Louis XIV invented bureaucracy in its current form to keep the up and coming bourgeois and the old noblemen occupied and out of his way. And I hope he burns in hell for it.

There is a scene in The Twelve Labors of Asterix that completely captures what I’ve been going through for the last 3 days trying to prove to Amazon that I have my permission to publish my own work. It’s when Asterix has to go through the House That Makes You Mad.

He has to get a permission slip to go to the window that gives permission slips, so that the permission slip can be validated to get another permission slip.

We have now gone up one level, because after making me sign a contract with myself (Who the F*CK else would sign for Goldport Press) they didn’t like it because both signatures are the same.

The last message, since the name involved is Brazilian was composed in Portuguese and said in essence “Honestly, guys, for the love of the poor souls in Purgatory can you stop acting like monkeys with keyboards?”

They now claim it will take them five days to prove that I’m me. I offered to get an affidavit in my legal name saying that I own Goldport Press, and get it notarized, or show them copies of my tax returns. I suppose I could also get our bank to certify that my signature is valid on Goldport Press.

But seriously: THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A COMPLAINT AGAINST GOLDPORT PRESS, and if they look, they can tell it publishes my name and my pen names. This should not, in any way be a problem. I could understand this level of scrutiny if I were someone who regularly publishes other people and/or out of print books. BUT why expend this kind of effort on someone who is JUST publishing herself and her pen names?

I do understand wanting the reversal letter, though I’ll point out even with that, they weren’t that tight in the beginning, and I don’t think there was any issue. I got all my reversals legally, sometimes after hiring a lawyer. I had friends though that when stonewalled by Ace and DAW both of whom were experts at ignoring requests for reversal as a way of denying them (and at one time my editor at Ace, who is a cartoon character, but not a funny one, tried to tell me I had to ask for reversal through the agent that initially sold the books, knowing I was no longer with that agent. The lawyer took care of that) sent them a letter, registered, with proof of receipt, saying that if they didn’t answer within ten days the rights reverted, and she used that to publish her own stuff. I don’t think they had any problems with that.

Yes, they have problems with (mostly foreign) scammers publishing other people’s books. For a while there was a fad for collecting the free portion of like three bestsellers books, and publishing them as a “collection.”

However, this has gone beyond all sanity. I could understand their behaving this way if:

a) Goldport Press was a new account and had NEVER published anything by Sarah A. Hoyt.

b) Goldport Press had never published reverted books by Sarah A. Hoyt.

c) Goldport press had had complaints about publishing author’s books without permission.

d) I hadn’t sent a reversal on Baen stationary.

e) I hadn’t multiple times signed emails from Goldport Press with “Sarah A. Hoyt.”

f) I hadn’t emailed them about the case from my customer account.

Now they say they’ll take 5 days to verify that I’m me…. which will probably devolve, by tonight into asking me for a cheek swab so I can receive the form that verifies I’m me.

I’m having flashbacks to getting my entire school grades with courses taken and curriculum, so it could be validated in the US so I could get a job as a college instructor (Look, I NEEDED it at the time. I was 25) and going to my old High School to be told I’d flunked out in 9th grade. Turned out they still used paper records, and were copying the page adjacent to mine (the girl’s name differed from mine by a middle name. We were actually friends and she was the originator of the famous joke-phrase (stage whispered at her during a test by another friend and ignored by the teacher) “Just copy what I did, don’t try to think. When you think you f*ck up everything.” We managed to drag her, yes, sometimes by allowing/encouraging her to cheat through 9th grade, but she couldn’t pass the exams to go further. For the record, we had a reason to help her. She was one of the decoys in our gifted form (see, the socialists made gifted forms illegal, but the school still wanted them. Mostly because… uh, some day ask me about my gifted from. One of our stunts was rewiring our classroom. Another was accidentally (kind of of) giving a nervous breakdown to a new teacher. So the school threw in three or four non-gifted students into the form. And because we were going five times the speed, the poor girls, who would have been fine in normal classes were DROWNING.)) That was solved after my dad came by and deployed what mom called “The power of the mustache” (Actually the power of the height, because he’s six one in Portugal) and was all polite and forceful at them. Before that they were refusing to acknowledge that that was NOT my middle name.

Which is the problem with any bureaucracy. By giving petty half-trianed (if that) clerks the power to deny or accept things that are vital for the people applying, it quickly revolves into permit-raj and banana republic operating rules.

Which, yes indeed, is the problem with our vast and completely insane governmental bureaucracy. They’ll all now permit-raj and insane, which is why we’re operating by banana republic rules.

If a company like Amazon, designed to MAKE MONEY can fall into this kind of insanity, imagine how much easier it is for governments.

To make the folly of this complete — they’ve now cost me three days of work, and imagine how many I’ve cost them. There are apparently three people dealing with this now. And probably stepping on each other — it would not stop any actually scammers. Which I helpfully pointed out to them, yes, because I live to make friends and influence people. (Shush you.)

If I were a, for the sake argument, South Elbonian scammer, I could very easily fake a reversal letter from Baen by taking their symbol and making up more convincing letterhead than theirs, and being all formal (which their reversal letters never are, being a note from Toni to me.) Then I could trick out an amazingly official letter from Goldport Press and make up a name of an editor to sign it. It’s not actually difficult, and how are they going to verify this person doesn’t work for Goldport Press? There is a contract.

And with that, if I were a scammer and thus inclined, I could publish any bestseller I wanted to. No problem. It would be denounced in three days, and then I’d use the same files and start another account. This is how they do it. (I once accidentally bought a scammer’s version of an F. Paul Wilson book.)

Except I’m not a scammer, so I tried to do things above board, and in return ended up mired in the House that Makes You Mad.

This is why if there’s any justice Louis XIV is burning in hell (forget his mistresses, those are peccadilloes. Forget murders and judicial murders and wars. He deserves to burn in hell for inventing bureaucracy.) And why all bureaucracies should be burned to the ground and this kind of process rationalized.

And also why companies should stop acting like banana republics.

While I still have some hair left.

UPDATE: So, apparently cursing at them in gutter Portuguese works. The ebook and paperback are now publishing. The hardcover isn’t, because they’re crazy. (I mean, if I have the rights to publish the book, you’d think that means I have the rights to publish the book, right?) I’ve poked them on that.
I want to announce that I’m available to curse in Portuguese at them if any of you has similar difficulties. It apparently is the magic sauce, at least as long as they use Brazilian flunkies.

*In keeping with the fact the last few days have been full of Murphy’s blessings, (Including a subscription to mid journey bot, which I can’t activate for …. reasons I don’t understand.) I’m now engaged in a full tilt (at windmills) battle with Amazon to publish Darkship Thieves. While it’s perfectly normal for them to ask for the reversal letter, this time they decided to take stupid pills. So after I sent them the reversal letter, they decided to tell me it didn’t have my name or Baen’s. (It was right there.) And after I sent them that, (screen shots of where they were on the letter) they decided that I now needed to explain why Baen had published it and send documentation (WHAT?); that I had to prove the book was in fact written by me (WHAT? Also library of congress); I needed a contract between myself and the self owned press AND I hadn’t sent them the reversal letter (which has now been sent 5 times.) Now, before you say “Amazon is evil!” I’m not sure this is so much evil as the fact that an ESL speaker is acting like permit-raj. Because they CAN.
As for Amazon being evil: Yeah. It sure is. It’s no more and no less evil, OTOH than the other sites that publish books. Its accounting is better than smashwords; its search functions are better than B & N and Kobo. But more importantly, it is where the customers are. I don’t get the luxury of saying I won’t publish there. Though the fact they’re acting like loons terrifies me I won’t be able to publish the series at all, as I know of other people whom the permit raj decided to f*ck with. (And FYI of all political stripes.)
I do have a means to go around should I be permanently banned, but then I’ll only be able to market to those on my newsletter, which will stop my being able to expand my audience. For self-publishers, (or for that matter consumers of e-books, or even more strangely, low carb eaters) Amazon is Luna Authority in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. I’d like to stop doing business with Luna authority, but it’s like stopping doing business with air.

I also wish you to know that Toni Weisskopf has offered to help me convince Amazon that I do indeed have the rights, something that no other traditional publishing house EVER would do. I’m still hoping I can solve this without more work for Toni, but we’ll see.

Anyway, I’m frazzled and upset and late with the promo post. For the last, I request your forgiveness – 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 WILLIAM LEHMAN: Shadow War (Harvest Of Evil)

When John Fisher retired from the Navy SEALS, he thought he was done with war.

But now, someone is killing the avatars of the tribal gods. Worse
they’re stealing the power that is supposed to revert tp the gods when
the avatars die. Mary has been told to investigate.

FROM JASON FLEMING, BY DWIGHT V. SWAIN: Crusade Across The Void (Annotated): The Classic Space Opera Novella of Revolution.

“Scum of the spaceways,” the interplanetary police had called them, so Wolf Stone and his motley crew left the solar system for another. There, they found a tyranny not too different from the one they left, and this time, they decided to fight.

And when they fought for justice, they were one blood with the crusaders!

    This iktaPOP Media edition has a new introduction giving historical and genre context to the story.

COLLECTED BY AMY SCHULTZ, AND CONTAINING MANY OF YOUR FAVORITE MISCREANTS: The Haunted Library Anthology: Volume 1 (The Haunted Libraries Anthologies)

This anthology is a benefit anthology for the Tom Burnett Memorial Library in Iowa Park, TX,
Is your library haunted?
Are you sure?
Many book lovers find peace and solace in their local library, returning over and over to the place their spirit calls home. Some of them keep going even after their bodies have stopped working. To say nothing of the ones who were already there when their home became the library.
Join 10 authors as they explore haunts from the past, the future, and the dead.

FROM JL CURTIS ET AL: Ranching in Colorado: The Bell Chronicles Book 2

Back in Texas he might be The Rio Kid, but at the other end of a long cattle drive in Fort Collins, Rio Bell is now struggling through his first year as a Colorado rancher. With his new wife, old hands, and a few mountain men, he’s learning fast as they deal with winter weather and stubborn cattle.

The killing cold and deep snows bring all new challenges to calving and just getting in supplies, but tempers can run hot as ever. Not everybody wants to see him succeed… or even survive.

They’re about to learn he’s no greenhorn when it comes to taking care of business, regardless of what that particular business may be.

FROM CAROLYN BICKFORD: Death to COVID (And F*ck You Fauci)

EXPERIENCE THE HORROR! As a new virus escapes from its Chinese prison and threatens to infect all of humanity!
WATCH! As hordes of people fight for toilet paper and run home to lock themselves inside!
GASP! As “Doctor” Anthony Fauci tells everyone to stop everything and cowers them into submission with fear!
A TRUE STORY from a female firefighter who had to go forth amidst the lockdowns and personally saw the psychological and societal destruction brought on by thoughtless politicians, sloppy journalists, and the power of tales of terror.

“A Federal emergency hotline for psychological distress registered more than a 1000% increase in calls that April compared to the same time the year before. How many people were driven to taking their own lives as a result of the never-ceasing panic porn and with restrictions so tight as to imply coronavirus was deadly to each and all, regardless of age or medical status — we will never really know.”

ENCOUNTER! Scolds who shame and intimidate those who dare defy senseless orders!
SHIVER! As mobs appear in the streets to harass and compel the public to their beliefs, and watch as they destroy cities and lynch historical figures!
DISCOVER! A revolution in voting that ends with a new president inaugurated behind barbed wire and guarded by thousands of soldiers!
WITNESS THE POWER! Of censorship and blind public obedience!

And just when you think it’s over…you find out IT NEVER ENDS!

This gripping real-life tale of how people lost their minds in 2020 includes a car chase, a massive fire, and a cast of characters that you will never forget!

FROM D. JASON FLEMING, WRITTEN BY ROBERT ORMOND CASE: The Rider From Hell (Annotated): The classic pulp western revenge novella

A gripping novel of outlaw revenge!

They had heard, those Mexicans, of Gringo honor—and one at least, was willing to gamble that young Dal Givens would return with the many good American dollars for the release of his friend, John Thurston—who otherwise would die of dry rot and torture in the great new Federal prison of Carrizal!

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

(Btw, on these, I want to thank Jason Fleming for bringing these books back. So many of my pulp favorites are out of print and can’t be obtained at any price. These books pay almost nothing, so you need to have a massive volume to make ANY money, and it’s never enough to make a living. So, it’s in many ways a labor of love, and I just wish he’d do more early sf/f. ;) – SAH)

FROM CLAYTON BARNETT: A Texas Naval Affair.

At eighteen, Allen Rupert’s criminal past caught up with him and he faces a choice of military or prison. To get as far from central Texas as possible, he joins the navy but spends half of his time in the brig.

Recognizing Allen’s mechanical skill, he’s trained as a machinist and assigned to the small corvette Liberty, patrolling the Gulf of Mexico. During an ASW drill, Allen defuses a torpedo that went live in its tube, and is summoned to the bridge. There, Acting Captain Ryland Rigó commends him for his good work.

For the first time in his life, Allen sees someone look at him with respect. Weeks later, ashore, he invites her to lunch. To his utter shock, she accepts.

Thinking her just another girl, Allen is shaken to his core to find himself swept into a maelstrom of domestic politics, international intrigue, and the plots and plans of Demi-humans and Machines. All while trying to fix his broken life and attain the only thing he wants: Ryland.

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: RADIATE

*Sarah Speaking: I realize it’s evil to hit you with essentially 2 promo posts in a row. But today we’re going to be running around like crazy people (ducttape-grandkids coming mid-week) and yesterday night Valeria-cat announced she wasn’t feeling so good by peeing all over our bed. Twice. So, I’ll write post on Monday. These two days I run around like crazy -SAH*

De Gusta-Books Non Est Disputandum by Foxfier

Look, if you like a book, you like a book. It’s really not something that will change when someone says “I don’t like it.” In matters of taste, it’s not up to debate.

Recent…ish… there was a kerfuffle over some list or other of “how dare you read these books? They’re bad!” where it was a definite purity spiral, and from the selection and justifications it was questionable if folks liked ’em, or just thought that they should like them.
(Think in terms of the difference between books you want to read, and books you want to have read, and books that you want folks to think you read.)

Sad how little that narrows it down, isn’t it? Anyways, long story short, instead of laughing or complaining, it was suggested that somebody try to get folks to write lists of good stuff to read. Guess who the “somebody” is today….
The format is title and author, link if applicable, what it is, and if you’ve got something besides “I just really liked it,” list that.

So, for example:

Daring Finds series by Elise Hyatt, an Odd and quirky crafting series with romantic sub-plot, and I like it because it’s fun, of the “his men would follow him anywhere, if only to find out what happens” sort.

The duology of A Net of Dawn and Bones and Seeds of Blood, by C Chancy; near future broken masquerade (“magic and monsters come out of the shadows”). Definitely not a romance-type urban fantasy, think more like the Dresden files, but with non-romantic duo instead of Harry as the main character. I like it because Chancy takes her subjects seriously, as well as telling an interesting story. Things are plausibly explained in-world, and not in a way that is actively painful if you’re familiar with the subject; it opens in hell, for goodness’ sake, and actually sells it.

And so on, however many books you want to list.

You don’t like someone’s list?

Make your own list, with the books you do like, and why! Spread the treasures! You get inspired to make a list, link to the person who inspired you– or just reblog them, and then join in, too, whatever works.
Let’s try to spread some positivity, right?
Besides, books!

Frontier Magic, by Patricia C Wrede. Magical AU American history, post 1800.
First series I talked my daughter into reading, largely on the basis of “Well, you liked The Enchanted Forest Chronicles.” Part of the fun is seeing the translation and logical continuation if you change one thing.

…I have been informed by the two eldest that I am adding Marda Quincesinger, Postulant, by Maggie Hogarth It is “basically fantasy– dragons, talking animals. Fantasy.” She likes it because it’s awesome!
and
Shadows by Robin McKinley, an alternate world roughly modern-day fantasy.
“It’s got a good story line. It’s interesting to read.”

Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things That Go, by Richard Scarry. It’s a simple story with a lot of fun, fanciful cars in an anthropomorphic animal world. The littles love it because finding Gold Bug is fun.

Dragons Love Tacos, by Adam Rubin. It’s a bedtime story book. Simple, cute, survives being read every night for a month straight, and the kids start picking up words by exposure.

Alright, back to what came to mind when I thought of good books I wanted to share.

Radiance, by Grace Draven. Romance, fairly physical, slightly dark/epic fantasy setting. I like it because the characters start out acting like adults in a rather painful situation, and (I hope I’m not spoiling too much) eventually fall in love; what really stood out was that there was a lot of physical touch that had nothing to do with romance.

Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers, and I’m linking the whole series because it’s good. It’s a now-historical mystery series, was current-day when it was written between the world wars. Generally starts with a murder, which is generally solved by the end. A lot of non-slapstick, understated or ironic humor, including the entire novel Strong Poison towards the middle of the series, where the plot line is “female author suspect of killing her ex-lover using methods from one of her novels.” In a novel. By a lady. Who did that kind of research…. thus showing that the worry of “does my search history make me look like a serial killer, or a writer?” predates the internet!

Father Brown’s Mysteries, by G. K. Chesterton. Historical fiction, pre-WWII England, basically the spiritual grandfather of mystery novels. They’re legally available for free all over the place. It’s kind of like if Columbo at his most bemused was transported back into pre-war England, and had some adventures and solved (rather good) puzzles.

Bound to the Alien Engineer by C. V. Walter. It’s book two in a series, definitely not-sweet romance, near future sci-fi, and you’ll hurt yourself laughing because it’s about a bunch of scifi fans trying to find out about their friend, by shaking down the guys cosplaing as big, blue aliens from a fandom nobody recognizes.

Exile’s Honor, by Mercedes Lackey. Fantasy, intelligent spirit-bond animal subtype. It’s awesome because Alberich is a snarky, honorable, somewhat grumpy with absolute justification, hard working character of towering awesome. Read it against my better judgement– I find the mind control ponies of Valdemar to be creepy– and I love this book.

Absolutely anything with Hoka! in the title, by Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson. Classic scifi (think Spaceman Spiff type scifi) comedy. You see, there’s a race of ADHDAF extreme RP, cosplaying teddybears that are strong enough to actually pull it off….

Hank the Cowdog, by John R. Erickson. The adventures of a ranch dog in Texas, who is not nearly as intelligent as he thinks he is, in a way that a five or six year old can recognize and find funny well into adulthood. Last on the list because this will be really long…. these were the first books I was allowed to read after my mom got word that the school library was restricting me to books they thought I could handle. Which was so restricted I’d have to work up to Color Kittens. She didn’t maim anybody, I promise, though I won’t say it wasn’t a risk.
For these, I actually love the audio books best– they were books on tape when I was a kid, read by the author, and they are incredible. We have both the audio editions and several of the book bundles, you can find them searching for Hank the Cowdog Set”.

So, folks– make a list, or several– what’s your De Gusta-books?

It will probably surprise no one here, subjected as you have been to my random brain-drops for years, but the thing that made the most difference to me in Jordan Peterson’s 12 rules was the rule that said: Treat yourself as though you were someone you love, for whose well being you’re wholly responsible.

I don’t think I’m alone in that. A lot of us born in or after the middle of the last century were so disgusted by the message of hedonism and self-centeredness of the times, that we ran the other way, at least where it pertains to ourselves.

Never to anyone else, of course, but for ourselves, many of us lived by the rule of “The beatings will continue till morale improves.” And when body or brain or soul broke, we just saw it as an excuse to kick ourselves harder and call ourselves names.

It never occurred to me this was a bad thing, until I read that rule in Peterson’s book. After all, being self-absorbed, self-loving and self-indulgent are bad, right? No one wants to do that!

Except there’s a difference between self indulgence and treating oneself as though she were the despised red-headed step child. And I’m an adult and should have noticed it.

Like this: There is a difference between demanding a feat of pure effort from yourself every once in a while, and not letting yourself take a breath, not letting yourself show weakness, being terrified of not succeeding at something. Thinking that if you fail it’s all your fault and you done it. Beating yourself up at every failure, and hating yourself for not being perfect, or for being (merely) human.

So, that rule from Peterson was a blinding revelation, and it probably shouldn’t be. I’m still incredibly afraid of being overindulgent and spoiling myself to the detriment of others or of my work. But I try to remember to take my meds and try not to hate myself when I fail.

But there are levels to this rabbit hole.

I might have mentioned I was put on a sleep schedule. This came about because I was talking to older son, and he said that if you only sleep less than 7 hours a night for a stretch of time, it’s suicide on the installment plan. And I stared at him.

Look, I haven’t slept more than (and often not) six hours a night for over thirty years, and before that I wasn’t particularly good at it, either.

I never thought it did you any harm. Just never did. I mean. I thought sleeping eight hours was for the weak and the indulgent.

So I got yelled at — when do the kids start yelling at you on the regular? Because lately both of them periodically look at me like I grew a second evil head, and then the yelling commences. Usually loving yelling and all, but really — and put on a “sleep hygiene” schedule, that involves no electronics two hours before bed and light blocking curtains and… I kind of failed yesterday because I was fighting a cover, but REALLY, it seems to help? More than I expected.

I got the sarcastic “No sh*t” for that, and I suspect a lecture on not living on coffee and whatever I find when I’m hungry (which is often stuff like popcorn which I shouldn’t be having, period) and probably a right smart telling off about proper exercise. He says I should try to run the body according to the owner’s manual.

But I’m serious. I always thought you didn’t need eight hours of sleep, that sleeping that long was a sign of weakness.

And we all know about the debacle last year, when I was determined not to ask for help, though we had to move earlier than I expected. And then a bunch of you put me in a corner and yelled at me, and I’m glad you did. For one, it gave me the courage to try a yearly blog fundraiser, which I promise to keep up, even if the idea of asking for pay for my daily work still seems odd.

Okay, I decided to post this, because I think there are others (Coff. Crossover) among us who have similar issues.

We treat ourselves like rented mules and demand superhuman feats of all too human bodies and minds.

Or, put it another way, if you wouldn’t demand it of anyone else, you shouldn’t demand it of yourself.

If you wouldn’t think anyone else is a “mooch” for asking for money help in a pinch, much less for asking to be paid, why would you think that of yourself?

And no, taking care of yourself isn’t self-indulgent. Yes we’ve all heard about people who think “Self-care” is trips to Paris or $500 pairs of shoes. And you know what? If you can afford it, you can do that too. You’re not a medieval monk.

BUT you shouldn’t indulge yourself to the point of financial straits, no. Let’s not be stupid.

However, treating yourself as a human being who needs food, rest, and sometimes, through no fault of your own, a helping hand is not self-indulgent.

And you should cut yourself some slack on “less than perfect”, not blame yourself when you get sick, and generally … well, try to treat yourself as someone you love and whom you’d like not to die of tiredness.

And if you have a gift… Well, Peterson says that creatives who don’t create die. Either physically or mentally, either fast or slow, but they die. So, that too, is not self indulgence.

And staying healthy enough to create is essential.

Stop beating yourself, berating yourself and hating yourself and then demanding top performance.

You’re not a rented mule.

No one is asking you to indulge in extravagant self-love, but give yourself a chance, okay? The rest of us will thank you.

Or perhaps this should be called “They rejected our reality and substituted their own.”

Nah, I’ll stand by my title.

My grandmother, who was sane as a brick, became curiously credulous in her old age, that is after the grandchildren had married and moved out of the village and her house was no longer the nerve center of the family.

There was nothing wrong with her brain. Her brain worked as well as it ever had. If you told her a girl down the street had given birth to a snake, she’d first laugh at you, then march down the street, knock at the girl’s door, and tell her what was being said.

But she believed the most absurd tales from… well…. tabloids, which she fell into reading because they appeared in the grocery store and she was bored. And at that, by the way, her old, faithfully subscribed Catholic newsrag wasn’t any better, though it ran to the “more believable to a lady who had never consciously encountered anyone so exotic as an atheist.”

So when I came to tea, she’d tell me how some girl in Lisbon had given birth to snakes. And how an atheist who was giving birth demanded the cross be removed from over the hospital bed, because she didn’t want her baby to see it. And then her baby was born blind.

Now if you’d asked grandma if G-d was the kind of being to strike a baby blind because his/her mom was an atheist, she’d be horrified at the notion. And if one of her grandkids had declared him or herself an atheist (I’m fairly sure my brother was close to, back then. I haven’t inquired of the state of his soul) she would have been chagrined, and tut tutted and prayed for him or her. But she would not for a minute wish that said grandchild have blind children.

The problem was that these things in the newspapers came with a dual nature: First, they were not quite real, because they weren’t about people she knew. How was she to say what some heathen in Lisbon did? Or whether such strange creatures, hundreds of miles away, could or did give birth to snakes? And obviously atheists in foreign parts wouldn’t be like our atheists, even if we had any, which she had no direct knowledge of.

Second, surely they wouldn’t print it in the paper if it weren’t true.

So I shut up, and drank tea with her, and nodded at her stories, then turned the conversation to the cats and the dog, and what she was doing in the garden. She’d also tell me about neighbors whose names I could never remember. (Seriously, if I met you at a con, it takes three times of telling me you name for me to remember your face with the name. Half the time I remember the name and have a pleasant association, but can’t remember the name. Speaking of, would the lady who gave me the knit minion cup owners email me? I’d like to send you something, because those have brought us so much joy.) In those opinions she was, again, sane as a brick, and it all made sense.

I find myself, now, going the same dance with my mother, though I’ll note only since the Covidiocy. Having been locked up and deprived of her network of continuous reality check, she fell headlong for Fauci’s folly. There is no point even arguing with her that there was never a need for all the crazy measures, much less than that the measures were countraproductive. It’s all “but you’re the only one saying that” and “what makes you think you’re smarter than the experts?” and such. This from the woman who withstood full on socialist propaganda and laughed at it.

But these expert opinions come from America, where modernity and medicine came from. And the only person she has to reality-check is my brother, who has believed every technocratic piece of bull excreta to come his way since he fell headlong for Al Gore’s Earth in the ballance, or whatever his book was. (And worse, he thought that Al Gore was so “smart” mostly because the book was beautiful written. The translator must have been amazing it’s all I have to say.)

And this is the problem. In our society, no one can actually go out and see what’s happening everywhere for themselves. They might be sane as bricks, but they don’t know any of those Trump voters, and lord only knows they might all be demon-worshiping white nationalists, even the ones that are black.

That’s why I was dismayed yesterday when reading the New Neo’s dispirited post about how leftists make Trump voters into horrible “things”.

Some of the comments on her post were about national divorce, but frankly, that’s stupid as rocks and I apologize to rocks. The national interests aren’t neatly divided along lines that make any sense on the map. Apologists for this loopy idea will say “I know it will be difficult.” Really, do you? Because I bet you that you don’t.

Not only aren’t the left concentrated on any particular region, (and no, we don’t even know about the big cities, because the margin of fraud is huge there) but it’s mostly confined to people who watch and believe TV. Or NPR. Or whatever the heck used to be “respectable modes of information,” up to and including the New York Times.

Now, my parents are in another country, because I moved away, but I’m sure most of you aren’t exactly eager to split the sheets and send the 80 year olds to live in foreign parts, right? Or, and I have a number of friends like this, they only get their info from quick TV summaries, in between doing whatever they’re obsessive about doing for a living.

And the real left, as such, is at most 10% of the nation. And frankly most of them have issues. Are you really going to give them half the land? HOW? And WHY?

The problem is not the people. The problem is that we’re at this awkward mental space, where — because the left not only used to dominate discourse, but has been cancelling people financially and professionally for decades — a certain percentage of the country, many of them, but not all old, are listening exclusively to news that might as well come from a parallel universe.

I used to know, because when they’re all around you, it’s important to know, the left’s means of taking over a country and it always started with “control mass media.” Which they did by the thirties or so, in the US.

It wasn’t even that they were exclusively US left at the time, but that at the time all parties in the US were “progressives.” It started before FDR, even if FDR made it permanent on the left, and proved very adept at corrupting all our institutions. But all the journalists, and every “educated” person was progressive for the same reason Heinlein was progressive initially. Because they equated centralized, top down government with “progress” — i.e. with having flush toilets, and real medical care, the same reason that Britishers are very fond of their health service. It came in at the same time as modern medicine, so the “progress was visible.”

And from there — because the visions of the future being sold in schools tilted more and more left — we ended up with news wholly dominated by Marxism.

Which means the reporters can’t even SEE the truth, much less report it. So what they’re reporting is all about those weird Trump voters — of which they don’t know any, because no Trump voter in their midst dares admit it on penalty of never working in journalism again — and the snakes they give birth to.

That ultimately is the big problem. They made us go silent, are no sure we don’t exist, and spend their time making up outrageous lies about us.

I have friends who fall into the “too busy to get anything but the news at ten” or whatever, and they of course think that Russia put Trump in power, etc. etc. etc. And that we’re doing great under Drooling Joe. While there might be some cognitive dissonance with groceries and gas prices, they really are too busy to pay much attention, and the short term explanations distract them.

They know I keep this blog. If they thought about it for a minute, or even dared read this blog (they don’t, because it’s obviously crazy. Or as a former friend so charmingly put it “She’s gone peculiar these last few years.” Yes, she’s British.) they’d know I’m one of those people who supposedly give birth to snakes.

I’ve told them to their faces that I voted for Trump (the first time under severe protest, but it was better than the alternative, as we’re seeing.) I have told them Marxism is a crazy cult, and that the sky and the stars will pass away before a comma in the founding documents becomes irrelevant. And I swear they forget it the minute they walk away. I mean, I’m their friend, they know I’m not stupid, so I can’t possibly give birth to snakes, like those people they hear about on the news. (I guess it’s easier if you were a casual con friend to just think I’ve gone peculiar.)

We don’t need a national divorce. We already have that. We’re a separated couple, sharing the same house, avoiding each other at every chance and interpreting the noises we hear as being something exciting like rains of spiders or giving birth to snakes, when really the ex just slipped on a pool of cat vomit, and is now thudding around the house in a cast.

Now, this is not complete, of course, because we know what they do. It’s more like they avoid seeing us, but keep dancing up and down the stairs naked where we can’t avoid seeing them. So we know they didn’t give birth to snakes. OTOH we assume there’s a lot more of them than there is, because they holler about snakes so much. (Yes, I DO know the images I’m putting in your head. You will surely deal.)

Meanwhile, we’re limping around with our cast, and they’re going “Ahah, I knew it. They’re giving birth to white nationalist snakes” and they have all these words they’re phobic about without having any clue what they mean. Like “nationalist” which means you must be fascist, because well…. national socialists. And you want to shake them till their teeth come out and say “DUDE I’m a patriotic Libertarian. No socialism here.”

And in a way, of course that’s what they need. Only the ones who do it first, who cross over the house, and shake their cast in the crazy person’s face and say “What the hell are you gibbering about you political nudist? I’m one of those people you’re so terrified of, and you’re a non-fracking idiot, you mental reject” are going to pay an immense price, as we’ve been paying for generations.

Because the full force of demonization is brought to bear on those that refuse to be written out of existence. The left can’t help do it. They need to keep their worldview intact, because it’s become the center of their being.

So the first few who tell them who they are make it stick, are going to be painted with the “gives birth to snakes” brush. We’ve seen it happen.

Which makes it a perilous endeavor for those of us in overtaken fields, who want to make a living.

The problem — for the left — being that they have created this …. ersatz cone of silence, where they can pretend we don’t exist. And therefore they think we’re few, rare and old. And they’re safe.

But breaking the fire alarm doesn’t mean you won’t have a house fire. What they’re doing to the economy is the equivalent of running around with a can of gasoline and a box of matches.

People can’t ignore the fact they’re having trouble feeding the family. They might not say anything, but the anger and the number of restive “against the people in power” people keeps growing.

Growing well beyond what I expected because the number of people who — in the face of unprecedented propaganda, and despite some doubts over his endorsing lockdowns — hunched their shoulders and went and voted for Trump so much that the left had to cheat at the last minute, in front of G-d and everybody, way beyond their already massive planned cheating, was astonishing even to me.

And there probably are more ready to do it now.

Which is very like what led to the Romanian Christmas gift. Quietly, behind the backs of officialdom, people had come to hate the regime like ravening fire. It just wasn’t worth their lives to say it, before they realized EVERYONE hated the regime. Not only weren’t they alone, almost everyone was with them.

There will be a moment like that here. Perhaps very soon. We can almost see it coming.

Heck, at this point we can almost smell it.

But they can’t. We’re still, to them, those weird people that give birth to snakes.

In the end we win, they lose. Pray G-d, if you believe in Him that when the time comes we have the fortitude not to beat them to death with our cast while screaming “Does it look to you like we give birth to snakes, you dumb f*ck.”

And pray really hard that a lot of them wake before that moment. Because quite a few are dear friends or even relatives, and not into the evil so much, as hypnotized into thinking evil is good. And anyway, Trump voters are those people far away who give birth to snakes.

They’re not stupid, and they’re not evil, even if they’re acting as both. Pray G-d they have a Road to Damascus moment and wake up, before it’s too late.

Heck, pray even if you don’t believe. Because at this point it’s our only hope, our only barrier on the way to having to do things that will damage us for the rest of our days, and scar the republic possibly more than ACW did.

Let’s hope Bismark was right and “God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America.”

Because the alternative is very very ugly. And it might be needed. May G-d have mercy on our souls.

In Kate Paulk’s Con Vampire series, she has the forces of evil gather at science fiction conventions.

Now, part of that is necessity of the set up. Her character is a vampire who hangs out at science fiction conventions because there really is no natural light inside the hotels, as long as he’s careful, and it beats sleeping all day and wandering the empty streets at night.

So, of course, the big bad will also have to be at the cons.

But she has a good explanation nonetheless (because she is a good writer.) And that is that SF in particular gathers most of the Odds and that the Odds dream the future for the normal people who can’t conceptualize it, and you break the back of the optimists in the world.

Now, if this were true, she’d be 30 years too late, at least. At that, it’s got better with indie, and of course, Baen was always a haven of relatively sane science fiction.

I don’t know about you but I remember screaming something like “I’m so tired of rusty futures” in the late 80s.

Of course, by the nineties, I was getting it both directions: the books I bought all assumed dire post-apocalypse or dystopia ahead. And the writers’ groups were even sillier. People were writing characters in 2010 having to continuously wear masks outside because of the pollution. And meanwhile I was screaming “WHAT POLLUTION? Y’all are way cleaner than Europe.”

Or it was 20 years in the future and everyone was living under underpasses and only owned a shirt. I kept looking back and trying to figure out when the bomb had hit EVERYWHERE, because dudes, even if we have a major crash ahead — and we do — our material wealth isn’t going to VANISH.

You’re not going to be in the situation I was in, as a kid, where our family owned ONE SHARP KNIFE. It had been sharpened so often it was almost as thin as paper, but mom used it for everything nonethless, because knives were EXPENSIVE.

You’re not going to be saving pins and needles like gold, and owning a limited number, because most of us have thousands in the house. We could subdivide twice and it still wouldn’t be scarce.

You’re not going to have people living in used container boxes. Not unless they want to. Because I don’t care what they told you, but there isn’t a massive overpopulation crisis that will require a bazillion new houses built faster than we can accommodate. Not for 20 years or so. In fact, with commercial buildings becoming less needed we’re more at risk for ghost towns.

And yet, a recent TV series had people in 2030 cramming two to a shipping container.

You see, the problem is that Kate was right. Most people can’t project the future at all. Instead, they get the idea of what the future is from things they catch in the air, which in turn is things that Odds and Futurists (BIRM) think are coming, and which pervade Science Fiction.

(In trad pub, except Baen, they enforced this, too. Which is why I never sold science fiction elsewhere. “This can’t be the future. There’s no overpopulation.” “What about the depletion of resources? They’d all be poor” or “It can’t be set 500 years in the future. If there are still humans we won’t even look the same.”)

Anyway, so–

The crazy internationalist agenda, demanding we eat the bugs, trying to cram us into giant non-funtional megalopolises, wanting us to use electrical everything because “we’re running out of oil?”

This is the science fiction of the seventies and eighties coming through. And because it was based on a bunch of popular, very badly figured out “non-fiction” they piously believe we have too many people, and we’re running out of everything, and they want us to live the future they were promised.

I suggest you hoist middle fingers aloft, and give it to them good and hard.

They were sold a lie! The future is more prosperous than they can dream.

We’re Americans. We come from the future, and we’re going back there.

Yeah, yeah there’s going to be a little inconvenient contraction for a little while, and we might have to eat the bread the devil kneaded for a couple/ten years.

But in the end, America will be prosperous again. And we’re going to the stars. If nothing else to spite everyone who doesn’t want us to. Because we’re G-d’s own bastard children, and we don’t recognize the authority of these so called experts.

We can dream our own futures, thank you so much. And we’re going to dream they bright and shiny and prosperous.

Let’s leave the rust in the past and embrace the amazing future.

Ad Astra per Aspera!

Let’s go.

*I don’t normally echo posts here from Mad genius Club, because a substantial number of you read both. But I have a feeling this one is somehow important to echo. And it explains some of the stuff that’s been going on. – SAH*

The price for the gift is to exert the gift.

Have you ever realized that most of the depictions of magic in fiction are a decent description of the writer gift?

I mean, it should be no surprise to anyone, right? What else are we writers going to talk of? What else will we equate with magic?

Perhaps that’s not true — I don’t know — of writers who aren’t what we call “gateway” writers. I hear — but it’s hard to know for sure, you know, because fiction writers lie. It’s kind of what they do — that there are writers out there who function solely on the rational side of the brain. I have heard them in panels, on blogs, even in my own writers group, assure me that they come up with the plot, rationally, and rationally cast characters for it, and rationally pen every single word.

Maybe they do. I’m almost sure that is true for some of them, because I’ve read their books, and they are utterly and completely lifeless. Interesting intellectual exercises.

Sometimes, if the premise is interesting enough, they will carry you through. But you won’t say “Oh, I would love to meet so and so in that book.” You don’t remember someone’s passion or sacrifice. You don’t… The book is not about real people.

Don’t get me wrong, it can be diverting, but you come away detached.

… For some of us it’s not like that. And the choice is never between writing or doing something more productive with our time.

We can pretend. Oh, boy, we can pretend like anything. Catch me in a crowd of “we’re all professionals here” and I will tell you I can write or not write. And that if writing stops paying I’ll walk away and go do something else.

But you know? I lie for a living.

Writing is… Something I do, because I need to do it.

It is also something at which I was always good, as far back as I can remember, or at least since I started writing at six.

Am I saying I was publishable at six? Oh, dear Lord, no. Most of my writing then was, to be honest, bad fanfic (of Enid Blyton.)

The thing is, it was better than I had any right to be. I hadn’t done the work. I had no idea what I was doing. And yet… there was life there.

I no longer have those writings. Whichever remain have probably long since been eaten by rats in the family’s outbuildings. Heck, I no longer have my first novels written in the US. They were written in media I can no longer read. And that’s probably a mercy, because the current me, the person who actually knows how to tell a story, cringes and wants to hide at the things I do have. The clumsy, hasty introductions, the dramatic scenes that aren’t, and most of all, the stories that are utterly incomprehensible unless you are also in my head.

The weird thing in those, and from what my husband tells me — I don’t know — in my earliest novel written in English is the grace notes, and the things I was given for free: the characters that live on the briefest of descriptions, the emotions that shine through, the urgency, the… life.

I can see it, even through the cringy bits.

This was not something I learned. It might be something I can’t learn.

Sarah, how do you write characters? Well, they are in my head, and they talk to me. Not that I hear them, physically (Oh, dear Lord, trust me, this might make me a rarity among … for lack of a better term “gateway writers.”) but I feel them there. I know who they are. I know what they do in their scenes that aren’t in the novel. I know what matters to them, what’s in their heads when they wake up. I know them, either as close friends, or as the guys down the street. They’re themselves.

And that comes across.

The learning? The craft?

Yeah, you should learn that, but that is not the inexplicable gift. The craft is what tells you what scenes to show — even when they upset your characters (rolls eyes to the inside of head. Shut you. I don’t want to hear it.) — craft and practice are essential. Even the most gifted of artists is a mess without the craft side. And if you study and practice enough, the craft becomes part of the gift.

Look, think of the gift as fire you are given. It is just fire — and if you let it run wild, it will consume you, and leave nothing to show for it, but ash — and there’s nothing amazing in it. Except that you have it, without knowing how to make it. You were touched by the divine fire, and life pours out to your stories, but if the stories suck, it’s a waste.

So you study and work, and if you’re lucky and apply yourself, and sometimes rewrite and re-shape the fire, you have an immortal phoenix, shining through the centuries for all others. (Which btw, passes through being entertaining. Because nothing that people fail to love lives forever.)

The problem is that the price of the gift is to use the gift.

And the magic in most fantasy books warns of the downfall. There are many ways of killing the fire, the life in your fiction, the passion, the strength of your writing thing.

I always liked Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar description of ripping your magic channels through by doing something you shouldn’t be able to do, and being left with a hurt/half-dead magic. Because that’s what it fell like when I pushed through a book I had to write, but which I didn’t want to. Forcing the gift into it left me sore and tired, and wondering if it would ever come back.

Yes, I do know. The working artist must have schedules and produce regularly. I’m not telling you otherwise. But I think there’s ways around it.

Usually the way I came back from that was to take a few months, read my old stuff, pick up an old thread, write some fun stuff.

Then came the year of homeschooling and writing six books, none of which I wanted to write for various reasons. That was fifteen years ago, and I forced it through.

Here I should explain that teaching, any teaching, pulls from the same place as writing.

That left me… dead. I described my writing after as “arid.” The grace notes, the fun stuff that just falls in wouldn’t. I’d have to reach for it, struggle.

Oh, there were exceptions. A Few Good Men came through, against my rational wish not to write it. (Look, it’s space opera, about a future USAian revolution, with gay male leads, and the world’s weirdest romance, for various reasons.) But it wanted out, and I wrote it in two weeks (if you count the six days I took off for urgent reasons.) Or I wrote it in a week and a day.

My autoimmune was acting up, and I felt like hell, but each day that week and a day I got up and wrote almost 20k words, and I wasn’t tired. I was flying.

And the Dyce books started out as drudgery, but they had a song of their own, and they ripped through me in about 3 days each. (Hush you.)

But in between books the recovery time was longer. And anything that didn’t have a force of its own became harder to write. A short story could take me two weeks, suddenly. And novels were started and floundered, which is why I have about twenty of them half written.

Forcing myself to finish one, just made me silent for months.

Now, some of this, don’t mistake me, was physical. Each of the last …. oh, 20 years in Colorado, my auto-immune has been worse, and my thought more muddled. I wasn’t sleeping, and I wasn’t functioning properly, and any treatment was a brief patch over the abyss.

…. I thought it was getting old. I knew some of it was burnout. The complete disproportion between how much I loved or worked on a book, and the result it achieved. My inability to influence cover or marketing, or …. any of it. And then my doctor told me that I was actually suffering adverse effects of altitude. Which led to trying to get the heck out of dodge fast.

(Despite everything that has happened politically, and everything I don’t like about my poor, beleaguered, beloved Colorado, I don’t think I’d ever have left without that. A part of my heart, a large one, will forever remain in the Rocky Mountains.)

I’d already started trying to do stuff for the burnout. Small wins pull you out of that, and the fact Another Rhodes sold amazingly was part of that, as was how well Barbarella did.

And three weeks ago I wrote a short story for LawDog’s Saints of Malta Antholoy, and yeah, it took forever, but it took forever, because I’d forgotten what it was like to have a voice come through. I’d forgotten and didn’t trust the voice that tried to sing through me, like an expert player through a disused harp. And so the poor story squeezed through backwards and sideways. The first thing I got was the last paragraph, and had to fumble in the dark, until I figured that out, and then had to TRUST the voice screaming to come out.

I don’t scruple to say that might be the best story I’ve written in the last 7 years at least.

And then, suddenly, I could feel it, the old flame struggling back to life.

… I no longer remembered what it tasted like. It was like… trying to speak a tongue in which I was once fluent but no longer really remembered.

I told a friend it felt like French. I used to be fluent in French and speak it without hesitation, think in it, as I think in English.

Now I can’t. I know the words. They’re there, in my head, but I don’t TRUST them, and so I never say them. I understand French. I just am afraid to speak it.

And that’s what was happening both in writing that story in finishing Bowl of Red (ALMOST , truly, almost. It’s been more mundane things that stopped it yesterday and today.)

I’m now, slowly, haltingly, learning the language of creation again. Letting the writing thing come through.

And I’m glad I got there before I read the last thing I tried to write before getting out of Colorado. It is a half finished novel, and I looked at it the other day. And I was scared out of my wits.

It was dead. Not bad, as craft, mind. But dead. LIFELESS. There’s nothing there. It’s a hunk of dead words. I can redo it, but I’ll have to start from page one and recast it.

I’d never ever ever have read anything of mine that was so devoid of life. I didn’t know I could write stuff that dead.

So… How did I ALMOST kill my writing thing?

I’m starting to get glimmers of that.

You can’t kill a writing thing by ignoring it. Eventually it seizes control and makes you write it.

But you can kill it by forcing it. By forcing it to write what it doesn’t want to, what it blatantly despises. (Note there are three books of mine I’ll never re-issue. Not unless substantially rewritten.) By forcing it again and again over and over to write and put life in what it doesn’t want to write or put life into.

Over and over again. Don’t play. Don’t enjoy it. Don’t give it time to recover. Plunge again and again into the battle, with your ever more battered little fire, till it’s all just ashes and nothing.

Heck, for all I know my physical issues in some part at least are part of this.

Because writing is part of who I am, woven through my being. And the price of the gift is to use it. But … not to abuse it.

So, does this mean I’ll write less?

No. I think I’ve figured what “re animates the embers.” I am going back to what I used to do. I read the old stuff. I find the threads that work. And I write experimental things I’m not sure will work, but feed my soul.

I try new things. I go where the life is, and stay there a bit. Even if sometimes I still have to force the harp to sing, when it wants to run off and catch butterflies.

I am now planning for built in periods of rest. Not rest in silence, but rest in letting the fire have its way a little, feed a little.

So it can grow anew.

It’s all still very fragile and tentative, as I grope my way back to where I was 15 years ago.

But two things I know: The price of the gift is to use it.

And: You must let the gift be its best and do the impossible now and then, or it dies off.

So. This is how I almost killed my writing thing.

And how the fragile, bloodied, almost dead thing is at last stirring anew.

Okay, I’m actually late as f*ck, and this is under the heading of “I’m alive, worry not.”

So, I went to bed last night with 10k words remaining on the (yeah, definitely it is) cursed novel, thinking I’d get up today early and finish.

Except autoimmune struck HARD as soon as I lay down. I didn’t wake up till 10:45, and I’m one of those people who considers getting up at 7 am “late.”

And then we had an appointment at noon.Which ran late, because I was talking to keep myself awake. I just got home. I still need to finish the novel.

I’m not putting up a guest post, because it wouldn’t be fair to the writers. I might take an hour nap before I finish. BUT I have to finish. TODAY.

So, to amuse you, below are the covers for the reissue of the first three DST books. DST will go up, probably by the weekend.

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 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 GAYL SIEGEL: Blood Stained: A Madalyn Mitchell Mystery.

Maddy mused abstractedly in the back of her mind. What if one of the sweet, kind people she knew were someone else on the inside—someone capable of murder?
Madalyn Mitchell is the contented wife of a Lutheran pastor in a quiet rural Iowa town. Suddenly her world is turned upside down when the body of a murdered man is found in the city park. Maddy follows clues to identity of the murderer, motivated by the desire to return to her safe, calm existence. But can life ever return to normal?

BY EDMOND HAMILTON, FROM D. JASON FLEMING: Outside the Universe (Annotated): The Interstellar Patrol, Volume 2: The classic space opera galaxy invasion novel!

A colossal novel about outer space — three universes in a desperate fight to the death!

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

BY ROBERT J. HORTON, FROM D. JASON FLEMING: Three Riders (Annotated): a pulp western omnibus

iktaPOP Media proudly presents three classic westerns by pulp author Robert J. Horton!

Rider o’ the Stars

When he was hired on to the Diamond H Ranch, the stranger gave his name as Dane. After seeing his skill with rope and gun folks started calling him “Lightning Dane”.

Was he a gunman? An outlaw? Why was he here? Nobody knew except Dane himself. And he wasn’t talking.

The Prairie Shrine

Annalee Bronson and her mother left everything behind when her father died, setting out to homestead in the prairielands of Montana. But being from the east, they simply don’t have the experience to cope with all the circumstances they find themselves caught up in.

Luckily, prairie poet and loafer Andy Sawtelle and mysterious gunman Silent Scott are more than willing to lend a helping hand.

The Man of the Desert

It starts with a stampede, and never lets up from there!

    This iktaPOP Media omnibus includes introductions by indie editor and author D. Jason Fleming putting the book into historical and genre context.

FROM CLAYTON BARNETT: A Texas Naval Affair

At eighteen, Allen Rupert’s criminal past caught up with him and he faces a choice of military or prison. To get as far from central Texas as possible, he joins the navy but spends half of his time in the brig.

Recognizing Allen’s mechanical skill, he’s trained as a machinist and assigned to the small corvette Liberty, patrolling the Gulf of Mexico. During an ASW drill, Allen defuses a torpedo that went live in its tube, and is summoned to the bridge. There, Acting Captain Ryland Rigó commends him for his good work.

For the first time in his life, Allen sees someone look at him with respect. Weeks later, ashore, he invites her to lunch. To his utter shock, she accepts.

Thinking her just another girl, Allen is shaken to his core to find himself swept into a maelstrom of domestic politics, international intrigue, and the plots and plans of Demi-humans and Machines. All while trying to fix his broken life and attain the only thing he wants: Ryland.

FROM SABRINA CHASE: The Last Mage Guardian (Guardian’s Compact Book 1)

Her great-uncle, the mage Oron, bequeathed to her his oak-shaded chateau and a debt of magical honor. But in a world where women do not do magic, Miss Ardhuin Andrews must hide her magical talents. How can she repay the debt? When Oron’s enemies attack, how can she survive? Political intrigue, duty, and echoes of an old war not truly ended combine to create a smoldering crisis in a world where magic and science coexist.

FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN: Familiar Tales

Smiley Lorraine: Wolverine. Rosie Jones: 100-lb. Skunk. Morgana Lorraine: Witch with Editorial Problems.

Welcome to a world where Familiars choose magic workers, and a few others, as their partners. A world of adventure, tax-deductions, bad publisher tricks, and odd veterinary clinics, where wolverines wear glasses and iguanas sing along with the radio—badly—while casting spells and keeping their chosen humans out of mischief.

Or try to.

(Five short-stories.)

BY DAVE FREER: Joy Cometh With The Mourning: A Reverend Joy Mystery

Reverend Joy Norton is a timid city girl, and she’s never been the primary priest in any parish. When her bishop sends her out to a remote back-country church, she doubts both her ability and her suitability. Those doubts grow when she hears of the mysterious death of her predecessor. But from the first encounter with her congregation — having her little car rescued from a muddy ditch, she finds herself deeply involved with her parishioners and touched by their qualities and eccentricities. Which makes it worse for her to think that one of the people she’s coming to care for murdered the previous priest…

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: POSSESSIVE

*Sorry guys. I’m still trying to finish the novel, and there’s other stuff happening that is making life confusing. Not bad but confusing. Thanks to everyone who is supporting this novel-finishing effort by sending me (GOOD) guest posts. You guys are the best- SAH*

It’s Mostly About the Money A Guest Post By Confutus

A couple of years ago on the Arizona Ballot, there was a voter initiative dealing with some school choice matter. As I looked through it, trying to evaluate the pro and con arguments, I noticed something interesting.  The con arguments, which were full of dire warnings about the fate of the public education system if this initiative passed, were chiefly authored by a teacher’s union here, a school board there, the employees of a school district somewhere else.  In Arizona, tax money for the schools is doled out mostly on the basis of enrollment; so much per student. Ohoh, I thought, if students leave the public schools for some kind of private education, it’s a direct hit to their income. So, without peering into my crystal ball to predict the future, I could at least predict who would oppose the measure and who would support it. 

Higher Education? Likewise. Professors and researchers must not only publish or perish, but they must bring in grant money or other funding to the department to finance their research.  Although the ideal of dispassionate, disinterested searchers for knowledge who freely exchange views is a wonderful myth, it is often exactly a myth. More often, it’s “he who pays the piper calls the tune” when tenure and reputation are on the line. In scientific disputes, if you can’t follow the science, follow the money. And no, it isn’t the oil companies that generate most of it.

It works the same way in religion. Whether it was Christians versus Jews in the 1^st century, or Christians versus Roman Imperial worship, Catholics versus Orthodox, or Protestants versus Catholics in the Reformation, the most important arguments, wonderful and marvelous though they may have been, were not theological. The bloodiest battles were about money flow to and through temples and churches and who would control it. Even today, poaching of parishioners who pay the pastors is likely to result in sectarian animosity.

What about business?  But of course, and quite openly. Businesses work to maintain or grow market share and stifle the competition. Some economics consider this heathy provided there is opportunity for entry into the market, but the business that is losing customers to the competition may have a decidedly different point of view.  Our hostess pointed out that without intending to, the campaign to restore popular taste to Science Fiction became a threat to the incomes of those who were looking more for literary recognition.

News coverage? Same. Speaking of newspapers, although some organizations try to enforce a separation between the advertising division and the news division, if no one reads the paper, they usually don’t read the ads, either. The sensational gets the most eyes.  Well, there are the bargain shoppers who read only the ads and coupons, but the newspaper still gets paid. The funding model has shifted from column inches of print to internet clicks, but the fact that the news is revenue driven hasn’t changed.  TV and radio are variants of the same thing: No viewers or listeners, no ad sales, but it’s the ads, not the news, that pay the bills.

What about governments? If one considers voters as a form of currency, it works there too. Political parties and candidates succeed or fail according to how many votes they can attract.

More important than this, though, is publicity. I observed way back in high school student government elections that usually the person with the most name recognition won, regardless of qualifications. That meant that the person with the largest, most numerous, or eye-catching signs and slogans did the best.  Once I graduated from high school, the same pattern appeared. In serious adult elections, the wealth of a campaign is determined by the number of donors and patrons the candidate can gather. There’s a snowball effect: The more one has, the more one can get. Candidates form entire networks of supporters.  In turn, publicity, in the form of advertising, can usually be bought.  Sadly and cynically, it’s seldom the best qualified who win elections. It’s those with the broadest network of supporters and the deepest pockets. It doesn’t always happen that way: A hardworking candidate with a good public face, and lots of luck, can occasionally overturn an incumbent with deep pockets but a bad reputation. But that’s the way to bet. Longstanding political observers and consultants know all this, of course, and talk about it much more than they do public issues.   

The information on whether a person is a good representative is probably best determined by how they vote on matters of public record. This is public information. However, it will not be spoon-fed to anyone.  A candidate is most likely to boast about a few public highlights (and, of course, they will remain silent about any negatives in their own record, while their opponents trumpet them to the skies.) Good information is mostly dry and boring and it is necessary to dig for it. 

And this is before we even mention government agency turf wars and who gets how much of the budget and whether it is more or less than last year’s.

An author I used to follow once claimed that if you overwatered an education system with money, you grew, not teachers, but bureaucrats.  It is no accident that the growth of the Federal Bureaucracy can be traced in large measure to 1913 and the 16^th Amendment which allowed the income tax.

It is considered crass to point out that those who dole out money from the public treasury are essentially buying votes, but in effect, that is exactly what they are doing. Republicans and Democrats both do this: They just have different favorite constituent groups.  It appears that the Democrats have slightly the more numerous constituents, who are notably concentrated in the larger cities where the largest media markets are. This is probably not coincidence.

One of the greatest sources of dismay among political conservatives is the consistent failure of the Republican party to make any significant check on the bureaucratic state. Reagan tried and couldn’t do it. Newt Gingrich, in Congress, probably came closest to success, and Clinton then claimed credit for balancing the budget.  Neither President Bush tried very hard. Donald Trump threatened the bureaucratic state but was too embattled and too often betrayed by his nominal subordinates and appointees to accomplish much. A balanced federal budget was not something he ever promised.  The Democrat party…pfft. Tax and spend is their lifeblood.

At this point, I’m not sure the system can be saved. The rot has gone too deep and too far. The political will for repairs has never been there, and too many people are captive to and dependent on the system.  I am absolutely not calling for revolution or joining HeadsOnPikes (other than metaphorically…I care nothing for federal careers). Rather, I expect the whole thing, from Social Security through the Federal Reserve all the way to the UN, NATO, and the EU to come crashing down of its own unsupported weight. The elderly and the poor, those without community or family, will be hardest hit.  The only thing to be done in that case is to rebuild on a solid foundation.  Nevertheless, while the system remains, I want to fight the good fight to delay or mitigate the collapse.

About the only thing in nature that can compare to a bureaucrat addicted to tax money is a drug addict, who will notoriously do anything…anything…for another fix. Once again, our hostess can bear personal witness at how utter vicious and ugly people can become when their income is threatened. Lies and character assassination and attempted character assassination are to be expected.  As a rule, the nastier, more acrimonious and less logical a fight is, the more likely it is that money is somewhere involved. 

There are few things that raise the passions more than fights about money, as many a marriage counselor could probably testify. It’s only natural that government employees fight to protect their regular paycheck, benefit packages, and retirement accounts. It’s considered somewhat gauche to talk about it openly and rude to ask about it. Usually, in a dispute, the non-monetary arguments will be advanced first.   And it isn’t all about money. Sometimes, there are genuinely more important things, and on occasion, people do act against their own financial interest.  But those are exceptions, not the rule.

The next time you hear someone Screaming Bloody Freaking Murder to High Heaven about Dire Consequences of this or that, especially if that someone is in government, I recommend wax in the ears, an infusion of steel in the spine, and a close look at cold, heartless money, because that’s usually what it’s really about.