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

HEY, YES, I’M GOING TO SELF PROMOTE. AHEM:

FROM SARAH A. HOYT, COMING OUT THIS TUESDAY: No Man’s Land: Volume 2 (Chronicles of Lost Elly)

No Man’s Land

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

Volume 2

Skip thought he’d figured out the rules of survival on Elly.

He was wrong.

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

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

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

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

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

BUY THE BOOKS OR I’LL CONTINUE TO MAKE YOU LISTEN TO CLANKER-MADE MUSIC: Skip Hayden’s No Man’s Land

FROM PAM UPHOFF: Outer Tiers (Chronicles of the Fall Book 18)

And posted to an Outer Tier World with an orphaned guardian’s store–the official name of the oft rumored “Doomsday Cubes” so popular in cheesy spy movies.

He hadn’t counted on children in danger, buying a hundred race horses, or running head on into a corrupt colony government. But with newly acquired sidekicks, it’s full speed ahead to save an entire World as Plagues and Invasions hit the entirety of the Three Part Alliance!

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

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

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

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

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

FROM ROBERT MULLIN: Forsake Not the Gods: Book Two of The Wells of the Worlds

For centuries, the ancient gateway between worlds has been kept a carefully guarded secret from the vampiric gods of the gray lands. But when its existence is revealed, it’s only a matter of time before the unthinkable happens and the exiled powers are unleashed upon the cosmos.

Honor and revenge, hope and despair, duty and sacrifice all meet at the crossroads of destiny in this thrilling sequel to Bid the Gods Arise.

Forsake Not the Gods is the second novel in The Wells of the Worlds, a dark sci fi fantasy series for adults and new adults

FROM HOLLY LEROY: Hostile Earth (Hostile Earth Series Book 1)

Terra Vonn is fighting to survive in a destroyed world, surrounded by unspeakable horror . . . and things are about to get much worse. After witnessing the vicious murder of her mother, Terra has a singular focus—exacting revenge on the killers. But before she can complete her plans, savagery intervenes and she is cast alone into a brutal post-apocalyptic world. As she trails the men south through a land filled with cannibalistic criminals, slave traders, and lunatics, the hunter becomes the hunted. Terra quickly learns that she is neither as tough nor as brave as she thinks she is. Worse, she may be the only one who stands between what little remains of civilization and destruction

FROM JOHN BAILEY: By Degrees: From Drift to Discipline in One Man’s Life

Raised in a house where even the thermostat testified to control, a boy learns to perform obedience without ever growing a spine of his own. Freedom at college exposes the hollowness beneath the manners, and a hard fall sends him home in shame, face to face with parents who are out of words and patience.

What follows isn’t a miracle turnaround but a painstaking rebuild: community college instead of prestige, small habits instead of grand vows, showing up before the fire starts. Momentum comes one ordinary decision at a time.

Work begins on the sales floor of a computer store, where he’s a terrible closer but a natural fixer; skills and empathy take root that no quota can measure. That stubborn, useful competence opens the door to a first real IT job—and to a perilous climb that wins praise while slowly costs him his marriage, his health, and his peace.

Then the diagnosis drops, and later—when he thinks he’s finally back on his feet—the layoff. Illness and unemployment strip away the old measures of worth, forcing him to find identity in endurance, honest community, and a quiet faith that becomes a lifeline. Scraping back is anything but cinematic, yet meaning returns in service, in telling the truth, and in the work of another ordinary day.

By Degrees is a first-person novel about learning to live without borrowed scaffolding—about failure, effort, and the kind of resilience built not in leaps, but by steady, imperfect steps.

FROM CAROLINE FURLONG: Theophany

Ten years ago the Savients took over Niban, forcing the independent inhabitants into poverty and despair. Bass White saw the careless cruelty of the Savients kill his mother and his father. When a resistance cell is discovered in his city bloc, the Savients seek to make everyone pay.

With his wife Amie, Bass races into the caverns to escape the Savients’ brutal enforcers: the Atrasai. The couple barely make it to the limits of known territory outside their underground city, however, before the Atrasai catch up with them. It would take a miracle to save them…

…or a combat medic robot.

Join Bass and Amie in this sci-fi story of healing, hope, and wonder. After a decade of fear and pain, even a little light can bring out the best in man and machine. But will the best be enough to heal?

BY FREDERIC BROWN, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: The Screaming Mimi (Annotated): The classic pulp serial killer mystery

A drunken Irishman named Sweeney — well, to be fair, he was only five-eighths Irish, and only three-quarters drunk — made a resolution. Sticking to it took him through murder, and blood, and tracking down a sculptor on the far side of nowhere, and delivered him right up to the doorstep of a serial killer!

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

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Escape Velocity

An optimistic collection of six stories revolving around leaving Earth, or living (and making a living) further out in the solar system.

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 NATHAN C. BRINDLE: An American in Iya (Timelines Universe Book 8

Over 200 years ago, a Plague overran the world, and 9 out of 10 human beings died.

In a small Japanese village on Shikoku, a group of American tourists found themselves stranded — and in grave danger of being murdered, merely for the sin of being 外人 (gaijin).

Luckily for them, their Japanese hosts took pity on their plight, and took them in as their own.

This is the story of their descendants — who still, more than anything, wish only someday to go home. That is . . .

. . . if they still have a home to return to.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Space Race Trilogy Omnibus: Time Slips, The Secret of Pad 34, Beach House on the Moon, Plus two exclusive new essays

All three books of the Space Race Trilogy, now together with two exclusive new essays.

Time Slips

What if our most treasured verities were in fact wrong?

To be selected for Project Mercury and be one of America’s first astronauts was a dream come true for test pilot Deke Slayton. But fellow Mercury astronaut Al Shepard kept telling old stories from his native New England, tales of monstrous entities like Cthulhu and Yog Sothoth. Earlier generations had viewed them as demons, but might they in fact be aliens, here long before humanity?

Soon Deke discovers evidence that something is watching the US space program. Something that begrudges humanity the stars and would put a ceiling on human attainment. Something that can manipulate time itself.

HP Lovecraft wrote that we dwell on a placid island of ignorance amidst the dark ocean of infinity, and that we were not meant to travel far.

What might the US space program have looked like in a cosmos filled with hostile eldritch entities? Would they notice us as playthings? Or as a nuisance to be dealt with?

The Secret of Pad 34

Who would put a ceiling on humanity’s expansion into space?

That’s what Gus Grissom wants to know. While fishing offshore from Cape Canaveral, he glimpses a mysterious undersea city of unearthly geometries, marked with a strange three-armed cross symbol.

His efforts to research it bring him veiled threats from strangers at his door. Trouble blights an exemplary career. However, Gus refuses to be cowed into silence, and pursues every lead he can find.

HP Lovecraft wrote that we live on a placid island of ignorance and were not meant to travel far. This is the Space Race in a world where the Soviet Union is not our only adversary.

Beach House on the Moon

The Moon is a dead world, airless and desolate. Emmaline Waite has known this fact since childhood, when she watched the Apollo landings.

But here she sits on the shores of the Sea of Tranquillity, looking up at the gibbous Earth as the waves roll in. What madness can this be?

She gets no time to contemplate that question, for she is not alone. She is about to enter a realm of love and fear, of mind-bending secrets that change her understanding of human history, and of self-sacrifice.

Her life will never be the same.

Miskatonic University in the Cold War and Contemporary Era

How would H.P. Lovecraft’s famous fictional institution of higher education have developed through the second half of the Twentieth Century and into the Twenty-first?

Space: Gernsbeck vs. Lovecraft

A look at the fundamental worldviews underlying the approaches of Hugo Gernsbeck and H.P. Lovecraft to the portrayal of outer space, aliens, and space travel.

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: Kick

Withe the book pimping email, and need to dress and go to church, so book promo after.

Meanwhile, OH MY GOSH, GUYS! THANK YOU:

And thank you, whoever you are who wrote this review. My head is so swollen I go through doors sideways now. This might be the BEST review of my lifetime:

And while I go dress and to church, yeah, yeah, I beat the clankers into a futuristic tavern video and….

People have been baffled as to why Jimmy Kimmel didn’t just apologize and avoid being fired. Also why a lot of the left is doubling down on what’s obviously the 20% side of an 80-20 issue, like…. Oh, standing for illegal immigration. or the 10 side of a 10-90 issue, like outright standing for more criminality.

What you’re failing to understand is that there is a strategy to it. It’s a defective strategy that no longer works, but it was such a good move for so long that it got deep-embedded in the left’s culture and they no longer know the reasons behind the action. They just do it because it always worked before.

At the same time that people were coining “Get woke, go broke” to show that wokeness was not in fact a bottom-up movement, I was coining “Roll left and die” but it actually should be more appropriately named “Roll left TO die.”

They’re not the same thing, but since they happened at the same time they’ve gotten conflated and the first kind of massively took over, because it’s a caution.

Roll left to die is more a description of what I saw happen over and over, primarily n publishing.

Someone who was hard left would take over a magazine. Over the course of his (or more commonly her) tenure, the magazine would decline to the point of dying. Just on the point of death, the person in charge would roll even harder left. The magazine would, of course, go down in flames. BUT before the ashes had cooled, this person would be offered a bigger, better job, with a bigger, better magazine. Where the process repeated.

This was also true of writers whose career was dying. Make sure your next book is redder than Mao’s Red Book, and even though it sells almost nothing, people will line up to give you big advances/support your future endeavors.

Because I don’t like things that make no sense, I analyzed the phenomenon and realized while it was a bad strategy for magazines/institutions, it was a great individual career strategy. How?

Well, the first thing you have to understand is that the left doesn’t give a d*mn about “the thing” whatever “the thing is”: science, industry, endeavor, institution, art. They don’t care about “the thing” that they just took over. The only thing they care about now and forever is revolution.

Add to that that by the fourth generation of dominating certain fields and hiring only on ideological compliance ALL OF THEM ARE ARRANT INCOMPETENTS.

Sure, sometimes, by accident, they find one of their true believers who has talent and sometimes even genius. But they tend to destroy those, because well, because their ideology views envy as a cardinal virtue. Be too talented and suddenly there will be rape accusations, or someone will have heard you mutter a slur, or… (These might even be true. As we learned this last week, the left are the most amoral sh*theads in existence. They don’t even know what morality is and can’t find it with two hands and a seeing eye dog.)

So the fact that you just destroyed the magazine/enterprise/institution doesn’t matter to them. They do that all the time themselves, often without meaning to. What matters is that before the thing died, you virtue signaled as hard as you could to the left.

That means that they MUST support you and give you a bigger position. They can’t allow people to think you might get fired for being hard left. So they have to do whatever they can to make you BIGGER.

This strategy worked for close on to a 100 years which is why people did the roll left to die as hard as they could.

Signs it was breaking down came when people like Keith Olberman or Don Le Lemon started having to “go to vlogging from their basement” to obviously no attention whatsoever.

And now a days it’s a crap shoot whether rolling left to die will get you more money, or just ignored.

But people like Kimmel whose career was dying anyway instinctively do it, because it worked so well so long that it just became “the thing to do” like some sort of deranged ritual.

They do it because the strategy solidified into ritual. And because they don’t know what else to do.

This btw explains the Biden administration too. Everything they did was a disaster and they knew it, so they rolled left as hard as they could, so they’d be seen as martyrs of the revolution and have cushy jobs/donations after. The fact that the Biden library is not getting funded at all and that Kamala is giving up on political — crazy cakes — aspirations, like governor of California, tells you it’s not working there either.

However, watch for it to happen more. The dying dinosaur rolls hard left to die.

Because its walnut-sized brain tells it that it always worked before!

Before you freak out, not I’m not doing a “both sides” thing and I’ll confess to more than a bit of glee at seeing Kimmel banished to the outer darkness where there will be gnashing of teeth and pathetic walking around the streets trying to get passerbyes to agree with him. Okay, fine, that’s Don le Lemon, but still. (But he was intending to retire. Yeah, yeah, more on that later.)

But–

Yes, I do know he outright lied, and that his shtick as a comedian is the same clown nose on, clown nose off we’ve known from Colbert and other such unfunny clowns. And I do know as well that he wasn’t fired due to government pressure.

Look, yes, Trump tweeted (Truthsocialed is so cumbersome) about how he should be fired. Yes, it might have caused it, but if so it’s not Trump’s fault but Biden’s (more on that later, too) and I don’t buy it anyway because Trump tweets the most absurd stuff and the most sensible stuff too, and the left does remarkably well at ignoring all of it.

Mostly the reason for the firing seems to be a revolt of the affiliates, which frankly is overdue IF they want to save their business (and might be too late.)

Still, I will confess it made me uncomfortable — even while gleeful — at the level of an itch in the back brain, so I’m trying to reason through it.

And part of the reason I have not to be overly disturbed by the Kimmel firing, besides the fact it wasn’t government ordered — as the silencings, firings, etc. under Biden. Remember the attempts to create a Ministry of Truth? — is that I don’t think it’s a market distortion so much as an overdue market correction.

Okay, fasten your seatbelts because this involves my explaining that I view pretty much EVERYTHING (except religion and family and love of country, maybe, though I could argue for those too) as an economic/market problem.

Most issues in society today, for instance, are caused by imposed top-down market distortions. And don’t get me started on that, or we’ll never talk about this specific issue again. But if you want to wind up the Sarah and watch her go, I can do another post (couple three of them) later.

But for our information market — from entertainment media to news media, to everything else, including education — from which people derive their view of the world, the case for market distortions is trivially easy to make.

Or maybe it is so only because I lived in the belly of that beast for so long.

I got so tired in the oughts of seeing people talking about how conservatives abandoned the market, yadda yadda yadda and coming up with all kinds of pseudo psychological just-so stories for why conservatives weren’t going into teaching, writing, journalism, art, etc etc etc. I mean people ON THE RIGHT came up with all sorts of reasons, from “Conservatives are more money oriented.” (Bullshit. Like. Total bullshit. I’ve never seen anyone as money oriented and grasping as a devoted communist.) To “Oh, conservatives are more concrete thinkers and want to work on things more easily quantifiable.”

All of this was utter nonsense on stilts. And every time I tried to explain people on our own side argued with me. EVERY TIME. Because what I said seemed soooo improbable to them.

You see, it’s nonsense to look for pseudo-psychological explanations for a field being totally dominated by one political side. There is no explanation in that case except market manipulation.

Okay, I’ll cop to our side having more autists and their side seeming to have more psychopaths. There are reasons for this, and they aren’t integral to the people. They are because their side has been a “social positioning good” for so long that psychopaths will latch on to it. And our side therefore collecting the people for whom social anything, not alone positioning, is a mystery. BUT the truth is that this is on the margins. maybe we have 10% more autists than they do and they have 10% more psychopaths than we do. But I’d be frankly surprised if it’s event hat start. It’s mostly marginal adjustments.

Mostly people are people. And just because “capitalism” (aka the free market pro freedom side) has more quantifiable benefits, it doesn’t mean it won’t attract any number of shiftless artists (raises hand and self identifies) even those who aren’t artists because they were promised it involved no math (they lied!) but those too.

Again, I’d buy a minor distribution difference on the margins, for psychological reasons. But the total dominance of entire fields by the left is evidence of one thing and one thing ONLY: market manipulation.

I’ve been the voice screaming in the desert so long that it’s always a surprise to see someone come up and corroborate it. What this lost soul is doing trying to break into trad pub in this day and age is a quandry, but the story she tells? Same, same. And bad news for her, it only gets worse. Both in terms of being discriminated against, and being held back and…. all of it. At this point trad pub will deliberately hobble you on telling a story that doesn’t accord with the woke shibboleths. And if you manage to find a publisher that takes it, the bookstores will play games with your books. And–

And it’s like that all over. For about a century now, not only is everyone to the right of Lenin discriminated against in broadcasting, news, entertainment (of which writing is broadly a part) and education, but the level and amount of distortion undertaken to keep people to the right of Lenin from succeeding in these fields while propping up the most absurd mediocrities of the left is– breathtaking. And usually locked in people’s heads, and people might doubt it themselves, even when it happens to them.

Let me explain: I say “a great part I was stuck in mid list was because of shenanigans” I sound incompetent and resentful both. Even though I know it’s not true, I only know it’s not true that I’m making this stuff up because during the hard times I did a bunch of write for hire. And the most off-the-cuff, just-writing-this-because-kids-need-winter-coats books made other people’s careers. Or shot to the top and stayed there.

Now you could say “maybe the stuff you labor over is not as good.” Fair call, as coffs many such cases. BUT contra that, a lot of my books are also the most off-the-cuff, just-writing-this-because-kids-need-winter-coats books and none of them described that trajectory. (Why would I write those? Well, in trad pub you write what the gatekeepers will buy. Because baby needs shoes. And if you think the years I wrote six, ten, or twelve books all of them were labors of love, I have a bridge to sell you cheap. It kept us above water but it was sometimes brutal. (And if you’re going to say indies do those numbers all the time, cool story bro. Now try doing them on someone else’s schedule, with tons of interruptions thrown in by the process itself (revisions on someone else’s time, for ex) and these books being 120k words plus. And on ideas you might have submitted 10 years before and not only aren’t interested in now, but need to do all the research on again. And note I’m not complaining about that. Publishing is a business. The needs of the company paying you are…. the market under that scenario.))

And I still feel uncomfortable complaining. Other people? Much much more so. They (probably) most of them don’t have even that kind of internal proof.

When they tell you “No one likes you and you don’t sell” you shut up and go away. What else can you do?

I don’t know if it’s the same mechanics for teachers, but I imagine just the opinion of the teachers’ lounge might break you. On top of which I find it curious that more than one right of Lenin would-be teacher seems to have given it up when they got their student teaching assignment in schools dangerous to life and limb. It makes me wonder if the same prospiracy (not a conspiracy. That would be easy to nail) type of thing made sure those they weren’t sure were fully onboard with their insanity got the worst assignments.

And that’s part of the problem. The thing that kept the right out of these professions wasn’t a conspiracy. That would have track records and evidence. It was a prospiracy of like-minded fellow travelers helping each other. In publishing the code was “is one of the good people.” In other fields? I don’t know. (And I only caught that by accident, btw.) And how much of this was honest prospiracy and how much the cells of three of typical communist org, only the Good Lord knows at this point.

But it doesn’t take much reading of past publishers and journalists bios from the early twentieth century to see it in action. And they were naive enough to BRAG about it. About how they kept right wingers, therefore obviously evil and stupid, out of the field.

At the same time they were giving plum assignments, pushing, etc. people with not a yota of talent but singing in the choir.

Which is how we get to Jimmy Kimmel, a largely talentless unfunny comedian, who had a golden ride to success due to his willingness to tell any lie, smear anyone, etc. etc. (Not all deals with the devil are a contract signed at a crossroads at midnight.)

Note I’m shedding no tears for him. And while firing a journalist for lying does make me uncomfortable (much less a comedian) since it’s a grand tradition of the profession — and then again, who is to say what’s a lie? (Yes, I know it is a lie that T. Robinson is MAGA, but hear me out.) Are we going to start our own disinformation department? — at the same time, in the face of a thoroughly corrupted market, any corrections are going to look like violations.

You see, a corrupted market functions to keep itself in business more than anything. Just because their people suck, doesn’t mean you can outsell them, because the market is vitiated to protect them. Whether what they’re selling is bad information, corrupted medical studies, or lumpy pottery that comes apart in the dishwasher. Corrupted is corrupted and self-protecting.

So to correct the Chinese corrupt market dominance, tariffs might be needed to encourage companies to stop outsourcing.

And to correct the corrupt and monolithic information monopoly, the affiliates might need to put the fear of them into the station.

That’s the only way to do it, short of it crashing utterly first, and some things — like say our market of medicinal production, or news — we can’t afford to have crash utterly for national security and sanity reasons.

However it does feel like a violation. It is a violation. I mean, fish got to swim, some jornos will lie. If you stop a fish swimming, you can at least eat them, but stop some jornos from lying and you’re interfering with their ability to make a living. (And I’d never advise eating them. Don’t put that in your mouth. you know exactly where it’s been.)

So? We still have to break the monolith. Oh, and btw, that “he was going to retire” (I told you we’d come back to it) might be true or not, but it’s irrelevant in the end. These people never fully retire. There’s sinecures, accolades and teaching and– This scalp collecting was real. We won’t let his hoary head decline peacefully into the grave. Much delayed justice, etc–

…. Here’s the thing… Normally at this point I give a pallid scolding along the lines of “We don’t want to do what they did. We don’t want to shut out all other opinions till we’re as useless and stupid as the left which is unable to course correct and at this point completely unable to figure out what things mean. What things? Oh “hate” for one.”

Whoever said that faced with any pushback, the left goes down like a tribe that never met smallpox is correct. They isolated themselves so much that at this point they don’t even realize the things they’re doing and saying aren’t defensible.

But normally when I offer that, I’m mostly doing it in the hopes that someone 100 years on somehow finds this and takes note. Because, you know, fighting such an entrenched establishment takes time, and we’re certainly at no risk completely dominating everything to the point we become useless.

…. Maybe? I mean, that was my absolute certainty until last week.

Looks around.

Guys, it might be you need to remember that. Do not ossify into tolerating no dissent at all. And while it might be needed for a little while — Lord, you have no idea how this bothers the libertarian — to shut the worst of the left out of these professions (tbf the worst of the left is very bad at their jobs too. The job is never the thing. The revolution is the thing) remember that when you hire for any reason but competence you always degrade competence. There is no way around that. And we’re already in a crisis of competence because of the left’s insanity.

So while you’re prying Jimmy Kimmel out of the fortified tent that keeps us out — and the others too. So many others — don’t forget that our aim is not simply to reverse positions.

In the end the free market is best, be it in the flow of goods or in information. Which means we need to make this phase as short and thorough as possible, and break down the walls quickly, and oh, get rid of the old managers, no matter how much they say they’re now on our side. They only know one way to operate and they’ll be just as bad under the new regime. (See USSR’s heads becoming oligarchs and mob bosses.)

And then we need to go back to, in the measure of the possible, trusting the public (which won’t be trained into half a dozen “valid” sources, which a lot of the older and much younger population still is.) to find their way amid truth and lies.

Freedom must be our watchword and our ultimate aim.

And not having to give a damn what political opinions your writer of bubble gum fiction holds is a consummation devoutly to be hoped for.

After the tsunami.

Make sure you remember. Because in the meantime, it’s going to get ugly. And there’s nothing we can do to stop that. Market corrections are always ugly, even when not physically violent. This one will not be an exception.

Buckle up and hold on tight. Things are about to get choppy.

If This Isn’t Danger, Then WHAT THE HECK IS?!? or Loosening the (Nearly) Impossible Standard-by Alpheus Madsen.

This Guest Blog Post started off its life as a comment to Sarah’s previous post from a few days ago, But! It’s Madness! – According to Hoyt, where she expresses the conflict between two very important, and very valid concerns: 

(1) the need to help the obviously mental ill who are on the streets, and who are obviously impacting society in harmful ways, and

(2) the need to protect mostly-sane people (to the extent that any of us are sane, to be sure!) from being committed, when the reason for that commitment isn’t really mental health, but disagreements over politics, religion, inheritances, and so forth. 

While it’s true that many mental institutions were abusive to their patients, they nonetheless served an important role in providing a places where the severely mentally ill could be helped, and while it’s true that it was Soviets who locked up and drugged anyone they disagreed with, we unfortunately have plenty of stories where, in our America, of individuals who were able to do the same thing.  So, without further ado …

This has been something that has been on my mind for several years now — both because I have read “My Brother Ron”, and also because well before that book was finished, my sister was diagnosed schizophrenic.

One of the biggest take-aways from that book is the “Danger to self or others” — and about how pretty much the only way you could be deemed a “danger” if if you’ve just stabbed or killed someone.

That woman who believes she is dead and is slowly starving herself? (An example given in “My Brother Ron”.) According to the current “standard” she’s not a danger somehow. In the case of this woman, she starved herself to death. (This is something particularly relevant to me, because that’s how my sister started out with her diagnosis — fortunately she got to a point where she voluntarily accepted treatment!)

That homeless guy who rants at passers-by, who threatens them, and who occasionally punches someone? Somehow it is justifiable to periodically put him in jail for a few days, and then release him, over and over again — until he goes and pushes a young woman onto the tracks of an incoming train.

That guy who can’t stay in a homeless shelter, even though it’s freezing (and heck, even though he has an apartment that, between social security and auto-payment, remains paid for even when empty, but isn’t used because he’s convinced it’s bugged — another example from “My Brother Ron”) either because he’s paranoid to go inside, or between drug use and angry tirades, he has to be kicked out — how is this not a danger to self, even putting aside others? How many homeless froze to death because of this?

So I would propose that a simple starting point for fixing the homeless problem, helping the mentally ill, and preventing the system from getting out of hand, is to expand “Danger to self or others” to include people who are, indeed, a danger to self or others! But it doesn’t have to be expanded greatly to have an enormous effect in both reducing homelessness and helping the mentally ill.

I would propose that being homeless and not able to hold a job should be a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for committing people against their will. If someone can wander the streets without accosting strangers, and can stay in shelters without getting kicked out (whether for using drugs or for being actively hostile to others), then that person shouldn’t be committed. A homeless, jobless person who does start doing these things — particularly if they’re getting arrested for these things, is a danger to self or others, and thus needs intervention.

Now, for purposes of removing people off the street, I kind of don’t care whether the individual is mentally unstable because of insanity, or due to a drug-addled brain — but the first step for treating someone committed should be to check for underlying physical conditions. As Sarah has pointed out, the mind is connected to the body in funny ways. I recently encountered a story of a meth addict who had been used for “before” and “after” pictures to show how awful meth can be … only to have her appearance continue to deteriorate, even after a year of sobriety … because it turned out that she had Lupus, and her meth addiction may have been partly self-medication for that. Whether the person has schizophrenia, is drug-addled, or just has other issues, it should be considered important to find and try to treat underlying conditions first, because other treatments won’t work as well without that!

Also, another random thought: commitment rooms should be comfortable to live in, should be “homey”, and inmates should be treated kindly. I can’t remember where I saw it, but I recently saw a study that suggests that, regardless of the mental issue, it’s far better to treat the patient in a nice environment than it is to put the person in a small, sterile, white room, which is apparently the current standard practice.

Should someone be forced into treatment? I’m not entirely sure I can say for sure — however, I will say this: if someone is belligerent, treatment should be a requirement for transfer to a half-way house — and if the person can stop taking medication (maybe he’s come to terms with his schizophrenia, for example, and has learned what his hallucinations are, and could learn to ignore them) and still function reasonably well, then I doubt it would be productive to force the individual to continue medication. But if the person goes back to being a danger, whether or not the person is still on meds, the person should be re-committed.

If someone is living in a home, and maybe even holding down a job, and is starting fights with strangers or making threats, that person should be considered sane, and should be charged with assault in these cases. It might be a good idea to check for underlying conditions for that individual too, though, particularly if it’s a clear personality change. But commitment should be off the table completely, unless an underlying mental illness has been clearly identified and it’s to the point where his new aggression is both related to the disease and is rising to the danger of self or others.

Now, this is by no means a perfect solution — in particular, the people on the boundary of insanity and intelligence, who are far enough gone to decide to kill people in crowds, but still have enough sanity to plot, plan, and acquire the means to do so, will inevitably fall through the cracks — because they will usually be just outside this strengthened standard of danger of self or others.

This is also going to miss people who lose their mind and go crazy, but don’t do so at a level to qualify as a danger to self or others — and may even refuse treatment that would be extremely helpful. Such individuals, so long as they are being cared for and have a place to stay, and aren’t hurting other people, will almost certainly slip through the cracks.

Perhaps there is a way to forcibly treat such an individual without going down a route that would be easily hijacked by evil people to drug innocents — whether it’s forced by family or by bureaucrats, it’s easy to see how such can be abused by greedy and/or power-hungry people — but it may very well be the case that these people would be a “sacrifice” we have to make, to be able to commit people who clearly need committing and to leave unmolested people who are clearly sane.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk! I am just a lone mathematician pretending to be a software engineer, so I don’t expect this proposal to reach the halls where it needs to be heard, but I figured that if I vented here, this proposal could at least get into a few more minds.

And come to think of it, this post was a lot longer than I expected. Heck, if anyone else thinks this would be a good blog post, don’t bother to ask me for permission, just use it: I think this is an important enough idea that it should be spread as far and wide as possible. Perhaps it’s not the best solution to both helping our mentally ill and preventing our psychiatric institutions from being hijacked by evil people, but I think it’s at least a good starting point!

There was a time in the late seventies or early eighties (I think early eighties because I was in college) when a terrorist group of broadly commie tendencies (Italian) was “fighting” industrialists, which was actually an euphemism for threatening/kidnapping/etc rich people for cash.

Dad wasn’t one (mom and dad did okay considering where they started, but they never went past mid-mid while they had kids in the house) but he worked for one. As in, he managed factories. Which I guess looked close enough to the commies, because we had threats.

And since one of their things was car bombs, and our car was parked in the (gated off, but the gate and walls were four feet tall) garden, (mom used the garage as a workshop) every morning, when dad gave me a lift to college (which cut about an hour and a half of public transportation out of my day) dad asked me to look under the car.

Yes, I broadly knew what to look for. IF they were all thumbs, at least. If they were subtle, no one was going to see it.

So, morning routine was: shower, get dressed, have coffee, grab books, go out to garden with flashlight and look under car to make sure dad and I weren’t going to go out with a bang.

I don’t actually know how long this went on. In my head the shenanigans of Mano Rossa (sp? It’s been years since I used Italian) in Portugal went on for a couple of years, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a month or two. Things tend to either stretch or shrink in my memory.

BUT what was weird was how fast it all became routine, and also what a relief it was to drop it when the danger passed. It was routine, and yet, it ate at the back brain.

These things are more onerous than we think, and take more time for the scars to fade than we think. Actually, from my experience, the time of scars fading might be “never.”

After 9/11 I thought I had it all together, until I found myself driving back from the grocery store with the Expedition as packed as possible with groceries and canned stuff. (Friends, we ate on it for five years. Maybe ten.)

I realized something in the back of my brain had activated the stars of “unstable times” from the seventies in Portugal and translated it, so I MUST HAVE FOOD STORAGE as the shelves might inexplicably be empty tomorrow.

In the same way, yesterday, when I heard that two bright sparks of the left had tried to car-bomb a Fox news truck (Fox News, people, I ask you. It’s actually left on left violence, but the left likes its stereotypes and imagined opponents and will never get how much Fox News has nothing to do with the real right) I remembered the story above and I got … well, I’m typing this when I am because despite going to bed on time, I didn’t sleep much.

Look, I don’t know what’s going through the heads of our leftist… morons, really, but … no I didn’t sleep enough to come up with a more diplomatic description, and the ones doing this stuff ARE morons, but they seem to think that killing Charlie Kirk was a major win and some number of them are all excited and trying to strike while the iron is hot.

If you have leftist friends or family, DO try to convince them it’s more akin to committing suicide with a blunt knife. It’s going to take a while to kill you, but it will hurt the whole time. No, I don’t expect they’ll listen, but in common charity you must try.

And if you fly on the internet under your own name and are even as opinionated as I am, let alone some of my friends on the right, be aware we’ve entered “Careful times.” Don’t open the door to people you don’t know. Don’t post pictures of your kids or pets if they spend time outside your direct supervision (or your entire family are hermits.) Don’t let repairmen into the house you haven’t vetted extensively, particularly if they approach you. Don’t go for long walks alone. And for the love of Bob, don’t spend a ton of time outside unsupervised. And don’t stand in front of windows with the light behind you.

Sorry. It’s really impacting my ability to get exercise. But there’s nothing for it. And it makes you feel silly and paranoid. Which, I’ll point out is miles and miles better than dead.

You’re probably safe. I’m certainly probably safe. I work in text which means I largely fly under the radar. But you never know. You just don’t. Like my dad was probably safe and his boss was the one who should worry, but you only need to be wrong once to die.

Oh, yeah, if you park your car on the street or in an insecure location, familiarize yourself with what it looks like now, and do a quick inspection. Yes, your co-workers will think you’re nuts. Make up something. You have an oil leak you’re trying to track down. Something. It’s better than their saying “Well, good old Bob sure was a bright spark at the end.”

And while we’re being careful, remember life goes on. The kids need looking after. They need feeding. They need clothing. Heck, even now I don’t have kids in the house I need feeding and clothing. And I will have to come up with some alternative for exercise, or the sleep will JUST get worse.

My dad didn’t stop going to work or taking me to school because commie insano-idiots were running around killing people. He just took precautions.

Yes, we’re all sitting at the edge of our seats afraid the idiots are going to call up something they can’t put down.

But while we’re doing so, remember to look after yourself as though you were someone you love for whose well being you’re responsible. Take your meds. Try to eat decently. Read a good book (Have you tried No Man’s Land, the link is on the side bar? Guaranteed no real-world politics!) hug your spouse, love your kids, make your doctor’s appointments.

Because you can’t stop living just because the worst might happen. Years from now you’ll have trouble remembering how long we spent waiting for the other shoe to drop, and the scars will only show up when something else brings it up.

And we might brush through this okay — yes, it would take a miracle, but the USA IS a miracle — and come out okay on the other side. You can’t give up living, because what life will you pick up on the other side.

Sure, beef up your apocalypse-pantry. Buy one of those crank radios (I have no idea where ours ended up) and a whole house battery. Prepare as you would for a big storm. Also be as careful as you’d be if your area were subjected to home invasions.

Other than that, carry on. Life must still be lived.

Even through these very unsettling careful times.

A friend and I used to joke that when we’re very old — considering she’s much younger than I, but we both come from long-lived families — we’ll be considered raging left wing extremist, while having changed absolutely nothing about our beliefs.

Is she right? I don’t know, but I can tell you I get the feeling she might be. And that scares the living spit out of me. And it should scare the living spit out of you. And I don’t care how right wing you consider yourself to be.

First because change that fast, even if it were for the best, will kill a lot of people. Some of them directly as they find themselves the target of mobs on one side, the other and neither (once the mobbing and mob violence get started, people get killed because someone else envies them and riles up a crowd against them as much as for anything else.) Second because when a movement starts going, particularly a “we’ve had enough” movement it’s really easy for the power hungry to hijack and take control, and a lot of the extremely power hungry are … um…. poisonous. At the present moment there are leftists moving right fast and bringing all their assumptions of what the right is with them. So they think they’re being right wingers by hating everyone who tans deeper than blue and also the Jews, (of course.) This is not what the American right is or has ever been, but like states getting overwhelmed by Californians, the right could be overwhelmed by these people. And that would mean our destination would frankly be very similar with where we are, just with the groups of people in power inverted. Third because dislocations on this level will utterly destroy every institution, every job market, everything–

So, what chance do we have of to get through this without it all falling in the pot?

I don’t know.

Someone at powerline stated, as if it were a great discovery, that we’re in a cold civil war now. Sigh. We’ve been in a cold civil war for the last … well, at least for four decades. Ever since I’ve been here.

The reason most of us didn’t know it is because the left had control of the media. So back in the stone age, aka, the eighties, we were surrounded by leftist propaganda, and we thought we were the only ones of us who kept everything bottled up and secret. It’s hard to have a cold civil war when you think you’re a side of one.

By the oughts though, with the net, it became obvious there were two sides, and we were in a cold civil war, with occasional outbreaks of violence, always from the left. (Or some crazy people, okay?)

And then … well, here we are.

And what an awful day the morning light disclosed. Are we in a cold civil war? Dear Lord, I hope we are. because the alternative is awful.

This morning I saw something that scared me spitless. More than anything in this horror show we’ve been on. It was in this article: Fired MSNBC analyst Matthew Dowd defends twisted remarks about Charlie Kirk killing that got him axed.

It was the remarks. It wasn’t that they were crude and gross. You expect that. it’s how they completely depart from reality.

“I said in the moment that we needed to get the facts because we have no idea what this could be and that it could easily be someone firing a gun in the air to celebrate the event. Remember Kirk is a diehard advocate of the 2nd amendment.”

Yes, guys. they thought “Right wingers” were either Muslims, or rooting tooting rednecks of the sort that no one has seen outside Snuffy Smith comics, and those aren’t even exactly popular now.

They thought that we would “celebrate” a very mild mannered man who was center-right coming to a college campus to talk to people by…. firing guns in the air.

I have no clue how it’s even possible to imagine this. I feel like we are talking to people in the thrall of an evil spell and unable to see what’s actually before their eyes.

And that’s a problem. Charlie was trying to reach them. He was trying to get them to see reality.

We can continue trying.

But we’re clog dancing on on a powder keg. I pray a lot. And of course we are a country of miracles.

Let’s hope we’ve not exhausted our share of those miracles. I’m very proud of how measured the striking back has been. People on our side are behaving better than I thought possible in the face of extreme provocation.

Maybe just maybe we’ll squeak through somehow….

Keep moving and don’t look down.

Book Promo

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

HEY, YES, I’M GOING TO SELF PROMOTE. AHEM:

If you are looking for the science fiction of your youth, with all its wildly strange lost colony worlds and barbaric glory, Sarah Hoyt’s No Man’s Land is the book for you. If you—like Glory Road’s Oscar Gordon—are looking for a roc’s egg, the hurtling moons of Barsoom, and Excalibur held by a moon-white arm, this is the book for you. And, if you want a romance, and a dash of baking and domesticity sprinkled on top, this is the book for you. –Laura Montgomery

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: No Man’s Land: Volume 1 (Chronicles of Lost Elly)

Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.

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

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

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

https://amzn.to/4n5SJNwEDITED BY BEN YALOW: Best of 2024: Presented by Raconteur Press

Short stories contain an idea. Ask a question, then begin to answer it. In a short story, you can contain a perfect narrative, it may be short in the time it will take you to read, but not in the time it will linger with you provoking you to thought. These are those stories.

Have you ever wanted to try out the very best stories published by Raconteur Press? Well, after their author peers nominated, Ben Yalow himself chose the top ten stories for this very special collection. Truly the cream of the crop, and a perfect selection to sample the wares of the Press, or to introduce a friend into reading Indie SFF.

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

HARRY POTTER MEETS THE SOPRANOS IN A MAGICAL BROOKLYN SHOWDOWN.

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

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

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

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

FROM JOHN BAILEY: The Grey Gentleman Appears: Nine Continental Mysteries (The Detective Stories)

The Grey Gentleman Appears: Nine Continental Mysteries
A Collection of Unsolved Crimes and the Man Who Asked the Right Question

A shadow passes across Europe at the turn of the century. Wherever secrets lie buried, wherever silence carries more weight than speech, a solitary figure in grey is seen—never announced, never explained. Some call him a guardian, others a harbinger, but none can deny his presence when mysteries deepen beyond reason.

The Grey Gentleman collects a series of haunting cases, each unravelled through the eyes of Julian Ashcroft, a reluctant witness drawn into a world where theatre becomes tomb, silence becomes judgment, and the boundary between the living and the unseen grows perilously thin.

Blending elements of detective fiction, Gothic atmosphere, and moral parable, these stories unfold under the constraints of the old Hays Code: suggestive but restrained, dark but never lurid, always circling the eternal questions of guilt, redemption, and unseen judgment.

For readers of Arthur Machen, M. R. James, and G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown, The Grey Gentleman offers a tapestry of uncanny tales that linger long after the curtain falls.

EDITED BY RITA BEEMAN: Moggies of Mars (Raconteur Press Anthologies Book 60)

---

Felines rule the universe, just ask them. These stories pay homage to the greatness that was portrayed by a master of sword-and-planet, only there are a lot more tails than there were in a Princess of Mars! Tales of derring-do, claws sharp as steel, soft cheeks smoothing ruffled warriors, and these cats back down from no-one. Read on, Fair Human! You will like what you find in these covers!

BY ED LACEY, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Enter Without Desire (Annotated): The pulp noir classic

Marshall Jameson was an aspiring artist at the end of his rope. On New Year’s Eve he wandered into New York City on his last pennies, and stumbled onto a radio game show, won it… and found the perfect girl.

How could he know his good luck would lead him step by step into murder? But Elma was worth it, worth murder, and more!

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

FROM EDWARD WILLET: Fireboy

“I knew things were getting weird when I saw my best friend’s face in the campfire. I didn’t realize how weird until the campfire followed me home . . .”

Thirteen-year-old Samantha “Sam” MacReady is nervous about the start of Grade 8, especially science class, which isn’t too surprising: last year, her Grade 7 science class mysteriously disappeared on the way to a field trip she missed out on.

But when her best friend, Lorenzo—who no one has seen since he got on the bus with the rest of that class—suddenly appears in a campfire, she moves from nervous to freaked out. She teams up with Meg LeBlanc, the sole student survivor of what all adults refer to as “The Tragedy,” to uncover just what went on that day and why Lorenzo is now showing up in her back yard made entirely of flames.

What the two girls find out is far freakier and scarier than they ever imagined. Sam and Meg must use all their grit and intelligence to save the day and free their friends from magical enslavement . . . or fall victim to the very same fate.

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

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

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

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

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Whine in a Box (Liquid Diet Chronicles Book 3)

Maybe chasing murderers wasn’t so bad after all…

Meg Turner, vampire, accountant, and investments advisor…is a political radical. By vampire standards, at least. She’s young, American, and wasn’t inducted into the unlife in the usual way. Which means she’s not a European feudalist. So, when other vampires started asking to move into her territory, she wasn’t sure how to react, other than to welcome some of them. She has a chance to shape an entire territory, if she wants.

(She doesn’t)

Her allies have other plans, though. And, between those plans being sprung on her without much warning, her nearest neighbor coming under attack (and sending his helpless civilians to her for shelter), her mother showing up on her doorstep, looking for answers to why she’d not gotten in contact in the last twenty years…yeah. She’s got a reason to whine.

And that’s not even counting the rising panic over a brand new virus…that shouldn’t affect her people, but will anyway.

EDITED BY WILLIAM JOSEPH ROBERTS: Convoy of Chaos : A Car Warriors: Autoduel Chronicles Anthology

Despite the grain blight, fuel shortages, and wasteland raiders, supplies still need to get through.

Ride along with the big rig convoys, road crews, and race teams of the wasteland, keeping civilization civilized one delivery at a time.

Convoy of Chaos— where every mile is an unforgiving battlefield, and survival rides shotgun.

FROM BLAKE SMITH: In Pursuit of Justice: A Novel of The Garia Cycle

When love sparks a war, can four hearts survive the flames?

Zara thought escaping to freedom with Téo was the end of her story. She was wrong—it was only the beginning.

Their forbidden love has ignited a war between two kingdoms, and now they’re refugees fighting for survival in a hostile land where every shadow could hide an assassin and every stranger might be the end.

Meanwhile, back in the marble halls of the East Morlans, Prince Hanri races against time to contain his father’s burning thirst for revenge before it consumes everything in its path. And in the glittering palace where whispers are weapons, Alia must navigate a maze of deadly rumors and half-truths to uncover the secrets that could save them all—or destroy everyone she loves.

With armies gathering and alliances crumbling, four young hearts must learn that sometimes the greatest battles aren’t fought with swords, but with courage, loyalty, and the unbreakable bonds of love.

In a world where kingdoms clash and hearts collide, who will you trust when everything falls apart?

War changes everything. But love? Love endures.

Perfect for readers who crave epic romance, political intrigue, and characters who will fight to the end for what they believe in.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Shadow over Leningrad

In Stalin’s Soviet Union, Tikhon Grigoriev lives a precarious life. He knows too much. He’s seen too much. A single misstep could destroy him, and if he stumbles, he will take his family down with him. With Leningrad besieged by Nazi armies, the danger has only increased.

He’s not a man who wants to come to the notice of those in high places. But when he solved a murder that seemed supernatural, impossible, he attracted the attention of Leningrad’s First Party Secretary.

So when a plot of land grows vegetables of unusual size and vigor, and anyone who eats them goes mad, who should be called upon to solve the mystery but Tikhon Grigoriev. However, these secrets could get him far worse than a bullet in the head. For during the White Nights the boundaries between worlds grow thin, and in some of those worlds humanity can have no place.

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: RISK