Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

I must be getting better–

For those who don’t follow my life assiduously — and why not, I ask — we’ve been falling from disaster into contretemps since August last year, when we got the sewage backflow.

Most of it hasn’t been health, but things that end up encouraging me to overwork, and then I manage to get sick.

However this last cold — didn’t seem to be flu, certainly wasn’t covid — was horrible because it dragged on for two weeks, just sick enough I couldn’t work. Also gave me apocalyptic dreams. And it seems to have spun my thyroid out of kilter again. Which was made worse by my having to postpone my appointment with the endocrinologist because I was coughing my lungs off, and frankly didn’t want to share it with anyone, much less a whole waiting room.

Anyway, pardon me for whining. This is part of my decision to start living more healthily, because I hate wasting time. BUT some of it isn’t fixable by clean living. (Like the low thyroid.)

The purpose of this is not to whine — that was just a side benefit! — but to explain how we got to April and how frustrated I am that the book I finished in October — OCTOBER — of last year is still not in ready to be released, not even in e-arc.

And to tell myself and you guys that “Doing the work takes time.”

When things have gone severely wrong, fixing things takes long.

This applies to the world and particularly to our country right now.

Having found out how much destruction and attacks on our country we were paying for via the various skims and cheats off our own government and our own tax money, I’m probably not the only one chomping at the bit and wanting it all fixed YESTERDAY.

But it’s going to take time.

It’s going to take time because fraud and waste and scamming schemes are woven all through our government. It’s going to take time to unwind it without destroying things that we can’t destroy, either because they are legitimate functions of the government or because though illegitimate there are people depending on them who, through no fault of their own have got herded into needing it. Like… yes, social security. You can’t give a seventy year old back the money and opportunities wasted by paying into social security his whole working life. At this point although not getting back the money he/she paid, this person is dependent on social security to survive. And the same with a lot of other help. The government made it impossible for private individuals to help the needy and shut down a lot of private charity as it used to work. So now people are dependent on the government.

And so it goes. Can the government be brought back within constitutional bounds? I certainly think so.

But it’s going to take time. We’d best hope we have another two terms, because we’re going to need them.

If it all goes well, maybe by the end of my life we’ll be something more closely resembling a republic that fits within the bounds of the Constitution.

This will also give us time to change the culture, so that we don’t run up against people whose idea of conservatism or a golden age is FDR’s autocratic rule in the 40s.

In the meantime, I can do what I can to make myself slightly healthier, so I can produce content more regularly. (Particularly the books, impatiently waiting to be written. Hey, given that Dragon doesn’t work for me, and neither does any of the other programs I’ve ever heard of, is there anything new and AI assisted that I can use to dictate? Because that might help.)

At least these last two days, when I’ve been SLIGHTLY better, I’ve got the Musketeer Mysteries and the Dyce Dare ones re-covered and out in print. (Which most of them weren’t.) So that’s something done.

Tomorrow I should be okay to edit, and maybe even — as my editor suggests — make some progress on Rhodes.

And I NEED to update my substack.

But …. it’s going to take time. Doing the work takes time.

Until I figure out magic, that will have to do for me.

And for the country.

No matter how impatient we get.

Okay, enough is enough.

I can’t actually do anything about emergencies that cause me to have to make a serious effort while under the weather.

I can theoretically do something about stuff like fallen tree branches, malfunctioning kitchen appliances, basement floods or other household disasters. But dynamiting the house and building another from scratch is likely to be too expensive and the neighbors would likely object, too. Not to mention the coding board, etc.

Well, I can have the house blessed, I suppose, and we’re working on that.

But it seems like the getting stupidly ill every other month should still be the easiest thing to tackle.

“Easiest” meaning in this case not impossible.

It’s going to take a bit of work. Like, now that I’m so very slightly perking up from whatever this latest schrechlichkeit is I’m not going to try to go full tilt on the writing and the unpacking the living room.

Also, I really need to start walking. Yes, outside, as unpleasant as that is. Probably not a lot. Maybe only a mile or so in the early morning “walking to work.”

No, I don’t particularly like this neighborhood for walking in, but I like being sick even less, and it’s become somewhat obvious that I need to have regular exercise in the (eek!) fresh air.

Also I can do something about not eating randomly because I forgot to eat until I was starving, and then I just grab whatever is sitting around, which is usually crackers or milk or something. (I am not a calf. I can’t live on milk. Yes, it could be worse. Sometimes it is. I also can’t live on bananas.)

Look, all of this sounds pretty unpalatable, and honestly, I don’t want to do any of it.

I want to keep living like a teenager, or an obsessed writer. I mean, I no longer have kids in the house, so I don’t need to have regular meals, and I don’t need to go to bed on time and I don’t–

But a wise man — okay, older son — has informed me that how I live affects my health. Or in my case my lack of health more often than not. And that while changing everything all at once is impossible, I should pick an habit and stick to it for two weeks and then pick another habit.

… And I’m over sixty, and apparently my body hates me.

So this week I’m going to start the walking thing. I might only walk like half a mile, because I’m still trying to cough up a lung, but I’m going to attempt the outside, fresh air type of thing.

Who’s with me so I don’t feel so alone?

Okay. Good. Now, let’s give this health thing a try.

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 MEL DUNAY: Waking The Dreamlost (The Jaiya Series Book 2)

New, professionally edited edition! Journey to the country of Jaiya, in a world not quite like ours. Here, humans ride trains, drive cars, and use cell phones, but they share their world with insect people and trollfolk, and stranger things lurk in the shadows… In a place like Jaiya, a woman can’t just back out of an arranged marriage to a bigshot, even if her amnesia keeps her from remembering when and how she agreed to it. Her engagement to a politician makes Itana a target for terrorist attacks, but a former soldier named Marish comes to her rescue. She doesn’t remember hiring Marish to find out who is stealing her memories, but he is determined to finish the job…or die trying! Note: Itana and Marish are friends with or related to a few characters from Marrying a Monster, the first book in the Jaiya series, but Dreamlost is meant as a standalone.

FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN: Gulls, Ghosts, and Skeps: Familiar Generations Book Eight

A beekeeper with a secret discovers a hidden orchard, and a little more.
Out-of-tune pianos are the least of a craftsman’s problems when magic combines with frustration.
Ghosts haunt Tallin’s citadel. Or do they?

From quiet stories to wild adventures, these stories expand a Familiar world. Meet new characters and check in with old favorites in this short story collection.

EDITED BY CAROL HIGHTSHOE: Midnight Menagerie. Stories from the edge of reality.

Step right up, dear traveler—your ticket to the extraordinary awaits.

Beneath the striped canopies of the Midnight Menagerie, wonders stir and nightmares awaken. Strongmen flex their might, fortune tellers spin futures, and acrobats defy the stars. But if it is shadows you seek—if you are drawn to the hush of velvet-draped corners where the line between spectacle and sorcery blurs—then step closer.

Here, within these pages, beasts from beyond the veil prowl in cages not quite strong enough. Carnival performers barter in secrets instead of silver. Mystics weave illusions that refuse to fade, and every whispered promise carries a cost. From the neon glow of alien menageries to the flickering lantern light of haunted carnivals, Midnight Menagerie is a collection of the eerie, the wondrous, and the strange.

So take your seat, dear reader. The lights are dimming, the curtains are rising… and the show is about to begin.

Featuring stories by: Fin Patiliu, Annie Percik, Harriet Pheonix, Robert Miller, Chris Clemens, Caitlin Barbera, Petina Strohmer,

FROM DECLAN FINN: Blood Country (Honeymoon from Hell Book 2)

THE HONEYMOON FROM HELL CONTINUES!

Until death do they part.

After surviving their first stop, Marco and Amanda have arrived in wine country.

Everything should go well.

Assuming the dragon constructs made from fire don’t derail their train. Or the local triads don’t hunt them down. Or if the local politician doesn’t turn into some sort of supernatural hell beast.

All in all, it should be a quiet trip.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT (WITH NEW PAPER EDITION*): Sword And Blood
*Yes, I promise I’ll finish the trilogy this year or next, if I can stop getting stupidly sick.

In a shadow-draped France, an ancient horror freed from its tomb has transformed the kingdom into a vampire’s playground.
Paris trembles under the Cardinal’s undead rule, the countryside lies abandoned, and the king offers no resistance.
Until now, three legendary Musketeers have held back the darkness with blessed silver and unwavering courage. But Athos has fallen, turned during a blood mass, while a fiery young man from Gascony arrives seeking vengeance—D’Artagnan, orphaned by the vampires that claimed his family.
With one Musketeer transformed and a vampire-hunter determined to join their ranks, an impossible alliance forms in France’s darkest hour. Some bonds transcend even blood —but will it be enough when the line between hero and monster blurs with each nightfall?
One for all and all for one— in a battle for the soul of France itself.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Schrödinger Paradox

To save the future, sometimes you have to reach to the past to change it. And in the face of extinction, you do what you must, regardless of who stands in the way.
Cataclysm
Unlucky jerk Tom Beadle was on watch at NASA when the collision alert sounded: a new asteroid, bigger than the dino-killer, headed for Earth. Big problem, but that’s why we have NASA, right? Except, after decades of budget cuts, NASA has no way to shove it off course. That job has to be contracted out. Will the private sector company his best friend from college works at succeed where the government option failed? Might be best to have a backup plan, just in case…
Heisenberg’s Point of Observation
Thomas Sutton was not your average fourteen year old, not even in an Ark City. Born in one of the three refuges of the last remnants of life on earth, deep underground, he knows his history. A century after an asteroid shattered and struck the earth, they have been trapped below by volcanic eruptions, toxic gasses, and radioactive dust. But what if he could…change things? What if he could reach the past, to prevent the asteroid’s impact?
Entanglement
Tom Beadle only volunteered for NASA’s neighborhood watch program when his department said it would maybe help him get tenure.None of them counted on the Neighborhood Watch becoming a mortifying political liability when a malfunctioning probe accidently reveals an asteroid hiding behind the larger outer planets, setting off impact alarms– and politicians looking for blame. When their answer is to defund the Watch program and fire all involved, Tom’s only chance to save the earth is to lie through his teeth and try to deflect the asteroid under cover of harvesting rare not-of-this-earth elements. And even that may not work.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Margins of Mundania

A tween boy’s Christmas gift opens a world of wonder and brings joy to a whole town fallen on hard times. A young New Englander in the early Twentieth Century discovers that some parts of human history don’t bear too close examination. A literary critic in the old Soviet Union must confront his own moral cowardice.

These stories, along with a multitude of bite-sized works of flash fiction, carry you from the most prosaic of events to the moments of awe that offer glimpses of matters larger than ourselves.

FROM KAREN MYERS: The Visitor, And More: A Science Fiction Short Story Bundle from There’s a Sword for That

A Science Fiction Story Bundle from the collection There’s a Sword for That

THE VISITOR – Felockati is anchored to his permanent location underwater and misses the days of roaming his ocean world freely.

But something new drops out of the sky and widens his horizons — all the way to the stars.

YOUR EVERY WISH – Stealing the alien ambassador’s dagger is a sure thing for Pete — just what he needs to pay off his debts.

Until he starts talking to it. There has to be a way to get something for himself out of the deal. Has to be.

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: DEFECTIVE

The Masquerade is Over by Charlie Martin

 

I’ve wanted to revive the term “yellow journalism” for a while. It originally came from the “newspaper wars” between Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal, and was named for the comic strip The Yellow Kid, which eventually ran in both papers. Both papers were known for outrageous and inflammatory headlines and a certain respect for facts, although the story of Hearst’s promise to Frederic Remington — “You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war” — is itself apparently a myth and a bit of yellow journalism.

But the distinction between “respectable journalism” and “yellow journalism” has always been less than its reputation would suggest — going back to Walter Duranty’s Pulitzer Prize for his heavily propagandized coverage of the Soviet Union and the Holodomor famine that killed 10 million Ukrainians. The Pulitzer, considered the non plus ultra of journalistic honors, is actually named for one of the originators of yellow journalism.

Still, legacy media like the New York Times and the “respectable” major news networks tried to maintain the the fiction that they strove for fair and objective reporting, and that anyone who claimed otherwise was trying to “work the refs” and revealing their own bias.

Then along came Fox News. Fox did two unheard of things: first, it drew a careful distinction between its daytime news coverage, and its nighttime opinion; second, taking a markedly more politically conservative tack in that opinion coverage.

Arguably, there was a third distinction, because by trying to actually cover the news fairly in the daytime hours, they looked politically conservative compared to the news coverage on the other networks.

And then along came Trump.

Trump was a massive shock to the system. he had billions of dollars of his own. There had been other unconventional candidates, like John Anderson, and more notably H. Ross Perot. Perot also had plenty of his own money, but he tried running as a third party candidate. Trump correctly recognized that the US election system was heavily oriented to the two major parties, and had been since before the Civil War. Rather than swim upstream like Perot, he decided to run for a major party’s nomination.

Besides the third-party handicap, Perot had a gratingly whiny nasal voice and the stage presence of a tobacco auctioneer or carnival huckster.

Trump, by contrast, had more than a decade as a reality-show fixture in The Apprentice, and numerous cameos in film and making fun of himself in appearances in places like Saturday Night Live. He was engagingly willing to be the butt of their jokes and even make fun of himself. Unlike Perot, his presence in the media was not immediately painful.

Then he ran for president, and what’s worse, ran for the Republican nomination, even though his policies were more like a Truman Democrat or an early FDR.

At first, the legacy media saw him as a bit of a buffoon, a sideshow but interesting. And besides, what chance did he have against the Obama machine and against Hillary Clinton, when it was clearly her turn?

So Trump got an immense amount of “earned media” — publicity gained through something other than paid advertising. It’s publicity you don’t have to pay for.

Then.

He won.

The nomination.

… and the legacy media turned on a dime. He wasn’t an amusing buffoon any longer, he was a dangerous demagogue. At the same time (we now know) the full power of the Obama Administration and much of the Intelligence Community turned to undermining his campaign and preventing his election.

And the son of a bitch won anyway.

This was simply and obviously unacceptable. Something must be done.

At this point, the traditional categories started to break down. No matter their political inclinations, the embedded bureaucracy and a good part of the political commentariat turned out to be utterly conservative in the old-fashioned sense of a desire to preserve and maintain the status quo ante — change as change was bad, and particularly change from outside the hallowed Ivy League idea of acceptable thought. And never mind that Trump, as a graduate of Penn, was an Ivy Leaguer himself — Penn was only a sort of junior varsity of the Ivy League. Besides, Trump was brash, had a Queens accent, and while okay, he was rich, he had made that money by building things, instead of something respectable like financing corporate takeovers or international currency manipulation.

He was a threat to the world view of the embedded and conservative — in the old sense — power structure. He was, simply, “not our kind.”

At that point, the masks must come off, and they did. The New York Times was calling for resistance in the first weeks of Trump’s first term. In the meantime, we now know, highly-placed FBI agents were reassuring one another that they would stop Trump somehow, while the Obama Administration and the Clinton Campaign were doing everything, legally or otherwise, to attack Trump.

Some examples — Jorge Ramos said in 2015 that “neutrality is not an option.” Christian Amanpour argued that journalists couldn’t remain objective in November 2016, just days after the election. The Washington Post changed their slogan to “Democracy Dies In Darkness” in February of 2017, and columnists like Charles Blow in the New York Times was urging a fight, not just reporting.

To those of us of a conservative bent — although I maintain I’m not a conservative, just an 18th century liberal — this wasn’t a surprise, going back to the coverage of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. The difference was that Trump, with his combination of in-your-face advocacy and refusal to follow the Acela Corridor line, finally forced the legacy media to remove its masks. It is, and has always been, advocacy media and not objective at all.

You guys really must tell me if my trips back into the memory lane of science fiction bore you to death. I’ll continue making them, and probably keep notes — because I’m old and have hit my head a bunch of times — but not inflict them on you.

For those who are not aware of what I’m doing, this is the initial post.

The short version is that I was introduced to science fiction via a friend of my much older brother’s. His friend had a real library and all the books of the only dedicated Portuguese science fiction imprint, the storied Argonauta. This imprint was so formative for me that when I established my own press I looked to see if I could name it Argonaut. Unfortunately at least at the time there was a gun/war oriented imprint by that name in Colorado, and I couldn’t use the name.

However I didn’t read the books in order, and might never have read all of them (again, having been hit on the head once too many times my memory is no longer eidetic so I don’t actually remember.) In Portugal the print runs were always too small and there were no reprints. This meant that finding the books after the initial distro depended on luck: someone else’s library, used bookstores or the spinner rack in some tiny tobacconist in a forgotten village. (Where I found a treasure trove of Heinlein’s in the 70s.)

Having found the listing online back in 2016, I decided I would read it from the beginning and blog it, and then…. Well, by the time I got around to it it was 2018, we were in severe financial distress, our older kid was getting married, I got ill and and and–

Now here we are. And now I don’t have any more kids to marry off, so the time has come to do this, unless you guys say I’m putting you to sleep, in which case I’ll still do it but not inflict it on you.

Today’s victim is Edmond Hamilton’s The City At World’s End. Next Week’s is Murray Leinster’s The Last Spaceship. (If you buy through these links I get a tiny commission. Just so you know.)

So, the City At The World’s End: first, what a lovely evocative name, isn’t it? It just gives you shivers, like science fiction was supposed to.

Second, I loved the writing style in this book. That probably sounds strange. But I absolutely loved it. It’s spare and tight and stark and beautiful. Reminded me a lot of Clifford Simak when he was on his game. In fact it reminded me so much that when I looked up Edmond Hamilton I was shocked that he was not a journalist. But no, he seems to be one of those rare science fiction writers — then or now — who was just a writer and didn’t have an arm’s long resume of weirdness to lean back on.

The book itself is weird. I enjoyed it a lot, but it could be argued and other reviewers have argued that it’s fractured, and seems not to cohalesce front to end.

I kind of understand them, because it’s a deeply philosophical book (also reminding me of Simak) but the question it explores is not the same it begins with. And yet… And yet, the book is almost a collection of the fears, the mind set of the mid-twentieth-century. It might at that have resonated more with me because I’m a cold war baby. Born too late for anyone to believe in duck and cover, I was told someday the hammer would fall out of a clear blue sky and then our choices were die or die. (Rest assured privately I’d decided I was not going to die, just to spite them. Which is, basically, the story of my life.) Honestly, it’s a wonder any of us, the kids from that time, grew up to be sane. Those of us who did, it’s like we blocked out the doom and gloom and just decided we’d do well and that was that.

Anyway, the book opens with our nightmare back then. John Kenniston, (Ken) works in a laboratory in a small town on the prairie (Middletown) where he does war-related research of some sort. The locals think it’s just an industrial laboratory. These locals include his girlfriend/fiance, Carol.

On a fine morning, Ken is on his way to work when a Super-Atomic-Bomb blows up above the town. This is told in an absolutely passionless way.

In the aftermath, people are shocked to find that they are alive, there is no radiation. But their entire town has been moved millions of years into the future to a time when the sun has become a red dwarf and the Earth is barren and frozen.

They find a domed city on the plains, an abandoned city of their future which allows them to survive. But they’re obsessed with the idea they’re the last of the humans of Earth. So, they blast out a call “Middletown calling”.

Eventually they are answered from the stars, where humans have gone and found other sentients too.

From that point on we are exposed to the overweening might of a Star Federation which decrees the stranded humans must leave the Earth, since it’s dying. They have autocratically moved other populations before. It is not well received by the people of Middletown, who’d rather die on their own terms than be ordered around by distant, faceless authority.

Enter a genius, who has some process–

I will be honest, I’d much prefer if this were a process someone from Middletown — preferably our hero — comes up with. Yes, it would be more implausible, but also would make for tighter and more satisfying plot. But this might be just me making a critique as another word slinger. It’s probably not valid, really, because “I would do it this way” doesn’t mean it’s how it should be done.

But there’s a trip to Vega, there’s a blond from the stars, Varn Allan, there’s weasely bureaucratic scheming, and the romance isn’t even forced, really, even if it’s truly embryonic as it ends, and the “Because you were warmongers” isn’t overloaded and no one really acts like we humans of the 20th (well, I was made then) are inferior. Not really.

I really liked the way the Americans of the plains of the US tell the Star Federation and their incontrovertible laws and commands to put it in their pipes and smoke it. I liked that the rebellion isn’t looked down on.

Because to me, ultimately, this was a collection of the knotty problems of the 20th century. I think the novel escaped the author, as his subconscious decided to work through some stuff. This is so much how my own best work happens, that I’m not going to throw stones.

The fear of the bomb collides with the then popular idea of world-government, only this time on a larger scale, with the peacenick idea that war is primitive, with a lot of ideas that festered then and that we now are fairly sure were always bokum.

Oh, yeah, and in the end, improbably, the individualists of the small town USA win which is just perfect.

I will add this was probably more bittersweet to me, because I have been in love with small town USA in the mid twentieth century long before I came to the US, having fallen hard for it through the stories of Clifford Simak.

And though the cities we lived in were larger than that, Colorado Springs when we moved in still retained the small town feel and the small town occasions.

This was particularly bittersweet as for most of my time in the US these cities have been dying. Now? I don’t know. It’s entirely possible the seismic (“world revolutionary”) changes of the last few years and the next few will change that.

I hope so. There is a dignity, a strength, a community that doesn’t crush the individualism characteristic of America, in these small towns. I’d love to see them flourish.

Anyway — Despite its possible flaws, or maybe because of them, I greatly enjoyed The City At World’s end, and will be looking for more for Edmond Hamilton. I’m sure I read him before, but weirdly, I didn’t remember his name at all.

Next week, onward to The Last Spaceship.

Yes, I’m still doing the reading myself back through old science fiction, but post probably tomorrow. I’m JUST starting to function so things will be a little off schedule.

And speaking of old science fiction, I keep remembering an old-science fiction where the unit the dollar was based on was the “man-hour”, ie. how much work a man could do in an hour.

This tied in in my brain — forgive me, I’ve been feverish for the last few days — with the fact that every year I seem to get busier. And I have a never ending list of things that I MUST do this year.

I’m not alone, either. Most people are… hustling. They have the thing that do that brings them their main money, the secondary thing they do for money, the third thing they’re trying to learn to upgrade thing one and thing two.

I’m not talking about having multiple jobs because one job doesn’t pay enough. That is a problem caused by illegal labor and forbidding teens from working and a bunch of other things, including stupid MBA tricks.

No, what I’m talking about is the people in my circles — who are, almost to the last person, smart, self-actuated, hard working — and who get busier and busier every year, even those of us reaching retirement age.

It finally clicked. It’s not a bad thing. It’s that our man-hours are increasing in value.

Let me explain, take me … 20 years ago. There was one thing I could do. I could write books and submit them. The books would then sell or not sell. I could optimize my value per hour by writing to the house. I.e. since I was in Baen, there was a certain type of book they’d accept. Same for the mystery publisher, for that matter.

I’m not even talking about matter or content, though there was some of that. There is a touch-feel to the books that will sell and where. But more importantly, if I had an idea that could be sufficiently told in 20k words, I couldn’t sell that. Heck, I couldn’t sell 40k words or 60k words. It had to be 80k words or nothing. And the same thing for the current monster which will weigh in at 250k words. I can already imagine the “no. It’s too long.”

So– So I wrote what I could, and put up with it.

Nowadays not only can I write and market whatever crosses my mind, but there’s a million things I can do to make them sell better. From learning publicity, to improving covers, to better typesetting.

You’ll say I outsourced that to others and you’d be right, but that also reduced how much I was worth to me. I now can make things sell better, goose them with a little extra time/effort.

The same with other side things. I’d like to start a podcast (eventually he’ll remove the boxes from my audio booth. After taxes, likely. Right now I don’t have a voice anyway) that is a reading, a talk, sometimes interviews with my friends, etc. I’d like to do short animated movies (I have been playing with animation programs) which I think can exponentially work to promote the books. Or at least some of the books.

And needless to say I want to write. I want to write all the things that I couldn’t write for trad pub.

The point is that every hour can be filled with activities that will certainly pay at least some, and probably/possibly a lot. The potential man-hour is near endless. And not just for me. I’m using my own situation, because it’s easier, but I think each of you could give the examples.

Two conclusions from this:

The first is What a time to be alive!

If they’re right and you live longer when you’re involved and interested? I’m gonna live forever. (Now, can we work on that forever not being taken up with hacking a lung?)

The second is… If you’re one of mine, one of the people who feel pathologically obligated to maximize your value and effort in the world (born owing money) you have to learn to take breaks. You have to learn to pace yourself. And you have to carve out time when you’re not “on”.

I say this as someone who sucks at this. I am aware the fact I forget to take time off leads to my getting sick, which leads to my falling behind, which leads to my forgetting to take time off as I’m catching up, which leads….

I told Dan the other day my happiest time in recent years was a mini vacation we took in September. We spent two hours walking around a car museum, and in my head this keeps shining like a golden moment. Oh, what fun we had!

This is stupid. I mean the fact we don’t have more of these times. Hence the serious talk on how we need to do a weekend every two months or so, so that we decompress.

Because yes, our man-hours are more valuable in potentia than ever, but the body is still mortal and made of flesh, and the d*mn thing just gives out unexpectedly. Particularly if you’re over sixty.

So, rejoice in your potential, but make time when you say “yes taking time off costs me money, but I’m worth it” and take a break now and then.

I will tell you this is not how I thought it would be in my sixth decade.

And I’m very glad it is.

STORM-DRAGON by Dave Freer

Writers… do shape future, as well as reflect the present. Often those reflecting the present will tell you they’re affecting the future. That’s usually because they LIKE the present or certain trends in it. It’s why the Left were so determined to capture the institutions and publishing and the media. They saw them not education or entertainment, but as tools, first to start things down their course, and then to keep it going that way.

I’m afraid, certainly as far as publishing goes, and reading and the effect thereof goes, we’re heading toward an Eloi/Morlock path. Remember, not the endpoint H. G. Wells referred to – but the part where the ‘beautiful ones’ lived lives of happy indolence, sex and ‘art’ while the Morlocks worked underground to feed them. Remember too, the Eloi got idle and stupider and stupider – as the selection pressure to be intelligent and hardworking was stripped away.

The US Left seem to see themselves as the beautiful ones, and the rest as Morlocks, to be kept underground (or at least out of their sight. Ignorant, separate, lesser…) It doesn’t make a lot of sense mathematically or any other way, as Eloi are effectively unskilled, defenceless, and, as heterosexual men – particularly of their own culture or even genetic heritage, are definitely Morlocks, the Eloi are doomed long before the Morlocks eat them.  It’s a kind of short nasty future, unless you have the weird assumption that the Morlocks will defend you, feed you, and maybe breed you parthenogenically.

My problem is that I have no interest in being a Morlock. Or having my kids, grandies, family, friends be Morlocks to provide for and defend the wanna-be Eloi.  They are welcome to be Eloi in their own minds and on their own dime.  This is not the future I am prepared to surrender to them. Humans may be a PITA, but I’m not having my descendant – or those of my friends, descend into being a servant class to a bunch of ‘beautiful ones’ – not even if the beautiful ones end up as roast dinners. The only thing I’d like less is having my people forced to become ‘beautiful ones’ (beauty is, we note, a matter of opinion. Some people find nose rings attractive.).

But… if they control the levers of culture, education, and publishing, and are pushing the world by it toward a suicidal and nasty end for Western Civilization if not humanity (because it will be. Messy and totally unlike their dream) what’s to do?  Well you can either say ‘they control nearly everything’ and just give up. Or you can fight back.  I guess I don’t have the genes to be a ‘hensopper’, so  -as the song says  ‘when they poured across the border, we were cautioned to surrender. This I could not do. I took my gun and vanished.’ (Leonard Cohen. The Partisan).  Gradually, despite the left’s determined efforts to make it feel like we were fighting alone (and I know a few good writers who just gave up, in the face of character assassination, silencing, exclusion and de-platforming) we have come back from the shadows – at least in publishing. For years it was just Baen. But now there is Indy, and a number of small publishers. The ‘beautiful ones’ still seem to be stuck on supporting the Trad houses they infiltrated and took over.

Late last year, I got a message from a friend who does some production work for one of these small, fighting-their-way-up new publishers – Raconteur Press. They had mostly done anthologies, but they were putting out an open call for books for boys. Books down the line of the Heinlein Juvies – to fill up a niche the beautiful people of publishing had declared dead, now geared to generate the Morlocks to serve them. Boys could read either nothing at all or books that would teach them their place in ‘beautiful ones’ future utopia. 

Only, there are a lot of parents who don’t accept that for their sons. They don’t want it for their daughters, the ones that don’t want to be Eloi or marry someone destined to either not read (and be unable to venture into the infinite worlds of the unknown) or be part of the underclass.  Still, the wanna-be Eloi ensure that reach into libraries, schools, bookshops and certainly any mass media mention is a no-no.

To even try is crazy.

So: of course, I did it.

STORM-DRAGON is sf. I set out to write Heinlein Juvie. The kind of book, that despite having a younger lead protagonist would be fun for anyone. I was inspired by two stories – one in the US and one in Australia – where bureaucrats wanted to kill ‘rescue’ wild animals – common baby wild animals that would have died had a human not stepped in. Having grown up, and had my kids grow up with a succession rescued of small animals – some of which died, some of which went back to nature, some of which lived a good life among humans, antelope, various rodents, snakes, and birds and a bat… my sympathies were NOT with the bureaucrats. There is a surprise for you all!

My hero – a boy having a rough time — finds and rescues a small alien creature. It’s a strange, dangerous world this human colony is on, and the little creature is both electrosensitive (it can detect electric fields of living things as many fish can) and can also generate powerful electrical shocks – a storm-dragon. He’s not allowed to have native life-forms inside the human habitat, say the bureaucrats. But if he leaves it, it will die.  He’s not going to leave it to die.

 In strong contrast to most of the Trad offerings, this is set among normal families.  Mums and Dads who love their kids, and are loved by them. And actually, I don’t give a rat’s butt-end if you think some of the gender-roles are typical and that none of the heroes are top of the victim hierarchy. They’re supposed to be real people you might meet, not Eloi. They’re boys, and they like boy practical jokes and doing boy things.  They don’t waste pages on angst or feelings – these exist, but they aren’t the story.  They are boys becoming men, with the honor and dignity and the price of that.

So: Storm Dragon is up for pre-order. We need critical mass, or the Eloi win. Stand against them.  ‘We need to come from the shadows and then Freedom soon will come.’

Buy Storm Dragon.

Let it be established that taxation is theft. If I were all three branches of government (Puts puppet heads on every finger and toe) I’d finance the government through a naitonal weekly lottery.

Sure, it’s a tax on stupidity, but at least it’s a volunteer-paid tax. And it’s not just stupidity. Yes, I know odds, but I do sometimes buy a lottery ticket. Because I’m buying something real. No, not the chance of winning, or not exactly.

In the most depressed, hopeless times in my life, we bought the lottery fairly often. The trick was to buy it early enough. You see, if I bought early enough I had pretty much a whole week of dreaming. Yeah, I knew how unlikely the odds were, but it was POSSIBLE. Which meant I could look at multimillion dollar houses, I could dream of the perfect library. And it helped me get through the horrible times.

So there is some value in return for the lottery ticket and $2 — or $1 back when we used to buy it — is well worth the dreaming and the mood uplift for a little while.

So, if I were all three branches of government that’s exactly what I’d do. I’d do a national lottery. And then chop the government to the limits of its constitutionally allotted powers, so that I didn’t have to worry about the money shortfall from that.

But darn it, no one has put me in charge of everything. Honestly, they probably shouldn’t. If stress were energy, I’d generate enough just trying to run my regular life, to power all of our great cities and a few of the smaller ones. Having that kind of responsibility on my shoulders would make make me blow up or something.

That said, tariffs are taxation and taxation is theft. And after a while, any form of taxes strangles, and it’s like getting blood from a stone.

So yeah, on principle I’m against tariffs, but I’m against income taxes too.

I’ll preface this saying that I, like everyone else, has no clue what Trump is playing at with tariffs. I do know there is, probably, a tax cut coming for most people. There have been rumors of abolishing income taxes and the man has a tendency to do what he talks about.

So maybe that’s the intent. He puts in tariffs, abolishes taxes. Is this what I want? No. I told you what I wanted up top.

But again, what we get as choices in this world is not cake or death. It’s usually more like a light beating or a serious scratching. So to put it to coin a phrase.

If he puts in tariffs and actually gets rid of the income tax, is this a good thing?

I could argue it is better, relatively. Considering how intrusive, confusing and stifling our tax system has got, tariffs are less intrusive in our lives.

Sure it controls what’s available on your shelves and at what price, but it at lets you NOT be complicit in your own theft. I mean, the current taxation system doesn’t only take our time. If you run any business at all, it requires you to keep records at the expense of time and space. It forces you to file multiple times a year, at more time expense. It forces you to not only hand money and time over to the intrusive government, but to convince them that you’re paying all they think you owe.

The current tax system has the ability to suppress activity and encourage malactivity, it has the ability to make powerful men control who gets to speak and who has to shut up. I’m not convinced that the philosophies of progressivism combined with our tax policy haven’t been shaping economic activity and science for a hundred years. It’s not all as blatant as the Green Nude Heel. Or the fact that for the last decades all scientific funding has come from the government.

But I’m sure there’s been other stuff. The power to tax is the power to destroy. As annoying as tariffs would be I don’t think they can be nearly as bad as the intrusion into every nook and cranny of our lives.

Would I prefer another form of pummeling like, say, national sales tax? Sure, maybe. Provided that it doesn’t turn into a VAT on every step of the process of getting things to the shelf. I’ve seen that “work” in Europe.

Tariffs does have something else to it. If — as likely — they are used to shape foreign diplomacy, they do fall under the purview of the executive. There is a good chance that a president will need to, say, discourage the manufacturing of computer chips abroad. In case of war or disaster, as we found through the covid thing, it can be a serious deal when your medicines, your computers, everything you need is manufactured abroad. This is particularly bad when one of your main suppliers is actually a all-but-declared enemy.

So in that sense the ability to slap tariffs is actually an important power of the executive.

Yes I do realize a tariff war could take down China. Would the country that took down the USSR through economic war with not a shot fired be surprised by that?

As for the EU, poor EU. At this point their falling apart in their attempt at hyper centralization might be the best thing since sliced cake.

As for tariffs? Is this death or slightly less death? I don’t know. And neither do you.

So let us lean back, chill and wait to see what develops.

I don’t expect this to affect the comments, of course. I expect a right donnybrook in the comments, and I hope my assistant can help me with that.

You see, after almost a week of not sleeping due to cough, I dropped onto benadryl, which allows me to sleep but makes me zombie like. Notwithstanding which, heaven forbid it, I’m going to try to continue/finish the deep revision of No Man’s Land this week.

And now release is May with luck, but probably June. If my body wouldn’t fall apart, I’d feel better.

However, one thing I can say: If I have to struggle with health crazy, at least I’m doing it the most interesting time line of them all….

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 DAVE FREER: Storm-Dragon

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

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

FROM MEL DUNAY: Marrying A Monster (The Jaiya Series Book 1)

New, professionally edited edition! Journey to the country of Jaiya, in a world not quite like ours. Here, humans ride trains, drive cars, and use cell phones, but they share their world with insect people and trollfolk, and stranger things lurk in the shadows… As a favor to her parents, Rina agrees to come back to her hometown and take part in an old local custom: a symbolic marriage between the town’s women and the Mountain King, a mythical guardian spirit no one really believes in. But the Mountain King really exists: a monstrous being that feeds on fear and suffering. Rina’s only hope for survival may be Vipin, the dashing scholar hunting the Mountain King, but Vipin is hiding a few secrets of his own… Note: Rina and another character are friends with or related to a few characters from the later books in the Jaiya series, but Monster is meant as a standalone.

FROM J. MANFRED WEICHSEL: Not Far from Eden

Jealous angels with no genitals discover the passion and ecstasy that humans experience through sex. In revenge, the frustrated but impotent celestial beings banish the men to the wilderness. Will the women save the human race, or will they become the mothers of great evil?

FROM MARY CATELLI: The Enchanted Princess Wakes

Once upon a time, a princess was cursed at her christening — but not the one you heard of.

When the fairy decreed that Rosaleen would fall into an enchanted sleep, and how she would wake, the grand plans of kings, to unite kingdoms, failed. They sent her to an out-of-the-way castle in the mountains, in hopes the curse would do no harm to anyone else.

There, alone, Rosaleen lived and learned, and realized that she herself had to be ready to face the curse, and when it broke.

FROM DALE COZORT: Earth Swap: The Stone Library of Venus

Near-future Earth suddenly finds itself in a different version of the solar system, one where human civilizations trade and war between planets. Lurking behind those humans: the long-vanished non-human “Builders,” who colonized the solar system long ago, seeding it with Earth life. Ward Parke, astronomy enthusiast and presidential advisor, wants to explore this new solar system, but the planets here are on the verge of a genocidal, civilization-ending interplanetary war.
Our Earth is caught in the middle of that looming war, with technology hundreds of years behind the other powers. Its only advantage is an ancient stone library preserved by a now-vanished human civilization from Venus and a mysterious woman called Pandora who may be that civilization’s only survivor.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Meals on Wheels (Liquid Diet Chronicles Book 4)

Not by the (nonexistent) hair on her chinny-chin-chin…

Meg Turner, vampire, accountant, ruler of her own small territory. Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? Not if you ask her, it doesn’t. Because the world’s going mad, the idiot mortals in charge are forcibly shutting down the economy without the understanding that it won’t start up again as easy as it’s going down, nor that it’s creating a nasty blood shortage for hospitals, much less vampires.

Even better, the head of her line is invading her dreams again, and teaching her history of all things. And teaching her about the laws, and why they’re there. It’s not just to avoid being noticed by humans capable of staking, beheading, and burning vampires during daylight hours—a vampire that breaks fundamental laws turns into something worse than a vampire.

And she’s got a bunch of those knocking at her border, wanting to come in. Worse yet, they’re sending their day-help into her territory to kidnap their meals, and they keep mistaking her for prey. And leaving their discarded empties in her territory to make it look like she’s draining humans without concern for the laws.

This really isn’t looking good, and it’s really not safe for her still-living friends and family.

FROM KAREN MYERS: The Visitor, And More: A Science Fiction Short Story Bundle from There’s a Sword for That

A Science Fiction Story Bundle from the collection There’s a Sword for That

THE VISITOR – Felockati is anchored to his permanent location underwater and misses the days of roaming his ocean world freely.

But something new drops out of the sky and widens his horizons — all the way to the stars.

YOUR EVERY WISH – Stealing the alien ambassador’s dagger is a sure thing for Pete — just what he needs to pay off his debts.

Until he starts talking to it. There has to be a way to get something for himself out of the deal. Has to be.

FROM SARAH D’ALMEIDA (YEAH, ME): Death of a Musketeer

When D’Artagnan, Athos, Porthos and Aramis discover the corpse of a beautiful woman who looks like the Queen of France, they vow to see that justice is done. They do not know that their investigation will widen from murder to intrigue to conspiracy, bring them the renewed enmity of Cardinal Richelieu and shake their fate in humanity. Through duels and doubts, they pursue the truth, even when their search brings them to the sphere of King Louis XIII himself and makes them confront secrets best forgotten.

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: Mask