According To Hoyt

It’s always darkest before dawn.  This is not actually true, but it is, metaphorically.

I’m rushed, and have a million things to do today. This is a very scattered post, just a bunch of things running through my uncaffeinated mind.

I leave it as an exercise for the audience to make lists of the reasons not to despair.

I’ll leave you with one: the same people who prattle endlessly about how the demographics are going their way don’t act as if they are.  Also, in that respect, the demographics have been going their way my entire life, according to them and yet, they never get there.

This is probably because people aren’t widgets, which they’re incapable of understanding.

So, protecting and encouraging vote fraud and quite literally dismantling the constitutional republic (Well, what do you think the popular vote compact does?) not the act of people who are confident things are going their way.

There are other examples, but– look at them.  Like Greta Thunberg traveling in a “carbon free” manner, which required the flying of crews back and forth, thereby undoing her savings ten times over, their vaunted “the future belongs to us” is sounding increasingly tinnier and desperate, a potemkin ideology in an avalanche.

Of course, the question is: what comes after?  And that, that is for us to fight for.  The future is unwritten. It’s in our hands.

It’s always darkest before dawn, and you can choose to close the blinds, hide under the bed and keep it dark.  Or not.

I have no idea what lies ahead this year.  Normally — because my subconscious is massively smarter than I — I can tell what is likely, what is most probable.  Now my crystal ball is occluded, my vision dark.  I don’t know.  We might come through this okay.  Or we might not.

And if we don’t, it might be brief or a descent into madness.  And as for what happens to the rest of the world…  I don’t know.

I recently wrote a short story centered on the battle of Cannae which some mark as the turning of the Roman Republic towards empire.  There are reasons to doubt this, honestly. It was in the process before that.

But here’s the thing, on that day, in that one battle, Rome lost an estimated forty thousand people.

But they didn’t surrender. They lowered (and raised) the age of enlistment, they made logical changes, they stopped being naive about the Carthaginians.

Carthage is a memory, mostly remembered as having been destroyed and salted.  Rome… it’s arguable that Rome never fell, or at least that’s the feeling anyone who visits one of her former provinces gets.

Reverses, defeats, can all be temporary.

It all depends on your determination and your willingness to learn.

They say it’s always darker before dawn.

Light a million lamps and hold a flamethrower in reserve.

This is not even the beginning of the end. I’m not sure it’s the end of the beginning.

Never give up, never surrender.

Be not afraid.

*Okay, I came back two days ago and my birthday is tomorrow. I will try to do some writing today, but I’m not even looking at my email till the 19th, because no. And also no. I’m trying to adapt to this “late 50s” thing. I need a moment. Also, honestly, I’m trying not to come down with yet another cold, because these days it takes me forever to recover.  I’m sure my faithful vignette-challenge-creators sent me a word, but since I’m not opening the email, I don’t have it. (I’m not even expecting anything bad. I just don’t wnat to deal with a week and a bit of email until after my bday) So. The challenge will be images.  The rest is normal. – SAH*

Book Promo

*Note these are books sent to us by readers/frequenters of this blog.  Our bringing them to your attention does not imply that we’ve read them and/or endorse them, unless we specifically say so.  As with all such purchases, we recommend you download a sample and make sure it’s to your taste.  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. One book per author per week. Amazon links only.-SAH*

FROM RUSS MITCHELL:  Malik The Pawn.

Malik’s star is rising. The village boy’s bravery nets him an award far beyond his station — the chance to serve the Moon Daughter’s Temple for a year. But serving a Goddess isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Malik finds himself possessed and in possession of dangerous secrets, as devastating changes come to a world he hardly comprehends. He will travel with a bitter, taciturn huntress and a healer who’s chained to a past he can’t escape, as Malik struggles to regain his freedom — and his soul.

FROM MARY CATELLI:  Oath Keeper.

Eadwin travels through through wild lands. There, he learns of a ghost, a oath that was broken, and one that was kept.

And thus his decision, which thane to serve as a knight, grows harder.

FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN:  Eerily Familiar: Familiar Tales Book Seven.

Something hunts the hunters . . .

Something waits in the shadows, watching. Lelia Chan and her Familiar, Tay, hear vague rumors of trouble among the shadow mages. Everyone’s heard rumors before, and keeping her boss happy is more important. Then a painting tries to capture her friend. When her mentor and good friend André and his Familiar Rodney both go missing, Lelia has to take charge.

She’s not ready. No shadow mage ever is. But she’ll find a way or die trying.

Things worse than than death hide in the shadows. And they LIKE meeting over-confident young mages . . .

FROM MICHAEL J. HOOTEN:  Till the Conflict Is Over (Enlisted Book 2)

Peter Wright not only survived the most deadly space battle in US Navy history, he also managed to defeat the enemy as well. He’s hailed as a hero, and everyone wants to know his story, but all he wants is to avoid everything that reminds him of that day. Instead he endures interviews, cotillions, and the ever-surprising demands of being a celebrity. And also anxiety attacks, suvivor’s guilt, and funerals. Through it all, he wishes he could just be a normal sailor again.

Be careful what you wish for.

FROM BLAKE SMITH:   An American Thanksgiving.

It is Thanksgiving Day, 1865, and Margaret Browne isn’t feeling very thankful. The war is over, and her grown-up sons have returned from the fighting, but her beloved husband remains absent, last seen a captive in a notorious prisoner-of-war camp. The Browne family muddles through their uncertain path, lost without their leader, but when everything begins to go wrong all at once, Margaret must hold together the farm and her family, and turn a disaster into a true day of thanks-giving.

And now for the writing challenge:

Take one of the two pictures below; assume they describe an essential aspect of a novel, that is either character, setting or conflict.

Now write me a couple of first paragraphs that will hook me and make me want to read your novel:

I woke up feeling 80 years old, and since I’m fairly sure none of you have an aging ray (if you do and you trained it on me, I’m gonna give you sych a kicking.)

I think it’s the result of late nights, unwonted activity (both trying to understand the science behind the talks and honestly sitting still in a classroom (meeting room) all day, a thing I’m singularly bad at. Oh, yeah, I was here.

I have zero idea why I felt the need not to disseminate our whereabouts, but when I get subconscious imperatives like that I obey, even if — particularly if — they make no sense.  Most of the time it’s just paranoia, but the few times that they’ve been right… well… More than paid for the false alarms, in terms of safety or not being bothered.

We drove out. We’d falling out of the habit of long drives when we had the kids, but as with so many things, we’re rediscovering them.  It gives us time to talk and I firmed 2 of the grossly overdue short stories in my mind. Hoping to get them written today.

My health wasn’t helped by the fact that both the conference provided lunches and what we could find were both full of carbs I couldn’t resist.

This is fairly rare, since I usually can withstand anything but corn chips.  Oh, yeah, Wichita has a Mediterranean place that sells fried pita chips. So HAPPY I don’t live there. I’d never be able to stay off them.

Anyway, we left a day early, partly because we didn’t think we could CONTRIBUTE anything to the last day, partly because I thought long days, late nights and not getting exercise were making me susceptible to the thing that was making everyone cough.

It might have. Or I might be just ahead of it. At any rate, I’m going to do a very perfunctory cleaning (Cats shed!) then write.

The only low carb thing was something I attempted before I left. People are now making and selling pasta from heart’s of palm.  I wasn’t particularly impressed by the linguini. It’s no more linguini-like than zucchini strips that are way cheaper. I mean, it LOOKS more like pasta, but that’s obviously not the point.  However I bought some canned for “lasagna” and plan to try it later tonight.  Will report.

We’ll resume regular schedule tomorrow, and hopefully by Monday the cold trying to land will have given up and moved off.

Oh, yeah, Greebo, obviously KNOWING I’d died rejected the impostor who tried to impersonate me until I cornered him and he smelled me.  He’s now acting very clingy. He also lost a lot more weight than the thyroid condition warrants. I suspect, as on previous trips, idiot-boy stopped eating.  I’m not sure exactly how I ended up with a dog in a cat suit, but there it is.  He’s been extravagantly petted this morning, and will sit at my feet while I write.

Oh, NANO: I finished a short while in Wichita. Not a ton, just 6k words. I still need to do a novel.

If we’re going to be honest the masks started falling well before this year.  But I call this year the year of the great disappointment.

Let’s for instance talk about Eric C*aramella whose name is being spelled like a swearword and deserves it: did I go overboard with memes. Sure. I did. Sometimes genetics is destiny, and when I get the Latin up, the legions of Rome go marching through my emotions and…. everything gets red and I become weaponized.  Or as I told Dan: Behold the power of Portuguese autism. It’s like other autism only louder and ruder.

The proper way to deal with that in a society with free speech is to let it be. Of course, if FB hadn’t deleted my very silly meme, I’d never have got that mad.

However how the left deals with it is by trying to stop the speech.

It is a truism that we want them to talk louder and they want us to shut up. And that’s fine.

But that they are trying to shut up A NAME everyone knows (with associations everyone at this point also knows) is a step beyond.

And in personal experience I blocked THIS ONE PERSON who btw should understand free speech since he swore an oath to the constitution.  And I stopped getting suspended by FB for older memes. I had hoped, honestly, nothing would happen, and I could just unblock him.  I am disappointed.

And yes, I know FB is not the government, but his desire to suppress speech tells me he would do it by government fiat and not see anything wrong with it, so long as it was “wrong” speech.

Again, we’ve always known the left wanted to silence us, but that they’re willing to do it on something so trivial and stupid, tells me they want to use people as meat puppets only allowed to say, hear, see and think the “truth” promulgated from the top that day.

Perhaps they wish to live like that. But most of us couldn’t.

And you know what? I wouldn’t WANT to.

Bite me, big brother. I have two middle fingers.

Obviously not continuing Stephanie’s series today. Will do tomorrow. Will do something later today.

Late night. Got mildly tipsy. Enough to walk in circles for a while, looking for the elevator.

But am very much alive and okay. Just kind of of slow this morning.

One of the things that’s puzzling hell out of me is how the democrats are acting this election.

I always assume they have better on the found intelligence than the republicans, because they know not just who is voting for whom, but also all the dead who’ll be voting, how many illegals they can commander, and precisely how many votes they can “harvest.”

Between the “human wave” of illegals, which they credit with flipping Virginia (no, seriously.  The left is saying this. Which makes you wonder if they’re even AWARE of the difference between residence and citizenship. They seem to be convinced if you cross the border, you can vote.  Perhaps that’s why they think our opposition to this stuff is “racist” since they’ve lost the concept of citizenship.) and the fact felons now vote in FL (which means we’ll never win it again. Not until after the troubles.) and btw the same for another state, though I can’t remember which right now, I’d think they’d be sure of victory.

But they’re not acting like they’re sure of victory.  Unless they’re very, very stupid — which, I grant you, is possible.

The candidates they’re running are the people you run when you expect to be trounced, and the impeachment is a last ditch effort.

Now, it’s possible they’re stupid.  They have this autistic tendency to assume that certain things are immutable when they’re not.

They might not realize Obama borked the economy so badly that la grand salida happened, which is why states that had always been dem — hello illegals! — went republican without their expecting it.

You see, economics is a closed book to them. They don’t understand wealth creation nor individual action. So what you get is that “rich” countries stole their “resources” and are now “rich” forever. And the poor people of the world come over to share the wealth, immutably.

So they still don’t GET 2016 and might think the same situation applies.  This is QUITE plausible because their clients, both illegals and Californians, always vote to repeat the conditions they escaped from.

Of course, it’s possible they know they’ll win but are afraid Trump will call foul and start investigations.  I’d be more sure of that if the recently started drumbeat of “he’ll refuse to leave” hadn’t been applied to Bush and Reagan and…

Assuming they win, and their victory is unbeatable — look, the fraud we saw in 18 was BREATHTAKING plus this other stuff — it’s not the end.

I’m not going to lie to you, whether they win or not, we’re going to see some…. sporty weather.

But here’s the thing: ever see a dog catch a car?  it can’t hold it.

The Marxist ideology has never captured anything as COMPLEX as the US.  As large, yes.  As complex? No.

Remember my children that Obama the Clueless was ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE more in touch with reality than the current clown car of candidates. Or at least his handlers were.

Which is why it took him four years to stop the economy and even that not thoroughly enough. And initiated la grande salida which doomed them.

They fail to get this.  Any of the current candidates will have people streaming for the border within a year, maybe less.  You see, they suck at economics. That’s one. And they suck at people, that’s two.  They don’t get that South and central Americans aren’t coming here to live the exact same way they do back in their homelands. To them America is rich, those countries are poor. That’s it.  And they might actually think it has to do with race.

As for the economics, the wheels will come off in a spectacular way.  Which will create interesting…. reactions.  For one, the world goes down hard, and the EU might get physical internally. Trust me on this. a broke US breaks the world.

For another, in some areas internally things will get interesting too.  Probably interesting VERY briefly, since the dems remaining after the economy crashes are not what I’d call “good strategists”

So: reports of our demise are most certainly exaggerated, though I hope we learn from the debacle.  I also hope we don’t go apeshit into totalitarian ideologies that are just as bad, though that’s definitely possible (but not inevitable. I trust Americans.)

In the meantime: preparedness is a thing.

Have supplies for a year, even if you’re not Mormon.  Stock up now.  Have at least a few months of extra meds, if like me you are dependent on them to stay alive. Take whatever defensive measures you need to, in case your area is one that goes… sportive.

And start now (I’m looking at me) to get in the best shape you can get.  No more skipping the gym because it’s cold and you feel yucky.  Sometimes running is the fastest way to avoid death. (Mostly if you walk into something you weren’t expecting, around a street corner.)

So, stop treating it like this is the end, and we’ll die gallantly or whatever.  Just get to survive and shape what comes after.

No surrender, that goes without saying. But also no stupid. Stupid only gives us one less sane person to shape the aftermath.

Be not afraid.  In the end we win, they lose. Because reality is on our side, and reality always wins.

I woke up late and have a million (and a half) things to do “right now” besides still being late on six short stories.

So, I figure this will give you something to discuss for the day:

Doing the promo post in a little while.

We’re on the road this week, so posting times will be …. whimsical.

You see, I caught a second 24 hour ban for an OLDER post.  Considering how many times I posted Mr. Caramel’s name, it’s going to be a LONG time.

Anyway, I can post in groups, and comment on other pages — want a comment from Sarah A. Hoyt on your page? Tag me, do — but I can’t approve new posts on my timeline (I turned them to approval-only during a similar kerfuffle, but not with FB.)

So, until I can promote the promo, there’s not much point doing it.  Maybe tomorrow.  We’re going to be on the road with irregular hours all week.  And frankly, I’ve passed Deep Pink to readers, and am now trying to write a full-length space opera in the next couple of week.  Also, I have SIX short stories overdue.  Spent the long drive talking them over with husband, I now just need to write them.

As for why I’m not abandoning facebook?  Because we can’t guys.  That’s what we’ve been doing wrong for seventy years or so. We’ve abandoned their spaces and silenced our own voices.  It not only makes us unheard, it gives them illusions of invencibility and has brought us to the brink of civil war.

This is what I’m posting in comments, all over:

Oh, also bake me a cake, Facebook. An Italian Caramel cake.
Are you a publisher or a carrier? Are you a wave or a particle?
What you are is a corrupt idiotic cabal. Maybe you think I’ll get so annoyed I’ll leave.
Only I’m not self-cancelling for your pleasure.
Bydand!
(And yes, curiously, I have a right to the motto. Tenuous, but there.)

And now I’m going to go write.  Send me a file baked in a cake ;)

It occurred to me yesterday that all the command and control left are like a dog chasing a car.  They really want to hold the US. But when they get hold of us, they find they can’t and they’re the ones hurt when they try.

I came home to my computer this morning to find out that I’d caught a 24h ban for “coordinating harm.”

Now, by the point I put that up I was just in full rebellion mode. I didn’t verify the statement above, for instance, because I’m just pissed enough.  I know he talked about impeaching Trump way before this and of course he IS NOT an impartial “witness”.  (For one he didn’t witness anything. It’s all hearsay. WRONG hearsay. Which he coordinated with Schiff of the “made up memo read in a hearing” fame.)

And I know the left is making a bizarre effort to protect him, which is enough to tell me that no, this is not a bona fide thing. Then there’s stuff like this.  And this.

And I wouldn’t even be this mad, it it weren’t so fargin stupid.  The son who is all mine, couldn’t be more mine if he’d emerged whole from my head keeps getting this status deleted:

Note despite manipulations, those numbers are way higher now.  And I’m tired of this nonsense. I’m so tired of this nonsense.

Sure, Facebook is a private platform, but it’s also a public venue, and it should damn well bake that cake already!

Also “coordinating harm” is idiotic. Unlike antifa which does use FB to coordinate harm, I’m just passing on information.  I’m not suggesting anyone do anything to the unindicted coup conspirator Eric Ciaramella. I’m just exposing him as a traitor and a disgrace, which he is. That’s not coordinating harm. Unless it’s the harm the citizens of America could do to the Dems quest for unbridled power.

And by the way, even if Trump were as bad — he’s completely not — as I thought he’d be when I held my nose in November 2016, I’d crawl over broken glass to the voting booth to vote against the outright communists in the Dem ticket.

I’ve seen it, I don’t want it.  We don’t need a third of our population in mass graves. Fuck off Marxists.

These are my middle fingers.  And as for Facebook: BAKE ME THAT CAKE MOTHER POCKERS.

I have a big pocking wrench. And I intend to continue using it.

Facebook, go eat a bag of dicks:

If you’re on Facebook, please share this on your page. Be assured what shows is the last image.  You see, Facebook decided we could no longer choose which images to show, so now they show the last image by default.  Which is why the last image is as rude as it is.
:)