According To Hoyt

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, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. By clicking through and buying (anything book-related, 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. Remember though all of these submissions are from people willing to be associated with this blog. So if you’re trying to buy from people who don’t hate you, this is a good place to start.– SAH

FROM MEL DUNAY: Pride & Planetoids (The Stars By Degrees Book 1)

With only three years remaining on Albion’s hundred-year lease in the Kuiper Belt, Elizabeth Bennet has rather more pressing concerns than her mother’s nerves. Terrorist attacks on Albion by a rival power are increasing. Mrs. DeBourgh is buying up shares in the Bennets’ mining consortium, with an eye towards gaining control. And events keep putting William Darcy, commander of Albion’s most powerful warship, in Elizabeth’s path.

His manners are cold, his judgment unerring, and he’s Mrs. DeBourgh’s nephew. Elizabeth isn’t sure which one is his worst trait, but she is sure that they are all unforgiveable…

Except that she has misjudged him. Considerably. He shares her vision of Albion’s future, and he’s willing to risk everything to bring it to life.

A Jane Austen fan fiction retelling of Pride and Prejudice in space, for readers of Lois McMaster Bujold and Georgette Heyer.

WITH A STORY BY ROBERT MILLER: Hostile Skies (A Bayonet Books Anthology Book 18)

The skies have turned hostile.

When an incomprehensible entity begins “surveying” the solar system—correcting reality itself—Mars Colony learns the terrifying truth: observation is invitation, and variance is a death sentence. On Earth, the remnants of humanity watch as an unknown fleet emerges from Martian space, its drone swarms descending with mechanical indifference.

Whether it’s scientists racing to go silent before reality folds around them, pilots cheating death in the void, or young cadets facing machines that defy physics, these stories ask one brutal question:
When the stars themselves become the enemy, what price will humanity pay to remain interesting?

For fans of hard military sci-fi, alien invasion thrillers, and tales of desperate resistance.

The invasion has begun. The skies are no longer ours.

FROM FRED PHILLIPS: Sons of Gold and Fire: A Boy, a Dragon, and an Impossible Quest

From the award-winning Gold and Fire Series — Winner of the 28th Annual Critters Readers’ Poll (1st Place, Tied), Finalist for the 2026 Imadjinn Awards Best Middle Grade, and Nominee for the 2025 Kearsells Indie Book Awards.

Aron’s brothers are gone, snatched by goblins in the night. His father and his knight-master rode after them into the mountains and never came back. The only one who can fix this is Aron — and the great golden dragon who is his best friend.

But Doubloon has been snared in a wizard’s enchanted trap, held fast by a net that his own fire cannot burn through. With his family imprisoned and his dragon helpless, Aron is out of options.

His only move is across the mountains. Alone. No harness. No wings. No backup — except a smart-mouthed goblin who talks, a couple with dark ideas about adoption, a sabrecat who takes his last strip of jerky, and one massive platinum dragon who actively despises humans.

Sons of Gold and Fire is a quest story that never lets up. Packed with monsters, narrow escapes, and a friendship between a boy and a talking goblin that nobody planned but everybody needed, this is the kind of book that stays with you long after the last page.

Perfect for fans of fast-moving adventure with heart. Ages 8–14.

Series reading order: Book 1 — Dreams of Gold and Fire Book 2 — Sons of Gold and Fire

FROM PAUL L. THOMPSON AND SCOT MCCREA: U.S. Marshal Ezra Flint: Gunfighter’s Grave: A Western Adventure (A U.S. Marshal Ezra Flint Western)

Bestselling authors Paul L. Thompson and Scott McCrea team up for their wildest, grittiest adventure!

Shorty Thompson learns that Clara Forsythe, his favorite niece, has run away from home after a whirlwind romance. Shorty figured it was none of his business until he learned that her young man just might be the West’s most notorious killer … Billy the Kid, not really dead and on the run from the law.

Shorty must find The Kid without getting Clara hurt and sends for his old friend, Marshal Ezra Flint. Flint also knew Clara when she was a child, and the two lawmen join forces before the trail grows cold. But will they find Clara before Billy the Kid can claim another victim?

“…hard to put down. If you like good Western fiction, you will love this book.” – Roundup Magazine review of Hard as Flint

“Thompson and McCrea make one of the finest writing teams in the genre,” – J.W. Masterson, bestselling author of ‘TEXAS RANGER PHARAOH SMITH’

“Combining Flint and Shorty Thompson is a match made in heaven. Action all the way and some of the finest writing this duo have ever done,” – Robert Hanlon, bestselling author of ‘SHADOW OF THE HAWK’

“A fine story from a fine duo,” – Fred Staff, bestselling author of ‘WILL THOMAS: MOUNTAIN MAN’

“Scott McCrea is one of the finest up and coming writers in the business and I am hopeful we will work together someday,” – C. Wayne Winke, bestselling author of ‘RENO GATES’ and many others.

FROM KYRA HALLAND: Beneath the Canyons (Daughter of the Wildings Book 1)

The bounty hunter. The rancher’s daughter. They share the same dangerous secret – magic.

Silas Vendine, mage and bounty hunter, has followed a trail of strange, dark magic to the remote town of Bitterbush Springs, where he lands in the middle of a deadly feud – and discovers that a local rancher’s daughter is hiding a dangerous secret.

Lainie Banfrey has been taught all her life that wizards are unnatural creatures with no heart and no soul. If anyone finds out she has magical powers, she could end up on the wrong end of a hanging rope. But when a mysterious gunslinger shows up on the hunt for a renegade wizard, she can’t hide her power from him. Drawn to his magic – and to him, she agrees to help him in his search for the renegade who has brought her hometown to the edge of open war.

Forced to hide their magic from the wizard-hating townsfolk, and fighting an attraction forbidden by the strict laws of the Mage Council – and by Lainie’s father, Silas and Lainie must find the renegade mage and stop him before the deadly power he commands destroys everyone who makes the Wildings their home.

Join Silas and Lainie in an epic tale of magic, danger, adventure, and romance, and discover the wonders and mysteries of the Wildings, a frontier land of gunslinging bounty hunters, outlaw mages, and mysterious magic. Beneath the Canyons is the first book in the complete six-book epic fantasy-western series Daughter of the Wildings.

Contains language, violence, and mild to moderate sensual content.

FROM DALE COZORT: Wokuo Incursion

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

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

FROM MARY CATELLI: Writing And Reflection Volume 2: Essays on the writing process from world-building to words (Writing And Reflections)

Reflections on the many and far-flung fields that writing can touch upon, from original inspiration to the final work.

Wizards. Metaphysics. Good, evil, virtues, and morality meters. Fairy tales in all their varied glory. Desert, forest, and other settings. Dragons and industry. Guilds of magic, quacks, and superstitions. Love and courtship. Portals. And more.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Witchfinder (Magical Empires Book 1)

A Duke’s Defiance Could Shatter Two Worlds
In an England where magic pulses through every cobblestone and the English Regency manners and modes never ended, one man’s conscience threatens to topple an empire.
Seraphim Ainsling, Duke of Darkwater, inherited a legacy of forbidden heroism. For generations, his family served as witchfinders, crossing between worlds to rescue those condemned to die for possessing magical gifts. But when the royal princess vanished twenty years ago, the king sealed the borders between realities forever.
Now Seraphim faces an impossible choice: obey the crown and let innocents burn, or defy his king and risk everything he holds dear.
With only his enigmatic half-elf valet Gabriel Penn at his side, Seraphim tears holes in the fabric of existence itself, leaping between alternate Earths where magic means death.
His mother and sister are lost in Fairyland. His enemies circle like vultures. The king’s patience wears thin.
But Seraphim’s stubborn compassion burns brighter than caution. In a world where doing right means risking everything, he’ll discover that the greatest magic might just be the courage to keep fighting when hope seems lost.
Some prices are worth paying. Some lines are worth crossing. Some hearts are worth breaking.
A spellbinding tale of sacrifice, family, and the dangerous allure of doing what’s right in a world determined to punish goodness.

FROM BLAKE SMITH: A Kingdom of Glass: A Novel of The Garia Cycle

In a kingdom of secrets and silk, one girl must choose between duty and her heart.

Zara has spent eleven blissful years in the sun-drenched kingdom of Garia, where she rides free across a vast grassland, shoots her bow beneath starlit skies, and calls her foster family’s castle home. But when a royal summons arrives, her golden world shatters like spun glass.

Thrust into the cold, formal courts of the East Morlans—a realm of rigid etiquette and deadly politics—Zara must navigate an arranged marriage to a stranger, reconnect with a family she barely remembers, and survive the unforgiving world of noble society.

Gone are the warm winds and open skies of her beloved home. In this land of marble halls and suffocating tradition, every word is measured, every gesture scrutinized, and falling in love might be the most rebellious act of all.

As court intrigue swirls around her and threats close in from every side, Zara must discover who she can trust—and what she’s willing to sacrifice—to reclaim the freedom she left behind in the endless plains of Garia.

Some cages are gilded. Some prisons are palatial. But Zara’s heart belongs to the steppe.

Perfect for fans of court intrigue, swoon-worthy romance, and heroines who fight for their own destiny.

FROM HOLLY CHISM:Fire and Forge (Modern Gods Book 3)

Long after their worshipers are forgotten, the gods are still holding up a corner of the bar at the Godshead Tavern. Some have learned since their stories became myths, some never did, and some are still finding old curses coming back to haunt…

Poseidon wants Artemis to lift Medusa’s curse so he and Medusa can resume relations, while Chronos seeks another chance to be whole and get to know his kids.

Meanwhile, Ares falls head over heels for a mortal half his size who manages to kick his ass not once but twice, and Loki’s son is trying to rebuild his life (and his credit) after a short marriage to Pandora.

Life and love runs smoothly for no one, god or mortal. And another disaster is brewing…

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: Saving the Spring: A short fantasy (Seasons Book 1)

Jack Randall knew immediately something was off when he pulled up to the old roadhouse. Little did he know that crossing paths that night with the establishment’s beautiful bartender and her handsomely-rugged boyfriend/cook would lead to him recalling his former life as a god – or fighting a rematch with the god who had stolen his memories.

FROM KAREN MYERS: On a Crooked Track: A Lost Wizard’s Tale (The Chained Adept Book 4)

Book 4 of The Chained Adept

SETTING A TRAP TO CATCH THE MAKERS OF CHAINED WIZARDS.

A clue has sent Penrys back to Ellech, the country where she first appeared four short years ago with her mind wiped, her body stripped, and her neck chained. It’s time to enlist the help of the Collegium of Wizards which sheltered her then.

Things don’t work out that way, and she finds herself retracing a dead scholar’s crooked track and setting herself up as a target to confirm her growing suspicions. But what happens to bait when the prey shows its teeth?

In this conclusion to the series, tracking old crimes brings new dangers, and a chance for redemption.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Sound of One Child Crying

Who is the child Reza can hear crying every time she goes to the new addition to the Royal Library? Her boss insists there is no child, that it is nothing more than her uncanny sensitivity to the unseen world making a nuisance of itself.

Worse, searching for answers gets her angry rebukes about respect for the dead. The further Reza goes, the more certain she becomes that someone is hiding an ugly secret.

It’s a secret that traces back two generations, to a dark period in this land’s history. A time most people would prefer to forget, not caring that denial doesn’t make a problem go away.

The truth may set you free, but not without a price. And Reza fears that death itself might turn out to be an easier price than the one demanded of her.

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: dependent

There is this thing going around where you ask an LLM to write an unhinged biography of you.

Irresistible, of course.

So my first run at chat gtp:
Sarah A. Hoyt is what happens when a science-fiction writer accidentally collides with a particle accelerator full of caffeine, history books, and righteous fury. Born in Portugal, forged in the fires of multilingual sarcasm, and ultimately unleashed upon America, she has spent decades producing novels, essays, stories, blog posts, and opinions at a velocity that causes lesser writers to pull hamstrings just trying to keep up.

A shapeshifter of genres, Hoyt writes science fiction, fantasy, mystery, historical adventure, and the occasional thing that can only be classified as “someone gave the typewriter espresso after midnight.” Her books are populated by revolutionaries, rogues, survivors, inventors, aristocrats with knives, and ordinary people discovering that history has once again decided to light itself on fire. Somehow, amid all this, she still finds time to fence with internet stupidity before breakfast.

Critics have called her “prolific,” usually in the stunned tone archaeologists reserve for discovering a previously unknown pyramid complex under a parking lot. Readers know better. Sarah A. Hoyt is not merely prolific; she appears to operate under a separate relationship to spacetime. While normal humans complete one manuscript, she has written three novels, six essays, a short story, and a 2,000-word rebuttal to someone wrong on the internet.

Her imagination ranges from sweeping space opera to intricate alternate history, powered by a worldview equal parts immigrant grit, incandescent patriotism, and the suspicion that civilization is a very thin crust over chaos and someone should probably keep an eye on it. She writes heroes who bleed, villains who believe themselves reasonable, and societies that teeter constantly between renaissance and catastrophe—which, coincidentally, also describes most comment sections. To fans, she is a fearless storyteller. To ideological opponents, she is a recurring weather event. To aspiring writers, she is either an inspiration or a warning label. Legends persist that Sarah A. Hoyt can identify historical inaccuracies at fifty paces, survive entirely on coffee and indignation, and produce a complete first draft while simultaneously arguing about economics, baking bread, and rescuing a cat. None of these rumors have been conclusively disproven. In an age determined to become increasingly absurd, Sarah A. Hoyt remains one of the few authors willing to stare directly into the madness, take notes, and turn it into fiction before the rest of us have finished panicking.

Somewhere between amused and horrified, I tried again, this time with gemini:

Sarah A. Hoyt is not merely an author; she is a space-faring tectonic plate shift wrapped in a vintage housecoat and fueled by the raw, unrefined spite of a thousand Portuguese explorers. Born in a village so old the stones remember the birth of Zeus, she eventually realized that the “real world” was a poorly constructed simulation with mediocre plotting. Consequently, she moved to Colorado to live in a house that is essentially a sentient library held together by cat hair and the sheer force of her own willpower.

Her literary career is less of a “path” and more of a series of tactical strikes against the concept of boredom. She writes at a speed that suggests she is actually three different women sharing one consciousness, alternating between Musketeers fighting monsters, Shifters dodging the law, and interstellar pioneers who have finally had enough of your nonsense.

The Hoyt Method

To understand Sarah is to understand the following fundamental truths:

• The Portugal-Colorado Pipeline: She manages to maintain the soul of a European aristocrat while possessing the “get off my lawn” energy of a frontier gold prospector.
• The Golden Carp: She is the only person on Earth capable of turning a casual conversation about laundry into a 4,000-word manifesto on the fall of Western Civilization and the inherent superiority of Heinlein.
• Biological Paradox: She subsists entirely on coffee, the tears of her enemies, and the occasional ribeye, yet she produces more words per day than a mid-sized news agency.

Career Highlights (The Unofficial Version)

1. Shakespearean Intervention: She once spent an entire series arguing that William Shakespeare was actually a front for supernatural entities, mostly because the truth was too dull for her taste.
2. The Dinosaur Incident: She has effectively convinced a significant portion of the internet that “The Dinosaurs” are a legitimate political demographic that must be reckoned with.
3. The Mythical Menagerie: Her home is rumored to be a sanctuary for cats that are actually displaced minor deities, all of whom are currently judging your choice of footwear.

In summary, Sarah A. Hoyt is a whirlwind of Gaslamp fantasy, libertarian fury, and high-octane storytelling. She is the woman who looked at the horizon, decided it was in the wrong place, and spent three decades writing it into a more acceptable position. If you meet her, bring coffee. If you cross her, may the gods have mercy on your soul, because she certainly won’t have time for it—she has a deadline in twenty minutes.

Still fairly certain it confused me with several of my characters, I returned to chat gtp:
Sarah A. Hoyt arrived on Earth by way of Portugal, apparently deciding at an early age that normal human occupations were too stable, too comprehensible, and involved far too little caffeine. After infiltrating the United States under the guise of “immigrant novelist,” she embedded herself deep within the science fiction ecosystem, where she began producing books at a rate suggesting either supernatural assistance or a secret basement cloning facility.

By day, she is a novelist. By night, she is also a novelist, but angrier and with more tea.

As proprietor of the blog According to Hoyt, Hoyt became known for essays that read like someone wired a philosophy seminar directly into a flamethrower. Her posts range across publishing, politics, economics, civilization, history, cats, apocalypse preparedness, and the ongoing mystery of why modern institutions seem determined to replace competence with interpretive dance.

Her writing style has been described as:

• “ferociously energetic,”
• “a caffeine-powered cavalry charge through ideas,” and
• “what happens when a Regency novelist acquires broadband and a siege mentality.”

At Instapundit, she appears periodically like a literary cryptid emerging from the woods to announce that civilization is probably salvageable if everyone would please stop setting fire to the load-bearing structures. Readers never know whether a post will contain publishing advice, political analysis, a meditation on freedom, or a warning about the dangers of trusting bureaucrats who use the phrase “stakeholder engagement.”

Her bibliography sprawls across genres with the alarming confidence of ivy overtaking an abandoned cathedral. Science fiction? Yes. Fantasy? Absolutely. Alternate history? Naturally. Space opera? Of course. Regency vampires? Why not. Somewhere in the distance, a marketing department continues screaming softly into the void.

Critics attempting to categorize Hoyt eventually enter one of three stages:

1. confusion,
2. admiration,
3. constructing elaborate conspiracy corkboards connected with red string.

Friends describe her as warm, intelligent, and unstoppable. Enemies describe her as “extremely online but somehow with references to 14th-century history.” Both groups agree she writes faster than should be medically possible.

There are rumors that if you say “indie publishing” three times into a darkened Kindle, Sarah A. Hoyt materializes to explain metadata strategy while simultaneously finishing another novel draft.

No confirmed sightings dispute this.

<It needs more unhinged, more cats and perhaps more baking. But maybe I’m confusing myself with my characters?

In other news: I’m now ALMOST sure I’m not going to die. (Look, I knew I wasn’t going to die, but yesterday sure felt like it) BUT still…. under the weather, if the weather is a category 4 hurricane.

Memes tomorrow. :D

By Holly the Assistant

About noon yesterday I got the first note from a college student of my acquaintance, followed very shortly by confirmation from a different student at a different school: Canvas got hacked by a ransom group.

Canvas, for all five of you that have not had to deal with it for a public school, a public charter school, a private school, a college, a university, or any other group that uses it, is a really pretty terrible software platform that lets you read textbooks, download assignments, upload assignments, take exams, check grades, submit grades, etc. It works mostly, depending on the users. Mostly.

Which makes it slightly better than the competition, so many educational entities have signed up. Internationally many.

Almost all the eggs are in one basket, and as those of us who remember the nineties recollect, the tech troublemakers target the biggest basket as much as they can: the payout is better, whether money or chaos.

One friend asked “But what do they think they’ll gain? Who would pay the ransom?”

My answer was “Not everyone is as tech savvy as you are. Think of our local school district, which had to close a school due to declining enrollment, and whose position is ‘we didn’t do anything wrong, it’s home schoolers’. Faced with the ransom message, with a debit card to a slush fund meant to cover paper and toner, and two weeks from final exams, are you absolutely sure that some administrator isn’t going to pay up to avoid more people pulling their kids out angrily and more school closures resulting?”

The policy at the colleges and universities appears to be landing solidly on “We’ll just cancel finals in the affected classes.” So no finals for the kids who waited to the last minute to take the online finals, and the pre-final grade is the grade for the class. Or that’s how it’s playing out for my friends. Colleges I don’t have sources at, or where my sources are busy taking in-person finals right this minute, may be doing other things.

There’s no great answer in the short term.

In the long term, maybe more pen and paper in person exams. I’m old enough to remember blue book exams, and I heard those are coming back in some classes because of AI usage by students, which is a whole other thing, because apparently it’s been found that a number of the students enrolled in online classes and turning in AI essays are not actual people but extraction of loans and grant money fictions who vanish when the funds are gone with no recourse for the government . . . but that’s a different story.

I certainly don’t fondly remember standing in line with the course registration paper in hand, waiting at the registrars’ office to sign up for classes. It worked, but it was obnoxious and a pain. Online WAS quick and easy, comparatively . . . but right now it’s down, so you cannot register.

Link to schools affected, sort of (found not the individual districts but the state department of education for my state):https://privatebin.net/?f8c17bc224cd9f22#F2qrJM6a2juvQjziJTH8Pbwef5Lsa8TzRbCFW5FMg4uW

A good summary article: https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/instructure-canvas-shinyhunters-275-million-students-3-6tb-breach-2026/

If you and your children are affected, time for The Old Freeze Your Credit Song and Dance. Except if you did that two months ago for the Blue Cross Blue Shield hack, you’re probably still frozen. Or one of the many, many other hacks, that have become part of our daily lives.

At the same time, our oh-so-safe-by-obscurity Linux distros have had a couple nasty exploits discovered in the last week. Maybe not-so-safe-by-obscurity anymore.

P.S. Those are not MY eggs pictured: mine are considerably dirtier because my hens are messy creatures. I do believe that eggs are probably safe from computer hackers, but the local magpies are hopeful of successful thievery. The roosters think that magpies look like they might be tasty . . . in any event, there are no computers involved in the production of eggs here, and the highest tech is the whiteboard that holds the daily records.

Younger DIL refers to the wobblers my body periodically throws as my being “nerfed.” She says G-d nerfed me, to make sure I don’t take over the world.

This is silly, as the Author knows I have zero interest in taking over the world. Just ranting on politics and writing a lot of novels, to be honest. But if that qualifies as taking over the world….

Anyway, this year has been extra special wild. So when the erratic posting (look, more erratic than usual) started a couple of weeks ago, I was just feeling really tired. Later on other symptoms manifested that sent me to walk-in clinic at my doctor’s last Friday morning. This in turn resulted in a lot of tests and…

Well, apparently the ear infection wasn’t so much cured, as it moved elsewhere. The problem being where it moved has the POTENTIAL (not nearly the certainty, but you know, in the majority of cases) of causing permanent harm to essential organs in adults.

So I’m not on an OMG (Obama must go (elsewhere)) level antibiotic. In a long life of taking antibiotics, I think this is the strongest I’ve taken. The kind of antibiotic where you’re told to, no joke, take a pro biotic with every capsule, even if it’s a one-a-day probiotic.

Anyway, to combine with this, allergies have been causing me to cough non-stop which does things to your sleep.

I defeated that last night by — a miracle — remembering to use the steroid inhaler, which is the only thing that stops the coughing, really. So I actually slept. 12 hours or so.

Which doesn’t explain why I woke up feeling absolutely NERFED.

I don’t know how to explain this, but it’s like all of a sudden, for no reason I can figure out, someone removed my will power, interest, power of locomotion: everything. To the point that I could happilly sit here and stare at the wall all day. Which is weird. Normally I HAVE to be doing something, and the worst torture you can give me is have me sit comfortably with nothing to read and nothing to do with my hands.

Note, nothing hurts, and I’m in no way in any distress, save for a complete lack of get-up-and-go.

I’m not sure what to do with this.

I read the morning news, and I’m somewhat upset at attempts to negotiate with Iran — No. Really no. I do understand the exigencies of internal politics, but the mullahs have to go. Completely. eradicated. — Yes. i do understand that if we bomb the oil infrastructure, the oil prices might never recover, certainly not in time for the midterms, but d*mn it. Those critters are going to be a danger to the world as long as they’re in charge.

However, this anger is very distant, as if it belonged to someone else.

And I have a copyedited pseudonymous novel to go over, and Rhodes to Hell to finish. But–

It’s all about a million miles away, and I’m sitting on my sofa, trying to get the motivation to go upstairs and doe the catboxes, which are foul. I will eventually do it. It just seems like… at lot of effort?

Anyway, I thought I should let you know what’s up, in case you were more worried than you should be.

On the extraordinary promo: Charlie Martin and I are trying to organize a site that reviews books and does geeky articles about sf/dinosaurs/old books/space and other things our side of the sf community hankers for. We are starting out on substack, which might not be the brightest thing in the world.

Not today — see nerfed — but I will try to post something asking for workers/reviewers/posters. Look, it won’t pay for a year, but I hope it will pay at least some after. It was supposed to go live this month, but my health has kept me from “piloting” the thing. So, keep your fingers crossed. It’s something much needed for indies, and frankly even Baen authors, as pro reviews are hard to come by.

And in very good news, my brother was released from the hospital yesterday (I just learned) which means he’s doing better and should be able to resume immunetherapy for lung cancer, which hopefully will make it so he dies with lung cancer (eventually) not OF lung cancer now. (G-d be praised, always.) Thank you so much to everyone who has been praying.

If I can get myself to do it, I’ll write him a postcard, which should furnish him with enough Portuguese grammar mistakes and spelling errors to chortle over for a while. (He finds it bewildering I’ve almost forgotten my native tongue and calls me an ex-speaker of Portuguese.)

Okay. Now I’m going to drag butt from sofa and go do boxes. The smell is bad enough to ALMOST motivate me.

Yesterday, when I was fortunately still too ill to engage extensively, I ran across someone on Twitter who was waxing mournfully (in one of the comments on a post about there being no such thing as noble savages) about why can’t all humans be peaceful and eschew war and aggression. When I pointed out that that if we were peaceful and non-agressive, we’d not have got where we are, he then came back with hopes that we might someday all live in peace and non-aggression and said that was something worth working for. At which point I said this would imply killing all humans and went off to do other things.

What shocks me about what he said and my reaction is that this is the sort of thing people kept saying, writing about — moaning about — in novels and books when I was little, and, being thoroughly immersed in this, if someone had said this to me when I was 20 or so I’d have said “yes, of course.”

But now all I can feel towards such pap is impatience.

I’m sick and tired of people who whine, moan, and throw themselves on the floor like my kids when they were two, about why oh why humans can’t be peaceful and non aggressive.

Sure, okay, maybe humans could be…. I don’t know. I’m having real trouble coming up with an Earth animal who isn’t aggressive. Because most animals who aren’t aggressive and don’t seek to expand their range, sooner or later go extinct.

Even sheep and for that matter bunnies are aggressive to an extent.

But on the serious side, if we were non-aggressive and non-violent, and if we had evolved in the kind of world where a species like that could survive…. we might be very peaceful, but we would not be human.

And the same goes for us all living in peace and harmony, someday. I truly can’t imagine everyone in the world living in peace and harmony. It’s a variant of “if only everyone” and there’s absolutely no chance of that happening, ever.

I don’t see any point hating on humans for being what they are. And I don’t see any point waiting for humans to be completely different, unless there is some kind of transformative religious event.

Do I hope for a future in which fewer innocent humans are killed? Yes. Do I have hope that life will get better for everyone. And yes, I’ll work for each human to be as free and capable of pursuing happiness as possible, because free and prosperous societies tend to maximize safety and health for innocent humans and the powerless.

But … working for peace for everyone — EVERYONE — would mean working for human extinction.

And that I’m not willing to work towards.

Aliens might be very well, but they’re not humans. And humans are as we are and there’s no use willing us to be something completely different. That way lies hatred of humanity because we can’t be perfect, and then crazy crap like voluntary extinction.

Humans are not perfect. Again, absent some religious transformative example, we will never be perfect. But as we are, this is my species, and as such I’m going to root for it.

And you know what, if some alien shows up promising us peace forever, I’m going to assume they want to kill us all.

In fact, if there are aliens, I recommend that we stay just as fractious as we are. Because I will bet you money no species climbed to the top of the evolutionary chain in some other planet, and built a space ship to come here without being at least as aggressive as we are, and possibly more.

And again, I’m going to to side with the humans.

Aggressive apes we might be, but look how far we’ve come. And everything we’ve built, just the way we are.

If I have to pick, I’ll pick humans being as they are and colonizing the stars.

Until someone gives me a believable version of world peace that doesn’t mean we’re all dead or lobotomized.

My fellow obsessives: I’m not asking that you stop trying to improve. Or that you not try to be better. Or even that you don’t keep a vigilant eye on your faults and defects with an eye to minimizing them.

I wouldn’t dare.

But I’m going to ask you to set aside the flagellum just a second, let the stripes on your back heal a little and consider this: What if it isn’t your fault?

No, I’m serious here. Hear me out.

What if that thing that bedevils you, that you seemingly can’t get over is organic? Something you can’t just use will power to pull yourself out of?

Not saying that you shouldn’t still fight it, but perhaps you need to assume there’s something physical/physiological causing it and you’re going to have to give yourself grace and work around it, instead of keeping hitting your head against the glass like a heat-dazed fly.

See, my assistant — hi Holly — is face blind. During a conversation yesterday, she said it was a great relief to find out she was face blind. As in there was a reason she couldn’t remember anyone’s face, and therefore couldn’t recognize people. And it wasn’t just that she was evil or just didn’t care enough.

Now if you’re me, you’re scratching your head going “How can not remembering faces mean you’re evil and don’t care enough?” But I can almost see how one would get there. Sort of. Through a glass, darkly.

You see, it never occurred to me when I was face blind: from birth till about 40, when I fell and hit my head so hard it rewired a lot of things. I just thought I was an alien, and it was very important that the people around me not find out. No, I’m serious. This was the central assumption of my childhood, because people around me seemed to do/think/be able to accomplish things that to me were utterly opaque. So, I must be an alien, and I’d best be very quiet about it, so they didn’t realize it.

I had tricks to get around it. One of them was to memorize the clothes someone was wearing before we left the house. (I still do it, out of habit.) Which is why I almost went away with a completely different woman from the cemetery on All Saints Day when I was 6. Everyone was wearing a black dress; she was about mom’s height and had the same hairstyle. More importantly, she was wearing the same perfume. Because until I was 41 or so and the thyroid issues kicked in, I had a nose that would rival a scent dog’s. And so I identified people PRIMARILY by smell.

First thing I noticed, after the concussion is that all of a sudden I could remember actors. I still don’t bother to remember their names — why would I? — but faces are sometimes familiar. And at this point all that remains of the face blindness years is a frantic fear when I’m going to meet someone I’ve only seen pictures of or haven’t seen in a few years that I just won’t recognize them. I do, though, so that’s fine. Also people still don’t have faces in my dreams. Just little clouds. BUT I know who they are, so that’s okay.

BUT the point is, as a kid, I knew I was different, but I didn’t think it was something I’d done. I guess because no one ever figured out how utterly face-blind I was, so they couldn’t blame me for it.

They did however blame me for transposing digits. Which I do unless I’m being very careful about it. Which is why, when wood working, I cut a paper template of the wood piece I need, before I go out and cut the piece. (I buy scratch paper by the truck load, yes) because 243 432 and 324 are really the same number. That is, if I’m trying to transcribe one of those and look away for a minute, I’ll transcribe it wrong.

Now, since I liked math, and was always fairly advanced, imagine my bewilderment when I hit the more complex equations. I completely understood the mechanics of the operations. And I enjoyed it. But the result I got defied description. And teachers and adults told me I was stupid, lazy and just not paying attention.

It was the most frustrating thing. Because I tried very hard to beat myself into not doing the stupid. BUT IT STILL HAPPENED.

The problem started with the fact you had to copy the original problem from the blackboard to the paper. Or the book to the paper. It was very rare for the digits to be in the same order once I copied them.

Look, I understand the adults. In a kid who was smart and did understand the operations, to make that kind of error must mean she was just being a spazz because she didn’t care. Or maybe she was sullenly defying you. Meanwhile there was me, endlessly flogging myself over not being able to do this very SIMPLE thing.

I never had that with directions, because mom was there before me. Directions… How do I explain this. You can tell me “Go North” till you’re blue in the face. I don’t “sense” north. I also don’t know what direction I just walked in from. This is endlessly amusing to the nurses at my labyrinthine doctors’ offices, as I try to walk in the completely wrong direction, barge into the blood lab trying to fine the waiting room, or other ill-advised adventures. Now they know me, the question starts as soon as I leave the exam room. “Where are you trying to go, Sarah?” And then someone points. But as I said, I kind of knew that was a disability, because mom had it, and SHE WAS WORSE THAN I WAS. After 50 years of living in the village, mom could still get lost, if she wasn’t very careful. I’m not that bad. Close, but not that bad. But anyway, the family knew it was a brain glitch and it was inherited, so I used work arounds. I wrote myself lists of directions, because words work for me. (Maps don’t.) The only problem I had with this was that husband, who has a precise and unswerving sense of direction, truly couldn’t understand why I “insisted” on going the wrong way for about 10 years. After ten years, he assumed that I wasn’t actually doing it on purpose. (Sometimes he still slips up and yells things like “learn” while I kind of gape at him in confusion. This is usually when he’s handed me a map and asked which way we should go. I don’t know WHY he does it, since it always ends up with him having to pull into a parking lot to look at the map himself, but I guess hope springs eternal.)

Anyway, it was the greatest and weirdest relief when, at a writing workshop 30 years ago, the lady leading it said “Oh, yeah, I’m digit dyslexic” and explained what it was. And I went “Oh. I’m not stupid and lazy. I have a brain glitch.” After which I watched out for and compensated for it, and I was fine. This was also timely, as both the boys inherited the glitch. But since they know what it is, and were forewarned, they just learned the work arounds. And both did fine.

But I do this with all sorts of things. Most recently with having a weird infection (yes, that’s all it is, diagnosed and horse-pill antibiotics brought home, with an appointment in ten days to check and make sure it’s gone. And yes, it’s apparently sequella to the massive ear infection. (Ain’t this year been a barrel of laughs?))

I’ve been beating myself up for not even keeping up with this blog, much less trying to make any progress on the novels, or even attempting to post on my substack. (Whose subscribers probably think I died!) Because it must be laziness, right?

Um…. No. Apparently it was a very, very, very bad infection, whose side effects meant I was ready to fall asleep at six pm and really didn’t even want to do dishes, much less anything more demanding.

Oh, and the weight problem might not be my fault either. I mean, of course I assumed it was. My weight has trended upwards since I got married, and I have to make immense efforts to avoid being gravity-distorting heavy. At one point I lived on 800 calories a day for years. The weight still crept up.

Turns out in addition to the thyroid deciding not to work, which only kicked in at 40, I have apparently been celiac my whole life. (Short form: apparently what I thought was eczema was celiac rash? WHO KNEW? Not me.) and the inflamation has weight-gaining side effects. (Or to be fair, weight loss. But I’ve said I never lose weight when I’m sick, haven’t I? Only gain.) Which explains why the only time I got thin was when I cut ALL carbs. Like, extreme carb reduction. It wasn’t the carbs. it was the bread. And crackers. (I can take or leave the bread, but I love matzo crackers. Better than cookies.)

So you know, when I kept trying harsher and harsher diet and exercise regimes, and hating myself because they didn’t work, it might have been a wee bit insane. Because it was organic. (Yes, it’s creeping off. VERY slowly. Not aided by the fact the thyroid is being stupid, and…. well, the usual, right. If it’s weird, it’s what I have. Have we considered I might actually have been right as a kid? That I am an alien?) Not something I could power through with will power.

So, other than a long whine about my issues — it really isn’t. Other than the digit transposing and the weight, the rest doesn’t bother me. And at this point those only minorly bother me. Except I’d like not to be so heavy because I like pretty clothes. — what is this all about?

Well, fellow obsessives: I KNOW YOU. I am you. We are kin.

So…. That thing you’ve been punishing yourself for, where you’re doing everything right and it refuses to work? That thing you can’t defeat?

Consider the cause is not merely psychological, not something you can power through by beating yourself harder.

Consider it NOT so that you stop trying, but so that you can try more effectively, with workarounds and compensating for what nature didn’t give you or is trying to keep away.

I know it’s very hard for people like us to remember we’re not just minds, but bodies as well.

The truth is that the body — like the enemy (which it often is) — gets a vote. You can’t just override it.

Stop beating yourself, and try more sneakily.

And — this is very hard — learn to live with what you can’t change.

Note, I’m still working very hard on all of this. This is not so much “do as I do” but “Do as I’m trying to do.”

And honestly, I wish you all the luck in the world. It has to be better than beating yourself endlessly.

My grandmother had a saying “some ills come for good” which could be the old polyannish “every cloud has a silver lining.” And “Everything happens for the best in the best of all possible worlds.”

While those are broadly true, it wasn’t ever — I think from knowing her — what grandma meant. What she meant would probably better translated as “That kick in the *ss life just gave you has you flat on the ground. Now, how can you make it the incentive for the best thing that ever happened to you?”

My husband believes “everything happens for a reason” and he might be right but it might also be survivorship bias, of course.

Like, for instance, we wanted eleven kids, but we had two. “Oh, maybe if we had eleven, we’d not have been able to keep up, and they’d all have gone seriously bad,” is a good way to cope. Is it true? Who knows? But having grown up with BFF’s friend’s family of 13 kids, I’m inclined to say no. Your genetics are still the same, your parenting is still the same, and the truth is you become better at parenting as you go. So…. Probably not true, but a great way to cope.

OTOH…. OTOH there are times when the worst thing that we thought could happen to us at the time, was in retrospect the best thing, either because it gave us a much needed wake up call, or because what we wanted at the time could be used as a poster for “be careful what you wish for, you might get it.”

Like, my entire life pre-college, I was aiming to become a journalist. Stop laughing. It was Portugal, and it was the only way I could imagine to make a life from writing. (No, seriously, unless everyone in the country buys your book, you’re not making a decent or even indecent living from writing there.) In my first year of college, I took a test for employment with the second largest newspaper in town. I failed. (I probably failed the political section with intent and malice.) I was devastated.

However if I had got that job, it would have made it much harder to come to the US when I got married. I mean, I still would have married Dan, but if I had a well-paying job, in addition to a degree I was finishing I probably would have demanded he move there. And over all? I am happy I’m here. I’m happy the boys were raised here.

When I got that rejection, it was the worst thing ever, but it was an ill that came for good, by leaving me free to take the best thing ever offered to me, and deciding to raise my kids in the US.

More recently, in 2018, not to dwell on it, but I was holding down two jobs, fiction and non fiction, and was let go (it’s more complicated than that, but it’s the short hand description) from both the same week. At the time we were still paying for younger son’s college (well, half the tuition, plus do to Colorado’s infernal highway construction, living expenses, because he couldn’t make it from our house to class in under 2 hours (it was supposed to be 45 minutes.)) This was what my income was supporting. And all of a sudden I was looking at that big a hole in our finances.

I’m not going to say it was the best thing that ever happened to me. At the time, it was like suddenly having a hole open under your feet. It sent me into such a tailspin of worry that I couldn’t work at all, and to be fair, I’m amazed anyone, from family to friends, stuck with me, as I can be pretty impossible to live with while spiraling.

In retrospect? Sigh. Best thing that happened to me is not far off. I mean, I’d have preferred that gentle opportunities had been offered rather than a two by four to the back of the head, but all the same…

It’s not like I didn’t know the opportunity for indie and for monetizing this blog was there. I’d known for 7 years then. I just had trouble lifting my head from the three columns a week and book due that year to find time for anything else. Much less to write anything else. Here it must be said that I also was at the time very ill due to altitude, but all the same.

Exploring indie (as opposed to Indy exploring, which just means he made off with another cabinet child lock and is probably face-deep in the sugar again.) has given me not only better income but a greater peace of mind and enjoyment of my work I hadn’t experienced…. well, in my entire traditional career.

Living in fear that, due to a lot of things you can’t control (like the fact my first book came out a year after 9/11) your books will tank badly and no one will ever buy you, ever, is not conducive to enjoying a career in writing.

Having the ability to write what you want to write NOW and not be scared that it will never see the life of day? That, weirdly does help, and I’m back to where I was as a kid, getting up excited to work on the book I’m writing right now.

And yes, the money is actually better. Not AMAZINGLY better, but better. To the point that if — G-d forbid — something happened to Dan, I’m sure I could stay afloat on my income, and not have to live in a hut in the woods. (Though that remains an option because hut in the woods with three unearthly smart cats is such a stereotype.)

More importantly, my stress levels are way way way down, which allows me to be more creative and write more, and more importantly, enjoy life more.

BUT it only came about because the worst thing ever improbably hit all in one week, possibly the worst week of my life.

— I’m underslept, mostly because I seem to have developed a weird chronic cough, (yes, it’s being looked into) so I can’t think of other instances, though I know there have been other instances.

However, let this stand: When the worst thing happens to you, look at it and see if you are now free to try an opportunity you’d never have considered otherwise.

Like… if something happened to my husband’s job, he has about 10 projects he’s been dying to work on, but hasn’t for lack of time and brain space. At least one of those has the possibility to be worth millions of dollars, but it’s hard to let go of the regular salary to try the “maybe, with luck” wild hope. Unless the job is yanked away first.

If instead of moping you — even if poliannish and probably survivor bias inspired saying — tell yourself “There are ills that come for good. What good can come of this?” and pivot into trying those things, it will at least save you the oh 5 years of moping I indulged in, and wasted. (Though again, health might have been a factor.)

And even if you see no opportunities from it, consider that maybe in the long run you’ll look back and say “Whew, I escaped a bullet.” And “this was definitely for the best.”

Do we live in the best of all possible worlds? Debatable.

But assuming we do will enhance your ability to cope with misfortune and probably allow you to pivot faster and better and enhance your quality of life.

So I suggest you take that line, anyway. Even if the back of your brain scoffs. Straighten your back, look up and tell yourself. “There are ills that come for good.”

And then find the good. And keep going.

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, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. By clicking through and buying (anything book-related, 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. Remember though all of these submissions are from people willing to be associated with this blog. So if you’re trying to buy from people who don’t hate you, this is a good place to start.– SAH

I want to ask, as a favor, that if you liked Witch’s Daughter you leave a review. Amazon is still showing nothing but one non-review rating! I figure they’re playing games. AGAIN.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Witch’s Daughter (Empires of Magic Book 2)

Some letters come from the living. Some come from the dead. This one comes with a formula that turns a rowboat into a miracle.

Seventeen-year-old Lord Michael Ainsling — youngest brother of the Duke of Darkwater, builder of mechanical marvels, survivor of fairyland — receives a letter from a man sixteen years dead. The inventor Tristram Blakley has not perished; he has been imprisoned by his own genius and begs the one mind in all of Avalon brilliant enough to understand his work to set him free. All Michael has to do is find seven missing brothers first and walk a magical path..

Fifteen-year-old Albinia Blakley has spent her whole life under her mother’s iron thumb — and her mother is a witch. The day Al finally escapes down a rope of knotted sheets, she lands in a world she doesn’t recognize, with no money, no magic kit, and no idea that the stranger who catches her is about to become her greatest ally.

Together, a girl with more secrets than she knows and a boy who builds machines that try to murder him must outwit a sorceress, navigate the treacherous courts of Fairyland, and unravel an enchantment years in the making — before a family is lost for good.

Witch’s Daughter is a gaslamp fantasy brimming with wit, warmth, and wonder, for readers who love their magic wrapped in velvet and their adventures served with morning tea.

FROM BETH HOMICZ: Some Guy Wants to Buy the Fourth of July: A rollicking, lighthearted, timeless story for Americans of all ages

Imagine: Charlotte’s Web and The Pushcart War meet National Treasure!

SOME THINGS SHOULD NEVER BE BOUGHT — OR SOLD.
When ten-year-old Allie Campion wins a finalist slot in the Friendly Family Freedom Franks national Fourth of July essay contest, she and her dad, Dan, depart their small Virginia town, embarking upon a zany whirlwind adventure in the nation’s capital. During their week in Washington, Allie and her spirited fellow finalists discover a conspiracy of crony corruption in high places, and – inspired in part by a curmudgeonly American bald eagle – gallantly set about revealing the truth and righting the wrongs, all while navigating betrayal, defamation, and their own growing desire for independence.

Intelligently and charmingly written by a former licensed D.C. tour guide, Some Guy Wants to Buy the Fourth of July™ offers readers a heartwarming, wholesome, laugh-out-loud tale of the indefatigable American spirit.

“A bedazzling book! A fun read for all freedom-lovers… Former D.C. tour guide, Beth Homicz, takes readers on a rousing ‘tour’ of the capital that includes political chicanery, vile villains, an eloquent eagle, and some very smart, determined children.”
— Claire Wolfe, author of Hardyville Tales and other books

Children’s / Middle Grades / Young Adult
American patriotic adventure fiction
Suitable for independent reading by ages 8 and up. Family-friendly, educational, enjoyable entertainment.
Highly recommended for helping young readers to build vocabulary and civic knowledge.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Beth Homicz is a national award-winning former local reporter and a co-author of AMC’s Best Day Hikes near Washington, D.C. (Appalachian Mountain Club Books: 2011, 2017, and 2023). As a licensed professional tour guide based in the nation’s capital for many years, Beth hosted more than 15,000 travelers from all walks of life – primarily student groups – on their own memorable Washington adventures. She now lives in the mountains of Virginia, where she is at work on several other stories. Some Guy Wants to Buy the Fourth of July is her first novel.

FROM MAX COSSACK: Deep Fakery (The Wilder Bunch)

When the State of Minnesota arrests and charges Ojibwa City local Aaron Fishel with murder, his defense lawyers Sam Lapidos and Jacob Laghdaf face an impossible task—the single security camera video shows Fishel murdering his victim in gruesome detail. As trial approaches and his lawyers try and fail to protect Fishel, they recruit help, and everyone involved begins to ask tough questions.

What is a crime?
What is justice?
What is reality?

Will this ripping suspense tale answer any of these questions? Only the reader will find out

FROM J. MANFRED WEICHSEL: Action Girls: Triple Threat

The Action Girls are a trio of wannabe Hollywood starlets whose failed movie shoots send them on absurdist pulp adventures. This omnibus collects all three novels (Jungle Jitters, Into the Bush, and Space Escapades) into a single volume, allowing new and returning readers to experience the complete Action Girls saga.

Jungle Jitters: The Action Girls are trafficked into the Congo by a cult of mad scientists who want to create a new race of hybrids by mating humans with apes.

Into the Bush: The Action Girls try to shoot a movie on the body of a 300-mile-tall giantess whose pubic hair forms a jungle ecosystem teeming with monstrous mites, crab-like beasts, and human-sized bacteria.

Space Escapades: A space witch teleports the Action Girls across the galaxy and into a fight for survival on hostile planets, lawless space stations, and worlds beyond imagination.

FROM MACKEY CHANDLER: Another Word for Magic (Family Law Book 6)

Fleeing the Solar System after an attack by North America, the three Home habitats now have to seek their own fortunes. Heather, Sovereign of Central on the Moon saved them but now has to make certain the USNA can never threaten them again.
What was a tentative research partnership with the Red Tree Clan of Derfhome becomes a full alliance of equals. Lee finds she has to grasp authority and act for the Red Tree Mothers and herself to repossess the planet Providence she and Gordon discovered. The Claims Commission on Earth has collapsed without the leadership of North America. Explorers like her are cut off from their payments and the colonists on Providence are left in the lurch too. To do that she needs these powerful new allies.

FROM GIULLIANA LOCAY: Pemberley and Pastelitos

A Hot, Laugh-Out-Loud Pride and Prejudice Inspired Story in Sunny Miami
Lizzie Benitez is Miami’s undisputed queen of efficiency. She’s this close to landing the career-defining project that will finally give her the financial security she’s worked her entire life for… until the infuriating, far-too-handsome Mr. Pemberley shows up to see if she’s really worth it. He’s rude, condescending, and seems determined to undermine her at every turn. Lizzie’s confidence is unshakable—except now she’s counting down the days until she can escape his judgmental stares without causing her to lose the project or her mind.
Enter her chaotic Cuban family: her influencer sister who thinks every crisis needs a TikTok, her no-filter Abuela dropping truth bombs over cafecito, and the sudden appearance of charming Mr. Wick with his easy smile and confusing signals. As deadlines tighten, family meddling intensifies, and the holiday season arrives just in time to cause maximum mayhem, Lizzie begins to wonder if the biggest obstacle to her perfect life isn’t Pemberley at all… but her own stubborn heart. A modern, multicultural enemies-to-lovers romance packed with Spanglish banter, pastelitos-fueled chaos, workplace tension, over-the-top Cuban family love, and enough sazón to thaw the coldest professional pride with one bite.
Tropes: Enemies to lovers • Workplace romance • Big, loud Cuban family • Holiday chaos • Pride and Prejudice retelling
Heat level: Spicy
Setting: Vibrant Miami

BY ANTHONY GILMORE, HARRY BATES AND DESMOND W. HALL, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING : Space Hawk: The COMPLETE Hawk Carse Stories: The Retro Pulp Space Opera Non-Classics!

In 1931, Harry Bates, the editor of Astounding Stories, was dissatisfied with the quality of the fiction he was getting from writers. So he, along with his assistant Desmond W. Hall, rolled up their sleeves and created a protagonist, and antagonist, and wrote four stories to show the other writers “how to do it right”.

The result, Hawk Carse, and his nemesis, the diabolical Ku Sui, are certainly memorable. As critic Schuyler P. Miller put it, “Hawk Carse was so bad, he was almost good.”

This iktaPOP Media collection of the original stories includes, for the first time, the fifth and last Hawk Carse story, “The Return of Hawk Carse”, written by Harry Bates alone, and published in 1942 in Amazing Stories rather than Astounding.

• This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving the stories genre and historical context.

EDITED BY DAVID BADURINA: Crashed Landings: Stories of First Contact, Strange Arrivals & Cosmic Adventure (Raconteur Press Anthologies)

Ten writers. Ten crashed landings. Zero warnings.
In Crashed Landings, editor David Badurina has assembled ten all-new stories inspired by the group-adventure films of the 1980s and ’90s —The Goonies, Explorers, Stand by Me, The Sandlot–where a strange event throws mismatched kids together and nothing is ever quite the same afterward.
A boy and his bully chase a fallen meteorite through the woods — only to find out it belongs to someone else. Three friends on prom night stumble onto a robot that fell out of the sky, and have to put it back together before the town pays the price. A fungal alien heart crash-lands in the forest and starts rewriting the wildlife. A teen grief camp gets an unexpected visitor from a crashing seed-pod. A space trucker with a time-traveling rig and a trunk full of contraband coffee recruits a girl with a slingshot and a very good reason to disappear. A boy in Kansas realizes the thing living in his skin isn’t quite him anymore. Bird-like aliens help a crash-landed human pilot evade an enemy patrol on a planet that isn’t Earth. And more.
These stories share a DNA: emotion, banter, wide-eyed wonder, and the kind of friendship that only happens when the world gets weird enough to need it. Good guys and bad situations. Stakes that feel real. Characters you’ll root for. Endings you’ll remember.
If you grew up watching kids on bikes outrun something impossible, and you’ve been waiting for that feeling in prose, Crashed Landings is for you.
Ten stories. One anthology. Infinite crash sites.

FROM PATRICK K. MARTIN: Threads

Science tells us that there are an infinite number of possible universes and nearly as many versions of you. Imagine if you had to be all of those lives. Imagine all the things you could ever be, good, bad, lover, fighter, benevolent or evil. Imagine if all the possible threads of your life became roads you had to walk. . .

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

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

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

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

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Starlight Running

Eight lives depend on Kyle’s desperate trek across the Moon to get help. But someone — or something — intends for him to fail. Can he defeat it in time?

FROM JOHN BAILEY: THE AFFAIR OF THE SILENT TERRAFORMER (The Detective Stories)

On a world where machines breathe for an entire planet, one silent failure could mean catastrophe.

When Chief Atmospheric Engineer Dr. Lucien Korda is found dead inside a sealed control tower at the Helios Atmospheric Control Complex, the case appears straightforward: a disgruntled technician, a history of safety complaints, and a system breach that triggered a dangerous storm over the colony’s capital.

But Inspector Matthias Veyron does not believe in obvious answers.

As he walks the towering machinery that governs the air itself, Veyron uncovers a deeper and more unsettling truth. The terraforming network—designed with perfect redundancy to prevent failure—has been quietly drifting from its intended balance. Calibration shortcuts, corporate pressures, and buried decisions have created a system no longer entirely understood by those who operate it.

And someone knows.

Someone with intimate knowledge of the system.
Someone who staged a failure precise enough to alarm—but not destroy.
Someone who needed a scapegoat.

As political pressure mounts and the colony demands answers, Veyron must unravel a mystery where the weapon is not a blade or a gun, but a planetary machine—and the motive may be buried in years of compromise.

Because on Rigel 5, the greatest danger is not that the system will fail…

…but that it already has.

AND JUST IN CASE YOU’VE BEEN LIVING UNDER A ROCK: FROM SARAH A. HOYT: NO MAN’S LAND

Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.

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

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: FRIGHTENING