Fun fact: when I was little I thought going over Niagara Falls in a barrel was something people did at least once in a lifetime, for the heck of it. Like, I was convinced there were long lines of people, rolling barrels, waiting their turn to go over the falls.

You see, it was featured in so many of the things I read or watched, like adventure books, or comics, or cartoons, that I thought it must be part of a normal life thing. You went to Disneyland (well, that was featured in the comics), you visited the Grand Canyon, and well, of course you went over the falls in a barrel.

This type of razor-sharp hold on reality is why I spent vast amounts of time in childhood learning to walk really silently, to balance on a narrow ledge or to get out of ropes tying my hands together. Not to mention watching out for quicksand, and having plans if I should fall into it. Because my choice of entertainment had told me those skills were absolutely vital if I hoped to survive.

I remembered this as I tried to find an image for today’s blog. Another fun fact: Midjourney clearly didn’t read the same books I did as a kid, because “barrel tumbling over Niagara Falls” was unobtanium and I’m tired and not in the mood to fight it.

Why did I remember that?

Well, partly because I’m feeling guilty about not having finished reading The Man Who Sold The Moon — but it has been truly odd and stupid out here with occasional episodes of not sleeping — and I was thinking of stories of that period. A lot of it written by Clifford Simak.

And today, in the car, on the way to an appointment, when there was absolutely no way to write anything down, I thought of the opening to a Clifford-Simak like story, where the journalist comes in to the newspaper to finish a piece he’s been working on, and the robots are finishing cleaning up, the automated AI coffee machine is yelling because it ran out of grounds, and a spaceship is visible through the plate glass window taking off, in the distance.

Maybe some day I’ll write it, except that as of yet there is no story, just the man (?) going into the office in the early morning and dealing with what’s for him a completely normal bog standard start of the day, but to us is amazing and fantastical. Of course, when a story presents that way, usually starting to write it tells me where it’s going and what the story is. Don’t try this at home. if I’d done this as a beginning writer, I’d have pages and pages in which he fixed the coffee maker, drank the coffee, finished his article, went out for lunch– It’s just at this time in my life, I’ve written so many stories my subconscious only spits out the beginning when it is ready to tell ME the story. — brrr. Just got the cold suspicion that thing is a novel. So I’m going to let it lie until I have at least a week or two to run it from beginning to end.

Anyway, because I was in the car, and didn’t have the means of writing the story, it saved me from the stupid of starting it. (They lie in wait these novels. Worse than the dreaded Portuguese spider-fish under the sand on a sunny beach.) Instead I started thinking about how charming those Simak stories were, in a world that was very much like mid century America, only with sentient, fully automated houses that looked after their people by making them food and flying them around and stuff, or diners run by AI (though he didn’t use that term) who had the personality of motherly, gossipy middle aged women. I thought of his stories in which the newsroom was weirdly automated — not in the way you’d expect — or there were newsfeeds from the stars, or whatever, but they were still banging out the stories on typewriters.

And of course, news were produced, sold, consumed via newspapers.

Of course, the man was a newspaper man. And nothing against him for that, but also he was capable of working out chains of event and consequence. I know that, because I love his novels. But apparently not capable of working out that the kind of tech that gave you seemed-sentient robotic diners would also affect a whole lot of other things. A tech level where the house flew would probably have affected…. well, everything. Semi-sentient houses that fly would have blown up the mid-20th-century society and ethos all to heck and back.

Only of course, people don’t think like that. And even if they did, it would be hard to sell a story like that, because present-day-reader wouldn’t have an in. Meaning they couldn’t mentally move into the story and live there long enough to bond with the people and feel the emotions.

But you know, some things do remain the same. It’s just most classical science fiction assumed a lot more things would stay stable in the change of tech.

And …. we still do.

Recently I read (and linked at instapundit, though of course I can’t find it now) an article where the author was talking about how we’re hitting a massive changeover post in which all our institutions of knowledge are failing.

Our very own Sargent Mom did a post about our educational institutions passing away.

But the thing is…. it’s not just them. It’s everything.

We didn’t get the future of starships and flying houses. (Yet. I’m still holding out for starships and colonizing other planets. I’ll pass on flying houses.)

What we got instead seemed small and innocuous. it was the the ability to process vast amounts of data, so distributed that everyone has a mid-century computer in his pocket, and on his desk, pretty much. And these computers give us the ability to talk to anyone around the world. Oh, and to publish our own news and editorials to be read by thousands or millions. And … upend the world.

We started tumbling in the nineties with ecommerce and the internet, and Amazon and and and and–

And we haven’t stopped. Yes, it is completely making over our knowledge institutions, and the way we learn and communicate and–

A lot of things are passing away, some of which we need and will be surprised as they pass and might or might not have a replacement.

The thing is, when the barrel is going over the Falls, it’s difficult to tell what’s going to tumble, and what will move, and what will get broken. Or what will be functional in a weird way when we stop tumbling.

There is no way to know it.

My younger duct tape brother is telling me the responsible adults around him — well, I didn’t talk to the responsible adults around me, okay? — told him going over the Falls would kill him, even in a barrel.

Fortunately societies aren’t just fragile humans, and the barrel is a metaphor. As are the Falls.

The tumbling isn’t though.

There’s a good chance our society will be alive at the end of it — I’m not putting hands in the fire for Europe and I know other societies will break, badly — and functional. But I suspect we wouldn’t fully make sense of it if we were dropped in the middle of it today.

Fortunately, we’ll get there one day at a time, which makes it easier.

Just…. watch out for unstable floorboards (they make noise) and quick sand, and keep moving, stay flexible. I think it’s okay if you make some noise, but do learn out to get out of binds that you find yourself in.

Or in other words, remember everything is going to tumble and change. Big or small, everything is going to change. Everything.

We’re in the barrel. We’re tumbling.

Brace. Stay positive, stay alert, stay ready to shift and survive.

…. Be ready to take the weight when things come crashing down, because a lot of things will. Oh, not — hopefully — civilization, the monetary system, or technology. No. but the institutions, the certifications, the way things are done. The things human live by.

Remember that any of that could go away, and keep an eye on it.

Be nimble enough to see the next thing, to build the next thing. To create the future.

Stay ready. Keep going. If you fall, pick yourself up. If your buddy falls, pick him up.

And keep moving.

There is a strange theory upheld by a subset of the nuttubers that time stopped in 1999, just before new year’s and everything since then has been a vivid dream.

Look, it’s not even the weirdest theory in that corner of youtube. And in my defense, I only go to youtube when I’m either trying to research something very specific and can’t find it written out, or when I’m trying to not work because I’m too tired/sick and will screw up whatever it is I’m supposed to be working on. In that state of altered…. alteredness, I’ll end up in a loop where I trip from one thing to another.

And that’s why sometimes I end up listening to persuasive talks about how birds are a plot of the CIA, dinosaurs didn’t go existed, they got interstellar travel and have a multi solar system civilization. Or weirder stuff.

And to be fair the weird idea that we have all been vivid dreaming since 1999 is not the weirdest one even outside youtube. I mean, Phillip K. Dick thought that time had stopped in the first century AD, right after the crucifixion, and we were all living in something like a virtual chamber that disguised this fact. (If I understood him correctly, which I might not have.) I mean, there is a population increase, but that theory would sure explain the NPCs we run into, no?

But when the I heard that thing about time having stopped in 1999 I had a moment of complete and absolute longing.

Oh, to go back to that year. To wake up and find out none of these things had happened, all these years that have treated us so very badly. To find the friends who died and are dearly missed still alive; their future unwritten. To find out we still had all the friends that … you know the ones I say “I remember when he/she was sane.” To be able to write things without having everyone (other than the NYC publishing establishment, of course) dissect its sad little entrails to figure out what message I’m sending and what I’m “trying” to say. (In fiction? Usually nothing. I mean, there’s ideas I’m playing with, but they’re likely not what people are liable to think they are. Like the thing for this upcoming (almost done with the revision, I SWEAR) novel is not “fun with sex roles” it’s “clash of cultures with hard and fast framing that can’t be changed.” If I have a message I want to get out? I write a blog post.) And people won’t run around with their heads on fire saying vicious things about me. Or if they do, they’ll have to do it in person, which takes longer.

Oh, I’m not going to lie to you, and I’m not stupid. Crazy at times, but not stupid. I know the attraction of this erasing of a quarter century includes the fact I’d be under forty and have a lot more energy and ability to do things. And if I remembered a few things I’ve found (like, altitude bad) the next twenty years could have been a lot more productive.

But mostly it was this feeling I’d like to go back to when the world was saner.

but it was that thought of “people wouldn’t say vicious things behind my back about offenses I committed only in their heads” that called me back to sanity.

Yes, they did. And on top of that, they played a game of telephone while doing it. And not only could you get yourself hard cancelled for things that you couldn’t control (because you didn’t know you weren’t supposed to step on THAT square) but it wasn’t public, so people assumed that you were no longer being published because you either didn’t sell, or you had done something heinous. And the heinous things were assumed to be terrible and other people would cancel you without even knowing what it was, just knowing you weren’t in favor. And you couldn’t convince anyone at large that it was going on. People would think you were crazy.

But it went beyond that. You know how I said I miss all the friends I had (so many) of whom I say “I remember when he/she was sane.”

For some it’s true. Some cracked wide particularly these last 5 years. And before that, the seeds of insanity might have been there, but they were more or less functional and sane. (Some for values of sane as pertaining to writers.)

But for the vast majority, we tolerated them. Note it was we tolerated them. We were isolated. There was no blogsphere, no social media. We assumed that we were “extreme” and unacceptable and more importantly alone or in a tiny minority. So we used our inside voices all the time. We kept quiet.

They didn’t. They thought they were not just the majority but the only opinion among the smart people. In fact their opinions were what made them smart. They still think that, but it was more so back then.

So they would announce things apropos nothing, like “Ahah, Reagn sure is stupid.” And you put up with it, because, well, that was normal. That was acceptable behavior.

And provided we stayed quiet, and didn’t call out the Marxist assumptions in their stories, or meekly accept when they (for values of editors) demanded you incorporate Marxism in yours, you were in fact fine, and you could co-exist.

…. And were pushed steadily closer to the point of no return, while they had full coverage from the only press to do what they wanted.

So, even the lockdowns? They could have done them. And got away with them better. The difference is that they’d still be getting away with it, and the rest of us would be wondering just how bad that virus was, not seen through it.

Of course, the likelihood of their doing the lockdowns was low, because they weren’t desperate. It was desperation that forced them to become vicious.

Which means we’d be living in a fool’s paradise. But not really, because we had to “tolerate” them while they controlled everything and we couldn’t fight back because no one believed we were being oppressed and cancelled. We ourselves didn’t believe it. We kept lying to ourselves.

You know what? As badly as the last few years have treated us, as battered and bruised as we feel, and as much as we’d give to go back to our years of innocence, Heinlein was right: Always travel forward.

The past wasn’t as gold as it seems and as scary as the future looks, there’s hope in it.

Always forward. Let’s build a better future.

For the last two years I’ve been living under a rock, or rather under a novel. So it was only recently when Charles III (Seriously. What was Elizabeth thinking when she named him that, anyway?) put on a spectacular show of ignoring history and mouthing platitudes that I became aware of land acknowledgements.

Being me, and therefore naturally altruistic and giving, I thought I’d save all of you the trouble of crafting your won land acknowledgements by giving you a template.

First to explain where I come from on this — and why Charles III was a special kind of brainless pussy when he made that statement — I understand people like the Canadians and the left in America are very fond of “land acknowledgements” for the same reason they’re fond of “Native American” as a designation. Because they think for some bizarre reason that the Amerindian (no, not a perfect designation, but every human on Earth gets called by the name their neighbors/enemies made up) myths are correct, and Amerindians have been here since “the beginning of time.” Bah. No, they haven’t been here forever, and the land is not uniquely theirs. And if it were, there is a better strategy than whining and namy pamby acknowledgements.*

Where I was born and grew up, the land is — at this point — made mostly of people. At least one of the online anthropological sites lists the region in which I was born and raised as the oldest continuously human-occupied area in Western Europe. What that means, in terms of how many people were buried (not to mention pooped) in that area, it means that the dust has human DNA in it.

Which humans? Oh, that’s… I mean, there’s a reason my kids call Portugal the reservoir tip of Europe.

What I was taught in school which completely missed Pre-historic population movements, from Early European Farmers to Yamnaya we: Celts, Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, Vandals, Alans, Visigoths, Moors, Franks, Spaniards, not counting imports from Africa and India that mixed with the native stock. And not forgetting British and French during the Napoleonic wars; Irish which traded goods and genetics with the North of Portugal since the 4th century BC.

Whose land was it? No one’s. One culture will supersede the other. From the time of the Yamnaya tearing into the Early European Farmers and yeah, probably killing all the men and marrying all the women, that’s how land conveys.

Your title to the land as a people is your ability to occupy the land and keep it. Note, the keep it is important.

*In all the history of displaced people, the one people who instead of whining did something about it and not only that but having gotten their land back made it more fruitful and better than what the occupiers were doing with it is Israel. They bought, they fought for, they have kept the house against all challenges and they have made the desert flower.

Everyone else? Every loser country in the world throws themselves on the floor and screams they’d have been great if only they had “their” land back. And it’s always bullshit. Possibly in the history of bullshit none is worse than La Raza bullshit, who think they are entitled to most of the US, when in fact if they took it, they’d only have more of Mexico, a failed narco state which only survives because of remitances from people coming here to work and get welfare from us because we are not in fact Mexican and don’t operate like a failed narco state.

As for the Amerindian illusions: dudes, there is a reason your tribal elders don’t want you do do DNA tests. You were not only defeated. You got in bed with the enemy. Sometimes when you kidnapped their daughters for the purpose. You are only Native Americans in the sense you were born here. You were genetically swamped. You are — and I mean this in the best sense, so shush — the same American mutts as the rest of us. And in return, almost anyone who has a branch of their family that has been here for two hundred years (a not inconsiderable percentage of Americans) has a bit of you. We took your greatness and added it to our own. (Yes, including my kids. A considerable bit. They are descended from all the best.)

So the land: Your land is our land. Your blood is our blood. We are you. Stop whining about stolen land, and start making something of what you have, living in the best nation in the world.

You want a land of your own? Join us. When we go to the stars, claim your own planet.

Because I’m a giving kind of person, I decided to give you a template land

Land Acknowledgement:

We’re standing on stolen land. Sitting, sleeping and playing rock and roll on stolen land.

All land on Earth has been owned by humans and/or proto humans at some point. Heck, a good amount of the continental shelves that are under water offshore are also stolen land.

Before our ancestors, someone else lived there. And before those people someone else lived there. And before those people someone else lived there.

Because that’s what humans do. They take land, and hold it, and have children and raise fat babies.

That’s called being human.

You want some land no human ever owned? Get us to the stars. That’s it.

End land acknowledgement.

Further note for the deluded bastards of La Raza: This land is OUR land. And what we have, we keep.

We’ve been ignoring you, as we’ve been ignoring a lot of other commie offshoots because we thought you’d grow up. But if you want to square off…. Think about it. What we have, we keep. Don’t start none. You won’t like the results.

PS- Because all this isn’t as eloquent as this single tweet by someone I don’t know:

(tweet link. And xcancel link.)

Are you surprised?

Well, I am. I’m surprised the bullshit in Los Angeles isn’t all over the country by now.

I’m not surprised at the bullshit itself. It’s a hot combo of the left having entered the last, desperate point of their ghost dance, their having imported a lot of military age men that they think would be a reliable army, and their wanting to recreate the “success” of BLM and the 2020 Summer of love.

Oh, and the fact we are a nation so great we pay people to riot against us.

I am however surprised that it’s pretty much confined in Los Angeles, and even NYC was saner than that.

I suspect I wasn’t the only one surprised. On Saturday night I was in a medium large town, at a public attraction near an immigrant area. Keep in mind we’d been driving and hanging out with friends, so we weren’t really in touch with the news.

We did however notice the helicopter circling and circling over the crowd and wondered. Husband thought it was the news doing a feature. But something looked wrong.

It wasn’t till we got home and I saw the mess in Los Angeles that it clicked in place.

Look, over the next week, they might — or not — manage to get spicy going elsewhere in the country.

The truth is I’m still in shock we don’t have one of these going in every big city as we did in 2020. Why?

Because they have imported a lot of people. A LOT OF THEM. And a lot of these people are obviously not good people. In fact, they are the opposite of good people. Further, they have the cartels, which right about now are pretty pissed at our making their operations more difficult, and the unions which are, by and large, a cauldron of corruption and have been feeding off illegal immigration.

So– We have a minor and puzzling miracle going here.

And several conclusions can be taken.

1- For whatever reason they can’t count on all of the goblins they thought they could count on. Is it fear? Or the pay isn’t enough? Or they’ve been losing more people through self-deportation than they want to admit.

2- I’m not seeing the type of of interest in these riots that I saw in BLM even early on. I mean, the sentiment just isn’t the same, okay. Most people seem to look at these riots and go “Wait, why aren’t these people already on their way to the border, pursued by bears?”

That could be because race relations are complex, but most Americans view black people as their fellow Americans and have a measure of concern/interest in them. While most Americans view illegals as at best sad sacks and at worst invaders. As sad sacks, we don’t necessarily hate them and we kind of feel sorry for them. But not sorry enough to put up with riots and burning on their behalf.

Underlying all this in the national psyche there is a very strong (and sane) feeling of “Buddy, you’ve got problems but you’re not my problem, and there’s no reason I should take it on.”

Part of it I think is the sheer enervation and immiseration of the Brandon years. We know what they did to us, and we’re not particularly interested in helping people who were used to beat us down.

And part is that we’re getting really tired of the left cosplaying and bullshit.

3- People, not just me, are starting to predict what they’ll do and say. Which, I must say, is about time. they’re running the exact same script with the same beats as Kent State about a half century ago, and every other Communist operation since. (And before too.)

4- Things are about to get more dangerous and complicated. Because when things don’t go according to plan, the left always finds the next crazy thing to grab onto. And their crazy is both not very imaginative and dangerously crazy since it started with stuff wholly constructed in unreality like the Communist Manifesto and Gramsci’s tripe theories and was then fed on a never end of movies that share their assumptions and build in “victories” that could never happen in real life.

Now, I’m glad Trump called the National Guard — among other things, I find it hilarious that the left is complaining about this, while they treated DC as occupied land for months — but I’m also worried it’s not decisive or strong enough.

Because without a big stomp some of the rest of that clueless imported army might decide it’s worth a go and jump in.

And then the bacon will be in the fire and no mistake.

I just wish I weren’t going to spend pretty much all the rest of the month traveling. (Not solid, but lots of excursions/family stuff planned.)

But is what is.

You: Be not afraid, neither do you give up.

I’m reminded of what a then 80 year old friend of mine told me during the election in 2004: “You can tell the left is losing. They always get loudest when they’re losing.”

Well, they sure are loud.

Keep your head on a swivel. Don’t take unnecessary risks. And if you’re in Los Angeles stay the heck out of that area, or take a vacation somewhere sane. But don’t let this trouble you unduly.

Be not afraid. In the end we win, they lose. And I don’t think the end is nigh, but they’re sure acting like it is.

Book Promo

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH

FROM C. CHANCY: The Words of the Night (Colors of Another Sky Book 1)

It’s 1618. Do you know where your historian is?

Retirement wasn’t supposed to have dragons….

Historian Jason Finn crossed the planet to escape the Black Dog of depression – and almost got there. Over the mountains of Korea, a monster out of nightmares tore his plane from the sky… and into another world.

Hunting down ravenous shapeshifting pirates, Night Magistrate Lee Cheong found survivors from elsewhere. Survivors who say pirates are not the only threat. Over twenty years ago Hanyang burned in dragon flames… and that monster still lives.

Now the young magistrate must lead demon-hunters on a desperate chase, aided by a bandit sharpshooter, a seafolk medic, a Heavenly cultivator on the run for her life… and a time-lost historian.

Jason’s willing to help, but he’s cursed, fighting to survive, and struggling to understand a land of magic and monsters. All the while doing his best to keep a teenage girl alive.

Upside? Jason’s definitely not depressed….

FROM JAY MAYNARD: Foundational Laminate (The Laminate Therapy Chronicles Book 1)

A radical therapy. A difficult past. One last chance to change.

Alex Sullivan isn’t crazy — just angry. Angry enough to get arrested. Angry enough to be offered an unusual choice: face prison, or undergo an innovative therapy at a private facility in rural Missouri.

At the Laminatrix Mental Hospital, patients wear full-body suits that block distraction and isolate sensation. They enter an immersive, time-dilated environment. There, they relive every memory — guided not by a voice, but by telepathic silence. There’s no room to lie, no place to hide.

Alex thinks he can fake it. He’s wrong.

Foundational Laminate begins the Laminate Therapy Chronicles, a speculative series exploring redemption, transformation, and the slow, difficult work of healing.

“One of the rare novels I hope becomes reality—a hard look at how to turn the antisocial into good neighbors.”
— Karl K. Gallagher, author of The Fall of the Censor and Torchship

BY CHARLES ALDEN SELTZER, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: 3 Ways of Lead (Annotated): A Pulp Western Omnibus

Charles Alden Seltzer was one of the first crop of western authors, a contemporary of Zane Grey and William MacLeod Raine. But he *really* hit his stride in 1921, and these three post-1921 novels prove it!

Brass Commandments

“He’s man’s size, goin’ an’ comin’. No show, no fuss; likes to play a lone hand. Cool an’ easy an’ dangerous. Two-gun. Throws ’em so fast that you can’t see ’em. Lightnin’s slow when Lannon moves his gun-hand. Dead shot; cold as an iceberg under fire.”

Such was the opinion in Bozzam City of Flash Lannon. Five years of getting an education back East might have tamed him, some, but when rustlers target his cattle, and the local law doesn’t care, Lannon nails a new law to the wall of the local post office: his brass commandments naming the five men who must leave the country — or die.

Five named men… and “one other.”

Last Hope Ranch

When Ned Templin rode out of the desert to the Last Hope Ranch, Lisbeth Stanton was grateful, because he saved her from having to kill a man. But when Templin told her he was staying, and that he was an outlaw, and that a posse was on his trail looking to hang him for murder, her opinion changed a little.

And it kept changing, for Templin was an enigma, with secrets and motivations she never could have guessed. And, it turned out, so was her father, whom she had been with her whole life but never really known. Between Sheriff Norton and his posse, and the criminal gang Blaisdell’s Raiders, secrets would out, and bullets would fly, at the Last Hope Ranch!

The Way of the Buffalo

When Jim Cameron saved a stranger’s life, he hardly expected that stranger to promise to shoot him dead.

Sunset Ballantine wasn’t bothered that a man had tried to shoot him from a distance — no bullet had ever touched him, despite living his long years in the west and getting into many a gunfight. He *was* bothered that this Easterner was going to run a railroad right past his front door in sixty days. And even more bothered that the man didn’t change his mind once the threat was issued. Ballantine’s word was iron law in Ransome, always had been. Yet this Cameron, understanding full well that Ballantine meant it, and would undoubtedly beat him to the draw in any fair fight, was pushing ahead anyway.

Would Cameron back down? Would Ballantine go back on his word? Could an old western hand face down the forces of Progress, or must he go the way of the buffalo?

• This iktaPOP Media omnibus includes introductions giving the novels historical and genre context.

FROM VICTOR TANGO KILO: Hell Yeah! We’re the Baddies!

Midnight Morrigan was once the Scorpion Horde’s top intelligence operative—master of deception, seduction, assassination, and alcohol appreciation.

Then the invasion of Carpathia faceplanted into a crater of blood, blame, and bureaucratic finger-pointing.

Now the Scorpion Overlords have demoted her to a lowly tactical post on a Horde battle cruiser—stripped of her power, her prestige, and worst of all… her minibar.

Morrigan has only one shot at redemption (and revenge!)—naturally, it involves murder and mayhem.

The Rebel Pact calls itself “the last best hope for freedom in the galaxy,” or at least their PR department does. If she can crush this ragtag band of insurgents, she might just get her rank back. Maybe even her minibar.

On her side: a war-weary Horde captain; a mad scientist named Madd (not a nickname—it’s branding); a sexy operative who gathers intel horizontally; a suspiciously helpful bartender with rebel sympathies; and the galaxy’s hardest-working liver.

Against her: the Rebel Pact, the incompetent Horde military bureaucracy, and the odds.

She couldn’t have asked for a better set of enemies.

Hell Yeah! We’re the Baddies! and its companion novel,The Baddies, explore the light side of the dark side—where one hapless food tech and one disgraced intelligence officer try to outmaneuver an empire built on cruelty, incompetence, and performance reviews. Together, they tell two distinct stories wrapped around the same set of events: a Rashomon-style exploration of different perspectives inside the evil Scorpion Imperium.

FROM CAROLINE FURLONG: The Guardian Cycle, Vol.1: In Dreams and Other Stories

A man whose debts must be paid by vengeance. A woman desperate to save her husband. A grieving father finding a young enemy soldier on his veritable doorstep…

These fantasy and soft sci-fi stories wonder whether or not heroes need families. Are we not told that families slow the hero down? Is it not typically implied that they get in the way of the adventure? Are they a burden, or truly the greatest strength from which the hero and those he loves can draw?

Six tales in this collection center on family, faith, and self-sacrificing love as men and women fight for the ones whom they hold most dear. Whether the enemy is inner turmoil, a nightmare, or a demon really does not matter. If the threat seeks to harm a member of the family, it is going to pay dearly.

FROM HOLLY LEROY: Hostile Earth (Hostile Earth Series Book 1)

Terra Vonn is fighting to survive in a destroyed world, surrounded by unspeakable horror . . . and things are about to get much worse. After witnessing the vicious murder of her mother, Terra has a singular focus—exacting revenge on the killers. But before she can complete her plans, savagery intervenes and she is cast alone into a brutal post-apocalyptic world. As she trails the men south through a land filled with cannibalistic criminals, slave traders, and lunatics, the hunter becomes the hunted. Terra quickly learns that she is neither as tough nor as brave as she thinks she is. Worse, she may be the only one who stands between what little remains of civilization and destruction

FROM MACKEY CHANDLER: A Reluctant Sovereign (Family Law Book 7)

When North America attacked the space habitats beyond the Moon they had no plan B if they failed. The Earth Claims Commission was already suffering a credibility crisis and North America’s disastrous failure and defeat left them with no muscle. Far flung worlds and stations were abandoned with no banking, no supply, and no news. The explorers who were owed royalties were cut off too. Lee and her father Gordon weren’t about to sit still for that. If you can repossess a ground car, why not a planet? Lee had standing to be sovereign of Providence but wasn’t all that fond of planets. She didn’t want to be bogged down with the day to day drudgery of sovereignty like her friend Heather on the Moon. Was there any reason she couldn’t have her cake and eat it too? None that she could see.

FROM ANNA FERREIRA: The Root of All Evil

When murder comes to Stockton, it brings long-buried secrets in its wake…

Kate Bereton leads a busy but unexciting life as the clergyman’s only daughter in a small Dorsetshire village. She’s grateful for the break in routine heralded by the arrival of her stepmother’s latest guests, but when Kate discovers a dead body in the parsonage one morning, she finds herself in much more danger than she could have ever anticipated. Terrified and desperate, she turns to the local magistrate for help. Mr. Reddington is eager to aid his dear friend Miss Bereton, but can they discover the murderer before it’s too late, and the secrets of the past are forgotten forever?

With a dash of romance and a generous helping of mystery, The Root of All Evil is a charming whodunit that will delight fans of Jane Austen and Agatha Christie alike.

FROM CELIA HAYES: West Toward the Sunset

It’s the year 1846, and Sally Kettering is just twelve years old. Her parents have decided to sell their farm in rural Ohio and go west … west to California. Sally and her six-year old brother Jon must leave everything they knew – friends, kinfolk and the little town where they had lived all their lives so far. Pa and Ma Kettering packed what they could take into a single covered wagon, and they set out to follow a trail through the wilderness west, along with a party of other families and adventurers. Unknown dangers lay around every bend of the trail … wild animals, wilder Indians … Indians who might be hostile or friendly, and no way to know for certain … treacherous river crossings, trackless deserts, and jagged, dangerous mountain passes.
And still, the Kettering family and their friends boldly set out … following the trail that led west toward the sunset!

FROM KAREN MYERS: Second Sight: A Science Fiction Short Story

A Science Fiction Short Story

BORROWING SOMEONE ELSE’S PERCEPTIONS FOR A POPULAR DEVICE CAN ONLY MEAN COMMERCIAL SUCCESS. RIGHT?

Samar Dix, the inventor of the popular DixOcular replacement eyes with their numerous enhancements, has run out of ideas and needs another hit. Engaging a visionary painter to create the first in a series of Artist models promises to yield an entirely new way of looking at his world.

But looking through another’s eyes isn’t quite as simple as he thinks, and no amount of tweaking will yield entirely predictable, or safe, results.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Baying of the Hounds

In the world we know, Nikola Tesla’s Wardencliffe experiment proved a costly failure and was ultimately torn down for scrap. But what if things had gone differently and he pressed his work to completion? In a world similar to but unlike our own, Tesla completes his transmission tower. But when he turns it on, he discovers his calculations were incomplete. Some unknown factor has created a connection with another world with physical laws unlike our own. The commingling of curved and angular space has led to catastrophe. Now his greatest rival, Thomas Alva Edison, compels him to repair the damage. To do so, Tesla must make his way through a ruined city to the locus of the damage. And through his mind echoes the baying of unseen hounds. A short story originally published in the anthology Steampunk Cthulhu.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Noah’s Boy.

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: ROMANTIC.

So, the snake thing? As you know I’ve been whole immersed in fixing this book, to the point nothing much is happening. Though, really, nothing much has happened this week. The meds now discontinued gave me terrible heartburn which, in me, manifests as shoulder pain. Which in turn means I don’t sleep, and I become so massively ADD that someone mentioning a multitool leads to a two hour browsing for the best multitool. Not that I wanted to buy it. But I had to know EVERYTHING about multitools. And it’s liek that with everything. I’ve become the world’s foremost expert on …. well, nothing. But I know a ton about what amounts to chaff. Or dryer lint. Which means not much work gets done. Sigh.

This to say I haven’t read The Man Who Sold The moon, or done much in the way of revision. I will.

But it also means in the sleepless hollows of the night when I can’t even concentrate enough for Jane Austen Fanfic, which is the lowest level of engagement for me, the characters for the second book start babbling in my head. (Oh, other books and series too, but–)

One of those, a constant though not voice character is an eighth circle magician — yes, this space opera has magic. Not real magic, but never mind — which are the people who who do illusions, story telling, memory and apparently mind-healing, though they’ve only found that out recently.

Anyway, this character insists that I’m also an eighth circle. Their derrogatory nickname is Serpent. I was very offended, since…

Because I’ve always been in love with story, I am very afraid of getting caught up in one and losing track of reality. And I try very hard not to lie. Partly because it’s really uncomfortable to confess. I already made my priest laugh helplessly by confessing Twitter hooliganism. (which is actually pride and anger, but, yeah.) But mostly because just like it’s important to know whose voice in your head is yours, it’s also very important to know which reality is actually real. (This from a woman who has long discussions with characters while zonked out of her mind with lack of sleep. Hey!)

But he pointed out it doesn’t mean lies. Knowing story is an ability in itself. Like with mind healing, they’re good for all sorts of analysis of stories and situations.

The places I search for the truth are weird.

Look, nothing we’re being told is real. Okay, not nothing. But nothing that relates to say, job reports, population figures, how the economy is doing, etc. etc. etc.

That is why I’m looking all the time and in the weirdest places. Stuff like monitoring what’s on the grocery store shelves and how fast it’s selling, or listening to people’s conversations, or seeing what people are talking about buying and what is aspirational, or–

Look, the other day I told Dan I know the economy is getting better because the scam emails that tell me I’ve won a free dinner are now for expensive steakhouses, not places like Applebees. In the depths of Let’s Go Brandon, I got those, and it scared the spit out of me. Because when dinner at applebees is aspirational, people are in serious trouble. And scammers have to know what actually works, so they know when the low-price restaurants are beyond people’s reach and they are willing to answer a scammy email for them.

So, the insanity yesterday is looking (already) more and more like something weird.

Hey, it could be a legitimate spat. Both Elon and Trump are volatile and neither of them are used to being in politics.

But the walk back started by yesterday night, and uh…. something feels wrong about it. My story sense is tingling with “this doesn’t add up.”

And maybe it’s wrong, maybe. But… I don’t think so? And what really bothers me, if it was fireworks, it’s “what was it supposed to blind us to?” Because while fireworks are going on, you don’t see other stuff in the dark.

Or the spat could be real, but we can’t be sure of the reason for it. The real reason. Nor what the fall out will be.

Give it forty eight hours. We can’t know the truth before that anyway (and maybe ever). As with all these public things, give it forty eight hours. Let it chill, and see what is there after.

Even if Elon and Trump really fought with each other, or whatever…. it is not the end of the world.

It’s not even the end of our current ascendance, such as it is. Vance said this week, this is the work of a generation.

There are going to be setbacks. There are going to be more pushes forward, though. And maybe one or two miracles along the way.

Guys, tech is our way, the wind is at our back, and the left hasn’t been able to catch their breath — even during Brandon’s so called presidency — even while they were supposed to have everything their way. They need total media dominance to thrive. And we’re not going to let them do that.

It’s not Trump, as valuable as he’s been. It’s not Elon, as much as he’s tried to do. It’s not any one individual.

This is our battle. It’s all of us. That’s the story. It’s all of us.

And now I’m going to slither off and try to get some rest, so revision can be finished this weekend, and then I can write the other novels, and give them to my newsletter subscribers, and all of that.

So. Chill. Chill. Let the story play itself out before you analyze it and prepare for the fall out or not.

This is a long march.

This is not the end. It’s not even the end of the beginning. Let it be, however, the end of “the world is ending.”

Put your shoulders into changing what can be changed. Look at the rest as a passing show. Decipher it if you can. Don’t let it control you.

But I can’t seem to do it. Not today. Post tomorrow.

We had a cat — Pixie! Best cat ever — who had an habit of pretending everything that happened was part of his master plan.

Lick himself and fall from the chair? He’d look around with that smug expression, like “I meant to do that.

Now combine this with the fact that humans make up stories out of anything.

So, what I am trying to say is that it’s normal for humans to make up stories and to make things make sense. This is why you need to be very careful about conspiracy theories. Because it’s really easy to look at assorted facts and make up a theory where they all “just fit.”

It’s the same part of the brain I use to make up stories.

I’m going to tell you a secret, though: not everything fits. It just seems to, but there’s always stuff that sticks out. Always. Whether it’s your theory, or a novel, or a story the people in power are selling you, it’s hard to make up a story without holes. So, for instance, when you they were selling us the covidiocy, what stuck out for me was “why aren’t the homeless dying in droves?” Look, you can’t know everything. I happened to know that the cruise ships were virus boats, which means that I knew the numbers from Diamond Princess meant there was no real danger. But a lot of people fell for “top of the line care at cruise ships.” However the other great big problem was the homeless. You can’t know everything, but you’ll know some things. And I knew that the homeless were like the collecting pool for every disease possible and also that the homeless have a ton of people who just crossed the border illegally, or came in on a plane to distribute drugs or…. whatever. And yet the homeless weren’t falling down dead.

And that was the hole in the story that allowed me to see it how it was all glued together with spit and wish powder.

You can do this to anything. Yes, stories too, though I try not to. Though of course there is a problem when you first become a proficient story teller because you can’t help seeing the gears of the story, and the holes. it’s why most writers stop reading for a while after they become proficient.

But that’s neither here nor there.

This post is about the tendency of EVERY totalitarian regime to act like Pixie, only infinitely less cute. So, you get everything that happens being “I meant to do that.”

There are videos explaining how everything that happened in the west, all the decline and the bad stuff was a clever plan by the the Soviet Union, and everything is just following their plan.

I think I fell for them when I was young and stupid and they were in late night programs. But you know, guys, even then, I’d been telling stories for a while and things stuck out.

Mostly what sticks out in that type of video is that the story only works if you stay inside the story. If you only look at the facts they show you and not outside them. For instance, the so called decline of the west was mostly something that the media sold us. Under the elites machinations and the barrage of media telling us we sucked, we thought these things were true, but they weren’t. As we know given how hard they’re finding to shove decay down our throat, and how they keep importing third world basket cases to plump up the “failures.” (Mostly because the idea we were in decadence was a stupid Marxist just-so-story and they were mostly lying to themselves. This is the whole idea that living well makes you soft and “decadent” is a soviet idea. It’s also a lie. Living without challenges makes you decadent and soft, but there are challenges in prosperity if you don’t let the government hamper you.)

Look guys, we continually tell ourselves The Arabs, the Chinese, the Russians, whatever the authoritarian group we’re up against are “careful planners. They plan for centuries. They’ll win in the end.”

To be fair, they in general believe that about themselves, too. But that’s because by and large they have all these myths. It’s the only thing they have.

Look, guys, let’s be serious. What is the big problem of totalitarian societies, like the Chinese and the Russians (not just commies, but historically, though communism makes it worse)? Information.

No one could tell the Soviet leaders the society was falling until it was completely beyond salvation, because no one wants to give their supervisor bad news in a totalitarian society. The same reason no one could tell Putin they couldn’t take the Ukraine in a weekend, because they just didn’t have the wherewithal.

In the same way, I bet you Xi thinks his country is much stronger and more capable than it actually is.

So, how can they plan for a thousand years if they don’t actually know what is happening in their own country?

As for the Arabs? Bah. They culturally have serious problems with time and keeping track of why things happen, as well as a bunch of their very own cultural blindspots that means they don’t understand Western culture at all. Yes, they think they do, but they don’t. (Not to mention they too are poisoned with Marxist story telling.)

They can’t. It’s bullshit. They’re selling you a story. And there are holes you can drive a mac truck through.

Yes, they will take the latest spill and tell you that they meant to do that. Every time. Every single time.

But in the end, in the very end, they didn’t mean to do that. They’re not in charge of their own plans. They just keep adjusting them and saying “hey, I meant to do that.”

Be not afraid. And don’t attribute magical powers to the enemy.

Humans don’t plan for centuries. Nope, not even us.

We just stumble from disaster into salvation by the skin of our teeth, to disaster again. And then we say “We meant to do that.”

Even us.

However, over the long time, individual freedom that gives us the ability to react to and recover from disaster in many ways, without holding on to some “grand plan” dreamed up by a single brain or a consortium of single brains have a better chance of surviving and thriving.

No one has a plan. Not even us. All is chaos.

Fortunately chaos is America’s native environment. We thrive on it. We eat chaos for breakfast and then go out and create new challenges.

Be not afraid.

We’re entering a time of high chaos.

We’re coming home.

Terry Pratchett, in one of his books (I want to say it was in the Tiffany Aching series) said that the secret to success in life was to be yourself as hard as you could.

I find myself wholeheartedly agreeing with it, which is odd in a way.

Why is it odd? Well, because I’m the person who says things like “Don’t chase your passion” and “Don’t take that degree in creative writing, take a useful degree” and “First take care of yourself and those who depend on you.”

Mind you, that’s not how my life works. Every time I try to be responsible and do the things that I’m supposed to do, it backfires on me wildly. Every time I do the wildly inadvisable: say marry a foreigner and move across the ocean with no plan other than “we’ll figure it out”, or have a kid when we can barely support one, or buy a house that is deeply distressed and trusting I’ll figure out how to fix it, or set out to be a writer in my third language … it turns out all right. On the other hand, when I take the degree that will be guaranteed to get me a job… I marry a foreigner and render my credentials moot. When I buy the house that’s a sure thing to appreciate… cover your eyes, because I don’t want to revisit that debacle. And on and on–

But that’s just — as my kids put it — I have luck that beats the odds. Not good or bad. Just highly improbable. So the sure things flop, but the wild risks pay off. That’s fine. No, it’s not. I’m a nervibore, living on my nerves, but then again after sixty two years if things suddenly became calm, I wouldn’t know what to do. (Though I could do with fewer emergencies. They do seem to be slowing down. Kind of.)

I do think when you’re twenty or so and you decide you want to follow your passion being a living statue or playing tiddly winks on the international stage, you’re not likely to find yourself. Well, not immediately. Somewhere between failing, finding out that even succeeding wouldn’t be the thing you would want and eating your millionth meal of cheap ramen, you’re going to find you really have a vocation for industrial design. Or 3-D printing the ideal tiddly winks and selling them to professional players.

Mostly what’s wrong with pursuing your passion when you’re young and so green that certain kinds of lettuce think you’re their kin, is that you don’t yet know what your passion is.

This comes mostly from the fact that when you’re young — and these days that can extend to your early thirties — you have no idea how the world works. So what you think you will really do is often not what the profession actually is. Partly because a lot of what people actually do in the world and how fields actually work are not only not widely known, but often — these days, and I suspect in every time, TBF — work in the most backassward and confusing way possible.

So you planned on being the world’s greatest tiddly wink player, but find they only want skinny blondes for the cameras, while you’re a zaftig brunette. And then…. you tumble. And eventually you figure out who you are. And how to be yourself as hard as you can.

You start out with the idea you should be good at a ton of things you were never good at and can’t even begin to do. Like, you know, I remember my life being destroyed over my inability to jump rope. Or my inability to memorize chemical formulas. Or–

But none of that matters. Because I eventually found my talents, and those things did not matter in the slightest.

So, be yourself as hard as we can, but first find out who you are and where you fit in. So start with something you can do to begin with, and then learn to tumble with circumstances.

Here’s the thing though: when you find out who you are, and what you do well? It’s going to take courage. It’s not just settling into the easiest thing.

At some point you’re going to find out who you are and what you really want to do. And I can almost guarantee taking that step is going to scare you spitless.

Do it anyway. Step out.

You might be on thin air. And you might fall. But at least you’ll have tried.

And if you don’t fall?

It’s the best thing ever.