According To Hoyt

I had a disturbed night, mostly because we ate late which leads to heartburn. In the middle of the night feeling a bit exhausted and out of sorts, I gave up sleeping for a while, and tried to read a Pride and Prejudice Fanfic (because low braining function required.)

And then on page three it kicked me in the teeth.

Look, I’m quite willing and ready to wink at all sorts of anachronisms and just plain unmitigated stupidity in those because they’re usually an entry point to writing and so suffer all the beginning mistakes.

So, you know, I roll my eyes at everyone who dies young dying in “Carriage accidents” because the writers can’t imagine a world without antibiotics or how dire any cut or infection could be. Or how many people just “went into a decline” and died without people ever knowing of what.

I’ll endure the exploding carriages. Seriously, guys, what did they do? Pack the carriages with C-4? There’s not anything there to EXPLODE. Catch fire, sure, but explode?

I’ll endure Lizzy (the main character for those who haven’t read P & P) talking about taking psychological damage or being repressed or even her vital need to express herself. (That last is more subtle, but still not a regency thing, okay?)

I’ll even endure the fact that all the girls are in mad love with “A vindication of the rights of woman”, hate needlework and want to do estate management (A gross misunderstanding of the duties of the mistress of an estate. Her being both responsible for the management of a house with sometimes hundreds of servants AND the status of the family which hinged on friendships and social connections the woman managed.)

But I’ll be tied in purple ribbons and called Edna if I am going to tolerate someone who says “He could tell she was a widow because she was wearing a black armband.”

WOMEN DIDN’T WEAR A BLACK ARMBAND. WOMEN WORE MOURNING CLOTHES.

And then because it was the middle of the night and I wasn’t feeling well, my head started taking on roles. Specifically idiot feminist roles. The kind of idiot feminist who argues women were oppressed because they didn’t have pockets, and then go forth to make up just-so stories about how this was because men were afraid they’d have spells in their pockets… all from misunderstanding that women had tons of pockets. They were just portable and tied around the waist or the wrist. (Leaving women free to keep stuff in there when the clothes were in the laundry, incidentally.)

Anyway, I imagined a feminist screaming that men only had to wear an armband while women were forced to visibly mourn with their whole body and blah–

At which point I realized there was an actual point to this. Two, actually.

The first is that yeah, women wore mourning clothes, because women were NORMALLY peacock bright. Some men were also, but in the regency already there was a tendency for businessmen and middle class well to do men to wear all black NORMALLY. Or at least somber colors.

The black armband worked with this because even if it was all black, the suit would be wool, the armband satin and visible. Women, OTOH were NORMALLY very bright. While an armband would be visible, changing to all mourning was more obvious of their status.

And, listen to me here, the higher visibility was designed to protect women MORE. “But women don’t need more protection and–” Take a damper. Maybe they don’t. fashions in “feeling” come and go. But regency women were encouraged to be more “Feeling” creatures and more prone to emotional issues. It was yes the culture of the time, but perhaps influenced by the fact that most regency married women spent a considerable portion of their lives either pregnant or nursing. And let me assure you, gentle readers, hormones make you a lot more fragile emotionally.

Which brings us to that utterly artificial construct of mourning signs on our clothing.

When I was a kid in Portugal there were still very strict mourning rules. I no longer remember what they were in time periods, but if a close relative died, the men all wore black armbands and women would go into the deepest black. I know women were supposed to stay in black for a year, then start “relieving” it to “half mourning” with touches of grey, lavender and maybe white for another year before returning to wearing normal color.

In case you wondered — did you? — this is why old women in Mediterranean countries just wore all black after a certain age. You hit an age where a relative dies every year, more or less, and at some point you go “this is my life now” and just wear black all the time.

When I was a kid this was argued against because “true mourning is inside” and “The dead don’t care what you wear.” Both arguably true. But both quite thoroughly beside the point.

The point of wearing mourning clothes was for people to know you weren’t quite up to normal human interaction/decisions.

You know where they tell you not to make any big purchases, etc. after a major life-change, like say, losing a close loved one?

Yeah. The mourning clothes gave you an excuse to take time to adjust to your loss, while people were aware you’d suffered one, and cut you some slack.

It lubricated social interaction with remarkably little expense.

BUT of course, in our present day not only is that rebelled against but people will be upset women wore different mourning from men. (Let’s also not take into account that men’s suits were hellishly expensive and needed for work. So changing them all over to mourning might sink a family.) Btw if a woman couldn’t go into mourning, or wasn’t that close to the deceased as to be that affected, she went into “black gloves” instead of full mourning or an armband. (Have you seen the clothes of the time? For a while they were all short sleeve. It would be an armband on the bear arm. Sigh.)

The problem I have, as with wanting to have all women manage estates, not houses, or do account books, not embroidery, is that it’s historical ignorance compounded by Marxism.

It’s historical ignorance because in our current world the reasons people did some things (like wear portable pockets, or spend a lot of time sewing and embroidering) have been lost and superseded in the immense abundance of the post-industrial-revolution.

And because young people have been educated in Marxism and mostly in Marxism, their Marxist mode of thought dictates that it all be binary, that there be an oppressed and an oppressor.

Therefore if men wear an armband and women wear whole-clothes mourning, women must be oppressed, and also ree.

But perhaps, just perhaps, it was neither nor. Perhaps different times and the circumstances thereto dictated different solutions. And perhaps, as fascinated as I am with the past, and as much as it can teach us, for the purposes of outrage, indignation and pay back, we should just leave our behinds in the past leave the past behind us. And fix the now.

Look, women used to need to be domestic goddesses because housework was hellishly more difficult at all levels of society. This doesn’t mean all women need to go back to JUST doing household work now. (Though doing SOME wouldn’t kill anyone.) Because we have appliances that make the work much less painful and much quicker.

Just because the dead don’t care if you mourn (let’s suppose we established this. I mean, have we?) it doesn’t mean that mourning isn’t an observance that makes the bereaved feel better and gives others warning this person is not QUITE him/herself. (And if you want to wear an armband, sure. Though I’m not sure anyone will understand what it means nowadays.)

Just because someone is oppressed, it doesn’t mean there is an oppressor.

Take the whole thing of men running around the net screaming that men-only spaces were destroyed. They’re right and wrong. Right because they were with intent and malice. Wrong because… GUYS in what world is someone even my age responsible for stuff done in the fifties and sixties? The offenders are dead. Stop thinking all women are on the other side of that binary because they have vaginas.

I for one think men only spaces (with perhaps a little tolerance when one’s father wants one to be a member and other members roll their eyes and let it be. The kid will never be coming in alone, anyway — look, I speak from experience) are a great idea. And there are a lot of women in the same position I am.

The original offenders are dead.

You want men only spaces? Bring them back. If it’s taken to court, I’d love to have someone argue with a serious face that men TODAY have an advantage in business. I bet you that nonsense can be struck down tout de suite.

Thinking that of course all women will oppose this is… Marxism.

Marxism is all about the oppressed and the oppressor. If there’s an oppressed there must be an oppressor. It’s very binary and simplistic, which is why it appeals to a certain type of mind.

The truth though is that in the world often everyone is oppressed. And often everyone is oppressed in different ways according to who they are. Heck, if you read enough you realize even the nobility of the middle ages was oppressed.

I mean, never forget that Marxism was invented by a work-shy grifter making up reasons why he couldn’t succeed. Of course everyone “oppressed” him.

And if you’re on the right you owe it to yourself to extirpate that evil and ridiculous mode of thought from your brain. It was installed there very early, but keeping it on will destroy civilization.

Look, just because some women in the past did men wrong doesn’t mean that all women right now hate all men. THE WORLD DOESN’T WORK THAT WAY. There will always be women like me, married to a man and the mother of boys, who loves men. (TBF I loved y’all before that, being a woman that didn’t fit in well with women, and most of whose friends and work acquaintances were male.)

And just because in the past and present some men are oppressors and abusive, this doesn’t mean all men are oppressors and abusive. Just that some men are oppressors and abusive. (See, Marx, Karl.)

Stop with the group think and the binary. Sometimes the answer is neither oppressed nor oppressor, but complicated human situation.

Be not afraid and stop packing your carriages with c-4. When those things explode, one gets all kinds of nasty splinters in unspeakable places!

Seriously. Go and think before you attack a group target.

And definitely do a modicum of research before writing P & P fanfic.

Two days ago, I ran across this on twitter:

Again, the “if you disagree with me” “you make me feel unsafe.”

It is on the face of it a totally nonsensical claim. I’ve hung out with plenty of people with whom I disagreed violently, as for instance the late Eric Flint and my brother, and I’ve yet to be attacked or killed by them. And I’ve certainly neither attacked them nor killed them.

It is possible to have completely opposite ideas of how society or life in general should be run and to be friends or friendly acquaintances or even beloved family members.

In fact that is the normal behavior of humanity, and the idea that being near or sharing a hobby with someone who disagrees with you or works with someone you despise or for a cause you don’t like.

Humans — adult humans — don’t just pound or hurt each other for no reason other than disagreement.

When I pointed this out in my share, people said they’re lying about feeling unsafe.

I don’t think this is true, because among other things to say you feel “unsafe” makes you weak. But also because it’s on the face of it a pretty bizarre claim for us here, in the outer world, looking at things objectively.

So, what is going on? Our very own Foxfier said it was an admission of guilt. The people on the left who scream they feel “unsafe” would in fact gleefully attack those who don’t agree with them, and since the model for how everyone works inside our own heads is based on us, they assume that we’ll gleefully attack them, instead of being grown ups and sane who just shrug and go “I think your beliefs are pernicious, but you’re not a bad person.”

That might be part of it for some of them, but I think it’s more visceral and basic. They say they feel unsafe because, hear me out, they feel unsafe.

But how can they when we’ve never even thought of hurting them?

I just did a dive through my archives and can’t find the — I THINK — guest post in which it was explained that our schools teach people NOT TO THINK. I don’t remember if it was a guest post or me, nattering about what I saw as my kids were going through. Heck, as I went through, because when it comes to leftism Portugal was ahead of its time.

It’s more or less like this: the schools claim to be teaching you TO think. They present scenarios, they stimulate discussion.

But it doesn’t take very long for students to realize — certainly while still in elementary — that through all this supposed freewheeling discussion, there is a RIGHT answer and all other answers will be harshly punished and held against you.

It’s the problem of the right square.

As a commenter put it not so long ago, it’s the equivalent of crossing a floor composed of identical squares, and suddenly, out of nowhere, you get hit, and get told it’s because you stepped on that square. Yes, that one there. And you should have known better. And your only salvation, the only way to make the beating stop is to admit you did wrong and stepped on that wrong square, even though it’s indistinguishable from all others.

Which means instead of thinking, people are trained NOT TO THINK. They are trained to avoid thinking. Because if they think and come up with the wrong conclusion, they will be cast into the outer darkness and their former friends will call them all sorts of bad things, up to and including Nazi. (And racisss, sexisss, homophobic.)

So people feel unsafe when around people who disagree with them, because if they listen to them and disagree with their “friends”/fellow cultists, they will be hurt. So they feel “unsafe.”

This is why we get the other side writing fiction in which wrong words MUST be suppressed, or else they will “contagious” somehow.

In that sense, we are “unsafe” and they feel “unsafe.”

Which, I’m so sorry, but it just means it sucks to be them. Their “safety” depends on “if only everyone thought the same.” And since it’s impossible to MAKE everyone think or do the same, they’re doomed to feel “unsafe.”

Unfortunately in the meantime they break fan spaces, friend spaces, and the regular places that people meet and talk and gather and where we decompress and are “simply” human.

So… What do we do? We get used to feeling disappointed in former friends and associates. And we must — MUST — build spaces we don’t let them take over and destroy.

There really aren’t that many of them. They’re just loud and don’t brook opposition.

So build under, build over, build around.

And be not afraid.

Sursum corda!

The Science is Unsettled by Torpenhow-Hill

There is an uproar in the science community at the moment over the budget cuts that President Trump is proposing.  Apparently all the colleges will be closing and people will die.  How bad is it?  A bit of AI fu (because I refuse to dirty my internet with MSNBC or that ilk) finds:

            “President Donald Trump has proposed significant cuts to federal research spending for the 2026 fiscal year, which begins on October 1. The proposed budget calls for a 37% reduction in funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and more than 50% for the National Science Foundation (NSF), marking unprecedented reductions for these major science funders.

 Additionally, the budget seeks to eliminate most federal spending on climate and ecological research and would cut NASA’s science budget by more than half, potentially ending major planetary missions.

The Trump administration has also moved to cap indirect costs for NIH research grants at 15%, which would reduce billions of dollars in funding for critical research aimed at developing cures and treatments for diseases. This policy has been met with legal resistance, as Congress has included a provision in annual appropriations bills since 2018 explicitly prohibiting such changes.

 The administration’s broader efforts to slash science budgets have extended to other agencies, including the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, which would see a 14% cut to its budget, reducing it to $7.1 billion.”

Thank you AI for doing my dirty work.  Let’s see, National Institute of Health just formally cut funding for gain of function research IE the research that brought us COVID so that will save us a dollar or two.  Furthermore, even though he’s got a golden parachute that’s the envy of wall street, we’re not paying Fauci millions a year so there is that.  And Robert Kennedy has said that he’s going through the department with an ax to eliminate redundant positions.  What the private sector calls deadwood. 

I had to look up the National Science foundation.  Well, nsf.gov tells me that they support 1,900 organizations and 350,000 + teachers, researchers and entrepreneurs across the country.  What the website doesn’t tell me is if there is any oversight or if any of those projects are meaningful, useful or replicable.  Nor are we told if the taxpayers would have voted for them if given a choice.  I’m going to take a wild guess.

The budget seeks to eliminate most federal spending on climate and ecological research.  I’m going to point and laugh and move on.  For the DOE I did a quick abstract search using Arizona as a keyword.  Enjoy the results. https://pamspublic.science.energy.gov/WebPAMSExternal/interface/awards/AwardSearchExternal.aspx.  Then tell me which of these you want your tax dollars to fund.

Last but not least, NASA.  Who does not remember the glory that once was NASA?   I watched Neil Armstrong take the first step on the moon.  But not only were they glorious, they were the only game in town.  By law.  Between 1958 when The National Aeronautics and Space Act created NASA and 1984 when the Commercial Space Act provided a medium for private entities to attempt space it was NASA or nothing.  And for those of us who remember the great Ma Bell days or the USPS or Public Education, well we’re a might bit skeptical about federal monopolies on – anything.  And the shuttle program (IMO and I’ll own it) didn’t get shut down because of the mistakes that were made.  The shuttle program got shut down because the government is by nature risk averse when it comes to public optics and human lives.  (Except for the military but that’s another post.)  So, while I sympathize deeply with the NASA people, they’re doing, not much by order of their bosses. 

Further            more we have problems.  Government spending on research drives out private spending. Not only does the government pull researchers from private industry, it then dictates what will be researched creating a monolithic worldview. The taxpayers have no choice as to whether or not they want to pay for the spending.  There is no oversight regarding the spending.  And we have a deficit the size of a hyperbolic stereotype.

There used to be private labs in industry, Bell, Westinghouse, and GE are the ones I know off the top of my head because I’m a tech.  Hospitals and colleges used to find funding from charities or businesses.  Even now, Saint Jude’s Childhood Cancer Center still pulls money from donations because societies tend to want to protect kids.  But providing tax breaks for research equipment got conflated by a specific subset of politicians with “loopholes, regressive tax policies, and corporate welfare” and not taxing capital expenditures for research became tax any capital equipment.  And the private labs became endangered species.  But the public pork kept rolling and became a secure source of funding.  All you had to do was-what you were told.  Awesome way to do science.  Much bold.  Very replicable.  Totes good for anything. OK not really. 

And oversight. Datarepublican could be working the rest of her natural life trying to find who is spending what on which programs and who ordered them.  They weren’t ordered by congress who are at least theoretically supposed to hold the purse strings.   And what science did we get?  Masks.  A vaccine that people are starting to sue for damages over.  In some cases successfully. Mutilated children.  And the deficit.  The interest on the deficit is larger than the budget for the armed forces.  And I’m over the tears and wailing.  We need to fix the spending and “science” especially what has been passing for it does not get an exemption.  I leave you with an NIH example from the Tweets:

We live in profoundly weird times, in case you haven’t yet looked out the window this morning.

And I don’t say this (only) because this post is coming to you as we careen through America’s big beautiful highways in excess of seventy miles per hour, with my laptop on my lap and my fingers making with the words as I look out at the unusually green Western US landscape.

I won’t be home for at least a week (what are we doing? We don’t know. We might be looking for a home, except for a reluctance to leave younger kid and DIL behind. But we miss Colorado terribly, and the Colorado we miss is no longer there, and sometimes we go poking around. Consider that — despite knowing the story behind it, yes — this is our song.) This has certain problems.

Mostly because when I’m traveling wars break out. Which is weird, but not as weird as the fact that this is inherited. My mom had the same problem.

I’m sorry. No. You can’t lock me in my house.

Anyway…. so, you know. Things will be interesting for AT LEAST a week.

Next as an exhibit of how weird this time is: When did “thank you for your attention to this matter” turn into another term for “FAFO?”

I was joking that this was like datarepublican’s ‘Hi, I’m datarepublican” when you’re talking sh*t on twitter (Everybody gangsta until they get the Hi, I’m Datarepublican) and it occurred to me…..

The problem — if it is a problem, not a bonus — is that this digital world of ours, this strange new world that is still being aborn and as all births seems to come with a lot of sh*t and blood, seems to be the ideal stomping grounds for our people.

Our people? Well, yes. People have taken to referring to it as autists and the way we operate as “the tisms.” I do it myself on occasion because I find it funny. Attending a graduation almost two weeks ago, in a field prejudiced FOR our people, I told the new graduate “it was a tisms parade, and you masked best of all.”

But it’s not. Or at least I don’t think it is, unless you widen it to the ridiculous point. I know most of our people — geeks, obsessives, ADD-compulsives — have bits that get called “on the spectrum.”

As my being an introvert was totally unknown to me until someone told me the real difference was that being out in public exhausted you, I never thought of myself as being “on the spectrum” or ADD. The ADD thing took effort, okay, because I’m so ADD that if I have to wait at a register more than five minutes, and I’m alone, I’ll forget I have a cart and wander off. (If I’m with Dan it just drives him nuts.)

Anyway, I realized maybe I wasn’t quite standard after dealing with quirks from my sons. Things like sensitivity to loud sounds/certain lights which affect younger son suddenly made me wonder if that’s why I spent all of fourth grade UNDER the desk, writing on the seat.

Other things, like the fact I can’t stand gravy or sauce. Any sauce. Mustard in small amounts is tolerated, but even salad dressing has to be on the side and the salad gets dipped in it, or I can’t stand it.

And yes, I eat anything not surrounded by bread (I’m okay with sandwiches) with fork and knife, because touching cooked meat is an unbearable sensation.

Anyway, I have issues calling it “autism” because the “on the spectrum” is so broad that the fringes don’t much resemble the other end.

There will eventually be another name for us: the people who understand text better than interactions, who are as likely to write long letters to people they share a house with as to talk to them; the people who learn how other people function like a rigorous discipline; and who manage, despite all the best efforts of our teachers and parents, and no matter how successful we are to do things in a way that normal people tilt their heads at and wonder where and how we got so weird.

Because of that, I call us Odds. We are ODD. We stick out Oddly. We come up with solutions that would never occur to anyone else.

We are Odd other ways, too. We acquire strange, often temporary obsessions and fall down rabbit holes no “normal” person would think of. Some of us are foremost experts in tiddlywinks. Others know every possible detail of imaginary spaceships in an imaginary world, better than the man who wrote them. And others turn these obsessions into professions.

But even those of us who pass — and like with being an extreme introvert, I “mask” passably well — do things sometimes that are so strange they either get us killed or become memes.

…. like finishing presidential announcements with “Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

For various reasons, including technology, we’re in an age that is perfect for us. Let’s face it, most of the time in the past our kind didn’t even marry. Or if they did, they married perfectly normal people who, to be fair, probably knocked some of their sharp edges off. Now — looks at best beloved who is driving and making gestures as he listens to the first half of No Man’s Land read by AI. (And cackling when the AI for reasons inexplicable refers to Skip as Sheep. I checked. I never spelled it that way.) Now, we can marry our own kind. (This is either good or bad, people, we might speciate.)

And now, thanks to the net, and the ability to interact directly online our strange quirks can become memes instead of reviled.

Datarepublican, of course, has other issues which she overcomes with magnificent grace, and I’m so glad no one tried to eugenically cull her before birth or institutionalize her after, because she is needed and she was born for this time. She is magnificent and I’m in awe of her.

I’m only a little Odd. An Oddling. But an egg. But how can I cower when the president can close his presidential statements like a business letter? And when Datarepublican can collar liars with “Hi, this is datarepublican?”

I shall carry my Odd flag into this brave new world, and plant it where I think it needs to go.

In the future perhaps tyrants will cower and “Have a nice day” and armies will disband at “Anyone want some chocolate?” And perhaps “pull up your socks” will be the most motivational phrase ever.

Oddlings advance. Who’s with me?

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

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FROM MEL DUNAY: Wolf’s Trail (Hunter Healer King Book 1)

The name’s Chloe Fortebat, and I am in trouble. I left my father’s ranch on the plains to come to the Old World: a place of airships, steampower, and monsters nobody talks about. Now I’m dodging giant werewolves with fangs the size of my knife, and the hunters crazy enough to go after them. The most dangerous of these doesn’t look the part: a quiet, sharp-dressed medical man with a tired face….

My name is Dr. Maxim os Storm, and I hunt the beasts that haunt the night. The leader of this pack of werewolves has set his mark on Miss Fortebat, but this brave lady would rather fight him than let him make her his tool. As far as I am concerned, that makes her my ally. My only chance of curing her lies with an ancient machine, hidden by my people in the caves beneath Wolf Island. We must keep that artifact out of the werewolf’s grasp at all costs, for he would put it to a terrible use….

FROM ROY M. GRIFFIS: Holding the Line: Book One of The Long Watch

𝐆𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐮𝐩 𝐰𝐚𝐬𝐧’𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝟏𝟖-𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫-𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐃𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐲 𝐌𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫.

His mother had died so long ago, he could barely remember her. Now he lives with his alcoholic janitor father in the basement of the 150-year-old New Territorial Military Institute. Growing up at the prestigious, low-profile military academy, Danny had watched as the Territorial discretely provided a college education for the sons and daughters of politicians and royal families across the world, as well as the children of the rich and dysfunctional.

Beginning his freshman year at the Territorial on a “child of an employee” scholarship, Danny has a simple plan: graduate, leave behind his widowed drunk of a dad, and get the hell out of Wyoming.

That was before his home exploded. Before he met the sickly, spooky Tatiana who could See. Before the whispers in the night.

And that was before things got really weird.

“𝐇𝐨𝐥𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐋𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐛𝐲 𝐑𝐨𝐲 𝐆𝐫𝐢𝐟𝐟𝐢𝐬 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐢𝐧 𝐚 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝. 𝐈𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐬 𝐚 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐚𝐭 𝐚 𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐬𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐥 𝐧𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐰𝐤𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐝𝐢𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐭𝐫𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐚 𝐜𝐨𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐩. 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐰 𝐢𝐧 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐲 𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐬𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐥, 𝐚 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐤𝐞𝐞𝐩 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐮𝐭. 𝐈’𝐦 𝐞𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐲 𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐥!”

“𝑨 𝒎𝒂𝒓𝒗𝒆𝒍𝒐𝒖𝒔 𝒎𝒊𝒙 𝒐𝒇 𝒇𝒊𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒔𝒖𝒔𝒑𝒆𝒏𝒔𝒆!”

“𝑻𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒊𝒔 𝒂 𝒔𝒐𝒍𝒊𝒅 𝒂𝒅𝒗𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒆 𝒘𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒏 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝑮𝒓𝒊𝒇𝒇𝒊𝒔’ 𝒕𝒓𝒂𝒅𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒓𝒌 𝒉𝒖𝒎𝒐𝒓 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒃𝒓𝒊𝒔𝒌 𝒑𝒂𝒄𝒊𝒏𝒈, 𝒂𝒍𝒐𝒏𝒈 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒂 𝒅𝒆𝒍𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒇𝒖𝒍 𝒓𝒐𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒄𝒆 𝒘𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒏 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒐 𝒊𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒘𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒑𝒍𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒆 𝒇𝒂𝒏𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝒈𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒕 𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒔.”

FROM PAM UPHOFF: In Plain Sight (Chronicles of the Fall)

A short story taking place after the Fall

Bryanne Volkov is sixteen and moving from a small town to the capital of the Alliance, as her Grandfather is about to become the head of the entire Volkov Family. And her new home is not much like what she expected . . . the servants, odd, and an Executioner much too interested in the family.

FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN: Threads of Empire: Merchant and Empire Book Ten

“Return with coin or not at all!”

Dagnija Modrisdatter brought nothing but bad fortune to her family, or so they believed. When a merchant offered to hire her as spinster and weaver, her father sent her off.

Adrians Eckelbert searched for the master weaver who made ornate belts. He found her on a remote land-tongue, and brought her back to Rhonari.

Dagnija discovers a different world, one filled with possibilities she had never dared to even dream of. But she must learn to navigate the shoals of Rhonari, seat of the trade lords of the Northern Empire. Spinning comes easily to her hand. Speaking for herself and balancing trade law and family duty? Far harder.

FROM BLAKE SMITH: The Hartington Inheritance (The Hartington Series Book 1)

Almira Hartington was heir to the largest fortune in the galaxy, amassed by her father during his time as a director of the Andromeda Company. But when Sir Josiah commits suicide, Almira discovers that she and her siblings are penniless. All three of them must learn to work if they wish to eat, and are quickly scattered to the far reaches of the universe. Almira stubbornly remains on-planet, determined to remain respectable despite the sneers of her former friends.

Sir Percy Wallingham pities the new Lady Hartington. But the lady’s family will take care of her, surely? It’s only after he encounters Almira in her new circumstances that he realizes the extent of her troubles and is determined to help her if he can. He doesn’t know that a scandal is brewing around Sir Josiah’s death and Almira’s exile from society. But it could cost him his life, and the lady he has come to love.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Mesopredator Hustle

A dying star, and a station harvesting its planetary nebula for resources vital to a centuries-old war.

Amidst this beautiful but deadly stellar environment, a spy has infiltrated the star-lifting operations, creating “accidents” to take the lives of the crew. Can two troubleshooters from Engineering, one a human and the other a member of the feline Chongu, track down the killer when Security is certain the real problem is carelessness?

A short story of the Chongu Empire.

FROM MARY CATELLI: Curses And Wonders

A collection of tales of wonder and magic.

A prince sets out to win his way to the dragon’s lair.

A woman fights a curse on her lands.

A man returns to his castle, bringing a magical sword, and worse things.

And more tales.

Includes “Dragon Slayer”, “The Book of Bone”, “Mermaids’ Song”, “Witch-Prince Ways”, “Sword and Shadow”, “Eyes of the Sorceress”, “Fever and Snow” — and “The Emperor’s Clothes”, which is not sold separately.

FROM KAREN MYERS: The Chained Adept: A Lost Wizard’s Tale

MEET A POWERFUL WIZARD WITH UNANSWERED QUESTIONS–AND AN UNBREAKABLE CHAIN AROUND HER NECK.

Have you ever wondered how you might rise to a dangerous situation and become the hero that was needed?

The wizard Penrys has barely gained her footing in the country where she was found three years ago, chained around the neck and wiped of all knowledge. And now, an ill-planned experiment has sent her a quarter of the way around her world.

One magic working has called to another and landed Penrys in the middle of an ugly war between neighboring countries, half a world away.

No one has any reason to trust her amid rumors of wizards where they don’t belong. And she fears to let them know just what she can do — especially since she can’t explain herself to them and she doesn’t know everything about herself either.

Penrys has her own problems, and she doesn’t have any place in this conflict. But they need her, whether they realize it or not. And so she’s determined to try and lend a hand, if she can. Whatever it takes.

And once she discovers there’s another chained adept, even stronger than she is, she’s hooked. Friend or foe, she has questions for him — oh, yes, she does.

All she wants is a firm foundation for the rest of her life, with a side helping of retribution, and if she has to fix things along the way, well, so be it.

The Chained Adept is the first book of the series.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Odd Magics: Tales for the Lost

Odd Magics
This is a very strange collection of fairy tales, recast for modern life. In it the prize isn’t always to the fairest, the
magic is rarely to the strongest.
But lonely introverts do find love, women who never gave it a thought find themselves at the center of romance.
Doing what’s right will see you to the happily ever after.
And sometimes you have to kiss an accountant to find your prince.

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: NORMAL

It starts in the dark
As soon as night falls
One by one
Two by two
People say their final goodbyes
And depart to their cars
Leaving behind the knots of conversation
The groups of friends in
Convivial talk

It’s all “Yeah, work tomorrow”
And “Early flight.”
Or “Long drive.”

Groups close around their absence
The other members making the most
Of a final reminiscence
A last joke
A shared meal

Then in the night, while most sleep
One by one and two by two
With their bags
Their stachels
And that special picture they purchased
More leave.

There are spaces now in the parking garage
But they won’t be filled

In the morning
Vast colorful groups gather in the lobby
Last hugs
Last goodbyes
Luggage piled in carts
The hotel exhales them like a gasp of breath
Till there are only, mid-morning
A few trailing remainders

Leaving behind dark places
Where there were reunions
Echoing silences in spaces
Filled with light laughter
And the business of cleaning
And making it
As though we’d never been

And we go
Friends just now so close will return
To being far away
Uncertain flickers on a screen
Emails, comments, online chats

But we take with us
Like close held secrets
The certainty that
They live and breathe
And no matter how odd we feel
How little we fit in
With the world at large
We’re not one of a kind
And not alone

Promo Monday

I’ll be at the Kafe klatch, if you haven’t had a chance to catch up with me otherwise.

And since I don’t leave till Monday morning, feel free to let me know if you want to join the informal, unorganized, secondary Huns dinner to take place tomorrow night at City Cafe. I’ll be out of my con persona and probably very quiet, but it is what it is.

Anyway. It’s been a good con, but exhausting. Sorry if we ran away after my reading. There were a couple of you I wished to speak to, but we had a minor emergency.

I’ll try to be up early and moving around tomorrow.

Mostly just happy I have a blurb, and wanting to share. Also feeling guilty and stupid this isn’t out (or fully revised) yet.

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—Star Empire envoy—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.

…. so that’s it. Meanwhile I’m moderating a panel on Space Opera tropes in less than half an hour. I’m in my room, getting some introversion time. Don’t know I’ll hit the parties tonight. Maybe one or two.

And you, what are you guys up to?

We’re currently at the Liberty con hotel, but we’re not out in public. You might have caught a glimpse of us running one way and then the other, as we brought stuff in, grabbed dinner, came back to the room.

But Sarah, you’ll say, what’s the point of being there and not there?

The thing is by the time we got in I was feeling extremely tired. To explain: at the doctor’s appointment, there was a discovery that I’m in fact still dragging the sinus infection I got 9 months ago.

This shouldn’t be contagious, because none of my family has caught it except Dan when we first returned and he got over it.

It seems to be some very strange combination of the bacteria and my auto-immune which gets spun up by them. This time I’m on a very strong anti-biotic (and other stuff) which knocks me out.

So if you’re here and you run into me tomorrow and I seem to be looking at you cross eyed, I’m probably not even seeing you, just trying to focus.

Anyway, I’m about to go to bed, and hopefully be rested enough to deal with life tomorrow.

I’m still working through the revision. I am hoping to finish it next week, but we’re going to be on the road a lot. Needs must.

On the bad news front: I don’t have the Indy stickers. And there is a story to this….

When I ordered the stickers, sticker mule replaced the shipping address with the card address. (Yes, I’m sure there was a check mark I missed.) This means the stickers of Indy and his multitool went to Vegas.

We had a few checks arrive at the same time, so we asked for both the checks and the box of stickers to be forwarded…. 3 weeks ago.

We got the checks deposited TWO weeks ago. The stickers?

Well, they went to North Dakota. No we have no idea why. From North Dakota, they went to Chicago.

They’ve been in our city now for THREE full days. The city only has — I think — three physical post offices. It’s been bouncing between them.

Until today we hoped they’d get there today and the house sitters could have them overnighted.

They didn’t get there today.

If a miracle occurs and it arrives tomorrow, we MIGHT be able to get them expedited. Maybe.

Sigh. I’m bummed because I’ve been dragging and that was the one thing I managed to do “in time” for the con.

Ah well.

See you guys tomorrow.