According To Hoyt

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FROM SARAH A. HOYT: No Man’s Land: Volume 1 (Chronicles of Lost Elly)

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.

Volume 1

The Ambassador Corps has rules: you cannot know everything, don’t get horizontal with the natives, don’t make promises you can’t keep.
They’re a lot harder to follow when assassins are hunting you, your barbarian allies could kill you for the wrong word, and death lurks around every corner.
The unwritten rule? Never identify with the natives.
Skip’s already broken that one.
Now he’s racing against time to save his new friends from slavery—or worse—while dodging energy blasts and political intrigue. One crash-landed diplomat. A world of deadly secrets. And absolutely no backup.

Some rules are meant to be broken. Others will get you killed.

FROM RUSS THOMAS: Operation: Valkyrie

On our 40th day in Immersion the phone rang just after noon. We were being summoned to High Command in Berlin for a conference.
We were suddenly reminded why we had spent the last five and a half weeks in this trailer. Who we really were. That we had a mission to complete. We had history to change. And then back to our real lives in the distant future.
The plane they sent arrived on schedule—a Junkers JU52. We spent the next five hours getting jostled around its interior. When we landed, we walked out the door to the sound of the Deutschlandlied, the German National Anthem. I returned the salute of the crew. It all felt unreal. Things like this didn’t exist.

FROM JOHN BAILEY: Mars Defenders:: 12 Tales of 2050s Mars and Asteroids.

Mars Defenders: 12 Tales of 2050s Mars and Asteroids

In the dust and shadow of the 2050s, Mars is more than a new frontier—it’s a breeding ground for corruption, sabotage, secrets, and quiet resistance. In this gripping anthology, twelve interconnected mysteries unfold across Martian colonies, mining outposts, terraforming labs, and asteroid corridors.

Follow Kieran O’Malley, Zara Chen, Malik Torres, and a network of determined colonists as they uncover the dark truths buried beneath red soil and beyond orbit. From rogue corporate sabotage to ancient alien artifacts, sleeper agents, and black-market conspiracies, each tale unveils a new piece of a sprawling puzzle threatening Mars’ fragile future.

Mars Defenders delivers classic mystery thrills in a hard sci-fi setting, perfect for fans of The Expanse, Murderbot, and Asimov’s Robot Mysteries. Smart, fast-paced, and richly atmospheric, this PG-rated collection weaves together suspense, justice, and quiet rebellion—on a world where truth is as rare as water.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: A Fox in the Henhouse (Timelines Universe Book 2)

Delaney Wolff Fox is a spy. A cute spy. A deadly spy.

A spy you want at your back when stuff gets real.

From a palatial office in Johannesburg, to a fancy whisky bar in Sydney, Australia, to a beautiful private beach in southwest Florida, to the great and wild city of New Orleans, Captain Delaney Fox, United States Space Force Marines (Intelligence Division) finds herself beset by assassins at every turn, while first saving an alien government’s valuable artifact from the South African cartel that’s stolen it, and then being assigned to guard said artifact while it completes a world tour, on loan from that same alien government.

But like the proverbial fox in the proverbial henhouse, you can count on Delaney to complete the mission and come out with the prize, intact and in hand – even if the “farmer” isn’t all that keen about her doing so.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Schrödinger Paradox: Cataclysm

The end is coming.

Unlucky jerk Tom Beadle was on watch at NASA when the collision alert sounded: a new asteroid, bigger than the dino-killer, headed for Earth. Big problem, but that’s why we have NASA, right? Except, after decades of budget cuts, NASA has no way to shove it off course. That job has to be contracted out. Will the private sector company his best friend from college works at succeed where the government option failed? Might be best to have a backup plan, just in case…

FROM MARY CATELLI: The Book of Bone

A novelette of curses and journeys.

Avice’s dreams of settling at Clearwater are dashed. The lawsuit had ended, and the lands were made over to her, but a bone wizard lays a curse on the land, and blight begins to spread. All will die before the curse as it spreads.

Neither her family nor her king are willing to help. She is left alone with only the knowledge that the mysterious Book of Bone may have the lore that she needs — if only she can find it.

FROM ROBERT A. HOYT: Cat’s Paw

What if the doom of the universe or its salvation didn’t depend on humans?
What if cats were far more than we imagine?
What if—
But enough of this: At the end of the universe there is a Mountain. Every thousand years, a bird flies to strop its beak on that mountain. When the mountain is worn to nothing the universe ends.
The mountain is down to a few grains of sand.
The only hope of survival for the entire universe rests in the grubby paws of an alcoholic alley cat, a fluffy cat with not much brain and a bookish cat who thinks Guinevere is a male hero’s name.
The universe might have run out of luck.
Or not.

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: Spiffy

For those of you who just dropped (possibly on your head!) in here, this is what I’m doing and why.

Sorry to take so long between these posts, but mmm. Yeah. It’s been weird out here, with a bunch of traveling around and being sick and stuff. If you want to see the previous posts, search “future of the past” in the search bar.

Also, add to “why did this take so long” that this is an Heinlein title. From the time I moved to the US and could secure all of Heinlein’s works (the juveniles were hard to come by when I was in Portugal, most having been published while I was far too young.) I re-read Heinlein about every year. Sometimes every two or three years, because life intervenes.

But, anyway, I’ve read Heinlein a lot, so it’s hard to give the same type of “looking at it with fresh eyes” perspective I give on stuff I’m re-reading after a long long time, or perhaps reading for the first time.

This is the copy of The Man Who Sold The Moon I bought for this. Interestingly, I’m sure I read it as a kid, in Portuguese, and also I’m sure that it was JUST The Man Who Sold the Moon. In the US it’s of course a novella and sold in various bundles. (In audio I have it in a future history collection.)

I think I’ve alluded to this in the past: Portuguese is a very …. expanded language. It takes more words and more difficult constructions to say what you say in English. (One example of this was translating the wedding ceremony (younger son’s) including the sermon so the happy couple could understand, which forced me to translate partial sentences because you can go on for three minutes and it translates as “I want them to realize they should try to be happy even when they’re not.”) Anyway, this means that English sf was often translated as duologies or trilogies, unless the novels were very very short. Like… a canticle for Leibowitz was two physical books, and a lot of Heinleins were trilogies.

Anyway moving right along:

Robert Anson Heinlein was born in Butler Missouri in 7/7/1907. The always biased Wikipedia will have the basics of his life and career here.

On his life I’ll only say that Heinlein is a good example of iterate till success in everything, from marriage to career, and gives hope to the lot of us who have not been instantly successful, shall we say. (Though I lucked out on marriage.)

Wikipedia mentions that Heinlein was a hard science fiction writer, and of course for his time he absolutely was. However I’d like to enjoin all my friends and followers who write hard science fiction to study him.

Modern hard science fiction is hide bound and too scared of stepping wrong, while Heinlein’s magic came from melding absolutely hard science (of the time) with traditional story forms to create ripping good yarns with a solid science foundation.

The Man Who Sold The Moon is precisely that. It’s the romantic scoundrel, the adventurer, the explorer. Only the romantic scoundrel has an obsession a lot of us empathize with: he wants to go to space. Which at the time meant the moon first.

May I say, it’s weird to read this after the trip to the moon, and still feel the same surge of excitement as he sets it all up to reach his goal.

The other thing I’ll say is that, in particular compared to the writing of science fiction of the time, while The Man Who Sold the Moon has pulp-pacing it is much more realistic. The problems they face are not alien mind control or another evil scientist trying to steal the rocket, but sane, completely plausible bureaucratic and financing and engineering problems.

It is in fact a highly crunchy story which once you swallow the moon-obsessed multi-talented main character is completely plausible.

And Delos Harriman is impossible not to love. (The difference between him and our very own Elon Musk is that Delos is a salesman possessed of the common touch, which Elon seems to be lacking. He does what he can with what he has.)

The end sequences, where he remembers seeing Haley’s comet as a kid and wanting to touch it, I wonder if those were autobiographical?

Also, having finished the story, I’m struck by the fact that it is far more plausible — and immensely more American — than the way we actually got to the moon. Going tot he moon via government program and purloined German scientists was always an improbable plot twist, one that seems to be a result of the deformations induced on our system by FDR. In fact, I find it wholly implausible, and DD Harriman by far the better way of getting to the moon, and most likely one.

No wonder Heinlein’s version lead to sustained space exploration and ours didn’t. (Though maybe we’ll fix that.)

And here let’s hold a moment of admiration for Heinlein’s naming. Delos, of course, a worth descendant of Dedalus, a son whose wings — this time — didn’t get singed by the sun (or perhaps did, considering the ending.) And he did in fact harry man onto space exploration. We should all be possessed of the deep symbolism and ability of a Heinlein.

Speaking of which, that ending is one of two Heinlein endings that always has me in tears, no matter how often I read it.

It is sad, of course, but also wonderful because he got what he wanted.

I think that is all I have to say about The Man Who Sold The Moon, other than, you should definitely go an read it.

Oh a passing funny. I swear the author of the Portuguese translation cover put in a Heinlein look alike. Also, the woman in the background is pure artist’s imagination. This is one of the few Heinleins in which there isn’t really a love interest (unless it’s the moon.) Delos’s relationship with his wife hardly matters except as a complication.

Next up by Argonauta listing should be this:

The title in English is From What Far Star, and there are used copies available. Je suis desole, but I’m not buying it (Cheapest I’ve seen is $19.) If one of you has it or wishes to get it for me, that’s fine, though I highly dislike paper books at this point in life. (Eyes, mostly. E-ink is easier.)

However, before we do that, we’re going to take a circle-back and do David Starr, Space Ranger, by Isaac Asimov. (Thank you to Uncle Lar who insisted on sending me a copy.)

This is the Portuguese title and cover:

(Yes, Paul French is Isaac Asimov. No, I’ve never read the book, so it will be interesting. No, I have no idea why it was called Martian Poison in Portuguese.)

So, that’s next week.

Until then!

Okay, I’m going to need all of you to do me a favor, okay?

Learn when you’re being spun, and stop spinning.

This is absolutely essential if you’re going to survive this presidency. Oh, not because Trump is doing it — though he’s gotten better at doing spinning of his own — but because it’s all the left has done, and boy do they do it 24/7.

I first realized this is not just the left, but it’s in everything, when I wrote the article yesterday about for Mad Genius Club about owning ebooks. (You do, btw. But unless I put it in my own store (working on it) no other vendor is going to let you claim ownership. They can’t.

Before you take offense, the reason they can’t is not you gentle reader. The big guys are probably not terribly afraid of Americans setting up shop to sell infinite copies of the one book you bought. I mean, look, not race but culture. Certain cultures don’t GET copyright or IP at all (Portuguese were still iffy in the 70s) and these shops are global. Note I’m not being mean, almost every instance of “steal book, set up store selling it” is based abroad. And moves around.

Granted the ebook stores aren’t very good at security measures. But they keep trying and mostly annoying everyone.

The point is, though, that if I announce a new book, half a dozen people will tell me I need to go wide because they don’t buy from Amazon, because Amazon evil bad reached into kindle and took out book someone had bought.

It wasn’t till I wrote that post that I realized the two books to which this happened — Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 couldn’t be a coincidence. I would bet you money the person who complained the books were taken was the same or an employee of the one who put it up without having the rights, thereby setting up the situation.

The point is, any other store would have done the same. BUT this brilliant bit of spin attaches to Amazon only.

In fact in the comments someone (Becky J, I think?) said that Barnes and Noble does a rights grab in their contract, in which case I can’t go with them anyway. But do you hear anyone say “All stores” or — as I say — “Amazon is bad but the others are worse?”

Nope, because THAT WAS A BRILLIANT BIT OF SPIN.

In the same way, if you’re still spinning over Epstein don’t be. Look, it was OBVIOUSLY a planted spin because they knew Tulsi Gabbard was about to lower the boom on the Obamanation.

It came out of nowhere. It was based on a big lie: that Bongino and Patel had threatened to quit if Bondi wasn’t fired. Etc.

It was actually a brilliant piece of foofahrah to get the right going. It tapped into our deep distaste for sexual shenanigans (We’re not the prudes the left claims, but anything with minors is RIGHT OUT) and also in our frustration with Bondi’s first approach to the matter.

(And on that, like on the Amazon thing, yep, I’m sure she was set up. By someone in her office. Not a coincidence the big flop with influencers happened at the same time as a big event calling reporters to the white house. It was stupid of her, and I’m sure Trump read her the riot act. BUT if he replaced it, whoever he could get confirmed would be worse. Bet you. The left already have that warmed up.)

But for the love of little apples: It was almost entirely a twitter-storm. All the extremely online people were going nuts. No one else cared.

It’s not that people don’t care about pedophiles and stopping them. They — we — do. It’s that Epstein is dead. While it would be great to see justice on that front, I bet you whoever he supplied has been plentifully supplied from the accompanied minors over auto-pen’s open border.

Sorry, but the people know that to topple the admnistration is to invite the return of open borders and child trafficking on a grand scale.

And note the left that was righteously demanding Epstein papers releases never cared about that. Or about the Epstein files WHEN THEY WERE IN THEIR CONTROL.

All attempts by them at bringing up the subject should be met with “Where were you the last 5 years, dude?” And that should be the end of that.

Mind you, “that” seems to have ended anyway. Because without USAid money none of this is catching fire outside the net.

In the middle of the sad, sad trombone solo, let’s hold a minute of silence for the WSJ who dirtied themselves beyond repair and might — even with an Obama judge on the case — end up bleeding money to publish the whole stupid birthday card bs. A “reveal” so profoundly stupid that if it were absolutely true would still mean nothing except “Trump asked his secretary, an English Major, to write some profound sounding drivel for the birthday of a guy who, back in 2003 wasn’t know to be anything illegal. Or anything, besides a rich playboy financier who frequented Florida resorts. Oooooh Stop the presses. Super-scary. And to make it worse, they did this just before the Gabbard bomb went off, meaning they didn’t even get to spin the very stupid and unaware.

(And guys if that’s the best they have? Trump once more shocks me by being cleaner than could be hoped for.)

Look, as we go forward, Trump seems intent on kicking over a lot of fire ant hills. When he does — or likely just before, because they have spies in the admin offices — they are going to spin like bright colorful tops.

Your job is to stop the spin.

Their techniques involve finding something the right cares for and using that to stir up outrage.

Say for instance, any day now “prices on food are still going up”.

At which point your job is to not get enraged but think “Yes, but much slower. Also, weren’t you calling me a treatler because I wanted affordable eggs?” And then ask them that. Make them justify their actions. Get inside their spin and stop it.

They also use mostly bot/foreign foreign-bot accounts on twitter. Anyone worth their salt should check the date the loudest screamers were created as accounts, and look at their page.

It’s stupid that people who are supposedly influencers don’t and continuously fall for these tricks and spin.

So, it’s up to us to lead the way.

When some big foofarah comes out of nowhere, stop, drop and think. Who is pushing this and why? Is it entirely too cutesy? — like the books Amazon took back — What are they trying to hide/distract from? Who benefits? And what did the screamers do about whatever they’re screaming about when they had the chance?

Oh, yeah, another one: Okay, so it’s a problem. Is it the biggest problem? And why is it so d*mn urgent this time.

Trump 47 learned what Trump 45 didn’t know. He’s become massively more based and able to fight back.

It’s time for us to do the same.

Know when you’re being spun. And stop it.

Canadian Non-Healthcare a Guest Post By the Balloonatic

A recent medical issue in my family brought the problems with Canadian healthcare to my attention again. My younger brother let us know in April that his wife had an appointment with a cardiologist. She has been having issues for years because one of her valves is opening the wrong way so blood going through is moving away from her heart instead of to her heart. On a positive note, she is now scheduled for open heart surgery at the end of June, which makes it seem that the Canadian healthcare system is moving quickly to take care of her – until you find out that she had to wait over 18 months to see that cardiologist. A quick phone call to one of my local cardiology clinics and their average wait time is 4 to 6 weeks.

This isn’t my first personal experience with how broken socialized healthcare is in Canada. This wasn’t something I noticed when I was younger. My only health issue was with migraines and I had no trouble getting into the doctor who did his best to try various alternative treatments, but there weren’t many of those available in the early 80s and I ended up falling into the trap of pain management with codeine causing an addiction with a feedback loop where my body started to produce more migraines to get more codeine. When I finally was able to break out of the cycle by finally quitting cold turkey, I was able to get the help I needed – counseling and trips to the emergency room for pain relief until I could find other ways to manage the pain.

It wasn’t until I came back to Canada in the mid 90s after an absence of almost 4 years while I studied in Australia that the problems of government run healthcare first caught my eye. While in Australia, I made my living as a street performer making balloon animals (yes, that’s where the nickname came from!). This was a great way to earn a good amount of money in a more limited time frame so I kept this up while finishing my BA in Alberta. I worked through various entertainment agencies, managed to get myself an annual gig at a big festival which covered a good portion of my living expenses for the year, and then busked at a local farmer’s market.

It was at the farmer’s market where I made friends with “Mary”, one of the market’s employees. Mary was born with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. She could only walk with the assistance of two canes/braces on her arms. We got to talking once and she let me know that the biggest issue was with her hips, where the joints had deteriorated. She had gone to several specialists and they let her know that the only option to help her would be to have both of her hips replaced. This doesn’t seem like a big deal sitting in my room in Ohio – hip replacements are fairly common. For Mary, though, this decision wasn’t just between her and her doctor or her insurance. It was up to the healthcare bureaucrats to decide when someone is allowed to have hip surgery. And their decision was that she didn’t qualify because she was too young. If she got hip surgery now, in her mid 20s/early 30s why she would need to have it done again in 30 years. So, better for her to wait until she’s older when she would only need to get it done once. I must say, that was a real eye-opener for me and brought up the problems of healthcare by committee when the focus is on saving taxpayers money and limiting healthcare rather than on putting the focus on treating and healing people.

This came home to me again several years later. In 1999 I was living in Saskatchewan, doing an internship program when I got sick – more sick than I had ever been in my life. I was aching all over, had severe chills and zero energy. It was all I could do to pull a pre-heated meal out of the freezer and microwave it. I finally called someone to take me to the hospital when I started having trouble breathing and began hyperventilating in panic and got admitted to the hospital. I recently found paperwork on this when I was cleaning up my attic and going through my visa applications to find that the doctors had admitted me for panic attacks. I spent a week in the hospital, hooked up to an IV while they had me blow into a plastic tube with a ping pong ball, and I couldn’t make the ball move up. That was the sum of their treatment. Finally, in frustration and desperation, I booked myself out of the hospital. My adopted grandmother sent me a plane ticket to come back to stay with her and her husband. I was so weak when the plane landed that I had to ask for help to depart, and they took me out in a wheelchair. My grandmother later said that she looked at me in the arrivals section of the airport and thought I was going to die. I was lucky, though – I had a great family doctor in Edmonton who saw me right away, got me in for x-rays and discovered that I had had a version of the flu that lead to a type of pneumonia which was viral rather than bacterial. She prescribed the right medications and while it took months, I did recover. This taught me that I couldn’t depend on a medical system or doctors to help me when I need it – I had to push for my own care and proper treatment, because the public system doesn’t want to make the effort to do more than the absolute minimum.

There are many more examples I could provide – my uncle, a quadruple bypass survivor ended up in the emergency department of a hospital again in the 2020s with heart problems. He went in on a Friday and didn’t get to see a cardiologist until the following Monday because the only cardiologist available at the hospital in a town of over 166000 people was on holidays and they had to fly one in from the nations capital to see him. My 87 year old father experienced a similar issue last year, when he went into emergency because he was light-headed and dizzy. He went in at night and it took 8 hours for him to see a doctor because they didn’t have any actual doctors in the emergency department at night – he spent that whole time sitting in the waiting room. At least he is more fortunate than one of his old buddies from work who developed cancer and spent the last three months of his life lying in a hospital room with 12 other men. Or the father of one of my childhood friends who also developed cancer and could not get proper pain management treatment so he chose to use the MAID program instead – which is a whole other blog post. Canada: where they would rather kill you than heal you.

The horror stories abound and are never ending. When I go in for my next annual check up and see my doctor, I will thank him once again for being available even at short notice when my son or I need to see him and for the way he does push me to get preventative care and go for tests to make sure that any health care issues are taken care of and not left to grow worse from lack of care. While yes, I may sometimes have bills that seem much too high (Thanks again, Obama!), I will take those bills over the alternative of a “free” system paid by higher taxes where the focus is on saving money over saving lives.

*ANNOUNCEMENT: I forgot to put this in yesterday evening’s post: If you have a blog and occasionally do reviews, or if you review for a professional venue, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com and I’ll send you the link to download the e-arc. Needless to say no obligation of a review. Also, for the record, soliciting reviews and help promoting, because frankly I suck at the marketing thing.)

My finally getting the books up for pre-order yesterday is not an isolated event in terms of writers who have been silent or nearly so suddenly having new properties. Mostly authors to the right of Lenin, mind.

I’ll confess this makes me a little uncomfortable. It brings to mind all my lefty colleagues in the early oughts claiming they couldn’t write, because they were so busy purging and tearing out their hair over the horrible reich wing dictatorship of…. W.

Yes, I’m fairly sure they are engaged in similar antics now over Trump. I don’t know for a fact, because I haven’t been part of their circles and email lists since oh 2015. I’ll be honest, I still belong to a few of their groups — those that haven’t imploded — under the principle that I lurk and am very quiet, so they probably don’t remember I’m there. The other side of this is that I don’t remember I’m there. I mean, guys, why should I, precisely? I can watch their histrionics in real time on twitter and facebook. And… I don’t. I stumble on them periodically and go “Oh, no. Not that again.” Because the principal emotion evoked through all this is “It’s all so tiresome.”

Which I think is more to the point than our purging and tearing out our hair over losing an election. No. The last four — arguably twelve — years have been silence-inducing for completely different reasons.

And it took me a while to figure out why, and a while longer to conceptualize it, but I think I should share the thoughts — still half formed — in my head as I grapple with this, because I think a lot of you who are not writers might be facing the same issue… with modifications.

The other day, in a small(ish) discord group I belong to, a friend mentioned something about the newest Strange New Worlds having a character fall on knees and pray and how unimaginable this would have been 5 years ago. She meant it as a “taking the temperature of the culture” thing. Which is correct, but it’s more than that. Put a pin in it; we’ll come back.

Her mentioning this made me realize how profoundly I’ve — personally — changed in 5 years. I haven’t become someone else. All the principal impulses were there five years ago. But the unthinkable happened, and I tumbled with it. And like rocks in a tumbler, it changed me in significant ways, making things obvious that were occluded and in a way making me possibly harder and smoother.

And what five years it has been. Guys, if in 2018 you’d told me that — I’m sorry, I still think this was the reason — as a ploy to make us all dependent on government and scared and tank the economy to “win” the 2020 election, the democrats would lock the entire country down for a bad flu and run a scam on how this was the next black plague that would cause Europe to also lock down and be terrified? I’d have told you that while weed was legal in Colorado, you should definitely put the bong down and go breathe some fresh air.

And if you’d told me that after all this they would still need to fraud the election at the last minute, visibly, in front of G-d and everybody? I’d have been hitting that speed dial for the men in white coats which no longer exist in our society.

And yet… And yet it happened. And yet, we were locked down, and people were terrified, despite the fact that numbers like the Diamond Princess were out and clearly demonstrated this wasn’t even an existential threat for the over 80 set, unless truly horrific treatment protocols were engaged. (And they were. Most of that group died of respirator setting.)

Because it was unthinkable, (both in here and in Europe, TBH) and yet it happened and kept happening, it broke things in our brains. And the fracture lines are still shaking up inside each of us, and in society as well.

On that pin: yes, a lot of people — self included — have become more religious. Note, I am still me. I think I have more atheist friends than religious friends. And I don’t engage in battles, anyway. Particularly not in what I call “beating over the head with Bible verses.” If they don’t believe, that will just make them puzzled or upset. I know, because my own particular branch of Christianity is often beaten over the head with Bible verses by people who think they’re “owning” us, while we have our own interpretations of those verses, so at best our reply is “First of all, rude.”

Which is what argumentum ad Bibliorum (Yes, that is in fact son of bitch Latin) is at the best of times.

But my tolerance for religion in my entertainment has gone up. Oh, you can still drive me bonkers with the average “Christian novel” because the characters stopping every fifty pages to pray, or wondering if G-d wants them to kill the bad guy feels phony and tacked on. However, a character, in an extremity of feeling falling to knees and praying? Yeah, I can see that. 2020, man. 2020.

To be fair, I always had a high tolerance for religious characters, whatever their religion, even if it was a fictional one. Sincerely religious people exist and their beliefs is part of how they process events. It’s just that few people write them/wrote them convincingly.

Will that change? I don’t know. I would suspect so, from internal changes and also how I see people around me changing.

But the change is not all, or even primarily religious. Though it is ideological, personality, enormous.

First there is the sudden doubt of everything experts say, but more importantly everything they’ve said over the last oh 100 years.

While this is good — “scientific government” has been a disaster for the world at large and filled over a hundred million graves — it is also bad, because some things are actually true, established, and can be scientifically proven (Say the germ theory of disease) but now face a much bigger cliff to convince people.

There is also high skepticism of institutions and elected — and even more non-elected — leaders. Look, you’re not going to get me to admit there is a downside here. I’m still a libertarian. An OWL (Older, Wiser Libertarian) sure, but still a libertarian (And I miss L. Neil Smith something fierce.)

Our institutions by an large have been so corrupted by Marxists and Marxism-light that we really need to topple them and replace them. The problem is that second. We really need to make with the replacing, because we still need their functions to work. Take higher education — please? I don’t want it — it desperately needs a complete overall, not in style but in substance. Yes, yes, the founding fathers, in a society that moved by ox cart, thought well of universities which were logical successors of monastic learning.

But in the 21st century? 99% or more of the learning done at universities could and arguably should be accomplished either long distance or by formal apprenticeships, with perhaps a year (tops) in localized learning and communal discussion. TOPS.

Replacing that properly (not just changing the ideological sign which will accomplish nothing) will require breaking our heads out of the mold of centuries. It might be achievable now, after the shocks of the last few years, but it will still take time and (arguably) hurt like a mother.

In the meantime, in upper education as well as everything else, frankly, everything is going to be adrift.

And each country in its own way is clinging like mad to its fundamentals. In the US that’s fairly decent but — looks sideways at Europe — guys, you know what Europe gets up to when we’re not smacking it on the nose…

The point being, though, everything is tumbling. Or to quote the great Leonard Cohen:

Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won’t be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold and it has overturned the order of the soul

In the middle of this, those of us who write feel sucker punched, unable to hold onto a coherent vision of society long enough to actually write books.

Look, until last year I felt iffy about the shifter books because they take place in a diner and I didn’t know how to deal with the lockdowns. I still don’t, except mentioning them in the rearview mirror, honestly. And how do I deal with the fact that all night open diners now seem to be a thing of the past everywhere? (Something I will never forgive the bastards who locked us down for. There was nothing like coffee at two am in an urban greasy spoon (okay, fine, Pete’s Kitchen on Colfax) to plot and clear one’s head.) I still don’t know!

But I’d guess, because outside the books I still feel a bit punch drunk, that the rest of you are going through a version of this, that this is universal and contributing to strange events with strange outcomes that keep the feeling of everything tumbling going.

In a way we’re like someone married for 50 years who is suddenly served divorce papers and then finds their spouse has had two other relationships going the whole time. Finding out what was true, what was a lie, and reestablishing our sense of self is difficult and mind-breaking.

And yet, here we are.

I’m glad I’m writing again. For those still stuck, let me advise you might have to force it in the beginning — I did stating around February last year — and find a support group to cheer you on (thank you to the terrible triplets of twitter — all different ages and looks — who kept me going. And their auxiliary corps like Fuzzy.) And if you can, if your writing field allows it, go as strange and far flung as you can. Another world, for choice.

If you’re not a writer, my advice is what I said before, but still useful.

1- Be kind to yourself. I know it’s five years, but five years is not too long to get used to the impossible happening. Give yourself grace. Give yourself time. Do something for yourself at least once a week. Carve some place and time to breathe and relax if you can. And forgive yourself for stumbles. You’re punch drunk in a world of punch drunks. Slips will happen.

2- Start figuring out how to replace compromised institutions, processes, ways of doing things. I don’t know your field, so I can’t tell you what needs changing. But I seriously encourage you to approach it from a “Do we even need the way this has been done for centuries? What if I turn it on its head?” Yes, some of the things are still needed/valid. But the processes have all changed. So examine each of the precursors first.

That’s it. Most of all, truly, give yourself grace.

No, you shouldn’t have known how to cope when the world broke. No one expected the world to break.

Now that it has, glue yourself together as you best can, and keep going.

Secure your oxygen mask before assisting those near you.

For those of you who aren’t old Baen fans (or fans of Baen for a long time) I suppose I should explain what e-arcs are.

So in the days when the mammoths roamed the Earth — 30 years ago or so — the main mode of publicizing an upcoming work was the ARC, aka the Advanced Reading copy. whenever a publishing house had a hot — or lukewarm, or cold. The difference was in the number of ARCs printed — book to push, they would print a bunch of these.

They were distinguished by having cardboard covers with no images, just the Title, author’s name and Advanced Reading Copy, not for resale. (I need to write about the resale, and why giving resale rights in ebooks is the road to ruination. Even if we do, by default, because how not? I think I’ll do that for MGC on Wednesday.) The pages inside were an unnatural white.

This is why experienced indies print their books in cream paper, btw. The bright white pages are off putting, unless it is non-fiction for some reason.

Anyway, these copies were dispatched to any reviewers you thought might put in a good word, friends of the author who might tell their fanbase about it, and in desperation just complete strangers whose address you happened to have.

Since I was in SFWA at the time, and had put my address on it, I’d get a few of these a month, most of them not even vaguely interesting. Or worse, interesting, but what to do with them after you read them and bought the book?

I might or might not have done walk-bys of those free-book bookshelves outside the local bookstores, put them in little libraries, etc. I have never stuck them in random cars with their windows down. They were not zucchini after all.

Anyway, I THINK Baen started electronic ARCs, because they were the first house to go into ebooks full force. (I read Baen ebooks on a used electronic planner I bought at the thrift store. Well, I had better eyes back then. Needed them, as the screen was sickly green.)

Anyway, I don’t remember when Jim had the brain storm of selling the e-arcs. He sold you the manuscript as the writer sent it in, typos and scenes that weren’t quite right and all. But it came out months before the book, and gave the people who bought them bragging rights.

I remember a Liberty con in which John Ringo reminisced about Jim Baen’s joy at how well they sold “Oh, Johnny, Johnny, it’s like watching the sheep shear themselves.” (If you don’t hear that in John’s voice it’s not my fault. It was very funny.)

Anyway, I’m not really aiming to sell them, but I’ve been looking for things to give my substack subscribers: see links at the top on the right. Because I got caught in this book and my health went weird and I kept forgetting to post.

Yesterday I posted the link to download e-arcs of No Man’s Land, Volume 1. They are actually pretty finished, save for some awkward wording and my usual fun with typos.

Why volume 1, you ask? Well, because each of three volumes is about 300 pages, printed. There’s no way I could print this as a single book, unless I set it in a type even zoomers will have problems reading.

So I am putting it out in three volumes, two weeks apart. Today I set up the pre-order for volume one. It comes out September 10. And then volume 2 and three each two weeks after the first.

Meanwhile the first volume is out in earc, and the second comes out in two weeks, the other two weeks after.

After that, Witch’s daughter e-arc should be ready to go. (I’m going to restart serializing it.) It tells you how well — not — my brain was working that I was very upset because I was serializing at substack but didn’t realize that they didn’t keep access to the archives easily, and there was no way for the to set up a unified page of what went before.

Of course the solution to that, which I’ll implement tomorrow, is to have a secret page here, and put the code to sign on to that page over in substack. (Derp, right?)

The other thing hopefully coming soon ((ish) It needs to be done this week but I owe younger son detailed outlines for the series we’re collaborating in, so that will eat some large portion of tomorrow, and there’s still doctor appointments this week) is that I’ll set up a shop with shopify so I can sell my own books both print and ebook, and other merch, book and not book related. (Look, I want to do calendars. And planners. And….)

Eventually that shop will “Stock” earcs, but today is not that day. Mind you, I’m not allergic to money, so if one or more of you wants to pay me 6.99 (it will be 4.99 on amazon) for getting the book early, I’ll be more than happy to sell it to you, and the sequel in 2 weeks and the next 2 weeks after that. So, the third one will be out well before the first officially comes out.

If you desperately need the e-arc, send me 6.99 via paypal. And shoot me an email to bookpimping at outlook dot com (because my hotmail eats emails) so I know where to send it. (Turns out paypal won’t let me see it easily, and what I see doesn’t always work.)

And if you don’t… well, know it’s coming in September. (I didn’t quite make the August deadline. I probably could force it but don’t want to give my copyeditor a headache.)

So, yay, things are happening again. Go over to Amazon and poke around and read the blurb! (And yes, I’m releasing wide, and hopefully selling in my own store as well.)

I’ve spent the weekend (and honestly the end of last week) under a rock with the manuscript for NML (the earc for volume 1 is out, btw. Post about this later.) so I’m not writing about Tulsi’s revelations on Friday.

For a recap here. And if you’re X-less, here.

I read them again this morning, and one thing jumps out at me: the use of the word “Treason”. As Charlie Martin has explained on X this has a very specific meaning in US constitutional terms: It means cooperating (Aiding and abetting) an enemy at open (shooting) war with the US.

Is Tulsi using the word loosely? Did none of her advisors point out the meaning? Or is she using it advisedly? What war were we involved in? Well…. Afghanistan. Eyes the ignominious retreat….

This stuff seems more solid than it’s been, though I’ll point out to Cynical Publius that at least for me the “Big Mike” thing was never a serious conspiracy. I don’t know if it was for anyone, but certainly not most people. (Unlike the French who are deadly serious about Mrs. Macron.) I think it was just our way of pushing back on Michelle Obama’s stunning beauty and style when in fact she was a “fairly decent looking” woman about my age. I’d like to think with her resources I’d look better. I’m probably wrong, but hey, I’d probably look about the same. Anyway selling her as the most stunning and well dressed woman ever was a serious attempt at gaslighting.

(Her sense of style reminds me of P. J. O’Rourke’s description of the sense of style of Russian oligarch wives: cover yourself in Elmer’s glue, then roll through the boutiques on Rodeo Drive.)

The “Big Mike” thing was our way of rattling the cage bars right back.

But the rest…. yeah.

Now, I’ve read Mike Walsh screaming that none of this matters unless there are indictments. I’m not sure he’s right.

Unless Tulsi really means that “treason” and has the receipts on that (in which case we’re in “hanged by the neck” territory, guys and … scary times ahead) it might be better, instead of arrests that while they aren’t will give the appearance of revenge, to expose Obama very thoroughly and make it so he can’t hold up his head in public anywhere.

For him, and those with him, that is literally a punishment worse than death.

But this post is to say: I’m taking the 48 hour BUSINESS DAY rule. Because none of this, right now, makes any sense in my head. I’ll wait till the contents under pressure settle.

However, I figured you guys needed some time to discuss it, and a place, and I’ll let you do that.

The one thing I’m already sure of is that all the people who idolized Obama need to go on their knees to Nixon’s grave and apologize.

Anyway, I’m going back to the day job (fiction, guys, fiction) and give you a chance to arggle bargle on this thread.

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

BY ROBERT J. HORTON, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Three Riders (Annotated): a pulp western omnibus

iktaPOP Media proudly presents three classic westerns by pulp author Robert J. Horton!

Rider o’ the Stars

When he was hired on to the Diamond H Ranch, the stranger gave his name as Dane. After seeing his skill with rope and gun folks started calling him “Lightning Dane”.

Was he a gunman? An outlaw? Why was he here? Nobody knew except Dane himself. And he wasn’t talking.

The Prairie Shrine

Annalee Bronson and her mother left everything behind when her father died, setting out to homestead in the prairielands of Montana. But being from the east, they simply don’t have the experience to cope with all the circumstances they find themselves caught up in.

Luckily, prairie poet and loafer Andy Sawtelle and mysterious gunman Silent Scott are more than willing to lend a helping hand.

The Man of the Desert

It starts with a stampede, and never lets up from there!

• This iktaPOP Media omnibus includes introductions by indie editor and author D. Jason Fleming putting the book into historical and genre context.

FROM L. DOUGLAS GARRETT: Remember How It Began (Remember The Trade Book 3)

Remember How It Began is the first volume in a pair of linked stories. It details the opening missions of the most complex operation The Project had ever attempted, how they did it and the price the agents paid along the way.

The Project had been in The Trade for five years, as mercenaries and spies fighting in the sideshows and forgotten theatres of the Cold War. Things changed over those years. Opponents changed. Circumstances changed. And the lives of the intelligence agents, the “Disposable People” of The Project, had changed.

Gary Keith had become an essential part of The Project. He was one of the linchpin men around whom The Project built teams of agents and operators. When a dirty job had to get done right, he got the call. The problem was, he was so good at being bad because he’d been David Cox: shameless, ruthless and entirely willing to be deadly and manipulative to get the job done.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Law of Magical Contagion

The capper to Siobhan Miller’s terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day was a dog, tied to the stop sign. She hates dogs. She’s terrified of dogs, and that was a big dog. Looking sad and lonely, tied to a stop sign. That was not okay. She was the only one around, so she took him home. Only to find that he wasn’t a dog, but one of the Good People, under a curse. And there were more of them.

And they were all after her. And all she had was the dog (who wasn’t a dog) to help keep her from being taken away from all she’s ever known. Because that dog? He and his twin sister are family that she didn’t know she had, and their appearance has upended everything she’s ever known about herself. Including that she was human to begin with. She has a lot of questions.

Starting with curses, and how and why they sometimes spread.

FROM MACKEY CHANDLER: Fair Trade: An Alien Invasion Story

Most of my writing is in a series people seem to enjoy but there is a constant small crowd who say: I’d really like your take on an alien invasion story. Well this is for them. The bulk of the aliens come to Earth stories assume their vast superiority, sometimes invincibility. Sometimes they suddenly appear on the white house lawn dictating terms. I have yet to see one with them appearing at the Kremlin or Canberra which seems rather parochial. Other times they are so advanced they quarantine the Earth or Solar System without discussion because we are such barbarian slime-balls. They may alternately be impossible to talk to and attack without mercy. All these assume they come with a plan and the means to carry it out. Our own age of exploration showed things happen much less orderly. Islands and natives were happened upon while seeking someplace else or even because a storm or miscalculation left the ship lost. In that case there is no plan but survival with the assets at hand. As with any game remember that turnabout is fair play.

FROM ROBERT A. HOYT: Almost Curable

Almost Curable’s fourteen short stories take you on a journey to equal few others. There are fantasies, like a long-dormant guardian waking to save a lost boy; or a luckless medieval princess finding her destiny; or even an angel helping a tech nerd fight off the devil, and then there are nightmares, from a steampunk adventure in which the characters have to face a literal dragon, and where dark elf ancestry can brand you for life. Or a land of living sugar slowly losing its fight with evil.
There are cautionary tales, like the one of the fully automated bio grocery store, or the one about AI watching your children.
And then then there are stories we don’t know what to do with — and doubt you will either — such as the one about the zombie dinosaur who is too cute to put down.
Enjoy a journey of adventure and wonder through these amazing stories.

FROM MARY CATELLI: Enchantments And Dragons

A wizard must produce justice enough to satisfy a dragon. A young man tries to rob a tiger’s lair. An enchantress tries to keep a court safe while they ignore the perils of misusing her magic. A lady finds that court intrigues can spread even to the countryside. And more tales. Includes “Over the Sea To Me,” “Dragonfire and Time”, “The Maze, the Manor, and the Unicorn”, “The White Menagerie”, “The Dragon’s Cottage,” “Jewel of the Tiger,” and “The Sword Breaks.”

FROM BLAKE SMITH: Test of Valor

Alain de Kerauille wants to be a knight more than anything in the world, to win as many jousting tournaments as he can, become wealthy and famous, and gain the hand of the fair lady Emma. As a squire in a noble household, he’s well on his way to success, and when he’s chosen to joust in a celebratory tournament, all of his dreams seem within his grasp. Until his rivalry with a fellow squire reaches the boiling point, threatening to destroy everything Alain has worked for and send his future crashing down around him.

FROM KAREN MYERS: Mistress of Animals: A Lost Wizard’s Tale

Book 2 of The Chained Adept.

AN ERRANT CHILD WITH DISASTROUS POWERS AND NO ONE TO STAND IN HER WAY.

Penrys, the wizard with a chain and an unknown past, is drafted to find out what has happened to an entire clan of the nomadic Zannib. Nothing but their empty tents remain, abandoned on the autumn steppe with their herds.

This wasn’t a detour she’d planned on making, but there’s little choice. Winter is coming, and hundreds are missing.

The locals don’t trust her, but that’s nothing new. The question is, can she trust herself, when she discovers what her life might have been? Assuming, of course, that the price of so many dead was worth paying for it.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: City of Blinding Light

The Columbian Exposition has transformed Chicago into a vision of the bright shining future. However, the electric lights that turn night to day bring no joy to Kitty Hawthorne, and not just because they are the work of her employer’s chief rival. Now Edison wants her to abandon her investigation of Tesla’s alternating current system and look into a mysterious newcomer. Who is Samuel Gillian, who devises calculating machinery as easily as he builds flying machines?

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Noah’s Boy (The Shifter Series Book 3)

Transform into a shape-shifting dragon? Complicated. Run a successful diner? Even harder. Fall in love? Now that’s really testing Tom Ormson’s self-control.

Between managing a temperamental new fryer and his budding romance with fellow shifter Kyrie Smith, Tom’s plate is already full. But when a vengeful sabre-tooth tiger stalks into town and an ancient dragon starts playing matchmaker, his carefully balanced life threatens to spiral out of control. Add in a string of mysterious murders at the local amusement park, and a lovestruck ex-triad dragon with country music aspirations, and Tom’s having the week from hell—literally.

Now Kyrie’s been kidnapped, and Tom must race against time to save her while keeping his inner dragon in check. Because eating the bad guys? Definitely bad for business.

Welcome to Noah, Colorado, where the supernatural meets the everyday, and young love comes with teeth, claws, and the occasional bout of spontaneous combustion.

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: Zany

THE END OF THE BATTY BLOG FUNDRAISER 2025