In the scattered files on this computer — and partly in handwritten notebooks in my office closet — there is a halfway written novel called The Years Undone.

It’s about the Red Baron — No, not the one where he’s a dragon shifter. I don’t know why I have two completely different novels with the same historical person. It’s not the first time, though — and therefore by extension about World War I. Or at least the aftermath of WWI. It is actually not a coincidence that I have two novels with that character, and another novel planned set in an alternate World War I.

For years, World War One was one of my reading obsessions. (The French Revolution too, but I had to give that up, because it made me so depressed there was nothing to do.)

World War I is the glitch in the matrix that haunts most historians, the place where it looks like Western civilization went wrong. The place the thread broke that was leading us through the labyrinth of barbarism towards the light.

Oh, it is an illusion, you know? It looms that large because it’s close up and in our face. humans have done stupid, inexplicable things before, and there have been many times where history seemed to stutter, veer off from a course that made at least some sense and go howling in the wildnerness for a while, at a cost of the some large percentage of the population: the English civil war, the 100 years war, the Moorish invasions, the–

To us it is World War One that looms large, partially because it hasn’t been fully digested. In historical terms, world war one was yesterday. We witnessed what seemed like senseless carnage on a massive scale.

Western civilization has been bleeding out from a wound sustained on the fields of Verdun.

But that’s not important right now. Or maybe it’s the only important thing, but it can’t be approached full on, or we can’t face it. So we must pirouette and tiptoe and dance a gavotte towards it.

Which is why the years immediately after WWI make such rich reading: histories, biographies, mysteries (which by their nature are a literature of the quotidian, at least cozy mysteries) and books of musings.

I found the title “The Years Undone” in poem by one of the poets of WWI. I no longer remember the poet or the poem, except it was a musing on how he wished the years undone in which he’d fought in the trenches.

Heinlein had a remarkably similar sentiment in Time Enough For Love. The file clerk that passes for my memory is confused today but I believe Heinlein called WWI “the War where both sides lost.”

And that’s a good way to see it. Another way to see it is that humanity lost. Afterwards, the world took a path of ever increasing government power, increasingly more regimented life, and a drive — partly fed by Russian imperialism — towards ever more “internationalism”.

Erase that. That’s what you’ve been told, but it’s not true. WWI was the first gasp of internationalism. All those royal families with their tentacles reaching into other countries, all the striving of cousins and brothers, uncles and nephews.

And the dead in the fields, the cadavers of young men piled in French and Belgian fields only fed the internationalism because somehow what propaganda made of that senseless war was that the fault was of NATIONALISM and of individual striving.

Which brings us back to the times. The times were the apex of the industrial revolution, when mass industrial production, communication, even art reached its peak. There was nothing anyone could do to fight that. You see, I’m not a materialist. I know there’s more to the world than the material, money, how we live.

But I also know that men — and women too, if you’re one of those that doesn’t realize men is inclusive in this case — live according to their understanding of the world and their material culture at that time. Elizabethans believed in a clockwork world, and primitives believed in a universe that worked by sympathetic magic. Some days I suspect we still do, but that’s something else.

The world of World War One and the dawning 20th century was one of increasing concentration of resources, and standardization of resources and manufacturing and, really, all production. Which brings us to the wars and what led to them….

The “systems” of the 20th century were systems that treated humans as widgets, as groups, as playthings. Communism, fascism and the dilute versions of both that the West installed in its supposedly free societies were all attempts at top down control, at “scientific” governance that controlled everything from the economy to the daily life of every human under them.

…. They’ve been falling apart for 100 years, and it’s become obvious they were falling apart at least 50 years ago. Because humans aren’t widgets and humans don’t work well when treated as widgets.

The country that retained the most freedom was the US because that was how we were founded, from the beginning — and our very founding is an affront the rest of the world will never forgive us — and we were also the most productive and the most innovative.

Even hampered by the fascist shackles that FDR clapped on us, we’ve produced enough to keep the world going through the delusional hell of the 20th century. We’ve innovated enough in all fields to show that the idea of top down control is a delusion. A dangerous one. And now we’re shaking off the shackles and the morbid dreams of the past.

We’re going to have to invent our way out of this, to pave the road so other countries can follow. But that’s okay. That’s what we have always done. (And what other countries can’t forgive.)

Do we wish the years undone of the 20th century, the years when we’re now finding, in many ways we were fighting ourselves in the dark and the fire? Or at least financing those who fought us and hated us?

I don’t think it can be undone. As with mistakes in individual lives, the mistakes made in the long history of humanity are part of who we are, what we’ve learned and who knows where we’d be without them. What we did was because that was how we understood the world. And now we understand it differently, but we wouldn’t be here now if we hadn’t been there then.

Or if you prefer, supposing the US had stayed out of WWI? Would that mean that the bitterness of the 20th century wouldn’t have touched us? Oh, hell no. It means we’d probably have come up — as the rest of the world destroyed itself — with some ultra special, invincible philosophy of mass, top down governance that actually destroyed us and what remained of humanity.

Sure, we could have sat out of WWII and let someone else come up with atomic weapons and– And the first use would be likely to be mass industrial and truly devastating.

Even through the cold war, by existing, we gave hope to the world, and we created a doubt that the USSR was inevitable. Oh, sure, we too fell to their lies, and we supported them in their fight more than we should have.

But had we not done that, I suspect the USSR would have eaten the world. We’d all be Africa in the late 20th century (And there’s fodder for nightmares.)

Of course, there might be a path through that got us to where we’re now without the horrible losses, the psychological damage, the hampering of the 20th century.

Only I doubt we could find it, because it would require us to be perfect and have perfect knowledge. Until humans are angels, that will never happen. When humans are angels, we won’t need that.

It is silly — and facile — to say that we live in the best of all possible worlds. that’s not the way the world works.

To say “if we hadn’t done this, we wouldn’t have this good thing” is a fallacy. It’s the survivors bias. We survived, therefore this is the best of all worlds.

But here’s the thing, worse things could have happened. Far worse. It won’t take much thought to realize it.

And the path where nothing bad happened requires than we know then what we know now.

The Years Undone is a time travel novel. Where the characters are pulled forward, unwilling, and then miraculously find a way to travel back with the knowledge.

This is because, when it’s finished, it will be a work of fiction. In reality we’re not granted such things.

And therefore we don’t know how things will end. Human society is a series of experiments, surging forward and falling back, then learning, integrating and moving forward again. The same way a human lives and learns and grows.

It’s not ideal. It’s a consequence of what we are and how we work. And we can’t be other than we are.

So, what can we do? We can fight, with words, with deeds and, yes, sometimes with weapons for what seems to maximize the potential of humanity and our capacity for good: Individual liberty and small, responsive political units. (Partly because small political units means that there is less damage when things go wrong.)

We write, we fight, we think, we speak in favor of humanity and against the hatred of all that’s human. We write and fight and stand for liberty and its fruits: free creation, love and a lot of fat and healthy babies. Oh, and beauty, which frankly is an attribute of all of that.

And we go on. Where we are, with what we know. Sure, maybe in 20 years we’ll realize we were wrong, and our goals unworthy. But then we readjust and fight again.

Because it’s our only hope, the hope for the future. The hope for humanity.

Go. Forward only. The past is a dead country and those battles not worth fighting over.

In the future there’s hope and there’s glory. Oh, peril too, but if you don’t overcome peril, what is triumph worth it.

We are living in a very exhilarating moment where the horrifying darkness of the twentieth century mass everything and top down control is receding.

Stand in the light and fight for freedom.

So how I started this new hobby that’s eating my evenings was like this:

Some of you are probably aware of the kerfuffle where Devon Eriksen was kicked out (on spurious grounds) from a contest he never entered because he said things the left does not like on X. But that’s not important, right now…

Or rather, it’s super important and it was heartening to see people stand up against the cancel crowd.

However in the aftermath I realized that a lot of the newer indies assumed (because traditional publishing discriminated against everyone not hard left for … well, since the forties, if some of the histories I’ve read can be trusted) that if they were to the right of Lenin, they were a minority and needed to keep their heads down.

This is very far from true. So far that a lot of the perception might come from preference falsification, where you don’t say anything because you think you are alone.

You guys know me. I can’t see this type of thing and not go over and kick the status quo. it’s who I am, it’s what I do. And in this case, as we’ve been seeing this last month, it desperately needs kicking. I put it on twitter that if people sent me an Amazon link to their book to bookpimping at outlook dot com I would give them promo. The ONLY requirement is not being embarrassed of being seen on my blog. (Which means I wouldn’t be doing even the minimal filtering I normally do, when I reserve my right not to promo you for any reason or none. )

So, here we are. The number of people sending me books as astonished even me, and I’m doing (more or less) ten books a night.

Oh, yeah, I earn a commission per each book, which trust me, I do earn since this is fussy and tedious work. As I said, it’s a new hobby for my evenings. Fun, eh?

Two further notes today: 1- Some of you might have thought I hated you or something. no. Email was hiding a bunch of you under “Junk” and I just found you this morning while trying to email someone else. 2- Today, at the bottom there will be shops run by indie artisans and sellers who also wish to say they’re for liberty. If you are one of these, page upward, find the email, and send me a link to your shop. I’ll include one or two after the books.

FROM JONATHAN SOUZA: Solist At Large: The Last Solist #1

Adelaide Taylor is the newest Solist to have gained her powers. A magical warrior of the ancient and lost Dawn Empire, she moved from California to New Jersey in secret. Enrolled in a very Catholic high school, she has to find her Companions-five teenagers that will help her to defeat magical threats to the human race. But, in the process of becoming a Solist, Adelaide has to hide the truth of her past from everyone else. Including the five people that she needs to trust the most. And, there are secrets that Adelaide still has to discover about herself and the world she has become a part of… And, who she truly is.

AND: The Winter Solist: The Last Solist #2

Adelaide Taylor has survived her first semester at school and as a Dawn Empire Solist. She’s found her first Companion, Sayuri Suisha. Sayuri’s grandfather wants to meet his only grand-daughter’s new friend. In Japan, just before New Years. Along with that, she’s gotten a warning-one of the High Fae is hunting her and is planning to ensnare Adelaide in her schemes.
There’s a girl in her school that has been set up as a tethered goat for Solists.
Her local and very Catholic high school is putting her into places that shouldn’t happen at a Catholic high school.
And there’s a monster eating prostitutes in Queens.
Nobody ever said being a Solist would be easy…

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Escape Velocity

Xanadu–Sometimes, making a profit just needs an outside perspective for why it hasn’t yet.
Turing’s Legacy–It takes love to make a person. And maybe an accident.
Theory in Practice–Psychological care may well be more important in a closed environment.
Reasonable Accommodations–Microgravity could be an answer to some disabilities.
You Can’t Go Home Again–The effects of long-term isolation on asteroid miners explored.
Everyday Miracles–What could push someone to emigrate to a new off-planet colony?

FROM KARL K. GALLAGHER: Ultimate Conclusions (Short Story Collections)

Rocket scientist Karl K. Gallagher writes stories stretching the imagination to new frontiers of wonder:

• An Amish boy on the Moon must choose between obeying his people’s separation or saving the life of a “Modern.”
• A squire tries to save a village from the monster which killed his knight.
• A junior officer makes contact with aliens whose mere appearance terrifies people.

And three new stories following up on the Torchship Trilogy, showing how Michigan Long and her friends deal with the aftermath of war and revolutions.

FROM THOMAS J. WEISS: Murmurations

They wanted him to start a war. Instead, he became a legend.

Daniel Lyon lives his life in virtual reality. His days are filled with games and friends and a family that cares for him. Until one day, when terrorists rip it all away.

Motivated by an unrelenting desire to even the score, Daniel leaves his now empty home and enlists in the Defense Force, where he learns to pilot a group highly sophisticated intelligence collection assets: robotic Starlings that look and sound like the real thing.

After quickly discovering the DF isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, Daniel meets a rich, eccentric man with plans of his own for dealing with the terrorists. The payoff is considerable, but so is the price. Daniel must leave behind everyone and everything he knows and journey to Geb, the terrorists’ home planet.

There, he teams up with a striking young woman, and together they embark upon one of the most audacious missions in history, one that promises to end the conflict once and for all.

Except nothing goes according to plan.

What happens instead is outrageous and terrifying and Daniel has no idea if he’ll live through it.

FROM JULIE FROST: Dark Day, Bright Hour

A choir girl cast into the Pit through an egregious clerical error
Her strapping Guardian Angel
A condemned hitman
… and Derek

–a crossroads demon who’s been secretly storing up power for millennia.

He wants revenge on everyone on his extensive list, from Lucifer all the way up to Daddy and every devil and angel between. It’s a frankly impossible goal for a low-level guy like him, but “dream big” is his motto and sheer spite keeps him going.

Now he’s stuck escorting three idiots through Hell—and Derek has a history with the angel, thanks very much.
An infernal rebellion looms along with a premature Armageddon, and the black and withered thing Derek used to call a conscience rears its stupid, stupid head. He’s faced with a choice.

Rescue friends he never thought he’d make from a boss he never really thought he’d defy, at the possible cost of his life, such as it is…

Or let it all burn and dance in the ashes.

FROM JOHN A. DOUGLAS: The Black Crown (Age of Adventures Book 1)

The Crown Pantheon, authoritarian rulers of Allspire, slaughtered the marauding Orcs by the tens of thousands and returned peace to the continent of Evergrad. But among the many half-orc bastards left in the wake of the war, one was Prince Ragoth Brightsorn, son of the notorious Warlord Thorgoth and Seranna, Queen of Namaria, the sole human-ruled kingdom.

After seventeen years of isolation, Ragoth is cruelly forced out of his life of luxurious comfort and into exile on the eve of his royal Crowning before he can receive his gilded mark, the magic sigil that proves his royal birth. Unable to prove who he is or return home, he embarks on a quest to reach his father’s tribe, the Sunderfang, in the lawless wilds of Dreadmour.

But his venture is not taken alone. He earns the company of Cortland Lowhelm, a pugilistic human farmboy hellbent on finding a legend to fill, and Denith, a compassionate, if helpless, elvish goodwill worker. To ensure safe passage, they acquire the services of Val’Mora, a world-weary veteran adventurer down on her luck. Together, they cross the kingdoms of the Crown Pantheon with nefarious forces seemingly at every step.

The Black Crown is a coming-of-age epic fantasy packed to the brim with action & adventure, political intrigue, found family, vengeful dragons, dark abominations, and, most of all….ORCS!

FROM JOHN SHUERGER: In Darkness Cast (Shades of Black Book 1)

A soldier prays for a mentor to train him to be a hero… what he gets is the dark sorcerer who killed thousands of them.

Gideon Halcyon is a young man who wants nothing more than to save his people from the hordes of Hell. Demons and cultists run roughshod over his home, slaughtering and sacrificing to a trifecta of fallen angels on the cusp of destroying the kingdoms of Man. Gideon is helpless in the face of extinction itself…

…until he meets Ashkelon.

Coming from the Void beyond the world, Ashkelon alone survives the world he left in ruins. Cynical and ruthless, the last lord of the Everlasting Dark seethes with millennia of hatred, and his cursed sword Acherlith shrieks with the last screams of a thousand failed heroes.

Ashkelon makes Gideon an offer – to train him to be a hero of the Light beyond the failures sealed within his blade, a peerless warrior to exceed even the exacting standards of the Dark. Reluctantly, Gideon accepts and is thrust into a world of infinite cruelty under Ashkelon’s black fist where the slightest misstep will see him just another scream in the murderer’s black blade.

As Hell consumes the hopes of Man, a hero is forged in darkness. Read it today.

FROM SABRINA ROSEN: The Sorceress Tangled: Chloe Delis Book 2 (Sorceress Chloe Delis)

Chloe hasn’t been a City Sorceress for long
Just long enough to realize her training isn’t what it should have been

Her magic is still going sideways
But maybe that will be useful
If it doesn’t kill her first.

She has to find answers before she
hurts herself, or anyone else.

But she’s not getting time off
And there are still beastials to hunt
Or maybe something worse

If she can’t follow Persephone’s rules,
Chloe’s patron goddess will take her to Hades.
Which is better than the alternative.

FROM D. S. BLAKE: Exopreneurs (4 book series)

From Book 1: It should have been a routine negotiation, an easy task for even a novice bailiff to handle.

Jake Ambler, a disaffected youth searching for purpose in the cosmos, finds solace in the ranks of the disreputable “exopreneurs” – those who seek to profit from the exploitation of alien worlds. His assignment?

Bug Space, a region of the galaxy where colossal, intelligent insectoids reign supreme. But when Jake arrives on the insect-infested planet of Telia, he quickly discovers that nothing about his mission is routine. The Spider Queens of Teila, a domineering race of arachnids, wield power like nothing he’s ever encountered. Their disdain for lesser life forms is only surpassed by their insatiable desire for supremacy among their own kind, especially the males.

And his fellow exopreneurs intend to cash in on it.

As Jake delves deeper into the tangled web of Teila’s intrigue, he finds himself embroiled in an uprising that threatens to consume him and those he cares for most. Survival is a high-stakes gamble, and the only way out is to unravel Teila’s greatest secret before Jake becomes yet another pawn in this galactic struggle for power.

Silk Unspun is a pulse-pounding science fiction odyssey that explores the boundaries of loyalty, survival, and the pursuit of forbidden knowledge in a universe where danger is as limitless as the cosmos.

FROM JON DEL ARROZ: The Immortal Edge: A Sci-Fi Spy Thriller (The Terran Imperium Chronicles Book 1)

…comes with a destructive price.

Imperial Special Agent Ayla Rin has uncovered a web of conspiracy leading back to the stronghold of the dangerous Robeni Space Pirates. Intelligence networks intercepted transmissions that indicate the pirates may have access to a new refined spore that can stop the aging process in humans.

But there’s more than meets the eye, as the trail leads Ayla to a mysterious planet which isn’t on any of the Imperial star charts, a world lost to time. Sinister forces seek to control this immortality spore and weaponize it against the Imperium.

Ayla Rin must uncover who is pulling the strings behind this planetary government and stop their evil plans before they’re exported to the entire Imperium. If she fails, humanity as we know it could be erased.

Fans of Star Wars: Heir To The Empire and Dan Simmons’ Hyperion will love The Immortal Edge!

SHOPS (I DON’T GET A CUT FROM THESE, BUT THEY WANT TO STAND WITH US, SO HERE THEY ARE: … because we shouldn’t willfully give money to people who hate us, and these people don’t.

MURPHIC INDUSTRIES: If you’re a gamer or simply like to paint miniatures, you could do worse than order from Murphic Industries.

MORRIGAN’S MERCANTILE: For blades, purses, drinking horns, and other needs of ren fair, or simply when you wake up feeling medieval. You could do worse than Morrigan’s Mercantile.

The Longevity Problem by Orvan Ox

Anyone of any non-trivial age “knows too many dead people.” And while it’s normal, if unpleasant, to lose older relatives (great grandparents if you were even lucky enough to meet any, grandparents, parents, and various aunts/uncles etc.) it’s not just relatives. It’s friends and acquaintances. Heck, for some there were only voices heard/conversed with “over the air”…For example, I never met AA9Y, the self-described drug dealer – he was a pharmacist, but I knew his voice.

If you have an… extended… life (say, like a ShapeShifter as described in Sarah’s “Shifters” series [PLUG! PLUG! PLUG!] of books… where lifespans can be measured in centuries or even millennia…) it’s even worse. You need to quite literally reinvent yourself every few decades and catch up on current idioms/slang… though if you look old enough you can be “charmingly” out of date by a decade or three. Get into reenacting, even a bit, and you might be able to get away with more. Oh, and then language changes. Not just a new country with a new language, but things like Vowel Shifts.

And, of course it’s still disconcerting to find the answer to something that was bugging a friend… but said friend is now long dead. Or you know just who to ask, but the person to ask died years ago. Or you see this item that so & so would love, but…  you get the idea.

This kinda works the other way, too. Let’s say you figured out the key to some Great Advance… but you do NOT dare proclaim it yourself, lest you become famous and thus… get paid attention. No, you need to find a Willing Mind to drop hints at.. or even tell outright (if you can then disappear to them!). No, I did not influence any of the Great Minds (scientists, inventors) but I have given the issue some thought, you know, just in case an idea strikes me and doesn’t just bounce off.

Other times, you just sigh and wonder how the blazes you missed it. Look, you escape the Labyrinth… you sail the Med for seeming Ages… sometimes rowing, sometimes steering with an oar… and it’s a gol-dang pain in the arm(s). And one day some bright spark comes up with the sternpost, or at least mounted, rudder. Brilliant. And SO. DAMNED. OBVIOUS. in retrospect. I might have been out a few days from the force of that face-hoof.

Oh, and the times you see some “genius” come up with a “brilliant new idea” … that you’ve seen crash and burn a dozen or more times. Except… every great once in a while, technology/science has caught up and NOW it’s workable. It’s all rather confusing, really. Nod, smile, and be ready to bolt to a safe distance – which might be a few borders away.

What can you do? I have no grand answer. Note history as it happens, but be ready to “forget” it (at least in detail) as ‘Current Events’ recedes into being History. Watergate means about as much to many today as does Teapot Dome.

And, well…. The line is MUCH older than the relatively recent tune it’s a title to, but the best I can say is just, “Keep on keeping on.”

Yes, there’s a simple answer to the Longevity Problem, but no, not taking the Canadian Medicine. There’s no future in it.

So, this is what happened:

Some of you are probably aware of the kerfuffle where Devon Eriksen was kicked out (on spurious grounds) from a contest he never entered because he said things the left does not like on X.

However for me the enlightening moment came after, when I realized a lot of beginning writers who were on the side of liberty, or at least to the right of Lenin, assumed everyone else writing fiction was a leftist. So, they tried to fit in with groups of leftists, keeping their heads down and feeling grateful for crumbs of information and publicity.

Guys, even given that there aren’t many of OUR groups, because the individualists as always fail to organize, the truth is that since the advent of indie, we’re the majority of this field.

Being incapable, or at least too busy to form a group, I decided to promote people who aren’t afraid to be seen on this blog. I figured that’s enough of a “purity test” for being to the right of Lenin. Later, once I get a chance to get my head together with a friend who can program (the snow isn’t helping) we’ll try to design a site for the like of us. For now, in addition to publicity, you get to know you’re not alone.

Because people glaze over after about ten books, I’m doing ten a night till I run out. You are of course free (eh) to send us the amazon link to your book at: email to bookpimping at outlook dot com

I am not reading each of these books before I post them, (though I have read a few, and might read more, just not before the promo is done.) So look at samples and exert normal caution before buying.

Oh, yeah: A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE. This is good because I spend a bunch of time compiling the info and getting the links. Yes, I want to help, but I could be writing ;). (Which makes more money, but never mind.)

FROM C. R. WALTON: Wilderness Five: Hard Science Fiction (Metamorphosis Book 1)

‘MYSTERY, SUSPENSE, AND COSMIC DREAD. A MUST READ FOR FANS OF PETER F HAMILTON OR ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY.’ Reader review

From Cambridge planetary scientist and award-winning author C. R. Walton comes a spectacular new space opera that sees the ingenious creation of new ecosystems throughout the System turn into a living nightmare. Extinction is only the beginning . . .

Accelerated evolution ‘Manifold’ technology has changed everything – dead worlds and asteroids bloom with strange new life.

People flocked to colonise the new wilderness only barely to survive obliteration by a Manifold experiment gone wrong. Like so many others, Bryn watched his people burn that day. Unlike the rest, Bryn finds himself hailed as the lone hero who saved his species. Only he knows better.

Bryn’s grim new life of solitude in the depths of the wilderness is shattered when the past comes calling. His presence is requested on the ringworld Wilderness Five.

There, at the edge of inhabited space, the oldest and richest man in the System has expended every drop of his money and influence to launch the most daring Manifold experiment ever attempted.

Bryn’s moment has come. Plunged back into a world of faceless corporations, hell-bent scientists, and terrifying engineered species, he must learn to finally live up to his reputation. Otherwise, nature will take its course with humanity once and for all.

On Wilderness Five, the fate of the species comes down to one question: whom to trust and whom to kill?

FROM CAITLIN WALSH: Mama Bunny #1: Comics and Stories

Parenting is tough, but it’s also rewarding. And occasionally even hilarious. Now collected for the first time, follow Mama Bunny and her family through this series of mostly-autobiographical strips and written stories as they navigate the ups and downs of dinnertime, chores, and all the other day-to-day adventures of a stay-at-home mom trying to raise and teach two children.

FROM BLAKE CARPENTER: The Way of Mortals: The Four Sisters: Book One

In the city of Bhai Mandwa, towers of steel and glass reach for the sky while boiler-cars roll along streets that are inhabited by gangsters, demonic assassins, inept policemen and wandering ghosts. More than a million people call the city home, one in the midst of an industrial revolution, torn between the traditions of the old world and a new, frightening future. Below, the Genja River flows, waters possessed by spirits and magic from ancient times.

Prem Marantha, third of four royal sisters, was kidnapped and trained to kill as a child. Upon returning home after her long absence, she discovers that her parents are dead and her youngest sister has taken the throne. Now Prem must find out how to evade an assassin’s plot, elude the unwanted attention of the ruling Parliament and the police force it controls, and stop a conspiracy planning to overthrow the monarchy for good.

THE WAY OF MORTALS is a mix of Indian-flavored steampunk, gaslamp fantasy and alternate history, with the aesthetics of Larry Correia’s SON OF THE BLACK SWORD and Guy Ritchie’s SHERLOCK HOLMES films, along with a dash of political intrigue, mystery, and murder. Fans of fantasy with an Asian and Oriental twist will not be disappointed.

FROM MANFRED WEICHSEL: Sword & Scandal (The Scandal Anthology Series Book 1)

the Gateway of Pleasure
By JIM LEE
A knight and a lady from warring kingdoms have an erotic encounter in feudal Vietnam

Shaven Beards
By ROSS BAXTER
A man and a woman sellsword learn more than they wanted to know about the secret lives of dwarves

The Snow Princess
By PIP PINKERTON
A magical princess teaches her special friend Annie new uses for ice

Vermina’s Creature
By BITTER KARELLA
A malevolent sorceress keeps a manservant as a pet

The Baron with a Thousand Cats
By GARY EVERY
A groom must save his bride from suffering prima notte with a grotesque baron

Windblades
By C. L. WERNER
A comfort woman summons killer demon weasels in a most uncomfortable way

Flesh and Ink
By Rebecca Buchanan
A female assassin’s tattoos hold a deadly power

Confessions of a Wicked Harpastum Player
By J. MANFRED WEICHSEL and ALEXANDER JOYNER
A sadistic inquisitor accuses a female Harpastum player of witchcraft… and sapphism

Kai-zur the Godless
By DAVID CARTER
A warrior becomes a lover only to learn that love is war

Abduction from the Seraglio
By DAVID J. WEST
A sellsword gets himself into an awkward situation after being hired to abduct a woman from a harem

The Harem of Al’Azeri
By JASIAH WITKOFSKY
A gentleman out for a night on the town has a serious mishap in a brothel

He Who Sows
By AUSTIN WORLEY
Two female thieves break into a temple to steal the phallus of a stone fertility god but get a little too excited by it

With thirteen filthy black and white illustrations by NSFW fantasy artist, Apolonster

Manfred is running a kickstarter for the next book.

FROM J. ISHIRO FINNEY: SCARS: Heroes come in all sizes.

James was a high-rider, a thrill seeker, an EVA cowboy. He was one of a small brotherhood of men who made a living out of lassoing dead satellites and towing them out of Earth’s orbit. Then came the accident, the one which cost James everything. Now landlocked and grounded with no chance of returning to space, James lives a life of quiet desperation. By day, he struggles with having become an amputee. By night, he is haunted by nightmares of the moment that took his leg, his friends, and his entire career. After a failed suicide attempt, a company psychologist assigns James a companion animal named Max—a very smart rat with an interesting past. Now, once again, James will find his life radically changed as old wounds are opened and fresh scars are forced to heal.

FROM JORDAN ALLEN: The Life Feast (The Hollow Realms)

Lord Legot had more money and power than any man in the town of Bastia would know what to do with, but the one thing he valued above everything else was his family. When his twin daughters are abducted one stormy night, he calls upon Caen the Hell Stalker to bring his beloved daughters back safely.

No stranger to wickedness, the intrepid monster hunter scours the land for any clues that will lead him to the girls, battling werewolves, mercenaries, demons and even monstrous hellhounds along the way. What he doesn’t yet realise is just how deeply twisted the mystery of the missing Legot girls is.

Jordan Allen returns with the fifth book in his Hollow Realms series of dark fantasy tales. The Life Feast is a standalone novella that promises action, adventure and mystery.

FROM XAVIER BASORA, WHO HAS A STORY IN THIS ANTHOLOGY: Shoot the Devil 3: Militia of Martyrs

Once again, we bring you tales of horror, adventure, and shooting the devil! Preferably in the face. This one is loaded with tales of the average fire fighter, to simple pastors, space vikings and more with one thing in common – coming face to face with supernatural evil and sending it packing.

If you have read the previous installments of the Shoot the Devil series, you will recognize some names, while others are brand new to the fold. That was our focus this time around, giving unknown and unestablished authors a chance to flex their muscle and show off their skill. And skill they have. The talent and imagination on display is extremely impressive and Crucifixion Press is extremely proud to welcome them all to the Militia!

FROM CHRISTOPHER MICHAEL: Danforth: Eldritch Tales of WWII: Tomb of the Black Pharaoh

The Cthulhu Mythos continues in series Danforth: Eldritch Tales of WWII.

In this Lovecraftian tale of horror and espionage, Tomb of the Black Pharaoh follows Robert B. Danforth, a former Miskatonic University scholar still reeling from the horrific events At the Mountains of Madness. Now part of the newly formed Office of the Coordinator of Information (COI) – the predecessor of the famed Office of Strategic Services (OSS) – Danforth is dispatched to Cairo to thwart a Nazi plot to recover the Talisman of Nephren-ka, buried deep within the lost tomb of Black Pharaoh. Said to grant unspeakable power, the artifact could tip the scales of World War II in the Nazis’ favor. As Danforth delves into the ancient tomb, he faces cults devoted to Nephren-ka, Nazi occultists, and cosmic horrors that strain the limits of his sanity.

Danforth must battle not only the looming threat of the Nazis but also the terrifying implications of the Amulet’s power. As eldritch forces close in and the boundaries between reality and madness begin to crumble, Danforth realizes the cost of failure may be far greater than even the war—humanity itself may be at stake.

This heart-pounding mix of Lovecraftian horror and historical espionage will captivate fans of cosmic terror and WWII thrillers alike, immersing readers in a world where ancient gods and modern warfare collide in a fight for ultimate power.

FROM R. H. SNOW: Transmutation Texas (WATCHER of the DAMNED: WATCHER Book 1)

In a World gone Viral, a Hero shall Arise – join the Revolution with WATCHER of the DAMNED!

The Happening wreaked havoc as Humanity got a hard reset from a deadly gender-cidal Virus – and for TransMutated Survivors like The Watcher, life in Post-Apocalyptic Texas just got a whole lot bloodier and a whole lot lonelier. In a cyberpunk Wild West gone awry, The Watcher was a Rebel without a clue under the System: a brutal, high-tech Social Construct engineered to serve the Enlightened and oppress the Damned. But that’s all about to change, thanks to a cheeky chaos agent named Rose…

Now The Watcher must lead a Revolution to save Rose from the System He helped create, or Rose will die – and Humanity will die with her.

Fight the System – Join the Revolution – with WATCHER of the DAMNED!

FROM JAY MCINTYRE AND DAN JORDAN: Lowther and Deardon: Tainted Gold

The city of Lanteius is divided between three rival nations. A grim mercenary and a cynical bard are thrust into an investigation to uncover a conspiracy that threatens the balance of power. Swords and sorcery, magic and crime, intrigue and betrayal.

Let’s start with true confessions! I never really liked school. Oh, I did well in it, and when I was in college I did more hours than were reasonable, plus took outside courses, too. But the goal there was to graduate faster and also to have diverse enough credentials to get a good job when I finished. (Turns out this was nullified by the one simple trick of marrying someone from another country and moving there.)

The reason I didn’t like it was that the information they were trying to put in my head was never the stuff I was looking for at that particular time and/or was weirdly slanted, or worse, the things they graded me on were senseless to me, or worse mostly what they graded me on was being nice and compliant. Those people always got good grades, even if they knew nothing of what we studied. Unfortunately I couldn’t make myself over into a good girl even if I tried. And boy did I try for years. (And no, I wasn’t the classic bad girl. I never engaged in juvenile delinquency (or at least none of the conventional juvenile delinquency) and never really had trouble with the law, unless it was stupid law about political expression. Even then I never got in trouble, though I came close enough it was a matter of luck.)

I just couldn’t help speaking out or showing my feelings in my expression. And that was enough to stick out.

But even so, I found that enough of the “form” of traditional schooling lodged itself in the back of my head, so that I would approach life in the real world as though it were a school assignment.

Take trying to break into writing. I didn’t — for years and years. Over a decade — understand that it wasn’t a matter of writing things “well” or “getting it right.” Rather, it was a matter of writing something that just happened to hit an editor on a particular day as a “must have.” (This is why, btw, it’s easier to sell — to the public too — something that hits the time period, touch-feel or themes of a popular movie or game. (Visual media always sells better than books. Deal.))

However, even now when I mentor people, it’s really hard to make people understand this principle: it’s not if you got it right. It’s not if you did all the right things, according to the latest instruction of how to write, it’s not if you finally got “good.” (In fact “good” in writing is so highly subjective that you really can’t tell if you got there. I find most bestsellers stultifyingly boring and lacking in individuality.)

What actually makes you sell/hit big etc. is a combination of having a product a lot of people want to read, and having a certain luck in word of your product spreading enough to sell substantially. (Whether you’re indie or traditional. If traditional, somehow convincing your publisher that lots of people want to read your product helps. However one does that.)

Note that while this is true in publishing, it’s also true in the business world, politics, getting a job. It’s just that in that case, you are selling yourself/making yourself into a saleable product.

I keep running into people on X — and sometimes in my friend’s group — complaining that they did everything by the book to have a secure job, but are now being laid off or fired by DOGE and how this is unfair and an injustice.

It’s only an injustice if you’re in school and you were promised an A if you do x, y and z. And “unfair” is one of the characteristics of life in the world. In fact the whole “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” never works because it fails on the most fundamental level: the world doesn’t have an all-seeing teacher. It’s all a chaotic, fractal network of humans evaluating other humans/their works on insufficient information.

Over all, the free market works best for everyone because it allows people to hire/be hired/sell/buy according to their own, individual percevied interests.

Which doesn’t make it fair. Because the “luck” or “random chance” has a say. I have been approached by writers no one knows, including some whose work was never published, who are absolutely amazing and knocked my socks off. But they were hit so hard by rejection early on that they never tried again. Or they published once, failed through no fault of their own, and never found the courage to try again. Or a dozen other circumstances.

Their work is wonderful. It’s other circumstances keeping them from being bestsellers, and some of those are things they can’t overcome because they’re part of who they are.

In the same way, you might have done all the work to be the best designer of agricultural colonies in Mars, but since the job doesn’t exist yet, you can’t do that. And heaven only knows what you’re doing to survive.

In fact most of my friends — perhaps most people — do not work or make a living int he things they studied in college, the things they prepared to make a living in. Why not?

Well, there wasn’t a job in that field at the time, or they got into the field and found out they didn’t like it as much in reality as they did when they studied it, or–

Because life isn’t school. there isn’t “complete this study, then study this thing, then receive this degree, then–“

It’s a chaotic interaction of abilities and needs. In many ways unpredictable.

More unpredictable when idiots are playing with the over-structure of government and distorting the economy for their own agenda.

In the last 30 years which of us hasn’t experienced a sudden redirection, found him or herself without income, lose a job or a position we loved out of the blue and in a way we couldn’t have anticipated?

Most of what shocks me about the government employees losing their jobs now is that they’re experiencing this with the newness of a child who still thought the world was a giant, and “fair” schooling experience, even though some are my age or even older. It just tells me they have been insulated from the real world. Perhaps it’s part of being embedded in the over-structure of the planners that you have faith in it. This mostly astonishes me.

Yes, I feel sympathy with those who aren’t crooked or corrupt. Because I’ve been there. We’ve found ourselves going from a two-income household to a zero-income household suddenly when we had toddlers and the economy was problematic for job-finding. I’ve found myself suddenly without income in a year when we had sudden and unexpected demands on our income. I think we all have. All of us adults. So we feel empathy. We know what it’s like. Who doesn’t? (Though let me tell you, the eight month deal is better than anything I got or anyone I know got. And don’t be a fool. Of course if you take the deal they’ll pay. They have to. The only thing that would stop it is a complete collapse of the economy and at that point we all have problems.)

All of us.

So, for those caught in this: Yes, it sucks. I do realize it sucks. But you know what? We can’t go on the way we’ve been. We simply don’t have the money for this. At some point we have to retrench and shrink government, because government is not the productive part of economy. It’s parasitical on the real economy. And at this point the economy is dying of being sucked dry by the government. And the government is suffering from too much money, which is why it comes up with the idea that it’s up to it to finance transgender operas in Serbia. Or even crazier stuff.

To the rest of us, yes they will push the hostage puppy at you. The hostage puppy being the cute sweet puppy that the government is feeding and looking after, as well as doing a lot of things that would look good on a demon’s resume.

Yes, the puppy is real, and the puppy will suffer, but behind it are all the things that would really buff up the demon’s resume.

While it’s not fair (that word again) for the puppy to suffer and die, and all good people will hurt over it, the fault for the puppy’s death is not on the people who stopped the government leeching on working people and creators. It’s on the people who use the puppy and its cuteness to hide their heinous crimes. In fact, in war hiding your fighters behind the innocent is what’s known as a war crime.

This is not schoolwork. There is no such thing as “I’ve done the thing, I’ll get the grade.”

Life is chaotic and unpredictable. And the only way for good people to avoid pain (or at least excessive pain) is to look to themselves and their interests.

Do not — ever — whichever side of this you’re on, sit around bleating that you got laid off, or something bad happened and it’s not fair.

Fair is a market where they sell cattle.

There is no fair in life. There is doing what you can and fighting for survival.

Do that.

Your survival, your success is up to you.

Go do so. And keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.

Some of you are probably aware of the kerfuffle where Devon Eriksen was kicked out (on spurious grounds) from a contest he never entered because he said things the left does not like on X.

In the aftermath of this I became aware of how many of “our people” (defined as political positions to the right of Lenin) who are indie have no idea that a lot of writers/storytellers are on their side. There is the assumption, fostered by traditional publishing, that all writers and artists are “of course” left.

So people try to join leftist groups (which to be fair, are more numerous because people on the right aren’t very organized as a rule.) They try to keep their heads down and pretend to be what they’re not.

This is all wrong. We are the majority and it’s time to know we’re so, and we’re not alone. The preference falsification has to end. And readers have to know they can buy from writers and artists who don’t hate them.

I put up a challenge on Twitter called “Step out of the shadows” and promised to promote everyone not afraid to be seen associating with me (and Devon, by implication.)

So, here we are. Needless to say I haven’t read all these books, so look at samples, and exert the normal caution.

FROM CHRIS SCHNEE: Virtual Horizon (Thousand Tales Book 1)

The future’s getting better; the Game is here to help!

In 2036, college-bound Paul gets pushed into playing a video game called Thousand Tales. Its playful AI gamemaster, Ludo, wants a few favors from him and from his ambitious friend Linda. The reward? Immortality.

Ludo starts selling “uploading”, a process that puts a human mind permanently into the game world. In there you can shapeshift, fight monsters, cast spells, even fall in love. The “hero discount” Paul and Linda earn is tempting, but ends up separating them. One friend is left to play Thousand Tales on an ordinary video screen, while the other wakes up in its fantasy realm as one of the first full-time residents.

Ludo’s new recruit tries to turn Thousand Tales into a society that lets uploaded humans, AIs, and ordinary gamers work and play together. Meanwhile, there’s plenty to do in the real world: live on an ocean colony, train cyborg raccoons, and start a new space program.

Can Paul and Linda work together between the real and virtual worlds, to make sure no one vision of the future ruins the others?

“Virtual Horizon” is an upbeat novel of the future frontier. It’s part of the “LitRPG” or “GameLit” subgenre combining science fiction with the world of gaming. There’s much more to see in the Thousand Tales setting, and most of it can be read in any order, but this is the best starting point!

(Note to readers of “Thousand Tales: How We Won the Game”: This book is a massively rewritten and expanded story based on the core plotline, with a novel’s worth of new material.)

FROM MELISSA CAVE: Traitor Son: Book 1 of the Empire of the Stars

Do the promises of war ever survive the peace?

At the end of a brutal war, Remin of Andelin promised his knights that he would build them a good place, far from the carnage of war and the poisonous intrigues of the Empire. But the only thing more difficult than winning a war is securing the peace.

Welcome to the Andelin Valley, where the days are filled with the backbreaking labor of building a city and the nights bring monsters summoned in the waning days of the war. The Andelin devils dare even the sacred soil of the Empire, and it takes all of Remin’s military genius to keep his people alive. Yet even in the face of bandits, traitors, and the implacable hatred of the Emperor, the greatest danger to Remin might be his new wife.

Princess Ophele Agnephus. Daughter of the Stars, the Exile Princess, she is the daughter of the Divine Emperor who executed Remin’s family. Raised in secret and given in the place of her sister as a reward for Remin’s war victory, Ophele carries a secret that could topple the Empire: his family was innocent. But will she risk her life to reveal her family’s crimes?

A tale of love and redemption. As the summer bleeds on and the walls of their city rise, Remin finds himself drawn to Ophele, who shares so many of his dreams and sorrows. She could be everything: his love and his wife, the mother of his children, the foundation of a dynasty that will last forever. Or she could be the Emperor’s weapon, placed at his side to destroy everything he has left.

A marriage built in the ashes of betrayal. A land built on the ruins of a century of war. And a people determined to rise, with shattered trust and an unquenchable hope…if Ophele can only make them believe it is possible. Traitor Son is the story of a people broken by tragedy, a hero torn between his duty and his dreams, and a young woman who must find the courage to take her place at his side, before their own devils tear them apart.

Begin an unforgettable journey with Traitor Son, the first book of the Empire of the Stars. Perfect for fans of epic fantasy, knights and nobility, and tales of resilience and redemption.

FROM STEPHEN HUBBARD: A Conspiracy of Ravens (The Codex of Wretches & Kings Book 1)

Once and an age —

The precipice of war is never more than the width of a blade away. Now, when the legendary assassin known as the Black Rose has slaughtered Baron Dartris Gorsha and all who made up his house, then fled with the nobleman’s young daughter, three nations that knew tenuous peace prepare for the brutality of prolonged conflict.

Yet a new and mysterious danger has emerged. The Shrike arrives to offer mercy and vengeance in equal measure to all those with a role to play, bringing cryptic messages from his unnamed master. Underlying his threats is one simple command: Retrieve the daughter of Gorsha.

Three Ravens of Danot — Celnor, Derrigan, and Martyn — are called upon to protect the child, and they seek answers to troubling questions and motivations. Manipulated by their queen, feeling as no more than pawns in the history unfolding around them, they conspire to bring about what they believe is a necessary change to the balance of power.

The secrets of their own shadowed pasts serve to pull at their union, threatening to unmake their pact, and leading them to ask one simple question: Are there roads too entrenched in darkness to allow for redemption?

In a time of growing doom and dread, when long lost magic begins to find a new foothold, Wretches and Kings alike maneuver and scheme as the Codex is inscribed with the fell deeds and heroic sacrifice compelled by a conspiracy of Ravens.

FROM T. ALAN HONE AND JAMES BERNADIN: Secret Sky: The Young Universe.

The stars speak in a language of secrets, yet their stories cannot remain hidden forever.

Billions of years ago, on one of the first-ever Earths, a boy named Skylar will walk away from his home for the last time. Beset by dreams where he flies through the early universe as a sentient starship, he will never be safe if his secret gets out. His only chance to stay alive is to fall in with the same knights who destroyed his peasant village and live under the shadow of the king who sent them to exterminate Skylar’s people.

But powerful dreams have a way of shaping reality, and with each midnight flight across the cosmos, Skylar finds his world—and himself—changing. Magic is another thing which should only exist in dreams, yet Skylar has it—one more secret that needs keeping.

Against a waking life full of monsters, warriors, swords, sorcery, treasure, and ancient mysteries, Skylar has only one key for putting all the pieces together: the Secret Sky that haunts his sleeping mind.

FROM MELISSA OLTHOFF AND CASEY MOORES: Forlorn Hope (Blood and Armor Book 4)

After Nisti Khan’s return from her No Fail mission in Iran, she is celebrated as a savior of the young Kurdish Republic. However, their country has many enemies, and within weeks, they are on the brink of yet another war. When Syria invades, Nisti finds herself on the front lines of the most critical battle—defending the beating heart of their country, the capital city of Kirkuk.

After a judgement call goes wrong, Nisti finds herself banished from the battlefield and relegated to a staff job. To regain her place on the frontlines, she’ll have to prove herself once again.

A successful deep strike by the Second GOG Division should have ended the war, but the Syrian onslaught continues. As losses mount, Nisti must learn the source and take the battle to the enemy. But can she figure out who the real enemy is before her country falls?

FROM BECKY R. JONES: Academic Magic

Zoe O’Brien has found her dream job at a small liberal arts college teaching the history of Medieval witchcraft and magic. Academic life is exactly what she expected it to be…until the squirrels stop by to talk with her and her department chair and best friend turn out to be mages.

Zoe discovers a world of magic and power she never knew existed. She and other faculty mages race to stop a coven from raising a demon on the winter solstice while simultaneously grading piles of final exams and reading the tortured prose of undergraduate term papers. Can Zoe master her new-found powers in time?

FROM HALDANE B. DOYLE: Our Vitreous Womb: Book 1-4

“Utopia is wherever you were born to belong.”

After thirty thousand years we’ve forgotten your age of machines.
On this resource-stripped planet our people are rising.
We Ostrals are both one and many.
A superorganism of superior organisms.
A hypersymbiont beyond mere technology.

The continent of Ostrala is pregnant with possibility.
Our vitreous womb swells with uncountable souls.
Suffer not our culled, that we may reach perfection.
And welcome the stranger (or parts thereof) so we may always grow.

FROM CHRISTIAN WARREN FREED: Dreams of Winter: A Military Space Opera (The Forgotten Gods Tales Book 1)

“Steven Erikson meets George Martin!”

3000 years have passed since the time of the gods. Humanity spreads across the universe, raising a mighty empire. But all is not well. Unrest simmers. Darkness threatens.

Inquisitor Tolde Breed has been a loyal agent of the Inquisition for years. A man with a haunted past, he roots out heresy wherever he finds it, but when the Inquisitor General sends him to planet Crimeat to investigate a mysterious prison break Tolde begins to believe his life’s work has been in vain. The ghosts of his past have returned, and they brought the winds of war with them.
Can Tolde stop the universe’s greatest evil from returning or is it already too late?
Dreams of Winter is the explosive first volume of the Forgotten Gods Tales and a must read for military science fiction fans everywhere. Buy your copy today and enter a universe of magic, treachery, and desperation.

FROM JOHN LOCKESON: The Transcendent Ethics of Liberty: A concise guide to the universal ethics of human freedom and dignity

Your liberty is no illusion.
It is no gift of government or society.
It emerges from the very fabric of reality itself.
Embrace that which is rightfully yours, a magnificent birthright of liberty.


Derived directly from observations of reality, a transcendent, universal ethical framework of liberty based on the primary truth of absolute ownership of the self, the self’s actions, and the products of those actions is presented.

This work integrates many philosophical components, some old and familiar and some new and surprising, weaving them into a coherent tapestry that builds a comprehensive deductive case supporting broad human liberty bounded by limits of justice as the supreme universal ethic of sapient entities everywhere.

FROM DAN MELSON: Measure Of Adulthood (The Politics of Empire Book 4)

Kusaan del. It means ‘divine finger’

The Empire of Humanity is locked in a war for survival with the Fractal Demons. Years on, the dice are still tumbling. Billions have died and planets have been destroyed. Meanwhile, an old loose end has resurfaced and forced Grace to confront a mistake from her teenage years – her son by a long-dead lover has lost his adulthood, and only Grace can save him from exile.

But the Fractal Demons initiate a new strategy, and are starting to turn the tide in their favor. Grace is unlucky enough to be assigned to deal with one of their first strikes under the new strategy, and she’s unable to prevent several million deaths.

But she’s learned enough to master her problems, both as the new mother of a two hundred year old son, and as one of those defending the masses of the Empire from assault by the demons. She has grown from her origins, and just because she seems to have a knack for attracting trouble doesn’t mean she can’t handle it. When the divine finger points at her, she steps up to deal with it.

More tomorrow night. And if you wish to send a book now, feel free. Step out of the shadows: bookpimping at outlook.com

I’ve been trying to explain how I feel with what’s happening in the country, and with what Doge is doing…

Beyond becoming addicted to the Doge site… which is sad and pathetic, but then you guys knew that. I mean, that I’m at severe risk of becoming addicted.

But there is a feeling behind all this, and I finally pinned it. It’s the feeling when the wall came down in Berlin.

I don’t think I can fully explain how amazing, wonderful, shocking and maybe a little scary it was to those of you born and raised after the fall of the wall. or even to those of you who were in elementary school at the end of the cold war.

For me, for my generation, particularly those of us who grew up in Europe (which includes any number of you guys who grew up in military bases) there was the overwhelming certainty at any moment the whole thing would go hot, and we’d have maybe a second to kiss our asses goodbye before being vaporized.

The idea/feel was not just that the countries behind the iron curtain were as powerful as the US (let’s not pretend Europe made any kind of contribution to this scariness) but also were secretly more powerful and better organized.

We knew they were more ruthless. We knew people died trying to climb the wall from East to west, because the communists would gun them down with no mercy: Men, women, children, babes in arms.

And then one day we woke up to images of the wall being torn down. Not by armies, not by professionals, but by members of the public who had had about enough. After all the rebellions that failed, after all the despair, common people on the street were just destroying this symbol of oppression with mallets, chisels, hammers, crow bars, and at the end of the process, bare hands.

And then they took their ladas and trabants, their piece of sh*t Eastern block cars, and they drove them as far as they could, which in many cases meant till they hit the sea in Portugal. then they abandoned to rot by the road side, and went off to be free.

And nothing happened. The nukes did not fly. The world did not end. (For that matter, the commies embedded in the institutions throughout the west didn’t change, either.)

Now I’m watching the impenetrable walls of the deep state broached and the stuff that’s coming out…. well….

It seems for decades, for perhaps all of my life, we’ve been financing the left. We, the American taxpayers.

For decades, it seemed like the left had all this money, and we assumed they were well-financed by the big figures of culture, by people like Soros, by evil dictators like Putin and Winnie the Xi. And we on the right, shut out of the cultural institutions and the well-paying gigs, had nothing to do and nowhere to go, so we grimly gritted our teeth and resigned ourselves to losing.

Only we didn’t. Despite the massive disparity, once social media became available, once blogs became a thing, even impaired, held down, we started to fight back. And we started to win.

And now here we are, and the illusion of the big perfectly financed enemy is coming apart before our eyes.

So we can sit here and run out the world’s stock of popcorn. or we can … go at the wall with mallets, with hammers, with our bare hands.

Look, each his own. My own fight is in the arts and culture. The illusion that all writers are leftist, that science fiction is inherently leftist still holds.

In the aftermath of Devon Eriksen being kicked out of a contest he hadn’t entered, because they found out he’s a vocal libertarian on X, (it didn’t go as they expected. Their other finalists dropped out in protest.) Since I’m pretty isolated and self-sufficient, and doing things backwards and sideways as I usually do, I didn’t notice till I read indie writers discussing this that many of them had joined the lefty indie writer organizations, and thought they were all alone.

That is so many levels of wrong. Of course, yes, there aren’t many organizations on the right, because the individualists, reliably fail to organize. But there are a ton of us to the right of Lenin. And we are not afraid. Or at least a lot of us are no longer afraid.

The mechanism that held us mute, the tradpub houses ability to blackmail anyone who spoke against the lefty pet causes, no longer operates. We grew wings and can fly solo.

So there is no reason to submit to the dying — and minority, without government cash — lefty culture.

Being me, I did something that’s probably backward and sideways, as usual: I dared other writers on twitter who aren’t ashamed to be seen with the freedom lovers, to come out of the shadows and send me their books to promote.

Which is why this blog is going to have a nightly promo post for at least a week, and it might be more. I have plans in the works for a dedicated site for the likes of us, with a query mechanism of “I like x, what should I read next?” That has been on the backburner because I can no longer (I was okay at it 40 years ago) program. But now Charlie is close enough to visit and talk to, maybe we can make it go. It’s worth a try. Even if it’s not going to be instant. So, you know, the mallet is on the way, but right now I have this nail-file.

That’s what I can do right now to give trouble to what The Saint (of the books) would call “the unrightenous.” Right now, it’s what occurs to me to start pulling out bits of wall. I’m sure other things will come to mind, as we go. After all, i can’t sit forever on the sofa, eating popcorn.

And you? What can you do? Is there a way you can start tearing down the wall of the left’s perceived dominance of culture — or anything else? Any other field that’s utterly controlled by the left. Signal to others they’re not alone. Help the people who don’t hate us and don’t want our country destroyed.

Where you are, is there anything you can do to signal to people to the right of Lenin that they’re not alone? The faster the rotten edifice collapses, the faster we can drive for freedom and start to recover.

I’m not you. I don’t know what you see or what you can do.

So– where you are, is there a mallet you can grab? A crowbar? An ice-pick? A nail file?

It’s time. Find a place to start hammering.

Don’t endanger yourself and others. For some of you, to keep your jobs, what you can do might be really small or really subtle. It’s still worth doing. Every piece that is scraped off the wall makes the rest easier to topple. Be creative. The promo posts are honestly win win, and yet the more people know they’re not alone, the more people know there are writers who don’t hate them, the faster the left will be denied even the power they retain.

And you see, we’re at a point a lot of little pushes might do it.

I know this wasn’t said by a good character, and yet it’s true: “Tis the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil.”

At this point the vaunted power of the left, their massive advantage are just that: a painted devil and not real.

Grab a mallet, grab a nail file, grab a plastic spoon, and start helping tear the monstrous wall down. Help set us free.

It’s time. Go.

The Special Edition Book Promo – It Begins!

Today’s edition of book promo and vignettes begins what will probably be a book promo a night week. There is a reason for this.

Some of you are probably aware of the kerfuffle where Devon Eriksen was kicked out (on spurious grounds) from a contest he never entered because he (being libertarian) is obviously a “fascist”. The truth is Devon is very free with his opinions on X and even though I don’t always agree with him (I don’t always agree with me a week later, either) he’s not even remotely fascistic, and is as far as an indie writing community goes a good neighbor and helpful.

In the aftermath, a lot of writers rallied around him, which is great, but I was reading a lot of the xeets and became aware of how isolated most indie authors to the right of Lenin were. The truth is, guys, that the aphorism is correct: the individualists fail to organize. Over and over and over again.

In a way, Indie is made for us, which is what I realized a mere five years after taking that path — look, I’m slow — because we can write whatever we want without being throttled by publishers (legitimately for once) worried about how strange our next book is, or whether it follows the current trends or the career path they envisioned for us.

But while we are more likely to jump with both feet into being individualistic and pursuing our own thing and thereby probably could sell more, we’re also really bad at forming groups and connections.

Look, Devon and I don’t need it that much — not really, though I’ll link both of us in the promo below because why not — Devon because he has a crack promo team, and I because I’ve been around enough most people have at least heard of me.

Oh, and the weird contest which I’m not even going to name, is not a thing really. They were barely a thing before, and I think this finished making their appeal even more… coff … selective.

However, the picture I got of write-side indie writers was that of dismal little hamsters hiding in the bigger, louder (they’re always gregarious okay?) groups of leftist indies, confused and not even figuring out how to make their books known without revealing their politics and being cancelled.

I’m sorry if that picture is insulting. It’s not meant to be. I spent most of my trad-pub career (until I was only being published by Baen) being a furtive hamster in a world of large, loud dinosaurs.

As with evolution, we know how that story ends. The hamsters won. (Well, tiny mammals anyway.) However it took an asteroid and a long, long time.

Fortunately for us, right now, there’s no reason it should take this long. Why? Because we don’t have to be where the dinos are. And I know synergistic promotion works. Years ago, I had friends who all echoed their releases. And that made a huge difference in sales.

So I posted on X asking anyone who wasn’t afraid to associate with the likes of us to send me a link to their book. As you can imagine, we got a few.

Since I’ve noticed more than about 10 books tend to get readers to glaze over and not buy, I’m going to keep it to 10 and do them in the evenings until they’re done… unless we get more.

Today’s is combined with the regular promo post, so you guys can have your vignettes.

TWO NOTES:

1- I’m not filtering these books as much as I do the ones on Sunday, where if I don’t like your face I reserve the right not to publicize you, if I don’t like your cover, I reserve the right not to publicize you, if your book strikes as wrong, I reserve the right not to publicize you.
In this case, I said the only condition was that you not be ashamed of associating with Devon and I and (of course) this blog. So I stand by that, and you know I’ll get some try-ons. That’s fine. THIS ONE TIME.

2- If you’re new to these promos, you know the people who show up here are also to the right of Lenin, or at least not afraid of being seen with us. Look them up, on X, and perhaps consider echoing their releases and bolstering them a bit. Whether you want to get cozy and form more of a community, it’s your call, not mine.

Okay, below is the regular heading/patter of the Sunday promo post. Note, that yes, I get a kickback from Amazon for these links. (It’s a lot of boring work to get them up, so I earn it. And it’s free for the writers.) And also that there’s an email address to send promo to in the future (if you’re new here.) There’s also a vignette challenge at the end.

Oh and no, I didn’t read all of these books. So, kindly exert the normal caution of dowloading a sample and reading before buying. Or not. It’s your choice.

It’s time to “give” money to people who DON’T hate us.

For the times, they are achanging….

Let’s go.

Book Promo (the normal weekly patter.)

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 DEVON ERIKSEN: Theft of Fire: Orbital Space #1

At the frozen edge of the solar system lies a hidden treasure which could spell their fortune or their destruction—but only if they survive each other first.

Marcus Warnoc has a little problem. His asteroid mining ship—his inheritance, his livelihood, and his home—has been hijacked by a pint-sized corporate heiress with enough blackmail material to sink him for good, a secret mission she won’t tell him about, and enough courage to get them both killed. She may have him dead to rights, but if he doesn’t turn the tables on this spoiled Martian snob, he’ll be dead, period. He’s not giving up without a fight.

He has a plan.

Miranda Foxgrove has the opportunity of a lifetime almost within her grasp if she can reach it. Her stolen spacecraft came with a stubborn, resourceful captain who refuses to cooperate—but he’s one of the few men alive who can snatch an unimaginable treasure from beneath the muzzles of countless railguns. And if this foulmouthed Belter thug doesn’t want to cooperate, she’ll find a way to force him. She’s come too far to give up now.

She has a plan.

They’re about to find out that a plan is a list of things that won’t happen.

Order Devon Eriksen’s Theft of Fire: Orbital Space #1 today!

FROM MARY CATELLI: Dragon Slayer

The dragon must die. It haunts the land and strikes with fire and death without warning.

Prince Baudouin knows the perils, and how other knights have perish. Still, he is confident that he can slay the dragon. All he has to do is forge through the burnt wasteland about its mountain, and slay it.

All.

FROM MACKEY CHANDLER: Family Law

People love easily. Look at most of your relatives or coworkers. How lovable are they? Really? Yet most have mates and children. The vast majority are still invited to family gatherings and their relatives will speak to them.

Many have pets to which they are devoted. Some even call them their fur-babies. Is your dog or cat or parakeet property or family? Not in law but in your heart? Can a pet really love you back? Or is it a different affection? Are you not kind to those who feed and shelter you? But what if your dog could talk back? Would your cat speak to you kindly?

How much more complicated might it be if we meet really intelligent species not human? How would we treat these ‘people’ in feathers or fur? Perhaps a more difficult question is: How would they treat us? Are we that lovable?

When society and the law decide these sort of questions must be answered it is usually because someone disapproves of your choices. Today it may be a cat named in a will or a contest for custody of a dog. People are usually happy living the way they want until conflict is forced upon them.

What if the furry fellow in question has his own law? And is quite articulate in explaining his choices. Can a Human adopt such an alien? Can such an intelligent alien adopt a human? Should they?

Of course if the furry alien in question is smart enough to fly spaceships, and happens to be similar in size and disposition to a mature Grizzly bear, wisdom calls for a certain delicacy in telling him no…

The “April” series of books works from an earlier time toward merging with the “Family Law” series.

FROM COLIN GLASSLEY: The Cure of All Disease (Mark DeSilva Adventure)

July 21, 2021 – World-wide pandemic is raging. Mark DeSilva is on a vacation, for the first time in more than a year, with a beautiful marine biologist who goes by the name Neon.

The vacation is over almost before it starts. Mark is given a new assignment: steal the laptop computer of a dead Chinese scientist. Soon Mark and Neon are on the run from Chinese Triads and Russian mercenaries; directed by one of the richest men on Earth.

The entire world is locked down but that isn’t stopping the criminals who are chasing after them. Does the laptop contain the cure for the pandemic? Or something far more sinister.

FROM J. M. ANJEWIERDEN: Mech Bunny

Humans won the war against the Blues, thanks in large part to the neural link they stole from the aliens. Few people can use it properly, though, and anyone with the right kind of brain gets conscripted immediately — even ordinary high school kids.
All Sophie wanted to do was be a dancer. She definitely hadn’t planned on piloting a sixty-foot ANGEL mech with only a cranky rabbit mechanic to talk to, or fighting the genetically engineered foxes and wolves that had turned on the humans once the aliens were gone.
She’s lost count of the battlefields she’s seen, but this next one is the worst yet. Ordered to defend a crucial forward operating base on a volcanic planet, forces are stretched thin, so she’ll have only infantry and artillery support, no other ANGELs.
One girl, one rabbit, and one giant robot up against creatures designed to be relentless soldiers.
Creatures who have mechs of their own.
Great.

FROM S. KIRK PIERZCHALA: Echoes Through Distant Glass: Beyond Cascadia: One

When cyber security defender Owen Dylan MacIntyre is forced from behind his computer screen to investigate a potential terror threat to the Pacific Northwest, he gets more than he bargains for when he crosses paths with the unpredictable and tragic figure of Tomás Chen-Diaz and the latter’s brother, the enigmatic Francisco.

A wealthy global plutocrat, Francisco is also a brilliant amateur biotech scientist with many powerful associates and a few dark family secrets—secrets he’s ready to kill over to keep hidden.

Drawn into Chen-Diaz’ web of international conspiracies, MacIntyre finds his skills tested to the limit as he’s trapped in a world where science and technology invade the most sacred realms of the human heart and soul…a world where he’ll confront some uncomfortable truths about himself…

…if he survives.

Book One of the Beyond Cascadia series, Echoes Through Distant Glass deftly weaves timeless themes of humanity and a range of relevant geo-political and bioethics issues into a memorable cyberpunk techno thriller drama. The vivid prose, haunting imagery and unforgettable characters will linger with the reader long after the thought-provoking and emotional conclusion.

FROM GREGORY MICHAEL: Chloe’s Kingdom: The Koin Vault Heist

Chloe Espinoza is a wild-haired petty thief aboard the Kingdom, a drifting city spaceship. Once rich but now poor, Chloe is determined to break free from the Honeycombs and return to her life in the Gardens. Only one problem: she hardly has enough koin for a burrito, making a lavish apartment seem as distant as the stars. All that might change, however, when Chloe is offered a heist that could make her unimaginably rich. But she can’t break into the impenetrable Koin Vault alone…

A young mastermind who can’t let go of her past.

A mathematical genius in desperate need of koin.

A privileged kid from the Gardens with a debt to pay.

A bartender who’s serving revenge.

A mischievous raccoon with a bottomless appetite.

A battered soul who’s been wronged by the council.

Gone are the days of stealing snacks. Chloe’s crew is aiming for the ultimate prize: the Koin Vault. Their plan? To rob the Treasury and bring down the corrupt council. But in a game where the stakes are jail or death, every move could be their last.

A thrilling Young Adult Science Fiction Heist novel set in the unforgiving void of outer space, perfect for fans of ‘Six of Crows’ by Leigh Bardugo and ‘Artemis’ by Andy Weir.

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

For four centuries, the Empire of the Sun and Moon has been torn apart by war as its samurai Clans fight for the empty throne of the Emperors. The Gray Wolf Clan is one of only six Clans remaining, but faces a deadly threat from the more powerful and ruthless Jade Dragon Clan. Yet the greatest threat to the Empire is not the bloody ambitions of its samurai. The shadowy followers of the Cult of the Mask, worshippers of foreign demons, burrow through the Empire’s society like worms in rotten meat, growing in power year by year. As battles rage and conspiracies fester, the fate of the Empire will turn on the actions of a handful of samurai. The young lord Ookami Akira, trained by monks to be a master of war but desperately ignorant of the Empire’s civilization, must learn to be the ruler of the Gray Wolf Clan or he and his people will perish. Kuroi Kaede, a naïve girl forced into an unwilling marriage to Akira, must master the courts if she is to survive. The lowly magistrate Kobayashi Mitsui is the only one in the Empire who recognizes the true scale of the threat from the Cult of the Mask. And the murderous wandering swordsman Kenji may hold the fate of all in his blood-stained hands…

FROM JARED N. MICHAUD: The Vale of Mysteries (The Epimyth)

“If They succeed in eradicating the deep myths, that act obliterates our identity and reduces us to nothing more than chattel.”

Nate Brightstar, a sojourner in the universe of Energematrice6, has already defeated an enemy the rest of the Aurora galaxy thought invincible. Neither that nor piercing the Vale of Mysteries can stop reality from dropping trouble on him-from either the Aurora galaxy or the troubled Milky Way.

It turns out, the battle against lies and false history may be harder than fighting physical enemies, especially as it becomes obvious that somebody powerful still has it out for him. Even more important, how can Nate come to terms with his identity when the present keeps slapping him in the face with what he used to be…or perhaps still is. Nate faces the most difficult question of his life:

“What reason could there be for one such as him?”

BECAUSE HE ONLY HAS PAPERBACK: He sent this link where you can read a sample.

FROM SARAH D’ALMEIDA (eh!): Death of a Musketeer (The Musketeer’s Mysteries Book 1)

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.

THE REST OF YOU AREN’T FORGOTTEN! I’ll continue with promo posts tomorrow night, Tuesday night, and so on. (And for future ones I’m not giving space to Devon and I ;) ) Ten at a time! We’ll get there.

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: PURRING.

Reality is a horrible foe to fight. You can delay it for a bit, but it always wins.

Have you ever tried standing on one foot? I do it on the regular when I put my jeans or socks on. And it’s fine. However, if I try standing on a foot for more than two minutes or so… well, I can. It’s not a big deal really. Except every minute it gets a little harder, and eventually the other foot is going to come down on the floor.

The left has been standing on one foot since 1991, when the Soviet Union cracked wide open and was proven to be not just a paper tiger, but to have always been a rotten, miserable, impoverished kleptocracy no better and in some ways markedly worse than similar kleptocracies in South America and Africa.

Think about it. Their entire world view, their entire expectation of the future was predicated on the idea that eventually communism won because it was simply a superior system. Being the better system — a system that was better for everyone, even, ultimately, those who might think they’re hurt by its earliest imposition — justified everything done to bring it about. You know “the end justifies the means.”

In their case, they were both justified by the fact that communism’s win was inevitable and by the fact that it was so wonderful, so perfect.

If you are a kid — which these days (checks calendars) I define as 45 or younger — you probably aren’t aware of how wonderful the Soviet Union was supposed to be. Since the whole sewer cover was lifted when you were in your teens, you probably don’t remember all the argle bargle demanding that “capitalism” justify itself against a system that supposedly didn’t have unemployment, poverty or even boredom at your work, or in some views even sexual jealousy. It was supposed to be the perfect system, under which all your needs were met, and you were never frustrated or upset or even vaguely thwarted. “From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs.”

You know that never worked. And you didn’t have college professors lecturing you with a superior air about how the command economy would of course — through no waste, no duplication of effort — bring this about.

I mean, if you’re young enough you probably don’t know what a pit of horrors the Soviet Union was, or you think they are all lies, or whatever. Or you are ready to shriek “that isn’t real communism”.

But the left as a whole — and even those who didn’t consider themselves communists considered themselves as socialists which (to quote from my 11th grade history book and also for a while the Portuguese constitution) was a society on the way to communism — had thought communism was inevitable, that ultimately we’d all be communist. And that this would be a good thing. Even those who insisted they were not communist, or who thought perhaps that Russia was not the best place to implement communism, or whatever were weirdly protective towards Russia and the USSR. (Partly because the “internationalism” of communism was always actually thinly disguised Russian nationalism.) In their heart of hearts they knew Russia was wonderful and made their point for them.

And then the dream collapsed. for about a year they seemed lost, and then they regrouped.

And yes, yes, part of this was hiding their communism behind a bunch of other worth causes, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights, anti-racism. The clue that these are masks worn by traumatized, defrocked communists is that the solution for every possible problem is always “more communism” even when they don’t call it that. I mean, seriously, go read the New Green Deal. You don’t have to scrape that green very hard to see the communist red beneath.

But none of those — it turns out — would even have taken without the US government pouring massive amounts of money into them all over the world.

For a while it all seemed to work. We seemed to be besieged by all these crazy, divisive causes which all flourished, found adherents, and all really were ultimately communism.

Except you didn’t have to look very hard — and remember, I always look, because I’m naturally a depressive, and before I jump off that bridge I want to make sure it’s not my mind playing tricks and that everything is actually lost — to see none of it was actually working.

Take environmentalism, in its “antropogenic global warming” which was not only supported with massive amounts of money (some of it obtained by blackmailing companies) but also with a seamless wall of propaganda so impenetrable that science fiction writers probably unwittingly and just because it’s everywhere (I don’t know maybe I should look for their names in the USAID site) couldn’t write the future without claiming that you know, in a hundred years Florida would be under water. And yet…. and yet, they keep having to change their name like a poorly run Chinese restaurant. Global Warming became Climate Change which became Severe Weather Events which…. well, is dissolving before our very eyes, even before their money was yanked.

I mean, the man and woman on the street couldn’t give two farts in a hurricane for the climate bs, and instead were concerned with things like illegal aliens.

At some point in the far distant future, someone with a lot more data points than we have will construct a perfect thesis of how the left’s wheels came off.

Was it the very fact they poured mad money into the mass media to turn them into propaganda organs that in turn brought about the replacement of the corrupt market with innovative markets, facilitated by the internet?

Because let’s face it, even before the internet Rush had become a major success and a force to be reckoned with in the information market, using an outdated not to say quaint means of communication.

Perhaps what drove us to the internet in search of information, in the disturbing turmoil post 2000 election and 9/11 was that sense that our streams of information were corrupted? Perhaps humans sense and crave accurate information?

(I like to point out that indie books have enough drawbacks they’d never have made it if our publishing industry hadn’t been in the process of committing suicide by ignoring the customers by the time indie became possible.)

As alternative means of communication became available, like a person standing on one foot, the left had to devote more and more effort to keeping the status quo, to keeping everything still, frozen in time.

Dorothy Grant made a good point about fashion yesterday. I hadn’t noticed because I’m older than she is and the last time I was passionately interested in fashion was the mid eighties, before kids and trying to be a writer took all my time away. (Well, trying to have kids actually. The kids took a while.) But she’s right. I have clothes form the mid nineties (I have been finding boxes not unpacked since we moved from Manitou Springs) which except for the fact that due to thyroid follies I’m double the size I was then I could wear to the next con without anyone saying “Wow, that’s retro.” As a student of fashion through time (because I write historical) that just AIN’T NORMAL.

And the same is true in almost everything, except that movies and TV and literature have gotten more and more preachy.

Because the effort to keep the culture frozen in amber has driven away all creatives or silenced them. In fact, no one was allowed to stir the pot in any realm, and if you tried you’d find yourself cancelled.

Anyone creative enough to have startlingly new thoughts sooner or later stumbled onto the truth that what we were being sold was utterly inauthentic. (Though even I had no idea it was being financed on this scale.) And then they became dangerous. And had to be pushed out.

Which eventually, these last four years became openly totalitarian attempts at thought suppression and speech procession, culminating with the Biden Junta trying to stamp out “disinformation” which is an old communist term for that which isn’t false but which disrupts the left’s narrative.

It didn’t work. Perhaps nothing could.

And so here we are. Will there be steps backwards? There might be. But my guess, and if you guys remember I’ve been saying this since before the election, is that they can’t actually force the clock back anymore than they could keep us standing still.

Reality is a bitch. Your other foot will drop towards the floor.

And no matter how much you try to keep society frozen in amber circa 1987 or so, reality will keep moving on, enabled by tech, and exposing the lies of the past, revealing the tawdry nature of would-be tyrants, and the fact they have nothing any of us want, and that all their offerings are candy-coated poison.

In the end, for all their attempts to stop the future, all they can manage is to reveal themselves for the pre-historic beasts they are.

Frozen in amber.