I was reading the news — I know, what a bad habit — when I read about Belarus, a Russian surrogate pushing/encouraging armed Middle Eastern “refugees” into Poland, when it hit me: They’re using people as weapons.

Forget everything you heard about creating a replacement population, though these idiots might believe that notion.

Forget about “refugees” too, the left’s insane term for economic migrants from shithole countries, propelled into more prosperous ones by dreams of easy money, mostly from corrupt welfare systems. Oh, sometimes propelled by religious visions — Muslims, Communists, and others — or by nationalistic fever and dreams of reconquista (of what was never theirs, nor even their ancestors) or of recovering the lands “stolen” from Dar Al Islam. (You might think the later is less likely than the reconquista, racialist fervor of La Raza commies, but I once found myself talking to the son of a Jordanian banker who — having found out I came from Portugal — went into a spit-flecked rage about how Portugal was stolen from Islam, and would be recovered.)

Forget about thinking of these people as people. They are of course. Mostly horribly deluded people and, at least in the US traipsing into a situation that is going to go bad for them, very rapidly as tensions worsen.

But for a moment pretend you’re one of the self styled technocrats (yes, it requires that you buy into that ridiculous appellation for people who can open their own email — maybe — one time in three.)

To begin with the one thing you must understand is that these are not very bright people. Cunning, yes. Indoctrinated yes. But their actual intelligence is middling. They occupy the positions they do mostly thanks to the left’s take over of all means of communication in the 20th century and by the fact that people hiring for an ideology are, of necessity, blind to competence. And when that ideology — central state control of everything — has already proven itself about as healthful and prosperity-inducing as gonorrhea with a side of syphilis, the people mouthing that ideology, particularly in its Marxist variant, are not competent people. Or sane people. Or in fact, anyone you’d want to leave in charge of your cat, let alone of your country. (And if you doubt my diagnosis, get a load of the governor of Oregon in her Christmas mask. What actual human being over the age of 2 would think of that bizarre, mind-boggling getup, much less someone in an official position? Think of it, let alone wear it? ships in your coiffure are understated and sensible by comparison. But that ridiculous creature probably thinks it’s homey and gives her the common touch. Which is true, if the touch is common in padded cells throughout the Earth.)

So imagine that you’re a not particularly bright person, maybe of an interesting color, maybe a woman, but almost for sure of the right class and having attended the “correct” institutions, who made the required Marxist noises and suddenly, out of nowhere, saw yourself whisked into the corridors of highest power: your election fixed, (or your spouse’s election), your career smoothed, praises heaped upon you, your every action a cause for the press to fawn and prostrate themselves before the glow of your imagined brilliance.

Come on, you’ve seen the essays of Michelle Obama or “Doctor” Jill Biden, or the unscripted utterances of Obama, or even Hillary Clinton, and let’s not even mention smaller luminaries like Beto O’Rourke, Pete Buttigieg or the cackling fool who doesn’t know how to solve our oil issues. You’ve watched the curiously affect-free expressions of the Junta’s spokeswoman who keeps circling back to inanity. You know that the VP they frauded in has one talent, and it has nothing to do with her ability to think (And frankly, I think worse of Willie Brown’s intelligence for having foisted her on American politics. And I never thought him that bright before.)

So, you’re mediocre to “can’t find my *ss with two hands, a seeing eye dog and a multimillion dollar *ss finding system.” BUT you suddenly find yourself occupying a position of prominence. And everyone — or at least the media, which you understand represents everyone — fawns on you and tells you how smart you are.

Little by little or all at once, in the dim, slogan filled darkness that passes for your mind, you decide “By gum. I know I don’t understand all that much. But they think I’m brilliant. THAT must MEAN that everyone else is even dumber.”

Boom. You’ve become a self-styled technocrat. Propaganda-crat would make more sense. You’re a being who will buy the most ridiculous idiocies spouted by “experts” because frankly you never got this scientific method thing, and you and reasoning are rarely in the same zip code. You might be able to refrain from drowning when it rains, but probably only because you have people to guide you indoors.

So you buy all the theories of all the “experts” looking only for grants. Anthropogenic global warming is not only proven, in your mind, but is going to kill us all in a decade or so (because you never really understood geologic time.) The experts agree, so it must be true. But at the same time, you are — of course — exempt from anything to mitigate it. However, those evil and stupid people who are dumber than you but won’t obey you unquestioningly? They must suffer to appease the climate gods.

And don’t get me started on where they think money comes from (printing presses is the short form answer) or their bizarre and irrational hangups about nuclear power (“bad thing. Professor said it was bad. Bad bad bad. Banish with holy bird slicers.”)

BUT the overriding idea in their dinosaurian shibboleth crammed walnut sized brains is that they, the anointed, by virtue of having memorized the pronouncements of the “experts” are now “technocrats and high priests of tech and science, who get to command the fate of nations and the lives of lesser humans.

Which is why, like Mongol hordes, impelling populations ahead of them, or the Moorish warriors ditto, or the various tribal variations on this they’re using entire populations as weapons. (They probably think its the first time anyone thought of it, too.)

These pseudo refugees are weapons that, thrown at the population they want to vanquish, not only cause physical injury (Yeah, I know, but I remind you these ardent believers in Covidiocy exempt border crashers from vaccines, and also that middle Eastern “refugees” in Europe tend to blow up when shaken. Or looked at wrong.) but also economic injury, as well as a corruption of every institution designed to serve and/or protect the people. (However misguided that institution. I don’t approve of state “charity”.)

Yes, sure, the idiot left in the US think these are forever their vote farm too. Yes, they are that stupid, and if their plan succeeded would be the first to find themselves killed. It won’t, mostly because we’re out of money. I predict a grande Salida that will make Obama’s look like child’s play. No, seriously. If this winter is half as hard as I expect, there will be a sauve qui peut the other direction on the border, because when it comes to starving people would rather do it at home. (I actually would expect it to already be movement the other direction, probably in increasing numbers. But there’s no point trying to find out. They won’t tell us. But the smart newcomers — and not all of them are stupid — should already be sniffing the air and beating feet.)

And in Europe the “middle eastern” refugees have become weapons of international aggression.

Two things worry me in all this, and neither is that the pseudo technocrats will be in power forever on the back of these populations.

No the two things that worry me are: when do the countries thus attacked just start blowing the human horde up? (In Poland I’d expect it very soon. Their history would demand it. At a guess, the only thing holding them back is fear of international demonization. And I’m not even sure they’re right.)

And do they then go marching fully into blood and soil ideology, as a way of dealing with what they had to do?

It would seem to make psychological sense to me. These technocrats are after all fascists without the saving grace of naitonalism, which at least requires one to consider one’s own countrymen human. They just consider every human widgets. (And they do it at every level, which is why they also run corporations as though their employees weren’t real people. Probably why they hate small businesses who insist on treating people as people.) Real national socialists might very well look sane by comparison to most of the world. (They aren’t. But they might get a substantial foothold before that’s revealed. And all we need is another century combating a DIFFERENT facet of Marxism.)

Can civilization respond to this in the only way that will stop it when governments are luring them and paying them to invade — I will remind you that “compassion” is luring women and small children to be raped and left to die in the desert South of the border; and that children are being stolen from their parents to give cover to criminals because we’re being “kind” — and save its soul? Or at least not go back to the beginning of the 20th century?

If we — not Europe. It won’t happen in Europe — try to restore the careful net of containment and international cooperation that was working under Trump, will it even work? Given all the broken promises and treaties? Will anyone trust us?

In other words, is it possible to treat people as people, while others are treating them as weapons? Is it possible to stop this nonsense without the use of force against the weapon?

I don’t know. I’m not sure I want to find out. But I suspect we will.

And to the idiots, soft heads and custard brains encouraging this sort of invasion because they think SOMEHOW they’re doing a good thing: Stop it. Stop it right now. Your protegees and hopefuls are being lured to a situation that is going to turn bad very quickly. And the results will be the opposite of what you think.

As to the idiot communists forming caravans to invade the US: there is nothing as idiotic as a Latin idiot with race supremacy and Marx shoved up his rear end and coming out his mouth. You are in above your head. You won’t enjoy this. We are not the Americans Hollywood showed you. Go back while you can.

Because every time this is used, the numbers need to be much larger (relatively), to prevent the population-as-a-weapon from becoming minced meat, when the receiving country has had about enough.

You have been warned.

As for the “technocrats”… I have no idea how long we’ll tolerate this, but there’s no happy ending there.

These are people who have a wildly inflated notion of their own intelligence, and virtually no understanding of humanity. On a scale of zero to fiddling while Rome burns, they’re at running around setting fire to Rome and demanding applause.

In the end, they lose.

Let’s make sure civilization wins.

It’s not your fault. It’s not you. It’s them. You are not alone.

Look, I woke up late (I’m still recovering from weirdly severe if very short URI that hit me last week. Like all URIs with me it’s taking a long time for the after effects to clear. I feel almost well, except for this underlying feeling that recovery is built on paper tape that will give at the slightest push.)

So I woke up, and had blog block. I happens maybe once a month. I want to write, but there’s no topic for the blog. Nothing. just blank head. (I now have the white board up, and am going to start writing future topics on it again. For these occasions.)

So I hit a few friend groups, and we were chatting….

All of us have similar experiences, only the timing varies. Well, and how many of our fans/friends the implosion took.

Because I am artsy (eh, sorry. It’s just who I am. Yes, I was good at STEM, but I was also the kid who wrote, did art, designed clothes, designed and made stuffed animals, painted pebbles, made things with wood, etc. I’m not saying I’m good at all or any of this, but that left to my own devices, that’s where I gravitate. The other interests don’t help: history, science fiction, social speculation. Honest, if I didn’t like economics so much, I might have fallen.) in my case the answer to how big the implosion is: would you believe two implosions? The first after 9/11, the second when I came out of the political closet. Was that 10 or 11? And the size was “cosmic.”

To explain to those of you who haven’t had this happen to them — are there any of you in America, at this point, really? — it’s like this:

We all grew up in a culture defined and dominated by the left, which frankly had taken over the overculture by the time I was born almost sixty years ago. And because the media industrial complex was in charge of news, entertainment, movies, books, art, everything, the barrage was complete.

We grew up submerged in it. I was born in sixty two, have realized they were wrong at least thirty years ago (before that I kept trying to limit the dissonance with “they’re wrong on this, but maybe not this?”) and I still have moments, usually when world building or thinking through a social issue where I go “Oh, no, wait. That’s just Marxism, and I know it’s not true.” And at that I’m ahead of the curve. I still hear people commenting on how poverty causes crime. PEOPLE ON OUR SIDE. And that’s both an insult to poor and honest and upright people, and has never been true, ever. Though it’s a sacred dogma of Marxists.

It’s moments like listening to Presley croon “In the Ghetto” and going “What the? No. Sure, maybe lack of opportunities can cause this” — though mostly what it causes is depression and drug use, as we’re seeing for a vast portion of young people — “BUT poverty is not the cause of crime. And solving it by throwing money at it destroyed black families and made everything worse.” I should have realized that before. But having grown up in water, I didn’t even see it.

Heck, by many definitions, I was a leftist, because I grew up in Europe, where all you have are two flavors of socialism, and the government is assumed to have the right to do things like limit speech. (And don’t get me started on gun ownership.)

So, having grown up like that we learned to give a “discount”.

We gave a discount to our favorite artists. I had a thing that went “He is a political idiot, but he sure can write/sing/whatever.” We also assumed we were all alone. We were the only ones who saw the dissonance, the lies, the hypocrisy of the left.

We assumed our friends were stupid, not evil, even as they reviled people like us and endorsed programs we knew would destroy everything that keeps society working. And were objectively evil. But we went “well, it took me so long to figure out, and they’re good people. And frankly I don’t wish this knowledge on anyone.” So, we talked of other things and emphasized what we agreed on.

Mostly because we really thought we were, if not just us, a tiny, tiny minority. We had clawed each of our beliefs, one by one, from the overculture while it shrieked in our ears that we were wrong, and insane and evil. So we were sure of them, or we wouldn’t hold them. But we didn’t blame people who couldn’t see it. It felt weird, and like we lived in a parallel universe, but it was better to stay quiet and have friends and a life.

My heart, btw, goes to people who married people under this system, and whose spouses didn’t change. To both of them, because most spouses had no idea anyone disagreed, much less their spouse. I was lucky, because my husband changed, politically. Mostly because we couldn’t not talk to each other, having been friends first. And because he’s honest enough to consider evidence, no matter what. Also, because after Reagan, he had some doubts of the left narrative.

And then everything changed.

Part of this is that it is the normal modus operandi of Marxists not to allow dissent of any kind. Because they’re a cult, you know? The reveled has to be accepted, even when it changes. So they kept chasing smaller and smaller dissent.

The end of one of my friendships came when the friend said I always disparaged her political opinions. Since she’d just informed me that W was going to put all gays in camps (snort giggle) and that we were spending 3 billion a day in Afghanistan (SNORT GIGGLE) I might have snort giggled audibly. Note this was the first time I’d answered her political rants at all. Mostly I did the multiplication tables in my head. That was the FIRST time I snort-giggled. Why the heck that “always” I don’t know. But that was the last time we talked.

And this was after 9/11 had nuked most of our friendships, hang-outs and writers’ connections, because people were saying things like we deserved it, or became troofers. And these were people I’d thought mostly sane and intelligent.

I didn’t fight it. I sidled away. Later I found out they decided I was a “right winger” and made up sh*t about me. That’s fine. Crafting Straw Right Wingers is their hobby.

Then at some point I hit a wall. I JUST HIT A WALL.

In publishing they kept demanding more and more AFFIRMATIVE allegiance to the crazy.

Three incidents stand out, one of which I only remembered recently while telling a friend about it (because I’ve been sick, and things got shoved out of my mind):

The first was when — and I think you guys know this — my hermaphrodite humans book got rejected but would be “accepted if you change their pronouns to “she”” which, TRUST ME in that book makes no sense whatsoever. This was in the nineties, but I was too dense to realize what it meant.

The second was when an agent wanted to make me change the book so human sacrifice (involuntary, etc) was a GOOD thing that the good guys did. That he couldn’t understand I COULDN’T WRITE THAT was ….. a revelation. That he then gave most of my world building to one of the darlings (no, not actionable) was eye opening.

The third was when one of my editors told me the only way for me to break out of midlist was to write an autobiography where — strongly hinted — I blamed America for all the issues with my birth country/childhood.

I realized things had got stupid. That combined with this blog, and the fact I was in a few lists and groups, where I heard what they said when the door was closed and they thought they were safe — you haven’t lived till you hear someone who has the image of a kindly grandmother explains to you how life will be so much better once 2/3 of the population “the stupid people” according to her die in a horrible epidemic, which is sure to come — brought me to a place which, without being Lutheran got me to quote Luther: “Here I stand, I can do no other.”

With full and clear understanding that I was blacklisting myself (I’d seen the hatred and the cancelling, then more undercover that followed things like “She’s a practicing religious person” (In that case Mormon, but it went for all religions.)) back in the days when indie hadn’t proven to support anyone (now it’s at least as good as Trad) and when even right wingers thought that the left was more creative, because we were so effectively blocked from the public, I came out politically.

I’m not expecting accolades for my courage. I had to do it. I had no choice. Something bigger than me grabbed my cowardly self by the scruff of the neck and propelled me into play.

Weirdly I didn’t lose all of my fans or blog readers. But I lost a lot of friends in the field, a lot of my reach, a lot of my pull and I thought I’d kissed goodbye forever to any chance of having writing-related fun jobs, like comics or Hollywood. (Well, maybe. It’s weird, but the times they are achanging fast. Still, not the same.)

It was made easier because honestly they didn’t trust me, so they’d already not given me the DAHLING treatment. Though I probably would have done it, anyway.

But yes, I lost friends and people I respected, who suddenly decided I was the devil. I’m somewhat amazed I retained SOME, though I can count them on the fingers of one hand.

In other words, they can’t give us the leeway we gave them for COUNTLESS decades. They will see us as the devil, if we disagree on politics, even as their politics edge crazier and crazier to the point if you don’t agree that there is no objective reality and that children as young at two know if they’re trans, you’re a hater who hates, and you probably want to massacre gays and eat babies for breakfast.

They will make our books “out of bounds” without reading them, because we’re the debeel. They will malign us in ways that only make sense if we assume they’re completely insane (like an immigrant who tans being suddenly called white supremacist.) And other than the fact that their stupidity is occasionally hilarious, like the people who complained about politics in the …. Shifter series, it’s heartbreaking to watch.

We thought we had friendships, and associations and– It was all a lie.

Mind you by the time I hit that, I came with baggage from Portugal, and I’d been cut off by childhood friends and family members, so finding this was depressing, and in many ways breaking, but at that point I’d survived the worst cuts. When you survive the beginning, you grow scar tissue, until it’s sort of a second skin that can’t be pierced. You take the new hit and go “Expected nothing else.” And keep on trucking.

It wasn’t till this morning that I realized that many people blame themselves and the way they phrased things, and keep going over “there should have been a way to do this and keep my friends/associates.”

There isn’t.

Look, it’s not entirely their fault either. We — our side. By the time we came along, we had SMALL choice, though still — kept quiet. We let them assume “everyone sane agrees with me.” And we let them create in their minds a completely bizarre “painted devil” vision of what the other side was like. Of course, a lot of this has been going on in mass-industrial-entertainment-communication since the 40s, so it might have been impossible to penetrate by the time we were born.

This would be like suddenly removing our human skin and revealing we’re really the devil. To them. They’re not going to ask why some people really look like that, or if it comes with all the other stuff. They’re going to react in panic and rage, because of what they think they know.

And they are going to believe they’re the “majority” and “the good people” which is why you get someone 3 years younger than I lumping me in with the “old people who need to die.” Because in the Marxist cult those who believe differently are “old” and “remnants.”

Oh and the future belongs to them, which does ring a bell.

Anyway….

It’s not entirely their fault. They’ve been indoctrinated from birth. And they weren’t strong enough to break away.

And it’s not your fault. You saw the lies, and you understand the lives you’re trying to save include your asinine and blinkered friends. Because Marxism kills. Fast or slow. But it kills. There is no other option.

And yes, you had to take a stand. For what it’s worth. Yes, it might be too late. But they can’t win, because their ideas don’t work. And we must — must — shape what comes after.

Mourn the friends you thought you had and sort of did. Mourn that they can’t even find the truth (with two hands and a seeing eye dog.) And then do what you have to do.

Which in my case, inexplicably, but inevitably is — somehow – writing a lot of books. Which means finishing this blog and going to (real) work.

Keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark. A man in a (mental) overcoat is the enemy. Don’t shoot them, if you don’t wish, but be assured they’ll try to shoot you in the back.

Stand in the only place you can and do the work. Waste no guilt on could’av should’av.

It is our honor and our very great privilege to be born in a time when we can and must fight for individual freedom.

Sure we might lose. But it is still a post of honor.

Stand.

And be not afraid.

Sursum Corda. You’ve got this.

Book Promo And Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike

*Yes, somehow WordPress embedded this in last week’s post. HOW? I don’t know. I think mostly fixed, yes? – 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. I ALSO WISH TO REMIND OUR READERS THAT IF THEY WANT TO TIP THE BLOGGER WITHOUT SPENDING EXTRA MONEY, CLICKING TO AMAZON THROUGH ONE OF THE BOOK LINKS ON THE RIGHT, WILL GIVE US SOME AMOUNT OF MONEY FOR PURCHASES MADE IN THE NEXT 24HOURS, OR UNTIL YOU CLICK ANOTHER ASSOCIATE’S LINK. PLEASE CONSIDER CLICKING THROUGH ONE OF THOSE LINKS BEFORE SEARCHING FOR THAT SHED, BIG SCREEN TV, GAMING COMPUTER OR CONSERVATORY YOU WISH TO BUY. That helps defray my time cost of about 2 hours a day on the blog, time probably better spent on fiction. ;)*

FROM CEDAR SANDERSON AND LAW DOG: Taskforce CHIWEENIE and the Poultry Liberation Front: An Adult Coloring Book

Two extraordinary heroes.
Sure, they may look like adorable chiweenies, but the reality is that only they stand between the world, and…
The Poultry Liberation Front
Follow the adventures of Chuy and Mochi through their slightly exasperated flag officer’s voice as he delivers pithy situation reports while the battlefield unfolds on his front yard.

FROM DOROTHY GRANT: A Perfect Day, With Explosions.

Jenna Brooks is a welder, and a fashionista whenever she can afford it. AJ is a former Special Forces spacer, who finds himself completely outside his comfort zone with her. However, terrorist bombs can overcome almost any divide – the hard way.

When Jenna stumbles over a corpse wearing an important clue, she’s roped into a high-stakes counterterrorism operation to uncover a counterfeit fashion ring that’s funding the terrorists.

As the trail of blood money and knock-off shoes starts leading closer to home, Jenna’s going to need all the help she can get to stay alive. AJ’s just the man to do that – but he’s after a lot more than merely her safety. It may cost her everything she’s worked for… and also her heart.

FROM BEN MASON: Gravitas: A Supervillain Story.

The world’s greatest villain has unretired for one last mission. Saving the world.

After a serious injury, Christoph “Gravitas” Holtz has retired from supervillainy. Heading into his silver years all he wants is to reminisce, garden, and teach his next-door neighbor’s daughter the finer points of proper villainy.

But when a classless young supervillain threatens Holtz and those he cares about, he turns to an old ally for help with one final mission.

When the mission goes wrong, Christoph will have to struggle against a dangerous enemy he helped unleash, his feelings for his superhero ex, and his own sense of what it means to be a hero or villain.

FROM FREDERIC KEY: Dwindle, Peak and Pine

Rick Drail and his widowed father, Craig, own a small cabin camp in the town of Hunker Lake. Things are normally very quiet for them after Halloween … but then, people aren’t normally murdered in Hunker Lake, and never in one of their cabins. Sue Milkins is the most beautiful woman Rick has ever seen in person, the kind of woman that can set a small town like Hunker Lake on fire. Where has she come from? What has brought her to this small town, past the end of the season? And why would anyone want to kill her? When Sue is found murdered one morning, Rick’s life spirals into chaos. The police suspect everyone of the crime, even Rick’s father. Rick suddenly sees everyone around him, including their other paying guests, even his closest friends, as potential murderers. As police tighten their focus on Craig, Rick tries to find information to save him–but maybe his father does have some secrets of his own.

FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN: Learnedly Familiar

Where do you file a Missing Meister Report?

Something is moving. Arthur Saldovado, Lelia, and André defeated ancient evil, but mysteries remain. And worse – Arthur’s name-sake is learning how to drive! Who needs abyssal creatures when you have teenagers, school-yard spats, and retail woes to worry about? Certainly not Lelia Chan Lestrang.

When André’s mentor disappears, Lelia braces for the worst. Trouble’s coming, as bad perhaps as the evil that drew her and André together. But she has a few surprises of her own now, including allies in very strange places. With very strange senses of humor.

Return to a Familiar world, full of adventure, bad puns, dark music, magic, shedding lemurs, and domestic chaos.

FROM BLAKE SMITH: A Kingdom of Glass: A Novel of The Garia Cycle

Zara hasn’t seen her family in eleven years, but she doesn’t mind. They sent her to live in a neighboring kingdom when she was small, and she’s adopted her foster parents in their place. She lives the life of an aristocratic Garian girl- riding her horse, shooting her bow, exploring the castle with her friends- and she has nothing to wish for.

Until she’s summoned home, to a prospective marriage she doesn’t want, family she doesn’t remember, and a poisonous royal court that threatens everything she’s ever known. The East Morlans are nothing like Garia, and Zara struggles to find her place among the scheming Morlander aristocrats. Along the way, she makes new friends, meets enemies, and falls in love. But secrets abound in the glittering palace, and Zara must discover who she can trust as she fights for her life and freedom in a fragile, beautiful, kingdom of glass.

FROM J. L. CURTIS: Calexit- The Anthology

When California declares independence, their dreams of socialist diversity become nightmares for many from the high Sierras to the Central Valley. Follow the lives of those who must decide whether to stand their ground, or flee!

In San Diego, the commander of Naval Special Warfare Group One finds his hands tied by red tape, even as protesters storm the base and attack dependents.
In Los Angeles, an airline mechanic must beg, borrow, or bribe to get his family on the plane out before the last flight out.
Elsewhere, a couple seeks out the new underground railroad after being forced to confess to crimes they didn’t commit.
In the new state of Jefferson, farmers must defend themselves against carpetbaggers and border raiders.
And in the high Sierras, a woman must make the decision to walk out alone…

Featuring all-new stories set after Calexit from JL Curtis, Bob Poole, Cedar Sanderson, Tom Rogneby, Alma Boykin, B Opperman, L B Johnson, Eaton Rapids Joe, Lawdog, and Kimball O’Hara.

FROM T. L. KNIGHTON: Hostile Territory.

Tommy Reilly and the misfit crew of the cargo ship Sabercat just managed to make it off of the planet Ararat with their load, but that was the easy part.

Now they have to land on a planet completely controlled by a church many consider more of a cult than a religion, all so they can get their hands on some information, information that could free all the colonies from the control of the Earth Defense Command.

Unfortunately, a master criminal got his hands on it first, which means the crew of Sabercat have to get it back, then escape from a planetary government known to shoot first and ask questions later.

Yep. It seems Tommy has landed his ship and his new family deep inside hostile territory.

FROM M. C. A. HOGHARTH: Flight of the Godkin Griffin.

On the eve of her retirement from the army, Mistress Commander Angharad Godkin finds herself re-activated and directed to replace the governor of the newly conquered territory of Shraeven. With its multitude of diverse societies and religions, the province will not be easy to tame; but Angharad has thirty-four years of experience and is determined to succeed–even with the additional challenge of an ex-lover as her second-in-command.

However, what starts out as a seemingly predictable military challenge takes multiple unexpected turns at the hands of Shraeven’s rebellious people, their unorthodox beliefs, and their capricious, demanding, and very tangible gods. Angharad quickly finds herself the central piece in a game being fought on too many levels, all of them very foreign to her nature and background.

But if she’s being forced to play, she’s going to play to win; and Shraeven may come to regret having gotten her into the game.

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: GUTTURAL

I’m having a thoroughly lazy day, having woken up late, then snuggled with husband till lunch time. I do plan to unpack this weekend, but only the bedroom….. so, slooooow

Sorry, it’s been a very busy month or so, with a lot of shocks to the system.

Our listing has been updated and we have …. showings? not a ton, but better than zero, right?

I’m very glad the Gofundme funded at more than double, because we’d planned on JUST paying the backlog, and we’re obviously looking at probably a few months of double mortgage. And we were going in the hole BEFORE adding another mortgage, so… (Gofundme is still up, but again, just because people asked. Comes down the 16th.)

It’s good not to be terrified, but it makes me sleepy.

I need to go over page proofs for fairytales and typeset them, to come out in hardcover, too. “suitable for Christmas gifts” And it will happen. Probably tomorrow. Today, I’m just being lazy.

This is fairly rare, so I plan to enjoy it.

Last night I dreamed I was making a purse, because the one I have been using for ten years — the think geek bag of holding made of fake leather — had finally fallen completely apart (it’s patched) and I couldn’t buy one, at a price I could afford.

What annoyed me about the dream was how plausible it is. I could make a purse. The only daunting bit is applying a zipper, as zippers scare me. (Shuddup. I’m just not good at putting them on. I KNOW the theory, but….) And I actually have high quality fake leather from the repurpose website (50 yards WIDE for $150, and I’m covering a bunch of chairs so the cats can’t baptize them. Like my editing chair. I have also threatened to make a coozy for son’s car while he’s with us, because it doesn’t fit in the garage.)

And I woke up thinking: you know, part of this is that if the left is hoping to hit the economy really hard with a hammer till the wheels come off, it’s probably getting frustrating about now.

Let me explain: to some extent this plan is always stupid because humans are resourceful. Even back in the seventies, in Portugal when the bakers kept going on strike (and to understand how much this touched the normal person, you have to understand that back then we were used to getting our bread delivered to the door before we woke up. Tie a bag to the back door, leave a note of what you wanted, wake up to crackling fresh rolls and baguettes. This is one the things I really missed when I moved here. Then I found bread machines, and made do.) The first couple of weeks were pandemonium and people were deeply unhappy because their routine — worse, their waking up routine — was disrupted.

And then things… changed. So, some people started making their own bread. Some people started making their own bread, other people heard and suddenly they were showing up at the back door and placing an order for the morning, then coming in the morning and knocking a certain way to receive your order. It was annoying, but life went on, and not everyone had to bake their own bread anyway.

Oh, and bonus, you didn’t have to pay taxes on the bread you sold. You were obliging your neighbors, and if they wanted to give you some money in return to help with expenses, it would be rude to refuse. (And since everyone was doing it, they couldn’t chase everyone, even in a tiny country.) Oh, and to understand this one, and the reason I use this expense, I don’t think people in Portugal had baked their own bread (Other than farmers makign broa) since before Roman times. Artisanal bread wasn’t a thing. But people found a way.

I do realize with so much of our manufacturing in China, and the supply problems, etc, it seems like the world is coming down on top of our heads.

But people find a way. Look, in Cuba, a tiny country, they’ve kept 1950s cars going all these decades. They might be repaired with washing machines parts, but they keep going.

The US is a huge country, with a ton more resources, and perhaps genetically (As we’re immigrants or descended thereof) more adaptable people.

We’re n the first shock, so not much being done to get around this cr*p inflicted on us from above. But in a month or two, probably before the anger reaches the level (alas) that #teamheadsonpikes comes out to play, we’ll adapt, improvise, overcome.

People are already buying direct from farmers. I have no idea how the Christmas gift shopping is going, because since the kids haven’t been little, we usually pick ONE interesting or meaningful thing for them, and anyway, Dan and I always want the same “A book and a music-vehicle (used to be a CD)”. This year, with worry over selling the house, etc. I haven’t even looked. I keep hearing it will be lean, but I suspect Americans will make more stuff/etsy will have a boom year. And life will move on. Heck, I know someone considering going into 3-d printing to make those pieces that are stuck in containers or that China is not sending off, or whatever, to repair your car/washing machine/air conditioning. Yeah, copyright problems, but if you market it as a “Stop gap while you wait” and market to local repairmen? I bet it works.

The point is we’re not Portuguese or Cubans. Not a small country, easily stomped. Out in the heartland, people will go over, go under, get around almost by default.

And even in Portugal, in the seventies things were…. fluid. Push hard enough and people don’t fall into line. At least not if your plan amounts to running around with pants on your head screaming “cuckoo!” So instead they do the other thing. The one you didn’t want.

So for instance when unemployment was something absurd like 70% (I probably misremember) everyone was busy, and eating and getting things done. Just not officially. We knew a family where the dad was laid off, and they found the local textile factory burned their “end of rolls/leftovers/trash fabric” at the end of the day. So the family asked if they could take them instead. Got four sewing machines, and sat around the dinner table making pot holders and small goods which they sold at the local fair. Incredibly lucrative? Well, you know, the material was free and they weren’t paying taxes. Eventually as things eased, they expanded the business and became fabric goods distributors. So, they didn’t do too badly.

More importantly, students were making stuff, and selling in craft fairs that popped up all over (did it occasionally, mostly for bus fare.) As a teen there was never a lack of affordable jewelry or decor items to buy. Of course, none of these were paying taxes, which is too bad for the central planners.

And again, there were places where you knocked a certain way and they sold you an already roasted roast or the produce or whatever. Even when the stores were empty.

HERE? In the US, with our distributed communication, our vast land, and our bizarre amount of abilities (Seriously guys, Americans take hobbies WAY seriously. I’ve never been anywhere else where pretty much everyone has a hobby and works hard at it. Most other countries, people go to their paid jobs, come home and veg in front of the TV. Yeah, mom sews, but it’s mostly mending.) I think those who want the wheels off are going to get a massive shock.

Now, keep in mind that this means the poor who are poor due to lack of will power or inventiveness will suffer. But some of them might actually discover they can do things. All of us will be very busy. BUT life will go on.

Of course the downside of this is that team #headsonpikes might not come out to play. (What? I never hid my bloodthirstiness. I just know it’s inadvisable, for a society.) That’s also the upside, of course.

Does it mean we’ll just endure the boot on our necks?

I don’t think so for three reasons:

1- the people wearing the boot are too stupid to pour piss out of it with the instructions written on the heel.

2- They’re in panic mode that they can’t help but keep accelerating, so the stupid crap they do will get worse, and even if we’re surviving, it’s going to piss people off. If they’re lucky, they get put on a container and sent to China. If they’re really lucky, we’ll punch in air holes.

3- What they’re doing is going to encourage more and more going under/going over/going around. Which makes people more independent and resourceful and less likely to fall for their bag of tricks. As everything they’ve done since 2016, they’re just accelerating the demise of their cult.

So, what I mean is, the country is vast enough and resourceful enough (I mean, just the repurpose site. And a million thrift stores, and and and) that the wheels never really come off. Or they do, but new wheels pop up from under them and we all go FIDO (F*** it, drive on.)

It’s the most likely outcome.

The point is the parasite class that thinks they’re elites don’t know that. And they’ve never done anything useful in their lives. And they think everyone is like them.

Buy popcorn. The story is about to get interesting.

Yeah, it will go nasty in spots. Keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.

But remember what you’re watching is the stomping around of the Marxian regimes as they die. It’s a blind, fatally wounded monster trying to take us to the hash heap of history with it.

Don’t let it. Adapt, Improvise, Overcome.

Remember you’re Americans. They ain’t seen nothing like us yet. And they will….

One of the things that drives me insane — to be fair, it’s a short road and well paved — is when people bring out the old Soviet plan (or one of a hundred warning articles/books) and go “It’s working, it’s all working! They’re almost there!”

At some point there, halfway through the insanity, I start hitting my head on the desk and cursing in seven languages. (Which is difficult as I only really remember three, no, wait, four with some clarity. And that’s awarding me points for calling people things like “dishrag” in German. (Well, it’s German. It sounds threatening.)

Because when people are analyzing why “it’s working” they using “plotting logic.”

Look, in novels, you can give the impression of plans failing utterly, working perfectly or whatever, because you’re a writer. You pick which events to highlight. And you stop before the consequences come home to roost, or divide and have kittens and become incomprehensible.

In real life, things are more complicated. Certainly the left has been trying to follow the plan, and believes the plan is ‘working’. But the left has issues with the idea of unintended consequences, a hard on for power, and minds so willful they wouldn’t know they’re failing till it bites them in the nose. (As is starting to happen everywhere. Which is why, baffled, worried and scared, they’re acting like someone shoved active beehives up their behinds.)

Look, guys, the left’s plans never worked…. IN RUSSIA, which was a small, controlled, backward environment with early 20th century tech, (or worse) which did not permit peer to peer unfettered communication, and allowed the state to control the narrative utterly.

Worse, their plan hasn’t worked in Cuba: even smaller, more isolated, etc. etc. ditto.

It doesn’t work because planned economies, planned societies, planned progress and planned whatever the hell plain does NOT WORK. Not on humans. (It might work on yet undiscovered aliens. I can’t talk about undiscovered aliens. But I would assume if they’re intelligent and have individual minds, it doesn’t work on them EITHER.)

You can sort of plan your family’s future, or your budget, or what you’ll do provided two things: Your family is relatively small; you concentrate on the near future. After that, it all becomes subjected to the law of “oh, something happened.”

Because something always happens. The problem of statist planners, besides their absolute certainty that they know how the future should be, is that they can’t really even compute all the factors, much less take them all into account in the plan.

Sure, for instance, control all the means of communication. Meanwhile, a wild internet appears, and there are blogs, emails that span the globe in seconds, phone service becomes so cheap it’s virtually free and– why aren’t people believing the official narrative?

Or, take over the US, and then we stop the innovation and we can control the rest of the world. Except that one salient feature of communist economies is that they can’t feed themselves. For almost a century, the US surplus production has been feeding the world.

More importantly, emergent fascist (look it up) economies like China, need a big, prosperous and undiscriminating consumer. Without one, their economy collapses in a puddle of goo.

Of course, Xi is probably about as informed economically, as Occasional Cortex so he thinks if he takes us out, China gets all the money and all the control.

In point of fact, what China gets is complete bankruptcy and famine, followed by disintegration. And this is not if the US is even destroyed, btw. It’s just if we’re made very uncomfortable and stop spending. Which is already happening.

The best thing that could happen to Xi would be to actually succeed in taking out an American city with one of his missiles (I take every announcement of successful missile tests, etc. with a huge grain of salt. Statist economies don’t even KNOW they’ve failed. To this day we don’t know how many failures the Soviet space program had. And I doubt the Russians know, too. Or that the people at the top knew. In communism, Cover your Ass is the law of the land.) Because then with or without the Junta, the American people will destroy him and his cronies and a vast amount of their apparatus, which would at least be a quick and clean death.

But Sarah, you’ll say, you’re saying they can’t govern. But they can take over!

They could take over. Usually societies in such deep crisis that it makes our current state look like perfect order and prosperity.

These days, again, communication and hell even fabrication and selling having become…. fractured and the mass model losing hold by the day? Not so much. I mean, they’re trying. And in the US they’ve taken enough to make an unholy mess.

Which will blow up in their faces.

Ah, but it’s not blowing up!

Oh, please. You’re thinking movie and novel logic. This happens, and the glorious revolution arises.

I recommend reading history. A ton of history. Because real history doesn’t work like that.

Yes, we’re almost (but not absolutely certainly) going to get out of this through paying a massive butcher’s bill. But things (at least to the Junta’s incoherence and our seeing the idiotic commies behind the masks) are actually progressing faster than I expected.

Because there are factors going into it that you can’t see, I can’t see, and we’ll only notice when they spectacularly blow up n everyone’s face.

But Sarah–

Look, guys, not only are their plans not working, but they’re stuck in political quicksand. Everything they do to achieve a goal wields a ton contrary hits that they don’t want and will have trouble surviving.

The lockdowns? Sure. Pretty disheartening. But here’s the thing: what it’s actually doing is growing things they hate like homeschooling and working from home and city-shrinking, and people moving away from the big lefty centers. And the more they bear down, the more people realize it’s out of proportion and crazy.

And they have NO option but continuing bearing down. With increasingly stronger reactions in response, every time.

At this point, their best ending is the Romanian Christmas Gift. At least it’s quick. And no, they don’t see it, because they are doing the plan and plans must work! That’s at the center and core of their beliefs.

You, however, don’t have to believe it, just because they believe it. In fact, you’re required to keep an eye on reality, and therefore not be able to believe it.

In their minds humans and societies are neatly ordered spools of yarn, to be woven into any design they choose. In reality human societies and cultures are like several bits of yarn dropped into a basket and used as a play thing by your cats. Pull one end, and you’re actually creating a big mess elsewhere. If you’re lucky there’s no dead mice in the middle of it all.

There is a fatal disconnect. They’re champion planners. And they talk about their success, and therefore scare the living pants out of a lot of people.

But the only thing their plans have achieved is to destroy things that work and leave messes in their place. Their regimes don’t hold. Their longest-lived hold on anything is China’s fascist regime, and that only holds because we bought a lot of crap from them.

Don’t be afraid their plan is “all coming true.” Be afraid of the things they’re breaking as they lurch around with the beehives of panic and stupidity buzzing in their nether orifices.

In the end they can’t win. But we can lose.

We can lose by not being prepared. We can lose by falling to some better-sounding authoritarian regime that’s little better. We can lose by forgetting we’re Americans.

Keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark, and be prepared for Chaos.

We’re Americans. Planning always goes weird around us. Chaos is our natural element.

They’re throwing us into that briar patch.

Be not afraid.

When I was fourteen or so, I was listening to an American comedian and he said that “America is the only matriarchy in which women feel the need to complain about being oppressed.”

At the time I knew clear nothing about America, or how it was different from Portugal, so the joke went absolutely wide of the mark. But over the years of living here, it keeps coming back to mind at all sorts of times.

Look, I’m not saying that some women didn’t have a terrible time in the US, or that women weren’t discriminated against in the region they grew up in. The US is a massive place both in territory and population. It is possible to come across families whose idea of the relations between the sexes is practically Elizabethan. It is possible to come across towns/areas that are very sure women should be seen and not heard. I’ll point out that these days the first of those are very covert, and the second almost non-existent.

I’ll also point out that in the US, in 37 years, I’ve come across more tyrannical females than males, partly because the leadership and the myth is that women are oppressed (the myth is stuck circa IMAGINARY 1950s) and therefore any man pulling the sh*t women pull, from physical violence to actual “rule with an iron fist by psychological torture” in their families, jobs and circles, would be crucified in the public square.

In fact, it’s gotten so the only men who get away with being abusive/complete assholes are psychopaths who just don’t care and area good at putting a good face on it. (Which yes, means the cases there are are really, really horrific.) And the only women consistently victimized are NICE women, or those so broken they can’t find the door to escape.

But does that stop women bitching, moaning and complaining their heads off? Oh, deary me no. Because the Myth is stuck circa the IMAGINARY 50s, and they want you to know they’ve suffered.

Being a victim is cool. It excuses all your failures, it washes away all your short comings, it gives you permission to be a head-on-fire vindictive bitch and gets you declared Stunningbrave for saying things that will have absolutely no bad consequences.

And I’m sick and tired of it.

Look, I know the past confined women more, okay, but I still think these people have no idea and would have melted growing up in Portugal, which was nowhere near as repressive as most other Latin countries, let alone places like Middle-Eastern countries (excepting Israel.)

And I’m getting tired of what I’d call “Grubbing for oppression in my memories.”

I swear to heck that there isn’t a single SF/F panel I attended where — usually on a tangential point — a woman older than I (five to ten years) doesn’t get up and go “Well, when I was in eighth grade my math teacher told me women aren’t good at math, and I should pursue English” or something like.

I guess this is meant to absolve them from not being physicists. And look, it’s not that women aren’t as good, it’s that most women — as far as we can determine, in countries where people are free to choose — prefer people-related or language-related professions. And you know what? There’s nothing wrong with that, and we don’t need oppression to explain it. There are several evolutionary reasons we can guess at, and others. Again, no “OPPRESSION” necessary.

For the love of mush, my entire schooling (except for the all-girls’ school which was its own form of hell) I got looked at weirdly, and had teachers trying to figure out how I was “cheating” because I out-performed boys. Discouraging comments? Every day. Jokes about women’s mental prowess from complete strangers? check. And yet, I continued in school and pursued an education.

Honestly, I don’t even remember most of the put downs, though one sticks in my mind as hilarious: STEM club. Visiting physicist explains how to solve something. Then calls me, the only girl in the room. I go up front and demonstrate. At which point he says “So, I guess everyone understood.” Because it was assumed I was the lowest common denominator there.

Am I scarred by this? WHY SHOULD I BE? They neither stole from me nor broke my leg. It got as tedious as middle class American women complaining of the oppression of childhood, but you know, you roll your eyes and drive on. I knew that was the assumption of the culture, so why should it bother me? Precisely? I also knew it was false, and proved it routinely, so who cares what idiots thought? (I mean there wasn’t even Facebook, so I couldn’t amuse myself beating them up.)

I’ve always suspected these “harrowing examples of oppression” came from people who were too well off and too well treated to know they were alive.

Which brings me to the latest example, and I won’t name the author, but the thread immediately became infested with SF/F women bragging of overcoming patriarchy (one of them by marrying a woman, because, you know, lesbianism is apparently intentional and an achievement. Rolls eyes. I didn’t tell her some of the girliest girls I knew were lesbians. Never mind.)

The question posed begged it, because it asked, obviously with disapproval/tone of “see how we suffered” how many women had endured charm school/finishing school/coming out.

My first response on the thread was sort of a warning shot, that went unheeded. Something along the lines of “my parents never taught me manners, I had to learn them myself.” But it was half joking (if true.)

And yet they continued. Muh oppression, in being taught the unconscious signals of the upper class went on and on and on.

I get it that women went to this, not young men. Though young men of a certain class were definitely also taught in “How to behave” and it was often a much, much harsher school.

I get they were taught “highly gendered” ways to behave. Most of them were taught this at a time when the sexes dressed differently which also brought on different behaviors (cross your legs at the ankles when wearing skirts. Took me till my thirties to learn that, and I learned it from a casual reference in a book.)

I also get these women are also Odds by and large, or even more non-functional, so they resented and hated this social thing they had to do.

However: mom having married above her class and having no clue how to teach me manners, her contributions being limited to angsting that I had no manners, I had to learn them by myself and mostly as an adult.

I bet you a lot of the things they learned are still useful, and are the sort of things people judge you on before they are even aware they’re judging. The sort of things that get them to go “Oh, she’s a real lady.” Which, FYI still has respect and currency in the world today. Yes, even in the US.

Again, my mom married above her class by a bit. It distorted her whole life, and to an extent my brother’s, mine and even my kids. Because one of mom’s symptoms was fastening onto the idea all her descendants would have degrees, by gum. But in my brother’s and my case, it never occurred to anyone that most people who made it into (then) incredibly competitive colleges had tutors or went to private schools. Because village/public schools were designed explicitly to train peasants.

I don’t think mom ever understood what an herculean task she set us, or how bizarre it was we succeeded through sheer intimidation and fear. You know, she yelled us into college. Or what fishes out of water we were in our classes, sharing no experiences with most of the people. (There were a few of us.) And often lying about our backgrounds, just to be left alone.

And before you say the US doesn’t have that…. OH, dear. You see, MIL had a similar story, only she was an only child and her parents sacrificed everything to send her to those schools and give her a come out. But she still stuck out like a fish out of water, because she couldn’t spend like her friends and hadn’t had their experiences. It showed. Fifty years later, it still showed.

But at least she in theory knew how to behave, which mom never did. (To be fair to mom, I take a bit after her, so she’d probably have rebelled even if she knew. Like the way she intentionally mispronounced things, even though she knew perfectly well how to pronounce them. Shakespeare became Shogspierre, for instance.)

But look, in my attempts to learn how to behave without disgracing myself in public, I often become too shy. Almost all of my social anxiety is traced to that.

And women who got the lessons, and behave according to the old imprinted patterns often breeze in, and do things a certain way, without thinking. Which opens more doors to corporate VP rooms and advancement in the arts than just about anything else.

Seeing a bunch of well-off (At least as children) American women complaining that someone cared enough to try to give them these tools to get ahead in life struck me somewhere between sad and funny. Kind of like if they’d gone up to my mom who grew up barefoot in a slum and started telling her the tragic story of how their shoes were all funny looking, and had weird colors.

Look, I don’t know if the US is a matriarchy. Certainly the overculture is. And as in an out of control matriarchy, women are getting screwed by expectations and their own peers.

However, in law and in every day life, we have more rights and more ability to do stuff than women have had since EVER. And no that’s not some mythical oppression. It’s the result that when life is hard — and it was very hard till this century — men have the advantage of size and strength, and women need protection, which puts them in a position of vassalage.

Going around whining about your oppression or crowing how liberated you’re now, might feel good.

It’s also annoying to anyone who grew up in another country/time.

And frankly it’s one more irritant added to the out-of-control overculture.

We’re now in a position the Marxists are going to lose. We just might lose lose along with them. We lovers of freedom.

And one of the ways we lose is that cultures under stress revert to their basics. And for years y’all and the media that feeds you these illusions have sold the American people on the idea that “Made up 50s” is our base culture. It’s not. American women always had more freedom than the rest of the world.

To keep piling on these pieces of nonsense only makes it more likely that my granddaughters will have to rise through the same kind of low-level sludge that didn’t hold me down, but bored me to tears.

Or worse.

Take your privilege and enjoy it. No one actually expects you to be astro-physicists. (What would we do with all of them?)

ENJOY being women in the freest, most equitable country on Earth. And shut the heck up about your 8th grade math teacher. It just makes you seem like a petulant child.

And we need adult women to help build a free future in which both men and women can reach their potential without stupid expectations.

Be not afraid. And be not whiny either.

I lost another friend to the Covidiocy/complications of. Since he’s one of the people who got me through 2020 and so far through 2020 won, and since I never saw this coming, I’m still feeling gutted and out of balance.

I’m also feeling mad. Very, very mad.

Look, it’s not that I don’t believe Covid can be dangerous. Actually it can be dangerous, in spots, to certain people and often unpredictably.

I’m not one of those people who say it’s “made up” or “doesn’t exist.” It is a real thing, though it’s not the black plague, and it’s not nearly as lethal or scary as people think it is, or as its creators expected it to be. I think the Chinese got the idea it was profoundly more serious from the fact that any respiratory virus is more serious there. Mostly because their population is surrounded/smothered in so much pollution that even babies have the lung damage of having smoked 6 packs a day for 20 years. Let’s give thanks for our enemies incompetence at science.

But at the same time, our government immediately adopted the China model of combating what they expected to be a lethal pandemic. And when it didn’t turn out to be a lethal pandemic, they doubled, tripled and quadrupled on the insanity.

There has been lately an expectation that if there’s some sort of crisis, “Society will have to go communist to survive.” I’ve seen this said by a lot of university graduates about everything, ranging from supply issues to new space colonies.

This is wrong. This is also bizarrely stupid.

Having re-read The Forgotten man, by Amity Schlaes, recently, the entire “pandemic response” has a strong wiff of “do what the government bureaucrats wanted to do for decades, and use the pandemic to stomp on any rebellion. Make Healthcare an arm of the government? check. Make sure that every private company has to bend the knee to government directives, Nazi style? Check. Make sure the serfs realize they have no rights, and feed them and allow them to make a living only if they obey us? check. Create a massive financial crisis which might shade into famine in Winter, because then obviously only communism can get us out? Check.

What it has bloody nothing to do with is preventing deaths or even infections.

The Vaccine that doesn’t vaccinate — i.e. render anyone immune — is not a way to prevent deaths. You lose immunity in months. And the fact that they’re pushing it on people who have had the disease and for the first time in the history of bio-medical science denying that natural immunity exists means if we’re lucky ALL it does is make money for the medical companies. (Whom I spent years defending from charges of being money-sucking Bond villains. You were right. I was wrong. Or perhaps they were corrupted later.)

Look, none of this is normal. None of the response to it, even if it were what the government kept insisting it is — i.e. the equivalent of the black plague — the way to fight it is bizarre, strange and definitely counterproductive.

Never have we “quarantined” healthy people. Particularly never have we done it on reports from a totalitarian country of asymptomatic transmission. We actually have no reason to believe there is any such thing, beyond “pushed self full of OTC meds while sick, and dragged out to do things. That’s not asymptomatic. That’s part of a sick culture that forces people to go out and work/go to school while sick.

Never have we denied religious exemptions to vaccines. Not even when there are so many of those in some school districts that Chicken Pox or Whooping cough run rampant. You don’t have to show proof you’re a committed member of a mainstream religion, or that you practice regularly to have your kid not have vaccines. You just sign a statement. And they don’t even keep them out of public school for that.

Never has the government run around stomping on alternate treatments. Look, I had friends who had cancer and quit chemo to use alternate herbal medicine. The government didn’t make those herbs illegal, even when it was obvious they did bloody nothing. Hell, the government made pot legal for ‘medical” treatment even though in most cases that people claim they need it for it’s more useless than rubbing yourself down with mint and rosemary. (Note, not all. It’s fairly effective to raise appetite and to at least make you not care about the pain. However prescribing it for auto-immune or bipolar? Whatever dude. However, the government didn’t stomp on THOSE uses.) Yet it’s run around stomping on everything, and has tried to stop daily use of aspirin after years of encouraging it, because there’s a rumor it helps recover from Winnie the flu.

What kind of pandemic response is that?

For that matter, what kind of pandemic response is to take someone who is infected and showing symptoms and tell them to take OTOC meds and go home?

And DO NOT tell me that it’s because of doctor shortage. They’re firing doctors who rebel against their insanity, and just firing doctors anyway, because it turns out when you don’t let people come in for other conditions, the hospitals are empty.

This is not a response to a disease. This is a bunch of authoritarians trying to create their wet-dream society.

And in the middle of this, we can’t trust anything. We can’t trust government releases/statistics, even if they didn’t contradict themselves every other week. And we can’t trust other insanity floating around, probably orchestrated and encouraged by government sources. (To be fair, it’s hard to tell the glowies when they don’t want you to attack Wretched Whitmer.) So, we don’t know anything. And we’re being gaslighted. And people are dying from this. And from isolation. And from untreated conditions not Xi-flu.

Meanwhile Sweden who released everyone but the very vulnerable is …. normal. This if anything should tell you how ineffective our response has been.

Yeah, sure, Sweden will still have deaths. Look, this insane product of Xi and Fauci’s diseased brains is now with us to stay. Like all colds and flus it will UNPREDICTABLY kill. Neither masks, nor vaccine — now both religious talismans — nor invoking Fauci at bed time will save you from it.

There is a correlation though with less chance of death if you keep healthy. Lose what weight you can (You’re being told this by someone whose thyroid treatment is slightly-under for good and sufficient reason and who therefore can’t lose weight. Even when she forgets to eat for days. So, not a judgement), exercise as much as you can. Do stuff out in the sunshine and fresh air, if you can, even if it’s what I’m going to do: take your work computer out to the back porch, and work there for a couple of hours. Take your vitamin c and d and your zinc.

And for the love of heaven, if you catch it, stay put during recovery. A friend I lost and one I almost lost were both getting better when they decided they were well enough to make what would normally be for them mild exertion.

If this is what I had (in other countries, you could test, but not here) Jan 2020, it really beats you to a pulp. You stay weak and vulnerable a long time. I was actually sick for two weeks, but it was another month before I could go about normal life in a normal way. I felt almost-well, but fortunately I have long experience with that state and its dangers, so I didn’t push it.

Don’t go dying on me. We’re going to need every one of you for the rebuild, after we win, they lose.

The response is going to stay stupid and dangerous while the statist beast flails around. In fact, like everything touched by big government controlled by “progressives” (a worst case scenario. Big government is bad enough) it’s likely to get worse. You take care of you, and be not afraid.

And to Paul Bisdorf, who is now in a much better place but from where, if there’s justice, he’s reading this: I regret we never got to meet. I regret that instead of sending you the Christmas ornament painted with the snail war, I stupidly packed it, and was intending to send it to you for Christmas. But most of all I regret losing you too soon. Fare thee well, my friend, and if I’m good enough, perhaps we’ll meet again in the bright land.

*Sorry this is so late. Got a friend in to help with things I needed three hands for, and then we got delayed with… Talking. Sorry, sorry,sorry. -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. I ALSO WISH TO REMIND OUR READERS THAT IF THEY WANT TO TIP THE BLOGGER WITHOUT SPENDING EXTRA MONEY, CLICKING TO AMAZON THROUGH ONE OF THE BOOK LINKS ON THE RIGHT, WILL GIVE US SOME AMOUNT OF MONEY FOR PURCHASES MADE IN THE NEXT 24HOURS, OR UNTIL YOU CLICK ANOTHER ASSOCIATE’S LINK. PLEASE CONSIDER CLICKING THROUGH ONE OF THOSE LINKS BEFORE SEARCHING FOR THAT SHED, BIG SCREEN TV, GAMING COMPUTER OR CONSERVATORY YOU WISH TO BUY. That helps defray my time cost of about 2 hours a day on the blog, time probably better spent on fiction. ;)*

FROM LAURA MONTGOMERY: Transport and Deliver.

When flight on a boat jeopardizes all a family has worked for, can an errant son risk his life to save their future?

The Luwenthals—second generation settlers on the lost planet Not What We Were Looking For—confront the destruction of their past life, and are forced to flee. As the boat containing the family’s prized linotype crosses a river lit by the flames of the printshop they had to abandon, fifteen-year-old Tobias Luwenthal must face his father’s ire over what he sees as his son’s betrayal.  Disaster strikes, but will Tobias seize the chance to redeem himself at the cost of his own life?  Will his father learn from his son as Tobias has learned from him?

A short story that picks up right at the end of The Gear Engages.

If you’ve enjoyed the Martha’s Sons series, start reading now for a glimpse into what happens next in this dystopian lost world!

ALMA BOYKIN STRIKES AGAIN*: White Gold of Empire: Merchant and Empire Book Six.

Without salt, man and beast cannot live. Without fire and tools, man cannot prosper.

Tarno Halson and the other salt makers of Halfeld Fluss must have wood for the fires to boil spring water into salt. Farmers, builders, smiths, tool-makers, bakers, and all the other trades demand wood as well, and tensions have risen among the trades. Tarno, a widower, also seeks a wife. One of the woodworkers offers—insists on Tarno taking—his daughter’s hand. The arrangement might bring peace between two of the trades.

Danger unifies Halfeld Fluss, yet also divides it. When Korvaal’s Son dies, and winter grows harder, obsession and anger simmer like boiling brine—and prove equally deadly.

*I have no idea what she struck, but the email started that way, and it amused me.**

**It could be argued I’m easily amused.

FROM DAVID VINING: The Sharp Kid.

1880s Missouri is a time of gangs and civilization, finding a way towards modernity through the old scars of the Civil War. 16 year old Cal Braden joins his absent father on a journey of train robbing with the promise of a new life further West in San Francisco. But promises are cheap, as cheap as iron, and it’s a question of whether they’ll ever be able to get out of the life of criminality they’ve decided to take up.

FROM DALE COZORT: Nazi Treasure Hunt Book One: Marsh War

Marsh War is an alternate history novel set in the aftermath of an alternate World War II where Hitler went for Moscow rather than the Caucasus in spring 1942. As a result, World War II in the east stalemated deep inside Soviet prewar territory. The Soviets were too weak to push the Germans out, even when the western allies pushed into Germany. Diehard Nazis fled to the German-held Soviet Union and held out there for years until the western Allies crossed into Soviet territory and destroyed them.

With the Soviet Union battered and partially occupied, the United States emerges from World War II as the World’s only real Great Power. Great, right? Not really. In 1949, two years after they destroyed the last conventional Nazi resistance, the US still occupies large parts of the western Soviet Union and has been sucked into the treacherous politics of the Polish/Soviet border regions, with nominal allies close to war with each other over economically valuable and ethnically mixed areas.
Stalin pursues his intrigues in this dangerous region, while Nazi remnants scheme to regain power.

While the US settles in for a postwar boom, US occupation forces in the Soviet Union search for missing German scientists, Nazi advanced technology and looted Nazi treasures. They also search for missing loved ones and brace for a coming war they are woefully unprepared for.

FROM BEN MASON: The Headsman Detective.

Being a headsman is killing Raymond. Friendless, loveless, hopeless and everyone he meets on the job seems to hate him. Until he makes his first friend—who is imprisoned less than a day later.

It figures.

But if Raymond doesn’t want to lose his best (and only friend), or stop spending time with said friend’s cute sister he’ll have to go up against Duncia’s dark union underbelly, and—worse—its bloated bureaucratic nightmare of a government, if he is going to clear his friends name, save the day, and maybe get the girl.

For readers who like to limited government, lighthearted humor, and heroic heroes (and heroines)!

FROM AMIE GIBBONS: Psychic (Wild Wild) West: A Southern Psychic Mystery.

Besides her broken heart, psychic investigator Ariana Ryder hasn’t met a case she couldn’t solve with her powers, except for the damage wrought by the Fae. After their breach into our world four years ago, thousands of Fae have been spreading across the US, invisible to the psychic eye.

She’s out west to run a Fae tracking experiment with her friend Dr. AB Williamson, but first, they take a night to see AB’s famous Rodeo Queen sister’s debut with a big circus. When the night ends in murder, Ariana’s not going to let it rest.

One little trip back in time a few hours, and she can save an innocent woman’s life. But when you mess with time, it tends to mess back. Something’s after AB’s sister, and a little hop back in time isn’t going to stop it.

Until it discovers Ariana, and all the powers she has buried within. With her powers depleting, dormant sides coming online, and a strange sepia world that’s dug its claws into Ariana, she’s got more immediate problems than the Fae right now.

The sepia world wants all Ariana has. And it will take it from her, one piece of her soul at a time.

FROM KATE PAULK: ConSensual.

There are vampires in the lobby, succubi in the beds, and bodies in the bathroom.

It’s ConSensual, where the editors are demons, the writers are crazy and the vampires and werewolves might be the most stable people in the room.

If that isn’t enough, Dracula is staying at the hotel on a business trip for his wood-based hardware chain, and he brings with him the mother of all sirens, Leannan Sidhe.

Kit Marlowe is one of the authors, and there’s an out of control baby vampire to deal with. Once again, the “Save the World” department is caught with its pants down. It mostly consists of a vampire whose name isn’t Jim and definitely isn’t Hickey, a barely house broken werewolf, a very confused archangel and his succubus squeeze and other assorted misfits.
With heroes like this, who needs villains?

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: EXTRA-LARGE

Every day, in every way, I identify more and more with this guy: