Oh, the adventures I’ve been having! If you’re the person who helped us find an ATM, thank you. And no, I’m not going to tell the story. OTOH if you’re the couple I scared by completely ignoring you and bonding with your dog, I’m sorry. I was very tired. Normally I pretend that humans are almost as interesting as dogs….
And no, I’m not going to discuss the dead armadillo, thank you so much.
But through it all the sound track grows:
Probably more next week, after I land back home. And yes, you who set me on this course are deththththththpicable. You know who you are. Like you don’t know it’s dangerous to wind up the writer. Sigh.
(Sarah’s well, I spoke with her earlier today. You might just be stuck with me through the weekend, but at least this time I’m not also traveling.)
Interesting time of year in America, isn’t it? A rather interesting and very commercialized holiday, harvest has wrapped up or is wrapping up, children scrambling for costumes or begging for boughten costumes, creativity on high display, sugar highs . . . memento mori . . .
My travels a couple weeks ago included accompanying my mother to graveyards where some of her ancestors, and my father, were laid to rest. A lot of interesting and not always nice family history came up, and I’ve written it down with relevant photoes for my kids, the great-great-great-great (counts on fingers) grandchildren of the perpetrators. I don’t mind graveyards: they’re very empty and quiet, a nice place for an introvert, but I know a lot of folks do mind them. Most of the old family houses are gone, no living relatives remain in the area in close enough degree for us to know of them, but her childhood church and the graveyards remain.
We’re coming up on an off year election here, and it’s been interesting seeing all the local political kerfluffles and drama. Oh yes, this town has pulled off as much drama about a mayoral election as you’d expect in a presidential race. No one has been arrested . . . yet . . . This is your reminder to go look up your local candidates before the vote, and also any ballot measures. (Assuming your candidates have not been putting on the show ours have, in which case you already know far too much of the dirt.)
Once the sugar rush is over, it’s worth taking a few moments to think about those who came before and how we ended up where we are today, and to talk about it with the next generations. Whether that’s the families moving to find work or congenial neighbors that led us to the places we live in, or the politicians they chose to fix the most urgent problems of their time and place, which fixes have led to the problems of our times and places, we, and our world, did not spring fully formed from nothing. We come from the past, including the past we do not know, and we’re going to the future, which we also do not know, but have great hopes and dreams for. Being mindful of the past and the ideas passed along to us, and who gave them to us and why, and after due consideration discarding those that are harmful, is only wise on this one-way trip.
Well, Sarah left me in charge again, and let me just tell you she’s traveling far too much, if necessarily so, this fall. Please to not do anything we’d have to explain when she gets back, such as taking over large countries or painting the blog pink. Exploring the floating mountains is fine, or even investigating what the heck is up with what appears to be a very odd celestial body or two in that sky. (Is it one or two? Is the AI high?)
And since I used an earworm for a title, well, yes, I think she spends enough time making music with the clanker to count for the purpose of lyrics, don’t you? Here, have an Elly tune to tide you over.
So, in No Man’s Land, in the lost colony of Elly, in the semi-tropical continent of Brinar, there is a festival so old that though it’s called Thanks for the Boats, no one knows which boats, why thank for them, or whom they’re thanking.
But there’s food and liquor and …. the king has a new interest. Sure. Spying. Let’s go with that.
Without further ado, listen to the clanker singing about Thanks for the Boats
Update:
Missa’s Confession, or the Sea Is Dark and Deep, which starts a new playlist: Songs from Elly.
Every time I hit x, I find someone talking with great certainty of what appears to be a parallel universe.
I’m not talking here of the doomers who are almost certainly foreign (or clankers) who mix up timelines and history, and seem convinced we’ve been living in dystopia since the 70s but also think that the US is somehow responsible for the inflationary policies of the rest of the world. (In the seventies! When the Mediterranean countries were already on the third or fourth cycle of inflating away their debt. Which arguably is also what the US tried to do.)
I’m talking of people I read and respect, who seem convinced all of the right has suddenly, overnight, become anti-semitic or worse.
They’re living in bubbles. And can’t seem to see outside them.
I wish I could say that this is a problem of the internet. Or perhaps not, since the internet isn’t going away. But honestly it’s weirder when the bubble is in real life.
For years I laughed at people who said that the communists were taking over or the like, because it was so weird and out of touch. What I should have done was check where they were coming from.
Yes, there are states, professions, locations where your view of reality will be completely distorted. It doesn’t make your view any more accurate, but it does explain why you think that.
I found this out in 2020 when we had to cross the country during lockdown. I found that the hard lockdown, unavoidable in urban Colorado, where the signs on the highway told you that you should be home, even though driving alone in your car (or with the person you lived with) could not cause contagion. But a couple of hours away, still in Colorado, little towns were fully open and people looked at you oddly if you wore a mask. And in other states, the enforcement was far less draconian and sometimes wildly spotty.
Another point at which I realized my bubble had blinded me was yesterday while talking about all the stratagems we used to go through to figure out which churches were less likely to serve up sermons on the wickedness of the right and the saintliness of the left. This was a theme of the last six years in Colorado, and I suddenly realized we haven’t found anything even half as bad since we moved. In fact, the worst sermons here would be very good in those days. (Like, I get annoyed because I think I know what the sermon is driving at, but not thing is explicit, and sometimes there is at least an attempt to head that idea off.)
Here’s the thing, yes, the net, and particularly X can make it worse. It’s still not as bad as the days the left controlled twitter. But– But other countries have realized that they can sow dissension and truly weird ideas in the US with their fifty cent army, some of which aren’t even clankers.
Can I tell you how to fix this? Well, I can’t tell you to regularly drive across the country and observe other places. I can’t tell you even to ignore all the bots and the crazies on X. But you should. Honestly, you should. It’s just that you might become confused about who is a bot or a foreign agent.
There are tells of grammar and syntax for foreign, more importantly there’s tells of worldview, like thinking the US is evenly divided by race, or that um… the media is perfectly accurate about how we live* and if you look, it starts to become obvious. For the clankers, not sure. Except sooner or later the “wait what?” comes through. (*Yes, this will also catch our hard left. or, as I said, foreigners.)
However and beyond twitter, keep one very clear thing in mind “Who would benefit if I believed this? And are they the kind of countries who would be paying for a fifty cent army?”
Other than that? Look at facts. Facts are hard to ignore or explain.
If there is a great anti-semitic movement in this country, how come the violence are the same ol’ leftist rentamobs and open-borders invaders we’ve always seen? I mean, it’s a good question, isn’t it?
In the same way, about my long running argument linked above, if everyone’s standards of life have been declining since the seventies, how come they actually haven’t, and if we were transported to the seventies most of us would bitch? I agree that currently the US is screwing the young, but that’s because we’ve become a stupid gerontocracy. And by “we” in this case I mostly mean the left. However, the young still have options we didn’t have, and those with a modicum of drive can forge their own paths. Claiming they can’t because Phds are more expensive or manual labor pays less doesn’t help anything and makes me want to b&tch slap the doomers. (Okay, that last one is constant, but still.) Yes, I’ll write about why the future is so bright we should all buy stock in shades, BUT first and more importantly, if your view of the present and future is that dark and you’re not a bot or a driven ideologue (For some reason the “everything has gone to hell since the seventies” is a favorite of card-carrying communists. I’m not sure why, except in the seventies the USSR still seemed ascendant?) check your bubble. Check what you might not be seeing.
As always, I’m going to recommend you listen to people talking in the grocery store, engage in casual chatter with your delivery people, and compare to what you think you know.
And if the future seems dark, go and look at the new tech, the new things we can now do, and don’t look at it through cautionary tales written half a century ago (No, truly, even if you discount USSR propaganda, a lot of the writers were just trying to write for the money.) And then think how you could use that to forge your own path.
Things feel dark because the left is dying. And they still have enough control over the opinion industrial complex to influence how the rest of us feel.
Talk of past unity and present strife ignores the fact that in the past there was only one opinion broadcast: the left’s.
Today the world seems to be falling apart but the truth is that we’re finally, at long last, fighting back.
Which is why the left is trying to obfuscate by being louder, crazier, and more than occasionally pretending to be on the right.
Oh, yeah, another reality check, people who say they’re on the right but parrot all the leftist talking points, probably aren’t on the right. High chances they’re ALSO not your friends.
We all tend to fall into the occasional bubble. And heck “Obsessed with politics” is a bubble. BUT thanks to the net, we can reality check.
Always reality check.
And don’t fall into despair.
Sursum corda. In the end we win, they lose.
No other outcome is possible — they’re at war with reality — but more importantly, no other outcome is acceptable.
Be not afraid. And keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.
This is mostly an update state-of-the-writer post, but there’s also a reference to the kind of linguistic misunderstanding I love and which my fandom excels at, and which actually helped through a dark/difficult time. And is still helping.
So, first the state of the writer: I’m trying to finish Witch’s Daughter to send to my editor while I’m away, so it can go to my copyeditor next week, so I can bring it out on my birthday. As soon as it goes to the copyeditor, the earcs will go to substack subscribers, and go up for pre-order. I also intend to put the prequel, Witchfinder on 99c sale when Witch’s Daughter comes out. (I’m planning on taking everything off KU and going wide, so this is probably last hurray of 99c sales starting on my birthday and extending to Christmas.)
I am objectively 10k words from the end of WD, but my troubles never come singly, and these last two months have been extra special, so… our oldest cat, our beloved, fuzzy Havelock Vetinari (worst named cat ever! He’s sweet and brainless) is now in pain all the time, and peeing on things four or five times a day, which has kept me distracted and busy.
Havelock (Havey) cat in his fuzzy glory
It is likely we’re approaching that awful, inevitable last visit to the vet. Certainly if he keeps acting like he’s in severe pain. And I can’t keep washing the protective covers on the leather sofas 4 times a day. But we’re leaving it till we return from SD. And maybe a week, to make sure it’s not just the upheaval of these last two months.
But– The visit is Thursday through Monday, because of driving time. The rest of the family will be home, so he’ll be cared for an maybe he won’t notice my absence? Sigh. We’ll see.
Anyway, wait till the fifth or sixth for me to be regular and coherent. While I’m gone, Holly will make sure you don’t have dead air, here, but I’ll try to check in. Likely to be busy at event 10 hours a day, so mornings and evenings, maybe?
Oh, yeah IF YOU WANT TO SEND A BOOK FOR PROMO, DO SO TODAY, AS I’M LEAVING THE PROMO POST SETUP TOMORROW. IF YOU DON’T HAVE IT TO ME BY TOMORROW, IT WILL BE NEXT WEEK, SO SORRY. Also if people freak at my absence (more likely spottiness) at insty, reassure them. Okay, just super-busy.
Now, the Chinchilla of Hope: if you guys read the acknowledgements of NML (right? Who does that?) I thank my chapter by chapter cheerers on and readers for the Chinchilla of hope.
How this came about: the Portuguese word for Chancla is Chinelo. I often threaten the chilluns (some older than I) with my Chinelo. But one of them is special-gifted on typos. And keep in mind this is me speaking.
So she started threatening people with the Chinchilla. This was so amusing it took off. So now the Chinchilla of Hope is a thing, coming out when the black dog has me by the heels and chasing that dread beast into its cave again.
While I’m intermittently absent from this blog till the fourth, may the Chinchilla of Hope be with you and keep you going.
Because we all need more fantasy animals in our lives.
We live in very weird times. People have forgotten what the real “march of communism” was like and therefore don’t realize how far we’ve come.
Yesterday one of my ducttape children was arguing with someone about his own age that communism was indeed collapsed/in a state of disintegration on twitter, while she believed that the future is a boot stepping on a human face forever and that the boot would have snazzy hammer and sickle ties.
I was too tired — curse jetlag — to jump in on that. I’m probably still too jetlagged, but since I come from an ancient time and bring you news of dinosaurs (no, really. I confirmed with brother while visiting that in the village we grew up in I’d be — likely — six feet underground, and he’d surely be. I don’t know why almost-63 doesn’t feel that old. Well, except that dad has lived more than 30 years as long and mom lived 30 years plus as long, and they are/were both still self-caring, autonomous and living independently.) I will say something about this.
People under 40 — and older people with bad memories — think that the night of communism is getting ready to fall. That it is invincible and impossible to avoid. That we’re all already doomed.
They are not only wrong. They’re hell to the wrong. Communism is already the defeated enemy. It might still do a lot of damage as it collapses, but it obviously can’t do the damage its followers believe it should do. Look, if communism were that surging force, we’d now be living under the Kamala regime, and it would stretch on forever. Well. Someone else would be living under the Kamala (high heel) boot. You and I and those like us would have been put in camps in 2020. IF NOT 2013.
The truth is that communists (no, are you going to argue this?) captured the highest reaches of US power — the presidency and most legislative offices) clearly and unequivocally in 2008. Obviously and via a color revolution in 2020. And yet we’re still here, still talking, still fighting. If that’s not proof of Red Impotence, I don’t know what is.
Let’s therefore talk about communism, what it was what it did and how it spread, and more importantly how it stayed “on.”
First of all communism is and has always been fiction. Fragile fiction that needs to be protected and have its vulnerabilities hidden.
Without removing literary merit from 1984, it is important to remember it works because the author does what Jerry Pournelle called “the fan dance” really fast and really well, so we never catch the world-building bareassed. But brethren and sistern, it is not only bare assed, it’s got a big booty and it cannot lie. A regime such as 1984 could only subsist if it had absolute and complete control over everything its people saw, did and lived.
Yes, Orwell does a good job of showing that, and I can even believe it was like that in the cities, down to large towns, and that the state had total control over a certain number of people. But it presupposes the whole world is a large city: I bet you in the country side, they might vaguely wave at big brother, but he’s not in fact part of their lives. And it presupposes that tech will never change (It changed and in a big way, long before 1984.) More importantly it presupposes that everyone is a sort of introverted, agreeable Englishman. Even Irish culture, by itself, would break the regime badly. Now introduce your average rural American…. (I have in fact a long-delayed in fulfilling promise to a friend/fan that I will write what happens to a 1984 type regime when a Heinlein character is loosed on it.)
Communism is a hot house plant because it originates from intellectual abstraction; because it doesn’t work mathematically; because, contrary to image, its biggest fans are always intellectuals of a certain type; because it can’t survive without leeching off functional systems, and because it can’t survive the free dissemination of information.
I trust I don’t need to explain why it’s an intellectual abstraction. Marx was not well informed or knowledgeable but he was an “intellectual” in the sense that he spoke a language that is spoken by academics. (Don’t argue the not well informed or knowledgeable: the man couldn’t understand the role of distribution in an economy. I won’t argue he was dumb, as facile verbal/written persuasion is a type of intelligence.)
It doesn’t work mathematically: It can’t. You can’t redistribute yourself into wealth. Yes, this dips into psychology and the fact that humans don’t work as much/as well as slaves, but that’s just one way to look at it. Communism, by its very own top-down structure makes it impossible for people to know how much they can produce, how much they have produced, what demand there is for what’s produced. Ultimately it makes it impossible to know the true price of ANYTHING. (Like the US health system, currently.) This makes it an immiserating and slowly collapsing system. Or if you prefer it in blunt terms, if you administer the Sahara on communist principles, you’ll find you run out of sand.
Its biggest fans were intellectuals, particularly intellectuals in the humanities. Why? Because it’s a just-so story, one that works beautifully if you stay inside your own head. As such, it’s well suited to college professors and such, who have no real world expertise and feel hard done by society, since they are so “smart” they should rule everything.
Yes, I saw the posters with all the marching workers. That’s part of communist disinformation and propaganda. It always was. It was maintained by claiming anyone who objected to communism was “rich” and an “exploiter.” The Kulaks were small, edge of starvation farmers, proclaimed Kulaks because they didn’t want to be expropriated. The fact is that communist regimes use a lot of propaganda about being “for the people” but always devolve into an elite living off the people.
It can’t survive without leeching off more functional economies, because no one — including the information functionaries — know what is produced, what is needed or what could be produced. It’s deaf and blind and it always leads to starvation.
The USSR survived as long as it did because we subsidized it directly (“to avoid war”. See wheat exports, etc.) and indirectly, by letting it swallow vast stretches of the world, including most of Africa. And even then its elites lived at lower-middle-class level for free countries.
Now, the USSR and the various other communist hell holes could survive that long because they were either small (population wise, and absent the lies) or because its people were used to a miserable level of life. Yes, I’m talking about Russia and China.
To swallow something like the US and last communism would need another entity at least as large and rich as the US to leach off of. When you find one, let me know.
The truth is that the long march was a dismal failure. Yes, they captured all important institutions. The reason McCarthy failed is that everything was already captured and the fully-controlled means of information turned on him and destroyed him.
However, the institutions it captured weren’t static, and the means of information weren’t going to be the same forever. This is btw, a big problem with communist thought. It is mired circa the early 20th century and it can’t process anything more recent.
So they took over the institutions and made them…. unusable, really, which damaged their prestige. They took over the media and made it unreliable, which facilitated the rise of the internet and free lance journalists. They took over book publishing and made it unsaleable, which resulted in indie publishing.
In fact the communist destruction of everything it touches brought about the development and purpose of technologies that makes it possible to bypass everything the long march took over, which in turn allows us to take back our government.
Look, if I can’t convince you any other way, believe me when I say: if they had the ability to do it, after the stolen election of 2020 we’d all have gone down for the count. They tried. G-d knows they tried. But their goons are fourth generation nepo babies, whose parents and grandparents were given power and enriched not because they were competent, but because they had the “right” (left) beliefs. This creates a degradation of intellect because they’ve never been required to use it. Regardless of natural ability, these people are too dumb to pour piss out of a boot with the instructions written on the sole.
BUT beyond that, leftist intellectual constructs don’t work in the real world. Its need to control the flow of information and its inability to process anything that doesn’t accord with its theory mean that anything it touches stops functioning.
They could — it was their only competence — lie like pros and have a complete, hermetically sealed lie that by its very ubiquity succeeded in creating the illusion of working.
(When you see those “defectors” talking about how the Soviet plan is still working, that’s actually what’s going on, whether the speaker knows it or not. They’re retconning the past like a cat falling off furniture and giving the “I meant to do that” look. The Soviet Union couldn’t make a single five year plan work, but we’re supposed to believe their almost-100 years plan is working perfectly. Let alone that a lot of it was stuff that never touched the people. It was elite projection and propaganda 24/7.)
As I tell people, if Obama had been president in the 50s the left would by now have convinced everyone he was a great genius and that his time was one of great prosperity. Because it would be in every “news” program, every erudite dissection, every TV sitcom set in the time.
But life is better now, at least for free people. You have a reporting device in your pocket, that can communicate with the world. And I can write for tens of thousands of people on my very own sofa, petting my very own cat. (Yes, Indy is a pain. He keeps pulling my left hand off the keyboard, making typing a very difficult endeavor.)
The USSR was brought down by … fax machines.
Communism is an illusion that can’t be maintained in the face of the ubiquitous ability of any citizen to become a citizen-journalist.
Now, does it mean it can’t do damage? It can and it will. It has after all captured most of our institutions and made them unusable. That was always going to hurt, no matter whether it collapsed or not. Its collapse just allows us to — actually — build better. And different. And clean out the infection.
Is it gone? Oh, dear heaven no. This type of infection will take as long to clear as it afflicted us. Cultural change moves very slowly. Arguably at the rate of filling graves. And we’re living much longer than previous generations, so it’s even slower. But even in Europe, claiming to be a communist is no longer a positional good.
In fact, the only place “communist” is still a badge of honor is in Academia. And “Democratic socialist” only flies because in Europe for a century Democratic Socialist was the right. That whole edifice collapses once they process that “democratic socialism” is slow suicide, versus the communist shot to the head. How will they process it? Well, first we stop propping up their socialist regimes. Trump is making a good start. Yes, it’s going to hurt and make them hate us. However, news flash, they have always hated us. They just used to keep quiet about it. (TRUST me, traveling in Europe as a young woman who spoke multiple languages, I heard the whispers. The fact that I was technically one of them helped in hearing things, too.)
Someone, and I can’t remember who, said that most of the casualties occur during the mop up after the war.
So I’m not telling you everything is roses. Honestly, I’ve been surprised it’s been as bloodless as it’s been so far. (Knocks on head.)
But in the end we win, they lose, because there is no other outcome possible. They were never going to win. They could just project that they were and maintain the illusion for a while because they had captured the mass industrial communication complex.
Which is now largely irrelevant.
Be not stupid, but be not afraid. We’re winning.
And as always, keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.
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
I AM CONTRACTUALLY OBLIGATED TO STILL PROMO NO MAN’S LAND OR MY HUSBAND WILL BE VERY SAD
To make it worth your while, this is the clanker-assisted sound track so far. (Note there are five songs, not just one. For some reason if I link the playlist, people think it’s just one song. So, all five get linked. And no, Ellyans don’t sound female (well, anymore than they sound male.) Most of their voices are in the high tenor low alto range. However when talking of bearing children it freaks us normal humans out less if it’s a female voice: Space Admiral’s Son; Seventeen; New London, New London (is a Hell of a town.); The Prodigal; Royal Escape. (Yes there will be more songs soon. I have a trip this weekend to South Dakota, which I can’t get out of for various reasons. (Friday to Monday.) After that and a few days of rest I should be back to normal.)
Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.
On a lost colony world, mad geneticists thought they could eliminate inequality by making everyone hermaphrodite. They were wrong. Catastrophically wrong. Now technology indistinguishable from magic courses through the veins of the inhabitants, making their barbaric civilization survivable—and Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Kayel Hayden, Viscount Webson, Envoy of the Star Empire—Skip to his friends— has just crash-landed through a time-space rift into the middle of it all. Dodging assassins and plummeting from high windows was just the beginning. With a desperate king and an archmagician as his only allies, Scipio must outrun death itself while battling beasts, traitors, and infiltrators bent on finishing what the founders started: total destruction. Two worlds. One chance. No time to lose.
Clarence Stone grew up surrounded by violence. In the hills and hollows of West Virginia, his family feuded with neighboring Burton clan, the big dogs of the region After seeing countless family buried before their time, Clarence set out to escape. His plan was simple: Run away and join the army. Unfortunately for him, his did it just a few months before shots were fired at Fort Sumter…
Now, despite his best intentions, war has made a far better killer than any of his quarrelsome family ever were. Still, his plain remains the same; go home, pick up his prize horse, and get as far away from the feud as possible. Let the fools dumb enough to fight it wipe themselves out. But the few remaining Burtons are not going to let any Stone escape, and are ready and willing to chase him all the way to the Rockies to see the job done. Stone’s only ally is a strange tomboy travelling west alone, convinced of her own toughness for reasons he’ll never understand. Adding to his troubles, an uprising of plain’s tribes rampages across the plains, endangering his chosen path. The man has seen enough of war, and wants only a place to carve out a life of his own; but in the end it may be that the fight he flees is the only thing awaiting him.
He’s a member of the civil police, but has come to the attention of the political police. In Stalin’s Soviet Union, that is a very dangerous situation. He’s hanging on by his fingernails in besieged Leningrad, and he has a family to think of.
Worse, he has reason to believe that something uncanny stalks the frozen ruin that is a besieged city in subarctic winter. But as a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he is not supposed to believe in the supernatural.
How can he keep his head in this impossible situation?
A short story.
Note: includes intense scenes that may be disturbing to some audiences. Reader discretion is advised.
Caught cheating a powerful magician out of ten nuggets of pure uncommitted magic in a rigged card game, Bartholomew Stypek needs a place to hide. As a spellbender he is a partial magician, who can read and change magic spells, but absent a stash of magical force, cannot cast his own. With his anarchic familiar spirit Pickles and the ill-won magical Opportunities, Stypek leaps blindly across universes…and lands in the break room of a small ad agency in upstate New York.
Because New York State doesn’t support spirits, Pickles manifests as the nearest local equivalent: AI software in the agency’s heavily networked copier. She wanders into a nearby corporate network looking for allies, and discovers a virtual universe where AIs live off-hours. Pickles is soon seducing Simple Simon, a naive AI tasked with controlling an immense robotic assembly line in the corporation’s manufacturing plant. Stypek, meanwhile, is mistaken for a penniless Eastern European computer science intern, and is taken in by Carolyn Romero, the ad agency’s copywriter. Expecting the usual suspicion and contempt, Stypek is humbled by the kindness he’s shown, and one by one uses the Opportunities to help his new friends with their problems, including Carolyn’s failed marriage.
But Jrikk the magician isn’t so easily thwarted. Soon Stypek, Pickles, Simple Simon, Carolyn, and their human and AI friends must fight for their lives against the evil force sent to retrieve Stypek to the magician’s dungeons.
Hikikomori are Japanese recluses. Right now in Japan over a million hikikomori are hiding in their bedrooms, hiding from their past and future. Hiding from the disappointment that having dreams can bring.
Miko is a hikikomori. As Miko’s dreams fade her Tokyo bedroom becomes her entire world. The city outside transforming into the realm of nightmares, a place where horrid memories and growing fears wait to pounce.
Playing car racing games on her laptop is all that distracts Miko from her situation. Then one day her parents are away, and her mouse batteries run out.
So Miko stands trembling next to the apartment door. Unable to live without her racing games, she must venture out into the world to buy batteries. But little does Miko know the consequences for herself, and for Japan, if she steps out that door.
What Japanese Readers Say: “A must-read for all Japan fans. Could even a Japanese writer portray contemporary Japan so realistically and poignantly… The Hikikomori is certainly a powerful piece of work.. I hope this story will spark interest in Japan and the Japanese people… You will surely be a fan of Miko… The perfect balance of pain, laugh and tears… It is a gem of a book that I, as a Japanese, am confident to recommend… It exposes social problems in Japan that are never visible from the outside… This novel will make you happy like eating chocolate… My heart was full of positivity by reading your novel… When I finished reading your novel, I felt confident and motivated to live positively. I am so glad I was able to read this book this summer!!”
Josef Kellerman thought he’d left intrigue behind when he fled the collectivist takeover of Ceres. On Mars, he rebuilt his life as a simple architectural photographer, keeping his head down and his past quiet.
Then his camera is found containing classified images of Martian defense installations.
Administrator Chen offers him an impossible choice: face trial and twenty years in the deadly Hellas Processing Facility, or spend seven days at the ultra-luxurious Olympus Crown resort identifying the real spy among thirty-seven suspects. Josef has no training in espionage. His only skills are a photographer’s eye for detail and a businessman’s instinct for reading people.
With the reluctant help of a sardonic intelligence officer, an investigative journalist who suspects his cover story, and a wealthy widow with secrets of her own, Josef must navigate diplomatic receptions, corporate intrigue, and multiple intelligence agencies—all while someone who doesn’t want to be found watches his every move.
Set against the backdrop of 22nd-century Mars, where domed cities cling to red mountains and three great powers circle each other warily, THE RELUCTANT SPY OF THARSIS HEIGHTS combines the classic spy-under-pressure thriller with humor, heart, and a protagonist who would really rather just take photographs.
Perfect for fans of Eric Ambler, John le Carré, and The Expanse.
Sheila Reilly, once a prominent research physicist aboard the Wells Explorer, now an American refugee living in China Harbor after the Millennium War destroyed America, has barely survived the last 5 years. Sheila’s very life may now depend on the secrets she keeps. Even from Yam, the man she loves and who has helped her eke out an existence for the last 2 years.
Discovery of the wreckage of the Wells Explorer sets in motion a chain of events wherein Sheila must come to terms with her past and is given an opportunity by the enigmatic ancient Lin Yi to change history, but perhaps at the price of losing everyone she now loves. Suddenly everyone in China Harbor is looking for her, from General Chen, the conflicted head of the often brutal People’s Guard and the villainous Colonel Kwan, who will stop at nothing to get the power he wants, to one mysterious stranger out of Sheila’s past, who started it all so very long ago. As Sheila races against time to save the past, no one in China Harbor who has touched her life is safe, from an innocent produce vendor to Yam’s young daughter who longs for Sheila to take the place of her dead mother.
Approx: 180,000 words (This would be the equivalent of 450 pages in a trade paperback. Average novel is 100,000 words.)
Look closer. The things that you’re assuming you’re seeing? May not be what you think. Is that really a mouse, or is it a Brownie? Is that really an owl? Is that polished gemstone a stone…or an egg?
We take so many things for granted. Some of them may be harmless, but many are a lot less so. I wonder how many people ignore red flags every day, because they only see what they expect to see?
This collection takes what’s “normal” and asks “What if it’s something more?”
Crocodile tears are fake tears, can crocodile words be fake words? Joffrey Simpson O’Day moves from the dry badlands of Eastern Washington State to the lush greenscapes of Western Washington to a Seattle-like city called Sunbreak City. Hayseed, Joffrey attempts to turn himself into a big-city sophisticate but he commits the ultimate faux pas—he insults a book held sacred by millions. He draws upon his head the wrath of everybody. Crocodile words come at him from all quarters. Will he survive?
Everywhere she goes, Maria Mason is plagued by little catastrophes. Getting caught in the rain, running from the friendliness of a muddy dog, tripping over her own feet at the worst possible moment- she has been subject to all manner of accidents, and to fend off the worst of them, she has learned to be silent and still.
Until she accompanies her friend Miss Gordon to London for a season of gaiety and pleasure. Life in Town is full of wonder, and soon Maria has new clothes, new friends, and the attention of the amusing and clever Mr. James Callahan. She begins to wonder if she has outgrown her propensity for falling into disaster, only to find herself embroiled in the worst sort of catastrophe when she is obliged to mediate between her feuding friends. One wrong word, one false step, and she might lose the regard of her friends- or worse, the love of a good man.
It’s a big galaxy out there. As mankind reaches out, new planets are identified, terraformed, and settled. These new frontiers can be dangerous places for the settlers. Fleeing to these places are intergalactic fugitives, and following them are bounty hunters.
Landing on a newly terraformed planet in his ship Vengeance, bounty hunter Quint Walker gets more than he bargained for with his bounty. Trapped on the planet by a scheming governor, a gang of vengeful terrorists, an angry mob, and a barkeep making sure he pays his tab, Quint scrambles to keep his footing. All the while, a deadly tally is climbing. When it reaches five, he knows he’s going to die.
SETTING A TRAP TO CATCH THE MAKERS OF CHAINED WIZARDS.
A clue has sent Penrys back to Ellech, the country where she first appeared four short years ago with her mind wiped, her body stripped, and her neck chained. It’s time to enlist the help of the Collegium of Wizards which sheltered her then.
Things don’t work out that way, and she finds herself retracing a dead scholar’s crooked track and setting herself up as a target to confirm her growing suspicions. But what happens to bait when the prey shows its teeth?
In this conclusion to the series, tracking old crimes brings new dangers, and a chance for redemption.
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.
According To Hoyt 