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Book Promo

*Sorry this is SO late but like the rest of us my sleep pattern has got really wonky, and it sends my ADHD through the roof – SAH*

*Note these are books sent to us by readers/frequenters of this blog.  Our bringing them to your attention does not imply that we’ve read them and/or endorse them, unless we specifically say so.  As with all such purchases, we recommend you download a sample and make sure it’s to your taste.  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. I ALSO WISH TO REMIND OUR READERS THAT IF THEY WANT TO TIP THE BLOGGER WITHOUT SPENDING EXTRA MONEY, CLICKING TO AMAZON THROUGH ONE OF THE BOOK LINKS ON THE RIGHT, WILL GIVE US SOME AMOUNT OF MONEY FOR PURCHASES MADE IN THE NEXT 24HOURS, OR UNTIL YOU CLICK ANOTHER ASSOCIATE’S LINK. PLEASE CONSIDER CLICKING THROUGH ONE OF THOSE LINKS BEFORE SEARCHING FOR THAT SHED, BIG SCREEN TV, GAMING COMPUTER OR CONSERVATORY YOU WISH TO BUY. That helps defray my time cost of about 2 hours a day on the blog, time probably better spent on fiction. ;)*

FROM MARY CATELLI: Free Passage.

When you want to pass the lands of the Amazons, you can ask to be allowed to just sail by. Chloe wants to try it, as the only sane route.

But when their queen dies, it won’t merely be for the asking.

IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THIS… YES, I PROMISE THE SEQUEL IS ON THE WAY (I HAVE A LOT OF THINGS ALMOST FINISHED. 2020 HAS BEEN HARD):

Deep Pink (Magis Book 1).

Like all Private Detectives, Seamus Lebanon [Leb] Magis has often been told to go to Hell. He just never thought he’d actually have to go.
But when an old client asks him to investigate why Death Metal bands are dressing in pink – with butterfly mustache clips – and singing about puppies and kittens in a bad imitation of K-pop bands, Leb knows there’s something foul in the realm of music.
When the something grows to include the woman he fell in love with in kindergarten and a missing six-year-old girl, Leb climbs into his battered Suburban and like a knight of old goes forth to do battles with the legions of Hell.
This is when things become insane…. Or perhaps in the interest of truth we should say more insane.

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: BUMPY

Okay, we’re in a pickle.

We are in risk of losing the republic. And if we lose it it’s going to be very hard to claw our way back. It could take centuries. So I’m going to suggest we don’t lose it. I’m going to suggest we refuse to stop being Americans. In fact, I’m suggesting we become so American they can’t hold us, and have to vomit us forth whole.

They want us? They don’t know what they want. They want to be our rulers? Do you know that the US is the only country in which presidents age 10 years per year in office? (Which means Joey the pedo, Xi’s turtle boy, will be a mummy in two months.) And do you know how much more they’d age and how much harder it would be if Americans, instead of trying to be good and cooperative and productive citizens, just went out of their way to be obstinate pains in the ass?

This is something we the people can do. Something that doesn’t depend on courts, or institutions, and which is not the fourth box. G-d knows it might yet come to the fourth box (the magic eight ball tells me “it’s almost inevitable”) but perhaps not. And if it does, maybe we can be in a position of strength when the music starts to play.

And yes, I’ll explain:

If the election results stand, despite obvious, obscene, skirts-up fraud on the street, in front of G-d and everyone (And please tiresome trolls, go here and read this, and learn to count above five. And stop trying to comment. I’m just going to spam you. Tell Comrade Xi he doesn’t pay you enough. Even better, kick him in the balls. Be a little American, you. Learn from Hong Kong.) and if they sit Gropey China Joe and Commie LaWhorish, I expect war by July, but it could take a year or more. Only because our side is slow to anger. On the other hand — and the left might want to remember this — we are ACTUALLY very thorough when we flip over. Y’all cosplay revolution. We just get pissed and steamroll everything. Remember that. It won’t be pretty.

The problem is if they have at least nominal power, they will have at least some of the armed forces. Which means the conflict will go on forever. Unless we soften the hell out of them, first, and give them nervous breakdowns. (Which is not as hard as it seems, since most of them are extreme neurotics.)

If OTOH Trump carries this in the courts, the left is going to try to amp up the sort of shit they’ve been doing for the next four years and burn the country down and destroy our economy, unless we let them have their little red wagon and fifty scoops of commie cream.

One way or another, we need to fight them. We. Us. Right now. On the ground. And not with bullets.

I confess until this morning I was in flat despair over how to do it, until Larry Correia, bless him, threw off an off-hand comment:

“Yet while I watched this, Twitter kept deleting the accounts sharing the file list. They’d block somebody, and then ten minutes later someone else would share it and get blocked too. In the half an hour or so I scrolled through dead voters the people sharing the list kept vanishing. It was kind of amazing to watch real time. But one would get blocked and somebody else would take their place.If the thing that saves America from turning into a cyberpunk dystopia run by ruthless tech oligarchs… is 4chan… I’m gonna laugh because I truly did not see that coming. : )”

Larry Correia

I’m not sure about the history of 4chan BUT it is an American thing. Sure, it’s all over the world, but it works like America only crossed with where the devil goes potty, of course.
Like them we’re autistic, we’re broken, we’re irreverent, we’re unique among the nations of the world. And that’s what we need to play to.

A lot of you play various forms of RPG. I don’t. Not because I disapprove of it, but because I never had the patience to do it and because the one game I played “felt” too much like writing, and NO ONE pays me to play these, while they pay me for books. (If you want to pay me to play RPG I’m willing.)

But I think those of you who play RPG will agree: The monster always has a flaw. It might be a stupid flaw, like you need to hit it on this one dime-sized spot behind the left ear. BUT THE MONSTER ALWAYS HAS A FLAW.

And here I must smack all of you, and me too, because we forgot to be Americans these last four years, and we tried to fight the monster on its terms. That’s the way to lose. That’s the way to ALWAYS lose.

For four years, while we held the presidency and one house, we acted like losers, and screamed because we let the bureaucrats pull our strings and get under our skin. NO MORE.

The left’s flaw is a mile wide. No, seriously. We don’t see it, because we don’t fully understand them, the way they don’t understand us. We’re better at predicting them, but we look at them and go “How would someone get so fucked up.”

Well, that’s a subject for an entire dissertation, but what you need to GET this are two keys:

a) They are more social than us. FAR MORE SOCIAL. They take their cues from where they perceive the herd to be. And they’ll accept all sorts of bizarre things, for the warm fuzzies of belonging. They’d rather be miserable with the group, than happy alone. They might not understand “happy alone.” (Even though they have an image of themselves as low heroes. ALL OF THEM. Go figure.) This is why there are no decentralized movements on their side. There must be a leader to follow. To be outside the group is their biggest fear.

b) They never had to think about their positions. To stay on the left, because they’ve controlled the culture so long that to be on the left, all you have to do is coast along, taking what professors and authority figures tell you as revealed truth.
This means their opinions are very vulnerable. We read their sites — though it needs blood pressure medication — but they want ours shut down, because they can’t stand any intellectual challenge to a system they didn’t reason themselves into. And they can’t let go of the system, because it would destroy them to be outside the group.

Their flaw is composed of exactly that. They can’t imagine anyone not acting like them. They think the things they do cause them to be liked and belong, or to intimidate some horrifying — but always laughably weak — other.
IOW they take themselves VERY VERY VERY seriously. They’re important people, doncha know. And the rest of us would be like them if we were as smart as they are.
Their biggest flaw is their self importance, their utter seriousness, and their stupid inability to see that others are different from them.

Look, Zombie Biden and his handler Roundheels McClownLaugh want to take us into — duh — a Chinese like system of credits and silencing, and gullags and the whole panoply of horrors of the Fascist mind.

Do you ever wonder why Fascism took so well in Germany and China? Compliant population. (Communist terror is different, but that also requires a different type of mentality. And yes, the idiots think they’re communist, but as we found out under Obama, they’re mostly fascist.) That’s cultural. And we don’t have it. Though we’ve been much too nice for too long.

So, be American. See, I was in Portugal when checking speed by radar was introduced. The entire extent of their non-compliance (and Portugal isn’t precisely law abiding, itself) was the blinking lights of drivers on the other lane to warn you. In the states? My husband had a little thing on his dashboard that warned him to slow down because radar was being taken.

Someone had designed this thing to circumvent enforcement measures. SOMEONE HAD SOLD IT. It was in every catalogue at the time. And the populace GLEEFULLY embraced it.

All of the fascist (well, commie too) enforcement and spying services call for constant surveillance, total vision into what you do on line, and who you hang out with, and what you read.

What actually is wrong with you people with tech knowledge? I need a software spoofer that shows them every day first thing in the morning I visit the Daily Worker. At noon I read the Nation. And I post comments at whatever the heck antifa uses to organize.

I’m sure a few of you geniuses can do that.

What about those who aren’t very techy? What can we do?

Well, you know, kiddies, the problem we face is that most of the populace SIMPLY doesn’t follow politics. They don’t. They just see a digest and THINK this means that it’s all above board, etc. I mean, they see the election map and think it’s real, and that it must be absolutely true.

So? Make doggerel verse. Find out how to rhyme something with Commie Lawhorish and laptop from hell, and election fraud. For extra credit make a stamp or stickers. Put them on phone poles. Put them on bus stops. You have to use a public toilet? Put it there. Let the knowledge penetrate from below. It doesn’t even have to be very funny. People tend to startle-laugh at those who speak the forbidden.

Oh, and Joe Lying and Commie LaWhorish are going to lock down the country and take the economy down for three months. Which should finish us off.
Don’t let them finish us off. Seriously. This can go anywhere from refusing to obey stay at home orders (do you know how easy it is to fake the essential work papers? I mean most are printed on a home printer. And you can put a phone # on them that’s a buddy’s who will vouch for you.) to creating an underground economy. This is hardest, btw. for distributing food, but we’re more or less managing it now. Find a local rancher or farmer. And create networks of friends till you find one.

And while this might seem like an odd time to start a business, it is the perfect time. For instance younger son and I are going to start a non fic, subscription only site, where there will be something every day of the week (Off on weekends) by one of us. And I’m goinng to make a subscription only site for my earcs for fiction. Some of you have said you’d subscribe to the daily output? Well, you might end up reading three novels in chunks, at once, but you’ll be able to do it.

What can you do that you can make money from? Most Americans have more hobbies than you can shake a big stick at, from handywork to oh filk. (BTW a filk about Commie LaWhorish and Zombie Joe and the election heist would be hilarious. Also, who knows, people might pay or send you a tip for it.) And if the stores are going to be closed, we can spin our own, right? DO IT. START NOW.

Have you ever seen a two year old who doesn’t want to go somewhere being carried by a parent? The parent is almost ten times that kid’s size, but if the kid is determined, the carrying can become living hell.

That’s what I want you to do. They want power so badly, and they think we’ll be compliant sheep?

Borrow a motto from Hong Kong and be like water. Be funny, be fluid, move from thing to thing, frustrate their attempts at tracking and controlling us.

Start NOW. Start by disseminating the story of Grand Theft Election in cartoon and song, in meme, in funny rhyme and dramatic play that reveals just what corrupt and ridiculous the hell spawn who’d rule us are.

Be the first kid on your block to give the left a “curl on the floor in the fetal position crying tears and snot” mental breakdown. Do it today.

No power on Earth can make you be compliant and gentle and sweet.

So don’t.

BE AMERICAN. With both feet. And as hard as you can.

All through the lead up to the election, everyone told me if we have a big enough margin, their fraud will be obvious, and then it will be stopped.

We’re here now. WHY IS ANYONE PRETENDING THIS IS NORMAL?

The fraud is OBVIOUS. Really obvious. I’ll be honest, it’s been really obvious for decades, but it’s now in plain view of everyone.

But because the left disseminated that WE’d say there was fraud, the f*king stupid duckies are buying it and falling in line.

I’ll be honest, if people ON MY OWN F*CKING side don’t stop patting their backs about how great it is that we have a divided government again, I’m going to rip their arms off and beat them to death with them. (And this is why I’m not on the PJM live blog right now, because I’d go profane.)

Yeah, because the GOP was so good at fighting back without Trump. And will be without Trump. And President Ho won’t start truth and justice tribunals on Trump and all his associates. And she won’t use a pen and a phone.

HAS EVERYONE LOST THEIR F*CKING MINDS? Asking for a friend inn a saner reality.

Yeah, I get it. People like to pretend there’s no fraud, because that allows them to think things are still working and so are “normal.” (The “new normal”, you know, the one where kindly uncle Joe locks us all up and makes us all wear the face rag of submission. Because Winnie the Flu is going to kill us all, and also, oh, yeah, the Earth is basically baking.)

People want to go about their lives, and live and do their things. Good Lord, you think I don’t want that?

But the fraud is not normal. The fraud is at levels none of us actually knows if more than a few insane people voted for Joe and the Ho. (Yeah, I know that moniker is my ticket to the re-education camps. Molon Labe.)

Any moment now, they’re going to declare Nevada for Lying Biden, a man that without the fraudulent help of his party never got more than 1% of the vote for any national office (except when tied to the clean and articulate black man, as he would say.) A man who is now deep in the throes of dementia and whose running mate is a communist. And then the media, and the deep state, and probably a lot of columnists on the right will start talking about how unseemely it is for Trump to keep challenging the results. Or the SC will think it’s in the best interests of the nation to not hear the case. (Sometimes I think they all take mescaline, all the time.)

And then what?

Because at that point, America is DONE. It no longer exists. And none of the electorate, but those hooked to big brother’s boob tube 24/7 can believe that voting will make any difference.

And seriously, guys, it’s NOT a matter of Trump. IT REALLY ISN’T.

He is our flag of how pissed off we are, and he has unique abilities, but really, it’s not “we must make Trump president.” The left will think so, because they’re f*cktards (yes, sorry, that word will be used a lot because it’s that kind of day.) who project their emotions onto us. Specifically they tend to cult of personality, so they think we do too.

But this is not about Trump. This never was about Trump. And btw, inchoate and often grabbing hold of the wrong philosophy by the shirttail, the “deplorables” and “chumps” the world over are rebelling. Those who don’t agree with the agenda of the global elites have been revolting for the last 4 years, nonstop. You don’t know that, because the media won’t report it.

Kind of like they don’t report the multiple, glaring acts of fraud all over the country. and have now seized on “if a reporter says it didn’t happen, it’s disproved.” (F*cking psychotic high priests of Marxism. Couldn’t they just be respectable satanists?)

So, it’s not about Trump. What is it about?

Well, the left has been frauding a LONG time. No, really, DECADES. And they fraud all over the world (though less massively in countries that have some sort of A election security apparatus.) But they fraud there too. And everyone more or less knows. Also, they’re really good at rules lawyering their way to power.

So, what that has caused is this:

The left, untied from the voters, and not needing their approval, has gone more and more off the reservation. Those they are trying to impress are the rest of the international media and other Marxist theolo– theorists all over the world. And to do that, they keep going further and further left (which explains the f*ckdinglebells screaming “no borders, no wall, no America at all.” I.e. fighting for the dissolution of their own country.)

Honestly, I think the only thing that saves the republic, right now? Is a hard reset. It’s the Supreme Court saying “uh, no. This election is way too corrupted at every possible level. Electors will meet two months later. EVERY state must purge its rolls completely. All new sign up with proof of citizenship, and then a national day off, where EVERYONE votes. If you can’t vote in person, request a ballot x time in advance, and drop it here. NO MAIL. If you must be absent on the day, vote a day or two early. BUT shows us proof you can’t.” And then people would vote and there would be federal observers at every poling place. And the counting would be done in public.

THAT would restore our faith in the elections as a way to tell the will of the people. (And it’s my humble prediction the f*cking lunatic left wouldn’t carry a state. NOT A ONE.)

What are the chances of that? Judging by the preemptive surrender of my fellows on the right, probably none. The chances are they’ll pile on Trump to make him stop being “unseemly” and then they’ll go to work analyzing the election to prove that the only reason the red wave didn’t carry him to a second term is that he’s too “uncouth.” What we really need is someone like Pierre Delecto.

And then yeah, we’ll have divided government for two years. Except all the congress creatures will know the fix is in, so they’ll roll over for the left, so maybe one of their seats won’t be taken, and they’ll be part of the pet loyal opposition.

Is this what you want? Because it’s not what I want.

And the only thing that can stop it now, short of a full conflagration (which is still preferable to commies forever. Look at how out of control they’ve got under the semblance of an American system and imagine what they’ll do when unfettered and knowing they’re unfettered) it is time to STOP PRETENDING THIS IS NORMAL.

MAKE A NOISE PEOPLE. SPEAK OUT. Collect instances of fraud before they disappear down the memory hold.

Support Trump’s fight against the fraud. DO NOT STOP. DO NOT SHUT UP.

Trump trains, signs, banners, or just screaming online. Let them know we will not go quietly into that good night.

For now, it’s our best chance.

The new normal ISN’T and I refuse to play their psychotic games.

“How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?’

‘Four.’

‘And if the party says that it is not four but five—then how many?’

‘Four.”

George Orwell, 1984

You can let the left fraud itself in, but you’ll eventually have to shoot your way out. In the dark, and half starved and frozen. DO NOT ACCEPT THEIR FRAUD AS NORMAL. AND REFUSE TO LET THEM FORCE YOU TO DO SO.

Remember, as Heinlein exhorted, to keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.

And those of you who are believers, PRAY like there’s no tomorrow. Because there might not be.

And now, maybe Benadryl will make me sleep (but I doubt it.)

Those of you in obviously dangerous zones get the f*ck out and go bunk with a friend for the foreseeable. I mean it. You have no idea how crazy this is going to get. I have some.

You’ve heard the phrase: make hay while the sun shines?

VOTE. Get out there and vote. Vote as if you life depended on it. If you are a regular on this blog, it probably does.

Vote if you’re in a deep red area and think your vote doesn’t count. Vote if you’re in a deep blue area and you think your vote doesn’t count. Vote if they call the election before you get out there. Vote. GET OUT THERE AND VOTE.

Yes the third box is woobly and leaky and the dereliction of duty of our journalists and educators (not to mention the invincible ignorance of both groups) means even non-fraudulent leftist votes are UNINFORMED. Which means we might not have a chance.

BUT it is NOT the fourth box. And we know what’s in the fourth. Pandora’s had nothing on it.

So vote while our flag is still there. Get your ass out there, stand in line if you have to, wear the face diaper if you have to, BUT VOTE.

According tot he suggestion of the Wallaby, this is an open thread for Election Day talk.

I probably won’t be back till tomorrow morning. Oh, who am I kidding? I tried that in 2016, and friends and kids started sending me texts around eight pm so I ended up crashing in on Steve and Melissa Green, and huddling in their living room, so I had someone to chatter nervously at.

I don’t know if history repeats itself, but if things are clear by the evening SOMEONE will text and I’ll know. Depending on the result, I might come here to chatter or just got to bed (I haven’t slept in weeks.) or to write a Don’t Jump Off the Ledge, We Need You, post. And pray not a repeat of 2012, where I was talking a friend off the ledge on my phone, another on private messaging, and two members of my own family in the house, all at the same time. This is not something you do to a depressive, btw. Force her to come up with and invent “upsides” to keep others from committing suicide.

I’m going to spend a few hours on my knees, praying to Himself the third box preserves the republic for now, and a fourth is not needed.

And then I’ll probably write a pride and prejudice variation, because it will keep me amused and doesn’t require a brain. (It’s fanfic. Not an insult to those who write it or read it, but it requires less brain than if I do the plotting and characters myself.)

And you mugs, GO VOTE. And then if you’re believers — or even if you’re not. The novelty might amuse Him into listening! — PRAY that when this election is done our flag is still there, and still stands for a Constitutional Republic devoted to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Go be Americans.

It is the day before what might very well be the most important — and disastrous — election in the country’s history. And it if goes that way, the last one too.

Before I woke up I ran through my head the things I should say and cover.

But I’ve been sitting in front of the computer for an hour, staring at the screen, because, what is there to say?

I can tell the people holding back and deciding not to vote or to vote for Biden because Trump is “Uncouth” and “mean tweets” and “not presidential” that they’re idiots. But they won’t believe me. They’ll believe it later, when the boot is on their neck, and they’re starving. Or maybe not, because the media will tell them it is the fault of someone else, some evil person who did something to them to prevent the paradise of free money and not having to work, and everyone loving everyone else from coming about. I’ve seen it before. In Portugal it was saboteurs and hoarders when things got bad. And people believed. The same people who believe that Biden is kindly uncle Joe who will make everything great.

I can tell people screaming that Trump is shredding the constitution that he’s actually been bizarrely respectful of states rights. When Feds went to states it was only to protect federal property. Otherwise, he let the governors and mayors handle it.

They won’t believe me, because the media told them that Trump is an evil tyrant and literally Hitler.

Is there anything more ironic than their calling themselves “woke”when their entire approach to reality is to treat it as a fluid dream, in which they remember nothing and follow whatever the pack leaders bay right now?

For my entire adult life every Republican president has been “literally Hitler” even though since Reagan at least they’ve been for reducing government reach, allowing for more individual rights, and treating people the same regardless of race. So, you know, the opposite of literally Hitler.

So what’s the use of telling people this, when they’re blinded by their own need to belong, to be part of the herd and to believe whatever they’re told is true.

Many of them will die without ever realizing they’ve been lied to, because their memory extends no more than the beginning of the latest screaming.

It’s global too. The left is going crazy in unison. I was flabbergasted, yesterday, to find that those who oppose Brexit blame Russia interference for its winning.

Okay, Russian interference was insane here, originating in a Hilary Clinton favor from the Russians to discredit her opponent Donald Trump. We KNOW this. It’s been proven. It’s only the deep rot of our investigative agencies that has prevented arrests from being made before the election. Having cooperated with Obama and his administration — and speaking of shredding the constitution — to confound and destroy Trump’s presidency itself, those agencies now thing helping Biden win is part of helping their own survival. Besides, every communist regime needs their own secret police, and these people are in line. No more sentimental nonsense about individual rights. They’ll be able to do onto you, until the end of time. They like that.

This is something else that’s no use telling the left here. They know everything they don’t like is Russia. So, Brexit is, of course, Russia.

It doesn’t matter that Russia was much closer to the Obama administration who, after all, were more flexible. And it doesn’t matter that Putin endorsed Biden. And it doesn’t matter– It’s all “Russia.” And when Biden turns on a dime and talks about our friends, the Russians, they’ll turn too, and forget everything.

Sometimes I wonder if there’s hallucinogenics in the water.

But what the long and horrible history of the 20th century showed us is that it’s just humans. Humans are capable of the most horrendous things.

Like, destroying the most successful system the world has ever seen, the one that has fed, clothed and raised the living standards of most of the world, in return for one that has never achieved anything ever except misery, destruction and mass graves.

Above I’ve used Communism and socialism as what will be brought in on us. I know that purists, and particularly idiots of the left will try to argue this on the basis of “economic organization.”

But it really doesn’t matter. Once the system stops being by and for the benefit of the individual who is allowed to make unfettered economic decisions, it always ends up the same. Call it communism, call it socialism, call it feudalism, call it Cuba, call it North Korea.

Once that train is set in motion and people can’t call it back, the people who have the power will work to concentrate more power and more money into their hands. What they call it, and the justification they use to stomp on the human face is irrelevant. Those with power end up very very rich, and the rest of the people end up starving. Until it eventually all collapses.

As for why I think this is what the left proposes to do to America? It starts with removing our ability to protest what they do to us, to defend ourselves from false charges, or even to demand reward for our labor, and decry injustices done to us. All of which is already being done through platforms and press aligned with the left and working to bring on this regime.

Also neither Biden or the functioning brain of the two will deny they want to open the borders, pack the courts, abolish the police (except THEIR police, of course), lock the populace down to defend us from a virus (that’s not how viruses work, but they won’t tell people that) forbid gas-powered vehicles, and generally work to destroy our economy, so they can squat, fat and poisonous above the ruins of our nation.

I could — I have — shouted that from the rooftops. It doesn’t matter. even people on our side don’t realize that this time, this once, the left HAS to play for all the chips. Even on our side people think this is just a game, and if they just sit this one out to punish Trump for “mean tweets” or whatever, they can vote the way they want the next election, and nothing much bad will happen in the interim.

The problem is the left are cornered rats. Not only is the tech going against them, with communications ever more distributed (despite their dominance of platforms) but during Trump’s presidency their ineptness and rage has revealed more about how they work than the people have ever known before.

For now, their captive media is holding back the full deluge of their horrible actions from the public. To do it, they only had to destroy the economy and put us all under house arrest, which is an extreme measure and also a measure of their desperation.

They must win, you see, because otherwise they face dissolution.

And incompetent as they are, they know — THEY KNOW — they must win. While our side thinks it’s politics as usual.

There is nothing I can do or say to change that.

So all I can say is this, should we not receive as a miracle, from almighty G-d that we beat the margin of fraud and all the fail-safe machinations already in place for our destruction, remember:

Even in the depths of tyranny people resist. Sometimes it means dying, sometimes it means working in small and patient ways.

Even if there’s no hope in our life time, teach the children well and send them forth. Ideas are hard to kill. They have no bodies of their own.

Even if we must burn, remember the falling star. It burns most brightly as it is destroyed.

And generations yet unborn will read of it and marvel, and wonder and know that humans, no matter where and how they live, are not just evil and dark, and made to live in mud and vileness.

If we must burn, my friends, burn brightly. Make such a fire in the night that it will illuminate the human mind forever.

Book Promo

*Note these are books sent to us by readers/frequenters of this blog.  Our bringing them to your attention does not imply that we’ve read them and/or endorse them, unless we specifically say so.  As with all such purchases, we recommend you download a sample and make sure it’s to your taste.  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. I ALSO WISH TO REMIND OUR READERS THAT IF THEY WANT TO TIP THE BLOGGER WITHOUT SPENDING EXTRA MONEY, CLICKING TO AMAZON THROUGH ONE OF THE BOOK LINKS ON THE RIGHT, WILL GIVE US SOME AMOUNT OF MONEY FOR PURCHASES MADE IN THE NEXT 24HOURS, OR UNTIL YOU CLICK ANOTHER ASSOCIATE’S LINK. PLEASE CONSIDER CLICKING THROUGH ONE OF THOSE LINKS BEFORE SEARCHING FOR THAT SHED, BIG SCREEN TV, GAMING COMPUTER OR CONSERVATORY YOU WISH TO BUY. That helps defray my time cost of about 2 hours a day on the blog, time probably better spent on fiction. ;)*

I’M IN THIS ANTHOLOGY: Divided we Fall: One Possible Future.

Political upheavals can be a very dangerous time, especially when ideologies are as far apart as they are now. Divided we Fall presents one possible future, one where powerful forces act behind the scenes to effect the change they’ve wished to create for decades, and have largely been held back. What happens when a nation is sharply divided, anarchistic forces allowed to run wild, and the police are held at bay or even defunded? Add in a presidential assassination, and you have all the potential for a world changing situation. In this world, Divided we Fall.

A collection of talented veteran bestselling authors and several new ones join together to paint a picture of the post 2020 election that none of us hope to see come about. But the more we watch events unfold, the more anything seems possible.

(*MY story involves the founding of the USAian religion. – SAH)

FROM MARY CATELLI: Crow Curse

An ancestor’s folly, stealing from a dead wizard, left them all turning to crows daily and bitterly attacking any of their number who stole from the dead.

Yet a dying wizard may hold the key of escape. . . .

FROM CEDAR SANDERSON: The Groundskeeper: Raking Up the Dead.

The ghouls, wraiths, and ghosties had not been part of the job description. Or maybe they had, just not in so many words. The neatly printed sign next to the ornate gates had simply read “Cemetery groundskeeper and caretaker needed. Inquire within.”

Now Chloe’s trying to calm an irascible ghoul, help a lost ghost find his way back to his grave, and get the mowing done before she needs to break out the bush hog instead… Who knew being a groundskeeper meant trying to keep things in the ground?

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: ROT

It was Halloween night and there was a horse at my door. Or at least a horse’s head. And he was carrying a basket of candy. And he stood six feet tall, wore a wine colored sweater, artistically ripped jeans and expensive tennis shoes.

I sighed and started to close the door, and the horse said, “No, Eileen, listen.” He lifted the basket, “I brought candy for Tori and Talon.”

I sighed again. I hadn’t seen Paul in six months. The lawyers had almost made everything neat and ready for signing. Seeing him at the door hurt. I didn’t want it to hurt. On the other hand, really, he had never been abusive or done anything that justified keeping him away from the twins. Particularly on Halloween.

This story is now part of a collection for sale here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09W3WBJYJ

I was going to do a slightly Halloween-like story, but that and/or the chapter won’t happen, mostly because I slept really really badly and think I need at least a day off today.

I’ll try to do the chapter tomorrow, as well as the promo.