Category: Uncategorized

Book Promo

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH

FROM SAM AND SHARI ROBB (EDITORS): Tales From the Wood: Stories in the Key of Tull, Volume 2

Jethro Tull has an amazing discography. Spanning everything from folk music to heavy metal over 50 years, their music has inspired generations of artists of all types – including authors. This anthology of speculative fiction pays tribute to that inspiration. Just as the music of Jethro Tull spans genres, so do these stories.

Come join us around the fire for stories of all manner of witches, wizards, dragons, and fae beings both light and dark as these bards bring you their Tales from the Wood.

FROM MOE LANE: Tales From The Fermi Resolution: Vol. 2: Lights in the Darkness

“Moe has a bunch of great stories in this collection, including the best response to that Le Guin story I’ve ever seen.”
– Karl K. Gallagher, author of Torchship Trilogy and the Fall of the Censor series.

Return to the world of the Fermi Resolution! Ten stories of a post-apocalyptic North America, gone mad with magic. Adventure abounds, from the treachery-haunted ruins of Michigan to the magic-kissed streets of Cin City! Action and derring-do, on land and sea – well, all right, the ‘sea’ part is actually a bay. But there are sea monsters fighting elvish privateers! Bears with hats! Orcs attending operas! Several flavors of mad cultists! Nine hundred years of patient heroism, all to protect those precious lights in the darkness.

This book includes the first three chapters of the upcoming Tom Vargas novel BANSHEE BEACH.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Light Up the Night

Dane Crockford is tired. Tired of the green energy crapping out and leaving his wife Rose gasping for breath when their air conditioning dies, tired of trying to hide his use of his own solar panels from the nationalized electrical company, and tired of worrying about his daughter and son-in-law, trapped in an abusive indenture program to pay off their student loans. He’s not the only one, either. Everyone in his home town is in a similar situation, many of them with their children doing dangerous jobs without pay to offset crippling student debt. So when his grandson Toby accidentally discovers an energy generation method that isn’t wholly owned by the federal government, he jumps on the possibility of building something that works, in spite of and around the federal monopoly.

But what the monopoly doesn’t realize is that their grip on Dane, and on his home town, is far less secure than they think. When they disconnect his house from the power grid, they have nothing to hold over him, to force him to work for small rebates on his monthly bill. The utility has unleashed the power of a cranky old man with a rare skill, and they’ve got no idea that they’ve tossed the pebble that starts an avalanche.

FROM JAMES TOTTEN: Annie’s Got A Gun: A Pole Dance Aviation Short Story

Ukraine is becoming a very dangerous place. Suicide drones attack civilians and infrastructure with impunity after all of the $100k surface to air missiles are gone and the “flack tracks” run out of bullets. In a horror show of a war, it’s time for some good old American ingineuity. Pole Dance Aviation, a Private Military Company, is established by its charismatic owner Jason Kane to assist with counter drone operations. Flying highly modified Cold War airframes, PDA gets down to the nitty gritty of shooting suicide drones out of the sky far cheaper than launching missiles that cost thousands of dollars a shot to kill hundred dollar drones. What happens if a PDA aircraft gets shot down? Send in the downed aircraft crew recovery platoon, The Shitheads, and they will fast rope into hell to get the pilots out. No fight is too tough and no enemy to too bad to keep the Shitheads from doing the deed and getting the pilots back. The Shitheads are supported by a cast of character’s, planes with call signs like Spy and Fat Amy, pilots named Axel and GO Juice, and leaders named Turtle and Mikey (that pre-workout fueled fight junkie will eat ANYTHING). Come along for the nonstop thrill ride set in the near future with headlines ripped out of tomorrow’s news feed. Oh, did I mention, Annie… yeah, she is there too, and she got a gun!! Mount up for grueling action as the Shitheads take on all comers in this high tech fight to the death on tommorow’s battlefield in Eastern Ukraine.

FROM I. M. LERNER AND CATHERINE OSORNIO: The Hidden Entrance (Under the Staircase – An Economic Adventure Series for Kids Book 2)

On a hunch, he pressed down on the ledge, first on Hubris and then on Nemesis.
Crrrr….
The click-clackety sound of moving gears creaked loudly on the other side of the wall.
Slowly the bookshelf slid aside, revealing a dark hallway.

After spending the summer discovering the Under the Staircase Society, Nate, Maya, and Maggie are finally back at school. But while Nate would be happy puttering in his workshop and tinkering with his 3D printer, he can’t stand by as their beloved Apprenticeship Program comes under attack. The discovery of The Road to Serfdom sparks a chain of events they could never have expected. From Cipher Wheels to Cicero, secret desks to hidden passages, the kids must solve the mystery…before it’s too late!

Under the Staircase® Books A mystery and adventure series that teaches treasured values: personal responsibility, individual liberty, and economic freedom.

Psst! Parents & Teachers: The second book in the series introduces a variety of Friedrich Hayek’s economic concepts—individualism and collectivism, the knowledge problem, the fatal conceit, and other topics—using examples from kids’ day-to-day lives in school, with friends, and in familiar situations.

FROM MARY CATELLI: Journeys And Wizardry

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

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Ice Storm

Everywhere Evangeline looks, a thin coating of ice makes objects gleam in the sunlight. However, the beauty proves deceptive, for it hides a deadly secret, one only she can recognize.

In her youth, Evangeline had aspired ot master the powerful magics of her world. Those dreams died the day her Gift awakened uncontrolled and plunged her into a vision of a full fleet battle. The Admiral’s Gift will not be denied, and for Evangeline there was no choice but to trade her mage’s robes for Navy blue.

Now she is faced with an enemy she cannot fight save by magic. Except those who bear the Admiral’s gift are forever barred from working magic.

FROM KAREN MYERS: The Visitor, And More: A Science Fiction Short Story Bundle from There’s a Sword for That

A Science Fiction Story Bundle from the collection There’s a Sword for That

THE VISITOR – Felockati is anchored to his permanent location underwater and misses the days of roaming his ocean world freely.

But something new drops out of the sky and widens his horizons — all the way to the stars.

YOUR EVERY WISH – Stealing the alien ambassador’s dagger is a sure thing for Pete — just what he needs to pay off his debts.

Until he starts talking to it. There has to be a way to get something for himself out of the deal. Has to be.

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: SWEET

Quite obviously the promo post will be tomorrow. Sorry.

Thing is, you see, there’s this book. It’s 212 thousand words. I … It might be the weirdest thing I ever wrote, and it has kidnapped my mind for the last several months.

This morning, when I woke up, I thought I was fifty pages from the end. It was just about fifty pages from the end. I just finished … an hour ago. So maybe now I can go back and finish Witch’s Daughter and Winter’s Prince. Maybe even during the time in Portugal. (Yes, while getting the wedding ready to go and all, because, why not?)

Posting here will be irregular and all over the place (more than this) while I’m in Portugal. And instapundit posting will also be weird, the first 2 weeks of October, because we’ll be in Portugal.

However, this too shall pass and posting and book writing will resume.

And the promo post will be tomorrow, yes.

Again sorry. I had to finish the book. It’s a monster, in case you wonder what took me so long. It weighs in at 212000 words and change.

And now to revise. So my editor can get it.

When I did my fundraising in July, one of you sent me a litter robot. (The picture above is AI generated, because the box is under a cabinet in the bathroom and devilish to take a picture of.)

I don’t remember who sent it, so this is my thank you.

At the time I thought it was a strange gift, even knowing I’m cat-infested, and perhaps a little too expensive, so that I was cringing because I do that.

To clarify we used to have two litter robots. They’re very convenient, because they allow us to take vacations or whatever and let our friends cat sit without having to deal with the mess. They’re also very good for someone like me, who is ADD AF and sometimes simply forgets that cat boxes exists, because she’s writing a book. I can just empty them once a week, and we’re fine.

The problem is the litter robot — my husband calls it alternately death star and eye of sauron — on the right got weird, so I ended up having to smack it over and over again. And sometimes, even so, it would not work. Eventually I got tired and got a replacement, which, unfortunately, due to tight finances was a chineseum one. when we acquired the kittens, I got another Chineseum one to supplement.

They are okay, or so I thought till today. However, they need to be emptied twice a week, and for reasons I couldn’t figure out, there was a smell in the cat box bathroom.

Today I finally had the time to put the new litter robot in rotation. That means I took the Chineseum box apart to store, in case I needed it later.

And that’s when I found out it’s been throwing litter and poop into the places under the tub where I had to take it apart with a screwdriver to reach.

This means when I have the money I’ll get a second litter robot to replace the second Chineseum box.

But until then, I really, really, really want to thank the person who sent it, and whose name I unfortunately can’t remember. (I’ll have to search comments to find it.)

Sometimes we don’t know we need gifts, but we do.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Our idea of the past has no relationship to reality. Specifically, our idea of “past generations.”

A few years ago, I accidentally found myself reading a page where some young women were talking about Christmas gifts. One of them was going on about how she was buying her mother — of all things — a vibrator. Because she thought her — Catholic, married, about my age — mother needed to find out that vibrators existed, and how wonderful they were. (Because her mother specifically had told her she didn’t want one.)

I was so shocked at the utter stupidity and callousness it took me a long time to realize that beyond this young woman being an utter and complete brat, she was utterly deluded.

Look, someone my generation could not have avoided knowing that vibrators existed. Nor could she have arrived at the conclusion she didn’t want one without pushing back on a lot of Freudian nonsense about avoiding frustration, and how terrible celibacy was for your psyche.

My generation came of age in the early eighties. We were taught by boomers in school. Our only chance to avoid having sex pushed on us was to be alone in a dark room and never interact with other humans.

Look, the boomers who came of age in the sixties and early seventies are now either grandparent age, or great-grandparent age or… well, dead.

Every time in a movie that someone talks about how shocked their parents or grandparents will be about pre-marital sex, or divorce, or some other “innovation” I wonder if the parents or grandparents were somehow transported forward in time from the 1800s or are perhaps Amish.

It’s not just sex, either. They will have the weirdest ideas, like that grandma never heard of communism. Or grandma never questioned the governmental organization. Or grandma–

Look, guys: Robert A. Heinlein was roughly the same age as MY grandmother. And in his twenties, he hit the artistic scene in NYC which was a wild sexual frontier. He also was a Fabian socialist (he got better.) And he had all sorts of wild ideas that curl the hair of young whipper snappers. If Heinlein were alive now, he would be 117. If he’d had a kid early, his kid would be my dad’s age. I could be his granddaughter. And I myself, had I reproduced in my early twenties, and had my kids had kids in their twenties, could now have a kid of marriageable age.

If you look at pictures of hippies in the sixties and seventies? They are now grandparents and great-grandparents.

So why do we have this weird picture of the past?

Mostly the media. And the fact that people who want to feel like they’re young, hip and rebellious keep forever rebelling against the same things that are already dead.

You know what’s rebellious? Refusing to buy the vibrator. Refusing to assume that abstaining from irresponsible sex is injurious to you. Refusing to believe that communism will work this time, if only the right people are in charge. Refusing the follow the insanity and the disproven myths of the last century is not old-fashioned or ignorant.

It is instead genuinely rebellious innovative and dangerous. It risks your career and sometimes your life.

On the other hand, it shocks the stodgy idiots who call themselves “progressive.” And it will make you feel warm and tingly.

So get out there, you wild person, you. Be traditional. Be uptight. Be monogamous. Be whatever the heck you want to be.

And cock a snook at the naive kids who think they are shocking us.

Sorry guys. It’s been a very weird month of so, and today (9/18)I just ran dry on blogs. I really need to try to finish the book tomorrow!

A few tie-offs on the fundraiser: A few of you requested an answer, one of you by mail. I will try to get back to you when we get back from Portugal on October 15th.

By now we’ve deposited every check. If you haven’t got notice of that, we didn’t receive it. (Our post office can be flaky.)

If there’s something I promised and haven’t done, please let me know. Other than, you know, finish a bunch of books which I haven’t, because the book I need to finish tomorrow stole my brain. I’ll try to do another reading for substack tomorrow. (And that one will be posted for free.)

Right now I just need to go to bed and hopefully actually sleep.

Feel free to tell me about why we’d send a racoon to space…

At the heart of what we’re going through right now as a country — and you could say of the West as a whole — is the left’s complete and utter lack of understanding of economics.

Look, there are rich people and poor people, there are rich nations and poor nations. For the left this has absolutely nothing to do with behavior or cultural characteristics. It’s a matter of location, mostly. Or a matter of who stole from whom.

Judging from my kids’ high school economics book — and therefore what they’re teaching all the kids — the left believes the west is rich because it “stole all the natural wealth” from poor countries. Which is also why poor countries are poor.

This is nonsense. It doesn’t explain why the poor countries didn’t do anything with all that natural wealth to begin with, and it fails to explain why European countries — generally poor in resources when compared to the rest of the world — were the ones who set out to travel to other countries and somehow “steal” all the resources.

The problem is that this stupid idea is dictated by Marx’s theories of “economics”. At the heart of his theories was the idea that wealth was a fixed pie. Wealth could neither be created or destroyed, just endlessly re-distributed.

If that were true then we would still be fighting over the same rocks and sea shells our ancestors distributed and redistributed.

So the left’s grand plan to get the dispossessed of the world and bring them to the States to give them welfare and all benefits as a small compensation for our having taken all their rocks and shells is essentially insane.

The truth is that whether countries and regions create wealth and people in them are well fed and taken care of not, has to do with people’s culture. That in turn might have a lot to do with climate and various other characteristics. However, the truth is anyone who has lived in more than one culture knows approach to life in general and oh, everything from inventiveness to property rights is very different and makes a big difference.

And culture, while not genetic is sticky. In fact, I’m convinced it takes a traumatic event, natural or arranged to break a culture’s hold on you and adopt another culture. What seems pretty obvious is that people do not acculturate to a new culture when they move to that other culture in a group from the original culture. In America at least so far — though the numbers of people coming in might negate that — the incomers eventually do adapt. Not the ones who came in, or their children, perhaps, but the grandchildren will — slowly — start to intermarry and become Americans.

But when you have a very large number of people, adaptation goes both ways.

I know the left is determined that the whole reason we don’t accept Haitians and pet-eating is that we are racist racists who are full of racism.

The reason is more that we are from a culture where we are wealthy and creative and capable enough that we can afford to keep completely unproductive creatures on whom we lavish love. And that we can afford food that isn’t those animals. And we respect private property and would not eat other people’s pets in any case.

Whatever the pathologies of our culture, they’re not that the majority people even think of grilling the neighbor’s cat, or do another million things that our culture — personally — would consider unspeakable.

And though the current imports have put that in some question, the truth is that our cutlure is still high trust and respecting of property.

However that is not normal in the rest of the world, and certainly not in the third world, where we’re importing millions of people from.

And given the numbers, we simply don’t have three generations to wait. Our culture will collapse before that.

So why is the left doing it? Because they think humans are fungible and bringing these humans to the place where their wealth was taken will make them instantly rich.

In fact they are absolutely convinced that our nation, and the entire west owes it to the rest of the world to make it up to them by taking all their poor and giving them welfare and submitting to their outrages.

But nations are not charities. The purpose of a nation is not to do good for people who aren’t its citizens and who are coming through our borders with no check and no intent of assimilating.

We are not racists for not wanting them here. We might be culturalists, but that’s just sense. If we didn’t favor our culture, it wouldn’t be our culture.

Heaven knows America is the most generous nation in the world. We assist anyone in need abroad. And that, itself, might have its own issues, but the truth is that it’s still less damaging than importing vast numbers, which doesn’t help anyone and destroys our own nation and culture.

I’m not saying shut the gates. America should bring in every person wants to be an American and has the intention and ability to contribute to our society.

But that means bringing in a few, select individuals, not vast numbers. Yeah, okay, maybe I shouldn’t even have qualified when I came in. Or perhaps now. But if you shut the door completely, you’re closing the door on people like Elon Musk. So, let people in, but carefully and advisedly and only people who aren’t likely to become a burden to the nation.

And for the sake of our children, our grandchildren and our great grandchildren, the invasion of third worlders who have no allegiance to our nation and no intention of assimilating to whom the left thinks we owe something should be sent back.

They don’t have to go where they came from, they just can’t stay here.

It’s time we understand countries aren’t charities. They’re structures and territories that exist for the benefit of their own citizens.

As for those other poor people, from benighted cultures, they can perhaps over time change their culture to better suit them.

Or not.

It’s not our fault or our responsibility. It’s their own.

The purse must be closed. And the border too.

Recently I’ve become aware of how much that’s going on in commerce, industry and our institutions is a sort of cargo cult of competence.

I’d been noticing some of it — and being baffled — since the nineties by an odd devotion to “procedure” which bordered on “We do the thing the experts do/say to do” and results will be right.

This intruded into my attention first with the publishing establishment turning against cozies. That term is broadening, but back then cozies was “Mysteries with an amateur sleuth, whose scope is within a family or small group of normal people.” All of a sudden in the early nineties, they demanded the cozy follow police procedural rules.

To figure out how wrong this is, go watch Murder She Wrote. Not one thing she does is right from the perspective of “real” crime investigation. Because the rules tie closely to whether you can get evidence accepted in court, most of her “solutions” wouldn’t work. I do get that. I also get that the whole point of the amateur sleuth is to have the plucky person solve things by unorthodox methods.

Which Murder She Wrote qualifies as. However, if you look at more recent mystery series, even those with amateurs have them try to follow the proper “procedure.”

What annoyed me back then, though, was that you’d get lectures from the publishers with the rejection. Our person was supposed to show all respect to the police because “they’re the experts.” Also, Joe Blow who ran a diner was supposed to know all the rules of evidence, etc. Which you know dang well wouldn’t happen. (BTW the way the “but this is not admissible in court” was solved was by having the suspect confess and semi-often die in some way.)

Because that had annoyed me, I started paying attention to how many of the rules and “the way things are now supposed to be done” from certain products being shunned, certain bought, etc. was all according to some often misunderstood “expert” pronouncement, no real thought.

Then came the late nineties, the dot com boom, which I had a weird view of. At the time Dan was trying to jump jobs, and going to a lot of interviews, so I read up on an analyzed the companies he had interviews with. And I quickly realized a lot of the metrics by which a company was considered “solid” or a good prospect were bogus. It had things thrown in, by the rules, because studies showed it was better…. like “Has game room on site for employees” (Because employee happiness made the company more likely to succeed. Which is likely true, but happiness and playing a lot of computer games ON THE JOB are not the same.) Dan interviewed with this company in Denver that had both a gym and various games in the offices, and encouraged you to take unlimited mental health days, etc. They offered a slightly lower salary but a huge amount of stock. So we crawled over their internals before he turned it down, and not only did we conclude that their product/expectation of success was AT BEST optimistic, but we wondered if anyone ever worked, ever. However, they were doing everything by the book in what “experts” in business said should bring enormous success.

Dan turned it down and six months later they were gone. Most of the companies with that model vanished.

But the idea that if you just do things according to a certain set of rules, you’ll get the desired result didn’t.

It mostly prevails in fields that are either closed shop with little visibility from the outside, yes, including police investigations but also everything from medicine to law or in fields willfully trying to hide things from the public. And given that the things it’s based on are usually biased already… it becomes fraught. Take for instance government reporting aid to minorities, when the aid amounts to, say preferential hiring of minorities or the giving of welfare, both of which over time actually degrade conditions for minorities. However, studies will base on whether something is good for minorities or not based on whether such “benefits” are provided.

Police is interesting because I doubt the editors telling us we couldn’t have a bumbling policeman figure in a murder mystery because “they’re highly trained professionals” realize how much of that training is in “Follow the rules so we can’t be sued” and how many murders (over half on average) go unsolved.

In fact, in our hyper litigious society, in almost every profession, more than half the rules on how to do things are designed so the company/institution/whatever isn’t sued.

Oh, and an example of “If we calculate according to these rules we can’t go wrong.” Sometimes, because we get a feeling in our gut this is not our final destination (Also depends on where kids end up of course) I kill my lunch hour eating at the computer and looking up “The best places to live in x state.”

I’d give it way more credence, if half the reasons they think these places are better places to live weren’t insane, bogus, or outright counterproductive. For instance, they often tout “highly rated K-12 institutions” which is … maybe okay, but most of the rating is done by agencies that don’t care if Jimmy can’t read, provided he can tell you how many genders there are supposed to be today. Or “diversity” which gives a HUGE boost to “Sanctuary cities.” Which is great, if you really want Tren D’Aragua in your business, but I really don’t. Then there’s “Gives you money to buy your first house in town.” We accidentally went to one of those places a couple of weeks ago. Okay, it wasn’t accidental, but we could have gone to three or four other places, not necessarily that one. It was just on the way of us going elsewhere. We… Um…. we’d planned to spend the day there, just because it worked with our schedule, but we left after a couple of hours. It wasn’t just that there really wasn’t anything to do, the museums and such closing seemingly at random on the weekend. It was that the entire place was overlaid with a patina of dingy misery. But it is rated as one of the best places to live in the next state, just based on a bunch of abstract measures. Like, you know, diversity.

The proximate cause of this rant is reading a mystery where the main character just took a course to follow the rules and make investigations better. Only all the rules the author is applying actually make the investigation impossible.

The further cause is this feeling that everyone is following “rules” and “Procedures” which are based on some study that no one ever read and which is probably irreproducible, and in the process we’re losing real knowledge and real ability to do things.

At the end of this process are ivy league college presidents who probably can’t read so well, so they plagiarist well-sounding phrases for their required “publications.” And they’re hired for their “diversity” (which mostly means female and can tan, like all the other “diverse” people) not any competence, so that works. Until it doesn’t.

And that’s just the most visible thing crumbling. Right now, hidden from view, I bet you actual essential positions are being not done, because they are occupied by someone who was never taught to do them, except “follow procedure.”

There are places where procedures are essential. Either because you can’t afford to forget something inside a patient you just operated on, to name an instance, or because you need to instill confidence in the public. or both.

For instance, it would be nice that everyone voting is at the minimum a citizen and a resident in the area. For that kind of thing there should be procedures. You’d like to know your doctor was trained according to rigorous standards (which they kind of are, unless they’re imported, sometimes from countries where the standards are very different.) You’d like all the i s dotted and the t s crossed.

But when you start talking about “best practices” of management, or investment, or even investigation, you inevitably find a lot of chaff has fallen into the wheat.

And the people who have been trained to blindly follow the procedures and the rules can’t tell one from the other.

Brace, because things are quietly starting to fall apart everywhere, not helped by the strain being put on them from above by those who think they can remove the walls and the roof will still stand, or that Western Civilization will remain as long as you follow these simple procedures, utterly divorced from the reality and history of the thing.

Brace and learn.

Because we’re going to have to rebuild. And it’s going to hurt like a mother.

But it is what is it, if we want to retain civilization.

Book Promo

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH

FROM JAMES YOUNG: Dispatches From Valhalla: An Alternate History Collection

“But now and again, the traveler reaches eminences where he sees…the deathless deeds of the great who have passed to Valhalla…” – George S. Patton
This collection contains “What ifs…” of military alternate history so daring their heroes would be welcomed into any warriors’ hall:
tand on the deck of the H.M.S. Illustrious off the Falkland Islands as the Royal Navy sails into the first carrier battle since 1945 in “Fate of the Falklands”

• In “The Lightnings and the Cactus,” see what happens when an unfortunate heart attack leads to P-38 Lightnings arriving at Henderson Field in October 1942
• Ride with M-18 Hellcats as they come to the aid of Task Force Smith in “Mr. Dewey’s Tank Corps”
• Finally, witness Vice Admiral Lee’s Task Force 34 clash with the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Center Force in the novella Wonder No More.

Ten years after Acts of War’s publication, long-term Usurper’s War readers will also be thrilled to find two entries in James Young’s signature universe:

• “Winifred,” the origin story in which a lost RAF bomber crew jettisons their payload…and changes history
• The Victorious Meeting, a novella that not only tells the story of the Royal Navy’s actions in Against the Tide Imperial, but sets the stage for A Feather Upon the Waves, the final novel in the series.

Whether you’re a new alternate history fan or an experienced traveler of the multiverse, you’ll find great tales within Dispatches from Valhalla. So grab the proverbial mead horn, erm, beverage of choice and prepared to be regaled once more by tales of battles that never were…but could have been.

Note: This is a collection of reprinted stories from anthologies and novellas that James Young has published since 2019. They have been placed in this single volume for your entertainment and ease of discovery.

FROM DALE COZORT: There Will Always Be An England

In the Alternate History novel, two weeks after the D-Day landings, 1944 Britain disappears, replaced by a version of Britain from the distant past, before modern humans made it to Europe. Billy Chandler, like all Allied soldiers in the Normandy bridgehead is suddenly in a desperate situation, cut off from British-based air support, reinforcements and supplies. Meanwhile, deep in the past, 1944 Britain is in its own fight for survival, isolated in a time when Neanderthals rule Europe and no humans have reached the Americas and struggling to feed itself.

The Allies in Normandy struggle to hold out against increasingly powerful German attacks, running low on food and ammunition. Meanwhile, 1944 Britain struggles to survive, a modern nation in a Stone Age world.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Schrödinger Paradox

To save the future, sometimes you have to reach to the past to change it. And in the face of extinction, you do what you must, regardless of who stands in the way.


Cataclysm

Unlucky jerk Tom Beadle was on watch at NASA when the collision alert sounded: a new asteroid, bigger than the dino-killer, headed for Earth. Big problem, but that’s why we have NASA, right? Except, after decades of budget cuts, NASA has no way to shove it off course. That job has to be contracted out. Will the private sector company his best friend from college works at succeed where the government option failed? Might be best to have a backup plan, just in case…

FROM JOHN D. MARTIN: A Clever, Chimerical, Clinical, and Charming Collection of 100 German Words: Absolutely Informative, Completely Trivial, yet Infinitely Useful … Useful Book of 100 German Words of the Day)

We’ve all seen the memes about that… crossword puzzle game being played in German, right? Well, here you have a collection of some of the most staggering linguistic morphological nightmares ever found in the wilds of German and Austrian newspapers, magazines, websites, and academic publications. All of these are to prove just how accurate those memes really were… no…. to prove how understated those memes really were. Along with the gigantic chimeras of the compound word world, there are some everyday vocabulary items you might actually use some day. Viel Spaß!

FROM MARY CATELLI: The Other Princess

This time, they invited the last fairy to the christening.

Elise, uncursed at her christening, received strange gifts about castles and roses. With such good fortune, what more does she need? She grows up forever in the shadow of her lovely, cursed, tragic cousin.

Even when the curse falls, and Princess Isabelle lies in enchanted sleep, life must go on for Princess Elise. Despite the curse, the kingdom can not sleep itself, and neither can she.

FROM JOHN D. MARTIN: Charis Colony: The Battle for McGuire Point

Raj and Shirin thought they were safe. They thought their son was safe. They had fled their family home in Mondal’s Landing and to the protected enclave of McGuire Point, out of the reach of Colonial Security. But when Colonial Security attacks the Point and the cost of ending hostilities is returning the couple and their son to the Landing, what decision will Governor McGuire make? And will their newfound home stand by them or sell them out?
From the review of Charis Colony: The Landing at ricochet.com:
“Charis Colony: The Landing” offers a story that is fast-paced and cerebral. Raj Mondal is forced to confront long-held beliefs and challenge authority for the first time. Martin offers readers several competing views of society in this novel.

Mark Lardas, at ricochet.com and at marklardas.com

FROM MACKEY CHANDLER: The Long Voyage of the Little Fleet:

In the first book of this series “Family Law”, Lee’s parents and their business partner Gordon found a class A habitable planet. They thought their quest as explorers was over and they’d live a life of ease. But before they could return and register their claim Lee’s parents died doing a survey of the surface. That left Lee two-thirds owner of the claim and their partner Gordon obligated by his word with her parents to raise Lee. She had grown up aboard ship with her uncle Gordon and he was the only family she’d ever known. Him adopting her was an obvious arrangement – to them. Other people didn’t see it so clearly over the picky little fact Gordon wasn’t human.
After finding prejudice and hostility on several worlds Lee was of the opinion planets might be nice to visit, but terrible places to live. She wanted back in space exploring. Fortunately Gordon was agreeable and the income from their discovery made outfitting an expedition possible. Lee wanted to go DEEP – out where it was entirely unknown and the potential prizes huge. After all, if they kept exploring tentatively they might run up against the border of some bold star faring race who had gobbled up all the best real estate. It wasn’t hard to find others of a like mind for a really long voyage. This sequel to “Family Law” is the story of their incredible voyage.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Baying of the Hounds

In the world we know, Nikola Tesla’s Wardencliffe experiment proved a costly failure and was ultimately torn down for scrap. But what if things had gone differently and he pressed his work to completion? In a world similar to but unlike our own, Tesla completes his transmission tower. But when he turns it on, he discovers his calculations were incomplete. Some unknown factor has created a connection with another world with physical laws unlike our own. The commingling of curved and angular space has led to catastrophe. Now his greatest rival, Thomas Alva Edison, compels him to repair the damage. To do so, Tesla must make his way through a ruined city to the locus of the damage. And through his mind echoes the baying of unseen hounds. A short story originally published in the anthology Steampunk Cthulhu.

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: Earthy

I was a good girl. I brought my laptop before I set off on an adventure. I even verified that my computer could sign onto my associates account.

What did I forget? Oh, yeah, the dongle.

I’m sorry, I’m so unused to spur of the moment jaunts these days. When I travel these days it’s plotted days or months ahead. This suddenly picking up and going off is a big problem. It’s outright unnatural, I tell you.

I’ll be back on tomorrow morning and do a promo post. Look on the bright side, this gives you the opportunity to send me something to promote if you’ve forgotten.

Again, I’m sorry. I’ll go finish stuff and head home in a couple of hours. I’ll be back on tomorrow.