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 CAROLINE FURLONG: Contact: Angeles

While removing a prototype sensor from the prow of her new Alliance battleship, the Ausa, Captain Elizabeth Goodwin and her crew encounter a setback when one of the engineers sent to remove and stow the device is injured in an accident. Before the other engineer can help the man, the two are surrounded by amoeboid creatures which seem immune to the effects of vacuum.

Thought to be hallucinations experienced by early spacers who had been alone in deep space too long, these creatures – known as “angel fish” – startle the crew by their sudden appearance. Despite her misgivings, Goodwin allows three of the aliens to be taken aboard for study. But less than an hour after the aliens have been brought on the ship, one of Goodwin’s men is killed and another is seriously wounded.

Her search for both the murderer and the escaped “angels” soon leads to a disturbing revelation. Eventually, Goodwin must decide which threat is greater: an old enemy of the Alliance, or the fabled “angels” encountered by the first explorers from Terra.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: The Lion of God

John Wolff has been handed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Again.
He’s already saved the love of his life from an early death – thirty years after she died.
Now, a beautiful young woman, who is clearly his daughter, has appeared from the timeline branch where that same love of his life survived and married his counterpart.
She says they need his help fighting off invaders from the far future. Who, by the way, are looking for him. Why? Because they want the starship drive he and a friend invented, the precursor to their time machine. Problem is, in her timeline, it hasn’t been invented yet.
What man can resist a cry for help from his own daughter?
Particularly when the invaders think she’s a saint. Or possibly, a devil wearing saint’s clothing. And they’re looking for her, too.
Thus begins the Timelines Saga, and the story of the Lion of God.

FROM KAREN MYERS: The Ways of Winter – A Virginian in Elfland

Book 2 of The Hounds of Annwn

TRAPPED BEHIND ENEMY LINES, CAN HE FIND THE STRENGTH TO DEFEND ALL THAT HE VALUES MOST, OR EVEN JUST TO SURVIVE?

It’s the dead of winter and George Talbot Traherne, the new human huntsman for the Wild Hunt, is in trouble. The damage in Gwyn ap Nudd’s domain reveals the deadly powers of a dangerous foe who has mastered an unstoppable weapon and threatens the fae dominions in both the new and the old worlds.

Secure in his unbreachable stronghold, the enemy holds hostages and has no compunction about using them in deadly experiments with newly discovered way-technology. Only George has a chance to reach him in time to prevent the loss of thousands of lives, even if it costs him everything.

Welcome to the portrait of a paladin in-the-making, Can he carry out a rescue without the deaths of all involved? Will his patron, the antlered god Cernunnos, help him, or just write him off as a dead loss? He has a family to protect and a world to save, and little time to do it in.

FROM MARY CATELLI: Spells in Secret

Magical doors and other mischief mix badly with tales about murder, as young scholars return to Graytowers.

Kenneth, as prefect, thought he had his hands filled with the beginning of the new session, but when one magical door takes him and another scholar far past the bounds of a prank, they barely escape with their lives, and their escape means only that they are in graver danger. They must hide, leaving the school, and casting all their spells in secret.

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

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Last Pendragon

“The last thing I expected when I went to grieve in the mountains was to get chased by werewolves, kidnapped by a dragon, or meet a legend. But that was exactly what happened.”–Sara Hawke

Sara Hawke, a highly-educated former PhD candidate in Linguistics, is plunged into a situation that strains her skepticism: first she meets a pack of werewolves while camping on the night of the full moon, then she’s rescued by a man the werewolves seemed to fear. Her rescuer then decides that she’ll be good company until he decides to let her go. Then he tells her that she has the potential to be a sorceress, and offers to teach her.

Along the way, she learns that legends aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be, and are occasionally more than they seem…

FROM PAM UPHOFF: Aslanov

The Three Hundred Families control the Three Part Alliance. To the Elite, their Family is their first priority.

Twenty years before the Fall . . .

Lord Dzon Konstantin Aslanov returns Home after a five year long assignment to another World to find his Family as poor a fit as ever. He is about to find out the cost of disobedience.

If only they’d tell Konstantin why he needed to marry so soon, to the right woman. And not like his idiot brother eloping with . . . the daughter of Kon’s new boss at the Bureau of Intelligence. And why should Kon marry this particular woman when her aunt was so much more interesting . . .

FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN: Preternaturally Familiar

Where is home for a Hunter?

Uneasy rests the head upon which rests the leadership of the River County Hunter clan. Arthur Saldovado’s older brother grows distant and untrusting. Arthur must balance his duty to the senior Hunter with protecting the shadow mage Hunter in Shadows and preventing strife within the clan. Arthur’s adopted daughter, Lelia Lestrang, watches and worries. That is, when she’s not trying hard to keep from ordering her children to marry (she wants grandchildren!) and sighing mightily when her much loved husband leaves his clothes lying in front of the laundry hamper yet again.

Then a sorceress discovers the remains of a gate between the worlds, cast with blood-path magic.

Where can an out-cast Hunter find shelter, save for the grave?

“I wish something would happen and clear the air!” When the storm breaks, Lelia, André, their Familiars, and their family pull together to fight a battle Lelia though had ended fifty years before.

The end of an era? Or the start of something Preternaturally Familiar?

BY CHARLES CLOWKEY, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: The Swordsman of Sarvon

Teenaged author Charles Cloukey did not lack for ambition when he wrote The Swordsman of Sarvon. It combines Edgar Rice Burroughs-style planetary romance with an anachronistic planetary culture (they have airplanes, but never discovered gunpowder) with an espionage technothriller about averting a world war between Europe, Asia and North America; with the secret of atomic energy, and its potential to annihilate all of civilization, as one of the MacGuffins in play. And he did all this in 1931, sixteen years before the birth of Tom Clancy, eleven years before the Manhattan Project began, more than ten years before the US entered WWII, and at least six years before the beginning of WWII as a whole.

FROM M. C. A. HOGARTH: To the Court of Love: A Peltedverse Collection in the Fallowtide Period

Sediryl Galare’s first official function as the formally invested heir to the Eldritch Empire is to open the summer court, on Escutcheon and on the world of Chalice. But behind every big event are a myriad of stories—some smaller in scope, and some enormous in implication. Join the Eldritch and their allies in this Fallowtide collection for a glimpse into those everyday stories. Who are the musicians of Ontine? What happened to the nobles of Asaniefa who didn’t care to fight the Empress? Will Jeasa and Haladir ever come to an accommodation? And how are the social changes sweeping the world affecting those who wish they hadn’t?

This reader-commissioned collection includes stories written by the author at reader request. Come home to the Alliance with seven tales of hope, renewal, romance, and change.

FROM CEDAR SANDERSON: Crow Moon: A Collection of Fantastic Tales

Eight fantastic tales of swords, sorcery, love and justice.

The honeymoon is over…. before it even began. Nico and Emie face the biggest decision of their lives, and hope that it won’t kill them.

Cecelia’s dowry is a worthless field, and a friendship begun in a macabre deal.

Soleh fights her way out of a cruel marriage and swears vengeance by the lost gods of a dead clan. She rides with the darkest of companions at her side.

In a breath of air on an unmasked face, the worth of a life is laid bare.

Amaya Lombard faces her past, risking her future, in the very place where her magic was stripped from her blood and bone.

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: FETCH

Years ago, I came across someone a little older than my kids who refused to read Heinlein juveniles because “they’re dated.”

Uh… note this was someone in his thirties. There might be some legitimate claim that the language, being dated, would be difficult for new readers, but even that, surely not with a mere fifty years difference.

Meanwhile my kids grew up reading Heinlein juveniles, and Enid Blyton books most of them taking place just before or during WWII in an England that no longer exists, and it never occurred to them that it was wrong in some way.

Note this is not arguing there isn’t a reason for “updated” Heinlein juveniles — not updating the books but writing something like. Jeff Greason and I had talked about them, oh, five years ago, but my life has been in a black hole since. If I can get myself healthy and disciplined, and I’m not too old by then, I’d love to try it because — but that’s because what the juveniles accomplished in terms of getting kids interested in current day space science and exploration might not work too well when the science in the books is outdated and the dates in the past. Now, I just think I’m the worst possible author for them, even in collaboration. Someone like Laura Montgomery would do so much better. But if no one else will step up, I’ll try. And a certain need might be adduced, due to the timing and nature of the books. The juveniles can now be read as alternate universe, but for kids just getting their feet into what reality is, they can be confusing.

And yet, my kids reacted to them exactly the same way kids in the fifties did, and got interested in science anyway. 12 year old younger son insisted on writing lengthy explanations of how our understanding of the solar system has changed and also verifying all the calculations, but that’s because he’s broken in a very specific way.

So, yes, in this specific case updating might be needed for the non literary purpose. And yet, the characters and situations still grab, and still speak to kids today. (And the language isn’t that difficult. If your kids find the language difficult, teach them phonics and give them a dictionary. If your kids taught themselves to read and can’t find things by following alphabetical order get them an electronic dictionary. Either an ap, if you let them have phones, or its own gadget, which they do sell. I know. we had to get it for younger son, or we’d never get anything done answering “Mom/dad, what does x mean?”

However, in most cases, unless you’re so extremely unimaginative that you can ONLY read present day things, set exactly in the time you live in or you can’t figure it out, (this dysfunction must be related to the “I have to have a character I identify with” obsession. Both are unfathomable to me, who have read characters in strange and alien worlds since…. ever.) you can follow along with the story. Even stories from the 19th century or before. Sure, our way of life has changed. but not so much that medieval fairy tales are opaque, so why will other stuff be?

A friend suggested that like all the other year zero stuff it is because the left thinks human nature is so malleable that we become completely other every five or ten years.

This is nonsense. Not only do I read with pleasure books written in the 20s or 30s, but books about writers often give me a sense of commonality with these long-dead people. Until Indie, nothing much had changed in trad pub. Not for us, bottom tier producers — which is what writers are — so, you know, it’s reassuring.

I actually think that’s the real reason for ‘can’t” and ‘don’t’ read old books from all the usual suspects, and some idiots on our side, who go along to be hip.

If you read old books, you not only catch everything that didn’t work, but all the things that did. And you catch the similarities in ideologies being sold as the opposite (no, seriously. read books of the seventies and what the “nice” people in the West thought of Hitler.)

Of course the most insidious betrayal, now being done to every book, but being done Enid Blyton for decades, for “marketability” is the continuous “updating” of books, that show the Famous Five at the turn of the century with cell phones and computers.

This is insulting in assuming kids can’t bridge the gap and also in outright lying to children about how those times were.

They fall under my “stupid lies” ban. So, while I still recommend Enid Blyton, try to find them used and on paper.

Oh, yeah, and all the “bigotry” that they’re now eliminating from her and Agatha Christie’s and all 20th century books: some of it is actual bigotry. There is a massive streak of anti-semitism in great Britain for instance, and it comes through loud and clear in places.

Why it shouldn’t be revised and removed: Because even seeing bigotry that is out of fashion and/or rightfully despised in our time, gives us a feel for how a time or place can fall into unconscious bigotry, how otherwise good people can go around knowing in their heart of hearts that all blonds are whatever, or all people with pink pokadotted clothing are evil.

Knowing this, in turn, will help us realize when our own culture is guilty of demonizing entire groups. It might make us stop before it’s too late.

Because, you know, things change a lot, but human nature is universal and well nigh eternal. Not only can’t we bring about the perfect Homo Sovieticus, we change very slowly and fractionally. And at any time we can go “full natural” again. (Look at the French revolution. Or World War II.)

Reading old books allows us to see our own prejudices through the eyes of the past.

Which is why it’s invaluable.

And why would-be tyrants of every stripe hate it.

Tucker Carlson first public appearance after leaving fox hit me very hard, the ones about truth. (Ignore the ancillary stuff from WSJ, but there’s a video here.)

It hit me hard because I’d been thinking along those lines already: how powerful the truth is. How suddenly telling even a grain of truth can dissolve a river of lies.

First I want to say for the rest of you, who simply aren’t sensitive to the feel of professions and places that no, none of this muzzling and cancelling is recent.

I notice that Tucker Carlson also seems to think it’s now, or very recent. And that we’re just at risk of silencing dissent.

He’s younger than I. At no time in his professional adult life has it been okay to tell the truth. NO TIME. At no time have we been allowed to go against what “everybody knows.”

I am perhaps more sensitive than most people to “What must not be uttered” because of when and where I grew up. If my real political opinions and leanings had been known, I’d never have made it to college, let alone out of it. My political opinions were known to be stupid, and believing in them would mark me as stupid.

This didn’t really change when i moved to the US….

Look, in all the intellectual fields, the “smart” thing was to parrot the message being put out by the media, which was uniformly and strongly socialist/communist. (Honestly indistinguishable from speeches heard from socialist/communist candidates in Europe.)

And if you talked out of school and countered them, the shock was enough to label you… oh, extreme right wing. Or outright evil. Or at the very least “someone who likes messing with people.”

And absolutely, if you were in a profession where they could do that, you’d absolutely be shut down cold.

There is a problem with this sort of environment when it stretches to generations. Because you know, you might start out with a lot of people who know they’re just keeping their mouth shut to keep their job, but after three generations, you’re buying some of the premises of the other side implicitly.

Look at how many on our side, before things became obvious, bought the Covid scam, hook line and sinker. Or how many still buy the utterly nonsensical anthropogenic global warming and its imperatives, even though every prediction has been wrong. And let’s not start on their fully canned opinions of Trump, etc.

Because when you live in an environment where this can’t be challenged, and a lot of you are falsifying their beliefs, it becomes “All sane people believe x.”

It’s not true. But the crushing weight of it actually changes opinions.

Which is what the left had for a long time. Seriously, you’ll be amazed if you research at how soft-left Nixon was, how little evidence there was of any chicanery, and how much they built on that. And let’s not get STARTED on “The climate of hatred that killed JFK.” No, seriously. But it became sanctified and went into history books.

They don’t have it all their way nowadays. I mean, if they did, they wouldn’t — still — be so worried about Trump.

But telling the truth is still a massively powerful thing. The truth, by itself, has a weight that melts away things on all sides.

Like, you know, RFK Jr. is as far ahead on poling as he is because he tells the truth about COVID. That grain of truth is recognized by people, and embraced. Because we all know, even if some won’t admit it, that the entire country was scammed. And just speaking it aloud has power. It might be enough for him to win, which would be a pity, as he’s still a global warmerist, etc.

Now I know many of you are still stuck in environments where telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth can get you in serious trouble.

But have you tried the power of minor truths. There are always some you can say without getting booted, but which will be powerful enough to start making people wonder about the other “everybody knows”. Like: “No, that’s not actually correct. Women don’t need to achieve parity in graduate degrees. They are now at 60%. I’m in awe of how strong women are.” With the dilution, it’s safe, but it’s still a truth bomb. And someone in the crowd will go “Wait, that’s not what I heard.”

Or “I’m just worried about how many women are being trafficked over the border.”

Or “You know many of those people are fleeing the cartels, and we’re dong nothing to keep them safe.”

Or “But do we have the services for these many refugees?”

Yes, some will still need to be careful, but the truth is important. The truth is how we reclaim the culture.

The truth has power and strength and those who hear it know they’re hearing it.

Misquoting Pratchett because the books are in storage:

“I come now to ransom my love

And ounce of truth is worth a pound of gold”

It really is. I don’t know how to put this, but the truth is recognized. And like water on highly wrought poisonous spun sugar, it melts a corner of their creation.

It might be a tiny, tiny corner, but it will add up, if all of us are out there and telling the truth.

And little by little the edifice of truth replaces the lies that are outright killing us.

It’s time.

There are four fingers. There are four lights.

No matter what the party says.

The truth is the truth.

And the truth will set you free.

Farewell to Childhood – a guest post by the Balloonatic

Even though I am in my early fifties, I have still clung to parts of my childhood. To the things which brought me joy and happiness, through good times and bad. To the love that I passed on to my son, and which has been a big part of his childhood. I am speaking of my love of Lego.

Lego has been an iconic part of many childhoods throughout the world. I remember when my parents bought my brother and sister and I our first sets – huge boxes of mixed bricks, with ideas for things we could build, but the freedom to let our creativity run wild. My younger brother built race cars while my sister and I built houses and furnishings and figured out how to build small animals – horses and sheep and so  many things. I still have some of those original Legos. They were like a building block that carried me into adulthood. A solid foundation. And now that foundation is crumbling and shattering into pieces that will never be the same.

I admit, there were years where my love of Lego was not as evident. Going through late teens into my twenties, I wasn’t really buying Lego or building it. But then I began a career as a church worker, and  part of that was working with kids and young families. I still remember having a family over to visit, and bringing out the box with my childhood Lego for the kids to play with, only to have a young man of five or six look at me solemnly and tell me that my Lego sucked. Apparently Lego had evolved and changed, and my old bricks had become outdated. So when I would go to the store, and found a good sale, I began buying Lego again, investing in some Bionicle kits to appeal to these savvy young builders I was working with.

One of the most exciting things about having my son was being able to introduce him to my love of Legos. While we started with Duplos, as soon as he was old enough to not swallow the parts, I quickly moved him on to my little bricks. They were presents for every birthday and Christmas, and we would buy sets for him to build in the backseat of the car when we went on long road trips. He has Lego Advent Calendars from every year of his life. When he outgrew the City set, he moved on to the Star Wars and the City Advent Calendars were bought for me. Every day in Advent, for so many years, we would have our daily build and post the photos on social media. Almost every May the 4^th I would be ordering kits and hiding them in the house until December for his birthday and Christmas. Santa even started to bring me Lego Holiday Village sets every year, and my son started buying me Lego for my birthday and Christmas as well. Half of my attic was converted to a Lego building station. We would buy everything from the smallest kits to the largest, including the Lego Titanic – the biggest kit they had made to date, combining two of my son’s loves in one huge box.

But now, while my love of Lego will still continue, my purchasing days are over. Lego has changed in ways that I can no longer support. I wasn’t thrilled when they came out with the “Lego Friends” series to appeal to young girls, because, as a girl, I already found Lego appealing, but I understood that they were trying to stay with the times and reach a new market. When they came out with a Lego Minifigure LGBT rainbow set, it made me pause; but I closed my eyes and ignored it, because I loved Lego so much and didn’t want to give it up. Recently however, Lego has gone further. They have created a “Dreamz” line with “Gender Neutral” sets. And I have to ask myself why? What does Lego have to do with gender? Almost every kit has mini-figures with both boys and girls. What is a gender neutral figure? They are neutering our childhood, our toys and our children. Literally. They are contributing to societal psychosis where girls are no longer allowed to be girls, and heaven forbid that boys be allowed to be boys. Our childhood loves, and our children themselves are being mutilated to conform to the craziness that is pervading society today.

So now, enough is enough. Every person has to find that point where they, like Luther did over 500 years ago say, “Here I stand. I can do no other.” This is my standing point, my line in the sand that I will not cross. It is time to say goodbye to Lego and farewell to this important part of my childhood. I pray that some day they will return to sanity. That they will put children’s lives and mental health above profits and temporary fads in society. That they will once again become a foundation of childhood and teach children the joy of building things rather than tearing them down. Until then, I will retreat to my attic, to the blocks and sets that brought us so much joy and refuge from the troubles in life, and remember the good times. The love of a toy that wasn’t tied to political correctness, but was about the simplicity of imagination and creation.

About ten years ago, someone pointed out that for wars and governments massacring their own people, alone –leaving aside changes in the way things are made and done that meant great dislocations for people, perhaps as high as what took place throughout the three centuries of the industrial revolution — the 20th century was as “bad” as the 14th.

Not exactly wrong, except that the 20th century also saw a marked standard of living worldwide. (So did the 14th, but that’s mostly because for a little while the population dipped.)

Honestly, it’s part of what has fostered the idea that central government is good.

As I’ve said before, part of the reason Obamacare never got wildly popular is that it came later than other socialized medicine. If you try to talk to citizens from other countries about their — 1930s vintage — socialized medicine, they’ll tell you it’s wonderful because look at how many people died before.

What they’re missing of course is the massive improvement in MEDICINE itself, which meant fewer people were going to die, no matter how administered, and that (looking at used-to-be-relatively-free, though not free-free US healthcare) the improvement might have been much bigger without the statist impairment.

In the same way, there was massive improvement in feeding and keeping the masses alive in the 20th century, and it’s easy to think it was due to centralized nation-states, and regulations interfering with manufacturing, worker’s conditions, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum.

The fact is that it wasn’t that.

This dawned on me because I’m doing world building on a re-barbarized world.

They were a lost colony (with unique and massive handicaps that would have made it bad anyway) but most of the adults died, when the ship crashed. The few remaining barely got the first generation of kids to adulthood. So, high tech to primitive with a hammer, in two generations.

However, my Earth-like character is flabbergasted because they are a barbarian society, but at the same time they have a certain level of prosperity and ease of acquiring rare and out of season foods that means they are better fed/clothed/housed than any barbarians should be.

The answer is simple. They developed sideways-methods of world wide transportation.

Part of what fed and clothed and lifted the 20th century well above the historic mean was the ability to travel/cheap transport/mechanized manufacturing/refrigeration.

Now some of those might be the result of government research due to the wars. Heinlein thought so. But no one has proved — nor can it be proven, absent travel to a parallel world — that the same discoveries wouldn’t have happened without the super-states and crazy wars of the 20th century.

Yeah, I can’t prove otherwise either, obviously, but looking at how government does things and what it’s good at… I have theories. And doubts.

At any rate, there is a good chance that where science was in the late nineteenth, we were due for a major kick in the transportation, manufacturing, improvements in production and distribution areas. And that the 20th would be prosperous anyway.

But it makes you wonder how prosperous it would be without governments that interfered in everything and consumed vast amounts of wealth in huge wars. I mean, unless you subscribe to the broken window fallacy, you know that wealth and effort could go to something more productive. Perhaps we’d have outer space colonies by now.

What no one can dispute is that these days government has turned sour. It’s trying to undo all the sources of prosperity, starting with transportation and manufacturing, and it has a massive war (in the name of the weather, at that) on things that work, from flushing toilets to dishwashers. (The later matters because freedom from domestic drudgery created more labor able to pursue innovation and ease of manufacturing.)

It’s time to realize that what we have, likely, isn’t owed to big government and top down command.

And even if it were, the gains possible from that are all gone. At this point central-point governments over vast territories seem determined to make their people starve in the dark.

If we’re going to rebarbarize — we’re not — we can do it on our own. And they’re doing nothing to help civilization.

It’s time to clip their wings and their sphere of influence. This might be difficult abroad. They’re free to debate how small government should be.

We KNOW. It’s right there in the constitution. And let’s stop widening the commerce clause, till — like a tent — it covers the universe.

The federal government should protect the border, negotiate with foreign powers, and intervene in disputes between the states. Leave everything else to the states, the cities, the individuals.

And get out of our way.

We’ll get to the stars on our own.

The prosperity of the 20th century is not due to government (More than likely.) But the wars that filled mass graves, and the totalitarian governments that filled even more are.

The blue model of everything through and form the government is passing away. It is our job to kick it on the rear on the way out.

Be not afraid.

It’s a truism in homesteading and prepper forums, or was back in the early aughts, that TEOTWAWKI–The End Of The World As We Know It–happens to someone every single day.  Sometimes it happens to a lot of someones: things like The Fall of the Berlin Wall, 9/11, the world as we knew it ended.

In March of 2020, the entire world ended.

Not uniformly, as best I can tell quite a few places noticed very little beyond the end of tourism and a few corrupt fat cats getting even fatter and smugger.  Some places took a few weeks off and then got back to normal.  Some made some modifications and got back to normal.  Some places seem to have decided that normal is impossible.  (If you’re in one of those, please get out.  Life’s too short to voluntarily commit yourself to an insane asylum.)

Here’s the problem: we all stopped.  Just stopped.  Stopped doing the things we’d always done.  Stopped eating out.  Stopped seeing the dentist.  Stopped seeing the doctor.  Stopped going to church, the library, the park, the farmer’s market, the parades, the concerts, the theaters . . . the list is long.  Yes, yes, we couldn’t do those things because they were closed, canceled, banned, restricted to only certain folks, etc.  Stopping is understandable.

It’s time to start again.  Start taking care of yourself and your loved ones’ health.  Start doing the things that you enjoyed before.  Start minding your business the way you used to.

Now, a lot of us can’t start again, not exactly.  A lot of us fled to new places, to places that weren’t quite so crazy as where we’d been.  Time to meet new people, find a new church, a new coffee shop, new haunts and new friends.  A lot of us learned that certain people, certain places, in our overall all right location, just plain don’t want us, and so we reciprocate.  Time to find new people, new haunts, right where we always were.

It’s hard.  I know it’s hard.  I know I’m blessed to live in a place where people didn’t go very crazy, to not have to move to escape.  I need you to do this, though.  We need you to do this.  We’re losing too many, too fast, too soon.

We need to start again.

Make a list of the things you did before.  It seems a lifetime ago.  Church, doctor, dentist, gym, clubs, associations, restaurants, everything.  Go through your calendar.  Make a list of the things your family did before.  You can’t trust half those people, I know.  I lost friends too.  But you can find new friends.  People you can trust.  People you can love.  People who will show up.

It feels safe at home, on line, and the connections are good.  The people are good.  People will show up in every way they can online.  I’m not saying you should abandon these people.  I’m saying we have to start living life again.  In fact, I think you should take a road trip and meet the online people in person, maybe move closer to them even.  Many of our number have done just that.  It’s a good thing.

We can’t build under and build around if we’re sick, injured, out of shape, exhausted mentally, spiritually, and physically.  We can’t build under and build around if we’re isolated.  Isn’t that the point?  People who think they’re alone might at most try the crazy lone suicidal route; people who know they are not alone are an actual threat to those who want power and don’t care who they hurt to get it.

Pick up the phone and call a doctor.  Make that appointment.  Go see a play.  Go to church, even if it’s not your old church.  Go to the park.  Get a coffee.  Try that gym.  Take the plant identification class.  It’s time and past time.

We have to start living again.

(From Sarah- Dan and I were talking about this this weekend. We had a plan when we moved here. It involved his convertible and driving around exploring our new surroundings. Last summer went by without doing this. And we know we should. And we’re trying to get ourselves to do it.
We know it’s hard, but she’s right.)

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: No Good Deed

Bob did the neighborly thing, and helped out some folks with a problem. You know it can’t be that easy, right? Things get a little sporty when it comes to how people want to reward him for his actions. Come see how Bob deals with notoriety.

FROM MARK PIGGOT: Corsair and the Sky Pirates

A brilliant inventor… A prolific writer…

A chance meeting between Nikola Tesla and Jules Verne catapulted the world into a new kind of power. Using meteor fragments from a comet named Uriel, they created a world powered not by combustion but by steam. The incredible inventions that followed launched the world into an industrial revolution ahead of its time… a steampunk revolution.

While Tesla’s inventions were designed to ease people’s day-to-day burdens, Thomas Edison’s ERP Corporation used their power and influence to ensure people paid for their modern miracles.

One man brought hope to the people as he pursued Tesla’s dream of invention for the everyday person. His exploits were legendary, his crew infamous, and his airship a vision of the future . . . Corsair and the Sky Pirates!

BY CHARLES ALDEN SELTZER, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Last Hope Ranch (annotated): The Classic Pulp Western

When Ned Templin rode out of the desert to the Last Hope Ranch, Lisbeth Stanton was grateful, because he saved her from having to kill a man. But when Templin told her he was staying, and that he was an outlaw, and that a posse was on his trail looking to hang him for murder, her opinion changed a little.

And it kept changing, for Templin was an enigma, with secrets and motivations she never could have guessed. And, it turned out, so was her father, whom she had been with her whole life but never really known. Between Sheriff Norton and his posse, and Blaisdell’s Raiders, secrets would out, and bullets would fly, at the Last Hope Ranch!

    This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving genre and historical context to the novel.

FROM BILL MULLIGAN: Raum

Even among the lawyers of his elite firm, Anatole Drake has a well-earned reputation for ruthless ambition. For this he will sacrifice everything, even the love of the beautiful Gwen Marina. But when his defense of an infamous cult leader ends in violence and scandal, he finds himself on the brink of ruin. In desperation, he turns to dark forces and unwittingly summons Raum, an ancient demon of near limitless power and hostility.
With Raum’s powers his to command, Drake takes control of his life, raining revenge on those who have wronged him. But as success exceeds beyond even his many ambitions, a dangerous cult pursues the secrets of his newfound abilities. Worse, the furious demon, chafing at his subjugation to a human’s whims, plots against him, seeking vengeance for this indignity.
Only Gwen stands by his side, unaware of the darkness consuming him. But as Drake slips further down the road to damnation, will her loyalties be toward the man she loved… or will Raum open her eyes to his true nature, seducing her to a new and darker allegiance?
With events spiraling out of control, innocent lives become the currency in this battle between malevolent beings, both human and demonic.
Be careful what you wish for…

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Schrödinger Paradox: Cataclysm

The end is coming.

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 MARY CATELLI: Magic And Secrets

Tales of Wonder and Magic

A woman, sent to a far off duchy, finds a mysterious wolf haunting the forest, and learns there are secrets no one even suspects.

Playing with props for amateur theatricals has more consequences than any of those doing it dream. . . act with care.

A king’s tyranny sends a woman searching desperately for a legend of lions, there being no other hope.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Shadow over Leningrad

In Stalin’s Soviet Union, Tikhon Grigoriev lives a precarious life. He knows too much. He’s seen too much. A single misstep could destroy him, and if he stumbles, he will take his family down with him. With Leningrad besieged by Nazi armies, the danger has only increased.

He’s not a man who wants to come to the notice of those in high places. But when he solved a murder that seemed supernatural, impossible, he attracted the attention of Leningrad’s First Party Secretary.

So when a plot of land grows vegetables of unusual size and vigor, and anyone who eats them goes mad, who should be called upon to solve the mystery but Tikhon Grigoriev. However, these secrets could get him far worse than a bullet in the head. For during the White Nights the boundaries between worlds grow thin, and in some of those worlds humanity can have no place.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Barbarella: The Center Cannot Hold #3

Having met the Innumerable and joined their cause against the Architects, Barbarella must clandestinely return to the home of the Architects in order to retrieve Vix, left behind when Barbarella was extracted by an agent of the Innumerable. See? We’ve come full circle! As is often the case, it’s not what you see that’s the danger, it’s what you can’t see, and Barbarella sees plenty of that wherever she sees an Architect. And lest we forget, there is the small matter of the Unnamable out there…

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: MOON

I don’t think it came across on my Seventies post that it wasn’t “real”. The point is not that the seventies are returning, but that the people that be are hard forcing a replay of it, in appearance.

It doesn’t work with the people on the ground because “we’re running out of oil” is now seen to be a blatant lie. We remember when they shut down the pipeline and fracking. And we saw that both under Reagan and Trump prices and availability of oil came back, which means it’s not “we’re running out of oil.”

In the same way no one really believes the dooms that either were general opinion in the seventies, or I believed in because I was a little kid. (Could be either.) So what we’re seeing is a large scale replay with (natch) media amplification but the people on the ground are somewhere between unconvinced and ignoring it.

So they try to run with climate doom, and you know…. the last time — other than the commenter, and honestly, he might very well be from the for-pay troll farm — that I heard someone genuinely concerned about the doom, gloom, we’re all frying soon, was mid-nineties. Other than that, the climate doomers are stuck scaring little kids and talking about how the kids have climate anxiety.

So, why am I bringing that up?

Well, the seventies were a form of decadence. Has it occurred to you that the other forms of decadence in society are also cosplay? No?

Oh, please. Let’s talk decadence.

Yes, I do know that the US has lots of the signs of decadence of the late Roman EMPIRE. (Which the US isn’t.)

So, pull up a rock. Has it occurred to you that the left ALSO knows the signs of decadence you know, because it all goes back to Robert Graves’ book?

Yeah. Cool fact. The Left is also all in on “America is a decaying empire” because the USSR used this as a form of psy-war on both us and their people. Oh, you’re jealous of Americans who have family cars? Don’t be. Abundance leads to decadence.

You should — by now — be suspicious that our supposed “decadence” is exactly the same as ancient Rome’s supposedly was (what we have are accounts, some highly doubtful) despite the difference between our societies? Or that they’re both covalent with the “kids these days” taken up to eleventy?

But Sarah, you’ll say, we really have a passel of useless morons who just want to be taken care of, and there’s teh gay thing, teh trans thing, teh slut thing, etc. etc. etc.

Yeah. Every society has had that. Also, be aware of when things are pushed and echoed into massive by the press. Also, most of the useless morons in our society are made so by indoctrination in the schools. (And some get over it.)

But you know that the powers that be are actively and with malice aforethought pushing both drug addiction, homeless lifestyles invading everything AND transsexualism. Because to them, that’s what decadence looks like, and they know “capitalism” has to lead to decadence, so it can fall and emerge as the glorious socialist republic.

This is the same reason they are — as in the seventies — not punishing crime in cities, from petty to major. Because increased crime is “decline and fall” stuff. (And the morons who think it is race — besides the fact that the US thinks race is one drop of anything other than white, which is laughable — have the burden of explaining how the demographics changed since the lockdowns to that level. Let alone that it’s always culture, not race that’s a problem. Did we get a landing of extraterrestrials in massive ships? No? Then it’s the laws. And the morons at the top trying to hasten the decline and fall, so they can have their glorious socialism. Most of those morons, with some exceptions, are white. The ones who aren’t have credentials from the best schools, which are Marxist, and still mostly white. Take a powder. Think, for a change.)

So you know, letting homeless camp and poop in public. Not confining people who are too drug addled/insane to be a danger to themselves and others, allowing petty theft to be decriminalized (and it’s all petty theft, it turns out) or doing fast no bail turn around for all crimes?

It doesn’t actually increase the number of people doing that. It just makes them do it more/more publicly and without interruption due to being taken up for being dangers to themselves and others.

That’s how you get San Francisco, for instance (Where the demographics are still mostly white, for those following from home, and too stupid to actually think for themselves.)

You know this. You know all of this. So, no matter how attractive “Those darn kids” is, you shouldn’t be falling for the idea that this kind of thing is getting worse. It’s merely being encouraged, becoming more visible. Or more frequent because the people who were doing it can do it more often.

The left bases a lot of their attacks on books, or the memory of books other people read and talked about. (Hence using 1984 as a manual. The author depicts no consequences for the authoritarian stuff and they think it’s how things go. So, why not?)

You are not required to believe it.

You are, however, as a free individual, required to do things that will be visible to others and go against the narrative. Because that encourages others.

So, on the small things front? Politeness, dressing decently and cleanly, and holding down a job are the minimum.

The large things, well, you see the parents protesting the sexualization of children in schools. You see the boycott of Bud Light. And you see the viral nature of Let’s Go Brandon.

These break through the “decadence” cosplay and make it obvious it is a cosplay.

Go you, and do more of this.