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 NATHAN C. BRINDLE: The Lion and the Darkness (Timelines Book 4)

The Long-Awaited Sequel to The Lion in Paradise

At long last, Ariela Rivers Wolff begins her mission to the Simulated Worlds.

As the Martyr of Sardristra, she finds herself in the position of a Joan of Arc, burned at the stake for preaching a sermon of love to a very violent race of . . . blue, four-legged, four-armed, sort-of-horse analogs. Five hundred years later in their history, she finds a totally-reversed welcome as “Saint Ardreyelya” in the country in which she first appeared. Will she be able to prevent the rest of the world from destroying “her” people before she can convert them, too?

As the Goddess of Mahoukai, she finds herself the deity of a world religion in a world governed by magic. And like all worlds with magic, inevitably there is a Demon Lord. She’ll have to deal with that Demon Lord before the world of Mahoukai can be realized into the True Universe . . . but in the event, the Demon Lord is an infiltrated agent of the very enemies she is sworn to fight in the real world. Can The Lion of God take on a Darkness, single-handed? If not, it may spell doom for the inhabitants of Mahoukai – and for herself.

EDITED BY JAMES YOUNG, WITH A STORY BY LEE ALLRED: Hooves, Tracks and Sabers!: Tales of Alternate History (Raconteur Press Anthologies Book 29)

Alternate history allows us to explore, in thrilling detail, what might have been. Come with these authors down the untrodden divergences from reality, while still staying close to the possible. Can history be fun? Yes! Be entertained by these stories and find yourself wondering along with the authors. What if…? Cavalry had evolved from hooves, sabers, and tracks in other ways than we know happened.

WITH A STORY BY LAURA MONTGOMERY: Tales of the United States Space Force

TALES OF THE UNITED STATES SPACE FORCE: New fiction and nonfiction focusing on the United States Space Force from top authors.

It has been six decades since mankind first shook off the yoke of gravity and flew into outer space. After cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s first fateful trip into the vastness beyond our atmosphere, the Apollo missions landed twelve men on the moon. Since the building of the International Space Station, humankind established a semi-permanent base in space.

But wherever people and their interests go, the military and law must eventually follow. Enter the Space Force!

In an increasingly unstable geopolitical environment, the wars of tomorrow may well be fought and won in space. Russia and China have successfully tested anti-satellite missiles. A Russian satellite approached a U.S. government satellite close enough to conduct an attack, forcing evasive maneuvering. Analysts believe the Chinese government has launched a satellite equipped with a robotic arm that could be used to manipulate and disable other satellites. With satellites critical to everything from weather forecasting to disaster response, agriculture to environmental monitoring—pizza delivery tracking to guiding missiles during war—a lot is riding on a safe and secure space program.

Here then, stories and essays of the United States Space Force, the first new United States military service since the establishment of the Air Force in 1947.

With stories by Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven, Harry Turtledove, Brian Trent, Gregory Benford & James Benford, David Brin, Jody Lynn Nye, Martin L. Shoemaker, M.T. Reiten, Avery Parks, C. Stuart Hardwick, Karl K. Gallagher, Gustavo Bondoni, Liam Hogan, Henry Herz, Marie Vibbert, Laura Montgomery, Sylvie Althoff, and Matt Bille.

Essays by: “Star Wars” program chief space laser engineer William F. Otto, USAF space office Michael Morton (ret.), and C. Stuart Hardwick.

At the publisher’s request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).

FROM LL LOYD: Mysterious Guardian Thief J.B.: Good-bye, Marianna Rose

Unexpected visitors send the Mysterious Guardian Thief J.B. to the phantom planet Fahlon, where he encounters an old love and new danger.

After a surprise attack leaves a dead woman at his feet, J.B. and his partner-in-crime Poe head for Fahlon, a world that can travel between dimensions. It’s a bittersweet return to a place J.B. remembers fondly. Unfortunately Fahlon isn’t the world he left behind. Something has changed it – and that change threatens its destruction. Can the Guardian Thief save Fahlon – and the Marianna Rose – in time?

FROM J. L. CURTIS: The Grey Man- Sunset

Whoever said retirement was quiet never met John Cronin…

The old man may have retired for the final time from the Sheriff’s office, but there are still cows to run, court cases to testify at, and consultation calls to tap decades of experience. And that’s not even counting the cold cases he’s still trying to solve…

With his granddaughter Jesse running the gun store and managing the ranch books, and her husband leaning how to fill Cronin’s shoes on investigations and arrests, John is keeping busy training the next generation, while settling a few old scores!

FROM KAREN MYERS: Mistress of Animals: A Lost Wizard’s Tale (The Chained Adept Book 2)

AN ERRANT CHILD WITH DISASTROUS POWERS AND NO ONE TO STAND IN HER WAY.

Penrys, the wizard with a chain and an unknown past, is drafted to find out what has happened to an entire clan of the nomadic Zannib. Nothing but their empty tents remain, abandoned on the autumn steppe with their herds.

This wasn’t a detour she’d planned on making, but there’s little choice. Winter is coming, and hundreds are missing.

The locals don’t trust her, but that’s nothing new. The question is, can she trust herself, when she discovers what her life might have been? Assuming, of course, that the price of so many dead was worth paying for it.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Pendragon Resurgent (Legends Book 2)

Life is much better when nobody is trying to kill you.

Sara Hawke, now a university professor, has had five years where nobody was trying to kill her…if you don’t count her course load’s grading. Five years of watching over and helping raise orphaned young dragons.

Her comfortable life comes to an end when she’s attacked by Eastern Dragons, once again—this time, though, her attackers aren’t in the ruling elite. She’s in for the fight of her life again, only this time, Mordred is on the other side of the world, and she must first reach his side before they can succeed.

The running fight to survive brings to light old treachery, blackest magic…and new hope and new allies.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Perfect Darkness

What would perfect darkness look like? And what would happen if you saw it?

When Pavlik becomes obsessed with the idea of seeing perfect darkness, it becomes a distraction from the pod’s duty as asteroid miners. Little does he know that danger lies in opening one’s mind to the things that lurk in perfect darkness. Things that endanger his pod-brothers, even all of Briar’s Children.

FROM PAM UPHOFF: Recovery Agent

Mike’s nephew Ari was kidnapped and recovered by an unknown man.
Mike helped get the ten-year-old all the way home . . . to find Ari’s father dead, and the relatives circling . . .
The police seem to be more interested in the rescuer than the kidnapping.

Falk was the youngest detective on the investigation, that had just gone sideways, as it seems the boy had been rescued by an infamous assassin. As an important and wealthy man’s relatives fight to control his estate and his only child . . . Falk is starting to realize his own family is entangled in the apparently natural death, the kidnapping . . . and the Recovery Agent.

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: concentrate

Sorry, guys. I’m running a fever, and I have absolutely no idea if it’s a real thing or “just” autoimmune. OTOH the panic attacks of the night before are explained. Not unusual when fever starts to take hold.

One of my ways of wasting time when I feel like I’m not doing anything productive is to play with midjourney. So, have some pretty pictures to look at, use for whatever you want, since I am not going to use them.

First a meme, related to yesterday’s post illustration (and maybe yesterday’s post.):

And that’s it. If one of these sparks an idea for one of you, I’ll be ecstatic.

I’m going to have some tea and maybe nap. The next chapter of NML is insisting on being written, so….

Last night I woke up five times, in a panic. This has happened before, but it was usually from a nightmare. This … was not. And I don’t know what caused the panics. It’s one of those: check everything, see if there was a loud noise.

Anyway, I think metaphorically speaking we need a reality check. We’re sitting here, in the dark, and we scare ourselves. Worse, people are trying to scare us, on purpose or not. In the sense that they think they’re going to do a lot of really bad things, and that intention and their certainty this is achievable can scare the best and most rational of us.

Look, first let’s establish something clearly: we are all poisoned by story.

Every time I see the stupid meme about how in revolutionary times “me and my homies would already be stacking bodies” I want to…. spit. Because seriously, no. The founding fathers were careful, deliberate, spent a lot of time analyzing things and almost killed themselves trying to find a peaceful solution to their dilemma. Benjamin Franklin was in London, looking for a peaceful solution, when war broke out. DESPITE deliberate insults, threats and attacks on them and their property. They were still trying to find a peaceful solution.

But that’s not how it’s portrayed in stories. In stories it’s all wham bam, and now we’re going to war. The refusal of the call (to action) cannot take too long or it’s a dud story, and that’s what we’ve been conditioned to.

This is one version of “poisoned with story” which is why we “know” a lot of things that just ain’t so. Like we know revolutions happen when people are starving. Or we know the government has super powers to stop all communication. Or we know–

Except none of it is true.

The good and bad news is the left is even more poisoned with story than we are. By and large, they are less practical and more people of word text and theory. (Part of it is self selection. The reason they are attracted to the left is that they like self-consistent theories and fail to realize they apply to nothing in reality. Because they work in fields/live in places where they’re not exposed to people who aren’t like them, with the same background and education.)

Do I believe the left is intending to bring us under the heel. Yes, yes I do. Does the left have plans and believe they can fulfill those plans? Yes, yes, they do.

And now I’m going to light this one lamppost sitting here, in the dark forest, guys: Does the left have a chance in hell of bringing their plans to fruition?

No, no they don’t.

Look, sure, they might jail Trump. They might even kill Trump in jail. I think both of them will cause a reaction, and not the one they expect.

What they expect, because it’s the way it would totally work in books or movies, the way of the story, the way we’ve taught our subconscious that things happen, is that “rednecks” a group of will commit terrible acts in protest, preferably indiscriminately killing families to protest this crime against their “leader” (No, they really think Trump is our Svengali and our leader. No. Seriously. Trust me. They think that.) and then the left can stomp down, arrest us all (as if) of us who ever spoke against them, and shut us down effectively and then it will be the reign of a thousand years (it’s either five or a thousand with collectivists. I don’t know why. They’re dumb that way.)

But that’s not what they’ll get. Because the right isn’t collective and the individualists fail to organize. What the individualists do instead if become very very impossible to track down and govern. And things start to happen. Like government vehicles might have a lot of flats. And families of certain three letter agents might just have a heck of a time making friends. And– But you know and I know what can happen, the base level “You smell” rising to the heavens. And for that matter, at a guess, so many whistles will be blown internally, from all the good people still embedded in those places that no one will get anything done for being deaf. And, and and– They have no idea what they’ll unleash, and the truth is neither do we. We just know they will.

How do we know they will? Well, look at all the things they’ve tried to do and which they’ve quiet quit because we ignored them/made fun of them/made them realize they’d reap the whirlwind? Everything from not being able to institute their disinformation ministry to their attempts at gun banning for the last… oh few decades that sure have had a few set backs, but have resulted in each middle class American having enough of an arsenal to obliterate a third world nation. And a majority of states now having constitutional carry. Or look these last few years at their attempt to lock us down again. I mean, if they could they’d never have lifted the lockdowns, but it became untenable. People were just ignoring them.

The truth is, every country is governed with consent of the governed. How that consent is withdrawn isn’t always a dramatic revolution, but slower and more grinding.

Look, there isn’t a doubt in my mind that they planned to arrest us, send us to camps, etc back in 21. Only, you know, even having the national guard in the capital started not working the way they intended. It was supposed to be a show of force, but it really just showed how scared they were. And even the national guard people — there were interviews — who believed this was needed due to a grave threat of insurrection started hating their guts. And–

But more importantly, this template they’ve lifted from stories… well, mostly about the Soviet Union, where they win and everyone falls in line scared of their brutality, and they confiscate all the food, stop food production, starve the parts of the country that disagree with them, etc. etc. etc. … it will never work.

Sure, they’ve managed to skyrocket meat prices, but let’s face it, they’ve skyrocketed most prices. That’s inflation and printing press go brrrrrrt.

Most of their attempts to get American farmers to slaughter their herds have been met with something between “You’ve got to be kidding me” and “Don’t try that in a small town.” Bird flu is not being any more successful. And you know, I’m probably the only one of my friends without chickens. (Mostly because I’m allergic to feathers. And also everything I raise turns to pets. See quail, and they’re younger DIL’s.) Even people in suburbs have chickens since the great egg insanity of 20 and 21.

So, yeah, they could confiscate our food…. if we were a country that has three major cities and a bunch of isolated villages easy to access all in a line. And a disarmed populace.

With all this, the size and variety of this country are the best defense. The orneriness of its people is another.

Sure, what they try to do, particularly if they “dominion” themselves into power again in November, will hurt like a mother. There are a lot of things we foolishly let become centralized, from energy production to transport. And those are the areas they are having the most luck messing with. Not completely, but the ones they are messing with the most. And even that is only affecting certain areas of the country. For the rest we’re… mostly ignoring them.

So some places, some professions, some cities, some areas are going to hurt. Worse than they’re hurting now. The rest of us are just going to get very upset.

Worse for them, and something they never get, is that their actions have consequences beyond what they intend. This for some reason is something they can’t understand in any way, shape or form. So they’re having trouble understanding why the lockdowns caused people to be able to work from home, caused people to be able to move anywhere, caused their favorite cities to become half-depopulated and the tax base in their fiefdoms to fall and…. Oh, yeah, caused a lot more people to homeschool, a lot more families to become close knit, and incidentally caused the demand for oil to fall (fewer commutes) which means the prices haven’t gone up as much as they wanted to.– This was not what they intended at all. And they keep trying to put the toothpaste back in cubeland tubes and not understanding why it doesn’t work.

None of this computes to them. And I’m not sure what their attempts at making us fall into line will do, but I can guarantee it will be the opposite of what they intend. Or a lot of things orthogonal to what they intend that incidentally mars their plotting.

This is because their plans are simple and — always — based on the simplified version of history they want to be true, and they have no real understanding of cultural and geographic differences.

Look, if they could, we’d already all be in camps. If they could, they’d have Hillary in power. If they had that kind of power over us, they would not have needed to scare everyone with a “pandemic” and put the country in house arrest to get the zombie elected.

They can’t. They’re already up against the hard limits of their power. Sure, they can say they moved the polls their way (it was one poll, and let’s say no, it’s not what they claim.) They have lost the consent of the governed. In fact, they never really had it. And they’re too dumb to know that at this point any more attempts to run “WWIII” or “USSR” or “Pandemic” scripts are just going to have less and less effect and more and more contrary side effects.

So, they can make us miserable for a while. And depending on where you are and your state of health, etc, you should make more or less extensive preparations to survive.

But that’s the other thing. Americans are prepared. I swear in 2015 when we were looking at houses everyone already had a “prep room.” I also presume all their guns were lost in a tragic canoe accident. BUT their canning, freeze dried food etc? That was next level. This is something that no other country does to this extent. (Or often to any extent.)

Be not afraid. Yes, their plans are horrific. And if they succeed it will be the first time their plans succeed in all of history.

Let’s not forget the Soviet Union, their beau ideal, the template they try to imitate, was brought down by…. typewriters, which allowed people to disseminate and spread information. And they’re trying to run the script in a country with…. internet, with personal cell phones, with–

Bah. They’re idiots studying to be morons.

They can cause a lot of pain, sure. An idiot with a hammer can break a lot of machinery. But in the end someone grabs the idiot and if the idiot is lucky, the hammer doesn’t get used on his head. If he’s lucky, he’s just locked in a back room were he can’t hurt anyone. People are very resistant to being killed and having their stuff taken away. And the idiots in charge are insistent they should do things people notice.

Move towards the light. The black pill is not your friend. If there were no hope, they wouldn’t be trying to gaslight us so heavily.

Sure, it’s going to take time. It’s not a glorious revolution. (Stop watching movies!) BUT in the end we win and they lose.

And definitely they’re the ones who should be afraid.

Don’t Look Down, it’s a Long, Long Way To Fall* a blast from the past from November7,2013

I confess yesterday I was very depressed.  I don’t think it came across how depressed I was – I was trying to be reasonable and being, by nature, depressive, I’m aware of how to compensate for depression – but I was.  Between certain speculations on who will run against Hilary in 16, which prompted me to say “In that case, I don’t have a dog in that fight,” and “let it burn” there was an article about how thoroughly screwed my kids’ generation is.

The article was written from the POV of “you bought this, you voted for this buffoon.”

Except that not all of them did, of course.  (At least I hope not.)  When I was manning the phones, many people my kids’ age were there and they were fully aware of what waited them if the buffoon won.

So to have them be told “you’ll never pay your student debts, you’ll never have a decent job, you’ll never be anything but some sort of retail aid, no matter how brilliant or what your degree is” depresses me.  It depresses me more than it would if you told me that I had no hopes of ever getting anywhere.  Because I know my limitations.  I’ve stared my potential failure in the face.  I don’t even expect full success at this point, just “not dying” as far as career goes.  I’m me, I can cope with that.  But not my kids.  I’ve known them all my life, I know their potential.  Yes, I’m their mother, but I see their failings too –but they’re not the sort of failings that should consign them to a life as debt slaves.  They’re hard workers, they’re focused, they’re battlers.

Don’t tell me “But they’ll be all right then.”  Meh.  Guys, I grew up in a country where my limitations were stark and clear.  For instance, I never considered writing as more than an hobby, because in Portugal it wouldn’t be.  The excuse is that the population is too small to support full time writers without government grants and stuff.  I call poppycock.  The population is large enough for writers – multiple – to earn a living.  I suspect the Portuguese publishing industry is even more effed up than ours.  Not that it matters to me at this point, except if I had money – like, if I won the lottery – I’d start an ebook publisher publishing exclusively in Portuguese and serving the entire Portuguese speaking world.  License to coin money – maybe – but above all a chance to destroy the entrenched publishers in Portugal.  (Okay, I was born a trouble maker.  Deal.)

And I knew just how far my lifestyle could go, and where it was limited.  In the same way, even in the States, my generation’s chances have been limited in comparison to the older boomers (which fuels some of the generational hatred on blogs.)  Inevitable given their population-bulge and the fact they were post war babies.  (It’s really not their fault, not even the lefties.  We just like slapping them.  But it’s irrational.)  We have friends who are ten years older than us who never had to make as many sacrifices, and who are looking at retirement.  We aren’t.  By the time we came along the housing market had been inflated, and a lot of our work has been running to stay in place.

What I mean – I don’t want to start boomer bashing, so please none of that in the comments.  It really is a matter of chance.  No one chose this – is that when you are born and when you come of age, and when you enter the work force shapes your life and limits your choices.

And d*mn it, I don’t want my kids’ limited.

So, I was a wee bit depressed.  Sort of.

You see guys, I have some insight you don’t have.  Some insight I’m sure those who want to bring us to the level of “other countries” don’t have, because they’re pampered little snowflakes, whose pampered paws never touched hard ground – and it’s encapsulated in that title above, which I woke up with it running through my head, “Don’t look down.  It’s a long, long way to fall.”

Look, I grew up upper middle class.  I also grew up dirt poor.  Yes, both are true.  For the village we were “of good families.”  My family had never been barefoot laborers, we owned land.  We didn’t own enough land to amount to anything but a small farm, but…  And my grandfather was a skilled worker – a cabinet maker – and my grandmother ran her own business (would you believe hand painting/building cosmetic boxes?)  Yeah.  And my dad had a college education and a white collar job.  And all the grandkids attended college.  (Though a couple didn’t finish.)

We were not “peasants.”  I doubt we ever had been.  All my ancestresses as far back as memory stretches knew how to read, which is not normal in Portuguese peasants.  And we had some nice China and stuff.

So, why do I say we were dirt poor?  Oh.  Well, there was the three suits of clothing, one for best, one for everyday and one for rough.  (We might have had double that, because mom made them, but honestly, she stored ALL our clothes – for the four of us — in ONE dresser and one wardrobe, when my brother was a teen, and I was little.)  I had a never ending succession of pinafores, which is what I wore to keep the “good clothes” clean.  There was the ONE alarm clock in the house, which had to be moved around depending on who needed to get up (and for these purposes the “house” included my grandmother’s next door.

But perhaps nothing will encapsulate it as well as the fact that it was normal, both from my family and other middle class families to take a sweater apart, re-dye the yarn, and make a “new” sweater.  You could go three or four rounds before the yarn itself became too bad to use.

Relatives from abroad brought us chocolates as gifts when they visited.  You know, your normal multi-square candy bar.  We hoarded it like gold, and ate a square or two a month. (Yes, there’s Portuguese chocolates.  I believe they are categorized as soap.  Or were, at the time.)

I don’t say that to induce pity.  We were neither conscious of being poor nor were we in bad shape in relation to other people.  On the contrary.  And in a comparison either with the world or with historic norm, we were rich.  Rich beyond the dreams of avarice.

This is something that shocks Americans born-and-bred.  But it is true.

We are so rich that even the rich of other countries don’t fully get us.  They don’t see how well off we are.  They don’t see how our MIDDLE CLASS lives better than their upper classes.  Sometimes, and in some things, better than their middle class could dream.

Portugal is considerably better off (technically, though it’s all apparently borrowed money) now, but still, guys, I’ll be blunt with you.  I’ve been to their grocery stores, and I don’t know how people live.  I know what they make, and their salaries seem to range about half of ours, but everything – EVERYTHING – is in a smaller package and costs more.

I submit to you a lot of our stupidity is the stupidity of the well off.  You can decide to be vegan – if you have enough money.  You can be very tolerant of stupid people yelling at you for being imperialistic, if they don’t destroy your way of life.  You can pick odd styles of dress and “go back to nature” because you have enough money and because other people are well off enough they don’t care.

That I’m very much afraid is coming to an end.  I’m not a clairvoyant, if I were I would not have spent two years trying to break into short stories and twelve years trying to keep a foot in other-publishers-than-Baen.  I’d simply have gone Baen only twelve years ago and right now would have piles and piles of mysteries to go up.

But I do have the ability to get pictures in my head that describe a situation. Sometimes a situation I can’t explain rationally, and one no one believes me on.  When I first came into publishing, I could see it as a rotten ladder, breaking low and middle.  If I got to the top, I’d be safe, but there was no path there.

Everyone kept telling me I was seeing what wasn’t there.  “Publishing has always been in trouble.  It’s okay.”  It wasn’t okay.  The combination of consolidated publishing houses and big bookstores was killing the field, low and middle, and only the darlings survived (but lost readership every book.)

The image in my mind right now, with this Obamacare insanity, is of someone taking a car that is barely running, opening the hood and pouring a few buckets of fresh cement over the engine.

Don’t look down.  It’s a long, long way to fall.

And as I said, the prospects for my kids, and for all the bright kids of their generation HURT me.

But we’re all born where we are and even I can only do so much to prepare the kids, and to ensure they’re not hurt by this.  And cr*p like what is already in the pipe and flowing at us?  It’s going to hurt EVERYONE.

However, I’m no longer depressed.  I’m no longer depressed because… well… turn that around.  “It’s a long, long way to fall.”

We could lose half of our easy wealth and we’d still be better off than 90% of the world (let alone history) and that’s if THEY don’t fall too.

And that’s the other reason.  The crap that’s flowing down the pipe?  It’s going to hit the whole world.  America is a late-buyer into teh shiny (I typed that initially whiny) of socialism.  Which is why we’re the world’s largest consumer and the best well off.  And the shiny is running out of other people’s money all over the world, because the system promotes redistribution, not creation of wealth, which means people slowly get poorer.

America is going to hurt.  I’m not going to lie to you.  Are we going to hurt as much as the rest of the world?  Impossible.  Wealth doesn’t vanish over night. Look, I think I admitted to you before I buy most of my clothes from thrift stores.  This is something that’s not even really available in other countries (oh, yes, it exists, but there isn’t that much surplus.)  Nine times out of ten the clothes I buy are new, sometimes still with labels.  Someone bought them/got them as a gift, and either gained/lost weight and never wore them.  I think it’s expensive to pay $10 for a pair of designer jeans.  I wait for the half price sale.  This is only possible in a VERY wealthy country.  And that wealth won’t vanish.  Not for a decade or two.  The surplus is still around.

There is another reason – when societies are shocked, they revert to their founding myth.  It’s not by chance that things like Golden Dawn are resurgent in Europe.  A lot of the countries are going to revert to their founding myth which is both racist and triumphalist.

BUT that’s not our founding myth.  We were founded in liberty.  Yes, there are many who think this mean “liberty to have everything I want given to me.”  But those are not the active, able people.  Those who can stay on their feet during the tumble are people like us, who believe in individual liberty.

Is this guaranteed?  Oh, h*ll no.  We could end up with a strong man.  (Only we won’t.  We’re ungovernable, as the idiots at the top are finding out.  A state or two could go for a strong man.  The rest of us?  — pah.)

The statists think out of disorder will come communism.  Guys.  Remember they’re a religion.  A particularly dopey one.  There’s almost no chance of that, because communism requires a strong man.  The current buffoon ain’t it.  Nor are any of the people around him.  And given present-day America, there might be no one strong enough.

My biggest fear is that we’re wealthy enough to limp along another three generations, by which time we would be tenderized as it were, for the “Strong man.”

Bah.  Won’t happen.  They want the full socialist shiny and they want it now.  They’re pouring the cement over the car, because the engine is still running.  And if it stops – communism!  (The poor dears never get over the idea that the starving masses are JUST waiting for the intellectuals to lead the revolution.  Poor num’kins.)

A rebirth of liberty is far more likely than communism.  And it something we can fight and work for.

As for my kids and their future?  Well!  Who in the depths of Carter foresaw the Reagan boom.  And guys, if we can arrange for a boom now, it will be bigger and better than Carter.  Has to be.  Like after WWII, the rest of the world will be in a shambles.  Which is why my kids are so lucky to be American.

Is this pie in the sky?  Not hardly.  You’re going to have to work for this one.

First, the preparation for the crash, which you should already be making: pay off/streamline/prepare.

Then the preparation for the resurgence: this has to do with what makes us uniquely American and I can’t give you instructions because I’m not there.  Which is good.  You’re Americans.  Make your own instructions.  “An Army of Davids” – what the man said.

Roll up your sleeves and see what you can do – ideally what will make you money (multiple streams of income) and also keep things going.  If you don’t have my brown thumb and have land, growing some food might not be amiss (I think food will get expensive and there will be disruptions in delivery.)  If you have the time and the inclination, learn how to keep cars running.  People are going to be holding onto them for longer, and it will be needed.  Other stuff like that – not preparation for the stone age, but for the conveniences getting more expensive and harder to find. Figuring out how to keep computers running, or small appliances, might not be a bad idea either, though there is a lot of wealth between us and new ones being utterly unaffordable. Learn to cook from scratch if you don’t know how.  Learn to make bread by hand.  Flour is cheap.  So is rice. (I wish I could have either.)

I’m a fairly useless person, other than telling stories and doing some art, but yes, I’m working on both of those.  People don’t live from bread alone.  They’re still going to need entertainment.

My kids are in STEM degrees and hopefully they’ll find jobs, but if not… well… I told them my best advice, the one that kept me working throughout 10 years in which everyone in the publishing field except Baen seemed to be actively trying to sideline me: I won’t die.  Even if they kill me.

I’m now giving that advice to all of you – and to America in general.  Refuse to die.  Even if they kill you. (Metaphorically speaking, of course, though if you find how to do the other, do let me know.)

It might be, and I always certainly guarantee will be, that you’ll hit the wall on what you’ve done all your life; what you know how to do.  Don’t sit there and go “it’s all over.”  Despair is a sin. It’s also a sure route to utter destruction.

Instead, go “I won’t die, even if they kill me.”  Find new ways to do what you love, or find something new to do.

Go under, go around, go over.  Use their regulations against them.  And never give up.

Don’t look down.  It’s a long way to fall.  Fortunately, we’re on the high wire, and as long as we keep moving and doing, we’ll be fine.

*Give me a break okay?  The furniture refinishing mysteries will ONLY be written to Evita.  Other music, nothing happens.  And then you guys wonder why I cry, bitch and moan about writing another of those.

Lately, as in in the last year or so, I’ve been discovering that a lot of things I blamed myself for were baked in, part of who I am, probably physiological not psychological, and likely impossible to budge.

Not mind you that psychological problems aren’t real, or easy to overcome, but that the things I’ve spent my life trying to brute force simply couldn’t be brute forced. Things like ADD. I can manage some improvement, brute-force some concentration, but I pay for it, in the fact that I shut down afterwards sometimes for months, while I rabbit around doing crazy stuff that amounts to nothing. This is basically why my career had the iteration of a book in two weeks, then nothing for six months. And it wasn’t some gigantic personal failing, though it felt like it. Still does.

Yes, ADD can be treated, and … Look Adderal makes me borderline psychotic and has the neat side effect of shutting down the writing. Dan shouldn’t have to live with me on Adderal, (I don’t want to live with me on Adderal.) Vivanse (sp) works and I can actually sort of kind of get stuff done, except that…. so, I can sit down and force myself to write. Which I grant you is an improvement over sitting down and watching a youtube video, shopping for private planes or Persian carpets (no, I don’t buy them. I just shop for them, price them and rank them as to which I’d buy. I mean, I am not, thank heavens, so insane that I will try to buy things I can’t begin to afford. I just do a “the price is right” type of info-dive) or trying to establish once or for all whether dinosaurs were cold blooded. On the other hand, for whatever reason (and not a hundred percent sure so another test might need to be done. Might have been other factors) the gateway-in-head shuts down. So, you know, I can type whatever on command, I just can’t “feel” the story or the words. If you think about it as clay sculpting while blindfolded and wearing oven mitts, you might have some idea what it’s like.

I’m fairly sure my problem with Chapter House (link to it on the right side) and the novel serializing is exactly that. I’m trying to be regular and my brain isn’t regular. In my defense Witch’s Daughter really is almost done. My brain just got high-jacked by No Man’s Land which is also almost done. Except that I might as well have flushed May down the toilet or spent the month sleeping for all I accomplished. That was, illness and recovering from illness, which probably has to do with being old, which I also haven’t processed yet, and then this week trying to get the house’s last nests of utter disorder fixed and triggering my raging household-dust allergy. (Which is why this post almost didn’t happen.) Hopefully functioning by the end of the week, but there’s not much use sitting here beating myself because it didn’t happen. The result might seem like laziness, but the origin of the issue is very much physical and flattened me.

So, what is this in name of, other than making excuses for myself? Um… They’re not precisely excuses for myself. They are “these are the limits of what I can do.”

I don’t like them. And they’re perfectly insane compared to the “Standard issue human” our industrialized situation has convinced us we’re SUPPOSED to be, but they are what they are.

The situation we’re in as a country, or even if you prefer as a culture, for the entire west, is rather similar to me trying to navigate my body.

Just like 100 years ago, in complete ignorance of neurological weirdness, I’d have gone to my grave thinking I was incredibly lazy and couldn’t be redeemed, we live in complete ignorance of culture, and the issues wrought by culture and how culture propagates/changes/is transmitted.

Today talking to a friend, she was amazed mules are still used to grade roads/landing strips in the rural west. And you know, it reminded me of things in Portugal that are still the domain of one family, for centuries and many millennia. And at the same time there are other things that have changed so completely since I lived there that my memories of childhood seem like an acid trip.

And that’s physical processes/events. Beneath it there’s …. buried stuff. Stories that kids get told and in some form tell to their kids, some of which I’m convinced has passed from brides that were kidnapped or captured in war when the rest of the tribe was killed and their whole culture destroyed to the point we don’t even know it ever existed.

Our very languages have things embedded in them we’re only partially aware of.

So as rational human beings, when we sit here and we watch, say, to use an example, our country shut down for a case of the common cold, or start to kill its dairy herds for fear of a bird flu that’s completely treatable in cows and which has failed to kill a single human (though it allegedly infected one,) all under the impression it will have a 25% mortality rate because “the experts” say so, and feel we should do something…

For most of the insanity — oh, including throwing things in the atmosphere to make the Earth colder, and other shananigans — in this, the craziest of all timelines: there’s nothing you, an individual human can do to fix it. It’s not yours to fix, anymore than you can fix your ADD or my ridiculous auto-immune, or….

Does it mean it’s all hopeless? Well, no. Humans do some pretty bizarre and irrational things over the course of history. The fact that all over the world, periodically, we’ve buried cities and walked away from them is one of those. And yeah we have tons of theories on those “It was ecological collapse” being the favorite, except that really, it’s a just so story. We don’t know, and it couldn’t possibly apply in every circumstance. And given the material culture of various times, walking away from a perfectly good city made probably less sense than locking our entire culture down for the sniffles.

But there we are. We as a group aren’t rational. We respond to deep set prompts, some of them from our very language. And we get panics and strange ideas about how things work.

But– But, we survive.

So to cheer — eh — you up, here are some thing to keep in mind:

What can’t go on won’t go on, but there’s no set timetable. Because people haven’t yet, visibly, en masse reacted to injustice or abuse, it doesn’t mean they never will. It also doesn’t mean they aren’t reacting, in subtle and yet paradoxically perhaps more effective ways.

There is nothing you can do that’s a big hero solution, where you explain things, and suddenly “everybody” does thing a or b. That’s not how any of this works. BUT that doesn’t mean you’re utterly impotent. Talking back still has value. Speaking up can slowly turn the culture. In fact, you can say that is happening, as mass media loses its grip. And if you can’t do either, if in fact career and feeding your family requires you to stay embedded in highly leftist locations/jobs, I salute you. You know what you risk — when the worm turns it will be sudden, and there will be friendly fire. And you’re not stupid. You know that — but you’re doing something highly necessary. There’s whole fields of human endeavor that might be lost or impossible to restructure, unless we have sane people among the Marx-insanists. Neither talking back in a small (in my case mediumish, but hey) way, nor educating are nothing. And staying embedded in enemy territory is certainly not nothing. You’re all our advance troops, our culture sapper specialists. I’m proud of you. (Which granted won’t buy you a cup of coffee, but is important.)

What you should do, in and around this: Stay informed. This is important, because it keeps you abreast of situations, and able to better:

Look after yourself. (Secure your oxygen mask before applying others, metaphorically speaking.)

Look after your family and those dependent on you that can’t look after themselves.

Keep yourself out of catastrophic trouble.

You should also do things you enjoy. Yes, I know everyone is pinched, we are all enormously stressed. But that’s the more reason to do things that bring you joy. Pick up a new hobby or an old one. Have dinner with friends, even if it’s sandwiches in the park, go for a walk withy our sweety. Pet your cat or dog. Listen to a favorite piece of music. Build in something like that every day. You are not a machine. Don’t treat yourself like one.

Be kind to yourself and others. Don’t assume the worst. Don’t assume someone is the enemy due to circumstantial evidence. (This is very important if things get spicy.)

Practice joy and mercy. And patience too. We’re going to need all the patience, one way or another.

And accept, at a deep level that yes, the worst could happen to you or those you love as a result of your action (or inaction.) But that’s known as the common flaw of mankind. You could die right now because a very small meteor drops on you.

Do the best you can. It might not be enough, but by definition no one, not even you, can require more of you.

And be not afraid.

Able, Differently Abled, Disabled by David Bock

I’m a regular contributor to Blue Collar Prepping, and over the years many posts have addressed things such as Bug Out bags (BOB), Get Home Bags (GHB), and the like. Several articles have also addressed physical limitations and pain management.

One thing that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention lately is actual disabilities and self-perception.

This was driven home to me recently when my doctor advised me to file for disability. I’m only in my mid-50s, and while I have health issues, I don’t think of myself as disabled. Or at least I didn’t.

One of the consequences of this image of myself, is thinking I can manage more than I really can, frequently to the dismay of My Wife. One of the benefits of my doctor’s recommendation is I’ve started to take a harder, colder, and I hope more honest, look at myself and my abilities.

I’m not young, I’m not in very good physical condition, and my health limitations need to be taken into consideration when planning for disasters or emergencies.

I approached the self-assessment as if I was considering another person for a variety of jobs, mostly physical at different levels of exertion.

Can they regularly lift twenty or more pounds multiple times a day? Yes, I can still do that.

What about fifty. Probably not, or at least not as frequently.

Are they able to carry a fifty pound pack for several hours? No, I’m no longer able to do that due to medical issues.

What about a twenty pound pack? Possibly, though I’d likely be in considerable pain at the end of that time.

Can they walk five miles? Maybe, but depending on the pace there would be a certain amount of health risk.

Can they cover broken ground at a reasonable pace? No, I can’t do that.

Could they carry another person a short distance? As long as the person wasn’t too big and the distance wasn’t too far, probably. But there’s a good chance I’d require medical assistance after.

And so on.

Based on this assessment, at this time Bugging Out is pretty much off the table for me, especially on foot. I can no longer carry a significant quantity of gear, and I can’t carry it very far. While physical conditioning may improve this to some degree, there’s the counter weight of my deteriorating health.

I’m not planning on dying any time soon, but part of that is accepting that I need to live within my limitations.

Moving forward, more of my preps will focus on Bug In situations, and making sure our home can be maintained in adverse conditions. Never a bad plan, but even more so now.

I also plan on seeing what physical therapy can do with regards to some of my medical limitations. Of course, that will also run into my financial limitations.

I strongly recommend all our readers take a dispassionate assessment of their own health and abilities. Then work at tailoring their disaster plans and supplies to that reality. No matter how mentally uncomfortable it is, for optimum survivability, it needs to be done.

Stay safe, and good prepping.

*First an announcement: A year or so ago, a fan asked if I’d let him set up my blog with AI reading and put it on youtube. The idea being that this way people could listen to it while cleaning or driving or whatever. Since cleaning (or unpacking and setup) only happen around here when listening to audio books, many of whom yes, I’ve heard before, I couldn’t tell him there wasn’t a market. Also he has some financial need he hopes this will help with if he gets enough subscribers.

I’m not wholly disinterested in this, financially. He wanted to take 10% and leave the rest to me, but that was grossly unfair, since he’s done all the work, it’s not me reading it, etc. HOWEVER I almost had to torture him to get him to agree to an even split. So if a lot of people subscribe I get 50%. Which — the fundraising days cometh — would help, since I suck at fundraising. BUT it’s his thing he did. It’s not my voice reading it. And… well, if you decide to subscribe it’s because of his work and effort. I’ve linked before and there were some problems with the reading. He says he’s fixed most of them and the rest might be unfixable. (Also sound really minor.) So if you’re interested, this is the AI reading of the blog posts. (Yes, at some point I’m going to start posting readings, but I’m trying to figure out how to make it semi-interactive, so it’s like attending a reading with me at a con. Abide in patience another couple of months please. And you’ll know when it’s me reading it by my call sign: Moose and Squirrel! ;) ) -SAH*

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 JERRY BOYD: Gone Fishing (Bob and Nikki Book 47)

Bob and the family thought it was about time to kick back for a few days on Charlie’s Planet. Of course, that brought all of Bob’s friends out of the woodwork, needing help with their old business. Can’t an Admiral get a break?

FROM RICHARD F. WEYAND: Conflict (Talbot Book 4)

Humans and bird-people are friends, right?

Fortuna colony continues to grow with the effort of humans and bird-people both. Arnie, the artificial intelligence who pilots Earth’s space effort, continues to look for new planets to colonize.

But there are some surprising new colonists and some surprising new discoveries.

Not all of them are going to work out.

Can Fortuna Governor Susan Talbot keep the colony moving forward?

Or will the whole project sink into conflict and war?

FROM JAMES TOTTEN: South Korean Blues: Breaching Ain’t Easy (Breaching Ain’t Easy Book 9)

North Korea gets real quiet when the Chinese Communist Party Kingpins die in an orbital strike from the US Space Force. South Korea gets presented with a once in a generation oppertunity to reunite Korea with Seoul in charge. Will crossing the DMZ going noth present that much of a problem? What can be done to prevent the NKPA from rushing reinforcements to the DMZ? The NKPA has special forces that can enter the South through invasion tunnels. What about the North Korean leadership and the nucelar weapons? Will the US get directly involved or sit on the sidelines? What in the heck is “Rapid Weseal?” Find the answers to all of these questions and more in this fast paced novel of World War Three becoming a global conflict.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Same Liver, Different Vulture (Modern Gods)

When you know you can regenerate any organ, fast…why not donate your kidneys?

Prometheus has been a teacher all of his life, nearly. Sometimes, like with teaching Man to harness fire, it got him in trouble. Sometimes, he’s able to make an even bigger difference for his students. Especially when they need a kidney as much as they need knowledge.

FROM ANNA FERREIRA: A Capital Whip: A Pride and Prejudice Sequel

An invalid for much of her life, Miss Anne de Bourgh has precisely one accomplishment: carriage driving. She is proud of her skill with reins and whip, and justifiably so.

But when another young lady moves into the neighborhood, and challenges Anne’s place as the most accomplished driver in Hunsford, Anne must prove to herself, to her beloved horses, and to her family that she is worthy of the name de Bourgh, and she does not shrink away from a challenge.

FROM MARY CATELLI: Sorcery and Kings

Tales of wonder and magic.

A fire master must find a magical starter of fires.

A mysterious queen holds a ball in a city filled with magic.

Magic of roses and gold are needed to fight a dreadful war.

An oath keeps a ghost captive.

FROM JULIE FROST: Cry Havoc

Nate Cassin, the alpha werewolf of Missoula, Montana, finds his little city has a big wolf problem when shredded bodies start showing up all over town. Faced with a hostile press and even more hostile hunters, he tries to protect his innocent pack of eight at the same time they try to track down two elusive killers in an area of 35 square miles with a plethora of hiding places.

He’s seen this before. And the hunters always, always go overboard and decide the only good werewolf is a dead one, no matter who’s actually responsible. His pack will be collateral damage unless he can find the enemy wolves—and stop their broken alpha—before they turn his hometown into a human buffet.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Grandmaster’s Gambit

The disastrous war of 1913 is over, and young journalist Isaak Babel has used his fame as a war correspondent to win a peacetime job covering an international chess tournament in New York City. However, trouble is aboard the airship Grossdeuschland, in the form of the notorious Bolshevik terrorist Koba and his henchmen. Men with a dark plan, and New York City will not welcome their visit

AND NOW A VERY SPECIAL PROMO. COLONEL KRATMAN POSTED THIS ON FACEBOOK:

And this is the link to Bob Hall’s Author Page, yes, with my code appended, if you’d be so kind.

This is his most recent book: Quotes for the Conservative Heart: Ideas as Weapons of Defense

Quotes for the Conservative Heart is a collection of over 1,900 quotes, thoughts, and adages that will make you think (which may be an uncomfortable experience), which will help you defend yourself against ad hominin attacks, and which will help your writing and speaking. They will inspire you to fight a bit harder and a bit longer. As necessary to your security as an extra magazine, this book will help you identify threats to you, your family, and your culture. Open carry (of this book) is encouraged. We hope it will be a constant companion and a treasured possession.

Robert A. Hall is a Marine Vietnam Veteran who holds a BA in Government and a Master’ in History. He served five terms in the Massachusetts Senate, managed associations for 31 years, and has 12 other books in print.

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: GAINFUL

This is not the end. This is not the end of the beginning, much less the beginning of the end.

I have two questions: First, was that verdict so unexpected? That’s kind of like everyone being surprised by fraud in 2020 after the Potemkin campaign of Joe the Zombie. If the fraud weren’t baked in, they’d have nominated someone else. And in this case, if the verdict weren’t a foregone conclusion, they’d have tried to make the trial more plausible.

Second: are you buying the leftist narrative again? Have you forgotten that Donald Trump is our instrument? Our battering ram. Our sledge hammer. Our screaming defiance in the face of the screaming bastards who think they can put us in the 15 minute gulags, take away our ability to drive freely, and make us eat the bugs? Yes, Trump is also a human being, and we can feel for what they’re doing to him all because he — stomp stomp — had the nerve to win in 2016 when it was “her turn.” But he is not our leader, or the embodiment of our great cause. He’s our instrument. If they cut him down, we’ll find someone twice as brash, twice as loud and twice as determined to get up their noses. And to destroy their grimy tentacles in the corridors of power. In fact to destroy the corridors and the power, and bring the power back to as small as possible, as local as people and as residing in we the people as possible.

No, it’s not going to be easy. It can’t be easy when they have ensconced themselves in every place with power, every official association, every political sinecure. On the other hand, it won’t be as hard as you imagine, because the left ain’t very bright, and they certainly don’t know us.

There are no guarantees. I believe that their attempts at scaring us and controlling us are going to explode in their faces, metaphorically speaking, just like all their insane attempts to scare us with yet another ‘pandemic’ have. In fact just as the original lockdowns have.

So don’t be despondent. Neither be you stupid. I don’t know what they want us to do, but it’s likely to be something crazy, since they think we are quite different than we are. So don’t do anything crazy.

Keep calm, and keep annoying them.

Oh, and keep your clothes and weapons where you will find them in the dark.

You got this. We got this. We’ve barely started fighting. Keep it up.