It never fails. Never. If a site is gaining popularity with the “to the right of Lenin” crowd, some expose, sometimes a lot of them come out explaining how they’re out to get us, it’s the most terrible thing ever and it’s a trap. And people run.

And this is the most stupid thing ever. Somewhere between a punishing sites that encourage or tolerate us, and doing the left’s bidding by allowing them to take over spaces by running before them like scared sheep.

For years now some of you — you know who you are — have thrown hissy fits and ranted at Amazon.

So Amazon is soft left. Cool-ee-oh. Cute story bro. Note that most — not all but most — of the cases of their taking down books that are “right wing” are manufactured by agent provocateurs who make sure they violate the rules just-so and then act shocked, shocked, they were taken down and insist it must be left wing bias.

Okay, I haven’t looked at all of them, and one or two of them might be true. There are — we know this — bad agents embedded at Amazon, and MOSTLY there are stupid agents, meaning people scared of “offending” because they are not American and don’t understand America.

To be fair on this, because I still lurk, forgotten, in leftist groups, and they complain of as many “politically motivated” take downs. And most of them also aren’t.

But the point is, let’s assume that Amazon really is politically biased. (Well, they are, in the sense they hired people from trad pub to help run the book side. At best they’re soft left) and will at some point in the future and for no reason take down every single author to the right of Lenin and forbid us the site.

Well, that would in fact be a terrible thing, and I’m not sure how I’d deal. I have plans and could probably shift, but it would still hurt for a year or two.

Here’s the thing though: that hasn’t happened yet. And until that happens, Amazon if the 800 lb gorilla of indie publishing.

If I run now, I’ll still sell to my hard core fans, sure. And maybe some of the softer core ones if I had some publicity efforts we’re contemplating anyway. But I will lose maybe half of my readers. These are the casual “Oh, I see that name and kind of remember I liked her last book. I’ll buy or at least borrow.” And I’ll (listen closely to this) lose 90% of my ability to get new readers who just stumble on me on Amazon.

Question: Why would I do that to myself? On purpose? Have I developed a sudden allergy to cash? Taken a vow of poverty? Really hate my family and want them to suffer? Which one is it? Because barring one of those, I’m being a dumbf*ck by running before I’m kicked out.

There is one semi-valid point to be made for running: don’t give money to those who hate us.

This one DOES apply to Amazon, but in Amazon’s case, it is negated by “Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face.” Sure I’m giving them (some) money. But without them I get almost no money. To run now would be to take poison and hoping my enemy would die.

That last point applies FAR MORE to places like Facebook, which are already in decline/present few opportunities for promotion.

So why do I stay there? Because I have a reasonable contingent of my readers for whom that’s the main social media. I’m not leaving them behind. But…. giving them money! Oh, please. Mostly these days I go there to share posts or promo books. I buy nothing they advertise. Sure, they’re still collecting data. Most of it is bad (I checked. For instance, I’m a political “moderate.” Which is actually true, mind, but not in THEIR reckoning for sure.) So the only money I’m “giving” them is adding one to their numbers. What? You think they can’t just invent more? Why do you think they don’t erase obviously dead people and pets? Yeah.

Mostly I stay in places like Facebook because I don’t want to give up the platform. If no one there were reading my blogs, they wouldn’t work so hard on doing things like making sure no picture (and sometimes no specific post) show in my link. I’m not leaving. They’d have to kick me out. (If you’re a private person, not a public figure, of course, that’s completely different.)

But recently I’ve noticed a trend of attacking sites that are specifically either ours or specifically secure.

I actually fell for the first of these, Proton mail, which was alleged to have rolled over and finked. It took me months to find out I was actually wrong about it, because the precipitating incident was that they REFUSED to roll over fink for (I THINK. I’ve slept since then) the UK government. And I should have known it was stupid, because if both are on Proton mail it’s end to end encrypted and if broken into it gibberishes (totally a word) itself. So even the owners couldn’t fink. If they wanted to. The encription is based on YOUR password, which they don’t know.

Now, mind you, I have other problems with Proton, mainly the fact it does NOT notify me I have messages, and being ADD AF I forget to check it. But you can get me to answer by pinging me on hotmail and telling me you emailed proton. (Yes, cumbersome. Deal.)

Signal is the same on end to end encryption and I’ve recently seen a flurry of screaming that it’s a trap, and they work for the left and…. Listen, you rockheads, I don’t care if half the left invests in it, they can’t read your messages, because it’s encrypted end to end. On your password. They couldn’t if they wanted to.

The latest target of the screaming mimmies is substack.

Is substack perfect? Oh, heck no. They’re technologically kludgy and weird. Financially too, in the sense that they could be easier at setting how you’ll get paid.

However they do not in fact have a political bias, as in banning what you say. Might they have it in one case or two during COVID? sure. Possible. But as we now know, den fuhrer bootsies were actively telling platforms to take down “misleading” “disinformation” or the government would shut them down. I haven’t examined the cases of substack take down and can’t be sure it was political. (Because most of the time it isn’t. It’s florid politics, and behind the scenes violating rules to ensure they’re taken down. Almost like they’re trying to scare us into panicking and running.) HOWEVER if those were political, they are still within the margin of error, and all the articles about them are GROSSLY overblown.

Being one of the most popular blogging platforms, if you run from them, who are you benefiting? If the right runs the left, by definition owns the field and really this time sets the rules so you can’t get in.

Heck, take WordPress, which is no angel. All the cases of “political take down” I dove down were in fact like Amazon’s. “I was taken down for my brave article about Covid” and you’re all sympathetic. Then you dive down the site, and in the side bar, under “about us” or “interests” or whatever you find actual incitement to violence which is the real reason they were taken down.

Remember the guy some of you mentioned and who had in fact been linking my articles for months, and I allowed the links to show, because I assumed what I saw at a cursory glance, was what the blog was: a place that showcased links to me, and Ace and a few others? When he was taken down and you guys linked him, he came to the comments to cry. But something he said — I don’t remember what — hit me wrong, so I went to check his site. And oh, dear Lord, in the About Us and other side bars, it was a fest of stuff that yes, of course it’s going to get banned, including explicit triple x pron.

In other words, the site had been setup as bait to have word press ban them, at which point the guy could spook the right by claiming it was all political and look how they are unreliable. When I called him on it in the comments and blocked him, he left one more comment which he didn’t approve, about how ah ah you sheep are so easy to scare.

Which I remember.

Yes, WordPress is annoying, but most of it is stupid programmer tricks, trying to “improve” it and making it worse and worse. Even though they are not explicitly for us, nor designed to attract us.

Sure, they play with my numbers, though that might be google. And other stupid tricks. But I’m still here.

Here’s the thing: If we run, they don’t have to kick us out. If we abandon speech platforms? They don’t have to censor us. If we spook at the first hint or a rumor? They don’t have to make an effort. And no one will try to fill our niche market, because we’ll be too unreliable.

I understand being paranoid. We’ve been under sustained attack for 100 years. But right now, just by refusing to run, speaking out and rewarding platforms that allow us to speak out? We’re winning. The culture is turning. Politics inevitably follows culture. not the other way around.

Sure, sometimes we’re going to get hit. Keep backups of your content so you can move quickly. But it’s not worth it to move preemptively, and it is in fact BAD FOR YOU and for all of us.

The fact the left is now trying to demonize ALL internet usage — No really — we really are winning this thing.

Look at what was suggested for me by pocket last night:

“The internet is evil, you stupid prolls! It will give you apnea! It makes you ungovernable! Stop using the internet and listen to us!”

Keep on keeping on. To quote Ian “It’s scared.”

If forced, then move, but until then refuse to be spooked.

Be not afraid. Fear plays on the side of the enemy. We’re not afraid. We’re the ones they’re afraid of.

You got this.

When I was in highschool, back in pre-history (the 1970s were pretty barbaric!) the hotness in psychology and sociology and frankly in public discourse was Freudianism. It had been completely internalized by then, proceeding from the halls of academia to the popular imagination.

If I had a dime for every time I was told I only wrote poetry (or novels. And boy, were they wretched) because I was sublimating my sexual impulses, and how I’d be “normal” and well adjusted if I simply slept with everyone who asked, I’d have…. well… I’d never have had to work, and I’d still be spending those dimes.

I know there are people here who are older than I, but I don’t know to what extent that pervaded the US back then. And I suspect the young people never really encountered it in that form, because by then it had sunk even deeper into popular culture and become non-explicit. It’s the underpinning of movies (boys/men only care about getting laid. Women…. well, behave like no woman ever, see any of the series where all women care about is getting laid, too.) and tv and books, but it’s not clearly articulated.

It was pretty pervasive and impossible to ignore. There was a sub-genre of “intellectual” books and movies where the murderer killed because he didn’t have enough sex, or not his preferred type of sex, and “cold” women (who didn’t want to indulge whatever crazy sexual fantasy the guy preferred) were guilty for every mass murderer ever as well as every other social ill.

There was also the gross subset, the reaction to which causes the spasm of accusations of child abuse in the eighties: the idea that if children were exposed to all kinds of sex very young they’d not have repressions (or in the lingo of the day “hangups”) and would therefore be perfectly well adjusted and jealousy, envy and aggression would just vanish. (This was perfectly integrated in the Communist Manifesto where Marx explained why if people gave him everything and every woman slept with him, the world would be paradise. And okay, sure, I exaggerate, but not by much to be fair.)

It really was everywhere. It’s still everywhere, but not completely articulated as “if>then.” And since it’s mated in people’s heads with the whole (also unspoken) Marxist concept that for every situation there is an oppressed and an oppressor, and if something is wrong, you must find the person/group to blame for it, it’s going to be a load of trouble as we try to right this ship and recover from the 20th century.

In most problems, there isn’t a clear cut oppressed/oppressor dynamic. My instinct for just about everything is to blame the government, and it’s amazing how often that works, but mostly that is because most human problems have their basis in how humans are — the human condition, if you will — but governments throughout history have tried to “improve” on that, and the accretion of bad ideas just builds and builds and builds, till yeah, it’s the government. Then that changes and we get other bad ideas accreting. Mass solutions fit nobody.

Anyway, what brought this rant about was this:

There is a link above the image, which gives you the context, but that’s not the important part. The important part is one of the answers to this, which was so wrong it wasn’t even wrong. As in it was literally “None of this makes any sense” and it had its root both in freudianism and Marxist dualism, both of which, by providing a facile veneer of intellectualism to very simple thinking have penetrated the back-mind of the west to the point they’re like a sort of brain parasite, eating away at what still functions.

As for the tweet above, there is nothing wrong with it/no falsehood detected. Those are indeed the sounds of vibrant goblin neighborhoods the “diverse” and “vibrant” areas of our towns, ever more infused with newcomers, newly arrived from third world shitholes.

The problem was that in the comments, someone who I’m sure thinks he’s “right wing” and “conservative” took offense with the fact that all the examples of bad behavior she cites “are male.” First of all, I can’t find where she mentions the sex of the overdoses. And I believe the “he” for schizophrenic is more in line of the old grammatical rule that if you don’t know the sex referred to it’s “he”. Second, as for males beating females, way for this “based” and “Chad” dude to tell everyone that he never actually lived in a poor neighborhood. Because, yeah, males beat females. A LOT. It takes a high degree of Western civilization for the opposite to ever happen. Reason being for males to get beaten, they must HOLD BACK. Which means they have internalized “men don’t hit women”. Now, sure, some other guy piled on saying she doesn’t have some chick yelling at her daughters, and a cat fight. But AGAIN way to tell us you’ve never lived in a poor neighborhood. Those dulcet sounds get lost in the death-like-screams of some woman getting beat within an inch of her life. Or on Saturday night, multiple women getting beat within an inch of her life. Because the imports from the third world take full advantage of males being bigger and stronger than females, and take out their frustrations on their wives like American men might relax by playing video games, or watching a fairly violent movie. It’s just what they do. Particularly on a weekend night. (Having grown up in a western but strange country and in unenlighted times, this happened in the village too. Drink a little, beat your wife, and other chilling that happened on weekends. Not in my family, but that was why we were Odd. Also why our women were known and feared, because we must have some weird magic.)

Anyway, the point here is that out of a cogent point this guy saw only “she’s attacking males.” Because he feels — possibly rightly — oppressed, so it must be females doing it.

Then he segwayed into this very weird thing about how she was only mad at men because she couldn’t get a “Chad” to sleep with her and had to sleep with inferior males.

I’m not going to reproduce his response, because he also threw in a bit of anti-semitism, because why not, if you’re going to be an idiot be an idiot all the way. Also, of course, since all oppression is binary, if he isn’t rich it’s because “reee! Jewish financiers control everything.” So, of course. But if you page down through the answers, you’ll inevitably find him.

The point is that it’s a bizarre response. The Marxist duality is so ingrained in the idiot that he can’t even read what’s actually written. Like the left, he just scans for pronouns, and if those are bad and denote “bad” things, then the poster must be anti-male, instead, of you know, having lived in low rent neighborhoods and correctly reproducing the noisiest type of malfeasance you can hear in those neighborhoods. (Because most of them are stocked with third world males.)

AND THEN when assigning the reason why a woman would do that, (Why she “hates” males, because that’s what he thinks) he must default to stupid background Freudianism. I.e. if there’s any evil or any envy or anything wrong, it’s because someone isn’t getting as much/the kind of sex they want.

This reduces humans to the most basic, instinct-driven animal.

It is by the way wrong, if you wonder. Heinlein might have said that everything humans did was a mating dance, and maybe he was right, in the sense horoscopes are “right” and all sorts of models for societal things are “right” — like the fourth turning one, or the strong/weak men one, or– — in the sense that if you abstract past a certain point and ignore non-conforming data everything will fit. But I can tell you that while I’ve done things to attract a man’s attention, including at one point putting stick on labels with eyes on his monitor, and perching a saucy vintage ladies hat on it, with a label underneath saying “the other woman” it’s mostly THAT man. Telling stories isn’t a mating dance. It’s what my brain does to amuse itself so it doesn’t die of boredom. And making say little stuffed animals would be very weird as a mating dance, since guys don’t even see them. (Not to mention painting rocks. Or refinishing furniture, which would scare off most guys, and just causes the one guy I care about to tell me to stop doing it because it makes my asthma worse.) And if Dan is doing programming as a mating dance, he’s doing it wrong. Not to mention the weird side-obsessions he gets into and then MUST tell me about. Last week he was “shopping” for a camper van. NOT REALLY because we don’t want one, much less can afford it, but he dropped down that rabbit hole, and HAD to tell me everything about it.

If there are men and women out there who are SOLELY interested in sex and who do everything in the interest of getting laid, I’ve never come upon them, or not outside a specific, late teens early twenties age range.

If humans were only interested in sex and sex solved everything, then humans would still be in a cave somewhere, and the most daring activity would be to raid the next band for women. Sure, great development of arrows and flint knives, not to mention clubs. (It just occurred to me the pursuit of getting laid always involves clubs. Sigh. I need more coffee, don’t I?) But you know? baskets, pottery, fishing, etc. would long since have fallen by the way side. (Hey, other humans are tasty, no need for anything else.)

But here’s the thing: A lot of the people who think they’re “fighting back” against the leftist culture that reduces humans to sex objects and pits a human group against the other are still refusing to think.

We were all taught Marxism and Freudianism to such an extent most of us aren’t aware how much of it there is, lurking in the back spaces of our minds and polluting everything.

Be aware that the reverse of a lie is…. still a lie. And fighting lies with lies perpetuates hell on Earth, just a slightly differently-targeted hell.

But in the end, in the war between men and women everyone loses. There isn’t some perfect third group (regardless of what idiots say) to come and take the spoils. And women “winning” the superior position or men “winning” the superior position still lose the important part of relationships and marriage which is trust, confidence, and the ability to absolutely trust the other. The big advantage to being a species with two sexes (other than reproductive) is the ability and need to enter a symbiotic relationship with someone who is different. Which in turns makes it easier to deal with all that aren’t “us.” And therefore communicate and expand, and yes, colonize, which has been the advanced edge of civilization.

Don’t kneejerk to “it’s men” or “it’s women.” In the current system no one wins, but the two sides are kept forever at the other’s throat. (Okay, the Marxists win.) And things get worse every generation.

We need to look beyond the binary, and — to evoke Rex Stout — to look at humans as having other interests beyond the instincts we share with dogs.

Otherwise the Marxists and popular Freudians win. And nothing changes.

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

FROM JERRY BOYD (A NEW SERIES!): Mark’s Magic (Fat Man’s Gift Book 1)

Mark was happy enough, working as a mechanic. He didn’t know that he was more than that, until his mother gave him some keepsakes from his grandfather. Those opened his eyes to a whole world that he hadn’t realized he had a place in. Watch him learn to use his new skills.

FROM CHARLES HACKNEY: Chosen by the Sword: An Urban Fantasy series (The Professor Howard Chronicles Book 1

There are some things a PhD doesn’t prepare you for, like running two feet of steel through the guts of a flesh-eating monster straight out of a nightmare, while ducking razor sharp claws. Or having the sword critique your fighting style while you do it.

Dave Howard had a problem. Last week, he was out looking for a teaching job in the middle of a wrecked job market. This week he was neck deep in green blood and hellfire. Dragged into it by the very sword, his grandfathers’ mysterious possessed blade, that was now walking him through hacking up a ghoul without getting his own head cut off. This wasn’t exactly what he had gone to school for, and the University he had just taken a job with seemed to be anything BUT an academic institution. More like some kind of monster hunting bunch of weirdo nerds. Maybe his degree in Personality Psychology might be useful there, at least. The fighting though … as he dodged another swipe of claws and awkwardly tried to follow the instructions the sword was screaming at him, he shot back at it, “Hell, I’m Canadian! Swordplay isn’t in my cultural DNA!”

An exciting new series that dives into a hidden supernatural world that lies just outside our own.

FROM S. K. BERIT: My Shorts Are Showing: Stories with no discernable theme

“What is a ‘Once Cat’?” asked Irvin, ignoring the harsh instructions to never speak, tapping his thigh with his pistol.

Woncekats hate explaining what they are, so Otis kept walking through the culvert, staying delicately left of the fetid water dribbling insincerely down the corrugated steel tube.

Irvin stopped four feet into the pipe. “I’m supposed to find one named Otis.”

Otis didn’t need to ask why—the bounty could enrich generations. He stopped, sat, and licked the back of his right paw where an undetectable fleck of mud had attached itself.

“I wonder why she left you. You don’t, of course. That would require…curiosity,” said Otis, his low voice echoing through the dank, elongated cylinder. His words wafted on invisible tendrils that wormed into Irvin’s mind, forcing him to review his worst moments in every cruel detail. “You’d then be curious, naturally, about yourself, and the mountains of failures you’ve managed to pile up in so few years. After that comes the broken heart, not for her, but for the person you might have been, for all the futures you threw away. And for what?”

Irvin slumped, pistol in hand, against the side of the culvert, hand and pistol butt pressed against his temples, as soulless accusations reverberated inside the bony chamber of his skull.

“And then,” said Otis. “If you are unlucky enough, you’ll realize she wanted to stay. I hope not, for your sake.”

Otis continued through the filthy metal pipe, savoring the agony behind him.

FROM RANDY BROWN: Next Time

Listed on the 2024 Must-Read List by Independent Book Review: “Of the many time-travel novels I’ve read, this is undeniably among my favorites.”

Fans of time-travel love stories as well as SF will enjoy “Next Time,” where a chance encounter with Miriam leaves William doubting her claims of randomly jumping forward in time. He is deeply skeptical when she tells him she’s been doing it for a thousand years.

As Miriam randomly reappears over the next several months and years, they fall in love. Rumors of Miriam’s condition raise the attention of government agents and the couple scrambles to avoid people who view Miriam as a chance for experimentation.

William and Miriam explore their past, live for the brief interludes they have together, and hope for their future, all amidst living life in scattered moments. Building a life together takes time.

Read the story awarded 5-star reviews by multiple sites, including Reedsy Discovery, Reader Views, Readers’ Favorite, and Literary Titan!

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Having a Pint

Even the dead have to make a living…

Meg Turner, vampire accountant and investments advisor, has plenty of living clients, but not many among her fellow undead. That’s about to change: she’s been invited to a regional business fair for her kind. She’ll get to meet and greet more bloodsuckers than she really wanted to (hopefully without having to suck up to any of them). than just the two Vampire cops she helped track down and stake her late, unlamented sire—and hopefully make some friends and answer some questions.

Unfortunately, she’s got a Line Progenitor who’s begun invading her dreams, and a serial killer stalking her future clients to distract her from growing her business. Throw in a sick roommate not long before the conference starts, a mafia messenger boy left on her front porch, and only one car to juggle all of her responsibilities toward her roommate and unexpected guest. And then on top of that, she has the business fair over an hour away that features vampire karaoke, nosy, pushy elder bloodsuckers, and one particular elder who’s friends with her unwelcome dream guest. Seriously, it’s enough to drive her to drink something other than coffee or blood.

Just why did she think this whole conference thing sounded like a good idea, again?

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

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

Time Slips

What if our most treasured verities were in fact wrong?

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

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

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

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

The Secret of Pad 34

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

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

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

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

Beach House on the Moon

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

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

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

Her life will never be the same.

Miskatonic University in the Cold War and Contemporary Era

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

Space: Gernsbeck vs. Lovecraft

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

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: Dazzling

We’ve been doing family stuff this week, meaning the whole family got all-hands-on-deck to move some of the family to a new place.

This involved getting together with rarely seen in-laws, people who are not particularly political (though generally non-leftist.) Sometimes it’s hard for me to remember where most Americans who aren’t politically engaged live. Mostly because our ravingly sane cohort here has seen the stuff headed down the pipe from so long ago, that we’re sort of jaded by it now. Take the Lesbian Space Witches of the Star Wars Acolyte (Please. You might be the only one). I’m not a Star Wars fan (Sorry. I’m not much of visual medium fan and it just never did it for me, period. For a while there I wondered if Dan and I would make it. I was Heinlein, he was Star Wars. Anyway…) so this does not affect it with rage for the intricacies of the story and precisely everything they’re violating. Instead I think of all the crazy Lesbians I knew in the seventies, (oh, please. I went to college in Europe. As a liberal arts major. In a college filled mostly with women. Of course I knew Lesbians. Most of them were professors and ten years older than I. My generation had decided we liked boys. But hey!) who piously waited the time they could reproduce by parthenogenesis and do away with men, who were “defective” by not being women. And then I laugh like an hyena. Because you have to have a heart of stone not to. And I think, “Well, of course, these people are now the financiers and senior producers and everything.”

But it’s sometimes refreshing to be with people that still find it strange and outre that the producer of Bridgertons really thinks eighteenth century England had a sort of apartheid system, with black aristocracy and white aristocracy. That she also believes a German queen was “black” and NO ONE EVER MENTIONED IT, and that she believes the Queen was black because she had a “Moorish” ancestor 500 years earlier. I mean, they don’t particularly object to the series as a fantasy — as I don’t — and alternate universe. They just find it strange that not only does the producer think this was real (all based on rumors of a “Moorish” ancestor — more likely to be a redhead than black and FIVE HUNDRED YEARS BACK — and a bad portrait of Queen Charlotte) but also that people who watch this series also believe this is true. (This is our cue to close public education and possibly forbid it. If we can’t graduate people with a better idea of history, biology and … humanity (who wouldn’t gossip about a black queen in Regency England, among the most prolific diarists in history?) the schools are counterproductive.)

This was the same week I caught Jeff Goldstein (late of Protein Wisdom) sighing on Twittex about “must every hero be gay and in an interracial couple?” and I thought “you’ve noticed now?” Five years ago I stopped watching British Mysteries, which are one of my guilty pleasures, because, dear Lord, after a while it became impossible to ignore that every couple — EVERY COUPLE — was mixed race.

Look, I don’t have anything against gay heroes. It would be really funny if I did. While I don’t write legions of gay vampires (rolls eyes) as a friend accused me of doing, I did write A Few Good Men. And I’m writing No Man’s Land. (In which the gay protagonist is possibly the least “abnormal” thing.) Both of those books have gay protagonists because it’s needed for the book (more obviously for NML.) Which is one thing over “every couple we can we make gay” where it’s not even remotely needed.

And some people — mostly insane people, but then again I have a very low respect for American-born perception of race. It’s not race. It’s just insanity — would think Dan and I are in a bi-racial relationship. We even sort of look it, since he’s paler than pale, being a programmer, while I spend considerable portions of time outside bothering plants. So obviously I have nothing against people dating or marrying outside their race.

What I object to is — outside the framework of this is obvious fiction — using demographics to try to play with people’s perception of the world.

I know why leftists do it. The people who tried to levitate the Denver Mint with the power of — ah — their minds, and who believe things like if we abolish the police there will be no more crime are not…. what is the term? sane? in contact with reality? capable of rational thought?

They are so overpowered by their fantasies, that they believe they can wish cast those fantasies onto the world.

You can see that with Biden’s new EPA regulations, which follow the path of Europe meaning, we’ll all be without electricity for long periods of time and have to burn every tree in sight not to freeze in winter. But that’s not really what Biden (or whatever passes for Biden, probably a brain trust of ivy league graduates) thinks will happen. No. These people think they can wish-cast science into happening. (This is another reason to abolish all schooling in its current form, because, seriously, they think that science is something that happens by the power of their pure thoughts and good intentions. The schools have taught them nothing, not even, arguably, how to read.)

They really think that lesbians will look at Star Wars Space Witches, and go “Oh, so that’s how one gets pregnant without a male” and then DO IT. And if you think I’m being silly, no. Not really. They really think that. For years now they’ve been telling us things like “the future is female” and this is what they’re basing it on. Their strong belief that if they believe strongly enough, it will happen.

And that’s the thing behind all heroes are gay and if possible in an interracial relationship. Because, you know? If they show it often enough, most people will become gay and get in interracial relationships. (Forget it, Jack, it’s liberals.) There is this account on Twitter called “The Queer majority” that is like the craziest bits of libsoftictoc, but they really believe it, and it makes me quirk my brow and go “The what now? You what?” I mean if the majority engaged in non-reproductive sex only, the world population would be nosediving in a way no one could avoid seeing. (Yes, it’s possible to define “queer” in such a way that everyone is but that is meaningless. I mean, now they’re adding the ability to tan. No, really.)

And they think if they rewrite history, the past will change, or at least most people will believe in the new past — because apparently they’re going to engage in a written material burn on the scale of Fahrenheit 451 or something — and then the future will be exactly as they scripted, with all couples being interracial and ushering in a new tan race (That’s not how any of this works, and among Ursula LeGuin’s stupid ideas that might be the dumbest. If everyone had the same skin tone, people would pick other things to be tribal about. Heck, if everyone looked exactly alike, you’d start signaling tribe by styling your hair. Seriously. Have leftists EVER met a human being?)

My objection to this stupid idea of storytelling, used as sort of word-spells to change reality is that it’s stupid. It’s cringe. Because it’s impossible, sure. That’s part of it. You can nudge people slightly in one direction, if it doesn’t cost them too much, and the direction is something they were already heading towards.

The fact that for almost a century the left controlled all the mass communication ability in the world gave them the very weird idea that they could control reality. But in fact, it’s just propaganda, which only works if it’s absolutely pervasive, never lets up, and it’s never disproven.

So, you know, you could convince people that Covid 19 was a plague on the scale of the Black Plague…. for a short time. As long as you kept them all locked down and unable to communicate with each other. Once people saw that there were no piles of bodies on street corners and that the people around them were just pretty much normal, the spell broke down and — get this — it’s impossible to cast it again.

More importantly, the words and the fear mongering, and the insane propagandizing didn’t change reality. It allowed them to steal an election, sure, but they know they stole it, we know they stole it, and every day it becomes more obvious they stole it. It’s not a fiction they can maintain.

In reality, all their devout belief and spell casting does nothing but create very cringe art. Which is okay, as it might speed the emergence of new pathways for creativity and distribution of media.

When even people who aren’t as sensitive to cringe as we are have become aware of it, it’s over. The propaganda will never work again.

And the only response we can make to their stompy attempts to make us believe is to laugh like an hyena.

Okay, so, here is where we are: No, I don’t think Trump will “win” in November. I mean I think he will win, if you count voters who are actually alive and can vote. But I don’t think there is a chance to beat the fraud. I will say I will be pleasantly surprised if we do, but I don’t think there’s a chance in a million of its working out.

BUT the other side isn’t sure. They keep panicking at the thought that Trump will win.

Now this might be because the enormity of what they’ve done under their color revolution, of stealing the election and then sitting on it and refusing to even let people question it, is terrifying them.

Sometimes the magnitude of the crime itself is enough to scare the criminal. And frankly, they should be scared. Because what she’s done cries to the heavens for vengeance, really.

They are terrified. Every day I read another article that amounts to the FBI or some other institution gibbering in fear that Trump will win, and thinking that telling us how scared they are means we won’t vote for Trump. (Laughs in “And I did nothing because I was refueling the helicopters.)

But that’s not to say they’re really in danger. “The wicked flee where no man pursues.”

However, I won’t lie, their very panic is working on our side. Yes, it means they will do some truly horrible things, but it also highly magnifies their chance of blowing the whole thing wide open.

More importantly, whether they steal the next election or not, every month they’re in power they’re losing adherents and losing the culture war. Yeah, it doesn’t mean they’re not going to hurt us horribly every month they are in power, because they are. And I hate that. BUT– BUT– They are losing. Incrementally. And much faster than I could expect.

The truth is that holding the institutions while the enemy holds everything else means they’ll lose. And faster than you expect.

What is very important: even if they seemingly seamlessly steal the election so it appears to be fully honest: DO NOT TURN ON YOUR FELLOW AMERICANS AND ASSUME THEY’RE SOCIALIST MORONS.

The fraud is deep. The fraud might be unbeatable. But the amount of socialist morons is negligible, at least once they’re ten years out from graduating from any educational establishment.

The reasons their elected officials are morons or senile is because that is the bulk of the electorate voting for them. Yes, there are also nice, smart people who just don’t pay much attention to politics, don’t understand economics, and believe the MSM.

But that’s it. The bulk of the country is okay. It’s just the fraud.

And that we can deal with, one way or another. Hopefully peacefully.

Americans are okay. The culture is going our way. Every day more masks drop and more people recoil from the horrors beneath.

We’ve got this. Don’t pin all your hopes on a rigged election. And don’t believed rigged results.

Keep calm and build under, build over, build around. We got this.

No, I’m not going to talk about the people who think they’re edgy and dangerous by breaking statues, in the most traditional habit in history, that of damnatio memoriae, where the memories of people who are disapproved of by those currently in power are expunged from public consciousness. The ancient Egyptians did it, for crying in bed. The problem right now is that this generation is so history illiterate they are trying to erase the memory of the entire past, not just a particular person of whose actions they disapprove.

There are several reasons for this, one of them being that, nope, they don’t know history, but more importantly, they don’t understand that history exists: that is, they completely fail to understand and believe, much less internalize the fact that people in the past weren’t exactly like them, didn’t have exactly the same ideas and the same interests, and were driven by different pressures. They never reasoned, for instance, that slavery was all pervasive in the past, not because people in the past were somehow uniformly evil or stupid (as opposed to their enlightened selves) but because there were different pressures on human society before widespread mechanization. That is, to be fair, everyone (but a very privileged few, did an insane amount of work and there was simply work that was too unpleasant and boring for free people to do it, or that it was impossible to pay people enough to do. Slavery — and as far as the impulse to force others to do what one wants, that’s the oldest sin of mankind — filled that niche. What eventually freed the slaves (which to be fair some religious souls always aspired to do, but there is no society in which “if everyone just” worked, so while the religious souls might have freed their own slaves, preached against slavery, that wasn’t going to make it vanish wholesale) was the mechanization of work. In places in the world where mechanization isn’t common, de facto or de jure slavery still exists.

Anyway, taking slavery as an example, one can understand a feeling of disgust at the practice leading young people to want to destroy, say, statues of famous slave traders (there are none that I know of) but they have gone past that to destroying statues of anyone who might have owned slaves, to statues erected by recently freed slaves, to commemorate their freeing.

That’s just wanting to expunge all memory of the past, partly because they assume all the past is somehow tainted, but also and more importantly because they have imbibed deep the Marxist-neo-Rosseunian ethic that if you destroy everything somehow paradise will emerge.

It is also not that ethic, the “everything in the past was wrong and I’m going to destroy it” that I’m going to talk about, but perhaps the comeback from it.

If I’m right, the time we’re entering could rightly be called “A time of iconolasts.”

Except of course, since it’s coming after a time of the iconoclasts themselves being in power and engaging in wholesale condemnation of what came before, it’s going to look very odd.

To understand what is coming you have to understand what the late nineteenth and early twentieth century did. By being the culmination of the industrial revolution, and bringing in mechanization of all processes, and making a lot of things cheaper via mass-manufacturing, it ushered in an era of unprecedented prosperity. It also ushered in an era therefore in which many of the rules of the past no longer applied. When technology or economics change and make the previously inescapable rules and necessities optional, it becomes easy and natural to imagine that all rules and all social restraint and all the centuries-old ideas of “how things are done” can also be done away with. And because many can indeed be done away with with little harm or harm that only becomes obvious in retrospect, a lot of things get swept away — like the wholesale breaking of statues just because they’re statues.

This was one of the forces of the 20th century. It was further fed by a popular understanding of Darwinian theory (popular and very wrong) that led people to believe that each generation got better or more enlightened.

The other force, because people need and seek “leaders” and wish to believe their leaders are special, was the odd cult of “experts.” It started fairly early, much earlier than any of us will think, if we don’t know about it. It was fed by the idea that there were many discoveries being made that brilliant people were coming up with amazing things every day in which they were experts. While this was absolutely true — to an extent. Many of those “discoveries” were wrong or partially wrong and didn’t connect easily into the “system of everything” that these people tried to create. But never mind. At the time there were discoveries in astronomy, in physics, in biology, and a discoverer could make a pretty good living of lecturing on it. There were also lectures on what we’d consider “Self help systems” including how to improve your memory (That being the one I remember.) This was going on from the eighteenth century at least, but in the mid twentieth century, it coalesced with the prevalence of mass-manufacturing, and the subsequent concentration of power in big cities and a powerful state apparatus, and fed off the subsidence of churches so rulers couldn’t say they were ruling by the power of G-d. A new vast apparatus of “experts” appeared, culminating in all the governmental departments which are supposedly advised and staffed by “experts” and “trained people” and well… “best men.”

I don’t know if “very capable” “best men” were ever involved in any of that. Personally I doubt it. Having been involved in artistic and scientific endeavors of various kinds, the “expert” who “knows everything about” whatever it is usually turns out to be either a sham or grossly exaggerated. And the number of even middling scientists or artists who are willing to leave their field of endeavor to become government bureaucrats is zero, meaning those associated with government are usually useless.

However by the mid century the press was also centralized, and in service of big government, which could burnish those “experts” and make them seem like supermen.

But that is the culture all of us grew up in. I’m sixty one, and I grew up in this mind set of “ask the experts.” By the 90s, we seemed to have “new experts” with “new theories” coming out every day. Most of them of the “self-help” variety. The “wonks” of the 90s made me roll my eyes, because what they kept coming up with amounted to “a new way to collect pocket lint.” However people piously believed it, and if you paid attention, friends and colleagues would tell you “Actually, research proves the best way to collect pocket lint is to–“

Only, as we’ve found out, as the control of the media escaped those (largely Marxists and neo-leftists) who kept the appearance of infallibility and expertise in place, most “scientific research” is falsified (quite literally most of it) particularly in the soft sciences, and most “experts” are no such thing, and most “new way to” is just a variation on rotating the cat.

Long before the watershed of 2020 people had the uneasy experience that those in control of the ship of state had escaped from the proverbial ship of fools and were just old fools in a new floating vessel.

But the last 4 years have been a mind-blowing demonstration of the falibility, incompetence and sheer ridiculousness of the “experts” and “top men” (not to mention “top women” or “top people who aren’t sure what they are.”)

I don’t think they can recover from this. And of course from such events two courses of results flow. One is that people stop believing in everything. They just devolve to savagery and inability to function. There is some of that, but curiously not as much as you’d expect, and most of it seems to be from that fringe element who would otherwise be mental patients anyway.

What we’re mostly seeing are people who are reaching back, beyond the mid-century and trying to recover what has been lost. People 30 and younger are desperately trying to figure out how things were done, and how things worked.

And yeah, part of it is that tech has changed again, from mass-everything to far more personal, which means what we have doesn’t work and older things might work.

If my feeling is right, the coming era is one at which we dethrone the “experts” and cock a snook at them. (I don’t know what a snook is but I’m itching to cock it.) And instead we try to figure out what used to work, and try it to see if it works. And we study and inform ourselves on whatever we’re trying to do — aided by the internet’s availability of information on everything — and figure out how to do it the best way. Which often is the old way, though perhaps modified for current circumstances.

And if my guess is right it’s going to be glorious.

Sweet Liberty* a blast from the past from September 2011

I have some experience with revolutions, partly because Portugal never believes a thing worth doing is worth doing only once. I get PTSD at the sound of Green Acres because Porto had one reel in its local broadcast station. Green Acres. When Lisbon got cut off, they played it back to back. This meant that someone had taken over the main broadcasting station in Lisbon.

(Okay, here I should explain that Portugal had two broadcast stations. Yes, I had a deprived childhood. [Yes. I spelled that right. I’m quite sure it’s an I.] Only one of them broadcast during the day at all, and that limited hours. So usually my experience was come home from school and watch something on lunch break and… ack… Green Acres. I wonder who is in now.)

For those who wonder why I’m “obsessive about my Portuguese background” – I’m not, but this kind of childhood experiences mark a person. I think this is why I’ve always been fascinated by revolutions. The ones that go right. The ones that go wrong. And the ones that go very wrong.

I read obsessively about the French revolution, the American revolution, the Russian revolution, and other, less obvious, revolutions. Like… The industrial revolution, or even the agricultural revolution.

Societies don’t change easily. People don’t change easily. Societies are worse than that. They’re slow to change like dinosaurs whose signal has to travel from head to tail and if it’s in full careen, it’s going to take a while to stop, let alone turn around.

One of the things I’ve noticed, in recent times, is that revolutions have another issue, particularly social revolutions of the non-bloody kind. Knowing you’ve won. Knowing it’s now, not thirty or fifty or seventy years ago.

Often when I’m talking to people, particularly people of an academic bend, I find myself wondering what world they’re talking about. It’s the silly little things, like “Oh, a woman would never dare say/do that,” when I saw women do it just that morning. Or “the neighborhood will get upset if there’s a non married couple” – what, like that one, that one and, oh, yeah, that one?

I will grant you that every once in a while, one comes across a person or persons who seem to be a blast from the stereotypical past, but my kids schools’ have more trouble with unwanted pregnancies than with girls being sent home to put on a longer skirt.

One of these effects of “delayed realization you won” keeps annoying me. Lately there have been any number of women writers complaining that they’re not proportionally represented as science fiction writers. They’re not being taken seriously and this is because they have vaginas. Etc. etc. etc.

Now, I’ve been this field for ten years as a published author. First of all let me get out of the way that there are some prejudices in this field, usually evinced by people you wouldn’t expect. For instance, I was pushed rather strongly fantasyward, in part because I had the v word. (Yes, verve.) And a friend of mine who is a physicist, was told that she should write fantasy, not science fiction, because she was a woman and therefore had the heart of a fantasy writer. (To which Rebecca Lickiss answered that yes, but it was in a locked drawer, and besides the statute of limitations had expired.)

There are other, more subtle prejudices. Some people told me they never read women writers, because they can’t write action. Weirdly, when they read me, they have no problems. I don’t worry about it. I just wait till they come around.

And btw, any male writing in romance or a romance-germane field, like certain forms of urban fantasy gets the opposite pressure, I’m sure. It’s all part of no one having a perfect life, and other people having certain expectations. My husband, for instance, had trouble placing his space opera (still hasn’t) because it’s character development oriented. (Yes, he actually got rejected by someone who told him it read too much like Bujold. No, I’m not joking.)

However, claims that women are discriminated against in fantasy always make me laugh. And claims that women as writers are discriminated against make me laugh even harder. And then there’s the post at MGC two days ago, and the comments – my Lord, the comments. Part of what got to me was seeing my friend Dave Freer getting attacked for making a perfectly reasonable and polite comment. Well, I was brought up to think part of my job was to give voice to those who didn’t have one, whether they be battered women in Portugal or silenced and demonized males in the US.

First let me establish there was a time I called myself a feminist. This is because I believed in the equality of women. I still do.

This doesn’t mean that women should be exactly the same as men. Or that they should behave exactly the same way. In fact, any such notions were pretty much dispelled by the time I came of age in the seventies. The average man and the average woman are very different creatures. And I strenuously object to such things as the fire fighters tests being rewritten so that you don’t need to do a fireman carry to pass. OTOH I heavily endorse any woman who is able to pass non “rewritten” tests being a fire fighter if she so wishes. And that’s because the median of anything is not the only person – there’s also the extremes. For instance, bad as I am at spacial reasoning (sad that) I am miles better than some males (okay, none that I’ve met, but I’m sure there are some. Maybe they were hit really hard on the head.) In fact I pretty much occupy the far outlier extremes of a bunch of categories (and I’m not saying which extreme.) As such, I am sympathetic with outliers. And I think letting people do what best suits them, without judgement, censure or barriers is best for everyone.

I believe in equality before the law not equality of results.

I still believe the same things, but I’m not calling myself a feminist, partly because the word has gotten corrupted. A lot of people seem to think the only way to elevate women is to degrade men. Others seem to be on a permanent hunt for offense, including attacking perfectly innocent words – no, history does NOT mean his-story. Please, study some linguistics.

This is many flavors of wrong, for many reasons, but the main reason is that it leads to a sort of permanent revolution. This reminds me of when the French revolution had got rid of every aristocrat either through beheading or immigration and had started attacking as aristos people who could read. Or people who dressed better than the others. Or people who used the word “roi.”

This is the sign of a revolution that has become its own reason to exist, and which will consume its own partisans, until it all ends in a sea of blood or until it’s stopped at last by a “strong man” of some sort, and suppressed for good. And at that point no one complains, because, frankly, it’s a relief.

Part of what disturbs me about this is that the justification for the “permanent revolution” is that we “could lose all the gains tomorrow.” You know, like if we don’t jump behind the latest harebrained “offense” campaign, next thing you know we’ll end woman suffrage (and good riddance, women have suffered enough! – Yes, yes, it’s a joke. And yes, I’m aware there is no joking in feminism. Another reason I no longer use that word.)

But the advances are fragile in another way. Much as I hate to say this, women’s gains rest on two things – one of them is safe contraceptives. The other is a stable western civilization. (No, I’m not even going to argue that. You want to live anywhere else in the world, be my guest. I wouldn’t, though.) And both of them can be lost more easily than you think.

Western civilization can be demoralized and subverted from within by a contingent of males who feel like women exist to punish them. Males who have been treated as criminals or morons or both from kindergarten on. Males whose education and employment figures, if reversed (i.e. if women had the same stats men have in the US today) would be a real offense and a call for investigations and remedies. Males who, btw, have never discriminated against anyone (most of them, at least) and whose fathers and, for that matter probably grandfathers, never discriminated against anyone.

These males can very easily see how women are treated in the rest of the world and, if pushed enough, form a concerted effort to subvert the current rules of behavior. (And no they haven’t done it yet. They haven’t even THOUGHT of doing it, yet. Again, don’t get me started. I lived in a country that is Western but only just. I know what discrimination is better than most people my age or even slightly older.)

I love the women who say it’s just the way the pendulum is swinging and that it’s right for it to go to far in the direction of privileging women. Let me enlighten you – if this is a pendulum, it’s one that has men as its favorites. Men are physically stronger and more aggressive. Any devolution from civilization to barbarism, or even any prolonged disruption in the economy that, oh, say, interrupts the production of contraceptives, and men will have to be very, very good not to be in charge. And if you’ve been pushing your little pendulum with glee and joy, don’t be surprised if they push it as far as they can the other way, till you’re in a world out of your worst nightmares.

You’ve won the revolution. Do you know what the mark of a GOOD revolutionary is? He knows when to put down his musket and go back to his farm. He knows when to shake hands with his neighbor who was on the other side. He knows when to make his rule so just, so fair that no one would contemplate returning to the former rule.

And he does not look for counter revolutionaries under ever bush and hallucinate that the war is still ongoing. Because then they just lock him up and beg the old regime to take over once more. Or start looking around for a Bonaparte.

Since I and my sons and my potential grandsons and maybe even granddaughters have to live in this world too, I beg you to come to your senses.

*–

Book Promo

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

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: The Lion and the Darkness (Timelines Book 4)

The Long-Awaited Sequel to The Lion in Paradise

At long last, Ariela Rivers Wolff begins her mission to the Simulated Worlds.

As the Martyr of Sardristra, she finds herself in the position of a Joan of Arc, burned at the stake for preaching a sermon of love to a very violent race of . . . blue, four-legged, four-armed, sort-of-horse analogs. Five hundred years later in their history, she finds a totally-reversed welcome as “Saint Ardreyelya” in the country in which she first appeared. Will she be able to prevent the rest of the world from destroying “her” people before she can convert them, too?

As the Goddess of Mahoukai, she finds herself the deity of a world religion in a world governed by magic. And like all worlds with magic, inevitably there is a Demon Lord. She’ll have to deal with that Demon Lord before the world of Mahoukai can be realized into the True Universe . . . but in the event, the Demon Lord is an infiltrated agent of the very enemies she is sworn to fight in the real world. Can The Lion of God take on a Darkness, single-handed? If not, it may spell doom for the inhabitants of Mahoukai – and for herself.

EDITED BY JAMES YOUNG, WITH A STORY BY LEE ALLRED: Hooves, Tracks and Sabers!: Tales of Alternate History (Raconteur Press Anthologies Book 29)

Alternate history allows us to explore, in thrilling detail, what might have been. Come with these authors down the untrodden divergences from reality, while still staying close to the possible. Can history be fun? Yes! Be entertained by these stories and find yourself wondering along with the authors. What if…? Cavalry had evolved from hooves, sabers, and tracks in other ways than we know happened.

WITH A STORY BY LAURA MONTGOMERY: Tales of the United States Space Force

TALES OF THE UNITED STATES SPACE FORCE: New fiction and nonfiction focusing on the United States Space Force from top authors.

It has been six decades since mankind first shook off the yoke of gravity and flew into outer space. After cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s first fateful trip into the vastness beyond our atmosphere, the Apollo missions landed twelve men on the moon. Since the building of the International Space Station, humankind established a semi-permanent base in space.

But wherever people and their interests go, the military and law must eventually follow. Enter the Space Force!

In an increasingly unstable geopolitical environment, the wars of tomorrow may well be fought and won in space. Russia and China have successfully tested anti-satellite missiles. A Russian satellite approached a U.S. government satellite close enough to conduct an attack, forcing evasive maneuvering. Analysts believe the Chinese government has launched a satellite equipped with a robotic arm that could be used to manipulate and disable other satellites. With satellites critical to everything from weather forecasting to disaster response, agriculture to environmental monitoring—pizza delivery tracking to guiding missiles during war—a lot is riding on a safe and secure space program.

Here then, stories and essays of the United States Space Force, the first new United States military service since the establishment of the Air Force in 1947.

With stories by Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven, Harry Turtledove, Brian Trent, Gregory Benford & James Benford, David Brin, Jody Lynn Nye, Martin L. Shoemaker, M.T. Reiten, Avery Parks, C. Stuart Hardwick, Karl K. Gallagher, Gustavo Bondoni, Liam Hogan, Henry Herz, Marie Vibbert, Laura Montgomery, Sylvie Althoff, and Matt Bille.

Essays by: “Star Wars” program chief space laser engineer William F. Otto, USAF space office Michael Morton (ret.), and C. Stuart Hardwick.

At the publisher’s request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).

FROM LL LOYD: Mysterious Guardian Thief J.B.: Good-bye, Marianna Rose

Unexpected visitors send the Mysterious Guardian Thief J.B. to the phantom planet Fahlon, where he encounters an old love and new danger.

After a surprise attack leaves a dead woman at his feet, J.B. and his partner-in-crime Poe head for Fahlon, a world that can travel between dimensions. It’s a bittersweet return to a place J.B. remembers fondly. Unfortunately Fahlon isn’t the world he left behind. Something has changed it – and that change threatens its destruction. Can the Guardian Thief save Fahlon – and the Marianna Rose – in time?

FROM J. L. CURTIS: The Grey Man- Sunset

Whoever said retirement was quiet never met John Cronin…

The old man may have retired for the final time from the Sheriff’s office, but there are still cows to run, court cases to testify at, and consultation calls to tap decades of experience. And that’s not even counting the cold cases he’s still trying to solve…

With his granddaughter Jesse running the gun store and managing the ranch books, and her husband leaning how to fill Cronin’s shoes on investigations and arrests, John is keeping busy training the next generation, while settling a few old scores!

FROM KAREN MYERS: Mistress of Animals: A Lost Wizard’s Tale (The Chained Adept Book 2)

AN ERRANT CHILD WITH DISASTROUS POWERS AND NO ONE TO STAND IN HER WAY.

Penrys, the wizard with a chain and an unknown past, is drafted to find out what has happened to an entire clan of the nomadic Zannib. Nothing but their empty tents remain, abandoned on the autumn steppe with their herds.

This wasn’t a detour she’d planned on making, but there’s little choice. Winter is coming, and hundreds are missing.

The locals don’t trust her, but that’s nothing new. The question is, can she trust herself, when she discovers what her life might have been? Assuming, of course, that the price of so many dead was worth paying for it.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Pendragon Resurgent (Legends Book 2)

Life is much better when nobody is trying to kill you.

Sara Hawke, now a university professor, has had five years where nobody was trying to kill her…if you don’t count her course load’s grading. Five years of watching over and helping raise orphaned young dragons.

Her comfortable life comes to an end when she’s attacked by Eastern Dragons, once again—this time, though, her attackers aren’t in the ruling elite. She’s in for the fight of her life again, only this time, Mordred is on the other side of the world, and she must first reach his side before they can succeed.

The running fight to survive brings to light old treachery, blackest magic…and new hope and new allies.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Perfect Darkness

What would perfect darkness look like? And what would happen if you saw it?

When Pavlik becomes obsessed with the idea of seeing perfect darkness, it becomes a distraction from the pod’s duty as asteroid miners. Little does he know that danger lies in opening one’s mind to the things that lurk in perfect darkness. Things that endanger his pod-brothers, even all of Briar’s Children.

FROM PAM UPHOFF: Recovery Agent

Mike’s nephew Ari was kidnapped and recovered by an unknown man.
Mike helped get the ten-year-old all the way home . . . to find Ari’s father dead, and the relatives circling . . .
The police seem to be more interested in the rescuer than the kidnapping.

Falk was the youngest detective on the investigation, that had just gone sideways, as it seems the boy had been rescued by an infamous assassin. As an important and wealthy man’s relatives fight to control his estate and his only child . . . Falk is starting to realize his own family is entangled in the apparently natural death, the kidnapping . . . and the Recovery Agent.

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: concentrate