From Holly the Assistant

Well, it’s been that sort of day all around these parts. Everyone’s fine. There were checkups and shipments and pollen and just . . . it was very much a Friday. (Ok, with the pollen, fine might be pushing it, but everyone’s alive and breathing, which is not Nature’s fault: she tried.)

So, please amuse yourselves, or not, with what might be on the other side of that door. And there will be memes tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar there’ll be meming.

Yeah, yeah, things got delayed because …. well, I hope I’m not getting sick again. It is possible. The thyroid prescription has been upped to maybe stop this cycle.

I’ve actually been up since — much too late 10:30. I mean the cats thought we’d died. But it was the two of us, so maybe it’s something else? — but exceptionally ADD with it and not getting much of anything done, though much started.

Anyway, part of the … interruption …. was a young friend who’s been down a long time, and her normal “popping back up” mechanisms aren’t working.

And I want to talk about that, and about the whole whole mess with health. Not whining this time, I hope, but explaining why I keep making the hand I was dealt worse. I’m doing this because I think a lot of us have that problem, and I suspect at least one of you out there needs to hear this.

First, look, when our cats start getting older, we take them for checkups every six months. Because they hide when they’re sick. And sometimes a checkup catches something that can be fixed with a tablet, and it means they live another five years, not five months.

And if you’re saying “But I’m not old”. It all depends on perspective. At this point, to me, everyone looks alike babies. And at the same time, I still feel like a kid, just beginning. I think humans have an internal certainty of their being eternal beings, and as such they know our entire life here, were it a century just makes us infants in eternity. Which is fine.

But talking of the body… Look at my cats. I start taking them for six month checkups at around 10 (unless we’re really broke, then it’s 12. Or beyond broke, in which case neither cats nor humans get checkups.) Because they’re considered elderly at 10. Which in the wild, eating what they can catch, etc. is about right. But you get them checkups and most of ours live 17 to 21 years.

Humans in the wild… ah, you’re good for 35 to 40 years and then things go wrong. You might tick on a couple of decades more, but you’ll be old. Really old.

So–

Yes, things can go wrong younger too, but after 35, consider things might be breaking down, okay?

And here’s the thing, I was talking tot he endo and pointed out I don’t even know what’s a sign of low thyroid or just being sick, or my auto-immune being spicy again, since the three tend to synergize each other into vortex from hell.

But one thing I know, and it’s comforting of a sort: I’ll always blame it on myself, my mind, my personality defects and my not trying hard enough until someone says “Hey, there’s something wrong physically.”

The weird thing? No matter how much I beat myself we wouldn’t have caught this latest thyroid issue, which we only caught because my GP tried to diagnose it as hyperthyroidism (apparently it’s fairly common for GPs to misread the results that way. Heck, I had an endo in Denver do that too.) And one thing I know for sure, having had friends who were hyperthyroidal, when you’re sleeping your life away, your get up and go got up and went, and you’re 80lbs overweight, there is no way in heck you’re hyperthyroidal. So I asked for a referral to a specialist, and yes, the meds helped, though not all the way. (And yes, I was diagnosed as hypothyroidal, not hyper.)

The thing is low thyroid which is disturbingly common in middle aged women is heck to diagnose if you are … me.

If you are chronically depressed, forever checking yourself against reality, and ADD — but can’t medicate because it makes you into a paranoid, aggressive moron — causes you to have to kick your butt into actually working, finishing things, fullfilling obligations, etc, it’s really hard to figure out when things have gone seriously wrong.

The first time my thyroid went wonky (Yes, it got better, but not all the way… And then it went bad in another direction) I went through years of brain fog — which I’d never had before, but you know what it is when you feel it — and until the symptoms were alzheimers-like and the writing stopped, it didn’t occur to me I needed medical help. I was just depressed and being a wimp, you know.

And the other thing I’ve had (and fortunately it’s just annoying) since I had first son (the caesarean) I’d get these black spots on my abdomen, gross black spots, and over time, sometime, these black things came out. I figured out it was because I was so fat, and–

Turns out it’s stitches from the Caesarean working themselves out of the body. (Yes, the OB used the wrong stitches. What else is new.)

Or take my infertility issues. I’ve felt guilty about it for decades. If only I’d not done this, I had done that, if I had– Now they have a diagnoses which also matches stuff that happened when I was 19. Autoimmune. Which shouldn’t shock anyone, but– So, the surprise is not that we only managed two kids with years of treatment and all. It’s that we managed kids at all. Most women with my condition never do.

Honestly, this is such a pattern that while I feel guilty as heck over my weight and the fact I don’t exercise enough, it wouldn’t surprise me even a little bit to find out it’s some problem that you can’t fight with will power and strong enough work ethic.

Because that’s the hardest thing, right? You know yourself. Or at least I know myself. I’m lazy, scattered and have a tendency to get depressed when someone drops a hat across the world.

Again, my solution to anything that goes weird is “kick yourself harder.” And sometimes it works. Heck, most of the time. I’ve managed to be unmedicated for depression for most of my life. (Holds up fingers in V — sixty two years, still at large! The fools! Mwahaahahah.)

So…. how do you know?

You don’t, but there are some reliable guides:

If something is weird, and isn’t exactly hurting but is just “Uh, that’s weird!”: A spot on the skin, lightheadness at certain times, after certain actions? Sure, maybe it’s nothing, just your body chanting, or whatever. OR– Or it could serious. Drag yourself to a checkup, mention the thing and don’t minimize it. See what it is. (Minimizing meant my husband went with something untreated for 20 years, so…)

If all of a sudden you can’t do anything you’ve done for years, whether that is hiking a mile or writing a novel in a month? Get it checked up. (The most likely cause for a slow down in writing or reading is your eyes, BTW.)

If you’re a depressive and have your protocols in place to deal with it — reality check, take a break, do enjoyable activity, see friends, sleep more, whatever — and it’s simply not working, go in for a checkup. And don’t prejudice them towards psychological issues. Have a blood test. A lot of serious issues, including some cancers first present as “depressions I can’t kick off.” (I remember Eric Flint describing the onset of his cancer long before they figured out it was there as “Depressions from the pit.”) So, check that. Check as much as you can. Your GP will gladly give you happy pills and not look at underlying causes. So describing exhaustion and sleeping too much or whatever and not hopelessness or depression is best to begin with.

And if you find yourself engaging in suicidal ideation out of the clear blue sky? First check if you’re taking Montelucast. No, seriously, it now has a black box warning. And you can take it for years and suddenly the symptom appears. Which is what happened to me.

If you’re not, run, don’t walk to a doctor, and yes, tell them what is going on. Because nothing is solved by the world having a you shaped hole in it.

…. And now I’m going to have some caffeine and go revise. Speaking of explaining things just not working, would you believe I forgot caffeine this morning? No wonder I have nothing done. Argh.

This is not my post about the Martian Chronicles, or not the full post at any rate. Mostly because I’m still at 25%. I’ve been rationing it — it’s not difficult to read — because Bradbury is contagious on the word sense level, and I’m in the middle of a revision that I don’t want full of poetic light and sound.

Not that there’s anything wrong with the poetic vision. On the contrary. But if the middle chapters are THAT people will wonder what good drugs I had for those chapters and why I didn’t take them for the rest of the book.

I will say though when I first read The Martian Chronicles, sometime in the long summer of adolescence, between 12 and 18 or so, and being UTTERLY baffled by it. You see, I was expecting a normal science fiction book about colonizing Mars.

But I liked poetry.

Coming from a long line of poets and people who told epic tales in beautiful language, having been trained to “no, that’s not the right word, try again. That word in that sentence is cacophonic. Try for euphonic.” from the moment I could speak, or at least as far back as I could remember (the injunction was usually more subtle.) poetry worked for me.

Bu the book disturbed me and left me with the sense I’d missed something.

As it turned out, I was right. Though perhaps getting Martian Chronicle the way it’s hitting me this go round takes having immigrated and acculturated, as well as having spent the last thirty years reading tales of first encounters, civilization, discovery, colonization around the world.

Which is weird since Bradbury never did any of that. But then poets are weird. There is a reason it used to be considered one of the poetic gifts. Like prophecy or soothsaying. Their minds are not all in the same dimension, nor do they move in a linear fashion.

Anyway, this brings us to how the stories are hitting me: the lost expeditions, the reactions from the Martians, how things work out…

They hit …. about right, including the flying language reaching for what can’t quite be expressed in words.

Look, even on Earth, when cultures long-separated meet, the misunderstandings, not understanding at all and either imbuing with supernaturally good characteristics or… well, the opposite, go on forever.

And are sometimes lethal. I’ve pointed out before that things like the Boer war with the Zulus stemmed from a fundamental mistake on the part of the Zulus. They were waging perfectly normal, effective war, as our ancestors did in the Neolithic, if the tales of the grave are to be believed.

When a new tribe appears in your territory, or territory you want, you go all our and commit what we’d consider heinous massacres, doing horrible things to everyone, including women and children. This shows the other tribe that you’re scary and mean business. They retreat. (Unless they’re stronger, or can’t, in which case they do the same to you till you retreat.)

But they weren’t prepared for meeting an…. international culture that communicated by writing and was so far from tribal they considered all humans people.

In that light their atrocities weren’t scary. I mean, they were that, but they were more. Enough to make the Westerners looking on wonder if they were human or even had souls.

From then on their loss was spelled out.

The story with Amerindians is the same. (Yes, they are indeed Native Americans. They were born here, most of them. Seriously. Just because their legends say they were here since the Earth and the sky, blah blah blah, we KNOW that’s a lie. I don’t like lies. Maybe they were here forever “spiritually”. It doesn’t matter. Is “Indian” a misnomer based on a mistake. Sure is. What? Are other peoples in the world not misnamed. I’m not at home to this kind of linguistic insanity.) Only they had better PR and Europeans, bedazzled by Rosseau endowed them with “noble savage” clothing. (Savage they indeed were, since they waged neolithic-like war.)

Viewed in that light, what the Palestianians did on 10/7 is the same kind of cultural mistake –but it begs the question: Where did these people come from? Were they imported wholesale from the neolithic? And while on that, why do they think this is their territory? — and is at long last getting the same kind of response from civilized humans. Because cultures don’t change any other way and use humans as mere vessels.

Anyway, now imagine you’re not meeting another human culture, separated a few thousand — or a few hundred — years, but something totally and completely alien, with no frame of reference.

I particularly like the story of the second expedition in Martian Chronicles, in which the Martians never even know an expedition landed because they know these people are crazy and causing infectious hallucinations via telepathy.

That is, of course, unlikely. Or is it? Have you seen some of humanity’s more… interesting explanations for what they don’t understand and which doesn’t fit our frame of reference? To save yourself embarrassment look up “scientific” theories of the past. I bet you we’re doing the same a few places, but of course we’d never know it. Because it’s us doing it.

I laugh, every time I hear announcements that the government is going to “reveal” aliens.

If aliens are here, there’s a good chance they’re so different we’re not aware of them.

And probably they’re not aware of us either.

That light in your house that turns on and off for no reason any of you can figure out?

It’s because the aliens who share your house and think it’s a natural formation like it that way.

Alive and also still under the weather. Thyroid medication got upped.

I will in fact try to put up a post a little later today. Until then….

Have a pretty pic or two. Tell me what stories they suggest. (They’re mine, but they’re on Pixabay, so free. Why? Well, because they were cluttering my drive and while Pixabay doesn’t really pay artists, I’ve had a lot of pics from them over the years.)

Oh, yeah, a side-note that will amuse you: my kindle stopped functioning suddenly early morning two days ago. Okay, fair. It was an oasis, now four years old, and had issues. (They discontinued the Oasis for a reason.)

I got an old kindle I’ve got by, which has a crack, but still works, and ordered a paperwhite. (The use I make of them … it’s worth it.) I’m still using the old one though till it arrives….

…. found Indy chewing on it. He ate part of the cover.

Not sure what to do about this. Something will come. I think he’s attacking it because it takes mom’s attention. Sigh. THAT CAT.

Post anoon. Or probably right after noon.

I have a doctor’s appointment today which will allow him to wrap up the thyroid saga.

Still, why no post. As we all know I often write these the evening before.

Well, the problem is this: I’m actually working again. As in at normal rate.

I might or might not have told you that I got grabbed by the scruff of the neck and dragged to the computer room, two months ago to revise the monster novel.

To explain, I’m not over-revising or guilding (which as we all know is a combination of gilding and deguelo?) gilding the lilly. It’s just that this novel has been in my head so long that there’s a ton of stuff I know so well I think it’s in the text and is not. Stuff like “did I tell them in my weird world adoption and real birth are blurred?”. Put it another way, there is a lot of this book in my head, which is why the inner writer grabbed me and took me to the desk to do a full go-over.

And it should have been done at least a month ago. At least a month ago.

But then the once and future upper respiratory infection came back. I’m now at the other end of it at last. I swear this was worse than the first instance of it, and as bad as the one in October. (Why it keeps recurring? Well, asthma. Chronic and untreated. Mostly because I dislike inhalers of the daily kind. But younger DIL has talked me into talking to doctor about a daily pill. (NOT Montelucast. I got the suicidal depression side effect from that. But now apparently there are alternatives.) but also my thyroid is screwed up and that does weird things to your immune system.)

Anyway I’m now at the other end of it, and with thyroid and two hard and fast upper respiratory infections, I am three months late on the book, and I’m impatient, so I’m trying to get on with it.

Two days ago I did two chapters. Yesterday I did my normal — seven — but the problem is that by night time I was unsure of my name and iffy about any other words. So I can work normal amounts, I just can’t bounce back from it like normal. Yet — YET!

Now, on making my assistant happy. She says since I’m moving on on the edits it’s time to publicize (you guys please keep the prayer wheels spinning that I don’t get sick again. Until this is done I can’t seem to finish Rhodes or Witch’s Daughter. And you know you’re waiting. Even if you guys hate this or it sells ten copies and it’s to the alpha readers! (The assistant AND Dan are going to kill me for saying this.) Anyway, she says I have to put up the new cover and the first and second chapters.

You’ve seen the first chapter, which would give you the impression this is a mil SF. (I hate that. I hate chapters that lead you…. weirdly. But it is what it is.) It is not. Remember this book was created by my reaction — AT FOURTEEN — to the left hand of Darkness.

So, in the second chapter the weird starts. If you remember the first well enough, that’s fine. Head on to the second. Or not. I’m just doing this so the assistant is happy. I have, after all to work with her. (And she’s busy with her other job today so it’s going to take her till tonight to read this. Mwahahahahah.)

Oh, yeah, and wish me luck at the endo!

So first the two prospective covers. There’s argument over which is best.

Or

UPDATE: I still like the movement of the cape, and also FOR ME (you don’t have to agree!) capes say space opera. But the face issue is taken. So, hear me out:

And now the text!

AHEM: Coming soon!

No Man’s Land

Sarah A. Hoyt

© 2025 by Sarah A. Hoyt

Hero

Skip:

Everything was going fine, until my father stopped giving orders.

Okay. No. So everything was not fine. For one we had been ambushed.

Which was the problem.

There are no ambushes in space battles. My father had dinned the theory and practice of space battles into my skull before I entered the Academy at twelve.  Which is as good a place as any to say I was a child prodigy.

Or maybe I wasn’t. There isn’t really any way to tell. Late born son of a brilliant father and a demanding mother — My father named me Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Kayel Hayden, for crying out loud! —  it was clear enough what I was supposed to do. What I was supposed to be. I wasn’t genetically improved – or not so that anyone would ever admit to – so it was just…  Look, I had to be what I had to be.  And that meant I was a young boy admitted to a private but prestigious military academy five years earlier than everyone else there.  Which meant I had to graduate as fast as I could.

This is how I ended up as my father’s second in command at the battle of Karan. At seventeen.

And we were ambushed.  But there are no ambushes in space. Just like there are no ambushes on the high seas.

You see the enemy approach for days on end. The best you can do is conceal your strategy or your capabilities from them. But you can’t hide. There’s nothing to hide in or behind. Certainly not with a Schrodinger-drive ship. You can’t port near enough to a planet that would hide you. And you certainly can’t port close to the enemy. Or rather you can, but then the risk of porting to the same space as the enemy and achieving the most pyrrhic victory of all time is high.

And we had intelligence – we had intelligence! – from the Nivirim side.  They had no technology we didn’t have, and their ships had a tendency to fall apart because, well, forced labor doesn’t build good ships.  And there was no way to hide a ship in space.

There was no way.

So my father, commanding five battle cruisers, the entire war fleet of her royal majesty Queen Madeline of Britannia On High, empress of the Star Empire had ported to a nowhere convergence called Karan.  Oh, there was some reason for it, including the fact that Karan gave access to other port points, which gave access to other port points which would put our colony worlds of Eire and Hy-Brasil and Prester within reach.  Which meant if we let the Nivirim fleet port there and hold it, with no contest, those colonies would be vulnerable, or call it actually enslaved, given the Nivirim system of government.

That’s the high-level version of the situation, which is all I knew at the time.

The trip to orbit, in order to port to Karan took a day, and then we were there.  There was the middle of nowhere in space.  In full view of Nivirim vessels. Ten of them, but Father said not to worry. “Battles in space aren’t a matter of ship count, Skip,” he said.  “They’re a matter of capabilities, of maneuvering, and of training. And we’re better at all of those.”  He said it after dinner, leaning back in his chair.  His blue eyes crinkled at the corners, the way they did when something amused him.  “Always remember, Skip, free men fight better than slaves.”

I believed him. I still believe him. My father, you see–  My father never gave me any reason to doubt him. Not even then.

Before I tell the story, something must be rightly understood: I look like my mother, Lady Harcaster.  Her ancestors, who had financed the colonization of and ruled over Aeris, all looked like me: colorless, narrow nosed, thin faced, tall and spare, the kind of people who grow older by getting thinner and dryer and harder, like aged wood.  There are ‘grams of them going back to the time of colonization and they probably look more lifelike than the originals.

Growing up with Mother I always knew exactly what she expected of me.  And what she expected of me was always impossible. So, of course, I did it.

Father, on the other hand was my anchor. From my earliest memories, I knew Father loved me. So I did what he wanted me to do, not because I feared him, but because I didn’t want to disappoint him.

I suspect that’s why I accepted the appointment as his second in command aboard the HMS Victoria, commanding Britannia on High’s space fleet. Because I got to spend time with father and away from Mother.

Was it stupid? Oh yes. My stupidity or his? Who knows?

“Look, Skip, your rank is largely ornamental,” he said. “And temporary and probationary.  The only reason for you to be Vice-Commodore, fresh off the Academy, is that you stick close to me and you learn. You learn, Skip. That’s all. That’s all you’re doing here. You’re learning.”

I learned. Oh, the blue uniform with the half cape was pretty nice, too. But mostly I learned. Because sure, I’d be the Earl of Harcaster when mother died, and have full rule over Aeris, which I loathed because it was not Capital City. But that was a function of being born to mother, who’d brought the title into the marriage. Being called Lord Harcaster wouldn’t mean anything. Being called Viscount Webson, the junior title of mom’s family, made me feel stupid. It wasn’t something I’d earned. And I wanted to earn something.

When I was at the Academy people kept quoting Father and talking about the victories he’d achieved. I wanted to learn that. I wanted to earn that.

Three days, while Father maneuvered, and the enemy maneuvered, and he planned for every eventuality, was like being back at the Academy. There was a hollo table, and the ships on it, floating in air.  Father moved them. And firing capabilities, and where the weapons were in each ship were discussed, as well as the shielding capabilities though these consisted mostly of turning the proper points to where we knew the enemy weapons were.

It was on the third night, with father and the eight captains and vice captains of the other ships, all assembled, that I asked the stupid question.

They’d just gone over the plan, and something that was constantly mentioned at Academy hadn’t been mentioned at all. I cleared my throat and before I could stop myself, heard my voice say, “Sir, what about boarding? What about preparations for boarding or to prevent boarding?” My voice sounded young, wishful, naïve. In fact, much like the voice of a student. Or a child. I was momentarily glad I hadn’t called him “Father” or – as in childhood – “daddy.”

Look, that was the reason that ships carried each a complement of some five hundred men each at enormous cost.  Because ships got boarded. At the Academy we’d studied five battles where defending your ship from boarding  had turned the tide of the battle. One of those was the first battle my father had fought as commodore, the battle of Ryrr.

But all nine men stared at me as though I’d lost my mind.

“It never happens,” Father said. “Not these last thirty years, Skip. It doesn’t happen. We board. They don’t. Their ships aren’t that agile. They have outmoded maneuvering.”

“But,” I said, feeling that if I’d already made a fool of myself, I might as well go on.  “Why do we have infantry on alert aboard, then? And why do we wear side arms into battle?”

Father patted my shoulder.  He actually patted my shoulder. “It’s the Force, Skip. Things change very slowly. It’s just tradition.”

All the captains had smiled, indulgently, and I wasn’t even mad that Father had called me Skip and not Vice Commodore Hayden. Because I knew it was from an excess of feeling and not a desire to humiliate me.

It was the last time he called me Skip.

Because in the night, while we all slept, we were ambushed.

You probably read about in the history books, but here goes: our intelligence was faulty or suborned. Which one, it doesn’t matter, and it wasn’t ever established although investigations and interrogations ran for years.

Until Karan boarding between spaceships had been done with boarding sleeves.  So a lot of maneuvering went on, until you could be in the right place where you knew the ship shielding was weak enough that the piercing machinery at the end of the sleeve could attach and make an entry.

Our propulsion and navigation systems were better than theirs. Which is why it hadn’t happened in thirty years.

But you know what those extra five ships apparently contained? Lots and lots of small vessels, each of which could carry twenty-five infantry troops. Ships equipped with an explosive prow.

I woke up to the sound of alarms. Our ship had been penetrated. Every officer and serving man was fighting with our utterly inadequate sidearms.

I put my uniform on in the dark, only because I was so fresh from the academy that waking with an alarm and dressing in the dark, without thinking, was second nature.

But the hallways were choked with people fighting and dying, and only the enemy was in uniform. Our people were in pajamas, in their underwear, or very against regulation, mother-naked and rocking holsters, or in one case that sticks in my mind, dripping wet and with a towel wrapped around himself, Roman style, with a blaster in each hand and one between his teeth. He was making good work, too.

I remember that. I remember snapshots of the battle in the corridor. I remember blood. I remember dismembered bodies, mostly ours. I remember people, their bodies torn, pouring out blood onto the glassteel of the floor. Many still fighting even as their life ran out in red rivulets and pooled in dark patches on the floor.

I remember sweat, shortness of breath. I remember the stink of blood and death. I remember running out of charges on my weapons, and picking them up from corpses without stopping.

All through it, I knew one thing: I should be in the command room with Father. Father would know what to do.

And then my mind becomes clear as I entered the command room. It was filled with dead. Dead in piles.

In the middle of it, Father. He was also in his uniform. He was getting up.  There was a gaping wound in his chest, and he was lurching up, trying to reach the com.

“Son,” he said. “Son.” It was a bare rasp.  “They knew. They had—They came here first.”

He didn’t need to say it. I could see the path from the outside, through a protected wall, through two adjacent storage rooms. It was plugged with the Nivirim ship, or we’d be leaking air into space.

“Father,” I said. “Commodore, please don’t talk.”

“I must give orders. I must warn—”

But even as he spoke his voice got fainter, and his knees folded under him, his body toppling.  And I – with my academy training, got on the com, and called, ship by ship, for status.

Our ship was the only one fully breached, though one of the small ships had attacked the Belcaria. Sentinels had seen it in time, blasted the disembarking attackers as soon as I called out.

I got on the coms. I screamed into them, my voice by turns hoarse and shrill.

Did the captains understand this was Vice-Commodore Hayden? Did I even tell them? Was it even true? Technically Father was hors de combat. I was in command. I was the Commodore.

I roused the ships. I gave them instructions. Textbook instructions. It’s all I knew But the hollo of a man in uniform bellowing instructions to the just awakened can be effective.  The ships spun. And fired on the small would-be intruders before they got near.  The few that penetrated were met with a full complement of wakened-in-time, in uniform, in their right minds infantry.

Me? I stayed at the coms. I stayed with it, calming, cajoling, ordering.

Do you know I don’t remember firing my side arm even once, while I was at the coms  But I must have, because Father was unconscious, and there was no one else there with us but the dead. So unless the dead got up to fight – I don’t know. It’s as plausible as anything else – while I talked I fired and fired and fired, and accounted for about thirty-five of the enemy, which effectively choked the door, so they couldn’t come in any more from inside our own ship, to stop the commands going out to the fleet.

They must have been working on breaking through the barrier of corpses when our people, commanded by me at a distance, and mostly from the Belcaria, took the Victoria, cleaning up as they went.

When it became clear the people trying to enter were our people, I got off the coms. I had the vague idea that if I could only keep Father alive till the medics got there, the regen would make everything all right.

He was on the floor where he’d lain down.  His eyes were closed and his hands were cold, and I thought he was dead.

I have no memory of all the orders I gave in combat, but I remember what I cried, then, “Father! Daddy!”

His eyes opened.  I lifted his head. I babbled about medics, about regen.

Father stared at me and smiled.  He said, “Good man, Scipio. Well done, son.”  And then he died.

My father had the most amazing eyes.  Blue, sure, but a very dark blue, so that from across the room they looked black.  But up close, you saw them blue and deep like the night sky in summer, blue and deep like the whole universe.

One moment they were looking at me, shining, deep blue. The next they were black.

I looked into my father’s eyes and I lost myself.

I forgot what I’d been meant to be, what I was.

They came in. They pronounced Father dead. I was wounded, they said. Nothing vital hit. Or nothing vital that couldn’t be regened.

I didn’t want to leave Father. If I didn’t leave him, perhaps he would come back? They had to tranq me to drag me away to the infirmary.

When I woke two weeks later, they told me that father was dead, but I already knew.

I wore the blue uniform with the half-cape once more, on a freezing winter day, in blowing snow, as I stood in the family cemetery next to the Earl’s palace of Aeris, and watched father’s coffin lowered into the grave, while space force captains and countless infantry stood at attention, wedged awkwardly between statues of angels and spacemen, of kings and imperious women holding aloft wreaths of victory.

There, in a deep hole, they buried what remained of the most important person in my life to that day.

When it was done, they let loose a 12 cannon salute, Earth cannons, the kind not used in battle since Old Earth, then a military band played the sweet, haunting “Home of the Spacer” consigning father’s memory to the stars.

I stood at attention there, and then I stood beside Mother and received the condolences of a grateful Empire.  The Queen herself, with frost-blued fingers, pinned the Wreath of Valor upon my chest, the big one, in gold, with the replica of the first colonizing ship in the middle.

I removed it after the funeral.  And then I removed my uniform. I sent my resignation to her majesty.

And then I lost myself in the fleshpots of New London, the Empire’s capital city.

The King Is Dead

Eerlen:

As he’d feared, the cries and screams echoed, even up in the guarded family wing, at the top of the ancient palace.

Eerlen Troz had rushed up five flights of stairs, the screams and baying of grief accompanying him every step of the way, as he climbed up and up and up. 

Sometimes a fresh note broke in, and he could almost follow the progression of the news through the various parts of the building.  “The king is dead,” was spoken, and the screaming started. 

Visiting city and league dignitaries in the guest quarters, traders and nomad clan ambassadors, also in the guest quarters, some muffled sounds that might be from the guard quarters, and he surely hoped the military commanders staying in the palace weren’t howling like peasants who’d lost a child, like nomads who’d lost a lover.

Up and up and up, rushing and breathless, nodding to the guard at the bottom of each flight of steps, ignoring their pointed looks of inquiry, Troz held up his long, ceremonial tunic so as not to trip on it and cursed that he’d not been prepared for this. 

He’d not been prepared for any of this. He’d expected nothing more than a dinner with Myrrir and the commanders, a discussion of forces and schedules of shield holders.  And then a quiet night with Myrrir in royal quarters. Perhaps a game of Etarresh before bed.

Maker’s womb, this was the last thing he’d expected.  But he must get to the child before someone else did.  And it wasn’t even because the child was young and the shock would be great. There were far worse outcomes in play, when the heir to the throne was only sixteen.

By the time he reached the top floor, where the royal family slept, he knew the child – his sireling – would be awake.  Eerlen was also out of breath, panting, cursing that he was too old for this.  Much too old for this. And that it had been far too long a time since he’d crossed Erradi with his bed roll, hunting for his keep. Much too long since even his last ceremonial partial route to check on the Troz clan of which he was titular head.

He opened the door to Brundar’s room, and rushed in, freeing his arm from the guard’s hand which had gone so far as to clutch at him.  The guard couldn’t think he was protecting the heir or that Eerlen meant the child harm.  It was curiosity.  Mere curiosity.

The child was awake and sitting in the middle of the bed that was still too big for him, even now that he was adult height. He sat, his eyes wide open, staring at the door, giving every impression he expected an attack.  Which meant his instincts were good at least.

He was tall, but not yet filled out, a sketch of an adult without the shading, his eyes too large in a too thin and pale face.  His green eyes turned towards Eerlen.  Surrounded by the child’s disheveled red locks, that face had something not quite real, or at least not quite tame.  It was a face one expected to see peeking from the shadows of trees in the deep forest, a face that disappeared as soon as seen.  The mouth worked.  “The screams…. The…” Brundar said, his voice too thin, as though he were much younger.  “Was there a breakthrough? Is—”

Oh. That.  The historical Draksall breakthrough that killed everyone in the palace four hundred years ago, and gave the throne to the infant saved by his nursemaid.

Well. When there were tapestries and paintings of that catastrophe all over, how could the child not think of that?

Eerlen shook his head, more hoping than sure that it was reassuring.  His breath had almost steadied.  He took a big swallow of frigid air.  These walls didn’t keep the heat in, no matter how big the fire in the ornate fireplace. 

The palace might be a confection of something they no longer had a name for, in shapes stone could not copy. But whoever the ancients were, they had been more resistant to cold than Erradians or had something other than fire to keep them warm.  He was grateful for the air’s coolness at any rate.  And for the need to do something, to keep the horrible after-effects of the death of a ruler from swallowing all, before he could stop and think he’d lost his lover, he’d lost his sworn lover, he’d lost his best-friend and helpmeet and support. Because if he stopped and thought of that, he’d break down and cry like a nomad at a funeral.

But I am a nomad. At least at heart. And this is a funeral. Or a wake, he thought, but didn’t say.  Instead he stepped towards the bed and knelt so as not to tower over the child.  Stretching his hands, he took hold of Brundar’s hands, and held them in his.  “Brundar,” he said and hesitated for a moment.  “Your parent came home….  Was brought home. He was wounded. He has … he has died.  You are the ruler of Elly.”

He meant to swear his fealty then and there, but he should have known better.

It is not like he doesn’t come by his wildness naturally.

When that thought came, it was already too late, and the child had leapt from the bed, running on bare feet, wearing only a knee-length nightshirt.

Eerlen got up and followed.  He didn’t waste his breath in calling.

Brundar was running like a scared colt.  And he’d been running towards what scared him since he’d learned to run. Perhaps not the best survival strategy, but he came by that naturally too.

Brundar knew where to go, of course. It wasn’t the first time that Myrrir had been carried in wounded.  Warrior king. Eerlen could have spit. He had tried to argue for moderation. In vain. Given the age of the one heir, given the multitude of others who could have claimed the throne sideways, by right of siring, and given that some of those had troops in their following, Myrrir should have had more care for his life. For the sake of the child, Eerlen had begged.  He’d been told, He’s my child. He’ll survive.

Yeah, well, he thought, as Brundar, far faster, vanished around the last turn of the last flight of stairs, and into the ground floor receiving room that had too often served as an infirmary.  The guards on the last three flights of stairs had been crying.  The news spread.

The bottom floor was a bedlam of people crying, and wiping noses to sleeves and hems of tunics.  Eerlen ran past them without even really looking, registering only that there were groups and couples, and people standing alone, pale and crying.  Crazy, brave, heedless, and often far too willful.  But loved. Myrrir was loved.

Tears prickled behind his eyes, and he shook his head, as he hurried.  No time. Not now. He could always howl later.

He noted without pausing that the yelling in the death chamber – the heated argument that had seen drawn swords – stopped dead as Brundar ran in, and lifted a short prayer to the Maker that the child not be run through by those swords, thereby clearing the way to the more ambitious of the arguing people.

By then he was mere steps behind and erupted into the room in time to see the five adults in the room standing, frozen in the poses they’d obviously held when Brundar ran in.

Khare Sarda of Karrash, his sword still drawn, his blue eyes flashing and Parnel Haethlem of Erradi, wearing his blood-stained tunic, his face almost as pale as his pale hair, standing beside him, while facing them were Guinar Ter of Lirridar and Kalal Ad Leed of Brinar.  Ad Leed appeared to have put his sword, flat over the others’ swords as though trying to bring them down. Lords of the four subdomains of Elly, and two of them Brundar’s cross-siblings and used to ruling. All of them either with drawn swords or about to draw them.  But worse in that respect was the person by the bed, who had not drawn his sword.  He was muscular and somber, the biggest person in the room overtopping the others by a head, his dark battle leathers stained with blood – how much of it Myrrir’s Eerlen couldn’t guess. He’d carried Myrrir in – his lips clamped firmly together, his face an unreadable mask. That would be Lendir Almar, commander of the royal guard and over-commander of all the armies of Elly, at least the second commander after Myrrir.  The child of the last commander. And Myrrir’s sireling, who had always seemed to loathe Eerlen and therefore Brundar, for reasons not quite clear.

The only good thing in this was that Nikre Lyto, Eerlen’s adopted child, Myrrir’s adopted sireling and heir to the role of archmagician was holding shield at the battle front. Without that, he’d have been killed by now. Nikre neither wanted the throne nor had defenses against the court’s intrigues.

You couldn’t have arranged things more disastrously if you’d meant to, lover, Eerlen thought, looking to the hasty pile of cushions and furs on which Myrirr had been lain, and which had become his death bed.

Myrrir had never been beautiful. Too many Erradians, too much Draksall in his ancestry.  A jaw too square, a mouth too strong, and the uncompromisingly direct glance that had flashed from beneath those too-straight eyebrows.  Of course, if he talked and moved everyone forgot his plainness.  But he’d talk and move no more.  Someone had closed his eyes. His hair was still bound for battle, braided and tied and securely pinned to his head.  He still wore his battle-leathers, slashed and soaked in blood.  They said the dead looked like they were sleeping.  Myrrir didn’t. He looked dead.

It was nothing too horrible, though his lips had contorted and remained in a final twist of pain, refusing to cry out. And he was pale. Deathly pale.  But most of all, it wasn’t Myrrir.  The shape might be the same, but something had left. Something was not the same.  What was on the bed might be the same form, but it wasn’t Eerlen’s lover. Not his sworn. Perhaps because Myrrir had never been able to stay completely still, even when asleep.

There was blood – a pool of it – under the body on the furs. Some of it dripped from the edge of the furs onto the floor, but sluggishly, starting to congeal. The child should not have seen that. The child—

Brundar stood very still.  A statue in the shape of an adolescent on the edge of maturity. Arrested where he’d stopped in his flight, two steps from the corpse, one hand forward, as though to touch Myrrir and wake him – if anything could! – one foot advanced, bare against the age-darkened oak, his nightshirt looking flimsy and far too short, even his hair seeming to have frozen in place, a mass of curls thrown back by his flight.  He was so still he might not have been breathing.

And the other five watched him, their eyes intent.  Eerlen would feel better if he could swear the look was not that of a wolf staring at a rabbit.

He didn’t dare touch Brundar.  Almost afraid to break the moment, which would break, inevitably, the minute the child started to wail, Eerlen reached under the hem of his tunic for his ankle knives, one worn on each ankle, and that against etiquette and risking Myrrir’s laughter – Are you afraid a dire wolf will jump you in the palace, or a Draksall, sweetling? – and fuck the settled habit of not carrying swords except in battle.  He was a fool to have complied even minimally and outwardly.  Now he wished for his sword, his lance and his bow. And all too little. 

His considerable magical power for defense or attack, couldn’t be used in the palace.  The shields would not allow it. It was old interdiction, designed to stop Draksall breakthroughs, but it put the throne at risk now.

Eerlen had a feeling the minute Brundar wailed, the tableau would break and minutes later the child would be dead, leaving the throne of Elly to be fought over by the three half-siblings remaining in that room.  Eerlen bet on Lendir who outmassed both Sarda and Ter. And was more battle hardened than mere governors. But that wouldn’t matter to Eerlen, because he’d be dead before they cut down his sireling, his daggers broken against those swords.

Brundar took a deep shaky breath. It sounded too loud in the absolute silence of the room.  He wheeled around, standing, square shouldered and crossing his arms on his chest, looking much like Lendir Almar probably without knowing it.

The voice that came out was controlled and even, with an edge of offense.  “Why wasn’t I informed before it came to this? Why wasn’t I called before the news went out?” The two questions flew like slaps at Lendir whose eyes opened wide, startled, and then Brundar turned to the four across the death bed.  “And what is this? Why are swords out in a death chamber? Is this the behavior of the Lords of the Land of Elly?”

For a moment it hung in the balance.  Eerlen didn’t know but could suspect how fast the child had thought and judged the reactions of those in the room, and taken advantage of his moment of absolute quietness to plan. It probably wouldn’t work, but if he had one chance it was that: sound as much as possible like Myrrir, assume authority and carry it through on that.  Myrrir had been loved. For all his faults, for all his errors, he had been loved. And three of the adults in this room were his sirelings.  And vassals of the new king. If they’d own it.

Eerlen became aware of his heart thudding so fast his head spun.  And he hardly dared breathe.  The daggers felt cold as he gripped them, one in each hand.

Lendir broke first.  The look of surprise passed.  For a second something like laughter fled behind his eyes, and then left his features impassive again.

He fell to kneeling without grace, the sound of his knees hitting the floor resounding on the wood. “King of Elly,” he said, looking up at Brundar. “Defender of the lands, Lord of the people, receive my fealty.”

If Brundar was surprised, he didn’t show it.  He nodded and waved his fingers at Lendir, without lifting his hand.  “Stand, Almar. Commander of my guard.” The off hand acknowledgement and confirmation of post might have been done by Myrrir himself.  Absolutely sure. Certain of his own authority.

Brundar looked enquiringly at the four governors, tilting his head to the left.  He said nothing.

Eerlen, weak with relief they had Almar and his sword, and by extension the armies behind Brundar, swallowed hard, because he would not cry, not even with relief. He caught the edge of a glance from Almar, a minimal lift of the corner of the commander’s lips and wondered if he was being mocked or consoled, but it didn’t matter. He wiped his sleeve down his face, to hide his expression. Nothing mattered as much as Brundar’s survival.

Ter tried a protest. He would. He was the oldest of Myrrir’s sirelings, thirty eight, and he had thought himself the heir to the throne for half that time.  “Almar, you cannot be serious,” he said.  “Brundar Mahar is a child.  His sire who will reign behind the throne is an ice nomad, barely broken to civilization! Unless you mean to rule behind the throne yourself.”

Lendir knew better than to answer. Brundar wheeled around on his half-crossibling, snapped, “No one will reign behind the throne, Ter.” It was said in the tone of an adult correcting a child.  No real anger, though plain irritation.  And no defensiveness.

Kahre Sarda, Myrrir’s youngest, best beloved natural sireling put away his sword, in measured gestures, and Haethlem slid his into the sheath at his waist. Small, dark and lithe, Sarda fell to his knees first, with the gentle drop of a dancer upon a rehearsed movement, inclined his head and pledged his fealty and his domain of Karrash to Brundar.  Haethlem, tall, blond and square shouldered, dropped to his knees behind Sarda, before Sarda stood and pledged fealty and Erradi – for what that was worth with war raging and invaders at its core and Haethlem’s own household more often threatened than not – and then Ad Leed gave Lendir Almar a quick glance. Was there an imperceptible nod from Almar? Why? What would a Lord of the Land owe Almar?

Ad Leed pledged.  Leaving Ter standing, looking sullen.  To be fair, he always looked sullen. Or at least peevish. The force of Myrrir’s features had been softened in the Lirridarian, but he compensated for it by scowling.

“Ter,” Brundar said, once more the adult in the room. “We do not have the time or resources for a civil war, while the enemy has broken through into Erradi and occupies a good portion of it.” Just that. Not so much a threat as a statement. The implication being that but for the invasion foothold in Erradi, he and his forces would wipe any resistance Ter could mount off the map.”

Ter let out his breath in a sort of sigh of impatience, and shoved his sword, with force, into its sheath, so hard that the clang of guard hitting metal trim rang like a bell, raising echoes from the high ceilings.  He knelt measuredly, and said his oath like spitting.

Brundar looked at Eerlen then. “Archmagician?” he said, lilting.  And for the first time in the whole wretched evening, Eerlen remembered he was more than Eerlen Troz, out-of-practice-ice-nomad-and-fur-trader, and the sire of the … of the new king of Elly.  He felt the weight of the silver chain around his neck and the ancient jewel it held, the red jewel of the Archmagician, the chief of the Magicians of Elly.  The one who must remove its complement from Myrrir’s dead finger and slip it onto Brundar’s, before he was de facto as well as de jure king of Elly.

He bowed, slipped his knives back into their sheaths, noting Lendir’s amused look at that – he really was mocking Eerlen! – and, bowing, stepped past his sireling, now his king, to the royal corpse.  It helped to think of it as the royal corpse, and not Myrrir’s remains.

He had to remove the blood-darkened, worn leather gauntlet from Myrrir’s right hand to get at the ring, at the ruby of kingship.

Unbidden, in his mind, he remembered twenty years ago, being the newly minted Archmagician making his bow to Myrrir, king of Elly.  The chain was unaccustomed at his neck, the ruby of office shone on his chest. He was still in shock, feeling ill awakened as the ruby muddled his mind with a sense of immense power and a confusion of impressions of his predecessors.

He remembered thinking it would have been easier to swear fealty to Mahar in battle, where Myrrir Mahar would be dressed in leathers and look much like the other commanders.  But of course, he’d had to do it at the palace, in a formal reception. The ruby informed him that was how things were done.

He could see himself in his mind’s eye, just seventeen, wearing his nomad furs: tunic and pants of white fur, home sewn and crude, his magician’s blue cloak still new. He’d been initiated less than a year before that. He could feel the stares of the dignitaries and courtiers, and hear that one person – he’d never figured out who, either – laughing in the corner.

And Myrrir — in green silk with gold embroidery, a long, formal tunic and court slippers of gold- embroidered leather, that kept tapping rapidly beneath the hem, even as he sat on his ancestors’ gilded throne — looked impatient and bored.

Had Eerlen not noticed the king’s diadem lay askew on his hair, and that the hair was bound at the back, like a warrior’s, as though the king had rushed in from battle, gotten hastily dressed, and dropped the diadem on his own head as he ran down the stairs – which was exactly what had happened, with an added swear word at the need to formally meet the new Archmagician – Eerlen might never have found his voice.

But he’d smiled at the diadem and whispered his oath about laying his magicians: healers, illusion spinners, spell makers, portalers and shield holders and all at the king’s disposal.

And Myrrir had looked amused and also as though he were thinking the words that he had whispered into Eerlen’s ear much later after the celebratory banquet the intricate dancing and the obligatory music. “Never mind the magicians and healers. Can one lay the Archmagician?”

Remembering, Eerlen swallowed hard. Smooth, really smooth, my love, he thought as he pulled the ring from the stiffening finger.

He turned and knelt before slipping it onto Brundar’s finger.  Brundar instinctively curled his finger.  Later a goldsmith would have to be engaged to make an insert to conform it to the new king’s finger.  Stupid to cut it to size before Brundar stopped growing.

Eerlen bowed his head, “I, Eerlen head of the Troz line and the Troz clan, Archmagician of Elly, swear its brotherhood of Magicians and all its functions, its healers, shield holders, illusion weavers and judicial magicians and all creators of portals and spells to the command of Brundar Mahar, King of Elly.”

Not for the first time it occurred to him to think that Brundar was an odd name.  Who called his child Vengeance? The child would grow to ask the same question.

But Myrrir had done it, and Eerlen was honor bound to answer the question when it came. Not that Myrrir’s name – Blood Oath – was any better. The Mahars were strange people.  And kings for thirty unbroken generations.  One more. Let there be one more. No, two more. Barren of a line-child himself, the end of his long, storied line, Eerlen wanted to see his sireling’s children.

“You may leave,” Brundar said, waving his hand at the four governors.  “Almar, keep watch at the door please.”

Eerlen turned to leave. He could do with some kind of privacy. Tears were going to overwhelm him any moment, and he’d promised himself a good howling. Not that there was ever full privacy for the royal family. There would be an ear at the door, a valet’s intrusion. Just enough to allow him an unguarded moment.

But Brundar said, “Stay, Troz,” calling him by his line name for the first time in Brundar’s life.  And Eerlen stayed.  He heard the door close, by Lendir Almar’s hand, softly, as if he feared disturbing the dead.

Brundar turned a desolate face to Eerlen and opened his mouth as though to speak, but before Eerlen could so much as move, he closed his mouth turned away, took the remaining steps to the bed, fell to his knees, buried his face in Myrrir’s shoulder and shook.

Well, at least he isn’t howling. Nothing that can be heard outside.

At length he heard the word Brundar whispered, “Emee.”  It was the baby word for parent.  And there, in the silent death chamber where the fate of the whole world had just been decided by the child on his knees by the bed, it made Eerlen Troz’s hair rise at the back of his head.

I promised my assistant I wouldn’t pick fights with the world in general on Tuesdays and Fridays, as she’s very busy elsewhere and doesn’t have time to comb through the comments.

Cracks knuckles, uses carnival barker voice: Welcome to the rumbl— er… Monday!

Smiles sharkilly.*

Let’s talk about the new, new thing and how terrible it is and fraught with trouble.

Which new thing? Well, sweetlings, we live in an era of rapid change. Real change, not the social from the top down bs, but change driven by technology which alters the way we do things because it exists. That in turn drives other change. (And I suspect if Trump can get things going the way he wants to, things will get changing faster.) So, new thing? We’re spoiled for choice.

I’m going to leave aside AI (which ain’t. No, I don’t care how much it throws shadows or how much it SAYS it hates/loves someone. If you guys think it hasn’t fed on every single story about AI rebelling/falling in love with/ruling the human race? You’re nuts. It’s an LLM.) simply because ce n’est pas mon metier.

Neither are self-driving or drive assist cars. I have experience as being not only a nervous driver, as one whose vision is going specifically on the “contrast” property. As in, I’m having trouble finding things that get lost against the background. I first realized this at the zoo, where they were trying to make the enclosures looking natural and the result is I didn’t see the animals at all.

I’ve never used full self-drive. I’ve used drive-assist, and found it perfectly safe except you can’t not be in the driver’s seat because there’s things that make it not “sense” right. (Like LLMS it has holes. It’s not human.) The weirdest one was a car with a HIGHLY polished back. For some reason this caused the car to start accelerating insanely towards the truck. But I was behind the wheel, I felt it, and I stopped it. I honestly don’t know why it was “light reflected on front, go very fast”, but there must have been a reason. Definitely needs adult supervision.

Anyway, so we’re not going to discuss that. We’re going to discuss things that I’m conversant with, granted at two or three remote in one case.

That case is remote work. The other case is indie publishing and ebooks.

Years ago, my friend Charlie Martin who sometimes writes posts for this blog told me something that I’ve never forgotten “ebooks win out in the end, because ebooks are the most economically efficient way to deliver story which is what the cstuumer is buying.” (Now that’s not all the custumer is buying with a traditional book. We’ll talk about that later.)

And the fact is that despite many, many surveys, polls, public chest beating to the intent that people loved paper will always love paper, that reading is a sensory experience and blah blah blah… ebooks outsell paper books ten to one. EVERY MONTH.

One of the problems with the ebooks is specifically Amazon’s outsized footprint. And their KU program which probably is violating some kind of restriction of trade regulation, but who is going to beard the gorilla.

I get less from KU now than I did for years, as a percentage of my work. But– It’s still almost half of my income from Amazon, and let’s talk about it: Amazon is where the money comes from. You might tell me you don’t buy from amazon, and I believe you, but 90% of people do. Because you get 2k from Amazon, you get $200 from B & N. You get change from EVERY OTHER SOURCE.

(But I’m about to make an experiment. I’ve taken the DST books from KU and once they roll off, I’m starting my own shoppify store, and also put it on all the other sites.)

However, revealed preference and what it forces on me or not, I’m open to the inconveniences and downsides of electronic books: mainly electronic books CAN be changed. And while the charge of “Amazon reached into my kindle” while it was bad publicity is also bs because they had to do it, for copyright reasons (THEY HAD TO. (And were probably set up.)) that’s not the big change danger. The big change danger are the things publishers are doing to books, and the reason I have Agatha Christie on paper, in case of grandkids. (I’ll note we’re a bit nutty, here on this side of the pond, as the the rest of the world has been on an “updating books so they connect to the current generation’s tastes” kick for 50 years at least.)

There is also, yes, that you can’t store it and all the DRM makes “own” it iffy. (Though honestly most of what I read on Kindle I’ll never want to read again.)

So, yeah, I do realize Amazon’s quasi-monopoly (even if a lot of it was acquired by being better) is a problem. A serious problem. Partly because companies with that commanding presence get sloppy and Amazon’s customer-service has already gone downhill.

BUT for now most people are voting for ebooks and Amazon with their money. It is what it is.

Also, the technology is very young. The kinks will get ironed. They get ironed by running into them and figuring them out. There are always problems. Someday we’ll discuss the jungle of paper backs back in the day. From violated copyrights to writers not getting paid, to– bah.

Also a lot of the complaints you have about ebooks — the changing of texts — you can complain about paperbooks too. Try getting an original Joy of Cooking. And I have a problem finding non-screwed-up Enid Blytons, though that is a problem that won’t affect most people here. But Europe is bad about this stuff, and I’m on the side of we “I want the book the author wrote” nuts.

The unfortunate problem is that you can keep a lot of books on paper, but not all of them. (And a lot …. well, check the bracings on your foundation.) You can keep a lot more electronic, if you can have a clean copy to archive.

No, I see no reason to doubt Charlie in this. The cheapest most efficient delivery method wins. Pretty much always.

This doesn’t mean paper books will go away, they’re just a different animal.

I used to buy popcorn books on paper — because there was no other way to buy them — popcorn books defined as books you read like you eat popcorn and don’t even remember very well after. Mostly mysteries, but also fantasy and SF. I bought them, I read them, sometimes I donated, more often they came unstuck (I bought books used. So I was often last stop) or I simply forgot to sell them and they cluttered the house for years and years.

I still buy books on paper. But I only buy those I wish to keep. The books I’m keeping now on paper, and I suspect most people are keeping, are special ones. Signed books. Books that had a profound effect on me. Books that remind me of an experience, like meeting the author.

People still buy books on paper, just a lot fewer, because now they are souvenirs, or experiences or — listen to me — for a certain kind of book, display items. if you’re not like us, and don’t read to read, but read to show off, and keep them around to display their erudition or their political opinions.

So no, paper books aren’t disappearing, but they are already a rump market, and my guess is they’ll become more so. And in the process, we’ll find each wrinkle with our nose. And then fix it.

Which brings us to another innovation: remote work.

Oh, the screaming and the belly aching. “But what if people aren’t working at all?”

And then there is this brilliant bit: Nail salon employee pleads guilty after netting nearly a million bucks by outsourcing U.S. government tech jobs to China and North KoreaNail salon employee pleads guilty after netting nearly a million bucks by outsourcing U.S. government tech jobs to China and North Korea. And more on that: here. (Side question, is “Maryland Man the criminal brother of Florida Man?”)

This immediately causes people to go “oh, no. Bring them to the office. This is not trustworthy.”

Let me interject that there are jobs that should never be done from home. Even desk jobs. And there are jobs — most of them involving national security — that should — if done remote now — be tightly controlled and watched. And most of them probably should not be done remote.

But your average job? Well, we’re back to the thing: Lowest expense for the delivery of work.

But Sarah, you’ll say, didn’t you read that thing above?

Oh, you think that’s new? Because I’ve seen things like that done in companies my husband worked for since mid oughts. You know, internet exists. You can supposedly work in an office and offload all your remote work to several people even in other countries, and then, well, you’re working very hard, late and early and here’s the work.

I’d like to tell you that all these bright boys were caught, but not even. Most of them even though we figured out what was going on… well, the bosses wouldn’t believe it even if we told them. These were golden boys, and they kept advancing, etc.

So, it’s not a new scam. Is it easier remote? Well, yes. To an extent. But if you read the stuff above, they were criminally negligent in both hiring and management. You interview in person, where it’s harder to fake. If it’s at all a sensitive position, you have them work in the office until you KNOW him/are sure of him. Administer a test, by all means. (Now they can.) Oh, yeah, and if you hire him for anything vaguely sensitive, by all means give him a dedicated laptop, and keep your own spyware on it that tells you what he’s up to. What are you, stupid?

In fact that entire sh*tshow was so badly managed that one wonders if the management was in on it and this was their way to sell secrets to China. Because I’m not stupid. And neither are you.

But are there problems with remote work? Well, let’s start with “how do we know if they’re working?” My husband (buffs nails) figured that out managing a remote team in the 90s: make it task dependent.

But what if people are working three or four part time jobs and cheeeeaaaaaating?

Get over the idea you’re buying time. Buying time for tech, creative or other brain labor NEVER made much sense. It’s a holdover form factory line work, when you bought time to buy a certain amount of work. It’s not real.

In tech work, or writing, or planning, or frankly just about anything you can do remote without issues? You’re paying for the task, not the hours. The hours are irrelevant.

Remote work is just underlining this fact, but it was always true. I know the readership of this blog. You guys know you’re faster than most people out there on the same task, right?

Say I pay someone (I’m about to) for managing a release and publicity? She actually gave me her price per hour, but I’m calculating that for what I’m willing to pay how many hours that would take. if she does it faster? I don’t actually care. Why would I?

If I wanted her to work exclusively for me, I would do so. I don’t. I would also have pay her more. Maybe someday. IF I have a dozen books coming out at once or something.

If the person is doing the job, why do you want them to work for you only if you don’t pay for exclusive. Is it a power thing?

It shouldn’t matter at all. Again, you’re not buying hours, but a completed task.

The other stuff? A lot of it are already solved problems that don’t inhere to distance work. A lot of them people know how to fix.

But there are bound to be some we haven’t thought about.

And there is, of course, the fact we need to start thinking of things another way. Jobs as tasks, just like we need to think of “books” as stories, not paper bricks.

What needs to stop is the freakout about everything that goes wrong with new tech. All the “ZOMG that changes everything!” “Ditch the new tech!”

New tech and new ways of doing things have bugs. Of course they do. They weren’t delivered from on high fully formed. They will have problems. The problems will work themselves out.

Chill. Most of these changes are taking power from centralized information and technology control. We know where the centralized modes are going: Europe for some reason just won’t make these changes. So they’re going hyper-controlled and hyper authoritarian.

The changes work in favor of decentralization and decentralization works in favor of liberty.

Why do you think all the orchestrated freakouts?

Chill. This too shall pass. And if we need to, we’ll find new solutions for the (few) new problems.

Keep driving.

*It’s totally a word. I just made it up.

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 MACKEY CHANDLER: I Never Applied for This Job (Family Law Book 8)

Lee seems to be getting a handle on this sovereign business. Mostly it is making sure you have exceptional people and then stay out of their way. She’s learning moderation a little at a time and commissioned a self programming AI who may be a he instead of an it.
Friendship is also a difficult process to master when you are torn between the standards of several species, but she manages to satisfy Badgers ideals, and her Human allies turn out to be very good friends too. A little working vacation with Jeff and April solidifies that bond and gives then a couple of adventures too. They really needed to check on the Bunnies and the Jeff had to teach the squids to keep their filthy tentacles off Lee.
Now if the Earthies would just stop trying to kill her, and they figure out how to deal with the impending death of money, maybe she can do some stuff again just for fun.

FROM CEDAR SANDERSON: The Groundskeeper: Deadhead

The reward for a job well done…

Chloe loves her job as a groundskeeper in the big cemetery, and as a caretaker for its dead and undead inhabitants. In fact, she’s doing a little too well at it, and as a result, her Boss makes her an offer she can’t refuse.

Now she’s not only dealing with angry honeyscuckles growing in eldritch muck, but secret societies and a task that makes her wonder if she has a ghost of chance…

EDITED BY JAMES YOUNG WITH A STORY BY SARAH A. HOYT (ALSO STORIES BY OTHER PEOPLE YOU KNOW. LOTS OF PEOPLE YOU KNOW. TO MENTION TWO KEVIN J. ANDERSON AND PETER GRANT!): Thin Red Tales: Military Alternate History (Arc of Ares)

O it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes,” when the drums begin to roll…—Rudyard Kipling, “Tommy”

From the first time a group of savages looked at each other, gathered into a formation, and then said, “Hey, let’s go together to swipe that guy’s food…” Humanity has sought to settle its differences by force. Whether for possessions, deities, land, or the sheer love of violence, organized conflict has been the Fates’ playground. Chaos and chance provide fertile ground for multiple “What if?” paths, and Thin Red Tales brings you several expert portrayals of things that could have happened, had Ares’s whims been different.

Prefer your mayhem to be up close and personal, with foes’ thrusting blades under arrows’ shade? You’ll love Rob Howell’s “Here We Must Hold.” Want that with ancient Latin and legions? Dragon Award nominee Sarah Hoyt (“To Save the Republic”) [Hey now. While I was finalist on some things, like Colorado Book Award and Mythopoeic Award, I DID win a Dragon and a Prometheus! AND am USA Today bestseller!] and bestselling author William Webb (“Broken Oath and Shadowed Blades”) will scratch your Roman Empire itch.

If you’re more a fan of enemies being close enough to see but not in each other’s personal space? NYT Bestseller Kevin J. Anderson, Sidewise Award Nominee Lee Allred, Colorado Book Award finalist Kevin Ikenberry, and newcomer Daniel Kemp bring you short stories from the Napoleonic era through the Age of Iron.

“But what if I really enjoy imperial angst but I have an allergy to black powder?” Thin Red Tales also gives you stories by Sidewise, Dragon, and Prometheus Award Winner S.M. Stirling, Sidewise Award Nominee William Stroock, and bestselling author Joelle Presby that cover both World Wars. Small wars against the backdrop of nuclear holocaust also get their due, as bestselling authors Peter Grant, Justin Watson, and editor James Young all provide Cold War-era stories that round out this take on alternate conflicts.

Bottom line: whether you like your alternate warfare served by the edge of a blade or delivered from several kilometers, Thin Red Tales has fiction for you. With its mix of new stories and previously published favorites, this second Arc of Ares anthology reflects the war god’s capriciousness from the dawn of time. So, grab your pilum or your sidearm, as you’re about to be entertained.

FROM PERCY SINCLAIR: New Dawn.

Earth tried to colonize Mars. They failed. But now the colony ship has come home, crewed by unknown entities far more powerful than dystopian Earth. Frantic to survive the invasion, Earth puts aside its internal quarrels and forms a coalition to investigate. But when the truth is revealed, everyone must make desperate choices. Caught in the web of lies and confusion, two scientists, one intelligence operative, and one pilot must choose who they will believe and where their true loyalties lie. Making the wrong choice could be fatal, both for the individual and for Earth-bound civilization.

FROM DAN MELSON: The Monad Trap: Connected Realms Book Two

You’d think there’d be more for a god to do.

Alexan and Petra have become Eternals – minor gods, binding themselves together in their divinity. According to most stories, that’s where ‘happily ever after’ would start. However, there’s a divine ecosystem, as red in tooth and claw as any other part of nature, competing for power and worshippers and other divine benefits. There’s also the diligar deity Klikitit, who’s appointed Alexan his personal enemy for having dared defend himself against one of Klikitit’s Sons. Then there is the question of how do they achieve the next step on the divine ladder? All of this while dealing with divine curses which bind both of them – for all divinities are cursed.

The Connected Realms are certainly more complex than they appear at first glance!

FROM RACONTEUR PRESS, WITH STORIES BY J KENTON PIERCE, LEIGH KIMMEL AND MORE: Steam Rising: Tales of steampunk and wondrous inventions (Raconteur Press Anthologies Book 35)

Steampunk. It’s not just a genre, it is science fiction in its purest form. In this collection, you will read of the ways that technology could both help and harm mankind. Steam power took a special kind of bravery to use and master, and the people who live in a steam-powered world adjust to that need: engineers, inventors, tinkerers and experimentalists of every kind and every manner imaginable.

Within, you will meet clockmakers and war-widows, steamship captains and airship pilots; you will see wailing engines race and clanking automata strut. Hurry on! The engineer is feeding the coal, and says she’s raring to go.

See that red lever over there? Grip ‘er tight, and heave forward the throttle…

FROM MARY CATELLI: Even After

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Mirror, mirror on the wall — can I be safe when I am tall?

Rumpelstiltskin got the baby.

Rapunzel and her prince never again met.

Snow White still sleeps in the forest.

Biancabella, Snow White’s half-sister, knows that if she is more beautiful than her mother, trouble will follow again. Her appeal to the magic mirror only gains her stories of how hard it is to fight the evil sorceresses and wizards and witches who have banded together to bring unhappy endings.

But with her mother seeking to constrain her, Biancabella knows she may have no choice to use that knowledge to attempt to escape.

FROM CHARLI COX: The Fae Wars: Northwest Front

Fae Wars returns on a new front as war rages in the Pacific Northwest!

Corporal Erik Doherty isn’t some kind of special operations super soldier; he’s just an infantry grunt trying to get by in what was once the United States Army, now an enforcement arm of the Fae overlords. When orders come down from a chain of command more interested in boot licking their new masters than protecting American citizens, he has to make the choice. To serve and live, or run and die?

Ashleigh Greene is a teenage girl with a price on her head, the Fae looking for retribution for the killing of one of their nobles. As her hometown burns behind her, she flees into the mist shrouded forests of the Pacific Northwest, her family killed by dragon fire and her world destroyed.

On separate paths, each human comes face to face with a haunting legend that has lived for thousands of years. One that has been waiting, watching, and hating the old enemy that has finally returned. Together, they bring war to the Fae in a battle for honor and revenge.

Book seven in the best-selling Fae Wars series!

FROM JERRY STRATTON: The Padgett Sunday Supper Club Ice Cream Cookery: Twenty-three great recipes for ice cream from your home freezer.

Twenty-five great ice creams and other frozen desserts from vintage cookbooks 1927 and up. Lemon Sorbet, Candy Cane, Cherry-Almond, Chocolate, Coffee, Cranberry, Mango, Maple, Peach, Peanut, Saffron, Vanilla, and Walnut! Including Italian and Russian.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Normalcy Bias: Look closer…things aren’t always what they seem to be.

Look closer. The things that you’re assuming you’re seeing? May not be what you think. Is that really a mouse, or is it a Brownie? Is that really an owl? Is that polished gemstone a stone…or an egg?

We take so many things for granted. Some of them may be harmless, but many are a lot less so. I wonder how many people ignore red flags every day, because they only see what they expect to see?

This collection takes what’s “normal” and asks “What if it’s something more?”

FROM KAREN MYERS: Tales of Annwn – A Virginian in Elfland (The Hounds of Annwn Story Collections Book 1)

A Collection of Five Short Stories from The Hounds of Annwn.

The Call – A very young Rhian discovers her beast-sense and, with it, the call of a lost hound.

It’s not safe in the woods where cries for help can attract unwelcome attention, but two youngsters discover their courage in the teeth of necessity.

Under the Bough – Angharad hasn’t lived with anyone for hundreds of years, but now she is ready to tie the knot with George Talbot Traherne, the human who has entered the fae otherworld to serve as huntsman for the Wild Hunt. As soon as she can make up her mind, anyway.

George has been swept away by his new job and the people he has met, and by none more so than Angharad. But how can she value the short life of a human? And what will happen to her after he’s gone?

Night Hunt – When George Talbot Traherne goes night hunting for fox in Virginia, he learns about unworthy men from the old-timers drinking moonshine around the fire and makes his own choices.

Who could have anticipated that the same impulse that won him his old bluetick coonhound would lead him to his new wife and the hounds of Annwn? Every choice has a cost, he realizes, but never a regret.

Cariad – Luhedoc is off with his adopted nephew Benitoe to fetch horses for the Golden Cockerel Inn. He’s been reunited with his beloved Maëlys at last, but how can he fit into her capable life as an innkeeper? What use is he to her now, after all these years?

Luhedoc needs to relearn an important lesson about confidence.

FROM SARAH D’ALMEIDA: Death of a Musketeer (The Musketeers Mysteries Book 1)

The musketeers never expected to stumble upon her body—a beautiful woman bearing an uncanny resemblance to Queen Anne of France herself, lying lifeless in the shadows of Paris.

D’Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis swear a solemn oath to uncover the truth behind this mysterious death. But their quest for justice quickly spirals into something far more treacherous than they imagined. What begins as a murder investigation soon reveals layers of intrigue and conspiracy reaching into the highest echelons of French society.

As the four friends follow a trail of clues through duels and deceptions, they find themselves squarely in the crosshairs of their old nemesis, Cardinal Richelieu, whose shadowy hand seems to guide events from behind the curtain. Each revelation brings them closer to King Louis XIII himself—and to dark secrets some would kill to protect.

With their loyalties tested and their faith in humanity shaken, the musketeers must decide how far they’re willing to go for truth when the price of discovery might be their very lives. Some mysteries, once unveiled, can never be forgotten.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Gods and Monsters (Modern Gods Book 4)

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Here there be dragons…again, damn it.

Deshayna has her sanity back, and forces older than the gods have granted her a new purpose. Chronos, his freedom restored, fights for his sanity, and with it, a purpose in helping Deshayna—now called Shay—with hers. The gods are starting to pull together more…and it’s about time.

Millennia after the last dragons to threaten human existence have been hunted down, they’ve started to reappear, hinting to the surviving gods that something more sinister appeared first: Tiamat.

Instead of a confrontation, though, the gods—major, minor, and genus loci—are drawn into a frustrating hunt for a predator that flees rather than attempting to strike.

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: DAFFY.

It occurred to me today that maybe the problem is that I’ve become hard boiled.

Which is a problem, of course, since my favorite mysteries were always cozies. But you see, we have been watching a hard boiled mystery series on TV every night, and I know the tropes: every authority is corrupted, everything turned against the newcomers, the idealistic, those who are clean.

And I realized me, the cozy writer, have come around to a complete hard boiled world view.

For instance, all the people who throw fits about forgiving student loans don’t realize they are standing on the side of giving the government debt-slaves. Or maybe they do. Under Obama there was talk of not letting people leave the country who owed student loans. Think on that a minute. You’ll see what the plan see should they get fingers on levers again.

They don’t seem to realize to what an extent our money is fungible and being taken out of our pockets — continuously — by inflation. And how much of the money the government actually collects goes to…. oh, let’s look at the unroll, shall we, even without looking at the USAID schemes to fund insurrection against ourselves and the burning or our own cities, there is stuff like they’ve been funding each and every illegal to the ridiculous tune of 100 and some k per year, at least. Though a lot of those moneys come from city and state, you know where the money comes from ultimately. Printing press goes brrrrr. Sometimes we funded them higher through other programs, like the ones that gave them start-up money or house buying money.

Where did that money come from? Why from your pocket, brothers and sisters. printing press goes brrrrr.

I’m not going to worry too much about that, because my taxes, all the ones I’ve paid, the ones I will pay, all of them, have gone to the Taliban, left in pallets of cash in the ignominious withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Forgive me if I don’t think anyone should give them any cash. Not one more cent until we know where every cent is going. And you know d*mn well even with Doge, even with everyone doing deep dives, you know we don’t know everything they’re wasting.

But it’s not just that, oh, no. It’s everything else. Everything is stacked up against the new, the outsiders, those with no pull.

But even those who are supposedly at the top and have pull? Remember the healthcare CEO gunned down by Luigi whatshisname? And how the whole left say he had it coming?

Look, I’ve shared here — I think — about my own issues with our insurance. For instance, they don’t cover the expensive daily inhaler my doctor prescribed, which is part of the reason I keep getting sick. Underlying inflamation from low-level continuous asthma. And I had to fight them to get the meds my husband needs for diabetes.

I understand the anger at the insurance companies. And to an extent I have some problem sympathizing with them because the dumb bastards were all in on the Obamacare push. But– But what is happening to them is the same screwing at the hands of government we’re all getting.

Obama care mandates the coverage of gender transition — you wondered where so many cases came from? Why it became the first go to to push on autistics and mal-adjusted and, well, Odds? Easy peasy. You get more of what you pay for — and when cases multiplied by 400 or so, the companies paying for it, particularly the medicine insurance part are spending themselves bankrupt to pay for girls becoming boys and boys becoming girls. Diabetes? They ain’t got no money to treat no stinking diabetes.

All of this goes unnoticed. We notice that the insurance companies are dicks, but we don’t see the fed revolver at the back of their heads.

Like … No one speaks for the voiceless.

One of the situations is with people who are infertile. Can’t have kids. I was there. Back then already I ran into people telling us to “just adopt.” Back then we knew people who adopted. They had way more money than we had. They adopted from abroad: China, Eastern Europe. Even Western Europe, sometimes. Okay, Portugal, but that–

Why did people do that? Why the expensive process? The left says it’s because we want ethnic kids. The same left says a bunch of kids are in foster care because white people won’t adopt children of color.

The truth? Adopting in the US is all but impossible. You need a lot more money, you need to open your household and yourself to fantastic intrusion. And you kid can be taken from you at any time, even if you’re the only parents he’s ever known, because the US adoption system is in thrall with Rosseau’s idea that somehow “natural” is better, that there is some mystical bond between the child and the parent who held him for half an hour (if the mom wasn’t hopelessly addicted and even realized she had a child) before surrendering him.

Also, speaking of outdated notions, the US also believes that it will materially damage the child to be adopted by someone who tans a different shade. This is baffling to me,a s someone whose child is darker than her — and much darker than her husband — despite looking like both of us.

Which brings us to where we are now. There’s hundreds of thousands (millions?) of children in foster care, while hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people who long to have a family can’t adopt. At this point foreign adoption routes have closed. (Except Africa, and given what Africa is — poor fucked up Africa — you might be adopting a kid who was kidnapped or who knows?)

Most people don’t know. As with student loans where the decent people don’t talk about it, and slowly sink under an impossible payment system that would be outlawed if they were payday loans on the corner? As with insurance denying medicines we need because they’re too expensive, because the insurance has to pay for all the things that Obamacare says you can’t dispute, those affected don’t talk about it. What’s the point? And if they did, they’d talk about how the insurance is screwing them up.

Everywhere I look, things are crooked, people are caught in a system they can’t fight which is screwing them coming and going.

Even us, how often do we forget the swallowing up of Hong Kong? Oh, that wasn’t us? Sure it wasn’t. Because it was ignored and China was allowed to do what she would, and we didn’t even give any aid or offer of asylum to those who had fought against China.

How often do we talk about the way that the attempt at freedom in Iraq was ignored and by being ignored thwarted by Obama.

How often do we forget that there are three hundred thousand kids missing, give or take ten thousand, who crossed the border as… mules, as disguise, as heaven knows what, a lot of them children kidnapped or bought South of the border, and who just…. vanished.

Where are they? A system that can’t be trusted to make sure innocents aren’t handed off to the worst of the worst? It’s corrupted beyond belief.

As corrupted as it needs to be to lock up an entire country, destroy an economy, try to make us all conform to ridiculous pointless measures, let the old die alone and the young be maimed forever by isolation. And we know they did that.

I could go on. [Pours two fingers of Devil’s Cut. Swirls the glass.] Oh, boy, I could go on.

But I won’t. It’s not my job to blackpill you. (Lights virtual cigarette and takes a puff. Look, bud, with my lungs, virtual cigarette is all I can have.)

Yes, this is the chasm we stand at the edge of. This is the precipice we could fall down.

But–

This has been a time of miracles, the last 2 years. We’ve seen miracles. And the miracles have gone our way.

And Trump 2.0 has gotten smart about a bunch of things. Take the whole vexed issue of the student loans, which are still controlled by the government and still ridiculous and where people are still fell into the cement vat.

He didn’t rescind that on day one. Maybe because he couldn’t, because it’s tied to something else (Obama dealt dirty.) Or maybe he simply hasn’t got there, yet. However it might be simply he hasn’t got to it. So much to do, so little time. On the other hand… On the other hand….

On the other hand I think there’s some obstacle in the way, because he’s doing things. What things? Well….

I realize this lynch pin involves a lot of things more than this, but one of the things his EO on disparate impact means that tests for jobs are back on. And that means not only is the goose of colleges cooked, it tumbles a whole lot of pins, like people actually having to know what they’re doing, not just getting credentials because they know someone.

Blows rings on the imaginary cigarette and smiles at the dark night sky.

Yeah, the crooked judges are fighting back. What? you expected them to lie down and let us have our way. Nah. They’re going to fight every step of the way. The dirtier they are, the harder they’ll fight.

It’s going to be a fight in these mean streets. And, oh, the streets are mean.

But we’re fighting back. Not just Trump. There’s something awake and aware and fighting back.

And there’s us. Yeah, puny, powerless us.

But we can be voices for the voiceless. We can be connections for those without them.

And we can have each other’s back.

The system of the hard boiled requires that everyone, everyone be dirty, but the one upright man, and that the upright man be isolated.

Dome now. There’s too many of us. And we’re not isolated. We got each other.

We don’t have much, but we have each other. And we’re not crooked. And we’re going to keep at it.

Right?

We’re going to keep at it. Until we clean it up. It’s impossible to achieve perfect justice, but we should be able to clean this utter darkness and mess a bit. Just a bit. Give good a chance to flourish.

Give a chance to people who want to marry and feed themselves and have fat babies. Give a chance to people who want to build and create things that benefit us all. Give a chance to everyone else who isn’t utterly corrupt and evil.

We’re going to keep at it, right? And you’re too, right?

Finishes the virtual bourbon, stubs the virtual cigarette, puts on her fedora and walks out into the velvety dark night.

We’re going to keep trying.

And we’re going to win.

Today we remember the victims of Communism. I highly recommend this project.

Communism — lowball — over the twentieth century killed a 100 million people. That’s direct kills. Direct putting in grave.

It doesn’t count those killed by famine, by disease. And it doesn’t count those who were never born because desperate would-be parents couldn’t afford kids or died early of alcoholism. It doesn’t count those killed by the wars which are the way the communist monsters keep themselves in power.

It also doesn’t count the toll on civilization which costs lives: the corruption of our institutions, our colleges, our science, everything.

The fundamental flaw in the mind of the idealist, silly “communism has never been tried” people is that the only way that kind of communism would work is if EVERYONE did the thing they need to do.

Leaving aside the ability to know what to do, etc. never in the history of ever, since the first day of the universe has “everyone” done anything.

“If only everyone” is the lie at the center of the honeyed lie of communism.

The brutal reality is war, famine, and for the lucky ones a shot to the back of the head.

Communism is a virus. Humanity either kills it, or we lose civilization.

As for me and mine, we’re for civilization.

And now for the memes.