Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

Fresh, From the Free Range Oyster-Lair*

Hail, well met, and sundry other greetings! We’ve a nice haul of new books for your entertainment and edification this week, for which I thank you all. As I sit in my lovely-but-cramped shell all week long, dutifully layering pearls, it’s good to know that I’ll get to do something useful for the weekend. *big grin*

In addition to this week’s books, I have an announcement! For those out here on the occidental end of the American continent, WesterCon is coming up in four weeks, in Salt Lake City. Incidentally, WesterCon and FantasyCon are the same weekend and will be sharing memberships. We’ll be gathering any Huns, Dinerzens, and other lurking Hoyt-fen who live in the area (I know there are several) as well as any and all of us attending the cons. The city has several awesome eating and drinking establishments; I hear you mammals are into that sort of thing. Those with knowledge of the area are welcome to recommend a place, or we can just roust out the ‘danes from a corner of the con hotel’s lounge. Pillaging may be involved, bring your own pony and torches. RSVP with me, if you would, if you’ll be in the area that weekend.

There is a larger announcement that I’d hoped to make this weekend, but there are… details still to be hammered out. Suffice to say that the WesterCon gathering is part of a larger world domination scheme organ-harvesting operation cat fancier’s club worthwhile and totally innocuous endeavour. More info and fewer heavy-handed hints coming ASAP, I promise. :P

Aside from all the mysterious goings-on, future entries for the promo post can (and should!) be sent to my email. Happy reading!

Jason Dyck, AKA The Free Range Oyster

Mercenary Wordsmith, Terminal Tamer, and High Seat of the Gathering Horde

Craig Allen

Kali’s Children

Crash landing on an uncharted world is bad enough. Losing most of the crew as the ship sinks to the bottom of an alien ocean is even worse. And that’s just the beginning.

Ragged and terrified, the last few survivors—a fireteam of battle-hardened marines and an inexperienced civilian adviser—search for a way to contact the nearest inhabited system for rescue. But as they encounter the denizens of this world, they learn something remarkable. From the red reeds that cover the land to the ferocious predators that fear nothing, every living thing on this world is highly intelligent… and utterly hostile. Violence is a normal part of life. Murder and war are nothing more than a means to acquire food. Kindness is unimaginably alien.

For the survivors, escape is not enough. They must also keep their technology out of the hands of the barbaric monsters around them. For the planet’s natives have learned that it is possible to leave their world, and out there among the stars is the most prolific source of food they have ever known: humans.

Dwight R. Decker

Pleistocene Junior High

The year is 1965. An abandoned alien base is discovered under the sands of northern Africa. Amazingly, the machinery in it is still functional after seemingly millennia, but exactly what the exotic gear does, no one knows. Until, that is, an experiment to test it goes wrong and an entire middle school in Ohio is suddenly transported 30,000 years into the past. For some 300 teenagers caught unexpectedly by the disaster, survival becomes a day-by-day struggle in a world without grocery stores, hospitals, electricity, plumbing, or any of a thousand other things taken for granted in modern civilization. Even though he is unaware of it, one boy literally holds the key to resolving the mystery of how it happened and perhaps even going home. Meanwhile, the Biology teacher finds himself the unelected leader of the colony whether he wants the job or not, and the lives of hundreds of people now depend on him. Between the two of them, they might be able to hold off the oncoming catastrophe, but others see nothing but opportunity in a prehistoric world in which laws and police are unknown. It will take courage and intelligence to live very long in this savage new land – and perhaps a little help from the stars.

Anita C. Young

Fenrir Reborn: A Sindri Modulf Novella

Sindri Modulf has been tested many times throughout his long life, but for every feat he has faced, he has artfully dodged countless more with easy humour and a deadly axe. Those well-honed abilities will prove useless when he is faced with one of the greatest challenges of his life; he must bring back a grief-stricken Seer from the edge of catatonia. Unwilling to let the mind of the most powerful woman in 1000 years be ravaged by Empaths and Telepaths, Sindri does something he hasn’t done for centuries: bare his soul.

Cedar Sanderson

The Eternity Symbiote

On Sale for the month of June!

Earth sits at the center of a galactic power struggle humanity knows nothing about. Then an alien delegation suffers a fatal accident and hidden plans unravel around the wreckage in the Alaskan wilderness. Infectious disease expert Gabrielle McGregor discovers the hidden machinations and what they’ll mean for her and her family.

Also available from Barnes and Noble.

R.A. Williamson

Foreshadows: A Collection of Tall Tales from the Weird West (Whiskey & Wheelguns)

Wheelgun Press proudly presents: Whiskey and Wheelguns: Foreshadows. This is a collection of six short stories all set in the Whiskey and Wheelgun Universe. You will recieve a first class introduction to the stories that will be keeping you up at night for the next twelve months.

Each series will explore a dark corner of the weird west as envisioned by the addled minds of the contributers. They will dazzle you with the grit of the desert sand, the gristle of sixgun wielding protagonists, and the intestinal fortitude required to subdue a werewolf lightskirt.

Twenty-four stories of dubious literary merit by six of today’s most vaguely groomed and semi-coherent authors, which will shock and amaze, dazzle and impress, and floor the reader with outright awe for the massive amounts of facial hair required to bring a project like this into the bright desert light. Be sure to follow along, ’cause the wagon won’t be stoppin’ until they strike fool’s gold.

This is the introduction to a shared world. Other books in the setting, by various authors, include:

• Possessed
• Five Lead Slugs: Casting Out the Devil
• The Widow’s Work

*It’s little.  Also, flooded.

Because some of you might not have all my stuff yet!  (I know, I know, inconceivable.)

My collection wings is on a countdown deal for the next week, and it’s 9/10th off today.

There’s a review of it here.

Also, among other things, to promote Witchfinder, I decided to put up a free short story a week for as long as I have trunk/reverted stories.  This week’s is

Heart’s Fire.  It was written for an anthology in which each story was about a store in a magical mall in Chicago, in case you wonder at the venue.

And RES reminded me to mention these are both DRM free, so you can change their format and read them on your nook or kobo reader, or whatevs.

That’s all folks.  The interesting post is below!

So, I’ve been following all sorts of Victimhood arguments on Facebook. By “following” you should understand “sometimes I can’t look away fast enough.”

In my community (O, my people!) they were sparked by the usual suspect, who wants everyone to know she’s more victim than thou, and who will, d*mn it, carry her point, even if she has to sharpen it herself. Kate goes over that mess, which frankly, I couldn’t read in full. It appears to me that some people are so sure of their own lack of talent that they must seize on whining and pretend victimhood to be important. Whatever.

But it brings us to another point.

Most of you know I grew up in another country, right? A Latin country, with different ideas of standing and honor. I was two when my dad informed me that Legionnaires don’t cry, after I skinned my knee and threw a fit. The obvious rejoinder didn’t occur to me for 29 years. When he repeated it to my son, who was then one and a half, I answered “Yes, dad, but Rome has fallen, the legion is no more, and I think he’s a tad bit young for it.” Dad looked confused. (Because of the trend of my dad’s mind, yes, it was the Roman Legion he was talking about, trust me.)

I’m not ragging on my dad. I was the apple of his eye, being late-born, a girl, and liking to hear him recite poetry. (Later on we found our minds both ran to history and literature, so we’ve always been close. My taking up art late in life only made us more so, since he used to be an artist.) Seeing me cry, he reached for something, anything, that would make me stop, because he couldn’t stand it.

It worked. It also worked later on.

I don’t think I went to rough schools by Portuguese standards at the time. In fact, my mom pulled strings to get me into a magnet school for High School because our local one was “too rough.”

They were, however, rough by American standards. Particularly current American standards. As early as middle school, boys (many of them repeating grades, which they could do till 19) would grab you and feel you up in the halls (no, I’m not advocating this. In fact this should be curtailed whenever possible. At 11 I had no clue why this was a bad thing, but I still felt like showering with bleach and a wire brush.) and the only way to stop them was to deck them. Fortunately they eventually figured out I had the knee of doom, the kick of a mule and not a bad right hook and left me alone.

But the point is, whether that type of bullying or another, the worst thing you could do was cry. With real bullies, when you cry, whine or feel uncomfortable, it’s meat and drink to them. It’s what they WANT. It makes them feel big.

So dad’s training, not to show hurt served me well. Eventually I gathered around me a bunch of girls who were small, weak and the crying sort, and I taught them both how to aim for the ah… relevant bits (no, it doesn’t always work, at that age, though, since boys are developing and sensitive, it works more often than with adult males. And it’s worth a try) and also not to cry. (Also to shout for me. I was by American standards small and slim, but for a Portuguese girl my age and generation I was a moose. More so because I grew to adult size at 13. And then stopped. But for a while I had the advantage.)

Just not crying or whining, even if you couldn’t fight back, was half the battle.

As with a friend of my dad’s from college, who insisted on arguing politics with me from the time I was eight and too young to realize his politics made NO SENSE whatsoever and were just a form of self-aggrandizement (as was picking on the kid to argue with) and who would eventually descend to taunts and make me cry, until I realized if I just smiled at him and said “of course” when he tried to pick a fight, if you don’t react and don’t cry and don’t let them have what they want – need? – the bullies get bored and go away.

So, imagine my shock when most of the science fiction community (O, my people!!) including writers I know and admire, get in a fist fight over who is the most victimized victimy victim in the universe.

No, seriously. This is all over FB. “But my parents…” “But my ancestors” Yep, uphill, both ways, drank a cup of cold poison every morning… etc. It’s mostly “my ancestors.” When you get to personal history the worst is the sort of thing I described above, which frankly was bog standard when I was growing up.

What I mean here is that everyone is going “But I/my ancestors are more victims than you/your ancestors and everyone should recognize that.”

(I’m so glad I put my eyes on a chain so I can’t lose them under the desk, when I roll them.)

A few thoughts come to mind watching this unseemly spectacle:

1-      The therapeutic mind set of society has done us a serious disservice, by elevating dysfunction and victimhood to an excuse for bad behavior which, of course, everyone wants.

2-      Most of your experiences are not only not traumatic, they’re laughably common. Look, guys, we’re geeks. If you weren’t laughed at/teased/beaten in elementary school, you’re geeking wrong.

3-      Those claiming they’re surrounded by people mistreating them/putting them down and doing so at the top of their voices at every venue, are either very very stupid, or liars aware that they’re liars. If they really thought that everyone not of their race/credo/ideology is against them, and had a brain cell, they would know the best thing to do is not gratify the bully. But they don’t think that for a moment. They know their story will fall on sympathetic, credulous ears of people who like them BECAUSE of their race/credo/ideology, and garner them sympathy and bennies. Kind of like the little girls who claimed someone had beat them up to the sympathetic older relatives, so they got candy and praise.

4-      Only in a very rich, very secure, very SAFE society could this entire idea of “I’m more of a victim than you” take hold as being a good thing to do. Societies and communities where there is even the slightest form of retaliation/discrimination/put down of minorities, you claim you’re fine, you’re stronger than they are, and you don’t let them see you sweat.

5-      Even in our society/community (O, My People!!!) this is corrosive. If you keep telling everyone you’re a victim, you’ll feel like one. The definition of victim is that you’re helpless. Helplessness is one of the things that corrodes the soul and eats at your mood, till you’re depressed and irritable (and usually irritating, but that’s maybe just to me.) Even if the publishing establishment showers you in “candy” you start wondering if other people who aren’t “victims” get better “candy” and also if you’d get it if you weren’t a “victim.”

6-      Since at least one of the slug fests on FB related to the teaching of the minority young (and since books do that to everyone anyway, by inculcating certain subconscious ideas of how things go in life) the victimhood nonsense is really, really, damaging. It makes young sprouts who’ve never had to fight for anything in their lives, living in the safest, most prosperous nation on Earth, learn to see themselves as victims. They grow up thinking that everything that goes wrong with them/everytime someone is rude, is racism, sexism, purplism. This prevents their taking a long hard look at what they might be doing wrong to bring about bad results. It also makes other youngsters grow up feeling guilty for stuff they never did and never benefited from. All so that some overgrown toddlers can get pets and “candy” from the establishment. We need to stop. One shouldn’t lie, not to the young. Telling them that their victimhood is special and entitles them to special stuff is a lie. In a world that really is against most of them, outside this country, it can entitle them to swift death or worse. I’m minded of the American female journalist who thought it was perfectly fine to push into Tahir square during the disturbances. Any woman raised in a country where female doesn’t mean endowed with the armor of sacred victimhood knows better than that.

7-      The only way to get “candy” for being beaten is that the adults give it to you. Stop being a child. Realize that there are no “teachers’ in real life, and that the people giving you the victimhood candy are doing it to make themselves feel better. I.e. to feel superior to you. They think you need them and can’t make it on your own. They think you’re inferior to them. And you’re encouraging this.That “candy” is laced with strychnine and will keep you down and dependent.

8-      Whatever else is happening, the world is heading to some seriously difficult economic times, and thanks to the idiocy of multiculturalism, the barbarism of far flung places (No, if you think it’s not barbaric to rape a woman because she has her face uncovered and thus is “asking for it” I don’t want to hear from you. Also, culture is not race, and the first one to cry racism on calling a culture barbaric gets my boot on his behind with force, in a rising vector.) is coming to your doorstep. Whining you’re the biggest victim evah (O, my people!!!!) will only paint a huge target on your forehead. Stop it now.

9-      Stop with the stupid competition for “most victimy victim ever” and learn to count your blessings. Learn that no time or place is perfect. Learn that every human who ever lived had some issue or other and some circumstance in which he or she was treated unfairly. That’s just how life is. You were born into a big wide world, not a bubble room. If I’m right and what I still pray every night isn’t heading for us – economic crash, social instability, infighting of various “communities” – you’ll leave a longer and happier life, and get few stress illnesses, if you stop seeing yourself as a victim. And if you it IS heading for us, getting out of the “victim mentality” is the best chance you have of surviving.

Other people have minds.  I have this thing in my head that gave me this sentence as I woke up “There was a mist of squirrels off shore, a multitude of them, blotting out sea and sky.  It looked like they were running one on the other, and the bottom layer had formed a living raft with their bodies.  They were armed with catanas.”

You tell me what in living blazes I’m supposed to do with that?

This is why I write, because otherwise this type of strange imagery and — dare I say it — story prompt, spills over to my waking hours and then the men with butterfly nets start chasing me around.  (And the fact that spell checker tried to change catanas — which yes, I’m sure it’s misspelled — to cantatas only adds to the madness.)

I haven’t done a state of the writer for a while, so this will have to do.  If you feel hard done by and bitch in the comments, I shall fling either a blast from the past, or the opening of the novella with Nat and Luce at you.

That is by way of being a problem.  It must be written, as it’s already late for Kevin Anderson’s Wordfire “Five by Five,” but I’ve never before written a novella set in a world and with characters that have been in novels.  The first five starts had the “obligatory infodump to bring you up to speed on the where and who these characters are.”  It doesn’t work well in novellas.  So I decided “screw that.”  Even though the Novella is 10 years after AFGM (around the incidents when Nat gets invalided from active duty.  No, it’s not mushy.  It’s about sabotage, treason and war) I figure it might very well be the first time people encounter the series, so I’ll give just enough of the background to make them curious about the novel, but not so much they feel like they’re being bludgeoned.  We’ll see how it goes.  I have the opening but it’s a hard balance act.

I considered writing it in the world of Winter Prince, (Yes, I do know it’s a stupid title for a novel of genetics and alien invasion.  It’s a working title.  I don’t know if it will let me change it, though) but all I need is to wake another series.

Speaking of, I do have the opening for Spirits of the Air which comes between Witchfinder and Rogue Magic.  I’ve been informed it’s a YA steampunk(ish) and it probably is, given the main character is Michael and it starts with him being pursued by the automated barber (magical) which he built and which the under gardener has to shoot.

But most of all, this week, I’m working on Through Fire, to hopefully lay it down.  Which is good because I’m not obsessing on Witchfinder numbers which have suddenly gone through the floor this month.

Now this is probably, partly, our spectacular economy, but it is also, definitely, from talking to people, the trajectory of indie books.  If you don’t have a new one in a series in two months, it drops off a cliff.  I’m not sure what does it, except, of course, ebooks are different.  I’m assured when you have a few more up, they never QUITE fully drop off.

We shall discover if this is true once Baen books are safely on Toni’s desk.  I also have the Musketeer Mysteries die hards asking for The Musketeer’s Confessor, which is half written.  I’ve been hesitant to devote time to it, because the series is selling so unspectacularly — though I’m putting it on ebook soda tomorrow and we’ll see — but Witchfinder has shown me that a new release is a completely different ball game, so I’ll bring that out, (At this point, because of move that HAS to happen looking like September/October) and we’ll see.  I don’t now if a new release in an old series has same effect, I’ll have to try it out.

I’ll admit part of what excites me about indie is that nothing is known.  It’s part of what scares me too.

Ah, well, so long as I don’t have to write about squirrels with catanas (I suspect somehow I got Robert’s dream) I’m fine.

To my subscribers — I’m sorry I really have been very bad at putting up stuff and servicing the other goodies.  Let me fight through the move and it will come.  I’m not kicking anyone out/changing the password, so even if you subscribed for only a year, you’ll get your compensation.  Also, you (poor things) are going to be the first recipients of the “novel in novellas’ that details the life of Jarl Ingemar (and the first 200 years of future history with it.) Hopefully starting next week and running for ten weeks.  (I don’t want to start posting it on Amazon until I have a full novel written, even if it needs edits.)  To explain, that’s an “indie experiment.”  I’m going to bring out the novellas at 2.99 each (20k words) over ten (or twenty, if I space them two weeks) weeks.  Those in a hurry can buy them, of course, but I will make it explicit that they’re going to be collected into a novel at the end, with some bridge sections, and the novel will probably be 4.99 (I know, but we’ll see.  Maybe enough people will be impatient?  Not you guys, though.  you guys get it for free.)

Oh, we found a very cheap flight to LC — leaving at midnight, the traditional red eye — so we’re bringing the boys, for what we expected to pay just for us.  They wanted to come, and after all, Robert is writing like a pro, some with hopes of Baen and some straight to indie. (For various far too complicated reasons, it would be a bad idea for him to find a job for this year.  Also, likely, difficult for the same reasons, but his fingers aren’t broken, and he can write.)  And Marsh will probably be sitting in on the writing panels, or at least I hope he is, since he needs to get over his fear of publishing.

And let’s not forget that it was a comment — by David Weber — at a Liberty con which propelled me to (I think) a new level of writing (after the two shifters, before the revision of DST and all the rest) by saying “The details aren’t important.  People will forgive you any kind of bad writing, or any stutter in world building if your voice is confident enough to carry it.”  He was right.  But, published 5 years, I’d never stumbled onto that truth.

That’s it.  If you demand another post I’ll do one, but right now I’m going to go have caffeine and then be confident in writing (which is way more difficult than it sounds.)

Just.No.Squirrels.

Update: Oh, yeah, I forgot the business, of course.  Tomorrow I’m running at countdown sale on Wings, starting at 99c and I also will be taking short stories free, and if I forget to announce what’s free those five days, someone poke me?

This is a post about victimhood: admiring, sanctifying, exploiting, parading and – strangest of all – stealing victimhood.

Guys, seriously, if aliens dropped in from alpha centauri tomorrow they would think we are very odd creatures. What is it with the big fights over who the biggest victim is, shaming and trying to make people feel guilty because they aren’t victims, claiming victimhood on behalf of anyone else and, most important of all, endowing oneself with someone else’s victimhood by white-knighting for them?

To define things: a victim is someone to whom, through no fault of his or her own, unpleasant things happen. Worse, in today’s lexicon, to cultivate the victimhood, a victim must remain a victim and allow bad things to continue happening to him/her. The minute he stops being a victim he loses all victimhood points.

So… who would WANT to be a victim. Beats me. I’ve been one at times, through no fault of my own, and it was pretty unpleasant.

Part of this, I think, is a perversion of the desire to help others. For instance, in books, it is easiest to gain sympathy with a character if pretty unpleasant things have happened/continue to happen to them. Anyone who has read my books knows I’m not above using those.

Here’s the thing, though, in a book worth reading, the character doesn’t come in whining and sobbing, doesn’t drape himself all over you claiming victimhood and REMAIN A VICTIM for the rest of the story. Instead, the character shoulders his or her limitations, grows and becomes admirable not by feeling sorry for him/herself, but by doing something worthwhile. If he or she does remain a passive victim, for this reader at least, the book takes flying lessons.

Mind you, if your ambition is to be assigned to a school’s reading schedule, then that’s exactly what the book should be. I don’t know how many of the kids’ assigned books could be described as “Downtrodden minority has a shower of sh*t rained on his/her head every page of the book, till the end when he/she dies a horrible death or achieves revenge in some stupid way.” It’s the plot of all of them I skimmed.

Add to that the strange concoction of sixties/seventies ideas that no one is ever guilty of anything and that even the most heinous criminal was driven to it by society, and we have… a fine mess, where being a victim gives you license to do whatever you want, and be as nasty as you want to perceived “evildoers” while remaining “saintly” because you are a victim.

As a confession, when I was in 9^th grade, during the final exams (the ultimate accountability exam. It having come to someone’s attention that through the previous three years, the first years of the revolution, teaching had been spotty; days had been spent painting murals and having our “consciousness” raised and that some schools were never in fact assigned teachers, in 9^th grade they made us take a nationally scored exam – ours was the first and weirdest year, since we weren’t prepared for it, but since then it’s become a national thing. You had to pass the exam to continue or, in fact, to have any chance at college.) which were stressful-crazy, since most of the stuff on them we’d never been taught, and “I haven’t been taught this” was no reason for the question not to count, one of the boys in the all-boy school across from mine committed suicide.

In retrospect, he must have been mentally ill. What he left behind was the usual “manifesto” bumble broth of complaints about how we were treating the environment and men’s inhumanity to men.

His letter made the rounds of both schools and more than one of us posted it in some public space, because of course, he was a “victim of society” and we identified with him.

This was foolishness. First, I’m fairly sure he was mentally ill (though it might not have been permanent had he survived. In the boiling broth leading up to those exams, all of us could be fairly overheated) and second, it was his decision to kill himself, not anyone in society.

But as adolescents we were primed to view “he was driven to it” as a reason enough and to lionize him. It was the spirit of the times. Nothing better than being the ultimate victim: a dead one.

It wasn’t always this way. One of my favorite books is A Little Princess, which is admittedly my most girlish taste in reading. I read it round about twelve, and granted, the girl is a victim. But the thing is, she doesn’t stay a victim. Through imagination and compassion, she builds a universe for herself that can’t be destroyed, and is ultimately rewarded. (BTW the movie is not like the book, and the book is better.)

And there were times, further back, when being poor or a “victim” in any way was proof that you were somehow evil. A bit of this mentality is preserved in Islam’s belief that Christ could not have been crucified, because that would be proof he wasn’t a prophet.

Yes, if you look further back, there are some hints of this in the Judeo Christian tradition. All the prophets of Israel seemed to be cast out and wander the wilderness doing the Biblical equivalent of eating out of trashcans, which was a necessary passage to their destiny, and of course Christian martyrs went singing psalms to the lions’ bellies. (Believe it or not, they did. It was a great factor in early conversions. Though I suspect now and then, one of them, faith or not, indulged in a good cry or scream. Who knows?)

What one is apt to forget in our secular days is the difference between dying in the FIRM belief in a reward on the other side, or suffering ill on Earth in the certainty that Himself will life one up after. The amount of certainty in the afterlife even among people in my village dwarfed my most faith-filled moments. They spoke of it incidentally and casually, as one plans a holiday or a trip abroad. I think that most of those days from which the stories of true martyrs come to us were more like that, and in face of the great reward promised, a passage through brief victimhood was acceptable.

It was perhaps predictable the tradition would get perverted by the romantics.

But it in itself, it wouldn’t matter much, hadn’t Marx got his foot in the intellectual door of the West. (Like a bad salesman. A little bearded ink blot, selling hatred and divisiveness.)
It was Marx who allotted victimhood out by classes and classes in a later evolution of his theory came to be apportioned by such weird characteristics as sex, race or sexual attraction.

According to the neo-Marxists what you are determines your victimhood. You can neither escape nor change it.

Take me, for instance, as a Latina (and fairly dark if I spent any time in the sun, which I don’t), an immigrant, a woman, I am by definition downtrodden and a victim. My days are filled with endless struggle and humiliation. There is no way to change that… unless of course, I declare non-Marxist opinions when the other side will immediately define me as white and call me names. They have to define me as white before they call me names, otherwise they just would add to my victimhood points. (No, I don’t know what you get if you win. Perhaps a set of matched shot glasses.)

But don’t despair, if you’re born lilly white, and even – gasp – male, you can be a victim by proxy so long as your opinions are red. You become a champion of the downtrodden and from then on you can attribute everything that goes wrong in your life to political discrimination.

Sorry, I rolled my eyes so hard I dropped them. Will someone please retrieve them for me and dust off the cat hair. Right.

Do I need to tell you this is nonsense?

Yes, of course, some people are victims. In fact, I will pretty confidently state we’re all victims sometime. Sometimes it’s when we’re too young to know better. And sometimes it is because we love someone and allow him or her to take advantage of us. And sometimes it’s even because of our sex, color, or sexual orientation.

Most of the time, though we’re only victims for some time.

Even the people I know who grew up in the hardest circumstances imaginable, usually turned their lives around when they became adults/moved away.

In fact to remain a victim seems to take either mental illness or extraordinary effort not to improve one’s circumstances.

And no, of course, victimhood doesn’t always follow the lines that people tell you should be victims. Say you grew up in a middle class community as a black person, in America. You might think you’re a victim – only because the SJW’s tell you that night and day – but the truth is that you’re nowhere near victimhood. The poor black baby born to a crack addicted mother in Detroit is. As is a white baby in similar circumstances. Notwithstanding which, they might both turn out all right and have a good life.

Because here’s the thing: this is America. We don’t have a caste system. As study after study shows, people move all over the map, not just physically but economically.

America is a country where you can reinvent yourself. Unless, of course, you’re wedded to your victimhood and think it confers something special upon you.

I’m here to tell you it doesn’t. If you’re a victim, it doesn’t make you special, or good or full of human kindness. It is in fact likely to make you the opposite – human nature being what it is. But mostly, you’ll be the same human you were before you were victimized. And being victimized doesn’t excuse your acting horribly. Self-defense is not the same as hurting those who never did any harm to you.

Your “class of victimhood” doesn’t count in anyone’s mind but Marxists, and come on, those people are crazy cultists. It doesn’t make you better or worse than anyone else.

And if you experienced a little pang at reading that, it’s time you came out of the dank darkness of Marxism and into the light.

You see, while being a certain color or orientation or sex might cause crazy people who follow a long-dead white-man (failed) prophet of doom to fawn upon you, refusing to be a victim, taking your lumps and learning from your experiences and battling on, makes you human, and an individual human at that.

And if you are an individual human, not trying to follow any script, the possibilities are limitless, and you decide where you go and – depending on how much effort you’re willing to put in – how far you go.

And that – that – is far more fun and more interesting than being a perpetual victim.

Stand tall. You’re a free man/woman. Despite what the Social Justice Warriors Whiners would have you believe, your future is not dictated by your skin color, sex, orientation, or even (within limits) your handicap.

Your future is yours, and only you can script it.

UPDATE: Today being Wednesday, I have a post up at Mad Genius Club.

For those of you living in a hole, who haven’t read about how Damien Walter, who for inexplicable reasons is taken seriously enough by The Grauniad to be given column space, has so far pursued his fascination with Larry Correia as to indulge himself with a fishing expedition on Twitter, trying to find “proof” of whatever crazy prejudices he attributes to Larry.

He also indulged himself – poor man – with yet another column Whining the Future, and explaining to the world how everyone who disagrees with him (the problem is it’s so hard to agree with someone who says crazy stuff like “the future is queer” – which leads one to add “and short”) is a dinosaur clinging to his guns and religion – oops, sorry, that was another person running his mouth about people who didn’t agree with him and whom he didn’t understand homophobic/racial/cultural/purple dinosaur privilege/prejudices, and how little Damien’s way is the way of the future. (No, I have no idea how large this man is, but reading him one can’t help imagining him about four feet tall and wearing short pants. For some reason, I also see him holding a lollipop, but that’s unlikely.)

I’ll leave the detailed fisking to the professionals: John C. Wright and Larry Correia. Really, when they were done there was nothing but a few scrapings of “progressivism” on the floor, and to attempt to revisit the column in detail would go way beyond beating a dead horse, to attempting to reconstitute the horse from a few strands of DNA. I’m not so ambitious, so I’ll merely note, as Larry did, that my experience too is that these loud-and-proud social workers who mistake themselves for authors are running people off reading in droves. They might be – some of them are, at least on paper – bestsellers, but this is a much diminished bestsellerdom compared to even the midlisters of the seventies.

And please spare me the excuses publishers made for years: it’s the movies, it’s tv, it’s the internet.

As someone who is hopelessly old-fashioned in her choice of entertainment, preferring reading over just about anything else, and who is friends with a great many similarly unnatural people, for years we’d gather together and lament the lack of anything to read, no matter how we looked. Also, as the mother of two young men of this our present time, who have had the net at their fingertips since the age of three, I can tell you that the internet never stopped them from reading. On the contrary, they’re likely to have one eye on youtube and one on a book – provided the book is interesting enough. And incidentally neither of them found it hard to get into Agatha Christie or Robert A. Heinlein or even C. S. Lewis, language conventions and a bygone mode of life notwithstanding.

Rather the problem has been that for the last fifty years or so, publishers and not a few writers have confused the production of stories for sale with a sacred calling of pushing “progressive” opinions, situations and narratives down people’s throats, whether the buying public wanted the narratives or not. Because they believed that this “future” is inevitable, and also just (in the sense it would destroy many people who are better off than these writers and a few who are worse off, but whom the writers imagine despise them, anyway) and therefore must be pushed.

The public responded well enough to an extent, while those narratives were somewhat understated, but the problem is that given the monopoly of the big publishers over the culture, and their ability to control the laydown on a book, they lost track of the fact that the progressive narrative was not … ah… universally acknowledged, and that the impression that it was was something they themselves fostered. And so they decided to push ever outward, and more bravely towards ever more “progressive” public re-education.

Which is why at this point reading some of the more “daring” fiction, you have to go and check the copyright page, to make sure it was published in the same universe you live in. It is also why, in despair, many publishers have turned to pushing porn, er… I mean paranormal romance (or heck, most romance) and outright “uh?” like Fifty Shades of Grey, because sex still sells. At least sort of.

But never mind all that – though it should be obvious to a blind man, at midnight, in a coal cellar.

What struck me about Walter’s article was his unshakeable certainty that he and other “progressives” are the way of the future.

Look, I know that’s what they’re taught in Europe. Well – I was taught that in Europe too. Unfortunately for my teachers, it was a bad idea to teach Marx to someone who read History in her free time, and Shakespeare for relaxation.

Why?

Because I knew that each era had a way of conceptualizing life and the cosmos by the “science” and “philosophy” of the time.
Thus the Victorians – like Marx – had great faith in science and what I’d call “social engineering” but not in the sense we use it. More in the sense that various parts of society constituted well-oiled parts, working in interlocking harmony.

Well… I could see the philosophy of the time all over Marxist ideas, like the idea of finite pie economics, the idea of an inevitable triumph of proletariat, the idea of proletariat: of people as widgets that fit into certain “classes”. Oh, come on. It was like the great drive to classify the natural world that did so much good in the Natural sciences. And also left us holding the bag on some particularly funny classifications, like pachyderms, which really have a lot less to do with each other than they thought.

Marx went splat a bit more because humans are a moving target, our culture and opinions ever moving, each generation reinventing the same things in a slightly different way. And economics was never a finite pie, which Marx might have known if he hadn’t cadged a living from Engels. Never mind.

I could see that the philosophy behind Marxism was already outdated. In the sixties and early seventies, we could already see that so many of the things Marx had predicted just had failed to materialize, that “classes” were ever harder to classify, that socialist paradises had a lot to hide behind the glitzy façade of the Soviet Life magazines sold at every street corner. I mean, I might not say it aloud, because I wanted to pass my classes and enter college, but no matter how much my teachers assured me that the Soviet Union was a beacon of civilization and the United States was like the Roman Decadence but not nearly as much fun, even I, at fourteen, knew which way people fled even at the price of leaving everything behind, including family.

Took me a long time to internalize it, though, because it’s hard to believe that everything you were taught (or almost everything) in school was a lie.

Since then Marxists have got more defensive, and spend most of their days explaining to us why every instance of Marxist failure is not real, and why socialism/communism/progressivism have never been tried.

Considering how much of their time this explaining takes up, it’s amazing that they still believe, unblinkingly that the future belongs to them and that it underlies things like their analysis that those who cling to their guns and religion their stories about monster hunters and spaceships are the outdated ones, instead of the incoming wave, ready to replace the tired and nihilistic view of the world fostered by that old dead white guy, Marx.

As we know indoctrination works. That and the fear of no longer being in step with the “good people.”

Which means that they don’t even think about the likelihood that the future isn’t “queer” or “feminist” or belongs to the classes that the new Marxists have decided are downtrodden, in place of the “proletariat” that disappointed them by getting cars and homes of their own and wanting to be well off more than they wanted proletarian revolution. (And before one or several of you comes and beats up on me because these people really are “downtrodden” – Quatsch. Yes, yes, victimhood, etc, but most people have at least one characteristic that was discriminated against at one time or another somewhere or other. Yes, there are broad classes of people who were very badly treated by Western civilization and who are still badly treated by every other civilization. But people aren’t “classes” of people, and being a victim is ultimately a matter of choice. Are there people who look down on me because I’m female and have an accent? Yep. And most of the ones I’ve run into are “progressive” but never mind. I am me, and not “designated victim of the week” and most people eventually figure that or they’re too stupid to live, and I don’t care.)

Anyway, “progressives” are absolutely sure that the future is somehow not-capitalist (even though capitalism is not so much a system as what people default to, and breaks through even in the most totalitarian of systems, under the guise of the black market), and belongs to whatever the minority of the day is. Even though there is no proof of this. And they’re convinced that white people are losing “privilege” (does Harry Reid look like he’s looking anything to you? No? Nancy Pelosi?) and therefore are “scared.” (Okay, Bill Clinton does look scared, but that’s because I think he knows he’s getting too old for random tosses in the hay.)

Like the long dead nineteenth century white men whose philosophy they parrot unthinkingly, they view civilization as having a direction, and – in a leap of faith – see it as moving in the way they want it to.

Considering the wonders their beliefs have done for sf book circulation and, more materially, for the economies of Europe and the United States or the standard of living in Cuba, say, this is faith indeed, faith that challenges reality. It is also of course, a sign of undigested and unexamined beliefs.

So if they can look at science fiction – which has been mostly female for at least twenty years – and see it as a long slog of the downtrodden, if they can look at a field that has lionized every writer of color who was willing to parrot the party line, and see white male supremacy… well, they’re not at war with us. They’re at war with reality.

But they never give up, because they were told history comes with a “this end up” arrow and theirs is the end that is up.

Yet, when I made the journey from the left in my mid-thirties, I found it very freeing. What we forget is what a dank no-hope philosophy Marxism is. The idea of a finite pie leads inexorably to the idea that fewer humans is better and no humans best, and eventually to self hatred and hatred of humanity. And the idea of classes and that the better off are better off because they took advantage of the system or were born with “privilege” makes you envy everyone better off than you, a destructive emotion at best. It also leads to guilt about every good thing you have. And to fantasies about a future in which all the good things go away.

It was a revelation, suddenly, to realize that it wasn’t scripted that we’d overpopulate the world and destroy ourselves; it wasn’t scripted that third world cultures would win out and that the future would be poorer and harsher than the present; it wasn’t scripted that crime would always increase, and human life become cheaper. It wasn’t true that the future was like Soylent Green but less fun.

None of it was scripted. There was no arrow saying “this way up” in history. I was free to hold what elements of the past I wanted, and to give up the ones I wanted. I could work towards a better future. I was free to think whatever I wanted without fears of being excommunicated.

I think people who cling to their Marx and Engels accuse us of being afraid, but I think they’re the ones who are afraid. Afraid everything they “know” is wrong. Look, we’re not the ones excommunicating people who cross over. Like the old Soviet Union versus the United States, movement is much greater in the direction from “progressivism” to “freedom” and when movement in the other direction takes place, we might wonder what happened, but we don’t obsess about it, and we don’t character-assassinate. We talk back to them, sure, but we don’t spend our time calling them names. (Oh, fine, I called Damien Walter short or at least juvenile, but note I said he just gives me that impression. For all I know he’s seven feet tall and doesn’t even like lollipops.)

They do. Because unless they keep that fence of rigid belief around the herd, that certainty that it’s their way or the highway, and their demands that you fall in line or “shut up and go away”; unless they metaphorically stone everyone who walks away or dares to disagree with them publically, people who’ve been indoctrinated just might smell the freedom outside and realize none of these dismal predictions are “inevitable.” They might realize that the future is theirs to create. And that they did build that. And that there’s nothing sacred about victimhood. And that they have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, in a world that is an infinite pie.

And then, they will be done.

I’m Tired – Dave Pascoe

I’m tired. That should really not be a surprise, as Wee Dave (all names and heights have been changed to protect the not-yet-two-week-old spawnling) is doing as the newborn do, and ensuring his parents are running on the not-quite-ragged edge. Mrs. Dave is doing well, and healing well. Wee Dave put on more’n half a pound (and a whole inch) in the week prior to his last pediatrician appointment, and drinks his meals like a champion quaffer (though more lands in his black hole of a stomach than around him, thank Glod) and belches like same after. We’ll see what he’s up to on the morrow. We’re slowly crafting a routine around our slightly larger family, and it’s quite the experience. I recommend it, if only because – when you do it right – it’ll boil away all of your pretenses and you’ll know what you’re made of. Hopefully it’s not cheese.

But more seriously, I’m tired. Of the foolishness I see in the world. Publishers mobilizing the authors they keep in quasi-slavery in order to attack the one entity that can mean their freedom. The fact that NOBODY is really stepping up to challenge that entity. Sure, there’s competition. Of a sort. But it’s smaller companies doing the same thing in not-quite-as-good a way, and so doomed to squabble over the scraps.

I’m tired of a marketplace geared around gigantic corporations, and a body of legislation geared toward making sure such large (and deep-pocketed) corporations have unnecessary advantages in said marketplace. Where a small group inordinately powerful people, living and working in the same small (yet inordinately powerful) place at the same job, can levy an outsized influence on a readership with whom they have almost nothing in common.

I’m tired of an internet where wastes of flesh can print the most horrible lies about my friends, and influence the weak-willed and weak-minded against people I care about, all from the relative comfort of their distant virtual anonymity. And I’m tired of having friends on different sides of the dispute, and not knowing how to deal with that.

On the larger stage, I’m very, very tired of an oligarchy trying to run my country to their own twisted ends. We’re coming up to an election season. Another election season, and one where one faction seems poised to take away the legislature from the other. Or, as they seem to have done more than once, yank defeat from the jaws of victory. We have a supreme executive who flagrantly flouts the law of the land, and nobody (*cough*the aforementioned legislature*cough*) does nothing to hold him to account. Where he frees enemy combatants on his own recognizance because doing a thing quickly was more important than doing it as the law prescribes. And when he leaves office? In the words of the as-yet-immortal Mr. Slant, Ave! Bossa nova, similis bossa seneca! I fully expect the next Placeholder of the United States to act as disgracefully as the current stuffed shirt.

So, yeah: this is me in a tired place.

Fortunately, that’s *mostly* just what it is.

And despair is a sin.

Look, SpaceX just unveiled its manned space module, the Dragon v2. It’s pretty. And on top of that, Sierra Nevada Corporation Space Systems’ Dream Chaser vehicle has completed the latest round of NASA certifications. Not to be left out, Virgin Galactic announced they’ve begun the process to get FAA certification for commercial space flights out of a New Mexico launch facility. Of course, what I’d like happen is a re-opening of the NERVA project, but then, I’m of the opinion that nuclear power has come a long way in the last several decades, and it’s the best way to move forward. So, we have private industry thumbing its collective nose at the only extant superpower and a wannabe-usetabe global heavyweight, and putting Americans back in space. Closer to where most of us live, we have options, for the first time in decades, of who we do business with.

And everywhere there’s new life, and new minds to mold. And we now have the means to do it, in a way we haven’t for years and years. Maybe we’re doing all right, after all.

*I should have posted this last night, but I woke up with the world’s worse sinus headache, and by the time it was gone, I had stuff that I needed to do.  Sorry.  It was mostly written from last week, but not quite.  So now I’ve finished it. The chapter, not the book!*

The prequel to this — Witchfinder — is now up on Amazon.

This novel will get posted here a chapter every Friday or Saturday, or occasionally Sunday.  If you contribute $6 you shall be subscribed for the earc and first clean version in electronic format.  I think it will probably take another three months to finish.  Less, if I can have a weekend to run through and get ahead of the game.  It hasn’t happened yet.

NOTICE: For those unsure about copyright law and because there was a particularly weird case, just because I’m making the pre-first draft of my novel available to blog readers, it doesn’t mean that this isn’t copyrighted to me.  Rogue Magic as all the contents of this blog is © Sarah A. Hoyt 2013.  Do not copy, alter, distribute or resell without permission.  Exceptions made for ATTRIBUTED quotes as critique or linking to this blog. Credit for the cover image is © Ateliersommerland | Dreamstime.com

Lady Helen Blythe, sister to the Earl of Savage

The child’s hand was moist in mine, and had overheated feeling children get when they’re in a panic.

I’m not good with children. It’s not as though I don’t like them. I suppose there could be a child I liked well enough, except that I’d never met him or her. My nurse said I just didn’t like my younger siblings, or at least I was annoyed by them which is perfectly normal. Or at least Nurse said so. Of course she also said when we were all grown up we’d be the best of friends, which just meant to me that she really hadn’t looked at my sisters too closely, because how anyone could be best friends with sickly sweetly Harmony was beyond me.

But I could imagine, in some distant future that I might, perhaps, get married, and if my children didn’t take after my siblings, I might even like them and wish to spend time with them. Perhaps.

Still it made me nervous to be the only adult and have this confiding little boy with his dark, curly hair and green eyes. It should make me nervous, of course. We were in fairyland, which meant he’d probably turn into a dragon or an ogre, or turn out to feed only on human eyes, or something equally disgusting.

I held his hand gingerly, thought it seemed no more disgusting than the average child’s hand. He smelled the same way. I mean, like an average child about that age. For some reason children around that age always smell to me like pastry and pencil shavings.

“Where do you live?” I asked. I kept in mind that on the paths of fairyland, you must help three people in need before you find your way home. “I mean, how can I help you?”

He turned green, intent eyes on me, and made me frown, because his eyes reminded me far too closely of Seraphim Ainsling’s the prince consort’s.

“I… I don’t know,” he said.

“How can you not know?” I wasn’t ready to give up the idea that he might be some kind of eye-eating monster.

He smiled at that and spoke with the suavity of an older man, which of course, might very well mean he was an eye-eater. “Very easily, madam,” he said. “I simply don’t remember.”

“Why not?” I asked him. I was not so trusting that I would take him at his word. Nurse always said that part of the reason the younger ones didn’t like me was that – in her words – I crammed them, as one would a horse. I cornered and asked them questions, and didn’t observe any sort of protocol or delicacy.

The problem, you see, is that I remember being their age. I think most adults don’t. Most adults go weak at the thought of a lost six year old, but I remembered very well being six, and the things I could connive and contrive were as bad – if not worse – than what any adult could think on. And I remembered that being asked direct questions, that didn’t assume I was a little simpering dolt, didn’t allow me time to make up cover stories.

His hand twitched in mine, and for a moment I thought he’d run away. But then he said, in a voice that sounded much, much older. “I don’t know, you know? I have a strong feeling I forgot it on purpose.”

“Oh,” I said. This, despite his much more adult voice, resonated with me. You see, I had been almost there. Not quite. But close enough. I’d never willingly forgotten who I was or where I was or for my sins, where home was. But I’d spent a good part of my childhood daydreaming about being just about anyone else. And I don’t mean by this I fantasized about being the Princess Royal, who was then lost. Oh, I did that too. I suppose every girl about my age did. I knew objectively I was younger than the lost princess, and I knew I looked like Jonathan. At least my features did, if not my color. But I could pretend I’d been hidden by magic, kept like Sleeping Beauty, from the world and from aging. And even that my appearance was contrived. Besides, the queen was dark as I was.

But those were dreams every girl had, when lessons were difficult or one’s nurse or Mama said one shouldn’t do something. I had others. And by others I mean I fantasized being everyone, and everyone’s lot seemed better than mine. The begging girl at the corner would, as I knew, having been instructed to give alms and feel compassion, often go hungry and cold, and even suffer the brutality of passerbyes. But few, even beggers, would go through life with the pretense of love.

Oh, I don’t know how to tell it, and when I say it it sounds quite foolish, but I think it would have been better for all concerned if Papa had told us aloud, over breakfast, that he disliked the lot of us and had only sired us because it was what one did. And it would have been better if he then washed his hands of us, giving us the minimal to survive and letting us grow up quite wild and unsupervised.

Just as it would have been better if Mama had said she only loved Harmony and Honoria, and the rest of us could go to the devil, for all she cared.

The problem was not that they didn’t love me. I suspect a lot of people, all the pious stories notwithstanding, grow up without having anyone who feels more than duty towards them. And mama and papa might be incapable of loving anyone, which I supposed was not their fault. Mama tolerated the children who most resembled them and she was pleased to think she loved them, and that was not her fault either.

But why must they and all of society conspire to pretend they loved me. It was all “you must show great gratitude to your father for how kind and generous he is to you.” I promise you, I’d rather have been beaten. And it was that feeling that made me want to be anyone else, to slip out of my existence as if I’d never been, and to go… elsewhere.

I’d done it at last too, hadn’t I? And what a fine mess I’d done of it.

“You understand it then?” he asked. “Wanting to run away? Wanting to forget everything you were? Everyone you were.”

“I understand running away,” I said. “But not forgetting. I couldn’t make myself forget if I tried.”

He looked at me, his eyes narrowed, and though his voice was that of a six year old, I had the feeling that he was much, much, much older, as he said, “I could make you forget.”

“Oh,” I said, and let go of his hand and for a moment I almost ran away, because it occurred to me maybe he didn’t eat eyes, but memories.

He looked appalled, as though not sure what he’d said, or why it made me so scared. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “I wouldn’t do that unless you asked me. But you said, you couldn’t make yourself forget and I—”

“And you?”

“I thought I’d oblige you. But you don’t really want to forget do you?”

“Not everything,” I said, reluctantly. I didn’t want to forget Jonathan’s visits to the schoolroom when I was little. I remembered the warmth in them. Or this one time I’d seen a pantomime on pirates, when I was very little and it had seemed to me an enchanted realm. Or the times I’d spent reading, by the fire, on long winter evenings. “To forget everything would mean to lose what you are. I don’t think anyone wants to do that.”

He blinked up at me. “I think I did.” The image of him wavered and fluttered before my eyes, and for a moment I had the image of a much older man, and a feeling I knew him too. “I think…” He frowned a little. “It’s a lot like being a mosaic, you see.”

“Your memories?” I asked.

He started to shake his head, then shrugged. “Imagine that you were taken and broken, and scattered to the four winds and that your pieces were gathered again but with a lot of other pieces, a lot of memories that aren’t yours, that can’t be fit into what you remember, that … that are things you couldn’t or would never do, and yet it all mixes him, and you remember them as if you did it.”

His form had now solidified into a man in his twenties, and he looked like Darkwater, and I thought the prince consort had a brother, the king of fairyland. I said, my voice trembling a little, “It must have been sore unpleasant, your majesty.”

I expected him to vanish on that, since it seems to be in fairyland no one likes to be revealed. But he just frowned at me, and smiled a little and said, “Yes, I think I am, and you can’t imagine unpleasant. It comes with the burden of the memories of everyone who was ever the king. Which is why the king of fairyland is immortal. And more often than not insane.” He ran his hand across his brow, in a gesture I’d seen Darkwater make. “I’m not here. Not me. I mean, not all of me. And I don’t mean just as king. I’m not even here, all myself, as human. But it’s enough to know. I remember. And I remember there is a reason I did this, beyond… beyond my wish to vanish. There was an attack. They can’t capture fairyland till they’ve captured me, because I am fairyland, so I made myself many. But… the young one was unadvisable. He longed for home.”

My mind had made one of those leaps it makes sometimes “You were under attack by the mythworld,” I said. “The gods are looking for power, for… something to do with misfits.”

“Misfits?” he said. And then, “Oh, dear.”

His eyes seemed to grow. I don’t know how to explain it but suddenly there was a green portal, shining with an odd light, and I tumbled into it, head first. The last words I heard were, “This should at least keep one of you safe.”

Happy Saturday, friends and neighbors! Apparently I griped so much about having no books to promote last week that you lovely people decided to give me plenty this time! We have several new books from familiar faces and the first from a recent addition to the Hunnish tribe. A quick note: I’ve included TXRed’s first book because it will be on sale to help promote the sequel, which has just been released. So go, oh mighty Huns, and buy books! Read them! Enjoy them! Once you’ve enjoyed them, go leave reviews and mention the books to your friends! If you didn’t enjoy them, well, just keep it to yourself. *grin* You all seemed very generous with your feedback on covers, marketing, etc. a couple of weeks ago, and I encourage you to continue to help your colleagues that way. Money and input, input and money. As always, future entries for the promo post can (and should!) be sent to my email. Happy reading!
Jason Dyck, AKA The Free Range Oyster
Data Herder and Mercenary Wordsmith, who’s fond of scenic coast lines but never quite pines for the fjords

Alma Boykin

Elizabeth of Starland (The Colplatschki Chronicles)

Stubborn as a mule? No, stubborn AND her mule.

Colonial Plantation LTD. abandoned ColPlat XI, writing the planet off as a tax loss after a series of severe Carrington-type events. Now, four hundred years later, Laurence V of Frankonia wants to write Elizabeth von Sarmas out of his kingdom, but like her Lander ancestors, Elizabeth refuses to roll over and die.

To survive, she needs to cross the continent, thread her way through a holy war, and find friends in the Eastern Empire—an impossible task for a sheltered gentlewoman. Or is it? Never underestimate a woman with a mission and a mule.

Also available from these fine booksellers:

• Kobo
• Barnes & Noble

Elizabeth of Donatello Bend (The Colplatschki Chronicles)

Elizabeth won. Now what?

Elizabeth von Sarmas just thought things would get easier. Now she’s faced with managing her late enemy’s lands and winning its residents back to the Babenburgs, while finding out where all the estate’s money went. While balancing diplomatic duties, her vows as a poltulant of Godown, and learning how to command men in formal battle. The Eastern Empire’s enemies don’t intend to let her rest. And while she makes some new friends, she also earns the hatred of an enemy far more dangerous than anyone can imagine.

No even Snowy the Killer Mule is going to be able to keep her out of trouble this time. Trust in Godown—but keep a loaded crossbow.

Also available from these fine booksellers:

• Kobo
• Barnes & Noble

Pam Uphoff

Dancer (Wine of the Gods)

A year ago, Rael Withione was one of the elite. A Presidential Guard. Now she’s a handicapped hero, going home to finish her recuperation, and hoping to achieve average. She wasn’t planning on dealing with a new illegal drug nor a murder that is much too close to home.

R. Modena & A.C. Extarian

United Fleet: The Right Place

The year is Ct2293 and humanity’s advancement has started to expand to the stars. Earth’s last military has made a discovery that is deemed impossible – potentially rocking everything humanity has known. United Fleet scientist Ensign Sharyn Cameron is put to the case when she meets Judas Extarian, a guard working in a nearby Ci-Tek building. Extarian’s boredom with his life and work comes to an end when Ensign Cameron comes to him for help with a problem – and both of them end up with more questions that neither of them can answer. Clues point to the building that Extarian is tasked to guard. To get the answers might cost them both everything they’ve worked for in their lives, especially when the only other guard dies under suspicious circumstances. Maybe New Adelaide isn’t as boring as Extarian thought it was.

This book is also available through Lulu.

James Young

After the Scythe (Scythefall)

For the people of Newton’s Village, the end of the world was just the beginning. The town’s denizens thought they’d witnessed the worst in humanity when all hell broke loose on the night the president announced the imminent arrival of the asteroid Scythe. Four weeks later, after Scythefall killed almost a third of the nation, they are about to find out just how wrong they were. After the Scythe is the story of every day people’s sacrifice and resolve in a struggle against desperation, violence and lawlessness.

Woelf Dietrich

The Seals of Abgal (A Guardians of the Seals Tale)

Bookstore owner and novice antiquarian Sebastian Kaine is proud of his new profession and even prouder still of the collection of antique books on the occult that he keeps locked away in the basement of his bookstore. But his little utopia is shattered one night when he wakes up in that same basement, bound and bloodied, and his prized collection all but destroyed.

Making matters worse are the two strange men responsible for the carnage. They want The Seals of Abgal and insist Sebastian is in possession of it. Though he denies having any knowledge of the book, Sebastian soon finds himself at the receiving end of a brutal interrogation – one, he fears, he may not survive.

As he tries to stay alive, Sebastian discovers that The Seals of Abgal is far more than just an ordinary grimoire. It holds powerful secrets, secrets that are older than time itself, and the men searching for it are no ordinary thugs.

But then, Sebastian is no ordinary bookseller.

Also available from these fine, not-so-mysterious booksellers:

• Gumroad
• Kobo
• Barnes & Noble
• iTunes

*I don’t mean to run consecutive guest posts, though I am working and am therefore running more guests than usual.  But Tom wrote this, and as you see there’s a reason to run it today.*

Beyond the violence -Tom Knighton

Two years. At once, it sounds like forever ago while also being just a blink of an eye. That’s what loss is like, though.

Let me back up. Some here know this, because I talked about it a couple of days ago, but some may not. Two years ago, on May 30, 2012, one of the most amazing people I’ve ever known was taken from the world.

A man named Ian Stalwicki walked into the Café Racer in Seattle, Washington. He had apparently been a bit of a problem, and was asked to leave. Stalwicki turned to walk out, but before he left, he drew out two .45 semiautomatic pistols and opened fire.

Stalwicki killed five people in the café, and another outside while trying to carjack a getaway vehicle. One of those victims inside the café was Kimberly Lynn Layfield, or Kim as we all knew her.

Kim was an amazing woman. Of all the people who graduated from us at Riverview Academy, she was one of the few who never let go of her dreams. Riverview was small, mostly working class families, so we weren’t rich kids by any means. Most of our classmates dreamed to take over their family businesses, or maybe a good job here in town. Kim was different. She dreamed of being an actress.

She was still pursuing that dream when Stalwicki ended her life. I remember reading the word on Facebook of all places, and it feels like yesterday. I remember breaking down at my desk, eventually collapsing on the floor in absolute tears. Of us all, Kim was among the best of what we all should have been.

It didn’t take long before the questions start. Some are normal, like “why her?” Kim was among the most beautiful girls in our school, yet she spurned opportunities to be one of the “popular” kids, and instead said she preferred the company of we less than popular folks. She was the kind of person who this world desperately needs.

Probably the most shocking question to me was “Have I been wrong about guns all this time?”

You see, I’m a gun nut. Absolutely fascinated with them and everything about them. I never turn down an opportunity to shoot something new, and generally don’t turn down an opportunity to shoot something I’ve shot before either. Yet, here I was, wondering if I was wrong about the entire Second Amendment.

That’s how I can forgive people in California who are questioning the Second Amendment. They’re not even gun people, so of course they’re going to question it.

I can forgive them for questioning the Second Amendment. It doesn’t make it any less stupid than when I did it.

You see, it didn’t take me long to remember that Ian Stalwicki was to blame for Kim’s murder and the murder of five other people. He committed the crime, not the gun.

Guns are tools. They have legitimate purposes, not unlike the knife Elliot Rodger used to slaughter three men in his apartment before leaving home to begin his rampage in earnest.

Some will argue that guns are only meant for killing. Honestly, that must mean I’ve been horribly misusing mine. I mean, most of mine have only been used for punching holes in paper. Of course, there are the ones I’ve taken deer hunting, so I guess you could call that “killing”, but I think we all know what the anti-gun crowd is talking about.

Guns are tools. Yes, they are tools that can also kill, but the same can be said about a machete or an axe. More importantly, however, they are tools that enable a weaker person to defend themselves from a stronger one.

Of course, the Left likes to argue that there are alternatives to guns for self defense. They’re deluding themselves, but they argue it. They think things like rape whistles, pepper spray, and self defense classes are effective alternatives.

Rape whistles don’t do any good unless there’s someone nearby to hear it. Since attackers tend to like to seek out their prey in places without a lot of people, the flaw in this plan is self explanatory.

Pepper spray can be effective…on some people. Others can shrug it off. In fact, one can actually build up a tolerance to pepper spray.

Self defense classes aren’t completely awful, except for the fact that most such classes only last a few weeks. It limits how much useful information someone can possibly get.

What your average Leftist misses is that criminals aren’t hobbyists. They’re in it for the career. That means they’re not as stupid as some might prefer to believe. Many have spent their entire lives working towards their criminal behavior. They’re good at it.

Like most people who make a career out of something, they spend time to be as good at something as they can be. Some will spend time building a tolerance toward pepper spray. Some will be bigger and stronger than their prey (and that includes both men and women, for the record). Others will just know how to beat someone down.

You know what they can’t condition themselves for? A bullet between the eyes.

There was an old saying. “God made all men. Sam Colt made all men equal.” It was an advertising slogan, but an incredibly accurate one, though “men” is the more general term for people. (Got to throw that out before the feminists attack me for believing only people with a penis should be able to defend themselves or something)

The firearm is the only tool that you can effectively rely on to protect yourself with.

Will bad people use it for bad things? Sure. However, as Elliot Rodger showed us, cars and knives can be used for bad things too. After all, he used both to hurt people. However, they’re not as scary to a lefty as a gun is.

Guns aren’t the problem. They never have been. Even Michael Moore will point out that Canada has tons of guns as well, and they even play the same video games, watch the same movies, and even the same television shows. However, Canada isn’t the United States. For all of the wonderful things we are as a nation, there’s something that makes sick people go nuts from time to time and kill a lot of people in the process.

Discussion of the actual causes would take a lifetime. The truth of the matter is that it doesn’t matter. The actual causes become irrelevant because we’re too busy having to defend against things that had no relevance to the act.

Unlike a lot of people, I don’t ascribe maliciousness to things leftists do. Even if a few wring their hands with malignant glee, most are just people who really do think that leftist policies are what’s best for this country. Unfortunately, those same people don’t realize that they’re obstructing us from really talking about the causes of these crimes. They’re distracting us from the discussion we need to be having.

Bad thing happen. There’s only so much we can do to mitigate bad things happening. You can legislate until you’re blue in the face, but you can’t stop crazy. You can’t stop evil. You stop the bad things of the universe from reaching out and making life horrible from time to time.

So here’s something for the leftists who really want to do what they can to prevent the next one of these events from happening. How about you all stop with your self-righteous crap about how the NRA has blood on its hands when your side will all but literally stand on the bodies of dead children to politicize any tragedy just because they know it’s the only damn way they’ll ever get any movement on guns.

Accept it. It’s a lost cause for you. If you couldn’t get a change in gun laws like you wanted after Newtown, you’re not going to get it. It’s just not going to happen. Why not spend that energy and money (I’m talking to YOU, Michael Bloomberg) on something that can actually make a meaningful difference, like something that would look at the real causes.

Not that it’s going to happen. Too many people are invested in this lost cause to take a step back and try anything else. That might actually make the world a better place. Can’t have that, now can we?