Scriptora est omnis divisa in partes tres…  Oh, wait, not that kind of report.

So — I hadn’t intended to get sick, and I went so far as not to get very bad flu, even while the guys got it.  In fact, #1 son and I — who’d had the vaccine — were barely touched by the flu, while the other two mugs got very ill.  Of course, any of the guys being ill makes it very hard to write, but I was sort of puttering along, and then the secondary infections reared their ugly head.  You see, I hadn’t prepared for that.  So, bronchitis and sinusitis, and my ears were starting to get involved.  (My ears always get involved.  If this were a space opera my ears would be the space ranger who can’t leave any situation alone — Sarah’s ears to the mess! — or for Heinlein fans, my ears are Lazarus Long — only they’re always trying to die off.)

But you know — I’ve talked about it before — how little aware I am of what is going on in my body.  This is one of the reasons I get so ill, because the symptoms need to get strong enough to break through the book currently unrolling in my head.  So, it took getting to the point my fever spiked to 103 and I was wandering around the house in a fog (did you know that a sufficiently high fever has the same effect as hallucinogenics?  I never actually saw pink lizards, but I used that as short hand for my mental state, so that people didn’t tell me to drive somewhere or something like that — I probably could have driven somewhere.  I just would have kept on driving in a straight line.  That was sort of what I was doing here.  If I was peeling carrots, I’d go through a whole pile before going “oh, yeah.”  Not that I peeled carrots.  In fact #1 son said “This family has been eating like we’re starring in a documentary.”  I.e. the family that NEVER eats fast food has had a lot of it this week, because everyone’s schedule is packed and I’m sick, and Dan isn’t very well.)

It was still unkind of Charlie to compare me to an oyster.  I could say “you can’t choose your family” but since he is in fact part of my chosen extended family I’ll just say “don’t let him put lemon on me.”

Yesterday (second day on godzillamicin) the congestion loosened.  This was actually a good thing, since what was worrying me was that I wasn’t coughing at all, and when that happens it goes to my lungs and that’s bad news.  Well, my cup runneth over.  Okay, not my cup.  And you don’t want details, but yesterday I woke up drowning.

And then I thought it would be a good idea to clean the kitchen, the boxes and the bathroom.  (Look, would you trust the parts of the house that must be clean to the young males?)  Yes, older son yelled at me.  There was something, something about my thinking I’m made of titanium, but I’m only human.  I have clue zero what he meant.  Anyway, this was about a third of what I normally do on Fridays, took me longer than the whole thing usually does AND I was shaking with tiredness afterwards.

This morning I woke up clear headed, but I think I’d best not do any cleaning and scrubbing.  (So hopefully Havey didn’t throw up all over the kitchen floor — why does that cat get sick when I do?)

I still don’t know what to do about these recurring issues — my lungs have always been fragile.  Twenty years ago in the Carolinas I lived tethered to my inhaler, so I guess this is an improvement?  I’m going to try to make with more C and lemon in my tea and stuff and to become more aware of signs of trouble before I’m really ill.

Meanwhile, if I was doing something with you two weeks ago — guest post, project started, promised to look at something — two weeks ago, it’s gone.  So ping me again.  A couple of extra guest posts next week wouldn’t hurt either.  I might no use them, but I hear this idiotic thing has a long ramp back up.  Feels like it to.

One of the projects I started two weeks ago was asking people to read over the first three musketeers and do a bible for me (I’d like to get three of those.  Then I’ll have everything covered.) and also to typo hunt them and No Will But His and send me lists.  All of this has been copyedited, some of it twice, but as I type set it, I keep finding strange and silly typos.

The musketeers were written when I was doing 6 books a year plus upteen proposals, plus homeschooling the genius (aka #2 son) so not only did things slip, but my very odd sense of humor intruded.  Some of it I can’t remember why I thought was funny (probably pink lizards) but I’ve been changing it and not making notes, so the old bible for the series is useless.

I have the new versions and will upload them to a hidden page and give the volunteers (and those subscribing at that level) access to them.

And I think that’s it.  I’m going to have caffeine.  If going downstairs and making tea and eating a yogurt doesn’t leave me winded, today might be a good day to write.

 

Now, I’ll admit that I have rarely felt a need to go to war with someone on the internet personally – at least unprovoked.  I have once started a war unwittingly, by linking someone who was being as Georgette Heyer would say “foolish beyond permission.”  This is known around here I think as “the incident of the very pampered non-fic writer and her insane groupies.”

Most of the time, though, when I have something to say, I have something to say about ideas, not the person in particular.  And since the ideas are usually stupid enough on their own, I don’t link the source – though I or my fans have been known to clue others on how to find it.  This usually avoids counterstrikes, because the originators of the annoying ideas either don’t feel a personal incentive to counter attack, or they don’t recognize the ideas as their own.  (People are oblivious, what can I say?)

This is not so much because I’m a wussy – I’m not – but because I’m your average, excitable Latin type.  (Well, maybe not average, but pretty close.  Sometimes stereotypes are true.)  Once the fight has started, I find it hard to pull back and do what I’m actually supposed to do, such as write novels, that actually pay, so we can actually you know, keep roof over head and such. (Okay, being fair, husband keeps roof over head.  But I pay part-tuition for the boys and other expenses of that ilk.  And if the payment for those has to come out of his paycheck, roof over head becomes… challenging.)

Also, as I said before, I’ve been involved in blogs that went to war against other blogs/organizations.  There are people you shouldn’t go to war with (more on that later, but let’s just say some of the more… ah… politically involved blogs… you know, the ones really involved, have connections who are either violent or plain crazy.  The practice of Swatting for instance can get someone who is just having an argument with a crazy comprehensively killed.)  But even if you go to war with a sane human being, (for values of sane and human being), if you both get so absorbed in the fight that it is the most fascinating thing in the world to you, you might not notice you’re boring your readers to tears.  I’ve wandered off from at least two blogs under these circumstances.  I agreed with their position in the war, but how many times can you say the other side are poopy heads without growing stale?

However, this blog has been – coughs delicately – involved in wars before, mostly when someone went after my friends, or said something so criminally stupid (as in, if you’re stupid enough to believe it you’ll do things that criminal in fact if not in law – and sometimes in law) that I must stomp.

From my own mistakes and er… unnamed (and unlinked) others in the Internet Art of War, here are some things you must do before going to war.

1-      Know your opponent.  I mean, at the very least CURSORILY google the person.  This also applies to commenting on their blog.  After all we’ve had people coming in here all hot and heavy, having heard somewhere I was ESL and lecturing me about my English based on my unproofed, un-caffeinated copy written early morning.

I’m not going to say I don’t make English mistakes – ya’ll do too, precious(es) – but I’m more likely to be using obscure slang and even more likely to have made some truly insane typo of the sort where my fingers think “head” is an apt substitute for “door” (this for some reason happens in my manuscripts a lot when I’m tired.)

Then there are the idiots who will run to other blogs and say “Sarah Hoyt, who is an indie writer” – before trying to claim I don’t know anything about traditional publishing.

Five minutes googling – or looking at the side bar – would tell them I write for a living and am still MOSTLY traditional.  Then there are the precious flowers, on and off this blog, who lecture me about not knowing other countries since I never left this one… yeah.  That’s funny too.

Of course, most of the time, when I get upset enough to go to war, my minions have already exhaustively researched the target.  That brings us to point two.

2-      If your opponent has hyper competent minions – by which I don’t mean ones who run to twitter to call your opponent white supremacist, but those who start posting funny (and true) stuff about your opponent in the comments to your blog – be aware that you’ve been researched and that some of it has been done by professionals who do this for a living.  Your proposed opponent – or the person you just attacked because it seemed like a good idea at the time – probably knows more about you than you do yourself.  If he/she isn’t using it, maybe he/she is being merciful.  Of maybe he/she is too busy with real life.

Don’t assume they used everything they have.  Depending on what you think is the possibility of a nuclear-level retaliatory strike based on what there is to be found out about you… not continuing to attack might be the best part of valor.  Remember what they say about mad dogs and Englishmen.  Let the sleeping Englishmen (or any other nationality that’s similarly nuts) lie.

3-      If you make mistake one or mistake two, don’t try to add to them by doubling down and saying something utterly stupid like ‘Well, I still think’ or even ‘poopyhead, poopyhead, poopyhead.’

At this time, it is a good idea to – if you’re not smart enough to apologize or simply can’t do it without losing face before your followers (eh.  Not mine, but some people have DIM followers)  — either drop the matter entirely or make a cogent case as to why your opponent is still wrong WITHOUT having whatever characteristic you based your initial attack on. That brings us to point four.

4-      Your opponent is unlikely to be a cardboard cutout.  Yes, I know, some of you are young enough to have soaked in group-hate without knowing that very few people fit stereotypes.  (I might be excitable, but I’m not flamboyant, for instance. Also, I’m only excitable after a point.)  Just because you’re battling what you identify as a conservative, say, (and you’d better make d*mn sure of that identification.  If you’re very young, be aware that anti-communist doesn’t necessarily mean traditional conservative.  That error will get you laughed at.) don’t assume this is going to be a prudish, repressed, or even particularly religious person.  Yes, I know what the movies and TV show you.  You might want to consider that in capturing the heights of entertainment and news, the left left its followers curiously disconnected with the real world.  (Which only works to a point.)  In the same way, when attacking someone you identify as crazy left, don’t assume they have the rest of the package, including atheism.  I’ve met a few hard left fervent Christians.  People can be … bewildering.  Don’t attack a “package deal” – few people are that.  In fact, don’t attack people at all.  Attack their ideas/beliefs/wrong-headed behavior that set you off in the first place.  Calling anyone a poopy head doesn’t convince anyone.  Explaining why an idea/belief is wrong might.

5-      If you’re going to attack or counter-attack, nuke from orbit.  That is, don’t just say something like “That idea/belief is wrong.”  Show why it’s wrong.  Explain how you came to that conclusion and don’t have it be just “I was told it was wrong, and only old people believe that’s right.”

Remember you’re not fighting a cardboard cutout.  So don’t suddenly assume your opponent got his ideas at the old cardboard cutout emporium mart.  To say “everyone knows this isn’t true” just makes you sound so young we’ll check for spit-up milk under your chin.

This goes double or triple when you’re talking about a country you’ve never visited; a time before you were born; a field that’s not your specialty.

Heaven knows, I engage in enough blather about things I’m not an expert on.  I’ve also been known to say that a commenter I KNOW is an expert should check me on it.

BUT when you’re going on the attack, you want to be on your home ground and conquer the hills.  Make sure – absolutely sure – of what you’re saying or doing.

Just because all your college professors told you things in country x are thus and so, if you’ve never been there, trust me – TRUST ME.  I’ve lived through this – you have no clue.  Chances are your oh, so learned professors don’t either.  They’re usually just going after their counterparts in that country who can be – again, trust me – astonishingly divorced from reality.

The mistakes can be as egregious – I’ve heard Americans say this.  No really – as assuming socialism works because “Europe has such beautiful buildings.  Much better than America.”  Or of course the idiot Michael Totten ran into in his latest jaunt in Cuba who told him that “They really love Che. I don’t think anyone in America is loved that much.”  (Innocents abroad, indeed.  Let’s hope this American tourist never finds out that when the penalty for not “loving” a public personality is death, people tend to “love” him, publically and loudly.)

Visiting a country on vacation won’t tell you anything about what life in it is like, either.  You might come back knowing a ton about artifacts and the local food, but to really know a country you need to live there, at peasant level.  (Or be a trained investigative journalist.)

So unless you’ve done that in a country, don’t lecture the people who live in that country on what they know/believe or what actually psychologically motivates them.

This is true for everything else.  I don’t care if your postmodern psychology teacher told you that tons of wives get beaten superbowl Sunday.  That is one of those things that sound right inside a belief system, but aren’t actually true (likely because the belief system isn’t congruent with reality) no matter how many made up statistics are brought up.  And don’t you go using those made up statistics to lecture your football-fan friends, because you’ll just look like a total idiot.

Again, make sure what you’re using to attack can be backed up and is not just a “I was told this.”

Once you’re sure, strike at will, and have fun doing it.  And then disengage.  This is just a battle.  It’s not your life, and certainly not your profession.

Always remember the motto “Peas Is Our Profession” (yes, if you get the reference, I’ll send a signed book to the first one.) even if war is at times needed.

*And no, there probably won’t be chapters this weekend.  I have Godzillamicin and inhaler but clawing back to health is going to take time too.  Meanwhile fiction takes more effort than non-fiction.  Sorry.*

(For a slightly saner (?) view on this whole thing, Kate Paulk (my fellow worst person in the world) over at Mad Genius Club takes on the daily dot article which claims all the signers of that anti-censorship petition are male  (Since C. J. Cherryh, Mercedes Lackey and my friend Amy Sterling Cassil signed it, I have to assume we are WAY post binary.) and want to keep women from writing science fiction (that is the most bizarre claim, ever.)  However, this being Kate, what she’s really worried about is that one of the stupid critters claimed Kate was afraid to use dirty words.  — I mean, you can perform bad journalism, insult an entire profession, slant the issue out of all recognition — but if you have some self-preservation left, don’t, I beg of you, tell Kate she’s a prude. So go on over for a primer on Aussie swear words.)

I’m not changing this blog format to all GIF posts.  But I’m running a very high fever, and have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, and reading more than three sentences or so hurts.  Writing it… don’t even.  So…

This is not a post about SFWA!

Though it might be sort of kind of marginally related.  You see the charming creature who wrote about how I was one of the world’s worst people, also called me a Nazi.  (Because national socialist, totally equals small-government libertarian, right?)

That was like:

But THEN it got better.  Apparently on Twitter someone accused me and Larry (Why Larry?  I don’t know) of being white supremacists.

As you can imagine, I was deeply offended and … yeah, I was like:

Because if these little precious flowers who are mostly college professors knew how to research their way out of a paper bag,

they’d know I come from Portugal.

Genetically speaking Portugal is…

When I was a kid we were made to memorize all the invaders to the peninsula, and it was like — let me see if I can remember:

Celts, Phoenicians,Carthaginians, Greek, Romans, Alans, Swabians, Vandals (so we got some glitteries in there too!), Arabs, Berbers, French, German, Spanish…  then there was the massive import of African slaves who, unlike the US had disappeared into the population a century later.  In fact, genetically, Portugal is like:

So the idea of my being a White Supremacist is

They would have to think I was so altruistic as to think I — myself — was inferior to anyone on the basis of skin color alone.

If anyone needs me clarify, I don’t believe that skin color is relevant for much of anything, but hey — Tan people uber Alles!

So, I was thinking about it, as well as about the fact that most of my books totally don’t have people who change genders (or shapes) or people who are attracted to the same gender or–  Okay.  Okay.  I’ll stop because I’m like:But it’s not like either my racial origins or my characters who might be… uh… a little off the norm are a credit to me.  I was born this way (Ah!) and I get characters like other people get colds.  Writing them interestingly, that takes effort.
And it’s not like these people know what they’re saying because they can’t possibly ever have read something by or about me and think that, so they’re like:

And to do other than this

Would be credit them with SOME thought.
However, I’m a charitable person.  Also I have a fever.  So I’ve decided to give them something to hate on.

and prepare yourself:

Maestro, some music:

I’m a human supremacist!

No matter how many times you tell meI don’t think that humans are like viruses upon the world.I don’t think

or

or even:

Or even:

are better than:

or:

I think that humans are pretty d*mn extraordinary.  All the best people I know are human.  Also, it’s what I am, and I don’t hate myself.

Frankly I think we need to be making with this:

Only bigger and better, so more worlds get to know the awesomeness that are humans!Which I suppose is an inferior purpose to making sure that everyone who was born a different color and orientation from me, but what can I say?  We can’t all have everything.  Where would we put it.  Who would dust it?So I can’t

be making with this:

When I have to do this:

Which will happen as soon as the fever passes.

It’s the purpose I have, and it suits my humble ambitions.  And if you don’t like it, then:

This post might be a little scattered.  I’m told I’m the twelve hour warning for this bug – throat a little sore, tired beyond all reason – and that two weeks of being rather sick follow.  So, I’m trying to do my posts on Sunday night, and will re-run MGC if needed.

This is one of the things that has been getting to me, though, and I don’t even think it needs to be a long post (though knowing me, it might very well be.)

Recently and pretty much everywhere, I’ve been reading Eulogies to America.  Do not get me started on how this makes me feel.  Someone shortly after the election texted me with “You must feel like the last person who got a ticket on the Titanic.”

But even then, even after the poll watching that got me very angry, I didn’t feel that was quite right.  I had a moment of despair on the night of the election, immortalized forever at Instapundit, and probably ending up as part of my funeral service, but then I started perking up.

Look, our strength is that we’re Americans.

No, wait, I’m saying this very badly.  It doesn’t mean we’re immune from being spun or tricked into socialism/communism (if anyone wants to argue the differences, have at it, but really, guys, unless you want to dissect the innards of “State ownership” or “government control of private ownership” or… there is no point.  Socialism/communism/ and let’s throw fascism in are all different colors of statist ideal.  They all believe that if you have “the right people” on top commanding the economy all the way down, the future will be great.  Their definitions of what a great future is; their ideas of how much people should be allowed to own; their choice of demonization victims and everything else may vary but in the end, it is all the same.  I don’t believe they have the right to decide in which manner the individual should be happy; I don’t want any part of their utopias – and all of them end up demonizing and objectifying humans, hating all of humanity and advocating for fewer humans. And all of them can gaze upon my middle fingers, as I hold them up. I’d rather die in a free society than live in their “utopias”) but it means that we’re less likely to stick that way.  As someone told me the other day, we’re neither Russian peasants nor German soldiers.  There are hopeful signs of what Glenn Reynolds calls “Irish Democracy”, including the simple, silent resistance to doing what your betters insist is best for you. There are mutters from above that we’re ungovernable.  Hopefully this will be enough.  We’re Americans.  We’re peaceful.  We don’t want to have a revolution.  If we need one – forbid the thought! – it will take more than this.

But the funny thing is, right and left, what I hear about America being in decline always harks back to the fifties as some form of golden age.  I can get this from the left – no, truly.  If you think FDR was a right winger, you’re insane – but from the right?  And I get it from the right, too.

 

Here are some of the signs of hope that I think are being mistaken for reasons for despair:

–          We can no longer undertake big projects.  Now, I agree that EPA regulations are out of control and that is an issue, though I suspect in the next decade or so, if there isn’t any other type of correction, this will become self-correcting. Smaller technologies, better remote-work ability, all of it require less big projects.  At any rate, the big projects everyone hankers over are always things like the hoover dam.  A big statist project, with tight government control.

–          The fact the US had little competition in the world.  Well, then.  When a war just left most of your opponents flat broke, you’re going to have a monopoly.  Take a deep breath.  Even if you wanted that back (and some of our elites might) it’s not likely to happen.

–          American schools just “worked.”  Sort of.  Kind of. Arguably education was better in the old days, by which I mean when communities hired their own school masters and set their own standards.

The state view of education in the fifties gave us the dismantling of public education in the sixties, in order to accommodate new “scientific theories.”  Education in the fifties (and sixties and arguably the seventies) is only better compared to today because this has been a process of slow disintegration.

The school we have now is not very adequate but at least, thank heavens, people are aware of it, and alternatives such as remote schooling, homeschooling and others are available.  There is hope for the future.

And the number one, unmistakable sign: both sides lament the loss of “unity”.  But there was never any unity, guys.  There was a feeling of it (and only in the second half of the twentieth century, caused by the left having taken command of all the means of communication.  Be glad that is gone.  If it weren’t, what it would mean is that right now we’d think we were in a recovery and that the president is a genius among men, and that we must be the only ones not prospering/seeing it differently.  Bah.  I’ll take my chances.

It is normal, I guess, to hark back to youth and by numbers our population is mostly aging boomers, who gave us nostalgia radio stations and nostalgia fashions and nostalgia furnishings – but enough is enough.  Nostalgia culture and nostalgia politics are one step over the line.

Besides our sixty year olds today can expect to live healthy productive lives for the same twenty years or so that their parents would have had at forty, back in the “golden age.”

Stop being nostalgic.  This might not be the best, in the best of all possible worlds.  The lies of state control being best for everyone are still with us.  (They have to be.  If communists/socialists/fascists didn’t have a good PR department, they’d be chased out of town with torches and pitchforks.)

But we’re headed towards more freedom for the individual.  Something that has not been true in all of my life before ten years or so ago.  And for right now, that must be enough for me.

My grandmother used to say Rome and Pavia were not made in a day.  (I have no idea what Pavia is, but I’m sure it was a city?) Neither is the recovery of freedom.  Keep calm and work towards the future.

I’ve belonged to blogs in the past which got in fights and arguments with other blogs/organizations, and even when I agreed 100% it got boring really quick.  So, I’d fully intended to have that blog on Sunday be the very last one I did on the SFWA mess.

But then I got selected for worst person in the world (though I have to share the trophy with Kate) and I thought, what the heck, I’ll do a final post on my dealings with SFWA from beginning to end, and because I’m tired of being misunderstood, I’ll do it in a way they’ll understand: with video clips.

So, in the mid eighties, I started writing sf/f, and I was so green that I sent submissions to the subscriptions address.  I still managed to get a personal rejection asking for more, but I thought “I need help.”  And then I heard about SFWA and how it was supposed to help SF/F writers and as a newby, just arrived in the country, with no contacts or connections, I was like:

So I sent them a letter and they were like: You need to have three pro short story sales or one pro novel sale.

So, I was like “But how do I get that if I don’t know how and no one has invented google, yet?”  So, I was all like:

But I don’t give up easily, so I was like:

So I was like:

And I finally started selling.  And I sold two shorts, and then, before the third I sold the novel, and I was like “Now I qualify for SFWA!”

And then I had some problems with my agent, and some problems with my publisher, and SFWA was like “oh, no. If we get involved in all that type of thing, the publishers will stop publishing us.  There’s nothing we can do.  And besides your agent and your publisher are members.”  And I was like:

But then they said “You know we have helped these people” — mostly against small publishers — “and we run Editors and Preditors and we have a medical emergency fund” and I was like:

At least I was now a member of SFWA, so I could prove I was a real pro, and anyway, I got this nifty directory of all pro writers, so… I was like:

And then I heard from some friends that SFWA, in the past had caused issues for them in their work for hire, by going to the publisher and saying they were representing these people, who had no problems whatsoever with the contracts but who now were told they’d never work for the publisher again and I was like:

But I thought maybe they’d misunderstood something, and SFWA hadn’t done anything bad to me, so I continued paying my dues and I was like:

And then, you know, things happened, and I decided to go at least partly indie, and then SFWA got into this big fight with Amazon over some small-press distributor who was all butthurt.  And they were like removing the amazon buttons from member pages and being all like “All of SFWA hates Amazon.”  And I was looking at my check from Amazon and looking at SFWA and going like:

So money was a bit tight and when the renewal came around I didn’t renew.  If they weren’t going to help me, at least they shouldn’t mess up what was making money for me, right?

And then I heard they were kicking out a life member because they didn’t like stuff he’d said on a kind of might be sort of SFWA twitter feed (oh, there were other excuses, but if that were true, they’d have to get rid of half their membership, including the person he got in a fight with.)  And I was like:

But hey, I wasn’t a member and it was nothing to do with me, right?  I mean, they said they were a private organization, which is fine, but then shouldn’t they add an S to their name?  SSFFWA  Some Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America?  Just for truth in advertising.  But still I was like:

And then in my writing daze, I hear they’re going after Mike Resnick and Barry Malzberg for being sexist, and I’m like:

So I ask what the EFFE is going on, and I’m told that they were making lewd comments about women in bikini, and I know Resnick and know of Malzberg and I’m like:

So I asked around and got the article sent to me and I was like:

because the column was completely unexciting.  They were talking about female editors and writers they’d known, you know, back when they were still rare in the field.  Part of what seemed to have kicked this off was that they called them “Lady editors” and “Lady writers” which was apparently sexist and I was like:

I mean, it’s an article about female editors and writers.  Perhaps they’d prefer they’d used Bitch and Hoes Editors and Writers?  Or People of Vaginitude Writers and Editors.

Oh, yeah, and the bikini thing?  They said one of the editors was exceptionally beautiful and that all the male writers’ wives were jealous when they saw her.  And that was totally sexist because women never talk/have thoughts like that, no way.

And they were also all upset about like women in chain mail on the cover, and the bulletin needed to be carefully censured, so that no bit of sexism got through.

And I was like:

And they were like:

And I was like:

And then my friend Kate blogged about the latest insanity, where established writers of every political stripe signed a petition to have SFWA give up this charming notion of censoring speech on their bulletin and a coalition of young no name or very little name writers (and a few decent writers who are my friends and who must be smoking something) were like:

So, Kate made fun of them, because she does, and an idiot troll came out under the impression it was all about the blogger named Vox Day and I was like:

But then he said that people like Vox needed to be cut off from society and I was like:

Because it was like:

So I was like:

And then some idiots saw it and they were like:

and also:

Because apparently telling them they can’t kill/kick out of human society everyone who hurts their feelings is like:

And also, I dissed Marxism which is totally a saintly ideology, because I’m a dumb American and all this makes me the world’s worst person (though I have to share the trophy with Kate Paulk, which is too bad, because I had a place all ready for it on my shelf.)

But life is full of these little disappointments, so then I thought…  Hey… I’m the world’s worst person.  By pointing out that Stalinist purges are Stalinist and never end, because someone is always going to be offended, I’ve made myself the worst person ever.  Worse than Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, Lenin, and the blood soaked mass murderers and tyrants who have oppressed humanity.  I’m worse than Caligula!

And I realized this is incredibly freeing, right?  I mean, if you’re already worse than Caligula, how much worse can you get?

I even caused a commenter on that blog to want to change her gender!

So now I’m like:

And I have SFWA to thank for it.

This, my friends, is a full account of my interaction with Mr. Whickam the organization formerly known as SFWA.  And now I’ll stay out of it, no matter what the temptation:

Because they’re like this:

And I need to be like this:

 

UPDATE: WELCOME Instapundit Readers and thank you to Glenn Reynolds for the link. (I should have done this two days ago, but I was in a fever daze.  Anyway, ya’ll know me. Pull up a chair.  Stay a while.

[ Note from 2-17-2014I normally don’t run posts this close together, but someone here mentioned that the left actually believe automation and stuff have made most of the population redundant.  I’ve been coming across this on the left AND right.  The thing is, I remember the seventies and JUST this kind of talk about how we’d outgrown work.  Then Carter was voted out and we had the eighties.

Of course, in the seventies NO ONE became crazy enough to brag that people were being freed from work.  They REALLY believe this.  They believe the economy could just continue trucking on without any humans worked.  It’s stunning in its craziness.  And yet, they believe it.

Maybe it’s true for them. Maybe they can stop working and not suffer for it.  Or maybe they wish they could.  I don’t know.  What I know is that for normal human beings, new technology just brings different ways to work.  Work doesn’t stop.

And I know what butthurt people who drink their own ink and don’t know what to do about the economy but are still so convinced they’re so smart will come up with to justify their own failings.  “We’re not going to need to work anymore” and “people will be freed from work” is the semantic null equivalent of “Americans are ungovernable.”  It should ALWAYS be assumed to be a declaration of incompetence from the current leeches.*

*No impugning of real leeches, like the ones that son keeps in a bell jar, and upon which on receiving the last royalty statement I was NOT allowed to slap a sign saying “Penguin Putnam Accounting Department” — because the guys said that would be mean.]

When we moved to Colorado Springs, the greatest part of choosing our location in town was that there were three bookstores within walking distance.  Practically the only way to insure I get exercise.

Now those three bookstores are gone.  There are a lot of bars and restaurants, but well… we are mini-galting (we need a logo for this) and therefore not eating out much, and bars… If I drank as much as I do NOT at home (or friends’ homes) but pay-per-drink, I’d be even more broke than I am.

The reasons we chose to live where we live are all gone – in less than ten years.

Then there’s my household arrangements.  We have so many books that I started culling into bins for eventual garage sale, about two years ago.  But I never finished the culling, and then act-of-kids intervened, and we bought more books, which means yesterday when I went in search of a book to check on a reference, I found instead that my bookshelves have got completely scrambled.  There’s all sorts of stuff in every bookshelf, nothing is in order, and the bookshelf on the way to the attic has become a convenient place for the guys to unload and/or store stuff they don’t want in their area.  The end result is that nothing is “findable” and everything is a total mess.

Which brings me to – I started reshelving.  And realized about half the mysteries taking up space on my shelves aren’t the sort I keep.  Heck, some of them might never have been read.

You see, every month or so, I’d take a trip to the local used bookstore and get a load of mysteries, read them, put the ones I didn’t care for back in for trade, and keep the ones I was likely to read more than once.  Then, once every six months we went to the BIG mystery bookstore in Denver (first day of a weekend away) and I’d fill three, sometimes four large bags with used paperbacks, read them during that weekend and the month after, then cull.

But sometime – four? – years ago, we got me a kindle, and then the trip to the bookstore wasn’t needed, and I think I forgot to read some of the books from the last one, as well as whatever books I’d got that month.

What do I mean by all this?  I mean that technology is changing the rhythms of how we do things, in ways that aren’t even obvious until we look back.

I did not know that last time we went by the used bookstore at the beginning of a weekend in Denver that it would be the last time.  I still bought the usual books.  I just ended up reading some stuff I had on the kindle, instead.  And when the next vacation came around, I had the kindle, and buying a bunch of used books seemed stupid.  I don’t think I’ve stepped into that bookstore since.

The rhythms change.

When we moved here, I walked downtown a lot, to buy books, or – more often – to browse books.  I used to take a laptop and sit by the fireplace in my favorite bookstore and write, while people watching.

The store is gone.  Downtown’s character has changed too.  There are fewer stores people shop at, so well, during the day it’s office workers and vagrants.  In the less populated area, it’s now a little iffy, if not dangerous (yet.)

We do the things that benefit us (in my case ordering more from Amazon) and other people do the things that benefit them.  And the entire landscape changes.

I’m not arguing otherwise.  I’m convinced things like “Save the indies” for keeping bookstores alive are in the end doomed and in the short term counterproductive.  They’ll either find a value-add to give people, or they will ultimately fail.  (I’d pay for a sort of in-person book café, with knowledgeable owners who can recommend books I might like, and who have space for writers’ and readers’ groups to meet, but I don’t know how practical it is, unless in a very large city.)

I’m just saying no one can see the future, even as it’s barreling down towards us.  Which is why any centralized planning tends to fail and any push-down (as opposed to pull down at will) business model tends to fail, and the bigger and more impersonal it is, the faster it fails.  And why the government subsidizing innovation usually means subsidizing things that real life ebbs and flows around.

I read, I don’t remember where, that the reason our government (to an extent both parties) is pushing for a welfare state that controls everything is that they believe in a future where humans really have nothing to do – where robots do it all.  They all – apparently – read “With Folded Hands” and thought it was inevitable.

But even we, science fiction authors, infallible though we are (of course) get things wrong.  Heinlein never saw computers barreling down the pipe.  Well, not in the form they came.  Which means my kids get to chuckle at slide rules in spaceships.

And the thing about robots doing everything for humans, and therefore there being no work for people, and therefore the government must step in and give people a raison d’etre and, if possible thin down the population.

This would be like someone in the nineteenth century seeing our civilization and going “We must create a vast welfare state for all the scullery maids put out of work by dishwashers and all the drivers put out of work by the horseless carriages.  And that’s not talking about the people who shoe horses and the crossing sweepers.  Doom, gloom, most of humanity will be useless and only the state can save us.”

It’s a serious under-rating of humanity.  We are clever monkeys.  We’ll find new things to do when the old drudgery is lifted.

Yes, some people will end up doing nothing – but I think that has more to do with learned helplessness and does not need to be subsidized.

I’m laying you a bet that a hundred years from now there will be jobs we don’t even imagine, and they’ll be all across the IQ and aptitude spectrum.  (We don’t need drivers, or maids, but I pay money for people to haul stuff to the dump.  And we still need gardeners and sidewalk sweepers.)  I’m also betting you that the jobs will in general be less onerous/filled with drudgery and far more interesting.

Am I sure – well, no.  And I’m unlikely (though it’s not impossible) to be alive 100 years from now (unless there’s really reincarnation) to pay or collect.

But I’ve seen where we’ve come from, and I know the trend.  I know the way to bet.

I don’t think robots will stop us inventing new work to do, or new ways of making a living.

The government, on the other hand, might – by killing incentive and curiosity and draining away the capital (human and financial) that could go towards innovation.

Refuse to live with folded hands.  Trust humanity.  Embrace the future.

Speaking out– A guest post by Kate Paulk

So. There I was, wondering what to write about (okay, rant about) to the Huns when Sarah posted https://accordingtohoyt.com/2014/02/16/the-heart-of-darkness/ and made my eyes go all blurry with this  comment: Now I understand why Kate has been so hot in pursuit of this.   I was never bullied, but she was.   I’m fairly sure that’s where her wish to fight back on behalf of anyone a group unreasoningly turns on comes from. Which makes her a hero because most bullied people just break.

Well, damn. I’m not up to getting emotional at this time of day (okay, at any time of day). I try to avoid strong emotion of all flavors for a whole raft of reasons including but not limited to the way strong emotion plus narcolepsy can lead to cataplexy episodes (I don’t get them too badly: I don’t completely lose muscle control, but I do get even more uncoordinated than normal and usually end up with a reaction headache afterwards. It feels kind of like someone replaced all my joints with rubber), the issues that go with depression induced by chronic lack of good quality sleep (another narcoleptic’s delight), and the long hard journey I had to take to distance myself emotionally so I didn’t create my own ever-decreasing downward spirals of emotion.

Yeah, I’m a mess. But I’m a functional mess, so I’m no worse off than anyone else out there.

Usually I don’t get terribly emotional over anything much. Anger I tend to avoid – not least because I have the berserker, and I taught myself to subvert it by switching over to a depression crash – and most other emotions are muted by the simple fact that I spend most of my time in a state approximating just coming off an all-nighter (when I’m medicated. When I’m not medicated it’s more like just coming off two or three consecutive all-nighters). Sarah hit me between the eyes with this one – not because I think I’m some kind of hero, but because I don’t.

More because I’m well… Let’s put it this way. In some of my darker moments I’ve genuinely believed the best thing I could do for the people I care about was to permanently take myself and my problems out of their lives. Even during the worst of the bullying (and let me tell you, it’s a hell of a lot worse when girls are doing the bullying than when boys are. Boys are up-front about it. With girls, it’s whisper campaigns and things you own getting destroyed, and never anything you can use to pin down a culprit – and the culprit can and will smile sweetly at you and act like you’re her best friend… until your back is turned) I never wanted revenge. All I wanted was to be acknowledged: to have some value.

It took me a while to realize that the kind of person who’ll belittle you because you’re different will never acknowledge that you’re a worthwhile person. Maybe some of those people grew out of thinking that way, maybe they didn’t. I don’t care.

But when they turn their sights on someone else, then I have to speak out.

Why? It’s pretty simple. Nobody spoke up for me. Nobody even recognized that this was happening. The scars that left… They’re not visible, but they’re not pretty. If I stand by and let someone else cop that kind of treatment without speaking up then I stand with the people who came after me. I refuse to do that. I would be a failure to myself if I let someone else take the treatment I got without speaking out.

Even if I think someone’s views are reprehensible, even if I think they’re an utter piece of shit, they still deserve the dignity of justice. This simple statement from the Declaration of Independence demands it: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Forget the PC bullshit that holds some more equal than others. That leads to the millions dead, to the gas chambers and concentration camps. Remember that until PC got hold, “all men” meant everyone. Remember too that the Declaration of Independence is the espousal of the principles. The US Constitution contains the compromises we imperfect humans require to be able to get anywhere remotely close to the principles. In an ideal world, that one sentence from the Declaration of Independence would be all anyone needed.

My voice might not be much. It might be derided. That doesn’t matter. What matters is that my voice is there, that I speak up for the things I believe are right, and that I speak against those who would rate dissenting voices as less worthy, less human. To use an old, rather cheesy bit of sappy metaphor, it’s like the fellow wandering the beach after a storm picking up stranded starfish and throwing them back into the ocean so they don’t die. When he’s challenged because there’s no way he can make a difference to the uncountable thousands of stranded starfish, he responds, “It makes a difference to this one.”

Even if what I say doesn’t make a dent anywhere, it matters to me that I speak up in defense of those in the cross-hairs of the bullies. After all, all it takes for evil to succeed is for good to do nothing. Even if I fail to change anything, I won’t be counted among those who did nothing.

Most of you know where I stand in the current and inane SFWA follies.  For those who don’t, I find, as my friend Amanda put it the other day, that a professional organization that devotes itself to the professional well-being of its members, should neither know nor care if its members profess doubleplusungood opinions.  And no organization that moves according to rational, representative norms, would spend its time expelling a life-time member for comments uttered in a private forum, comments that the other person chose to take public – and that the other person chose to take offense at.

But SFWA can not do anything about its members careers.  It never could.  I’ve written about it before – on why SFWA is not a union, on how its attempts to work as a union do not work.  Also on why this is a disaster for unions as a model for worker representation because the model of work of fiction writers is where most of the educated workers of the world are going – you can work anywhere, with your own (mental) tools and are free to enter into any contract you find advantageous to yourself.  If the union (SFWA in this case) tries to control the employers, the employers go around them and start hiring fresh workers, far away.  What are we going to do in response to unfair clauses, to contracts that take our copyright, to reductions in already minimal advances, all the while shrieking you have to act professional (Professionals can totally live and focus on their work on 3k a year, can’t they?  Nota bene that all the fields taken over by “progressives” end up with unpaid work where the exploited ones – interns, adjuncts, beginning writers – are told that to complain would be unprofessional and where the weak people are held to much higher standards of behaviors than their masters.)

This flaw in the design of SFWA has always been apparent, and therefore the people inside chose the other route.  “Act like we’re a big bad union, but co-opt the employers, make nice to them.  We can at least secure good deals for ourselves and our friends.”

Note that everyone they go after, and everyone they pound on are small presses or things their pet authors disapprove of: write for hire, Amazon.

I haven’t been as involved in the SFWA wars as my friend Kate.  Part of this is because it doesn’t interest me that much – I dropped them over their idiocy over Amazon – and part of it is because I’ve seen the spectacle SFWA has become often before.  I went to a village school, where bullies had full run, and where they were as likely to take aim at the aged teacher as at the first grader.  Long ago my reflex to meet them was to grab a desk and march in front of my cowing classmates and teacher, using the desk as a winnowing fan against the bullies.  Actually being a target of PHYSICAL bullies was never a problem for me.  Those who’ve met my family will understand when I say I am in proportion to my generation in Portugal as big and imposing as my son.  A problem for dating – being a giant at 5’6” and wearing a size 7, as I was back then – but oh, so useful to keep me unmolested except by the particularly large and dumb.

Psychological bullying, otoh…

So the spectacle of SFWA insiders acting like school yard bullies in a small and unenlightened village long ago gives me heart burn, and I don’t get involved unless they’re particularly stupid, or particularly funny.

I am not, regardless of what people say, of think, a happy warrior.  I’m a happy writer and left to my own, I would be writing novels and short stories and letting the world go by outside my door, heedless of their actions and their insanity except where they might provide story fodder.  But I mind me the fate of Archimedes, who at least according to some accounts, was so absorbed in his studies he failed to see his city was invaded, and when going out to go about his business was murdered by an ignorant soldier who didn’t know the great man and who saw only a peasant disobeying orders.

So I am aware of what is going on.  I just don’t talk about it much, since it’s a club I no longer belong to, trying to ingratiate themselves with publishers I wouldn’t submit to at this point if they paid me a lot of money.  (Yes, Baen is a member of SFWA, but I don’t need to be in SFWA to ingratiate myself to them.  I just need to write books that sell.)

Since the protest by members on the right the left and sideways against what is going on in SFWA, and SFWA’s response, which I think amounted to “Neener, neener boo boo, all these writers we used to like are dead to us” I’ve been sure that what they’re destroying is actually their own organization.  No skin off my nose, and SFWA hasn’t been useful for anything but as a directory of members since I joined in 1999.  And in the age of internet, there are other ways to get hold of a colleague.  For one, most of us belong to ten informal email lists.

On Thursday, on her blog at Mad Genius Club, Kate referenced the blogger known as Vox Day by no more than he’s referenced above.  She pointed out the current president of SFWA’s first action in office was to expel the one who’d lost the election to him.

Kate attracted a troll.  This was not surprising.  The surprise is how weak the troll sounded.  Dilute drink.

His first comment was as follows:

 

John Wesley Hardin

February 15, 2014 at 2:42 pm (Edit)

Having no other dog in this fight, I would just like to say that Vox Day is a reprehensible human being, and deserved to be forcefully ejected, not only from the SFWA, but from society in general. But that’s just my opinion.

I probably wouldn’t have answered at all, in a normal day – but having spent Friday cleaning and its having been a rather violent sport because of Havelock’s digestive issues, yesterday I felt what is popularly known as “sick as a dog.”  Not that I recognized it as such, of course.  No.  I thought of it as “a bit out of sorts.” And “My brain isn’t engaging.”  Feeling much better today, all I can say is that I came as close as makes no difference to catching the thing that has laid the rest of my family low for a week.  I don’t THINK I did.  I feel – as I said – much better today.  (Besides, having spent the evening with Mr. and Mrs. Vodkapundit and the person known at Baen as Speaker To Lab Animals, enough alcohol was consumed to kill anything trying to take hold.)

However, I was this peculiar combination of tired and revolted at his comment, so I answered this:

accordingtohoyt

February 15, 2014 at 3:45 pm (Edit)

Oh, how cool. So, you have been given license to decide who gets to live and who gets to die? Great.
Because 100 million dead is never enough. Let’s give it another try.

His reply left me breathless.  It also led to this post, because what is going on with SFWA is the sad and pathetic episode of a bunch of creative people destroying their standing in the world and losing touch with what they are supposed to be doing.  That is silly and sometimes amusing, and mostly revolting.

But it is also a microcosm of what is happening in society – of how uneducated, semi-literate people, encouraged to think of themselves as so smart and so “right” about everything (easy.  When you’ve been indoctrinated instead of educated, you’ll never disagree with received wisdom, and you now you’re “right” because you agree with all of those you think of as your betters.) think they can take on racism, sexism, any other ism you think of, and drive it from the world by shutting up those who have thoughts they think are wrong.  Except that the line for what is not permitted as thought or opinion keeps changing, and the number of the ones who should be “expelled from society” grows ever larger and more arbitrary.

Did this poor creature read anything – a biography of Mao, say, or any of the very good books on how Hitler came to power?  Or maybe about Lenin?  Stalin?

Apparently not.

This was the reply:

John Wesley Hardin Feb 15, 5:02 pm

Live and die? Hardly. I’m sure the ruff, tuff libertarian Vox Day could, if he were ejected from society, single-handedly hack a Randian utopia out of the wilderness and show the rest of us namby-pambys how to really go Galt.

And this is my reply to him –  written here because I needed room.  The post be linked there as soon as I put it up.

Little boy, I am fifty years old, but you make me feel like I am a thousand.  Little boy, how old are you, and who had the raising of you?

Did you ever read the horrors of the 20^th century?  The first step is ALWAYS to expel the victim from “society” – which of course makes it a non-human, who can then be expropriated, killed or have all manner of evil perpetrated against it.

Little boy, I don’t have any particular interest in Vox Day – we’ve exchanged a few emails, some of them arguments – but I’ll tell you this: when you tell him he’s wrong he doesn’t seek to “expel” anyone from society.  Instead he says “I might be, but…”

Yes, I know the double plus ungood comments the honorable (and reading comprehension impaired) female author who started this leaked about him. None of them were as abusive as what you’ve done to him.  No, not even if you take them at face value.  (And with him you never should.)

Objectively, what has Vox Day done to you that you are so full of hatred for him: He expressed opinions you don’t like.  Yes, some of those might be objectively despicable, if taken at face value.  But then again, Little Boy, the opinions many members of SFWA express – say the ones who think we should give communism another try – are objectively despicable, because encouraging the return of a regime that has led to mass graves everywhere it was instituted is objectively despicable.  However, you don’t see anyone howling for the ejection of communists from SFWA.  EVER.

What has SFWA done to Vox Day: You have maligned him in public.  Your anger at him has spilled from blog to blog, magnifying his offenses and blackening his character.  Worse, you’ve expelled him from an organization in which he had a lifetime membership.

And now you’re saying he should be expelled from society – and in the way you mean it, you mean from human society.

Because he doesn’t think like you.  Because he has ideas people (yes, me too, with some of them) find offensive.  ALL THE WHILE embracing to your bosom people who think using state power to control what people say and how people think is a positive – and this last, btw, is far, far, more offensive than anything that Vox can have said.  (I don’t know.  I don’t read him every day or even every month – but I can’t imagine any rational human being, not blinded by ideology wanting someone expelled “from society” for having incorrect thoughts.)

Do you believe in evolution, child?  Because I do.  I know, it will totally blow your mind that someone who is self-avowedly religious believes in evolution – but I do.  This is because most of us don’t take our beliefs off a shelf like little indoctrinated sheep.  We evaluate, we choose and we take this and not that, and sometimes take that even though we know on its face it conflicts with this because we know our intelligence isn’t perfect and there might be a higher knowledge that reconciles the seemingly ireconciliable.

It is possible to think outside a group.  It is possible to form your own opinions.

 

Unfortunately the clay that humans are formed of makes this very difficult, particularly for the weak willed and insecure.  This is why it is so important to study simian group dynamics.  This is where we come from, and if you think we’ve got so far from it, you should look at kids (particularly girls) on the playground, bullying one of them who committed the unpardonable offense of sticking out.  Or look at SFWA.  (Now I understand why Kate has been so hot in pursuit of this.  I was never bullied, but she was.  I’m fairly sure that’s where her wish to fight back on behalf of anyone a group unreasoningly turns on comes from. Which makes her a hero because most bullied people just break.)

 

Any human society that says “you can’t belong to us because you think the wrong thoughts” is on a very dangerous path.  Particularly when “wrong thoughts” are no more wrong than those expressed freely in the association.

 

Any human association that listens to people who continuously shriek offense and hurt is on its way to expelling people for thoughts and words.  SFWA is already there.  The spectacle of the expulsion of  Vox was followed by the maligning of Resnick and Malzberg for using the horrible word “ladies” and talking about an editor they respected as having been beautiful.  Then there is the eruption of the blogger who thinks everyone should write “non gender binary characters” because science fiction is – apparently – a school and we need to choose the curriculum.  This is only marginally associated with SFWA (I don’t even know if the woman is a member.  Her credentials are thin enough) but it’s the type of thought that drives SFWA “writing is an instrument for education and our organization is the most important thing evah and therefore it can by itself root out the ancient evils of racism, sexism and the tendency of humans to turn on anyone who is different and outlier.”  (They’re apparently going to do this by turning on anyone who is different or an outlier in a way not approved of.)  And now we have the truly unedifying spectacle of SFWA turning on old members, (many of whom DO hold statist beliefs I consider reprehensible, but SFWA doesn’t) for standing up for freedom of the press in the form of the Bulletin.

And SFWA is forming committees to determine what its members may think and say…

Can self-denunciation sessions be far behind?

 

SFWA doesn’t have armies or enforcers.  Actually most of its nebbish core would run screaming when faced with most people getting tired of its antics.  All it’s doing is committing suicide.

 

But you Little Boy, with your wish to ingratiate yourself to the bully-group, your blithe inability to understand the group mechanics driving this, your running back to tell them how you showed those ungodly oh, sorry, those double plus ungood things… you Little Boy worry me.  Because there are many like you, and they are all ready to do anything to be in the “in group” and the “cool people” – follow any charismatic leader, ostracize anyone, denounce your neighbors, cheer at executions of “bad thinkers.”

 

While you confine your antics to SFWA you’re merely pathetic and ridiculous.  But there are a lot of you, willing tinder to a fire that threatens to consume civilization.

 

Little Boy, with your little toys – what you’re really playing with is death.

 

For those expecting update on subscriber space, sorry.  I figured I’d go into a little more detail on the mess the last week was: Dan caught something at superstars writing seminar.  This is weird, because normally I catch it.  Meanwhile, Robert had a trip to Virginia and came back with something (not as severe.)  I also didn’t quite catch this (though I might have, very lightly.)  The Reason I’m not sure is that Dan tried not to infect me.  To this end, he slept the first three days in the movie room.  The problem with this is that I can’t sleep — or not deeply — if he’s not in bed.  So I catnapped for an hour, woke, rinse, repeat.  Needless to say I was quite useless during the day.

I might also have caught the illness itself, in a mild form, because when I walk I get disproportionately tired and yesterday, after I cleaned the house, I was useless.  Now, I know exactly where To The Dragons (And Through Fire” (Yes, my titles have prepositions ) are going.  I can taste the next chapters, so if stuff could stop happening so I can write, it would be wonderful, thank you.

Under that heading, I should be writing now, or at least going over witchfinder — edits but my glasses broke again.  Now, before you  point out we’re not so poor I can’t afford glasses — I know that.  In fact, I had an exam and have a new pair coming.  And I ordered a new ear piece for this pair.  the problem is this: It takes five days to arrive.  Meanwhile, they superglued this piece, but there’s not much contact surface and it broke again.  The problem is, without glasses, I can’t see to glue/tape the side.  So I have to wait for Dan to wake.  And last night we had one of those Colorado Wind Storms when the wind rages like hurricane strength, so we didn’t exactly sleep Well.

Anyway — I hope this is legible.  It’s mostly by touch.  I have to be two inches from the screen to read, which is not practical.  So.  I’m going to put up the  reader pimping thing, then go read with a book two inches from face until Dan wakes to fix my glasses.  And then I’ll see about “feeding” you ;)

The pimping below is courtesy of Free Range Oyster, and you guys should also be sending to book.plug.friday-at- gmail-dot-com.
We have a few options this week for your literary delectation. Science fiction, all, including the latest in the popular Maxwell Saga. Buy, read, enjoy! As always, future entries can (and should!) be sent to my email. Happy reading!
Jason Dyck, AKA The Free Range Oyster
Anachronistic Curmudgeon, Mercenary Wordsmith, and Out-of-work Ion Cannon Technician

Michael B. Caffrey

A Dark and Stormy Night (The Adventures of Joey Maverick)

Joey Maverick, a young Ensign in the Atlantean Union, takes part in a low-tech sailing regatta right before he’s supposed to ship out for space. A storm hits, causing Maverick to take command of his ship and mount a rescue mission. Along the way he picks up stranded nurse Belinda Simpson, along with many others. Sparks fly while the tension mounts . . . what will be the outcome of this dark and stormy night?

On Westmount Station (The Adventures of Joey Maverick)

Newly-minted Lieutenant Joey Maverick of the Atlantean Union is finally about to head out into space and is waiting at Westmount Royal Naval Station for ship assignment. Joey thinks no adventure is possible on Westmount Station, but he couldn’t be more wrong . . . there’s treachery afoot, black treachery, and it’s up to Joey and his temporary crewmates to stop a saboteur before it’s too late!

Michael Kingswood

The Pericles Conspiracy

Josephine Ishikawa changed the course of history, but no one knows it.

She cannot talk about what happened during her last shift as Captain of the starliner Pericles, nor does she care to. She passed the ball to the authorities, like procedure required, and now has her sights set on getting Pericles through a major maintenance overhaul and back out to the stars.

Until she learns of a betrayal so large it defies belief, leaving Jo to decide between the life she loves and her duty to the beings she brought back from outer space. Her decision will affect not just her future, but possibly the futures of everyone on Earth and the other colonized worlds.

Also available from these fine sources:

• Kobo
• Barnes and Noble
• Smashwords
• iTunes
• Google Play

Peter Grant

Adapt and Overcome (The Maxwell Saga)

Assigned to investigate a deadly accident, Lieutenant Steve Maxwell uncovers corruption and criminal collusion reaching far above his pay grade. To save his career he’s dispatched to a distant planet to help upgrade its defense forces, in the company of an old friend and some of the most experienced Marines Steve’s ever met – plus one of the most distracting.

Trouble is, the planet’s antiquated defenses make its new-found wealth a very tempting target – and there are those planning to take full advantage. As Steve and his colleagues strive to whip a rusty, run-down defense establishment into shape, the clock’s running out…

*And now, I shall go and do cat boxes and the spots upstairs where Havey rubbed his behind in an effort to clean it :/  After that there will be subscriber’s content.  For reasons I can’t fully explain — I can, but it would involve too much and too long an explanation — my brain has been on hold most of the week.  Now it’s back.*

The prequel to this — Witchfinder — has been removed.  I do promise to go through the copyedits as soon as humanly possible and send the advance copies to those who pre-ordered.  You’ll know when that’s eminent because I’ll remove scattered chapters from this blog.  I do hope to manage it next week, but I’m not promising as I’m still finishing a novel under contract to Baen. Meanwhile, if you donate $6 and note it in the field, you’ll get advance-subscribed to this novel.  I do, however, understand it can be a long time to wait, and if you want to, do so.  I will continue to post chapters here, roughly one a week.

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

 

Ginevra Mythborne

 

I was a little surprised Jonathan agreed with me that we needed to go to fairyland.  It was about this time that I expected him to get a glimpse of the plan, or at least of the people targeted, and to probe behind my motives.

I had of course forgotten that he was a human male, and how easy it was to cloud a human male with hints and promises and allusions to mating.

He might not be all human – from that magic glow around him, I wasn’t sure, yet, that he wasn’t Hermes himself, save for the fact that someone that close to the Father in blood, couldn’t have remained on Earth long enough to become Jonathan.  A few days at most.  You needed to be as dilute a bastard as I was to be able to withstand the lack of magic on Earth for long enough to accomplish anything.

Which left us with… mostly human.  And if mostly human, he was susceptible to the tricks of my kind.  Very susceptible, as it turned.

He let me do the translation magic between universes.  Not that I meant to play him false.  Not in this at least.  But I’d expect someone as full of guile and imagination as Jonathan Blythe to wish to say the incantations himself.

Instead, he let me say them.  His eyes widened a little, then narrowed, at the old language, then he shook his head and opened his mouth, and looked like he was going to say something, but didn’t.

I was using the wayfaring incantations, in the variant popularized by Espinosa, so what happened was that instead of a fey portal opening in the middle of this very mundane room, a … a discontinuity appeared in the room, right there between the tall dresser and the red-draped chair, and through that discontinuity you could see sort of, if you squinted, a dark way that seemed to wind amid a darker meadow.

I started towards it, and Jonathan held my wrist.  “Wait,” he said.  “Wait.  Where … where does this lead?”

I turned to him and considered giving him that kind of pose that human females use to suggest attraction without saying anything verbal.  I thought to jut my hip out, to move just slightly closer to him, to go willing and meek in his grasp.  But the time wasn’t ready for it.  Whatever thoughts the old magic language and Espinosa’s embroidering upon it had sparked weren’t amorous.  I won’t say he was all business.  There was a good bit of the trickster in him. But his eyes were narrowed, and I could almost hear him trying to think through things.

“To Fairyland,” I answered truthfully, willing to let him see my truthfulness and my quiet certainty.

He growled at me – or at least he made a sound of impatience in his throat that was very close to a growl.  “Don’t try that on me.  There are many points in fairyland.  Where are you taking me.”

“Fairyland doesn’t have a defined geography,” I said.  “Too much magic for that.  It has in fact, a mutable and always changing geography, a—”

“I’m not a child, Miss Mythborn.  I was not born yesterday.  I recognized the words you said, though damme if I know how.  I know all that about fairyland, but I also know there are places, like the centaurs meadow and… and worse, where you can end up imprisoned forever and worse.  There are many people, as you know, who think that Dante wandered into those dark meadows and that it was there he saw the place of eternal torment for the impious dead.”

I sighed.  He knew too much, but I knew he knew too much.  It was the point of all these we’d targeted that they stuck out, they were unsatisfied with their fate – they were mice captured in a trap not of their making, but refusing to resign themselves to their fate.  The high magic one of those were—usually interesting.

However, in this one thing I wasn’t playing him false.  Again, I willed him to see my total honesty.  “It is not,” I said.  “To one of those dark places that I’ve opened this road.  Rather, I willed it to take us near the King.  If I’m right, he’s still in the palace, in the center of fairyland, having spun for himself a reality that accommodates each of his halves.  I do not know what that reality would be, but I count on you, who have known him from early life, to do so.”

He demurred, looking at me, his eyes narrowed, then said, “Buggered if I can.  Gabriel was always a strange one.  Well, now I think about it, I was a strange one, too, but no more dissimilar men may be found.”

I didn’t say anything, nor yet move.  He sighed.  “I wish—”  he said.  He shook his head and let go of my wrist.  “Go on, fair temptress.  Damme, I’m going to regret this–  But possibly only for a very short time.  And anyway, the things I’ve regretted the most in life have often turned out to be the ones that…”  He looked surprised as though he’d suddenly seen clearly something that had evaded him all too long.  “The ones that bore me least.  You know, I don’t think I am ever amused except when I’m doing something regrettable.”  He grinned.  “Lead on.  This is about to get interesting.”

That part, at least, was true, even if I was not leading him into a trap.  Well, at least not into any trap he could imagine.  Even I, low-blood that I was, could only see the outlines of what lay ahead.

But I knew we needed to get the misfits into fairyland.  By any means necessary.  The result…  Well, if I was right it would be as catastrophic as if that bomb had gone on in the office of the Witchfinder.  And yet, I could see where it would be something else, also.  Something… interesting.  Even for people other than the Earl of Savage.

I reached for his hand.  Strangely, it was I who needed support and reassurance.  I knew the game was being played, but I couldn’t tell for sure that I had more – or less – say in it than the mortals we were gathering.

When we first set our feet on the path, all sound ceased – those sounds I hadn’t even been aware of: our breath, the minute sound of our steps in the brothel’s cushioned rugs.

We walked as one walks in a dream, without feeling of air on our bodies and faces, without the sounds of living.  When were ten steps in, or so Jonathan looked back over his shoulder.  “Interesting,” he said.  “The door is closed behind us.  The room isn’t back there.”

I didn’t say anything, and he chuckled.  “The … At least it doesn’t do what happened to Eurydice.  I’m not back in the room.”

“That only happens the other direction,” I said, and then wished I could bite my tongue in two.

“Does it?” he said, the amusement in his voice betraying he knew very well I’d let escape what I didn’t mean to.  “Useful to know, isn’t it?  Now lead on to whatever adventure waits us.”

Like that, as though conjured out of nowhere, a tall while place loomed.  It looked as though it might have been sculpted out of ice.

And from somewhere came the shouts and laugh of children at play.