*While I’m AFK doing family like stuff, Alma has undertaken to keep this place minimally safe through tonight and tomorrow – SAH*

Huns-giving Reminders by Alma Boykin

1. No, you may not serve yourself from the turkeys. After someone took two entire turkeys, we have to limit access. Don’t blame us, blame the miscreant.

2. No arguing theology, especially while in the serving line. The last time someone started the “9 mil or .45” debate over the potatoes, the mess took an hour to clean up. No. Off limit topics include: religious theology, trying to convert someone to your denomination*, stuffing vs. dressing (unless you are offering the serving spoon to someone), sugar in cornbread vs. plain, football,** the American Civil War, and the other forbidden topics.

3. Yes, you can have both dark meat and light meat.

4. Yes, you can get seconds, but only after you finish your firsts. No preemption, please.

5. The management is not responsible for what Jeff does to you if you mess with the coffee machine in the main bar. If you want to experiment, that’s what the labs are for. The machine in the bar is very touchy, and Jeff finally got it re-calibrated after the last honyacker tried to program it to make mulled cider. Touchest thou not!

6. The range will open after the buffet line this year. Yes, there are Reasons. No, the management is not going to list all of them. If there’s no range-safety officer available, act like a responsible shooter and follow the Four Rules. Plus the other two posted on the gate. When in doubt, don’t do it. The sheriff is still recovering from last year’s trauma, as well as from getting out-shot on the 100 yard pistol range.

7. No alcohol is allowed on the range. If we have to go back to breathylizer tests to unlock the gate, we will. Yes, you. No exceptions. Seriously.

8. Please warn kids and newcomers that fishing in the sea-monster pool and swimming in the minion pool are both prohibited. Kids generally know better, but some theoretically-adults need a reminder.

9. The Introverts’ Association meeting is in the Diogenes Memorial Library, fourth floor, first plaid door on the left. Talking and eye contact are not required, nor is taking a name tag. It is come and go, as usual.

10. Yes, there is a kosher line this year. It is fleishig, so plan your desserts accordingly.

11. If you signed up for side-dishes or desserts, keep in mind that chtulumari bothers some people, so it needs to be in a covered dish. Midwestern gelled salads go with the green salads and vegetables, while Southern gelled salads are desserts. Unless it is TXRed’s gelled cranberry salad, which goes with the other cranberry sauces beside the turkey.

12. No, you may not use mecha during the touch-football game. Limited cybernetic assists are approved, but check the insurance policy carefully.

Thank you for your cooperation, and have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

*Unless they are socialist, in which case preach away! Beating up on statism is always appropriate.

**OK, one exception. It is fine to wager on how badly the Dallas Cowboys are going to lose. Remember the House gets 10% of the winnings.

Yes, I know, I have told you to do it for spite. And you know, if you can’t muster love, then duty, need or spite will do.

But if you can do what you do out of love, it really works better.

I’m one of those people who tends to get lost. Mostly because I have ADD, but also because I get depressed. And when I get depressed, I can — sometimes — still produce, but I don’t enjoy it, it’s a slog, and forcing myself to work makes me more and more depressed.

Which you could call “the story of 2023.” It got briefly better when we adopted Indy and Helena, littermate orange kittens. It just did. But then Helena died, and we still don’t know why, and I went right back into a morass of depression, which had a lot of other contributors, including two deaths in the family, moving out of my beloved homeland of the heart, etc. etc. etc.

We did go back to Colorado this summer, and it helped. Although it can no longer be mine (the auto-immune flare up when we crossed back up to altitude was spectacular, and I’m glad we only stayed five days, because of that) it’s good to know it’s still there, and some trends have gotten better, even if it’s still held captive of fraud-by-mail.

But it somehow wasn’t enough. Well, these last two weekends have been very busy, and this week I’ve been fighting some kind of sinus infection, but the spirits just keep lifting.

This is because Celia Hayes (Sargent Mom) very kindly allowed Indy’s parents to have another hot date before fixing, and they produced a litter of seven.

Two weekends ago we went to get all seven, since they were our responsibility, and last weekend we drove around like a deranged kitten fairy, giving them to their permanent people, where to be fair, they will be very happy.

This involved of course prying them out of Dan’s hands, because he wants to keep them all.

Now we’re done to two. Circe, who doesn’t look like Helena (maybe that’s good) but is a little orange girl cat and very smart and perhaps too persistent. (If she were a boy her name would already be Harry for Houdini) and Toast, second of her name, who like Cedar Sanderson’s Toast (first of her name) is a flame point siamesish.

Toast 2.0 is promised to friends, but…. well…. she loves me a lot, and Dan says we should keep her. I told him if he really wants her he should negotiate for her. So far he hasn’t, so likely we’ll let her go to her new people. Which, yes, will hurt, but then again, perhaps be best for all of us in the long run? I mean, we’re sixty one, and five cats are a lot, particularly since Havey and Valeria are 14 and have kidney issues. (Then again– Sigh. I really like the little trouble maker.)

Anyway, the last two weeks have been turmoil filled, and I’ve had to do a lot of things I’d rather not, and yet, I feel better. (Yes, chapters are coming to substack. It’s been the busy, not the depressed preventing it.)

Why?

Well, as I explained at Mad Genius Club just a few minutes ago, it’s like introvert versus extrovert.

Both can go to a party or a conference and be good while there. But the introvert will come home and crash. The extrovert wants to go go go forever.

It’s the same some things please you, some things don’t, but nothing fills the well like doing it for love. Whether it’s writing, cooking, cleaning the house (which I desperately need to do since family get together is here this year) or looking after helpless kittens and children.

If you do it for love, it will fill the well. Whatever your well is.

And while we live in a screwed up world, and everything we do can’t be for love, try to do some things for love in the middle of what you must do, and what you can do, and what others expect you to do.

Trust me, it will make everything better, if now and then you do something for love. It should deplete you, because you’re adding work. But somehow it doesn’t. Perhaps because, as dad puts it, “He who runs for love doesn’t tire.” But more importantly, doing anything for love revives you.

Go do something for love today, and like — Per RAH’s advice, your budget should include the frivolities first — budget your time so you can do something for love on the regular.

And now I go clean this pigsty. For love.

This year, I’m very thankful for loving my family, including my sons’ ladies. It wasn’t a given, but I’m grateful I do. Because love recharges and revitalizes.

And for these two — too — I’m heartily thankful:
Circe, the redhead, and Toast 2.0 the siamesish:

I have never been woken with a bucket of icy water to the noggin. In fact, most such I’ve seen are scenes in movies of someone pouring a bucket of ice water over the head of a drunkard.

I do, since I’m confessing, confess that I once woke my younger son by dropping a cup of ice on him. In my defense, we had an appointment and he was 13 and taller than I and impossible to wake. The result was, btw, amazing, and once I was done peeling him off the ceiling, I decided never to do that again, because eventually he might get to choose my nursing home.

Anyway…. I have seen the result of icy buckets of water in movies, and I’ve seen the result of metaphorical icy buckets of water in real life.

In movies it brings people out of the deepest unconsciousness. And in real life I’ve seen it happen a few times. You probably have too, if not in person, then at a remove through a friend of a friend. Normally it takes a good scare. Something that shakes you to the core.

There is a tendency in humans, individual or in groups, to go along to get along, which in turn gives us an inertia of the normal. “Normalcy bias.” How much normalcy bias depends, honestly on how much people’s iron rice bowl depends on their not noticing things.

That people have been red pilled at all even when it goes against interest is a sign of how out there our times are, and how horrendously insane the overculture is.

Because people are well paid not to notice malfeasance in their own in group, when noticing casts them to the out group.

A point here: while the left was never justified in assuming creativity was on the left only — since creativity is often associated with a kind of madness, whether divine or simply mad, and often descends on outcasts — it was justified in viewing the expression of non-left-wing opinions as a sign of stupidity.

No, bear with me, here. Suppose you have absolutely no principles. Or even that you have principles, but you think the left, while sometimes misguided is trying to be good and do good things for other people. Now, you’re smart enough to see that everyone who expresses one set of opinions gets promoted, fetted, called very smart, and is more or less handed gold-plated careers. This might not be true in tech (and even there open communists often got better pay for inexplicable reasons) but it was and largely still is true in just about every other field, yes, including science and research (which explains a lot) and with bells on for writing, arts, journalism, etc. Meanwhile, profess opinions that fall outside the “acceptable mainstream” which is increasingly the same as hard left, and your career is over. Ditched. If you are very very good you’ll be kept on, but regardless of the work you’re doing, you’ll be kept at a low level. You will be Cinderella, in the kitchen, working for everyone.

If you are the sort of person smart enough to notice that, but you don’t see anything wrong with what the left is doing, or see something wrong but convince yourself both sides do it, or see something wrong, but know it won’t come to that bad an ending because “it can’t happen here” or “that will never work in reality” or “insert calming phrase here” WHY wouldn’t you mouth the stuff required to make your life much easier and give you the gold plated ride to the top? And why would you not assume anyone doing otherwise was just stupid? If not stupid in their particular field (if I had a dime for everyone who said “She’s a good writer, but–“) stupid as rocks when it came to human interaction? You’d cast about for excuses. Perhaps they were uneducated and simply couldn’t guess what to say? Perhaps they were religious fanatics? Perhaps they just hated people different from themselves? Perhaps–

That is how it worked. Some of us escaped it because we had seen it play out elsewhere and because we read a lot. Some of us escaped it because of a strong religious or otherwise community. And some of us are just absolute contraries. And some of us were wide eyed idealists, who were therefore better at noticing all the contradictions early, and it bothered us extremely. Most of us needed a combination of all of those to step out of line. Because humans are social apes, and the temptation IS to conform. No, not even temptation. We all know the tale of the blue monkey. Any monkey who sticks out dies. The need therefore is to conform. For social species it is an imperative of survival to fit in.

And the left, once it had weaponized the era of mass communication — yes, it was intentional, they always in any targeted country, took over all means of mass communication, and then means of dissemination of art and literature. it was part of the subversion protocol — had that going for them. Once they had taken over that small sector of society, it was very hard for society as a whole to go up against them and/or wake up.

Hence why reading so many accounts of communist take over (or fascist. It was all Marxism, after all) is like watching a sleep walker walking towards the abyss while all attempts at waking up failed.

(I would find it hilarious that they use “woke” to symbolize the state of those who blindly parrot the lines given them without thinking and in fact with an aversion to thinking, except it’s not. Most of psychology as practiced today, save for techniques of behavior modification is bokum, but there is such a thing as a subconscious, (whatever Asimov thought) and the stuff repressed into it has a funny way of returning. And we don’t mean “funny ah ah”. This is like when in a dream you keep telling yourself you must wake up, or when you’re writing a very boring chapter and all your characters talk about how bored they are (this is a thing, btw. Known as “messages from Fred.” If you’re a writer, pay attention to it. It’s like when I get stressed and all my characters want to smoke.))

This is because humans will do practically anything, including dying, rather than stand out from the group. Because through most of our evolution, standing out from the group meant dying, and unpleasantly at that. So, humans don’t. Unless they’re Odds, Goats, Eccentrics. You know, people like us.

It’s not that most people won’t do it. It’s that most people can’t do it.

So now some of you are going: Argle bargle, Sarah, as I said, argle bargle, I told you we were doooooomed. Doomed.

Bah. Nonsense. Because societies change and revolutions happen. And some of them even short of dire. And revolutions in the era of mass communication were amazingly instructive, too. It seems that controlling everything doesn’t really allow — as to an extent people like Aldous Huxley or George Orwell thought — control of people’s minds. It allows control of what people say or show. And leaves dissenters feeling very isolated. But when due to some event people finally realize the majority feels as they do, the results are…. explosive.

But secondly, go see the verb tenses I used for having control of mass communications. You see, they HAD full control of means of communication. But they don’t now. And the ways in which it has escaped them are ways they didn’t anticipate. Some of the greatest blows to their cause have, in fact, come from what their allies or they, themselves, did trying to regain control and shove everyone back in line. Because they have put out messages they thought would rally or scare the masses, but which, instead, woke people who suddenly saw the abyss.

Arguably this started happening with Reagan’s election and his performance in office. They’d had very tight fear-control on the left: elect a “right winger” and he’ll get us in nuclear war. I mean, makes perfect sense, if you believe the only way to keep an attacker from killing you is to grovel and beg, the only way to prevent crime is to get rid of policemen, and the only way to stop war is to surrender. Since “right wingers” (None of us in the US really qualifies, but never mind) were by Marxists’ (Mostly the USSR’s, actually) definition war mongers. So, of course, they would make war immediately and it would kill little girls and daisies and stuff.

But Reagan was elected and not only didn’t we get into nuclear war, but the cold war ended peacefully.

I like to imagine what it would have been like if we’d had blogs and the internet with access to the common man then. Because it would have been amazing. You see, there was maybe these two or three years where, gloriously, everyone knew stuff like communism sucked and top down economies didn’t work.

But we didn’t have open communication. So while a lot of people actually woke up and walked away from leftism, it was quiet. It involved a lot of self-blacklisting. It involved their former colleagues thinking they’d gone mad. It wasn’t general. Not a bang, but a whimper. And in the circles where it was the rigueur, hard leftism reasserted itself via a thousand different routes: “environamentalism” “women’s issues” “Queer rights”, “Anti-colonialism” etc. While the causes themselves, in the un-Marxisted (totally a word, roll with it) version aren’t of themselves bad, these weren’t causes, but vehicles for telling everyone that the free market was terrible and that communism/socialism/leftism, while not great was still better. (With the while not great being more and more whispered as time went on.)

If you were in the know, you could see the old leftist horrors move back into top positions here and abroad, and anyone who dissented being pushed out and down, now more forcefully, since they reminded the people in power that they were in fact wrong, and that reality was in fact against them.

But the buckets of cold water continued. 9/11 was the next big one I remembered, where a lot of people woke up. Though a lot of feminists for real woke up when people they trusted and believed in said not a peep at Clinton’s abuse of a young woman over whom he stood in a position of authority.

Since then the hits keeps coming. If you manage to get in a place where people trust you, even though they are generally left, even the most “convinced” leftists will betray the cracks in their worldview, and you can see it metaphorically as a sort of a carnival mask over a face that keeps screaming silently like the painting by Edward Munch. (I always also wonder at the boomers’ love of that painting. I have wondered if it’s a message from Fred yet again.) In fact, their doubts are characterized most of all by their refusal to think. If you bring up stuff that would force them to question, examine, or apply logic, they shut down. Sometimes they shut down visibly, and sometimes they just scream and insult you to get you to go away. This is worse if they’re older.

Why do I say this betrays their doubts? Because in the sixties and seventies, when things like Freud or (eh) Margaret Mead hadn’t been debunked and exploded, they loved to discuss this stuff. They would bring up (largely made up) facts and figures, which you couldn’t counter, because your stuff wasn’t getting published. They were full of whataboutism and supposed righteous logic. Now they just want it to stop.

In the same way, they increasingly try to censor interactions and stop people talking. (The lockdowns were special in that vein and I think why they were so wedded to masks.) Because they don’t want anything to wake them up from the dream and force them to stand out from the herd. If they made a continuous sound it would be “stopthatstopthatstopthat.”

But no matter how much they suppress, repress and shout over, their very own side, their very attempts at consolidating reality, keep dumping buckets of cold water.

The terrorists filming and broadcasting themselves — gleefully — on 10/7 was one of those. It was also a genuine cross-cultural f*ck up. You see, attacking and killing lots of civilians in horrific ways is a military thing for tribal cultures. The fact that they COULD do it should be enough to make Israel surrender in fear and humiliation. They never THOUGHT of retaliation. They think we don’t kill tons of their civilians and their helpless population because we CAN’T not because we have a moral code that forbids it. (Remember Islam doesn’t believe Christ died on the cross. They think someone else was substituted for him, because dying on the cross would be humiliating. The fact we use the cross as a symbol means to them that we want to humiliate Christ. Yeah, it’s …. a very old, very tribal mind set. It can be defined as “might makes right” or “only the strong horse counts.” Whichever.)

But those images, though suppressed, woke a lot of people. And if you have feminists in need of waking, I suggest making them watch it. In fact, part of the damage control is “the Israelis faked it” which is utter bullshit and not really sticking.

And then the attempt at damage control, at making sympathy with Israel “double plus ungood” and making it stop, those ridiculous mass demonstrations, and tearing down of the hostages posters?

All of that woke more people up. I keep coming across people on twitter sadly lamenting “How has the left got this evil and irrational? We’ve never been like this before.”

These are people who are my age or a little older, and it would make me laugh, if I weren’t so busy crying.

Because they’ve been evil and stupid irrational for all of my life, and obviously so since the eighties.

There was this college professor who was earnestly asking how this could have happened, how could the left be siding with Hamass? How could all these people she loved and trusted suddenly be so eeeevile?

I actually answered that one. She might have blocked me by now, but was visible as of yesterday on Twitter/x/twix, whatever.

I pointed out her sign to leave was if no earlier, when they called a Christian-Socialist like W. a “Nazi” or when they called a squish leftist like Romney “literally Hitler” or a hundred other times. But she said nothing, because she agreed with it. Probably because she didn’t want to look too deeply. If she looked too deeply, it would show her all the evil, and then she’d have to stand out, and leave the herd. And people would rather die than that. But at some point, a bucket of water falls on you that you can’t ignore.

For her it was this, but she’ll still try to bury it. Look, she’s a college professor. If she doesn’t try to ignore it and bury it in her mind, she’ll lose her job and all her friends. I know people who are strong enough to do that, but it takes effort and well, inner strength and a devotion to the truth. Which most ordinary leftists don’t have.

However the hits keep coming. Because on one side, we’re in the end stage of “socialism/communism glorifies and rewards politically correct incompetence, which causes everything to fall apart.” This might be tolerated in China or the USSR/Russia for a while, because frankly, they have experience of neither freedom nor prosperity. But we have experience of both, even if the first was illusory at various points in the 20th century. (Also relative. We were still more free than most of the world.) So, the way things fall apart and contradict the socialist verities is unavoidable, and people tend to believe their lying eyes. (Which is, btw, how Reagan got elected in the eighties.) And the patches put on the old tired Soviet agit prop are popping faster. Hence the — giggle, point, laugh — open borders bullshit is starting to wake up even liberal bastions. As is the “let’s coddle the “homeless” because they totally just hit a hard patch” etc. And don’t get me started on the enviro insanity which now wants to forbid random things with the more or less express intent of making agriculture impossible. That will wake up a lot of people. The prospect of starving in the morning might not concentrate the mind as much as the prospect of hanging, but it’s not that far off.

The buckets of water are already lined up. They can’t help but fall. And the left’s attempts at stopping them — because they are, ultimately, at war with reality, and reality is a bitch, it always wins — just means they become extra-icy and fall extra-hard.

Yeah, it’s going to suck, because we’re not watching this from another planet, far away. But it’s not going to suck as much as it will for them. Because we can see it coming, and we’re preparing. (Right, boys and girls? Please tell me I’m right.) And because we can see reality, and therefore we can elbow them out soonish and start rebuilding.

For them? Their minds would need to be completely rebuilt. Which some people say is impossible after 45 or so (Might be later now. After all, we live healthier and longer. But still.) And they believe. Most of them actually earnestly believe the mass of contradictory shibboleths, from humanity being a plague on the Earth, to free market causing slavery and war, to… well, the entire bucket of stupidity, according to which giving up agriculture and living in grass huts would make all of us healthier, more enlightened and possibly give us psi-powers. And no one would attack us, because EVERY ONE, every single person in the world will of course do this.

So when they see their vision failing, there is nothing after. Just unending abyss.

But be not afraid. It won’t be long. (Which still can exceed my remaining life span, because history doesn’t move on human life scale.) And in case it is tomorrow (could be. Unlikely, but it could be) that everything falls apart and simultaneously implodes and explodes, do keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.

Illegitimi non carborundum!

*We’re now, hopefully, fixed at home till Spring, save for maybe day trips. We’re down to two kittens, one of which — Circe — we’re keeping, and the other — Toast 2.0 — adopters will be getting after thanksgiving. Circe is on my shoulder, as I type this. But this post isn’t late because of the kittens and travel (except second order effects of much travel). It’s late because as some of you know, I’ve been feeling “off”. It manifested as a massive ear infection on my birthday. I’m on antibiotics and just well enough to do this and hopefully finish chapters. The ear infections are a risk of traveling and getting new and exciting allergies in fall, because my ear canals are a mess from birth. Anyway, am better, no pain anymore, just slow and tired. Will be okay – SAH*

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 JERRY BOYD: The Butler Did It (Bob and Nikki Book 40)

The fleet manages to catch the Squirrel responsible for the horrible things they’ve seen recently. That should be a good thing, shouldn’t it? Turns out it’s only the beginning of their troubles, as their journey to collect a bounty on him turns into an adventure. Follow along, as Bob and the fleet get the best of the situation.

FROM ALMA BOYKIN: Hunter and Horseman: Familiar Generations Book Four

Undying love or cruel obsession?

Devon County, a quiet rural corner of Pennsylvania. That is, until two brothers refuse to take “no” for an answer. Malice and magic pull Jude Tainuit, the lone Hunter, into the fray. When a tornado rips through the county, leaving pain and twisted power in its wake, the Hunter and his allies face two foes – one in the open, and one who lurks, patient and deadly. A blood-path magic worker hides in the storm, one who hunts Hunters.

Worse awaits. Aunt Martha goes to visit relatives, leaving Jude in charge of the farm … Or as in charge as his Familiar and Martha’s cat will allow.

Jude Tainuit will need all his skills, and the help of allies great and small, to face the storm when twisted power awakens the phantom Horseman.

FROM MAX COSSACK: Khaybar, Minnesota (The Wilder Bunch Book 1)

Terrorism comes to the rural Midwest heartland—can one ordinary man stop it? Islamist terrorists frame small town Minnesotan Nat “Hack” Wilder for the murder of his friend Amir Mohammad. Hack must survive a January blizzard, elude the police and F.B.I., track down the real killers, infiltrate a terrorist gathering, and stop a terrorist attack on his nine-year-old daughter’s school. This is a suspenseful fast-paced action thriller that is often disturbing, sometimes surprisingly funny, and always PC-indifferent. Some sample reviews from real people (who are not Max’s friends):

FROM MARY HARE: Down Pad

A few years from now, reusable spacecraft provide routine, daily access to space. And as always, it’s the enlisted boots on the ground that keep everything going. They need a special combination of people, both laser-focused detail-obsessed computer jocks and the oil-stained salt-of-the-earth folks who just make things work.

Space Force enlistees go to boot camp in Boca Chica. That’s also where the Space Force operates its workhorse, the Shrike, the military version of the SpaceX Falcon 9. The landing pads are nicknamed down pads, a name reflected in the local military hangout, The Down Pad, which provides food, drink, dancing and gaming.

But not everyone who wants to join the Space Force will make it. Jake Blacksmith, a detrans man, has to fight to get in. Camden Tanner, more comfortable with computers than people, has to fight to fit in. As Blacksmith and Tanner rotate between the base and The Down Pad, each must navigate his own path in life. Where will it lead each of them?

Novella: approximately 23,000 words; mature language

BY GREYE LA SPINA, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Invaders from the Dark (Annotated): The weird pulp classic

When Portia Differdale invited her maiden Aunt Sophie to live with her, Sophie little expected to be caught up in a struggle between the forces of Light and Darkness. But meeting the exiled Russian Princess who moved into the neighborhood somehow clued her into the uncanny forces in play, and before too long, policemen would vanish, children would be kidnapped or worse, and she would be facing… Invaders from the Dark!

• This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving the book genre and historical context.

FROM VARIOUS CLASSIC AUTHORS, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: The iktaPOP 2023 Eerie Collection: Free culture weird fiction and horror.

From iktaPOP Media, another prime selection of free culture, public domain weird fiction, just in time for Halloween!

Within this book you will find zombies, hamadryads, spectre cowboys, dismembered wizards, werewolves, vampires, and oh, so much more!

• This iktaPOP Media collection contains introductions that give the stories historical and genre context.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Shadow over Leningrad

In Stalin’s Soviet Union, Tikhon Grigoriev lives a precarious life. He knows too much. He’s seen too much. A single misstep could destroy him, and if he stumbles, he will take his family down with him. With Leningrad besieged by Nazi armies, the danger has only increased.

He’s not a man who wants to come to the notice of those in high places. But when he solved a murder that seemed supernatural, impossible, he attracted the attention of Leningrad’s First Party Secretary.

So when a plot of land grows vegetables of unusual size and vigor, and anyone who eats them goes mad, who should be called upon to solve the mystery but Tikhon Grigoriev. However, these secrets could get him far worse than a bullet in the head. For during the White Nights the boundaries between worlds grow thin, and in some of those worlds humanity can have no place.

FROM MARY CATELLI: Through A Mirror, Darkly

What lies behind a reflection?

Powers have filled the world with both heroes and villains.  Helen, despite her own powers, had acquired the name Sanddollar but stayed out of the fights.

When the enigmatic chess masters create a mirrored world reflecting her own home and the world about it, it’s not so easy to escape.  All the more in that the people of that world are a dark reflection of all those she knows.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT (NIFTY NEW COVER): Gentleman Takes A Chance (The Shifter Series Book 2)

Family! Can’t live with them and can’t eat them.
Tom Ormson, owner — with his girlfriend — of The George, a diner in downtown Goldport, Colorado is well on his way to becoming a responsible and respectable adult, despite his rough start and the fact that he turns into a dragon.
But then the unpredictable Colorado weather, the ancient leader of a dragon triad and an even more ancient shifter-enforcer combine to destroy his home, put his diner at risk and attempt to kill him.
All this, of course, has to happen while Tom’s friend, Rafiel, is trying to solve a series of murders-by-shark at the city aquarium, and Tom’s newly-reconciled father is attempting to move to Denver.
Fasten your seat belts, a wild ride is about to begin.

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: Horses

I was going to write about the power of love. Mostly because I’m realizing the depths of depression I’d fallen into and the kittens are bringing us back to life. Little Circe, particularly, really loves her daddy and it’s healing his heart.

BUT– But lately I’m running into the narrative on Jews that is really just anti-antisemitism in glad rags. “All Jews are commies, destroying western civ. Why should we support their war.”

It’s…. interesting, shall we say? Because in the end, it comes down to “we support their war because we’re next on the Hamass menu, regardless.” But a lot of this is, bizarrely, taking organizations like ADL and claiming it speaks for all Jews, and therefore…. Which is like La Raza, or the more deranged (yes, they exist, they’re just small) Portuguese orgs in the US speaking for me. They don’t, just because I come from a vaguely allied culture, if you were wondering. I don’t think that Latin culture is superior to all others, or that the West of the US was stolen from us, and I’m not, of course, a Marxist.

I do have some insight, coming from having acculturated to the US as an adult though. Sometimes I wonder if that’s why I seem to be the only person, even among the writers and artists, who was aware of the political color bar, and what you had to do to succeed, and how you could get cancelled on suspicion of not singing fully in the progressive choir, even back in the eighties and nineties.

It was plain as the nose on my face, to me. Perhaps this was because in Portugal, by the time I hit my teen years, that political color bar was drawn in bright red and the penalties were also very obvious. The fact that some teachers spelled it out, by telling me outright if I wanted to have an A and get into college I’d best get with the program, probably didn’t hurt.

But I could see it even as an exchange student in the early 80s. It was “subtle” in a way, but you could see it. Say something outside the leftist media narrative, and everyone in the room looked at you like you were an idiot. And then it would start circulating how very not smart you were, and how you might be a little nuts. From there to social pariah was a step, though the odder and less sensitive to others’ responses might not get it and just think it’s an unfriendly group or whatever.

Note later, when I was involved in Mensa, a society that is entered by showing proof of IQ, the same mechanic applied. Open your mouth with a non-approved non-leftist narrative, and you “weren’t very bright” at best, and were a potential terrorist/racist/sexist/homophobe at worst.

The line was very clear to me, as was the assumption: All smart people; all educated and well informed people were leftist. Therefore, if you didn’t want to be judged as one of those stupid hicks and uneducated and maybe with a screw loose, you’d repeat whatever. And yeah, a lot of times, you’d end up being more left than you’d otherwise have been, because — look up cults — there is a mechanic to repeating what you don’t believe that’s used in indoctrination.

By this mechanic, most of the US upper class by the 40s (if you believe bios, and also Heinlein’s opinion) had essentially become Marxists, though unaware of it themselves. It was a function of what books were published, what programs were broadcast (radio first) and what memes were deployed. I THINK it started in the colleges, probably around and just after WWI. By WWII the only fight was German Marxists or Russian Marxists. And because of FDR the overclass went all in on the Russian side. (It might have been for the best, too, who knows? I just wish they’d woken up earlier.)

Note this was completely invisible to people who hadn’t come from another culture, be it immigrants or “working class/under class who made good.”

Leftism was a positional good. It’s actually been interesting and surprising how fast that’s falling apart since 16. It’s partly the fact that leftism is no longer holding it together to the extent of sounding even vaguely sane. And partly the fact that the masks have all come off, and the mechanic become incredibly obvious. Partly because we have access to the media of other places, times, and un-gate-kept media too.

I’m hoping this breaks both the immigrant comes in and becomes hard left, and the “lower class who makes good” becomes hard left. Because if you think about it, that’s been true for a long time. And it’s a poison pill. We all want our kids to do well/acculturate. But that means we lose them to Marxism because they want to fit in with their new circumstances. It’s been a meme in the culture forever, and yet people don’t seem to GET it. Not really get it. Makes me feel like the man with one eye.

But I never expected this effect to be held PARTICULARLY against the Jews. It’s all immigrant groups who came in during or after the 20th century. All of them. I always cringe at “oh, Hispanics are hard working, family oriented. They’ll be right wing.” No. they won’t. Because leftism is a positional good. And they want to fit in and sound high class. The effect is so strong that third generation of families escaping Communists: Russians, Chinese, Cubans, are often hard left. (And even the ones who think they aren’t, buy into a lot of the bullsh*t.) The only defense seems to be a strong religion. Hence Muslim immigrants aren’t becoming hard left, though their political culture often allies them with the Marxists. But that’s because their culture is their religion and they tend to stick in tight communities that all police each other on religion.

No, not like Jews or Catholics. Walk away from that religion, and your parents might stop talking to you. They are, however, highly unlikely to slit your throat. So, Italians, Hispanics, etc, all become Marxists to fit in. Yes, so do the Jews. Arguably some of them were Marxist (both kinds, though Jews will read danger when it almost kills them (takes a while) and soured on the German model really quickly) when they came here, because they were European upper class “d’industrie” not of birth, but those lines also blurred because noblemen like money, etc.

All of these 20th century and later immigrants, as well as the organizations that cater to them are all hard left. It’s not a coincidence. It’s because integrating in the culture involved becoming increasingly harder left. Unless you were stubborn enough that what you said out of your mouth didn’t taint your mind (grins in being me) and/or so religious that you wouldn’t go over. (Some Christians were protected, yes, but often not their kids.) It’s one of the risks of massive and uncontrolled immigration. Though to be fair, in the Jewish case, there wasn’t much they could do. They were genuine refugees and terrified. Which made their assimilation more so.

Look, we have a lot of work to do healing our culture. But the bullshit was already in our culture that pushed these people left. It’s nothing inherent in Jewishness, except the twin desire for safety and being accepted to the extent those operate. (Yes, there’s also separatedness, but that is driven from the inside only to the extent that Jews stay religious.)

I was going to paste a screen cap of a comment on Wretchard’s FB page that used ALL the talking points, about how this guy would support Israel, but frankly the Jews, as exemplified by ADL and Soros were responsible for anti-white, anti-Christian, anti-western initiatives, so let them burn, etc.

I decided not to give the asshole screen space, besides the fact I want to set him on fire.

First, Soros maybe was once upon a time a Jewish boy. Maybe. I honestly don’t know how religious his family was originally or if they tried, but he reminisces mistily about selling out other Jews for profit as a young teen. He’s evil, but he’s not Jewish in the religious sense. He might be an “Ethnic Jew” but so are a lot of people. Due to the fact that Jews are not a collective entity with a shared brain, it means nothing for Jews or Israel as a whole.

The ADL is now just a leftist organization. Yes, sure, Jews work for it. Again, leftism is/was until very recently a positional good. And? Other large organizations, including the ACLU that started as non leftist have all become screamingly leftist. This has nothing to do with Jews, and everything to do with “Our culture was already very infected when most Jews immigrated which led to all sorts of pathologies.”

“But Jews have all the power, reeeeee.” Jews in general do well, particularly when semi-assimilated. I have friends who believe it is the effect of generations selecting for who does best at professions that are mostly intellectual and portable. And they might be right. I’d like to point out though, that I think it’s also FEAR. Converso families in Portugal tend to do very well, because there is safety in wealth and position, and family trauma tends to echo through generations. That thing about culture persisting beyond genes.

Take it from the neurotic who managed to stay employed in trad pub for 30 some books, when the average career was 2 when she came in. Scrambling on your torn fingernails out of utter terror can give you a lot of lift.

So, yeah, Jews are more visible than other minorities, in some ways. Some. Though I’ll also point out a lot of people assume we’re Jewish because Biblical names and last name that sounds German (It’s actually British from the border with Wales, originally, but hey. Dan does have a ton of German, via an Amish Great grandmother.) I’ve seen this happen more than once. Prominent person in entertainment or arts, German last name, the finger pointing begins, and then you find they’re Lutheran or Catholic. (Though usually background only.) Bah.

The point here is, yeah, a lot of Jews are leftist. They also suffer from targeting issues. To understand why you need to understand that generational trauma, again. There was a post recently on how the Jewish community as a whole kept identifying Christians as the enemy, instead of the left. That’s partly because they assimilated into the left for safety, and partly because they’re hearing the words not the actions. Yes, it’s stupid. They’re not the only ones making that mistake.

This also goes to “but they exaggerate their victimhood.” Bitch, if you were retraumatized through history every few generations, and always hit when you felt safe, victimhood would also be at the center of your identity. That it is a belligerent victimhood is probably to the good. It’s how Jews survive. That it makes them then try to help everyone who proclaims himself a victim…. well, oy vey iz mir gevalt!

Though the last month and change has made a lot wake up to how they’re being used.

There is a wakening set in motion in 2020 that went further with October 7th, and a lot of masks have come off. We’re seeing a massive realignment across the lines, and not just for Jews. But it will take time, and the results might surprise even you. But these things are always slower than you think in working through.

Right now everyone is still in shock from 2020 and the masks coming off, and stumbling around punch drunk.

None of which has anything to do with the fight between Israel and Hamass. First what Hamass (the Pork Loin Brigades) did was true savagery and horror, a declaration of war not on Jews, but on all of civilization. Their doing what they did and broadcasting it amounted to “We will subdue you with violence and evil, till you bow to us.” The answer to that is always not only no but hell no, preferably with missiles, if you want to keep any civilization and decency.

Second, it’s purely in our best interests. If you think allowing Hamass to do this to Israel and destroy it utterly — which will happen if there’s a cease fire with no surrender first! — won’t result in their trying the same in our lands, you’re out of your mind. And while I don’t think they’d succeed in America, looking at Europe makes me doubtful they wouldn’t succeed there. At least enough to make the rest of the world hazardous to America.

Third, the axis of evil, totalitarian regimes is real. And it doesn’t include Israel. Which is why our evil would be totalitarians much love China, and only reluctantly pay Israel lip-service and play f*ck f*ck games on aid. BTW all the totalitarians are in major economic and other trouble. Part of their recent belligerence is an attempt to save themselves. And like our home grown Bidenmites, the more they try to flail around and fix things, the deeper they dig.

It is in the best interest of CIVILIZATION to back Israel. Because Hamass is the opposite of civilization. And will take us all down given a choice.

As for the anti-Semites…. they’ll always be with us, I guess. However, before you buy their idiocy, do pay attention to the logic and how this affects other groups.

There is a concerted propaganda effect going on to leave Israel out in the cold. And for various reasons, the right always falls for this. ALWAYS. The right in the US are so susceptible to propaganda it’s a miracle we survive at all.

Again, as yesterday, don’t echo malicious propaganda, and do make an effort to identify what is propaganda and aimed at winning by other means the war started with savagery and horrible crimes against civilians.

Be not afraid and be not stupid. Stay safe out there.

Of all the ideas in Heinlein fiction that would be useful, the most impossible isn’t his “sensitives” that can communicate telepathically or otherwise circumvent technology. I mean, those seem impossible, but to be honest, we haven’t really tried for them.

The most impossible, which seemed, I think, back when he wrote them, “just within reach” are things that, though I don’t remember the exact names he used (a sure sign it’s time to re-read) involve making the sciences of psychology and sociology, let alone linguistics into exact sciences, so the number is computable and the outcomes precise.

In a way it is a very mid-century idea for the 20th century. Part of the whole rule by experts, and everything being planned from the top down involved of course exact outcomes that could be exactly computed and calculated.

Well… it’s not like that. And we know that’s a good thing, because it keeps the idiots at the top from attempting to herd us like cattle and create what they think is utopia and is in fact a horror. But it doesn’t keep them from trying.

Yes, the commenter who said something about “10% parasites, all is lost” wrote back. He says — and I believe him, btw. This is not an adversarial response, but one that involves answering the ideas. Because the ideas, obviously, are out there. The fact they’re crazy cakes somehow gets lost even to very intelligent people, which my commenter is. So they need airing — he read something about when there is a minority that is determined not to be absorbed and has its own language and costumes, even just 10% of the population, it will destroy the nation. This made me laugh so hard in “European-raised before highways” that I can’t begin to make you understand. BUT I’ll try. Oh, I’ll try.

I suspect it all comes from — who was it — and his idea that if a minority of as much as ten percent holds its breath and threatens to turn blue long enough, the majority will give in. This, I suspect is a way to explain what the left did to the west in the 20th century all while ignoring the elephant in the room. Which is very human and utterly infuriating. It reminds me of explanations for why the artistic and literary establishments were dominated by the left back in the old days, including “The right just isn’t creative” while we who saw this from the other side knew it was because the establishment discriminated on politics. But this never occurred to the analysts.

Anyway, first, the thing the commenter said he meant. This made my jaw drop and my mind blow. I imagine whoever came up with this piece of brilliance (NOT my commenter) is a dyed in the wool racist, and that this was aimed at the US’s black population, which is around 14% I think, at last counting. Yes, they’ve been indoctrinated not to assimilate, and that’s a problem, but it’s a problem caused by the people who instituted public schooling creating they wanted the opposite — integration, in that case of immigrants — and all the kids knowing the same things. Remember that, because it’s what they always do given the chance.

It is not a natural factor, and absent continuous indoctrination and bizarre forms of governmental discrimination in the name of “helping” it would be gone within a generation.

But would the the black population of the US “fully integrated” and not have “distinctive language”? Look bub, it never was. Nor were any of the other tiny groups. Cultures, even after someone gets fully assimilated, when the population retains a group — not an isolated individual — have…..very long half lives.

Did it rip apart the US? Well, no. Not so long as there was a general culture, a civic set of beliefs that made us American.

If you think that we must all have the exact same linguistic expression, set of beliefs and cultural presentation for the country to survive, the country should be no larger than about a thousand people. And about 15 miles square. And that might be pushing it.

Okay, I exaggerate, because we do have highways and mass communication means. But the local variation is much larger than most people realize. And while I realize I’m ESL (Actually ETL) and deaf to boot, regional dialects might not be their own language, but they might as well be.

And all of us have groups we let our hair down with. I know when I realize new acquaintances that I’m desperately trying to be “normal” for reveal themselves as our brand of geek, I can feel the pressure coming off.

Now, is that the same as say importing boatloads of ENIMICAL culture individuals, like, say, Somalians? Who have a different religion, different language and hate us with a burning passion?

No. Will it destroy the country? No. Mostly it will destroy THEM. Because they are too convinced of their own inherent superiority, and let’s face it, they were brought in as weapons by our idiots. So they’re going to go off. After which, they’ll be gone.

Throughout history, the only minorities like that that manage to stay separate and SAFE are the ones that are brought in to be elites, and protected from the populus. Yes, I do realize that this is exactly what our overlords think they’re doing. Our overlords are idiots studying to be morons, okay? They see savagery and mistake it for a warlike disposition. These are not the Teutonic Knights of the Holy Cross. They are not capable of holding the American population (THE AMERICAN POPULATION!) cowed by their superior war like skills. They’re crazy rebarbarized populations, ululating their entitlement and hatred of the general population. We’ll tolerate them as long as they’re tolerable. And then…

Look, even with populations brought in to be overlords, whose dominion lasted centuries, when they stopped being protected/kept in a superior position to the general population, two things happened: A vast number of them got killed. Messily. The rest integrated, with nary a peep.

Oh, there is a third one: the indigestible minority leaves. Or separates into its own country. But that takes either 50/50 separation or…. well, yes, the Jews didn’t integrate. That could also be what the original proponents of this lovely idea were aiming for. Here’s the thing though: the Jews didn’t integrate-ish. But they did. Spanish Jews spoke a different form of Spanish, not a different form of German. And the genes drifted as well. Yes, there is a genetic marker, but that’s not as strong as you’d think.

And for that it took not just a religion, but a strong religion that appeals to very stubborn people and circumstances that for various reasons selected for intelligence and argumentativeness.

Also, contrary to the delusions of the Nazis it tore no country apart. The Jewish minority, in most countries, functions as a fully integrated part of the whole and brings distinct benefits to the nation. Only crazy people think otherwise, though it’s a popular illusion, mind. It’s also one that, when that minority is killed or expelled, leaves the country a mess and materially and culturally impoverished. (No? Fight me, she says in Portuguese! Do you think it’s a coincidence Portugal never rose to world-power again? Also, FYI Henry the Navigator was 1/4 converso. I said and will stick by it, FIGHT me.)

More importantly, everywhere in old Europe, there were little villages with their culture, customs, ideas, and languages, often the remnant of old languages in that area. I can’t be the only one who learned “Standard” language in school for the first time. Now, what we spoke at home was mostly understandable, but not standard in any way. And I found out later when I opened my mouth without thinking, my college professors could pinpoint my origin to within a mile of home.

Those countries weren’t torn apart. Well, they were but fighting other countries, and the cultures in Europe all still demand that. I’m frankly not even mad, more impressed that the EU hasn’t exploded yet.

They weren’t torn apart, because they had a set of beliefs that held them together. In this case a blood-and-soil myth that the borders held ein volk, ein– You get it.

Myth? Oh, dear Lord. My sons call Portugal “the reservoir tip at the end of Europe” and they’re not wrong, due to the duality of being at the extreme edge, and basically a vast seaport with a tiny country attached. I used to be able to — but would now take a lot of alcohol to perform — sing-song all the people’s who had come and stayed, contributing to the “Portuguese race.” But here’s the thing, children…. it’s not a race. It’s not even an integrated nationality. Yes, even to my eyes now, they all look the same-ish. But I remember when I lived there, and I could tell where people came from by their look. Celtic and Germanic is mostly in the North. The South has a lot of Moor still, and– Oh, I might not distinguish all the thirty or so people’s that contributed to the whole, but I could give you a general “feel”. (Germanic looks, btw, were mostly lower class, and not for the reason you expect. You see, the Moors, which were the large last group deposed and subdued by arms had a bad habit of kidnapping blonds and redheads. So. Add a few centuries and shake well…)

And even when I was a kid there were DEEP rifts, in how you cooked, how you kept house, how you LIVED. But the country wasn’t torn apart.

Nor were the other European countries. Now, some might not be quite so promiscuous as Portugal — and some are more — but look you I remember British friends who could tell the ancestry of someone they met to the area of the country they came from. And you know what, according to my linguistic professors, some of that went back to the teapot-sized countries that the nation originated from.

Cultures take time to mix and assimilate. Centuries. But the countries can be healthy nonetheless, provided there is a set of beliefs in the country. Yes, that can be the blood and soil myth in Europe. Here, our constitution is fine, thank you.

What happened in Germany wasn’t the result of an unassimilated minority. It was the result of a culture in deep crisis crossed with a time when it was assumed the “experts” could design everything from the top down. The fact that they were trying to resolve the problem of a deeply wounded national ego by blaming a minority that was VISIBLE because of their different attire and customs, and trying to solve it by eliminating it and pushing conformity from the top down doesn’t mean it’s inevitable.

It means it’s a danger for deeply wounded cultures, with a myth of UNITY and blood-and-soil. For us the danger hinges more on equality, which leaves us wide open to the politics of envy. But the nation isn’t deep crisis. The elites are. They’re just inflicting their psychosis on us.

Anyway, I’ve spent way too long on what is OBVIOUSLY someone’s racist and anti-semitic hangup. I’d guess someone not culturally American. (And no, not my commenter.)

And the original person decided in the beginning these “minorities” were a problem, and then justified it. OBVIOUSLY. Because otherwise, it’s adding two plus two and getting kumquat, and I recommend Thorazine.

Just like the hangups on “EQUALITY”, if a nation is absolutely uniform (and ten percent is a pretty small minority, btw) in income/lifestyle or language/cultural expression, it’s not a sign of health and strength. It’s a sign of a serious totalitarianism, squishing everything down.

I’ll tell you the same I tell the people who list inequality as a problem, “You’re trying to solve a feature as if it were a problem.”

An absolutely unified nation WITHOUT a minority that refused to be assimilated has never existed, outside maybe the earliest nation states. And even there, I doubt it. The problems come when the culture is in crisis and tries to make everyone exactly alike. But a culture in crisis exaggerates even the slightest problems. So, you know, them over there, who use clay pots for their stew instead of cast iron, can become a whole “unintegrated minority” at need. But it’s a mirage, really. And what tears the nation apart is something else. The minority is just something convenient to blame.

So much for that. Yes, we do have a problem (fight me on that too) with not only not encouraging people to speak English, but catering to a dozen langages so as not to be “racist” and refusing to let kids be taught to assimilate. I KNOW I had to fight to keep my kids from being put in Spanish-only (of all things) school, and I am not, nor ever was, a Spanish speaker, and am married to someone whose ancestors have been here from the beginning, save for the ones that met them on the shore. So, you know?

We have a huge problem. It’s called a massive and too powerful government with illusions of intellectual superiority. Remove that, and people will integrate or flee. (And keep in mind I still think most of the newest arrivals are here because they were promised benefits, and we’d be better off without them. In fact, a bunch are running the other way when the teat dries.)

Otherwise? People can and will integrate. No? Laughs in Italian and Irish.

Now, on the other one, the “if a minority holds its breath till it turns blue, we’ll give them what they want because we hate to be mean!”

Do I need to point out that’s bullshit? If that were true, guns would already be forbidden, since they’ve been the main push of the proto-commies and commies since…. oh, forever?

So, where did this analyst of social evolution come up with that? Easy peasy. Disregard the fact that every means of mass communication, down to commercialized artistic expression supported the push of the Marxists, and you come up with some strange sh*t to explain the 20th century.

I’ve pointed this before, and it’s only visible now because it’s no longer working as it used to, but there used to be a push on EVERYTHING for whatever their pet cause was at the time. When their push was to get abortion federally legalized… Well, let’s say I’ve read a lot of period novels. Almost all of them had someone die of a botched abortion. So did the movies. Or worse, they had someone destroyed, going insane from having a “bastard”. ALMOST every one. It was a pervasive wall of propaganda.

And with all that, we don’t even know if it convinced the people at large. Why? Because when that level of propaganda is deployed, people who dissent are afraid to say it. Those of you who were recently college students will know what I’m talking about. Step out of line, and you just ruined all your prospects in life, and people will know you as “that crazy person.” (Or in my case, “A little peculiar.” Yes, very proud of that.)

I know in the present day where, despite their stomping, we can still talk around the edges, and more importantly, the information/entertainment is not unified, they deployed the same thing to make us feel like open borders were the bestest thing. And it’s not working. It’s not working with teeth in it. But Lord, they tried. From city-commissioned murals, to the stories that get awards, to the series that are changed to be all about immigration, to– It’s everywhere. And they can’t understand why it’s not working. (Part of the reason it’s not working is because the quality of entertainment/literature and art that pushes the message has got so bad — because they select creators on the basis of conformity, of course — that people are reading older things, and indie things, and foreign things. And they get news from other countries, as well. So the push is not working.)

But yeah, all the remarkable “gains” of the left during the twentieth century is because cancel culture, whisper campaigns, and hiring and promoting for social conformity were already fully on.

So, the dispirited dissenters thought they were the only ones, and kept their mouths shut.

This is not effective in the long run. In the long run, it leads to Romanian Christmas. BUT in the short run, and if the people doing the analysis refuse to see the elephant in the room, it gives the impression of a minority getting all their crazy wish list, because the majority is just so nice, and doesn’t want to say no.

At any rate, these are things that superficially seem to make sense, but not when you really dig for all the factors, or look at similar situations in history.

Sure, unassimilated minorities are bad. They also only stay ABSOLUTELY separate if the government of the land is enforcing that. And even then they don’t. It just takes them MUCH longer to integrate.

And sure, some cultures are utterly toxic and inimical to civilization. (Judaism might be the opposite. As with cats, where they are, there is civilization.) And they’re very hard to eliminate while keeping the people. And only insane people would invite them into their home country. But our elites are bugnuts, and hate us with the fire of a thousand suns.

Still, the problem is self-resolving when the government stops protecting the invaders. And no, I don’t even mean violence, unless it’s getting what they dish out. And my guess is it will mostly result in fleeing while a small contingent quiet assimilates and disappears into the population. Because frankly the overculture doesn’t work well with tribal mentality. And it won’t.

Anyway, this is why social math, or scientific psychology and sociology don’t exist. You can’t set controlled experiments with that kind of system over time. So, it’s impossible to say “Once you reach x number of dissenters, this happens.” Because you can’t experiment to prove it.

What you have is history, which often in the telling ignores the elephant in the room, for the same reason that fish, if they had language, wouldn’t have a word for “water.” (They’d have 100 words, including one for water that smells like poo, but that’s something else. Just go with the metaphor, okay?) Everyone in one of the fields where the left enforced conformity in the 20th century knew what was happening (What, you thought everyone all at once just needed to write about people dying in botched abortions? Thorazine. You need it.) But they didn’t know/couldn’t see it was universal. So it appears in nothing. And trying to analyze from the “history” is a fool’s errand.

As for psychology, though there was some outright crazy stuff done in the late nineteenth century and also by the Nazis, it’s really hard to eliminate all other factors that lead to outcomes in humans, and experimenting is a chamber of horrors I’d like to keep shut, thank you.

So again anyone who comes up with a number, or a population percentage that guarantees an outcome, is trying to sound super-scientific and is just making shit up. Some might not realize they’re making shit up, so I’ll credit them with stupid honesty. But I suspect most do realize it.

And anyone who comes up with a number or a percentage of the population who is tying their belts funny, or speaking with a weird accent, or eating those disgusting onions, or WHATEVER IT IS as a reason why “everything is lost, give up now.” Is an enemy. An enemy of humans. An enemy of civilization and an enemy of America.

No one runs around telling one side of the fight to just give up if they want it to win. And no one does it when the side is ALREADY defeated.

The only reason to run around saying “Give up now!” is a psi-ops by those who want you defeated, and are afraid you won’t be.

Keep that in mind, before you doom. The times being what they are, and the private pressures being what they are, not to mention the psychological fractures of 2020, a lot of us go through black moments. Actually black moments from the pit of hell are not rare.

HOWEVER try to keep your black moments to a few friends. And don’t trust anyone who shouts them in public, and wants to convince you it’s all lost.

Those people are not your friends. And what they want is not the restoration of America.

One of you recently came up with the idea that we have ten percent parasites, and therefore society can’t endure and “it’s over man.”

Honestly, I don’t know who is promulgating this kind of insanity. I know someone is, because these completely unrooted and frankly crazy ideas show up everywhere at once, and whoever it is a) understands very little of the immense abundance in US society, still, despite everything that’s been done to us. b) is very dogmatic and pulls numbers from ass on the regular. c) must be one hell of a persuasive writer, because he bypasses smart people’s pshaw reflex, which should kick up at such absurdities.

Absurdities? Do I maintain we don’t have 10% parasites? Bah. We have far, far more than that. I mean, Pierre Delecto is an idiot, because not paying taxes isn’t the same as being a free loader, but the amount of welfare that flows from Uncle Sugar’s teat is far more than 10%. And a lot of those people aren’t even American. And a lot of them aren’t even here. (But a large number are.)

So it’s absurd to come up with 10% and it’s irrational to say that’s the “terminal condition” of our society. Hell, even if those 10% were all violent and organized. Why? Because we’re all armed to the teeth, frankly. I can see — in fact, I expect — a dozen 10/7s happening across the county, if I’m right on a given, clear-sky day just before Easter next year, but I also expect only one will succeed and not to the same extent, not even close.

Look, there is a reason no other airplanes have been highjacked and flown at high buildings which, if you remember, we all expected on the regular 12 years ago. It wasn’t because our Homeland Security and airport theater are super-effective. And it’s not because it hasn’t been tried. It’s because we’re a pack, not a herd, and anyone trying the same shit would get — has gotten — beaten within an inch of their lives and stuffed in a luggage compartment. Hell, people, before 9/11 was done, the last plane missed the mark the terrorists had designated for it, and went (from their perspective) tragically wrong. Because we’re Americans. And they’d plotted it for people like them.

Something like what happened in Israel, would have to be a lot bigger to make a dent here, and I doubt they can make it as big before someone shoots all their faces in. Even in towns where gun ownership is technically forbidden. As one of my friends in one of those enclaves told me during the summer of love of 20 “Better be tried by 12 than carried by 6.” (No, not ragging on Israel, but hoping they get out of their European mind set on guns.)

So, a 10% determined, organized minority who came out to do attacks? They might succeed …. once. And it would be very bad. But after that– Well. We wouldn’t have 10%.

Beyond all that, though, while Pierre Delecto is not right in 47% parasites, or whatever the hell it was, we do carry a lot of dead freight. A lot more than 10%. Off the top of my head, I’d say 25% counting only human beings, real and imaginary, and not college programs, grants for the arts, and whatever crazy sh*t our “betters” use to give our money away. As I like to say all the taxes I’ve paid and I’m likely to pay the rest of my life, were given to the Taliban.

Are we going deep in debt? Yes, we are. And the current maladministration is too stupid to inflate it away. But it is fiat debt. And while it’s not as if it doesn’t count, it’s also not precisely all it seems to be. For one, China owns a lot of it, which it bought with play money of their own, and which it can’t really collect on.

So the situation with the debt is horrible, but not serious. By definition, since we’re obviously using play money.

Will the bill come due? Certainly. But I expect it will be blood not money. And after that…. who knows? In the end reality prevails, because it exists when we ignore it.

Look, I’m not saying we’re not in trouble. Part of the trouble we’re in are institutions and an establishment (including the financial portion) completely disconnected from reality and the nation and the country. So the decisions it makes, and the thing it does have not even tangential contact with what needs to be done. And often, like opening the borders, they’re trying to fix a problem they tell us doesn’t exist (population dearth) by the stupidest means (that assumes people are widgets) and thereby making everything worse.

But in real wealth, in the way we live? We might be feeding a lot of parasites, and our government is certainly trying to kill us/destroy us. But we’re still wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice.

Groceries are swallowing up a lot more of our paychecks than we thought. And we’re trying to help the kids, who are just starting out, of course. And their rents are crazy. To compensate for the lockdowns, they’ve gone crazy everywhere (and that’s not counting properties bought by foreign nationals for reasons of their own brain parasites.)

We’re trying to save a little to buy canned and non-perishable to donate to various charities. And we try to help friends who fall on hard times, which has been happening way faster and more often. Because writers (and musicians, and artists and even small time craftsmen) have no insurance when the bad times come, and we’re often the first ones hit. And it is the duty of every decent human being to help as we’d hope to be helped. It’s sort of what we owe our own humanity. I think. (I don’t require you to believe it.)

But the newspaper headline saying 25% of Americans were threatened by famine made me giggle. We’re so far from famine that the fat geese infesting city parks are considered a nuisance, and deer are an hazard to road navigation in Fall. I wondered if that “journalist” was an AI and maybe Chinese.

Look, when I was little, having parasites was normal. No, seriously. We had intestinal worms, and fleas, and well, mom kept my long, scrupulously clean hair free of parasites and never had to shave my head. This was a bit of an achievement, since at any time in school a little girl or another had a shaved head because it was the only way to get rid of lice.

And some of the poorer kids were probably a lot leaner than they would otherwise be. But no one was starved out.

Sometimes we’d hear of a kitten or a puppy dying due to an excess of parasite, but no humans. As tight as we were on money and food, compared to the US, it wasn’t so much that it killed us.

It’s sort of like that. I’m sure that 10% number being a “terminal condition” was true for some societies, at some time. Heck, even right now, I very much doubt China or Russia could lose 10% of those actually productive and survive. (The thing being that a lot of their population is not allowed to be productive, but that’s different. Same as here, but more so.)

In the Middle Ages, I doubt we could have 10% of people who did nothing. Even among the nobility, there was a lot of work that had to be and got done. They were only “well off” and “idle” in the eyes of historians who don’t understand much. People who actually ONLY consumed and did nothing, in a society that close to the bone, would have sank it. Other people would starve to keep them going.

Though it wouldn’t be that fast, and it depends on the situation and the time. They could afford fighters who did not produce food or consumables directly. And they certainly could afford to set crops on fire, not once but as a routine of war. And the society didn’t dissolve usually, or starve to death, usually. (The whole idea that bankruptcy equals revolution, or even famine equals revolution is quite literally a-historical.)

And in caveman times, where I think our back brain was formed, well, the band that kept 10% of their members utterly idle, would probably die, unless in extremely fertile land. (But we do know they didn’t in fact kill the lamed, the children and the elderly, because the remains we’ve found don’t show that kind of society. However, they’d be weakened, and might all die next hard times.)

But now? Bah. We carry way more than that. And in the US? Well, we’re still pouring money out. And no, not even the Ukraine thing, where we do have an interest in not letting Russia get back to its aggressive paranoiac ways. But we give money to oh, Afghanistan, for transgender causes. (It’s not the only one, or the craziest thing.) We pour taxpayer money out on the craziest shit that a) doesn’t get used for that b) benefits no one. In fact, we should count other countries corruptocrats as our pensioners. Part of that parasite load.

And while the shoe is pinching, and a lot of us are worried about our kids making it in these times, the condition is more annoying than terminal.

Even with the parasite load, what’s hurting our kids is not that, but stupid regulations and ideas designed to hurt us, like open borders, and “environmental” insanity. Stop those, and the economy will roar to life, because we’re very productive gun nuts…. (Two of our best traits.) We’re also inventive and infinitely innovating.

Rumors of our demise are grossly exaggerated.

I don’t know who in hell is pulling numbers from ass, but to believe those numbers requires shutting your eyes to who we are, and how we are.

We’re Americans. The current occupiers have chained us and are beating us. But like an abused wife, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with us that getting rid of the bastards wouldn’t fix.

And they’re not close to killing us. Just bruising us. Badly. And getting in our heads and making us feel beaten and helpless.

That’s the ultimate tell, you know. All these “Abandon all hope. We’re done” wouldn’t be needed, if it were patently and obviously true. In fact no one would be reading them, as we’d each be scrabbling for our daily gruel, and to defend our tiny little patch to sleep in.

But that’s not true. And when you hear this what you should ask is “Who and what wants us to give up? And why? Who would this serve?”

Not our best interests, and not our survival.

Yes, righting this mess is going to suck, and suck badly. And I suspect the debt is going to be paid in blood, not money.

But our situation is not terminal. It might be grave, but it’s not terminal.

Nowhere close to it. And we’ll come back, provided we want to.

Get the parasites out of your head first, before you get them out of our body politic.

And be not afraid.

HamAss, Hospitals and the MSM by Francis Turner

Many of us on the side of civilization have noticed that in the last month and a bit after October 7th that the Mainstream Media has been solidly on the sides of the genocidal Hamass. Among many examples there was the time when much of the MSM credulously repeated Hamass lies about the rocket that blew up in the hospital parking lot. Although it is true that many of them eventually walked that story back, the damage was done because the unanimous repeating of Hamass propaganda without any pushback meant that large parts of the world, from the low information street to world leaders thought the Israelis were to blame and had killed hundreds.

The MSM has sort of learned its lesson from that. They are less likely to report Hamass announcements as fact and some (e.g. the BBC) note repeatedly that the Gaza casualty reports come from the Hamass controlled Health Ministry and so on. But they are still in the tank for Hamass, just not as blatantly.

Take the current fighting around the various Gaza hospitals. One thing that is notable is the plight of Gazans attempting to flee. Often they are unable to because “shots were fired”. For example this BBC update:

Reports people attempting to leave hospital shot in legs

The BBC’s Rushdi Abualouf has heard that no people, or any items of aid, have been allowed in or out of the Al-Shifa hospital for the last 48 hours, according to one of his contacts.

That source – one of the few remaining journalists in the hospital – says four people had tried to leave Al-Shifa yesterday, but were shot in the legs and left on the ground bleeding for around two hours.

Medics had to risk their lives to get them into the hospital for treatment, the source tells Abualouf.

The BBC has been unable to access the hospital to verify this as fighting has been raging in the vicinity in recent days.

That passive voice thing is a dead giveaway. It wasn’t the IDF because we know that if it had been they would have said so. So who is it? Hmmm? A mystery!

Similarly the IDF has surrounded many of these hospitals and gunfire etc. is being exchanged. Well who are the IDF shooting at? And who is fighting back? Oddly this is not mentioned. Indeed MSM reporters regularly say things like “Israel claims that Hamass has bases underneath and adjacent to hospitals” but they seem unable to join the dots. Think about it. If Hamass were not there then the Isrealis could simply drive up to the various hospitals, give them fuel if need be and everything would be fine. For some reason though, that does not get mentioned. Israel is evil for cutting off power and access to these places that are totally neutral, apparently, and is unable to simply drive up to the front door. Could it be that there are Hamass fighters trapped in the vicinity? Underneath perhaps? The MSM is remarkably incurious about such matters.

Indeed just a day or two ago the IDF found the Hamass tunnels under one of the Gaza hospital – Rantisi Hospital. See https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-773085 or various posts on X like this:

#BREAKING #CRAZY #MUSTwatch @IDFSpokesperson Daniel Hagari went inside Gaza Footage showing operations Israeli Navy Seals and the 401st Brigade Combat Team in the Rantisi Hospital: Full Video: Operational gear, ammunition, explosives, suicide vests, some of the motorcycles who… pic.twitter.com/zBUwkGyqCL

— Niv Calderon (@nivcalderon) November 13, 2023

Considering that Israel has been claiming this for years you’d think that having clear evidence would be news-worthy. So I looked at the BBC site where they have an article about the state of the Gaza hospitals. At the bottom of the part of the article about the Rantisi hospital there is this

On Monday evening IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari showed journalists what he said was evidence of Hamas infrastructure at Rantisi – video of explosives, suicide vests and even a motorcycle used in the 7 October attacks, hidden in a basement. He showed video of a deep shaft with a ladder down the side which he said was the entrance to a tunnel that was next to both a school and the hospital, adding it was “nothing else but a terror tunnel”.

No pictures of what the IDF found and up above when talking about Al-Shifa lots of denial that Hamass has its HQ there

Hamas denies it is using the hospital or that it has an operations centre underneath. Doctors inside insist there is no Hamas presence there. The BBC’s Gaza correspondent Rushdi Abualouf said that he had never seen “any military capability” inside the hospital, but acknowledged it was difficult to verify either Israel’s or Hamas’s claims.

There’s a lot of weaseling that they can use later when it turns out the IDF proves the Hamass HQ is under the hospital and no effort to challenge the Hamass claims

I’m not picking on the BBC specifically. When I did a search on google for news about “Rantisi tunnels hamas” I got results like this:

and

Its is notable that Foxnews, the Jerusalem Post and the Times of Israel are the sites that essentially accept the IDF findings as essentially true. The BBC I’ve already covered. ABC and CNN are if anything worse. The ABC article (which shares quite a lot with an AP article reprinted in the Wapo) first talks about Al-Shifa hospital where it says

Shifa is Gaza’s largest and best-equipped hospital. Israel, without providing visual evidence, claims the facility also is used by Hamas for military purposes. It says Hamas has built a vast underground command complex center below the hospital, connected by tunnels, something Gaza health officials and Hamas deny.

Only much further down the article do we get mention of Rantisi

Late Monday, Israel’s chief military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, showed footage of what he said was a Hamas weapons cache found in the basement of Gaza’s Rantisi Hospital for Children.

Hagari said he entered the hospital with Israeli troops on Monday, a day after the facility’s last patients were evacuated. The hospital ran out of fuel last week, and Israel had ordered people to leave as it conducts its ground offensive.

Hagari entered a room decorated with a colorful children’s drawing of a tree, with weapons lying across the floor. He said they included explosive vests, automatic rifles, bombs and rocket-propelled grenades.

“Hamas uses hospitals as an instrument of war,” he said.

He showed another area that he said appears to have been used to hold hostages.

It included what appeared to be a hastily installed toilet and air vent, a baby bottle and a motorcycle — scarred by a bullet hole and apparently used to carry hostages. One windowless room had curtains on the wall that he said could be used as a backdrop in a video. Hagari said forensic experts were examining the scenes.

Yet despite this evidence, the article goes back to skepticism

Israel says these claims are based on intelligence. However, it has released no visual evidence to support the claims. Hagari last month unveiled maps showing where Israel believes Hamas’ underground command centers are located, including one next to hospital’s reception area and another next to the dialysis department.

Indeed it then goes and gets a Hamass quote, which it repeats without any questioning or skepticism:

Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas official, rejected the Israeli claims about Shifa as “false and misleading propaganda.”

“The occupying forces have no evidence to prove it,” Hamad said. “We have never used civilians as human shields because it goes against our religion, morality and principles.”

This is clearly bias given that reports about Al-Shifa being Hamass HQ have been common over the last decade – including a mention in a WaPo article in 2014 (via Hotair) – and that Hamass has regularly been accused of the use of human shields as “martyrs”

The CNN article is just as bad. Despite a CNN crew actually going into the tunnels they repot the IDF clams remarkably skeptically and have quotes from Hamass sources denying what is seen

A CNN team embedded with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and was shown guns and explosives in one room located beneath Al-Rantisi children’s hospital on Monday, which IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari termed an “armory.”

He also pointed to a chair with a rope next to it and a piece of women’s clothing, which he said would be tested for DNA, and a makeshift toilet.

Israel has repeatedly claimed that Hamas locates its operational bases in tunnels under hospitals and other civilian infrastructure. The access provided by the IDF provided Monday was an effort to back up those assertions, which are denied by Hamas, as well as health officials and hospitals in Gaza.

…

Speaking by phone to CNN on Tuesday, Mohammed Zarqout, who has responsibility for all of Gaza’s hospitals, said the basement at Al Rantisi had been used as a shelter for women and children – not to store Hamas weaponry and hold hostages – as well as being the location of the pharmacy and some of the hospital’s administrative offices before rainwater made it “impossible” to use.

And then there’s the excuse for a tunnel leading to a Hamass commander’s house

CNN was shown a shaft, about 200 meters away from Al-Rantisi, which Hagari claimed was located next to a Hamas commander’s house and also a school.

Wires leading into the shaft provided power to the tunnel from solar panels fixed onto the roof of the Hamas commander’s house, he also said.

“We [put] a robot inside the tunnel and the robot saw a massive door, a door that is in the direction of the hospital,” Hagari said.

Zarquot said “the tunnel they claim to be a Hamas tunnel is actually an electrical wire assembly point. We raised the wires to prevent any electrical shocks caused by floods.”

The rest of the article goes on about how bad it is to attack hospitals and so on, though it does grudgingly note that  

While hospitals are protected in times of war under international humanitarian law, that protection may be compromised if they are believed to be sites of military activity.

It also mentions that the hospitals are full of patients with absolutely no curiosity about whether these patients are civilians or Hamass fighters.

I could go on. The most notable thing is that the Rantisi discoveries, which would seem to be important verification for what Israel has been saying for years are simply not being reported as important news. They aren’t generally a separate news item, they aren’t on the front pages (or web equivalents) and so on.

It is worth comparing this to events in Ukraine last year. Then, when the rape rooms, torture cellars and so on of the Russian invaders were discovered in Bucha and later Kharkiv Oblast. In those cases the discovery of such things that go against “the laws of war” and the like were headlines. This is not happening with Hamass’ war crimes and so on. For some reason.

It seems obvious that the answer is that the MSM are completely in the tank for Hamass and against Israel.

Note that for various reasons, relating to my having forgotten to post early today, this post will bridge today and tomorrow, when there might or might not be a post, depending on a bunch of things I don’t know/can’t know yet – SAH

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 CAITLIN WALSH: Mama Bunny #2: Daddy’s Home

Mama Bunny is back, and this time she’s got backup!

In this brand-new Papa-focused collection, follow the Bunny family as they perform unwise science experiments, operate heavy machinery, and disassemble anything that stays still for long enough.

Being a stay-at-home mom has its challenges, but with your husband at your side, anything can be managed—no matter how ridiculous.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: AI Is Love

The Japanese word Ai (愛) means “love”. The English acronym AI means “artificial intelligence.” But they both use the same two Roman alphabet letters…and the author loves making puns.

Thus, AI 愛 is Love is a collection of 65 images made using Artificial Intelligence tools and methods. Each image is the author’s loving re-imagination of his wife at various stages of her life, using old photographs and digital models and post-processing software, not to mention plain old-fashioned skull sweat coming up with prompts to feed the MidJourney AI in the first place. While the author cautions his readers that his wife actually doesn’t look entirely like the lovely ladies depicted (mostly because they all have long straight or wavy hair), he does wish to make clear that all of his love for his beautiful lady wife has been poured into the present book, which he humbly recommends for your consideration.

BY ROBERT J. HORTON, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Three Riders (Annotated): a pulp western omnibus

iktaPOP Media proudly presents three classic westerns by pulp author Robert J. Horton!

Rider o’ the Stars

When he was hired on to the Diamond H Ranch, the stranger gave his name as Dane. After seeing his skill with rope and gun folks started calling him “Lightning Dane”.

Was he a gunman? An outlaw? Why was he here? Nobody knew except Dane himself. And he wasn’t talking.

The Prairie Shrine

Annalee Bronson and her mother left everything behind when her father died, setting out to homestead in the prairielands of Montana. But being from the east, they simply don’t have the experience to cope with all the circumstances they find themselves caught up in.

Luckily, prairie poet and loafer Andy Sawtelle and mysterious gunman Silent Scott are more than willing to lend a helping hand.

The Man of the Desert

It starts with a stampede, and never lets up from there!

• This iktaPOP Media omnibus includes introductions by indie editor and author D. Jason Fleming putting the book into historical and genre context.

FROM SANDRA MEDLOCK, JOHN SHOEMAKER, AND MORE: Tales of the Oil Patch

Stories of men and women who looked for oil under the land they call Texas.

To those who brought the ‘Black Gold’ to reality with their blood, sweat, and tears, and left their legacies for us.

Twelve authors use their imagination to bring you these stories revolving around the oil patch in Texas in the early days.

FROM BLAKE SMITH: The Hartington Inheritance (The Hartington Series Book 1)

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 SARAH A. HOYT (LOOK, IT’S A SNAZZY NEW COVER!): Draw One In The Dark (The Shifter Series Book 1)

Something or someone is killing shape shifters in the small mountain town of Goldport, Colorado. Kyrie Smith, a server at a local diner, is the last person to solve the mystery. Except of course for the fact that she changes into a panther and that her co-worker, Tom Ormson, who changes into a dragon, thinks he might have killed someone. Add in a policeman who shape-shifts into a lion, a father who is suffering from remorse about how he raised his son, and a triad of dragon shape shifters on the trail of a magical object known as The Pearl of Heaven and the adventure is bound to get very exciting indeed. Solving the crime is difficult enough, but so is — for our characters — trusting someone with secrets long-held. Originally published by Baen Books.

FROM KAREN MYERS: The Ways of Winter – A Virginian in Elfland (The Hounds of Annwn Book 2)

Book 2 of The Hounds of Annwn

TRAPPED BEHIND ENEMY LINES, CAN HE FIND THE STRENGTH TO DEFEND ALL THAT HE VALUES MOST, OR EVEN JUST TO SURVIVE?

It’s the dead of winter and George Talbot Traherne, the new human huntsman for the Wild Hunt, is in trouble. The damage in Gwyn ap Nudd’s domain reveals the deadly powers of a dangerous foe who has mastered an unstoppable weapon and threatens the fae dominions in both the new and the old worlds.

Secure in his unbreachable stronghold, the enemy holds hostages and has no compunction about using them in deadly experiments with newly discovered way-technology. Only George has a chance to reach him in time to prevent the loss of thousands of lives, even if it costs him everything.

Welcome to the portrait of a paladin in-the-making, Can he carry out a rescue without the deaths of all involved? Will his patron, the antlered god Cernunnos, help him, or just write him off as a dead loss? He has a family to protect and a world to save, and little time to do it in.

FROM LAURA MONTGOMERY: Simple Service: A Science Fiction Lost Colony Adventure (Martha’s Sons Book 1)

They’re stranded beyond the known stars. Will Peter Dawe’s perilous mission with a brother he despises end in death?

A lost starship’s settlers, isolated on an uncharted alien world, manage to terraform a mountain-ringed valley into a rich replica of Earth. Despite their success reproducing the environment they need to survive and thrive, only tenuous forces hold together the human colony on the world of Not What We Were Looking For. The governor’s appropriation of the western settlers’ weapons for the city strains those bonds to breaking point—and then beyond when Peter Dawe’s father sends him to get the weapons back.Twenty-year-old Peter Dawe’s restless nature easily endures the lost colony world’s rigors. His genetic modifications make it even easier. So when Peter retrieves the family weapon, he also brings back a motorbike, a piece of technology no longer available to everyone.

It would be a fine prize to keep to himself. He won it. He earned it. He quickly learns that his brother Simon lies in wait to take what isn’t his. Simon wants more than just the motorbike. He wants Peter’s glory.

But when Peter’s father forces him to take his hated older brother on Peter’s next mission, the pair must not only navigate the city’s perils and politics but learn to work together—when neither thinks the other should be in charge. Their success—and their very lives—depend on it. Or will Peter be proven right that he should have faced this task alone?

Simple Service is the first book in the immersive Martha’s Sons science fiction series. If you like gripping action, insurmountable odds, and alien worlds, you’ll love Laura Montgomery’s tale of a man determined not to let family ties sabotage mission success.

Buy Simple Service to pull off the impossible today!

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Love in the Time of Campaigning

As Frank Correra brings his family to a lunar settlement to get them away from a worsening political situation on Earth, he reminisces about how he and his wife met.

Frank had always dreamed of the skies. As a clone of an astronaut who subsequently became a US Senator, Frank thought he had a clear path ahead of him. But when it comes time to apply for the Air Force Academy, it is an election year. His ur-brother can’t promise a nomination until he’s won another term, and this year promises a hard race to run. When the other side puts up an ugly attack ad, can Frank find a way to discredit it before it destroys his ur-brother’s chance of re-election, and with it Frank’s slot at an Academy appointment?

A short story of the Grissom timeline.

FROM MARY CATELLI: Sorcery and Kings

Tales of wonder and magic.

A fire master must find a magical starter of fires.

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

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

An oath keeps a ghost captive.

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

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

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

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: Flaky