Sorry, guys. It was a very weird day compounded by the fact I drove about six hours yesterday, so by the time I went to bed, I kept startling myself awake from dreams I was driving and… falling asleep. So I woke up early today for things that I couldn’t be late for. I just got back to the hotel.

On the good side, I drove six hours. On the highway. Those of you who know my issues with driving, particularly on the highway, know how momentous this is.

So I’ll put up the book promo tomorrow, since we actually have a very nice batch of books.

I told you this week was going to be weird even for me. OTOH hoping to get these two books out the door so I can publish one this month, and one next month.
I’m also well into editing the Con books, and will talk to Kate about the next two next week, and hopefully lock in the contract. (Editing: SOMEHOW we don’t have an edited version, which is why they’re not up yet. And yeah, I’m doing it, because why not? I was still sleeping 6 hours a night. It will be fine.)

She also has some space operish mil-sf and other stuff I’ll try to get out ASAP. I mean, what am I doing, otherwise? worrying? what good does that do?
And yes, in case that doesn’t come through: I am feeling better.
So promo post and special Labor Day challenges tomorrow (when husband has his birthday, too.)

Catch you on the flip side.

It Takes Longer Than You Think by B. Durbin

I was recently reading a fantasy series—it doesn’t matter much which one—where the world building started out quite well, with a pre-industrial collection of cities and farming towns, but eventually dissolved into poor world building, in that a number of things didn’t make sense.

At the heart of the issue was that the author was evidently unaware of what living on the margin really means. A pre-industrial farming society, especially one such as the one portrayed, where darkness means that everyone and everything has to be safely inside, has almost no room for error, and is going to be on the edge of starvation.

To begin with, how long does it take to bake bread? I know the answers you’re likely to give, but in a society living on the margin, it takes nine months.

Let me explain.

We’re used to our modern society, where you have many things right at hand, but to make bread in a pre-industrial society, we need to be like the Little Red Hen and start at the very beginning. Which means a piece of land.

Land doesn’t come in bags of soil from the garden center. Land starts with what you have. It’s not precisely suited to wheat where I am, so the challenges are a bit different, but a lot of the process is the same. First you have to prepare the ground, which means you have to deal with the plants that are already there. And the rocks and other things that get in your way. Plowing is generally the first step, a deep breaking up of root structures and turning over of the dirt. Where I am, the soil is heavily clay, so things need to be added to break it up. Straw is good for that, as is any dry foliage that is unlikely to sprout. Definitely nothing diseased; you don’t need nasty spores mildewing up your plants. And you’ll want nutrients in there too, all the stuff you’ve been composting over the last year, steer manure or well-aged horse manure, fish heads, night soil, those sorts of things.

This will not smell good.

You may want to harrow the field to break up the clods and even stuff out—yes, “harrowing” started out as an agricultural term—and you haven’t even gotten to planting yet. When you do plant, you have to plant more than you’re going to need, because pests and other problems are going to take out a portion of your crop. While it’s in its early growth, you’ll have to go weeding every day, lest they overtake your crops, but once they’re established, they often out-compete the weeds. But you have to make sure they have plenty of water, the right amount of sun, no disease, no nibbling small mammals (or big mammals; deer are agricultural pests too), and basically you have to maintain the field for as long as the growing season is. 60-90 days is a typical amount of time for many crops after fruit set—which means until you’ve got flowers and pollination, you can’t even start the count. (And mind that you have bees and butterflies, or you’re not getting much of a crop.)

Once you’ve got the crop ready, you have to harvest. Of course, you have to be careful, because cut grain is liable to rot if it gets wet, and in a pre-industrial society, you don’t have the weather report as such. So you set your harvest for a dry day and try to get it under cover as soon as you can to dry out. Once it’s dried, you have to separate out the grain, which means threshing it. (One such threshing tool is a flail, which fantasy writers often imagine makes a good weapon of war. Maybe improvised, but that’s the sort of thing that can literally come back to hurt you almost more easily than it can hurt someone else.) Once it’s threshed, you separate the wheat from the chaff—yes, there’s another agricultural phrase for you—by throwing it up in the air in a bit of a breeze and letting the grain fall while the straw and other bits blow off.

So now you have grain, hopefully without too many straw bits in it. Time to get it ground into flour. You could do it yourself, with a mortar and pestle, that would take darn near forever. Or you could take it to a miller, who has millstones, which are set a tiny fraction apart and have channels to carry ground wheat to the edges. The millstones are turned by gears and wind, water, or animals, and the quality of the stones affects how fine the grain is, and whether you get little bits of stone in your flour to wear away your teeth over the years. You get back your flour—the miller has probably taken a portion of it in payment—and now you’re ready to bake.

Except you need some way to do it! While there are means to cook bread over an open fire, you need at the very least a sturdy pan in which to cook it, and the fuel to cook it with. Be careful of your fuel choices, because the smoke is likely to flavor your food over an open fire. If you have an oven, it’s very likely brick set to the side of the hearth, with its own door, and that will keep smoke and ash out of your food. (Hope it’s after the invention of the chimney, at least.) So if you have a nicely bricked hearth, chimney, and oven, you’re doing great. Plus wood, peat, dried herbivore turds (yes, that’s a thing), charcoal from a forest fire, or whatever you’re going to burn.

What else do you need for bread? Well, yeast is actually pretty easy to come by. Stale beer is the simplest (beer comes before bread in human history), but anything that’s fermented can do. In a pinch, you can get the flour wet and wait for *it* to ferment, that only takes a day or two. Three or four if you want that sourdough taste. Make sure nothing nasty starts growing, though—you want fermentation, not rot. Eggs? Well, if you have chickens, you can have egg in your bread. Milk? Cows, goats, sheep.

Now that you have all of your ingredients, you can bake! Baking itself is the shortest part of this all. What you’re really going to want to spend time on is safe storage techniques, though, because you can’t wait until the next harvest for your next loaf of bread. Pottery is pretty choice, as it’s waterproof and vermin-proof. Hope you have a potter around, and the right kinds of clay, and plenty of fuel for the firing…

*Note from the blog owner – B. Durbin didn’t know if this post would be germane for this blog. There was just a feeling that perhaps fantasy writers should know more about the real world before setting out to build imaginary ones.
I think, on the contrary, it is the same airy-fairy sort of notion that of course our ancestors could just run to the supermarket to buy some flour (i.e. for instance that regency that started with the duchess driving a gig to buy groceries…) that gives us the notion that, oh, a state (the glorious masked, locked, bear flag people’s republic) can postpone evictions for non-payment of rent indefinitely.
There is a generation/generations of people raised in such pampered affluence they literally don’t know that everything they can buy — or, say, loot — is literally pieces of other people’s lives: time spent making the things (and effort, and other materials, etc) so this thing could exist.
So, even supposing that insurance could replace the full value of looted goods (it can’t, for the record) the goods themselves would be gone, and with them the pieces of people’s lives that went into them existing and being available for sale.
Looting, and vandalism, which is all the pseudo revolutionary chic of pampered establishment brats these days is in fact a series of partial murders. You’re destroying parts of people’s lives.
You’re destroying value that can’t be replace by money, because money is just a symbol, not the thing.
Do that enough and civilization collapses. And those so pampered as to think that things just appear and that goods aren’t made or created or invented, just infinitely redistributed, really will not like what comes after.
So, yes, this post is germane. It’s a reminder of the real world. Which is that you can’t change by wishing it different. -SAH*

I’m one of those people who doesn’t believe in affirmations. If I tell myself “”You’re good, you’re wonderful, your talent is amazing!” the voice at the back of my head just gets sarcastic. And frankly, it gets sarcastic enough to undo any even vague acquiescence I might be giving to that stuff. Plus my sarcasm…. I’m really good at it. So I emerge beaten.

In the same way, I don’t believe in pampering yourself. Look, I know myself. I’m made of laziness and loving not to do much. Yeah, I say if I win the lottery I’d probably write more, but I’d have to discipline myself to do so. Because otherwise I could easily while my life away going down rabbit holes on the internet. And don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ve recognized the disease in a few of you. Something is mentioned and even if you don’t have any interest in it, suddenly you have to know EVERYTHING about it. You look up what seems like two minutes later, and 400 years have gone by, give or take a week. This is actually how Deep Pink came about. From simultaneous deep dives into apparitions (some of which smell a little of the diabolus and to be fair aren’t certified) and Hard Rock bands history. Okay, I lost less than 400 years. Only about three months, but seriously, I could have done so many other things with that time. Including written other books that have been waiting longer.

Anyway, the point is if I say “I’m going to pamper myself” I don’t even know what that looks like. First thought is a lot of chocolate, but that has its own issues. I mean, that type of pampering, when I used to do it after finishing a writing jag, usually meant a day or two on the sofa sleeping, drinking hot chocolate, or eating ice cream out of a carton, and watching the A & E Pride and Prejudice.

That’s good for like a day, but then I start feeling guilty, mid of the second day. And by the third I’m too guilty to enjoy it.

Just letting myself do whatever no judgement has the same issue. I’ve slipped into that a few times this year, more out of of “I can’t even” than out of “I’m going to let myself do this.” It’s not fun. After two weeks you start feeling you’re completely useless, and why are you bothering getting out of bed in the morning.

So, we’ve established I have no clue how to be good to myself, right? And I suspect I’m not alone. In fact, according to older son, I only ever accomplish stuff by being the most complete (compleate, really) *sshole to myself. He’s not wrong.

But listen to me anyway, if nothing else because I’m a past expert at doing this all wrong: Be good to yourself.

We’re all hanging on by our fingernails, barely surviving. No, really. Well, okay, I am. 2020 has been a scouring year. I feel we’ll emerge from it stronger and more determined…. if it doesn’t kill us first. The jury is out on the “if,” but hey if it kills us our problems at least in this reality are over. And all I accomplish by telling myself “I’m not worried” is that I worry at a subconscious level, and then don’t sleep. We’ve seen our country turned upside down by fiat of a bunch of dictators. We’ve seen petty criminals and the children of the rich riot and burn down our cities. We’re not allowed to engage in commerce unless we muzzle. And we’re told things that are patently not so — this virus is the most dangerous evah! The country is tired of capitalism! We’re the most racist nation evah! — even while our eyes and reason tell us something different.

And some of us — okay me — have lost all our fun stuff. I haven’t been out to the botanic gardens or the zoo since March. Dining at Pete’s is okay, if you feel like having food in the apocalypse, with most of the diner empty and everyone looking strained. Oh, and nothing can be spontaneous. One of the joys of both of us working from home most of the time has been “oh, hey, I’m not getting anything done” Headache/whatever. “How about we go for a quick walk and then hit up the lamb’s special at Pete’s/have the charcuterie platter at the German place/go to x lecture at the museum?” And we can do stuff at the drop of a hat. It might be we have to work two hours late, but we can go and do it then. Only not now. Most of those things are not happening/curtailed/I’m not sure they’d let me in with “just” face shield.

And most of us — even my husband, which is weird — have lost our “time”. I don’t have a very accurate time-sense. Oh, I’m pretty good about “what time is it” but not “What day of the week/month is it.” It used to be anchored by our day off — Saturday — I could kind of figure out how many days it had been since we’d taken an afternoon off. Most of the time. But that is… gone.

Other people had other things they did. Gaming night. Saturday breakfast with friends. The day they meet Bob for lunch and to catch up (Bob gets around.) BUT all that is gone. So most people are disoriented and have no idea what day it is, or sometimes what month it is. (March. It’s the billionth day of March 2020. I swear.)

And because everyone is frayed and stressed and on our last nerve, we are getting other hits. A lot of other hits. Stress increases illness, and at any rate some of us are on the run from our doctors, who make us wear masks though they know damn well we have breathing issues. People aren’t going in for routine checkups, and everyone assumes it’s fear of the ‘rona, but I think that’s stupid. It’s like college students not wanting to have classes in person it’s assumed to be fear of the ‘rona, and that’s stupid too. Sure, some of them — those who mainline XINN on the daily — might be scared. But given the ratings of those stations, I doubt that’s a majority. It’s just that most people don’t enjoy going out in public during the pretend apocalypse, or LARPing the end of civilization. Everyone in masks, and having to stay out of shouting distance of each other (which btw in Europe is only 3 feet, or as we call it in the states “normal”) and everyone acting like we’re all going to die? It’s depressing and stressful, and none of us — even those who CAN wear masks without huffing like Thomas the tank engine after five minutes — wants to do that.

So, stress and lack of medical care, we’re all losing friends to death, or finding out they have cancer. And all our personal relationships are stressed as heck. Even our impersonal relationships. I’m still not sure — and kind of gobsmacked — at the commenter who took offense/though I was casting him out yesterday. What the hell, even? Normally, at least I have a vague sense of a suspicion of a glimmer of what I might have said, but not that time.

And if it were just commenters on the internet, I’d just take a vacation from it. But all human contact is strained, (and rare.) Husband and I are making a point of being extra nice to each other because we realized we were each overreacting to everything, for instance. And in the store I feel anger and fear radiating from people. And what’s worse, as Herb pointed out in yesterdays post, I’m not even sure what they’re angry about/scared of.

Me? I wake up screaming at the thought that our republic has barely two months to live, if things are done as they always have been and the frauding is worse than ever.

And I don’t know what to do. I’ve been doing (rare) writing jags, reading the world’s stupidest cozy mystery series (No, let’s see…. The main character has the same name as the author; in the inevitable love triangle she chooses the insane-sounding beta male (kind of like Dyce deciding she’s in love with Ben, but only if Ben were WAY more effeminate and weird); the police are complete bumbling fools. Not “the character is so weird that she/he sees what the police doesn’t” but complete bumbling fools.) I’ve been reading them one after the other because they require no mental effort. I’ve been doing covers for books that haven’t reverted and might never revert and obsessing on them, like it mattered (Oh, I do have plans to engage a lawyer and/or burn it all down (which would be entertaining) at the end of September, but at best it’s going to be a bitter battle. Also, I figured out Luce’s clothes were too tight/weird so I changed them this morning, and will post at end.) And I’ve been cleaning/refinishing/fixing because I’ve found that being exhausted means I sleep for at least a couple of hours.

None of this is healthy. None of this makes me feel better.

We’re going sort of on vacation (it’s complicated) tomorrow for a week (which means posting here will be weird, meh, like you’re not used to that these last few months) and hope to get my head in order as far as writing/getting back to writing. Well, at least I can’t RENDER on the laptop.

And then I’m trying to figure my way back to some sort of sanity. Because if it all goes to hell and gets very bad this winter (which I fear will happen no matter who wins) I need a routine in place, so that I can survive it mentally, emotionally and physically. And hopefully be around for the rebuild. (If they don’t catch me first.)

I think part of it is establishing a routine and sticking to it. Not that I know for sure, because I suck at both those things: routine and “establishing.” But it might be time to make an unwonted effort.

But I hear routines have a calming effect. And you feel like you’re safe, because you’re doing things you’re supposed to be doing at a time you’re supposing to be doing it.

And I’m going to try to make part of that routine being good to myself. No, not that way. Not endless deep dives into internet useless trivia. Not eating ice cream from the carton (well, maybe once a week, but probably not from the carton.)

Because being away for a week — I’ve found in the past — is enough to shatter my “habits” particularly the dysfunctional ones (I’ve fallen into this before, and gone away to a hotel for a week to “reset”) when I come back, I’m going to try really hard to establish a routine where I walk or do something vaguely like exercise every morning (it used to be a thing pre-march) then work, then take an hour and make something nice for lunch (this has become a thing, but it has been erratic) and then I work again till five or so, and then I’ll have something diffferent and fun each day of the week. Yes, rendering (though some of that is work. I owe a few of you covers. But that is not necessarily for “fun time” unless… well, some of it is) and crocheting and, once the sewing room is done, some sewing or drawing (same room.) And I’m going to try to put in time to just sit on the sofa with Dan and read. And I’m going to schedule in the occasional low-carb hot chocolate or dessert. Because.
And I’ll try to write blogs at night for the next day. And do more articles for PJ, because some stuff still needs to be said.

And then I’m going to hope it works. I’m going to try really hard to be good to myself. Even if in my case that means doing it on the schedule and forcing myself to do what’s good for me and being good to myself on the clock.

I am, of course, also open to suggestions, because, you know, I’m kind of new at this.

But I suspect most of you are better at this than I, and I want to ask: What are you going to accomplish by worrying obsessively, or getting in fights on the internet? Will it change a yota of what’s to come? If not, then it’s probably best to be good to yourself, and get yourself in good shape, so you can survive what promises to be the most difficult winter of our lifetimes.

Be good to yourself while you can. The time for sacrifice is coming soon.

And below is my latest iteration of my time-waster.

UPDATE Well, one thing can be said…. you guys are making me learn Daz. I should probably scrap the figure and try again. Came CLOSE to it, and lost the positioning in the process. I think this physic is more….believable? Realistic? Though it actually looks worse/bizarre naked, but works better with clothes. I think there’s something toggled on this figure that I can’t see/find and might be from an installation issue. As in most body mods I tried to make it more believable made it even weirder. (Sigh.)
Anyway, this probably looks better…. maybe?

The Great Remasking by HerbN

I am on vacation this week. My in-laws had a non-refundable stay at a resort where they have a membership. Unfortunately, my father-in-law required medical treatment barring travel. As the stay was not movable or refundable, they offered it to us.

The last thing he told us last night when we called to say we were in and checked in without problem was “Have fun and wear masks.”

My in-laws are not what you’d call politically left. They watch Fox News. They rant about the Obamas still. I even, accidentally, said something that led my mother-in-law to rant about how Michelle Obama is a man. Like I said, not on the left and not on the mainstream narrative about Trump and Republicans.

But they are one hundred percent on board with the preferred Narrative about COVID. In doing so, they are part of the Great Remasking.

I’m not talking about the physical masks we are all forced to wear to get the necessities of life, although that is part of it. I am not talking about the Left letting their masks slip and show their actual view of us and their intentions, especially since we got uppity and elected Trump. I’m talking about the mask lain over all of us in the pre-Internet era.

Before the Internet it was hard, although not impossible, to see how many people saw through the mainstream media’s lies. It was hard, but not impossible, to get accurate news on events in the next state, much less across the nation. It was impossible, or so close as to be impossible, to get that information in a timely manner to counter the mainstream’s attempt to create the preferred Narrative.

It was impossible to know if you were and your immediate friends were all that was left of people who didn’t accept the Narrative. Some of us thought we were crazy because no one else thought like we did. Others of us felt a “last man on Earth” isolation. A third group thought we were the one eyed men in the land of the blind and realized that did not make you a king.

Then came electronic networks. BBSes using things like FidoNet at first and we many tiny contacts. Then came the World Wide Web and with it the widespread adoption of the Internet. People could put up websites and join message boards, under pseudonyms at first, and post what they were afraid to say to a neighbor or colleague (or in a sad comment spouse or partner).

We learned we were not alone. We learned that often our “radical” thoughts were tame compared to other people. Now and then we’d find that guy in the next cubicle who we were afraid to tell we thought the news was full of it on global warming had a well-done analysis of the math that not only reinforced our conclusion, but showed it to be a bit conservative on just how much manure the Narrative was shoveling.

Four years ago, amid much wailing and gnashing of leftist teeth, this realization reached a crescendo. Not only were leftist Democrats defeated with the election of Trump, but they were shorn of the ability to create an illusion that cowed most of the population and frightened the rest into silence. Ever since Trump there have been attempts to build the Narrative and force us to get back in line and shut up for fear of being seen as wrong thinkers. They got no traction until COVID.

Then they politicized a virus. Their allies in the media got into a 24/7 fear mongering. They got us to remask.

I am in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. This is not Obama country. It is not Biden country. Yet I have to wear a mask everywhere. Here or home in Atlanta, I have to wear a mask even to buy groceries. Life requires I hide behind a mask.

And those masks are not just physical. In forcing a mask for the virus while simultaneously politicizing the wearing of masks they have undone the unmasking the Internet created. The undoing is not complete, but it has started.

Is the guy in line behind me at Kroger wearing a mask because he can’t come in without it, or is he wearing it because he’s back on the reservation?

The Great Remasking isn’t about physical masks, although it only works by making a physical mask a requirement to buy necessities. The Great Remasking is about taking away our ability to see we are not alone in our questioning the Narrative. It is about restoring the power to the media and the Left to tell us “this is the Truth and you contradict it at your peril”.

I am not sure how to fight back. A first step could be masks that signal. At first I thought a MAGA mask could do that, but my in-laws are very MAGA. They are also telling me to remember to wear a mask.

I think when I get home I’m going to go to the craft store and get some iron-on letters. A MAGA mask might not signal I do not buy the Narrative, but one that says “forced compliance” might. Sure, it will get looks, but if it gives one other person thinking they are the only one convinced we’re living in mass hysteria that they are not alone in their thinking, I’ll take it.

We may have to comply with the physical masking to buy food, but we do not have to comply with the Great Remasking.

But today my brain wouldn’t leave me alone till I did fan art for my books whose IP is currently not mine. Yeah, it would make a great cover, wouldn’t it?

Anyway, I’m in late-stage showing people my drawings. Who knows? Maybe you’ll put it on the fridge…..

UPDATE: Nat’s face was just WRONG. So I went in and fixed things. Bonus, you can now see that he’s keeping an eye on the madman next to him (and he not wrong. He’s a manicac but he’s the saneish one in that association.)
Because some comments would otherwise be incomprehensible, I’m keeping the original (smaller) underneath.

UPDATE: Nat’s face was just WRONG. So I went in and fixed things. Mostly because it wouldn’t leave me alone till I did. Bonus, you can now see that he’s keeping an eye on the madman next to him (and he not wrong. He’s a manicac but he’s the saneish one in that association.)
Because some comments would otherwise be incomprehensible, I’m keeping the original (smaller) underneath.

It’s 2020 and we’re all cracking.

And no, by that I don’t mean that we’re cracking like crazy on our writing. Most of us are having trouble writing.  A lot of us are having trouble reading. Though I’ve finally got out of the Pride and Prejudice fanfic jag.

I’ve seen people suddenly lose it and start crying over dirty dishes. Or the fact we ran out of peanut butter.

Okay, that was me. Yesterday. But I’ve been watching signs of just that much fragility in everyone I know.

Part of it is the lockdown.  Man — and verily, woman — is a social animal. Not only is it not good for Man — do I need to say “and woman again?” — to be alone, it’s not good for us, when going out to be confronted with “truncated” human faces.

It is instinctive in humans to see human faces in everything. Don’t believe me? Look at a random pattern long enough, and you’ll find faces.  Truncated human faces, the mouth gone, are deeply unsettling to the back of our brain.  It is wrong, mutilated.

Suicides are through the roof. Mental health issues abound.  The young are suffering particularly badly, because on top of all they believe they’re going to die.  (The rest of us are already dead from the ice age, acid rain, fossil fuel depletion, alar, global warming, ozone depletion… I’m sure I’m forgetting some things.  After so much death, one becomes resilient.  Those of us forty and over won’t die. Even if they kill us.)

But the other part of it is that in a contentious political year there’s nowhere to escape.

Remember when you used to have friends that believed exactly the opposite of what you did, and you both knew it, but you were still friends?  You couldn’t talk politics, but you could talk knitting, embroidery, kids, gardening, furniture refinishing, science fiction?  You could sit down and have a cup of coffee with someone whose political views you considered despicable and not mention politics? Not even once?

But that was before the invasion of those for whom everything is political.  Oh, cancel culture already existed. Before social media, I was terrified of saying the wrong word and revealing my real thoughts, and getting blacklisted by publishing houses.

But there were spaces you could draw a breath. Places where you didn’t have to talk and/or think about politics.

And yeah, books and movies were always political.  And since they were mostly controlled by the left, it meant I had to elide portions of them.  But I could tell myself “yeah, sure, the good guy will be a lefty environmentalist and the good guy will be a factory owner, but aside from that, the story holds and is good.”

Of course, that was when comedians also could make jokes without being cancelled and called insensitive.  And when comedians made jokes, rather than just saying “People to the right of Lenin are so dumb!” and expect laughter.

Is this the fault of the left only?

I should be graceful and say that’s not true, but yeah, it is.  The left has confused political beliefs with virtue, and political forecasting with revelation.  And they’re convinced they can create paradise on Earth if they just stamp out the last unbeliever.

This always ends the same way. And it’s not pretty.

It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. Particularly since they hold not just American but most of the world’s institutions in their hands.

I do believe it gets better. I have to. Or it would be better to end it now.  But at any rate I know the trend of technology is making it hard for them to hold their monopoly at communication (and yes, Facebook and Twitter are setting themselves up for a world of trouble.  Only not yet.)

And we’re all cracking.

But there are some compensations.  For one, the masks are off. Really, really off.  And that’s a good thing.  (I do wonder if their obsession with making us mask is because they feel exposed? If it’s a subconscious desire to hide again.)

You can’t lance the boil if you don’t know it’s there.  You can’t get rid of the termites if you don’t hear them chew.  And you can’t rebuild society if there is an army of people secretly digging under your support pillars.

Now it’s not secret.

I mourn the innocent days when I had friends who didn’t need to agree with me on politics. But in this day and age, I’ve started wondering if they ever really were friends, or if they would have hated me, anyway, had they guessed my politics.

Maybe it’s better that way.  Sometimes things need to get worse before they get better.

And sometimes, flowers and new life grow in the cracks.

Build under, build over, build around.

We’re the ones who build!  Get to it.

 

For years, they’ve been teaching minorities (which bizarrely includes women) that everyone is out to get them. For years they’ve been telling everyone that white males are just inherently evil. In schools. Real, reputable teachers have evoked the specter of “white privilege” and “white supremacy” in the most intermixed, racism-free society humans have ever known.  (Not to say there aren’t some racists. As I said, in other posts, in a society of 300 million people, there are people who believe elves are real, people who think they can fly, people who think they’re reincarnated Atlantians.  I’m sure there are people who are racist. Whites even.  It’s just not as significant a portion as any other society ever.)  Only an idiot would be surprised it leads to this:

AutoZone Stabbing Suspect “felt the need to find a white male to kill”

And no, “reparations” don’t work.  (Though I’m perfectly willing to make anyone who has ever owned a slave pay that slave for the harm done, harm is not passed down through the generations that way. We’re all descended from slaves and slave owners, rapists and victims, murderers and saints. Oh, in the US in the current day, both slaver and slave would be recent immigrants. Likely Muslim.) All they do is convince people they’re entitled to something they neither created nor earned. And once you started that, you’ve turned society into a loot and pillage club.

California politicos move forward on plans giving reparations to African Americans

Which means not a society at all.  Just a giant suicidal crab bucket.

The Sacking of New York City: 1970’s Radical Chic Reaches the Streets

But they have no idea who we are, what we believe in or what we do:

The Democrat Lurch Back to the Primitive.

And as I predicted long ago, the things that are changing during this aren’t changing THEIR way.  Nor is the technology.

The Wuhan virus has accelerated existing trends.

 

None of this is new. All the crap that is hitting in 2020 has been coming for at least a hundred years.

It is our duty and our very great privilege to make sure civilization doesn’t fall on our watch.

As they say, courage is contagious. (But I still think you should lie to polls. So we can beat the margin of fraud.)

Rasmussen Reports noticed something very fishy about polling.

Sursum corda. Be not afraid.

 

 

The night after the election, I found myself on a facebook battle with what I suppose we must call an “ally” (white savior, much? Or in this case het savior?).  I.e. the daughter of a friend took it upon herself to warn us that now that Trump had won, they were going to be going door to door to round up all the gay people and put them in camps.

I confess I would have been more puzzled by the deranged idea if it weren’t for the fact that I had heard this before, about W.  In fact, I more or less walked away from a friendship because this woman was offended at my calling her idea that Bush was going to put all the gays in camps “fever swamps.”

I wasn’t as plugged in when I first came to the US, mostly because my husband was almost aggressively apolitical, but I suspect there was the same nonsense about Reagan, particularly when the crisis hit.

This is because the left has no imagination.  Or perhaps because they’ve gone well beyond trying to sell their idea, which we’ve all known is poison since the soviet union fell (or at least all of those who escaped the public indoctrination camps long enough ago) and into scaring several groups of people into thinking that the other side means them ill.  Which is how we got Biden’s eructation “They’re gonna put you in chains.”

The thing that amazes me about this is how these people — even otherwise intelligent, well informed people — never walk back from the cliffs of insanity.  I mean, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who met the “they’re going to kill all gay people!” panicked people after the election in 16.

So– have any of those people ever walked that back?  One? Just one?  Any of them ever said “Uh. Trump actually has gay people in his administration. I guess I was wrong?”

None that I know of.

And this gives me an insight into how poisonous ideologies bent on totalitarianism take control of people.

For decades we’ve wondered how the Germans, some of the most civilized people in Europe at the time, could have committed the atrocities of WWII.  Honestly, they too don’t seem to know how that happened, and in Germany, among the older people in the eighties, you got the sense of their still not being sure how it got that far.

BTW, I BELIEVE the people within sight and smell of the camps who said they didn’t know what was going on there.

No, I don’t believe they didn’t know, or weren’t able to put it together.  I BELIEVE they’d convinced themselves they didn’t know what was going on there. Because they couldn’t live with knowing, and admitting they’d been supporting and aiding evil would break them. So, in self, preservation, they “didn’t know.” Hysterical denial is a thing.

You see, the people who HAVE to have noticed that Trump isn’t rounding up gay people to put in camps, can’t admit it to themselves, because if they did they would have to admit they were duped and completely fooled.

For instance, the young lady on election night, was telling me that Trump holding up a rainbow flag on stage was a “codded message” because “he held it upside down.”  When we pointed out that a) the rainbow flag doesn’t even have set colors, much less an up and down.  b) there was an inscription on the flag (I THINK LGBT for Trump) and the inscription was right side up, she retreated to “the flag wasn’t made by a real gay person.”  Which…. well. I presume the flag was made in slave factories in China, like so much of such things.  Also, how do you certify a real gay person? Is there a central authority? The mind boggles.

This young lady isn’t stupid. Intellectually lazy, poorly educated, but not stupid.  Which means what?

Well, her peer group, her social credit, the people that pass themselves as trend setters and really smart in her groups, all told her that Trump was going to round up gay people.  To admit they were wrong would have broken her. So. She had an investment in believing it.  It made them tell her she was “smart” and “connected.”  To suddenly doubt them would make her an outcast. And of course, the media sells these points over and over and over again.

And the more you buy from them, the more you realized they’re wrong, the more you have to tell yourself you believe the next big panic to come down the pike.  Because if you don’t, you have to admit you were wrong before.  Your own sunk costs hold you captive.  You can’t admit you were encouraging evil people and supporting them, that you were their willing dupe, so the side you’re fighting must be even worse than you suspected, and it must be horrible 24/7.

I believe this is the key to why the good people on the left — and there are still good people there — are still going along with the insanity.

Craziness after craziness has come and gone, including the fact that they tried to impeach Trump because Biden DID blackmail Ukraine.  Insanity after insanity and obviously cooked evidence.

More importantly things have come out about the abortion factories that are Planned Parenthhood outposts.  Tearing babies out in bits so you can sell the bits for profit, to the corrupt oligarchs of China. Insanity like Kermit Gosnell, or that guy that kept babies in jars in the back of his car and his garage.  This is the stuff of true evil, the stuff of mass murderers, the stuff of horror.  How can people face with this continue saying that we should have late-term abortions, and that it’s the mother’s word that determines if a creature is human or not?  HOW?

More importantly, how can writers of science fiction and fantasy look at aborted-baby-parts sold to China to (supposedly) keep the decrepit communist horrors alive another decade and not go “That’s the stuff of vampire legends. Those weren’t the good guys.”  If they fact that fact, they’ll realize they owe Elizabeth Bathory an apology.

And while on that, China, which has been their beau ideal since the Soviet Union collapsed, a place where, supposedly, communism worked (which in part caused them to decide it’s whiteness that causes communism not to work.), has been revealed as basically as evil and corrupted and as ethnically driven as Hitler’s Germany.  But you’ll still hear “good people” on the left tell you that the Chinese aren’t racist and that’s why they do “so well” in Africa.  I know. I’m related to one of those.

Then there is the multiple insanity of the Obama administration, from Fast and Furious which left hundreds if not thousands of Mexicans dead, on a psychological gambit that anyone out of Obama’s freshman-in-college circle would tell him was not going to work.  Or Benghazi where he let good men die (and went after a man who made a movie about Muslims in the US, where we’re supposed to be able to say whatever we wan, as an excuse) so as not to admit we still had problems with terrorism, and potentially jeopardize his re-election.  And ten the Iran bullshit.  I have to tell you I can’t decide whether Obama was always Iran’s puppy, and simply had to pay back, or if he is just a raging idiot. But it’s one or the other, plus a lot of evil. He flew PALLETS OF CASH to the evil oligarchs of Iran who crush their own people under an iron yoke, while screaming death to the US and Israel.  He did this in exchange for a meaningless promise they wouldn’t develop nukes, which is mind-boggling stupid and evil.  And he thought that was his signature deal, his apotheosis. And the trained seals saw nothing wrong with that.

Then there is the fact he subverted our judicial system and our investigatory agencies to attack his political enemies.

And all this is as nothing compared to 2020, where they — desperate, and realizing that the technology is moving people away from the conditions that foster central control, i.e. packed cities, largely illiterate workforce, repetitive mindless work in large conglomerates run by the same clock — decided to pull all the stops.

The jury is out on whether they meant the covidiocy to be a sophisticated psy-ops.  I’m sure it was just that on the part of China. And very sophisticated indeed, to the point that around February I was very worried.  To be fair, this might be fostered by the fact that the casualties were worst in China due to their truly appallingly bad level of hygiene and pollution.  That said, by March it was obvious to me — and I’m not a trained intelligence officer — that the illness would not be half as bad as they were touting, and would probably amount to “a bad flu.”

I find it amusing that if the CDC is right and the cases in which COVID-19 was primarily responsible for the death of the patient are 6% of the total reported, it comes to exactly my prediction when we were pushed into lockdown: 10k people, more or less.  Which, yes, is very sad, but it’s the number of people who die of the flu every winter.

However, whether our authorities were duped or malicious, no one can pretend at this point that between the continuing semi-lock down and the orders to mask up while there’s no proof the masks do anything, and there is plenty proof they aren’t necessary among school children, it becomes obvious that whatever else this is, it is a malicious attack on our society and economy. An unprecedented attack, never before performed by a sixth column on any nation.

So, why do so many people — particularly on the left — believe that Winnie the Flu has killed 30 million people? Well, because they have to. Otherwise they’d look like idiots.  (BTW it didn’t take a genius to figure out if the homeless and the poorer countries in Africa where China has a presence weren’t dying like flies, the illness was NOT that dangerous.  I know it didn’t take a genius, because I figured it out.  So why did people hysterically fall for it? I don’t know. That one has me stumped. And why are so many people holding onto the lie?  Because they also can’t figure out how they fell for it.

And now we have the riots.  And you need to be a particular kind of stupid and indoctrinated — say a CNN reporter — to believe they’re mostly peaceful.  Most of us who live in blue cities have found our lives changing, our daily routines being calculated to stay out of the path of the crazy (which gives me PTSD from 70s Portugal.)

And there are people defending the looting as “taking back what’s theirs.” Because apparently mostly affluent, college-educated white kids and/or petty criminals have the “right” to whatever they want from stores.  Since that stuff is made by elves and represents no human effort or investment.

Then there was trying to turn Kyle Rittenhouse self-defense shooting into “white supremacy.” Because apparently killing a white pedophile rapist who is trying to brain you with a skateboard means you believe the only good people are blond. Or something.

And then yesterday there were two shootings of Trump supporters. Note that there isn’t any excuse for those.  You can scream they’re “white supremacists” but even if they were, that might be a stupid opinion but it — or black supremacy, or all the other crazy floating around — aren’t capital crimes.  But the truth is, there is nothing to indicate that. They were just political opponents of the left. That’s it. And as much as the left would like it to be otherwise, that is not a capital crime.

So, to the good people of the left: your side has now descended into killing people who disagree with them politically.

And don’t tell us that’s necessary, because otherwise you’ll die under Trump’s iron boot.  His first four years seem to show that means you’ll do well financially and frankly, your primacy in academe, entertainment and the media remained unchallenged.

So why? Why the desperate panic?  Is it because you KNOW now you were duped? Because the accumulation of the things you did in good faith has been revealed to be support for the monsters? And you refuse to admit it — have to refuse to admit it — or you’ll have to break your image of yourself as sophisticated and compassionate?  So you must fight very hard, because another four years of Trump will only reveal to what extent you’ve been duped; to what extent your thought leaders have lied and screwed everyone over?

Is it because you are in MacBeth’s position:

By the worst means, the worst. For mine own good,
All causes shall give way. I am in blood
Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o’er.
Strange things I have in head, that will to hand,
Which must be acted ere they may be scanned.
Is it? I would remind you how that story ends. I would also remind you that like the Germans you can choose not to “know” of the atrocities committed in your name. But the more they escalate, the more they will become obvious, and the more the atrocities will mount.

Your side has destroyed the most vibrant economy in the world, and is already killing people with famine in the third world every day.  If allowed to continue, they will bring the famine here.  And they might end civilization.

And they’re shooting people on the streets for having a contrary opinion, even while destroying the work and livelihood of millions.

At which point do you say enough?

None of those death camps could have stayed in business if everyone around, all the decent people, had advanced on them and said “Stop it. Enough is enough.”

All they had to do was admit they were wrong and had supported evil.

So, what will do?  Will you smell the smoke and tell yourself you don’t know what it means?

Or will you have the courage to face your own darkness and walk forth into the night?

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. ;)*

 

WITH A STORY BY SARAH A. HOYT AND ON SALE FOR 99C:  Parallel Worlds: The Heroes Within.

 

Heroes and villains are not always on the opposite ends of the spectrum of good and evil. Sometimes, all that separates them is a fine line. The stories within “Parallel Worlds” explore the lives of such heroes and what drives them — and what keeps them from crossing over to the other side.

This anthology features nineteen stories from bestselling, award-winning, and emerging authors, and includes brand new, never-before seen stories from Jim Butcher’s, “Dresden Files,” Robert Asprin’s “The Myth-Adventures” by Jody Lynn Nye, and Neo Edmund’s “Red Riding Alpha Huntress Chronicles.”

[My story is Dead End Rhodes, which unfortunately planted a series-seed in my head.  I’m finishing Other Rhodes, to hopefully release next month.  Stay tuned – SAH]

WITH A STORY BY SARAH A. HOYT & ROBERT A. HOYT:  Cosmic Corsairs.

Robert’s and my story is one of the origin stories for a character in a world Robert and I created years ago…. and which we’ll start doing novels in soonest, I promise.

FROM MARY CATELLI: Journeys And Wizardry

Drunken mermaids — a clan cursed to become crows — a magic book that even the Nameless Necromancer fears — and more in this reprint collection of thirteen stories and a poem.

FROM ELLIE FERGUSON:   Rogue’s Magic.

Trouble comes to Mossy Creek.

Jaqueline “Jax” Powell left town after high school, wanting to put as many miles between small town Texas and herself as possible. Mossy Creek, however, isn’t your normal small town and once it gets its hooks in you, you never really escape. It has already brought home two of its wayward children. Will Jax be the third?

When her best friend and “sister from another mister”, Annie Caldwell, is attacked and left for dead, Jax wastes no time in returning home. But is Mossy Creek ready for her return? Before long, everyone will remember why she’d been called “the rogue” growing up. An Earth Elemental, she will join with Wind and Fire to protect those they love.

As storm clouds gather over the small town, danger grows. Jax will have to use all her gifts as an Other to keep her friends safe.

But will it be enough?

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: SNIFF

*For the previous chapters, please go here. These are posted first draft, as the brain dictates to the fingers which are remarkably stupid. Also there will be inconsistencies because until September or so, the timing on these is wonky, and I’ll forget stuff between posts. Eventually it will be cleaned up and fixed just before page is made secret/taken down and the book is published. At that time I will take lists of typos or volunteers to proof read. For now, it’s written in a hurry, usually an hour before it goes up. And, let me remind you, it’s free – SAH*

“Oh, I don’t mean I created the world to be imprisoned in. I’m not so daft as to accidentally bespell myself.  I created this world…”  Tristan Blackley glowered briefly at his son and daughter. “I created this world, the few square miles of it, as a way to get away from domestic strife. Not my wife only, mind you.  The boys were always excited over something….”

The swan made an irritated sound at that point. Tristan smiled, “True,” he said, as though the words had been completely clear and human.  “You do have a pointn about there being quite a lot of you.”  He sighed.  “At any rate, I created this place, so I could not be found, and I did not pay attention to how my lady wife used my own magic against myself, by making it so that I could not be found.  And when the boys came after me, they too were trapped in here.  At which point I realized it would take more than my magic to escape it.”

The swan squawked and Tristan sighed again.  “Well, I know. I shouldn’t have let you boys know about the magic way. I never thought you would be so foolish as to try to follow you when I told you that your magic wasn’t sufficient.”

Al made a sound and as Tristan looked in her direction said, “Well, begging your pardon, Papa, but that was a great piece of nonsense.  All my brothers are right ‘uns. If you told them there was some means to save themselves, how could you think they wouldn’t try, even if they might not have quite enough magic? They would think with a little more effort and a little more cunning–”

Tristan, Michael noticed, looked a little shocked at being called Papa, or perhaps at being addressed so fortrightly.  He folded and refolded his napkin and said, “Well, I didn’t expect them to be that foolish. It’s magic, yes, but also cunning, and I told them they’d just be irretrievably lost. We just know they’re all alive, because of the transformations that come over us without warning.”

The swan made a noise and Tristan smiled, “No, not now. I’m holding my transformation. Yes, I’m aware I’m the one who is dangerous, even with a surfeit of voles.  I felt one of them try to change, but held it down.  Hopefully he’s not in too much trouble.” He turned to Michael. “Unless I’m wrong, you’re the only person who can get us out of this.  I can’t walk the road myself, because one shift to wolf at the wrong time could be disastrous.  And I don’t know what the challenges are out there, or if I’d be near people or other beings when I change.  I hesitated to ask you both because your family tends to be so…. conventional, and because of the… well, I don’t imagine either of your older brothers will be happy at this.”

“I was just thinking what Seraphim and Gabriel might do, when they discover I was pulled from Seraphim’s house by a Gather.”

“Not much they can do here.  Well. I suppose one of them might be able to get in here.  Probably your human brother, as I’ve made this fairly proof against fairyland. No insult meant to your brother, whom I’m sure is excellent, but that place–”

“No, no. Trust me. I had some experience of it.” And quickly, to disguise the shudder that shook him, “But then you have kept up with what’s going on in the real world while you’ve been here?  How?”

Tristan made a gesture.  “The usual. Scrying on a crystal ball. But it won’t show me what is going on with my sons, and I’m concerned.”

Michael nodded.  “And you think I can do it?” Part of him was screaming that he was stupid for even considering it.  After all, what did he owe Tristan Blakley? He barely knew the man.  And he knew enough of magical paths — roads designed to have a spell worked  or unworked through walking them — to know it would be hazardous.

And in this case, it was a road where his brothers couldn’t help him.

Only the leap of excitement in his heart, the sudden feeling like he would very much like to do this made him realize what was pushing him.  Indeed. if he could walk this road and win out, without either of his all too powerful brothers being able to help him — or stop him — wouldn’t that be proof, once and for all that he was a man grown, and that no one need watch over him or keep him in cotton, as though he were fragile?

Most of all, wouldn’t that be proof for himself?

“Of course, I’d also walk the road with you,” Al said.  It was not a tone of voice that brooked dissent.

Michael knew the offer should irritate him. It should make him think that she would diminish from his achievement. But mostly, it made him feel it wouldn’t be so lonely.  And besides, weren’t they about even on saving each other.

He realized he’d been looking into Al’s eyes perhaps a little too long as they widened in surprised response to his stare.  He spoke quickly into what seemed like too-long a silence, “I… Wouldn’t object to that at all.”

Tristan looked from one to the other of them with his eyebrows drawn together, and Michael felt his cheeks heat with embarrassment.

“Well,” the older magician said. “Now that that’s resolved, let’s finish dinner.  You can sleep here tonight, though I enjoin you to lock your room doors from the inside, as I’ll have to give in to the change sooner than later.  But then you can start bright and fresh tomorrow morning.”