Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

Ready, set, go!

I have no idea what is coming. I want to make that very clear. I don’t have a crystal ball or a functioning time travel machine. (I could fix it, I could. But someone has misplaced the screws, and now they don’t make those yet.)

Anyway, this to say making predictions is hard. Particularly about the future.

Take today, for instance. I intended to write a short story to thank those who gave to the midwinter fundraiser. Instead, I got multiple-kidnapped by my husband, (this is not a complaint. Might be a brag.) and wrote nothing though some little stuff happened around the hedges.

So do I have any new year’s resolutions. Not really. I’m going to try to get better at finishing and releasing stuff. Obviously I need to feed my newsletters more. But all of this passes through my not getting seriously sick. So I’m working on that.

Not so much resolutions as an ongoing process. I think getting better, but very slow.

BUT if my personal and close in future is occluded and it’s a process, the national and world trends are easier to see and predict, even if it’s not easy to predict times exactly.

For instance, it is obvious the centralized, Marxism infused model of government is falling apart. It was never very together. But the centralized media-industrial complex could fake it for a time. That time is past. The decentralization of the media is pulling the pins off everything else. It starts with the United States, because here is where we started running with blogs and opinionated people on line, and we’re continuing with Tweet-x. But the rest of the world is starting to open its eyes and take big breaths.

Will Trump succeed at everything he promised? Probably not. But he’ll succeed at things he didn’t promise. We’re dealing with a complex game of Jenga. You never know which little stick will bring the whole thing down. And there are a lot of sticks. And the “whole thing” is not our country or our system of government, despite the left’s fevered dreams, but the deranged house of cards they have been building over and around everything and making everything not function. At most they’ll manage to delay some things. But I doubt it.

Is the left going to do what they can to stop us? Undoubtedly. I mean, you know what they’re like. and now they’re panicked and a little stupid. What was it on the 1st? Two? Three terrorist attacks?

They’re trying to ring on that shaky feeling of the summer of 20.

And oh, the stomp stomp clap clap for the bird flu.

It’s not going to work. None of it is going to work. Yes, some people are going to get hurt or killed, and I’m sorry. But we can’t prevent it at that granular a level.

The left have been snakebit for a while. Their playbook has stopped working. Partly because at this point their playbook is largely fictional. They told themselves a lot of just so stories but, take it from a fiction writer, things function differently in real life. There is no “We put this plan into action, and tada! it worked.” (Which is why I say Trump won’t do everything he promised. Unless he does, through sheer chaos and dumb luck.)

To date their most brilliant, multilayered plan was the would-be pandemic and shut downs of 2020. First, I think they really meant it to be a real plague, who would kill mostly the old — remember they think everyone who opposes them is old — though I can’t prove that. Second, and more importantly, they really thought it would work to install a “new normal” in which we stayed in our houses forever, terrified to go out, and listening to all their instructions through the TV. (Parenthetical: this just shows how lousy the writers on their side are. No understanding of human nature, or economics, or frankly life.)

When they were talking about “the new normal” they really, really meant it.

And what did they get instead: A higher than ever level of skepticism about their “experts” and their pronouncements, and the political establishment in general.

And then, for the candle on the cake, the guy they frauded in was such a terrible disaster they had to replace him with the more disastrous idiot they had him choose for a VP. Worse, their attempts on Trump didn’t work. (Guys, that’s one of the inexplicables. We got miracles last year. Multiples. Possibly some we don’t know about.) And their fraud network was just not enough.

They thought they had it sewn up, forever and ever amen.

And that’s with their most sophisticated, largest scale operation. All it did was blow up in their faces and leave them worse off than they started out.

Yeah, they’re going to throw everything at the wall: terrorism, lawfare, faux scandals. Everything.

But they don’t have much imagination and — this part even I can predict — they won’t succeed in that.

I predict this next year is going to be white-knuckles and clenched teeth and the unbelievable piled on the improbable.

But mostly it will be going our way. And like on the day the Butler assassination failed, we’ll be watching in awe and shock, but not in horror.

I know this is too much to ask, but you guys, as political addicts (takes one to know) need to let go a little. You need to pop some corn, sit back, and be ready to be entertained. You particularly need to stop expecting doom around every corner.

For your own — our own — health, you — we — have to learn to do that.

Because the year ahead is going to be a complete roller coaster ride.

And I’m going to give you the advice Jerry gave me, when I was distraught over Obama’s win in 12. It’s the opposite circumstances, but it’s going to take the same remedy, because it’s going to be just as nerve wracking: Organize. Clean. Set your life in order.

Go through with a trash bag and throw out the “what even”s. Make a room perfect, then move to the other room. Set a routine. Fix your habits.

The year is going to be stressful as hell. But it’s a year for cleaning the crap out of our national life.

And you know what? A lot of that crap has fallen into our personal lives. First, a lot of us moved and are still not set up (looks at ceiling). Second, depressed people are pack rats, and unorganized packrats at that.

The problem is living in a life that’s cluttered with a mess and with no pattern tends to worsen depression, and makes it harder to do what we want.

In our nation, and in our home.

This is the year we clean.

The adults are coming home. We are the adults. And we have a duster and a mop.

Now get to it.

I’d planned to do this post anyway, and then I realized it is the perfect post for the last day of the year.

Look, everyone: it’s going to take a long time for us to stop flinching and deciding we’re going to be betrayed. 2020 left scars in the collective psyche, and scars take a long time to fade if they ever do.

The last four years we were hunching our shoulders and just enduring the blows, and that will take a long long time to fade.

And sure, there are things that won’t go our way. But you shouldn’t worry too much about that.

Look, the edifice that supports the boot on our necks is not only rickety. It always was rickety.

Keeping the big lie of the all powerful centralized government in place was a full scale production, and it required a fully coordinated media, fully coordinated panels of “experts”, and a trusting public that believed all of it. Or at least a majority of the public that believed all of it.

It has been eroding for a while, since social media and blogs got really big in the wake of 9/11. Despite their best efforts at censorship, a massed multitude of — what did they call us? — hobbits is harder to control than a few journalists who want to be invited to the right parties.

Trump’s election in 2016 was the first time the media lost to the hobbits. Really lost, publicly. They didn’t like it. The hell the establishment has put us through since is their payback.

It came with unexpected consequences though. The main ones being: their masks were yanked off; and we don’t believe them anymore.

This is the sort of thing that not all the king’s horses and not all the king’s men can put together ever again.

Sure, we’ll “lose” some. Sure, they’re making cunning plans to thwart the will of the people.

But be not afraid. If we win even a few places, it’s enough for the whole edifice of oppression and lies to come tumbling down.

It has been tumbling down, already, even while they were nominally in power, which is why we won 2024.

Be not afraid. This is very important. The rest will fall into place, provided you keep your heads and remember you’re Americans.

Even if we’d lost the H1B argument, the truth is the mass importers of obedient visa-slaves are already losing. For the same reason the South would have lost in the long run if there had never been a civil war.

Look, slave-economies are inefficient. Any economy that minimizes the ability of the employee/order receiver to innovate, create and talk back will lose to one that does.

Yes, we need a certain amount of discipline. Of course. But particularly now in the 21st century, we’re not in an era of silent, robot-like workers standing silently by machines making the precise movements.

And the reason that big management adores H1B holders — other than their being cheap — is the reason they’re a weakness. They obey. They don’t come up with innovations.

Look back at the last 30 to 35 years of our corporations and you’ll see a big history of fail. Since we started hiring by HR and racial preferences, and giving priority to cheap and obedient labor, things have been falling apart. I know this intimately because my husband has made a career in computers despite this and only got laid off once. But we saw friends have career interruptus, and many getting sidelined in their forties and fifties because they were just too expensive. And taking institutional knowledge with them, let alone ability to innovate.

Slaves — and H1B visa holders are that to an extent, as they’re tied to that visa and can’t protest — are always inefficient, and regardless of whether their culture allows them to be creative or not, won’t dare be so while under restrictive conditions. They always lose out to free people.

Take a less obvious case: Journalists who had to stick to the approved story. I have friends who got laid off, sidelined, thrown into peril because their employers demanded absolute conformity. And now newspapers are failing and blogs are eating their lunch. And some of my friends are doing better off of substack.

Same for traditional publishing.

And the same will happen to the big companies that are H1B visa hogs. This is not visible yet, because they’re in bed with government and government is covering their tootsies (and yes, there’s a name for that. It starts with an F. It will come to you.)

But — But– Hear me out: this just means they will fail, if even a single pin holding daddy-government up fails. And we stand to remove a whole lot of them. We have to, because it’s dead and rotting while propped up and pining for the fjords.

Be not afraid.

The future is ours. And the winning is just beginning.

And yes, that kind of open future, where the old certainties are falling is scary all on its own, even if it’s going its way.

A young friend/fan was scared she couldn’t prepare the kids for the wide open future. What will they need? What must they learn?

Well, it’s not just the kids. It’s all of us. G-d willing I have thirty years in me, and that’s time for a whole career. And even in my case, between midjourney and the animation programs (I should show you some of those clips I’ve been playing with) guys…. I could perhaps tell my stories in movies in another ten years. It’s not even a joke. And it is mildly terrifying.

Because change is terrifying, and we’re at the edge of a whole lot of it, in catastrophic, rushing amounts.

So? Prepare the only way you can. Stay flexible, stay ready, stay creative.

America is the country best set to survive and thrive in this, because our culture and we, ourselves, have maxed our creativity stats at the expense of our compliance and orderliness stats. Or if you prefer: we are made of chaos. We’re just entering our element.

How to prepare your kids? Well, by ten make sure they have all the basics cold: math, reading, a modicum of history. As soon as they enter their teens, encourage them in entrepreneurship in a small way. A craft business or something small that they can do. Something you can stake them with a couple hundred dollars. Be prepared to have a lot of them fail, if not all of them. But it will teach them. Teach them to plan and account. Teach them to see what’s a usable niche and where innovation can come in.

And you learn too, along with them. Our lives are getting longer. You’re nowhere near done, and I don’t care how old you are.

America can suck at first and second acts, and rescue it all in an amazing third act.

We haven’t even started. But we’re getting ready to.

Innovate, create, be free in mind and in thought.

Be not afraid.

Dance on the wave of chaos and arrive triumphant at the future.

We win. They lose.

Be not afraid.

I keep giggling when the media — even some on the right — refers to the lively… discussion last week about the appropriate use of H1B visas and when to import workers as “A MAGA civil war.”

Sure, there were the usual sh*theads babbling about how America is a “blood and soil” nation and all that nonsense. (The most amusing was the one arguing with me that America was created explicitly as a white nation. He failed to tell me which documents say so, and explain the divergence in what was considered “white” then, or even show me the set aside for free black people, which, yes, existed in the North.) But let’s be real and talk about the actual argument amid actual Americans. Not the (Mostly Russian. And they probably actually believe what they’re posting) paid trolls. I suggest we mostly ignore anyone screaming about the “white” race or set asides thereonto until they come up with better trolls.

This wasn’t a civil war. This was barely a family argument.

Here I should interject. Where I come from expression is loud and voluble, particularly if your mom is a bit deaf. I remember the first time Dan (the poor man is from a Connecticut patrician family!) found himself at the table with my family. I saw when his eyes got all panicky and he started looking at the steak knives, and wondering whether to dive under the table. At which point I told him we weren’t about to slit each other’s throats. We were discussing where to buy shoes the next day. It hadn’t even gotten impolite. We were all just enthusiastically shouting our opinions and disagreement.

He got used to this communication method later on to the point he didn’t much notice it. Heck, I didn’t notice it, until I was walking back from downtown one day and heard what sounded like two men having a very loud argument about three blocks away from our house. It wasn’t until I got closer I realized it was my teen sons who were discussing their favorite Spiderman timeline.

This example is more germane because at the time I thought “Gee, it sounds like they’re about to slit each other’s throats. I’m shocked no neighbor ever called the police.”

But it was the kid next door, in the quiet house where no one ever raised their voices who tried to commit suicide by dropping from a roof. And it was in that quiet house that the father and mother divorced, in a long, bitter mostly silent process that took years and left them both broken.

I’m not saying loud is preferable (My Connecticut DIL still tries to dive under the table while her husband and BIL scream at each other at the top of their considerably powerful voices over…. who gets to sit next to whom at holiday meals. Or whether one of them set the trivets in the right place for me to place the turkey pan.)

I’m saying that some family arguments — granted not the ones about Spiderman retcons — need to be had, no matter the volume. And that there’s worse than having arguments out in the open where the world can see and hear.

Sometimes “not in front of the kids, dear” is justifiable. And sometimes all it does is tamp down the tensions till everything explodes.

Let me unpack it for you: Of course Musk and Trump had a prejudice pro H1B visas. The first came here with one, and he and the second see only the results after they’ve been normalized, tamped, cleared and made rational by their middle managers.

Look, this is like what I refer to with the publishing industry drinking its own ink. If you only see the end result of the actions taken by your middle managers, you don’t know what goes on in the middle. I call this management by spread sheet, and though both Elon and Trump are too smart to do that exclusively, they run very large enterprises and have to delegate SOME of them.

The publishing industry got caught in this, because they started doing things like judging the success or failure of a book without taking in account anything but the book. Ie. not paying attention to even elementary things like covers, much less push, or money spent on publicity, or what type of publicity, or the fact the pipeline had gotten clogged with things like “ordering to the net.” It was all “the numbers don’t lie” but yes, the numbers do, which is why they ended up drinking their own ink and opening themselves up to having indie eat their lunch.

The problem with the management of any large enterprise is the you end up having to take certain things on faith. Which is how the hyper concentrated management of communist countries fails.

Yes, you can do marketing and opinion surveys, but for anything political or frankly economic or– well, pretty much anything in these days, they are proving more and more useless.

So, of course, Trump and Elon stepped in it, after Vivek really stepped in it by thinking America is how Hollywood portrays it.

But Elon and Trump have walked it back, and I really think they mean it. They truly were not aware of how bad it’s gotten. Yes, every new job created in a quarter going to foreign born people might have been a clue, but I think they didn’t connect it.

They didn’t realize how bad it was 20 years ago and how it has incrementally grown. Yes, sure, offshoring is bad but “inshoring” and laying off your entire department to bring in foreign labor who then perpetuates itself by despising Americans, in a purely xenophobic snit (Hi Vivek!) is just as bad. And creates massive resentment.

Which Elon and Trump got to see, up close and personal.

(Oh, and much as I stare at Vivek in horrified fascination, let me tell you as someone who acculturated, this is one of the phases. You’re trying to understand your new culture, and you go through a phase of believing the media, not realizing it has its own biases. “Oh, so things really are like Revenge of the Nerds. Or Pretty In Pink. Or whatever.” You have to work at moving out of that phase. So I have some limited sympathy for him. Acculturating is difficult and a hell of a lot of work. Which is reason #300000 why mass immigration is a bad idea and makes every country worse. As the world is finding out.)

And then they walked it back. And this is good. Because they saw the rage and the hair-trigger anger people are living with, but more importantly they saw the injustice and the ridiculousness of importing workers because you can essentially enslave them. While you can’t do that to citizens.

Oh, and to the people saying that to want to (really, not pretend, with fake ads) hire Americans first is “DEI”: you are full of shit. American citizens are tax payers. They are also members of the culture, born and raised in it. If their buy in doesn’t get them at least equal consideration for work and the benefits of an economy they and their parents helped build, it’s on you to explain why not. America should be run for the benefit of Americans (of all colors.) I’m not suggesting we slam the gates shut. I’m suggesting small, a trickle really, and for very specific needs and circumstances, where people aren’t committing wholesale fraud to get it. (Like, I came over as a bride. But I’m strenuously against “Marry the maid so she can stay here.” I would have come over, anyway and had a study/employment offer at the same time. I just happened to fall in love. BUT–) There should be routes for entry. I suggest more than for “must be a genius” which is NOT the best criteria, we should screen for “really wants to be American” but that might be just my own bias showing.

The point is, as much as I’m sure Vivek didn’t know what he was stepping into, this argument is one that needed to be had. The pros and cons, and the justifiable anger of the people should be on open display. And the “factors leading to” should be investigated. Because by themselves H1B visas might be a good idea. They are not a good idea as they’re being used/frauded/messed with. And as with publishing, the fraud factors are so many that people at the top don’t even realize their metrics mean nothing.

Yeah, sure, the education in America is a mess, and that needs to be fixed. But we need to find pathways to get kids employed, instead of assuming they’re all stupid and lazy. (They’re not. And keep in mind “kid” for me at this time is anyone under 45 or so.) If you think they are you don’t know how hard they’re fighting/working to stay above water, and have been deceived by reports of a few people. (Look, even in my day most retail workers were flaky and wouldn’t show up for their shifts or paycheck. It’s just now we make it harder for people to work two or three jobs in retail. So we have fewer of the reliable ones, because fewer of them can work more than one job.) BUT all of that is also obscured by people trying to hire cheap people they can bully and by the sheer mess that is our HR and their protocols, including DEI.

So, after this discussion, we are set on a better path to fix the problem. These discussions need to keep happening, and yes, they need to happen in the open and where everyone can see it because no one has the full picture of how messed up the entire process is. Even I didn’t, and I have feelers in a lot of places. (It’s like the people who say illegal immigration is a net plus. No it’s not, if you see the payouts and destruction of education, healthcare, welfare, etc. etc. etc., and I’m sure even I don’t have the full picture.)

This is the time to take a page from the dems and say “party unity my ass.” In healthy families, nations and movements, things get discussed in the open without fear it will destroy everything.

And yes, the dems will think it’s a civil war and that we’re “falling apart” but that’s because they don’t tolerate dissent or even questioning, and frankly any questioning would cause them to fall apart, because they have no coherent philosophy.

Ignore them. The adults need to work through this stuff.

And despite the shouting and the waving hands, I have great hopes for the future.

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

FIRST LET’S GET THE INCESSANT AND INTRUSIVE SELF PROMOTION OUT OF THE WAY, SHALL WE?

FROM SARAH A. HOYT, FOR 99C: Odd Magics: Tales for the Lost

Odd Magics
This is a very strange collection of fairytales, recast for modern life. In it the prize isn’t always to the fairest, the
magic is rarely to the strongest.
But lonely introverts do find love, women who never gave it a thought find themselves at the center of romance.
Doing what’s right will see you to the happily ever after.
And sometimes you have to kiss an accountant to find your prince.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT, FOR 99C: A Few Good Men (Darkship Thieves Book 3)

Lucius Dante Maximillian Keeva was born a prince…

or so close to it as makes no difference. He is the son of one of the fifty Good Men who — between them — partition and rule all of the Earth.
But for the last fourteen years, he’s been imprisoned in a small cell, in what amounts to solitary confinement.
You can’t stay sane in solitary confinement that long, not even if someone supplies you with reading material.
When Luce escapes, he finds that his family is dead and people are trying to kill him. He doesn’t respond as a sane man would.
It is just as well.
Restoring a constitutional republic to a world gone mad, five hundred years after the fabled USA vanished from the face of the Earth is not a job for a sane man.
And Luce Keeva is just the madman for the job.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT, FOR 99C: Darkship Revenge (Darkship Thieves Book 5)

The World Can’t Be Made Safe….

But it doesn’t mean Athena Hera Sinistra isn’t ready to try. Flying back to Earth Orbit from her asteroid home, leaving behind unresolved questions and turmoil, Athena becomes a new mother in orbit.

As is perhaps fitting, her daughter is born during battle with an unknown foe.

A battle that ends with Kit – Athena’s husband – missing, and Athena’s ship damaged.

So Athena names her daughter Eris, and goes to war.

What follows is a non-stop fight by a very angry mother, who wishes to make the world(s) safe for her newborn daughter, and other children too.

When the adventure is over, it is just the start of another, where children will be rescued, old tyrants brought to justice, and freedom restored.

If it can be.

FROM D. A. BROCK, ON SALE FOR $1.99: Texas at the Coronation (Republic of Texas Navy Book 1)

For seventy years after a devastating war, the Republic of Texas kept to itself. But it would be rude not to attend the international naval review celebrating Britain’s new king, George VI. So with war clouds over Europe, Texas sends the elderly armored cruiser, San Antonio, and her new captain, Karl von Stahlberg.

While making new friends and meeting Texas’ ancient foe, can Karl and his men avoid sparking a war?

FROM D. A. BROCK, ON SALE FOR $1.99: The Lone Star, the Tricolor, and the Swastika: Republic of Texas Navy Book 2

Autumn, 1939…

The war that the Western nations have long dreaded has erupted in Europe. After the conquest of western Poland by Germany, the war on land settles into the so-called ‘Phony War’.

But the war at sea is anything but phony. Especially when the French Government accuses the Republic of Texas of providing aid to Germany. The tension escalates, and Hitler fans the flames for his own nefarious purposes.

After a devastating sneak attack, Commodore Karl von Stahlberg is thrust into command of the Texas battle fleet. Can he defend Texas against the enemy’s onslaught, or will Texas be defeated?

FROM D. A. BROCK, ON SALE FOR $1.99: Texas in the Med: Republic of Texas Navy – Book 3

September, 1940…

The Battle of Britain is at its height. Every day RAF and Allied fighters rise to meet the swarms of German planes seeking to bomb Britain into submission.

In the Mediterranean, the Royal Navy, badly overstretched by the loss of the French Navy, struggles against the powerful Italian Navy to keep that vital waterway open while supporting the besieged island fortress of Malta.

To aid their ally, the Republic of Texas is sending Vice Admiral Karl von Stahlberg and the Texas Naval Expeditionary Force. Can his small force of cruisers, destroyers, and two aircraft carriers stem the rising tide of Europe’s dictators as the tyrant Pétain works to break up the Allies?

FROM D. A. BROCK, ON SALE FOR $1.99: Tales of the Texas Navy: Volume 1

This mini-anthology contains two short stories in the ‘Republic of Texas Navy’ universe, revealing heretofore unknown facets of that world.

FROM HOLLY LEROY: Sudden End: A prequel to the Hostile Earth Series

Long before the events depicted in Hostile Earth, the end came. This is how it happened. Lisa Evans, sixteen, lives with her mom and dad in a cute little town, Rose Vista, California, It’s an idyllic life, except when you reside at the bottom of your high school’s social ladder. Picked on, laughed at, and embarrassed daily, it’s been rough for Lisa. But the next day things are going to change. She has an opportunity to take back her life. Then a catastrophe strikes. In the beginning, everyone thinks that it’s a simple power outage and everything will be back to normal in a week or two. Instead, the entire world has gone dark, cities have burned, and the jails have emptied. There is sickness, starvation and death everywhere, and each day that goes by, the population shrinks even further. Sudden End is a STANDALONE SHORT NOVEL (22000 words or 92 pages) prequel to Hostile Earth, post-apocalyptic series.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Ghosts of Christmases Past

These are troubled times. The Flannigan Administration’s hostility to clones has reached a boiling point, resulting in the Expulsions. All of NASA’s astronaut clones have been sent to lunar exile in Shepardsport.

Christmas is approaching, and Brenda Redmond is helping put on a musical adaptation of A Christmas Carol. But the three ghosts who visit Scrooge in the classic Charles Dickens story aren’t the only ghosts haunting the corridors of Shepardsport.

Even as Brenda is trying to get her young players ready, she must also track down the source of the strange visions that are coming unbidden to the settlement’s inhabitants.

A novelette of the Grissom Timeline.

FROM MARY CATELLI: Sorcery and Kings

Tales of wonder and magic.

A fire master must find a magical starter of fires.

A mysterious queen holds a ball in a city filled with magic.

Magic of roses and gold are needed to fight a dreadful war.

An oath keeps a ghost captive.

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: Minister

And if you’re done with all your cooking and everything…. And haven’t read all my books yet… Or you need a last minute ebook gift for someone…

These are ALL on sale for 99c:

Odd Magics: Tales for the Lost

Odd Magics
This is a very strange collection of fairytales, recast for modern life. In it the prize isn’t always to the fairest, the
magic is rarely to the strongest.
But lonely introverts do find love, women who never gave it a thought find themselves at the center of romance.
Doing what’s right will see you to the happily ever after.
And sometimes you have to kiss an accountant to find your prince.

Darkship Revenge (Darkship Thieves Book 5)

The World Can’t Be Made Safe….

But it doesn’t mean Athena Hera Sinistra isn’t ready to try. Flying back to Earth Orbit from her asteroid home, leaving behind unresolved questions and turmoil, Athena becomes a new mother in orbit.

As is perhaps fitting, her daughter is born during battle with an unknown foe.

A battle that ends with Kit – Athena’s husband – missing, and Athena’s ship damaged.

So Athena names her daughter Eris, and goes to war.

What follows is a non-stop fight by a very angry mother, who wishes to make the world(s) safe for her newborn daughter, and other children too.

When the adventure is over, it is just the start of another, where children will be rescued, old tyrants brought to justice, and freedom restored.

A Few Good Men

Lucius Dante Maximillian Keeva was born a prince…

or so close to it as makes no difference. He is the son of one of the fifty Good Men who — between them — partition and rule all of the Earth.
But for the last fourteen years, he’s been imprisoned in a small cell, in what amounts to solitary confinement.
You can’t stay sane in solitary confinement that long, not even if someone supplies you with reading material.
When Luce escapes, he finds that his family is dead and people are trying to kill him. He doesn’t respond as a sane man would.
It is just as well.
Restoring a constitutional republic to a world gone mad, five hundred years after the fabled USA vanished from the face of the Earth is not a job for a sane man.
And Luce Keeva is just the madman for the job.

“Ma’am, animals are not allowed in the hospital.”

I stopped, and stared at the nurse. She was coming out of my son’s room, and she looked very upset. Which considering Jeffry had been in a persistent vegetative state for a week would normally alarm me. Except she was obviously not upset at something that had happened, but upset at me. Personally.

I stopped. I’d been home, to shower and change clothes for the first time in two days, and Bill had gone to work for a day just to make sure nothing was on fire there. Why was the nurse mad at me? She was middle aged, with fading blond hair, wearing scrubs with a candy cane pattern and her name tag, unbelievably, read Karen.

“I beg your pardon,” I said. I craned my neck around her, as she stood at the door, and saw Jeffrey was still as he had been, pale, with bandages on his head, instead of his shock of brown hair in perpetual disarray. All the machines around him were beeping as they’d been. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Your dog,” Karen, the nurse said, with withering disdain. “Your dog was here with your son while you were gone.”

“We don’t have a dog!” If I could unpack it there would be a lot more to say to that. We’d always meant to have a dog, but we’d moved so much it had never happened. Last Christmas, we’d given fourteen-year-old Jeffrey a stuffed spaniel doll, for the do he’d always wanted but we’d never given him.

Nurse Karen gave me a dubious look, like she knew I really had a dog I wasn’t admitting to, and probably was secreting him into the hospital in the pocket of my jacket. “There was a dog on your son’s bed,” she said. “A brown and white spaniel.”

I frowned at her. “Then I think you have a problem in the hospital.” And then I walked around her to the bed.

The room was very silent, except for the electronic bleeps and gurgles of the equipment connected to Jeffrey. And my heart squeezed.

He looked so pale and so still. I remembered the times when he was little and I couldn’t wait till he was asleep. All the tiptoeing around, trying not to wake him up. And now I’d give anything to see him wake up and yell at me.

Bill must have come in while I was staring, because he said, behind me, “You know what I’d like most of all?”

I turned my head. “For him to wake up and yell at us?”

“No,” he said. “Well, yes, but… If it must be like this…” He swallowed so hard I heard it. “If he must die, then I would like to have a do over. To have more time. If all the time we were going to have Jeffrey was fourteen years and no more, I’d like to have worked less. To have spent more time with him. Playing trains when he was little. Going for walks. Just… hanging out.”

I stepped back to lean into him. “I know what you mean, but if you’d done that we wouldn’t have been able to provide for him. He wouldn’t have had all the toys he had. We wouldn’t have lived in the kind of house we did. He wouldn’t have had the friends he had–” I paused.

“Which means he wouldn’t have been in the car accident, with his friends’ mom driving, and the car packed with teens?”

I sighed. “We can’t do that. We can’t go back and redo things. There would have been other problems and other regrets if we’d done that.” Because I didn’t know what else to do, I walked to the bed, and started arranging the thin, nasty-feeling blanket over my son. And paused. “There’s … dog hair on this blanket.”

Bill blinked at me. “That’s funny. As I was leaving, I thought I saw a dog. Like…. I thought I saw Fuzzy, come to life. I swear he passed me in the hall but when I turned around he wasn’t there.” He made a sound that was a laugh, except there was no joy at all in it. “If I had only one wish, I’d go back in time, not moved the last two times and gotten Jeffrey a dog when he was nine, back in Elmheim, where we had the fenced backyard.”

“I don’t think we can wish for time travel,” I said. “And I don’t think Fuzzy took living form to come visit Jeffrey.”

“No. Probably not.” He swallowed again. “You know, the docs say we should let him go. Just turn off the machines.”

“I know,” I said. “Perhaps we can wait just one more day. Just past tomorrow. Past Christmas day.”

Bill sighed. I knew why. Every day Jeffrey stayed connected, it meant another million dollars or so. If the health insurance didn’t pay out for the days above doctor recommendation, we’d be paying for it the rest of our lives.

Bill squeezed my shoulder, as though he could hear my thoughts. “What else are we going to spend the money on? I know we wanted many, but we only ever had Jeffrey. He’s all we have.”

Everyone who has had a loved one in the hospital, struggling between life and death, knows the next day and a half. Which is a good thing, because I don’t think I could tell you what happened. I must have eaten, because I don’t remember being hungry. And I probably dozed in the uncomfortable straight backed chairs of the waiting room. I almost for sure walked around, because I’d catch myself doing it, now and then.

Bill and I didn’t talk. Not even when we were together. There was nothing to say. We were both too busy wishing for the impossible.

I found myself on Christmas day sitting at one of the grey formica tables, in the cafeteria. There was a little paper Christmas tree in the middle of the table. I had a half-filled coffee cup between my hands. I had no memory of having drank any coffee.

It was years since I last prayed. I’d been taught to pray as a little kid, but then my teenage doubts and adult skepticism had intruded. I still loved the story of the child who was God in the flesh, born in an humble stable. I loved the shepherds and the ox and all the little sheep. But I hadn’t believed enough to address a creator, or to ask for anything.

But now I found myself wondering where Jeffrey would go if he died. If there was something else. He was just a kid. He was quite likely to go right if they told him to go left, to go up fi they told him to go down. Simply because he was trying to be himself and he didn’t know what that was except “not what people tell me to be.” And perhaps that’s what I’d done for so long. Perhaps there was nothing there to ask help from. But if there was–

One thing was for sure. We were past what we could ask of medicine and science. The doctor had told us Jeffrey would die. Was dead already, except for the machines breathing for him.

I looked up feeling stupid, staring at the ceiling of the cafeteria. It was a stupid textured popcorn ceiling of seventies vintage, and looking grey and dingy, but I thought up at it, anyway, “God, if you’re up there, give us time. Time to see Jeffrey grown up. Time to get to know him. Time to–” I sighed. “We’ll get him a dog. We’ll spend time with him. We’ll try to give him all the connections we haven’t before. I promise. We’ll change our way of life. We only have one child, but we’ll make space for him in our lives, anyway.”

There was no sound of trumpets, no big response. Well, did I expect one?

The coffee in the cup was cold, but I drank it anyway. We only had twelve hours with Jeffrey, they were supposed to come and disconnect him early morning. I’d go back and watch him sleep, like I used to do when he was a baby.

As I neared the room, I heard a snuffle, and hope shot through me. Jeffrey had woken up!

I walked into the room and stopped, stock still. On the bed was a brown and white spaniel. He was doing that thing that dogs do with their butts when they’re happy. You know what I mean. He was wagging his whole butt not just his tail. And he kept nudging Jeffrey’s hand, and doing it again. Every time he nudged Jeffrey’s hand he must have disturbed some sensor, because something beeped angrily.

I stopped, stuck between removing the dog before he hurt Jeffrey and shock the dog was there at all.

“I said, no dogs in the hospital,” Karen said behind me.

I turned back “It’s not our dog.”

“Then why is he here?”

“I don’t know. You tell me why–” I stopped because she looked like she was in utter shock, mouth half open, staring. I turned back. The dog was gone.

He hadn’t gone past us, but he was gone. I rushed to the bed, started straightening the covers, as though the dog could be hidden under them.

“Mom?” Jeffrey said. I looked up. He was blinking and looked pretty groggy. His voice sounded awful too, raspy and hoarse.

“Yeah,” I said. “Jeffrey. You’re awake Jeffrey.”

He gave me a dopey smile. “I dreamed Fuzzy and I were playing on this big backyard.” Then he tried to look serious. “I mean, Fuzzy was a real dog and we were playing and–“

I nodded. I couldn’t speak.

It was a long road back. A year of physical therapy and treatment.

And then one day coming out of a physical therapy appointment, there was a dog waiting by our SUV in the parking lot. He was…. I suppose a chocolate and white spaniel. Except he was so dirty we thought he was yellow and black.

We’d tried really. I mean, we weren’t going to steal someone’s dog. We took him home and washed him three times. In doggy shampoo once, twice in dawn, and then, on the advice of our vet, had rubbed corn starch into his fur and brushed it out again and again and again.

When it was done, yeah, he was a purebred and a youngish dog, probably not fully out of puppyhood. He acted like he belonged to Jeffrey too.

We put up posters, and called all the sites that monitor lost pets. And we had him scanned but he didn’t have a chip. Oh, and he acted like he belonged to Jeffrey.

Well…. Our condo in an high rise in Denver Colorado was no place for a dog. But the dog was helping Jeffrey more than all the therapies. So we looked for a house in the suburbs, one with a fenced yard.

The Christmas two years after Jeffrey had woken up, you could barely tell he’d ever been in the accident. I was cooking Christmas dinner and looking out the kitchen window, at Jeffrey and Fuzzy in the backyard.

“He looks exactly like the dog in the hospital,” Bill said.

“He does?” I said. Then “I mean, he does, but when did you see him?”

“He came to get me in the cafeteria when Jeffrey woke up. He stood there bork, bork, borking, like Fuzzy does when he wants attention.” We’d early on decided that Fuzzy didn’t bark, he borked. It was very clear that was the sound he made. “And he wouldn’t let anyone catch him till I followed him. But then he disappeared at the door to the room.”

I frowned. “Do you think Fuzzy traveled back in time to wake Jeffrey? Is that what you’re saying?”

He grinned. “No. Or perhaps yes. I don’t know. Perhaps dogs travel outside time. I mean, we never figured out how Fuzzy found us, or where he came from. Perhaps–“

“Perhaps he came to give us more time. Real time with our son?”

Bill put his arm around my shoulders, which impaired my ability to drain the potatoes, but I wasn’t going to complain.

“Perhaps. Perhaps he came to bork up at us and give us a lot more Christmases.”

Outside, Fuzzy was dancing in front of Jeffrey, doing the whole butt waggle while Jeffrey held Fuzzy’s toy cow up, then threw it.

Fuzzy ran after it, then caught it and tossed it in the air ecstatically. Then turned and bork bork borked in joy, before picking up the cow and bringing it to Jeffrey and dancing in front of him begging him to throw it.

Where does dog start and angel end. I was told angel meant messenger. And Fuzzy was surely a messenger. We’d got the best miracle of all. We had time. And this time we would not waste it.

*Sorry this so late. It is part of the Winter Fundraiser.

I’’m running a mid winter fundraiser for the blog. You know why.

There’s a Give Send Go for the Winter Fundraiser and well, if you need anything else including a snail mail address, please go here.

But I don’t like to ask for money without giving something back.

It is also my Christmas gift to you. I hope you enjoy it.
I’ve been doing readings and short stories, to feel I’m giving something back for my Winter fundraiser. (There will be dog story either tonight or tomorrow. Was going to be tonight, but my kid informed me he’s taking me to a movie this afternoon, so I guess not? Anyway, since we’ve been having a furry Christmas season, this one will be The Bork of Christmas. But yesterday one of you contacted me asking for a link to the reading I did for my substack subscribers (I intend to do three a month for paid, one for free. In case I haven’t got around to doing chapters, because well… maybe next year will be better? I’ll try at least. Anyway, right now the ones out are all free and I see no reason not to share the links here. So, hold up.

READINGS:

The Littlest Nightmare.

Tic Toc.

Call the Mom Squad

Short stories, so far:

Claws For Christmas

A Squirrel for Christmas

The Chinchilla Of Hope.)

I’ll post something tomorrow, but not a full post. Merry Christmas to those who celebrate, and happy first day of Hanukah. May your day be happy and full of love. -SAH)