*I swear I did a promo post. Took me two hours. Then…. Well, then I went to make the house safe for Kittinity. Imagine my surprise when I found out the post had no content. WordPress Delenda est. And once more into the promo, my friends – 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. – SAH

FROM MAX BRAND, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Jim Curry’s Test (Annotated): The classic pulp western

Jim Curry was a loafer, but never did anybody any harm. Until his gun accidentally went off, and killed the most beloved old-timer in the area. It was an accident, but the sheriff isn’t overly sympathetic, and when Curry breaks the sheriff’s jaw escaping, the townsfolk decide that due process just won’t do…

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

FROM JL CURTIS WITH STORIES BY MONALISA FOSTER, CEDAR SANDERSON, TOM ROGNEBY, DOROTHY GRANT, AND OTHER MISCREANTS WHO SOMETIMES HANG OUT HERE: Twisted Tropes

Things are never what they seem, and on the other side of this cover, what you know isn’t so!

Plunge into eight tales of that will feel familiar, only to careen through more twists than a country road at night, and stranger turns: From noir private eyes, to Fae battles, to the cookies of the dark side, you’ll find a surprise in every story!

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Last Pendragon (Legends Book 1)

“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 C. V. WALTER, CEDAR SANDERSON, JL CURTIS, BRENNEN HANKINS, BART KEMPER AND OTHER REPROBATES: Steam-Powered Postcards

Can you tell a story in exactly 50 words? The Three Moms of the Apocalypse went to Louisiana’s World Steampunk Exposition and Makers Faire in Lafayette, LA and issued a challenge.

Tell us a story that could fit on the back of a postcard. Use 50 words, no more, no less. We’ll provide the postcards.

The response to this challenge was huge!

FROM MARY CATELLI: The Other Princess

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

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

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

FROM A. PALMER: Troubled Poems for Difficult People

This is a book of troubled poems
For difficult people.
The first of those people is me
I write them to myself
I write them about myself
But I don’t write them for myself.
If reading them helps, I am grateful.

“Troubled Poems for Difficult People” is a body of just under a hundred poems about philosophy, pain, and humility before God from a Christian perspective. It concludes with “Book of Weekdays,” intended as a meditation on mornings and evenings for each day of the week.

BY EDMOND HAMILTON, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: The Complete Interstellar Patrol (Annotated): A pulp space opera omnibus.

In 1928, Edmond Hamilton published Crashing Suns in Weird Tales magazine, at approximately the same time that E.E. Smith’s Skylark of Space was published in Amazing Stories, giving both men the distinction of creating the genre of space opera. Hamilton, however, was the first to create a series, writing further stories in his Interstellar Patrol Series in 1929 and 1930, then writing a final one in 1934.

Here in one volume is every Interstellar Patrol story Hamilton published, including the novel Outside the Universe. What the stories lack in characterization and scientific plausibility, they more than make up for in enthusiasm, spectacle, and sheer breakneck pacing.

    This iktaPOP Media omnibus includes new introductions that give the stories genre and historical context.

FROM KAREN MYERS: To Carry the Horn – A Virginian in Elfland (The Hounds of Annwn Book 1

AN ENTIRE KINGDOM BUILT AROUND A SUPERNATURAL NEED FOR JUSTICE, ENFORCED BY THE WILD HUNT AND THE HOUNDS OF HELL.

What would you do if you blundered into a strange world, where all around you was the familiar landscape of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, but the inhabitants were the long-lived fae, and you the only human?

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Day the War Struck Home

Astronaut Peter Caudell comes home to find his daughter struggling with a school assignment. She’s to write an essay for Memorial Day, and her teacher suggested astronauts — but she wants to write about combat heroes, not REMF’s. So Peter suggests the NASA Massacre and relates his own part in those events.

It’s the summer of 1994, and the Energy Wars are raging in the Middle East. On the home front it’s the Summer of Fear, a season of continual terrorist attacks. All eyes are upon Kennedy Space Center, where a Space Shuttle is launching for a critical on-orbit repair of a spy satellite. When it goes up without a hitch, everyone breathes a sigh of relief.

However, the intelligence proves incomplete — the actual target is Johnson Space Center. Suddenly Peter is in the fight of his life, as the presence of multiple police agencies further complicates the fight to stop the terrorists from slaughtering the astronaut corps.

It’s a story of courage, patriotism and self-sacrifice that proves a much greater lesson than the teacher imagined.

A short story of the Grissom timeline.

Originally published in Liberty Island Magazine as an Honorable Mention for the Memorial Day contest. This version includes a bonus essay on the genesis of the Energy Wars.

FROM EDWARD P. MOSER: THE OLD TOWN HORROR: Murder and Theft in America’s Most Historic Locale

A genteel Border South town not far from the nation’s capital is shaken by a series of vicious slayings at historic sites. These include a Civil War cemetery for escaped slaves; a burial mound of Confederate soldiers; a church associated with George Washington; and a museum on the Antebellum Era. At the same time, violent break-ins take place at venerable banks and townhomes connected with the lives of Washington, Robert E. Lee, and civil rights figures. The small city is already in the thrall of a frightening pandemic, disputes over the removal of historic statues, and nation-wide turmoil on alleged police misconduct.
Meantime, violent or offbeat characters enter the life of the town: an escaped jihadi terrorist; a neo-Nazi bomber; Woke demonstrators; a power-hungry FBI official; and a beguiling teacher obsessed with the afterlife. Fears multiply about killers on the loose. Law enforcement is baffled, until a relentless local historian and his intrepid, alluring lady friend start to uncover the horrifying truth behind the shocking crimes. They have grave encounters with a menagerie of villains who threaten to ignite a second Civil War. Leading to a showdown at a gruesome site symbolic of the town’s troubled history, and tumultuous present.

FROM RON CORRIVEAU: The Agent’s Daughter (Agent Series Book 1

Melina has been preparing for a future career as a spy.

She just doesn’t know it.

Legendary spy Evan Roberts always knew that his fifteen-year-old daughter
Melina also possessed the absolute lack of fear required of an agent.
Without telling her his real profession or his intention, he began to guide her
toward an eventual career as a spy. However, Melina’s world is shattered
after her mom is involved in an accident that leaves her mysteriously unhurt
but unresponsive. Her father’s plans on hold, Melina settles into life at a
suburban high school, immersing herself in a world of schoolwork, her
friends and a budding romance with Alex, the cute new guy in her class.

When Melina and her father uncover shocking new information about her
mother’s accident, Melina is pulled deep into her father’s shadowy world.
With Alex desperately trying to find her and only hours to go before it will
be too late to save her mother, Melina and her father work together using
their combined skills to find a way to reach her.

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: BOILING

This is a new trick of word press I DO NOT APPRECIATE. Took me two hours to do the promo post, and it ate it.

Sigh. Redoing.

We’re safe, kittens are safe, everyone is well.

We just let late, then had stuff to do when we got home.

I probably won’t post at instapundit till tomorrow, because I’m falling asleep on my face.

But I didn’t want you guys to worry.

Gathering of TX friends was FUN, but I’m glad to be home. Peopling is hard. However, I do feel better.

Okay, there’s only three of them. Helen and Pol, which we’re going to keep, and one for Marshall, little Harmony who look like one of those q-tips that’s starting to unravel and looks fuzzy.

This is Sweet Helen. We couldn’t get Pol to linger with us, though he played with Dan and let him tickle the little fuzzy belly.

Harmony was also really active, and didn’t linger, but I got a picture. She was determined to keep Cedar’s Toast stuck in a little Amazon box, so every time toast tried to pop up, she got smacked into cowering in the box again, which is very funny.

Here she was plotting how to steal the chicken treat from Helen. Um… she’s not bad but she’s very mischievous. She’s still a good and sweet kitten.

What surprised me was how tiny they were. I kind of expected them to be bigger from the pictures, but they’re not.

Anyway, since I’m in unreliable internet mode, I really cannot do the promo today. I’ll do it tomorrow, probably midday or something when I get home. We’ll be leaving very very early with kittens in the back. (Pray for us.)

Anyway, they were very cheering. We’ll see how the old sour pusses back home take to them. I expect Havey to be excited and adopt them, but Valeria might try to eat them, so we’ll see. (Again pray for us.)

See you tomorrow.

Years ago, when these things were notional and far in the future, my father in law asked me to give his eulogy. He’d just read a memorial I’d written for my grandmother, because I’d never got to say goodbye to her, and I can only grieve — or do most things to be honest, being fairly useless by nature — in writing. And he thought he’d like to be remembered like that.

He was then younger than I’m now, probably by ten years or so.

Time does go by very fast.

I met my in-laws when they served as my liaison to the local AFS (exchange student program, now called something else) chapter. I used to go to their house, because my future mother in law (though neither of us knew it) let me play with ceramics and paint. And besides, I used to hang out in case Dan came from college. I could never figure out when he’d drop by, but if I stayed long enough, MIL would ask him to drive me home. (Yes, it was like that, though it took us four years to figure it out, because we were 18 which is a sort of disability of its own. Like a certain kind of teen romance trope, we argued a lot.)

Dan’s dad was a very gentle man, but with an imaginative streak. If you got him to talk about technology or what the future might hold in computers, or strange, far out theories of the world, his eyes lit up, and he could talk forever.

When I got engaged to Dan, it was a relief to finally call his father “Dad” because well…. he was. Sort of a distilled essence of dad.

We didn’t see him too often in the next years. We moved a lot, and finally moved across the country to Colorado, where they only visited three times.

But when I heard he had died, things came to mind.

Whenever he visited us, he spent his time organizing and cleaning our house. I’m by nature clean (bleach is a SACRAMENT) but not organized. He also used to help me wash up after dinner.

I remember him in our kitchen, in Columbia, South Carolina, teaching me to sing “They’re coming to take me away.” Trust me on this, he voluntarily exposed himself to my singing. Greater love has no man. We were so loud that Dan came to see what in heck we were doing (Which gives you a measure of my singing) and ended up joining in.

Later, when we visited, I came out of the guest bathroom at their home, after putting a beauty product on that briefly (very briefly) turned my face green. I actually startled him enough he sort of screamed (I didn’t know he was out there) and then teased me about being secretly an alien the rest of the visit.

When Dan went on work to France and dropped me on his parents for two weeks (I couldn’t drive, and we didn’t have an extra car anyway, and staying alone for two weeks in a city where I didn’t yet know anyone wasn’t even safe, let alone pleasant) we stayed up late into the night — of all things — designing these ideal houses with all sorts of ways to go off the grid. We’d stay up till late in the night, until my mother in law came and chased us upstairs.

When he visited us in Colorado, he went to a parade of homes with us, and I found out that he and Dan have exactly the same sense of humor. Some of the decorating choices, not to mention floor plans loaned themselves to entire impromptu skits about weird families.

When we bought our house he reserved the front bedroom which we used as a TV room as “That’s my room when I need to stay with someone.” Well, it didn’t happen that way. When he needed it, he didn’t want to move that far from his friends and his church.

After that life got complicated, and yes, we feel guilty how little we visited. I think the last time we spent time up in Ohio was when my brother in law died. We went up for the memorial, but also for that first very difficult Christmas, and my father in law got to spend time with his grandsons.

He liked that we’d given Marshall his middle name, and was flattered when Marshall started to go by it. He was very proud of his youngest grandson.

The last time I saw him was at my mother in law’s memorial. He spent the entire service holding my hand. He told me that for so many years I’d just been a voice in the phone, and it was good to know I really existed.

Afterwards we visited with him for some hours, and I petted the little mini poodles he loved.

We meant to go up again. We did. But the last two years have been fraught, between moving and health issues.

Dan did go up, but we couldn’t manage the money/time combination.

His passing hit me very hard. There are a lot of unspoken stories, a lot of things we could have air-dreamed about. And just time to sit and pet a fuzzy while being silent together. Time ran away from us. In retrospect, it seems so fast, even though I know it wasn’t.

I’m sorry dad, that we didn’t spend more time together. I will miss your gentle humor and your kindness.

Perhaps we’ll meet again in eternity, with time and better understanding, and a fuzzy or two for company.

Goodbye dad. Until we meet again.

Away from Keyboard, en route to a friend meetup.

Will be bringing back kittens for us and younger son.

About to run out of connectivity zone. Might or might not update tonight. Will try to but there’s this dinner thing.

While you’re at it, Sunny comments here as Holly, and she’s… um…. she could use some financial help, honestly.

Yes, we have donated, though anonymized. Will probably donate again, once dust settles and I know how much I have in hand.

Helping with health insurance deductible for unforeseen issues

Anyway, don’t worry about us. I slept horribly, and I’m sort of punch drunk, but husband will be driving. And I’m almost over the virus. The death in the family was expected, and a release, but for some reason still walloped me like a hundred ton weight.

Not sure if it’s good or bad we are set to see friends this weekend. Fortunately they have a broad tolerance for “Weirder than normal.”

Take care of yourselves, and hug your loved ones. More posting tomorrow, if it all goes well.

In The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, Robert A. Heinlein, Mycroft, the trickster sentient computer that joins the revolution because he’s bored and wants friends, (I figure he’s their Benjamin Franklin figure) tries throughout the book to figure out humor.

In fact, his “first human friend” Manny finds out that Myke has woken up because Myke plays a joke. He pays someone about 100 times what he should be paid.

Part of Manny educating Myke is “funny only once.”

Now part of the funny only once is self defense. Manny can’t have Myke playing big, noticeable, system breaking pranks that will lead to either killing everyone and/or people finding out he’s sentient.

But part of it is accurate for everyone. I know a lot of people here grew up with Star Trek and are impressed by Kirk’s “this one simple trick.” It was impressive, of course, in the context of the show, considering they were going from planet to planet, so funny only once worked, since it was a new audience every night. To an extent, the Saint is the same thing, (the TV series) with the flaw that it’s not a new planet every night. (If anyone does Saint in Space — concept not name — please tell me, I’d love to read it.) I mean, you watch the series to see how he pulls off the trick and double crosses the unrighteous (his name for the bad guys.) But you willingly have to suspend disbelief, because at some point people would notice and know, and start knowing when they see him coming…..

And this is part of the problem that our “governing classes” and self styled “elites” have. Much of what they’ve been pulling is world breaking.

It works once, partly because we can’t believe anyone would be stupid enough to pull that. It is a stupidity so big that we can’t believe anyone would do it.

I mean, look, locking up the entire world over a bad flu, and scaring people half to death just so they could steal the US election? It’s not a clever trick, unless you consider breaking the dome protecting a space colony clever.

But is is so monumentally stupid, requiring that people be unaware or uncaring of where food comes from and more importantly that trust once broken can’t be recovered overnight, that most people refused to believe that anyone would do something so monumentally stupid and psychopathic.

In fact, it’s how psychopath narcissists manage to pull half the stupid sh*t they do. Normal human beings can’t understand the depths of non-human thought that allow someone to use others as pieces in a game.

The thing is that once you see something like that pulled, no only is it funny only once, because you won’t allow it to be pulled again, but it allows you to see all the other “this one simple trick” requiring monumental chutzpah and stupidity to pull off. And once you start seeing it, you can’t unsee it.

No, most people still don’t fully know what to do about it, but let’s face it, despite cooked polls and the koolaid drinkers being special all over social media, this one simple trick, as it unravels further destroys what remained of trust in the media, and government, and “scientists” and… well, the entire structure that allows the left to stay in power, and that in fact allowed them to steal the election.

Even better, by involving the entire world in this, they finally broke the Europeans. Europeans are starting to doubt their “experts” and “smart people.”

Yes, there are pockets that haven’t. But overall, not only was it funny only once but, contrary to what they took from the whole experience, it made their chances of pulling it off again very very small.

Right now, people know they’re being duped, and no one trusts much of anything they’re told that they haven’t experienced by themselves, with their own lying eyes.

This is good, because part of what has allowed the tyranny to grow is a trust in experts and “scientific” governance over the last 100 years. We need people to start trust themselves and (with limits) their neighbors.

It is bad, because as institutions collapse it makes it harder to change and rebuild without it all collapsing or tipping into “blood up to our ankles” type situation.

But this one simple trick was funny only once. And it’s already broken their structures of power. We can pray for a miracle that allows us to cross to new structures and more freedom without massive violence. And we should.

Because most of the casualties happen after victory.

On the other hand, we already won. And they lose. There is no victory condition for them.

We win, they lose.

Be not afraid.

When I’m sick but starting to be ALMOST well it’s a very frustrating time. I feel like I’m well enough to work, and should in fact be working, except I know anything I write in that time will be strange and lifeless. Sometimes it can be revived in revision, sometimes not.

In the last week, the fact I didn’t feel well enough to actually do things like typeset old books and adjust covers was a good indication I should not mess with works in progress. (And oh, yeah, have a got a story for you on that.)

So instead I was doing what I normally do when I should be working. Reading true crime stories (From the investigators side, which is still depressing, but mostly gives me ideas for books.) and taking weird drunkard walks through internet weirdness.

My still being me — you do remember that part, right — this often devolves to truly weird stuff like seeking out ideas of previous civilizations (Most of it is new age and funnier than heck, which is very cheering, particularly when I’m not feeling well.) And similar “weird stuff.”

This time, for reasons, I tried to look up “Accidentally walking between realities.” You know, the thing that might be a brain glitch where you suddenly remember something as being completely different up to this moment. Instead of deja vu, it’s never-vu. You stare at your car going “I swear my car was blue when I went to bed last night. When did it turn red?” And your family looks at you like you have three heads and they’re all speaking in sanskrit, because the car has always been read.

I think we’ve all had moments like that, though perhaps not as dramatic. My younger son had so many of these one year that after that it became a joke. If he woke up and I’d just changed something in the house, his opening gambit would be “I come from a world where you don’t have a line across the laundry room to hang clothes that can’t be dried.”

Some of the most dramatic ones, of course, are dreams, where you dream in a self-consistent reality in which you don’t remember the current world, but everything makes sense. I had one of these, about 4 years ago, in which I had teen DAUGHTERS and was cleaning their bathroom, after they’d gone to school and I wondered if boys would have been as messy. It was such a weird, self-contained dream that it was like I’d been in a different world.

Anyway, I was looking for that, but I accidentally stumbled onto something else.

Apparently there is a fad among mostly teens, of sending their consciousness into a “desired reality.” For a lot of them it appears to be Hogwarts (?????).

They have an entirely constructed theory of why this works, though meh, it doesn’t stand up to true scientific knowledge. It at best stands up to speculative and therefore unproven hypothesis.

The idea being that somewhere in the universe whatever can happen happens. And your mind being multi-dimensional is able to perceive everything. So it’s a matter of changing your consciousness to perceiving your other reality.

In the meantime, you leave something behind in your body, an automated version of you, living out your life in this reality, for the time you’re absent.

At its most involved, this shades into tupalmancy, the creation of a shadow self.

And of course, what’s actually involved, at least most of the time — I’m not going to speculate on if what they think is happening is actually happening, I’m just going to say I find it unlikely MOST of the time — is creating a lucid dream. What gives it away, btw, is the idea you can script this experience ahead of time. You can’t script a reality because other consciousnesses — other people in it — have a say.

What I’m going to say is that I’m immensely familiar with the creation of a vivid lucid dream that goes on from day to day, as well as with going through life as a barely conscious robot.

I’d say that was most of my life from about 12 to 18. Oh, there were moments I was there, but most of the time, I was in a world inside my head (the world in fact of Schrodinger worlds, that is actually a bunch of worlds.) My notebooks at the time are a bunch of codes for what was happening in various imaginary worlds, maps and physical plants of places that don’t exist. Genealogy trees for non-existing people, histories of non-existent empires.

How is that different from now, you ask? Well, now I know which world I’m in. I KNOW WHICH VOICE IS MINE.

I got lost there for a while. The danger of a vivid imagination is that you can get lost in it. You can become a living shadow in your real life, while living in another one.

Curiously — or not — the deeper I went into it, the less I produced in the real world. The less I wrote, the less I learned, the less engagement I had with real people.

At seventeen-eighteen, for whatever reason, I woke up. And decided to stay out of the dream-world, or at least to stay out of it, while dreaming it. Be aware of it, and “go there” but as a visitor. Know where I was and which voice was mine.

Which is when I started establishing interests and relationships, and re-started writing again.

Because the world couldn’t live for other people till I came out of it and could communicate it.

It was as hard as quitting any drug addiction. The dream world was safe and interesting, even when bad things happened. But to live in it was to ignore reality. You can’t live in the dream world. Because you’re not made of dream. Making yourself into a meat robot won’t keep you safe. Reality is that which doesn’t go away when you stop paying attention.

I always thought of this as a particular problem of being a larval writer. It NEVER in my wildest moments occurred to me it could become a general problem.

I have guesses as to why, starting with 2020 and ending with clownworld.

BUT to anyone who is aware of their kid doing this, or who — despite our ages — is tempted by it, let me enjoin you to stay in reality. Day dreaming is great. I still do a lot of it. It’s why and how I write.

But a wise man — PTerry — said to always be sure what voice is yours. To that I add, always be sure what reality is yours.

It’s been 42 years, since I decided to live and create in the real world. It hasn’t been a bowl of cherries, but it’s real. It’s …. I can grow and love and create in here.

The dream world is a sort of fairyland. You can perceive it and dream in it, but nothing is real.

When you try to choose your reality, all you do is turn your back on what’s real. And in the end, you’ll die without ever having lived.

I have lived through curious shifts, some of them due to the fact that I moved to a country, where things were already shifted, and then they shifted more.

Portugal is still in many ways way more “sexist” against women than the US.

When I was a kid it was openly so. Women were just believed to be a lesser form of human. Period. full stop. Even when you were a female acknowledged as not being lesser in some characteristic, this didn’t absolve you from the flaws of your sex.

I could whip most men in mental contest with half a brain tied behind my back, but I was often congratulated on keeping my emotional nature in check, or considered fragile emotionally for reasons that were, more often than not, baffling to me. I was also of course congratulated on being “unusually smart FOR A WOMAN.

Rest assured I wasn’t injured by this. Perhaps it is a factor of being Odd, but mostly it amused me no end. I collected funny disparaging comments, not because they were hurtful but because they were funny.

The country and the culture has changed, under the influence of feminism, but here’s the thing: culture doesn’t really change. Not that fast. It changes very slowly if at all. The external forms have changed, and women are now expected to excel above men in school, same as here (part of it being of course that the game is rigged) but women are still expected to excel in female accomplishments, from cooking to crafts to child care. The result is overburdened women, and men who still are expected to dominate all public life, other than specialized professions.

That’s fine. They’ll change, or not, and it’s their problem.

But here–

Ah, here. By the time I came over, women ten years older than I were convinced the world was against them. By the time I came over, in the mid eighties, it really no longer was. Absent some bizarre pockets and strange sub cultures (which exist, given how huge and widepread this country is) women in the eighties were already expected to excel in school and business, and sometimes non subtly given legs up by “affirmative action.”

I didn’t realize how crazy things had got till my kids entered public school in the mid-nineties.

In the early to mid-nineties, when I joined the MOB — Mothers of Boys, of course — there was a already a surplus of women wanting to birth only girls.This is very much a US phenomenon and back then it was pushed hard in sitcoms and movies, where a pregnant woman referred to her “daughter” while the husband wanted a “son.” And even back then, this was viewed as chauvinism on the MAN’S PART.

This entire interplay baffled me. In Portugal there was a preference for boys, though after two or three both parents might want a girl. But if anyone wanted a girl, it was usually the dad. So, the idea that each parent wanted to reproduce only his/her kind, that there was some kind of competition was BAFFLING.

And then my kids entered elementary school.

And it quickly became obvious boys were treated as a kind of defective girl. Which got worse and worse until it culminated in puberty, where boys — later developing than girls, were asked to keep pace with them, even though neurologically they were incapable to do so.

We see a lot of victims of the trans fad pushing on people immature enough to not know what they are and believe they really can change and be fertile as the other sex. (Believe it or not they’re telling kids this will soon be possible.)

And we’re aware of the girls who have their breasts cut off. Of the hysterectomies. Of biological men displacing women in sports and other fronts.

But few people are aware there are just as many — maybe more. I don’t know how exact the statistics are — males who get castrated, sterilized, given medical problems for life by being “transitioned” when they are too young to even know what male means.

But beyond all that, we have men being raised being told from the youngest age possible that they are defective because they are male. That they need to be punished because they are male. That their deepest instincts, to pair-bond and protect a woman are wrong and evil and bad. That wanting to father children, wanting to father sons, is wrong and evil and bad.

They are told that women were oppressed for six thousand years because of males. (Not that everyone was differently oppressed because of biology.) That they are guilty of all that, somehow, though their entire life they’ve been discriminated against — hard or soft — for being male. They’ve had to learn in environments not tailored for males. They’ve had to excel — if they do — despite being taught by women who believe the only reason women aren’t perfect and perfectly happy is that males exist.

…. And then people are surprised sperm counts are down. That men aren’t engaging in family formation. That more and more young men are become psychological basket cases, unable to engage in real life. And they’re ridiculed by it. The term incel is applied almost exclusively to men. And there’s assumed to be something wrong with them, if they aren’t out there, spreading their seed irresponsibly.

We see female fantasies on the screen all the time. And in books. Romance novels are female fantasies. But James Bond was a pure male fantasy. And those early movies, literally could not — COULD NOT — be made today. The Ree of sexist, etc. would start one minute in.

The problem is that none of this is the way that idiots in charge assume it is. Societal organization and status is not a a zero sum game.

You don’t elevate women by destroying men. You don’t elevate men by destroying women.

Willing or not, we are yoked together, as partners. Even single people function better in a society where men and women are individually able to chose their profession, and their course in life, and be their best selves without men being told their defective women, and women being turned into sort of men manque, which their biology doesn’t suit them to.

And no one is happiest being told that their sole and most important focus should be their career. Yes, some very driven or very crazy individuals will focus on their careers to the exclusion of a family life. These tend to be what you’d expect: scientists, doctors, artists, writers. (I mean, I’d write, anyway, even if I had half a dozen kids, because I had to write.)

But for most people a job is not a career. It’s simply a way to earn your way, so you can live. And what gives meaning to life are relationships: familial, marital, parental, amicable.

All of which require a healthy relationship where men and women can each pursue their happiness without crazy people telling them they’re doing it wrong.

So, you know, the people who want to be housewives and mothers? So what? What business is it of anyone else? Seamstress is mostly a female word? So, what? There are gifted ones, as there are in any profession. The people who want to be corporate raiders? So what? There are more males than females who want to do that? So what? What business is it of anyone? More boys want to be engineers than girls? So what? More woman want to be romance writers than men? So what? More men want to write science fiction than women? So what?

The world is not a game of proportional representation. Who you are and what you do is determined by more than your sex, your skin color, or for that matter who you like to sleep with.

You are not a widget with certain characteristics, and you shouldn’t be aggrieved if people who share one or two of you characteristics don’t do as well in x or y as people with other characteristics.

If you want to do the thing, and people like you traditionally don’t? So what? Yeah, some people will look at you funny. If you can’t withstand funny looks (oh, the micro-injustice) the problem is with you, not society. Your answer to that type of thing should be “Shrug. So what?” And then do what you feel you must.

And stop paying attention to number games.

Right now we’re destroying both men and women by the numbers.

And society cannot survive this. Because society is not a number game, but a chaotic system of individuals, each striving for individual happiness.

Stop destroying the future. By the numbers.

Hark, What is this Abomination Monday Two Weeks Late 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. – SAH

SOME AUTHORS AND THEIR SELF PROMOTION:

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…

FROM DAVID COLLINS: The Second War (Wars Without End Book 2)

After leaving the medical chamber, Keith thought the long war was over. He had united two warring factions and identified the culprit behind the earlier devastating war. A xenophobic race that was out to destroy all the other races.

The problem was that they didn’t like that he had uncovered their deception, and they were out for revenge.

Then the Earth sent their “secret weapon” out to him. Something that could possibly beat the Meduala at their own game. Unfortunately, her daughter insisted on coming out too.

Much of his earlier success was based on help from the AI on his patched-up former delict spacecraft. Getting it updated seemed like a good idea. Adding more processing power to an unlocked AI should make it even better. That was the idea. What could go wrong? (he soon finds out)

Then they went out exploring the area in the new and improved ship. They found some unexpected aliens. And then some different aliens found them. They discovered that the Meduala were terrified of the new aliens.… It turns out that they had a reason to be…

FROM BONNIE RAMTHUN: The Stone of Excellent Luck: Book Three of the Centerville Chronicles

Saving the world just got tricky

Ray knows he has to save the world this coming summer, since he’s supposed to be “The Shining One.” But then the mysterious new bully in town, Finn, tells Ray that he’s the true one of the prophecies, not Ray. Finn has taken the Stone of Excellent Luck from the deadly caverns underneath the town, the first magical artifact needed to stop the Awful Solstice.
Finn is now after the great sword Excalibur, and once he’s got it, he’s going to be unstoppable. Worst of all, Finn doesn’t want to save the world. He wants to see everything fall apart!

Ray and Clancy must brave the deadly traps in the caverns, find Excalibur first, and convince Finn to play a desperate game of winner-takes-all. Their adventure takes them to the windswept moors of Scotland, the oceans of the Caribbean, and a final confrontation that will give them a way to save the world, or lose their chance forever.

BY MAX BRAND, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Jim Curry’s Test (Annotated): The classic pulp western

Jim Curry was a loafer, but never did anybody any harm. Until his gun accidentally went off, and killed the most beloved old-timer in the area. It was an accident, but the sheriff isn’t overly sympathetic, and when Curry breaks the sheriff’s jaw escaping, the townsfolk decide that due process just won’t do…

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

BY CHARLES ALDEN SELTZER REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Men of the West (Annotated): A pulp western omnibus of: Riddle Gawne, Beau Rand, and West!

iktaPOP Media brings you an omnibus of three classic westerns by Charles Alden Seltzer, featuring Seltzer’s characteristic western heroes, each with his own unique nickname.
Riddle Gawne
Jefferson Gawne has a low opinion of people, and an even lower one of women. After his brother was murdered by Watt Hyat, in complicity with his brother’s wife, Gawne followed Hyat’s trail across the west.
But the trail went cold, and Gawne, nicknamed Riddle behind his back, found himself the guardian of an orphan girl, and the only man in the territory who dares stand up to Hame Bozzam, founder of the dirty and lawless Bozzam City. Bozzam is too smart to challenge Gawne directly, and Gawne is too honorable to act against Bozzam without cause.
So an uneasy truce has held between the two men. A truce that is about to be broken, with the arrival of the beautiful Miss Kathleen Harkless. Every man wants her, and the men of Bozzam City don’t particularly care if she wants them back.
Beau Rand
Amos Seddon has a secret and Beau Rand knows it.
When someone starts rustling cattle, it doesn’t take long for the whispers against Rand to start. To save himself and his young son, Rand has to prove his innocence and find the real rustlers.
West!
Josephine Hamilton’s first impression of the west was stopping the hanging of a supposed horse thief. From that moment, she decided that the west needed her principles imposed upon it.
And the man who personified that west, and most needed dominating, was Steel Brannon, a man who was merely amused that she stopped him from giving justice to a horse thief. And intrigued by a woman so willful, and so misguided.
    This iktaPOP Media omnibus includes Introductions and Afterwords by indie author and editor D. Jason Fleming, putting the novels into historical, cultural, and genre context.

FROM MARY CATELLI: A Diabolical Bargain

Growing up between the Wizards’ Wood and its marvels, and the finest university of wizardry in the world, Nick Briarwood always thought that he wanted to learn wizardry.

When his father attempts to offer him to a demon in a deal, the deal rebounded on him, and Nick survives — but all the evidence points to his having made the deal.

Now he really wants to learn wizardry. Even though the university, the best place to master it, is also the place where he is most likely to be discovered.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Love in the Time of Campaigning

As Frank Correra brings his family to a lunar settlement to get them away from a worsening political situation on Earth, he reminisces about how he and his wife met.

Frank had always dreamed of the skies. As a clone of an astronaut who subsequently became a US Senator, Frank thought he had a clear path ahead of him. But when it comes time to apply for the Air Force Academy, it is an election year. His ur-brother can’t promise a nomination until he’s won another term, and this year promises a hard race to run. When the other side puts up an ugly attack ad, can Frank find a way to discredit it before it destroys his ur-brother’s chance of re-election, and with it Frank’s slot at an Academy appointment?

A Gus on the Moon story.

FROM CHRISTOPHER WERNER: 202303 The Ideas of Marchhttps://amzn.to/3mjyVMx

The monthly booklet, collecting essays on current events and whatever else comes to mind. Mostly current events but that’s natural. The masters are pushing down on us harder and harder and making our lives worse. Like many other people, I’m trying to fight back and inspire others to do the same. How long will it take?

The B-side is a collection of The Struggling comic strips I made this month. Just random jokes and observations that are essentially the sort of thing I write about on Side A, but hopefully more entertaining. This booklet is an edited collection of the previous month’s worth of pamphlets so now you can read it twice!!!

FROM FRANK HOOD: A Hearth for Ulysses

The sky was blue, and snow covered the tops of the mountains. Jack Burns hadn’t realized until he saw it how much he’d missed snow–real, honest-to-goodness, earth-water snow. Even the cement under his boots felt good. Things had changed however. Houses were creeping up the sides of the Andes. The small launching area had turned into a huge spaceport, complete with enormous corporate buildings and a mammoth city to surround it. “Is this the house that Jack built?” Burns thought but couldn’t bring himself to laugh at his own joke.

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: HAMMER