, at 33, with pneumonia, I was told I should allow them to do the procedure that was almost guaranteed to kill me because I was a “drain on my family” and would probably always be, and did I want my husband to lose his job because he insisted on staying with me at the hospital? I mean, the old and the sick in general don’t even have mommy to stick up for them. In fact, according to various cases, at that point it’s “you’re human if your spouse/children say you are.”

It sucks. A society built for humans should have the broadest possible definition of human. Not “you’re disposable scrap unless someone else vouches for you.” and “You’re not even human unless your mother says you are.”

Look, I had a friend who had been very abused in childhood and who said that being wanted was a great standard. Otherwise the child would end up abused. She was a little taken back when I told her she was wanted. Her parents needed a child to abuse. Also “wanted” changes. Don’t believe me? Go to craigslist or facebook marketplace and see all the expensive-breed dogs being given away at 2 or 3 years of age, because they’re no longer wanted. Or, more heartbreakingly, all the old dogs and cats being given away because they’re no longer pretty, fluffy, compliant and CHEAP. As the vets bills mount “wanted” changes.

As for “But unwanted children won’t be happy”: poppycock. Beyond the fact that happiness is a terrible way to judge someone’s life and achievements (I am not permanently ecstatically happy. Are you?) by that standard both Dan and I — he was wanted by his mother, but as a GIRL, and I was never wanted by my mother. My father wanted more children, not my mother — are unhappy, suffering souls. And you know, despite illnesses and various issues, I don’t think we are. I really don’t think so. In fact, in the general order of things, and despite a lot of tight squeezes, we’ve been damn lucky and happy. And I don’t think we’re alone, as unwanted children.

In fact, there is absolutely NO justification for the Mommy Standard of Humanity. And the excuses grow thinner as we learn more about biology and human development.

It is a corrosive, crazy way of deciding what is human and what isn’t, what is to be protected and what is to be killed.

Birthrate drop? Ah! That would be lucky. People wonder about the deranged tick tock mommies and “we’re all Lindsey” nonsense. But why should they wonder? You gave mothers the right to decide who is human and who isn’t. Why should that stop once they’re out of the womb? Or in the crazy states out of the womb for a month or so? After all children can become inconvenient, expensive or simply trying and brainless-acting at any point between birth and eighteen. (And after. Hence my lamentations about “I’d smack you upside the head, but I’d need a step stool” which still happen, sometimes, and the boys are well, early middle age at this point. But I can’t say I’m responsible for them.) Why should they not have the right to do away with any inconvenient child they’re responsible for? After all, their sleep patterns are interrupted! They have to look after these small humans! Do you hear them crying? And just keeping them alive as toddlers is a full time job. Shouldn’t the mom have the right to personal fulfillment?

Roman fathers used to have the right to have their kids executed for anything including talking back. (How many of us would survive that?) Then we became more civilized…

In the ancient world, children got exposed in batch lots. Yes, for defects and maybe infidelity, but really for parents’ convenience. There was a Father’s standard. You’re human if he says you are. (Though if you think the women couldn’t give birth in secret and send the kid to be exposed, you’re an optimist or a fool.)

Christians were considered odd because they raised all they bore. If you think that had no impact on the advance and ultimate taking over by Christianity, you’re also a fool.

So, now, in a post-Christian world, we’ve reverted. And yep, birthrates are in the crapper.

But more importantly, the increasingly more obvious Mommy Standard of Humanity makes each and every one of us very aware “I’m only here, because I was allowed to live.” And “Society can change that permission at any time.”

Right to life? Don’t make me laugh.

But Sarah, you can’t be saying that every human is human from conception! Any number of pregnancies end, unnoticed, in spontaneous abortions.

Yeah, I’m aware of that. None better, since early miscarriage is the form my infertility took. So? Many lives end to, at various points before whatever arbitrary age. Does that give us the right to go around killing people, because so many people die of natural causes by their age? The standard is flawed.

I don’t know — and can’t think of any — standard for determining “What’s human” unless we go “is of human DNA, is alive, and if no one kills him/her has a good chance of growing into an independent autonomous human. Maybe not worth spit, (hell he might even grow into a communist) but definitely human.

If society is going to rest on the measure of the human and humanity, then human and humanity needs to be hard rock, something never questioned. The right to life of humans, all humans, must never, ever come into doubt.

Because that’s the price of the right to life for all of us.

The mommy standard sucks. Even the best, sanest of women have moments of idiocy and insanity. Trust me on this. I’m a woman and I try to be sane, but there are times… If her idiocy or insanity can cost the lives of other humans and this is legally and societally approved of? No one is safe.

“But you’d police every pregnancy.” Take a chill pill. I was born in a society where abortion was strictly forbidden by law. And yet it still happened. In fact, many women used it as their main method of contraception. In fact, it’s probably the only way to keep it safe and rare, because everyone involved knew they’d be in trouble if caught.

But they’d be in trouble if caught. Society as a whole held that human life was precious and not at the whim of either of its creators, father or mother. Society as a whole, though it wasn’t codified, held that humans had a right to life.

Liberty and the pursuit of happiness are pretty hard on the Mommy Standard.

It’s making everyone more than a bit insane and insecure.

I suggest that we’re not Spartans (thank heavens. They were closer to Cuba than to us) and most of us are not insane. It’s time to face up to the Mommy Standard and rethink the whole thing.

Before civilization is completely gone.