Hello, lovely readers. Some of you know me but others may not — I am a frequent reader but only sometimes commenter. I’ve become friends with Sarah over the years through our mutual connections in the SFF community, and I can even credit her for a major role in the chain of events that led me to meeting my husband. But that’s a longer story, for another time.

Today’s topic addresses a pet peeve, which is how every single time some human-shaped monster attacks a school in America, the resulting commentary heavily features the line: “This never happens anywhere else!!” Really? Nowhere else? In no other country, in the entire world.

To be clear, I know what they’re really doing is limiting it only to shootings when for all practical reasons, what matters is if someone died, not what kind of weapon did it. The next line in the argument is usually something about how okay okay, there are other ways to murder, but guns make for larger victim counts. When it happens in other countries, there are only one or two victims.

Well then. I have a story for you.

Setting this up requires a bit of autobiography. I lived in China for the latter part of my childhood, which consisted of the years 2008-2013. (I do apologize for any gray hairs that spontaneously generated among the audience just now.) My parents worked as teachers at an English-language international school, set up by and for the expatriate community, which in our area consisted mainly of foreign business executives and their families. As a benefit to their employment, my siblings and I attended the same school. However, Chinese law left us limited in our ability to interact with locals in a meaningful way, and that had a deep effect on our experience. Even in the years before Dictator Xi took over (he came into power less than a year before I left) Chinese citizens were restricted, and sometimes outright prohibited, from being involved in our schools, churches, and other social environments. Most of the time they surveilled us in a hands-off way that you could get by without noticing if you didn’t pay close attention, but it was always there. I’m told that in the decade since I’ve left, it’s gotten far worse, and I believe it. Chinese leadership is increasingly Maoist and with the prevalence of inexpensive security cameras and digital tracking technology, Big Brother is more possible than ever.

But that’s getting into the weeds a bit. I can continue ranting about China and the Damned Commies all day if you let me. Instead, our question: “This never happens outside of America,” right?

Hearing that recently, I had another flashback to my time in China. Our school had fairly robust security already — walls around the entire campus, and gates with full-time guards. At one point, the guards started watching much more closely when we came and went. They checked IDs, and sometimes inspected bags or other items being carried in. I was a teenager and paid enough attention to what the adults were saying. A series of knife attacks had taken place at schools around the country. Everyone in China was terrified. Fortunately I never saw an attack take place, but I absolutely recall the atmosphere of fear that resulted.

For many years, this memory felt like a fever dream. I’d never heard anyone talk about it outside of those of us who were there for it, and was sure that I’d never be able to find any articles or proof that it actually happened. Fortunately for me, some of my friends are much better at digging up old news articles than I am! Even more surprisingly, some mainstream Western publications put out articles, though I am sure they were buried enough that most people missed them unless they knew exactly where to look. Usually when I’ve mentioned this story, I get people doubting that it’s real, so I really have to conclude that it was barely reported overseas.

One from the Atlantic, “Why the Rash of Attacks on School Children in China?” from April 2010. This would have been my second year abroad, which fits perfectly in my memory. The article describes three incidents. Fifteen wounded, knife attack. 28 wounded, 4 dead, knife attack. Five dead, killed with a hammer. All victims were children. All perpetrators were adult men from elsewhere in the local community. Another article from the BBC in 2023 (describing yet another attack on a school) states that a total of 17 children died in Chinese school massacres during 2010.

Going through our search results, we see other school attacks in places like France and South Korea and Japan, all countries with stricter gun laws than America, if not as strict as China. Knives are most common, but some incidents used blunt weapons, bombs, acid, or incendiary devices. All of these are problems and in my mind, equally awful. Why does it matter if your loved one was killed with a gun, a knife, or a bomb? Dead is dead.

But here’s the linguistic game they play. Any time an incident involves a gun, it’s no longer a massacre. It’s a shooting. I insist on pushing back with that one. Of course they can say “it never happens elsewhere” if they make sure that it exclusively refers to only one specific type of massacre.

As for the argument that it makes the killing easier, therefore there will be more killings — that presumes some population of people who are a hair’s trigger away from killing everyone they see, but only stopped by the fact that they don’t have an “easy” way to do it. No, I argue that the important part is the line between “peace” and “killing”, and that once someone crosses that line, the weapon matters little.

Don’t believe me? Why did Ted Kaczynski mail homemade bombs from a rundown cabin near Lincoln, Montana, when he also owned guns? Why did Darrell Brooks kill six people and injure 62 by driving a car into the 2021 Waukesha, Wisconsin, Christmas parade? He was legally barred from owning a firearm due to past felonies, but that didn’t stop him from shooting a family member the year prior. He could have gotten guns if he wanted to. He really just wanted to hurt people and didn’t care how.

Heck, just this past week I’ve seen people argue that Charlie Kirk could have been saved by gun control. But go back only a few years, and Shinzo Abe was killed in Japan with a homemade shotgun. Go back much further, and Margaret Thatcher was dodging car bombs. It’s always something. Evil finds a way.

We have a violence problem in the world right now, absolutely. If you ask me, I’d say we need more religion and less paranoia. Better family connections. Less doomscrolling on the internet and more fresh air. I spend a lot of my free time watching true crime content, especially from a criminal psychology perspective, and I’m convinced that a lot of our societal issues come from people who are rootless and directionless and who have been convinced by the doom-and-gloom peddlers that nothing they can do will improve their situation, so now they just want to hurt as many people as possible before they go.

That said, some violence will always exist. Human beings are NOT SANE as a general rule and sometimes insanity leads to serious problems. Being a god-fearing woman, I turn to prayer and hope that things will work out, Lord willing, here or hereafter. If you don’t have your own source of faith, I implore you to find some philosophy that helps you stay grounded. When we talk ourselves down into that depressive spiral, that’s when we get closer to justifying evil behaviors. 

As for the issue of safety, do what you can to make reasonable decisions, then take care of yourself and your family. Find a community that supports you and be good to them! And try not to lose your head, literally or figuratively.

Sources:

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/2010/04/why-the-rash-of-attacks-on-school-children-in-china/345763/

https://www.newyorker.com/news/evan-osnos/why-are-chinese-schools-under-attack

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-66151247

https://time.com/archive/6949952/chinas-alarming-spate-of-school-knifings/

Note from Holly: Emma blogs at https://sverizona.substack.com/ about things that catch her interest, often including historical clothing, fabrics, and domestic economy. You should go read her blog!

By Holly Frost

Hi Huns, Hoydens, and other creatures,

I have a lovely guest post . . . and I don’t know what name the author wants on it! Darn (checks notes) authors and their pen names.

It will be up by and by when the author gets back to me.

All are well on the Hoyt end of the blog: a little frazzled by the existence of global rotation and the resulting differences in night and day. As happens.

Don’t sound the alarm. Don’t send for the emergency services. For the next week (or so) things are going to be a little rocky and delayed both here and at instapundit, partly because my assistant and I both managed to be traveling at the same time. Which means I’m not here, and she’s not catching up for me.

Well, I’m here, sort of. Sometimes.

The biggest problem is that I’m having trouble thinking of topics, because I’ve been busy (nothing bad, it’s just family stuff — involved family stuff, both emotional and legal — though arguably it’s sequelas of bad stuff, since no one was counting on mom’s death, not for three, four or perhaps ten years.) and paying less attention to general things and politics than usual.

Seen in passing, the ridiculous slander against Homan (Anyone else want to call him Hooman in lol cat language? I’m fluent in lol cat!) does indeed seem to be ridiculous and slander. The left still hasn’t figured out that in the present day they can’t control all the media and make things stick that make no sense.

And apparently both the left and the Bulwark (BIRM) is convinced that “Republicans are afraid of the No King’s protest.” They’re not wrong. I mean, every time I read about it I roll on the floor laughing so hard I pee myself and I’m running out of clean pants, plus you probably should buy stock in detergent companies.

Let’s see, their first protest was unimpressive and the second no one notice. The third, I suspect we’ll notice, because I’m sure they intend to place piles of bricks and fire-starting materials. The thing is, that does worry us, because in fact we don’t like people’s property burned and people harmed. That’s a specialty of the left.

BUT it doesn’t worry us in the sense that people will think that political alternative which is destroying and burning things is preferable. no one thinks that. At best they can pretend for a while, if they lock the entire nation up– and that’s not going to happen again.

Part of the problem with the left is that, since the Marxist theory and its predictions — which they are enamored of — doesn’t conform with reality, and because they refuse to relinquish it, they have trouble even seeing reality, even with two hands and a seeing eye dog.

So instead they’re locked in this sort of memetic pseudo reality where instead of learning from history they try to repeat certain gestures as though they guarantee a certain result. And since violent demonstrations “worked” in certain countries at certain times in the past, they don’t understand the conditions are different, or that there’s no great interest in their policies. Violent demonstrations worked in the past and therefore they will automagically work again.

They keep running on that treadmill and pushing that button and failing to realize that none of it makes the political machine drop the desired power pellets.

It’s of course going to get worse before it gets better. Because the less they get their supply the more they’ll push the button.

So, yes, be afraid of the No King’s protest, because they will get violent and stupid. (They’re already stupid.)

On the other hand, don’t be afraid that they’ll start some amazing new movement.

For one the entire thing is incoherent. America — famously! — doesn’t have a king. And trying to claim Trump is being one while he gives more than due deference to the eructations of federal judges even in matters they CLEARLY have no jurisdiction over is self-obviously stupid.

Particularly after the Reign of Obama the Inadequate with his pen and phone, of which he bragged and which they cheered on. And also given their ridiculous, obsequious foot-kissing of personalities they anoint for… reasons that have nothing to do with competence.

I’ll close by saying, though it’s worthy of and the incident that prompted this will need a post of its own late: People who take great pleasure in imagined triumphs of people whom they’ve never met but who have some characteristic in common with them (female, same race, whatever) but nothing else just because they imagine this gives them power are idiots. And will always remain idiots. HOWEVER people who take great pleasure in the ascension of someone they consider downtrodden or marginalized for no other reason and regardless of perceived or real competence are even worse idiots. Poisonous ones, since their only motivation is to feel that they somehow have power to engineer society.

It’s all very exhausting.

And now forgive me if posting is sporadic until next Thursday. By then I’ll resume the usual schedule. Until then, I’ll have resort to a lot of guest posts (I just didn’t even get around to it yesterday or today.)

BUT I’ll do the meme post and the promo post, of course.

Sorry about the silence, and I’ll try to be more on it.

More than once in Agatha Christie’s novels, I came across a phrase that used to puzzle me: “I/she disapprove/s of marriage as a career for women.”

Being a thoroughly post-modern Millie, who came of age in the early eighties, that just didn’t scan. A marriage was not a career. It was something you did for love, or, increasingly, didn’t do at all in Europe at least. Because who needs a paper, if you’re in love after all?

Later, when I was a young mother, mired in diapers kid spit up and the older kid being just smart and accomplished enough to magnify the mess. (Not that he was a terribly bad kid, but he did things like eat the cat food, or attempt to help in very strange ways.) I came across an article in some magazine (I don’t remember which, and if I’d bought a housekeeping or women’s magazine it would be for a recipe or a craft thing. But I’d have read it anyway) where some woman tried to be cutesy and compare being a mother to a corporate career. Where she — and I at the time — were mired was the factory floor, in our coveralls, and we couldn’t keep clean or do anything but just barely manage the brutal work. She talked about ome day being like her mom, who — with kids out of the house — could have lunch meetings with her peers, and keep her hair and clothes beautiful.

At the time I kind of chuckled, and it gave me hope of a time when my entire house didn’t smell of sour milk.

….. Since then I’ve both come to believe that yes, indeed, marriage is a career and that the progression is more or less what that woman had outlined in jest.

Look, careers are a slippery thing. Most people, when they envision careers see themselves in business attire and progressing till they’re the VIP of some company. That — even for college graduates, even for those with graduate degrees — describes may 1 to 2% of careers.

Most people not only don’t have that star studded path, but they don’t really have anything resembling a “career.” What they do have is “jobs.” Meaning they go in, they work a day, they get laid off, get another job. In my lifetime (husband and I entered the market in the mid to late eighties) even jobs have no security whatsoever, and because of changes in tech and economy, you’re likely to have two or three different fields of jobs over the years you’re employed. It might be even in the same general “field” but the subfields will be wildly different, or how the job is accomplished will be completely different.

Although we sell every young person the bright dream of the “career” it is unlikely their job will have any coherence or much satisfaction.

In fact, let me add, for most normal, functional human beings, it was always like that. Your job is something you have and do so that you can fulfill your life’s plan and purpose and find satisfaction elsewhere.

Yes, some of us are broken and not in any way shape or form functional human beings, and do find quite a bit of satisfaction in what we do for money. (Glares. Stop the smirking please.) In my case, that is writing. But my husband derives as much satisfaction from programing and head-breaking mathematical puzzles (which are sometimes the same.)

Even then, there’s a difference between your art or craft that you do and enjoy and your job or career. No matter ho much you enjoy your work, particularly these days (because there’s some fundamental breakages in how things are done) but probably always, honestly, there’s always vexations, bad bosses, parts of the job you don’t enjoy at all.

As much I love writing, there were times I would have turned in my writing career — willingly — for a glass of water, then poured the water out on the ground. Except that…. well, baby needed shoes, and expensive college books, and did they really outgrow those pants again? And oh, yeah, we probably should have the money to go see my parents, because they’re getting on in years. So I stayed on, even when writing was a pain and a source of stress.

BUT I did have that other career, the one writing supported. And there I did progress from the spit up years to the middle manager years, where I was mediating their education to, eventually, the executive suite, where my job was to figure out how to network and help them if I could. And–

Because the only satisfying career most of us will have is our personal life: Marriage, sure, or family, or just our friends and our social connections. (I will point out a lot of the women who disapproved of marriage as a career for women were spinsters, so their career was …. looking after the broader family and working for the village in various ways.)

But that’s most likely to always and still be our most important career and the mark we live in the world.

Having people preferentially chase “careers” has created an unreasonable expectation that your jobs will be wildly satisfying and lead to “careers.”

And then we wonder why people are upset.

Business is business. It’s what you do to live, not your life.

Find your satisfaction and purpose in something else, or you’ll be unhappy your whole life.

As I write this, Israel has gotten back all the living kidnap victims. Unfortunately there’s only twenty of them.

Also fortunately Trump managed to get in the treaties that Hamass doesn’t get to stage its repulsive rallies or give “souvenirs” to the hostages.

Both of these are great and good. But I flinch a little when I hear about the “peace.” I don’t think Trump is stupid. I don’t even think he’s as naive as he was in his first term. Surely he doesn’t expect it to hold.

Or maybe he does. He had his son in law, Jared Kushner, negotiate the “peace” and frankly the man reminds me of a golden retriever for a reason. Maybe Kushner believes that he really negotiated lasting peace, and maybe Trump is crossing his fingers and hoping.

I’d be glad to eat my words on this but I don’t think I will: I will be shocked if the peace lasts till the end of the year. It won’t last long after. And if the domestic terrorists Antifa sponsors Democrats by any means win the midterms next year, Hamass will definitely trike immediately after. (Not that I think they’ll wait that long.)

There is a reason for this, and it’s not just “I don’t trust them” or “I have a memory longer than 20 minutes.”

The reason is simple: Hamass won’t hold the peace, because it can’t.

Eric S. Raymond has made similar observations about Antifa, the armed wing of the Democrat party, and he’s not wrong there either, but it’s even more so for Hamass.

We’re not dealing with a normal country. We never were. And it’s not just because normal countries don’t elect a terrorist group for its leadership. (I’ll pause a moment while you think about that, because that’s the edge we skate on as we speak.) It’s that “Palestine” as constituted, the country the kleptocratic bureucrats of the EU are so all in on recognizing, doesn’t have … anything. And I’m not talking about “oh, they’re despoiled.” I like the rest of you remember what they did to the infrastructure they found in the West Bank when they took over. There were functioning, producing greenhouses they ripped apart to use the plumbing to make rockets to lob at Israel. No, what I mean is that Palestine makes nothing, produces nothing, grows nothing. They can’t feed their own people. They can’t even educate their young, and send them to “schools” staffed by UN “teach-a-terrorist” units which indoctrinate them in the way of the suicide bomber.

All that keeps Palestine that appendage of Hamas and the people it indoctrinates/propagandizes/holds captive going from day to day is that euphemistically called “international aid.” If they didn’t get food/money/clothes shipped in, they’d be running around naked and starving in the desert.

They are a “people” (not really in any way but legally, btw) held together and governed and more importantly PAID for the simple purpose of making war on Israel. There is no other purpose, no other reason, nothing else that can get them paid or provide a purpose to their existence.

Given that, they can’t avoid breaking the truce. Even if their leaders understood they had to do it. Even if their leaders wanted to do it, it would never happen, because the entire ethos of the people, perhaps not down to the infant at the breast, but definitely down to the toddler, is to attack Israel.

They’re a people gathered, taught and governed as a living weapon to make war on Israel. They have no other purpose, no other interest, no other culture. They have no other reason for existing.

So, no, sorry President Trump, they won’t hold the peace. But remember you gave your word. And when they break it, all the brakes should be taken off Israel’s response.

Because we can’t have a people in the world whose whole purpose is to destroy another nation. We already have communists for that.

And that’s all. Right now the best I can wish the people of “Palestine” is that any remaining sane ones (if any remain) take off and make it to saner places (not here, thank you. We already have enough indoctrinated terrorists) and forget their “identity” before what is ultimately inevitable.

Today though? Today we celebrate that Jewish people more abused than any since the end of World War Two made it home.

And we gird our loins for what’s to come.

Nothing left to do.

As in the old Russian fable, the scorpion will sting the frog that’s carrying him across the river, even if that means they both die because it’s its nature. It can’t do otherwise. Same for the Palestinians.

Two more songs for the sound track.

Some observations:

1- Prodigal is of course the chapter in which Skip is visited by his father’s ghost, and let’s all be very grateful he just decides to become a diplomat instead of going Hamlet-murdery. Very sensible of him. (I can’t believe I’m posting THAT.)

I realize the chapter being 2 songs is weird, but I thought the feel was very different and for narrative (also boppy) reasons New London New London was needed.

Prodigal is a very weird song, but I’m a very weird writer and let’s not talk about my character’s weirdness, if you please.

The one who spots the Odyssey allusion gets a Britannia flag sticker as soon as I have them made.

2- I have no idea why my subconconscious decided a song about attempts to murder the singer should be boppy and happy. It just IS.

However, rendering pictures was a problem. So I went with silly. Notice the venomous toad is wearing a snazzy jacket please.

Midje lacks the concept of bear traps, alas.

In case you missed the previous songs, this is the link to the playlist.

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

Posted on October 5, 2025 by Sarah A. Hoyt

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 PAM UPHOFF: Outer Tiers (Chronicles of the Fall Book 18)

Konstantin Aslanov is back!

And posted to an Outer Tier World with an orphaned guardian’s store–the official name of the oft rumored “Doomsday Cubes” so popular in cheesy spy movies.

He hadn’t counted on children in danger, buying a hundred race horses, or running head on into a corrupt colony government. But with newly acquired sidekicks, it’s full speed ahead to save an entire World as Plagues and Invasions hit the entirety of the Three Part Alliance!

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: All Precious Stones and Peoples (Timelines Universe Book 11)

Once, a million years ago, a water world populated with dolphin-like beings, the product of gene-alteration by their Progenitors on the Earth-like world one orbit closer to the sun, was flung into the cold and dark of interstellar space by the passage of a rogue star.

And four thousand years ago, its engineers were awakened from suspended animation to bring the world into a new orbit around a giant, blue-white star, where the waters of the World Ocean could thaw and life could continue to flourish.

This is the story of the A’ka’pa’i’ka’ti, and their Foretold Saintess, Speaker to the Dry Ones, born to communicate with the Progenitors when they finally arrived to reclaim the lost . .

FROM DENTON SALLE: The Summoned Sage: The Summoned Sage Book 1

“Don’t bother. I’m already dead,” the man said. “Only a spell keeps me here.”
I froze and he continued speaking. “I am sorry I had to summon you. I wanted a young hero, not a sage. But someone must carry the scroll to my teachers, lest the world end in blood and terror.”

A dying scribe-magician ripped me from my retirement in Texas to help save his world. A world kind of like Old China, where the legends and tales about cultivators are real. And I have no idea how this works. All I have is some years of practicing an internal martial art.

But I’m trying to complete his quest as thugs from a tong, monsters, and other cultivators hunt me before some catalysmic event destroys the world. They killed him for this scroll, and I’m pretty sure I’m next. If the foxes or fu dogs don’t eat me first.

And I’ve picked up this girl by mistake, which complicates things even more. Maybe I don’t want to go home? But can I even survive in a world like this? Assuming I can complete this quest before it all goes to hell?

If you enjoy Beware of Chicken or the Unintended Cultivator, you’ll love this isakai adventure where a man from Texas finds the magic powers of taoist myth are real and a world depends on his choices.

Scroll up and one click to start reading this fantasy adventure today!

FROM CELIA HAYES AND JEANNE HAYDEN: A Full Dozen of Luna City (The Chronicles of Luna City Book 12)

The final chapter in the modern day chronicles of Luna City; where Richard Astor-Hall and Kate Heisel plan their wedding, Police Chief Joe Vaughn discovers that he is famous, the fabled Mills Treasure may have been found at last, and Miss Letty McAllister reveals all, in explaining the mystery of a rarely-seen ghost in the Cattleman Hotel.

BY CASEY NASH, ROBERT HANLON AND SCOTT MACREA: U.S. Marshals Timber, Flint And Jubal Stone: Showdown at Red Hollow: A Western Adventure (A U.S. Marshal Ezra Flint Western Book 7)

If you thought the stakes could not get higher when Marshals Timber, Flint and Stone teamed up for The Long Trail to Justice, then you haven’t imagined the dangers of their next adventure, Showdown at Red Hollow!

Jake Timber, Ezra Flint and Jubal Stone join forces to investigate the murder of a fellow marshal just outside the boomtown of Red Hollow. It looks like the work of the outlaw band The Crimson Veil, but soon the marshals realize they are caught in a bigger, more dangerous conspiracy.

Facing a ruthless team of hired killers, a renegade band of Comanche, a crooked politician bent on crippling the town, and the most efficient killing machine of the Wild West, Timber, Stone and Flint race to their ultimate confrontation… the Showdown at Red Hollow.

Showdown at Red Hollow is the pulse-pounding follow-up to The Long Trail to Justice, the first-ever teaming of Jake Timber, Ezra Flint and Jubal Stone. Now, acclaimed authors Robert Hanlon, Scott McCrea and Casey Nash come together to produce another white-hot, classic Western Adventure!

EDITED BY D. JASON FLEMMING: The Victober Collection 2023: 3 Classic Victorian Novels

Three classic Victorian novels, almost in time for the month of Victober!

Black But Comely

Born to gypsies, raised by Jews, Jane Lee turns eighteen and decides to win her way into the upper classes of Victorian society. Her heritage won’t let her go, but her single-minded will and cunning are a match for any gypsy plots against her.

Marmorne

The British Segrave brothers were as different as could be. Emil, the eldest and a solicitor, was passionless and precise. Julius, the middle brother, had enough energy for three normal men, so his decision to mount an expedition to Africa was no surprise. Youngest, Adolphus, was the peacemaker between the other two.

How their fates became tied to the quaint French village of Marmorne, and the Prussian invasion of France, none of them could have foretold…

Sweet Anne Page

Sweet Anne Page is an ideal to everyone who meets her. To Stephen Langton, she is the youthful ideal of love. To Humphrey Morfill, she is the ideal way to marry into money. To Claudia Branscombe, she is the ideal foil, a distraction that enables her plots and intrigues. And to Raphael Branscombe, she becomes the ideal path to revenge…

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Everything in 24 Frames

Twenty-four frames equals one second of motion-picture film.

Cather Hargreaves learned that fact for class, but as an abstraction. Now that he’s going on a tour of a movie studio and its back lots, he’s about to get real-life experience in just how movies are made.

What he didn’t expect was being tossed into a real-life horror, as the war against sectarian violence suddenly comes home to the City of Angels. It’s a moment that will change the course of his life forever.

When life is on the line, 24 frames can be an eternity.

A short story of the Grissom timeline.

FROM DALE COZORT: Wokuo Incursion

Invasion from an alternate timeline?
It’s December 1937 in a world exactly like ours except that it is about to veer wildly into alternate history. It’s less than two years before World War II broke out historically in Europe. War has already come to much of Asia, with Japan invading China. An isolationist US fears it will be drawn into that conflict, especially after the Japanese sink the US gunboat Panay. Just when President Franklin Roosevelt thinks he has that crisis under control, he faces a bigger issue. High tech descendants of the Wokuo, Japanese pirates and smugglers who should have vanished over three hundred years ago, flood into the Pacific coast off California.

The Wokuo are both refugees and invaders, fleeing from war in an alternate reality where they survived and grew strong, while looking for new conquests to replace their lost empire. They set their sights on California. President Roosevelt sends disgraced former Colonel Martin to California to organize resistance to the invaders, but the Colonel has his own issues, buried deep in his brain and waiting to cause disaster.

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.

AND YES I’M GOING TO REMIND YOU: No Man’s Land: Volume 3 (Chronicles of Lost Elly) is out.

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.

To compensate, if you’ve missed the first three tracks of No Man’s Land Sound Track (WHY do you monsters suggest stuff like this to me when I’m stressed and weak?) they’re on youtube. (And yes, they will be up for sale and given for free to my paid substack subscribers. BUT first I need to deal with the sequella of mom’s death (sorry. It’s eating my life.)) And there are two more I need to put up before I go clean the grotty house. If I get them up before tonight, I’ll put up a post later today.

No Man’s Land Sound Track.

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: CARVE

Y’all are MONSTERS. MONSTERS. I was standing on the corner, minding my own business (probably reading my Heinlein) when suddenly some baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad commenter (You are a baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad thing. Baaaaaaaaaaaaad.) mentioned the words “sound track for books.” And that I really should do a sound track for No Man’s Land.

It’s not like y’all don’t know I’m slightly on the spectrum (like people are slightly pregnant while screaming into the delivery room) and likely to become obsessed with stuff involving writing poetry and playing with clankers for music and–

Well! Now there are three tracks (though the chapter with Skip hiding in beds made me profoundly uncomfortable, it makes a fun song. The “He came to me in a dream” Probably called “Prodigal Son” but not written YET (unless I’m sitting down tonight and hit hits me) links up with his training for the Interplanetary Diplomatic Service. It will be the refrain.

I hope y’all are happy with yourselves. And yes, chapters WILL get written, today hopefully. The reason they’re late is more that I’ve been helping the Littler Pickle (younger DIL) fix up a space for storage for her stuff.

Dan says I’m actually writing a Rock Opera and wants me to do a screen play. If I kill him I was playing poker with y’all all night, right.

He also wants me to do videos with the lyrics, and that I CAN do it’s just going to take learning how. Chapters for Witch’s Daughter first, because it’s “this” close.

So, from the Top, what I have Right NOW on the No Man’s Land Playlist:

Track 1:

Track 2: (And if you haven’t read the book, read the description, otherwise you’ll be MIGHTY confused.)

Track 3:

THAT’s it. For now.

Until our next episode of “Pointing the writer at clankers and not even saying we’re sorry!”