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. One book per author per week. Amazon links only.-SAH*

FROM L DOUGLAS GARRETT:  Remember Them (Remember The Trade Book 2).

The man who became his cover identity is back in action! He had to become someone new in time to be sent on a mission he was ideal for: taking in a team to ferret out a secret Cuban plot in West Africa. But has the identity of David Cox really been put to rest?

Remember Them brings the details and dirty work of covert missions to the forefront, an espionage thriller where clandestine violence and disposable identities combine. You know all about the Cold War spies in Europe. This was 1984, West Africa, and The Trade. It was a dangerous place, rife with mercenaries, coups, and a dozen little wars. But there was even more happening behind the scenes.

“The Dogs of War summed up 1960’s mercenaries in Africa. Now, add in spies and welcome to the 80’s.”

BY MEL DUNAY:   Slaying a Tyrant (Ancestors of Jaiya Book 1).

Journey to the country of Jaiya, in a world not quite like ours. Here the humans wield magical powers and fight against an Empire which seeks to enslave them, but they share their world with insect people and trollfolk, and stranger things lurk in the shadows…

Vanti would be happy to spend her life in dance and choreography, but her family chooses her as their champion in a deadly gladiators’ tournament. To save her country from enslavement, she must defeat King Obiar the Conqueror and his magical powers. But will the brooding trainer named Gurion be her guide in the battle to come…or a dangerously handsome distraction?

Note: Tyrant is meant as a standalone with a “happily ever after” ending. However, the heroes in the later books in this series are descended from Vanti and Gurion, who are also the ancestors of some of the characters in the original Jaiya series. The romance is on the sweet side, but there is some violence due to the villains’ actions and the tournament in which the main characters fight.

FROM MARY CATELLI:  The Firemaster and the Flames.

Jan well knows that it is an honor to serve the king as a firemaster.

Even when it means leaving the lands where firemasters are known and common, and traveling to where they are feared and hated, bringing with her the foundling she is raising, to fight a strange manifestation of fire.

FROM KEITH FLICK:  Betrayal on BestYet (The Universe of Little Ships Book 1)

Alfred Young had it all. A scion of one of the founding families of BestYet, he had just successfully finished his first interstellar voyage. He was happy to come home to his planet, family and fiancee. What he wasn’t expecting was an attempt to frame him for one of the biggest robberies in history. A heist big enough to destroy his family’s company and plunge his planet into a recession. He thought he’d be safe once he reached home, he wasn’t expecting Betrayal on BestYet.
With his mind damaged he just wants to sit on the sidelines and heal but his family and planet need him. Knowing he was sane would be nice too, but after all, who really gets to have that?

FROM HENRY VOGEL:  The Lost Planet.

The Progenitors—ancient, powerful rulers of an empire spanning a thousand suns—vanished before mankind discovered the Americas, leaving the Elders to rule as Regents of the empire. Three thousand years later, the Regency set their sights on the Terran Republic.

When the vast Regency fleet attacks, the fate of humanity falls on a pair of young shoulders. Elise, a scholar’s daughter who has never been on her own. Glen, the slave of an alien master, who doesn’t know how to be human.

Against the vast empire, Glen and Elise have nothing to oppose the aliens but their wits, a spaceship, and a handful of allies—an ethereally beautiful alien artist, her equally handsome brother, and a quadruped mob boss protecting her teenage daughter.

Together, they must steal a sacred text out from under the Regency’s very noses, rescue Elise’s father, and hope he can solve the mystery of the Progenitors’ whereabouts. If he can, they must pray humanity’s salvation can be found on…

The Lost Planet.

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: didactic

Taking the day off. Well, kind of. I intend to be writing, just not blog posts.

I’ve spent a lot of time recently reading back where I come from in genre and style.  For me that’s space opera.

It’s weird to say, but in the years of writing to market, or at least writing to publishing houses (you didn’t sell directly to people) it’s easy to forget why you start doing this thing, and what you want to do… what the lamp burning inside your soul is, and what feeds it, versus what just keeps it sort of burning.

I’m starting to have some clarity.  I get the impression this is a road, though.

Meanwhile I write, building a rope of words back to sanity and health.  Keep me in your prayers, your thoughts.

This writing things is not as safe as it looks. Not inside.

Sorry this is so late.  The Odds and Ends first:

Mom’s term for Odds and ends was useless things.  When you couldn’t find a screw or a bolt or some specialized part you knew you’d left somewhere you looked in the box of the useless things. Digression over.

Frank Flemming has ordered me to put out an urgent request.  Would two gentlemen who commented on his blog: Paul who suggested that he carve Hellbender ont he moon with nukes, and Steven Stolarz either ping me (or him) on facebook or send me an email to my two initials, last name at the thermically enhanced email? You’ll hear something to your benefit.

Second, on the late, an apology because Deep Pink is also now very late.  I — as usual — thought I was being lazy, but it’s “virus, the continuation.”  I slept 10 hours last night, and I REALLY think I’m better.  Why do I keep getting sick… well, I always have low resistance to “strange” viruses, i.e. those that aren’t around much, hence the epic case of con crud I used to get.

For some reason this is the year my fans and friends visit, so it’s been… interesting.  Sometime this month we go to a workshop too.  I hope I’m well before we go.

Now, this is November and therefore Nano. (NaN0WriMo)

The first time I Nanoed (eh) I wrote Darkship Thieves.  Since then I’ve nanoed sometimes not finishing the book, sometimes writing two novels.

I never participate in the forums, just keep count for myself.

This year is a little difficult, because of a week-long conference, but also because I have six short stories due, a couple overdue already.

But I’m going to try.

I’d like to invite/suggest anyone else who is likewise nanoing share excerpts, word count and challenges on our November Sunday posts.  On other posts, too, if you wish, just put NANO at the beginning of the comment.

And now I’m going to shower and do a quick cleaning, so writing can happen.

Incoming: The Chicxulub Impactor, Part 3 ― The Impactor & Effects

By Stephanie Osborn

http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

The Impactor

Based on the evidence at the impact site, there are quite a few things that can be fairly readily extrapolated about the impactor.

• Impactor’s estimated velocity: 12.6-73km/s (4,500-26,000km/hr or 2,800-16,300mph)
• Impactor’s estimated diameter: 9-11km (~5.5-6.8mi) up to 81km (50mi)
• Impactor’s estimated mass: 0x10¹⁵-4.6×10¹⁷kg  (2.2×10¹⁵-1.0×10¹⁸lb)

The generally held view is that the impactor was an asteroid about 10km (6mi) in diameter, traveling at 16-32 km/sec (10-20 miles/sec, or 36,000-72,000mph).

The Impact

So the impactor comes screaming in at anywhere from 2,800 to as high as 16,000 miles an hour, doesn’t even notice the top, oh, 290 miles of atmosphere, and that last 10 miles of air doesn’t even slow it down. Nor does the relatively shallow water in which it impacts, which, 65 million years ago, covered the entire site.

When the impactor contacted Earth’s surface, it still didn’t slow down, at least not initially. Instead, it punched several miles into the rock. The sudden impact vaporized the impactor as well as substantial quantities of ocean basin and underlying bedrock. Additional quantities of Earth’s crust were liquified and sent into exoatmospheric, suborbital trajectories, only to fall back down, far far away from where it started. Some was probably ejected from its home planet entirely. And the remaining bedrock of the entire region was shattered like fragile glass.

Ground Zero

• Original crater depth: several miles (exact depth not yet determined; possibly as deep as 25-30mi, per Gulick, et al.)
• Original crater diameter: 185km (115mi); some estimate 300km (186mi)
• Temperatures at ground zero: >>10,000ºF, possibly as much as 18,000ºF (~10,000ºC)
• Yield/KE of impact: at least 1.1×10⁸-1.6×10⁸MT or over 100,000GT

By comparison, the biggest nuke ever detonated on Earth, Tsar Bomba, was 50MT. The Chicxulub impact was, at these numbers, 2 million times as powerful as Tsar Bomba.

The Thermal Blast

If you were close enough to see the impact, it would have been the last thing you ever saw. All life within 1,000km (625mi) would have been incinerated in under 10 seconds.

The Atmospheric Shock Wave

• Local winds: 900-1000 km/hr (560-625mph)
• Air blast damage radius: 900-1800km (560-1120mi)
• Sound of impact: at least 105+ decibels
  

The Megatsunami

• • Megatsunami height range estimates: 50-305m (~165-1,000ft) [Note that these estimates depend on a given researcher’s initial conditions, therefore the estimates vary widely.]
  • Estimated inland reach: >100km (62mi)
    

 

The Seismic Seiche

A seiche is a localized tsunami-like wave akin to a “bathtub slosh.” It is usually generated by the local arrival of one or more earthquake waves.

Extrapolating from the 2011 quake in Tohoku, Japan (mag~9.2), which generated a 1.5m (~5ft) seiche, we can estimate that the seismic waves from the Chicxulub impact generated seiches of 10-100m (33-330ft).

Released Greenhouse Gases

Estimated released greenhouse gases:

• • • Carbon dioxide, CO₂: ~10 trillion tons (10,000,000,000,000 tons)
    • Carbon monoxide, CO: ~100 billion tons (100,000,000,000 tons)
    • Methane, CH₄: ~100 billion tons (100,000,000,000 tons)

And methane is flammable, in itself.

The Aftermath

Core drilling on the peak ring of the crater showed that the topmost layer of debris laid down in the aftermath contained a significant amount of organic material, topped by bits of charcoal; evidently there were significant fires ignited worldwide, and the first days after the cataclysm may well have been a firestorm in many, if not most, places.

After the fires died down, Earth would have entered a “nuclear” winter for at least a year and possibly up to several decades after the impact, thanks to all of the particulate material (dust, soot, smaller ejecta) which was injected into the stratosphere, that then blocked the sunlight. Researchers estimate global temperatures decreased by 2-3ºC (3.5-5.5ºF); some areas dropped as much as 8ºC (14.5ºF). Photosynthesis largely ceased worldwide; plants began to die. As a consequence, herbivores began to starve; subsequently, predators began to starve. The last to die would, presumably, have been the scavengers, though based on the information coming out of the Tanis/Hell Creek dig, no one lasted long enough for there to be a lot of scavenging.

But ash is particulate, and eventually the ash will precipitate out of the atmosphere.

Some of this stratospheric material was in the form of sulfur and nitrogen compounds; as it gradually settled and fell out of the atmosphere, it formed acid rain.

Then the released greenhouse gases took over, and the low temperatures started to soar. This may have lasted for as long as 200,000 years after the K-T boundary.

It gets worse.

Some scientists speculate that such large impacts may generate magma plumes on the antipodal (opposite) side of Earth in the long term. This is generally not considered probable by mainstream researchers. It must be admitted, however,, that the shock waves would indeed converge on the opposite side of the planet; whether it created additional problems or not would likely depend upon the magnitude/amplitude of the shock waves, and whether the timing was such that they interfered constructively or destructively. In any case, the shock waves probably set off existing volcanoes, in a kind of planetary paroxysm.

It is flagrant, screaming understatement to say that the aftermath would not have been pleasant for any survivors.

Next up: What, where, and how hard?

~~~

For more details, check out INCOMING! The Chicxulub Impactor by Stephanie Osborn on Kindle and Nook.

 

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/incoming-the-chicxulub-impactor-stephanie-osborn/1133840127?ean=2940160786032

And check out Stephanie’s fiction!

CAMPBELL: The Sigurdsen Incident (Childers Universe Book 6)

IS SOMEONE TRYING TO KILL MARY RAO?

Captain Mary Rao, Jablonka’s planetary tactical officer, seems to be under the gun from all angles, but neither the Sigurdsen Base military police nor the counter-intelligence investigations personnel believes that it’s anything more than a confluence of accidents.

Lieutenant William Campbell of the CSF Intelligence Division believes differently. What he doesn’t know is who or why.

And if he can’t figure it out soon, he could die with her.

Shortly after I got married, I ended up babysitting my nephew who was then two and a half or so.  It went okay, until I decided to show him a Dumbo cartoon.

He really, really, really liked the elephant flying. And when the elephant landed, he started screaming and crying “Elephant fly. Elephant fly.”

He was pretty disappointed when I couldn’t make the elephant fly.

What I was talking about: when your imagined future is suddenly yanked away, by changes in your industry, or illness, or a move is much like what my little nephew experienced.  Oh, except we know it won’t work.

So we scream “Elephant fly! Elephant fly!” but we know it won’t happen.

One of you asked “how you get around it.”

Well…

I’m still working through it.

Part of the problem is that I don’t have the type of mind that works with visualizations or affirmations.  As mentioned in another post, I am naturally a person of very little faith.  So if I sit here trying to imagine a future for myself, I just giggle. Or make up reasons for it never happening and end up pretty depressed.

I mean, if I’m going to sit around imagining a future, I prefer the one in which I win the lottery and clear 100 million dollars, and buy dream houses in three cities, and…  And that is fun because I know it’s never going to happen, not because it gives me some sort of map for my future.  (I mean, we remember to buy a ticket maybe twice a year.  With luck. And mostly just to buy that chance to dream for a couple days.)

I found out recently I’m already doing whatever the hot new “being really present” thing is in psychology.  I have through half a century of living with myself learned to redirect bad thoughts, stop panic attacks, etc.  That’s not the problem.

The problem is that I swear we’re like mice with an imprint of a labyrinth at some sub-thoughts level.  Even when we know the cheese is no longer there, we keep aiming the way we were going.  And the older you get, the harder it is to redirect. Because it’s not conscious. It’s how you stand, it’s what you eat, it’s how you occupy your time.

Sure, maybe transcendental meditation would work.  Or hanging by my feet from a helicopter, or something.  Look, I already have problems doing the praying I’m SUPPOSED to do.

But clearly standing in front of the TV screaming “Elephant fly!” ain’t gonna work.

And btw, for me at least, the Dumbo trick of holding a feather and believing you can is also not going to work.

I am of that unfortunate cast of mind that if I were the little engine that could … I wouldn’t be. I would be the little engine who asked really unfortunate questions. In the elephant flying case?  “Why is he flying? How can he fly? Have you seen his wing to body ratio?  What planet is this?”  And thus, my own situation.

So believing I really can is not in the cards either.

So what is left?

I don’t know.  Right now I’m locked in single combat with “establish a damn schedule already!” slightly hampered by the fact that my family has decided this is crazy year with comings and goings and needing me at weird places and weird times.

But to me, I think the path to another future goes through day to day.  First change habits.  Then establish routine. Work on getting healthy to avoid constant interruptions in work. Etc.

Let the macro stuff fall where it will. Worry about putting a foot in front of the other every day.  Climbing that cliff an inch at a time. Even when your nails bleed.

Incremental. Small. Just routine.

…. And maybe at the end of it I’ll find if the elephant really flies.

And maybe it will, soaring improbably into the blue on stubby wings.

It could happen.  Which is better than things that couldn’t.

And I sure as heck am going to give it a try.

 

 

This is not a post about All Saints or what in Portugal gets called “Dia dos Fieis” — day of the faithful — when everyone, of any belief or none seemingly, makes a bee line for the cemetery and lights candles and cleans graves and talks about those who lie there, who left, long gone.

My first memories of it were of going to the children’s cemetery to put candles on the grave of the cousin, my age, whom I don’t remember at all, who died at 3 in what appears (according to databases) to have been a small pox epidemic.  She was the strong one of the two of us.  I don’t remember but for years, before I caught a reference to what she died of, I thought she’d died because I refused to share my bread with her, at tea at my maternal grandparents.

Anyway, perhaps the way I’ve been feeling lately tracks back to the fact that time is approaching, and like things trained in from very early, my mind turns to those who have died and whom I miss.

Lately too there seems to be a spate of deaths among friends and friends of friends.  And one of our pets is edging that way and I’m daily weighing the decision.

Greebo too is showing is age, so it might not be long…

I’m old enough that I appreciate being alive.  Even through the daily aches and pains.  Perhaps I got to this point earlier because I never expected to live very long.

Recently death has been rounding near, becoming familiar, shadowing me on lonely morning walks, pausing for a reminiscence when the day is foggy.

I feel as if it’s a strangely dressed man, on a city street, trying to get to the point that it can touch me, that I won’t fight back.

I’m fifty six and fast approaching the point at which I have as many loved ones and friends on the other side as on this.

One expects, of course, to lose grandparents, and I probably shouldn’t complain, or not too hard.  But I do miss Grandma.  This time of year, particularly, I miss her bustling around the kitchen, cleaning up the yard.  And I’d give years of life for one more chance to open the gate that no longer exists and take the path around the side yard, around grandad’s workshop, and into the always open kitchen door, to have tea with her one more time.  I’d tell her about her great grandsons, both of which at times remind me so much of her, and how things turned out for me.  And how much I miss her.

I’m sure she knows all of this, mind you.  Not only because someone like grandma couldn’t simply disappear, but because I have reason to believe she visited me once, at a critical point, some years after her death. I might have talked about it before. I don’t intend to do so now. I’ll simply say that yes, it could be an hallucination (I was near death at that moment) and maybe it was, but in my mind and heart I KNOW what I experienced.

But I’d like to sit and have tea — with lemon — and talk it over, just once more.

Then there is our friend Alan, gone for years now.  His death hurt more, because to an extent it took part of our youth with him.

I never thought of thirty something year olds (much less 50) as young, but we met Alan when we were all thirty.  Alan and his wife were, for years, our best friends in the worlds, our kids brought up as cousins. Holidays and celebrations were at one house or the other, and we had down to habit who cooked what so there was no need to coordinate.  And we went to cheap dollar movies together, broke into publication together, laughed and talked and shared most of everything for fifteen years.

He was diagnosed with cancer the year older son finished his freshman year.  We were visiting him at his summer internship when we got the call and I thought “I’m not ready to let go.”

I still wasn’t ready five years later.  But I had to let go, anyway.  And around this time of year, I miss him and he’s much on my mind.  The other day husband said “As Alan would say” and we both laughed.

He told us when we met again, he’d take us out for ice-cream because there are no carbs in heaven.  That was my last talk with him. I plan to hold him to it.

This week, I had word of the death of a guy who MIGHT have been my first fan, who did everything he could to promote me through my first three? four years with Baen.  Some of you will remember John Wagner from the bar.

He was very ill and was looking after his handicapped daughter, and at some point he stopped talking to me, apparently because he feared burdening me.

But I remember the conversations we had, and the silliness in the bar, and the long talks we had on AIM which were far more serious.

I know in the last few years he’s been hurting, physically, mentally, emotionally, and that his death was probably a release.  But I can’t but lament his passing and say I hope there is another time we can meet.

There are others.  I still miss Jerry, still find it weird I can’t simply email him to discuss something.

There was a fan, Ray Carter, I met briefly online, while my life was going insane, and who in a month became a close friend… and then died but will never be forgotten.

Then there are pets.  No, it’s not a different order.  Well, it is, but some of them have kept me sane and loved more than humans. I don’t know how else to explain it.

We’ve now lost five.  And it gets harder every time.  And Euclid-cat is going that way.  We had to confine him (in a three floor cat condo, but confined, nonethless because… well, our living room has half-carpet, and half-killzeed floor, and the rest of the house was getting the same way.  He simply doesn’t remember, or doesn’t care.

But he’s a cat who loves pets and contact. We used to call him a pet slut, because he’d do anything to be petted.

He took his confinement okay for a long time.  But this week has been hard.  He cries constantly and begs me for pets, and I can’t do that AND work.  I take him out and love him for an hour or two at night, but he wants more, and it’s worrying me.  I don’t want him unhappy. On the other than, he’s not in unbearable pain, which is our decision point.  And perhaps in a way I’m balking the decision because losing Miranda hurt so much.

Meanwhile Greebo, who is a cat, yes, but is MY dog, always at my heels, the guardian of my writing time, has been diagnosed with hypothyroidism.  This is not a death sentence. We will treat.  But it means our time together has drawn down to one-to-three years, from previous experience.  And he’s one of the cats who, like Pixie of blessed memory, or Miranda, or before them Petronius the Arbiter are so close to my heart, they’ll take most of it when they go (not that I didn’t love the other cats. Some are just closer.)

This all came to mind when I read Dave’s farewell to his dog.

And this brought another thing much on my mind, because I have aging parents, and my brother and the cousin who was raised with us aren’t exactly spring chickens anymore:  distance is a kind of death.

This came to mind because when I first “met” Dave Freer on line, Wednesday and Pugsley (her brother) were just puppies.  I was regaled with tales of their exploits and sort of knew them through him.

Like John Wagner, for a long time Dave Freer was someone I only knew online.  And yet, I grew to love him as a brother. I’ve met him now twice, and would like to see him again in the flesh before one of us leaves.

Thing is… we’re both getting older, the distance and travel is almost insurmountable, both physically and monetarily.

Just as with my parents, every time I see them, might be the last.  Distance curtails your remaining time.  Makes people almost like the dead in your memory.  And makes your time with them very short, very precious.

I am not naturally — which will shock everyone who reads the soon-to-be-out short novel Deep Pink — a person of faith.  I’m one of those who find it hard to believe without seeing.

But I want very much to believe in a life after this, where distance and time have no hold over our loved ones.  And where we’ll all get together once more and forever.  Where I can tease John Wagner about the drool and the pink. (You had to be in the Baen bar at the time to get it!)  Where I can talk to Jerry about whatever interesting thought just crossed my mind.  Where Dan and I will go for ice cream with Alan.  And where, perhaps — if I’m very good — I can go for a walk on the beach with Dave and Wednesday.

Someday.

I’m not in a great hurry for it.  I’m not allowing that odd skeletal fellow to get too close, just yet.  But I can see how, someday, his approach might be welcome or at least not fought against, because he knows the way to where all my friends are.

And I must believe that land exists, that place where they all are and where we’ll have time — a long time — to be friends, together.

Because no sane creator would make something as complex as love (agape, not eros, in this case) only to have it vanish forever at the whims of time and health and capricious fate.

It must continue, somewhere.  Because it’s real, whatever else it is.

Somewhere the candle light and the tears must become golden light, by an endless ocean where there will be no more crying.

Have you ever been in a tug of war? One with a fraying rope?  Probably not.  I suspect most tugs of war in the US would be supervised contexts, either at school or in other circumstances.

But I’ve had tugs of war with rotting rope.  It looks fine, and suddenly it parts. And both sides fall. Hard. Sometimes there are injuries.

I wonder how many people out there are oblivious to the fact that we’re in a cold civil war.

I’d known it for over a decade, back when I was reading at Classical Values and saw the situation framed in that way.

But it became clearest to me over Sad Puppies.

Look, I’m not an infant. or a child. I knew the establishment in science fiction was hard left. I knew it well enough to keep my mouth shut till I couldn’t anymore.

I even knew there was a style of science fiction being pushed hard. “Literary.”  And I know what Literary means these days.

Well, it means what it does every age, right?  The prestige writing, the type the contemporary critics value is that which displays the marks of an excellent education and hews to that which professors of literature (or the gentry, mutatis, mutandis) say books/plays/poetry should do.

At one time, while reading about Shakespeare, I found the way that critics at the time thought plays should be written. For instance, critics of the time thought it was low and bad to have deaths happen on stage. Instead, there should be messengers who tell us the death happened, in the upper class way, off stage.

I laughed till I swallowed my tongue, because I have a degree in literature (and languages. The two went together.) One of the great play writers in Portugal, a luminary that I’ve heard floated as a possible “he was Shakespeare” whose play we studied had so many messengers announcing deaths that it was amazing they didn’t trip on each other on the approach.  He’s considered great because he did everything the right way, the way the critics said he should. Of course he is not known in every country and there aren’t towns named after his characters.

Shakespeare, that commoner who just had people die (with buckets of blood) on the stage? He does.

Does that mean that I think that I can identify future Shakespeares?  I wish. Because then I’d know exactly what I should write to be that big.

But I do know that there can be disagreement in tastes. And I know, as anyone should who has studied the history of any art that any “school” any “this is the good thing” can run itself off its legs.  Which arguably our notion of “literary” has.  Which is why each year books sell less. Which is why books that win awards and are taught as the next great thing are entirely forgettable while the old stuff sells.

So I thought that it was time for a turnover.  Nothing political, right?  And that is because I’m a great big, fat idiot.

Through more than fifty years of seeing slander perpetrated against anyone who disagreed with the establishment, particularly when the establishment was the result of the long march, I thought — like an idiot — that of course they would attack our taste, our intelligence, our writing. I never thought they’d go political. Much less that they’d accuse us of motives that made absolutely no sense whatsoever.  Which of course they did, in the international press.  (And btw US slander laws suck.)

And then it all became political.  And the shock — and honestly a shock that broke something in me, because you don’t expect that.  You just don’t — was that people who knew me, people I’d considered friends, people I’d have trusted, people who weren’t political, believed the slander.  I lost friends over it. But more importantly, I lost trust in humanity as a whole.

Because people I knew chose to believe that I’d had some kind of bizarre racist/sexist/homophobic aims, rather than that I simply disagreed with them about what makes good literature and what should be promoted and get attention.

Sure, I knew a lot of these people disagreed with me politically. But I knew that didn’t make them bad people. And I thought they understood — despite the demonization of generic libertarians/conservatives/whatever — that I was not any of those things.  Oh, yeah, and not stupid, either.

But they didn’t.

You see, we are social apes.  And there is the problem. The serpent in the garden might as well have whispered “belonging.”

Which brings us to why I was shattered and why they needed to defend by bringing in the worst “sins” problem, and for that matter why people I liked and respected believed them: because not believing them meant being cast out. It meant not belonging.  Because people they trusted and respected at least as myself, and possibly more, said these things.  why not believe them? It was the sensible thing to do.

Someone the other day said that Sad Puppies was te beginning of the turn.  She was wrong.  There are many many turns in the road, and none of them are actually dispositive.

What they are is symptoms that … consensus reality was fraying.

Which is a good thing, because the way we were going, given the long march, was the primrose path to hell.  Since all the news and entertainment and everything including education were hell bent in stampeding us into communism, we’d have ended up there. We were already halfway there in all but law.

But —

But it frays the thing that connects us together.  The consensus reality. The rope in the tug of war, if you prefer.

I’ve watched otherwise sane people — people I used to believe were sane — believe the most outrageous things.  Yeah, and say the most outrageous things, in this year of our 3 of the Falling Masks.

I understand it.  A lot of them are good people.  But continuing to belong to the circles they belong requires them to believe certain things.

And it’s not conscious.  None of it is conscious.  It’s all trust in other people. Trust in the group.  And frankly not having any idea that anyone could believe differently, because we all run in our own social circles. The trusted circles. And we trust them. That’s the whole point.

But the rest of us, outside those circles, those of us who thought we were alone and found out we weren’t, those who have been slandered in the press (and there’s a lot of us and growing) have our own circles.  And we’re bunching up.  And we’re hearing hells bells ring.

And the people going with the establishment don’t see it. They just don’t. They think they still have full control. They think they can regain it by stampeding it. They just want to belong. They want their circles to accept them and think they’re smart.

We’re pulling the rope, two ends.

But the rope is frayed. And if it breaks, both sides will go tail over tea-kettle.

While time remains, while we wait for Archduke Ferdinand to get shot — or hell, for Gavrilo Princip to go off and get a sandwich, because when the powder is packed this tight any spark will set it off — we must — MUST — fight with words.  We must break those circles. We must break that certainty.

We must fight back with ideas and thoughts and words.

Or we’ll fight physically.  And the rope will break. And the republic will fall.  And with it the last best hope of mankind.

The fight might be hopeless, but what else are you going to do? We have to do the best we can.

Before the rope breaks.

 

 

 

 

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. One book per author per week. Amazon links only.-SAH*

FROM MONALISA FOSTER:  Ravages of Honor.

Riveting characters in a gripping tale of interstellar intrigue, love, and impossible choices.

With one act of defiance, Syteria holds the fate of two empires in her hands, but she does not know it.
A stranger in a strange land, she must survive, adapt, thrive.
Only then can she free herself. Only then can her sacrifice and rebellion bear fruit.
An epic story about the price of honor, power, and freedom.

FROM MARY CATELLI:  Queen Shulamith’s Ball.

A ball, a ball, Queen Shulamith would hold a ball. . . .

In the magical city that all kingdoms can reach, and none can conquer, filled with kings and queens, intrigues and wonders, that the reclusive queen would stage a ball was a marvel among marvels.

It will mean much to many: a young woman newly arrived in the city; a woman and a bear who dance on the street; two small orphans sent to the house of their great-great-grandfather; soldiers staging an invasion; and a queen securing her position.

KEVIN TRAINOR, JR:  The Anti-Dog Tank And Other Stories.

Five stories about life in the America of the future: during a new Civil War, societal collapse, and a different kind of alien invasion.

FROM J. F. HOLMES AND OTHERS:  ORIGINS: A Joint Task Force 13 Anthology (JTF 13 Book 1).

The debut book of the hot new military science fiction series, Joint Task Force 13.

There is a thin wall between our world and that of the Fae and, during times of war, it is easily stepped through. The passions and emotions stirred by violence and combat bleed over, and the supernatural often awake from long slumber to meddle in mortal affairs. Then also, there are the humans who purposely force that wall down seeking glory and power.
Either way, there have always been those among us who have been willing to meet the supernatural threat with cold steel, burning hearts and grim determination. In modern America, they are the men and women of Joint Task Force 13, those who have proven they have the metal to confront soul blasting otherness on the battlefield. This unit, this organization, though, has been intertwined with our country since its birth. The name changes, but they are always there, ready to answer the call. Unknown, seeking no glory, asking no reward. They hold the line …
… BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL

Marines, soldiers, sailors and airmen take on the forces of the Supernatural, defending America’s military from the things that come from a deeper darkness than the night. Six tales from the past and present as they meet the supernatural with hot lead and cold steel, in the debut of the new series, JOINT TASK FORCE 13.

FROM JERRY BOYD:  Whammo Ranch (Bob and Nikki Book 2).

A saucer comes in damaged, with sick people aboard. A deadly plague threatens Earth. Can Bob and his crew save the day? Will Bob’s good nature cost him his life?
Julie’s boss wants to retire. Can she handle running the restaurant? Can Bob find her the help she needs?
Dee has come down with a terrible case of pedestrianism. Can Bob and the boys find the cure? Will she drive again?

 

 

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: burly

 

Fall was always my favorite season.  I suspect partly because of poetic affectations of my adolescent self, partly because in Portugal, in the North, if you grow up in a house with neither heating nor air conditioning, it is the most comfortable season, (spring, too, but spring has more mosquitos,) and partly because my birthday was in fall. When a half dozen box of colored pencils is a luxury and you’re a little kid who likes to draw, your birthday assumes magical qualities. Also in Portugal fall is PRETTY.  There’s a long slow cooling from around mid September to mid to late November.

The leaves turn, the air smells like it’s giving out the memory of summer: every little bit of long evenings in the shade, ever laughing walk on the beach, every harvest festival comes out in the smells of fall, as the leaves turn gold with the memories, the grapes paint (the term for going from green to either purple or golden-translucent) and are harvested.

In Portugal, when and where I grew up, Fall is the season of festivals and reminiscence.  Family gets together for the grape harvest, usually.  I mean, maybe this was an artifact of my growing up at a time when there weren’t people desperate enough to hire on for three days of brutal, back breaking work with small householders for what they could pay, which was mostly food while harvesting and maybe some wine afterwards.

We had grapes over… five? separate locations.  (It’s hazy.)  You know how in Colorado you can sell land and retain mining (or water) rights?  In Portugal you can sell land and retain “vining” rights, which means they can’t cut down your vineyard, you’re responsible for taking care of it, and you get to harvest it in fall.

I don’t know how much of that was the case with our remote locations, and how much we were harvesting the grapes from relatives who were leasing the house, or were leaving abroad, or whatever. I just have the dim memory of walking around with baskets of grapes on my head. Eventually, by the time I remember clearly, in my teens, we only harvested grandma’s yard.

Oh, yeah.  Every Portuguese yard — it still seems so weird to me that backyards here aren’t like that.  Well, there, too, now, though my brother might have them. I don’t remember — has grapevines growing around the edge of it and trained up, to form perhaps a five/six foot canopy all around, with a bigger canopy over the patio.  My childhood was spent playing under the grapevines, so as to be in the shade.

When I was an exchange student in Ohio I used to cut through backyards on my way from school and there was a lady who grew grapes of the same variety we grew in the North of Portugal.  In summer, the smell would bring tears to my eyes.

Anyway, grape harvest was very important from a small age, because it was the one time I could feel grown up.  You see, grapes had grown over the chicken coops and the storage buildings, all of which had either uncertain roofs or spaces too narrow for a full grown person.  So I’d be helped up there, and given the task of picking those grapes.

It was a family event because everyone who could including people with jobs and kids in high school (at the time a privilege and an expense) took two-three days off and got together for the grape picking.  And afterwards there was a big meal.  And for about 3 days you had sweet wine sent home with you (pre-fermentation wine.)

Then there was the colder, slightly darker festival of all saints eve.  No, it was nothing like Day of the Dead. You need Spanish drama and Aztec fascination with death for that.  In the North of Portugal it was quiet, decorous and sad.  You go to the cemetery and light candles on the graves.  And you go home and eat roast chestnuts and drink red wine, and talk.

We weren’t big farmers, (or farmers at all. Grandad was a carpenter, dad an engineer) so the pig killing and other harvest rituals QUITE evaded us.  Later as a college student I’d get invited to friends’ houses for those sometimes.  Mostly for the “big meal and talk” part.

And then there was my birthday.  No Thanksgiving, of course, though it might be mentioned at church.

After that winter came, which was mostly slow, boring drizzle, though sometimes very cold.  I’m fairly sure this isn’t true, but other than liking the city lighting up for the holidays, my recollections of winter are of burrowing under a blanket in my room and reading by lamplight.

School… Well, I grew up in revolutionary times.  I know one year it started in January.  Most of the time it started in October and 90% of the time was going around end of November. It was also a great nuisance, but that’s something else.

Anyway, it is perhaps silly that I live (on purpose, yes) in a state of unpredictable Fall.  Some years, like this one, it’s kind of mooch. We had a big frost that killed the still-green trees, so they never got to the lovely golden color. Some years, the snow comes early, at the end of September, and that’s it.  Some years we do have that lovely, slow, golden fall.

I never know if I’ll wear short sleeves or three layers of clothes at Thanksgiving.

One thing is known: due to my eczema/auto-immune in general responding to even miniscule amounts of carbs, not to mention the pre-diabetes which seems to be coming in for a landing, I can’t eat any of the Fall comfort food I grew up with.

Why are Fall favorites all carb-loaded?  I don’t know.  I suspect to put some weight on our bones before winter.  I grew up with roasted chestnuts, flour thickened soups, stews with potatoes…

And the thing is, even though the brain knows better, I crave carbs in fall. Different carbs (except for the chestnuts, which I sometimes buy to roast as a big treat.  I want casseroles with noodles; I want shepherd’s pie; I want Chinese fried rice.

And because my family motto should be “I contrive” I do kind of manage it. Sort of.

There is a slow-carb pasta, Carb Nada. I can’t have it very often. It’s still too high. But I use it for casserole-like things, smothered in cheese.  Last time I made it I only had a little bit, as it was actually “too rich” for me.

There is this, and it’s pretty good, but it’s not pasta. It works best with oriental dishes.

The rice is really not rice at all.  The best success I’ve had with rice — particularly for oriental rice — is riced cauliflower.  Oh, the rice of the not pasta is better than riced cauliflower for ONE thing: rice pudding.  You have to boil the living daylights out of it, then rinse it till all the slightly fishy taste is gone, but between it and xantham gum for those that tolerate it, you can make a pretty good facsimile of rice pudding, which is another of my fall comfort things.

The cauliflower rice can make such a good imitation rice that I often forget I’m not eating rice. You just have to remember not to boil it.  For instance, for oriental rice, I just start by frying it, treating it as “already cooked rice.”

Potatoes are of course a big problem.  At least when it comes to fries.  But I’ve found that cauliflower is one of those “Is there anything it can’t do” substances.  Well boiled, mashed with butter, cream cheese, cream salt and pepper, it makes pretty good not just mashed potatoes for eating on their own, but also for shepherd pies.

I’ve also recently found that boiled, mashed, then “refried” with appropriate spices it can be pretty good “refried beans” for burritos.

There are recipes for low carb cinnamon rolls, and waffles and even low carb scones, though I usually just use a regular recipe and carbquick.

I contrive. Even if right now my state is inflicting on us what looks more like winter with the occasional fall day, I still have my comforts.  And even if they are different comforts from my childhood, they’re still comfortable anyway.

And recently I’ve gone back to drawing, which is perhaps another return to childhood.

Now if the weather in your state cooperates, go for a walk in a gold-painted wood, and come back to sit by a warm fire. You’ll feel better for it.

 

Sometimes I think 99% of the trouble with current society is the state of education, and the way we arrange to have people teach kids who have never experienced any real trouble or problem what to be offended at.

In historical terms, we live incredibly safe lives in the US.  In historical terms, women live incredibly safe, incredibly equal lives.

And yet women here talk about the patriarchy, and are never done with how much they are being oppressed and kept down.

Dates are rape, bad sex is rape, being looked at by a guy you don’t like is rape, being told you’re less than perfect is the equivalent of rape, and for that matter being forced to smile is “emotional labor” and unfair.

where does all this come from?

Well… it’s taught. And it’s taught in the most absurd and ridiculous way.

This became clear to me the other day.  This young woman wrote an hillarious review of Blazing Saddles on Medium.  It’s since been removed, but the internet remembers.

And what caught me was this:  “<One of the main women in this movie, Lil Van Schtupp (Madeline Kahn), is portrayed as stupid and talks with a lisp. In one scene she uses the classic “let me go slip into something more comfortable” quote that we’ve talked about in class. Objectifying and sexualizing women are two key themes throughout this movie.

Note the “We’ve talked about in class.”

By the time I I came around the phrase “let me slip into something more comfortable” was played for laughs.  If you heard it in a movie — and btw it could come from a man or woman — the character would come back wearing a spacesuit, or alternately naked.

But I watched classical movies.  “Let me slip into something more comfortable” was not sexist.  It was a way of signaling that the characters were having sex, most of the time, in a prudish era where they didn’t feel the need to let it all hang out on screen.

Why the “slip into something more comfortable?”  Because women — and men too — tended to dress more formally in public.  And at any rate, the clothes were made of different fabrics, and simply weren’t that comfortable.

I remember watching a movie set in the fifties where the description of a suspect included “he’s not wearing a hat.”  A little earlier and it would have worked for a female suspect, as being unusual.  and even when I was a kid (though that might have been Portugal, not the time) women didn’t leave the house without being dressed up.  This involved a dress or skirt or skirt suit, and at least a “half heel”, i.e. the highest heels I wear at 56.

None of this was comfortable. It was the equivalent, nowadays, of dressing for a prom, or to attend a wedding or formal dinner.

What’s the first thing you do when you get home?  You get more comfortable.

I don’t know if people still wear night clothes at home in the evening, or if I’m simply in a pocket of the culture where that doesn’t happen. I know it used to happen in the US in the early eighties. Go visit someone early in the evening, and they’re in nightclothes and robes.  Or earlier than that, do you remember housedresses?  My mom practically lived in one when she was home. It was a wrap-around thing that tied.

The point is, usually only intimate friends and family saw you outside of your formal clothes.  “Slipping into something more comfortable” showed that the relationship was no longer just friends, or casual.

Sure, it could be used to show a woman was “dangerous”.  What in hell, precisely is that sexist about?  Some women were sexual predators, just like some men were. It’s called being human.

But no, they teach to these duckies that it’s objectification and sexism.

It’s like the thing with the aprons, that science fiction writers older than I think mean that Heinlein was a sexist, because he has women wearing aprons.  Instead of “Everyone who worked with staining liquids and fire wore aprons. Because clothes were insanely expensive, that’s why.”  We stopped wearing aprons in the measure that a pack of t-shirts at walmart is $10. Nothing to do with sexism.

I do happen to know what sexism is. I grew up in Portugal in the sixties and seventies.  The culture is still relatively sexist — it’s Latin, it bears the imprints of the Moorish invasion and occupation — though mind you nothing on other cultures in the third world.

I remember being in classrooms and hearing teachers ask boys how they could bear it that I had the highest grade in a test, or being called up to the blackboard in a class where I was the only girl, and once I proved I understood the concept, having the teacher say “I see everyone understands.” I have actually been told I was “pretty smart for a woman.”

I’ve also been grabbed in the playground, and had drunkards rub against me on buses.  I say this not to say that all men are bad. They aren’t. But you can’t stop bad apples, and the culture as a whole assumed women were… not inferior, except perhaps intellectually, but certainly creatures that needed looking after, as though they were children.

If you went out alone after dark, they knew what to think of you.  And while they were wrong — I had two classes after dark in college, one in high school (English) — they weren’t wrong about women needing more protection. I always made sure there was either a group of us, or someone came to pick me up.

Because I knew I was weak, and had been in enough tight situations that I knew if a man was determined he could overpower me.  Yeah, I usually had a knife on me. But guns were rare and it was hard to get a license.

Ask me how furious it makes me to hear these children talk about how protecting yourself is evil because the man will just seek another victim.  Is it similarly evil to lock your door? A potential robber might just attack your neighbor.

Should we all make ourselves willing victims to spare others?  We are, then, decided in encouraging criminals.

And then learning by rote what is “Sexist” or “Demeaning.”  Dear Lord, have they lost their minds?

It is a measure of how safe and protected these girls are, that they learn these things by rote and are never curious.  They never wonder WHY those things are considered sexist (in the case quoted, they aren’t. There’s an historical context and a reason for the scene and it has nothing to do with objectifying women.) they just learn to vomit it back on the test, and it gets good grades, therefore it must be true.

If you’re not aware of what they’re teaching your kids in the “college education” you’re paying for, you’re a fool.  If you don’t read their text books and explode the myths and tell the kids what the context is? You’re cooperating with the destruction of Western society in a sea of mentally scrambled myth.

If you took your kids to watch Pocahontas and didn’t tell them the colonists in North America did NOT come to find gold (they were more interested in agriculture, though they went a little mad over the planting of tobacco for a while, but that was later.)  you’re remiss.  Heck, even the Spaniards didn’t come in search of gold (yes, El Dorado, but that was a different myth.) They came for the propagation of the faith, and to find a shorter route to India, where they expected to find not gold but spices, a vital commodity in a world without refrigeration.

Did they plunder gold?  Yeah, sure.  But that was later. That was not their motivation.  (And yes, there’s a lot of nonsense written by Catholic priests in the Americas around that time.  They were, they thought, excoriating the world, and never thought that the future would take them literally.) And there’s other stuff there, involving wars and defeated and rules of plunder.

There is context that is never explained.  Like the buying “Manhattan for beads” is never explained, in the sense that beads were currency for those people, and frankly they were fairly expensive for those buying it, too.

None of this is explained. Instead, young people are taught a litany of things they can recite as reasons for offense or trauma, like some kind of Freudian rosary.

The problem with our children is that instead of education we send them to places where they try to raise their self esteem by telling them they’re simultaneously victims and oppressors, but the world can be made perfect by their admitting their privilege and fighting “oppressors.”

The problem with our children is that they’re not being educated in any sense of the word, are not being told the truth about the past or the present, let alone the future, and are taught farrago and nonsense as if it were gospel.

And it has to stop.

Because it’s not just funny movies we’re losing. They want statues of heroes (Jefferson!) destroyed, because they think this will save the world.  They want to forget the past and in its place have memorized lists of good and bad things, that have no actual relation to reality.

Because that’s what they were taught.

Stuff that has no contact with reality.

And the problem there?  Reality always wins.