So You Want GOOD e-reads?

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Well, one of them at least is very good.  Go to http://savethedragons.nu/   where my friend Dave Freer is posting chapter by chapter of his novel Save the Dragons.  The impetus for doing it right now is that he’s moving from South Africa to Australia and needs money to take his several animalia along.  Those of you who have pets, think how it would feel to abandon them as you face a totally strange country.  And besides the novel is worth it.

Then there is this: 

Order Now
http://www.webscription.net/p-1112-darkship-thieves-arc.aspx

Baen is selling the earc of my Space Opera Darkship Thieves.  I don’t know if it’s very good, (lousy evaluator of my own stuff) but I had more fun writing it than just about anything else, and the next one is already in my head and demanding I type as fast as I can…

I

One

　

I never wanted to go to space. Never wanted see the eerie glow of the Powerpods. Never wanted to visit Circum Terra. Never had any interest in discovering the truth about the darkships. You always get what you don’t ask for.

Which was why I woke up in the dark of shipnight, within the greater night of space in my father’s space cruiser.

Before full consciousness, I knew there was an intruder in my cabin. Once awake, I couldn’t figure out how I knew it. The air smelled as it always did on shipboard, as it had for the week I’d spent here – stale, with the odd tang given by the recycling.

The engines, below me, hummed steadily. We had just detached from Circum Terra – a maneuver that involved some effort, to avoid accidentally ramming the station or the ship. Shortly we’d be Earth bound, though slowing down and reentry let alone landing, for a ship this size, would take close to a week.

My head felt a little light, my stomach a little queasy, from the artificial grav. Yes, I know. Scientists say that’s impossible. They say artificial gravity is just like true gravity to the senses. You don’t feel a thing. They are wrong. Artificial grav always made me feel a little out of balance, like a couple of shots of whiskey on an empty stomach.

Even before waking fully, I’d tallied all this. There was nothing out of the ordinary. And yet there was a stranger in my cabin.

Years in reformatories, boarding schools and mental hospitals, had taught me that the feeling I woke up with was often the right one. Something had awakened me – a door closing, a step on the polished floor.

Now, why? Knowing the why determined how I dealt with it.

Three reasons that came to mind immediately. Theft, rape, murder.

 

Father’s Daughter

You Might Be A Writer If

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

*This was the work of a post meeting party for my writers’ group round about 2000.  Because people came and went from the group I don’t remember the quorum that afternoon, though I can swear to my husband, Dan Hoyt and to Rebecca and Alan Lickiss, as well as Jennifer Roberts and Barbara Nickless.  I’d forgotten all about this till I found it in my hard drive while looking for something else.*

You Might Be A Writer If…

…you have knock-down, drag-out arguments with your significant other over verb tenses.

 

…you pay big bucks for a babysitter so you can go out on a date … in order to have some time to plot a story.

 

…revelatory conversations that start with "That’s it; I know exactly what to do with Lord Raven!" don’t mean you’re having an affair.

 

…you find nothing wrong with foregoing food, sleep and sanitary facilities for three days running in order to get those last three chapters done.

 

…you talk to walls on a regular basis, but only because your characters refuse to come out into the middle of the big, unprotected room where their enemies might make an attempt on their lives.

 

…you talk to yourself. Do not! Do too! Do not! Don’t listen to him; he doesn’t even know how to hold a sword properly!

… conversations that start, "Have you decided how to kill him yet?" don’t indicate that you are about to become a felon.

 

… hearing that you have no clue isn’t necessarily a personal remark.

 

… if a story isn’t accepted, happiness is a detailed personal rejection.

 

… and then you brag to all your friends about being rejected.

 

… your computer is three generations old, but your printer is a top of the line, twenty pages per minute model.

 

… you have to think to remember which of your friends are real, and which are characters in your stories.

… your characters have definite opinions about your friends, hairdos and sex life.

 

… while plotting a novel you drive your car across a median, barely avoid a stream of oncoming traffic, climb the berm, cross a parking lot, stop against a small tree, and don’t realize you’ve done anything out of the ordinary.

… You ever pumped a total stranger for details of his last illness, so you could use it in a book.

… Often have trouble remembering what day, week, month, year or century you live in.

… Are afraid to park a large car but routinely discuss the mechanics of space travel.

… you have definite opinions about the merits of historical personages so obscure no one else ever heard of them.

… Read Machiavelli’s The Prince on an interstate flight.

… Your four-year-old thinks "editor" is a bad swear word.

… in highschool you used to wander off from parties to research a plot point in the nearest library.

… your writing has ruined more than two serious relationships.

… Your prayers often involve a critique of the divine plot.

… Cleaning is what you do while suffering from the block. And only then.

… Some of the leftovers in your refrigerator have acquired life and are on the verge of sentience. You can’t wait to write about it.

… you have to be a writer, otherwise someone would realize you’re insane.

… you think coffee, donuts and pizza are a complete diet.

… when you were little, your main contribution to the playgroup was making up the "scripts" for playtime.

… your kids talk in hushed tones about your "coming down with a novel."

… Don’t know what the nearest crossroad to your house is, but can tell with certainty what type of carriage was used in 1456 in Wales.

… When a friend asks "what’s new" you give him a synopsis of your latest book.

… Have one or more times scared a late-night diner waitress with a conversation that started with: "now I need to figure out where to hide the body."

… A social life is another name for getting together with other writers and discussing plots.

… While being administered the last rites you think, "dang, I’m too woozy to remember this, and I need it for my mystery novel."

… Love to write, but hate every minute of the writing business.

The kitty progresses

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Her name is Valeria Victrix — Val, for short, and also Brownie :) — after the little girl character in Operation Chaos.  this is from Yesterday and our friend Charles, who would like to keep her, is holding her.  We’ll see if he DESERVES her.

Our vet said about three weeks.  Not eating yet, nursing well but the night feedings are killing me.  Her right eye is almost okay today.  I’ll take picture later.  She climbs all over me and caught on to "writer surpervisor is my job" by sitting on the keyboard shelf and watching my fingers.

Light a candle

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

In the nineteen eighties when Solidarity looked like they had a chance against the government of Poland, the first significant crack behind the iron curtain since the Prague spring, a whisper went around "Light a candle."

I lived in Portugal then and our media assured us it was all very complicated and we just couldn’t know what to do.  We knew exactly what to do.  We lit candles.  Real ones, on my parents’ cement and stone balcony, electrical ones in the windows of those houses that didn’t have a balcony.

Did it help?  I don’t know.  The media didn’t make much of it — if they mentioned it at all — but these things have a way of being known and when entire villages in Europe glowed at night with candles in the windows and on balconies… well… I figure if word got back to Poland, the bad buys knew we were watching.  And we weren’t amused.

Governments need to take in account all sorts of things.  Like, will they have to negotiate with the bastards if something happens requiring such?  Also, one of the rules I learned early in writing was never criticize an editor to another editor — no matter how much they hate each other, they still project.  They’ll think "if she says that about so and so, what will she say about me?"  Even if it’s a joke about how badly your book was copyedited.  In the same way governments tend to support others that have the power right now, or at least not attack them, unless provoked beyond endurance, because, well  "It could be me next."

We the people have no such restrictions and SHOULD have no moral confusion.  What’s going on in Iran is evil.  Is the guy the opposition could install only marginally less evil?  Perhaps.  But even if movement toward freedom is incremental, it should be encouraged.

Light a candle.  Light one today.

As for me, a candle will burn on my balcony from today until the people of Iran are free from the tyranny that has stomped them since 79.  If for a week or the rest of my life, I don’t know.  And I don’t care.  I’ll stand with those willing to fight and die on the streets for their freedom.

Solidarity is more than a union in Poland.

A French Polished Murder

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

*This is the novel I’m trying to finish, slightly hampered by fact I’m NOT in a funny mood just now.  Ah well, maybe tomorrow.*

A French Polished Murder

By Elise Hyatt

The Fast And the Electrically Furious

We were thirty years old – and, in his case, a couple of months — when I came to the sad conclusion that I would have to murder my friend Benedict Colm.

This was as sad as it was necessary, but there was no getting from the fact as my son, Enoch – whom I called E in an attempt to save him therapy bills as he got older – came speeding into the living room, atop Ben’s Christmas gift to him.

The gift was an electric toy motorcycle with a top speed of ten miles per hour, an acceleration that might seem impossible for a small boy to achieve in a home that was less than seventy feet in either direction, but which E managed, quite often.

I heard the horn blare a moment before E came riding in and, with the practice born of two weeks of terror, dove behind the sofa, while Ben, who stood square in the middle of the living room, his arms crossed on his chest, became an impromptu traffic circle.

E sped around him once, twice, then headed the other way, at an increased velocity.

Continue reading “A French Polished Murder” →

Until we meet again

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt


Dejah Thoris Burroughs Carter Hoyt, June 12 1989 – June 8 2009

She was the cutest ball of fur you ever saw.  For reasons that would take too long to explain, Dan and I broke into the sun room where she was locked — away from her mom.  I think she was maybe four weeks old, all fluff and meows.

We bottle raised her and her two brothers — not easy since I had a full time job as a translator at the time.  I always thought it was because of that that she was a little shy.  Not socialized enough.  Didn’t like being held.  However when Dan lay down on the floor to read, she would climb between his shoulder blades and fall asleep.

When we put wood down in the hallway of the house in Charlotte, she escaped from where we had her locked up and hid under the neighbor’s porch for two days, refusing to come out.  Dan had to go under there to get her.  The fit was so tight, he had to strip to his underwear to get her.  

As she became tamer with time, Dan was her special person.  She used to sit on the bed, on my side, and give me dirty looks when I came to bed, because I was clearly a third wheel.

When we moved from Charlotte, for various reasons, (mostly renting) the cats ended up outdoors.  DT took up hunting.  She could bring down anything, from rabbits to birds.  In Columbia, SC she got me involved with raptor rescue by bringing down a hawk (I think) that we then nursed to health.  This while she had a bell on.

When we lived in Manitou Springs and traveled a lot, we boarded the cats while we were gone.  If DT got wind she was going to be boarded, she’d run all over the neighborhood to avoid us.  More than once we left on vacation and left instructions with our friend Charles to the tune of "When she comes to eat, grab her and take her to the vet for boarding."   By this time, we’d have had them indoors only, but her friends, Pete and Randy liked being outdoors and so she did too.  If we tried to bring her in she’d cry her heart out to join them.

She was the youngest of the first batch of our cats and answered to ‘baby girl" as readilly as to "DT".  She always answerd to Dan, no matter what he called her, though. 

When first Randy then Pete died, we brought DT and Pixie inside.  She was Pixie’s best friend, comforter and nurse as he declined and died, four years ago.  I don’t care what animal experts say, she missed him till today.

If she loved you, she groomed you — usually wildly.  We called it "hair by DT" when she licked your hair so it was all at odd angles.  If you weren’t feeling well, she crawled in bed with you and did this.  Lately she was afraid one of us would think she didn’t love us.  She’d walk between us, licking one and then the next.

She’s had diabetes for six months, and we’ve been giving her insulin morning and night.  When she seized twice last week while I was away, we thought it was the diabetes.  But when I came home on Friday she couldn’t close her mouth and had bloody drool.  I thought "tooth.  It has to be tooth."  But we took her in today, and it turned out she had cancer of the jaw which mestatized all over her lungs and spine.  She was in pain and she was only going to get worse.  This cancer was very aggressive.  It couldn’t have been there more than two weeks.

We did what we had to do.

At times like this, I wish I had more faith in a life after this.  I believe there is a G-d, but that doesn’t necessarily imply a belief in the after life. 

Heinlein said it’s entirely possible normal people die and disappear forever, but not "saints".  Well, I don’t know about saints.  And I know every theology is fuzzy on the afterlife of cats.

But tonight I want to believe there is a rainbow bridge and that she’s there, with Pete and Pixel, all of them young and hale again, waiting for us.  Until we meet again.