UPDATE: If you’re looking for the post by Peter Grant — yes, this is how well I’m functioning today — please look here.

For some time now, I’ve been puzzling over the missing eight (No, truly, check my math, 1+7=8) US States that have vanished from  our geography and our history without a trace.

I’m the first to admit that when I first heard of their potential existence, it seemed impossible, however after watching  more than four years of coverups and dense-cluster scandals, I’ve become aware that it’s possible to hide just about everything from the American public.  And after reading some of the books wished upon my kids by their history classes, I also know it’s possible to make the American public forget just about everything.  (Oh what fun it is to sit one of the boys in front of, say, my collections of reprinted WWI news, and watch their illusions shatter.  And if the sources are about WWII you can warm your hands to the flames of burning lies.)

But still, even given all that, what could possibly have happened to eight American states?  It’s not like they could simply have been inadvertently thrown out with the broken crockery.  They’re states.

So we did what we do here at ATH headquarters and engaged in some exhaustive searching.  Yes, okay, we looked in Havey’s litterbox.  Look, it’s where big things that go missing usually end up.  Small things, too, like screws and coins.  (That cat is going to cost us so much money one of these days.) That or thrown up all over the upstairs floor, like last week when he decided it was a good idea to eat the (fortunately soft-bristled) broom.

When this failed we employed our minds in an exhaustive search, and we’re happy to report our findings.

First, some of the missing states can be inferred by squinting really hard at the map, and their fates discovered by pulling from air judicious inquiry.

Take East Virginia, for instance.  Between the depictions of West Virginia in movies and popular series and Virginia’s insistence that it is “for lovers” what could poor Virginia do but slowly shrink out of sight, out of sheer embarrassment.  This is a process often observed when you have three teenagers in the back of the car, two are behaving boisterously and the third just keeps shrinking and shrinking, and shrinking, trying to escape the association.  (It can also be observed when teenagers are forced to walk anywhere with their parents.  Our younger son could almost be suspected of possessing a cloak of invisibility.)

There is also the sad case of Old Hampshire, whom we think has disappeared due to our emphasis of youth culture.  It might have moved to England.

And since West Virginia and Virginia proves (to us) that there should be, as well as an east and west and a north and a south, a state that goes by its plain unvarnished name, we’re right now putting out a call for Dakota and Carolina.  We have not been able to find a trace of you, and have no idea what we did to you, but do come home.  All is forgiven.  We probably can live without Dakota which is probably too cold, but we desperately need Carolina.  There are still some people living in the rust belt, and they need somewhere to move to.

Nwadna is perhaps the most baffling of the missing states.  In fact, the only trace remaining of this once great state are yellowed and crumpling bumperstickers adhering to the rusted bumpers of fifties cars.

We know Nwadna must have been a tourist destination because the bumperstickers proclaim “Nwadna by Godna” and “Nwadna or bust.”

However where it was located, or what happened to it, no one knows.  If you look at the more conspiracy theory type of books, you’ll find hints and throat clearings about whole states of votes disappeared to ensure this or that election.  We suspect a careless pole worker discarded the state along with the votes, and thus we lost Nwadna forever.  Did it have purple mountain majesties or crystal clear lakes?  We don’t know and we mourn not having the chance to find out.

There is one more state we’re missing.  We’re not absolutely sure of its name.  Look, the truth is, it has changed its name so often, we’re not sure it’s sure of its name.  These days it’s going by Guido, but we think that’s a name of accommodation.  There are indications that in the past it went by Jeffersonia, Franklia, John Smith and Bob.

Guido is said to be living in Italy.  There are indications  and hints that Jeffersonia Franklia John Smith Bob  Guido was created as a mobile state by our founding fathers.  With its ability to change names and merge abroad, it was an invaluable asset to our secret services.  Why send spies, when you could send a whole state.

This would account for all the people born abroad who know, in their hearts, that they’re American.  (Not that we know anyone like that.)  They were probably born within the mobile territory of Guido.

Guido is said to be living in this apartment.  It takes in washing to make ends meet.

Of course — removes shoes to count — the more alert (and probably more caffeinated) readers of ATH will know that there are still two states missing.

We promise to continue our endeavors to find them and will take any tips.

If all else fails, hey, Friday is the day we do the litter boxes!

*Note from Sarah — it seems to be climbing the Amazon ranks very handily indeed!*

Ok so Dave Freer’s Stardogs  is far from your usual SF fare. It is, in fact, hard to classify.

Well, except to say it’s brilliant.

I’ll let Dave describe what the book is about, from the blurb:

The Interstellar Empire of Man was built on the enslavement of the gentle Stardogs, companions and Theta-space transporters of the vanished Denaari Dominion. But the Stardogs that humans found can’t go home to breed, and are slowly dying out.

As the ruthless Empire collapses from its rotten core outward, an Imperial barge is trapped on top of a dying Stardog when an attempted hijacking and assassination go horribly wrong. Trying to save its human cargo, the Stardog flees to the last place anyone expected – the long-lost Denaari motherworld.

I won’t talk much more about what happens in the book, I don’t want to give it away, and you REALLY need to go buy this book.

However, I will say that the book is infused with Freer’s usual sly humor, and like most of his books, his gentle remonstrations about good and evil.

Freer’s opinions about the difference come through loud and clear in this book, more so than in his earlier works. That said, loud and clear for Dave Freer is still sufficiently subtle that he’s not beating you about the head with his libertarian-ish philosophy. And if it is less subtle than most of his previous work, this means only that it’s occasionally visible, rather than delivered with a touch so light as to be nearly subliminal.

The world building, as usual, is excellent, the characterizations excellent — if slightly two dimensional — and the plotting tight and well paced.

Overall, it’s a charming, wonderful first indy effort from a veteran which simply should NOT be missed.

Available from Amazon and other fine retailers for just $3.99.

GO BUY IT, NOW!!! Or I’ll hunt you down and pee in your wheaties.

OI! MONKEY! WHERE’S THE SEQUEL!?!?!

*Note from Sarah — for the uninitiated, “Monkey” or more specifically Dr. Monkey is Dave Freer’s nickname from Baen’s Bar.  Also, for the uninitiated, Patrick Richardson is the annoying git (yes, we ARE friends, why?) who often emails me with “write faster, toots.”  So, threats of peeing in your breakfast just mean he likes you.*

Below is an excerpt of Stardogs © Dave Freer 2014

The People’s Empire of Gotha stretched across light-years. The mind-maps of the great Stardogs had taken men to 432 planets. The Empire held sway over all of them, even if only tenuously on a few like Arunachal. And of course many of the Denaari worlds had been virtually uninhabitable… But even so, the new Emperor, Turabi II, ruled absolute over 300 billion people.
Such power is beyond human understanding. Let us turn instead to a weeping girl who had hidden herself deep in the shrubbery of the vast enclosed imperial gardens of Phillipia, the seat of the Empire. She was nineteen. She had survived just about as many assassination attempts as she had years. This, the last one, an hour and a half ago, had cost her the life of her mother-figure as well as her father and step-mother.
She couldn’t have cared less about her father and step-mother, even if their death had put that horrible little toad, her sixteen year old step-brother Turabi, on the Diamond Throne. The Princess Royal wept instead, bitterly, inconsolably for her peasant-born ex-nurserymaid, who had mothered her, raised her, and finally shielded her beloved charge with her own body. Flecks of Lea’s blood stained her dress. The Princess knew that they were still out there, looking for her. Right now, she almost didn’t care if they found her.
Princess Shari buried her face in the fur of a small dog of dubious parentage. The dog, with canine understanding, allowed this, despite the fact that he was a Dog-of-Immense-Dignity, who believed that cuddling should only be permitted at times and places of its own choosing. The dog growled abruptly. The delicate pale green curtain of hanging Sambar-lilies parted.
Shari looked up. For a moment she thought it was her brother’s crony, Selim Puk. The man had the same almond eyes and dark hair, and moved with same catlike deadly grace. But this man was smaller. And the eyes were a softer brown. “I suppose you’ve come to kill me,” she said calmly.
In his hands the thin garrote-wire gleamed, confirming the truth of this. But he was startled. Hers was not the first life the high-priest of Kali-Dewa had sent him to harvest back into the great cycle. There had been many. But this was the first time he had been greeted thus. “You do not beg or plead?” This was an honorable thing indeed. Surely her rebirth would be a great one.
She shrugged, unafraid now that it had come. “Why? It wouldn’t make any difference. You’ve killed everyone I have ever loved. First Senn. Now my Lea.” She scratched the base of the dog’s ears. “I only have Otto here left. You won’t hurt him, will you?” She gave a tiny sigh, and hugged the mongrel, who turned to lick her nose. “I wonder what will become of him. He was only half-weaned when I found him. I don’t think he knows how to look after himself.” The dog, reassured by the calm tones, jumped off her lap and went to sniff the boots of the killer. Without thinking the man put a hand down to pet it.
“I have killed none of these people, lady. I will not harm your dog. I give my word that I shall find it a suitable home.”
She looked faintly surprised, but patted her thigh, calling Otto back to her. “Thank you. I didn’t expect that from one of Selim’s hatchet-men.”
“I am no one’s hatchet-man, lady. I am the holy executioner of the Kali-Dewa.” He stepped forward, unwinding the garrote.
“How depressing. You’re going to kill me for this ‘Kali-Dewa’ and I don’t even know who he is. I thought you were too pleasant to be one of my late father’s or my brother’s pet murderers.”
She made no move to resist as he skilfully dropped the loop of braided steel wire around her slim white neck. “You are a person of great honor, even if you do not know that the Dewa is always female. Where possible we are instructed to allow the victim a last prayer for their souls to ensure rebirth closer to the Dewa. I grant you this time to make your peace with the Goddess.”
His victim sighed. “I’ve no one to pray for except Otto. Lea and Senn are dead. Kill me if you’re going to. I’m so tired of running and being scared all the time.”
The wire slackened slightly. “You are supposed to pray for yourself, for forgiveness.”
“Why?”
The holy executioner was definitely at a loss now. “Because… well, because of your tyrannical rule of my people, and persecution of the holy church. You are the Duchess of Arunachal, after all.”
His victim began to laugh helplessly. Eventually, interspersed with little hiccups of hysterical laughter, she explained to the puzzled killer, “I’m hiding in the garden from my brother’s assassins. I haven’t a friend in the world besides my dog. I might be an Imperial Princess to you, but believe me, I couldn’t tyrannize anybody. I don’t think I could even order lunch now. I’m the titular head of seventeen planets, and patron of dozens of organizations. You don’t really think that really means anything do you? You don’t think I’m allowed to actually do anything, do you? I don’t even know where half the places are, never mind anything about them!”
“That is a sin itself. You should have found out, done something, gone to your dominions,” said the executioner doubtfully, as the dog sprang off her lap.
She shrugged. “So kill me for it. I haven’t even been able to get out of the palace to save myself, never mind visit my so-called dominions.”
By this stage the holy executioner had forgotten the garrote in his hands. The dog barked and he almost throttled the Princess instinctively. But Otto was barking at someone outside the shrubbery.
“That’s her damned dog. The girl must be in there somewhere. Selim said we were to finish off the girl and that damn dog of hers.” The voices were close. The girl ignored the garrote, and grabbed the dog who had pressed against her knees. The holy executioner stared in puzzlement as she turned away from the voices and held it her arms. Abruptly he realized that she was trying to shelter the dog from the bullets she expected. Yet, by the fierce look in her eyes she had been prepared to attack the newcomers barehanded to defend the dog, had she not been certain that the animal too would be killed.
It was a moment of epiphany. The executioner dropped his garrote, and, secure in the knowledge that he stood in the presence of a light-incarnation of the Kali-Dewa herself, went forth.
A single, small Aranachali man armed with two ancient fourteen-inch knives should really have been no match for two of Selim Puk’s professional killers. The men were top-graduate assassins trained for two years by the Imperial Security Service.
It actually was no match at all. The Dagger of the Goddess had begun his training when he could barely walk. He had twenty years of training to their two. His bloodline too had been honed for many, many generations to this purpose.

Update:

It’s up – click via the picture and I [Dave] get an extra couple of percent :-)

You know, the slow-mo disaster on the link I posted (About the British Veteran who escaped nursing home with medals to go attend D-Day celebrations in France) continued, with someone else coming to yell at me for sharing a link from UKIP. Now, to my knowledge, UKIP isn’t Britain First and vice versa. I also know next to nothing about UKIP and very slightly more than that about Britain First.  Nor do I propose to spend my time researching it. After all, British parties are British parties. I can’t vote on them. What I hear about them is filtered through their papers and ours.

Two things I do know, before I get to the main point of this post:

1-      I’ve seen Portuguese parties referred to here as “far right” which are in fact undefinable in the American spectrum. What passes for “far right” in Portugal is, economically social-democrat, if not socialist. It’s also morally extremely social-conservative with overtones of heavy Catholic enforcement. Now, several things about that squeak me (pretty much all of it, actually, which is why when I was in Portugal, I voted monarchist, because they had no chance. It was a “none of the above” vote.) but NONE OF THEM fit into American politics. We have socialists and we have socons, but the two don’t normally unite (save in a fringe of the Democratic party. Yes, I’ve met some.) America simply doesn’t have a “right wing” like Europe’s “right wing.” Heck, I’m not sure “Right wing” translates between various countries in Europe. (More on that later.)

2-      Any American presuming to know anything about any other country’s politics, their implications and their substratum, at a remove, filtered through two sets of fairly left wing media (I’m not guessing you know, 90% of them vote for the most socialist slate they can find. And the left tends to be more uniform across countries than the right (or what gets called right in the local lingo). That’s because they’re internationalist (at least in their own minds. More on that later, too.) is about as well informed as when Europeans presume to advise us on our politics and living conditions. (Yes, I know, a lot of people take the European scolding for gospel. This is a strain that has run in American culture from the beginning, but it is now dumber than ever. Do you even realize most other countries don’t get how our country is organized, or the difference between federal government and state? That all of them, pretty much (except maybe China) are incapable of understanding the vastness of the US? Or the cultural variation state to state? I find it hilarious to have my brother admonish me on our uniform culture “you only have one cheese and one type of bread” when that’s almost 100% true of Portugal, unless you have tons of money, and has no application here. Or when he tells me about how frightful our crime rate is. Guys, I’ve left my car unlocked in the driveway, with my purse in it (because stupid) and found it intact in the morning. In Portugal… Let’s not go there. But see, those crimes aren’t reported, because the police is on the take, so in the end, their statistics look better.) I’m not saying no country can know anything about another country, I’m saying what we know is often very wrong. The US believed Soviet self-released statistics until the whole caboodle collapsed.

Okay, those points are disposed of. Let’s now move on to the meat of this post.

I’m sick and tired of people coming along and flinging poo and everyone cringing and distancing themselves. You know exactly what I mean: calling someone a Nazi, or homophobic, or anti-woman.

Larry has got tarred with that, and I’ve got tarred with that. Why, some idiot Twattertwitter guessed my entire politics from my national origin and (her presumption about) my age (I’m actually about 20 years younger than she thought. In fact, closer to her own age than she thought. This was arrived at by a process akin to reading tea leaves. All this while I make absolutely no secret of my political orientation which is “that government governs best which governs least” and also “Don’t tread on me.” Which immediately invalidated her clever-idiot presumption that I was a “Nazi” (That this was said by someone from Germany is just the ironic irony jam on the irony cake.)

But see, she probably (I presume. Unless German education cooks brains in their case) doesn’t believe that. It’s probably impossible to be that stupid and that unable to do any research at all. She just thought that if she called me a bad enough name, I’d shut up and stop calling her on her bullshit.

This is the same thing that the people who came on my facebook page wanted. “Oh, Americans don’t know much about British parties. I’ll say these people are just like Hitler. They’ll apologize for even mentioning them, and they’ll cringe in my presence forever more.”

There is a time it would have worked. It’s not that far distant. In my school days, it would have worked immediately and I’d have shut up SO fast. But even in more recent days it almost worked.

Anyone else who remembers the blog that shall not be named, whose owner lost his mind in the blog wars, will know that his first sign of dementia was to start sniffing out guilt-by-association and looking for signs of “racism” and “white supremacy.”

Some of the things he found out almost kind of made sense. If you talk right wing in Northern Europe, you’re going to find a lot of people with vaguely fascist (of the “attended same class” type) associations. Oh, you’ll find them on the left, too, but no one talks about it.

At that point in his descent into madness, I was cringing and thinking “But I liked that blog. Oh, no. What’s wrong with me?”

Do you know what stopped it? His post on the Celtic cross. I kid you not. This man went through archives of photographs and every time one showed a Celtic cross knickknack or jewelry or whatever, he decided they were part of a mega white-power conspiracy extending across Europe.

I might have bought that, but for two things: first, I was raised in Europe. The Celtic cross is mostly a symbol that you’re bookish and a bit of a romantic (in the literary sense) and want to have something that looks classy and old. Second, I belong to the science fiction community. Our tables at cons are filled with celtic cross stuff of assorted descriptions. In fact, when he published that post, I’d been hankering for a silver celtic-cross pair of earrings I did not have the money to buy at a con the weekend before. And last I’d checked, SF/F whatever the Social Justice Whiners with their Glittery Hoo Has say, is NOT nor has it been for at least seventy years even slightly tainted with white supremacy, let alone a hot bed of it.

At that point I started realizing how tenuous that bloggers hold on reality – and the connections he was making – were.

And since then I’ve been very suspicious of any tarring by association.

First of all because when you tar Americans with being “right wing” in the foreign sense, you have no clue what you’re talking about. If you think you do, you’ve just proven your own ignorance. Go soak your head.

Second, because guilt by association is crazy-making. Look, like Joseph Stalin, I was born in a foreign country and worked in a white collar position. We were/are both married and had kids. Worse, the country was in Europe. And what’s more, neither of us liked/likes aristocracy of birth. Does this mean I’m responsible for the hundred thousands of deaths accounted to Stalin? Oh, please. Go soak your head.

Third – This never gets applied equally. For instance no one calls the left on the fact that their still lionized hero, FDR, was less than a ha’porth of opinion away from Hitler. He believed in eugenics, had issues with Jews (no? What do you think of all the ships turned away?) and was convinced the State should be the ultimate arbiter of everything. Nor do Democrats get called on the fact that during the DNC in 12 they were proudly proclaiming “Everyone must belong to something, so the state is something we all belong to.” In fact, “All within the State, nothing outside the State” – Benito Mussolini, loud and proud. Now, there’s something to cringe about. (And by the way, they can “belong” to whatever they want to. I’m a free citizen, thank heavens. The authority of the state comes from me, not the other way around.) If you think the left doesn’t have feet made of as much clay as the right (in any country), you can google people who supported Hitler until he fought with Stalin, and find all the icons of the left. I have read primary sources about both wars. If you think the left didn’t go overboard for Hitler until they found a bigger butcher wasn’t tainted with pretty much the same sins as the right of the time, you’re ignorant, go soak your head.

Fourth if you poke around in anyone’s life – ANYONE’s – you’ll find some association that is repulsive if not downright criminal. This is because we’re humans associating with other humans, all of us broken in several ways. For instance, we once barely escaped meeting a would-be terrorist, because I had a migraine and we skipped out on a dinner party. Our friends were friends with this Arab couple, and wanted to introduce us because, you know, immigrants. The Monday after that Saturday the couple were arrested for plotting to bomb something or other. There are things you don’t know about even authors you madly admire. Because people can be great authors and capable of horrible stuff in their private lives and if we only read books by saints, we’d have maybe three books to read. As this blogger at Tor found out. Now does this make the blogger at Tor endorse pedophilia? Hardly. She’s glittery and dim and thinks that history started when she says it did, but unless I knew more about her, I’d never accuse her of something that heinous. So when you try to accuse people of horrible crimes by association, look to your own glass houses. If you think you don’t have them, you’re mentally slow. Go soak your head.

Choose your associations carefully – and for that I mean REAL associations, not echoing someone’s facebook meme. For the love of heaven, I’ve echoed some from the hard left because the meme was CUTE. 99.9% of the people never look at the originator, only at the meme – and be aware that in all good there’s evil intermixed. And when people try to fling poo and tar you with heinous crimes by association, tell them the truth: “I am responsible for that which I explicitly endorse, that which I do, and that which I support that brought evil on others. I am not evil because I believe differently from you, nor do I accept other people are evil just because they disagree with you. Cringing is over. Defend your ideas and your opinions openly in the full light of day, or go soak your head.”

Oh, yeah.  And grow up already. Being grown up is messy, and confusing, and you’ll objectively like people who are very bad, and dislike people you should like, and all your best judgements will be sneered at by history  and by scholars yet unborn who — if they care about you at all — will call you names.  You are not, and will never be omniscient, let alone omnipotent.  And nothing in this world is perfect.

That’s a lesson most of us learn three years out of the nursery, if that late.  It’s time you learned it.

I didn’t write my two posts last night, because Benadryl and right now I desperately need tea before I write BUT meanwhile two things:  First, if you didn’t read this when it was free on my website, Sweet Alice is now up for free on Amazon.  (It’s about Rafiel and set in the shifters series.)

Second, Dave Freer just launched his Stardogs as his first indie release.  Dave Freer is probably my “main writing buddy” and most of Stardogs was written in The Year of No Hope (2003) when we were each other’s main beta readers.  I wanted him to sell it so badly, but it was a very original novel and as such hard to sell.

So, now it’s available to buy, and my friend Cedar has written a review which she gave me permission to post below:

Dave Freer’s Stardogs

I know, it isn’t review day. But it is launch day, and I have been waiting on the edge of my seat for this day since I got to read the pre-release copy of Stardogs.

This one is good. Very, very good. I know I can always rely on Dave Freer for a solidly plotted, well-composed tale, with characters I can root for, a world that comes to life in my head, and best of all? Hope.

Which is all the characters in this story have to go on, in the beginning. Ever since humanity first encountered a stardogs, the alien, intelligent but not sentient being, they have been using them. With the stardogs providing vital transportation, humanity has conquered the stars and hundreds of worlds. But there is a nasty secret underlying all this activity, and it’s about to come out.

It all centers around an imperial princess, her (real!) dog, and an assasin. But it won’t turn out like you think it will. I started reading Stardogs one afternoon, and couldn’t put it down until I was done with it. Dave’s prose is easy to read, and a joy to discover little passages that had me reading them out loud to my First Reader. This isn’t something I do often, by the way. I had to, there were just some lovely bits of humor, wit, and wisdom buried in the story. He’s been reading it too, and enjoying it, which is rare these days, he’s picker than I am by far. Personally, I’m looking forward to re-reading it.

Stardogs is of course a space opera, with a dash of romance for seasoning, and a lot of adventure. I’d rave at length about it, but I don’t want to spoil any surprises for you, my friends. Priced at $3.99, this is a hefty novel for a very affordable price. Grab it, review it, and let’s all meet back here later to talk about it!

You know, I almost wish that would work. Book club for great new science fiction and fantasy…

Or perhaps we could not march in lockstep.

Yesterday I might sort of have started a fight on facebook. For those of you who are rolling their eyes, no, this is not normal for me.

You see, I actually don’t like to fight. Once the fight is swinging, yeah, I pretty much fit that thing that Foxfier posts about the men of England and all their fights being merry, but that’s not how I look at it before it starts.

There are two factors going into how I’m reacting to thing these days, though. The first – fair warning – is that I seem, at long last to have started the process of menopause. So far no behavioral wobbles, perhaps because I’m used to policing myself the whole time. (You have to, when you feel all drama-y because of something going on in your head pretty much all the time. And that’s called being a writer. And I’ve been one for years.  So I have checks on my behavior and how it fits reality.) The only thing I’ve noticed is that my give-a-d*mn is busted.

In my twenties you could make me cringe and fall in line by saying “you’re acting like a ‘negative stereotype’” and I’d get so scared of being stigmatized as that thing that I’d fall into line immediately. That has been sloughing off a little at a time, and now it’s thoroughly gone.

[This, btw, should serve as warning to the “ladies” in twitterfront (They’re sort of like stormfr*nt upside down, sideways and – somehow even more ignorant. — Trust me, it takes effort, I once followed a troll from here back to his lair and what those people don’t know of history could fill several very large archives. Note I’m asterisking their name because I’m writing and I don’t need trolls). Anyway ladies – oh, wait, offensive – females – oh, wait, recently considered offensive too, Sluts (it is), take note calling me a fascist will only get me to roll my eyes at you, while calling me a Nazi is roll-on-the-floor funny. Why? Because my political philosophy requires almost no control by the state, beyond the very minimum to ensure the force of contracts and to prevent outright war of all against all. If you think that’s fascism, you really need to study up on fascism. As for Nazi, let’s just say that anyone who poked into my genetic antecedents (with a stick. And acid resistant gloves. Some of my ancestors were not… peaceable precisely) would know any theories of race purity would consider me an abomination.

Why the warning? Well, I haven’t bothered with twitter. I have kids still in the house, four cats, a demanding job. But as I get older and pissier, who knows, I might need another outlet. And you really can’t cage me with epithets because – get this, I know it will be hard for you fluttertwatters – I don’t care what you call me, anymore.]

So, that’s where we stand vis a vis givead*mns.

On top of this for a month now I’ve had eczema all over my arms. It was already pretty bad at Ravencon, but – picture the worst you’ve seen my eczema (and some of you have seen it at cons.) Now make it ten times worse and project it from my shoulders through the end of my fingers. I couldn’t take it anymore, the cream alone wasn’t fighting it, and I found that Benadryl oral does stop it for however many hours. This is allowing the topical cream to get the upper hand so that today I’m proud to announce only one small open wound on my right arm. The whole area is still covered in scales and still itches like hell, but hey, no wounds. Progress.

The price is to spend the whole day in a state of semi-zonk. Which means I’m working on Through Fire, but it’s going VERY slowly.

For some reason “zonk” removes my already lax “giveadamn” barriers.

So yesterday, on FB, finding a meme about the veteran of WWII who escaped a nursing home with his medals, after they told him he couldn’t attend D-Day celebrations, and who, somehow, managed to make it to France in time for the celebrations, I decided to echo it.

A quick click on the picture revealed that it was originally posted by Britain First. There was much handwringing in the comments about how he fought against fascism and now these people were defending fascism and using his picture.

The handwringing was so universal it made me curious. Look, I’ll admit right away I know nothing about British parties. At this point I know next to nothing about Portuguese parties. ONE thing I know, sort of, and that is that in either country there is no equivalent of a small government party. Or the idea that you shouldn’t stick your nose in people’s business. What there are are various flavors of socialist, whose program, depending on how aggressive they are at nationalizing things vs. just making private enterprise do what they want (as our current administration does) spread out on the pink/red/black spectrum from international socialist to national socialist. This doesn’t make them classical left and right so much as it makes them “uh?” To the extent that Britain First is LIKELY TO BE (note that I haven’t studied them beyond a tramp through wicki and some things my fans found) Nationalistic and promote a socialist agenda, they’re probably… unclassifiable. Since I suspect their nationalism is more of the confiscation than the “control private enterprise” form. But if we go on name, they might very well be national and socialist. Does this make them the equivalent of the Nazis?

Oh, hell, no. Nowhere could I find intent to invade Poland, and besides, Putin might get upset, since he has that planned for Wednesday.

Okay – I’ll be serious – nowhere did I find anti-semitism. Their entire program, first and last seems to hinge on getting Islam out of Britain and Islamic influence out of the British manner of life. They don’t even seem to be particularly against Arabs or Immigrants (there’s another party that is that in Britain), they’re just against he culture and the religion. Oh, and they’re very rude and uncouth and say nasty things about Islam and Muslims in public, and also walked in a mosque without taking off their shoes and try to give bibles to Muslims.

This is the stuff of horror, right?

I’ll confess to you that I’d have cringed from the association if I’d been twenty, and if I weren’t completely, fresh, all out of giveadamns.

At fifty one, I thought “Screw that. I like their meme which is about a WWII veteran. They’re not doing anything bad here. And no one is going to donate to them/become committed because they saw this meme.” So I echoed it.

Like clock work, someone half an hour later came to yell at me that I was echoing a meme from a white-supremacist party, and please stop doing that.

At which point I posted what I posted above about Britain First. I also pointed out culture is not race. Being against a culture, or a religion does not make you racist.

She then came back to – I swear I’m not lying – inform me that while okay they might not be racist, but they were a “hate group.”

I hate that designation which seems to mean “anything vile progs don’t like.” I used to post at a libertarian blog (I haven’t for a couple of years due to lack of time, not because I left it) where we were so strongly dedicated to overthinking everything we once got tied up in knots over whether adult incest should be forbidden by law. All of us agreed there were problems with it on the moral front, mind, but did it justify a law.

If you can picture that, you know that such a group not only couldn’t make the trains run on time, it couldn’t even decide whom it should hate, or even mildly dislike.

Well, we got labeled an “hate site” when we said stuff critical of terrorists, and it took us forever to slough it off.

So those words annoyed me. Particularly since what they seem to hate is a philosophy (again, on a very cursory search. I’m not that interested.)

So I started to answer back asking whom did they want killed or interned. Only my fingers have a life of their own. So what I posted was “Do they wish to stone gays? Kill women who marry outside their faith? Kill people not of their religion?”

After which the Huns took over and got delightfully in your face and graphic.

The girl who’d come to scold me didn’t come back. And you sort of have to realize after my answer she ran screaming into the night, sure she’d found a true bonna fide “right wing” and “fascist” nest. Because I was dissing Islam.

Let’s lean back and take a deep breath, shall we? This is what’s technically known as insane.

Words like “racist” and “hate group” and even “fascist” are not discussions. They’re a way to stop discussion and make the opposition run away. And the reason they want us to run away is that – of course – they don’t have a leg to stand on.

Yes, I’m going to be the first to say there are Muslims who never did harm to anyone. To the extent these people are decent, though, they’re not GOOD Muslims. And they know it, and in their heart they feel they should support the Jihad (which is not a spiritual fight, but a very physical one against infidels. You see, when I was fourteen an religiously seeking, I read the Koran. You cannot blow smoke up my orifices.) They might even give money to Jihadi groups.

And the religion itself, which is both religion and civil law, combined, is a horror. Killing anyone who converts out of the faith? Check. Covering women in upholstery better used for sofas? Check (and the first idiot who tells me this means respect for women is going to get punted from on high. It’s one thing for women to cover their hair out of religious belief, another to have it forced on them by civil laws. And it’s another entirely to cover women in a garment that makes it difficult for them to function in public in an industrial society, all in the name of making all women look like blobs, so men who can’t control their lusts won’t be tempted.) Mutilating little girls? Check. Child marriage with older men already with multiple wives? Check. The list goes on and on and on. Anything they don’t specifically approve of seems to be on the list to be stoned.

Look, I’m the first to say one man’s religion is another man’s belly laugh, (well, the second. Heinlein said it first.) and I have friends of a lot of religions I find dotty. But not one of them advocates killing that many people/subgroups.  In fact, none of them, presently, advocates killing anyone.

Islam is, if anything, the living definition of hate group. So, why is it that anyone condemning them is a “hate group” – shouldn’t we fight hate with hate?

Shouldn’t we at least listen to why they object to this group of believers and this group of beliefs? Or is the fact that this religion, in England, is represented by people-who-can-tan an immediate get out of jail free card? And if it is, why? You do realize throughout history brown skinned people have committed just as many abominations as blond, blue eyed bastards, right?

Take Portugal (please. I sell it cheeeeep.) The North was raided by Vikings, the South by Moorish Pirates. I don’t recall either side receiving loving kindness.

But no, the screams of “hate group” and “nazi” and “fascist” makes people skiv off running, for fear they’ll be called that next.

Yes, I’m rolling my eyes.

Let’s peel back a bit of the wrapping around the words. Not all, because that would take forever.

As I said before I know nothing about Britain First. For all I know they paint Hitler mustaches under their noses and goosestep around their local pub saluting every Friday night, before setting fire to a mosque or two.

This is not about them. This is about being called a “fascist” or a “nazi”

Believe it or not “fascist” doesn’t mean anti-communist. Oh, sure communists and fascists squared it off in the Long war of Europe, for who would get supremacy.

The communists won. In words if not on the battle field, which is what’s causing the confusion.

First, communists, like the devil, managed to convince people they don’t exist. “True communism” cannot ever be achieved, and even its lighter form “socialism” is only really socialism if you take over the means of production.

I call it bullshit, and I call it damnable.

It’s true that “true communism” can’t exist in this our present plane, because it would require humans to transform into something different. (The communists in Russia actually expected this. Freed from the pressures of Capitalism, humans would evolve into Homo Sovieticus, who would work perfectly well within communism, and be happy too.) It doesn’t work that way, because it is, really, just a painted-up-version of the ancient tyrannies man has known since it became man. Taken to its final conclusion it generates not the Homo Sovieticus, but an hereditary monarchy. See Cuba, or North Korea.

BUT that’s not how they mean it doesn’t exist. They excuse the 100 million corpses generated by this regime by saying that “this time we’ll do it right.”

As for socialism – national or international – there isn’t a penny difference between outright nationalizing enterprises (what used to be undisguisedly socialism-on-the-way-to-communism. Yes, they called it that) and just controlling them with regulations and government money (which also goes to the cronies of the government, generally, not the “better enterprises.”)

To the extent it is sort of kind of different, it is the difference between China, which is now, in organization, fascist and Cuba which is the closest to a “perfect socialism” we have.

If I had to choose between living in one of them, I’d prefer China. It’s a thin preference, because both regimes are brutal, repressive, capable of dealing death on anyone who has a non-approved thought.

Both are also economically rotten. “Economic fascism” leaves just enough freedom to companies that it decays SLOWER than “economic socialism” but that’s it. I know. I was born in a country that practiced economic fascism (no, they were not Nazis. No, they never allied with Hitler. They were neutral because they were near bankrupt and also because if they’d declared for the Fascists, Franco would have annexed them. If they declared for the Allies, Franco would have invaded them. There really wasn’t any choice but being neutral in WWII, for them.) We weren’t as poor as Cuba, but by the time I came along, we were probably 50 years and perhaps more behind the rest of Europe. And there was no relief in sight.

It’s just fascism goes down the drain SLOWER than socialism/communism (the caveat being dose matters.  the more socialism, the faster the down-the-drain-going.)

So, on that axis, if you take “fascism” as “right” and “socialism” as left, America managed to somehow lose WWII, because there is nowhere in the world a regime that believes in free enterprise and the rights of the individual. Our political idea of “leave us the heck alone to conduct our economic and social life as we please” has no room on that axis. We stand outside it and scratch our heads and go “why would you want either of those?”

The other defining factor in the axis is the one from Nationalism to Internationalism. I’m not going to explain why “Internationalism” is crazy. I know most Europeans grew up being taught nationalism leads to “fascism” and “war.”

This is bullshit and a scar from the time of WWI. Yeah, arguably, the lead up to the war was dressed in nationalism. And anyone who says “We should attack Elbonia because they’re not Kneeans like us” should be told to shut up and go home.

But there is a great difference between that and love and pride for your country. Look at it this way, guys, if you don’t love your country, what country do you love? Your country is the only one you’ll truly know – warts and all – and because it’s the only one you know, and you see the warts, you project onto other countries a level of perfect wonderfulness that doesn’t exist anywhere in the human condition.

This comes prettily from an immigrant, doesn’t it?

Yeah, but guess what? I loved the other country better, so I moved there. I didn’t sit in Portugal running Portugal down and cringing every time someone unfurled the flag. And the reason I moved here was not because I thought America had no warts. (I was raised in Europe, remember? Trust me, they tell us all of America’s warts in history.) It was that the philosophical alignment here suited me better. We might not have free enterprise or individual rights, but we still have the concepts.

Europe doesn’t.

It doesn’t in large part, because four generations have been told that nationalism is the root of all evil, and so they have dopily embraced the “internationalism” that was peddled by… Russia. The thing is if you dig into that “internationalism” it’s not so much that as “Russian Nationalism” where the world becomes one nation and that nation is Russia. (Yes, I say Russia, not the Soviet Union, because in the end, Russia was the motor of that, and Putin is about to rev it up again.)

There is – there can be – no such thing as internationalism. Look, guys, regions of the US are too different to form a “perfect union” despite the same (more or less) language and a shared history to a point. The nations of Europe… Eh. We’re seeing how that is working out. And the nations of the world… well! There isn’t enough in common there to form an international anything.

You really can’t make common cause with a hate group who stones homosexuals, upholsters women, forbids interest rate, and mutilates little girls. It’s not possible. And saying so doesn’t make you a hater, it makes you sane.

So – brings Benadryl addled mind back – refuse to be intimidated by name calling. They can call you “fascist” or “Nazi” or “hater” but that doesn’t change who you are.

If we are to make our way out of this mess we need to discuss what is really behind the words and behind the regimes. For instance, socialism, right or left, hasn’t worked all that well. Maybe we should give free-enterprise a spin. And dopey multiculturalism where we give equal acceptance to every CULTURE for fear of being called “racist” doesn’t work very well, either. For one, it’s bringing back true racism, which is the assumption culture and behavior are genetically inherited.

Perhaps we should go back to the idea that there are things people just SHOULDN’T do, like stoning people for changing their religion. Perhaps we should go back to the idea that even if Islam screams the loudest, and threatens our physical integrity, it really isn’t exempt from the market place of ideas. Distributing bibles to them is not a crime, and not hate. It’s normal in a free society. They distribute pamphlets promoting their religion. (They do it downtown where I live) and no one wants them banned or calls them “haters” for that. (For some of the loony stuff in the pamphlets, like the crazed hatred of gays and uncovered women, sure.)

If they want to live in the west, they have to accept the west’s give and take of ideas. And if they don’t want to do that they can go back whence they came. The west does NOT have the duty to wrap them in cotton wool. They come here, they live like us.

And that, readers, is the sum total of my hating hatey hatred. I think immigrants should adapt to the receiving culture. I’m one. I should know.

And I think we should stop talking in terms of “left” and “right” and instead examine the various economic and social systems and finds what works and what doesn’t.

Yes, I know this makes me a terrible person. Who is now going to load up on caffeine and finish her book, despite Benadryl.

Don’t’ read that! It might be bad for you. – Amanda Green

Once upon a time, our children were encouraged to read. They were given books with exciting storylines and characters they could identify with, even cheer for. They were given non-fiction books in school that taught them it was a good thing to strive for the stars and not worry about being told something was impossible. If they could imagine a way to make it happen, they knew they could try to find a way to make imagination turn into reality. Long before man made it into outer space, some young boy or girl lay in bed, staring out the window into the night sky. They saw themselves on the Moon or Mars.

Or they imagined themselves becoming the next Einstein or Edison or Marie Curie. They were Paul Bunyon and Pecos Bill. Scheherazade and Aladdin. So many stories, fact and fiction, and we were encouraged to read them. Better than all that, we were encouraged to read above our grade level, to excel.

Sure, there were books we weren’t supposed to read, at least according to the school administrators. When I was in high school, back in the Dark Ages, one of the “forbidden” books was Catcher in the Rye. Whether the administrators were afraid we’d all become like Mark David Chapman and go out and assassinate some musical icon or something else, I don’t know. All we were told was that it was not “appropriate” for high school students, even those in the advanced classes – classes now viewed as AP or even IBE courses. We weren’t mature enough to be able to differentiate what Holden Caulfield did from real life.

Since then, we’ve seen Toni Morrison’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings all the way to J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books being put on the banned books list. All it seems to take in so many education districts is one parent objecting to a book for whatever reason. The reasons can range from language to sex, implied or real, to religion or violence or anything else they might find objectionable.

Now I know that to truly ban a book you have to be a government, but when you’re a school you still can keep books away from students, or at least you might think you can.

The latest example of this comes from Florida. It seems the principal of Booker T. Washington High School in Pensacola has decided to remove Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother from the One School/One Book summer reading program. Well, to be fair, the first stories I read about this said the principal was removing the book from the program – the word “ban” was being bandied about – but subsequent stories noted that the book was only being removed from the reading list for the ninth and tenth grade students.

What makes this instance of pulling a book from a school reading list different from many of the other instances when this has happened is multi-fold. First, the author had been scheduled to visit the school and discuss the book with the students at the end of the summer. Whether you agree with Doctorow’s politics or not, you have to give it to him for wanting to visit with the entire school to discuss the book and its themes. More importantly, the ability for those students to hear the author discuss why he wrote the book – and what it means to be an author – could be invaluable for any number of them.

Now, even if he does make the trip at the end of the summer, there will be a number of students who won’t be allowed to hear him because they weren’t allowed to read his book.

So, why weren’t they allowed to read it? Let’s start with the fact the principal admitted to only having scanned the book and becoming concerned about some of the topics. It was while he was scanning the book that he noticed it “included language and themes he didn’t think were appropriate for his younger students.”

Mind you, this is the same principal who said, “I take it upon myself to look at what kids are exposed to and what’s in their best interests.”

And this is my first and probably greatest problem with what happened here. As any English teacher worth her teaching degree will tell you, you can’t get the full impact of a story, no matter what its length, by scanning it. Your eyes will pick out certain words but not necessarily their context. You certainly won’t get the deeper meaning of the book.

So here you have a principal who proclaims that he takes it upon himself to look at what his students are exposed to and to then determine what is in their best interests. So tell me, how can he do so without actually reading the book?

But there is another subtext here that the principal seems to be missing – and one that Doctorow and his publisher, Tor, has embraced. Tell a kid that he shouldn’t read something and it is almost a guarantee that he’s going to race out and try to find a copy, if for no other reason than to find the parts of the book that were so bad he shouldn’t read it. Doctorow and Tor realize that and, for that reason, they are sending 200 free copies of the book to the high school for the students.

I guaran-damn-tee you that those ninth and tenth graders will be huddling up somewhere, thumbing through the books they’ve either picked up for free or have gotten from their friends or older siblings looking for the – gasp – sex or violence or whatever the adults are whispering about and that makes Little Brother so bad.

Instead of worrying about how the poor little darlings might be led astray by a story about teens questioning authority and Homeland Security, wouldn’t it be better to actually discuss the book and its themes? Gee, maybe there is something in there those kids ought to be thinking about – like the encroachment on our rights by the government and what our options are to slow and, hopefully, stop the slide into socialism or worse.

But I guess it is dangerous to have our teens actually thinking about issues that might impact them and their families. Just like it is dangerous for them to read about people who are different from them or about British boarding schools where “magic” is taught. After all, the one might help us understand those raised in a time or place different from what we were and the latter – gasp – might reek of Satanism.

Yes, my tongue is planted firmly in my cheek on the Satanism comment because, as with Principal Roberts, most of those who objected to Harry Potter in our schools had never read the book. They heard it was about magic and we all know that magic is actually magick which is nothing but blood rights and black magic and devil worship. It is so much safer for all of us to pass judgment on a book or a poem or essay based on rumor and innuendo than it is to read the thing. If we read it, we might be contaminated and where would we be then?

Oh, I know, we might be infected with an attack of imagination or inspiration. We definitely can’t have that in our schools, can we?

Maybe this bothers me so much because I read it on the heels of D-Day. I wasn’t alive back then – heck, I wasn’t even a twinkle in my mother’s eye. She was 13 years old then, younger than many of the kids impacted by the decision not to let them read Little Brother. The parallel it draws in my mind is to the Germans rounding up books, tossing them into piles and burning them “for the good of the nation”. This might not have been a book burning, but the reasoning for not allowing these youngsters the chance to read the book is too close to what happened back then for me to like it.

Maybe I suffer from being brought up in a home where I was encouraged to read – everything I could get my hands on. Or maybe it is because high school for me included teachers and administrators who weren’t afraid to challenge us with unpopular topics to consider and discuss. I first read the Communist Manifesto on junior high. Even then it was a bunch of rubbish. Sure, it looked good on paper but there was no way, humans being what they are, that it could work the way it was envisioned.

I read the John Birch Society’s Blue Book, almost as chilling in some ways as the Communist Manifesto, in 11^th grade history. Why? Because Mrs. Monk, my teacher, realized I was bored with what we were studying. I already knew the material. So she came in one day and called myself and one of my best friends, who was also bored, up to her desk. That’s when she handed us each a copy of the Blue Book and gave us a week to read it, study up on the JBS and to prepare a presentation to the class. After that, while everyone else still toiled – for the umpteenth time since we began school back in the first grade – on the Civil War and its aftermath, David and I had to study and debate which would be best, the United Nations or the League of Nations, Communism or Socialism or Democracy.

I was raised, as were so many of my generation, to question authority and not to blindly accept what the government – or any other organization – said, especially if it was prefaced with “for the good of the [fill in the blank]”. Now we have our schools and other institutions teaching just the opposite. Let Big Brother care for you. Big Brother is here to protect you, succor you and comfort you. Trust Big Brother and all will be well.

Sorry, I’ll be over here in the corner reading the books you don’t want me to, telling my son and – hopefully one day his children – why it is important to question authority. If we don’t, if we just accept what those in power tell us, there is no longer any real check and balance of power. I’m not ready to let anyone tell me, or my children, what we can or can’t read – and especially when they haven’t read the book themselves.

I may not agree with a lot of what Doctorow stands for. But in this, I agree with him completely and kudos to him and to Tor for sending the 200 copies of the book to the school.

Of course, I remember the Ayn Rand Institute doing that with both Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead when my son was in high school and both of those are books I could get behind more than Little Brother. Both were books my son had no interest in reading – especially Atlas Shrugged because of its size – until he was told by the school he couldn’t read them.

When will our so-called educators learn that kids will do exactly what you tell them not to do and when will we start educating and not indoctrinating our kids in our schools? It can’t happen too soon.

*I was going to do posts here and at MGC, but something came up last night, which kept me from even sitting at the computer till now (tough I did sleep!)  So forgive me the Blast From The Past post.  For those in England, though, let me remind you Wings is NOW on sale FOR YOU. And in the US, I think it’s up to 1.99, which is still one fifth the regular price, so…  And now I go deal with stuff.*

I just woke up from the weirdest dream.  In my dream, this choir of sweet-voiced children was singing “If you are right and we don’t belong, we’ll fall, don’t fret.  It won’t take long.”  There were other verses, but as I woke up most of it vanished, leaving only this and “If you are right and it’s beneath that we belong, if we are wrong, it won’t be long.”

It was such a vivid dream – let alone I don’t often dream of people singing – that for a moment or two I thought “wow.  I must find a site with those lyrics and post them on the blog, because that is totally the theme song of indie.”

And then I woke up and realized the song was sung to the lyrics of “Love lifts us up where we belong.”

And I realized the song didn’t exist and my post would be slightly different.

So, let’s talk about fate and duty and striving.

I grew up in a culture that believes strongly in fate.  I was rocked to sleep to songs about fate inexorably pulling people to doom or triumph as well as to songs about your fate being scripted all ahead of time and there being nothing you can do to escape it.

So I suspect this problem is more mine than other people’s.  But I know it’s other people’s too.

Nine times out of ten, when newbies approach me and stammer a question, it is a variation on “do you think this is what I’m supposed to do?”  (Why is it that the ones who instead TELL me “this is what I’m supposed to do” are ALWAYS the ones who truly have no aptitude and who ALSO aren’t making progress because they think they’re wonderful already?  No, don’t answer that.  Because G-d is an author and this is a funny book, I know.)

This question tortured me for years.  It still does.  The sense that I owe someone a life, that there is something I’m supposed to do, and that “is this what I’m supposed to do?”  “Is this the life I should be living?”

(In my case, it is complicated – of course – by my being religious and therefore believing that there is a part I should be playing.  But if you interpret my life in that way, He’s been plying the divine two by four against my thick skull since the sixties trying to shove me this way, while I bleated “should I be doing this?”)

Even for those who aren’t religious; even for those who didn’t get saturated in fate with an extra side helping of fortune telling and talismans to avert an evil fate, there seems to be this sense “am I making the best possible use of my life?  Is this what I’m supposed to be doing?”

This is possibly because humans are crazy apes, aware of our own, personal mortality, a thing we presume other animals aren’t.  (Presume perhaps wrongly.  I suspect cats know.)  So we know our time is finite, and we look at it as an asset to be used.  Hence we get young people wanting “meaningful” jobs and “to do something that matters.”

Writers are particularly prone to this sort of doubt, because we get hit on the nose early and often.  Unlike other skilled crafts, we don’t – most of us.  There are exceptions – get tutored by a master in the craft and then released into the world knowing we’re at least somewhat good.

No, even those of us who have worked and practiced and think – from what we’ve seen and what we read – that we can’t be wholly bad, can’t be sure.  And in the days before indie it was entirely possible to spend a lifetime being rejected by EVERYONE and never breaking in.  Particularly as we went towards the nineties and you had to go through an AGENT first.  “Get pre-rejected” as it were.  Look, if I didn’t write as fast as I do and not been as stubborn as I am, I might not have made it here.  I wrote eight – EIGHT – novels, one of them a goat-gagger and got them rejected by EVERYONE before one of them found an agent. And then she claimed she couldn’t sell it and didn’t send it out.  And I wrote a ninth, which sold.  Two of those books rejected everywhere have now sold.  One has done rather well for me.  Others were a case of my biting off more than I could chew and/or of trying to cram too much story into too few words because I thought I was supposed to do.

Writing books used to say things like “know when to give up.  If it’s affecting your life, breaking up your relationships and devouring your sanity and you’re still not published, it might be time to walk away.”

I suspect the indie path won’t really be any easier.  There will be stories you put up that sell barely a copy.  Some of these will be your heart’s darlings.  Some of the stuff that you put up almost cringing will sell and sell and sell.

And this is not even just for writers, but for everyone who ever tried to do something difficult and tried to reach beyond what they thought they were supposed to do or what they thought they could aspire to.  (One of the videos that came up for Love Lifts Us Up Where We Belong was of An Officer And A Gentleman.  It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the movie and I don’t remember whether the song was in it.  BUT the story is the quintessential story of reaching beyond what you thought should be allotted to you.)

So you’ll try – whether what you want to do is writing or something else you think would be wonderful and which seems just out of reach – and you’ll fail.  And you’ll try again, and you’ll fail, and you’ll start to get discouraged.  And you’ll lay awake at night, the thought rounding on your mind, like starving wolves outside a village during a killing frost “What if I’m not supposed to be doing this?  What if this is not what I’m supposed to do with my life?”

It is human, I think, to want to avoid pain.  I think that whole question is a way to allow you to walk away before you kill yourself trying for something.  After all if your ancestor Grog hadn’t limped away from the big mammoth he was trying to take on his own, with his stone ax, you wouldn’t be here.

On the other hand…  On the other hand…  If he had taken that mammoth the entire village would have eaten like kings for a month and there would be other humans here who weren’t because all the village except Grog died of starvation.  (Grog probably ate them and survived that way.  This is why I don’t study genealogy.)  And that mammoth?  It turned out that Grog had already wounded it fatally and it died not very far away, after Grog had stopped following.

So, what am I saying?  Am I saying that there is no destiny?  No preordained fate?  That there is nowhere we should be?  Nothing we should do?

Well, I do believe there is a purpose to our life – but then I’m religious – but I don’t believe our fate is scripted.  I also believe that our purpose might be something that… fails to occupy our entire life.  There is an Agatha Christie story that illustrates this beautiful – unfortunately I can’t remember the title, but it’s one of the Harley Quinn stories – in which someone is about to jump from a cliff, and someone saves him.  The person who is saved goes on to play an important role in something.  The one who saved him had, himself, contemplated suicide.  It is hinted he had to stay alive so he would pass this isolated spot in the dead of night and thereby save this man.

Yeah, I believe you have a divine purpose, but your chances of knowing it or understanding it are minimal.  You have to trust that if you do the best you can, you’ll be there at that moment when you need to do what you’re supposed to.  (Also, I presume that G-d, like a good programmer has backup loops and you might get re-directed somewhere else.)

But that’s my religious beliefs – and other people’s belly laughs – and not fate.  I don’t believe in fate, no.

I believe in people who want something and who want it bad enough to do it.  I believe in people who think “So, what if it’s against fate?  The gods of fate can stuff it.  I’ll still climb that mountain and steal that fire even if there should be hell” or eagle “to pay.”

But shouldn’t you take heed of failures?  Perhaps you don’t have the natural talent?  Perhaps someone is trying to tell you something?

Look, natural talent has precious little to do with it.   If my younger son wanted to be a singer, I’d tell him it would be hard as h*ll because of his sensory issues.  I wouldn’t tell him it was impossible and that he could never do it.  Deaf people – who want it bad enough – can learn to sing.  There are ways to magnify the sound vibrations, so they can feel music and imitate it.

In the same way I wouldn’t tell even the most pitiful beginner writer “you’ll never make it.”  I’d give him or her some gentle hints on how to start improving, then leave it up to them to succeed or fail.  Because, as that sweetly singing in choir in my dream said, if they don’t have what it takes, they’ll fall… eventually.  (Or not.  It’s none of my business, anyway.)  If they want it, it’s their business to try.  If we want it, it’s our business to try.

I don’t remember the rest of the lyrics in my dream, but I have a feeling it said something about kicks in the teeth.
The other day a friend on Face Book posted a thing about “How do you get to success?”  Answered with “Fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, fail…….”

Make your own fate.  Climb your own mountain.

Your nails might be torn and bloody when you get there, and you might be down to one eye and one good knee.  BUT if you want it badly enough, you’ll get there.  If it’s a price you’re willing to pay, you’ll get there.  Don’t deceive yourself into continuing because it’s “fate” and don’t soothe giving up because “it’s fate.”  Make your own decisions, fate or no fate.

Yes, there might be hell to pay.  If you want it badly enough to pay the price, you can have it.  You can reach beyond what you were taught you could. The price is working beyond what you thought you’re capable of.  And to keep going after – by all reasonable thought – you should have been dead.  Sure, a man can take a mammoth down alone.  Even if the mammoth falls on him.  But what the heck, the village will eat well through winter.

You want the fire of the gods? Steal the fire of the gods.

And when the eagle comes to eat your liver?  Eat his.  Raw.

No one decreed it should be the other way around.  It’s up to you to make it the way you want it.

The prequel to this — Witchfinder — is now up on Amazon.

This novel will get posted here a chapter every Friday or Saturday, or occasionally Sunday.  If you contribute $6 you shall be subscribed for the earc and first clean version in electronic format.  I think it will probably take another three months to finish.  Less, if I can have a weekend to run through and get ahead of the game.  It hasn’t happened yet.

NOTICE: For those unsure about copyright law and because there was a particularly weird case, just because I’m making the pre-first draft of my novel available to blog readers, it doesn’t mean that this isn’t copyrighted to me.  Rogue Magic as all the contents of this blog is © Sarah A. Hoyt 2013.  Do not copy, alter, distribute or resell without permission.  Exceptions made for ATTRIBUTED quotes as critique or linking to this blog. Credit for the cover image is © Ateliersommerland | Dreamstime.com

 

Paths

 

Wolfe Merrit, Manager of Manufactories for Jonathan Blythe, the Earl of Savage:

 

There are two ways you can deal with being in the middle of two armies about to clash. One is to run away. But running away in this case meant making for the edge of armies that stretched as far as the eye could see.

The other– The other was to go a little crazy.

I indulged myself for a breath in the idea that my wife hadn’t really sent me to a battlefield but only gave me the illusion that she had.

It was a brief illusion, though one that often grasps mortals in fairyland. When everything you touch, and everywhere you are might dissolve at a moment’s notice, it’s hard not to believe it is so much the stuff of immaterial soap bubbles. But it’s not. I’d once seen someone killed in fairyland; the friend who was fool enough to accompany me when I came to recover Jimmy. We’ll just say that he was just dead as if he’d died in the mortal world. More, perhaps.

So after my reassuring breath, I knew that the things riding towards me were real. Which meant my only chance at saving myself was to run at one of the approaching armies and join it in its assault.

On one side was an army, mounted on fairy horses. I know enough of fairy – I married into it! – to identify them as high lords of fairy and their retinue. The ones who rode horses largely kept their shapes and they looked as you’d expect elf lords to look, most being too beautiful for mortals and slim to fragility.

The ones on the ground and running fast? Ah, those were something else again, and changed shapes as they ran, some of the shapes being perfectly terrifying.

On the other side, the army approaching, or at least the first rank of it was – I blinked – not men on horseback, as I’d first thought, but centaurs.

This being so, my way was clear. Centaurs are of fairyland, but one of the saner species there. Short of changing into humans, which they do, they remain immutable, and their home life, their cultivation of fields, even their societal arrangements are something one could understand. I’d stayed with them for a week, with Jimmy, as I recovered from– Never mind. As I recovered. And it had been much like staying in any rural village.

Centaurs were understandable. And far preferable to the things on the other side.

I ran to them. Or rather, I ran determinedly at one of them, to the side of the main chief leading the assault.

If I had had time and leisure to think of what I was doing, I daresay I’d have checked. Centaurs, like it is said of the ancient gauls, and like certain tribes in the American colonies, or so I hear, ornament for war. They tie horns and feathers to their head, as well as multicolored fabric and ropes. And they paint their faces in a most fearsome way, with blue and red and black.

The gentleman at whom I was aiming and who, from his position, had to be a relative to the king of Centaurs, looked very young – this was good. You try to jump a full grown centaur – and wore a confusion of multi-colored silks woven with his – I presume – black hair, the whole standing up in a very intimidating way, yet perhaps not wholly suited to a charge where someone might get hold of it. He had painted his face mostly blue save for red under his eyes. And he held a lance that streamed silks, also.

He was a most frightful sight, and had I looked at him full on, I’d surely have run. But I didn’t. I had to run somewhere, and he was it.

I ran full tilt at him, and he – fixed on the opposing army – noticed me at the last minute, and tried to check. It was a good thing he only noticed me then, because had he reared it would have been the end of me.

But he didn’t rear. Instead, he fixed his front legs, and his human torso sort of moved back, and then I was on him, grasping him against his naked middle. Good thing most of them didn’t wear anything in battle, because I sort of used his human body as a place to hold onto, while I swung myself onto his horse back.

His fellows were by then streaming around us, and from the distance there was a clash of weapons.

He should have reared and thrown me off. Battle mad centaurs are really not much better than drunk centaurs, and neither is known for rationality. But I had got a thinking centaur. Perhaps this was his first battle, and he was more than a little afraid. He panted a bit, then straightened himself. Then he said “Who are you? And what do you wish?”

“Wolfe Merrit,” I said. “Supervisor of Manufactories to the Earl of Savage, sir, at your service.”

He said, “You’re what?” as though I’d told him I was a three headed gorgon. No. That he’d surely have taken in stride.

But at the same time a male voice in my head said, “You’re all wrong. That is not your place. You have your own path to walk.”

And like that, I was in the middle of a piney woods, their smell fragrant in my nostrils, and a sense of peace all around, a sense one should never trust in fairyland.

Up ahead, someone was singing.

 

Fresh, From the Free Range Oyster-Lair*

Hail, well met, and sundry other greetings! We’ve a nice haul of new books for your entertainment and edification this week, for which I thank you all. As I sit in my lovely-but-cramped shell all week long, dutifully layering pearls, it’s good to know that I’ll get to do something useful for the weekend. *big grin*

In addition to this week’s books, I have an announcement! For those out here on the occidental end of the American continent, WesterCon is coming up in four weeks, in Salt Lake City. Incidentally, WesterCon and FantasyCon are the same weekend and will be sharing memberships. We’ll be gathering any Huns, Dinerzens, and other lurking Hoyt-fen who live in the area (I know there are several) as well as any and all of us attending the cons. The city has several awesome eating and drinking establishments; I hear you mammals are into that sort of thing. Those with knowledge of the area are welcome to recommend a place, or we can just roust out the ‘danes from a corner of the con hotel’s lounge. Pillaging may be involved, bring your own pony and torches. RSVP with me, if you would, if you’ll be in the area that weekend.

There is a larger announcement that I’d hoped to make this weekend, but there are… details still to be hammered out. Suffice to say that the WesterCon gathering is part of a larger world domination scheme organ-harvesting operation cat fancier’s club worthwhile and totally innocuous endeavour. More info and fewer heavy-handed hints coming ASAP, I promise. :P

Aside from all the mysterious goings-on, future entries for the promo post can (and should!) be sent to my email. Happy reading!

Jason Dyck, AKA The Free Range Oyster

Mercenary Wordsmith, Terminal Tamer, and High Seat of the Gathering Horde

Craig Allen

Kali’s Children

Crash landing on an uncharted world is bad enough. Losing most of the crew as the ship sinks to the bottom of an alien ocean is even worse. And that’s just the beginning.

Ragged and terrified, the last few survivors—a fireteam of battle-hardened marines and an inexperienced civilian adviser—search for a way to contact the nearest inhabited system for rescue. But as they encounter the denizens of this world, they learn something remarkable. From the red reeds that cover the land to the ferocious predators that fear nothing, every living thing on this world is highly intelligent… and utterly hostile. Violence is a normal part of life. Murder and war are nothing more than a means to acquire food. Kindness is unimaginably alien.

For the survivors, escape is not enough. They must also keep their technology out of the hands of the barbaric monsters around them. For the planet’s natives have learned that it is possible to leave their world, and out there among the stars is the most prolific source of food they have ever known: humans.

Dwight R. Decker

Pleistocene Junior High

The year is 1965. An abandoned alien base is discovered under the sands of northern Africa. Amazingly, the machinery in it is still functional after seemingly millennia, but exactly what the exotic gear does, no one knows. Until, that is, an experiment to test it goes wrong and an entire middle school in Ohio is suddenly transported 30,000 years into the past. For some 300 teenagers caught unexpectedly by the disaster, survival becomes a day-by-day struggle in a world without grocery stores, hospitals, electricity, plumbing, or any of a thousand other things taken for granted in modern civilization. Even though he is unaware of it, one boy literally holds the key to resolving the mystery of how it happened and perhaps even going home. Meanwhile, the Biology teacher finds himself the unelected leader of the colony whether he wants the job or not, and the lives of hundreds of people now depend on him. Between the two of them, they might be able to hold off the oncoming catastrophe, but others see nothing but opportunity in a prehistoric world in which laws and police are unknown. It will take courage and intelligence to live very long in this savage new land – and perhaps a little help from the stars.

Anita C. Young

Fenrir Reborn: A Sindri Modulf Novella

Sindri Modulf has been tested many times throughout his long life, but for every feat he has faced, he has artfully dodged countless more with easy humour and a deadly axe. Those well-honed abilities will prove useless when he is faced with one of the greatest challenges of his life; he must bring back a grief-stricken Seer from the edge of catatonia. Unwilling to let the mind of the most powerful woman in 1000 years be ravaged by Empaths and Telepaths, Sindri does something he hasn’t done for centuries: bare his soul.

Cedar Sanderson

The Eternity Symbiote

On Sale for the month of June!

Earth sits at the center of a galactic power struggle humanity knows nothing about. Then an alien delegation suffers a fatal accident and hidden plans unravel around the wreckage in the Alaskan wilderness. Infectious disease expert Gabrielle McGregor discovers the hidden machinations and what they’ll mean for her and her family.

Also available from Barnes and Noble.

R.A. Williamson

Foreshadows: A Collection of Tall Tales from the Weird West (Whiskey & Wheelguns)

Wheelgun Press proudly presents: Whiskey and Wheelguns: Foreshadows. This is a collection of six short stories all set in the Whiskey and Wheelgun Universe. You will recieve a first class introduction to the stories that will be keeping you up at night for the next twelve months.

Each series will explore a dark corner of the weird west as envisioned by the addled minds of the contributers. They will dazzle you with the grit of the desert sand, the gristle of sixgun wielding protagonists, and the intestinal fortitude required to subdue a werewolf lightskirt.

Twenty-four stories of dubious literary merit by six of today’s most vaguely groomed and semi-coherent authors, which will shock and amaze, dazzle and impress, and floor the reader with outright awe for the massive amounts of facial hair required to bring a project like this into the bright desert light. Be sure to follow along, ’cause the wagon won’t be stoppin’ until they strike fool’s gold.

This is the introduction to a shared world. Other books in the setting, by various authors, include:

• Possessed
• Five Lead Slugs: Casting Out the Devil
• The Widow’s Work

*It’s little.  Also, flooded.

Because some of you might not have all my stuff yet!  (I know, I know, inconceivable.)

My collection wings is on a countdown deal for the next week, and it’s 9/10th off today.

There’s a review of it here.

Also, among other things, to promote Witchfinder, I decided to put up a free short story a week for as long as I have trunk/reverted stories.  This week’s is

Heart’s Fire.  It was written for an anthology in which each story was about a store in a magical mall in Chicago, in case you wonder at the venue.

And RES reminded me to mention these are both DRM free, so you can change their format and read them on your nook or kobo reader, or whatevs.

That’s all folks.  The interesting post is below!