According To Hoyt

That word in the title is not a typo. Bleg is a compound of blog and beg.

But Sarah, you’re thinking, you just did a blog fundraiser.

I sure did. This is not a fundraiser and not a request for money. This is a request for help, some of which might be trivial to you — depending on who you are — and some of which might be a reach, or might be a matter of “I know a guy” (which I don’t.)

So, here’s the thing: As some of you know — those of you who follow my writing at least — I’ve just finished a mammoth of book, so mammoth it will be published in three volumes.

The book is No Man’s Land. the first volume is setup to come out on the 9th of September, with the other two volumes coming out at two week intervals thereafter.

Yes, the book is finished — in fact I have released earcs of the first two volumes to people who subscribe to my blog. (e-electronic. Arcs – advance reading copies.)

I have the first volume back from the copy-editor — to those who called me on it in the e-arc, yes, she was scathing on the subject of lightening/lightning. Look, I NEVER knew the difference. Or rather, I do, but I keep mixing it up all the same — and need to send her the second volume. It should have been done today, but for reasons difficult to explain I spent the day doing yard work, and will need to do it again tomorrow. (ARGH. Very good workout, but–) At any rate, it will be to her by Wednesday or so.

Anyway, if you want to know what whole three-part book is about, it’s up with a blurb for the whole story, and then a blurb per volume.

(Full disclosure, if you decide to buy when you click through, I get a small portion of the sale. I mean, as an associate link, beyond what I get because it’s my book!)

No Man’s Land

Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.

On a lost colony world, mad geneticists thought they could eliminate inequality by making everyone hermaphrodite. They were wrong. Catastrophically wrong.
Now technology indistinguishable from magic courses through the veins of the inhabitants, making their barbaric civilization survivable—and Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Kayel Hayden, Viscount Webson, Envoy of the Star Empire—Skip to his friends— has just crash-landed through a time-space rift into the middle of it all.
Dodging assassins and plummeting from high windows was just the beginning. With a desperate king and an archmagician as his only allies, Scipio must outrun death itself while battling beasts, traitors, and infiltrators bent on finishing what the founders started: total destruction.
Two worlds. One chance. No time to lose.

Volume 1

Volume 1
The Ambassador Corps has rules: you cannot know everything, don’t get horizontal with the natives, don’t make promises you can’t keep.
They’re a lot harder to follow when assassins are hunting you, your barbarian allies could kill you for the wrong word, and death lurks around every corner.
The unwritten rule? Never identify with the natives.
Skip’s already broken that one.
Now he’s racing against time to save his new friends from slavery—or worse—while dodging energy blasts and political intrigue. One crash-landed diplomat. A world of deadly secrets. And absolutely no backup.

Some rules are meant to be broken. Others will get you killed.

Volume 2

He was wrong.

Now his potential allies from the Star Empire are turning up dead, one by one. Spies and saboteurs have infiltrated every level of Ellyan society, and Skip is running out of people he can trust.

As he races to save the king and archmagician—his only remaining allies—disturbing secrets about Elly’s culture emerge alongside buried truths about his own family’s past. One moment he’s explaining the bewildering concept of binary gender to confused Ellyans, the next he’s making impossible choices that could strand him on this world forever.

His last gambit is reckless. The odds of success are slim. And failure means losing everything—his mission, his allies, his only way home.

But some fights are worth the risk, even when the deck is stacked against you.

Sometimes the most dangerous enemy is the one you never see coming.

Volume 3

Skip’s idea of crisis management?
Stress baking. While he’s kneading away his anxiety, Eerlen Troz is fighting for his life—and his unborn child’s—in an ancient and familiar battle.
When saving Eerlen’s life requires forging an unexpected blood brotherhood, it creates something neither person anticipated: a memory bond between two worlds.
Through shared consciousness, they uncover a conspiracy that threatens not just Elly, but the entire Star Empire.
The plot runs deeper than anyone imagined. Lives, fortunes, and freedom itself hang in the balance. But exposing the truth means surviving long enough to tell it—and their enemies have other plans. Two minds. One mission. A galaxies-spanning conspiracy that someone will kill to protect.
When the fate of worlds rests on an unlikely brotherhood forged in blood and baked goods.

*********

So, anyway, part of the problem with this book is that it’s odd. It simply is. I am not running it down mind, on the contrary, but you know, science fiction books come in a range, and mine is hanging out on the extreme end, or perhaps to the side, doing a little dance, fully out the “expected” range.

The other problem is that it’s a heart-book. I can’t explain that, I think, to anyone but a writer. Readers tend to think a heart-book is a book the author writes a book with his/her message, and makes sure the message gets through and–
It’s not like that at all. It has nothing to do with self insertion (which I just don’t do anyway, since I have my own life and don’t need to live the characters’ lives) or putting out the message you care about, or even “With this book I will fight communism forever.”
A heart book is like a favorite child. Which parents aren’t supposed to have but each writer has anyway. (Not in their kids, dorks, in the books.)
Some of it inexplicable. When I was writing short stories at one a week, most of the time I was okay with each of them. I wasn’t in love with, I didn’t hate it. I did the best job I could to get it out of my head and into everyone else’s. And then I sent it out. Was I happy when I got rejections? No. But unless it were the day I got sixty rejections back, I was fine.
However, one in fifty short stories just GOT me. It was a favorite child. And every time it got rejected, it gutted me.
Some of it, with this book, is explicable. This book first came to me when I was 14. And it’s been waiting. I wrote 8 versions of it before this, but I knew they weren’t right. This one IS. And this one is a piece of me.
I want to say here that this doesn’t mean heart-books are good. Jane Austen’s, bizarrely, was Emma, not Pride and Prejudice. Or even Persuasion.

HOWEVER, and keep in mind this is me, I’ve written a lot of books and normally my basic fail at publicity is that if you ask me if the book is good, I tell you “It’s a book. You might like it, or you might not. I don’t know.” But No Man’s Land is GOOD. It’s a d*mn good book.

Which brings us to problem three:
I have no idea how to market. NONE.

The main problem is that I never did. It’s not so much that I don’t want to promote, or that I’m afraid to, or that I’m shy, diffident or modest. None of that is quite right.

It’s more that I never had the right kind of contacts for traditional publishing. I never did. I never had a link to the powerful, the influential, the people who knew people in New York City publishing. I had editors and agents, but I think I was a bit of a kludge for them, (that not fitting into an easy category thing) and at any rate publishers and agents are not in the business of publicizing anyone but the already successful. Or those who for their own reasons are targeted and marked for success. I was never one of those. And I never had the alternative channels to do it.

I still don’t have the alternative channels.

I’m not going to lie, I do have some publicity ability: This blog. Instapundit links. I’ve used them for others and (sparingly) for myself, but for this book I’m willing to publicize myself as if I were someone I love who has written a — damn — good book.

But the thing is, the book deserves publicity. It deserves to reach farther than my normal captive audience.

And I have no clue how to do it.

Oh, there are …. webinars and methods and ways to evaluate it. And that’s fine. Except that a) that’s not the way my mind works. b) I don’t want to spend a year figuring out how to make it work. c) no one quite knows how to make it work.

I know the patter from these webinars. It’s just like the talks that published (but not crazy successful) writers used to do at cons. They sold you “my method for breaking in” and what you could be sure of is that the method was already oudated or had worked once, through freak chance.

Sure, ad campaigns work. They take a lot of time, but they work. And you can make a small fortune by spending a large fortune. I don’t have a large fortune. And if I did, I still wouldn’t want to spend it on that. Because you can, and it might never do anything. And the campaigns are less likely to work for a truly off beat property. They work much better with “This is the great thriller just like this other great thriller.” I don’t have that.

So here we are: I have this book I want to promote, and I have no idea how. So, hence the bleg.

A Writer’s Bleg

Let me start by saying I don’t want you to contact me if you are selling your for-pay blog review (I can get fifteen of those offers on linked in. But I don’t think they have more — and some have significantly less — reach than this blog and certainly than Instapundit.)

I don’t want you to contact me if you are a “publicist” who wants to “design a campaign for me” — not unless you have d*mn good references with clients I can verify exist and can contact independently. And even then I’d have to know what you intend to do for THIS particular book. And remember, I’m not made of money, nor is this a vanity project where I spend my retirement account for fame. I’m a working stiff, variety writer — unless you really are a unicorn. And a verifiable unicorn, not a goat with a horn velcroed on. I wasn’t born yesterday, I’m a veteran of 25 plus years as a professional, and you’re not — like someone tried on twitter — going to beguile me by praising the book you haven’t even read to the sky. No.

So, that should take care of most of the spam hitting my mailbox.

Now, what I DO WANT.

Are you a writer I have helped promote? I know you might — probably do — have fewer resources than I.

However, if you have resources, could you give me a little bit of promotion? No matter how small, it will get me a few eyes that would otherwise never see my book.

(If you’re uncomfortable (the book is almost distressingly wholesome, but it might not come across like that in the description) feel free to ping me for ARCs at Goldport Press at gmail dot com. And if you still feel uncomfortable, that’s fine.)

Just, you know, a mention, a review or if you really turn out to like it after reading the ARCs some “push” in the sense that you tell your friends it’s a d*mn good book. (Word of mouth still works best for books, I find.)

Other ways you can help: Do you have a blog? I would like to do your basic “blog tour”. I.e. I’ll come to your blog, be entertaining on the subject of whatever your theme is, and then plug my book at the end.

Do you have a podcast? I’m a d*mn good prospect for an interview, because I — allegedly — have an accent, and people tend to be fascinated by it. Also, I get nervous, and APPARENTLY I babble amusingly.

If you don’t have either a blog or a podcast, but have a friend who does? Can you ask them. I’m not telling you to take their pets hostage or anything, but just ask.

Do you have some idea how else to promote? And I mean a realistic idea not a “As G-d is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly” type of idea. Let me know.

This is a bleg. I can forecast social trends and politics, and kill current events to read the future in their entrails.

Publicity, though? I have no clue. There’s an art to it, and it’s not my art.

I want to be writing the second story, which is started, but… And I want to be finishing Witch’s Daughter and the two Dyce books. And the next Rhodes. And writing the next shifters and Fuse’s story in Darkship Thieves. Not trying to play games with impressions and conversions and hits and…

So, help a direwolf writer out, please?

I’m blegging you with tears in my eyes. Brother, can you spare some word of mouth and pass it on?

This Sunday I realized the left — particularly the cultured, posturing left — is completely and utterly out of ammo.

Oh, probably not out of literal ammo. That seems to always be their last play, after all. Bringing out the hidden cache and trying to make a splash. In America, I’m going to hazard, it won’t go well for them. They might even know it, so that the outbreaks of nonsense we get are isolated and tiny. Still tragic. Still costing innocent lives. But not the open shooting war they hanker for at some level and which their revolutionary heroes in other lands managed.

But for you guys to understand the level at which they are out of ammo and the shock I experienced on realizing it: I grew up in a place and time where the left commanded all the heights of culture, all the megaphones of discourse. They could declare what was beautiful and not, or make your book/music/art untouchable with a word.

Even as late as the early oughts, to brand some novelist as “racist” because you deemed she had insufficient people of color characters in her books and/or insensitive and imperialist because she had those, while being herself obviously white was enough reason to destroy a career unless the person were already a massive success.

And now? Now they’re down to this type of utterly ridiculous meltdown over… a commercial. No, seriously.

Like, you know, commercials aren’t supposed to show an enticing, aspirational ideal.

Wait, for all I know the left doesn’t realize that. Their favored means of getting you to do something is, after all, to curl a disdainfully look and tell you to do it if you don’t want to be fascist/retrograde/stupid.

Which is what this precious specimen is trying to evoke.

He stompy stompy footed and told us that liking beautiful things, or heroes or rural scenes, or an evocation of the past makes us…. he looked into his little bag of tricks and hurled out the most horrifying word in it. Nazis!

Which is utterly revealing as to the kind of mind we’re dealing with, but let’s save that for later.

The most immediate thing is why he did it. The short answer is because he’s stupid enough he doesn’t realize the only reason that sort of thing worked is because they commanded all the heights of culture, there were no alternative voices and while people might not buy their bullshit and definitely not enjoy their “art” they largely had no way to talk back. This meant the institutions, art buyers etc (I am of the impression that the art buying in the present post modern world is a giant money laundering scam on par with book advances for lefty politicians) were fooled into thinking that these people were culturally significant somehow.

They had made themselves into the church of art and those they disagreed with were excommunicated. (Which incidentally was the worst possible thing for art as such. Except insofar as it continued to exist around the edges, things the establishment hated, which sold nonetheless.)

My friend Francis Turner (Of L’Ombre de l’Olivier) says the most revealing thing in that little screed is the fact that he’s upset at “conventional and banal ideas about beauty.” Like, you know, beauty cannot common and widely appreciated because it IS. Or like something widely appreciated can’t be both beautiful and art. Or–

Look, as Francis put it:
“I think the bit that really gets me is

conventional and banal ideas about “beauty”

That shows he doesn’t get it at all. Why do millions of tourists visit Paris or Kyoto or rave about the Golden Gate bridge or the Statue of Liberty or Machu Picchu* or wherever. It’s because they are beautiful. Sure they may be other things too – historic, natural wonders etc. – but it’s beauty that gets you there first and there is global agreement that these things are beautiful. The only people that don’t find them beautiful are miserable avant-garde sorts like the writer. And while there are certainly cultural idiosyncrasies about beauty there are many things in common across cultures and denying that or deriding it as banal or conventional is just a sign that you are being deliberately elitist.”

Of course he’s being deliberately elitist. Even though he also quite obviously has nothing that could be considered elite about his intellect.

How do I know that? Because only the most bizarrely conformist and yes banal mind could come up with the “They’re just like Nazis.”

I could see just throwing a fit (as he tries to in comments) over the fact “the right” (Bad news bucko, as Francis points out, it’s not just the right) is “pre-modern.” But this never occurred to him, until he realized that the examples weren’t just “just like Hitler.”

No, the fact that he reached for the Nazis means that his mental box is arranged by “things that would make me cry” and being called a Nazi if right at the top of that. And also that somehow everything pre-modern is Nazi.

This is his grand attempt at cowing the masses and making them feel unworthy. Judging by the comments, the masses are mostly pointing and laughing.

I joined in to show willing, because you know me, and as mom says “the beggar might go without alms, but he won’t go without a response.”

I really think that is a problem. At its core, the leftist project has defined beauty as banal and therefore worthless.

They got lulled by their dominance not of the culture but of the cultural press into thinking that they could create taste and culture wholesale out of their nether regions and also that value and art could be found in what they declared to be so.

In a way, in fact, it’s a lot like the propaganda art of Nazis (And Soviets) things proclaimed from above and imposed on the crowd with neither consent nor interest on the crowd’s part.

They were so busy at this little game they didn’t realize, as I pointed out, that the traditions they were trying to eviscerate and the people they were trying to shock were long dead. Guys, I’m 62 (ALMOST 63). Their half-assed nonsense might have shocked my great grandmother. It certainly wouldn’t have shocked my grandmother who was, albeit from a less cosmopolite millieu, the same generation as Robert A. Heinlein, and who read a lot. (Meaning she’d run into ideas that would shock this precious flower, likely.) And I’m not sure they’d have shocked great grandmother. I suspect it’s just I know less about her generation and can imagine her as a very proper Victorian lady. (If I’m to believe Agatha Christie, they had minds like sinks.)

When the entire aim of your otherwise conventional and hidebound “art” is to shock, outrage or at least repulse those you imagine less enlightened, sooner or later you’re going to run into diminishing returns.

When on top of that you think there’s virtue in eschewing beauty what you get is the Obama presidential library which manages to make his (and his wife’s) official portrait look positively interesting, ground breaking (other than for wait? what?) and significant.

And yes, that means you’re going to lose the public at large. Because the public now can find better stuff on their own. Or create it. And yeah, they can actually talk back to these half-baked art “experts.”

Who have nothing. Who are UTTERLY out of ammo. And bewildered their sneers no longer work.

Grid your loins, ladies and Gentlemen. It’s going to be a loooooong and strange ride.

But at least we can do as the groundlings in Shakespeare’s day did: Munch peanuts and pelt the performers with the shells.

Because we, like Shakespeare, understand beauty and truly significant art.

Art and beauty is that which remains, through the centuries, long after all the experts who told you it was cheap entertainment for the masses, have died and are moldering in the grave. Forgotten.

*I don’t know what is so beautiful about Macho Pikachu.

Book Promo

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

FROM NATHAN BRINDLE: Footprints

Humanity has worked its painful way up the technological ladder and is ready to go to the moon. But surprises await our intrepid explorers, who have differing reasons for their presence on the mission. Will the agent of an oppressive government do the will of his masters, or will the revolutionary-in-secret win out and spark a revolution among the people back home? And what does an ancient artifact protected by a mysterious voice have to do with any of this?

Written in 1984 as a prequel to a novel series that never got off the ground, this is the first appearance in any form of this work.

FROM L. DOUGLAS GARRETT AND NICKY ROBINSON: Remember How It Ended (Remember The Trade Book 4)

Remember How It Ended is the second volume in a pair of linked stories. It details the gritty conclusion to the most complex operation The Project had ever attempted, how they did it and the price they paid… in lives.

Someone was out there, pulling strings and providing services to the bad guys of the late Cold War. It had taken two high-stakes espionage missions to find the thread that led to them. But who were they and what was their agenda?

The only way to find out was to risk half of The Project’s entire operational capacity on a third mission in Cyprus. The opposition had bought and paid for near-immunity there. Could Gary Keith and the other “Disposable People” of The Project find a way to burn down their operation?

And could Gary Keith live with himself if it took being David Cox again to do it?

FROM WILLIAM STROOCK: War Night: Stories of the Great Nuclear War of 1975

War Night: Stories of the Great Nuclear War of 1975
Eleven stories of people on the night the Great Nuclear War of 1975 began.
-In a NATO bunker, General Al Haig fights Europe’s first nuclear war.
-Over the Canadian Boreal Forest, Canadian F-101 Voodoo pilots make the ultimate sacrifice.
-In Florida, a single mother must pick up her children, as the bombs are falling.
-An Australian family watches the nuclear war unfold live on television.
And much more…

BY ED LACY, BROUGHT BACK BY JASON FLEMING: Blonde Bait (Annotated): A hard-boiled noir thriller

Mickey Whalen lived on his boat and bummed around the Caribbean all by himself, until he found a woman alone, on a sandbar, with a suitcase full of money. He fell for her, hard, even as he was trying to figure out who, or what, the hell she was running from!

• This iktaPOP Media edition includes an introduction giving historical and genre context to the novel.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Godshead (Modern Gods Book 1)

Food and drink for sale; snark for free…

It’s hard to be a god nobody believes in, sometimes. Especially when one spends their days trying to quietly go about his or her life in a world that barely remembers the myths surrounding the old Greek gods, but where some religions still follow the old Norse gods.

And some of the Norse gods are getting more dangerous: Loki, the trickster, has lost the last of what passed for his sanity, and needs to be helped, or stopped. One of the two. And no one seems to be up to it.

At least, not alone. Working together, they can avoid the worst of Loki’s tricks, and maybe even solve their problems.

A tale told from several points of view.

FROM JOHN BAILEY: The Orb of Tides

The Orb of Tides

In the mist-soaked port of Hand-To-The-Sea, a group of weathered adventurers—Carl the True, Louren Swiftblade, Mira the Younger, Gunnar Stoneman, and Gorrim Stoneheart—reunite for what they believe is a final farewell at the King’s Head tavern. Bound by scars and shared history, their camaraderie is tested when a mysterious stranger, Cassian, offers them a perilous job: retrieve a stolen relic, the Orb of Tides, from a dangerous rival on the uncharted island of Salthollow. What begins as a quest for coin and closure spirals into a journey that challenges the fabric of reality itself.

Aboard the creaking ship Windsinger, the group navigates eerie seas and faces visions, whispers, and a shifting world influenced by the orb’s ancient power. Guided by the enigmatic Elyra, a watcher with her own connection to the relic, they confront Zoryn, a fallen mage whose ambition threatens to unravel existence. The orb, a keystone of cosmic memory, tests their truths, forcing each to face their regrets, fears, and hopes.

As they battle Zoryn and the orb’s temptations, the adventurers choose restraint over power, sealing the relic but awakening something beyond the veil—a presence marked by a red star and mysterious feathers. Returning to a subtly altered Hand-To-The-Sea, they realize their journey has changed not just them but the world. Now stewards of a fragile reality, they prepare to face new threats, guided by Elyra’s fading memories and their unbreakable bond.

The Orb of Tides is a gripping fantasy epic of loyalty, sacrifice, and the weight of choices, where the line between hero and guardian blurs against a backdrop of cosmic mystery. Perfect for fans of introspective, character-driven adventures and tales of worlds on the brink.

FROM KAREN MYERS: The Ways of Winter – A Virginian in Elfland (The Hounds of Annwn Book 2)

Book 2 of The Hounds of Annwn

TRAPPED BEHIND ENEMY LINES, CAN HE FIND THE STRENGTH TO DEFEND ALL THAT HE VALUES MOST, OR EVEN JUST TO SURVIVE?

It’s the dead of winter and George Talbot Traherne, the new human huntsman for the Wild Hunt, is in trouble. The damage in Gwyn ap Nudd’s domain reveals the deadly powers of a dangerous foe who has mastered an unstoppable weapon and threatens the fae dominions in both the new and the old worlds.

Secure in his unbreachable stronghold, the enemy holds hostages and has no compunction about using them in deadly experiments with newly discovered way-technology. Only George has a chance to reach him in time to prevent the loss of thousands of lives, even if it costs him everything.

Welcome to the portrait of a paladin in-the-making, Can he carry out a rescue without the deaths of all involved? Will his patron, the antlered god Cernunnos, help him, or just write him off as a dead loss? He has a family to protect and a world to save, and little time to do it in.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: She Dreams Day and Night

Nancy White they called her, a good, solid name for a troubled girl. But she knew her father had called her by another name, before he disappeared through the gate into another world of strange stars and stranger moons. No matter how hard the staff of Hildred House try to force her to forget, she remembers. And longs to reopen the gate, to rejoin her father on that alien shore where cloud-waves break.

FROM MARY CATELLI: Over the Sea, To Me

A novelette retelling an old ballad.

A castle of marvels, by the sea — full of goblins and sprites. Many young knights come in search of adventures, and leave in search of something less adventurous.

A knight brave enough to face it could even woo the Lady Isobel there, but when Sir Beichan and she catch the attention of her father, the castle has horrors as well as wonders, enough to hold him prisoner. Winning freedom may only separate them, unless its marvels can be used to unite them, over the sea.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: No Man’s Land

No Man’s Land
Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.

On a lost colony world, mad geneticists thought they could eliminate inequality by making everyone hermaphrodite. They were wrong. Catastrophically wrong.
Now technology indistinguishable from magic courses through the veins of the inhabitants, making their barbaric civilization survivable—and Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Kayel Hayden, Viscount Webson, Envoy of the Star Empire—Skip to his friends— has just crash-landed through a time-space rift into the middle of it all.
Dodging assassins and plummeting from high windows was just the beginning. With a desperate king and an archmagician as his only allies, Scipio must outrun death itself while battling beasts, traitors, and infiltrators bent on finishing what the founders started: total destruction.
Two worlds. One chance. No time to lose.

Volume 1
The Ambassador Corps has rules: you cannot know everything, don’t get horizontal with the natives, don’t make promises you can’t keep.
They’re a lot harder to follow when assassins are hunting you, your barbarian allies could kill you for the wrong word, and death lurks around every corner.
The unwritten rule? Never identify with the natives.
Skip’s already broken that one.
Now he’s racing against time to save his new friends from slavery—or worse—while dodging energy blasts and political intrigue. One crash-landed diplomat. A world of deadly secrets. And absolutely no backup.



Some rules are meant to be broken. Others will get you killed.

THE FOLLOWING COVER IS NOT SAFE FOR WORK. IF YOU’RE AT WORK, BE WARE.

FROM J. MANFRED WEICHSEL: Jungle Scandals (The Scandal Anthology Series Book 2)

Jungle Scandals is an anthology of NSFW jungle adventures featuring twelve really wild stories

ALSO, THERE IS A BASED BOOK SALE ON BOOKS FOR MEN: Based Books For Male Readers Sale. All Titles Free or $0.99; Through Tuesday August 5.

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: Alive

Hi Huns, Hoydens, and other Creatures! Sarah’s taking a much needed day-off-ish and said I could put up a post!

First of all, please to share the links–see the sidebar, or the top menu, or if you’re on mobile the very bottom–for No Man’s Land pre-orders. If you’ve read the eARC, a review on your website of choice would be much appreciated. These are referral links, and therefore Sarah gets a tiny additional cut of the Amazon pot.

Second, a WordPress housekeeping note. No, we did not deliberately put you in spam, for almost all values of you, and if you are a regular here we definitely did not (drive-by crazies may have). WordPress decides based on some known criteria (certain slurs) and some unknown (WPDE) to spam people. Some people more than others. There are three or five regulars who ALWAYS go to spam. It doesn’t help to resubmit the comment, that just means we have five identical comments in spam when we open it up. You might as well give us a day to fish it out, unless your internet is super-flaky and you really think it never left your computer. WordPress has also been ‘upgrading’. Yay?

Since the cats were being suspiciously civilized this morning, and the dog went with the neighbors for a hike, I poked around the internet a bit, and discovered no inspiration. It’s flooding and burning: normal American summer weather. All the kiddos are getting ready for county fair. The farmers are concerned about either too little water (my area) or too much water (quite a lot of the rest of the country). The media is screeching as usual. Dog days of summer, right? Too hot and too busy for much. We here at the Frost Household are operating under nature-imposed water restrictions, which is going to make the septic grumpy, but better a grumpy septic than a dry well.

Now’s probably as good a time as ever to prognosticate wildly about the future? I suspect we have both a stock and a housing crash coming at some point, but then, we always do, so that’s a gimme. No, I’m not stupid enough to suggest timing. I suspect there are hurricanes and tornadoes coming, sooner or later: there always are. Winter is on it’s way, have you looked at your weather stripping? How’s your roof? Power outage supplies set? Local friends nearly lost their house to a wildfire this week–they got it out fast–they had a scraped strip between the house and the field that burned which saved the house. They didn’t have go-bags ready and just grabbed kids and fled. Got your go-bag ready? Fires and floods both benefit from having your go-bag prepacked. (So do tsunamis, as a special category of flood, per a friend in Hawai’i.)

I’m afraid I’m generally the relentlessly practical side of this relationship, so I’ll also remind you to eat, drink, exercise, and generally take care of your body, mind, and soul, while we’re at it, and don’t forget to pet the dogs and cats in your life. (And have their needs in your go-bag, too.) It’s the time of year for grilling (it always is, after all) so go cook some meat over fire and maybe give the pets some of that as well. I am reliably informed that dogs and cats like meat very, very, much. Also chicken skin. Especially chicken skin. And then, as a special favor to those of us in the burning part of the world, please double check your fire is out and cold. Have fun!

It’s getting increasingly difficult to talk to Europeans. Or read their books. Or–

And if you’re going to say “Why would you?” Well, because I’m related to a lot of them. Or they are dear friends from either so far back in childhood that they’re basically family, or from my misguided youth. I’m not fond of Europe, but I like the people.

Until recently, this was an easy circle to square. I just didn’t talk about politics, or really lean too hard into their preconceptions. And usually when they started on a tirade, say about our high crime rate, and I just sat there and looked, really looked at them, they’d stop and go “Well, at least that’s what I heard.”

As for their fiction and their attempts to give us what can only be called “helpful hints” which usually had nothing to do with who we are and how we live? Mostly I rolled my eyes and skipped, as I do badly written sex scenes.

This… er…. has changed.

Look, i got a hint this was coming during my trip to Europe last year.

It wasn’t just that — prior to the election — these people were doing all but offering to air-lift me out if Trump should win, or that my mother — who speaks not a word of English — was sure she knew Trump was “low IQ” because of “the way he talks” (Yeah, I looked at the translations. We adjust to Trump’s funny speech patterns, but they don’t need to be translated to toddler level.) I mean, she was shocked when I pointed out she doesn’t speak English and can’t tell, really. But then she was “sure.”

She was sure because everyone around her is sure of the same. And apparently she doesn’t remember that everyone around her also thinks socialism is the way of the future. Eh. But–

But. The media there is doing one hell of a job to portray everything Trump does as “just like Hitler.”

Part of this is easy. No, really. Listen to me.

It’s on the level of “Hitler also drank water” okay? It’s just that there’s a set of behaviors/beliefs that Europeans are taught from the cradle on are very bad and basically fascism. That they have nothing to do with fascism, and no, didn’t bring about the long war of the 20th century never occurs to them. Because all of them were told/taught this. ALL OF THEM BELIEVE IT. (I believed it till well into my thirties. I just have a way to want to figure out if things are true and go poking. And we have a ton more sources of information than they do. And did, even in the nineties.)

One of them is nationalism. They’re absolutely convinced that nationalism brought about WWI and WWII. HOW they can believe that when WWI was caused by the European attempt at growing various empires and their bizarre set of internationalist alliances, I don’t know. It goes something like “People fought for their countries, therefore evil bad and war.” Even though they themselves admit it was sold as “the war to end all wars”: the most internationalist goal of all.

As for World War II, well, Hitler talked a lot about loving Germany (while strip mining it, but never mind) so nationalism causes fascism. ELEVENTY!

The fact that the British too fought for dear old England apparently doesn’t mean they were fascist though. BUT if they loved their country now? Total evil bad fascism. Because, reasons.

Another is militarism/military preparedness. Trump actually is far less war-like than any of his predecessors. Something I approve of, provided he doesn’t destroy the military. Because he is a business man, his approach to keeping other countries in line is to hit them in the face with a bag full of money.

HOWEVER he’s not running around saying “military bad.”

The USSR sold Europe on the idea that America was Imperialist, because we had a military. And our military could beat theirs every day of the week and twice on Sunday. And they knew it. It never seems to have occurred to the European hit-on-the-head bunnies that our military was their military. In the sense we protected them. No, no. We were militarist and therefore fascist.

Then there is the whole immigrant issue. I can’t blame their press too hard, I guess, because it starts in our press. These arrant idiots don’t seem able to distinguish between legal immigrants and illegal immigrants. Or, for that matter realize that illegal immigrant isn’t a RACE.

This shouldn’t surprise me, since in the last quarter of a century I found out all sorts of things were race: religion for instance. If you said anything bad about Islam, or for that matter voodoo or tree worship, you were told you were “racist.” Language was also racist. If I objected to the school trying to force my kids to attend classes in a language no one in our family speaks or has spoken for generations (Spanish) I was suddenly “racist.” If I made sounds of gagging when I got an advertisement in Spanish I was racist. (No, no I’m not. I’m Hispano-lango-phobic. It’s an awful language in most accents. I’m fine with the people. I just hate the sounds. There are other language sounds I hate. Press one for a list that will keep you rive– Are you stupid? Stop pressing.) DISAPPROVING OF VAGRANTS was also racist. I once wrote a post here about how the homeless were turning the library in downtown Colorado Springs unusable and the usual babble brooks of the left called me racist. I was so surprised I actual sat the family down and asked them what color of homeless they’d ever seen, and then SPECIFICALLY when they’d seen a non-white homeless in town. (We all thought there might have been one or two some years ago, but we couldn’t remember. Yes, that’s changed now. The whole town has changed out of recognition in the last four years.)

And because they’re not here, not shopping where we shop, not attending cons here, not … living here, it’s easy to believe that Trump is rounding up everyone who tans — citizen or not, thank you to our media for all the cases of publishing false stories of citizens deported! — and deporting them.

Then there is the fact Trump is fighting race preferences. (As he should, because hiring or promoting people based on ANYTHING but competence degrades competence, and we’ve done enough of that, thank you. Also race preferences is basically titles of nobility. We’re preferring you because you were born to these parents. This is specifically against our founding.) But of course, the idiots over there think what this means is that we’re going to discriminate against anyone who isn’t blue eyed and blond. The whole jeans advert thing is probably playing right into that, despite the fact almost all our top models are some flavor of tan.

No, the Europeans who frankly never saw any reason not to discriminate for conditions of birth are going to interpret this as a preference for Aryan characteristics. (True, there are a LOT of Indian H1B Visas. But we’re not all Vivek R. and we don’t think they’re superior.)

Of course, without question, and despite the fact that your average man-on-the-street European is way more racist than any American except perhaps the three non-FBI members of the KKK remaining, racist equals Nazi.

And from those three points they hop skip and jump. They whisper about the long night of fascism falling on us. They cry about they know how people felt looking at Germany in the thirties. They try to give us “warnings” about “tyrants” who “stop our ability to speak” and they talk about … defending our borders and sending back interlopers (most of whom are being supported by the welfare state to some extent, btw) as though we were building camps and were about to start gassing people in batch lots.

If you try to point out they’re completely off their tiny little unstable rockers, they pat you on the shoulder OR back away from you in horror and say something like “I didn’t realize you were a good German.”

PEOPLE.

Yes, I do check. I check all the time. If we were about to go Nazi I’d want to know. I’m in my sixties now, and running around the mountains totting an AK-47 doesn’t look appealing anymore, but frankly there are other ways to fight tyranny.

If the current administration is trying to suppress speech, they’re going about it all wrong. Unlike Biden, they have yet to even attempt to install a “disinformation tzar” (How come the left is obsessed with tzars? You are what you murdered? Is that it?) The attempts at debanking people stopped cold (Though strype needs to clean house. Part of the reason I haven’t arranged to monetize this blog yet. WordPress, also, goes through strype.) Throws hands up in the air. It’s like they’re not even trying.

Then there’s the racism thing. The left and PARTICULARLY Europeans keep telling me Trump is racist, sexist, homophobic. AND definitely anti-Semitic. I’m looking at his administration and having serious trouble buying this line. I mean, look at these people. Worst Nazis ever. True, true, his VP married a true Aryan. But all the same.

As for anti-Semitic, this administration aren’t the people pushing to recognize the rule of Hamass as a state. Yes, yes, I GET it that these days support for Israel is the true antisemitism or something, but surely you don’t expect me to turn my brains into that kind of pretzel. That just doesn’t work. Antisemitism is antisemitism. I.e. it is discriminating against Jews. You should see the expressions I get when I inform Europeans that Trump in fact has a daughter who converted to Judaism and he has grandchildren being raised Jewish. This just breaks their brains. So they deny it and go back to screaming. Or mutter darkly about Hitler being Jewish. (Maybe? or maybe it was a rumor. But at any rate not “was Jewish” but “might have had some Jewish ancestry” which, dear Bob EVERYONE does. Because yeah, mobile minority gets around. Deal.)

Look, we have joked about annexing Canada and Mexico, yes. (I wonder how much of this is done to drive Europeans bonkers, actually.) And no, of course, we’d not do it. Mostly because it would be like cleaning out slum housing.

But until we actually put boots on the ground and head to Toronto, I’m not going to be all jumpy about our invading Poland, EITHER.

On the serious side, I keep tilting my head, but I just can’t see what they see.

Is Trump more authoritarian than I’d like? Well, yes. But then traffic cops are more authoritarian than I’d like. I have a baked in, intractable “leave me the heck alone” streak. I’m willing to accept minimal government but alas our crazy mess of a government isn’t minimal. (I want a government small enough to fit in the Constitution.)

Is Trump Hitler? Well, they both are/were air breathing mammals who drink water. So, yeah, I can totally see a resemblance.

Seriously. This would be rich and all the hints about the oncoming Nazification of America very stupid (because we heard it about George W. Bush, for crying out loud) if Europe were SIMPLY its normal elitist, regulated, stultifying mess.

But no. They’re pointing at us and screaming fascist as they codify things you can’t say on the internet, not even as a joke; as they ensure parents have fewer and fewer rights over their children; as they codify precisely which incoming cultures and skin colors have more rights than the others. They’re pointing at us and screaming, even as they’re all upset we didn’t frog-jump and put boots on the ground to fight Russia. They’re pointing at us and screaming even as we can no longer be sure if we visit we won’t go to jail by telling them to put one of their pronouncements up their arses on twitter.

It’s like being in a fun house mirror.

Even as used as I am to the IMAX like qualities of the American left, seeing this amplified all over Europe (and Canada, and probably Mexico) is … horrifying.

Sure, when the rest of the world disagrees with you, sometimes they’re right. In this case, though, they’re mainlining mescaline and tripping balls.

And we really can’t do anything about the blue air-breathing squid they’re trying to fight. For one, they’re not real. For another we are tired of hearing them scream about the blue squid engulfing us, while they’re the ones getting tangled in tentacles.

It’s sad. And it makes it likely I won’t see my dad in this world again, which makes me very angry.

But at this point, and until such a time when they choose to snap out of it, I don’t know what else to do.

When I first came to the US as an exchange student, during an otherwise unexceptionable trip into Pennsylvania I saw a sign on an hill side that shocked me to my core.

The sign said “US out of the UN. UN out of the US.”

You guys truly can’t imagine how much this shocked me. In Europe, growing up, it was all the UN this and the UN that, and the UN keeps us safe from another world war, and Unicef and Uni whatever.

I didn’t realize it, but I was living in a time capsule, or rather, a propaganda capsule. I didn’t know it but my view of the UN mirrored the great hopes with which it was created.

It has never, ever lived up to its imaginary wonders and benefits. Never. In the annals of ever.

It has neither promoted peace, nor helped the poorer nations, nor done anything — ANYTHING AT ALL — people thought it would do.

The UN was — from what I understand — supposed to be the precursor to a one-world government.

And it suffered from everything a one-world government would suffer from: too large, too cumbersome, too bureaucratic, too corrupt AND a handy instrument to every tin pot dictator and ideologue.

What was so amazing about my being shocked by that sign was that by that time I already knew that the UN had lent itself to such mendacious USSR propaganda coups as “The rights of man” or “the rights of children” half of those rights being either irrelevant or crazy, but giving totalitarian horrors the ability to say that the free countries were “also” failing.

Yes, the UN was supposed to be a deliberative body where nations could solve conflicts without having to war over them.

Only really? In what world does that make sense?

The US has had some authority to stop wars, because other nations know we’re the 800 lb gorilla and we’re willing to pound them into sand. UN peacekeepers are most notably dangerous to minors under the age of consent, which are the only thing they do in fact pound.

What they do, in fact, is lend unwarranted credence and consequence to a passel of sh*tty little nations who are self-inflected poor.

WHY are we in a deliberative body with and treating as equals nations that are still engaged in slavery, not to mention other, disgusting practices.

And while we’re at it, yes, there are attempts to “replace” the UN. This makes as much sense as replacing the League of Nations with the UN.

Look, here’s the thing: It was the fact that travel took a very long time and people had romantic ideas about other countries. Today, in the era of instant communication, we know what other countries are, how they live. And we don’t want — and shouldn’t want — them to have any say in how we live.

Take the boondoggle of carbon control and Climate Change. It’s mostly a Russian ploy to keep selling the only asset they have: oil. I say let them starve in the dark until they stop being crazy.

Certainly better than US dying in the dark by following their idiotic ploys.

And therefore….

I say US out of the UN, UN out of the US. And no replacements.

Sure, the UN will “fall to China” if we leave. Bull pocky. The Chinese won’t pay for the circus if they can’t use it to bully us. Also China won’t pay for it, because they can’t. In fact, no one but us can pay for that.

And ask yourself, is it a good use of our money?

Sure, the UN apparently has sub-groups that do things like set aviation standards. Cut those particular organizations loose and let them work on their own.

Keep such international organizations to the absolutely needed and what can be verified and tested. No more airy-fairy “world peace.”

Aviation standards, cool. Peace on the shipping lanes, cool

And yet, OTOH, think about it — who is going to be enforcing such standards? I.e. in ultimate instance, who is going to pay? Who is going to put boots on the ground? Why in fact does the US need “international organizations” more than a snake needs galoshes?

UN out of the US. US out of the UN.

Fumigate the building in NYC and sell it as luxury condos. Still an eyesore, but less malicious.

The UN is a dream whose time has passed.

It was always a nightmare, anyway.

No Man’s Land (all three volumes) is up for pre-order.

And I suppose because I’m me, and I write what I write, you’ll ask yourselves: But is this a libertarian system of government in these worlds? Or perhaps a revolution against a tyrannical system?

Well — squirms — no. No, it’s not. Though it is, in one case, a liberty-inclined system.

Look, I remember people getting very upset at me over Witchfinder, because a libertarian shouldn’t write a monarchy much less a monarchy with hereditary ordained monarchs, where the land and the king are one.

Head thumps desk. I pointed out this was a magical monarchy. I mean it’s supposed to be from King Richard, okay. Magic is how they roll and–

Look at ceiling. Kicks pebbles. Well, that sort of does it, doesn’t it, because No Man’s Land has not one but TWO monarchies. And neither of them is magical, not really.

The libertarians would drum me out if there were a small l libertarian party and frankly if the individualists could organize long enough to excommunicate me.

Or, on the other hand, hold up a little. Because all that is not as it seems.

Because, well — waves at the crowd gathering around. Marks the rocks they’re holding. Raises hands in the look ma, no hands pose — look, at least one of the monarchies is not one as such.

No, never mind, neither of them is.

Take Elly — please, no seriously, how did a nice woman like me end up with this crazy world? — while technically one of my main characters — Brundar Mahar, King, Healing Magician, rescuer of babies, eater of sweets — is king of the whole world and probably a couple million souls, the truth is things are… complicated.

Right at the beginning of the book, you find his sire talking about ambassadors, and if you’re like me when I first got this world in my head, you tilt your head kind of sideways and go “Aroo? Isn’t there only one polity? Okay, and the enemy? As far as these people are concerned, where are ambassadors coming from? Before the guy from the 25th century drops in?”

Well, it’s complicated. Brundar is king. His line has been kings for … a few thousand years. But… King is perhaps a bit high flung for the job.

You see, Elly is barbarous. Brundar’s ancestors have been “kings” because that’s the only system they’d ever seen, while enslaved by the enemy — Draksalls — but for thousands and thousands of years there were so few people actually settled — most were nomadic hunter gatherers and drastically … individualistic. Their largest unit of normal residence if the family. But they have bonds to those of their blood, which I chose to translate as clans. And clan leaders, by virtue of being able to call for help for you if you get in serious trouble, have certain rights of negotiating for your and such.

In the last thousand years or so, their efforts at convincing people to settle (they’ve been settled for thousands of years) have started gaining momentum. More and more people are farmers, and merchants and there are leagues.

But their model (their founders erased all history and started them as tabula rasa) is nomad clans. So they have… guilds. That’s a name. Guilds and associations, and argle-bargling associations. All of them filled with highly individualistic, prone to argument and duel people.

The king is actually, mostly, a warlord. He leads the armies against the enemy, ably assisted by four other people/lines who have also been settled and working at the civilizational project for millennia. Getting troops and supplies for those, and keeping their world from being invaded, keeping them from being enslaved again is the most important, if not the whole job. (The secondary job is keeping duels down. And minor wars between clans, associations and such. I mean, otherwise he’d have no population.)

For these he must argue, discuss, convince, beg, seduce and sometimes duel clan leaders and heads of other groups.

So he’s basically the head of the circus. Or the main lunatic in the planetary madhouse. (I suddenly have a much higher appreciation for Brundar, brat that he is. And his parent who was insane. I think this would make anyone insane. What a job!)

No they are not representative. To be representative, they would need to be way more organized and collectivized.

How they got there was sometime in the 21st century (Wanna speed it up Elon? I figure you’d have something to do with it) someone comes up with a way to teleport through space. I’m not going to call it worm holes, because I don’t think it is, but you’re free to think it is whatever you want.

It took spaceships, getting to orbit, and then… the ship could translate…. elsewhere, by coordinates and … well, the first ships didn’t take time in account as a coordinate. So sometimes ships simply disappeared.

People being people they nicknamed them schrodingers. Because no one knew what happened to the people that went up in them and… disappeared.

Well, you’re saying, and crossing your arms, (and I note you’ve put the rocks down. Thank you. I realize a lot of places stone lunatics. I’m glad you’re refraining.) NO ONE WOULD GO UP IN THEM IN THAT CASE.

Oh, are you for real? Of course people would go up in them. I mean, you have a fifty fifty chance. Maybe more. Maybe the other ships get … somewhere.

Of course assembling a group and taking everything you’ll need to start a civilization is expensive. So mostly what you’re seeing are … very rich eccentrics. Because when you’re that rich, you’re not merely insane.

The people who started Elly had a bee in their bonnet about humanity having two sexes, and they thought that making everyone the same would set the world up for equality and community. Uh uh.

Being radically able to be self-sufficient didn’t turn out that way.

BUT then there’s the crazies who started Britannia on High which eventually became the center of the Star Empire.

To be fair, they didn’t go out in a Schrodinger. They only left in the 22nd century, after the time variant had been stabilized and everyone knew where the Schrodingers had gone. Those that disappeared. Forward and backward. In time. The oldest they found still functioning are ten thousand years in the past, but there are schrodingers that show up in the 26th century and are slightly salty at the now cheaper, easier space travel.

Britannia was started…. um….

It is TECHNICALLY a monarchy. Because I’d been reading a lot of crazy people saying that to start space colonies they’d need to be “communism”. And no, they’re not.

But the people who put up the money for everyone else to immigrate (And Britannia was originally three solar systems, where the inhabited worlds range from two very Earth like worlds (Earth and anti-Earth, say) to some large satellites of a gas giant, then …. well, there’s a lot of earth-enough worlds) wanted to create something that had an echo of the golden age of the British Empire “as it should have been.”

So, of course, they made themselves Lords and kings and…. yeah. Cool. Whatever. What they are were the people who sustained all the expense of settling and if needed terraforming, etc each area. Most of them have been substantially bought out, but retain a lot of investments in their world or portion of a world (this is not related to the titles. Some worlds have less land area.) And other worlds, by marriage and inheritance, of course.

If you view them as magnates more entrepreneurial than political, you’re not wrong.

Their constitution is surprisingly close to the US. Most of the power of the nobility is ceremonial, though the Queen’s power is real as much as any constitutional monarchs. They have … some political power (again within the realm of a constitutional monarchy) BUT they can be voted out. And sometimes bought out as well. (Particularly if they’re really bad managers.)

Monarcho-capitalism? Radical constitutional Monarcho-Capitalism? I don’t know.

Look, it makes my head hurt. It does.

What it does have — actually both places meet in this — is a culture of service for the “nobility” kind of like again it’s supposed to have existed in the hey day of the British Empire. (Ideally. In theory. Well, some families definitely did. In this case, in Britannia — and Elly for other reasons — most families do.)

As lost colonies are found, Britannia and Earth emerge as “the empires of free people” which in turn means each are a group of various worlds, growing the nobility of Britannia and the parliamentary turmoil of the empire of Earth.

On the other hand they face an empire that has decided to dispense with its people and had them all made into cyborgs. And what can only be described as a syndicate of criminal worlds that cater to everything horrible, plus.

Oh, yeah, and the world Elly is battling is actual for real slaver cannibals. I mean….

So how much is this book about liberty? Well, my archmagician of Elly (okay, roll with it. No. It’s not fantasy. Mostly not) takes high offense to the idea that he’s settled. He still views himself as a wild nomad, free, by himself.

Which tells you where their heart is.

And because I’m despicable and made of silly, have a movie of poor Skip, from Britannia.

When you get lost between New London and lost Elly, the last thing you should do…
Is get horizontal with the natives. They’ll drum you out of the diplomatic corps, court martial, execute you, reanimate you and do it all over again.

For sure!

First let me lay two things out before I even start the post.

1- I’m not a feminist, not in the sense of reacting to insults on “feminism”. Did I ever call myself that? I don’t know. If I did it was in my early teens before I realized it was just a flavor of Marxism dressed in a pretty skirt and bows.

2- There is right now, in the US, a movement among the right, which for the purpose of this post is defined as “to the right of Lenin” that if it continues will fashion it into the Left’s idea of the Right. And will make it non-viable as a political movement, thereby giving the left its much needed next burst of energy.

The problem with this is that the left as it exists and the right as the left is working to refashion it — yes, I’m convinced it’s infiltrators, and people repeating nonsense without thinking — are neither viable, useful to humanity movements. From both of them will come nothing but death. Oscillating between the two will destroy civilization, and lead to a long, slow crawl from tribalism again. (If we make it. Most cultures stay stuck in tribalism.)

The right the left is trying to make ascendant — which is what they always thought we were, but now know at some level we aren’t, and that terrifies them — is just as authoritarian as the left, and is what the left keeps accusing us of: sexist, racist, homophobic.

Today’s post points out how we’re slipping into the first, and what’s fundamentally wrong with that. Honestly, the terms of engagement on that are so wrong they’re not even wrong.

But, again, please realize at the start of this, I don’t react to things that are maybe too broad in saying “Women do this” Or “women are guilty of this.” Because most of the time I can see that a lot of women are. I might say “Not all of us” but then I move on.

Also I am one of the first to admit there is such a thing as toxic femininity. I’d say our business world is choking on it and it’s destroying it. (A lot our institutions, including the Supreme court, to an extent.) BUT it is not what the skinsuiting right identifies.

In fact, the attempts at pushing us into sexism are so wrong they’re not even wrong. Which is why I’m always shocked and appalled to stumble on them repeated by people on our side. Note I clipped the name from the screenshot, because I don’t want the person mobbed. I think he’s roughly on “our side”. He just swallowed a lot of sh*t and is regurgitating it all wrapped in his hopeful-not-thought-of stereotypes.

But my reaction to his tweet was immediate and visceral. Because he was trying to make me, and every woman sin-eat Marxism. He was making us into the scapegoats who could then be safely subdued and kept infantilized, and that would make it all right.

I’m going to paste the tweet now. Note he uses “feminine” not “feminist.” (Using “feminist” would be wrong because it would be a small portion of Marxist evil. Using “feminine” IS evil.)

My reaction to this, in the Discord group in which it was posted was to immediately answer with “Fuck you, no. I’m not your sin eater because I was born with a vagina. Fuck off with that shit.”

I don’t know how much people here know this, since the few times I do swear is on the blog, but I don’t swear. My characters sometimes do, but it takes really life-and-death situations or truly punch-in-the-gut emotions.

My visceral reaction surprised ME so I had to unpack it.

First of all he’s right about the process of weaponized empathy. He’s wrong about EVERYTHING ELSE.

Also he’s tweeting this in reply to some ass saying he wants socialism now. Femininity and feminism have nothing to do with this, except in the sense that feminism is a small portion of Marxism (yes, it is. It was from the beginning. Fighting for equal rights under the law is not what “feminism” is, nor is “feminism” aiming for that at any time.)

What in heaven’s name made him jump from “socialism” to “femininity”? There are some rats in head there that have been carefully planted at a guess by mobis pretending to be on our side.

Let me make it very clear: Marx was NOT A WOMAN. Communism is in no way feminine. In fact, using women to advance their purposes was a brilliant move for destroying the west.

Just as weaponized empathy was.

But let’s begin at the beginning: WHY ATTRIBUTE WEAPONIZED EMPATHY TO “feminine”? What sense does that make? Has this man ever met a woman? Or let me put it another way, has he ever met a woman who wasn’t pretending to be sweetness and light? Has he ever let himself be in an unguarded enough situation with a woman to realize she wasn’t a Victorian upper class stereotype?

Because that’s what he’s using: Victorian Upper Class Stereotypes. Women as sweet, gentle creatures who don’t want anyone, even enemies to suffer.

This wasn’t true even in the Victorian age or even in the upper classes. As you’ll find out if you read any biographies or auto-biographies of women in the Victorian age. Hell and damnation, people, even Victoria herself wasn’t like that, despite all her pretty language.

I have spent most of my professional life fighting this idiotic, completely anti-reality stereotype ON THE LEFT. Because the left/feminists have swallowed this hook, line, sinker and tinkling little bell at the end. Even though they are the embodiment of “this is wrong.”

You know this stereotype on the left because it leads to the never end of dreary feminist SF in which the solution to all of humanity’s issues is to eliminate males. And then women, sweet, caring, gentle women rule the world as the angels they are, with no war, no strife, and everyone cared for and looked after PERFECTLY.

I was very lucky to have been raised in a milieu that was a patriarchy, but where women weren’t dissembling. Most of them were working class too, which means under the gun, under fear, under oppression (real oppression. When a married woman needs her estranged husband’s signature to work to feed the kids and there’s no divorce, that’s oppression.) and nakedly themselves.

And then I was sent to a magnet school that was girls-only. Oh, dear Lord. if you want to see true war and carnage, by all means, make it a “country of women.”

I might be killed by a group of masked women, in the dark, for giving away club secrets (I’m joking, I’m joking) but guys, women are far meaner than you, more ruthless and at many levels utterly immoral. Or at least amoral. (And for those of you who are protesting even now. No. I don’t mean we are like that normally. We’re thinking beings. But present a man and a woman with the same unbalanced conundrum “kill a hundred innocents to save your newborn child.” The man will hesitate. Half the man might not do it. No woman will pause to think. She will gladly kill all hundred, as they plead for mercy. If she’s a good woman, she will feel guilty after. But in the moment, she will do it.)

We are creatures of bare claw and fang. We have to be. We live at the hard edge where life meets death. Each of us has, if not in fact, the potential to produce life and that life appears in the world as a completely helpless, mewling creature. We risk our lives for them. They are, in a way I can’t explain to any of you not a mother, for the rest of their mortal life, a portion of us. Arguably the most sensitive portion of our anatomy. Even as adults. Even though we know they’re not perfect.

I heard it described as having a piece of your heart forever in someone else’s body. The most important piece. They’re not wrong. (And in ways it meets the uncanny. If those pieces of my heart are troubled I can sense it and it affects me.)

Even those of us who try to be good have to work at it. I’ve had my kids in difficulties that could be solved by murder, and I had to be talked down from it. Even though I knew it would destroy my family. (This was the famous scene “Honey, if you don’t want this to devolve into the type of scene where they find five heads in the toilet and never find the bodies, you’re going to have to take time from work and go to the Middle School. Because if I go, I don’t answer for my actions.” … and he, a sane, rational man in time crunch at work heard that and immediately left to deal with it. This is what women are. He gets it. Be told.)

Don’t take my word for it. You don’t have to.

Go read historical accounts of the life in seraglios and what happened to other concubines when the son of one of them inherited. (Or worse, the other concubines’ children. SHUDDER.)

Go read unvarnished biographies of female rulers. Bloody Mary gets called that because the protestants won, or we’d have blood-soaked Elizabeth. They were just as bad as each other. Ruthless.

Go read, closer to home, how the women of plains Indians tortured prisoners. In fact, in any tribal area, the women are the ones torturing prisoners. And the men will turn away, horrified.

Go read Kipling’s Female of the Species.

Or just, you know:

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
   An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.

Women are not kind, gentler. Women are creatures of overkill. Why? Because we’re weak. We know that if we don’t utterly destroy the attacker, and he limps up and comes after us again, we’ll die.

Or holy hell, our kids will die.

Frankly the most amazing thing about Judeo-Christian morality and law is not that it conquered wilding males, but that it got women to more or less human, and to AT LEAST pretend to virtue and altruism. (Oh, we have plenty of altruism. Real one. Most of us would die or starve for our mate and families. But extending outside that group? Nah, brah. Not without a higher faith.)

So his first point is wrong. And from that everything else if wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, miles and miles of wrongitude. So wrong it is not even in the same universe as right.

And you’ll say “But Sarah, we’ve seen women pleading for all this. For letting criminals go for–“

Yes, yes, you have. And this is where we get to the truly frightening bit of what women are (Girls, you can beat up behind the bike shed later.)

Women are enforcers of the status quo. Women are the unifiers by obeying what they perceive as high status opinions and ideas.

This is inevitable, because we’re creatures of evolution. For most of human (and probably pre-human) history, women were traded between tribes, captured, stolen. This went on into the twentieth century when the tribal cultures the west interacted with stole women of the west. (And still goes on, look you — glances meaningly at England.)

This happened not because all men are evil (Rolls eyes.) Because what women are and what they can do is so precious that barbarous men fight over them.

Without us there is no next generation. No more future. For any primitive tribe under the edge of starvation and war, women are the ultimate resource.

So women got sold, traded, given away.

And if you’re bristling, men were also not valued as individuals. Just as members of the tribe.

It’s just most men never left the tribe they were born into. If their tribe — or band — were ambushed they were killed. The end.

Women on the other hand had to learn to survive and thrive while changing cultures, climbing the hierarchy.

Part of the reason autism in women is far less diagnosed than in men is because women seem to have a sixth sense that allows us to figure out what the “high status” posture and position is anywhere. (Some of us just choose to oppose it anyway. But it takes a while to work up the courage, to be fair.)

Because our ancestresses that could climb very quickly and ensconce themselves in the heart of the ruling clique had more daughters who survived, this is an instinctive thing to us. It takes thought and effort not to do that. (Though like all instinctive abilities, it has levels, of course. And Odd women are most likely to break it.)

So you hear a lot more women than men flap lips on the weaponized empathy that the Marxists loosed on the west in order to destroy us, because it is perceived as the high status opinion.

How could it not be? It’s pronounced from the pulpit, from most “expert” seats. From the ranks of academy. All the “good” and “smart” people proclaim it.

And women are the enforcers of tribal unity and the status quo. It is women who perform female circumcision in Muslim countries — and are vocally for it — and it was women who found their daughters feet.

But the problem is not WOMEN. Women are just reacting to their instinct to fit in well with society (though even that is breaking.)

The problem, at its root is Marxism. Including the nonsense idea that criminals are “society’s fault”. It is high status male weaponizing the women.

Fight Marxism wherever you find it, and most women will turn on a dime.

Marxism is a problem, not “feminine energy” “entitled” or not. What the hell even is this “energy” bullshit? Are we New Agers now? Or Muslims? Are you going to be blinded by my hair-rays if I’m not veiled?

Make no mistake, that cute little screed above leads exactly to women in burkas. And that’s the GOOD result. He’s not saying that because he senses it would be a step too far, but he likely believes it.

Because if women are such kindness and light that they will coddle the enemy who is destroying their sons or will destroy their potential sons? Well, the only cure for that is to confine the silly things, treat them as unthinking toddlers, and cover them up so they don’t tempt other men, and and and–

THESE ARE MY MIDDLE FINGERS. I’m not your sin-eater for Marxism. I’m not your scape goat for the evils of the last 100 years. And while I have no daughters, I have daughters in law, and I might have granddaughters. You’ll put any of us in a burka over my fucking dead body, you assholes.

Turn back now, while you can, and think about the type of ideas you’re falling into.

Yes, the last century was horrible, but none of these assholes was a woman:

Nor was Mao, or Pol Pot or Castro.

There is toxic femininity that is the morality of the serraglio. Me and mine above all.

Most of us, civilized, try to be good, women can control our most base impulses. But none of our impulses are towards forgiving enemies and letting criminals out. They tend to be more along the lines of “Do they make pencil sharpeners I can stick this person who is threatening my kid into feet first?”

Oh, sure, a lot of us lie about it to men. At least men who aren’t our husbands and who don’t get to see the beast in full rampage.

This might be a mistake. They get these illusions.

See this gentleman going on about masculine fire and female grace. Where the hell is this coming from? Are these people human?

HAVE they had mothers and sisters? Have they met a woman… EVER? (Do they actually think the stripper loves them? Don’t answer that.)

I’m going to guess I wouldn’t meet the definition of “grace”. For sure not physically. I trip over my feet while standing still.

And emotionally? Oh, I’m quite capable of grace and mercy. Because I am a Christian and believe in forgiveness as I hope to be granted forgiveness. But I won’t give it till I am sure you’re not going to kill me. Because I’m a woman, and weak, and know I won’t survive a second attack.

Again, stop this now. Stop this nonsense of adopting the Victorian Upper Class — and the left’s — view of women. We’re not creatures of light and sweetness who should either — for the Victorians — be protected at all costs or — for the idiot left — be put in charge of everything.

I don’t care if the right is more inclined to protecting — while blaming us for all the horrors we did not create or inflict — it’s still not considering us full human.

Humans are creatures of primal shadow and desperate survival. Yes, we can be kind, even gentle. But that is the wonder of Western civilization.

It is not natural. It’s not free-floating energy. And women’s “natural state” is not kind, gentle and peaceful “grace.”

If you’re not man enough to face that, you’re not a man, merely a little boy who stopped soiling his diaper.

I’m demanding you grow up now.

Or things are going to get very bad. For men, for women, for the whole human race.

No one but the totalitarians win from this delusion.

Book Promo

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

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: No Man’s Land: Volume 1 (Chronicles of Lost Elly)

No Man’s Land
Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.

On a lost colony world, mad geneticists thought they could eliminate inequality by making everyone hermaphrodite. They were wrong. Catastrophically wrong.
Now technology indistinguishable from magic courses through the veins of the inhabitants, making their barbaric civilization survivable—and Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Kayel Hayden, Viscount Webson, Envoy of the Star Empire—Skip to his friends— has just crash-landed through a time-space rift into the middle of it all.
Dodging assassins and plummeting from high windows was just the beginning. With a desperate king and an archmagician as his only allies, Scipio must outrun death itself while battling beasts, traitors, and infiltrators bent on finishing what the founders started: total destruction.
Two worlds. One chance. No time to lose.

Volume 1

The Ambassador Corps has rules: you cannot know everything, don’t get horizontal with the natives, don’t make promises you can’t keep.
They’re a lot harder to follow when assassins are hunting you, your barbarian allies could kill you for the wrong word, and death lurks around every corner.
The unwritten rule? Never identify with the natives.
Skip’s already broken that one.
Now he’s racing against time to save his new friends from slavery—or worse—while dodging energy blasts and political intrigue. One crash-landed diplomat. A world of deadly secrets. And absolutely no backup.

Some rules are meant to be broken. Others will get you killed.

FROM RUSS THOMAS: Operation: Valkyrie

On our 40th day in Immersion the phone rang just after noon. We were being summoned to High Command in Berlin for a conference.
We were suddenly reminded why we had spent the last five and a half weeks in this trailer. Who we really were. That we had a mission to complete. We had history to change. And then back to our real lives in the distant future.
The plane they sent arrived on schedule—a Junkers JU52. We spent the next five hours getting jostled around its interior. When we landed, we walked out the door to the sound of the Deutschlandlied, the German National Anthem. I returned the salute of the crew. It all felt unreal. Things like this didn’t exist.

FROM JOHN BAILEY: Mars Defenders:: 12 Tales of 2050s Mars and Asteroids.

Mars Defenders: 12 Tales of 2050s Mars and Asteroids

In the dust and shadow of the 2050s, Mars is more than a new frontier—it’s a breeding ground for corruption, sabotage, secrets, and quiet resistance. In this gripping anthology, twelve interconnected mysteries unfold across Martian colonies, mining outposts, terraforming labs, and asteroid corridors.

Follow Kieran O’Malley, Zara Chen, Malik Torres, and a network of determined colonists as they uncover the dark truths buried beneath red soil and beyond orbit. From rogue corporate sabotage to ancient alien artifacts, sleeper agents, and black-market conspiracies, each tale unveils a new piece of a sprawling puzzle threatening Mars’ fragile future.

Mars Defenders delivers classic mystery thrills in a hard sci-fi setting, perfect for fans of The Expanse, Murderbot, and Asimov’s Robot Mysteries. Smart, fast-paced, and richly atmospheric, this PG-rated collection weaves together suspense, justice, and quiet rebellion—on a world where truth is as rare as water.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: A Fox in the Henhouse (Timelines Universe Book 2)

Delaney Wolff Fox is a spy. A cute spy. A deadly spy.

A spy you want at your back when stuff gets real.

From a palatial office in Johannesburg, to a fancy whisky bar in Sydney, Australia, to a beautiful private beach in southwest Florida, to the great and wild city of New Orleans, Captain Delaney Fox, United States Space Force Marines (Intelligence Division) finds herself beset by assassins at every turn, while first saving an alien government’s valuable artifact from the South African cartel that’s stolen it, and then being assigned to guard said artifact while it completes a world tour, on loan from that same alien government.

But like the proverbial fox in the proverbial henhouse, you can count on Delaney to complete the mission and come out with the prize, intact and in hand – even if the “farmer” isn’t all that keen about her doing so.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Schrödinger Paradox: Cataclysm

The end is coming.

Unlucky jerk Tom Beadle was on watch at NASA when the collision alert sounded: a new asteroid, bigger than the dino-killer, headed for Earth. Big problem, but that’s why we have NASA, right? Except, after decades of budget cuts, NASA has no way to shove it off course. That job has to be contracted out. Will the private sector company his best friend from college works at succeed where the government option failed? Might be best to have a backup plan, just in case…

FROM MARY CATELLI: The Book of Bone

A novelette of curses and journeys.

Avice’s dreams of settling at Clearwater are dashed. The lawsuit had ended, and the lands were made over to her, but a bone wizard lays a curse on the land, and blight begins to spread. All will die before the curse as it spreads.

Neither her family nor her king are willing to help. She is left alone with only the knowledge that the mysterious Book of Bone may have the lore that she needs — if only she can find it.

FROM ROBERT A. HOYT: Cat’s Paw

What if the doom of the universe or its salvation didn’t depend on humans?
What if cats were far more than we imagine?
What if—
But enough of this: At the end of the universe there is a Mountain. Every thousand years, a bird flies to strop its beak on that mountain. When the mountain is worn to nothing the universe ends.
The mountain is down to a few grains of sand.
The only hope of survival for the entire universe rests in the grubby paws of an alcoholic alley cat, a fluffy cat with not much brain and a bookish cat who thinks Guinevere is a male hero’s name.
The universe might have run out of luck.
Or not.

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: Spiffy