I want to start this by being very clear: You are entirely entitled to not like stuff produced by AI. You’re even allowed to not like stuff you SUSPECT was produced by AI even if the “markers” you think you are seeing are completely insane. Because of course taste can’t be argued.

But I hope to get you to think about what you think you’re seeing, and what is happening right now in the culture re: AI.

Because you can do whatever you want and, frankly, with the readership of this blog, there is no point trying to get you to act any way you don’t want to, but I’d prefer you do it after careful examination of why you’re doing things and consider some stuff.

First of all, my position on AI: If AI is to be used, in science or art or whatever the heck you want to use it at, it should be used by people who are already somewhat above merely “competent.” Or to quote my husband, “Don’t treat AI like an infallible expert, treat it as a trainee who is a little naive and very unsure about the real world.” I.e. Ai is great for doing what I call the “donkey work” — whatever portion of the work it is you’re least fond of — and it should be extensively checked.

This is why I will not use AI to write: That’s the part I enjoy. The part I don’t enjoy? Well, I’m not using AI for that either because I’m not going to upload my entire novel up and ask it to edit and make sure I have all the ages right and all that. (I have an Amy B. for that!) Because no. I could maybe if I spun up a private instance of AI, but I’m about as likely to do that as I am to fly.

That said… If I could do it, and had, you know, copious spare time to do it in, that’s what I would use AI for. “Normalize every time character x is referred to so that his name is spelled with an N not an xyz.” “Highlight every use of the word “primarily” in my novel. That type of thing. The donkey work. The kind of thing that has me going through page after page after page looking for a needle in a haystack and falling asleep. The kind of work I’d give a trainee, if I had a trainee.

Now, yes, I am somewhat aware that I am weird for a writer. Most people at least in traditional publishing prefer having written to writing. Would it be possible for a writer in that position to have AI write a first draft and then they go over it with a fine tooth comb which is the part they like. Sure. Provided they REALLY like writing prompts, because I’ve never tried it, but if writing AI is like art AI it will do truly bizarre things if your prompt is scientifically clear. (Like yesterday, instead of “woman dancing with her shadow” for the MGC post, I typoed “woman dancing with her sharow.” Look, act of cat. He jumped on my boobs, fingers went wrong. The results were…. weird enough that I looked at the prompt. really looked.) But ALSO the prompt, at least for, say, animating images, needs to be so specific that it’s like making a contract with the fey. You know what I mean. “Does this word have more than one meaning, no matter how far fetched the second? How do I disambiguate?” I’m sure it’s possible to do it. In fact I suspect some fanficcers in JAFF are already doing it, and some are good enough even I don’t detect it. But quite frankly I’m breaking into a sweat just thinking about writing something clear for writing an entire chapter, say.

And then you’d need to edit edit edit. Which presumes you know what good writing is, and can edit it so that you make the story GOOD. Not my favorite part of the writing life.

Anyway, that’s my position on AI right now. If I were ever to use AI it would be in the way I’d use a trainee, if I could hire one at $2 an hour without breaking the law. That’s me.

But obviously there are people who are better at it, or have a better relationship with detail editing.

Which brings us to AI, the identifying of, and liking or not liking.

Lately I’ve become very afraid that I’m an AI. Look, if I read one more Facebook post, confidently identifying “AI trash” and the “markers” are stuff like “uses m dashes or semi-colons” I am going to do that end of story that goes “Then I too must be–” (My brain has gone blank on what the story is, but I’m sure one of you will know.) Heck, Heinlein must be, and he wrote before AI was invented. That’s how ahead of his time he was. I always wonder how to explain to people that AI uses those because they were trained on writers who use those.

Yes, there are tells, but those are usually things like: it doesn’t work like that in the real world, and couldn’t work like that in the real world. Yes, this means you’re at risk of identifying college students as being AI. But some of the mistakes hinge on being written by something that doesn’t have a body. One of the most disturbing mistakes I’ve found on JAFF is people moving miles away suddenly and inexplicably without even a wave at “they readied the carriage.” Even I in a fugue state of coffee and lack of sleep am not that bad at remembering where last I left my character. Also, there is a tendency to repeat a crucial plot point over and over, as though the writer has Alzheimers.

Still, what upsets me most about the “oh this is AI” missidentification and stuff like “Prove you wrote it” is the immediate “Oh, this is AI trash” followed by many, may intimations that they hate it, hate it, hate it. Then there are the people hiring artists who demand the artists draw in front of them.

And what that does is make the back of my head go “Why?”

Look, I know the songs produced by Suno, say, lack a certain expression, and it makes perfect sense for people like my younger DIL to dislike it. They will point out at various issues with it, but as I told her “I’m not that sophisticated a listener” and as a song writer, I’m mostly in awe of the fact I can bring the lyrics to life as songs even as lame at it as I am. Would a real singer/music writer be better? Yes. They’d also be better at using Suno. I know this, because I know people who do use it, then revise it and fix it, and sing over it. People who actually know how to be musicians. Which I don’t. For them, it’s a tool And they use it well. But yeah, pure AI songs can’t compete with real artists. They can however compete with most amateurs and can allow people like me to self-filk. (which is probably illegal in several states.)

So if you are an expert and can catch things and can tell me why you dislike this or that, I’ll respect that.

But if you need to see the artist draw to make sure it’s not AI? You don’t have that kind of expertise. If you need to see the musician play the music to make sure it’s not AI, why are you even doing this? If AI is that good that it can fool you, why are you bothering?

But Sarah, you’ll say, AI will steal all the jobs of all the artists, and then all we’ll have is slop?

1- No it won’t. The really good artists already using AI just take the whole thing higher and make it better.

2- If it’s good enough that unless you see it being made you’re not sure it’s AI? It’s not slop. (and at current state of the art it must have been edited expertly, at least for novels, otherwise it’s obvious.)

3- This type of pitiful “I hate x because it could steal jobs” never works. This is mostly nonsense. And attempts to preserve jobs by driving a new alternative down never work. EVER. The market seeks the cheapest and easiest solutions. Every time.

3a) as one of the writers who might have her job stolen by AI? If it happens, I’ll find something else to do. Probably using AI to tell my stories in another way. In my opinion that’s what artists do. There will always be really good old form — painters didn’t vanish when photography became a thing — and there will also be good new form (like photography done artistically.)

What worries me is that “I hate AI because it’s AI” is “I hate x because of who made it.”

Now, there is even some valid point to that. For instance I could see a lot of you refusing to read anyone else’s book about a newly discovered colony of hermaphrodites because “What horrors might this contain?” Only you knew me, and knew I’m the chick who often forgets to have her characters kiss, even when they’re about to get married. And then there’s “Trust the writer not to hurt you by killing your darlings.” There are writers I trust, and writers I don’t.

In that sense TRYING something — or not — because of who wrote it makes perfect sense. But LIKING it because of who wrote it is bokum.

I experience another side of this, because I write under my real name. (Or variations thereof.) Which means I don’t hide the fact I’m a woman. Look, I always wrote, and if I’d tried to write professionally in Portugal, I probably would have used a male name, way back. But when I started trying to publish seriously, it was the nineties, which I’m now starting to think was a weird cultural island. Because it lulled me into a sense that it was okay to write science fiction and fantasy under my own name.

After all there had been women science fiction writers under female names since the thirties, so–

So, I didn’t antecipate having a lot of crazy women writing things where the whole point was “men bad” and poisoning the field. And before you tell me this didn’t happen — yes it did, to the point I myself am sometimes afraid of reading a book with a female name on the cover.

What I mean is I do understand that. But I don’t understand reading it looking for reasons to hate it because I have a female name. (And yes some people do.) Or because of my political opinions which aren’t part of my books. (And yes, some people do.)

What I see people do with AI is more like reading the book looking for reasons to hate it, because you suspect it MIGHT have been written by AI.

And that’s a) stupid. And b) Depriving yourself of fun.

Because at the bottom of this, why do you read? To make yourself seem intellectual and important? Really? If that were the reason, you wouldn’t be hanging out with us wrong fun lot.

So, you read for fun and enjoyment right?

Which means the ONLY acceptable metric is “did you have fun?”

I mean, every work — human or AI — has flaws. And — much as I hate to admit this — some of the stuff I’ve enjoyed has had more flaws than not. (Look, the economics chick now has more story in her JAFF, but she still has massive amounts of investing and in-time economics than are reasonable. BUT her characters have heart and aren’t weird non JA constructs. So…. I enjoy her.)

But in the end, with fiction, the only thing that counts, as you close the book is “DID YOU ENJOY IT?”

Yes, values of enjoying it can include bawling your eyes out, or wanting to shake the characters. But…. if you’d do it again– you enjoyed it.

And that’s the only standard writing (or music, or art) SHOULD rationally be judged on: the ludic standard.

Did you enjoy it? If you did, why would it matter if the writer has an innie, an outie, is a human, a clanker, an exquisitely trained small white cat, or an alien from the Ort cloud?

(As a side reach you could hold Did you enjoy it AND was it uplifting? But that’s muddying the waters, as what I consider uplifting is not universal and I know it.)

If you suddenly turn around and denounce something because you suspect it might be AI? That has nothing to do with it being good or bad, enjoyable or not.

That’s social signaling signifying “I’m important, and all the best people say AI is slop. So, as an intellectual, I’m going to condemn potential/denounced as AI.”

You’re entitled to do, that of course. But if you’re doing it you should be aware you’re playing dumb positioning Monkey games, and be honest with yourself.

At least so your world doesn’t shatter when you find out you completely misidentified AI-produced.

Coff. I want to open with a land acknowledgement:

I acknowledge I live on land. That is already a problem, since the land I live on was (probably. I haven’t checked, but I mean, Colorado was) at one time under the sea, and as such, at one time, belonged to single cellular aquatic creatures. It was stolen from them by moluscs once those evolved, and then from them by fish, and then from them (once it had emerged from the sea) by amphibians, then by reptiles, and eventually (I’m skipping a lot of probably marsupials and then mammals) by humans, who then had it stolen by other humans and eventually by husband’s distant ancestors/relatives who lived on it in the way of neolithic hunter gatherers, which they were. And then eventually by husband’s collateral relatives (his direct ancestors stayed in Connecticut, but we do know at least one branch moved thisaway) who had originated in Europe. And by a lot of people who weren’t even vaguely related to them. Note in this case “stolen” means they moved in and lived here. What happened to previous inhabitants ranges from “moved on” to “were all killed” to “they were tasty.” Eventually in the fullness of time, we paid cash-money for this plot of land, and spent a bunch of money fencing it and having the trees pruned. And if you think you have a right to it, you can fuck right off with that delusional shit. Because land doesn’t inherently belong to anyone or anything. And every single inch of habitable land has had a lot of inhabitants, none of which just grew there, or had an inherent right to it by genes or being uniquely adapted to it or whatever the hell.
THERE IS NO NATURAL RIGHT TO LAND (or anything material. For disambiguation I’m not speaking of the rights mentioned in our Declaration of Independence, but even those need defending or they get violated.) AND IF YOU THINK THERE IS YOU NEED TO TAKE YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS AND LOOK AT REALITY.

Because otherwise you’re going to die. Oh, not because we’ll kill you — though one more land acknowledgement and I will think about it really hard — but because stupidity that bad and that detached from reality is not survivable. To quote from Robert A. Heinlein: Stupidity is the only capital crime. The penalty is always death. There is no appeal.

What I’d really like to know — NO REALLY — is why these people think that “land acknowledgements make any sense whatsoever, even in the most distant, fantastical way.

I mean, I do realize we’re talking about people who recently raised a Somali flag over a school to symbolize… who the actual hell knows? “We approve of Somalis?” well, okay, cool. But if you’re going to raise a flag for every country you approve of, you’re going to have to change them every five minutes. Or perhaps “We think we need more Somali immigrants” also cool. You’re allowed to think any stupid shit you want to. You probably can’t help it, being brain damaged. But unless you tell me what precise qualities these Somalis are bringing in that you want in our country you can fuck right off with that shit. Or perhaps what you really want to say is “We approve of Somalis because Trump stopped Somali immigration and is investigating the Somali community. In which case, everyone involved a) is too stupid to continue living and should have a permanently installed subcutaneous speaker that reminds them to breathe in and out, since forgetting mid-breath is a totally likely circumstance. b) what they really mean is “We approve of people who aren’t really immigrants, because they have no intention of integrating coming in and stealing from our tax payers to the tune of billions, with a b. c) I want their computers examined for participation in fraud and bilking.

In the same way every time ANYONE does a land acknowledgement, which for reasons are always done in recently colonized areas, like the Americas and Africa or Australia, they should be asked, “What about the people who lived in these lands before the ones you mentioned? What are they? Chopped liver?” And after that they should be asked “You are aware that every square inch of land inhabited by humans has been inhabited by various groups of humans, one after the other who stole, killed, bought, bribed and sometimes ate the previous humans, right?” And after that, they should be asked “What makes the people who lost out to Europeans so special that we need to acknowledge them?” After which they should be asked “Are you an anti-European bigot? Well, are you?”

However my guess is they fail at the “you are aware there were other people here before the ones we defeated, right?” At which point the most appropriate and really the only answer is to point and laugh at them until you can’t speak, because they are such Tim Walz’s (Hey, I was told the r word is offensive, so I’ve replaced it) that they can’t understand the most basic facts of life.

Look, yes, hunter gatherers or not, there were terrible things done to the Amerindians when the Europeans took over. What is never mentioned in the bilge that passes for education in our schools is that the Amerindians did just as many horrible things to Europeans, and often enough FAR WORSE. In fact, it was their playing Neolithic war games — seriously, read War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage and also feel free to beat any “land acknowledgement” idiots over the head with it. Metaphorically. Or literally. It’s not like there’s anything in those skulls you can damage — which are centered on hurting and massacring women and children, to make the invading band run away and leave your territory that led to otherwise decent, Christian western civ people losing their minds and doing some absolutely rotten stuff. But even then they always had their defenders, and also a passel of lack-brain sentimental fools looking at them as noble savages.

And it was that last that has fucked their descendants over big time while giving them a vaunting and outsized sense of entitlement that causes them to be all in on idiots doing performative land acknowledgements. It’s also on a personal, individual level destroying those that still identify with the displaced neolithic hunter gatherers (look, I think the highest concentration of blood for any of them is about 14%. And husband probably has that, but really, he’s just an American geek. They were genetically swamped. HARD. As separate peoples they no longer exist. They’re just a cultural memory and a sense of grievance anymore. Plus a bunch of romanticized noble savage bullshit.)

You see, the noble savage bullshit, which is at the bottom of the land acknowledgements — the sappy, mind-boggling idea that somehow nature (they don’t believe in G-d, so they personify nature) designed certain peoples for certain places, and therefore “the place and the people are one” (That works great in fantasy, not so well for humanity, a species that is so inbred that compared to any other species, even cats, we’re all second cousins to each other.) This mind boggling nonsense about people living in perfect harmony with a place and owning it by right of being made for it would make Hitler smile and leads to exactly the same kind of eugenics massacre — caused the most damage, because it made Westerners treat the recent conquered DIFFERENTLY from all the conquered in history.

Since the 18th century, when the West became prosperous enough not to be in touch with the slicing edge of nature, (yes, that far back) and therefore to be able to tell itself stupid stories that sound good but have nothing to do with reality, humans stopped acting like normal humans.

Normal humans just conquer other humans and kill them all, the raping and taking as concubines of women, and the sparing of children three and under being optional. Oh, sometimes, in places that were prosperous enough to afford mercy, the conquerors took the conquered as slaves.

Terrible? Yes. Fairly. However that horrible, painful process (war is always horrible and painful or you ain’t doing it right) is the ONLY WAY KNOWN TILL NOW by which a culture can be overtaken by another. As in, there is no other way to change a culture with another culture. Not quickly enough. And cultures, as I’ve come to believe, are horribly persistent, deep set things that can be changed by the individual in him or herself by dint of great effort and at immense personal pain, but cannot be changed in a large group, particularly not a large, unwilling group. (Yes, immigrants can assimilate. If they are a relatively smallish group, and assimilation is highly incitivized. And even then it will take a good three generations and sometimes more. BUT a large group that’s taken over by another? Oh, hell no. Unless you kill every adult over 3 some of that culture will remain.)

And throughout history this is what’s been done and how a culture overtook another. Now, the overtaking culture wasn’t always ‘superior’ by the only metric allowable — maximizes human happiness — to civilized people. BUT it was always ‘superior’ by dumb and blind natural forces. It maximized survival of those who belonged to it.

Turns out the place I come from — the ten miles or so area — is now believed by at least some archeologists to be the oldest, inhabited part of Europe (Maia, which apparently in indo-European means low-lying humid, fertile valley. Or just “garden” in the sense of well, fertile land where everything grows.) It has been inhabited, stolen, taken, occupied, reconquered, fought over, bled into, etc. by a lot of people. Portugal as a whole is made of people, but the region I come from more distinctly so.

Note that there are no land acknowledgements there, because everyone understands they’d be there all day and all night just naming all the Germanic tribes that poured in after the fall of Rome, one after the other after the other, or all the small no long existent (mostly Frankish) nations that came in as crusaders after the moors. And Portuguese take their food and special events very seriously and like hell they’ll stand there and recite.

But more importantly, this was before we got rich and stupid enough to believe in noble savages and put people in “reservations” to preserve their culture. Or their genetics. Or whatever the fuck we thought we were preserving.

And if you’re going to talk about horrible, I’ll submit to you that putting people in what amounts to human zoos is far, far worse than killing all the adults over three. And also creates brain worms in the survivors.

When listening to the pious ‘we acknowledge we’re on land stolen from–” you have to want to beat the people who failed to teach these parlous parrots anything about human civilization or the fact that many many cultures have fought and extinguished others. And that most of those cultures don’t even have names or a memory of them left because it all happened in pre-history. You also want to beat them because they’re passing the brain worms on: the idea that a group of people is built for a particular place and should not and cannot ever be displaced. Or that the west doing this was uniquely bad. Or that “harmony with nature” is possible, beyond the obvious (Humans are natural. DUH) or that the neolithic savages who happened to be living here are super-special and more so than the neolithic savages that were ancestors to Europeans, whom these retro-brained savages imagine sprang forth from the Earth wearing three piece suits and carrying briefcases with contracts for strip mining in them.

They need to be beaten to silence with the fact that their favorite brand of noble savages ate every potentially useful animal larger than a dog into extinction, for one.

And then they need to shut up. Just shut up. Because down their stupid delusional path lies the prioritizing of cultures that were worse than Hitler’s Germany as fucked up as that was. In fact their beliefs are exactly the same as Hitler’s and if we accept them, and don’t exempt Europeans, we’d have to believe Hitler’s bullshit of Ein Volk, Ein Reich, etc. was true. Because it’s exactly what the liberal land acknowledgers believe. same precise thing. That some people are made for one land, and somehow have remained there untouched from the beginning of time.

It’s a fantasy of old maiden aunts, and it would be fine if the old maiden aunts didn’t vote. And dye their hair bright purple and march with signs. And teach college. (The hair is minor. It just offends my aesthetic sense.)

Down the road of this bullshit is them dreaming up that the Palestinians, a people of scraps and pieces, formed of people too anti-social for other Arabs to tolerate (contemplate that for a moment) are the rightful owners of the land of Israel, and going out of their way to justify the Neolithic war attack of 10/7. Which of course will only unleash new Neolithic horrors on the world.

I’m old. I have no grandkids. I shouldn’t care. But I do. I don’t want the world, after I’m gone, to become a nightmare of warring neolithic tribes with advanced tech killing each other’s women and children in the name of some mythical “the land and the people are one.”

These asinine idiots who don’t understand the difference between Genes and Culture, and who assign land to an arbitrary grouping of both that happened to coalesce in a place relatively recently need to be laughed out of the public sphere.

Unless of course we can send them to a reservation far far away. No, further than that. I’m thinking Proxima Centauri.

And don’t worry. They’re Tim Walzs. The chance of any of them surviving by the time the rest of us get there to colonize is zilch.

Future inhabitants of Alpha Centauri can then do appropriate land acknowledgements: We live on a world where a bunch of Tim Walzs used to live. Fortunately they all died of the rampant stupid before the rest of us got here. Let’s eat.

We all know that Hollywood is out of ideas. I have theories about why this is — having to do with running off everyone who wouldn’t mouth the platitudes — but there is a more fundamental cause: when an industry is in a tail spin due to whatever reason, it becomes more and more risk averse. It’s a sort of mental trap: they want to make it big, but of course, they want to make it big with tame stuff that won’t startle or upset anyone.

In the case of Hollywood and traditional publishing — which are in distress due to technological innovation hitting too fast to be responded to by normal mechanisms — there is another layer to this issue, though, in that what they interpret as “won’t upset anyone” is what wouldn’t have upset their college professors or/and what won’t upset the super-loud segment of the internet population. This usually agrees with their own biases (they had the same college professors!) so it gets lots of attention (why we have sensitivity readers in the big houses) even though it has become clear that no, this segment of the population doesn’t buy the product at all. Or if they do there’s really a lot fewer of them than even I think. Because they are utterly incapable of making a project that follows their directives successful. They are also, to be fair, incapable of sinking a project. However, again the problem is that because their biases agree with the loudmouths, the people in charge of Hollywood and trad pub will listen to them every time.

However, Hollywood — and probably trad pub to be fair — think there is a way out of this trap: make a traditional story that everyone knows, but reverse the heroes and villains, and make the newly heroified villains some kind of oppressed class (at least oppressed in Hollywood’s and trad pub’s minds): independent women; people who tan; gay people; trans people.

The right tends to assume the left tries to push gay and trans onto properties to “corrupt” the young. This might be true for some of them, who more or less announced it, but for a lot of them it’s simply the only way they can figure out to be allowed to tell a traditional story that would otherwise upset the gatekeepers: make the character gay or trans, and you can get away with traditional heroics and a pallet of good and evil.

If you don’t do that, the publisher/producer wants it new and fresh, which mostly means “reverse everything.”

I have to tell you that I’ve now watched a few of the reversed fairytales (in the sense that I watch anything — Dan is watching, and I’m sitting next to him, usually working on the latest story or the blog or something –) and none of them hold a candle to richness and complexity of the original. All of them have to rely heavily on some kind of group victimhood to effect the “reversal” and that usually makes them fall into the blah dross of group virtue and group evil. Which is not emotionally satisfying enough to support the catharsis that is inherently part of a good story. In fact, they all devolve into a sort of preachy blah that just puts people to sleep. In the publishers’ and producers’ minds the movie/book is stunning-brave, but all people see is platitudes they’ve been told a thousand times.

In fact, these days the “oppressed independent woman” is a trope that I was taught in elementary school in Portugal in the sixties. Now in Portugal it had some teeth, because women are in fact (still, though not economically or professionally) culturally oppressed (they’re supposed to be great career women, yes, and great wives and mothers, BUT they’re also supposed to have feminine accomplishments, and keep an immaculate house and defer to the males in the family.) Even there, that’s less and less with every successive generation. Meanwhile the US is arguably the only matriarchy where women clamor for rights and consider themselves oppressed.

No one looks down on independent and smart women. No one. They might excite envy and backlash, particularly if they have no social skills. However, the backlash they court comes equally from male and female and is more a matter of feeling threatened by ANYONE who is smart and independent. Men get hit with exactly the same level of backlash and envy.

And the whole “Everything that goes wrong in your life is the patriarchy” has been preached for at least three generations now, and probably four. So when we come across a book that preaches the same thing…. well…. it doesn’t light up the different and interesting reactions in the normal brain.

The same to a large extent goes for people who tan or have different habits. America was never very good at discrimination on that basis, really, except in pockets, and even there it had begs (All x people are terrible, but not OUR x people.) And whatever there was left has been preached against for the last three generations and probably more. Which means coming across it in your fiction is yawn inducing.

What makes it worse is that every time I accidentally download one of these books, or find myself stuck in front of one of these movies, it’s always presented as “AH! THIS IS GOING TO BLOW YOUR MIND.” As in, it’s the reveal that they work up to throughout the book. Or the movie. You see it coming a mile away, and you go “Surely they’re not doing that. That would be stupid.” And then they do the stupid. Yep.

Look, I don’t have to watch the thing in the image here, to know that the step sisters probably have some disability or are misunderstood.

As for the “bright new idea” joke hold on to that idea. I have a story for you at the end of this.

There is another way to reverse villain and hero in a story. I’ve done it without meaning to. I think every writer worse his salt has.

Look, we love our villains. We know their reasons. Sometimes we know the horrible crap that was rained on them before they finally snapped and went bad. We might have some of the same temptations ourselves. (Particularly among Odds it’s way too easy to want to do something terrible to people for whom all the social monkey stuff comes naturally.) Sometimes we can’t help giving the villain a moment in the sun in the sequel.

As a writer, I’m here to tell you: abstain from this. No, seriously, abstain from this. You can write redemption stories. Those are immensely satisfying, actually. But abstain from making the villain “the hero actually.”

I don’t care how much they’ve been “more sinned against than sinning” they still chose to sin. And they have to atone for that. And it should be hard fought and earned. And then, then, yes, the redemption can be amazing. But you can’t just wave the magic authorial wand and go “The other side was actually the bad one.”

Which is mostly what the left (and whether creatives are or not, the gatekeepers in the mass industrial entertainment complex are all leftist, often reflexively so, and thinking they’re centrists) does, often by making the villain “actually oppressed” by being some broad category of victim. Because the problem with the left is that a belief in group guilt and group victimhood and group worthiness has robbed them of the concept of redemption. Once you’re part of group x, you’re a villain. And irredeemable. Also probably prone to infestations by rodents and losing shape in the rain, due to being made of cardboard.

Anyway, the habit of “reverse hero and villain” is also VERY old in our culture. Well, it’s very old everywhere, and even fairytales going back to the dawn of oral tradition have “opposite fanfic”: except it was neither dominant nor generally very popular.

Mostly because our ancestors lived at the sharp end of necessity, where stupid-crazy bit hard. They knew evil existed. They’d experienced it in their own villages, in their own bands, in their own persons.

But the habit of reversing the normally told story to be stunning brave when it comes to history is very old as well. In my personal experience — but going back to the 18th century and the noble savage — it started with “Well, the Amerindians were the heroes actually.”

Were they? Well, no. The entire colonization of the Americas and interaction with Amerindians has heroes — and villains — on both sides, and both sides were in the grip of blinkered cultural assumptions that meant they both treated the other side very badly — objectively — and caused unneeded bloodshed and destruction. And the only way to solve it was for them to see past their cultural assumptions which is very hard for any humans. Which both sides were.

What doomed the Amerindians (no, I’m not going to call them “Native Americans.” They were no more native than anyone else. We’re not required to cater to their delusions that they’ve always been here. And yes “Amerindian” is wrong. But everyone’s group name is wrong. Ask the Germans.) was the software in the head, because theirs was less likely to lead to victory.

Anyway, the reversal of “every defeated group were really victims and the victors are always evil” has become insane. It has led to Land Acknowledgements which are beyond ridiculous. Land Acknowledgements, properly done, would go all the way back to the time the first amphibian crawled out of the sea. Sea acknowledgements would go further back, of course.)

And most of the reversals are just plain insane, because they try to make the previous villain groups into perfect Liberal Heroes. So the Vikings become multicultural, sensitive, and accepting of women and gays and and and–

The individual reversals are even crazier. Rex Stout believed that Shakespeare had done an injustice to Richard III — about the princes in the tower — and maybe he was right. I mean, yes, I know what the DNA youtube videos claim, but none of them are compelling. HOWEVER even if Richard III wasn’t the villain he was painted — and there’s a whole apologia that can be made that starts with “man of his time” and “kings did the things they did at that time, even if they are bad to us and our time.” — there’s no excuse for the entire sub-genre of romances that make him into the perfect, sensitive liberal male. To make things worse, when you are doing that kind of thing, you eventually hit something you cannot possibly reverse or cover up. Richard III might not have killed his nephews. He might have seized the throne because he was actually the legitimate heir. He might… But yes, he had mistresses. And he was probably mean to his servants by our lights. And–

Anyway, the problem with the brain-rott of let’s reverse the story every time has to do with poisoning by story. Stories are how we learn. If we corrupt that mechanism, we learn he wrong things.

I think these eternal reversals are at the basis of “What we need is to give the homeless more money and more latitude and not arrest them for public indecency or for bothering people.” If you don’t remember all the heroic and sage homeless of the 90s I do. And what it actually does is make cities unlivable for normal workaday citizens who aren’t villains just because they work, and clean and have their own spaces. At the same time it tempts people who would otherwise avoid it to fall into the addicted-and-homeless population, since they are obviously “victims” who get away with everything.

But more importantly it erases the concept of evil. Evil in personal or even historical matters is a fact. We’ve all — every one of us — run into evil people who do evil things, because evil things please them or enrich them or whatever. These people might have suffered in their lives (who hasn’t?) but they’re not victims, and they can’t be magically be made good with more tolerance and understanding. In fact, they are more likely to become worse, the more leniency you afford them.

Telling people that if you see evil it’s just because you’re not tolerant enough, is evil in itself and actually and for real harms real, living people.

Beyond that, historically, it leads to a sort of upside down, topsy turvy view of history where the winners are always bad. Always. There is no reprieve.

The screenshot above is funny. And not.

And not because my American Culture (it was a required course) textbook in college already managed to have the colonists be bad, the Southern plantation owners be bad, and the North be bad for defeating the South, when the South became magically victims. And they didn’t even seem to notice it.

I’ve been waiting for exactly that reversal — the Producer’s play without its being a scam in any way — since my very first literary agent, in the nineties told me she probably couldn’t sell my Red Baron novel (yes, my dears, but now I need to rewrite the almost finished, because I’m a way better writer) because she’d been trying for years to sell a young Hitler in love novel and no one would buy.

Listen — ignore the fact that Manfred von Richthoffen was not that I know a monster (and I’ve read countless biographies of him, and in fact, just bought a new one) — this woman had no clue at all why a novel with a “nice” Hitler wasn’t selling. She was connected to all the publishing people, and she had no idea —

And yes, I realize I just did a story with the equivalent of baby Hitler who turns out not to be bad. BUT the operative word in that thought is “baby.” Baby Hitler might have had — probably had — the basic impulses and desires that would lead him to become… well… Hitler. But those had to be “fed” over his education, his family life, his social life, his time in the trenches, etc. etc. etc.

It’s quite possible if his parents had immigrated to America when he was a baby he would be only a mildly annoying and corrupt American politician. And it’s even more possible if he’d been adopted by completely different people at birth, he’d be a totally different person.

Sure, impulses for power-seeking or even sadism might have been present, but there are normal and even laudable people who live normal lives, despite this.

Now, writing Hitler as Hitler and trying to sell him as good, even if say (I don’t know, she didn’t tell me any more about the novel) it was his tragic love affair that made him a monster? THAT is if not evil, actually wrong. Because if Hitler was sort of okay and maybe even a victim (if only they’d appreciated his art!) he wouldn’t have killed several million people!

No, just no. I don’t know when or how, but I know he made his decision to fall to evil. And he was evil. As was Stalin. As was Mao. As were all the other tyrants and monsters of history. Let’s not whitewash them.

To make them “Actually not so bad” will just lead to calling Hitler to anyone the left disagrees with. Oh, wait, too late on that.

At any rate, far be it from me to tell you what to write. However I find the reversal of good and bad has become tiresome — REALLY TIRESOME — as in, it’s now expected.

And this has the danger of reducing our moral map to a grey directionless fog, where there’s no good, no evil, only bad categories and good categories.

Frankly, if I want to manipulate entities with no free will that belong to natural groups, I’ll do math, not writing and reading.

It’s time for us to get as loud as the loud crazies and shout back in one voice “This is boring and stupid.”

Before the moral map loses every marking.

*Yes, this is very late, because it exploded in size on me. (And made me write mil-speak, which I have issues with. Have mercy on me, okay.) And yes, I wanted to use “on the bounce” as a Heinlein homage. I might be trespassing, I don’t know. But I really wanted it in – SAH*

It was Christmas day and I was lost.

***

“Is anyone alive here? Come out. Come out,” it was a male voice, young and confident, if slightly on edge.

I had a minute to decide. Did I speak up? Did I trust this voice? I’d been hearing explosions and screams for the last twelve hours. I could smell the blood.

But the screams and explosions had stopped a couple of hours ago. So, maybe it was safe now? Or maybe– Or maybe it was a trick of the attackers, seeking to make their mop up complete. Isabelle — the child — put her arms around my neck and shook. I’d stopped singing to distract her when the bad noise stopped, and I thought she was asleep. Apparently not. She was shaking slightly, and smelled of tired, sweaty child.

(Removed because book — Christmas in Time — will be available for sale on Amazon 12-14-2025)

Guys, this thing changed name. It’s now not Lost and Found, but The Stars In The Sky and it’s gone…. wails MILITARY which drives me nuts because I cannot CANNOT do mil-speak. As in, at all.

And I’m clocking in at 3 words, and have erased at least that many and…. am still in the initial movement of the story and….

Hand reaches above the computer: SEND HELP.

Okay, fine, you can have the opening movement:

It was Christmas day and I was lost.

***

“Is anyone alive here? Come out. Come out,” it was a male voice, young and confident, if slightly on edge.

I had a minute to decide. Did I speak up? Did I trust this voice? I’d been hearing explosions and screams for the last twelve hours. I could smell the blood.

But the screams and explosions had stopped a couple of hours ago. So, maybe it was safe now? Or maybe– Or maybe it was a trick of the attackers, seeking to make their mop up complete. Isabelle — the child — put her arms around my neck and shook. I’d stopped singing to distract her when the bad noise stopped, and I thought she was asleep. Apparently not. She was shaking slightly, and smelled of tired, sweaty child.

I took a deep breath.

“Hello?” the voice sounded again. Most of all he sounded young, and there was something else behind it. Something shaky, I thought, as though he’d just been shaken. By seeing a lot of death and carnage? Or by causing it.

I had no way to know. I had to risk it. I had to risk it. I couldn’t continue hiding in here forever with someone else’s child. If her parents were alive, they would be looking for her. And if they weren’t someone else would be looking. And my own parents would be worried out of their minds, if they knew where I was. Which Father at least probably did.

I kissed Isabella and whispered in her ear, “Be very quiet, I’ll be back for you.”

“Mama,” She said, and tried to hold me, her arms tighter. I pulled away gently, “It’s all right. Count to 100 and Mama will be back.”

I wasn’t her Mama. Her Mama was probably in the carnage outside, but I’ve given up on convincing her. During the hours of horror, when I said I wasn’t her Mama she cried harder. I hesitated a minute, then kissed her forehead, amid the little wisps of her bangs. She was maybe five, maybe six. She’d told me, but she was hard to hear amid the explosions. “I’ll be right back,” I said. “I promise.”

And then I stood up, and walked out of the utility closet in which we’d been hiding, right behind the automated cleaners. I walked out with my hands up.

The young man in the uniform of Britannia’s Spatines jumped about three feet but — a witness to his training — spun around and had his heavy duty burner pointed towards me, held in both hands for better aim.

“I am Marjorie Starr Forster,” I said. “I was in transit through the station.”

He unfocused his eyes, and I suspected he was looking at a list of passengers projected by his memory nanos. I could tell when he found my name, because he relaxed a little. His shoulders went down just a little and he drew a deep breath. “Thank God,” he said, which I had a feeling is not something men in his service — the ones particularly tasked with fighting terrorism and mass attacks in space — usually said. But he looked suddenly very young. Maybe younger than I. Not that he looked old before, but the uniform — the grey, blue and silver camouflage that worked in space stations and technological environments, and the burner about half as long as he was and big around as two of his arms put together lent him gravity.

But the easing of his expression made him look young. Just a blond boy from a farm colony, with a bad haircut, and a look of relief almost as if he were the one being rescued. “Thank God you’re alive. You might be the only survivor of this station.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “There’s another one. She’s been hiding with me.”

He looked like he was going to kiss me or cry, perhaps, and said, “Where is she? Is she wounded?”

“No, no. I just told her to wait, because– Well, I couldn’t be sure you were friendlies.”

He nodded and said, “Brave,” as though to himself. He let his burner fall so it hung on its sling, and said, “Where is she?”

I led him through the hallway, to the cleaning closet and opened the door, “Isabelle? You can come out.”

I was surprised she didn’t come, but when we went back there to look, there was no one. The Spatine gave me an odd look. I was frantic. “Maybe she got out while I was talking to you,” I said.

“Miss, no one left. I’d have seen movement. After my training and after– Miss, there’s no way I’d miss movement.”

“But she was here with me,” I said. “Since last night.”

He shook his head, not in doubt but in bewilderment. “What… what’s her name, Miss?”

“Isabelle. She didn’t give a last name.” I’d had a heck of a time getting “Isabelle” out of her. She’d kept shaking her head and saying, “You know my name mama!”

“Uh.” His eyes unfocused. “There is no one by that name on the manifesto. Could she have given you an assumed name. Maybe an hostile?”

I shook my head in turn. “No way, sir. She was all of is five or six.”

He gave me a really odd look. “There was no girl that age on the station, not in the manifesto.”

“What?”

“Oh, there were children aplenty, in the Amber Sanctus colony ship.” He swallowed. “They were waiting while their ship stocked some tech form Neue Zambia.” He shook his head, and his eyes glistened suspiciously. “Ten infants, mixed genders. Twenty five toddlers. Ten boys between four and ten, and a passel of teenagers.” He swallowed hard. “They’re all accounted for.”

The tone of those last words was like the closing of a heavy stone over a tomb. I remembered again, “You are the only survivor.”

The Spatine was talking into his com. I couldn’t see the com, and he was talking just above a whisper, so it was probably a nano thing. Which made sense if you didn’t want him to lose it.

“Lieutenant Allsop, Leading Spatine Beech here. Section Three-Baker, Deck Seven, compartment seventy-two. Sir, I have a survivor—civilian, female, approximately twenty years. Name Marjorie Starr Forster.” He paused and listened. Then nodded as if his superior could see him. Maybe he could. “She’s conscious but distressed. No visible injuries, but she’s been here a while and she’s… she’s insisting there was a little girl with her, sir. A child, age five or six, named Isabelle. Says the girl was right beside her all through… All through what happened.”

BOOK PROMO

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

FIRST THE ROLLING NOVEMBER TO NEW YEAR 99c SALE

ROLLING, ROLLING, ROLLING….. Remember that if you order these for delivery on Christmas to people’s kindles, they won’t know it was on sale, and you look like a big spender…. (If you order one of each, that is.)

Other Rhodes

When Lilly Gilden discovers a cyborg in her airlock, she should turn him in for immediate destruction—harboring any cyborg means death, no exceptions. These abominations are born from violent, illegal brain extraction, forbidden across all human colonies. But this tortured soul believes he’s Nick Rhodes, a legendary detective from the 20th century, and his fractured mind may hold the key to finding her missing husband.

The penalty for harboring him is execution, but Lilly is desperate. Her husband vanished while investigating a case that leads straight into the galaxy’s most dangerous criminal networks. With time running out and nowhere else to turn, she makes a fateful choice: trust the half-mad detective trapped in synthetic flesh.

Joined by a mysterious journalist with secrets of his own, Lilly plunges into the shadow world of interstellar crime syndicates, corrupt officials, and deadly conspiracies. As the cyborg’s detective instincts clash with his deteriorating programming, Lilly must navigate a web of lies and violence where one wrong move could cost her everything.

In a universe where love is the ultimate liability, how far will she go to bring him home?

A pulse-pounding sci-fi thriller that blends classic detective with high-stakes space adventure—perfect for fans of cyberpunk mysteries, noir whodunits and interstellar romance.

Trade Winds, A collection of short stories

A collection of science fiction short stories by Prometheus Award Winner Sarah A. Hoyt. What if aliens walk among us—not as conquerors, but as refugees seeking humanity’s moral guidance? What if our greatest creations return as lethal threats, and time itself has watchful guardians we never notice? From interstellar immigration crises to generation ships doomed by human nature, from aliens who set fiendish traps to futures inventing entirely new forms of misery—these thirteen thought-provoking tales explore humanity’s place in a vast and often bewildering cosmos. With the vivid storytelling and engaging characters that have made her a standout in Analog, Asimov’s, and Weird Tales, Hoyt delivers science fiction told from a uniquely warm perspective that welcomes readers into worlds both strange and intimately human. Discover what happens when probability itself defies replication, journey to the Darkship universe ten years after the Olympus revolution and witness an alternate history where Carthage sowed salt on Rome’s ruins. How long does memory truly endure? Reviewers praise this collection as “off-beat,” “light fun but thoughtful,” and note that “all stories are engaging and worth reading unlike so many which have one or two stand out stories and a lot of filler.” Standout tales include the clever alien refugee story “Yearning to Breathe Free” and the emotionally powerful “And Not To Yield” set in Hoyt’s USAians universe.

The collection contains the stories: And Your Little Dog Too; Who Goes Boing?; A Cog In Time; All Who Are Thirsty; Yearning To Breathe Free; Calling The Mom Squad; On Edge; Some Other Pieta; Leaving Home; Flying; The Big Ship And The Wise Old Owl; And Not to Yield; Trade Winds.

FROM PAM UPHOFF: Tiger Hunter (Chronicles of the Fall Book 19)

A novella in the Chronicles of the Fall series

Yuri Popov was born and raised on a primitive Research World, where his scientist dad and uncle worked, avoiding the rest of the family.

But as he approaches his eighteenth birthday, it’s time to meet that family, and deal with a culture having more trouble adjusting to the new reality, than Yuri the Tiger Hunter will have dealing with a modern society..

FROM LLOYD TACKITT: Murder In Texas: Book One of the Colt Andersen Detective Series (Colt Andersen Murder In Texas Detective Series 1)

Colt Andersen thought he’d left the chaos behind. After a near-fatal shooting ended his Dallas detective career, he retreated to the solitude of Ten Dog Ranch—two hundred acres of wild Texas land, a pack of wary feral dogs, and the memory of a promise made to his dying cousin. But when the body of a beloved local brewer is discovered on the eve of Buchanan’s legendary October Beer Festival, Colt is pulled back into a world of secrets, suspicion, and danger.

Sheriff Elena Mendez knows trouble when she sees it. With the festival bringing outsiders, corporate interests circling, and tempers flaring over mysterious land deals, she needs Colt’s sharp mind—and his uncanny ability to see the truth in people’s colors. Together, they uncover a tangled web of greed, betrayal, and a decades-old family feud that threatens to tear their small town apart.

But nothing is as it seems in Buchanan. As Colt digs deeper, he discovers the murder is only the beginning. Hidden beneath the rolling hills and ancient oaks lies a secret that powerful men will kill to protect—a labyrinthine cave system filled with priceless archaeological treasures and rare earth minerals worth billions. The caves are mapped in ancient petroglyphs, guarded by warnings from a vanished people, and coveted by a ruthless corporation willing to do anything to claim them.

With the help of a determined sheriff, a brilliant local historian, and the murdered man’s courageous daughter, Colt must race against time to expose the truth. As more bodies fall and the stakes rise, he’ll face armed mercenaries, corporate hitmen, and the ghosts of his own past. The fate of Buchanan—and a legacy stretching back centuries—hangs in the balance.

Murder in a Small Texas Town is a gripping blend of mystery, thriller, and small-town drama, set against the evocative backdrop of the Texas Hill Country. Rich with unforgettable characters, atmospheric detail, and a plot that twists like a country backroad, this novel will keep you guessing until the very last page.

Perfect for fans of Craig Johnson, C.J. Box, and James Lee Burke, this is a story of justice, redemption, and the enduring power of community.

Can one man’s promise—and a town’s courage—stand against the darkness rising from beneath their feet?

FROM MICHAEL MORGAN: Three Righteous Souls

The lights have gone out, and nobody knows why. As society begins to crumble, Emma Pitts and her children set off to her parent’s place outside of Toledo, but the road turns bad. Out of gas, food, and water, Emma and the children are afoot wandering through unfamiliar rural landscape peopled with desperate refugees and even more desperate local authorities trying to control the flood. Fearing the worst, and out of options, Emma knocks on a farmhouse door. Three Righteous Souls is an award winning short story of humanity in a world falling apart.

BY JOHNSTON MCCULLEY, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMMING: The Rangers’ Code (Annotated): The classic pulp western

Cactusville needed cleaning up, Sheriff Tom Thomas knew that. But the deputies he kept sending to do the job always turned up dead.

Until ex-Texas Ranger Dick Ganley took on the job, at least. Or so Ganley claimed would happen. He would not only take out the gang running Cactusville, nor would he stop at identifying and bringing to justice the shadowy head of the gang, the “King of Cactusville”.

No, Ganley had his own score to settle into the bargain, and it was a score that could only be settled by blood!

• This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving the book historical and genre context.

FROM J.J. DIBENNETO: Ten Years and Then…

What if the love of your life was the one who got away… over and over again?


In 1988, Daniel Keller is a shy, brilliant college sophomore who never expected to fall for anyone—until Nora Langley crashes into his life like a thunderstorm in heels. With wit, ambition, and a wild heart she tries to hide, Nora makes Daniel feel seen for the first time. Their love is messy, exhilarating… and more than either of them knows how to handle.
When the pressure of family expectations and uncertain futures becomes too much, they break apart—but the story doesn’t end there.


Over the next ten years, Daniel and Nora keep finding their way back to each other. Different cities. New careers. Almost-relationships. But the connection never fades. Every reunion brings joy and pain, hope and heartbreak. And always, the question: what if?


Told with nostalgia, emotional depth, and aching romanticism, Ten Years and Then… is for anyone who’s ever looked back at a lost love and wondered what might have been. Can two people who never stopped loving each other finally get it right, or are some hearts never meant to stay?

FROM WILLIAM GEORGE MEISHEID AND ANNA MARIE MEISHEID: Remembrance: Book Three of the Chronicles of Moses the Lawgiver

This will be Moses’s last journey from the mountain’s high summer pasture.
Moses is eighty years old, and the fugitive shepherd knows his time is ending. For forty years, he has lived with his wife, Zipporah, and his two sons, sharing the life of Jethro’s family in the grasslands of Midian. He has been silent about the man he was before he arrived at Jethro’s well and saved his wife and her sisters from the bandit slavers. His sons, Gershom and Eliezer, know only the father who tends flocks and speaks nothing of the past. He is an uncommonly gifted man who changes everyone’s life for the better but remains an enigma to all who know him. No one knows the Prince of Egypt who commanded armies, who stood in Pharaoh’s court, who bore a name that once made his enemies tremble.
Tonight, before they descend the mountain for the last time, Moses will break his silence and open his heart to his sons.
Using the ancient practice of zikaron—remembrance that transcends memory and makes the past live again—he will take his sons into those hidden forty years. He will show them the palace and the battlefield, the friendships and betrayals, the prophecies and the choices that drove him into exile. He will open his heart and reveal everything.
But this is more than a father’s final confession to his beloved sons. For forty years, Moses has heard nothing from the Most High, the God of his fathers. Tonight, he repents of his failures and asks the Lord to give him strength to share what he has kept buried. After a night of revelation, dawn breaks, and Moses and his two sons begin their descent down the mountain. As they journey past Horeb, the Mountain of God, the Most High’s silence will finally end, and Moses will discover that his life’s true mission, what he was born for, is only beginning.
The hidden past becomes the present. The fugitive becomes the deliverer.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Khuldhar’s War

The war was over, but where was the peace the victors had promised?

Geidliv the Tyrant was dead, and the rogue nation of Karmandios now lay in ruins, its people prostrate before the occupying armies of the five allied nations. But now the winners are quarreling among themselves, and where brothers fight, enemies will enter to widen the gap.

Merekhet is a man torn between competing loyalties, tormented by guilt over his past failures. Raised the scion of a Karmandi noble family, he discovered upon puberty that he was in fact the son of a senior war commander of the telepathic People of the Hawk. Yet he could not entirely disavow his mother’s people, and thus became entangled in Geidliv’s regime and his nephew Khuldhar’s doomed attempt to fight it.

Now Merekhet has evidence that Geidliv used telepathy and the bioscience of the mer-people to create a living weapon from Khuldhar’s genetic material and hid it in plain sight. Worse, a former ally now estranged is seeking that weapon, and must not be allowed to capture it, lest all the world of Okeanos fall to far greater tyranny than Geidliv could ever have hoped to create.

Merekhet must regain Khuldhar’s confidence, and together they must find the five young men who are the keys to Geidliv’s final vengeance weapon.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Dragon’s in the Details

Six stories of dragons hiding in today’s world:
A Friend, Indeed–A little girl meets the best friend she could ask for when she finds a dragon sleeping in her wagon.
Tempest–What do you do when you find a dragon in your favorite teacup?
Clowder–These are absolutely not cats, no matter what they look like, and will take offense at your mistake.
Back Yard Birds and Other Things–If the dragon defends your chickens, you invite it to stay.
Houdini–When the pet supplier sends the wrong kind of dragon, the pet store’s got a problem.
Hoard–Not every dragon cares for gold, gems, or cash.

FROM MARY CATELLI: Through A Mirror, Darkly

What lies behind a reflection?

Powers have filled the world with both heroes and villains.  Helen, despite her own powers, had acquired the name Sanddollar but stayed out of the fights.

When the enigmatic chess masters create a mirrored world reflecting her own home and the world about it, it’s not so easy to escape.  All the more in that the people of that world are a dark reflection of all those she knows.

FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN: Land Magic and Shadows: Familiar Generations Book 10

How far will a seeker go to find an answer?

Thomas A. “Art” Chan struggles to balance his duties as university faculty with those of husband and Hunter. Toss in a tenure committee with members who insist on putting new obstacles in his way, and Art begins to contemplate a job in retail, almost.

Meanwhile, a professor searches for items in a place best left undisturbed. A place where darkness looks back. Darkness with an interest in careless magic workers.

Which is more dangerous: academics with grudges, or an irritated earth power? Or a third force, one that combines the worst of Art’s worlds?

FROM MACKEY CHANDLER: I Never Applied for This Job (Family Law Book 8)

Lee seems to be getting a handle on this sovereign business. Mostly it is making sure you have exceptional people and then stay out of their way. She’s learning moderation a little at a time and commissioned a self programming AI who may be a he instead of an it.
Friendship is also a difficult process to master when you are torn between the standards of several species, but she manages to satisfy Badgers ideals, and her Human allies turn out to be very good friends too. A little working vacation with Jeff and April solidifies that bond and gives then a couple of adventures too. They really needed to check on the Bunnies and the Jeff had to teach the squids to keep their filthy tentacles off Lee.
Now if the Earthies would just stop trying to kill her, and they figure out how to deal with the impending death of money, maybe she can do some stuff again just for fun.

FROM ANNA FERREIRA: The Root of All Evil

When murder comes to Stockton, it brings long-buried secrets in its wake…

Kate Bereton leads a busy but unexciting life as the clergyman’s only daughter in a small Dorsetshire village. She’s grateful for the break in routine heralded by the arrival of her stepmother’s latest guests, but when Kate discovers a dead body in the parsonage one morning, she finds herself in much more danger than she could have ever anticipated. Terrified and desperate, she turns to the local magistrate for help. Mr. Reddington is eager to aid his dear friend Miss Bereton, but can they discover the murderer before it’s too late, and the secrets of the past are forgotten forever?

With a dash of romance and a generous helping of mystery, The Root of All Evil is a charming whodunit that will delight fans of Jane Austen and Agatha Christie alike.

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: ITCH

*’t was the ’tisms, m’lord. I had this story in my head when I woke up, but then my head hurt so badly that I was typoing all over the place, so I decided to redo the covers for my collections…. and then I couldn’t stop. So I’m starting this at 9:30. (and just had food for the first time since 8 am.) It might be later than midnight by the time you see this. I’m sorry. – SAH*

Time isn’t exactly an ocean. But then again, it is exactly like an ocean. I should know. I, Leith Pappas, am one of the lighthouse keepers in the sea of time.

You’ve probably seen the lighthouse. My house. At least if you have ever visited Goldport Colorado you were probably directed to the Lighthouse House as one of the local attractions. The brochures put out by the chamber of commerce say that the house was built by a sea captain who became a prospector and struck it rich. Far from his natural habitat, lost in the Rocky Mountains, he built his lighthouse, so that when the wind blew late at night, he could imagine he was at sea.

This is not so much a lie as rank nonsense, made up to explain the lighthouse in the middle of town, with a large Victorian house attached to it.

The truth is that the house was there when the first colonists arrived. Because the time corps built it there as far back as we could possibly want to go, in the case of this location circa the seventeenth century. I understand the lighthouses in Europe and two in the Eastern United States are much, much older.

I’ve been the lighthouse keeper in Goldport since shortly after I joined the time corps. It’s a quiet a life, a little lonely.

(Removed because book — Christmas in Time — will be available for sale on Amazon 12-14-2025)

It’s going to be past midnight…. Might be tomorrow morning. I’m so sorry.

The headache just returned today, so I started doing other stuff. Will have a story before midnight. Promise.