Being in an Earthquake is an interesting phenomenon. The only one I went through awake, I’d just hit the stairs, on stocking feet (mom’s stairs are very polished highly varnished mahogany) at a run, to answer the phone. I was holding the banister. And yeah, I shouldn’t have been running on the stairs, in my stocking feet. Except I had done it hundreds of times in the past. And never fallen. I knew how to position my feet, so I didn’t slip. I was fine.

And then suddenly the ground went off from under my feet. The rail shook the other way. I tried to balance and hold, but the things I counted on weren’t there.

I was airborne. And then I was landing. Fortunately on my behind, which is padded. I was lucky. Nothing broken, but it hurt to sit for a week.

Some years ago, I started noticing a weird phenomenon.

Most of my friends were somewhere between 50 and 65, and times were unstable — kind of like now, but a little slower — and people would get laid off. When that happened, they seemed to become paralyzed.

It was bizarre to watch.

I mean, this often happens to young people, laid off for the first time often have that issue, because they simply don’t know how to look, or where to apply, and are scared.

But these were people with years and years of experience jumping between jobs, finding work, being productive.

And suddenly…. they weren’t. They couldn’t even get up and look. Even as finances got strained, most of them continued derping in place. Heck, you could throw them offers, and they would let them slip, or hesitate a lot before taking them.

I thought it was depression, and we did what we could to cheer them up. Most of the time it didn’t work.

It took me years to figure out what the real problem was. And yeah, I had to live through it. I’m only now, slowly, emerging from it. And yes, it’s hitting friends who are “laid off” from writing too.

You see, it’s not depression, though in the beginning at least it might have elements of it. It’s actually shock. Paralysis coming from shock.

They are in shock because they never saw the layoff coming. They have experience, they’ve been laid off before, just like I’d tripped on the steps before. They know the signs. They also know how to look once it falls, but suddenly ….

It’s all different. Their field might not exist at all, or exist in a form so different they can’t quite conceptualize it.

And they feel betrayed, and don’t know the way to go on.

Yeah, I lived through this as I got “laid off” from Baen. Over the years I’d built my identity as a writer into Baen. I was a Baen author. At signings we tended to sit together. Most of my friends were with the house.

For at least two years I knew it made me less money than going indie, but I felt I owed the house something, and all my friends were there.

And then — whammo. Earthquake.

And you’re at the bottom of the stairs, on your butt going “But what happened?”

Mind you this is still somewhat of a mystery, but what isn’t a mystery is that I was stunned, stupified, and it’s taken me three? four? five, I guess, years to even come close to normal functioning. (And the return of my IP helped.)

I know what to do. I have the tools. I’ve done the research.

But still, even now, somewhere within, my mind is going “but why do I have to start again?” Because of course, we expect a certain roadmap and feel out of it when it stops being there. It’s not… natural. And the older you get, the more ideas you have of what is, or should be, natural.

The problem is that over the next two/three years, and for good or ill, everyone’s roadmap is going to change. And for most people their career and daily routine as well.

Which means for those of us on the lee (and slidy) side of fifty, it’s going to be hard.

All I can tell you is it’s easier to be prepared, to be ready for the bump. To be braced. You might still fall, if the shake is big enough. But you’ll be ready.

And it’s easier as if, as for every major traumatic (happy or not) event, you have a plan. That’s why women make “birth plans” because it helps to feel at least a little in control. And that’s why you have routines.

So, prepare now. Make sure you have “Well, if I lose my job/house/town/family” this is the first thing I do. And this is the second. And–

We might not have control over what will hit us. That’s at a level beyond our control.

But we can control the aftermath. And cover our butts with a pillow, so they don’t hurt quite so badly.

Now is the time to do it. when planning food storage, and the worst case scenario, prepare for medium-bad too.

What if you lose a job? What if your spouse does? What if you have to help your parents/children/siblings.

It might seem impossible to survive, but it never is. Make lists. What do you do first? What are your secondary skills people might pay for? etc, etc, etc.
In the end, “never give up, never surrender” should be the motto of life.

Have a plan. Have two. Have three. And be prepared to keep on going when the worst happen and plans one and two fail.

You’re capable of more than you think you are. So are most people.
Be not afraid. And keep battling on.

I didn’t read fairytales till I was in high school. Not the big, illustrated, classical fairytales.

But I’d heard them before, the way they were supposed to be transmitted. (And read them, in little tiny booklets sold at checkout in the grocery store, and begged for in lieu of candy bars when I was very young.)

Okay, so grandmother’s fairy tales weren’t canonical. She made up an entire set of stories about an alternate fairy-tale village. I want to say that while not canonical, and not pertaining to really old stuff, they were in spirit the same old fairy tales. Look, I’d often have nightmares afterwards. Sometimes I refused to let her tell me stories for a week, because people died in them and horrible things happened. But then I’d come back, because they were fascinating.

On the other hand, I heard fairy tales from just about everyone else. The old ones, with crunch and blood, where the happy ending had to be fought for, and the moral, while not told to you outright, was there clear as day, ten feet tall: Don’t go into the dark woods; the old shouldn’t feed on the young; parents shouldn’t abandon children; self-centeredness kills; undeserved good opinion of yourself leads to a downfall, etc. etc. etc.

Fairytales are very old. So old, we don’t know how old they are. Like the Illiad, the Odyssey and certain parts of the Bible, they are almost for sure MUCH older than they appear and might (MIGHT) if linguistic traces can be trusted date back to well before the written language traces we’ve found.

Me? I suspect the roots of them go back further, much further, to shortly after language became complex enough to transmit them.

They have that feel, of extending back, with roots in time and the mind of men, to the time an ape developed enough symbolic thinking to go “this sound stands for a broad range of things that are like this thing.”

Their warnings, therefore, are deep-set, scary and…. well, important.

Things don’t get transmitted that deep into history, unless they’re important and they enhance survival.

So, how in the name of all that’s holy, did we end up living in a time where evil fairy tales come to life?

Look, yea, they always existed in places like Afghanistan and other lands where Islam wiped the land clean of fairy tales and substituted its own version. (Because totalitarian philosophies and religions can’t afford competition.) And I think in Russia also, after communism. You find children killed and served to their parents, and children traded away to be eaten, and animals treated with awful cruelty, and–

But we’re not like that! Right? We live in a land of plenty and ease, and are cognizant of the evil fairy tales, the deep ones, and–

Are we? Even Jordan Peterson, who has his head screwed on straight, bases his fairy tale talks on the Disney versions. The Disney versions are actually a good illustration for this.

They started out as being slightly nicer than the original, though not by much, I admit. The bones are still there for Snow White, less so for Cinderella.

But by the time we hit Little Mermaid they were actively messing with the plot to give them what they thought was a happy ending, and thereby castrating the deep meaning.

And now? Now they’ve gone off the deep end. There seems to be a deeply-laid consensus that the girl and the boy can’t get together, that the girl will have something more important to do (and the boy will be a dolt) and that in the end things like getting married, or obeying your duty to your kingdom (important if you were an hereditary ruler, and that was the system) matter less than “self-actualization” and “finding yourself.”

Which means the fairy tales have mutated from things that are actively against survival for the species, sometimes for the individual.

And which explains why we’re living in a world of evil fairy tales, where its perfectly all right to use parts of aborted babies to extend the life of the old and wealthy, it’s perfectly all right to sacrifice your children to your pursuit of “finding yourself” by ignoring them/farming them out/getting divorced to pursue a career, etc; it’s perfectly all right to convince your little boy (under puberty) that he’s a girl, because you wanted a girl; it is perfectly all right to convince yourself you’re the real princess and take her place, by demanding that you be promoted ahead of those with ability/talent, because you’re you; and self-esteem in absence of any accomplishment is promoted as a panacea.

It is progressing, as the old fairy tales warn, in the way such stories usually do: in madness, horror, death and unending darkness.

Because human nature doesn’t change. Culture shapes it, but the nature itself doesn’t change. In the end those who live only for the pursuit of transitory pleasure always find themselves alone. Those who pursue self-agrandizement turn into monsters. Those who eat children to survive will be punished with a long, horrible life and also by turning into monsters.

The warnings are there precisely because human nature doesn’t change, and what seems to be pleasurable/enticing often leads to horror for everyone concerned, including the person doing it and thinking they want it.

And things like “Marries and has children” is how the species continues. Or doesn’t. And that’s in the end very important for survival of the species and sanity for the individual.

However the warnings have been erased in our culture to “be nice.” And of course, due to mobility, and mothers working full time (ah!) and various other factors, we don’t actually have any other means of transmitting these old, old stories.

So they are dying. And society is coming unraveled, because the deep set warnings were never given. Or were perverted.

Humans are far more complex than we tend to think. At least humans as something else than apes. We are creatures of language, of transmissible knowledge, of story and of culture.

The modern era has both submerged us in a bunch of modern narrative that often portrays things that just ain’t so (a lot of it, but not all, based on Karl Grifter Marx), and cut us off from the deep, deep roots of our culture.

The results aren’t pretty.

Sure, we can relearn the lessons. But can we learn them before civilization crumbles? because stuff like “Sacrifice so the next generation will be better off” is the very foundation stone of civilization. All civilization that hopes to survive.

We don’t say things like “don’t eat children” because we think it’s not needed. And so, it leaks in, around the edges, in using abortion parts, like using children for sexual affirmation, like not giving kids what they actually need to grow and be healthy, whether by raising them vegan or by starving them of true learning.

Listen to the voice of the early, dark fairy tales.

They’re not kind, or nice. And sometimes they’re horrible to read/listen to. But they fascinate for a reason. They are the sign blinking in the night saying “drive off this ledge and you die.” They are alluring to package and transmit a very old message, hard fought and learned with difficulty by your ancestors.

Those who fail to learn them are condemned to repeat them.

And the land of evil fairy tales is hard to escape.

When I was a lonely little kid, I had a game that kept me entertained hours at a time, in playgrounds, in my parent’s garden, during parties while the adults were having fun: find a narrow ledge and walk it. Back and forth, back and forth.

(Side note: This might be something of a universal for Odds. Dan and other friends remember the same past time. An odd one for uncoordinated little kids, who weren’t exactly graceful. And my kids did it too.)

Lately I’ve found myself walking the same ledge. And gee, it sure feels lonely in here.

So — clears throat — anyone else thinks it’s funny that this Ukraine war thing came right after the Covid bullsh*t became untennable? And that incidentally it is sweeping under the rug just how much the current governments trespassed on liberties, destroyed the economy, and in general acted like communists on meth? It is sweeping under the rug the violations of civil liberties still going on. And by squeezing the oil price yet further is making people too worried about surviving now to go after the bastages who did this to them?

Anyone else thinks that it’s bizarre that Soros and his buddies are all gung-ho to get in a shooting war with Putin?

And that while on the subject of Putin, anyone else notice he’s still buddies enough with Biden to broker our attempt at giving Iran everything Iran ever asked for?

Yeah, yeah, great reset and ….

I’m sure that plays well for insane people with illusions of grandeur like that sh*tty little traitor Soros, and maybe the Clintons and their circle.

But–

This kind of big grandiose schemes are what the left likes to pretend they’re working towards. That is a thing, like you know, the USSR had a plan to subvert the US, and then every time something went wrong here, one of their dissidents pointed out it was going according to plan. They probably believed it too. Since it was exactly what they were told. In the USSR. In fact, it was a case of a cat falling off the back of the chair and then telling you he meant to do that.

Because if any plan of the USSR’s worked flawlessly, it would be the first. Particularly a plan involving people.

Communists like to pretend they’re in control. In fact, almost all of them, from the beginning, are acting out of panic, because nothing is going as it should. It is that which makes them so deadly. Because they decide when the plan doesn’t work they need to eliminate the people who prevent it from working, which is to say, everyone.

There are four things that seem to be true, right now, and they’re all terrifying:

1- The international left are now — some have been for a long time, but at this point we can say they all are — functionally communists. They think it is necessary that the state/some big entity own all the means of production and, well, everything, so that the peasants are forced to do the right thing.

2- The international left are simultaneously incredibly stupid and convinced they are the most brilliant and educated humans to walk the Earth. They are not stupidin raw IQ. I suspect most of them are middle-wits with a high social drive. But their education consists of teaching them things that aren’t so and telling them how smart they are, so it makes them absolutely, bizarrely, mind-bogglingly dumb. Like this: It’s far more dangerous to think you know more than you do and can control economies flawlessly, than to know just a little and know you know just a little.

3- They are people who are unable to do second step thinking. They plan for the first, desired result. It never occurs to them something else could happen. Ever.Every crazy idea they’ve come up with, from prohibition to gun control founders on “and then what happens next?” Because they’re incapable of planing beyond the first step. I think this is a requirement of the type of mind that buys the just-so stories of communism. It is also why the carefully laid out plan of the Great Reset is mostly bullshit. They just think it’s a plan, but mostly they are trying to use the media and education to make it happen and running around the economy breaking things to force us into it.

4-Because of the internet, communications, global commerce and oh, a million other things facilitated by the internet, but also because of — salutes — Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump, and you and me, all the anonymous liberty lovers who never shut up, who fought for gun rights, who yelled that the king was naked at every opportunity, the culture and the zeitgeist are turning against them.

I don’t have time to unpack it for you, but suffice to say that communism/progressivism/socialism is a theory of the late 19th and early 20th century, when mass-everything (media, production, education) was ascendant, with some economies of scale realized (or faked or whatever) and the idea of a nation — a world — like a factory, managed from above, with everything perfect and bloodless and delivered just in time seemed not only possible but inevitable.

For the last twenty years, tech, culture and the way we live has started running the other way: to micro-manufacturing, personalized products, the ability to get whatever knowlege you wanted and run your life the way you wanted to.

All these four things amount to: the left was ad hoc and improvising before. Now they’re that plus panicked.

Understand, I still don’t believe in conspiracy theories in the normal meaning of it. I don’t believe there’s a super brain behind the scenes orchestrating all this. I think it’s all a limited modified hang out, with them falling from unstable perch to unstable perch and trying to shore things up in insane ways, always having recourse to excessive power when we fail to comply.

So Covid? Was a great opportunity to terrorize us, make us lock down, make us OBEY. And the thing is — look, I travel in the same circles, scientifically speaking, the interested outsider who reads everything– I’m sure they expected the Wu Flu to be lethal.

Yeah, okay, sure, they might actually have grown it in a lab. And they might have always intended to let it out in America, probably in fly over country. Because we were starting to worry them. And they needed something to “Get Trump out.” oh, I’m sorry “Fortify the election” which was much easier in the confusion created by arbitrary lockdowns and misery. I mean, again, it’s important to pay attention to the timing. If you think it’s a coincidence this came up just as “Russia! Russia! Russia!” as exposed as nonsense, you are more naive than anyone in this place and time has the right to be.

But if you think they had this plan all along, you’re also nuts. Nah. They’re making it up as they go along. They might have been doing research — were, really — in Wuhan, but that’s because people like Fauci love to play with the forbidden and feel powerful.

Then there was the leak from the lab, and I’m sure they had access to numbers from China, which were — I am sure — while not black-plague levels (that was the purging that went on under cover) much much worse than here. You have to remember the public hygiene problem (to comprehend how bad that is, all you need to do is look up “gutter oil.” No, seriously.) And air quality is so awful that their infants might as well be smoking three packs a day. Plus Wuhan was half starved on account of being moved out of the way and their businesses/food production shuttered, to host the military games just before this.

I’m sure Covid-19 killed a sh*tton of people there, giving China and the China fan-boys in the rest of the world the idea that it was way more lethal. Hence flying infected people all over the world, on the part of the Chinese who think we should die already. And hence the fanboys thinking that this was their big traumatic event that would kill oh, 1/3 of the population and leave the traumatized survivors scared, docile, and ready to obey their “betters.”

Or in other words to save the vision of the left, which had been turning sour since the early nineties, and frankly really not working recently.

I don’t know when they realized that people weren’t dying like flies. They should have realized it earlier, but of course they actually trust computer models and lunatics like Fauci. In their world this amounts to being “smart”. (Which tells you they’re functionally morons.)

I’m fairly sure they realized it sometime in the middle of 2020. And then they had a problem. How do you dismount from locking people up and treating them like prisoners? How, unless there’s bodies in every corner? And besides, they had an election to steal and the chaos made it much easier.

So, they doubled down in utter panic, also accounting for the completely inconsistent rules of what you could and couldn’t do and the hysteric demand you wear masks, which we all know are useless.

Once the election was stolen, they were blindly looking for a dismount.

The vaccine, they thought, would give them that. Which is why they delayed it till after the election. Their plan went something like: get a large portion of the population vaccinated, declare victory, unlock, receive the thanks of a grateful population. Meanwhile, make changes in the economy that usher in the Green New Deal and make us all prosperous and in tune with the Earth. Rule forever.

Only…. it didn’t go that way. It’s no longer possible to hide all the problems with vaccination, not to mention the reason some of us will refuse to take it. Plus by that time a lot — most? — of us knew “the plague” was bullsh*t (I mean, why did they trust Chinese technology, again?) and were refusing to even consider the vaccine.

So they descended to vaccine mandates, which simultaneously sparked revolt and hit the economy with a hammer in ways they haven’t even understood yet. (They also can’t conceptualize the changes that are taking place in society due to their little exploit, like the fact that we’re moving out of the big cities and into far flung places, or the fact that more people are homeschooling than ever, and it’s not a fringe concept any more. I doubt they’re even aware of those changes, much less thinking through second order effects.)

So they needed a distraction. BIG distraction.

And by the way, remember the covidiocy is worldwide, and even senescent Europe was starting to get froggy over vaccine mandates and passports.

So, they need a big distraction to wipe all this away (while keeping their power grab) and make people forget what a big screw up their Covid response was. Oh, yeah, and in the US they need a way to control the population that is suddenly aware these people, no matter where they were born, are foreign invaders, who hate us and America with a burning passion.

Well, they know where to go, and what to do. They’ve done this before. (See Woodrow Wilson.) In fact, there’s a reason they kept comparing Covid to a war. I mean, it gives them so many powers.

And there’s Putin who really, really, really wants to retake the former Soviet pact nations (he really never got over the break up of the Soviet Union. All of you who think he’s a patriot are sort of right, but he’s a patriot for the USSR.) He thinks they’re idiots — he’s right — and they think he’s controllable — they’re wrong.

In this case both thought they could win from Putin being allowed to take Ukraine (and in their minds all the other countries that used to be behind the iron curtain.) Putin would get his “glorious USSR” back, while quieting opposition at home. (Yes, the people there were restive.)

The US and the West got to sweep the last two years under the rug of the great just war. (And I’m sure they just planned to …. well, not send our very best, put our people’s legs in a sack, and then retreat. Afghanistan 2.0) and restructure things in the interim, including getting rid of/shutting down anyone — hi guys — who spoke against them. All of it under the war powers act.

They’d end with the divided, bipolar world most of them are comfortable with (they’re all older than dirt.) With China playing the wild card, maybe.

Oh, they might have to sacrifice one or two cities and other countries to the versimilitude of the thing. I mean Putin would need to do damage before we surrende– I mean, negotiated a peace.

Only the world is not the place where this plan would work. (I don’t know. Legoland?) And things started going wrong almost from the beginning, starting with the very specialized form of stupidity that Putin brought to the table: i.e. as a totalitarian, he has lousy information and had no clue how bad his army and equipment actually were.

(Old USSR joke, that illustrates the problem, if you imagine this happening at every level, without the denouement.
The komissar visited the collective farm, and ask about the potato harvest.
Farmer: Oh, it’s extraordinary. Stacked end on end, the potatoes would reach the knee of god.

Komissar: Don’t be stupid. There is no god.

Farmer: Same for potatoes.)

I mean, guys, he’s asking for Arab fighters. Arab. Fighters. Look, the left couldn’t hamper us enough to make us lose to them. So they had to make us retreat in disorder. Arabs are even longer on the braggadocio and slower on the fighting than Russian conscripts, as hard as that is to believe.

And Europe is seizing this opportunity to grab population (Mom is seeing refugees arrive) and confiscate Russian assets to bolster economies that are suffering form the US being impaired.

And over here there isn’t much enthusiasm for going and fighting the Russians. We’re all cheering the Ukrainians on, (even if their propaganda is goofy) but we’re resisting all attempts to go to out and out war under president Dementia and VP Ho.

Then rumors start. Like the Ukranian biolabs.

Maybe they’re there. Sure. I mean, they were in Wu-han. But what has been proferred is not precisely right. Like the terrifying organisms they were working on are the ones any high school student works on.

I suspect if money was paid for bio-labs most of it went into the pockets of Hunter Biden and Russia.

So, why isn’t our government outright denying it? And why is everyone being cadgey?

Because nothing is working the way they planned. They want us to move like good little chess pieces and go to war already.

And every one on the right is supposed to be getting 100% behind Putin. I mean, they told us he helped elect Trump right? So, if we supported Trump we must want to cheer Putin on. (It’s very, very important you don’t cheer Putin on. And take a long hard look at anyone who does. They’re probably just pudding heads, but they’re putting us all and our right to free speech in danger. For one, complaining about “Nato on their borders” only makes sense if Russia was intending to expand those borders. Through all its existence, Nato never attempted to invade Russia, or even the USSR. It’s classic USSR bullshit. For another, NOW he mentions biolabs and says that’s why he invaded. Sure thing. “I only put my hand in the cookie jar because I knew the cookies were radioactive. I just didn’t mention that for weeks.”)

They don’t want to start this off with nukes. And besides, Putin has to be getting pretty upset, and what if he lets fly with nukes right upfront? All of them? I mean, that wouldn’t end in detante and a balanced powers world. That could even end with them being toppled! or having to work for a living.

Now, is my outline of what is going on precisely right?

Nah. But I can see the motivations pushing them this way, in kind of a blind panic run.

And now? Now nothing is working as it should. And people are really getting pissed.

What zany insanity will these morons in power come up with?

I don’t know. I know it will be stupid, insane, and not take into consideration second order effects.

And it’s getting close, because except for the crazy left, people are way more worried about gas than about the war. And no one is buying that the war caused inflation.

So they must pull the next trick off their sleeve.

It’s going to be a doozie.

Stay prepared, stay safe, keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.

And if you live near DC, do consider going on a vacation to fly-over country. NYC and LA too, just for good measure.

Because you don’t know what they’ll reach for.

You just know — as we do — that it will be horrific.

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. That helps defray my time cost of about 2 hours a day on the blog, time probably better spent on fiction. ;)*

FROM M. C. A. HOGARTH: In Good Company.

Trust Your peers….

…unless, of course, one of them is a rogue flouting Fleet’s already lax regulations. But stowaways are the least of the Stardancer’s issues when they are assigned to investigate a mysterious area of space at the behest of an alien allied power. What will the Stardancer find in the depths of the Sargasso? And will it give them reason to dedicate themselves to Fleet’s military mission, as their captain hopes, or to decide that defending the Alliance is someone else’s responsibility?

In Good Company, the sixth Alysha Forrest novel, returns to deep space and the adventure of finding new worlds and new discoveries. And if there might be an AI or two… what’s the Alliance without its many peoples?

FROM JOHN R. FOSTER: Morning In Havana

Is Fidel dead or alive? No one knows, but reporter Kate Swanson is risking her life to find out; has Colonel Blanco finally succeeded where so many others have failed? From the jungles of Angola, to the streets of Havana, and into the depths of Cuba’s coastal waters, Morning in Havana is a relentless quest for riches, revenge, and redemption in an island nation turned upside down…

FROM J. W. KERWIN: Slow Death in the Fast Lane: A Brendan O’Brian Legal Thriller.

If you hate the IRS, you’ll love this book!

Years of creative accounting have landed Harvey Berkowitz in court, charged with criminal tax fraud. The government has a mountain of incriminating evidence and what appears to be an airtight case. But Harvey has Brendan O’Brian, an unconventional defense attorney with a reputation for winning seemingly unwinnable cases.

O’Brian turns the tables on the government, putting the Tax Code and predatory IRS practices on trial with strategies that create a circus-like atmosphere in the normally staid federal court.

Chaos reigns outside the courtroom as well. O’Brian is mugged twice in less than a week, shadowed by a man who is officially dead, and harassed by local cops. But his biggest distraction is news that his wife has hired someone to kill him.

Surrounded by a cast of unforgettable characters, including a seemingly senile law partner and a colorful client nicknamed Eddie the Skunk, O’Brian must determine which events outside the courtroom are connected to the Berkowitz trial, an unrelated case involving a ruthless politician, or his wife’s contract on his life.

Although a work of fiction, the book discloses some very real truths about a government agency that has recently been embroiled in controversy. For example, at one point in the trial O’Brian details the workings of a little known IRS sting operation that targets small businesses.

And in the particularly entertaining chapter entitled “Dean Wormer must be running the IRS,” an expert witness uses the “double secret probation” scene from the iconic National Lampoon’s Animal House to explain why the Internal Revenue Code violates constitutionally mandated due process requirements.

On the surface, Slow Death in the Fast Lane is a fast-paced, entertaining and frequently amusing legal thriller. But read between the lines and you’ll find a damning denunciation of a government agency that many people believe is far too powerful.

FROM MACKEY CHANDLER: Fair Trade: An Alien Invasion Story

Most of my writing is in a series people seem to enjoy but there is a constant small crowd who say: I’d really like your take on an alien invasion story. Well this is for them. The bulk of the aliens come to Earth stories assume their vast superiority, sometimes invincibility. Sometimes they suddenly appear on the white house lawn dictating terms. I have yet to see one with them appearing at the Kremlin or Canberra which seems rather parochial. Other times they are so advanced they quarantine the Earth or Solar System without discussion because we are such barbarian slime-balls. They may alternately be impossible to talk to and attack without mercy. All these assume they come with a plan and the means to carry it out. Our own age of exploration showed things happen much less orderly. Islands and natives were happened upon while seeking someplace else or even because a storm or miscalculation left the ship lost. In that case there is no plan but survival with the assets at hand. As with any game remember that turnabout is fair play.

FROM CHRISTOPHER WOERNER: 202203 Daily Planet

Covering current events as always, most notably the Freedom Convoys, the supply crisis and the Russia/Ukraine issue. Earlier drafts of most of these essays were included in the last several pamphlets I’ve published but now I’ve included more news headlines and formatted like one of my normal books. This is my latest contribution in the fight for freedom.

I’ve also included a few essays on history since I’ve been working on that and one or two comments about pop culture. This time, the book is just whatever I’ve written in the last month in chronological order.

FROM BLAKE SMITH: A Kingdom of Glass: A Novel of The Garia Cycle.

Zara hasn’t seen her family in eleven years, but she doesn’t mind. They sent her to live in a neighboring kingdom when she was small, and she’s adopted her foster parents in their place. She lives the life of an aristocratic Garian girl- riding her horse, shooting her bow, exploring the castle with her friends- and she has nothing to wish for.

Until she’s summoned home, to a prospective marriage she doesn’t want, family she doesn’t remember, and a poisonous royal court that threatens everything she’s ever known. The East Morlans are nothing like Garia, and Zara struggles to find her place among the scheming Morlander aristocrats. Along the way, she makes new friends, meets enemies, and falls in love. But secrets abound in the glittering palace, and Zara must discover who she can trust as she fights for her life and freedom in a fragile, beautiful, kingdom of glass.

FROM TONY ANDARIAN: Prologue to Chaos: Dawn of Chaos.

“This society is decadent beyond redemption. It is time for it to be purged in fire and rebuilt from the ashes.”

The royal family of Carlissa struggles to guide their land into a new age of enlightenment. But when a radical professor of magic is targeted for heresy by the Inquisition, they end up caught in the crossfire. And when that violent confrontation spawns political infighting in the kingdom, it leads to the return of a dark and ancient threat thought lost to the legends of time.

Prologue to Chaos introduces the vast world and cast of characters of the Sanctum of the Archmage saga. Aron and Gerard, princes of Carlissa, race to stop the rampage of an arrogant mage targeted by the Inquisition. King Danor navigates his government’s factions in a struggle to reform its archaic laws. Orion, a scholar, prepares for his first day as an instructor at the academy, while Randia, a talented bard, looks forward to a life of music and theater with her beloved consort.

They do not know it yet, but each of them will be called upon to fight or die in a desperate battle that follows the opening of the Hell Gate.

Prologue to Chaos finally brings the world and story of the award-winning Sanctum of the Archmage role-playing games to the world of fantasy fiction. Get it now and don’t miss this exciting start to the saga!

Note: An earlier version of several chapters from this book appeared as part of the novel Dawn of Chaos, published briefly on Amazon several years ago. That book has now been re-written and expanded into a series of six novella-length installments.

FROM DAVID WELCH: The Day of the Deputy

Stanton Brunner has always lived in the shadow of famous lawmen. His father is a respected town sheriff, his grandfather a legendary, retired U.S. Marshal. But Stan never wanted to have it out with the bandits of the world, and was content to live the quiet life of a frontier town gunsmith. This comes to a crashing end when Bloody Brit Talmadge and his band of outlaws ride into town. Talmadge is a hardened killer with a cruel philosophy to match. He means to rule the town and surrounding valley with an iron fist, and that requires eliminating all who might challenge him. When tragedy strikes Stan’s family at Talmadge’s hands, the young man finds himself with a choice: slink away and do nothing, or take up the badge where no one else will. If he stays and fights, he faces seasoned killers who have him outnumbered, and have the townsfolk running scared. Stan, on the other hand, has never shot at a man, never enforced the law, and never really been in a serious fight. Beyond his inexperience, he’s also torn between a duty to see justice done, and a seething, justifiable desire for revenge. About the only thing the man has going for him is courage, and soon enough that courage will be the only thing standing between a small town and complete annihilation.

FROM THOMAS DOSCHER: The Vixen War Bride

With the destruction of their home colony, Captain Ben Gibson and his Army Rangers have nowhere else to go.

Six months after humanity’s victory in Earth’s first ever interstellar war, a group of soldiers are tasked with running a convoy refueling base in a rural part of the occupied enemy world. When they arrive, they find the local village has been abandoned in anticipation of their arrival by the panicked residents. Fearing a possible humanitarian crisis, the troops have to go into the alien wilderness to find them, reassure them that the humans are not the savages they’ve been taught they are and bring them back.

And it won’t be easy. They will have to overcome language barriers, a fearful and hostile population, cross-cultural miscommunications, almost no support from the Army, and their own demons to succeed. With no idea where to start, it looks nearly impossible until the sudden arrival of a dirty, disheveled priestess who confesses to a host of war crimes and demands she be executed for them.

FROM BILL ADAMS:The Unwound Way

A century ago, Evan Larkspur was a promising young playwright who never imagined he would one day be regarded as the Shakespeare of his time. Disgusted by the growing authoritarianism in his elite circle, he joined a Naval Survey for a relativistic run that never returned.

But now he is back! Or is he? His fragmentary memories—sabotaged ship, cold-sleep malfunction, miraculous escape—seem like a madman’s fantasy. His valuable Survey data, if real, would make him a target, so he remains in the shadows as an actor and a smuggler, trying to tie his memories of the past to the repressive society he sees now.

He is blackmailed into impersonating a government bureaucrat overseeing an extraterrestrial archaeological site, an important key to a bitter feud between two rich and powerful men. He soon finds that there is more beneath the surface than he expected.

BY ERIC FRANK RUSSEL, WITH FOREWORD BY D. JASON FLEMING: The Great Explosion

The invention of the Blieder Drive opened the galaxy to humanity, and humanity exploded out into it. Every group of like-minded individuals, from religious groups to nudists, got together and took off to their very own planet. Without bothering to ask anybody’s permission.

Four hundred years later, the bureaucrats of Autocratic Earth and its government have decided that enough is quite enough, and are mounting an expedition to return the Children of Earth back to the fold of good, right, proper, and highly controlled government.

Eric Frank Russell’s The Great Explosion is a science fiction comedy that explores the purpose and necessity of government with his typical wit. In 1985 it was inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame, an honor reserved for classic libertarian fiction.

FROM AMANDA S. GREEN: Designation: Frejya (Augment Wars Book 1).

I was five when they came for my brother. I was thirteen when they came for me. At twenty, they sent me to war, an AI embedded in my brain make sure I didn’t remember my past or question my orders. Not that they told me that part.

And that was their mistake. They might have enhanced me, trained me, but they didn’t break me and, with Menhit in my head, I am about to become their worst nightmare. . .if they don’t kill me first.

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.

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.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: WHIMSICAL

I’m not a terribly organized person, or — easier to put it — I tolerate disorder better and longer than my husband does. Or perhaps a different type of disorder. (He’s okay with piles of boxes. I’m okay with the cabinets not being precisely organized and divided, so long as things are more or less in the right place.)

HOWEVER I’ve found that trying to do anything in this house with the state of still-packed disorder takes three times the effort, and I have books to finish.

So I’m unpacking and cleaning kitchen and dining room.

After which I will write but PROBABLY not a blog post.

Just wanted you to know I’m okay.

I have a method to figure out how to vote in a national election, if I’m completely lost. I ask my brother whom to vote for, then vote against.

My brother is well intentioned, though not an idiot, so it might seem weird that I apply the Heinlein trick to him. But really, since he gets his information via the mass media of the country and the French mass media, with occasional input from the BBC, what he gets from the US is ILL-intentioned idiots, so what he thinks he knows is the opposite of the truth.

In 2000 he chilled me to the core by telling me that really W or Gore was basically the same thing. I mean he thought Gore was a very intelligent man (Which means he had a hell of a translator, and also that my brother doesn’t keep up on science any more. Or yes) and W was not as articulate but “they’re both ultimately technocrats, so you’ll be all right.”

I ran screaming into the night (metaphorically speaking) and voted for Harry Brown. I still contend that might have been the “first do no harm” option, and yes, I know he was an embezzler. But at least he talked about firing the entire Federal government, which, sure, would have caused chaos, but more or less chaos than we’re facing?

Because, please understand, while rule by real technocrats would be terrifying — for context I want you to understand the idiot who came up with the Great Reset is a mechanical engineer — because most science people are iffy on “people” and don’t get that when it comes to human behavior 2+2 might equal banana, rule by FAUX scientists is far, far worse. And that’s what we actually have. People who are convinced they “Know” and don’t actually know anything, or know a lot of things that ain’t so.

Part of this is the remnant of power by the MSM and the other leftist disinformation organs (including schools) blaring cover up and narrative to cover how spectacular their failure is. For instance like the newneo, I‘m getting sick, and mostly tired of hearing the newly red pilled throw tantrums about how this is all Trump’s fault because his administration was so bad, without paying attention to the fact he was constantly under attack by forces external and internal to it, and by his underlings desire to be seen as “so smart” by betraying him. (Bill Barr, you’re a florid dumb ass, and so are all the other idiots who decided to make Trump look bad and get in “good” with the establishment. That would have been a great move fifty years ago. But we’re not fifty years ago, and you’re all morons.)

And part is the structure in which most of us were taught to see the world. If the whole structure is wrong–

I — and most of you — was born to a world of centralized power, a world of “science” ascendant, where humans supposedly knew how to engineer everything, including themselves.

By the time I was in my teens, though, this “humans can engineer everything” had started eating itself. Yes, sure, it was USSR agit-prop in the west, but it was everywhere: We were running out of oil, we were poisoning the environment, there were too many of us, we should just all die out.

The “science” that had run the west for so long — since WWI, really — had turned on itself, by action of propaganda, and become a doomsday cult.

You have no idea how much effort and what mental fortitude it took for Reagan to stand against that tide. And you can only imagine how pissed off normal people were to elect Reagan. I know. I was here for his campaign. Despite Carter’s magnificently stupid governance, the culmination of an era of “progressive” presidents of both parties (Progressive and technocratic are the same. It’s the bizarre idea that one man trained mostly in shaking hands and kissing ugly babies can lead us to the future with unerring hand, by listening to “scientists.”) everyone knew that Reagan would get us killed, and that anyone who “knew” was voting for Carter.

But Reagan exploded all these shibboleths, like Trump would do later. By being reality-aligned, they managed to perform miracles.

However cults don’t react well to disconfirmation. They usually just double down. Which is precisely what the left did. With the USSR collapsed, their dream in ruins, they re-oriented to the twin deities of the environment and race. Which comes with a whole lot of bizarrely weird things attaching to it, like the obsession with gender (because it’s the only way a white person can claim to be good, when the myth makes them super evil) and the systematic dismantling of science in the name of science (because science and the west and progress caused all the issues for everyone, including tribes in Papua New Guinea, right? Because Gramsci says so.)

Which brings us to where we are today, where true ideological colonialism — the importing of the Wests bizarre obsessions — is ruining small nations, where most of the world locked down, masked and distanced — and ruined economies, agriculture, etc — by following a science fair project of a middle schooler who happened to be friends with W’s family.

As any parent knows science fair projects, by and large aren’t science. They’re wishful thinking, half assed experimentation, and a lot of persuasive writing. (Also trips just before 10 pm to hobby lobby the day before it’s due. But that might be only my kids.)

Which is precisely what technocrats like. Because that’s the science they understand.

Let’s establish some thing right now: I have a lot of friends who are scientists, engineers, and people involved in real life “tech”. The real ones, the good ones, really don’t want to govern anyone or anything. They want to do their research and experiments.

Because money for research is within the government’s gift (And guys, we really need to change that. Like, right now. Yesterday if possible. Because he who pays the piper calls the tune, and if you think money doesn’t corrupt science, I’d like to give you a tour of some swampland in Florida, never you mind the gators) most real researchers have had to learn to politic. They’re very bad at it. I mean, they’re okay within their communities, but they suck in the outside world.

Most of them running for anything, even things they know how to do would make the rest of the world recoil, and possibly want to kill them. At best they come across as snake oil salesmen, because peopling is a late-acquired skill. Mostly they care about the science.

So, who are these “technocrats” in charge of government, everywhere from dog catcher to president, and incidentally infiltrating every possible bureaucracy?

The elected ones are the people who were elected king and queen of the prom, while you were attending science class. The bureaucrats are the people who majored in “Studies” and “business” and “administration.” I.e. the people who were really good at bullshitting their way into things. Remember how sometimes one of them got stuck in your science class and failed so hard it made you wonder how they could walk and chew gum at the same time?

And before you say this could be solved by making sure everyone learns basic science…. we had that. (And a complete ignorance of history.) In the aftermath of WWII, and when science was going to conquer everything, they put such an emphasis on science that…. it corrupted science completely.

When I say things like “I’m afraid a falling population will leave us bereft of people who can run the tech” I mean it. I don’t know which percentage of the population can do science and tech. I know it’s relatively small.

I’m one of the people on the edge, and if I had figured out I was digit dyslexic, not stupid, I might have beat my brain into place for engineering (Supposing mom let me take it, which she didn’t, because she was sure the only reason I wanted to take engineering was the hot guys. Which just shows you mom didn’t know many engineers despite being married to one.) I might have done it, anyway, except for mom’s hangups.

But it would take effort, and re-engineering my own brain. And in the end I’d be an expert in a small area of engineering, not “all of science.”

Because that’s the way these things work, see?

It’s sort of like I can write anything, but what I can write, in science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and even romance is a small slice of possible stories. It is a common error of young writers to come up with stories they couldn’t possibly write. So they can’t finish them, and they think if they had enough persistence. It takes years to be able to say “I can read that type of story, but it’s not mine to write.” For instance, I love Prince Roger, but if I wrote its like (okay, I am, but long story) it would be with a diplomat, or a geek in the main role, (it is) because I can’t write a military structure convincingly. I get the culture, it’s the ranks and habits that confuse heck out of my mind. (I’m rank dyslexic. I mean, I grew up reading military biographies, but I scramble ranks like a pro. And don’t get me started on procedure.) I have a military fantasy underway (waves at #1 ducttape son) but I need a collaborator, or I simply can’t.

Exact same thing with science.

Heck, husband has worked at the narrow edge of math and computers for his entire professional life, but the other day I had the bizarre experience of watching younger son explain some new technology to his father.

Because our knowledge has grown so complex and confusing that we can’t possibly keep up with everything even in our own field.

And minds only bend a certain way.

There is nothing wrong with having the sort of mind that doesn’t bend to science. We do need people trained in languages, and history, in philosophy and diplomacy.

What we shouldn’t be doing is telling these people that what they’re doing is based on “science” nor should we be giving power to bureaucrats with either a pseudo scientific background, or a decades out of date scientific knowledge. (Fauci — have they found him, or is he still hiding? — is a bit of both. Medical training isn’t exactly science, though please I implore you not to call your physician a “well educated witch doctor”. — they tend to get upset — Ask me how I know. It’s half peopleing and some “this worked with this person so it might work with this other. And a whole lot of irreproducible studies.)

And we shouldn’t be electing people who think they know what “science” tells them to do.

Because the policies they implement are always the same and they have nothing to do with science, but more with the appeasing of the gods of “the environment” and “Race” which somehow always leads to making energy ridiculously expensive and freeing predators to commit crimes. (Most of those predators are white, because white people are still the majority, but yes, the left thinks this is race or economics related. Remember they think crime is a response to poverty and that poverty is mostly race based.)

And then they run to the media and their spokespeople to paper it over, so they can do it once again.

Except every time they get to try their idiocy it becomes more obvious it doesn’t work, and it was always nonsense.

We might be at the end-point of that cycle. They had to cheat their way in, and they’re worse than anything else that’s been done to this country. Or the world, to be fair.

Which brings us to something I heard from someone who kind of maybe has insight into Putin’s circle. Putin is just spinning his own reality. He thinks by yelling and commanding he can make reality whatever he says he is. And he gets rid of anyone who contradicts him.

Our left is attempting the same thing through a combination of yelling and cancelling people.

Neither of them is having any marked success. Rather this is the failure mode of concentrated power.

Look, in the beginning of the twentieth century, it was already too late for mega states run by super-concentrated power. There might have been a time for it — I don’t know because history has been corrupted — but by the 20th century knowlege and industry were already too complex for it. Fortunately — ah — they had the media to paper over their failures and pass them on to education with bullshit like FDR saving us from the failures of capitalism, aka the Great Depression (which he caused.)

Now? There is more knowledge, it is more highly specialized, and trust me, no man can really govern even a small country, much less something like the US. And most of the experts they can call on — heaven knows Trump tried — are either corrupt, or themselves unable to know their area as well as they think they do.

For a long time, leftists were obsessed with the idea of the US breaking up, mostly because Russia wanted us to.

I always said that’s not likely, and it’s not. Look, just like the EU, no matter how they try, will never be a polity, because there’s some really old divisions of land and blood, the US can’t be separate states or even regions, because we are one polity. We all move around, intermarry, have kids everywhere.

What we can do, what we need to do, and what will happen, either fast or slow, either explosively or incrementally, is a return to what the US is meant to be: with governance devolving to the lowest possible level: the state, the city, the family, the individual.

Abominations that put all the power of “science” or “education” or “environmental protection” in the hand of a federal agency need to be done away with. Because, no, there is no science whatsoever behind most of it. It’s fads all the way down. And all of these things have failed, over and over and over again. Only there’s an information problem, and the failures are swept away as meaning nothing, and the same nonsense is doubled down on.

Until a critical amount of damage accumulates. (And boy, has it.) And then it all blows up.

Which is where we are.

What’s coming — and each day makes it less likely that it will be incremental — will blow away our institutions. Blowing away the thinking that these things SHOULD be centralized, or that there is scientific justification for a lot of the nonsense will take longer. It can’t take too long, though, or there will be no civilization left.

So, first change your mind, then change the minds closest to you. Expounding on the catastrophic failures of the technocratic mind set will help.

It will also scare people, so they’ll try to stop you. Eh. It’s the price you pay.

Keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark. And be not afraid.

There is only one way out of this and it’s through. Let’s roll.

(Mostly) Indie 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. That helps defray my time cost of about 2 hours a day on the blog, time probably better spent on fiction. ;)*

FROM BLAKE SMITH: The First Adventure of Sir Garamond de Crecy

Sir Garamond- Gerry, to his friends- has been knighted for less than a month, and he’s already found his first great quest: saving the beautiful and helpless Princess Alyssia of Ollandra from the dragon that is holding her in dreadful captivity. Or so he thinks…
A lighthearted short story.

BY MAX BRAND, INTRODUCTION BY D. JASON FLEMING: Wooden Guns (Annotated): A classic pulp western adventure

Big Jim Conover has a reputation back home as a very, very dangerous man, and one of the fastest draws ever to live. Folks don’t know he’s now partly-paralyzed on his right side, his gun no better than a wooden gun. So when he comes back to take charge of the family that adopted him as a boy, people expect trouble.

Doctor Clinton Aylard has dreams of restoring the proper social status to the once-great Aylard name in England, but finds himself out west, engaged to a girl named Jack, and accidentally in possession of a reputation as a quick draw with a dead aim. A reputation that only he knows he does not deserve.

Conover is on the wrong side of the law, with a sterling character despite his upbringing. Aylard is on the right side of the law, with a conniving, deceitful character, despite his “good breeding”. When these two men meet, even with both carrying “wooden guns”, bullets will fly!

FROM KEITH HEDGER: Moving Target (Burn ‘n’ Karma Cycle Book 1).

Breeze should have know the money was too good…

It was supposed to be one last big paycheck at the end of the war. Jacob was handling the communications while she sat on a pontoon boat on Lake Michigan, freezing in the winter wind. Then they got the order to fire.

When she made it to shore, Breeze found a hit team standing around her ride out. Soon after that, she discovered her crew were being hunted, and the hunters were hot on her trail.

She wondered if she would make it out now that they had made her a moving target.

You’ll love this cyberpunk thriller with high tech mercenaries surviving in the lowest places.

FROM MEL DUNAY: Shadow Captain (Star Master Book 1)

His one chance to escape slavery could trap his brother in a terrible fate!

Jetay has been on the run with his brother for a long time, hiding his psychic powers from the evil Red Knights. Living as a slave on a star freighter, Jetay dreams of freeing himself and his brother, and of wielding his powers openly.

On a frontier planet, Lady Lanati of the Partisan Alliance seeks his help for a secret mission. It will take him across the stars to the edge of a black hole, with a Red Knight chasing him every step of the way. He might finally get a chance to use his powers for good.

But the price of that chance may be too high, putting his brother in grave danger. Can Jetay save himself and his brother without sacrificing Lanati and her friends? If he can’t find a way to save them all, the battle against evil may be over before it begins….

FROM H. NARCISSUS PETIT: Eden Will Be Destroyed!: A Very Short Story That Explains A Whole Lot

The Bible tells us mankind originally lived in the Garden of Eden until the Serpent tempted Eve who led Adam astray and they were all cast out to suffer and toil in the dirt. But what if that version wasn’t strictly accurate? What if the true story was distorted through generations of oral history, then edited by dead white men employed by an imperialistic dictator with a history of failed relationships and an unhealthy fear of snakes? Wonder no longer. Herewith, the true story of the Fall of Mankind and the Loss of Eden. Well, sort of.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Phoenix in the Machine

Dreams come true in cyberspace — but so do nightmares.

Roger remembers dying in a fire on the launchpad. He’s reconciled it with being alive again. However, being an infomorph in a simulated environment has been a difficult adjustment. Toni tells him he went mad the first time he awoke, and she had to crash the computer.

Now he helps her playtest the games her employer designs. But cyberspace outside Toni’s local area network is a dangerous place. A disastrous experiment in Bangladesh left the world in a moral panic about AI and machine consciousness.

When a careless connection betrays him to those who cannot distinguish between an AI and a post-biological human being, he and Toni must flee. Their cross-country journey will either destroy him or deliver him the spaceflight he’s awaited for a century.

BY CHARLES ALDEN SELTZER, WITH INTRODUCTION BY D. JASON FLEMING: 3 Men of the West (Annotated): A pulp western omnibus of: Riddle Gawne, Beau Rand, and West!

iktaPOP Media brings you an omnibus of three classic westerns by Charles Alden Seltzer, featuring Seltzer’s characteristic western heroes, each with his own unique nickname.

Riddle Gawne

Jefferson Gawne has a low opinion of people, and an even lower one of women. After his brother was murdered by Watt Hyat, in complicity with his brother’s wife, Gawne followed Hyat’s trail across the west.

But the trail went cold, and Gawne, nicknamed Riddle behind his back, found himself the guardian of an orphan girl, and the only man in the territory who dares stand up to Hame Bozzam, founder of the dirty and lawless Bozzam City. Bozzam is too smart to challenge Gawne directly, and Gawne is too honorable to act against Bozzam without cause.

So an uneasy truce has held between the two men. A truce that is about to be broken, with the arrival of the beautiful Miss Kathleen Harkless. Every man wants her, and the men of Bozzam City don’t particularly care if she wants them back.

Beau Rand

Amos Seddon has a secret and Beau Rand knows it.

When someone starts rustling cattle, it doesn’t take long for the whispers against Rand to start. To save himself and his young son, Rand has to prove his innocence and find the real rustlers.

West!

Josephine Hamilton’s first impression of the west was stopping the hanging of a supposed horse thief. From that moment, she decided that the west needed her principles imposed upon it.

And the man who personified that west, and most needed dominating, was Steel Brannon, a man who was merely amused that she stopped him from giving justice to a horse thief. And intrigued by a woman so willful, and so misguided.

This iktaPOP Media omnibus includes Introductions and Afterwords by indie author and editor D. Jason Fleming, putting the novels into historical, cultural, and genre context.

FROM KATRINA LEGG: Some Like it Bot (Noir Good Deed Goes Unpunished)

When the blonde bombshell walked into his office, Deputy Corbin was certain he’d seen this show before.

Then she asked him to solve her murder.

Deputy Corbin will have to follow a convoluted trail of lust and madness to save the tragic starlet… and he might not be in time, even if he figures out who did it.

This is a long short story, not quite a novella, and should not be mistaken for a novel.

FROM DAN MELSON: The End of Childhood (The Politics of Empire Book 3)

The die is cast.

The Empire has caught the fractal demons marshalling troops for assault, and there is no avoiding the decisive Armageddon between humanity and the fractal demons. Both sides have their strengths and there is no certainty about the outcome. While the Empire is free-falling towards open war, Grace is tasked with nudging the odds a little bit, ferreting out traitors to humanity, bribed with the seeming of the most precious gift possible but with a nightmare catch.

Then at the moment of the first skirmishes, personal tragedy strikes, clearing the way for a long-delayed impulse, which results in horror and more personal tragedy.

But out of the disaster, a new Grace emerges – one ready to stand on her own, fully realized as a potent force in her own right.

FROM BLAKE SMITH: An American Thanksgiving

It is Thanksgiving Day, 1865, and Margaret Browne isn’t feeling very thankful. The war is over, and her grown-up sons have returned from the fighting, but her beloved husband remains absent, last seen a captive in a notorious prisoner-of-war camp. The Browne family muddles through their uncertain path, lost without their leader, but when everything begins to go wrong all at once, Margaret must hold together the farm and her family, and turn a disaster into a true day of thanks-giving.

FROM DAVID COLLINS: Prelude of Fate: The Obsidian Valley

This is not the standard Isekai story of “average guy, sent to other world, somehow changed into macho dude doing mega violence getting all the girls”.

This is NOT that story!

Ok, he does get sent to a different world, and he will meet some “very interesting” characters, and many of them will be females.

The problem is, “He” is the primitive, he has no magic or cheat abilities and he really has no clue what’s going to happen.

This is the story of a man, ripped from normalcy, and dropped into a world populated by several very different high tech aliens. This is his struggle to adapt to the new world, and try to make friends with the alien that at first seem like monsters.

In the new world, there is no universal translator, there is no magic, or a box plug in and in 20 minutes you speak a new alien language. He has to learn the new common tongue the old fashioned way, by studying.

Jake tries to adapt and to learn to live in the new world, but he finds out that not everything is what it seems.

Sometimes the monsters are real. Sometimes the really scary monsters are the ones we hide with us. Sometimes the ones that are outwardly monsters can become your best friends.

FROM TONY CARDEN: The Sorcerer’s Lackey

How could Tony be so dumb as to choose a hopeless Hero for this story? I mean, really! Everyone knows that playing around with a dragon is playing with fire.
Hapless, an unsuitable Hero with not a shred of the usual qualities. Dragged – unwillingly, it must be said, by his foster mother – into being the sorcerer’s lackey, he is sent by his master to collect some unmentionable ingredients for his magical experiments.
His trip to “Here Be Dragons”, it does not quite go to plan.
The story is, they say, … is … well … complicated … confusing … chaotic … comic…
A hopeless hero…
A ruthless villain…
A rabble of helpers…
What could possibly go wrong?
What could there be not to laugh over?

FROM DAVID SUTTON: Longest Run

Longest Run is set in North America a thousand years after nuclear war has knocked the tectonic plates off the table. Ecologies are in flux. People are trying to cope with the mess they have made. Since that mess includes humanity’s own genetic instability, Brand Levin is willingly engaged in a live-or-die wilderness proving trip; at stake his right to become a parent.

BY J. ALLAN DUNN, WITH INTRODUCTION BY D. JASON FLEMING: Turquoise Cañon (Annotated): A Classic Pulp Western Adventure

Jimmy Hollister just lost everything he had in a stock market crash. After a life of polo and caviar, he cheerfully starts building up his life again, eventually following a girl to Arizona and starting a goat ranch. But hostile neighbors want to make dead sure he never learns the secret of Turquoise Cañon!

This iktaPOP media edition includes a new introduction giving historical and genre context to the novel.

(Yes, there are three links from D. Jason Fleming. Apparently my email has been eating his promos. Hungry hamsters indeed. – SAH)

CHALLENGE

As we all know, this is the strangest timeline.

I invite the writers and humorists among you (Yes, I KNOW it’s often the same person) to give me one or two paragraphs of an hypothetical (you don’t have to write it) novel’s opening, that starts with a pithy summary of where we are (for pithy you’ll need to choose, trust me) and then takes a leap into the unknown with the strangest “what happens next” you can think of.

Example (and no, it’s not the strangest I can think of, but bear with me, I need to shower, finish installing shelves in the office, and work on Bowl of Red, which really needs to be done this week, since it’s as we know cursed):

We thought it was all a conspiracy theory. No, seriously.
Sure, they locked us down for two years. They terrorized us and treated us like cattle. They made up entire policies to hurt us and impoverish us.
But who the heck could believe there were really space lizards trying to drive humanity to extinction?
And then they took off their masks. On camera.

What is the operative word in Fiat Currency?

Fiat.

The full faith and credit of the United States of America.

To an extent it was always bullsh*t that your money was safe with the government. To be fair to an extent it was always bullsh*t (apologies to Orvan) that anything was safe in the hands of the government, starting with your kids’ education and ending with…. well, everything. Because humans have a knowledge gathering problem, and the bigger the organization, the bigger the knowledge gathering problem and the bigger the knowledge gathering problem, the greater the chance of being run by gossip, innuendo and fad.

But the thing is, we now have better knowledge of what the government is up to than we did back when FDR set the value of the dollar to gold according to his lucky number.

Which means we now know we shouldn’t have faith.

Other reasons we shouldn’t have faith — or give credit — is the soft coup we watched happening before our very eyes. And while a lot of the people are still closing their eyes and going “I see nothing” I will note that when I say that we had massive fraud for years, people have stopped fighting back. And these days no one sane says “We need voting by mail/multiple voting days/no signature verification.” The left says it, but their sanity is questionable, and they are obviously interested in incentivizing and facilitating cheating. Ten years ago people still told me “But I need early voting, because I can’t take the day off. I have to make money.” And “there is really no fraud.” Now, no one does. Or no one sane. Which means that needle has moved considerably.

And the needle has moved to “We don’t trust these guys.”

Then add to that the Covidiocy, where it’s becoming more and more evident not just the US government but EVERY government in the world, to an extent, cooperated in pushing crazy bullsh*t on everyone because they could, add the confiscation of Canadian truckers funds, add the confiscation of Russian citizens’ funds.

What do you have? Well, at this point the indicator on Fiat is approaching zero.

Yes, okay, so the confiscation of Russian funds is at least technically an attempt at getting the Russians to get rid of Putin. And the Canadian fund confiscation is in response to inflammatory press reports claiming they were several kinds of “ist.”

Sure.

But you know what we didn’t do, when Iran declared war on us? Confiscate their citizens accounts. We froze them.

Same way in the past, various governments (rolls eyes in “Dude, I knew about this before it was cool”) have frozen citizens accounts, but not confiscated them.

(Okay, there’s an exception. Between that and “we will control the industry without expropriating the owners, the imposition of medical experimentation on populations without their consent, and the obsession with genetics and eugenics, the current leftist bozos have Hitler laughing in hell, in between bouts of being f*cked with a pineapple.)

And then the stock market started unraveling, in a way that at least Zero Hedge (waggles hand) thinks is catastrophic.

They give good reasons for this, but honestly, as I’ve talked about here before, I think there’s others.

Like, for instance, the fact that I suspect population is imploding in most of the world. The fact that dumbasses in possession of the levers of power made like a monkey with a stick in a China factory on the world economy for two years. Like the fact that the “big government” model was imploding long before that. (Errors accumulate in any human system. The longer it goes on, the more errors. When it possesses a self-multiplying bureaucracy, more errors accumulate.)

But the central thing here for me — I’m an information/communication person, not an economic analyst — is that the left isn’t adjusting well to “Everyone can see what we’re doing.”

So their response to plummeting fiat is to do more things that break the faith.

And then expecting us to literally put our lives, the fruit of our labor — because that’s what money is — in their hands. And then being surprised we don’t trust them.

The operative word is “Fiat”. What do you do when the trust is gone?

What do you do when the money is gone?

What do you do when everything implodes because it’s in the hands of dumbasses who can’t seem to realize we SEE them?

The sense of having to brace for a crash of all sorts is very intense. And all we can do, individually is prepare and be ready.

Add some precious metals, alcohol, baby formula, medical supplies to your planning. (I should add baby formula, if it has a long expiration date. I’ll never use it for bargaining, because I’m too soft-headed for that. BUT it might be needed by family or strangers. While babies can survive like dad on water from boiling rice, or like our own Dr. Monkey on water from boiling carrots, most of them don’t.)

And be ready.

For years we’ve said “what can’t go on won’t go on” and we’re now hitting terminal “can’t go on.”

Be ready. Stay as calm as possible. Do what you can.

UPDATE:

Go read: https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2022/03/courage-to-change-what-must-be-altered.html
ALL OF YOU. It’s important.

Kurgan Culture, Yamnaya Culture, or Aliens? Old Europe and Indo-European Speakers by Alma T. C. Boykin

So, a few weeks back, a commenter argued that the peoples of Old Europe were more or less egalitarian and possible matriarchal until the people of the Kurgan Culture appeared and imposed a horse-riding patriarchy on everything. I admit, as soon as I saw “Kurgan Culture,” I knew the well-meaning individual was not current on the state of research concerning the two groups involved. So what is the state of research, and what the heck is this all about anyway?

The area centered roughly between the Tisza River in Hungary, the Dniester and Dnieper Rivers to the east, the Polish/Slovak Carpathians to the north, and the Iron Gates of the Danube to the south, is where a series of cultures that archaeologists lump together as the Danube Culture or “Old Europe” developed. There are a number of sub-groups within this Old European culture, and the ones I’m the most familiar with are the late-phase pair known as Cucuteni-Trypillia. Cucuteni is found in Transylvania and adjoining parts of what is now Romania, and Trypillia was on the eastern side of the Carpathians, in the Dniester and Dnieper River watersheds. The timespan for Old Europe is around 6000 BC/BCE to roughly 3500 BC/BCE.

Marija Gimbutas did intense research on the Danube Culture, and published in English. She also wrote several popular archaeology books about the Danube Culture. She proposed that the lack of obvious markers of social rank, the lack of apparent weaponry, and the prevalence of female “deity” images meant that Old Europe had been matrilocal, matriarchal, peaceful, and egalitarian. They had farmed and had done well for centuries. The end of Old Europe came at the hands of the horse-riding “Kurgan Culture” nomads from the steppe, who were warlike, nomadic, and patriarchal. Gimbutas, like many activists of the 1970s, felt that the peaceful, woman-led Old European culture had been far superior in many ways to the aggressive, hierarchical warrior nomads who buried their dead with weapons, animal and human sacrifices, and lots of gold and silver. The nomads erected hills, called kurgans, leading to the term Kurgan Culture.

Fast forward to the year 2014, when I inadvertently started doing research into the Cucuteni-Trypillia phase. I was actually trying to learn a lot more about steppe nomads in order to do some comparative work for an academic paper. I ended up with sources for the Cucuteni-Trypillia people as well as what I wanted. In 2019, I started digging deeper into the Cucuteni stuff, and discovered that a lot remains unknown, and what we do know is very odd, in the sense that it doesn’t match a lot of theories people have developed about how societies change over time. It also doesn’t match Gimbutas’ early work, either. She has been discredited in many ways, although she remains the pioneer*, and her term Old Europe is still in common use.

The rest of this little essay can be summed up as “we don’t know much yet, but what we do know is Odd.” It also reflects my personal interest, and is not in any way a survey of the entire 3000 year period.

Cucuteni-Trypillia started out as a single cultural group. People lived in villages of up to several hundred people, and farmed. They had domesticated sheep and goats, but also ate a lot of deer, some beef (probably very old animals), rabbits, squirrel, and other things. They gathered nuts, berries, and other wild foods in season, and had some domesticated or wild apples and possibly plums. Maybe. They gathered wild grains to augment their domestic grains. They also had very highly decorated pottery, and made items from copper and some very primitive bronzes. Houses came in three general types, wattle-and-daub, log houses, and semi-subterranean. The Old European people are considered Chalcolithic, or Copper Age, bridging between Neolithic and Bronze Age.

We have no idea about their language. It was not Indo-European. The Danube peoples migrated up from Anatolia around 5500 BC/BCE, before Indo-European languages developed. It is thought that some traces of the root language can be found in Greek and Sardinian, but that’s still open to debate. The western groups seem to have had some sort of written symbols, perhaps a form of writing, but thus far no long inscriptions have been found, and no way of translating the tablets and seals exists.

We also don’t know anything about who or what they worshipped, or their government. The Trypillia Large Settlements (TLS) seem to have a major building or two near the center of the settlement, and lots and lots of smaller houses built into groups, almost neighborhoods. A wall of some kind seems to have encircled the TLS, as was common for settlements. No sign of status markers like obvious palaces, or caches of goods, or graves with lots of stuff, have been found. That isn’t to say that some won’t be found, or that non-durable status goods didn’t exist. Textiles were a high-demand trade good, but very few of them survive from pre-history. Without written documents or obviously high-status places, we can only guess as to how the people of the TLS organized themselves. They could have indeed been an egalitarian matriarchy. Or an egalitarian patriarchy. Or they could have been rigidly organized in castes and commanded by priest-kings or Brahmin-like priestly castes. Or something no one has thought of yet. Status might have been based on access to food, textiles, animal products, or things that were destroyed upon the death of the owner and scattered into the rivers.

To make modern researchers even more puzzled, the last century or so of the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture left almost no graves, either in Romania or in Ukraine and Moldova. Low numbers of graves from earlier eras have been found, leading to some speculation that cremation or exposure (like the Parsi do with their Towers of Silence) was used to dispose of the dead. The last century or so? Nothing, or as close to nothing as can be found. Without graves, it is hard to determine social organization, the presence or absence of disease and warfare, the sex ratios of a culture, and so on, since there were no written documents.

The Trypillia side has gotten the most attention, because of those large settlements. As in, up to 15,000-20,000 people large. That alone is very unusual. Each house had a built-in oven, and probably a grain-storage mini-house near-by. The buildings had a second story, a loft or storage space, that was reached from outdoors by a ladder. The houses were wattle-and-daub with clay over the outside. Each house was about the same size. None seem unusually large or small, and all that have been excavated had similar internal features. Perhaps the houses had small shrines inside, and each family worshiped clan deities and totem animals (all the bull-headed things that have been found), as well as venerating sky and earth deities as a group? Perhaps worship was done away from the houses, and only small tokens kept as reminders or for personal devotions.

The houses, walls, storage buildings were all burned to the ground every 60-80 years or so. The entire settlement went up in flames, deliberately burned. People either tidied up and rebuilt on the site, or moved to a new site. That’s unheard of. Was it a ritual of some kind, a communal death and rebirth and sacrifice? Since some items seem to have been “killed” before the burning, that’s one thought. Another is that so many vermin and so much garbage piled up that burning the place down served as a public health protection.

The Cucuteni people didn’t have such large settlements, although they seem culturally very close to the Trypillia people, based on surviving artifacts. They too burned the settlements, rebuilding on the same site.

So, what happened in that last 150 years? Did the nomadic horsemen from the steppes (the Kurgan, or more accurately Yamnaya Culture) attack, burn, pillage, loot, enslave, rob, and generally beat up on the peaceful matriarchy until it vanished, leaving Europe to the Indo-European speaking barbarians? Um, probably not. One suspicion is that a shift in weather patterns favored the newcomers as weather in the area turned cool and moist, then colder and drier. This was great for grass and grazing, but not great for farmers. Questions about the exact timing of the cultural contacts relative to the weather shift are still open. Another very recent speculation, based on the genetic analysis of the few late-phase bodies found this far, hints that disease might have moved ahead of the steppe peoples, as happened with the Plague of Justinian and later waves of disease. Again, timing and transmission mechanism are still hotly debated, and I’m one of the sceptics.

What we do know is that the TLS settlements went away, the Danube Culture disappeared or was absorbed by the Yamnaya Culture (the steppe people) and with two exceptions, Indo-European languages filled up Europe. Basque is one exception, Maltese is the other. Horses grazed where the Danube peoples had farmed, and the Bronze Age had arrived.

I borrowed a lot of this for my Familiars novels, added a generous dollop of Handwavium and speculation, and turned the end of the TLS into a cautionary tale about making very bad bargains with forces beyond your control. After all, I’m a lazy writer. I steal good ideas from history so I don’t have to think up new stuff for myself.

Sources:

Anthony, David. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language.

Ibid. The Lost World of Old Europe (an exhibit catalogue with papers and photos)

Haarmann, Harald. The Mystery of the Danube Civilization  (excellent IF you have some background in archaeology)

Müller, Johannes et al. Trypillia Mega-Sites and European Prehistory: 4100-3400 BC

Menotti, Francesco Et al. The Tripolye Culture Giant Settlements in Ukraine. (this one is focuses just on the Trypillia Large Settlements.)

Olsen, Birgett Annet et al. Tracing the Indo-Europeans (a collection of papers. Updates Anthony, but can be very technical.)

For a good website article about Old Europe:

https://patrickwyman.substack.com/p/old-europe?s=r

*This is Sarah speaking, not Alma who is a gentle soul.
Isn’t it curious that Gimbutas, Mead and all the rest are found to have made up stuff wholesale, but remain “respected” and — like Marx — we get told “but it still has applications, even if it was wrong.”? Meanwhile, anyone dissenting from the narrative of the left is considered “thoroughly discredited” if they once got a word wrong.
Be the unicorn, my friends. Puncture that nonsense. Why else the razor sharp horn?

Okay, this is weird. No, stone cold weird. I guess you guys really are living on your nerves, or my mail has decided I don’t need to hear from you.

There were no books to promo. This is the second time — 2, in however many years of promo — that this has happened. It has me a leetle on edge.

I could go hunting, see if some of you forgot to send me listings, etc.

But I’m building bookshelves. Yeah, I SHOULD be writing, but I guess– rolls neck — I know how you’re feeling. So, I’m building bookshelves. I’ll write this evening.

So, you have until Wednesday, when I’ll run a promo, (So I guess you have till Tuesday Night) to get me links to your Amazon-published books.

Until then, here is the vignette challenge, to take your mind off things.

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.

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.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: Pleasure