Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

Grandma — not a fan of apocalyptic fiction — used to say “The world ends once for each of us.”

I only wish she was right.

The world has ended several times for me now, and then… I pick up my boots and build it again. (Note I’m sleepy and still weird-jet-like-lagged enough I almost typed “pick up my boobs.)

Look, the world ended for me when I left the village to go to high school in the city. It was a different world, and my past assumptions no longer applied. Then I became an exchange student and the world ended again. And I came back and strangely the world was yet different. And then I got married…

I’ve moved between states 4 times in my married life, and the world ends. And you build again.

I’m not making light of the devastation, particularly for those still digging out of Helene and Milton. For a lot of them, the devastation and the end of the world is so vast that there is not– or there seems to be no — tomorrow. The world has ended.

I’ve found myself almost in that place once or twice through my own stupidity not a natural disaster. And it took me years to dig out, and the scars remain.

But I’m saying: The world ended. You endure, you survive. And then you must build again.

And I’m saying it too if the unimaginable happens and the enemies of civilization, through fraud, capture the key points in our nation and manage to destroy it as close to utterly as possible.

The world ends. That is a sign that you must build again.

Because unfortunately there is no other choice. Humans build, and sometimes it all gets destroyed, and we grieve.

And then we build again.

Because to stop is to die. If you stop, you’re lying down and dying, as is everything with you. There is no future anymore.

My heart goes out to the people who lost everything. When the wild fires in Colorado took familiar neighborhoods and friends’ houses, it wasn’t as large a disaster. When floods destroyed and reshaped our beloved Manitou Springs, it wasn’t as last a disaster. I’ll continue praying for those people who were unfortunate enough to get hit by monster storms at a time when our government not only wasn’t helping but was actively undermining and almost making war on its own people.

First comes survival, and achieving a place where you can endure day to day without dying.

And then you take your broken heart and you mend it by rebuilding, by making things new again.

It will never be the same. You retain the scars and the homesickness for what will never again be, what never exists again, outside your mind and your dreams.

But you build. You go on, because there is nothing else.

I’ll continue praying for the victims of destruction, storm and man made. And that it’s not as complete as it could be.

And I’ll be here, to cheer on and help when I can, while you build.

We build. To build is to live. Even on a broken heart. Even when everything we built before has been destroyed.

We build.

Sursum corda.

They say death and distance dress people in their most winning smile. I’m not dead and neither country is dead, but from afar, looking back, it’s weird what stands out.

I could and would have deeper thoughts on this if I were here for longer — which pray G-d I will not be for more than a few days more — and I’m sure if I were forced to return — again, pray G-d and make obsequies this never happens — my view of America from here would evolve and evolve again, and now one aspect and then another would be foremost, like remembering the face of a lost loved one, one now remembers the eyes, now the hair, now the way they used to smile.

But right now what stands out for me most from here, looking longingly at home is how comfortless and random I find my surroundings.

Now, some of this to be fair is that I’m a writer of a certain age. Writer is relevant here because we are — to be fair — of a solitary and taciturn disposition and likely to enjoy our own company. This, once you add a certain age — over fifty really, but over sixty starts to be serious — becomes the tendency to want our things the way we like them, and our schedule predictable and also just as we like it, until we’re used to getting up at a certain time, having a certain breakfast and–

I’m not quite that bad — though I can fall into it — because my life is never that excruciatingly predictable. Things happen and throw my day into disarray so often that the more pertinent question is whether my day is ever arrayed.

But still this great a dislocation and it will make me feel uncomfortable. The thing is this happens whenever I travel anywhere, and it’s not normally THIS uncomfortable.

What I find is that even the newly built, expensive houses, seem to lack a basic level of comfort. Now a lot of this is Euro-eco regulations. Another part is… they simply don’t demand it, or they even feel a certain pride in not having it.

Take heating and air conditioning, for instance. Or rather don’t take it, give it to me. Because we’ve been here for what must be the greatest deluge of rain outside the hurricane zone. The humidity would make a southerner go “Too much” and on top of that it’s what we’d consider “somewhat chilly” 40 and 50, except it feels colder here.

The windows don’t fit QUITE right (they’re almost my age.) So last night, trying to sleep involved ignoring what sounded like a dozen energetic drum players all over the house.

Now, it was an exceptional storm and as I said, the windows are almost my age. But we found the same going out anywhere. I don’t know how to put it but “things aren’t designed to cater to comfort and convenience.”

I’m not QUITE complaining. I don’t live here. It’s their life, and they arrange it to their comfort. It’s just they … don’t.

On top of that anytime we’ve interacted with officialdom in any capacity, you have to approach as a supplicant and proffer the proper degree of humble abasement and it never works the same way twice. It depends on whether they like your face, or something.

The whole experience is kind of forlorn and somewhere between camping and trying to live in a house.

And I’ve been watching their news. I won’t go into details. No one needs to cry. But let’s say that perfect audience that the left wishes for? Yep. Brandon is an upright statesman and no sane person would listen to that wanna be Hitler Trump.

The things they believe are somewhere between bizarre and “that never happened.” BUT it is what their media sells. And they buy it verbatim.

No one blogs about current events or politics (or even so far as I can tell history.) It’s just food and mommy blogs and “today I did.” No one voices a contrary opinion, because that would mark them as “crazy” for standing out from the pack.

In the end? They live like this, because this is how they wish to live. They have the life they deserve.

People don’t protest when they get pushed around. They don’t expect something better, or try to bring it about. And they shut up when lies are told in public because they don’t want to be thought “crazy.”

There are people in our country who say that the Republic is dead. It is mortally wounded, but dead is something else.

The Republic is not dead so long as there are Americans. So long as we are those people the world complains about: loud, demanding, refusing to settle or be sensible…

As long as that remains, the Republic can be brought back to its former glory.

Stay salty my friends. The rest of the world might think we are reprehensible, but we are still, and will remain the last greatest hope of mankind.

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 JON LAFORCE: Hell’s Belles: Love and War Downrange

Two souls collide in the middle of a deadly war.

Sergeant Sylvie Lyons of Her Majesty’s Royal Engineers wishes she’d listened to her grandda’s advice and stayed away from the military.

USMC Sergeant Hondo Cassidy wants nothing more in life than being a Marine and fighting.

Hondo and Sylvie find themselves thrown together when his artillerymen are assigned to provide security for her engineers deep in the desert of Afghanistan.. Amidst death, destruction, cultural misunderstanding and the inevitable that happens when you mix an all male unit of Marines with an engineer unit that is mostly female, Sylvie and Hondo find in each other a reason to live.

That is, if they can survive.

FROM DALE COZORT: Wokuo Incursion

Invasion from an alternate timeline?
It’s December 1937 in a world exactly like ours except that it is about to veer wildly into alternate history. It’s less than two years before World War II broke out historically in Europe. War has already come to much of Asia, with Japan invading China. An isolationist US fears it will be drawn into that conflict, especially after the Japanese sink the US gunboat Panay. Just when President Franklin Roosevelt thinks he has that crisis under control, he faces a bigger issue. High tech descendants of the Wokuo, Japanese pirates and smugglers who should have vanished over three hundred years ago, flood into the Pacific coast off California.

The Wokuo are both refugees and invaders, fleeing from war in an alternate reality where they survived and grew strong, while looking for new conquests to replace their lost empire. They set their sights on California. President Roosevelt sends disgraced former Colonel Martin to California to organize resistance to the invaders, but the Colonel has his own issues, buried deep in his brain and waiting to cause disaster.

FROM MARY CATELLI: Madeleine and the Mists

Enchanted pools, shadowy dragons, wolves that spring from the mists and vanish into them again, paths that are longer, or shorter, than they should be, given where they went. . . the Misty Hills were filled with marvels.

Madeleine still left the hills, years ago, to marry against her father’s will. If her husband’s family is less than welcoming, she still is glad she married him, and they have a son, two years old.

But her husband’s overlord has fallen afoul of the king. And all his men fall with him, including her husband.

She sets out, to seek the queen and try to bypass the king — and the Misty Hills.

Some things are not so easily evaded.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Having a Pint (Liquid Diet Chronicles Book 2

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: Technoserf

The Madrian Empire rules worlds as numerous as the grains of sand on a beach. When the Madrians conquered Roby’s homeworld, they brought him to this godforsaken lump of a world, to toil at their will.

Now the Gate has failed, leaving them without communications or transport to the rest of the Empire. When Roby identifies the problem, he’s offered a chance to fix it.

Roby now faces a quandry. Even if he can repair the damage, should he? Will he be better off reunited with the masters’ metropole? Or will he only complicate a difficult life?

FROM BLAKE SMITH: The Hartington Inheritance

Almira Hartington was heir to the largest fortune in the galaxy, amassed by her father during his time as a director of the Andromeda Company. But when Sir Josiah commits suicide, Almira discovers that she and her siblings are penniless. All three of them must learn to work if they wish to eat, and are quickly scattered to the far reaches of the universe. Almira stubbornly remains on-planet, determined to remain respectable despite the sneers of her former friends.

Sir Percy Wallingham pities the new Lady Hartington. But the lady’s family will take care of her, surely? It’s only after he encounters Almira in her new circumstances that he realizes the extent of her troubles and is determined to help her if he can. He doesn’t know that a scandal is brewing around Sir Josiah’s death and Almira’s exile from society. But it could cost him his life, and the lady he has come to love.

FROM PAM UPHOFF: Out of Contact

Radmir Gagarin is not an Exec, he just does the job of one. Working for the richest man in the Alliance, Lord Diomid Devi, is not easy, even though he’s retired. And it gets a lot harder when the Plague strikes the World Lord Diomid purchased as his personal retirement home. And then the invasion . . .

As the Three Part Alliance crumbles, it’s every world for itself, and even a man so rich he can buy an entire parallel Earth to retire on, can find himself in a lot of trouble!

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: credit

When did she grow to be a beauty? When did he grow to be so tall?

Wasn’t it yesterday when they were small?

I don’t remember growing older. When did they?

As usual when I’m away from home, particularly in Europe, I’m…. Uh…. At the rate my Americanness and libertarianism are intensifying, I won’t need a plane to fly back. I’ll call an eagle to me through utter, intensity of my love for the Constitution, and it will then fly me home.

I’ve been trying to be good and behave, because we’re guests, but the country makes me itch inside my skin, and the level of governmental interference in every day life is a thing we not only don’t imagine but can’t imagine.

It’s stupid little things, like I found out that they have three trash collections a week, and have to separate in more bags than I can keep in my head at any one day. Then there is the fact that their bottle caps have a tether to the bottle so it doesn’t get discarded separately and maybe polute the oceans.

And I keep getting unreasonably angry, then telling myself I can endure it for a few days, but if it were longer, there would be a revolution.

This morning, when my poor husband got up for breakfast, he was treated to a “I don’t stop to breathe” rant on the subject of “these people spend so much time obeying the pointless commands of their government that they’re never ever, in the eve of ever be productive or invent anything or– Which is why our country is the engine of the world. Because by 8 o’clock in the morning local time, I had just about enough and a little beyond.

And as I hear well intentioned things about how America should be run — and let me point out that their news here make our news sound like they’re rabid right wing. Their news have my parents — my parents — convinced that Biden is a nice man, and a very smart one, who just recently became slightly impaired — and my blood pressure climbs to the level that I expect a little whistle to come up atop my head and whistle, Merry Melodies style. — and I start fuming.

It wasn’t till a few hours in that it occurred to me: Forgive them, George (Washington). Not only don’t they know what they do, they have absolutely no idea who and what we are.

That thing when my parents call me because there’s a fire in California? They imagined, when we lived in Colorado, that we might go for a nice Sunday drive, of an afternoon, and accidentally stray into California. If there’s a shooting in Pennsylvania they ask if we might accidentally be near it, perhaps because we took a wrong turn on our way to the grocery store.

They don’t at all understand not just American geography, but the scope and SIZE of our country. And they’re exactly the same for the size of our economy. The variety of law in our states. The amazing scope of our economy.

When they say something like “We don’t understand why a country the size of yours can’t avoid school shootings” what they’re actually saying is “We don’t understand you’re not half a dozen school children who can be scolded into better behavior.”

Part of the problem with this is that they don’t understand their post WWII little socialist dream was a thing facilitated and ultimately paid for by the US. Without our creating the future, improving continuously on processes to do everything, without us creating the internet and making this amazing transmission of data across countries possible, without us buying and selling and growing, and creating untold wealth, their relative impoverishment due to their hyper controlled economies would have become so dire they’d have starved or revolted already.

And they don’t understand if they could drag us down into their socialist dream of the state looking after you in all circumstances and you not being permitted to fart unless you have a fart permit and then only on alternate Wednesdays, it wouldn’t be paradise.

They would have killed the goose who lays the golden eggs, and things would get dire very rapidly.

Forgive them, George, they know not what they do. And let them never find out, because we remain free and obstreperous enough we’ll never sink to their level.

Now excuse me, I need to go out to the terrace and invoke Ayn Rand’s name of power, and call out in the name of the George, for the eagle of freedom to come and fly me home. I’ve been here 48 hours. How much longer am I supposed to endure?

Sure, I like seeing my parents and spending time with them, but you see, I have this medical condition. I am allergic to unwitting, willing serfdom. And I’m about at my limit.

Or why Spanish, like birds, isn’t real. Or it’s entirely possible that not having slept in close on to 48 hours I’m tripping…. but…..

Hey guys?

What’s wrong with Spain? No seriously?

I grew up thinking of them as Portugal’s more forceful and organized brother but I just flew to Portugal via Madrid, and something has gone seriously wrong with that country.

Portugal isn’t very organized. I’m used to that. It took them close to two hours to locate the rental car we’d reserved, and then they forgot we wanted a GPS and finally brought us one, I swear, from someone’s personal car. Even though we’d paid for a GPS.

But that’s…. organization, non compliance, and what I decided to call ADD Nation.

The Spaniards seem to not only have lost all their capacity for organization, but also even a vague attempt at making sense. Madrid seemed to be a flux of competing power satraps, in which the ticket girl is at war with the luggage handlers, is at war with the schedulers is at war with the people at the gates is at war…

Caught in the middle of this, mere passengers have no clue if they’re herded towards baggage claim, passport control or, you know, an outdoor entrance. Or of course, their doom. We not only could have left through door to the street in the middle of a supposedly secure place, but conversely anyone could come in, as we opened the door and peered, confusedly, outside.

And everyone yells at you all the time, in Spanish, which I understand just enough to get p*ssed at being treated like a toddler. And there are no signs anywhere.

By comparison our destination airport, in Portugal, was clean and modern, and had signs telling us where to go, even if the customs guys were too busy arguing soccer to actually do their job and just waved everyone through. (We GENUINELY didn’t have anything. We brought gifts for the little kids, but I don’t think anyone cares about dinosaur puppets. Well, other than the kid. But I’m sure other people did.)

So, first question: Is Spanish a real language, or is it a ruse, designed for being maximally annoying, and loosed on the world, and they are behind our backs speaking English like normal people?

Second question: Is Spain having a nervous breakdown? Is it something the EU did? Is Spain an abused spouse. Does the EU go down to the pub, come home worse for the wear?

Does anyone know if Spain has bruises and says it’s just clumsy and it walked into a doorknob?

Come on. Check with your Spain today, and make sure it’s okay.

Also, I’ll write a real post tomorrow, after I’ve slept more than two 20 minute catnap.

Don’t demolish the blog. There will be posts, I swear.

In the 2000 election my brother told me he didn’t understand why I was so worked up. Both the candidates were basically technocrats and their program was very similar.

As we’ve come to find out, he was right. Wrong also, of course, but ultimately right.

Of course there were differences between Bush and Gore, beyond the question of which noses would be on the through. The left in the US seem to be the only true believers in communism left in the world. Even those at the top seem vaguely shocked when they try to implement extreme left measures and not having the success they’ve been assured should come. One must blame the universities. The rest of the world, by and large, those on top are aware that communism doesn’t work, it’s just a racket to keep the masses down. The intellectuals still believe, but that’s because by and large they need something to put their faith on, and religious faith is considered uncool.

Anyway, for one, Gore was industrial strength stupid, and wholly sold on using the climate cult to stomp on us, completely unaware of repercussions.

But other than that, and as far as we can deduce, they believed largely the same things and were largely “technocrats.” I.e. they believed in rule by the “educated class” and the “experts” who could “solve all the big problems.” And they shared — as we can tell from Bush’s post-presidency friendship with Clinton, of all people — a certainty that the little people should be ruled and not listened to.

The problem of course is that Obama was brought in by the same people. Who are the faces behind the Junta now. As well as those controlling most of the world. Badly.

Part of the hatred for Trump — particularly among the University educated class — is a sort of back-of-the brain certainty that he’s ruining the program. It’s the only reason I can find for the frothing mouth and glazed eyes, the screaming of how terrible he is and how he’s going to burn down the world, when he’s been president once, and all he did was stop the waves of illegals, stop the wars, and make us energy independent. This is terrible?

Yeah. For the international would be technocrats it is. You see, they need to dislocate people, make them rootless and disconnected. They need to herd masses of people here and there like sheep — a technique for breaking up nationalities that has worked since the ancient world (except, by and large, on the Jewish people) — broken from traditions/beliefs/ customs and social bonds. Only then will the masses be utterly dependent on their wisdom and able to be indoctrinated in the new beliefs of the….

Well, they don’t call it that, but of Homus Sovieticus in a new suit and tie, with a bit of computer savvy.

It is essential to them to make as many people as possible dependent on pay offs that are wholly divorced from labor or production. They need you to have nothing to live for. To, as they put it, own nothing and (pretend to) be happy. Only then can they direct every minute instance of your daily life.

Why? Well, they’ll give you all sorts of reasons. By and large the same reasons as communists: it’s a more efficient way to allocate resources, so we don’t all starve when the (non existent) population bomb goes off. It’s best for us to be kept in hygienic surroundings. It’s best to not let us get racist/sexist/homophobic ideas. Etc. etc. etc.

In other words, you’re a sheep they want to feed what they want, shear when they want, and eat when they want.

A curious thing happened on the way to the technocracy, though.

Humans don’t herd well. You can break humans and give them Stockholm syndrome, but you have to be offering something pretty strong for them to attach onto. Which “own nothing and be happy” ain’t.

Humans are in fact refractory apes, and have been breaking out in rebellion all over.

And the technology never worked as the technocrats thought. You see, they’re not in themselves technical. They just thought they knew how to control humans through tech.

They’ve already failed. Oh, they’re fighting a rearguard action, composed of vote fraud, violence, lawfare, spying, etc. etc.

Their problem is that it’s already out in the open, because they are fairly desperate. And the more it’s out in the open, the more horrified people become at the smile on the face of the tiger.

In a way the covidiocy was their high water mark, the complete coup of the technocracy. It worked, but not uniformly, only briefly, and the actual compliance outside big cities was — as I found out — notional. Their attempt to roll it into a “climate emergency” lockdown was shrugged off. Their attempts to spook us into locking up again have been… laughable.

As almost always, but now faster, the humans failed to comply.

Plus they burned their “expert rule” by revealing most “experts” are no such thing.

The insurgence — the real one, not the one they tried to gin up as an excuse in 2020 — is alive and well, composed of set faces, clenched fists and feet planted in the ground, refusing to be moved.

I don’t know if they’ll manage to fraud themselves into power in November. They might. But it will do them a whole heap of no good, you know?

In China rulers lose the mandate of heaven. Throughout the west… you can piss off people enough that they don’t put up with your bullsh*t anymore. So it’s been throughout history.

The only remarkable thing about our would be expertocracy is how fast they burned a clout that took them a hundred years to create.

We are not sheep. We are not in the mood to be herded. We are not going into their profoundly stupid future.

We are chaos. We are liberty. We are — us here — Americans.

And intend to stay that way.

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 DANIEL ZEIDLER: The Last Day of the War

When a fleet of human colonists, lost and growing desperate, found an Earth-like world to settle, they named it Aurora in honor of what they were certain was the dawn of a new Age for humanity, an era of peace and prosperity. For a time, it seemed as if their dreams had come true, but then came Jarma Kaarl and General Adain, and with them came war and the cult that worshipped it above all else. A century after the war began, art thief Aleris Tynet was arrested and sentenced to serve a term in the Army. There, she saw things others did not, and realized that her world and her civilization were dying. She had no way of knowing the war would soon come to an abrupt end and a countdown had begun to its last day; a day that would forever change both Aurora and her people…

FROM ROBERT HANLON AND SCOTT MCCREA: Timber: U.S. Marshal: Savage Flint: A Western Adventure

Western adventure goes to new levels when Marshal Timber teams up with Marshal Ezra Flint to investigate the murder of penniless prospectors. The men had no money and no future … why would killers target them? The two legendary lawmen follow the trail of dead bodies until they face-off with Edmund Arthur Carew, a crazed killer conceived in a grave and with a taste for carnage!

Master storyteller Robert Hanlon and Western Writers of America Spur Finalist Scott McCrea bring you a pulse-pounding tale of the Wild West at its very Wildest!

BY PETER RABE, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: A House in Naples (Annotated): The classic pulp crime thriller

After World War 2, Charley and Joe made a good living on the black market in Italy. They didn’t like each other. Didn’t even trust each other. But they worked well together.

Now it’s been ten years, though, and after Martha shows up, things are starting to come apart.

• This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction by indie author D. Jason Fleming giving genre and historical context to the book.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Bite Sized (Liquid Diet Chronicles Book 1)

Meg Turner has been a vampire for twenty years. Her favorite food is rapists. Which is how she met Andi Donahue, her new best friend/ girl Friday.

And then the nightmares start. And the bodies start showing up–bled out and raped. Just like Meg was. They don’t have a whole lot of time to stop the killer before he strikes again, and only one way to stop the killer.

But how can Andi help Meg stop a killer she can’t even see?

FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN: Wheels of Empire: Merchant and Empire Book Nine

Water driving wheels driving danger.

Without bread, hunger stalks the people of Jerwood. The old grist mill burned and a new one must be built. Count Ealdred of Jerwood hires Harald Tolson, called Halfpaw, to construct a larger, modern mill. A mill that the count will own.

Harald and his journeyman walk into trouble when they enter Jerwood’s gates. Why did the mill burn? Who doesn’t want a better, larger mill built? And what lengths will those people go to in order to get what they desire?

Harald finds himself battling the elements, suspicion, and danger in order to complete his contract. But his opponents underestimate how stubborn and determined a millwright can be. The Wheel always turns, something Harald knows full well.

FROM MARY CATELLI: Spells in Secret

Magical doors and other mischief mix badly with tales about murder, as young scholars return to Graytowers.

Kenneth, as prefect, thought he had his hands filled with the beginning of the new session, but when one magical door takes him and another scholar far past the bounds of a prank, they barely escape with their lives, and their escape means only that they are in graver danger. They must hide, leaving the school, and casting all their spells in secret.

FROM PAM UPHOFF: Wild West Bar and Grill

Horst Aslanov is a seventeen-year-old criminal. Or at least he aspires to be one. But his mentor is missing, the number two boss is a dictatorial idiot, and it’s hard to say if the possibility of a police raid is better or worse than the violent criminal gang moving into their area.

The Wild West Bar and Grill is a restaurant in a cross-dimensional future Moscow. Serving authentic barbeque, and tiny shows of wild west shootouts. It’s also a cover for an unlicensed brothel . . . which is an extra layer of cover for an ID hacking and brainchip forging operation. But the old forger is missing, and now Horst has to decide if he’s going to try to keep the business running . . . or go straight.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: One Last Homecoming

Sherry had planned a quick trip to her home town for her forty-year class reunion, to see the current classes’ Homecoming game. Instead, she arrives to find the high school just as she remembers it, complete with long-demolished buildings and long-retired teachers. It’s Homecoming, all right — her senior year.

For someone with happy memories, revisiting one’s younger days might be pleasant nostalgia. Sherry dreads the thought of being stranded in the past, forced to reassume the old roles after decades of independence.

How can she return to her own time when she has no idea how she got here? Worse, a hostile entity is making its presence known — and it may not want to let her go back. And the Homecoming game isn’t the one she remembers from four decades ago.

FROM CELIA HAYES: That Fateful Lightning: A Novel of the Civil War

There wasn’t much of an outlet for an ordinary American woman with ambitions in the 184os; marriage and family was as good as it got back then, for most women … But Minnie Vining wasn’t an ordinary woman. A spinster in her forties, of a respected old Boston family, possessing an independent income and an education worthy of any man among her peers. Minnie took up a noble cause – campaigning for the abolition of slavery. The matter of slavery roiled political and social life in the United States for more than thirty years, splitting apart families, friends, comrades … and eventually the nation. And when the war began in earnest, Minnie followed her heart and her calling … as a nurse, tending to sick and wounded soldiers … but at what personal cost?

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: BETRAYAL