I’ve spent the weekend (and honestly the end of last week) under a rock with the manuscript for NML (the earc for volume 1 is out, btw. Post about this later.) so I’m not writing about Tulsi’s revelations on Friday.
I read them again this morning, and one thing jumps out at me: the use of the word “Treason”. As Charlie Martin has explained on X this has a very specific meaning in US constitutional terms: It means cooperating (Aiding and abetting) an enemy at open (shooting) war with the US.
Is Tulsi using the word loosely? Did none of her advisors point out the meaning? Or is she using it advisedly? What war were we involved in? Well…. Afghanistan. Eyes the ignominious retreat….
This stuff seems more solid than it’s been, though I’ll point out to Cynical Publius that at least for me the “Big Mike” thing was never a serious conspiracy. I don’t know if it was for anyone, but certainly not most people. (Unlike the French who are deadly serious about Mrs. Macron.) I think it was just our way of pushing back on Michelle Obama’s stunning beauty and style when in fact she was a “fairly decent looking” woman about my age. I’d like to think with her resources I’d look better. I’m probably wrong, but hey, I’d probably look about the same. Anyway selling her as the most stunning and well dressed woman ever was a serious attempt at gaslighting.
(Her sense of style reminds me of P. J. O’Rourke’s description of the sense of style of Russian oligarch wives: cover yourself in Elmer’s glue, then roll through the boutiques on Rodeo Drive.)
The “Big Mike” thing was our way of rattling the cage bars right back.
But the rest…. yeah.
Now, I’ve read Mike Walsh screaming that none of this matters unless there are indictments. I’m not sure he’s right.
Unless Tulsi really means that “treason” and has the receipts on that (in which case we’re in “hanged by the neck” territory, guys and … scary times ahead) it might be better, instead of arrests that while they aren’t will give the appearance of revenge, to expose Obama very thoroughly and make it so he can’t hold up his head in public anywhere.
For him, and those with him, that is literally a punishment worse than death.
But this post is to say: I’m taking the 48 hour BUSINESS DAY rule. Because none of this, right now, makes any sense in my head. I’ll wait till the contents under pressure settle.
However, I figured you guys needed some time to discuss it, and a place, and I’ll let you do that.
The one thing I’m already sure of is that all the people who idolized Obama need to go on their knees to Nixon’s grave and apologize.
Anyway, I’m going back to the day job (fiction, guys, fiction) and give you a chance to arggle bargle on this thread.
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
iktaPOP Media proudly presents three classic westerns by pulp author Robert J. Horton!
Rider o’ the Stars
When he was hired on to the Diamond H Ranch, the stranger gave his name as Dane. After seeing his skill with rope and gun folks started calling him “Lightning Dane”.
Was he a gunman? An outlaw? Why was he here? Nobody knew except Dane himself. And he wasn’t talking.
The Prairie Shrine
Annalee Bronson and her mother left everything behind when her father died, setting out to homestead in the prairielands of Montana. But being from the east, they simply don’t have the experience to cope with all the circumstances they find themselves caught up in.
Luckily, prairie poet and loafer Andy Sawtelle and mysterious gunman Silent Scott are more than willing to lend a helping hand.
The Man of the Desert
It starts with a stampede, and never lets up from there!
This iktaPOP Media omnibus includes introductions by indie editor and author D. Jason Fleming putting the book into historical and genre context.
Remember How It Began is the first volume in a pair of linked stories. It details the opening missions of the most complex operation The Project had ever attempted, how they did it and the price the agents paid along the way.
The Project had been in The Trade for five years, as mercenaries and spies fighting in the sideshows and forgotten theatres of the Cold War. Things changed over those years. Opponents changed. Circumstances changed. And the lives of the intelligence agents, the “Disposable People” of The Project, had changed.
Gary Keith had become an essential part of The Project. He was one of the linchpin men around whom The Project built teams of agents and operators. When a dirty job had to get done right, he got the call. The problem was, he was so good at being bad because he’d been David Cox: shameless, ruthless and entirely willing to be deadly and manipulative to get the job done.
The capper to Siobhan Miller’s terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day was a dog, tied to the stop sign. She hates dogs. She’s terrified of dogs, and that was a big dog. Looking sad and lonely, tied to a stop sign. That was not okay. She was the only one around, so she took him home. Only to find that he wasn’t a dog, but one of the Good People, under a curse. And there were more of them.
And they were all after her. And all she had was the dog (who wasn’t a dog) to help keep her from being taken away from all she’s ever known. Because that dog? He and his twin sister are family that she didn’t know she had, and their appearance has upended everything she’s ever known about herself. Including that she was human to begin with. She has a lot of questions.
Starting with curses, and how and why they sometimes spread.
Most of my writing is in a series people seem to enjoy but there is a constant small crowd who say: I’d really like your take on an alien invasion story. Well this is for them. The bulk of the aliens come to Earth stories assume their vast superiority, sometimes invincibility. Sometimes they suddenly appear on the white house lawn dictating terms. I have yet to see one with them appearing at the Kremlin or Canberra which seems rather parochial. Other times they are so advanced they quarantine the Earth or Solar System without discussion because we are such barbarian slime-balls. They may alternately be impossible to talk to and attack without mercy. All these assume they come with a plan and the means to carry it out. Our own age of exploration showed things happen much less orderly. Islands and natives were happened upon while seeking someplace else or even because a storm or miscalculation left the ship lost. In that case there is no plan but survival with the assets at hand. As with any game remember that turnabout is fair play.
Almost Curable’s fourteen short stories take you on a journey to equal few others. There are fantasies, like a long-dormant guardian waking to save a lost boy; or a luckless medieval princess finding her destiny; or even an angel helping a tech nerd fight off the devil, and then there are nightmares, from a steampunk adventure in which the characters have to face a literal dragon, and where dark elf ancestry can brand you for life. Or a land of living sugar slowly losing its fight with evil. There are cautionary tales, like the one of the fully automated bio grocery store, or the one about AI watching your children. And then then there are stories we don’t know what to do with — and doubt you will either — such as the one about the zombie dinosaur who is too cute to put down. Enjoy a journey of adventure and wonder through these amazing stories.
A wizard must produce justice enough to satisfy a dragon. A young man tries to rob a tiger’s lair. An enchantress tries to keep a court safe while they ignore the perils of misusing her magic. A lady finds that court intrigues can spread even to the countryside. And more tales. Includes “Over the Sea To Me,” “Dragonfire and Time”, “The Maze, the Manor, and the Unicorn”, “The White Menagerie”, “The Dragon’s Cottage,” “Jewel of the Tiger,” and “The Sword Breaks.”
Alain de Kerauille wants to be a knight more than anything in the world, to win as many jousting tournaments as he can, become wealthy and famous, and gain the hand of the fair lady Emma. As a squire in a noble household, he’s well on his way to success, and when he’s chosen to joust in a celebratory tournament, all of his dreams seem within his grasp. Until his rivalry with a fellow squire reaches the boiling point, threatening to destroy everything Alain has worked for and send his future crashing down around him.
AN ERRANT CHILD WITH DISASTROUS POWERS AND NO ONE TO STAND IN HER WAY.
Penrys, the wizard with a chain and an unknown past, is drafted to find out what has happened to an entire clan of the nomadic Zannib. Nothing but their empty tents remain, abandoned on the autumn steppe with their herds.
This wasn’t a detour she’d planned on making, but there’s little choice. Winter is coming, and hundreds are missing.
The locals don’t trust her, but that’s nothing new. The question is, can she trust herself, when she discovers what her life might have been? Assuming, of course, that the price of so many dead was worth paying for it.
The Columbian Exposition has transformed Chicago into a vision of the bright shining future. However, the electric lights that turn night to day bring no joy to Kitty Hawthorne, and not just because they are the work of her employer’s chief rival. Now Edison wants her to abandon her investigation of Tesla’s alternating current system and look into a mysterious newcomer. Who is Samuel Gillian, who devises calculating machinery as easily as he builds flying machines?
Transform into a shape-shifting dragon? Complicated. Run a successful diner? Even harder. Fall in love? Now that’s really testing Tom Ormson’s self-control.
Between managing a temperamental new fryer and his budding romance with fellow shifter Kyrie Smith, Tom’s plate is already full. But when a vengeful sabre-tooth tiger stalks into town and an ancient dragon starts playing matchmaker, his carefully balanced life threatens to spiral out of control. Add in a string of mysterious murders at the local amusement park, and a lovestruck ex-triad dragon with country music aspirations, and Tom’s having the week from hell—literally.
Now Kyrie’s been kidnapped, and Tom must race against time to save her while keeping his inner dragon in check. Because eating the bad guys? Definitely bad for business.
Welcome to Noah, Colorado, where the supernatural meets the everyday, and young love comes with teeth, claws, and the occasional bout of spontaneous combustion.
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.
The reason for fundraising and the reason bloggers on the right in general should fundraise: Every blogger to the right of Lenin has paid the price in career, in wealth, in prospects. And that keeping us poor and meek is a great way to serve as a warning to others who would speak out. If you want to nullify the “warning,” consider donating. Thank you to everyone who has donated. If you wish to donate: The Give Send Go is still active. There is also paypal. Yes, I removed the button from the side (though I’ll return it) a couple years ago because they were threatening to fine people for badthink. Whether that was entirely organic or part of the Autopen administration it’s open to debate. They were being very enthusiastic about forcing everything from social media to everything else including debanking. At any rate, I think it is safe to use a paypal link for the next four years. Give or take. (Look none of these services are pure. We use what we can and seems safe at the time.)
So, here’s the paypal link. While on that, yes, the address in Las Vegas is still available: Sarah A. Hoyt Goldport Press 304 S Jones Blvd #6771 Las Vegas, NV 89107 (Note this is a drop box. Please don’t send perishables that will be damaged by heat. If you want to send something out of the ordinary, contact me first. I’ll figure out another place to send it where things won’t be damaged and I can retrieve it. And if you want to give me physical stuff, it might be best to catch me at a con. (Younger DIL says I have do do more cons. Sigh.)
If you’re a substack subscriber and wish to continue subscribing, please do so. There will be earcs tomorrow. Spoiler: There were no earcs today. Look, the book is finished. I just ALWAYS consistently forget how long formatting takes. Also, tbf my formatting program invents new glitches EVERY BOOK.
Tomorrow, I SWEAR. I’m going to get my butt to bed, get up tomorrow and finish formatting the earc. Then entering changes so my long-suffering copy editor (like my typos aren’t enough) actually get the manuscript she’d made room for on… Monday. SIGH.
So, Once Great Britain is going to grant the vote to sixteen year olds.
Upon reading this a friend pointed out it was the opposite of the reason to give the vote to eighteen year olds. After all, eighteen year olds could drink, get married, go to war, but not vote.
I’ll note since that justification was brought up, eighteen year olds have lost the right to drink. And the fact that they lost it because supposedly their brains aren’t yet fully developed must, of necessity, cause one’s eyebrows to go up in questioning wonder. So, their brains aren’t fully developed, but they’re developed enough to vote? Of course, it makes us wonder about the other things too.
There is something to that brain thing, btw, but maybe not as much as we’d like to think. More on that later.
Meanwhile, of course, sixteen year olds can’t do any of that, and I believe in Europe must be enrolled by law in public education. They can’t have jobs. But oh, yeah, sure, let’s let them vote.
The truth in fact is that the impulse towards giving younger and younger people the vote, be they 18 year olds back then or 16 year olds now is a pet project of the left worldwide and it’s in pursuit of the same thing: people too naive and ignorant to know the leftist project has brought nothing but misery and death to this weary old world.
And while at it I’ll admit my immediate reaction was that eighteen was also too young to write, but that’s not actually true.
The actual truth is that any age is too young to vote if it is treated as the age at which you suddenly become an adult.
Adult is not something that happens when you hit a magical birthday. Be it 12 or 16 or 18 or even 21.
Heinlein mentioned decades ago that the problem for the law and who got to vote was distinguishing between forty year old children and 12 year old adults. He wasn’t wrong, as rare as those are. And without some test, we cannot, and the test needs to be absolutely unbiased.
So for voting we use an age delimitation at which “it is most likely people can.”
Unfortunately this leads us to think of the magical age, when people become able to do xyz.
In point of practice, what that has encouraged is not letting people do anything that would prepare them for the responsibilities of adulthood before that age. No living alone, no signing contracts, even trivial ones, no — and this is very important — working at all. Because that would somehow taint their childhood.
Okay, technically at least in some US states, people under eighteen can work. It’s just that in most of them the paperwork necessary to enable that job is more than anyone is going to brave, and the restrictions on the work more than any employer will want to deal with.
In the end, that is the problem. Not the age of voting. Not the age at which you’re magically “an adult.”
The problem is that if we pin our “they’re now adult” ideas to 18 or 21 or even, who knows, 35, in our minds that becomes the magical age of adulthood, and before that we must protect people from EVERYTHING that we’d protect a two year old for.
Adulthood is not a function of age or development. It’s a function of practice. Heck, when I first got married I spent the first year having anxiety attacks we’d suddenly be unable to pay our rent. Meanwhile my husband who had lived on his own for years took it in stride and was faintly amused by my terrors. (We are almost exactly the same age. He’s three months older.)
In the same way, my children were perfectly poised taking part in panels or speaking in public at 20 because they’d been doing it since their mid-teens, while I was a basket case at 35.
It is practice. Adulthood is when you can shoulder your own responsibilities, be on your own, and take the find out for your effing around. And getting there means failing a bunch of times before you shoulder it and stand under it. (And even then at times, you cry in the night and really wish someone was coming to save you.)
Look, I don’t have an answer for how to do this. There is an inherent difficulty in testing when people are ready to do X.
Take sexual maturity: people are sexually mature long before they can understand relationships or that relationships have consequences. Or even that older, more mature people can be unscrupulous perverts. So, changing age of consent to age of sexual maturity is a problem. On the other hand wrapping the kids in cotton to the age of thirty or so (just in case someone takes advantage of someone) gets us the authors of regencies having the gentleman ask the lady for “affirmative consent” before kissing her. (You only wish I were making it up.)
Yes, you can mitigate this by teaching young people that sex has consequences, and that there is no such thing as consequence-free sex. But then you run into the “if only everyone” fallacy. Because never is EVERYONE going to teach it, or be capable of learning it.
For something more nebulous take drinking alcohol. We’re told that people drinking alcohol before 21 will impair their brain development in some horrible way.
As someone from a generation and a country where I could drink if I could toddle up to the counter and ask for it, and where wine was part of the daily meal and Port Wine part of special days, I don’t think my brain is any less capable or developed than the brains of younger generations. Heck, until recently, mom told half joking of how while pregnant with me she had craved bread soaked in read wine and eaten a vast quantity of it every day. (Yes, sounds revolting to me too. Sounded revolting to her also, but not while pregnant.) Since this was not high-octane wine, I don’t seem to have suffered any bad effects from it. Meanwhile if you’re a woman your doctor will label you alcoholic if you confess to having one glass of wine a day with dinner. (No, I don’t. We couldn’t afford it so long I got out of the habit. BUT a friend made the mistake of answering that answer seriously.) And this is for full adults. Could we allow children to have wine now and then under their parents’ supervision? Probably. Would there be bad effects? Only if the parents are heinous, and if the parents are heinous, they’re getting it now.
I don’t have a perfect answer. As close to one as I can get it is that we should let people work if they’re able to. We should let people escape the public education gulag as soon as they can prove a certain level of competency, whether or not they’ve reached the magical age. (Yes, this will be abused. And? Can’t be worse than the high rate of illiteracy we have now, to be honest.)
And we should let people vote when they’ve paid their own bills and held down a paying position for a year. Regardless of age.
Until then, we are giving the vote younger and younger to people less and less prepared to vote. Or live.
Let the kids grow up. Most of them are trying to — desperately — but right now, short of becoming entrepreneurs, we make it impossible for them to support themselves or do what adults do: pay their own way.
Until the magical day when we expect them to automagically do all of it. Without training.
Batty BLOG FUNDRAISER 2025
Let’s get the bats out of the way, shall we? feel free to ooh and ahhhh
Pleased to meet you. Hope you like my bats!
Moving right along…
This is the final day but one of blog funding.
The reason for fundraising and the reason bloggers on the right in general should fundraise:
There is also paypal. Yes, I removed the button from the side (though I’ll return it) a couple years ago because they were threatening to fine people for badthink. Whether that was entirely organic or part of the Autopen administration it’s open to debate. They were being very enthusiastic about forcing everything from social media to everything else including debanking. At any rate, I think it is safe to use a paypal link for the next four years. Give or take. (Look none of these services are pure. We use what we can and seems safe at the time.)
While on that, yes, the address in Las Vegas is still available:
Sarah A. Hoyt
Goldport Press
304 S Jones Blvd #6771
Las Vegas, NV 89107
(Note this is a drop box. Please don’t send perishables that will be damaged by heat. If you want to send something out of the ordinary, contact me first. I’ll figure out another place to send it where things won’t be damaged and I can retrieve it. And if you want to give me physical stuff, it might be best to catch me at a con. (Younger DIL says I have do do more cons. Sigh.)
If you’re a substack subscriber and wish to continue subscribing, please do so. There will be earcs tomorrow.
Here I feel I must explain: No Man’s Land is FINISHED. It is also very very long. So I’m publishing it starting mid-September, in three volumes, published 2 weeks apart for the sake of the Amazon Algorithm. Starting in September allows me to put out the complete book as an omnibus (ebook format only, or the print will have to be tiny) in December. By which point there will be three volumes out.
Anyway, I will release e-arc of Volume one tomorrow, Volume two in two weeks, Volume three in another two weeks. The volumes are not stand-alone but thirds of a long story. In the meantime, the volumes will be going to the copyeditor, one by one.
Anyway, I have started the second story — The Ghost in the Ruby — but it will have to compete with my finishing other things such as Witch’s Daughter and Rhodes to Hell and the two, two Dyce books. Let’s see how many I can have out by Christmas, shall we?
So…. I guess that’s the other part of the funding. And we’ll see how it goes.
Oh, yeah. doctor’s appointment today: Thyroid is off again. Prescription has been increased.
Three other appointments remain, the first next week. I’m also in the middle of the largest auto immune outbreak since we left Colorado. I presume because of all the travel last month. If that’s the case, it should calm down soon.
Okay, that undersells it. I know many of you are flat on the floor, kicking and screaming “I was promised arrests.”
I understand. In my mind I’m doing exactly the same thing. And in my emotions it makes perfect sense. We went through Obama’s years, seeing things get worse and worse as they piled corruption on corruption and made it more and more unlikely we’d ever have our country back as a constitutional republic. Then we had four years under Trump with the nonsense of Russia! Russia! Russia! and all the other fake emergencies, distractions and attacks, and nothing happened. And then 2020. My LORD 2020. The entire insanity, the gaslighting of an entire nation, the abuse of power, all of it so they could get away with the myriad open fraud events during the election.
Then came the four years of the Bidentia, with an obviously demented man who wasn’t any good even before he was demented (wrong on every issue) supposedly in charge, and a gaggle of the most radical Obama followers making decisions that amounted to the destruction of America. I mean, it’s not like they were hiding it. Their pro-open borders protesters kept saying “No border, no wall, no America at all.”
Sure they didn’t get everything they wanted, but I don’t need to tell you — you went through it with me — that it got pretty dark there for a while. Pretty d*mn dark. Between monetization sites trying to enforce what speech you could engage in, social media sites were silencing us, heck, Biden tried to install a “disinformation” czar not to allow any speech that they didn’t approve of.
Of course you want perpwalks. You saw the evil doers dancing in front of your eyes while violating every law, every civilized restraint. Of course you do.
Because it’s been six months, and the world isn’t completely made anew.
Read that sentence again. It’s been six months. Okay, six and a half.
The administration is working with a severely corrupted apparatus that has distorted our every institution, inserted itself in every investigation, and makes it impossible to do anything without fighting them every.step.of.the.way.
Six months. Okay, almost seven.
I’m sorry, it’s not a lot. It’s not a lot even if they weren’t trying to work with the equivalent of a computer infected with a virus.
I think part of the demand for the Epstein list is coming from this frustration. We want to see something being done and someone punished, and it’s been six whollllllle months.
Part of it too was the first electric month of the presidency, with Doge scaring everyone on the left, and finding more and more corruption. We got addicted to the high.
Guys, that is not how lasting change is made. It just isn’t. Even the stuff done against us wasn’t that fast. (And fortunately the stuff Biden tried to do, by and large didn’t work at all.)
Again, I must remind you that we are extremely online. And we are political addicts. We know everything that happened, and we’re outraged about all the crimes. Most people aren’t either of those. And when and if there are arrests, it will need to be made clear what caused them and also that the trials are impartial.
If we just replace their unjust persecution with our own, we just set up a cycle in which we alternate between triumph and revenge and the country will be destroyed. The worst thing we can do is appear to the country in general to be unjust and dogmatic.
Yes, I know we aren’t. You know we aren’t. But the point is that to move without proof, absolute proof that stands before the world, we will appear to be.
This is the same reason Trump hasn’t completely ignored the utterly ludicrous orders from every federal judge and his sixth cousin. It would be too easy for the apparatus of the left, still in place, to convince people that he’s a dictator and ignoring “the law.”
Instead, these judicial oversteps are getting cleaned, one by one, by the supreme court. Yes, it’s slow. But it’s effective.
In the same way, other things are being rolled back. Heck, the BBB has a poison pill for the entire make the young massively indebted to make sure beardo the weirdo has a university job deal. Things are moving. Slowly but surely, a lot of crap that has held the Republic down, some of it going back to FDR’s “New Deal” is being overturned.
All this while dealing with enemies inside the apparatus of state and an adversarial official cultural establishment, and the chaos abroad left by the Bidentia.
Is everything perfect? No. Does this look like paradise? It’s still the same Earth with the same flawed humans.
Do I agree with every step of everything the administration is doing? Guys, I don’t agree with everything I’m doing half the time.
But they are doing an awful lot. If not everything I’d like them to. And their priorities are the right ones. First of all, and most important of all, we need to clean our election system. The rest will be easier after.
So are we going to get perp walks? Maybe. In the fullness of time. Some. Perhaps.
If the evidence hasn’t been completely destroyed while in the previous administration’s custody. If it isn’t being destroyed now by the underlings that are in the grip of critical theory they learned in college. If —
We might get some perp walks. Maybe.
They probably won’t be the biggest of the evil doers. And if we do get some of them, it will be for what we can get actual proof of. So, you know, not, say, corrupting our election system, but mortgage fraud. There is a reason we got Al Capone for tax evasion, after all. The evidence of bigger crimes is always more carefully obscured.
Yes, this frustrates me at a level I have trouble articulating.
I understand it frustrates you too.
However, we must have — how was it that Tom Jefferson put it almost 250 years ago? Oh, yeah, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind. — and make it clear that our grievances are just. And if we can manage to get it through without the war that Tom and his buddies ended up in.
Yeah, yeah, I know. There are days when you think you’d love a second American revolution. The problem is that revolutions don’t have a scripted end. And while I believe our cause is just and that liberty would win in the end, we’d end up destroying a generation, maybe two. And unlike two hundred and fifty years ago, neither we — nor humanity — have people to spare.
If we can get this through without it all tipping into a war? that would be ideal.
And to do that, it must be done slowly, subtly, with steady work and many, many, many of our own poison pills inserted into things like the BBB and making the pervasive election fraud, the absurd high jacking of our institutions impossible.
We must return power to the people, for the people, if possible, without burning it all down and while maintaining a thriving economy.
Not just for us. For the world. When America sneezes, the world catches pneumonia. Whatever happens here is worse the world over.
And the world is in rough shape right now. Our troubles have been amplified for them. For us to take a turn in the nuthouse and rip at each other might not mean the end of civilization. But it might very well mean several steps back with the ascent not guaranteed again.
Yes, I want a hundred perp walks. I want to see the smug bastages who lied to our faces proven rotten criminals.
But that’s the point. It must be proven. Without a doubt. And if it can’t be proven, even if we know in our hearts they’re guilty, we’d best let the forest of laws stand than get at the devil.
That’s what the play was about:
William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”
Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
William Roper: “Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!”
Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”
― Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons: A Play in Two Acts
Take a deep breath. Things are moving. Things are being done. Frankly, if you look, things are being done at such a spanking pace that I suspect no one in the administration is sleeping more than every other night.
They’re just not the perp walks, the strutting, the big revenge moves.
And I am enough like the rest of you to understand why this upsets you. It upsets me too, but I also understand that this side of heaven there will always be disappointments. And sometimes what we want isn’t what it’s best for us.
I think I told here before — or if not here, in my discord group — the story of the dream I had, in 2020 or 2021 or maybe any time before 23 (I’m no longer sure of the date. Just that it was one of the dark times.)
I dreamed I was watching at a bird’s eye view, the stretch of highway between Colorado Springs and Denver. A stretch of road highly familiar to me.
It was a Colorado winter day, with cold grey light filtering from a light grey sky and just a few flakes of snow dancing in the air. There was no traffic on the highway, and it looked like it had been closed.
Finally down the highway there came very large trucks, looking like military equipment. In the first truck were gallows, piled high. Men got out, and with heavy equipment, erected gallows. These were crude things, just an inverted L and a support diagonal piece, all of it wood so raw I could almost smell the sap on the tree trunks. They were erecting those every 10 or 20 feet, by the side of the highway.
And then behind came a truck filled with people in business-casual clothes, like they were dragged out of some office, during a work day. One at the time, they were taken to the gallows and hanged, by men who looked like they were tired — soul dead — from what they were doing.
I don’t know who these people being hanged were. They looked like our neighbors. Like the parents of kids in our kids’ classes back when. Like people we saw when we went out to dinner or to the museum. Just men and women between thirty and sixty.
And — this is the important and horrible part — I have no idea who was hanging them.
Was our side winning? I don’t know. Was theirs? I don’t know.
And in a very real sense, it doesn’t matter. Because once things get to that place — study the history of our own revolution, comparative clean as it was — a lot of it personal revenge and personal envy and animus.
When things get to that point, we have all lost and it takes a miracle to bring back anything resembling the Republic we know and love.
I woke up from that dream chilled and scared, because it had the feel of one of those dreams I have that seem to foretell the future. (They’re not infallible, but a higher percentage than should be logical come true. I think they’re the result of reasoning going on at a subconscious level.) And it is a future I’d very much like us to avoid.
So, let things be done slowly. Advisedly. In the full eye of even the low information voters. Let us break through the logjam one at a time. Let us — for once — strive for hearts and minds.
If it means we don’t get our perp walks — maybe if we’re lucky one for two. For Christmas. We’ve been such good boys and girls — but we also don’t get unreasoning revenge? Probably a good trade.
Provided of course that the mechanisms and dark pathways that allowed the crimes to happen in the first place are corrected and sealed off. And that, I believe, is in the process of happening.
Guys, it’s been seven months. I know you expected more from seven months. On the other hand, it’s only been seven months. Take a deep breath. Possess your soul in patience. Start a diary of positive developments. Heck, share it with us because as with the outrages of the past, it’s easy to lose track of all the good that is happening.
Deep breath. As they said during Covid “we’re all in this together.” Only in this case it’s true. We’re all frustrated. We’re all angry.
And we, all of us, need to be strong, and let things unroll as fast as they can and no further.
Lest we wrest defeat from the jaws of victory.
BLOG FUNDRAISER 2025
Okay, I must ask: what is it with you and bats, anyway?
Again, whenever I post anything bat related, the fundraising is much much better.
Anyway, so, there’s the bats.
Now for the real thing, yeah, the fundraising has been limping a bit this year. Which is okay. It’s not an emergency. And it’s not like I’m going to shut down the blog if I don’t make enough. The blog money just makes it easier to explain to the family why I must make time to write a post or upload the memes or something, even on my “off” days.
The reason for fundraising and the reason bloggers on the right in general should fundraise:
There is also paypal. Yes, I removed the button from the side (though I’ll return it) a couple years ago because they were threatening to fine people for badthink. Whether that was entirely organic or part of the Autopen administration it’s open to debate. They were being very enthusiastic about forcing everything from social media to everything else including debanking. At any rate, I think it is safe to use a paypal link for the next four years. Give or take. (Look none of these services are pure. We use what we can and seems safe at the time.)
While on that, yes, the address in Las Vegas is still available:
Sarah A. Hoyt
Goldport Press
304 S Jones Blvd #6771
Las Vegas, NV 89107
(Note this is a drop box. Please don’t send perishables that will be damaged by heat. If you want to send something out of the ordinary, contact me first. I’ll figure out another place to send it where things won’t be damaged and I can retrieve it. And if you want to give me physical stuff, it might be best to catch me at a con. (Younger DIL says I have do do more cons. Sigh.)
Meanwhile for the much abused paying subscribers of my substacks and patreon: the earcs for No Man’s Land are coming — three volumes, each two weeks apart — because I consider if you pay for those subscriptions, you are automatically subscribed to my e-arcs. (And if you don’t know what an e-arc is, I’ll explain when they’re released. The first SHOULD be tomorrow except tomorrow there’s a ton of doctors’ appointments. So it might be Friday. I spent today doing dramatis personae list with pronunciation. I’d completely forgotten the API and it was like pulling teeth.) The first book is DONE save for final copyediting and minor fixes. (And the first book is three volumes.) The second story in the world is started (actually the second and the third, but who’s counting.)
However before I dive into the second story I’m going to take a couple of months and finish the books I promised and that you’ve been waiting for.
Meanwhile keep your fingers crossed for me with the doctors’ appointments. Maybe I can break off my body’s attempts to kill me for a while.
Again, from the top: if there was some experiment done in the twentieth century which forms the basis of lefty beliefs there is a high chance it was faked.
At the very least, the methodology is wrong and the data improperly collected. But actually, at least judging from the Mouse Utopia and the Stanford Prison Experiment?
It’s made up from whole cloth.
The Stanford Prison Experiment was supposed to explain how the horrors of Nazi Germany happened in the (at the time) most civilized place on Earth.
It studied this by having students divided into prisoners and guards. And supposedly it proved that, driven by peer pressure, these arbitrarily chosen prisoners and guards fell into their roles. Right?
data collected from a thorough investigation of the SPE archives and interviews with 15 of the participants in the experiment further question the study’s scientific merit. These data are not only supportive of previous criticisms of the SPE, such as the presence of demand characteristics, but provide new criticisms of the SPE based on heretofore unknown information. These new criticisms include the biased and incomplete collection of data, the extent to which the SPE drew on a prison experiment devised and conducted by students in one of Zimbardo’s classes 3 months earlier, the fact that the guards received precise instructions regarding the treatment of the prisoners, the fact that the guards were not told they were subjects, and the fact that participants were almost never completely immersed by the situation.
The Stanford Prison Experiment — the infamous 1971 exercise in which regular college students placed in a mock prison suddenly transformed into aggressive guards and hysterical prisoners — was deeply flawed, a new investigation reveals.
The participants in the experiment, who were male college students, didn’t just organically become abusive guards, reporter Ben Blum wrote in Medium. Rather, Philip Zimbardo, who led the experiment and is now a professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford University, encouraged the guards to act “tough,” according to newfound audio from the Stanford archive.
Moreover, some of the outbursts from the so-called prisoners weren’t triggered by the trauma of prison, Blum found. One student prisoner, Douglas Korpi, told Blum that he faked a breakdown so that he could get out of the experiment early to study for a graduate school exam. [7 Absolutely Evil Medical Experiments]
However, again, this is used everywhere, including by people on the right to prove that humans are sheep, completely influentiable and easy to convince to commit atrocities.
And for the left? For the left it creates their fear of any traditional role of authority. Because, you know, conformity is natural blind and inevitable and given a chance we’ll all become abusers and horrible torturers.
Part of their hysteria about what they thing we’re going to do to them is from this ridiculously fake “experiment.”
And their shameless behavior, the horrific things they do are also justified by this experiment. After all, if all humans are so terribly hapless and easily led, then not only can’t they help themselves and have a blank check to do whatever they want, but also they presume because all humans are so weak, and of course we must be weaker than they are, then we must be committing all sorts of atrocities just keeping them secret.
Again, if you hear of a “scientific experiment” which confirms that humans are horrible; there are too many humans; humans are the most horrible creatures in the world or perhaps the universe, chances are it’s not only flawed, but it’s complete bullshit.
Some humans are indeed terrible creatures. But not all. And big, powerful governments that try to re-engineer humanity are not proof against attrocities.
They are in fact the greatest predictors of atrocities.
BLOG FUNDRAISER 2025
The old song and dance! It’s been fairly lousy, so let’s see if the bats can do it!
Four more days.
Yes, I know it’s a nuisance. And I’m not going to claim that if I don’t get enough money I’ll shutter the blog because we all know I won’t. It will on the other hand make it harder to do this on weekends and holidays when my husband objects to my sitting up late or getting up early to put up the post. Which is fine. I’ve survived it for near on 20 years. I’m not going to wilt.
For this year, I’ll (merely) give you ways to donate.
The Give Send Go is still active. (And to the person who compared me to Jerry Pournelle, G-d bless you.)
There is also paypal. Yes, I removed the button from the side (though I’ll return it) a couple years ago because they were threatening to fine people for badthink. Whether that was entirely organic or part of the Autopen administration it’s open to debate. They were being very enthusiastic about forcing everything from social media to everything else including debanking. At any rate, I think it is safe to use a paypal link for the next four years. Give or take. (Look none of these services are pure. We use what we can and seems safe at the time.)
While on that, yes, the address in Las Vegas is still available:
Sarah A. Hoyt
Goldport Press
304 S Jones Blvd #6771
Las Vegas, NV 89107
(Note this is a drop box. Please don’t send perishables that will be damaged by heat. If you want to send something out of the ordinary, contact me first. I’ll figure out antoher place to send it where things won’t be damaged and I can retrieve it. And if you want to give me physical stuff, it might be best to catch me at a con. (Younger DIL says I have do do more cons. Sigh.)
And please, please, please do not send either a multitool of any kind of learning center for Indy. The cat with hand-paws and the engineer mind who yes indeed does understand English is already enough trouble as is.
And I’m THIS close to having the first third of NML ready for an earc. THIS close.
Bear with me. Yesterday was a serious problem with lots of asthma, which apparently is because of too much Canada in the air again… e-arc tomorrow.
When discussing the experiment of the Mouse Utopia, which, again, to recap, was completely faked, probably tried various habitats to get the results that fit with his preconceived notions (Calhoun’s Mouse Utopia) a friend suggested perhaps the mouse utopia suggested that having everything handed to you and not having to struggle was what caused the problems.
That I know this was never suggested as the meaning of Calhoun’s Utopia. Though, honestly, that’s probably only because they never thought of it, since the left, where he definitely was, love to claim that prosperity makes you weak and decadent.
It’s nonsense. If anything what the Mouse Utopia shows is that it’s a really bad idea to get captured by an alien species that sets up what they think is utopia for you and in the process stress you to a breaking point.
Most of the behaviors associated with “decadence” or in Calhoun’s mind, “overpopulation” are in fact stress behaviors, from over-grooming to infanticide to the entire issues the mice displayed.
For the mice, of course, is was being held captive by an alien species that dictated their every living condition.
For us…
Well, Russia tried very hard to convince us that it was because we were so wealthy. Think about it, the lie might even have been aimed mostly at their people. The USSR couldn’t give them food, it couldn’t give them even basic necessities. It certainly couldn’t give them luxuries. And even right after WWII with the rudimentary technology of the time, it was impossible to completely keep out that we were richer, happier, more free than they could ever hope to be.
This needed to be dealt with, and was, by convincing them that any aberrant behavior, any problems in our society were because of how rich we were. Wealth causes decadence, donchyouknow?
That of course filtered back here, partly because their useful idiots were… idiots. And were all through our society. Even as late as the eighties, in Charlotte NC, I remember reading some brain damaged journalist who had spent time in Russia, extolling how wonderful the ridiculously simple, stupid cartoons in Russia were compared to our cartoons. Because they were simple, of course, and stripped down. As someone who, after the revolution, endured a lot of programming from behind the iron curtain, I’d like to point out this was an exercise in self deception and insanity.
Of course (I don’t need to tell you) over here it hooked into our Puritan roots and a certain very strange idea that being rich is — somehow — sinful. Oh, there is a certain twist of that in all Christianity. It’s not real, meaning it’s not actual good doctrine, but it’s what people tend to get when they fixate on rich and camels and eyes of the needle and such and don’t look at the deeper meaning.
The end result of that is the whole idiotic idea that good times create weak men and hard times create strong men.
No, they don’t. As what remains of the Soviet Union, the various corrupt always on the edge of starvation South American banana republics, and the perpetual sh*t show that’s Africa can attest, what hard times create are … weasely men, slippery men, men who are lawless and shelfish and cruel. Hard times create barbarians, even if sometimes barbarians wear suits and ties. If Putin is your idea of a strong man (as opposed to a political strongman) you might be confused.
So, what caused the symptoms of degeneracy and decadence in the west? Which have worsened exponentially in the last half century?
Well…
Some decadence you shall always have with you. Look, people can find themselves purposeless and be of the kind that breaks at any level of wealth. Or we wouldn’t have such stories dating back what must have been dang near close to the Neolithic.
But mostly?
Mostly what seems to cause the symptoms of society coming apart? I.e. the men become drunkards (and gay), the women become whores, crime goes through the roof, children are destroyed (or never born)?
Being occupied.
It’s the way a culture comes apart when it’s been invaded and occupied by an alien culture.
But, you’ll say, this has never happened to us, ever.
Ah. What do you think happened when the socialists (national and for that matter international) captured the over culture and started trying to impose their “scientific” governance on the masses, and social engineering on a grand scale?
We’re doing all right, for having been occupied for pretty much a century now. We’re fighting back.
In the US we’re fighting harder because we have a healthy disrespect for the overculture, and because frankly disrespecting “our betters” is part of our culture.
We’re starting to win.
Heinlein believed humans — for good and ill — couldn’t be tamed. And frankly our puppet masters are not all that. They’re just Marxists.
“Were they ever really intelligent? By themselves, I mean? I don’t know, and I don’t know how we can ever find out.”
Fortunately, we don’t need to. We just need to remember not to let them manipulate us — the only thing they’re actually good at — and keep in mind that their cultish beliefs are not scientific and are not superior and bring about hell on Earth.
Communists bring about hard times. Stop them and thrive. There is no virtue in poverty and decadence.
BLOG FUNDRAISER 2025
UPDATE: Okay, okay, the song and dance. This one is dedicated to Imaginos. Also, POLKA NEVER DIES!
(Sigh. I’m such a ridiculously indulgent blog mistress. Yes, I was a permissive parent too. I confess.)
Five more days. Four? Well, I took the 14th off, so this will go on through the nineteenth. sorry.
Yes, I know it’s a nuisance. And I’m not going to claim that if I don’t get enough money I’ll shutter the blog because we all know I won’t. It will on the other hand make it harder to do this on weekends and holidays when my husband objects to my sitting up late or getting up early to put up the post. Which is fine. I’ve survived it for near on 20 years. I’m not going to wilt.
For this year, I’ll (merely) give you ways to donate.
The Give Send Go is still active. (And to the person who compared me to Jerry Pournelle, G-d bless you.)
There is also paypal. Yes, I removed the button from the side (though I’ll return it) a couple years ago because they were threatening to fine people for badthink. Whether that was entirely organic or part of the Autopen administration it’s open to debate. They were being very enthusiastic about forcing everything from social media to everything else including debanking. At any rate, I think it is safe to use a paypal link for the next four years. Give or take. (Look none of these services are pure. We use what we can and seems safe at the time.)
While on that, yes, the address in Las Vegas is still available:
Sarah A. Hoyt
Goldport Press
304 S Jones Blvd #6771
Las Vegas, NV 89107
(Note this is a drop box. Please don’t send perishables that will be damaged by heat. If you want to send something out of the ordinary, contact me first. I’ll figure out antoher place to send it where things won’t be damaged and I can retrieve it. And if you want to give me physical stuff, it might be best to catch me at a con. (Younger DIL says I have do do more cons. Sigh.)
And please, please, please do not send either a multitool of any kind of learning center for Indy. The cat with hand-paws and the engineer mind who yes indeed does understand English is already enough trouble as is.
And I’m THIS close to having the first third of NML ready for an earc. THIS close.
Bear with me. (Why yes, the sinus infection is TRYING to come back. I’m fighting it.)
So, I’ve come, once more, to ask you to please get some awareness of when external forces are spinning you up for their own purposes.
No, I’m not talking about the regulars in this blog — not by and large — but about “the right” at large.
When a big firestorm comes out of nowhere, weeks — months — after other people were — rightly — outraged, and just as the left is losing its shield of corrupt judges and the administration is making some inroads — why would anyone think it was natural? Why in G-d’s green Earth?
Look I knew there was something weird going on with the Epstein files when Bondi first made a big show of having read the whole thing and how disgusting it was and then delivered… nothing.
At that point, looking at it, I had two choices:
1- She was played into making the earlier statement, then played into getting egg on her face. Bad show.
2- She was going to publish and someone stopped her. I.e. “Deep status interruptus.”
Either way, I was furious at it. Furious enough that I said — bad then — she should resign as she had just undermined the administration’s credibility.
When she wasn’t fired, by the man known for “You’re Fired” I figured it was one of two things: Trump either figured she was about the best he could get AND GET CONFIRMED right now (remember confirmation hearings and razor thin margins?) OR Trump also couldn’t defy the deep state.
And before you throw yourself on the floor screaming bloody murder on that last hypothesis, yeah. It’s entirely possible for Trump NOT TO BE CORRUPTED and yet to be unable to fight the deep state. We’re dealing with corruption stacked so deep that we might need to take it a corner, an edge, a bit at a time. Yes, it sucks. But honestly looking at the administration these last few months it’s exactly what it’s looked like to me.
You can have it fast and fall into a civil war as the deep state activates all its resources at once, or you can slowly undermine them until you can go for the central things.
No, it is not actually credible that Trump was “in the Epstein list” because if he had been, the Biden DOJ who had control of that list would have published it or at least published that bit of it, with corroboration, instead of going after washed up socialites and media personalities oh, and porn actresses to try to smear Trump.
Also the one thing we DO know is that Trump was the only one of the “elite” to turn on Epstein (supposedly when he figured out what Epstein was up to) and try to take him out.
And then, while I was recovering from travel, out of nowhere, not only is Epstein trending, but every single blog I frequent is full of people screaming that if Trump doesn’t fire Pam Bondi NOOOOOW (and possibly Patel and Bongino too) he’s a pedophile, and supporting pedophiles.
And twitter accounts are screaming that the administration is just all corrupted and co-opted by the deep state and if you tell these accounts they’re insane, they call you a pedophile-lover. Or scream about their feels that Trump promised he’d take down pedophiles and this is the most important thing right now.
The thing is…. is it the most important thing right now? And if so, why is it the most important thing right now? Sure, I don’t think Epstein killed himself. But he’s been dead now for…six years? And his list, such as it is, has been in the hands of the Biden administration funny fingers for that long.
But now, suddenly, if it’s not released this week, MAGA is going to take revenge on the administration and all is lost?
Give me a break. No, seriously. Also, go look at those accounts. Most of the accounts screaming on the blogs aren’t people I’ve seen there before. Twitter? I confess I don’t look closely at twitter accounts. Also those accounts can’t keep the Jew-hatred out of the screeds.
And then I noticed we’re not getting the screeds here, and you know the blog hygiene I practice for comments. (I forbid them from certain IPs including certain country IPs known for spamming blogs with dizinformazia posters.)
Do I know that’s why we haven’t got the crazy here? No. But it’s an indication.
They ignore the fact that Trump says that the files were rewritten by the previous administration and instead scream Trump is shielding pedophiles. THESE ARE NOT CREDIBLE OR SANE PEOPLE. Even if they’re not AI generated. (And I’m not going to check.)
So to recap this: This is a campaign spun up by people who don’t wish Trump or the administration well. People who don’t wish the country well.
Before piling in and going screaming into the night, kindly consider that who wants you to do that.
Let me be quite obvious before some of you also start saying that I’m a mindless supporter of the administration, or that I support pedophiles (be your age!):
1- I think Pam Bondi and at least her immediate aids were spun on the Epstein stuff. I think they have egg on their faces.
2- I think it was stupid of Trump to promise to reveal the files. He had to know they were in the other party’s control and would be corrupt.
I kind of understand that he can be very naive around some things, and one of those things is how corrupt or not the bureaucrats in the lower reaches of the government were or are. He seemed to believe in “our institutions” way too much for my taste.
3- Pam Bondi is obviously the best he can get right now, and BE CONFIRMED or Trump would be making other arrangements.
4- Trump such as he is is obviously the best we can get right now and get elected, and like he says we should concentrate on cleaning the elections first before we go saying we’ll punish him or what not.
5- No I don’t think this will affect the midterms. I don’t think this is grassroots at all. Epstein file has always been an obsession of the extremely online. People care more about things like grocery prices. And jobs.
6- All that said, there have been unprecedented pedo-ring arrests and people who know have told me that there is work being done on the list, but around and looking into how it was changed to maybe finally make arrests. It won’t be easy or quick. Me? I don’t know and I’m not telling you that’s true. Just that it’s a possibility.
7- Trump is not going to say he was wrong. Why? Because he’s not stupid. He’s been online a long time. Never apologize. Never backtrack. Just move on. Any admission of error will be used by the left to destroy you. You’ve seen this. I’ve seen this. Trump has certainly seen this. So if he was a dumbass in promising the list, he’ll just brush it off.
Right now, though, I’m going to ask you to stop, take a deep breath and ask yourself if we’d be better off with the left in control. Because those are your options. And I want to tell you that no, you won’t be better off with the left in control.
When these campaigns spin up THEY ARE NEVER FROM THE PEOPLE. THEY ARE NEVER IN YOUR BEST INTERESTS.
8- No, we’re not going to lose the midterms from this, because twitter is NOT in fact America. The left learned this. Learn from their mistakes.
9- If you throw away this miraculous chance we got to search for some mythical perfect, you are in fact an idiot. They had their claws at our neck. We managed to sweep them aside using Trump. But now you want to throw it all away because Trump is not a perfect person or a perfect president.
10-If that’s the case you might consider that what you actually want is not a country in which my children and grandchildren can live, but heaven. And you’re willing to burn Earth into hell to get to heaven. Everyone who tried that, ever, only found hell forever.
I’m not even going to fundraise on this post. Partly because half of you — even the regulars — are going to try to pick a fight with me.
I hate to do this kind of post on fundraising weeks. This tells you how upset I am at the ridiculous “falling for the psy-ops again.”
PLEASE don’t. Consider — in the bowels of Christ — that you’re being made a pawn of people who want us all dead.
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
Why would Captain Mishka Nix of the Security Bureau be called out for a simple runaway servant? Except . . . there’s something odd going on . . . even before Lord Saveli Solovsky took a fatal fall down a flight of stairs.
Anzor ought to be a rich kid, getting ready for his Presentation. Not that he minds hanging out on a raw Colony World, but the pretenses are piling up and when the police show up to tell him his father is dead, he’d better be wary and word things carefully . . . so they aren’t actual lies . . .
Summer passes quickly as Jude Tainuit assists fellow deputies and teaches young magic workers. Then a trap laid on an unquiet grave snaps, triggering a search through the past for names and hints. A surprise at another grave warns that more than angry ghosts walks in Devon County’s summer shadows.
Who troubles graves, graves all connected by blood, or rage, or both? What does the sorcerer hope to gain? And why does the taste of the man’s magic seem almost familiar? Jude struggles to solve the mysteries while raising a family and bemoaning the start of both football and pumpkin pie seasons.
Dark magic moves, power that taxes all the cunning and control of the Hunter of Darkness.
Fresh out of college, Evelyn Alexander’s first order of business was finding a place to live. One she could afford on her small inheritance before her job started. None of the local rental agencies had anything in her price range, but…she found a small Victorian house for sale, the only one mostly untouched in a decaying neighborhood of subdivided rental houses.
Complete with a ghost. A very attractive ghost. A very attractive ghost with a strong dislike of the idea of anyone changing his house. So, of course, she bought it. A cranky ghost for a roommate was still a better option than the tiny studio with criminal neighbors.
Between working to restore her new house, embezzlement at work and a murder next door, Evelyn has her hands full. As she works to get on her feet as a productive adult (and not fall in love with a ghost she can’t have), the problems start to snowball. And it’s only compounded by learning that her house has far more secrets than just a single, cranky (attractive) ghost…
A young military intelligence agent. Hunting a murderous drug dealer across a floating city on a water world light-years from Earth – with only his name, and a vague description of what he might look like. Will she finally find her quarry and bring him to justice, or will cases of mistaken identity mean she’ll simply end up
When we opened the call for Vice Noir, I wrote: “The protagonist I am looking for in Vice Noir is a little different than the standard noir central character. Your standard noir detective knows the abyss and has armoured himself against it. He fights monsters, because someone has to, and his moral code demands that someone stand in the breach. His moral code is more externally focused: ‘Someone has to do it.’ The Vice Noir protagonist, on the other hand, has looked into the abyss … and the abyss winked. He lives in the bright sunshine, among pretty people — because the night, the alleys, and the adrenaline are way too attractive, too addictive, too comfortable … and he knows it. He is Sonny Crockett, living on a yacht with a gator named Elvis; he is Fiddler, in his beach cottage, with his lime tree, and his koi; both of them trying to build up the antibodies before the abyss whispers, and they leap headlong. Again.”
Of the forty stories I received, I had to pick ten that conveyed the spirit I was looking for; and I’m not going to lie – it was damned difficult doing so.
I hope this selection hits the right notes. If it does, that’s all on the authors. If not, that’s all on me.
Buckle up, gentle readers. Grab your Ray-Bans, fire up your 1980s pop hits, and get ready to smile back when the teeth come out.
The Phantom Compass: An Odyssey of Mystery and Mastery
In the vibrant spring of 1927, the Hawthorne and Caldwell families—Ned, a former codebreaker; Clara, a skilled nurse; Theo, a meticulous geologist; Margaret, a sharp historian; and their children, Jack and Lily—embark on a thrilling global adventure sparked by a cryptic telegram and a mysterious brass compass. Set against the backdrop of a post-Great War world, The Phantom Compass: An Odyssey of Mystery and Mastery weaves a tale of intrigue, unity, and discovery as the family chases spectral illusions orchestrated by a shadowy syndicate.
From the cherry blossoms of Washington, D.C., to the crimson-lit Acropolis of Athens, the golden dunes of Morocco’s Sahara, and the misty peaks of Machu Picchu, the family unravels a series of elaborate deceptions—phantom oases, glowing ridges, and sapphire spires—each tied to stolen treasures and rising powers testing the waters of a fragile peace. Ned’s athletic prowess and cipher-cracking skills, Clara’s calm under pressure, Theo’s analytical precision, and Margaret’s historical insights blend seamlessly with Jack’s vivid sketches and Lily’s sharp ears, turning each challenge into a triumph of wit and teamwork.
As they zigzag across continents—South Africa’s Drakensberg Mountains, Australia’s Uluru, Peru’s Andes, and Canada’s Niagara Falls—the family confronts pre-Nazi scouts, smugglers, and local legends, dismantling illusions crafted with surplus technology and cunning. Each adventure yields a keepsake—a carved camel, an opal pendant, a maple syrup bottle—adding to Jack’s sketchbook and Lily’s “phantom notes,” symbols of their growing legacy. Culminating in San Francisco’s bustling waterfront in 1931, the family uncovers the truth behind their compass, a relic of the Order of the Saffron Veil, designed to thwart a wartime smuggling network. With their mission complete, they reflect on a journey that tested their courage and deepened their bond, leaving the door open for future quests.
Perfect for fans of historical adventure and family-driven mysteries, The Phantom Compass blends vivid settings, rich historical detail, and heartwarming unity. This gripping tale of chasing phantoms across a world on the brink of change will captivate readers who love puzzles, exploration, and the enduring strength of family.
Nearly a year has passed since the conclusion of the Chatcaavan War… which means it’s time for Jahir and Sediryl to marry, and Sediryl to kneel for the coronet of the imperial heir! All their allies are gathering to celebrate, from the expected, like the Queen Ransomed and Lisinthir, to mentors and friends from years past. But life doesn’t pause for momentous events, no matter how joyous or anticipated. There are issues Jahir and Sediryl have yet to resolve, issues that reflect the greater challenges besetting their world and the Alliance. Before they can join hands for the wedding cloth, they’ll have to face at least one of those challenges… and it won’t be the first.
Healer’s Wedding, Book 1 in the Jubilee Summer duology, brings together the characters from Her Instruments, Dreamhealers, and Princes’ Game for a capstone season of politics and pleasure. Return to the homeworld of the Eldritch and the company of friends!
Athena Hera Sinistra never wanted to go to space. Never wanted see the eerie glow of the Powerpods. Never wanted to visit Circum Terra. She never had any interest in finding out the truth about the Darkships. You always get what you don’t ask for. When an intruder in her bedroom forces Athena to flee her father’s luxury cruiser in a tiny lifeboat, her escape leads her straight to the legendary Darkships—mysterious vessels that steal Earth’s power supply. And into the life of the pilot of the Darkship.
Thrust into a hidden asteroid colony and hunted by powerful enemies, Athena discovers shocking truths about her father’s empire and her own identity. As she navigates this dangerous new reality, what began as a fight for survival becomes a battle for freedom that could transform humanity’s future.
Winner of the Prometheus Award—a pulse-pounding space adventure where liberty hangs in the balance and nothing is as it seems.
Jeriah Hartington is far from home. Born into a wealthy family, he is now reduced to poverty. In desperation, he signs on to a ship headed for the planet XKF-36. Their mission? To search for colonists who’ve been lost nearly as long as Jeriah has been alive.
Jeriah fully anticipates an adventure as they travel into the unknown wilderness. He never expected to find living people, eager to tell the tale of their sufferings. But their hair-raising account could be the downfall of everyone on the planet, even their rescuers. For a villain lurks within the ship’s crew, and no one can say who he might be.
The Madrian Empire rules worlds as numerous as the grains of sand on a beach. When the Madrians conquered Roby’s homeworld, they brought him to this godforsaken lump of a world, to toil at their will.
Now the Gate has failed, leaving them without communications or transport to the rest of the Empire. When Roby identifies the problem, he’s offered a chance to fix it.
Roby now faces a quandry. Even if he can repair the damage, should he? Will he be better off reunited with the masters’ metropole? Or will he only complicate a difficult life?
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: TENDER
BLOG FUNDRAISER 2025
Yes, I know it’s a nuisance. And I’m not going to claim that if I don’t get enough money I’ll shutter the blog because we all know I won’t. It will on the other hand make it harder to do this on weekends and holidays when my husband objects to my sitting up late or getting up early to put up the post. Which is fine. I’ve survived it for near on 20 years. I’m not going to wilt.
For this year, I’ll (merely) give you ways to donate.
The Give Send Go is still active. Lately I’ve gotten more disenchanted with them, though. Not only have they hosted fundraisers for the kid who stabbed the track star through the heart, but there was some appearance of encouraging racialist bs. True or not? Don’t know. Haven’t looked that closely. Still, that and the fact they calculate how much of the raised money you actually get in some weird way makes them less than shiny.
So, what else is there? Well, there is paypal. Yes, I removed the button from the side (though I’ll return it) because they were threatening to fine people for badthink. Whether that was entirely organic or part of the Autopen administration it’s open to debate. They were being very enthusiastic about forcing everything from social media to everything else including debanking. At any rate, I think it is safe to use a paypal link for the next four years. Give or take. (Look none of these services are pure. We use what we can and seems safe at the time.) So, here’s the paypal link.
While on that, yes, the address in Las Vegas is still available:
Sarah A. Hoyt
Goldport Press
304 S Jones Blvd #6771
Las Vegas, NV 89107
(Note this is a drop box. Please don’t send perishables that will be damaged by heat. If you want to send something out of the ordinary, contact me first. I’ll figure out antoher place to send it where things won’t be damaged and I can retrieve it. And if you want to give me physical stuff, it might be best to catch me at a con. (Younger DIL says I have do do more cons. Sigh.)
And please, please, please do not send either a multitool of any kind of learning center for Indy. The cat with hand-paws and the engineer mind who yes indeed does understand English is already enough trouble as is.
I’m very grateful to all who contributed and all who might contribute to those who buy and push my books, and to those who leave reviews.
ADDENDUM
If you’re a subscriber to substack or patreon, I’ve treated you very badly, largely because of my health this past year. At some point I became too embarrassed to post updates that amount to “Yeah, still sick. I’ll try to post later.” I don’t think they’re entertaining and I feel like hiding under the bed.
On the other hand, no, I didn’t abandon you and I feel tremendously guilty about it.
For the record, I am better, and I do intend to return to posting regularly in both patreon and both substacks. I’m just trying not to rush it and make myself too sick to function again.
Also for the record, no, I don’t know why the health collapse and neither does my doctor. We have appointments booked with — I swear — every kind of specialist who might give me a clue. If/when I figure it out I’ll let you know, but it’s quite possibly “Autoimmune is trying to kill me again.”
Anyway, there will be earcs for No Man’s Land (which will be three volumes for reasons of being a huge book) and those subscribed to the substack for pay (Or those who recently lapsed and whom I’ll reinstate) will get them as a matter of course. For those not subscribed, there will be a way to buy. I haven’t sent it yet, because I also need to upload it for pre-order at the same time and I haven’t got my ducks in a row enough to do it. (I think one of them is a buzzard.)
If you read this blog a few times a week and feel like donating, I’m tremendously grateful.
If you read this blog and don’t feel like donating, that’s fine too. Your presence is appreciated.
The Give Send Go is still active. Lately I’ve gotten more disenchanted with them, though. Not only have they hosted fundraisers for the kid who stabbed the track star through the heart, but there was some appearance of encouraging racialist bs. True or not? Don’t know. Haven’t looked that closely. Still, that and the fact they calculate how much of the raised money you actually get in some weird way makes them less than shiny.
So, what else is there? Well, there is paypal. Yes, I removed the button from the side (though I’ll return it) because they were threatening to fine people for badthink. Whether that was entirely organic or part of the Autopen administration it’s open to debate. They were being very enthusiastic about forcing everything from social media to everything else including debanking. At any rate, I think it is safe to use a paypal link for the next four years. Give or take. (Look none of these services are pure. We use what we can and seems safe at the time.)
While on that, yes, the address in Las Vegas is still available:
Sarah A. Hoyt
Goldport Press
304 S Jones Blvd #6771
Las Vegas, NV 89107
(Note this is a drop box. Please don’t send perishables that will be damaged by heat. If you want to send something out of the ordinary, contact me first. I’ll figure out antoher place to send it where things won’t be damaged and I can retrieve it. And if you want to give me physical stuff, it might be best to catch me at a con. (Younger DIL says I have do do more cons. Sigh.)
Please, please, please do not send Indy a multi-tool. I realize this is probably futile pleading, but he’s enough trouble as it is. No, seriously. If you want me to have time to write, don’t send Indy a multitool.
And that’s it for now. A heartfelt thank you to anyone who contributes, thinks about contributing or (“merely”) leaves a nice review on one of my books.
You guys keep me what passes for sane around these parts. Thanks you.
According To Hoyt 