Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

Book Promo

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

FROM CEDAR SANDERSON: Following Trouble : A Tale of Underhill (Pixie for Hire)

Lom has a new mission, to track down illicit magical use. Something is going on in the gritty underworld of Cincinnati, where the nightclubs are still hosting gambling and the organized crime runs more smoothly than the bureaucracy. He’s about to find out if he’s going to get lucky… or get dead.

FROM DALE COZORT: There Will Always Be An England II: Planet Ripper

A gripping blend of alternate history, science fiction, and military adventure set in a world where time travel, alien invasion, and World War II-era conflicts collide.

1944 Britain spent twelve grueling years in the Stone Age, leaving its World War II Allies to fight on alone and forcing brutal decisions: dispatching stranded US troops to ancient North America, while wartime factories crumbled to rust. When the nation snaps back to 1944—mere weeks after it left—it’s a superpower, boasting jets, nuclear reactors, advanced computers, and television, light-years ahead of the world.

But this Britain is a fragile giant, its defenses geared for Neanderthal raids, not modern warfare. As Nazi Germany eyes the vulnerable country, eager to exploit the chaos, an even greater peril looms: a huge, derelict artificial moon orbits Earth, self-repairing with each orbit. Whoever seizes it could dominate the planet—or doom it.

In this pulse-pounding alternate history, survival hangs on getting rusting equipment back in the fight while turning Britain’s advanced technology to war.

FROM RACONTEUR PRESS: Alien Family Traditions (Raconteur Press Anthologies Book 58)

In a galaxy torn by war, where battles shatter civilizations, the heart of family endures. From adoptions that bridge species to foster homes offering refuge to aliens and humans alike, love becomes the ultimate rebellion against conflict. Discover uplifting tales of unlikely kin—blood, chosen, or found—building havens of hope amidst chaos. In this heartwarming collection, explore the lives of those who choose compassion over strife, the consequences that reshape worlds, and the reasons why family, in all its forms, is the brightest light in the darkest times. A feel-good celebration of unity and resilience that will leave you inspired.

FROM JOHN BAILEY: Stories of Asteroid Mining: Hardships in the Belt

Stories of Asteroid Mining: Hardships in the Belt
by John Bailey

In the ruthless frontier of the asteroid belt, fortunes are carved from stone—and lives are shattered in silence.

Stories of Asteroid Mining tells three gripping tales from the boom era of space’s final gold rush. Elias Varn, the wiry mechanic-turned-prospector, claws his way to success and returns home to marry his sweetheart. Torin Kade, a hopeful coder from Europa, finds only betrayal and loss in the void. And Cassian Holt, the cunning tycoon, builds a mining empire from the wreckage of failed dreams.

From the dust-choked hulls of Vesta’s saloons to the icy stars above Ceres, these stories chronicle the harsh realities of life in the Belt. In a world where oxygen costs more than whiskey, and claim-jumpers hunt in stealth ships, only the sharp, the stubborn, or the soulless survive.

For fans of hard sci-fi, space Westerns, and frontier capitalism, this gritty anthology exposes the sacrifices made to mine the sky—and what’s left when the stars no longer shine for you.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: On Account of a Dame (Timelines Universe Book 9

Welcome to the New Jazz Age!

It’s the Roaring Twenties all over again — well — the 2120’s, that is. Where New York City has reverted to its Jazz Age roots of two centuries before. What’s missing? Prohibition, and gun control. What’s not missing? Tough guys, and the dames who (sometimes) love them. Gin joints. Speakeasies. Dance halls. The Social Register is still a thing, and the Beautiful People litter the society pages of the local hypernews sites.

Enter a typical gumshoe private detective — a member of that high society himself, yet a man who left society long ago for other pursuits. And his latest client, a rich young woman of leisure, who needs her new husband followed.

Throw in the recently-crowned queen of one of Chinatown’s tongs, a beautiful investment wizard from upstate, and a hundred million dollars in assets, and suddenly it’s all

On Account of a Dame

BY PETER RABE, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Dig My Grave Deep (Annotated): The classic pulp noir

Danny Port wanted out. Being the right hand man to the boss of a political machine in a second rate city was no longer interesting, let alone exciting. But Boss Stoker wanted him to stay. And Stoker’s main competition, head of the local Reform Party Bellamy, wants him to switch teams. And nobody, but nobody, is willing to let him leave. Worst of all, every one of them knows about Shelly, and some of them even know what she means to Port.

• This iktaPOP Media edition has a new introduction giving the book genre and historical context.

FROM TIMOTHY WITCHAZEL: Joshua and the Battle of Jericho: A Poem in Alliterative Verse

From author and poet Timothy V. Witchazel comes the story of Joshua and the Battle of Jericho in alliterative verse. Tracing the story of the Israelites from the parting of the Red Sea to the fall of the walls of Jericho, the story is retold in the style of Beowulf, Piers Plowman, and other Anglo-Saxon poems.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Having a Pint (Liquid Diet Chronicles Book 2)

Even the dead have to make a living…

Meg Turner, vampire accountant and investments advisor, has plenty of living clients, but not many among her fellow undead. That’s about to change: she’s been invited to a regional business fair for her kind. She’ll get to meet and greet more bloodsuckers than she really wanted to (hopefully without having to suck up to any of them). than just the two Vampire cops she helped track down and stake her late, unlamented sire—and hopefully make some friends and answer some questions.

Unfortunately, she’s got a Line Progenitor who’s begun invading her dreams, and a serial killer stalking her future clients to distract her from growing her business. Throw in a sick roommate not long before the conference starts, a mafia messenger boy left on her front porch, and only one car to juggle all of her responsibilities toward her roommate and unexpected guest. And then on top of that, she has the business fair over an hour away that features vampire karaoke, nosy, pushy elder bloodsuckers, and one particular elder who’s friends with her unwelcome dream guest. Seriously, it’s enough to drive her to drink something other than coffee or blood.

Just why did she think this whole conference thing sounded like a good idea, again?

FROM MARY CATELLI: The Maze, the Manor, and the Unicorn

A short story of banishment and magical intrigues.

Cecily had been a lady-in-waiting. Exiled to Clearwater — for her health — after she angered Queen Blanche, she has nothing to do but wait.

Until an ambassador is sent there, for his health, and Cecily finds that the court intrigues reach farther than she had known they could.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Time Enough to Spy

A spy has at long last come in from the cold — but all is not as it seems. The longer his debriefing continues, the more uneasy he becomes. In particular, how can he reconcile his presence here with the impossibility of both rescue and escape from a polity with the power to remodel the bodies of their subjects at will?

What secret hides behind those cool professional faces of the agents who briefed him so long ago? Has he been induced to betray all he was sent to protect?

A short story of the Madrian Empire.

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: Frantic

Mostly I’ve done not much of anything since death march with mowers. Okay. It was a very bad death march, but still.

Honestly, I think I’m coming down with something, judging by slight temperature, general nausea and my voice going weird. Nothing serious, but–

It makes me react very weirdly to things. Okay, that might also have to do — all of it might — with stopping Prednisone without a taper.

This afternoon I decided I was losing my temper at people unwarrantedly, then my fans/friends went and looked at the arguments and…

There was the guy who thought science fiction should be no more than 10 years in the future and have all the science. All the science. Super-accurate science. No more than 10 years in the future.

That’s not science fiction. That’s near-future techno thrillers. Younger son will probably end up writing these (after series he’s working on with me.) And they’re completely valid, and I’ve enjoyed some of them. They are not, however all of science fiction. Leave my space opera alone. I bite.

The other ones who came in talking about how the US is too free and this invites communism turned out to be for real Nazis who think fascism is the answer to communism. (I blocked so many people. Yes, they think they won the argument. I think I need to wash just communicating with that type of stupidity over the net.)

He also at one point assumed I am pro abortion on demand and for only fans (somehow) because woman. (Also he thought that Nazis were more moral than communists. Don’t get me started.) Only fans — meh. The porn we’ll always have with us. Porn and cat pictures. I have a high interest in cat pictures (real felines. I don’t even demand they be pets. Big cats are fine.) I don’t look at it. My friends either don’t or don’t talk to me about it. Do I think it’s damaging, etc? Sure. And if I can, if my opinion is asked, I’ll tell people it’s bad for them. But I’m not the boss of the vast majority of people. And I know flat out making that stuff illegal simply doesn’t work.

As for abortion, I think everyone here knows my opinions.

But this touches on something I’ve seen far too often, and when I wrote about not making me a scapegoat, I meant it indeed.

Look, guys, men and women are different. Pretty much from the womb. But there’s a spectrum. And us Odds are, I swear Odd first. We tend to be more “logical” than not.

Yes, I’m sick and tired of people who assume because I was born with a vagina they know my politics. I hate them on the left, where they call me a gender traitor, as though I’d sworn allegiance to the vagina. And I hate it on the right where they assume I’ll do all this stuff and support all this stuff because “of course female.” Including the idiots who say that I might not support all those things that are supposedly women’s preference, but I’ll “betray” it when it gives advantage to women.

I have to assume all the idiots making those mouth noises were born by fission and are single. In fact, they never had a relationship with another human being. Because me? Where I stand I’m the daughter of a man, the sister of a man, married to a man and the mother of two men. And if you guys think that doesn’t matter, you’re as crazy as those people.

Seriously. People aren’t just themselves alone. They are a network of people, and that means they live with other people.

Also, let’s get rid of “I don’t read women, because–” Unless what follows is “they mostly don’t write what I read” you’re being an ass.

Look, as a woman, I admit there is a higher bar these days towards reading women (Or literary fiction. More on that later) because I expect to be sucker punched. I expect at some point there will be a rant against men, or having children, or capitalism or– I even know at least for trad pub women that most of these rants are demanded by the editor. But dear Lord, you get invested in a character, you follow the character and then… smack. Same for literary fic, where they seem to think nothing is as “literary” as making everyone evil and hateful.

But I give women (and some, though rare, and mostly classical) literary a chance.) And if it’s someone I know from twitter say, I really give them a chance.

The other thing is: Can we talk about the fact that not everything women write is romance? My books in general don’t have more romance than say Heinlein books. No, seriously. And I don’t even mean his later books. More like… oh, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress.

There are some that have more romance, yes, but they are either novelizations of real people’s lives (I challenge you to make Jane Seymour, wife of Henry VIII interesting without ascribing her some totally improbable romance tot he guy who imported sonnets (as a form of poetry) into English (as I figured he deserved it.)) or the stuff my assistant is currently editing (clearing the stupid stuff the house put in.) Though when I told her those were Romances, she looked at me like I’d lost my mind and told me no, they’re adventure, history and cultural clash, with a little personal attraction thrown in. So, there you have it.

On the serious side, sure, I have more motivation from personal attraction than…. oh, mil sf. (Unless it was Prince Roger.) Or children’s picture books. Usually people in my books are doing things for other people: friends, lovers, children, spouses. Because… well, most people only become heroes in extremes and that’s one way to get the character to move. But my stuff is no more romance than Heinlein’s late stuff was “porn”. When people say that, I always wonder if they’ve read any contemporary romance or mystery (published by the big houses.) Both are likely to contain more explicit sex than anything Heinlein wrote. (And way more than I did.)

Anyway, you see, I’ve been getting a bit cranky. And yeah, it’s probably the prednisone cut-off. I normally just ignore the glaring stupid. And the mildly annoying.

I’m really hoping to finish an installment of Witch’s Daughter tomorrow and to — finally — send section two of NML to the copy editor (I need to implement a couple clean ups my editors suggested first.) And typeset section one, which is back from the copyeditor, so that the paper will also be on pre-order. And I suppose I should investigate Barnes and Noble and the other places. And set things up there.

Anyway, if I snap at you, it’s partly because I swear I’ve been besieged by strange idiocy and infuriating coincidences (including but not limited to the fact the lawn guy showed up after the lawn was done. Yes, he had good reasons, but still… Argh) and the fact I’m just touchy. I’ll try to be less touchy. I don’t like ME when I’m touchy.

In more amusing news: I know I have a mutant cat who can taste sugar. Indy keeps finding ways of breaking into or getting to things that are sweet. I suspected this since the first time I found him face deep in the sugar bowl omnoming away, but now I’ve secured that stuff where he can’t get to it, he’s resorted to stuff like…. licking the bowl where we had the grapes, because there’s some sweet stickiness left behind.

I guess he fits in with all geeks. No. I’m not giving him mountain dew. Geesh. Cats don’t do well on caffeine.

Also I found the Paul French book, then lost it again. I know, I know. “I sense some resistance” … I guess.

This too shall pass. On the good side, there are a bunch of things I’m doing more competently — or at all — than I was when we moved three years ago. Including the death march with mowers. When I tried to mow before, the asthma attack almost killed me. This time, there were only peripheral allergies. I’m also managing doctors’ appointments (the making of) and such much better than I was. So, there’s hope. I guess altitude was seriously messing me up.

Oh, yes, if you sent a check to the fundraiser, we might not cash till labor day. I’m sorry for the inconvenience, but we don’t have a bank closer to us than two hours and hate doing banking on the phone. We will try to make it before that, but it depends on Dan’s schedule. Again I’m sorry. I know it’s a massive inconvenience, and we’ll try to make it sooner. But it is what it is. Dan just had it forwarded, since the last one came in on the 31st. (Not sure why.)

Anyway, I leave you with the inevitable cat picture.

That’s Dan’s and my legs under the fuzzy blanket. Circe is on me, Muse is on him. Indy is squarely between us (weirdly not demanding we hold his paws) and Havey is also kind of in between us. We were, needless to say, watching a British mystery. (A not bad one, though also not great. Is it me or have British mysteries turned into shows about emotional disregulation with everyone from policemen to suspects going on rants and throwing punches? It didn’t use to be that way and frankly? it just looks stupid. So I end up doing other stuff while watching, or I make too many tart comments.)

And now I’m going to feed the bosses and go to bed. The cat food timed dispenser stopped working and if I leave it too late, they open it and carpet the living room in cat food. I thought it was Indy, but no, it’s Circe, his sister. (I yelled at her when I caught her doing it, and she went and got Indy, apparently under the impression I wouldn’t yell at her big brother. She was wrong.)

I’ll try to be more productive tomorrow.

First of all, if you subscribe to my substack and/or were hoping for a book review, the substack will come (a chapter of Witch’s Daughter) tomorrow. The book review probably Friday. I lost the book for a while.

I’m running late on account of Death March with Mowers. I.e. our lawn care fell through, and I’m the one who can do it. Which would be easier if it weren’t almost an acre, and the only implement to cut it we have weren’t a little electric mower. Oh. We have an electric sheep too, but he who wrangles tech hasn’t had a chance to train it.

Of course, the moment I was done, lawn care showed up. Mistakes were made, won’t happen again, etc. etc. etc. Just in case, He Who Wrangles Tech shall be nagged into taking the electric sheep out and showing it where to dine.

Meanwhile I spent the day in a state of near — almost — functionality. Which is better than non functional as the last two days, but not exciting. (It wasn’t so much the mowing. It’s just hot and the combination of the two was a bit much.) (My assistant who is reading this as I write it reminds me it might also be hangover from just stopped prednisone. And that’s quite likely.)

Suffice to say I’m out of sorts, a state in which I’m likely to get annoyed by things I’d normally ignore. Which is why my readers who aren’t science fiction readers or particularly interested in shelving conventions or designation of genres are going to have to forgive me while I go into matters of genre, which will in turn lead to a point for the larger culture wars.

Because, trust me, it does apply.

I’m not picking on the person who left the comment in Mad Genius Club saying that since No Man’s Land dealt with complex speculation and problems it would be considered literary anyway, so why not market that way.

There are things that are so wrong they’re not even wrong with the idea of leaning into “literary” for marketing, but they’re things most people who haven’t been in the trenches for the last 30 years can’t be expected to know. I think the top sales figures for literary these days — that’s with full traditional support, push from critics that can declare something anointed and perfect, etc — is around 2k copies. For releases without buzz, let alone indie which is to say something no self-respecting critic of literary fiction would sully himself with, I suspect that would be maybe a couple hundred.

Then there is what “literary” is.

I know of at least three definitions, none of which applies even remotely to my novel. Oh, okay, sorry. I hope one does apply, but by the time it does apply it will be a long time and we’ll all be dead.

Because the first definition of literary and what we’re all familiar with is “classics.” I.e. books that have stood the test of time and are around to be read. And which can still be broadly enjoyed if literature professors aren’t actually trying to suck the life out of them by teaching them in class: Shakespeare. Jane Austen. For a more recent example, Mark Twain.
Obviously I hope No Man’s Land — and others of my works — make it to that category. Mostly because that’s the standard I aim for. (I am btw aware this is unlikely. But either way, it doesn’t matter here and now.)

The second definition is “Literary is a genre like any other.” I.e. it’s a shelving category in bookstores. It is broadly defined as “things that literature critics and professors like.” (And which they think will become classics. Their record on this is… less than perfect. If they’d existed in Shakespeare’s day they’d have considered him a pulp hack.) It used to be the needed classing for this was “has beautiful language.” Hence Ray Bradbury tends to be shelved there. Also “is fairly obscure in meaning/form” which is why Jorge Luis Borges is also there. (I enjoy them both and think they have a good chance of making it to classics.)

Third – In recent years this, like everything else connected to Academia the definition of “literary” has decayed, and now what gets shelved there tends to fall in the category of “repeats current popular politically correct shibboleths.” And often, from what my younger fans tell me “is so obscure it has absolutely no plot.” To be fair “recent” is as far back as my days in college where I had a book inflicted on me in which the “Author” decided to dispense with the unit of time. Anyway, this explains why books like the semi-competent soft-core porn The Handmaid’s Tail Tale is on that shelf. The chances of that one making it to classic are such that I’m sure future generations will wonder at hysterical leftist women dressing like Ketchup bottles. I’m sure there will be many a thesis written on that subject.

This is because these days being crazy-Marxist and politically correct is the mark of an excellent education. (That decay of Academia, yes.) Which means that the same people who used to put Classical Allusions in their stories now make them into Just So Marxist Allegories. (Or the various subgroups, from “race” to “feminism.”) As I said, these are what college professors teach in the hopes of convincing you they should be classics. Most of them are of a quality and a resonance with real human problems that they are more likely to be burned for warmth in a nuclear winter. (And the nuclear winter thing was probably made up during the cold war and about as likely as a prosperous communist society.)

Again, I’m not upset at the suggestion that No Man’s Land should be considered literary, because I know the view of literary people on the street have. It’s complex, satisfying, and has heft. Honestly, I’m flattered if anything.

However — hefts Samurai sword — what the hell have you people done to my chosen genre while I was busy writing fantasy and mystery and other things that publishing houses gave preference to?

Because, you know, this isn’t the first time I’ve run into this. And its’ starting to get under my skin. Because–

Well, guys, it took me a d*mn long time (and a half) to get there, but I got into this writing gig to write science fiction. And the particular sub-branch of science fiction I wanted to write was space opera.

Not that I have anything against hard science fiction. And portions of my forecasting are always fairly “hard.” And, supposing I stay in shape, I have a hard YA SF plotted with a friend/collaborator.

It’s just that what I want to crunch my head around are things like the clash of cultures that cannot be reconciled because one culture is “modified humanity.” (Which is what NML is. Exploring that. Plus the ethics of bringing a barbaric culture to civilization and can it in fact be done without destroying its members. All without the hard triggers of using real cultures/history.) Or the ethics of modifying and optimizing humans (Darkships.) Or… probably a good dozen other things which will emerge after I’ve written them. (You see, I write to understand problems, but I never know what problem I’m trying to solve, in my head, until I do it.) And I’m completely unscrupulous in casting “future science” to serve the needs of my plot.

I know Heinlein was — for his time — writing hard science fiction, but what makes his works immortal (or close enough) and will probably have him in the same category as Shakespeare in a couple three hundred years is that kind of thing: Human problems with a vast canvas scope. (And a small, individual one at the same time. No? Well, you might need to re-read both The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress and Starship Troopers. While you’re at it read everything else, too. It’s good for you and puts hair on your chest. Unless you’re a woman in which case it puts more chest in your chest.)

It wasn’t only Heinlein. That collection of science fiction I’m trying to revisit is full of people doing just that. And even if I think some of them — particularly the French (not, not Asimov’s pen name. The nationality!) — are out of their ever loving mind, they all try to tackle complex problems that are either too “sensitive” or too weird to be tackled in a present-day context.

And that is the circus I ran away with at eleven, when I first found out that such a thing as “science fiction” existed. (Weirdly, I was in my twenties before I realized FANTASY existed. And the first time I came across a Fantasy book I was bewildered by its very existence. I’ve reconciled myself to it, and will admit it serves a lot of the same purposes as science fiction. I just don’t feel as at-ease in its constraints and with its touchstones, and despite my best efforts (and the fact I love a lot of fantasy like Tolkien or Pratchett — other two who will become classics. Well, one almost is, already) am haunted by the feeling that it shows in my work.)

I became aware there was a problem with this a couple decades ago, when I was looking for stuff to read. “I’m in the mood for space opera” brings a never end of mil sf recommendations.

I do read mil sf occasionally, but to me it’s a sub-branch of space opera and not even close to the whole of the thing, or even the main part of the thing.

My attempts at cluing people in by saying stuff like “Like Prince Roger” brought back “yeah, mil sf.” (Well, it technically is, but actually it’s “adventures in strange imaginary worlds that tell us something about the essence of being human.” Why is that different from fantasy? Because the game is played for plausibility and without excuses, that’s why. It’s a different mind-set.)

Anyway, I won’t lie. It’s part of the reason I’m revisiting the books I grew up reading. I might be Ronin and masterless, (BIRM) but I want to remember the house I belong to.

And then, starting a couple of years ago, I started meeting people surprised that my novels meant something, that is was more than pew pew zoom zoom, that I was actually trying to solve basic issues of the human condition/history.

This baffled me, because else what was science fiction for? Why even have this thing called science fiction or at least the space-opera sub-branch?

Today’s comment put this in perspective for me.

Sit up. Stop chewing gum. Did you bring enough for everyone? Pay attention. This is the part that applies to the culture wars at large.

THE REASON THAT PEOPLE THINK THIS IS BECAUSE THEY’VE BEEN LISTENING TO THE LEFT AGAIN!

I know this because I read the same articles and books, where in the middle of what is actually a cogent, sensible point, someone SNEERS at genre and talks about science fiction “hacks” or fantasy “scribblers.”

All of this, of course, while comparing it to the immortal beauty of “literary” by which they mean their own hacks who frankly aren’t, by and large (the recent ones) even competent at the trappings of the genre they’re attempting to skin suit.

Listen up, guys: stop putting leftist ideas in your heads. You know very well where they’ve been. And I hope you washed your hands after touching them.

The left sneers at that which is too creative for them to imitate. They have — as Hollywood is proving — all the creativity of the fae and all the subtlety of giant mecha.

They are telling you that “literary” — by which they mean their drek — is so much better because they’re hoping you think their lack of plot and awkward phrasing is intentional and “deep.”

Stop letting them set terms.

Yes, we are in a weird landscape, and they’ve broken all the walls of the houses we swore allegiance to. Or if you prefer they skinsuited so many institutions that skinsuiting literary genres is the least of it.

And yet, they’re not taking Heinlein’s genre and making it a simplistic, meaningless thing. Oh no. Not while I’m here and I’ve got my sword pen

You and you and you too, before you engage in the game make sure you’re not using words the left has corrupted and distorted. They’re dying a deserved intellectual death, and you don’t want to lend them life by echoing them.

Alas we are ronin. Cool. Let’s topple the skinsuiting regime and restore the right sovereign. Culturally speaking.

Come on. This will be fun. Strap on your mind-sword. Let’s go rampage.

*Before we get to this I want to say two things about this post. The first is that he’s absolutely right: it’s almost impossible for AI to decode things like slurred words. How do I know that? Because — as Kate Paulk pointed out — I have a “variable accent” which never hits the same word exactly the same, plus at least three intersecting linguistic influences: Portugal, Great Britain and North Carolina. The end result is that not even the “best” AI transcription programs (“this one transcribes my Indian boss with no problems!”) can transcribe my DELIBERATE DICTATION, and the things it gets are pretty outrageous and have no relationship to what I actually said. This without people deliberately seeding mistranslations.
Second, the people pushing the anti-semitic bullshit as a true translation are utterly despicable and have (OBVIOUSLY) never met a Jewish person in their lives. Because even drunk people wouldn’t say something like that. NO HUMAN BEING WOULD.
No, Jewish people don’t talk about money for no reason. That’s a stupid stereotype with buried historical origins I can explain another time, if you insist (I want to get out of the way of the guest post). BUT no one would go on that type of rant. No one.
Granted babbling how much one loves G-d while drunk off one’s ass is weird, but it’s also the most Jewish thing ever. This kid is the most adorable little religious geek ever. (Though some of my Baptist (almost spelled it Babtist. I love you guys. I was just hearing it SC accent.) friends might be as gloriously odd when drunk if of course they drank. Also for those going “Ew, drunk” if you can’t hold your alcohol the Purim celebration will absolutely make you like this.)
The ugly strain of anti-semitism appearing online is one of those things being promoted and seeded by nations that want the US to rip itself apart. That this is being pushed after 10/7 is just icing on the idiocy cake.
10/7 made it very clear who the barbarians are, and who is on the side of civilization and humanity. The barbarians are not Jews. If you fall for this campaign and start making Jews into the root of all evil, you are an idiot and you should be ashamed of yourself. – SAH*

Beware LLM (“AI”) translations of foreign-language videos. – A Guest Post by J. C. Salomon

There are lots of incidents where large-language models (commonly called “AI”) get things amusingly wrong.  Look up the “map of United States, with just Texas and Illinois colored the same, and each state labeled”; apparently I live in the state of “York Virginia”, just north of “Delmar”, “Marylaid”. and “Delaward”.  This post is not about that, but how these systems are vulnerable to malicious poisoning of their data.  And it’s a lot less amusing.

This particular incident happened with Grok on 𝕏, but probably all LLM “AI” systems are vulnerable in similar ways.

On a recent Purim in Israel (perhaps this past March, perhaps a few years ago; there’s no date in the video) someone took this video of a drunk young man exclaiming how much he loves God and His law & commandments:

Watch the original video with the correct translation pic.twitter.com/nYZqNRnIw1

— Canary Mission (@canarymission) August 5, 2025

(I verify the accuracy of the Canary Mission translation.  The rest of their thread on the topic is also a good read: https://x.com/canarymission/status/1952742426608574937 and for the xless: https://xcancel.com/canarymission/status/1952742426608574937)

Nobody fails to look silly while drunk, but we’d most of us babble about more inane things.

Along comes some anonymous ragebait account and posts the video (the original version, without the subtitles); and someone responds by asking Grok to translate:

I do not for a second think this question was asked as innocently as it’s made to look.  Like I said, this is a ragebait account, and (checking post history) it’s got a special emphasis on promoting Jew-hatred.  Still, we’ve all seen the various AI systems do a pretty good job of transcribing and translating videos, so what’s the worst that can happen?

But speech recognition remains a difficult and error-prone task, even for ChatGPT and Grok. So they implement a rather clever optimization: if there’s a reputable site with the video and a purported transcript, just report that result.  And if there are a couple of sites that have similar transcripts, assign that a very high confidence rating.  Normally, that will get a best-quality result with the least computation.  But—

—but that optimization is vulnerable to maliciously false information.

The people behind this exploit posted the video and a completely fake transcript to a couple of sites which Grok trusts (including supposedly Reddit’s /r/Yiddish board, though I have not found that post).  Once they confirmed that Grok was trusting their fake translation, they posted the seemingly-innocent question, and then pretended to be shocked and horrified at the response:

Let me be very clear:  That Grok post is a lie.  The only true words in that “translation” are “the man speaks”, nothing beyond that. He speaks Hebrew not Yiddish; he says nothing about Zionists, shekels or any other money, or buying anything let alone the world; he says nothing bad about non-Jews, he doesn’t use the word “goy” in any way, and does not curse anyone.  He doesn’t use words phonetically similar to any of that.  There is simply no way that algorithmic transcription and translation yielded this result.

And yet, Grok was firm about repeating this claim when challenged, even providing a (completely fake) Yiddish transcription, and elaborations on what the young man supposedly said.  In one reply to me Grok insisted the video showed the man holding money.  Usually it’s easy to bully an LLM into agreeing with you against its previous answer, but not this time.

All because the data it trusted had been poisoned with lies and hated.

(This has been corrected, somewhat, a few hours later.  Some—but not all—of the Grok mistranslations have been deleted, and Grok will now respond by saying the earlier posts were due to “hallucinations”.  But not before accounts with 100k+ follower counts reposted the lie.)

Some of us remember “Google bombing”, as when the string “miserable failure” was seeded into the algorithm so Google would point you to the White House site.  Everything old is new again, it seems.

Caveat lector.

That word in the title is not a typo. Bleg is a compound of blog and beg.

But Sarah, you’re thinking, you just did a blog fundraiser.

I sure did. This is not a fundraiser and not a request for money. This is a request for help, some of which might be trivial to you — depending on who you are — and some of which might be a reach, or might be a matter of “I know a guy” (which I don’t.)

So, here’s the thing: As some of you know — those of you who follow my writing at least — I’ve just finished a mammoth of book, so mammoth it will be published in three volumes.

The book is No Man’s Land. the first volume is setup to come out on the 9th of September, with the other two volumes coming out at two week intervals thereafter.

Yes, the book is finished — in fact I have released earcs of the first two volumes to people who subscribe to my blog. (e-electronic. Arcs – advance reading copies.)

I have the first volume back from the copy-editor — to those who called me on it in the e-arc, yes, she was scathing on the subject of lightening/lightning. Look, I NEVER knew the difference. Or rather, I do, but I keep mixing it up all the same — and need to send her the second volume. It should have been done today, but for reasons difficult to explain I spent the day doing yard work, and will need to do it again tomorrow. (ARGH. Very good workout, but–) At any rate, it will be to her by Wednesday or so.

Anyway, if you want to know what whole three-part book is about, it’s up with a blurb for the whole story, and then a blurb per volume.

(Full disclosure, if you decide to buy when you click through, I get a small portion of the sale. I mean, as an associate link, beyond what I get because it’s my book!)

No Man’s Land

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

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.

Volume 2

He was wrong.

Now his potential allies from the Star Empire are turning up dead, one by one. Spies and saboteurs have infiltrated every level of Ellyan society, and Skip is running out of people he can trust.

As he races to save the king and archmagician—his only remaining allies—disturbing secrets about Elly’s culture emerge alongside buried truths about his own family’s past. One moment he’s explaining the bewildering concept of binary gender to confused Ellyans, the next he’s making impossible choices that could strand him on this world forever.

His last gambit is reckless. The odds of success are slim. And failure means losing everything—his mission, his allies, his only way home.

But some fights are worth the risk, even when the deck is stacked against you.

Sometimes the most dangerous enemy is the one you never see coming.

Volume 3

Skip’s idea of crisis management?
Stress baking. While he’s kneading away his anxiety, Eerlen Troz is fighting for his life—and his unborn child’s—in an ancient and familiar battle.
When saving Eerlen’s life requires forging an unexpected blood brotherhood, it creates something neither person anticipated: a memory bond between two worlds.
Through shared consciousness, they uncover a conspiracy that threatens not just Elly, but the entire Star Empire.
The plot runs deeper than anyone imagined. Lives, fortunes, and freedom itself hang in the balance. But exposing the truth means surviving long enough to tell it—and their enemies have other plans. Two minds. One mission. A galaxies-spanning conspiracy that someone will kill to protect.
When the fate of worlds rests on an unlikely brotherhood forged in blood and baked goods.

*********

So, anyway, part of the problem with this book is that it’s odd. It simply is. I am not running it down mind, on the contrary, but you know, science fiction books come in a range, and mine is hanging out on the extreme end, or perhaps to the side, doing a little dance, fully out the “expected” range.

The other problem is that it’s a heart-book. I can’t explain that, I think, to anyone but a writer. Readers tend to think a heart-book is a book the author writes a book with his/her message, and makes sure the message gets through and–
It’s not like that at all. It has nothing to do with self insertion (which I just don’t do anyway, since I have my own life and don’t need to live the characters’ lives) or putting out the message you care about, or even “With this book I will fight communism forever.”
A heart book is like a favorite child. Which parents aren’t supposed to have but each writer has anyway. (Not in their kids, dorks, in the books.)
Some of it inexplicable. When I was writing short stories at one a week, most of the time I was okay with each of them. I wasn’t in love with, I didn’t hate it. I did the best job I could to get it out of my head and into everyone else’s. And then I sent it out. Was I happy when I got rejections? No. But unless it were the day I got sixty rejections back, I was fine.
However, one in fifty short stories just GOT me. It was a favorite child. And every time it got rejected, it gutted me.
Some of it, with this book, is explicable. This book first came to me when I was 14. And it’s been waiting. I wrote 8 versions of it before this, but I knew they weren’t right. This one IS. And this one is a piece of me.
I want to say here that this doesn’t mean heart-books are good. Jane Austen’s, bizarrely, was Emma, not Pride and Prejudice. Or even Persuasion.

HOWEVER, and keep in mind this is me, I’ve written a lot of books and normally my basic fail at publicity is that if you ask me if the book is good, I tell you “It’s a book. You might like it, or you might not. I don’t know.” But No Man’s Land is GOOD. It’s a d*mn good book.

Which brings us to problem three:
I have no idea how to market. NONE.

The main problem is that I never did. It’s not so much that I don’t want to promote, or that I’m afraid to, or that I’m shy, diffident or modest. None of that is quite right.

It’s more that I never had the right kind of contacts for traditional publishing. I never did. I never had a link to the powerful, the influential, the people who knew people in New York City publishing. I had editors and agents, but I think I was a bit of a kludge for them, (that not fitting into an easy category thing) and at any rate publishers and agents are not in the business of publicizing anyone but the already successful. Or those who for their own reasons are targeted and marked for success. I was never one of those. And I never had the alternative channels to do it.

I still don’t have the alternative channels.

I’m not going to lie, I do have some publicity ability: This blog. Instapundit links. I’ve used them for others and (sparingly) for myself, but for this book I’m willing to publicize myself as if I were someone I love who has written a — damn — good book.

But the thing is, the book deserves publicity. It deserves to reach farther than my normal captive audience.

And I have no clue how to do it.

Oh, there are …. webinars and methods and ways to evaluate it. And that’s fine. Except that a) that’s not the way my mind works. b) I don’t want to spend a year figuring out how to make it work. c) no one quite knows how to make it work.

I know the patter from these webinars. It’s just like the talks that published (but not crazy successful) writers used to do at cons. They sold you “my method for breaking in” and what you could be sure of is that the method was already oudated or had worked once, through freak chance.

Sure, ad campaigns work. They take a lot of time, but they work. And you can make a small fortune by spending a large fortune. I don’t have a large fortune. And if I did, I still wouldn’t want to spend it on that. Because you can, and it might never do anything. And the campaigns are less likely to work for a truly off beat property. They work much better with “This is the great thriller just like this other great thriller.” I don’t have that.

So here we are: I have this book I want to promote, and I have no idea how. So, hence the bleg.

A Writer’s Bleg

Let me start by saying I don’t want you to contact me if you are selling your for-pay blog review (I can get fifteen of those offers on linked in. But I don’t think they have more — and some have significantly less — reach than this blog and certainly than Instapundit.)

I don’t want you to contact me if you are a “publicist” who wants to “design a campaign for me” — not unless you have d*mn good references with clients I can verify exist and can contact independently. And even then I’d have to know what you intend to do for THIS particular book. And remember, I’m not made of money, nor is this a vanity project where I spend my retirement account for fame. I’m a working stiff, variety writer — unless you really are a unicorn. And a verifiable unicorn, not a goat with a horn velcroed on. I wasn’t born yesterday, I’m a veteran of 25 plus years as a professional, and you’re not — like someone tried on twitter — going to beguile me by praising the book you haven’t even read to the sky. No.

So, that should take care of most of the spam hitting my mailbox.

Now, what I DO WANT.

Are you a writer I have helped promote? I know you might — probably do — have fewer resources than I.

However, if you have resources, could you give me a little bit of promotion? No matter how small, it will get me a few eyes that would otherwise never see my book.

(If you’re uncomfortable (the book is almost distressingly wholesome, but it might not come across like that in the description) feel free to ping me for ARCs at Goldport Press at gmail dot com. And if you still feel uncomfortable, that’s fine.)

Just, you know, a mention, a review or if you really turn out to like it after reading the ARCs some “push” in the sense that you tell your friends it’s a d*mn good book. (Word of mouth still works best for books, I find.)

Other ways you can help: Do you have a blog? I would like to do your basic “blog tour”. I.e. I’ll come to your blog, be entertaining on the subject of whatever your theme is, and then plug my book at the end.

Do you have a podcast? I’m a d*mn good prospect for an interview, because I — allegedly — have an accent, and people tend to be fascinated by it. Also, I get nervous, and APPARENTLY I babble amusingly.

If you don’t have either a blog or a podcast, but have a friend who does? Can you ask them. I’m not telling you to take their pets hostage or anything, but just ask.

Do you have some idea how else to promote? And I mean a realistic idea not a “As G-d is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly” type of idea. Let me know.

This is a bleg. I can forecast social trends and politics, and kill current events to read the future in their entrails.

Publicity, though? I have no clue. There’s an art to it, and it’s not my art.

I want to be writing the second story, which is started, but… And I want to be finishing Witch’s Daughter and the two Dyce books. And the next Rhodes. And writing the next shifters and Fuse’s story in Darkship Thieves. Not trying to play games with impressions and conversions and hits and…

So, help a direwolf writer out, please?

I’m blegging you with tears in my eyes. Brother, can you spare some word of mouth and pass it on?

This Sunday I realized the left — particularly the cultured, posturing left — is completely and utterly out of ammo.

Oh, probably not out of literal ammo. That seems to always be their last play, after all. Bringing out the hidden cache and trying to make a splash. In America, I’m going to hazard, it won’t go well for them. They might even know it, so that the outbreaks of nonsense we get are isolated and tiny. Still tragic. Still costing innocent lives. But not the open shooting war they hanker for at some level and which their revolutionary heroes in other lands managed.

But for you guys to understand the level at which they are out of ammo and the shock I experienced on realizing it: I grew up in a place and time where the left commanded all the heights of culture, all the megaphones of discourse. They could declare what was beautiful and not, or make your book/music/art untouchable with a word.

Even as late as the early oughts, to brand some novelist as “racist” because you deemed she had insufficient people of color characters in her books and/or insensitive and imperialist because she had those, while being herself obviously white was enough reason to destroy a career unless the person were already a massive success.

And now? Now they’re down to this type of utterly ridiculous meltdown over… a commercial. No, seriously.

Like, you know, commercials aren’t supposed to show an enticing, aspirational ideal.

Wait, for all I know the left doesn’t realize that. Their favored means of getting you to do something is, after all, to curl a disdainfully look and tell you to do it if you don’t want to be fascist/retrograde/stupid.

Which is what this precious specimen is trying to evoke.

He stompy stompy footed and told us that liking beautiful things, or heroes or rural scenes, or an evocation of the past makes us…. he looked into his little bag of tricks and hurled out the most horrifying word in it. Nazis!

Which is utterly revealing as to the kind of mind we’re dealing with, but let’s save that for later.

The most immediate thing is why he did it. The short answer is because he’s stupid enough he doesn’t realize the only reason that sort of thing worked is because they commanded all the heights of culture, there were no alternative voices and while people might not buy their bullshit and definitely not enjoy their “art” they largely had no way to talk back. This meant the institutions, art buyers etc (I am of the impression that the art buying in the present post modern world is a giant money laundering scam on par with book advances for lefty politicians) were fooled into thinking that these people were culturally significant somehow.

They had made themselves into the church of art and those they disagreed with were excommunicated. (Which incidentally was the worst possible thing for art as such. Except insofar as it continued to exist around the edges, things the establishment hated, which sold nonetheless.)

My friend Francis Turner (Of L’Ombre de l’Olivier) says the most revealing thing in that little screed is the fact that he’s upset at “conventional and banal ideas about beauty.” Like, you know, beauty cannot common and widely appreciated because it IS. Or like something widely appreciated can’t be both beautiful and art. Or–

Look, as Francis put it:
“I think the bit that really gets me is

conventional and banal ideas about “beauty”

That shows he doesn’t get it at all. Why do millions of tourists visit Paris or Kyoto or rave about the Golden Gate bridge or the Statue of Liberty or Machu Picchu* or wherever. It’s because they are beautiful. Sure they may be other things too – historic, natural wonders etc. – but it’s beauty that gets you there first and there is global agreement that these things are beautiful. The only people that don’t find them beautiful are miserable avant-garde sorts like the writer. And while there are certainly cultural idiosyncrasies about beauty there are many things in common across cultures and denying that or deriding it as banal or conventional is just a sign that you are being deliberately elitist.”

Of course he’s being deliberately elitist. Even though he also quite obviously has nothing that could be considered elite about his intellect.

How do I know that? Because only the most bizarrely conformist and yes banal mind could come up with the “They’re just like Nazis.”

I could see just throwing a fit (as he tries to in comments) over the fact “the right” (Bad news bucko, as Francis points out, it’s not just the right) is “pre-modern.” But this never occurred to him, until he realized that the examples weren’t just “just like Hitler.”

No, the fact that he reached for the Nazis means that his mental box is arranged by “things that would make me cry” and being called a Nazi if right at the top of that. And also that somehow everything pre-modern is Nazi.

This is his grand attempt at cowing the masses and making them feel unworthy. Judging by the comments, the masses are mostly pointing and laughing.

I joined in to show willing, because you know me, and as mom says “the beggar might go without alms, but he won’t go without a response.”

I really think that is a problem. At its core, the leftist project has defined beauty as banal and therefore worthless.

They got lulled by their dominance not of the culture but of the cultural press into thinking that they could create taste and culture wholesale out of their nether regions and also that value and art could be found in what they declared to be so.

In a way, in fact, it’s a lot like the propaganda art of Nazis (And Soviets) things proclaimed from above and imposed on the crowd with neither consent nor interest on the crowd’s part.

They were so busy at this little game they didn’t realize, as I pointed out, that the traditions they were trying to eviscerate and the people they were trying to shock were long dead. Guys, I’m 62 (ALMOST 63). Their half-assed nonsense might have shocked my great grandmother. It certainly wouldn’t have shocked my grandmother who was, albeit from a less cosmopolite millieu, the same generation as Robert A. Heinlein, and who read a lot. (Meaning she’d run into ideas that would shock this precious flower, likely.) And I’m not sure they’d have shocked great grandmother. I suspect it’s just I know less about her generation and can imagine her as a very proper Victorian lady. (If I’m to believe Agatha Christie, they had minds like sinks.)

When the entire aim of your otherwise conventional and hidebound “art” is to shock, outrage or at least repulse those you imagine less enlightened, sooner or later you’re going to run into diminishing returns.

When on top of that you think there’s virtue in eschewing beauty what you get is the Obama presidential library which manages to make his (and his wife’s) official portrait look positively interesting, ground breaking (other than for wait? what?) and significant.

And yes, that means you’re going to lose the public at large. Because the public now can find better stuff on their own. Or create it. And yeah, they can actually talk back to these half-baked art “experts.”

Who have nothing. Who are UTTERLY out of ammo. And bewildered their sneers no longer work.

Grid your loins, ladies and Gentlemen. It’s going to be a loooooong and strange ride.

But at least we can do as the groundlings in Shakespeare’s day did: Munch peanuts and pelt the performers with the shells.

Because we, like Shakespeare, understand beauty and truly significant art.

Art and beauty is that which remains, through the centuries, long after all the experts who told you it was cheap entertainment for the masses, have died and are moldering in the grave. Forgotten.

*I don’t know what is so beautiful about Macho Pikachu.

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 NATHAN BRINDLE: Footprints

Humanity has worked its painful way up the technological ladder and is ready to go to the moon. But surprises await our intrepid explorers, who have differing reasons for their presence on the mission. Will the agent of an oppressive government do the will of his masters, or will the revolutionary-in-secret win out and spark a revolution among the people back home? And what does an ancient artifact protected by a mysterious voice have to do with any of this?

Written in 1984 as a prequel to a novel series that never got off the ground, this is the first appearance in any form of this work.

FROM L. DOUGLAS GARRETT AND NICKY ROBINSON: Remember How It Ended (Remember The Trade Book 4)

Remember How It Ended is the second volume in a pair of linked stories. It details the gritty conclusion to the most complex operation The Project had ever attempted, how they did it and the price they paid… in lives.

Someone was out there, pulling strings and providing services to the bad guys of the late Cold War. It had taken two high-stakes espionage missions to find the thread that led to them. But who were they and what was their agenda?

The only way to find out was to risk half of The Project’s entire operational capacity on a third mission in Cyprus. The opposition had bought and paid for near-immunity there. Could Gary Keith and the other “Disposable People” of The Project find a way to burn down their operation?

And could Gary Keith live with himself if it took being David Cox again to do it?

FROM WILLIAM STROOCK: War Night: Stories of the Great Nuclear War of 1975

War Night: Stories of the Great Nuclear War of 1975
Eleven stories of people on the night the Great Nuclear War of 1975 began.
-In a NATO bunker, General Al Haig fights Europe’s first nuclear war.
-Over the Canadian Boreal Forest, Canadian F-101 Voodoo pilots make the ultimate sacrifice.
-In Florida, a single mother must pick up her children, as the bombs are falling.
-An Australian family watches the nuclear war unfold live on television.
And much more…

BY ED LACY, BROUGHT BACK BY JASON FLEMING: Blonde Bait (Annotated): A hard-boiled noir thriller

Mickey Whalen lived on his boat and bummed around the Caribbean all by himself, until he found a woman alone, on a sandbar, with a suitcase full of money. He fell for her, hard, even as he was trying to figure out who, or what, the hell she was running from!

• This iktaPOP Media edition includes an introduction giving historical and genre context to the novel.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Godshead (Modern Gods Book 1)

Food and drink for sale; snark for free…

It’s hard to be a god nobody believes in, sometimes. Especially when one spends their days trying to quietly go about his or her life in a world that barely remembers the myths surrounding the old Greek gods, but where some religions still follow the old Norse gods.

And some of the Norse gods are getting more dangerous: Loki, the trickster, has lost the last of what passed for his sanity, and needs to be helped, or stopped. One of the two. And no one seems to be up to it.

At least, not alone. Working together, they can avoid the worst of Loki’s tricks, and maybe even solve their problems.

A tale told from several points of view.

FROM JOHN BAILEY: The Orb of Tides

The Orb of Tides

In the mist-soaked port of Hand-To-The-Sea, a group of weathered adventurers—Carl the True, Louren Swiftblade, Mira the Younger, Gunnar Stoneman, and Gorrim Stoneheart—reunite for what they believe is a final farewell at the King’s Head tavern. Bound by scars and shared history, their camaraderie is tested when a mysterious stranger, Cassian, offers them a perilous job: retrieve a stolen relic, the Orb of Tides, from a dangerous rival on the uncharted island of Salthollow. What begins as a quest for coin and closure spirals into a journey that challenges the fabric of reality itself.

Aboard the creaking ship Windsinger, the group navigates eerie seas and faces visions, whispers, and a shifting world influenced by the orb’s ancient power. Guided by the enigmatic Elyra, a watcher with her own connection to the relic, they confront Zoryn, a fallen mage whose ambition threatens to unravel existence. The orb, a keystone of cosmic memory, tests their truths, forcing each to face their regrets, fears, and hopes.

As they battle Zoryn and the orb’s temptations, the adventurers choose restraint over power, sealing the relic but awakening something beyond the veil—a presence marked by a red star and mysterious feathers. Returning to a subtly altered Hand-To-The-Sea, they realize their journey has changed not just them but the world. Now stewards of a fragile reality, they prepare to face new threats, guided by Elyra’s fading memories and their unbreakable bond.

The Orb of Tides is a gripping fantasy epic of loyalty, sacrifice, and the weight of choices, where the line between hero and guardian blurs against a backdrop of cosmic mystery. Perfect for fans of introspective, character-driven adventures and tales of worlds on the brink.

FROM KAREN MYERS: The Ways of Winter – A Virginian in Elfland (The Hounds of Annwn Book 2)

Book 2 of The Hounds of Annwn

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

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

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

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

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: She Dreams Day and Night

Nancy White they called her, a good, solid name for a troubled girl. But she knew her father had called her by another name, before he disappeared through the gate into another world of strange stars and stranger moons. No matter how hard the staff of Hildred House try to force her to forget, she remembers. And longs to reopen the gate, to rejoin her father on that alien shore where cloud-waves break.

FROM MARY CATELLI: Over the Sea, To Me

A novelette retelling an old ballad.

A castle of marvels, by the sea — full of goblins and sprites. Many young knights come in search of adventures, and leave in search of something less adventurous.

A knight brave enough to face it could even woo the Lady Isobel there, but when Sir Beichan and she catch the attention of her father, the castle has horrors as well as wonders, enough to hold him prisoner. Winning freedom may only separate them, unless its marvels can be used to unite them, over the sea.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: No Man’s Land

No Man’s Land
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.

THE FOLLOWING COVER IS NOT SAFE FOR WORK. IF YOU’RE AT WORK, BE WARE.

FROM J. MANFRED WEICHSEL: Jungle Scandals (The Scandal Anthology Series Book 2)

Jungle Scandals is an anthology of NSFW jungle adventures featuring twelve really wild stories

ALSO, THERE IS A BASED BOOK SALE ON BOOKS FOR MEN: Based Books For Male Readers Sale. All Titles Free or $0.99; Through Tuesday August 5.

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: Alive

It’s getting increasingly difficult to talk to Europeans. Or read their books. Or–

And if you’re going to say “Why would you?” Well, because I’m related to a lot of them. Or they are dear friends from either so far back in childhood that they’re basically family, or from my misguided youth. I’m not fond of Europe, but I like the people.

Until recently, this was an easy circle to square. I just didn’t talk about politics, or really lean too hard into their preconceptions. And usually when they started on a tirade, say about our high crime rate, and I just sat there and looked, really looked at them, they’d stop and go “Well, at least that’s what I heard.”

As for their fiction and their attempts to give us what can only be called “helpful hints” which usually had nothing to do with who we are and how we live? Mostly I rolled my eyes and skipped, as I do badly written sex scenes.

This… er…. has changed.

Look, i got a hint this was coming during my trip to Europe last year.

It wasn’t just that — prior to the election — these people were doing all but offering to air-lift me out if Trump should win, or that my mother — who speaks not a word of English — was sure she knew Trump was “low IQ” because of “the way he talks” (Yeah, I looked at the translations. We adjust to Trump’s funny speech patterns, but they don’t need to be translated to toddler level.) I mean, she was shocked when I pointed out she doesn’t speak English and can’t tell, really. But then she was “sure.”

She was sure because everyone around her is sure of the same. And apparently she doesn’t remember that everyone around her also thinks socialism is the way of the future. Eh. But–

But. The media there is doing one hell of a job to portray everything Trump does as “just like Hitler.”

Part of this is easy. No, really. Listen to me.

It’s on the level of “Hitler also drank water” okay? It’s just that there’s a set of behaviors/beliefs that Europeans are taught from the cradle on are very bad and basically fascism. That they have nothing to do with fascism, and no, didn’t bring about the long war of the 20th century never occurs to them. Because all of them were told/taught this. ALL OF THEM BELIEVE IT. (I believed it till well into my thirties. I just have a way to want to figure out if things are true and go poking. And we have a ton more sources of information than they do. And did, even in the nineties.)

One of them is nationalism. They’re absolutely convinced that nationalism brought about WWI and WWII. HOW they can believe that when WWI was caused by the European attempt at growing various empires and their bizarre set of internationalist alliances, I don’t know. It goes something like “People fought for their countries, therefore evil bad and war.” Even though they themselves admit it was sold as “the war to end all wars”: the most internationalist goal of all.

As for World War II, well, Hitler talked a lot about loving Germany (while strip mining it, but never mind) so nationalism causes fascism. ELEVENTY!

The fact that the British too fought for dear old England apparently doesn’t mean they were fascist though. BUT if they loved their country now? Total evil bad fascism. Because, reasons.

Another is militarism/military preparedness. Trump actually is far less war-like than any of his predecessors. Something I approve of, provided he doesn’t destroy the military. Because he is a business man, his approach to keeping other countries in line is to hit them in the face with a bag full of money.

HOWEVER he’s not running around saying “military bad.”

The USSR sold Europe on the idea that America was Imperialist, because we had a military. And our military could beat theirs every day of the week and twice on Sunday. And they knew it. It never seems to have occurred to the European hit-on-the-head bunnies that our military was their military. In the sense we protected them. No, no. We were militarist and therefore fascist.

Then there is the whole immigrant issue. I can’t blame their press too hard, I guess, because it starts in our press. These arrant idiots don’t seem able to distinguish between legal immigrants and illegal immigrants. Or, for that matter realize that illegal immigrant isn’t a RACE.

This shouldn’t surprise me, since in the last quarter of a century I found out all sorts of things were race: religion for instance. If you said anything bad about Islam, or for that matter voodoo or tree worship, you were told you were “racist.” Language was also racist. If I objected to the school trying to force my kids to attend classes in a language no one in our family speaks or has spoken for generations (Spanish) I was suddenly “racist.” If I made sounds of gagging when I got an advertisement in Spanish I was racist. (No, no I’m not. I’m Hispano-lango-phobic. It’s an awful language in most accents. I’m fine with the people. I just hate the sounds. There are other language sounds I hate. Press one for a list that will keep you rive– Are you stupid? Stop pressing.) DISAPPROVING OF VAGRANTS was also racist. I once wrote a post here about how the homeless were turning the library in downtown Colorado Springs unusable and the usual babble brooks of the left called me racist. I was so surprised I actual sat the family down and asked them what color of homeless they’d ever seen, and then SPECIFICALLY when they’d seen a non-white homeless in town. (We all thought there might have been one or two some years ago, but we couldn’t remember. Yes, that’s changed now. The whole town has changed out of recognition in the last four years.)

And because they’re not here, not shopping where we shop, not attending cons here, not … living here, it’s easy to believe that Trump is rounding up everyone who tans — citizen or not, thank you to our media for all the cases of publishing false stories of citizens deported! — and deporting them.

Then there is the fact Trump is fighting race preferences. (As he should, because hiring or promoting people based on ANYTHING but competence degrades competence, and we’ve done enough of that, thank you. Also race preferences is basically titles of nobility. We’re preferring you because you were born to these parents. This is specifically against our founding.) But of course, the idiots over there think what this means is that we’re going to discriminate against anyone who isn’t blue eyed and blond. The whole jeans advert thing is probably playing right into that, despite the fact almost all our top models are some flavor of tan.

No, the Europeans who frankly never saw any reason not to discriminate for conditions of birth are going to interpret this as a preference for Aryan characteristics. (True, there are a LOT of Indian H1B Visas. But we’re not all Vivek R. and we don’t think they’re superior.)

Of course, without question, and despite the fact that your average man-on-the-street European is way more racist than any American except perhaps the three non-FBI members of the KKK remaining, racist equals Nazi.

And from those three points they hop skip and jump. They whisper about the long night of fascism falling on us. They cry about they know how people felt looking at Germany in the thirties. They try to give us “warnings” about “tyrants” who “stop our ability to speak” and they talk about … defending our borders and sending back interlopers (most of whom are being supported by the welfare state to some extent, btw) as though we were building camps and were about to start gassing people in batch lots.

If you try to point out they’re completely off their tiny little unstable rockers, they pat you on the shoulder OR back away from you in horror and say something like “I didn’t realize you were a good German.”

PEOPLE.

Yes, I do check. I check all the time. If we were about to go Nazi I’d want to know. I’m in my sixties now, and running around the mountains totting an AK-47 doesn’t look appealing anymore, but frankly there are other ways to fight tyranny.

If the current administration is trying to suppress speech, they’re going about it all wrong. Unlike Biden, they have yet to even attempt to install a “disinformation tzar” (How come the left is obsessed with tzars? You are what you murdered? Is that it?) The attempts at debanking people stopped cold (Though strype needs to clean house. Part of the reason I haven’t arranged to monetize this blog yet. WordPress, also, goes through strype.) Throws hands up in the air. It’s like they’re not even trying.

Then there’s the racism thing. The left and PARTICULARLY Europeans keep telling me Trump is racist, sexist, homophobic. AND definitely anti-Semitic. I’m looking at his administration and having serious trouble buying this line. I mean, look at these people. Worst Nazis ever. True, true, his VP married a true Aryan. But all the same.

As for anti-Semitic, this administration aren’t the people pushing to recognize the rule of Hamass as a state. Yes, yes, I GET it that these days support for Israel is the true antisemitism or something, but surely you don’t expect me to turn my brains into that kind of pretzel. That just doesn’t work. Antisemitism is antisemitism. I.e. it is discriminating against Jews. You should see the expressions I get when I inform Europeans that Trump in fact has a daughter who converted to Judaism and he has grandchildren being raised Jewish. This just breaks their brains. So they deny it and go back to screaming. Or mutter darkly about Hitler being Jewish. (Maybe? or maybe it was a rumor. But at any rate not “was Jewish” but “might have had some Jewish ancestry” which, dear Bob EVERYONE does. Because yeah, mobile minority gets around. Deal.)

Look, we have joked about annexing Canada and Mexico, yes. (I wonder how much of this is done to drive Europeans bonkers, actually.) And no, of course, we’d not do it. Mostly because it would be like cleaning out slum housing.

But until we actually put boots on the ground and head to Toronto, I’m not going to be all jumpy about our invading Poland, EITHER.

On the serious side, I keep tilting my head, but I just can’t see what they see.

Is Trump more authoritarian than I’d like? Well, yes. But then traffic cops are more authoritarian than I’d like. I have a baked in, intractable “leave me the heck alone” streak. I’m willing to accept minimal government but alas our crazy mess of a government isn’t minimal. (I want a government small enough to fit in the Constitution.)

Is Trump Hitler? Well, they both are/were air breathing mammals who drink water. So, yeah, I can totally see a resemblance.

Seriously. This would be rich and all the hints about the oncoming Nazification of America very stupid (because we heard it about George W. Bush, for crying out loud) if Europe were SIMPLY its normal elitist, regulated, stultifying mess.

But no. They’re pointing at us and screaming fascist as they codify things you can’t say on the internet, not even as a joke; as they ensure parents have fewer and fewer rights over their children; as they codify precisely which incoming cultures and skin colors have more rights than the others. They’re pointing at us and screaming, even as they’re all upset we didn’t frog-jump and put boots on the ground to fight Russia. They’re pointing at us and screaming even as we can no longer be sure if we visit we won’t go to jail by telling them to put one of their pronouncements up their arses on twitter.

It’s like being in a fun house mirror.

Even as used as I am to the IMAX like qualities of the American left, seeing this amplified all over Europe (and Canada, and probably Mexico) is … horrifying.

Sure, when the rest of the world disagrees with you, sometimes they’re right. In this case, though, they’re mainlining mescaline and tripping balls.

And we really can’t do anything about the blue air-breathing squid they’re trying to fight. For one, they’re not real. For another we are tired of hearing them scream about the blue squid engulfing us, while they’re the ones getting tangled in tentacles.

It’s sad. And it makes it likely I won’t see my dad in this world again, which makes me very angry.

But at this point, and until such a time when they choose to snap out of it, I don’t know what else to do.