For the last two years I’ve been living under a rock, or rather under a novel. So it was only recently when Charles III (Seriously. What was Elizabeth thinking when she named him that, anyway?) put on a spectacular show of ignoring history and mouthing platitudes that I became aware of land acknowledgements.
Being me, and therefore naturally altruistic and giving, I thought I’d save all of you the trouble of crafting your won land acknowledgements by giving you a template.
First to explain where I come from on this — and why Charles III was a special kind of brainless pussy when he made that statement — I understand people like the Canadians and the left in America are very fond of “land acknowledgements” for the same reason they’re fond of “Native American” as a designation. Because they think for some bizarre reason that the Amerindian (no, not a perfect designation, but every human on Earth gets called by the name their neighbors/enemies made up) myths are correct, and Amerindians have been here since “the beginning of time.” Bah. No, they haven’t been here forever, and the land is not uniquely theirs. And if it were, there is a better strategy than whining and namy pamby acknowledgements.*
Where I was born and grew up, the land is — at this point — made mostly of people. At least one of the online anthropological sites lists the region in which I was born and raised as the oldest continuously human-occupied area in Western Europe. What that means, in terms of how many people were buried (not to mention pooped) in that area, it means that the dust has human DNA in it.
Which humans? Oh, that’s… I mean, there’s a reason my kids call Portugal the reservoir tip of Europe.
What I was taught in school which completely missed Pre-historic population movements, from Early European Farmers to Yamnaya we: Celts, Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, Vandals, Alans, Visigoths, Moors, Franks, Spaniards, not counting imports from Africa and India that mixed with the native stock. And not forgetting British and French during the Napoleonic wars; Irish which traded goods and genetics with the North of Portugal since the 4th century BC.
Whose land was it? No one’s. One culture will supersede the other. From the time of the Yamnaya tearing into the Early European Farmers and yeah, probably killing all the men and marrying all the women, that’s how land conveys.
Your title to the land as a people is your ability to occupy the land and keep it. Note, the keep it is important.
*In all the history of displaced people, the one people who instead of whining did something about it and not only that but having gotten their land back made it more fruitful and better than what the occupiers were doing with it is Israel. They bought, they fought for, they have kept the house against all challenges and they have made the desert flower.
Everyone else? Every loser country in the world throws themselves on the floor and screams they’d have been great if only they had “their” land back. And it’s always bullshit. Possibly in the history of bullshit none is worse than La Raza bullshit, who think they are entitled to most of the US, when in fact if they took it, they’d only have more of Mexico, a failed narco state which only survives because of remitances from people coming here to work and get welfare from us because we are not in fact Mexican and don’t operate like a failed narco state.
As for the Amerindian illusions: dudes, there is a reason your tribal elders don’t want you do do DNA tests. You were not only defeated. You got in bed with the enemy. Sometimes when you kidnapped their daughters for the purpose. You are only Native Americans in the sense you were born here. You were genetically swamped. You are — and I mean this in the best sense, so shush — the same American mutts as the rest of us. And in return, almost anyone who has a branch of their family that has been here for two hundred years (a not inconsiderable percentage of Americans) has a bit of you. We took your greatness and added it to our own. (Yes, including my kids. A considerable bit. They are descended from all the best.)
So the land: Your land is our land. Your blood is our blood. We are you. Stop whining about stolen land, and start making something of what you have, living in the best nation in the world.
You want a land of your own? Join us. When we go to the stars, claim your own planet.
Because I’m a giving kind of person, I decided to give you a template land
Land Acknowledgement:
We’re standing on stolen land. Sitting, sleeping and playing rock and roll on stolen land.
All land on Earth has been owned by humans and/or proto humans at some point. Heck, a good amount of the continental shelves that are under water offshore are also stolen land.
Before our ancestors, someone else lived there. And before those people someone else lived there. And before those people someone else lived there.
Because that’s what humans do. They take land, and hold it, and have children and raise fat babies.
That’s called being human.
You want some land no human ever owned? Get us to the stars. That’s it.
End land acknowledgement.
Further note for the deluded bastards of La Raza: This land is OUR land. And what we have, we keep.
We’ve been ignoring you, as we’ve been ignoring a lot of other commie offshoots because we thought you’d grow up. But if you want to square off…. Think about it. What we have, we keep. Don’t start none. You won’t like the results.
PS- Because all this isn’t as eloquent as this single tweet by someone I don’t know:
Well, I am. I’m surprised the bullshit in Los Angeles isn’t all over the country by now.
I’m not surprised at the bullshit itself. It’s a hot combo of the left having entered the last, desperate point of their ghost dance, their having imported a lot of military age men that they think would be a reliable army, and their wanting to recreate the “success” of BLM and the 2020 Summer of love.
I am however surprised that it’s pretty much confined in Los Angeles, and even NYC was saner than that.
I suspect I wasn’t the only one surprised. On Saturday night I was in a medium large town, at a public attraction near an immigrant area. Keep in mind we’d been driving and hanging out with friends, so we weren’t really in touch with the news.
We did however notice the helicopter circling and circling over the crowd and wondered. Husband thought it was the news doing a feature. But something looked wrong.
It wasn’t till we got home and I saw the mess in Los Angeles that it clicked in place.
Look, over the next week, they might — or not — manage to get spicy going elsewhere in the country.
The truth is I’m still in shock we don’t have one of these going in every big city as we did in 2020. Why?
Because they have imported a lot of people. A LOT OF THEM. And a lot of these people are obviously not good people. In fact, they are the opposite of good people. Further, they have the cartels, which right about now are pretty pissed at our making their operations more difficult, and the unions which are, by and large, a cauldron of corruption and have been feeding off illegal immigration.
So– We have a minor and puzzling miracle going here.
And several conclusions can be taken.
1- For whatever reason they can’t count on all of the goblins they thought they could count on. Is it fear? Or the pay isn’t enough? Or they’ve been losing more people through self-deportation than they want to admit.
2- I’m not seeing the type of of interest in these riots that I saw in BLM even early on. I mean, the sentiment just isn’t the same, okay. Most people seem to look at these riots and go “Wait, why aren’t these people already on their way to the border, pursued by bears?”
That could be because race relations are complex, but most Americans view black people as their fellow Americans and have a measure of concern/interest in them. While most Americans view illegals as at best sad sacks and at worst invaders. As sad sacks, we don’t necessarily hate them and we kind of feel sorry for them. But not sorry enough to put up with riots and burning on their behalf.
Underlying all this in the national psyche there is a very strong (and sane) feeling of “Buddy, you’ve got problems but you’re not my problem, and there’s no reason I should take it on.”
Part of it I think is the sheer enervation and immiseration of the Brandon years. We know what they did to us, and we’re not particularly interested in helping people who were used to beat us down.
And part is that we’re getting really tired of the left cosplaying and bullshit.
3- People, not just me, are starting to predict what they’ll do and say. Which, I must say, is about time. they’re running the exact same script with the same beats as Kent State about a half century ago, and every other Communist operation since. (And before too.)
4- Things are about to get more dangerous and complicated. Because when things don’t go according to plan, the left always finds the next crazy thing to grab onto. And their crazy is both not very imaginative and dangerously crazy since it started with stuff wholly constructed in unreality like the Communist Manifesto and Gramsci’s tripe theories and was then fed on a never end of movies that share their assumptions and build in “victories” that could never happen in real life.
Now, I’m glad Trump called the National Guard — among other things, I find it hilarious that the left is complaining about this, while they treated DC as occupied land for months — but I’m also worried it’s not decisive or strong enough.
Because without a big stomp some of the rest of that clueless imported army might decide it’s worth a go and jump in.
And then the bacon will be in the fire and no mistake.
I just wish I weren’t going to spend pretty much all the rest of the month traveling. (Not solid, but lots of excursions/family stuff planned.)
But is what is.
You: Be not afraid, neither do you give up.
I’m reminded of what a then 80 year old friend of mine told me during the election in 2004: “You can tell the left is losing. They always get loudest when they’re losing.”
Well, they sure are loud.
Keep your head on a swivel. Don’t take unnecessary risks. And if you’re in Los Angeles stay the heck out of that area, or take a vacation somewhere sane. But don’t let this trouble you unduly.
Be not afraid. In the end we win, they lose. And I don’t think the end is nigh, but they’re sure acting like it is.
If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo,please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months(unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH
Historian Jason Finn crossed the planet to escape the Black Dog of depression – and almost got there. Over the mountains of Korea, a monster out of nightmares tore his plane from the sky… and into another world.
Hunting down ravenous shapeshifting pirates, Night Magistrate Lee Cheong found survivors from elsewhere. Survivors who say pirates are not the only threat. Over twenty years ago Hanyang burned in dragon flames… and that monster still lives.
Now the young magistrate must lead demon-hunters on a desperate chase, aided by a bandit sharpshooter, a seafolk medic, a Heavenly cultivator on the run for her life… and a time-lost historian.
Jason’s willing to help, but he’s cursed, fighting to survive, and struggling to understand a land of magic and monsters. All the while doing his best to keep a teenage girl alive.
A radical therapy. A difficult past. One last chance to change.
Alex Sullivan isn’t crazy — just angry. Angry enough to get arrested. Angry enough to be offered an unusual choice: face prison, or undergo an innovative therapy at a private facility in rural Missouri.
At the Laminatrix Mental Hospital, patients wear full-body suits that block distraction and isolate sensation. They enter an immersive, time-dilated environment. There, they relive every memory — guided not by a voice, but by telepathic silence. There’s no room to lie, no place to hide.
Alex thinks he can fake it. He’s wrong.
Foundational Laminate begins the Laminate Therapy Chronicles, a speculative series exploring redemption, transformation, and the slow, difficult work of healing.
“One of the rare novels I hope becomes reality—a hard look at how to turn the antisocial into good neighbors.” — Karl K. Gallagher, author of The Fall of the Censor and Torchship
BY CHARLES ALDEN SELTZER, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: 3 Ways of Lead (Annotated): A Pulp Western Omnibus
Charles Alden Seltzer was one of the first crop of western authors, a contemporary of Zane Grey and William MacLeod Raine. But he *really* hit his stride in 1921, and these three post-1921 novels prove it!
Brass Commandments
“He’s man’s size, goin’ an’ comin’. No show, no fuss; likes to play a lone hand. Cool an’ easy an’ dangerous. Two-gun. Throws ’em so fast that you can’t see ’em. Lightnin’s slow when Lannon moves his gun-hand. Dead shot; cold as an iceberg under fire.”
Such was the opinion in Bozzam City of Flash Lannon. Five years of getting an education back East might have tamed him, some, but when rustlers target his cattle, and the local law doesn’t care, Lannon nails a new law to the wall of the local post office: his brass commandments naming the five men who must leave the country — or die.
Five named men… and “one other.”
Last Hope Ranch
When Ned Templin rode out of the desert to the Last Hope Ranch, Lisbeth Stanton was grateful, because he saved her from having to kill a man. But when Templin told her he was staying, and that he was an outlaw, and that a posse was on his trail looking to hang him for murder, her opinion changed a little.
And it kept changing, for Templin was an enigma, with secrets and motivations she never could have guessed. And, it turned out, so was her father, whom she had been with her whole life but never really known. Between Sheriff Norton and his posse, and the criminal gang Blaisdell’s Raiders, secrets would out, and bullets would fly, at the Last Hope Ranch!
The Way of the Buffalo
When Jim Cameron saved a stranger’s life, he hardly expected that stranger to promise to shoot him dead.
Sunset Ballantine wasn’t bothered that a man had tried to shoot him from a distance — no bullet had ever touched him, despite living his long years in the west and getting into many a gunfight. He *was* bothered that this Easterner was going to run a railroad right past his front door in sixty days. And even more bothered that the man didn’t change his mind once the threat was issued. Ballantine’s word was iron law in Ransome, always had been. Yet this Cameron, understanding full well that Ballantine meant it, and would undoubtedly beat him to the draw in any fair fight, was pushing ahead anyway.
Would Cameron back down? Would Ballantine go back on his word? Could an old western hand face down the forces of Progress, or must he go the way of the buffalo?
This iktaPOP Media omnibus includes introductions giving the novels historical and genre context.
Midnight Morrigan was once the Scorpion Horde’s top intelligence operative—master of deception, seduction, assassination, and alcohol appreciation.
Then the invasion of Carpathia faceplanted into a crater of blood, blame, and bureaucratic finger-pointing.
Now the Scorpion Overlords have demoted her to a lowly tactical post on a Horde battle cruiser—stripped of her power, her prestige, and worst of all… her minibar.
Morrigan has only one shot at redemption (and revenge!)—naturally, it involves murder and mayhem.
The Rebel Pact calls itself “the last best hope for freedom in the galaxy,” or at least their PR department does. If she can crush this ragtag band of insurgents, she might just get her rank back. Maybe even her minibar.
On her side: a war-weary Horde captain; a mad scientist named Madd (not a nickname—it’s branding); a sexy operative who gathers intel horizontally; a suspiciously helpful bartender with rebel sympathies; and the galaxy’s hardest-working liver.
Against her: the Rebel Pact, the incompetent Horde military bureaucracy, and the odds.
She couldn’t have asked for a better set of enemies.
Hell Yeah! We’re the Baddies! and its companion novel,The Baddies, explore the light side of the dark side—where one hapless food tech and one disgraced intelligence officer try to outmaneuver an empire built on cruelty, incompetence, and performance reviews. Together, they tell two distinct stories wrapped around the same set of events: a Rashomon-style exploration of different perspectives inside the evil Scorpion Imperium.
A man whose debts must be paid by vengeance. A woman desperate to save her husband. A grieving father finding a young enemy soldier on his veritable doorstep…
These fantasy and soft sci-fi stories wonder whether or not heroes need families. Are we not told that families slow the hero down? Is it not typically implied that they get in the way of the adventure? Are they a burden, or truly the greatest strength from which the hero and those he loves can draw?
Six tales in this collection center on family, faith, and self-sacrificing love as men and women fight for the ones whom they hold most dear. Whether the enemy is inner turmoil, a nightmare, or a demon really does not matter. If the threat seeks to harm a member of the family, it is going to pay dearly.
Terra Vonn is fighting to survive in a destroyed world, surrounded by unspeakable horror . . . and things are about to get much worse. After witnessing the vicious murder of her mother, Terra has a singular focus—exacting revenge on the killers. But before she can complete her plans, savagery intervenes and she is cast alone into a brutal post-apocalyptic world. As she trails the men south through a land filled with cannibalistic criminals, slave traders, and lunatics, the hunter becomes the hunted. Terra quickly learns that she is neither as tough nor as brave as she thinks she is. Worse, she may be the only one who stands between what little remains of civilization and destruction
When North America attacked the space habitats beyond the Moon they had no plan B if they failed. The Earth Claims Commission was already suffering a credibility crisis and North America’s disastrous failure and defeat left them with no muscle. Far flung worlds and stations were abandoned with no banking, no supply, and no news. The explorers who were owed royalties were cut off too. Lee and her father Gordon weren’t about to sit still for that. If you can repossess a ground car, why not a planet? Lee had standing to be sovereign of Providence but wasn’t all that fond of planets. She didn’t want to be bogged down with the day to day drudgery of sovereignty like her friend Heather on the Moon. Was there any reason she couldn’t have her cake and eat it too? None that she could see.
When murder comes to Stockton, it brings long-buried secrets in its wake…
Kate Bereton leads a busy but unexciting life as the clergyman’s only daughter in a small Dorsetshire village. She’s grateful for the break in routine heralded by the arrival of her stepmother’s latest guests, but when Kate discovers a dead body in the parsonage one morning, she finds herself in much more danger than she could have ever anticipated. Terrified and desperate, she turns to the local magistrate for help. Mr. Reddington is eager to aid his dear friend Miss Bereton, but can they discover the murderer before it’s too late, and the secrets of the past are forgotten forever?
With a dash of romance and a generous helping of mystery, The Root of All Evil is a charming whodunit that will delight fans of Jane Austen and Agatha Christie alike.
It’s the year 1846, and Sally Kettering is just twelve years old. Her parents have decided to sell their farm in rural Ohio and go west … west to California. Sally and her six-year old brother Jon must leave everything they knew – friends, kinfolk and the little town where they had lived all their lives so far. Pa and Ma Kettering packed what they could take into a single covered wagon, and they set out to follow a trail through the wilderness west, along with a party of other families and adventurers. Unknown dangers lay around every bend of the trail … wild animals, wilder Indians … Indians who might be hostile or friendly, and no way to know for certain … treacherous river crossings, trackless deserts, and jagged, dangerous mountain passes. And still, the Kettering family and their friends boldly set out … following the trail that led west toward the sunset!
BORROWING SOMEONE ELSE’S PERCEPTIONS FOR A POPULAR DEVICE CAN ONLY MEAN COMMERCIAL SUCCESS. RIGHT?
Samar Dix, the inventor of the popular DixOcular replacement eyes with their numerous enhancements, has run out of ideas and needs another hit. Engaging a visionary painter to create the first in a series of Artist models promises to yield an entirely new way of looking at his world.
But looking through another’s eyes isn’t quite as simple as he thinks, and no amount of tweaking will yield entirely predictable, or safe, results.
In the world we know, Nikola Tesla’s Wardencliffe experiment proved a costly failure and was ultimately torn down for scrap. But what if things had gone differently and he pressed his work to completion? In a world similar to but unlike our own, Tesla completes his transmission tower. But when he turns it on, he discovers his calculations were incomplete. Some unknown factor has created a connection with another world with physical laws unlike our own. The commingling of curved and angular space has led to catastrophe. Now his greatest rival, Thomas Alva Edison, compels him to repair the damage. To do so, Tesla must make his way through a ruined city to the locus of the damage. And through his mind echoes the baying of unseen hounds. A short story originally published in the anthology Steampunk Cthulhu.
Transform into a shape-shifting dragon? Complicated. Run a successful diner? Even harder. Fall in love? Now that’s really testing Tom Ormson’s self-control.
Between managing a temperamental new fryer and his budding romance with fellow shifter Kyrie Smith, Tom’s plate is already full. But when a vengeful sabre-tooth tiger stalks into town and an ancient dragon starts playing matchmaker, his carefully balanced life threatens to spiral out of control. Add in a string of mysterious murders at the local amusement park, and a lovestruck ex-triad dragon with country music aspirations, and Tom’s having the week from hell—literally.
Now Kyrie’s been kidnapped, and Tom must race against time to save her while keeping his inner dragon in check. Because eating the bad guys? Definitely bad for business.
Welcome to Noah, Colorado, where the supernatural meets the everyday, and young love comes with teeth, claws, and the occasional bout of spontaneous combustion.
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.
So, the snake thing? As you know I’ve been whole immersed in fixing this book, to the point nothing much is happening. Though, really, nothing much has happened this week. The meds now discontinued gave me terrible heartburn which, in me, manifests as shoulder pain. Which in turn means I don’t sleep, and I become so massively ADD that someone mentioning a multitool leads to a two hour browsing for the best multitool. Not that I wanted to buy it. But I had to know EVERYTHING about multitools. And it’s liek that with everything. I’ve become the world’s foremost expert on …. well, nothing. But I know a ton about what amounts to chaff. Or dryer lint. Which means not much work gets done. Sigh.
This to say I haven’t read The Man Who Sold The moon, or done much in the way of revision. I will.
But it also means in the sleepless hollows of the night when I can’t even concentrate enough for Jane Austen Fanfic, which is the lowest level of engagement for me, the characters for the second book start babbling in my head. (Oh, other books and series too, but–)
One of those, a constant though not voice character is an eighth circle magician — yes, this space opera has magic. Not real magic, but never mind — which are the people who who do illusions, story telling, memory and apparently mind-healing, though they’ve only found that out recently.
Anyway, this character insists that I’m also an eighth circle. Their derrogatory nickname is Serpent. I was very offended, since…
Because I’ve always been in love with story, I am very afraid of getting caught up in one and losing track of reality. And I try very hard not to lie. Partly because it’s really uncomfortable to confess. I already made my priest laugh helplessly by confessing Twitter hooliganism. (which is actually pride and anger, but, yeah.) But mostly because just like it’s important to know whose voice in your head is yours, it’s also very important to know which reality is actually real. (This from a woman who has long discussions with characters while zonked out of her mind with lack of sleep. Hey!)
But he pointed out it doesn’t mean lies. Knowing story is an ability in itself. Like with mind healing, they’re good for all sorts of analysis of stories and situations.
The places I search for the truth are weird.
Look, nothing we’re being told is real. Okay, not nothing. But nothing that relates to say, job reports, population figures, how the economy is doing, etc. etc. etc.
That is why I’m looking all the time and in the weirdest places. Stuff like monitoring what’s on the grocery store shelves and how fast it’s selling, or listening to people’s conversations, or seeing what people are talking about buying and what is aspirational, or–
Look, the other day I told Dan I know the economy is getting better because the scam emails that tell me I’ve won a free dinner are now for expensive steakhouses, not places like Applebees. In the depths of Let’s Go Brandon, I got those, and it scared the spit out of me. Because when dinner at applebees is aspirational, people are in serious trouble. And scammers have to know what actually works, so they know when the low-price restaurants are beyond people’s reach and they are willing to answer a scammy email for them.
So, the insanity yesterday is looking (already) more and more like something weird.
Hey, it could be a legitimate spat. Both Elon and Trump are volatile and neither of them are used to being in politics.
But the walk back started by yesterday night, and uh…. something feels wrong about it. My story sense is tingling with “this doesn’t add up.”
And maybe it’s wrong, maybe. But… I don’t think so? And what really bothers me, if it was fireworks, it’s “what was it supposed to blind us to?” Because while fireworks are going on, you don’t see other stuff in the dark.
Or the spat could be real, but we can’t be sure of the reason for it. The real reason. Nor what the fall out will be.
Give it forty eight hours. We can’t know the truth before that anyway (and maybe ever). As with all these public things, give it forty eight hours. Let it chill, and see what is there after.
Even if Elon and Trump really fought with each other, or whatever…. it is not the end of the world.
It’s not even the end of our current ascendance, such as it is. Vance said this week, this is the work of a generation.
There are going to be setbacks. There are going to be more pushes forward, though. And maybe one or two miracles along the way.
Guys, tech is our way, the wind is at our back, and the left hasn’t been able to catch their breath — even during Brandon’s so called presidency — even while they were supposed to have everything their way. They need total media dominance to thrive. And we’re not going to let them do that.
It’s not Trump, as valuable as he’s been. It’s not Elon, as much as he’s tried to do. It’s not any one individual.
This is our battle. It’s all of us. That’s the story. It’s all of us.
And now I’m going to slither off and try to get some rest, so revision can be finished this weekend, and then I can write the other novels, and give them to my newsletter subscribers, and all of that.
So. Chill. Chill. Let the story play itself out before you analyze it and prepare for the fall out or not.
This is a long march.
This is not the end. It’s not even the end of the beginning. Let it be, however, the end of “the world is ending.”
Put your shoulders into changing what can be changed. Look at the rest as a passing show. Decipher it if you can. Don’t let it control you.
We had a cat — Pixie! Best cat ever — who had an habit of pretending everything that happened was part of his master plan.
Lick himself and fall from the chair? He’d look around with that smug expression, like “I meant to do that.
Now combine this with the fact that humans make up stories out of anything.
So, what I am trying to say is that it’s normal for humans to make up stories and to make things make sense. This is why you need to be very careful about conspiracy theories. Because it’s really easy to look at assorted facts and make up a theory where they all “just fit.”
It’s the same part of the brain I use to make up stories.
I’m going to tell you a secret, though: not everything fits. It just seems to, but there’s always stuff that sticks out. Always. Whether it’s your theory, or a novel, or a story the people in power are selling you, it’s hard to make up a story without holes. So, for instance, when you they were selling us the covidiocy, what stuck out for me was “why aren’t the homeless dying in droves?” Look, you can’t know everything. I happened to know that the cruise ships were virus boats, which means that I knew the numbers from Diamond Princess meant there was no real danger. But a lot of people fell for “top of the line care at cruise ships.” However the other great big problem was the homeless. You can’t know everything, but you’ll know some things. And I knew that the homeless were like the collecting pool for every disease possible and also that the homeless have a ton of people who just crossed the border illegally, or came in on a plane to distribute drugs or…. whatever. And yet the homeless weren’t falling down dead.
And that was the hole in the story that allowed me to see it how it was all glued together with spit and wish powder.
You can do this to anything. Yes, stories too, though I try not to. Though of course there is a problem when you first become a proficient story teller because you can’t help seeing the gears of the story, and the holes. it’s why most writers stop reading for a while after they become proficient.
But that’s neither here nor there.
This post is about the tendency of EVERY totalitarian regime to act like Pixie, only infinitely less cute. So, you get everything that happens being “I meant to do that.”
There are videos explaining how everything that happened in the west, all the decline and the bad stuff was a clever plan by the the Soviet Union, and everything is just following their plan.
I think I fell for them when I was young and stupid and they were in late night programs. But you know, guys, even then, I’d been telling stories for a while and things stuck out.
Mostly what sticks out in that type of video is that the story only works if you stay inside the story. If you only look at the facts they show you and not outside them. For instance, the so called decline of the west was mostly something that the media sold us. Under the elites machinations and the barrage of media telling us we sucked, we thought these things were true, but they weren’t. As we know given how hard they’re finding to shove decay down our throat, and how they keep importing third world basket cases to plump up the “failures.” (Mostly because the idea we were in decadence was a stupid Marxist just-so-story and they were mostly lying to themselves. This is the whole idea that living well makes you soft and “decadent” is a soviet idea. It’s also a lie. Living without challenges makes you decadent and soft, but there are challenges in prosperity if you don’t let the government hamper you.)
Look guys, we continually tell ourselves The Arabs, the Chinese, the Russians, whatever the authoritarian group we’re up against are “careful planners. They plan for centuries. They’ll win in the end.”
To be fair, they in general believe that about themselves, too. But that’s because by and large they have all these myths. It’s the only thing they have.
Look, guys, let’s be serious. What is the big problem of totalitarian societies, like the Chinese and the Russians (not just commies, but historically, though communism makes it worse)? Information.
No one could tell the Soviet leaders the society was falling until it was completely beyond salvation, because no one wants to give their supervisor bad news in a totalitarian society. The same reason no one could tell Putin they couldn’t take the Ukraine in a weekend, because they just didn’t have the wherewithal.
In the same way, I bet you Xi thinks his country is much stronger and more capable than it actually is.
So, how can they plan for a thousand years if they don’t actually know what is happening in their own country?
As for the Arabs? Bah. They culturally have serious problems with time and keeping track of why things happen, as well as a bunch of their very own cultural blindspots that means they don’t understand Western culture at all. Yes, they think they do, but they don’t. (Not to mention they too are poisoned with Marxist story telling.)
They can’t. It’s bullshit. They’re selling you a story. And there are holes you can drive a mac truck through.
Yes, they will take the latest spill and tell you that they meant to do that. Every time. Every single time.
But in the end, in the very end, they didn’t mean to do that. They’re not in charge of their own plans. They just keep adjusting them and saying “hey, I meant to do that.”
Be not afraid. And don’t attribute magical powers to the enemy.
Humans don’t plan for centuries. Nope, not even us.
We just stumble from disaster into salvation by the skin of our teeth, to disaster again. And then we say “We meant to do that.”
Even us.
However, over the long time, individual freedom that gives us the ability to react to and recover from disaster in many ways, without holding on to some “grand plan” dreamed up by a single brain or a consortium of single brains have a better chance of surviving and thriving.
No one has a plan. Not even us. All is chaos.
Fortunately chaos is America’s native environment. We thrive on it. We eat chaos for breakfast and then go out and create new challenges.
Terry Pratchett, in one of his books (I want to say it was in the Tiffany Aching series) said that the secret to success in life was to be yourself as hard as you could.
I find myself wholeheartedly agreeing with it, which is odd in a way.
Why is it odd? Well, because I’m the person who says things like “Don’t chase your passion” and “Don’t take that degree in creative writing, take a useful degree” and “First take care of yourself and those who depend on you.”
Mind you, that’s not how my life works. Every time I try to be responsible and do the things that I’m supposed to do, it backfires on me wildly. Every time I do the wildly inadvisable: say marry a foreigner and move across the ocean with no plan other than “we’ll figure it out”, or have a kid when we can barely support one, or buy a house that is deeply distressed and trusting I’ll figure out how to fix it, or set out to be a writer in my third language … it turns out all right. On the other hand, when I take the degree that will be guaranteed to get me a job… I marry a foreigner and render my credentials moot. When I buy the house that’s a sure thing to appreciate… cover your eyes, because I don’t want to revisit that debacle. And on and on–
But that’s just — as my kids put it — I have luck that beats the odds. Not good or bad. Just highly improbable. So the sure things flop, but the wild risks pay off. That’s fine. No, it’s not. I’m a nervibore, living on my nerves, but then again after sixty two years if things suddenly became calm, I wouldn’t know what to do. (Though I could do with fewer emergencies. They do seem to be slowing down. Kind of.)
I do think when you’re twenty or so and you decide you want to follow your passion being a living statue or playing tiddly winks on the international stage, you’re not likely to find yourself. Well, not immediately. Somewhere between failing, finding out that even succeeding wouldn’t be the thing you would want and eating your millionth meal of cheap ramen, you’re going to find you really have a vocation for industrial design. Or 3-D printing the ideal tiddly winks and selling them to professional players.
Mostly what’s wrong with pursuing your passion when you’re young and so green that certain kinds of lettuce think you’re their kin, is that you don’t yet know what your passion is.
This comes mostly from the fact that when you’re young — and these days that can extend to your early thirties — you have no idea how the world works. So what you think you will really do is often not what the profession actually is. Partly because a lot of what people actually do in the world and how fields actually work are not only not widely known, but often — these days, and I suspect in every time, TBF — work in the most backassward and confusing way possible.
So you planned on being the world’s greatest tiddly wink player, but find they only want skinny blondes for the cameras, while you’re a zaftig brunette. And then…. you tumble. And eventually you figure out who you are. And how to be yourself as hard as you can.
You start out with the idea you should be good at a ton of things you were never good at and can’t even begin to do. Like, you know, I remember my life being destroyed over my inability to jump rope. Or my inability to memorize chemical formulas. Or–
But none of that matters. Because I eventually found my talents, and those things did not matter in the slightest.
So, be yourself as hard as we can, but first find out who you are and where you fit in. So start with something you can do to begin with, and then learn to tumble with circumstances.
Here’s the thing though: when you find out who you are, and what you do well? It’s going to take courage. It’s not just settling into the easiest thing.
At some point you’re going to find out who you are and what you really want to do. And I can almost guarantee taking that step is going to scare you spitless.
Do it anyway. Step out.
You might be on thin air. And you might fall. But at least you’ll have tried.
I’m not a hundred percent sure what’s happening, but I’ve had this sense building, building that when Trump actually made it past inauguration and started getting briefings — was he getting them before the election? I know he was supposed to, but did he? — he became highly alarmed.
Now, understand that we’re trying to read tea leaves. Some of this we have no way of knowing, and frankly it’s a good thing we don’t know. Because we can’t do anything about it, and worrying about it will just make us ill and solve nothing.
And some when we try to see the shape of them, we realize that we can’t second guess the decisions this administration is making. And that burns me up something terrible, because I like trusting but verifying and governments are dangerous things that we should always keep an eye on.
But I have a feeling that something hit him really big, and from the … shape of things, including his trying to end two wars in a hurry and playing mad tariff chess and ignoring a couple of other things that I’d expect him to be all over? … I think it’s China.
First of all, let me point out I’m not particularly worried about China’s conventional abilities, just like — and I do know all of you are absolutely sure I’m a crazy optimist on this — I’m not that worried about Russia or… anyone in the conventional sense. Yes, yes, some or all of those might have a few functioning nukes. It’s possible. But they know what our retaliation will look like, and it takes a level of insanity even totalitarian regimes don’t have to challenge us.
But… China doesn’t really do conventional unless they know they have massive superiority.
And they have so many other ways to get us. I still don’t know what the whole spy balloon was about. And no, neither do you. But then there’s stuff that we know is there and makes me scared sh*tless.
Like the fact that they seem to be addicted to a My Little Genetics Kit of their own when it comes to illnesses. I don’t think that it’s as easy or that they’re as capable of creating lethal viruses as they think. But– They can make things uncomfortable and difficult at very bad times.
More worrisome is the back switches and various other backdoors they have in literally all of our electronics. And what is in our medicines. And everything else that China has been putting its fingers into.
In the seventies Heinlein wrote up a thing saying we’d bear any cost, etc. for the sake of bringing up our nuclear arsenal to USSR’s level. That might have been uneeded and misguided — maybe — but it was the fact that we ramped up our investment in the cold war that broke the USSR, so–
Right now, I want you to keep in mind how vulnerable we are to China, because of how stupidly we gave them everything to produce.
And I want you to realize that any pain we bear is worth it to decouple from that slave-state. Any pain short of death of everyone is worth it.
It’s not just what they can do to us at a whim — do you remember the pagers Israel used? Are you sure ours aren’t mined? No? Neither am I — it’s what their culture is doing to ours.
No, I don’t mean their “ancient culture” though even that, depends what parts. They have a tradition of treating individual humans like dirt. But their culture as it is now, with the communist implant?
They are destroying us. Part of the reason all our companies are such sh*tshows when it comes to how they treat employees is because it’s easier and cheaper to buy Chinesium. Yes, they steal our stuff, and the stuff they make isn’t very good, and we have to take it on faith they’re putting in what they say they’re putting in. And sure, we know they use slaves and political prisoners and everyone in the most unethical way possible. But they sure are cheap, aren’t they? And if a company is using them, it makes a lot more money than everyone else around. And so, the next company starts using it, and then the next. And the next.
Even if they wouldn’t use every bit of what they have against us — and they will — they are destroying our culture, our industry, our ability to innovate and survive, because slaves are cheaper to buy. Yes, sure, their product is never as good, but they’re cheaper.
We need to decouple from China. We need to decouple from China hard. It’s going to hurt. But it is absolutely worth it.
Our survival depends on it.
UPDATE: If it needs to be said — and it should not, but I remember the time an arrant idiot thought I was being racist towards the Chinese by using CHICOM, aka the State Dept. abbreviation for Chinese communist, and therefore, to prevent such idiots — for disambiguation: I have nothing against the Chinese people. In fact, I know I have several first, second and third generation Chinese immigrant fans because every time I do one of these posts they email me to thank me. I do however loathe and despise their regime, which is one in a chain of several exploitative and horrifying regimes they’ve suffered throughout their long history. Chinese people away from China and set free tend to do better than anyone else. Their current affliction combines the worst of their previous bad regimes and the worst Western regimes: communism. I wish the people of China the best. I do realize on the way there there will be pain for both nations. But we must decouple from them before their evil regime does its worst or we shall both be lost.
If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo,please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months(unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH
Light reveals, shadow conceals. What we illuminate, we become.
In Breheimen, artisans and craftsmen aren’t just respected. They are revered. The Muse-touched are individuals whose creativity seems divinely inspired, capable of conjuring beauty so profound it borders on the mythical. Their gifts shape culture, hold political sway, and define the kingdom’s identity—the very spirit of the realm.
But when Master Bard Dorian Silversong is summoned to the capital by his mentor, he walks into a world unraveling. That same mentor, the head of the prestigious Collegium Bardica, has been murdered. Muse-touched artisans are vanishing. And at the heart of it all lies a web of courtly machinations and unseen forces determined to twist the bond between creator and creation for malevolent ends.
What if the power to create was the greatest one of all?
The planet Sanddoom. Desert exile world for most of Earth’s Radical Islamic Fundamentalists. Run by Mad Mullahs, who repay the favor of American leniency by creating a world of slavery, insurgency, and export of dangerous drugs via their own outmigrating people, headed for other colony planets.
The first two are covered by a hands-off agreement with the Americans.
The last, not so much. And Captain Delaney Wolff Fox’s special assignments fire team, FTSA1, aren’t going to stand for it. Their job is to hunt down and eliminate
Fresh out of college, Evelyn Alexander’s first order of business was finding a place to live. One she could afford on her small inheritance before her job started. None of the local rental agencies had anything in her price range, but…she found a small Victorian house for sale, the only one mostly untouched in a decaying neighborhood of subdivided rental houses.
Complete with a ghost. A very attractive ghost. A very attractive ghost with a strong dislike of the idea of anyone changing his house. So, of course, she bought it. A cranky ghost for a roommate was still a better option than the tiny studio with criminal neighbors.
Between working to restore her new house, embezzlement at work and a murder next door, Evelyn has her hands full. As she works to get on her feet as a productive adult (and not fall in love with a ghost she can’t have), the problems start to snowball. And it’s only compounded by learning that her house has far more secrets than just a single, cranky (attractive) ghost…
Ten years ago the Savients took over Niban, forcing the independent inhabitants into poverty and despair. Bass White saw the careless cruelty of the Savients kill his mother and his father. When a resistance cell is discovered in his city bloc, the Savients seek to make everyone pay.
With his wife Amie, Bass races into the caverns to escape the Savients’ brutal enforcers: the Atrasai. The couple barely make it to the limits of known territory outside their underground city, however, before the Atrasai catch up with them. It would take a miracle to save them…
…or a combat medic robot.
Join Bass and Amie in this sci-fi story of healing, hope, and wonder. After a decade of fear and pain, even a little light can bring out the best in man and machine. But will the best be enough to heal?
Once, they were hated and hunted by mage hunters and Plain folk alike. Now, former bounty hunters turned renegade mages Silas and Lainie Vendine finally have the life they dreamed of – a home and ranch of their own where they can live in peace and raise their family, and the friendship and respect of their non-magical neighbors.
When a company from across the western sea comes to Prairie Wells, bringing marvelous new inventions, Silas and Lainie figure it only means more prosperous times ahead for the town and for them – until an old and vicious hatred of mages rears its head.
As troubles stirred by unseen enemies divide the town, many of Silas and Lainie’s neighbors turn on them. When danger strikes at the heart of their home and family, Silas and Lainie must fight to protect everything they love, everything they’ve worked for, before it’s all destroyed.
If you love fantasy filled with romance and adventure in a unique setting, come join Silas and Lainie Vendine in this new tale from the Wildings. Mages’ Home is the first book of Defenders of the Wildings, a follow-up series to the epic romantic fantasy-western series Daughter of the Wildings. It is a self-contained series and can be enjoyed even if you haven’t read Daughter of the Wildings.
Contains language, violence, and mild sensual content.
Jared Thorne: A para-human detective and his dryad wife hunting for a legendary lost sword in a multi-dimensional city. Eysteinn Bjarnarson: A descendant of the viking who settled North America fighting to win the love of the town beauty. His only opposition? A monster of Indigenous Canadian legend and…her father. Captain Faust of the North American Marine Corps: A descendant of one Dr. Johannes Faust who learns some deals are heriditary. But can they be re-written? Milo “Wolfkiller” Patel: A teenage bullrider on an alien world facing the challenge of his young career. Pawel and Tamar: Newlywed asteroid miners whose wedding cruise from the trans-Martian orbit out to the belt turns deadly. These are the characters whose stories I have faithfully recorded for you here.
Danny Port wanted out. Being the right hand man to the boss of a political machine in a second rate city was no longer interesting, let alone exciting. But Boss Stoker wanted him to stay. And Stoker’s main competition, head of the local Reform Party Bellamy, wants him to switch teams. And nobody, but nobody, is willing to let him leave. Worst of all, every one of them knows about Shelly, and some of them even know what she means to Port.
This iktaPOP Media edition has a new introduction giving the book genre and historical context.
After a bold but costly raid, Morgan captured Hillman’s ‘Comrade Father.’
With him in custody, the war will soon be over… …but the real challenge has just begun.
Convincing the rest of Hillman’s Navy to stand down will be the easy part. Healing the deep scars left by the war will be much harder. Between the righteous fury of Parlon’s people to the bitter divide between Hillman’s elite and the miners trapped below, revenge seems far more likely an outcome than reconciliation.
Can Morgan help her new home and her homeworld heal?
Lilly Gilden has a half-crazed cyborg in her airlock who thinks he’s Nick Rhodes, a fictional 20th Century detective. If she doesn’t report him for destruction, she’s guilty of a capital crime.
But with her husband missing, she’ll use every clue the cyborg holds, and his detective abilities, to solve the crime her husband was investigating when he disappeared.
With the help of a journalist who is more than he seems, Lilly will risk everything to plunge into the interstellar underworld and bring the love of her life home!
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.
According To Hoyt 