According To Hoyt

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 JAMES YOUNG: Dispatches From Valhalla: An Alternate History Collection

“But now and again, the traveler reaches eminences where he sees…the deathless deeds of the great who have passed to Valhalla…” – George S. Patton
This collection contains “What ifs…” of military alternate history so daring their heroes would be welcomed into any warriors’ hall:
tand on the deck of the H.M.S. Illustrious off the Falkland Islands as the Royal Navy sails into the first carrier battle since 1945 in “Fate of the Falklands”

• In “The Lightnings and the Cactus,” see what happens when an unfortunate heart attack leads to P-38 Lightnings arriving at Henderson Field in October 1942
• Ride with M-18 Hellcats as they come to the aid of Task Force Smith in “Mr. Dewey’s Tank Corps”
• Finally, witness Vice Admiral Lee’s Task Force 34 clash with the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Center Force in the novella Wonder No More.

Ten years after Acts of War’s publication, long-term Usurper’s War readers will also be thrilled to find two entries in James Young’s signature universe:

• “Winifred,” the origin story in which a lost RAF bomber crew jettisons their payload…and changes history
• The Victorious Meeting, a novella that not only tells the story of the Royal Navy’s actions in Against the Tide Imperial, but sets the stage for A Feather Upon the Waves, the final novel in the series.

Whether you’re a new alternate history fan or an experienced traveler of the multiverse, you’ll find great tales within Dispatches from Valhalla. So grab the proverbial mead horn, erm, beverage of choice and prepared to be regaled once more by tales of battles that never were…but could have been.

Note: This is a collection of reprinted stories from anthologies and novellas that James Young has published since 2019. They have been placed in this single volume for your entertainment and ease of discovery.

FROM DALE COZORT: There Will Always Be An England

In the Alternate History novel, two weeks after the D-Day landings, 1944 Britain disappears, replaced by a version of Britain from the distant past, before modern humans made it to Europe. Billy Chandler, like all Allied soldiers in the Normandy bridgehead is suddenly in a desperate situation, cut off from British-based air support, reinforcements and supplies. Meanwhile, deep in the past, 1944 Britain is in its own fight for survival, isolated in a time when Neanderthals rule Europe and no humans have reached the Americas and struggling to feed itself.

The Allies in Normandy struggle to hold out against increasingly powerful German attacks, running low on food and ammunition. Meanwhile, 1944 Britain struggles to survive, a modern nation in a Stone Age world.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Schrödinger Paradox

To save the future, sometimes you have to reach to the past to change it. And in the face of extinction, you do what you must, regardless of who stands in the way.


Cataclysm

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 JOHN D. MARTIN: A Clever, Chimerical, Clinical, and Charming Collection of 100 German Words: Absolutely Informative, Completely Trivial, yet Infinitely Useful … Useful Book of 100 German Words of the Day)

We’ve all seen the memes about that… crossword puzzle game being played in German, right? Well, here you have a collection of some of the most staggering linguistic morphological nightmares ever found in the wilds of German and Austrian newspapers, magazines, websites, and academic publications. All of these are to prove just how accurate those memes really were… no…. to prove how understated those memes really were. Along with the gigantic chimeras of the compound word world, there are some everyday vocabulary items you might actually use some day. Viel Spaß!

FROM MARY CATELLI: The Other Princess

This time, they invited the last fairy to the christening.

Elise, uncursed at her christening, received strange gifts about castles and roses. With such good fortune, what more does she need? She grows up forever in the shadow of her lovely, cursed, tragic cousin.

Even when the curse falls, and Princess Isabelle lies in enchanted sleep, life must go on for Princess Elise. Despite the curse, the kingdom can not sleep itself, and neither can she.

FROM JOHN D. MARTIN: Charis Colony: The Battle for McGuire Point

Raj and Shirin thought they were safe. They thought their son was safe. They had fled their family home in Mondal’s Landing and to the protected enclave of McGuire Point, out of the reach of Colonial Security. But when Colonial Security attacks the Point and the cost of ending hostilities is returning the couple and their son to the Landing, what decision will Governor McGuire make? And will their newfound home stand by them or sell them out?
From the review of Charis Colony: The Landing at ricochet.com:
“Charis Colony: The Landing” offers a story that is fast-paced and cerebral. Raj Mondal is forced to confront long-held beliefs and challenge authority for the first time. Martin offers readers several competing views of society in this novel.

Mark Lardas, at ricochet.com and at marklardas.com

FROM MACKEY CHANDLER: The Long Voyage of the Little Fleet:

In the first book of this series “Family Law”, Lee’s parents and their business partner Gordon found a class A habitable planet. They thought their quest as explorers was over and they’d live a life of ease. But before they could return and register their claim Lee’s parents died doing a survey of the surface. That left Lee two-thirds owner of the claim and their partner Gordon obligated by his word with her parents to raise Lee. She had grown up aboard ship with her uncle Gordon and he was the only family she’d ever known. Him adopting her was an obvious arrangement – to them. Other people didn’t see it so clearly over the picky little fact Gordon wasn’t human.
After finding prejudice and hostility on several worlds Lee was of the opinion planets might be nice to visit, but terrible places to live. She wanted back in space exploring. Fortunately Gordon was agreeable and the income from their discovery made outfitting an expedition possible. Lee wanted to go DEEP – out where it was entirely unknown and the potential prizes huge. After all, if they kept exploring tentatively they might run up against the border of some bold star faring race who had gobbled up all the best real estate. It wasn’t hard to find others of a like mind for a really long voyage. This sequel to “Family Law” is the story of their incredible voyage.

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.

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: Earthy

I was a good girl. I brought my laptop before I set off on an adventure. I even verified that my computer could sign onto my associates account.

What did I forget? Oh, yeah, the dongle.

I’m sorry, I’m so unused to spur of the moment jaunts these days. When I travel these days it’s plotted days or months ahead. This suddenly picking up and going off is a big problem. It’s outright unnatural, I tell you.

I’ll be back on tomorrow morning and do a promo post. Look on the bright side, this gives you the opportunity to send me something to promote if you’ve forgotten.

Again, I’m sorry. I’ll go finish stuff and head home in a couple of hours. I’ll be back on tomorrow.

Among the many strange things that Kamala Harris has done in her life, there is a video going around of her giving a talk at a black — college? — association where one of the guys opines there should be a different law for black people, because they are “400 years behind.”

First, sure, let’s see how stupid this man is from the historical perspective. He apparently believes that a) slavery holds you back sort of in stasis for the time period you were a slave. b) that it happened only to black people. c) that the 16– whatever project is true. d) that there is some “level” at which all white people are and some “level” at which all black people are.”

Taking the last one first, he’s a dumbass. He’s looking at history as a chart on the wall and positing that if you leave a civilization alone, each one progresses exactly like the other. Maybe this is an example of the left culture-blindness. Because culture absolutely dictates how a civilization develops or not. As does geography and a ton of other things.

Look, the civilizations of South America built cities but they never invented the wheel. This probably had to do with their geography more than anything. But still, there it is. An invention that Europeans made so far back we literally have no record of who did it, never happened in South America.

In Africa? It gets complicated. Because Africa is a whole fricking continent. Some civilizations had agriculture and complex languages, some were hunter gatherers and unclear on the concept of future tenses in verbs or counting above 3. So are tribes in the Amazon.

That’s to begin with. There simply is no set marks or places that all civilizations hit. It’s not like in school. You don’t pass certain grades.

On top of which, if you’re talking about American blacks, which this guy was and Kamala pretends to be, they’re mostly white. Or at least fifty percent or so. So, why would black people in America be 400 years behind? How do you do the math on how far behind each genetic component is.

Also, unpacking this, this dumbass thinks that culture is genetic. Black people somehow got slavery “retardation” encoded in their genes. WHAT?

Second, the idea that the US was founded on slavery does not pass the laugh test and is a-historical nonsense.

Third, how do you compute how much each person has been held back by “slavery” if you presume slavery holds a race back? Do I go to 23 and me and compute the percentages of each race I am, then go back and see when these were enslaved and by whom, then…. What? I mean, let alone that the math would be mind-boggling and that 23 and me doesn’t even go deep enough to get all that, much less that history is not detailed enough to figure out who was a slave when…. again I say WHAT?

Look, the Romans enslaved everyone. If you’re even partly Mediterranean you probably are descended from slaves … and Romans. But wait, the Romans also went everywhere throughout Europe with their slaves, and enslaved more people there. So if you’re British, you’re descended from slaves and at least some Romans. Oh, but wait, the Germanic tribes enslaved each other. Moors enslaved everyone, including other moors.

Barring psychic ability and the power to see into the past of each person, how do you calculate how ‘behind’ each individual is?

Most of all, though, slavery doesn’t work that way. No, seriously. Slavery doesn’t work that way. Oppression doesn’t work that way. Oppressed races are routinely more cunning, more able, more capable, and once freed fly higher and further than their former masters.

Look at the Jews. From slavery to a functional civilization, and under oppression becoming intellectual giants.

This is not rare. Looking around my group of friends, recently we realized we were all the least favorite child. And all of you, for sure, have seen that the pampered and handed everything children of the wealthy tend to go nowhere fast.

In fact, if you want to look at people who have been hampered in life, look at those — either charity cases or the noblemen of old — who were handed everything by virtue of being born.

Which is what this dumbass is asking for, and Kamala is agreeing with.

Special laws? What, so that they’re not punished for crimes other would be punished for? That is privilege, the definition of – private law.

And think about it. Humans respond to incentives. If people are allowed to steal and kill or even just flaunt the law with impunity, what does it do to them?

It means the thrifty, the law abiding, those who are polite and sober and work hard become a despised minority who aren’t taking all the advantage they can. They therefore not only leave fewer children, but — evolution is slow, culture is fast — the bad behavior that’s rewarded will be imitated even by those who would not have behaved that way.

It destroys subcultures. It destroys people. It destroys civilization.

The noblemen of Europe who “fell” fell all the way to the bottom. They had no skills other than lording it over people. (Not the ones in Victorian times, but the ones who fell from grace in the middle ages. It’s complicated. In Victorian times, the noblemen behaved like the middle class, more, and had imbibed bourgeois virtues.)

Let’s have one law for everyone. That’s how people actually catch up. No special breaks for anyone, in law or hiring or anything.

Pure meritocracy is impossible, but let’s make it as close as possible.

And I bet you race becomes irrelevant in short order.

This very stupid idea of making black people like the noblemen of old comes from the Marxist stupid idea that white people are all like medieval noblemen. They’re not. The ones who are privileged — Hi Obamas, Clintons, Hunters — are also complete basket cases personally.

Welfare has done more harm to black people in America than slavery ever did. And affirmative action has compounded it to ensure that even black people who get ahead are tainted with the suspicion of not having gotten there by their own efforts.

Free everyone. Remove the hobbles from everyone. Let meritocracy reign. And I bet you, giving family culture time to catch up, within 3 generations you won’t be able to tell the difference in racial achievement in America.

This is late as heck, because this morning Fun With Doctors joined Fun With Bureaucracy. I’ve been home all of an hour, and had to deal with all the stuff I should have done this morning… including feeding VERY STARING kittehs.

But one very brief foray into twitter this morning brought me across a guy screaming (and I’m doing this from memory and for comedy, so wording is not only not exact but exaggerated): “Damn you you maniacs and your immigrants eating pets memes! You caused Trump to repeat it and sound like an idiot. Damn you all to hell.”

Which caused me to chortle and move on. What is considered “sounding like an idiot” by the “elites”, is often just sensible talk. Take this mention from an article in powerline:

Reagan said “fascism was the basis of the New Deal,” and refused to back down while the media hounded him about it.

As he very well shouldn’t, because, other than hating the Germans, it is in hindsight patently obvious that FDR was a fascist.

So shocking and appalling the media, college graduates and leftists (BIRM) is no reason to think anyone committed a gaffe that will be judged as stupid by the rest of the country.

But more importantly, because we have every reason, in fact, to believe that Haitians are eating pets. There’s this video linked in yesterday’s comments. Which is being blocked because “fact checkers” say is wrong, but we all know that dance, no.

And there’s this about geese. And I’m given to understand there’s a ton others. These are just the ones I stumbled onto without looking much, because well, have been playing bureaucracy and doctors all morning. (New from Hasbro, the hot new game for sixty year olds.)

In fact, there this going on, which of course has nothing to do with the poor town getting hammered with feral* illegals.

Do I know Hatians are eating pets? Well, no. But I know this dance quite well. Other people know it too. There’s already a meme:

The truth is that the left howls racist or white supremacist because — as usual — they confuse race with culture. Frankly, if we’d got Ukrainians in the middle of Holodomor in the same circumstances these Haitians were dumped in Ohio, they would likely do the exact same thing — and most Ukrainians are far paler than I.

Race means nothing. Culture means everything. And Hatian culture is horrible, coming from horrible circumstances and a horrible history. In fact, things have been bad for so long in Ohio that even attempts at turning it around are impossible. And would probably fail. The island has been a wreck and a charity case so long that there is no memory of a productive existence, anymore. (No, it’s not race. The Dominican Republic has the same racial composition and is not the same mess.)

Haitians are as close, at this point, to feral humans, as it’s possible to get. Worse, they’re referalized humans. Humans once civilized who have been forced by extreme circumstances, to shed their civilization. Which is much worse than being “just” savage or feral.

Now, they could be salvaged, and if there’s a place they might have hope, it’s the US. But the way to do that is NOT to bring them in through wide open borders, with no background check, and dump them on a small Ohio town that you deem should be punished because– I don’t know — they voted for your opponent or something.

The way to salvage these poor, traumatized human beings would be to bring them in with extensive therapy and acculturation lessons. And then separate them in family units, throughout the country, so the old culture has no hold.

Now whether that kind of extensive charity on a national level is in our best interests is a good question, and as a libertarian and a nationalist, I’d say no. OTOH if charity organizations, not the government wanted to spend the massive amount of money to do this, it probably should be allowed, even if the first generation would never be even halfway acculturated. (But their kids would be okay-ish, and their grandkids would be American.)

BUT again, this is not what’s being done. Instead they’re either trekking in or being flown over at taxpayer expense and dumped into small towns throughout the nation. Then jobs are found for them at very low wages, and they are awarded full welfare while they proceed to be feral and terrorize the neighbors and eat their pets.

And the local government denies it’s happening just like Paste Eating Polis denies that Aurora apartments are taken over by Tren D’Aragua. Because you’re supposed to believe their autoritah and not your lying eyes or your lying neighbors. And if you don’t you’re a racist who racists or something.

Look, again, race is bullshit — at least in the American definition of it — but culture is everything, and before we allow anyone into our nation we should look at their culture. And we should tell them “there is bullshit up with which we will not put!” so to put it. And for more extreme cases, there should be orientation, counseling and checking on them.

For instance, I very much doubt the immigrant from a remote area of South America who had never seen a flush toilet and tried to drink from it knows what to do when set free in America. Things like credit cards, bank accounts and groceries are probably beyond her experience, and she’s most likely to fall into slave labor or be sex trafficked.

In the same way, these immigrants, even less feral ones, coming from less starved areas than Haiti, are likely to interact badly with Americans on one of the most sensitive cultural areas: pets. (The other immediate clash points that come to mind are: behavior of and treatment of females, and definition of and treatment of children. There are others. Private property left unguarded is a big part underlying all clashes.)

Not every place in the world is as potty about pets as America. In fact only the other Anglosphere nations seem to be. Even French or, well, Portuguese, Spanish and probably (though I never looked closely) Germans are far more pragmatic about pets.

Of these the countries formerly occupied by Moors — Portugal and Spain, for ex. — are the worst. In Portugal a significant portion of the population throws their cats and dogs outside and leave them with no provisioning whatsoever while they take month long vacations. If the pet is there when they return, great. If not, well, they get another. They’re free, right?

My family, being Odd seethes over this, and even mom who is not a pet person will feed a bunch of these “abandoned” pets every summer.

The same happens when someone dies. The way to deal with it, according to most people in Portugal, is to throw the deceased’s pet, even if it’s an indoor cat, out in the street to fend for him/herself.

This attitude is closer to much of the rest of the world than to America.

And then there are the regions with actual food insecurity. Where pets become either covert or overt sources of food. And since there’s no sense of private property, a pet who is — or can be coaxed into being — loose is just food on the oof for “sensible” Hatians.

But you ask, why can’t they go to the store and use the EBT cards they were given?

Well, first because most food will look really weird. It did to me, and I came from a western country — but not one that at the time had real supermarkets. Carnicerias, sure, but not supermarkets — second because they probably have no clue how to use the cards.

Think about it. You’re handed a piece of plastic and told you can get food with it…

And sure, America is jumping with food, from squirrels to raccoons to deer which no one will cry if you eat (Oh, the idiots will cry about deer) but by and large that food is hard to get while the pets are…. tame and easy. As are the park geese and ducks.

These people are utterly pitiable. Not least because doing this and being allowed to do this is not acculturating them to America at all. And is setting them up to be the flash point for when America has had enough and the convulsion starts.

The left either doesn’t see that, or hopes if the dance starts that it will be the racial war they’ve dreamed of since the 70s. Mostly because they think that 50% of the country is black, but also because they think people who tan are magical and much more “savage” which they view as good and therefore would win walking away.

In fact they’re setting up everyone from my level of tan upwards, or who has even a slight accent (Hi. Moose and squirrel.) to be massacred. Which includes me, my kids, and a lot of my friends and ducttape nephews and nieces.

They are setting them up to be the victims in a spasm of violence that will leave America broken, but not in a way the left will enjoy.

All because they have rats in their heads about race and are completely ignorant of culture. Oh and because they engage in fantasies of the Gramscian kind, which is just the Noble Savage in Marxist war paint.

Their fantasies are driving us to a point when the butcher’s bill will be a stain on America’s soul as most of the dead will be objectively innocent victims.

Let’s hope that those who victimized them by making them the tool of lefty fantasies also get what they’ve earned if it comes to that.

May G-d have mercy on their souls. Because if they get their wish, no one else will.

Yes. Yes. You are in fact getting a bonus post. And today of all days. (I never function at my best on 9/11.)

Why are you so blessed, you might ask. Well, I have certain skills. Skills that make me more adapted than the rest of you to live in our present all propaganda all the time now.

Last night when I went to bed my group of people who were paying attention to the debate was mixed on the result. As was the consensus of the net. It was all “Trump could have behaved better” and “Kamala was good.” (Spoiler Que Mala wasn’t good. She smirked and made faces like a bad actor at a community theater audition, lied egregiously and needed the help of the two moderators not to implode. But she was better than Biden’s debate, which I think is what many people were expecting.)

But this morning, the right blogs (granted my sample leans heavily DeSantist — and would you lot get over it. No, Ron would not have done better in that incredibly rigged scenario. Again, I question his political judgement in running at all this year.) were in full Doom! Gloom! Abandon all hope!

Since it’s 9/11 and I’m mildly depressed and — yes, thank you for asking — still dealing with dual country bureaucracies, I kind of settled down to not read politics today.

But then…. but then something was working at the back of my head.

Last night in the PJM liveblogging, it was taken as fact that Kamala was winning because her team was already demanding another debate. This didn’t make much sense, except under “oh, she wants to rub his face on it” maybe. But even so–

It wasn’t till this morning the full stupid of this hit me.

So, Kamala managed not to Biden it on stage. Great.

And yes, she, personally, might be stupid enough not to realize how much help she had from the mods and likely from her little friend in her ear. And think it would be fun to do it again.

But Que Mala’s team isn’t Que Mala. I suspect they treat her about like Biden’s team treated him. And they’re the same people.

They know she’s not that great. And they know that in the primaries in 16 she imploded in the debates. They’ve been carefully keeping her away from any opportunities to interact with press or even the public. And please keep in mind they allowed BIDEN to mingle. So, this is their estimation of her intellect and ability.

And yet, despite a supposedly HUGE bump from the debate in the polls, a bump such as puts her out of reach…. She’s asking for another debate, and apparently pressing the point.

People! I raised children. The kid who follows the other going “I demand a rematch!” is not the winner. Ever.

Period.

At the same time, regardless of what Nancy Grey Goose Pelosi says, you know Trump is not a coward. Heck, we have photo evidence of it. If Kamala really were that far ahead in the polls from the debate, Trump’s team and frankly Trump would want a rematch. Also, Trump, right? He’d be spoiling for a fight, going “I demand a rematch” even if his team were trying to hold him back. Say what you will of him, if he ran from a fight he wouldn’t have thrown his hat in the ring this year, despite everything they’ve thrown at him. Or he’d have quit after the failed assassination attempt. And his ego is big enough if he had bombed, he’d want to show how great he really was. And again, his team would really just have to get out of the way.

Instead Trump is saying “Only on Fox and with my chosen moderators.” I.e. he’s putting CONDITIONS on it.

Guys?

This is not how a loser acts.

In fact, the roles are reversed and require not just that Kamala be brutally stupid, (which I’ll buy) but that her entire team also be too stupid to remember to breathe out after breathing in. And it breaks character for Trump.

So…. As during the covidiocy, what do we do when what people are DOING doesn’t match what we’re being told? Well, we weigh what they’re doing more, because that is more consequential, right?

Which brings us to: Who won the debate? Who lost?

First, admit that we’re not normal people. None of the commenters are. And most of my blogs are people who are functionally over-educated and can’t help interpreting things in the way the university class does. (And they almost all fell for the covid mania too.)

Are they/we interpreting the interaction properly? Are they seeing what normal people saw? You know, I rather doubt it? Just …. I listen to total strangers talk. It’s a writer thing. Also a PTSD thing. I like to be aware of my surroundings. And in one quick trip to the store…. the impression I got is that people really found the moderators over the top assists telling and almost comical.

Second, we know campaigns have internal polls that are more accurate than the ones used for propaganda. Like in 16 we all thought Trump was nuts for acting like he was going to win…. but I’m sure he had internal polls.

…. All I can say is the internal polls must be LIT.

Now, could I be wrong about all this? Sure. Trump could have had a personality transplant from Mitt Romney and Kamala could be handled by people so dumb they can guess the day of the week two times out of three. COULD happen, I suppose.

But somehow I don’t think so. Even in clown world there should be some congruence between reality and words. If there isn’t, look to the actions, not the words.

The words are usually propaganda.

Twenty three years ago, I watched TV commenters (through the world’s grainiest reception ever because we lived in Manitou Springs, and didn’t have cable) tell us that everything had changed.

I didn’t quite believe them. It was horrible, of course. But everything changing?

But I can see it now, tracing backwards. Without 9/11 and the situation of permanent crisis it introduced, we would not be where we are today.

No, I don’t think 9/11 was fake. I happen to know that fire does in fact soften steel enough for the horrors of that day. And I doubt George W. Bush knew or planned it. For all I am very disappointed in him, and have been for a good long while, I don’t think he chose that path. He wanted to be an education president, after all.

Did no one in our government know? Waggles hand. Next your going to ask me if no one in our government knew about the Trump assassination attempt.

I don’t know. I want to tell you those conspiracy theories are crazy. I’d tell you those conspiracy theories are crazy. But these days the difference between conspiracy theory and reality is about 2 weeks.

And the incompetence was astounding, and the opportunities were there in both cases, so maybe there was no collusion, but who knows? Our three letters have been corrupted for a long time. Either that or more useless than soggy toilet paper. (Waggles hand again.)

Anyway, we are stuck now in a conveyor belt of insanity. The events after 9/11, the ramping up totalitarian instincts in our so called “elites” and the technology, all combined to create the illusion in our would-be technocrats that they could control all and make us do everything they said and, you know, own nothing and be happy.

But they’re finding it hard going and they keep ramping up their insanity in response. Like deaf people, they think that the problem is we haven’t got the message, and they keep making it louder and more obvious.

I don’t have a crystal ball, I don’t know what’s coming down the pike. And I’ve been kind of under the gun on personal stuff this year, so I have not, in fact, even given the elections much thought. Besides I’m fairly sure they’ve got it rigged. I just don’t know what happens next. Or maybe before.

And they can’t stand resistance even passive of the “make me” kind. So they’re going to get even crazier.

When you consider 2020, ramping up from that crazy is bad.

There was a meme making the rounds of facebook last night. It is this:

On this night…23 years ago, 246 people went to sleep in preparation for their morning flights. 2,606 people went to sleep in preparation for work in the morning tomorrow. 343 firefighters went to sleep in preparation for their morning shift. 60 police officers went to sleep in preparation for morning patrol. 8 paramedics went to sleep in preparation for the morning shift of saving lives. None of them saw past 10:00 am Sept 11, 2001. In one single moment life may never be the same. As you live and enjoy the breaths you take today and tonight before you go to sleep in preparation for your life tomorrow, kiss the ones you love, snuggle a little tighter, and never take one second of your life for granted.

As you guys know this week I got a reminder of the brevity of life, the unpredictability of the span of days we are given. I actually got three. I only posted one here.

And you guys know I’m writing the crazy novel (I really need to finish it, now bureaucracy agogo has slowed down. I’m SO close.) partly because I realized I was sixty and didn’t want it to die with me. (And of course, it spawned six more, the …. gah.)

No human being knows how long they have. I certainly don’t. And in these ridiculously dangerous, slippery times, we literally don’t know what tomorrow will bring, nor how crazy it will get.

What we do know is this:

1-Prepare, prepare, prepare.

2- If you feel there’s something that will be on your conscience for eternity because you didn’t do it now, do it now. Provided it’s not killing other people, or robbing the mint, if it’s not hurting other people or taking their stuff, do it now.

3- Do something you love every day. Tell someone you love that you love them every day. Enjoy your life while you have it.

And keep moving forward. It’s not over till it’s over.

Don’t lie down till you’re dead. And make it hard to kill you.

Trump’s Worst Mistake – by Tom Kratman

So where did Trump really screw up?

I am reminded of something Bill Buckley once wrote, “I would rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2000 people on the faculty of Harvard University.” Just keep that in the back of your mind for the nonce.

Trump’s not an eloquent man. That’s not the problem, although it does tend to explain some of his addiction to Twitter, where no one is eloquent. He’s said some stupid things, here and there, which have cost him some support he could and should have had. But then weigh those factors against some of his undoubted successes.

We had a gangbuster economy for four years. Even COVID and lockdowns couldn’t kill it.

We were energy independent, as much as we cared to be, and were for about two years. Did you imagine the eco-nazis near and at the core of the Democratic Party were going to let that continue? (If so, I have this bridge…) We didn’t open any new campaigns in either the unwinnable, because we refuse to win it, war against radical Islam nor any more silly-assed interventions on behalf of the goodfeelz of ICOTESCAS, the International Community Of The Ever So Caring And Sensitive.

Illegal immigration had near enough stopped. No, he didn’t get a wall built from sea to shining sea, but he got enough of it built and, as he promised, he got Mexico to pay for a more effective wall…right on their southern border. And the Mexican La Migra, boys and girls, does not fuck around.

His trade rep, Robert Lighthizer, had browbeaten the rest of the world, such of it as matters, into submission. NAFTA is effectively dead, replaced by the more favorable USMCA.
In short, he did what he promised to do, or as much of it as political realities allowed, and then some.

I know a lot of people – some of them close friends – don’t want to see any good or any effectiveness in Trump, largely over any number of the dumb things he’s said, but I’ll ask them to consider just how cogent and eloquent they would be, in Washington, not just friendless but with everyone but your wife and kids turning on you like rabid dogs, where your every word, movement, everything becomes fodder for what is perhaps the most concentrated and concerted efforts at libel and slander ever launched at an American political figure. Sure, terrible things were said and made up about Jefferson and Jackson, Adams, Lincoln, and many others. But it wasn’t from everyone, nor all the time.
I don’t think Trump ever understood, going into this, that he would be quite so alone and abandoned as he was going to be.

And that leads us to the one consistent, horrible, repetitive failing of which Trump truly is guilty; he has perhaps the worst record of anyone but the early Lincoln for picking shithead subordinates, incompetent, unreliable, arrogant, stupid, cowardly, ungrateful, entitled, and treacherous.

Why is that? Well, one thing stands out; again and again Trump went with establishment figures who were – generally quite mildly – seen as something other than pure mainstream. Well…if they weren’t quite mainstream establishment, they were STILL establishment. So of course they turned on him; he was attacking their establishment.

Now go back to that second paragraph, above, the quote from Bill Buckley. You see, Trump did have friends, tens of millions of them. They were the common people, the workers, the natural allies of a revolutionary executive against the aristocratic robber barons, plutocrats, and their running dogs in the establishment.

And that was Trump’s huge mistake; he kept going to those 2000 names of the Harvard faculty…or Yale…or Columbia…or Annapolis…or West Point, when those should have been bars to even slight consideration for his cabinet. Instead, here’s Buckley, again, he should have been looking for the 2000 common folk of talent. No, not me; I want nothing to do with DC. Others.

They could hardly have served him or the country worse.

*For those interested in Colonel Kratman’s fiction, he has a substack, here. – SAH*

This is a post I didn’t want to write for at least another thirty years, or possibly for the rest of my life, since Holly was only a year and change older than I, and she might well have outlived me.

I found out yesterday, from Suburban in comments that Holly Lisle had died of cancer. She died on the 27th of August, according to Wikipedia.

The last time I thought of Holly Lisle, a friend/commenter on this blog who is also a friend of hers asked if I’d heard from her because he hadn’t and the blog hadn’t been updated in some months. I told him I’d also not heard — in fact my last two emails had got unanswered — and I thought I should email her, but then it got lost in the shuffle of trying to organize a wedding overseas.

Which is why yesterday hit like an anvil.

I never met Holly in person. Because I’d read her for the first time in the 90s I thought she was ten years older than I or so. Nah. She just started going and stuck with it. And of course I tried to rewrite the one book no one in trad pub would buy…. 8 times before I got a grip on reality.

I was surprised when we “met” online to find she was not quite two years older than I.

I’ve been breaking my head to figure out how we “met” online. I think I’ve reconstructed it mentally. I had read one of her stories and wanted to promote it. Because of the nature of this blog, I wasn’t sure if she wanted to be associated with me, so I tried to find her email so I could ask her permission to mention her. (Either here or on MGC? I don’t remember.)

At any rate I couldn’t find her email, so I just mentioned it or promoted somewhere. At which point she emailed me. Having noticed an uptick in her Amazon sales, she searched and found my mention. She sent me a bookfunnel copy of The Longview Chronicles.

Which revived my love for space opera, which had been lost for a while.

After that we corresponded. I didn’t always agree with her ideas on why some of her marketing hadn’t worked, but she was trying to figure things out.

During the horrible year of 2020 she was one of my reality checks and online mental health supports.

After I moved and things got a bit crazy for a while, we weren’t in as frequent a contact. But she sometimes dropped into my email or into the comments at MGC and was always a class act.

Through Holly I found that my experiences in Traditional Publishing weren’t that unusual. And I borrowed a lot of her courage (she had enough to spare) to get used to the new, exciting world of indie publishing.

Last we talked she was genuinely excited for her Ohio novels, and trying to figure out all the ins and outs of how to make it a big success.

I’m so very sorry she slipped out of this world while I wasn’t looking.

But in another way, she will never be gone. Her books will continue to be read. Her lessons online — I hope her family keeps them on line — will continue to help new writers figure out how to make the story in their heads the story that enthralls someone else, in their heads.

Yesterday, as I frantically tried to confirm her passing, I came across a blog post that might be her very last gift to me. In it she spoke of breaking into publishing and how important it was to write the stories that are uniquely ours.

Which I am in fact doing now. I only hope to have enough time.

Farewell Holly. I know you didn’t agree with me on the afterlife, but as Heinlein said of Theodore Sturgeon, whatever else is true, I’m sure a spirit like yours couldn’t be entirely extinguished.

Nothing is lost, nothing is created. You’ve only changed and are for the moment inaccessible to me.

You were a writer to your fingertips and a battler who didn’t know how to give up.

Somewhere, you are creating and seeing very clearly. And someday, out of time, we’ll meet again.

Until then, fare thee well my friend. I’m looking forward to discussing everything you’ll have learned, created and figured out.

When we meet again.

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 JEFF DUNTEMAN AND JAMES R. STRICKLAND: Drumlin Circus / On Gossamer Wings

A starship malfunctions and strands its 800 passengers on a planet eerily like the Pleistocene Earth, complete with prehistoric mammals including woolly mammoths, dire wolves, and smilodons. And something else: tens of thousands of abandoned alien machines consisting of a bowl and two pillars that respond with drum-like sounds when touched. Tap 256 times on the pillars in any combination, and…something…coalesces in the bowl. It might be a spoon or an axe or a twisted lump of silvery metal. These artifacts (dubbed “drumlins”) help the unwilling colonists survive, but there’s something a little weird about what comes out of the “thingmaker” machines. High-pitched sounds sometimes make drumlins twitch and combine into more complex things. Stranger still, what drumlins do seems to depend on the thoughts of nearby humans. Wish hard while you whistle just so…and something amazing may happen. 260 years on, the castaways have created a civilization resembling late 19th Century America, based in part on coal, steam, iron, and hard work–and in part on the mysterious drumlin artifacts. Both short novels in this volume are set against this background. Drumlin Circus: Every spring, Bramble Ceglarek takes Pretty Alice’s Wonderland Circus down the dirt roads of the west country, dazzling townfolk with clowns, acrobats, calliope music, and trained animals — especially trained animals. His wife Julia trains them with a drumlin whistle, and they obey with peculiar precision. The cultlike Bitspace Institute, hoping to train animal assassins, sends agent Simon Kassel to steal the whistle. Unknown to him, Kassel has been set up to fail by his Institute rivals who want to be rid of him, and after Julia and her apprentice Rosa are abducted by Institute thugs who attempt to kill him, Kassel switches loyalties and joins the circus as a very scary clown. He returns to Institute HQ to rescue Julia and Rosa, only to discover that the training whistle is much more than merely a whistle: a mysterious “function controller” that compels animals, human beings, and even the alien drumlin artifacts themselves to obey its bearer. On Gossamer Wings: From out in the dry rye fields of the west, rumors have come to the Bitspace Institute that someone has drummed up something valuable from the alien thingmakers: a large sphere of pure iron. Institute agent Hiram König rides out to investigate, and discovers the strange, mute young woman who has done the drumming. He also learns that the Big Ball of Iron is just the beginning of the previously unknown drumlins that she has discovered in the vast “bitspace” of the alien thingmakers. Despite the slow progress of technology in the Valinor colony, where steam locomotives and the first primitive hydrogen airships are state of the art, Natalie Bishop is using her talents with the thingmakers to seek out the drumlin parts she needs to build a heavier-than-air flying machine. For her, the flier is her masterpiece, the work that will prove her worth to the people she cares about. The race is on for König to extract Natalie from the pressure-cooker of a small town that is her home, before it blows up around her and before she takes the dazzlingly risky final step and tries to fly.

FROM SHANE GRIES: The Big Dead One (The Line)

The best place to be in an Apocalypse is inside a thirty ton Bradley Fighting Vehicle grinding rotting bodies to paste under your tracks or using an Abrams 120mm canister round to turn a horde of undead into a pink mist. Here’s the thing though … tracks and guns and the people who operate them wear out, even as the living corpses keep coming at you.

After a brutal summer of combat in the plains and cities of the Midwest, the First Infantry Division is conducting a fighting retreat back to the Pacific Northwest. Both the winds of Fall and the howls of the undead are echoing in their wake when they’re re-tasked to take Denver Airport. Along the way they have to safeguard thousands of civilians who are following in their armored wake, and one mistake can turn them all into a ravening horde.

For Staff Sergeant Mark Foley and his tired mechanized infantry squad, it means diving once more into the hell of combat against both raiders who will shoot you dead for a gallon of gas and infected that will send you to a special kind of living death.

The third volume of Shane Gries’ best selling, “The Line” series.

FROM MARY CATTELI: A Diabolical Bargain

Growing up between the Wizards’ Wood and its marvels, and the finest university of wizardry in the world, Nick Briarwood always thought that he wanted to learn wizardry. When his father attempts to offer him to a demon in a deal, the deal rebounded on him, and Nick survives — but all the evidence points to his having made the deal. Now he really wants to learn wizardry. Even though the university, the best place to master it, is also the place where he is most likely to be discovered.

FROM PAM UPHOFF: Out of Contact

Radmir Gagarin is not an Exec, he just does the job of one. Working for the richest man in the Alliance, Lord Diomid Devi, is not easy, even though he’s retired. And it gets a lot harder when the Plague strikes the World Lord Diomid purchased as his personal retirement home. And then the invasion . . .

As the Three Part Alliance crumbles, it’s every world for itself, and even a man so rich he can buy an entire parallel Earth to retire on, can find himself in a lot of trouble!

BY MANLY WADE WELLMAN, REVIVED B D. JASON FLEMING: Sojarr of Titan (Annotated): The Classic Pulp Planetary Romance

When the spaceship crashed on Saturn’s largest moon, the pilot adventurer died. But his infant son did not. Raising himself in the wilds of an alien world, Sojarr survives, and thrives, discovering a strange tribe of gypsy humans, and battling roving bands of monstrous natives…

Until the day another ship falls from the sky and threatens to throw two worlds into chaos!

• This iktaPOP Media edition contains a new introduction giving the novel genre and historical context.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Highway to Tartarus

Insanity seems to run rampant in the immortal population, and Hades seems to be the one the Fates tap to contain them all; however, this time, Hades, and Kyra, the former goddess of War from Atlantis, have to find and catch the one who’s gone dangerously insane: Deshayna, Kyra’s identical twin, and the former goddess of Death.

Along for the ride are a pregnant Persephone, Hel from the Norse pantheon (and Hades’ and Persephone’s lover), Tyr and Thor, and Kyra’s adopted daughter Rowan.

The seven of them follow rumors, leads, and death-god connections around the world in an RV that’s bigger on the inside than on the outside, while trying to maintain a bare semblance of normalcy despite the chaos of never knowing when or where their Fates-assigned mission will end…or if it will end them.

FROM KAREN MYERS: Bound into the Blood – A Virginian in Elfland

Book 4 of The Hounds of Annwn.

DISTURBING THE FAMILY SECRETS COULD BRING RUIN TO EVERYTHING HE’S WORKED SO HARD TO BUILD.

George Talbot Traherne, the human huntsman for the Wild Hunt, is preparing for the birth of his child by exploring the family papers about his parents and their deaths. When his improved relationship with his patron, the antlered god Cernunnos, is jeopardized by an unexpected opposition, he finds he must choose between loyalty to family and loyalty to a god.

He discovers he doesn’t know either of them as well as he thought he did. His search for answers takes him to the human world with unsuitable companions.

How will he keep a rock-wight safe from detection, or even teach her the rules of the road? And what will he awaken in the process, bringing disaster back to his family on his own doorstep? What if his loyalty is misplaced? What will be the price of his mistakes?

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Sound of One Child Crying

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

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

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

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

THIS WEEK WE HAVE A SPECIAL TREAT: FROM OCCASIONAL ATH COMMENTER AND ACE OF SPADE HABITUE SCOTT, HIS FIRST PUBLISHED STORY IS FREE HERE: The Waystation Incident

And if it gets enough votes, it will be printed in an anthology. So go and read, and if you enjoy it, support it.

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: PREMIUM