If America had a symbol, it would be bigger than.

Matthew Bowman (probably in one of those flashes of insight one has when baby is making one sleep-deprived) said on Facebook, that the rest of the world just sees Americans as extreme. Americans is where big things happen. Good or bad? Yes. but big. Much bigger than in the rest of the world. And it got my mind ticking.

He’s right. And wrong. I mean, it’s how the rest of the world sees us, and there’s a lot of things that feed into the myth. But it’s not true. It’s more that we’re more… real? than the rest of the world. We take things to their logical conclusions, little hampered by “but it’s never been done before.” We have severed our roots, but we’ve bound ourselves to other roots, to a document that is supposed to set our limits.

And yes, I know what you’re going to say. And yes, that’s the problem precisely. To the extent that America is bound to the Constitution America is bigger than but good. In gamer terms? Chaotic good. (No bear with me. I’ll explain.) But if we’re unbound? Good or bad? Mostly yes. Very fast. And very, very big.

What do I mean by bigger? Well, I remembered the other day that the Guiana’s People Temple massacre took place on my birthday. I remember waking up to the newspapers being full of it. But you know, I never associated it. I have pleasant memories from that birthday, because it was probably my biggest party. For some reason I had a lot of “friends” at the time. (Yes, note the quotes. They weren’t enemies, but they weren’t close friends either. Yet, for the first time in a long time, I had people who were very friendly acquaintances, ten or so, which made it the biggest group I ever had at a party. Ever.)

How could I wake up to descriptions of that horror and not identify it with the date? Easy. because at the time I had it firmly set in my head that in America huge things happened all the time, good and bad. I don’t think I believed, as a lot of people we fight with on line do, that in America people got up and shot fifteen people before breakfast, then shot their way into work, etc. But I did believe that in America crime was much, much higher. Particularly in the cities. When I stayed fifteen days in NYC upon landing (In an enclosed college campus — it was an orientation thing for our group) I heard sirens day and night, and I thought ‘Ahah.’ It wasn’t till much, much later that I realized the bulk of those sirens would be in hot pursuit of speeders, red light runners and just coming to the scene of accidents.

But it’s the image. You can be shivved in any random walk through the neighborhood, but on the other hand, someone can discover you and make you a Hollywood star, or give you a million dollars or something.

You can be a pauper or a king, but not anything in between.

Look, I know that’s not true. Most of us live lives of routine and politeness, and while I personally was once two minutes from an armed robbery (we’d just left the Kroger when the armed robbers went in. No seriously. Downtown Colorado Springs. Tiny neighborhood store) the only times I’ve been shot at, or been near someone who was shot was not in the US.

Part of this is of course that they get our news, but they imagine that our news instead of sensationalizing things mute them down. So they imagine it’s more like the movies, all the time. I have the hardest time explaining to mom that I don’t routinely get shot at on the way to the grocery store and don’t have to dodge a car chase on the regular, while going out for sewing notions or something. And she visited the US. (Granted tiny Manitou Springs. She probably thinks it’s the exception.)

But the other part of it is that to them (and to an extent to the history of the world) we’re unfathomable.

You guys, if you grew up here probably don’t get this. Heck, I didn’t fully get this until I was here and had more contact with Portuguese, from here to there, because I was broken and never paid any attention to what people expected of me. (Not paid any attention is the wrong way to put it. I didn’t “see it”. I still have that issue here, just less so because things tend to be more explicit. Except where they aren’t, and then I run into trouble.)

But there is a bound assumption that you’ll do something like what your ancestors have done. Jobs are acquired ONLY through connections (It’s getting that way here) so changing ‘class’ is really really hard (Not so much here because our connections frankly don’t care about “class” or if someone is in a manual or intellectual profession.)

Some jumping can occur through entering University, say, when you’re the first in your family, but it’s still hard. And beyond that, there is a powerful substratum of “this is how it’s always been done. Always.” and shock when people do things differently.

In America, even when that happens, it’s not what is expected. America as a culture is where we can do anything, or at least that’s the expectation.

And part of the expectation was us doing the impossible. Don’t ask me why, but we’re the only country who kicked out the king, put up a constitution and hasn’t FORMALLY reconstituted three or four times since. I mean, yes, the Constitution has been ignored and twisted every which way but lose, but we’ve not outright tossing it out and rewriting it every generation. Most of the countries who tried to follow in our footsteps (with various degrees of crazy shot it, like France which had all the crazy) have.

Instead, we have despite fraud and other things followed the peaceful revolution every four years, and except for the Civil war (which yes, was big, but also the result of pushing big issues under the rug) haven’t had a set-to in forever.

This is so weird that even the founding fathers didn’t expect it.

And it’s not genetics, because genetics have changed so much from the beginning. (BTW, that alarming statistic of most Americans or half Americans or whatever have a parent born abroad? I see those families every time I go grocery shopping. To an extent I are those families ;) . And it’s because American males are marrying abroad a lot, now that communication across the ocean is a trivial matter. And that’s because American culture is bigger than life, and women are attracted to the winning tribe. Also, from my kids’ friends, those with one parent from abroad are more American than George Washington and FAR more American than Alexander Hamilton.)

Anyway, I think the magic sauce is that all of us here are either immigrants or descended from those who were. (Shut up. There are no full blood Amerinds. Not a single one.) In a new place, it’s easier to break the unspoken ties of culture and stick to the Constitution. or try to.

This has cast us loose to make our own way. Sometimes we choose bloody stupid things — like Prohibition — but most of the time, it frees us from the errors of the past.

Which means, to the rest of the world, we appear unfathomable. And bigger. Just bigger.

This is why I say communism has to die here. No, it has never worked anywhere else, but stupid idiots don’t realize it’s against human nature itself, and think it could maybe work here. I mean we’ve done the impossible before.

They’re not wrong. Except about communism, which is a mind virus hooking into very old tribal sentiment. Part of the reason it had and still has such a hard time infecting here. But it it were a simple utopian philosophy? Yeah, we’ve done that before. (Most of them have failed, yes, but we sure tried them.)

It’s also why if any nation or culture can take us to the stars, we can. Because we do the impossible, the strange, what can’t be done.

We’re greater than. We’re humanity unleashed.

And this is why dooming based on other people’s histories will not be predictive.

We’re not the same. We’re qualitatively and quantitatively different.

This is not chest beating. It’s just a change in how things are done. Romans were just such a step. They were the first culture to more or less (less than more, but all the same) look beyond tribalism. We’re the next step in that, with classism also left in the dust, and innovation baked in.

We’re something quite new.

Which means the old pathways turn weird shapes here.

And yeah, that does mean we could end up worse than anyone else, sure thing.

Or you know, we could end up better.

It’s a risk we take, and we’re a risk taking people? Me? I choose to believe and work towards our ending up better.

Someone has to take humanity to the stars. And I say it should be us.

Because we’re greater than.

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: There’s No Space Like Home (Bob and Nikki Book 44)

The Gene scrambles to help Milly. Watch as they get through the obstacles to bring her home safe. Bob and Nikki decide to finish their shore leave on Earth. A nice relaxing few days in the Holler, right? You know better by now, don’t you? Come find out what all happens.

FROM LAURA MONTGOMERY: The Wheels Run Truly: A Science Fiction Lost Colony Adventure (Martha’s Sons Book 6)

Two brothers fight for freedom. A lost colony’s governor strives to reinvent the feudal state. Can Martha’s sons escape to liberty and a future?

Thaddeus Dawe is a patient man. On a planet where only the valley of First Landing is fully terraformed, he waits for spring’s agonizingly slow arrival. He plans to take the colony’s last terraseeder to fortify a secret northern enclave outside the governor’s control. When the palace loses power in late winter, Thaddeus scrambles to save his and his brothers’ hopes for independence.

Peter Dawe suffers under another secret. When he receives his brother’s call to return from exile to save the terraseeder, Peter forces himself to disclose his long-planned departure to those who sheltered and befriended him, including the woman he wants in his life. None of that goes as planned, and he heads north responsible once again for too many lives.

With the terraseeder losing power, a promise he has yet to fulfill, and the governor’s men against him, Thaddeus fears the new chaos marks the imminent death of the essential terraforming microbes and the failure of the new world he plans to build. Peter has spent the winter learning skills for his brothers’ northern plans, but joining Thaddeus’ team puts not only his own life at risk, but that of the woman he gives up to friendship.

Can the Dawe brothers escape the governor’s dominion with the life-giving terraseeder in time, and with their friends and loved ones alive?

The Wheels Run Truly is the final installment in the gripping science fiction colonization series, Martha’s Sons. If you like driven heroes, deep bonds of love and friendship, and a fight for freedom, you’ll need to read Laura Montgomery’s thrilling adventure tale.

FROM SPENCER HART: The Masuyo Incident

A short story adventure. The Year is 2185, in a timeline not quite our own. The Jovian Guard patrols the space near Jupiter and its inhabited moons, potentially the last uncontaminated human settlements in the Solar System since the plague 50 years ago.

Lieutenant Osiris Jackson, aboard the patrol ship Nevada, intercepts a distress call from the civilian ship Masuyo near the moon Callisto. Is the crippled ship the result of a mere accident, or are more sinister forces in play?

The young officer is plunged into a life-or-death situation with far more at stake than he realizes as he tries to save the mysterious Callistan passengers.

FROM J.M. ANJEWIERDEN: The Long Black (Audiobook)

Morgan always assumed that if she could survive growing up in the mines of Planet Hillman – feared for its brutal conditions and gravity twice that of Earth – she could survive anything. That was before she became a starship mechanic. Now she has to contend with hostile bosses, faulty equipment, and even taking care of her friend’s little girl. Once pirates show up, it’s a wonder she can get any work done at all.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Normalcy Bias: Look closer…things aren’t always what they seem to be.

Look closer. The things that you’re assuming you’re seeing? May not be what you think. Is that really a mouse, or is it a Brownie? Is that really an owl? Is that polished gemstone a stone…or an egg?

We take so many things for granted. Some of them may be harmless, but many are a lot less so. I wonder how many people ignore red flags every day, because they only see what they expect to see?

This collection takes what’s “normal” and asks “What if it’s something more?”

FROM DALE COZORT: Exchange: Book One of the Exchange Universe

It’s called Bear Country, an untamed alternate reality where humans never evolved, but saber-tooth tigers and suspiciously intelligent little green monkeys did. Random chunks of Bear Country are temporarily swapped—exchanged—with Earth, bringing a risk-averse, bubble-wrapped society unimagined threats, from giant bears to the hazards of unknown bacteria. They also bring opportunity for anyone brave enough—or crazy enough—to settle there.

Computer guru Sharon Mack prepares to evacuate when she finds out her town is about to be Exchanged . But when her crazed ex-husband kidnaps their autistic daughter, dragging her into Bear Country, Sharon has no choice but to go after them, find her daughter, and escape before the Exchange reverses, cutting her off from her own reality forever.
Flash floods and giant bears aren’t the most dangerous thing in this wild frontier. Bands of escaped convicts, with nothing left to lose, roam freely in a land with no laws but survival of the strongest. Then there’s enigmatic Leo West and the secretive Sister West cult, determined to claim Bear Country for their own. And there are those willing to kill to hide the true secrets of the Exchange.

Exchange is the first book in the Exchange universe. The second is Devouring Wind, available now.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Ice Storm

Everywhere Evangeline looks, a thin coating of ice makes objects gleam in the sunlight. However, the beauty proves deceptive, for it hides a deadly secret, one only she can recognize.

In her youth, Evangeline had aspired ot master the powerful magics of her world. Those dreams died the day her Gift awakened uncontrolled and plunged her into a vision of a full fleet battle. The Admiral’s Gift will not be denied, and for Evangeline there was no choice but to trade her mage’s robes for Navy blue.

Now she is faced with an enemy she cannot fight save by magic. Except those who bear the Admiral’s gift are forever barred from working magic.

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: Handy

The Dreams of which Stuff is Made – by Wyrdbard

No, this isn’t about quantum physics.  This is about fantasy, science fiction, horror, and all the rest.  It is also about the human spirit.

Our hostess has more than once said we are a storytelling species.  (And while I have issues with the also oft cited Hogfather quote, the point it makes is good.)  Wisdom is usually dearly bought, and each generation tries to pass along that which is right and true to the next.  Or at least the functional ones do.

Which is where storytellers come in.  Science fiction and fantasy and yes, horror, all serve a purpose.  Fantasy is “What dreams should I dream and how do I tell good dreams from bad ones?”  Science fiction is “I have dreams, what do I do with them?  And what if people chase the bad ones?”  Horror is “When our dreams go terribly wrong this is the result.  Be careful.” (Though I will speak less of horror than the other two.  It is not my genre in any sense.)

Now, this does not mean each story should be a sermon.  But stories, by their nature, play with ideas.  Truth is a slippery creature, how do you show someone it is important? Stories can often do that more clearly than raw facts.  This sort of thing is why Sabaton is so effective at hooking people into history.  Yes, they get details wrong, but the STORY is compelling and that pulls people in to go find the facts.

In defense of fantasy:

Fantasy is the realm of dreams.  What if?  What if we could… it rarely concerns itself with how except in the mad scramble of the REACH for the thing that works right now.  Also, by its touch with the mystical, shows faith more clearly than Science Fiction usually manages.  Faith in science fiction often becomes another fact.  It can be a human fact but the wonder of faith is often lost in Science Fiction, where it more easily comes to the fore in Fantasy.

Dreams can be good, dreams can be bad.  Fantasy looks at them, and little fancies spun out to their conclusion let us test them without touching the real world with them.  Fantasy answers “Can dragons be killed?”  Fantasy answers “Can life go on?”  Fantasy answers “Can men of good will rise to the occasion?”  Fantasy answers “What darkness tempts men’s souls?”  Fantasy also answers “Can a man resist the darkness?”  Fantasy answers “What are the duties of a Leader?”

Fantasy also looks at ‘where do we come from’.  With its roots in the mythological it can help us set our roots deep in our past.  “What drove our ancestors?”  We have their stories and myths and legends, and while some things are shockingly different, courage and honor and truth weave through them.  So there is a connection and a good one.  Fantasy lets us examine all those things so we can learn from mistakes, and embrace strengths of the past.

Many of the old things are under attack.  The foundation upon which the future is built is under attack.  Strength is derided unless it is the strength of the thug.  Yet, as long as Aragorn, son of Arathorn is spoken of, as long as the High King Peter steps out on to the field with Miraz the Usurper, as long as a mouse named Mathias opposes a besieging bilge rat (Redwall for those unfamiliar), strength and courage an honor have not lost their hold.

In defense of Science Fiction:

If Fantasy deals in what dreams are and the past, Science Fiction deals in what comes beyond dreams.  Science Fiction deals in ‘can we make the dream real?’  Science Fiction also deals in ‘should we make the dream real?’  Which is why there is more cautionary Science Fiction than Fantasy.  Fantasy looks to the stars, Science Fiction touches them.

Rather than “Can the dragon be killed?”  Science Fiction asks “How do we kill the dragon, and what comes after?”  Science Fiction asks “How does life go on?”  Science fiction asks “What causes men of good will to rise to the occasion?”  Science Fiction asks “What kind of system leads to leaders that follow their duty and what is an appropriate duty?”  Science Fiction asks “How does man resist the darkness?”

Science Fiction asks more than it answers.  It is the playground of the future.  It builds on that which goes before and tries to reach the next star.  If Fantasy gives roots, Science fiction gives up reaching branches.  It seeks to go further and fast and seeks the NEW.  The possibilities.  Science Fiction is a quest to find out what we will become.

Like the old, the new is under attack.  Science Fiction tells people that they can build anew upon the old roots.  And that they can choose who and what to be.  It warns them to choose wisely.  Which is why so much these days the emphasis is on the past.  Those who build, who reach, might find something strange or dangerous.  As strength is derrided, so is the ability to build new strength. Yet we have Honor Harrington.  We have Dorsai.  We have Luke and Leia challenging Admiral Thrawn.  As long as these and their companions exist we have branches that reach for the stars, and we can add more.

Roots of fantasy, branches of Science Fiction, the strong trunk of the present.  That trunk is also under assault.  The roots nourish it.  The Branches challenge it.  And there are stories of the real, the now.  Worthwhile ones, though they are seldom stories found in books these days.  (And there are exceptions even there.)

Stories do not have to be fictitious.  Sabaton is not.  The tales some folk here tell of their lives and the lives of others are stories as well, wrapped in a presentation that people wish to listen to.  And the stories will outlast the teller.  Somehow they always seem to.

This power is why stories and the arts were some of the first targets of the culture war.  This power is why Indie is so valuable.  The stories are there and can be found.  Courage is not dead.  Strength is not gone.  Hope is not lost.

Years ago, when I already had far more experience of traditional publishing than was good for my mental health, I came across someone talking about how you become an “old pro”.

I no longer remember who it was, but I have a vague idea he was a bestseller, albeit one of those who only made it big purely by accident, after having been midlist for oh… twenty years or so. He was describing his experience, and he said his colleagues who became bestsellers off the get-go didn’t understand the industry. Understanding of the behind-the-scenes mechanics was hard earned language you acquired when the impossible and disastrous happened. And it was experienced and learned as a series of hard kicks to the teeth.

That interview stuck with me, because I had just heard myself — ten years ago, twenty years published, after thirteen years trying to break in every way but the right way — referred to as an old pro and wondering when that happened, because I was a rank beginner the day before.

That stuck with an extra hard vicious twist because he was also older than I. By the time I broke in that kind of accidental best seller was bloody impossible. There were no little bookstores run by brilliant autists who could discover your book and sell it to the public in mass quantities. There were just the big chains, and no one in the big chains read your book (discovering this was one of those kicks. And would take to long to explain how I found out) not even the people responsible for “placing it.” They just listened to the house about the “confidence” the house had and ordered a book or a hundred, dependent on what the house said. And son of a b*tch if the house wasn’t always right…

I don’t even hold it against the houses. In a highly controlled market, you have to have a justification for putting money behind a writer/book. And why would you do that (even if one book sold freakishly well) when they have twenty years of mid list? Sure, if you dove in you’d realize why, but you don’t have the time for that for a mid list author and book. You just scan the numbers, and off it goes to fail like its predecessors.

This level of centralization is a lousy model that brutalizes everyone. For writers it tends to make us stop creating. For publishers, it takes out whatever passion they came into the field with, forces them to lie to creatives, and sullies their souls and sucks them dry. For readers, it produces lousy product that doesn’t meat their needs, and makes them walk away to other genres, or long-ago-published books.

It started to break about ten years ago, with Amazon, and now it’s chaotic, and– I’ll manage it. It’s how I’m broken. Even all the kicks only managed to make me stop writing temporarily, and then it came back. It’s a function of being a very simple tool, made for only one thing: in my case, storytelling.

But this long introduction is just for how I came across that image: kicks in the teeth. It applied to writing in later stage traditional publishing and it applies to us now.

Anyway — kicks to the teeth. No matter your efforts, no matter how much you try, there is another factor that comes out of the blue and smacks you and leaves you reeling and walking around as if something had hit you hard on the mouth. Even after you recover, you’ll never be the same again. Things that are natural to you — like eating — will hurt every time you do it. And other things will just feel wrong. All the time. Forever.

But the same way the burned hand learns best, the kicked mouth teaches. Oh, it teaches. It teaches with precision and pain, and you’ll never forget the lesson. Ever. You won’t be the same after either. Any other pain you’ll shrug off. You’ll become more determined, more ruthless, more — no, not more like what you’re fighting. In a way you become more yourself than ever. It’s just all the little hesitations, all the kindness, all the normal decency you owe to other human beings you care for peel away, and you can’t even remember why you felt them.

Because this is what the left has been doing to anyone who opposes them, with their stomping, their game rigging, their “brilliant” improvised patches, a lot of us are feeling these results as much as I did ten years ago, in writing.

I wonder if they know what they’re setting up. The new rules they’re evoking. The new enemy they’re calling to face them.

Look, yesterday my assistant told me I was basically a nice person and I was gobsmacked. This was in relation to some fraud that probably has been taking place with our insurance accounts, and which has us in a bit of a pickle. Not financial. It’s like this: we have a doctor who refuses to transfer records, and a new doctor who won’t take us up, because it’s continuing care without the transfer. The second is being stupid, but part of the reason we want them is that they’re obsessive like that. The first– it’s unexplainable unless you assume massive gobs of fraud. Or an office so effed up they don’t HAVE records. (In this office, that’s believable, trust me. Part of the reason we’re moving.) The problem being Dan (and I but I to a lesser extent) can’t be without care much longer without serious issues cropping up. Yes, we ARE dealing.

Anyway, she called me nice and I was shocked, because I haven’t thought of myself as that for a long long time. (And I don’t think in this case it is that. I think I’m just gobsmacked –if this IS fraud — at the sheer unmitigated stupidity. Because patients will transfer at some point, right? And I suffer from a very specialized form of dumb, in which I don’t understand stupid that works at that level, okay.)

But long ago and far away, I was raised to be a nice girl. With all the meanings that implies. It never took very well, but I could play it for extended periods of time. And the things that took were things like never being rude unless I was ready to go on the war path. This left me curiously defenseless when people are rude to me, because the back of the brain doesn’t believe it. Particularly when they expect no consequences. Because why would you declare war and not expect return shots?

Anyway there were other things, like not being meaner than I had to be. Always helping people even if I disagreed with them. Always honoring and helping the competent, even if they were in actuality rat finks, etc. etc. etc.

The “nice” I was taught is why the right of Lenin side of the political fight has been losing, worldwide. “Yeah, sure, he’s a communist, but he’s a brilliant musician. Of course I buy his albums.” “Yes, he says things like he wants everyone like me dead, but he’s a great writer, of course I’ll support his career.” “Yes, this series of movies maligns all my values, but they’re a hell of a ride, I’ll take my family to the theater.”

And no, we couldn’t call people names. — I still remember the pearl clutching when I called someone in our field an abbreviation after she called me a racist. Oh, no. So mean. Much evil. We shouldn’t descend to their level! Even worse the pearl clutching for calling Occasional Cortex what she in fact is. So evil, very demeaning. Yes, she’s a commie whore, but we need to give her all dignity, or they won’t treat us right either. (Hint, they don’t.) — We couldn’t ridicule them. Under no circumstances could we hire by political bend as well as by competence. We should allow ourselves to be rolled over and our entire work perverted because look at the credentials of Random Marxist. Ignore that they captured the credentialing process long ago. Because if you undermine the institutions, we’ll lose everything.

That was…. Scrubs hand across face… ten? years ago. Somewhere from fifteen years ago to… Oh, I think the last bits shook off around 2018 or so. Or not. There might still be bits of nice sticking to us, which we’ll only discover when the boot comes out of nowhere and hits our teeth again.

Look, I understand. Particularly the hiring for politics thing. It’s bad cess and a bad road. If you hire for anything other than competence, you over time break everything. Because only if you get very lucky does your second cousin, your friend’s nephew, or your political coreligionary turn out to be brilliant and focused on the job. And the more you do it, the more it takes to draw that lucky card. It’s like all gambling.

But we aren’t given that choice. The left started doing it early in the twentieth century — partially because they confuse agreeing with them with intellectual brilliance — and if only one side does it, the side that doesn’t loses.

And there’s other begs for each one of those. Though at this time, the luck is on our side, simply because to make it in anything when the credentialing in every field and the gatekeeping in all the arts have been captured by the other side, it takes exceptional people. As long as we remember to flip it to “just competence” when we win this. I doubt we will, because we’re human. And we’re walking wounded. But I can hope.

Anyway, look, I came here to be nice. Here being described as this time, this place. I’m a very simple tool. I’m made to tell stories. Sure, my politics will leak into some of the stories. But except for kicks in the teeth at really, really early ages, I probably wouldn’t even understand or pay attention to politics. I’d be too busy telling stories.

And even after I had become aware of, and weary of politics, it probably would only show around the edges of some of my stories.

Heaven knows I hope there is an alternate universe in which I ignore politics and just write silly mysteries and ditsy space opera characters, all held together by the rule of cool and a sense of enjoyment. Oh, I hope.

In this timeline… There have been a lot of kicks in the teeth. Weirdly this means I have more teeth, and they’ve gotten sharper.

I can’t list them all. I remember election fraud going back to 2006 and to me it’s been blatantly obvious since 2012. Kicks in the teeth. And then…. oh, the last four years. The last four bizarre years.

Yes, the bio-engineered virus with research funded by our own sh*theads in government. But also the lock down. The inconsistent, varies with every city lockdown, and no one else seeming to realize if the illness were that horrifying, we’d all be dead. And the chicanery with enforced vaccination. And and and and and and —

Government enforcing censorship of social media. People being debanked. “Weird occurrences” around those of us who won’t shut up.

Kick, kick, kick.

To me the last kick in the teeth was October 7. Not that it happened. If you let your pet savages you’ve been nurturing like deranged piranhas out of their box to do what comes naturally, the results will be horrifying. I mean they do the same sort of thing among themselves all the time, it’s just they expect it and no one hears about it.

But that someone planned and financed that piece of lunacy because they thought it would benefit them. And you know who, precisely, by the way the left flipped on a dime to demand the final solution in a way that would make Hitler proud. (Even while still calling their opposition Hitler.)

The evil, the stupidity, the BLINDNESS. Kick, kick, kick.

They think the kicks have softened us for the kill. You see, they confused the nice with cowardice, with a sense that we were wrong, and therefore wouldn’t fight back.

Oh, they might even be right about some of the older people on our side. Not that they thought they were wrong, but they believed in the Marxist eschatological message and thought that the future was pre-ordained and that it all ended in world communism.

But Reagan and what came out after the USSR changed that. We saw the inept, bumbling evil behind the papier mache, flawless monster. And you can’t undo that. Even the kids not being taught won’t undo it. They’ll stumble on the truth sometime.

The rest of us? We’ve been fighting mad a long time, and only holding back because only monsters and crazed cultists want the world to burn.

We still don’t want the world to burn. And we’re not going to lay down a fire storm. Unless we’re forced. We might be forced.

Israel didn’t want to lay down a fire storm, and they’re still being controlled and careful. But the shrieking harpies of the left don’t understand why Israel no longer cares about “world opinion” and no longer stops on command.

Well, you psychotic bitches of the left, because they’ve done that before, and you kicked them in the teeth, and the last one was warning that the next one will kill them. They won’t stop — I pray they won’t stop — till they cut off the kicking foot.

And those of us who would normally try to moderate the feeling that they should be justified turning Hamass to powder? We don’t feel that way anymore.

The left and the right should look very carefully at this event.

The right because you need to understand what’s happening to you. People who still are nice, much nicer than I, are now saying “I told him/her what I think, and if they stop talking to me, I don’t care anymore.”

“I don’t care anymore.” is the anthem of the nice person who’s been kicked in the teeth enough. And next time? Next time it won’t be just words. And they don’t care anymore.

And the left? The left needs to stop. They just need to stop. Look at what happened there, take a deep breath and realize that while their manufactured “opinion” is demanding that Israel stop reducing an enemy that attacked her with no provocation, and which has yet to surrender, the real opinion in most of the world has turned…. On Hamass.

Most of us who aren’t left realize that this is our battle. The battle for civilization itself. That what happened over there can happen over here. Has been happening over here in small increments. In light kicks to the teeth.

And we know it.

Now, it doesn’t mean the right will go to war, as the IDF has been forced to go to war. But the forces are in motion and are going to be damn hard to stop.

You see, the left is starting to get scared. They have a prophecy that they’d win, and they believed it. And sure, the right seemed to give territory up as a matter of course, like we were pre-defeated.

But …. But particularly since 2020 things haven’t been going according to plan. We didn’t turn on and let the Kenosha Kid hang which they expected and which would have stopped all resistance to their rent-a-savages in Buy Large Mansions. And even the soft left is turning against their open borders insanity and their coddle criminals insanity. And only the very young and very pampered buy the lies about “climate change” (yes, it changes. It changes all the time. And it has mighty little to do with humans, really.)

The right has learned to boycott. And quietly, on the qt, the right has learned not to hire/buy/promote those who hate them. It’s anecdotal, of course, but all of us are seeing it. So are they.

Their credentials are becoming worthless. No one believes authorities. Their attempts at shutting us down are not effective enough, which is why the WEF — the grand babbling heads of their moron prospiracy — is terrified of free speech. The farmers are in revolt against climate maumauing. And they’re making it stick. AND people aren’t hating on the Jews as the left hoped they would after 10/7.

It’s all going sour for them. And they only know one way to continue. Unreasoning attack and aggression has worked for them for so long.

So, listen up, all ye pampered Jades of the left. Stop. Take a deep breath. Think.

The life you safe might be your own.

Because trust me, from this side — and I’m not the biggest hothead on my side, not by a year of Sundays — one more kick in the teeth, and the remaining HUMAN DECENCY flakes away.

You don’t want to create what will come from that kick.

Hell, we don’t want you to create what will come from it. We’d rather fight you on the details and mop you up in every day life, despite how many more lives and wealth that will cost us, until you damned (I’m not swearing. I use the word advisedly) ideology is in the ash heap of history. We’d much rather.

But those kicks–

If you make it so you survive or we do? Common decency will make it so we have to survive. Because in the world you create if you eliminate us (not that you can, truly) no one WILL survive. Not even you. Your poisonous, evil ideas will destroy all mankind. And the fact some of you just quietly cheered at that tells us all we need to know.

If you make it a choice, we will survive.

You will not like this. No one will. We won’t be civilized anymore.

The world will enter a dark turn that will probably take up the rest of my life, and leave it to my grandkids to rebuild.

I beg you, with tears in my eyes, consider you might be wrong. Consider you don’t want to do this.

Because once it starts, we won’t.

The kicked teeth learn best. And you should have seen what you taught us.

I often feel like everything I came to this blog to say has been said, like I’m repeating myself, like there is no point in going on.

I know I’m not the only one thinking that, as I keep getting occasional comments about preaching to the choir, or “what is the point of speaking up. Everyone who will hear will already have heard.”

And since I’ve been at this, more or less 12 years and change, it’s easy to believe that. At this point, who doesn’t know my views on Marxism? And if they rejected them in the past, why would they listen now.

And then this week, I had one of those experiences that changed my mind on this.

First, I shared a meme on facebook that listed all the movies in which we sympathize with the resistance, and ask what’s wrong with us in real life. Now, I hesitated a little on sharing it, because “the resistance” is a memetic thing that the left has highjacked. They call themselves the resistance against you know, the “fascists” of the right, because they put little stupid signs on their lawns and imagine they’re singing the Marseillaise in the face of the Nazis. And you know — you know — this is complete and utter nonsense. Because they are completely in their own head and think that they are the brave underdog, even while they control every institution, corporation, etc. At this point they imagine they are fighting invisible demons that no one has ever detected “institutional racism” and “micro aggressions” and whatever. They are in such denial of the fact they are actually the people in charge of the institutions that they have to invent something greater to fight. And like every time they try to invent something, they’re failing and instead are exposing how silly they are.

And so, because we are the real resistance, and paying for it in career and income, and for more and more of us every day in arrests and being sued, I decided to share it.

What would never occur to me, never in a million years, was that this meme had originally been created by Palestinian-sympathizers. It never occurred to me, because I guess I’m innocent and I’d never think that raping women and children and killing entire families in horrible ways and taking babies hostage and killing them, and displaying innocent civilian corpses as trophies was “resistance.” Or in fact that Palestinians were resisting anything. They certainly didn’t resist the temptation to becoming a murderous parasite, taking all the money that is handed to them and producing nothing but Jew hatred.

I guess I’m innocent, okay?

But at the same time here, we must apply a bit of a check. I don’t actually know the meme was created by someone like that, or just shared by them. Frankly, it could have been something invented by a leftist who didn’t like the meme. There is nothing in the meme, which is white words on black, with no signature or byline, to indicate that should be the interpretation put on it, or that anyone posting it would agree with that interpretation. Needless to say, where I found it was someone in our cohort, not the fishing phallestinians.

However as soon as I put it up I had several of the people who have followed me forever and who are Jewish defending themselves as though they thought I was pro-Palestinian (as if I’d be pro-savagery.) So, I told them the truth, that as far as I’m concerned, Israel is fighting for Western civilization itself, and if we turn a blind eye to the horrors of October 7, we are consigning civilization to savagery and the whim of barbarians. And also that yes, I’m still salty about October 7. I’ll be salty till the end of days.

And suddenly, people who have followed me forever and who should have known better, were — PLEASANTLY — shocked that I was on the side of Israel, and so vehemently so. I suppose at least that is not a surprise to anyone who reads HERE, but who knows?

Here’s the thing, these are not randos. They are people who followed me for years. But they didn’t GET that I was pro-Israel. And I haven’t been mealy mouthed about it.

So, here’s the thing: We must repeat ourselves, because we’re not the center of the universe.

Just because I say something a number of times, it doesn’t mean that the world stops to listen to every single one.

Just because I say something and someone rejects it, it doesn’t mean that on another day, said slightly differently, they won’t hear.

Just because I say something, it doesn’t mean that the person on the other side even noticed that day.

Heck, even for people who read me every day, I’ve noticed sometimes I say something that’s been said a number of times, and suddenly it means something to them as though it were the first time; or it gives them the argument they need to explain it to the kids, or–

Also, the culture is loud with “abandon all hope you who disagree with commies” that I think sometimes people don’t hear me.

And there is a purpose to the repetition. And it does something good.

So, I’m going to keep beating my little drum. Right here.

Rattatatatat.

As many of you — perhaps most of you — know I was at ConFinement this weekend. We drove like insane people, a long, long time, without stopping, mostly because none of us could afford to take the time off for driving for two days.

I almost forgot to take books. With all the death and issues I completely forgot to get new copies of the newly issued books, or new-cover versions of the old things, including new hard covers.

So at the last minute I remembered and filled a box with far more books than I thought would ever sell, considering how old they are. I did sweeten the pot by putting them at half price, since they are old.

Anyway I didn’t have arrangements for a booth minder — in future, though not Liberty con this year, because since we aren’t absolutely sure our other stuff will allow us to go, so I didn’t book a table or booth. Next year, younger DIL (well, she’ll be by then) will figure it out — so I just put books on a table on the honor system, and had people come find me to pay. Yeah, real classy. Anyway, I only brought back four books everything else –50 or so — sold.

Other than that, it was a small con, but it was very friendly.

I stayed out very late talking to people. I met Devon Eriksen, who says he’s not a cat, and I need to read his book. I mean… shakes head… cats writing books.

Anyway, from the blog, and I will miss people, I saw Ben Olsen and his wife, Dorothy Dimock and her husband, the one who wrote the great baking book I advertised here a little while ago. I also met Turquoise Thyme, who is so sweet in person and had fun talking shop with my husband. And I met Nancy Edwards from Facebook. I thought I remembered her being older than myself, but I swear she’s forty and just faking it. And I got to see David Bock and his lovely wife again and–

Anyway, what is there to tell? I ate junk food. I stayed up too late discussing things like whether there were ancient civilizations or at least if we could lie and say it did in a convincing way so books can be written. And what books were fun, and–

I couldn’t make it to the Dave Drake Memorial Shoot, because I was doing a reading. Bad timing on my part, but at any rate, I need to get better at shooting before the next con, right? I just need to make range time. It’s been WEIRD.

It was great. That’s the short and long of it. Small, but intense, and full of highly engaged fans. I recommend it.

In fact, as difficult as leaving the house or being around more than 2 people at once, I am going to try to make it to Confinement next year again. Which is the highest compliment I can give any con.

I mean, I love Liberty con, but we really need a wide scattering of new cons, don’t we?

The good side of all this, is that the persistent depression from what this year has been so far seems to be gone.

The bad side is that I’m still exhausted, so this report is the least coherent thing I’ve ever written. Probably.

But…. well, I had fun. Would you consider coming out and hanging out next year? Even if you have to send me to bed at 2 am, because none of you are really up to carrying me to bed. It would take a carrying party and who wants to do that?

I don’t know if MadMike has scheduled next year’s yet, but you can ask him. I’d love to see more of you.

Anyway, we can hang out and talk and have totally unhealthy snacks (No, the con had very good food, like chill and sandwich makings. I just have a fatal attraction to unnaturally yellow cheese puffs, okay?) and talk and–

Just plan on it. It will be fun.

*Note that this post is a re-run of a post first published in 12/8/2016. But it fits in well with our run of recent posts, and I thought it bore repeating*- SAH

Flavors of History – Alma Boykin

In the beginning there was vanilla, and it was . . .

OK, correction. In the beginning there was olive oil on flat bread with goat cheese, better known as Herodotus. He really does deserve the title of the Father of History, in the sense that he did research, interviewed people who had traveled, and made clear what he knew to be fact, what he had been told was fact, and what he suspected was conjecture. As far as Western history goes, he is the first general historian, and we might say the first social historian, since he wrote about unusual people way over there and what they did. He could also count as an anthropologist, back before the two sides parted company. In China, I’d count Sima Chin as the first historian who was not simply compiling king lists or writing on oracle bones. He is a political historian and intellectual historian, writing about monarchs and the good and bad things they did and if they accorded with his preferred philosophy. No, he wasn’t “objective” but back then historians weren’t supposed to be.

The next major Western historian was Thucydides, a military and political historian. In fact, political and military history dominated the field for quite a while, if you focus outside the Christian Church. People who could write tended to be churchmen and/or affiliated with royal or princely courts. The most important things going on involved ruling, challenges to ruling, inheritance, and how good the patron was. As a result, we tend to find pious descriptions of saintly monarchs (Alfred the Great) interspersed with descriptions of battles and marriages and offspring, or accounts of how horrible the previous monarch was and how G-d, in His mercy and grace, allowed the current claimant to the throne to overcome the bad monarch and replace him. Buried within the accounts, we find nuggets of what moderns consider history.

During the early middle ages (say, 1100s – 1300s or so) we find a lot more national histories written. These are descriptions of the long history of the Bohemians, or Magyars, or Britons (although the English and Welsh started early with Gerald of Wales and the Venerable Bede tracing things back to the Trojan War). The goal was to show how long a nation had been in the land, and how noble and dignified their ancestry was, thus locking in their claims to territory and respect from other, less worthy peoples and rulers. This is when the Magyars staked their claim to Pannonia based on descent from wandering ancestors related to the Huns and farther back, to the sons of a princess and an eagle. The Bohemians didn’t go quite that far, settling on a princess in the 600s or so (pre-Magyar and German) and a plowman. The Kieven Primary Chronicle dates to this period, skipping the mythology for the most part.

Until the 19^th Century history focused on what we call today political and military history, with some diplomatic history wrapped in, and historical biography. When people grumble about “history is just dead kings and battles” they are thinking of this sort of writing. But the people writing histories were not interested in “objective” history. They were recording events in order to support a certain side, or to justify certain actions, or to explain why their side won (or lost). And the most important things to the literate people who were not businessmen and women, or clergy, were politics and wars. Politics and wars shaped everything in the world of the nobility and upper classes, international trade and diplomacy, and even some religious matters, so that’s what you wrote about. And that’s what interested the people who had enough extra money to hire scribes to write family histories and accounts of events. A few individuals wrote diaries and detailed accounts of events that they participated in, like Samuel Pepys (most famously), a latter-day version of the old monastic chronicles, but they were not writing history per se and did not claim to be.

Then along came the professional historians, first Gibbon, and then most importantly Leopold Von Ranke, who ordered his students to go into the archives and government documents and write down things as they really happened, no favoritism or glossing. And political history, diplomatic history, and nibbles of economic history appeared in the form of trade histories. The American diplomat George Perkins Marsh wrote the first environmental history in the 1890s, with the book Man and Nature where he compared the descriptions of the Classical world with what he observed as an ambassador, and described what he thought had happened and why. After WWI people began turning away from the older kinds of history, looking below the level of monarchs and ministries, to see what had been going on in departments, counties, parishes, and villages. The French in particular started combing through local records, digging up anything they could find and trying to make sense of it. Called the Annals’ School because of the title of the journal where the first of their work appeared, the French also began looking at the longue durre, the extended stretch of history of places and peoples.

After WWII, with the surge of new people coming into the universities and more access to archives and new tools to analyze things, history either exploded or shattered, depending on how you view things. Political and military history still led the field in terms of respect and number of practitioners, as the box on my office floor containing the full paperback set of Samuel Elliott Morrison’s history of the US Navy in WWII can attest. Governments still funded historical writing. But economic history emerged as an official specialty, and environmental history, women’s history, Marxist and labour history that looked back at the working classes, and peasants and slaves and serfs to tell their story (E. P. Thompson most famously), religious history that didn’t focus on the development of theology or advance a pro-denominational thesis, corporate history and industrial histories, much better histories of non-Western places with South Asia, China, Japan, and so on developing their own standards and patterns and conventions, geographically focused histories such as American West or Borderlands, and new takes on older writings. Medicine developed its own history that lapped into social and political history. Military history shifted from how battles were won and lost into the daily experiences of soldiers, and of civilians around the soldiers, to histories of logistics and supply, how warfare affected society and shaped culture (see Victor Davis Hanson’s early work), and war-on-the ground like John Keegan’s Face of Battle.

Historians also began nibbling, then gulping, the tools of other fields. We crunched numbers and developed Cliometrics, history based on statistical analysis that could be amazingly useful when it worked and miserable to read when it didn’t. We pestered the archaeologists and the Dark Ages turned into Late Antiquity as more and more continuity appeared in the historical and archaeological record, plagues, invasions, and the climatic downturn in the 500s-600s notwithstanding. We harassed geographers (OK, we’ve been doing that since Herodotus), plagued engineers, annoyed ecologists and foresters and naturalists, irked physicists and chemists, “borrowed” from archaeology and linguistics and hydrology and anyone else who forgot to lock up their journals and research notes, and came up with some wonderful results. And some not so wonderful results.

Today, late 2016, you can find a historian looking under pretty much any rock you mention. Music historians, art historians, historians of ideas, environmental historians, historians of sex (not as exciting as it sounds), historians who write about people and animals, historians of water, or fire (Stephen Pyne and yes, that is his real name. He was predestined to go into fire science and pyrohistory). Is this good or bad? It can lead to some pretty dead-end research, because the PhD requirement is to either find something new, or refute something old. Classics and political history especially have grown some pretty esoteric-to-questionable branches, in my opinion. But it also means that anything is fair game for anyone, and you can find works about all sorts of fascinating and odd and intriguing and “that is so cool!” things and peoples and places.

Of course, I’m the poster bad example for someone who could not focus in graduate school and who still refuses to specialize to the extent required by academic standards. So you might not want to follow my lead.

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

https://amzn.to/49EUhHIFROM HOLLY CHISM: Bar Tabs: A Modern Gods Story

Brief back stories on the characters from the Modern Gods universe.

FROM SCOTT MCCRAE: Finding Bradigan’s Mountain

A brand new Mountain Man adventure from Scott McCrea!

Mountain man Richard Bradigan goes on a deadly cross-country trek to save the girl he loves from his old nemesis, the sadistic Colonel Sauvage. With him are the outrageous Bon Chance Legrand, dime novelist Fred Stryker, and disgraced soldier Captain Burr. But time starts running out for the searchers when they are pursued by some of the most dangerous badmen to ever come out of the West.

One thing is guaranteed – it will all end in blood. But who will live and who will die?

A Mountain Man’s Revenge is the pulse-pounding conclusion to the exciting Finding Bradigan’s Mountain trilogy.

https://amzn.to/3wLpAShFROM CARL MICHAEL CURTIS: Stigmata Invicta

On a backwater planet in an otherwise barren solar system, an underground church thrives. For generations, the tyrannical world government has tried to stomp it out. But now, an elderly nun has brought hope to her suffering people when she begins experiencing a genuine stigmata. Her bishop requests her be rescued and taken far away. The Knights 15 13 send a spec ops team to do just that.

But these missions never go easily.

Discovered and assaulted from the land to the atmosphere, the Knights 15 13 rush to save the nun from the clutches of their enemy. An enemy who has much more sinister plans in mind. They don’t want to just kill her. They want to force her to help them kill everyone.

https://amzn.to/48CSmCaFROM BECKY JONES: Academic Magic

Zoe O’Brien has found her dream job at a small liberal arts college teaching the history of Medieval witchcraft and magic. Academic life is exactly what she expected it to be…until the squirrels stop by to talk with her and her department chair and best friend turn out to be mages.

Zoe discovers a world of magic and power she never knew existed. She and other faculty mages race to stop a coven from raising a demon on the winter solstice while simultaneously grading piles of final exams and reading the tortured prose of undergraduate term papers. Can Zoe master her new-found powers in time?

Karen Myers: Bound into the Blood – A Virginian in Elfland (The Hounds of Annwn Book 4)

Book 4 of The Hounds of Annwn.

DISTURBING THE FAMILY SECRETS COULD BRING RUIN TO EVERYTHING HE’S WORKED SO HARD TO BUILD.

George Talbot Traherne, the human huntsman for the Wild Hunt, is preparing for the birth of his child by exploring the family papers about his parents and their deaths. When his improved relationship with his patron, the antlered god Cernunnos, is jeopardized by an unexpected opposition, he finds he must choose between loyalty to family and loyalty to a god.

He discovers he doesn’t know either of them as well as he thought he did. His search for answers takes him to the human world with unsuitable companions.

How will he keep a rock-wight safe from detection, or even teach her the rules of the road? And what will he awaken in the process, bringing disaster back to his family on his own doorstep? What if his loyalty is misplaced? What will be the price of his mistakes?

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Baying of the Hounds

In the world we know, Nikola Tesla’s Wardencliffe experiment proved a costly failure and was ultimately torn down for scrap. But what if things had gone differently and he pressed his work to completion? In a world similar to but unlike our own, Tesla completes his transmission tower. But when he turns it on, he discovers his calculations were incomplete. Some unknown factor has created a connection with another world with physical laws unlike our own. The commingling of curved and angular space has led to catastrophe. Now his greatest rival, Thomas Alva Edison, compels him to repair the damage. To do so, Tesla must make his way through a ruined city to the locus of the damage. And through his mind echoes the baying of unseen hounds. A short story originally published in the anthology Steampunk Cthulhu.

FROM MARY CATELLI: The Other Princess

This time, they invited the last fairy to the christening.

Elise, uncursed at her christening, received strange gifts about castles and roses. With such good fortune, what more does she need? She grows up forever in the shadow of her lovely, cursed, tragic cousin.

Even when the curse falls, and Princess Isabelle lies in enchanted sleep, life must go on for Princess Elise. Despite the curse, the kingdom can not sleep itself, and neither can she.

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: HELP