Book Promo And Vignettes By Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike

Posted on by Sarah A. 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

FIRST LET’S GET THE INCESSANT AND INTRUSIVE SELF PROMOTION OUT OF THE WAY, SHALL WE?

FROM SARAH A. HOYT, FOR 99C: Odd Magics: Tales for the Lost

Odd Magics
This is a very strange collection of fairytales, recast for modern life. In it the prize isn’t always to the fairest, the
magic is rarely to the strongest.
But lonely introverts do find love, women who never gave it a thought find themselves at the center of romance.
Doing what’s right will see you to the happily ever after.
And sometimes you have to kiss an accountant to find your prince.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT, FOR 99C: A Few Good Men (Darkship Thieves Book 3)

Lucius Dante Maximillian Keeva was born a prince…

or so close to it as makes no difference. He is the son of one of the fifty Good Men who — between them — partition and rule all of the Earth.
But for the last fourteen years, he’s been imprisoned in a small cell, in what amounts to solitary confinement.
You can’t stay sane in solitary confinement that long, not even if someone supplies you with reading material.
When Luce escapes, he finds that his family is dead and people are trying to kill him. He doesn’t respond as a sane man would.
It is just as well.
Restoring a constitutional republic to a world gone mad, five hundred years after the fabled USA vanished from the face of the Earth is not a job for a sane man.
And Luce Keeva is just the madman for the job.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT, FOR 99C: Darkship Revenge (Darkship Thieves Book 5)

The World Can’t Be Made Safe….

But it doesn’t mean Athena Hera Sinistra isn’t ready to try. Flying back to Earth Orbit from her asteroid home, leaving behind unresolved questions and turmoil, Athena becomes a new mother in orbit.

As is perhaps fitting, her daughter is born during battle with an unknown foe.

A battle that ends with Kit – Athena’s husband – missing, and Athena’s ship damaged.

So Athena names her daughter Eris, and goes to war.

What follows is a non-stop fight by a very angry mother, who wishes to make the world(s) safe for her newborn daughter, and other children too.

When the adventure is over, it is just the start of another, where children will be rescued, old tyrants brought to justice, and freedom restored.

If it can be.

FROM D. A. BROCK, ON SALE FOR $1.99: Texas at the Coronation (Republic of Texas Navy Book 1)

For seventy years after a devastating war, the Republic of Texas kept to itself. But it would be rude not to attend the international naval review celebrating Britain’s new king, George VI. So with war clouds over Europe, Texas sends the elderly armored cruiser, San Antonio, and her new captain, Karl von Stahlberg.

While making new friends and meeting Texas’ ancient foe, can Karl and his men avoid sparking a war?

FROM D. A. BROCK, ON SALE FOR $1.99: The Lone Star, the Tricolor, and the Swastika: Republic of Texas Navy Book 2

Autumn, 1939…

The war that the Western nations have long dreaded has erupted in Europe. After the conquest of western Poland by Germany, the war on land settles into the so-called ‘Phony War’.

But the war at sea is anything but phony. Especially when the French Government accuses the Republic of Texas of providing aid to Germany. The tension escalates, and Hitler fans the flames for his own nefarious purposes.

After a devastating sneak attack, Commodore Karl von Stahlberg is thrust into command of the Texas battle fleet. Can he defend Texas against the enemy’s onslaught, or will Texas be defeated?

FROM D. A. BROCK, ON SALE FOR $1.99: Texas in the Med: Republic of Texas Navy – Book 3

September, 1940…

The Battle of Britain is at its height. Every day RAF and Allied fighters rise to meet the swarms of German planes seeking to bomb Britain into submission.

In the Mediterranean, the Royal Navy, badly overstretched by the loss of the French Navy, struggles against the powerful Italian Navy to keep that vital waterway open while supporting the besieged island fortress of Malta.

To aid their ally, the Republic of Texas is sending Vice Admiral Karl von Stahlberg and the Texas Naval Expeditionary Force. Can his small force of cruisers, destroyers, and two aircraft carriers stem the rising tide of Europe’s dictators as the tyrant Pétain works to break up the Allies?

FROM D. A. BROCK, ON SALE FOR $1.99: Tales of the Texas Navy: Volume 1

This mini-anthology contains two short stories in the ‘Republic of Texas Navy’ universe, revealing heretofore unknown facets of that world.

FROM HOLLY LEROY: Sudden End: A prequel to the Hostile Earth Series

Long before the events depicted in Hostile Earth, the end came. This is how it happened. Lisa Evans, sixteen, lives with her mom and dad in a cute little town, Rose Vista, California, It’s an idyllic life, except when you reside at the bottom of your high school’s social ladder. Picked on, laughed at, and embarrassed daily, it’s been rough for Lisa. But the next day things are going to change. She has an opportunity to take back her life. Then a catastrophe strikes. In the beginning, everyone thinks that it’s a simple power outage and everything will be back to normal in a week or two. Instead, the entire world has gone dark, cities have burned, and the jails have emptied. There is sickness, starvation and death everywhere, and each day that goes by, the population shrinks even further. Sudden End is a STANDALONE SHORT NOVEL (22000 words or 92 pages) prequel to Hostile Earth, post-apocalyptic series.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Ghosts of Christmases Past

These are troubled times. The Flannigan Administration’s hostility to clones has reached a boiling point, resulting in the Expulsions. All of NASA’s astronaut clones have been sent to lunar exile in Shepardsport.

Christmas is approaching, and Brenda Redmond is helping put on a musical adaptation of A Christmas Carol. But the three ghosts who visit Scrooge in the classic Charles Dickens story aren’t the only ghosts haunting the corridors of Shepardsport.

Even as Brenda is trying to get her young players ready, she must also track down the source of the strange visions that are coming unbidden to the settlement’s inhabitants.

A novelette of the Grissom Timeline.

FROM MARY CATELLI: Sorcery and Kings

Tales of wonder and magic.

A fire master must find a magical starter of fires.

A mysterious queen holds a ball in a city filled with magic.

Magic of roses and gold are needed to fight a dreadful war.

An oath keeps a ghost captive.

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: Minister

All We Are Asking IS Give Kids A Chance

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

It’s one of those things… Apparently Vivek Ramaswamy, whom I’ll remind everyone was not my choice for president at any time (for a variety of reasons) decided it was a good time to put the fox among the hens by running his mouth from his own insular perspective on the need to import more foreign workers.

This is one of those things in which I’m divided. As one is.

I mean, on the one hand I think absolutely the US should get the best from anywhere else in the world. My perspective on what the best is though is somewhat different from Vivek’s. Now part of this might be self-interested perspective coming from the fact that I absolutely wasn’t the best when I moved here (I mean, sure, elite academic credentials, but honestly none of them translated into a job here. Also, sure, IQ measurements in the mumble, mumble mumble percentile, but there is a very good reason for me to doubt that IQ applies to success/achievement in the real world [If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?]) And a lot of you, particularly the leftists hate-skimming will say I’m still not the best. All of this is true, but you can’t say I don’t work hard as heck. And I believe I’m d*mn good value, considering in 40 years here I’ve never been on welfare or any other kind of assistance.

So I think sometimes “the best” should be “Clears minimal requirements and won’t go on assistance for 20 years.” Because in a time of high tech change you can’t tell if the person who is the best at digitizing whatchmacallits will be adaptive enough to stay the best when watchmacallits go out of production altogether. And there is no way to pick for “intelligent and highly adaptable” except by looking back at someone’s life.

Anyway, let’s start with my biases. Eric S. Raymond wrote a tweet that I substantially agree with which is rare, because I tend to at least have some quibbles with his takes. (And sometimes very substantial ones.) (My only quibble with this one is to take offense at finding myself lumped as a MAGA nationalist. I’ve recently come to the conclusion I’m a libertarian nationalist (for one I think libertarianism can only work here for now. And thanks to Charlie Martin for the moniker in which he includes himself.) MAGA as an aspirational direction is fine. MAGA as a movement is too much of an hodgepodge pulling in everyone to the right or even only slightly to the left of Lenin.)

https://twitter.com/esrtweet/status/1872404345003692207

This is the link if you want to read to the end and lack twittex.

He is absolutely right about all of that. But then there are things he isn’t as right about, or where it seems to me he’s groping at the problem but not quite grasping it. Perhaps because of his own innate biases. (We all have them. The best I can do is try to lay mine out.)

First, let me start by saying that I’m HARD CORE FOR MERIT IN HIRING. Not only is it important to always hire the best you can for the job, it is also important to always select for merit. Because merit breeds merit. There are other valid reasons to hire, sure. Like “I trust this person.” The US has been pushed more an more that way in areas not infected by DEI by the DEI crazy and the litigiousness of the woke. BUT regardless of good reasons, the end result of hiring for anything but merit is driving merit out. It always is. Mostly because people who are only marginally competent or barely competent, or even who are competent but KNOW THAT’S NOT WHY THEY WERE HIRED, tend to hire less competent people, because they’re afraid of being shown up. Oh, not all of them. Humans are individuals. But over time the process repeats.

So, in that sense it is important to hire the best. Yes, even if they’re from abroad.

But while we’re at it, an important caveat: When you talk about hiring the top 0.001% it’s the merest bullshit. No such things exists. No, I’m serious. THERE AIN’T NO SUCH ANIMAL.

People who are very good at that level, are very good at a specialty of a specialty. And drawers at everything else. No, seriously. At that level you’re dealing with almost idiot savants.

And a lot of them never bother developing the other needful things for the profession. So, sure, you might hire the best data cruncher that ever crunched. Or to put it another way because this is something I’m familiar with only at a distance, you might hire someone who can, instinctively create a new branch of mathematics and bend an entire program around it to do the THING you want. But they might suck at everything else. In fact, there’s a high chance they won’t fully understand or integrate what you want, won’t listen to their co-workers, will be resistant to debugging and will generally be a human interaction disaster to the point their program might be the best, but not necessarily the best for what you want.

So let’s go a step below to the best of the best who are still human. Cool beans. How do you find the best among them? Answer, you don’t. It’s not that some aren’t better than others. It’s that above a certain level it doesn’t matter. And that certain level is about the top 5%. Above a certain level you’re hiring for “feel” more than anything else.

I know this because the process this guy describes:

(Here for those with no twittex.)

for resumes is substantially the same as for submissions to a medium size magazine or publisher. Above a certain level, you can’t select the best. You just select “It’s the best for me now.” Or “I feel like it.”

This leaves the process vulnerable to people THINKING THEY’RE SELECTING FOR MERIT WHILE SELECTING FOR OTHER REASONS.

So, while American education sucks — I’ve been the one here raising the possibility that all the cases of plagiarism are because people at the ivy leagues and promoted into positions of power CAN’T READ FLUENTLY. Their behavior to me seems like that of an ESL trying and failing to make a policy of copy pasting sentences (because they can’t write their own coherently) sound like they were part of an original essay. I ran into this in the early oughts while teaching in college. People who sounded like normal human beings in speech couldn’t write an essay at 4th grade level coherently. That’s a failure in learning to read/write enough that you’re fluent in it. — if you’re talking the best it’s pretty damn hard to say something like “This doesn’t exist in the US.”

Is it possible? Yes, quite possible. Likely? Not in the least.

That top 0.01%? Unless you’re hiring the man who created the new quantum computer (and good luck with that) that works on two molecules of super-excited water (again, good luck–) you’re just as likely to find them in the US.

Except for– well, your search which is hell of borked, but will take a whole post to explain. Let’s say though that our HR works mostly as either a DEI factory or a way to not pass anyone on to the hiring process. At this point firing HR departments by the score and getting rid of automated computer keyword sorting might be the best fix for that. (How bad is it? Well, one cheat to get your otherwise fully functional resume passed up is to “print the add in white” on your resume. The computer reads that and passes it on, because congrats, you have the keywords. Note this has nothing to do on whether a human looking at your resume sees you’re a perfect fit. You just need those keywords, exactly. This is what’s known as stupid.)

Vivek is right that there is a massive problem with our culture. It is not what he thinks it is. I have no clue what hole he crawled out of, but if you’re basing your ideas of what kids learn and who they idolize on Hollywood’s crazy ideas, you already lost.

Again I’m going to invoke “My kids are in their early thirties, smart and geeky, and so are most of their friends.” I will actually need a full post to unpack this, so put a pin in it. But all the people saying their education was giving a medal for participation are wrong. That was MY generation and we’re in our sixties now. My kids were the generation where they “corrected” for that. Stupidly, as only a deeply screwed up education establishment can. My kids’ generation had a “tokenized” education. No, I don’t mean race and sex and… Oh, those too. The ladies’ A is a thing. BUT mostly they weren’t so much educated as they “collected tokens.” Like…. “Participate in science Olympiad, winning team” put that token in your resume. This started in kindergarten, where they assured us if our kids — in a little mountain town school in Colorado — didn’t collect the right tokens they’d never make it to college, let alone a good college. Kids were so busy doing special projects and collecting tokens for their resumes most of them never learned to read properly.

However among all kids, the nose to the grindstone, and run around like crazy acquiring “accomplishments” were a thing. It’s not their fault they weren’t taught anything substantive. And it’s outright stupid and nasty to call them slackers. A lot of these kids hit the job market with a massive case of the burnout, yes, but that’s not the same as being slackers.

Yes, I am still me, and being still me I said no, and put my little hooves down. My kids weren’t booked into three different after school activities, five different extracurricular classes, or ten different “accomplishment learning.” They still got a “resume” but that was almost incidental due to being massive geek-o-nerds. So, younger son learned Greek after bullying me into putting him in an online course. Also art. Older son got professionally published in fiction at 13. And placed second in a state singing competition. If anything we taught them by the geek-slacker model. I.e. we’d throw money, books and resources at their enthusiasms, and sometimes they achieved something/the enthusiasm stuck. Sometimes … it didn’t. They also both learned to build computers and write software, though younger son cordially despises it, I suspect for the same reason it required a lot of work from me (Look, I was a geek girl in the late 70s/early 80s. Of course I learned starter programming. I just haven’t done it since. And no, I wasn’t even doing it for the guys. In retrospect I think I puzzled a lot of them, taking my lunch hour in the computer lab and NOT on the hunt.) because he is dyslexic, and misplacing a letter or punctuation mark in a thousand-line program means sweating bullets while you proof it. (At least for novels I can be the despair of my copyeditor and have backup.)

Anyway, all their friends are more or less the same kind of kid. More or less proficient depending on parents, but good, smart geek kids. Entering their thirties. Most of them working for starvation wages, if not on those jobs that are supposed to give you exposure and training but literally pay nothing.

Now there are issues with our education, as I detailed. And there are issues with the fact we’ve banned “child labor” so thoroughly most people are having trouble finding starter jobs in their twenties.

BUT I can tell you from observing this group that any of these kids given half a chance JUMP on it, and work their *sses off to be good.

No, they probably won’t be any good to begin with. But they learn. And they work very hard at learning.

Which brings us to–

What is better for those top of the top people? Picking a generic “genius” from across the world, from a culture that has its own drawbacks, and trying to fit him in your company? Or picking someone who knows nothing but is eager and has tons of potential and who will when fully trained be exactly what you need?

Yes, there are problems in the way, such as you can’t give them IQ tests. But I’m sure you can give them “placement tests” to figure out how they fit in your company and it would take a trained psychologist to know the difference. Same with establishing basic literacy and numeracy.

Also, I’ll fully agree with you companies shouldn’t have to teach employees the basics.

But the thing is hiring from overseas is not painless EITHER. Look, I’m not singling out Chinese and Indians. I too come from a culture where you hire your cousin over anyone else. There are reasons for this, deeply baked into the culture, like the opposite of high trust culture.

And I’m not going to say every overseas-hire does it, because that would be a lie. BUT a significant portion of them does it, because culture is sticky and takes an extraordinary individual to overcome.

So the price of hiring ready-trained and far more compliant with orders (the training is often different, though. Particularly in medicine) from overseas is to see entire departments flip to that ethnicity only. Which wouldn’t be a problem except that: see dictum: hire for any reason other than merit, it degrades merit.

Also I have many complicated opinions on women in corporate culture (several posts waiting on that) but I can promise that there are women who are more than pulling their weight, and hiring from deeply misogynistic cultures (which includes a lot of Europe, you’ll find, beneath the happy talk) will make them be overlooked/mistreated. As well as a lot of the native born males.

In addition to that: I’m not a nativist. It would be extremely weird if I were. But I’m just going to say it: you can’t treat the people of your own country worse than you treat foreigners. You do that and you’re setting yourself up for large scale revolt.

For decades now I’ve heard from friends in technical fields about their departments being eaten from the inside by hiring foreigners on work visas, who work for less and do whatever they’re told no matter how outrageous (or borderline illegal) in the name of the visa. And how those imports, once secure and with some power run the natives out.

I’ve heard (and seen it, even 20 years ago, coincidentally (?) in companies that then foundered) enough that you know there is not only truth but widespread truth in it.

Combine it with what is shaping up to be a lost generation, say 25 to 35 (with some older outliers) due to stupid child labor laws, competition form illegals and work visas at the bottom, flooding of the market with “imports” from above and driving down wages, and our incredibly broken education system, and you have a cauldron of resentment.

Which is why Vivek stomped on a fire ants nest.

That is the measure of resentment going on.

Look, again, this is self interested me. I have an audible accent. I could get rid of it, but it would eat my writing time, and I’m in my sixties. Writing the books is more important.

And Obama’s policies of race-division have already made it so that my American-mutt sons get asked by total strangers what their race is. On the street. Out of nothing.

What I don’t need is crazy people pinging off the oddness of our behaviors (my family, the rest of you. Come on, we’re Odds for a reason) and deciding we’re foreign interlopers being treated to the GOOD jobs. (Or paying jobs, at all.)

What we don’t need is a wave or riots and lynching. And I’m here to tell you that’s quite likely. Just judging from the reaction to Vivek’s running his mouth.

So, we need to clean house, peeps. If you can, teach your kids yourself. Make sure they’re literate and FLUENT at reading and writing. (And if you’re not, find someone who is to teach them. Hint, get boys old comics to see them between picture books and real books. It bridges the fluency gap and has more complex stories.) If you can’t, teach them yourself anyway, after work. And as a culture, let’s can DEI and HR, shall we?

Meanwhile, Mr. Ramaswamy kindly shut your trap. You’re right we have problems, but your solution is going to destroy everything and get people killed.

And Mr. Musk, sure, you can have your 0.01% top engineers from abroad. As soon as you explain to me how you’re discerning their excellence at that level. Ouiji board? Tarot cards? Because at that level you CAN’T and I don’t care how smart you yourself are.

Sure, though, they’ll be what? 10 people for all your companies. Go ahead, import them.

But train yourself some smart local kids meanwhile. You might need them when the geniuses crap out.

The rest of us: Yeah…. we have a lot of clean up to do. Because I don’t want riots. I don’t want lynchings. And I don’t want epic, all consuming cultural clashes. So.

Let’s get busy building under and over and around. Because when it all blows we need structures in place to take the weight.

Sometimes Nothing Is the Best You Can do

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Just so you know, if you weren’t paying attention: There’s something weird going around. By which I mean there’s soemthing weird going on in the disease department.

I mean my coming back from Portugal sick isn’t a big shock. I catch everything I come in contact with, or even things that just wave passing by. No, the shock here is that Dan caught it too, and it took him three weeks to be okay. He never catches URIs. Period.

And then the reports kept coming, from friends and relatives. No, not your average flu but something that lingers. Also has a disturbing tendency to go pneumonia fast, etc. BUT responds to antibiotics.

Now can I prove anything? No. But there is this feeling at the back of my head that this is the new horror being tried out to create a panic in early January, so they can shut things down and… heaven knows what else they plan, except another attempt at the great reboot they dream of.

Look, they did it before. They — as far as they can reason — got away with it. It hasn’t worked since, but has that ever stopped them trying again.

I figure with Trump having already announced he’s going to pull us out of the authority of China-puppet WHO and Biden having given over our authority to them, they’re going to make one last pass.

Or not. But that’s not the important thing right now.

The important thing is that they’re making sounds about bird flu and how lockdowns might be needed.

ESR on twitter said that if they try it, they’ll find out how not funny it is. And he was right.

But the answers came back immediately, of course, insisting that we “can’t do nothing” and that “sooner or later a pandemic will come along, and what should we do?”

Will a pandemic come along? Possibly. Sooner or later.

What will it be like? Well, likely like a really bad flu year. Maybe a bit worse.

Yeah, we might have something much much worse. It happens. But–

Look most of the really bad plagues in history had to do with things like poor hygiene and crowding on a massive scale. And sure, I know what you might think about the present age, but it is nothing like that. Also, we are better fed than practically all our ancestors, ever.

Even the great flu epidemic 1918 had the help of a war and concurrent food shortages, etc.

Now, does it mean the entire world is equally proofed against a pandemic? No. But even world wide, the nasties that have arisen lately seem to have had a limited run.

But sure, something could arise in China. Particularly if there are funny labs doing their work.

But let’s suppose the absolute worst could happen and we had, as someone was floating in the comments, a disease that kills 10% of the population. Let’s suppose it actually comes here, and kills in those numbers.

What, oh, what should we do about such a terrible occurrence?

I’m going to say it right now: nothing. Absolutely nothing. I mean, sure, put out commercials telling people to wash their hands, not French strangers and cover their sneezes. It never hurts.

But after that, leave it alone.

If a virus is that strong that it’s going to kill 10% in the best fed, most naturally socially distanced country in the world, this is going to happen any way. All the government can do, with lockdowns and mask mandates and vaccine mandates is destroy our economy, our freedoms, and the future of our children. But none of these materially affect the chances of reducing mortality.

They don’t really.

Instead, what they do is give the impression that people can do something and that they can stop something like a massive pandemic, or —

Well, you know all the people trying to destroy civilization to keep the weather the way they think it should be? Or the crazy people who blame things like meteor showers on global warming?

It is all in the name of looking like we can do something about everything.

But sometimes we can’t. Yes, the Earth climate will change. It has changed before us. It will continue to change. We can’t stop it, no matter how many carbon indulgences we buy.

Yes, though we have some fairly decent tracking systems, it’s possible for us to get sucker punched by a rock from space. No matter how many DEI programs we institute, that will be a likelihood, until our technology progresses.

And yes, unlikely though it is, it is somewhat possible that a pandemic will sweep through the Earth and hurt us badly.

But if something is that lethal and cautions and careful hygiene won’t stop it, we certainly can’t stop it with government mandates.

All governments can do in that case is make it worse. And ultimately kill more people.

So, let it come, the pandemic with all its fears.

We will not be locked down again. And they can shove their mandates where the sun don’t shine.

Funny only once.

Merry Christmas

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

And if you’re done with all your cooking and everything…. And haven’t read all my books yet… Or you need a last minute ebook gift for someone…

These are ALL on sale for 99c:

Odd Magics: Tales for the Lost

Odd Magics
This is a very strange collection of fairytales, recast for modern life. In it the prize isn’t always to the fairest, the
magic is rarely to the strongest.
But lonely introverts do find love, women who never gave it a thought find themselves at the center of romance.
Doing what’s right will see you to the happily ever after.
And sometimes you have to kiss an accountant to find your prince.

Darkship Revenge (Darkship Thieves Book 5)

The World Can’t Be Made Safe….

But it doesn’t mean Athena Hera Sinistra isn’t ready to try. Flying back to Earth Orbit from her asteroid home, leaving behind unresolved questions and turmoil, Athena becomes a new mother in orbit.

As is perhaps fitting, her daughter is born during battle with an unknown foe.

A battle that ends with Kit – Athena’s husband – missing, and Athena’s ship damaged.

So Athena names her daughter Eris, and goes to war.

What follows is a non-stop fight by a very angry mother, who wishes to make the world(s) safe for her newborn daughter, and other children too.

When the adventure is over, it is just the start of another, where children will be rescued, old tyrants brought to justice, and freedom restored.

A Few Good Men

Lucius Dante Maximillian Keeva was born a prince…

or so close to it as makes no difference. He is the son of one of the fifty Good Men who — between them — partition and rule all of the Earth.
But for the last fourteen years, he’s been imprisoned in a small cell, in what amounts to solitary confinement.
You can’t stay sane in solitary confinement that long, not even if someone supplies you with reading material.
When Luce escapes, he finds that his family is dead and people are trying to kill him. He doesn’t respond as a sane man would.
It is just as well.
Restoring a constitutional republic to a world gone mad, five hundred years after the fabled USA vanished from the face of the Earth is not a job for a sane man.
And Luce Keeva is just the madman for the job.

The Bork Of Christmas

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

“Ma’am, animals are not allowed in the hospital.”

I stopped, and stared at the nurse. She was coming out of my son’s room, and she looked very upset. Which considering Jeffry had been in a persistent vegetative state for a week would normally alarm me. Except she was obviously not upset at something that had happened, but upset at me. Personally.

I stopped. I’d been home, to shower and change clothes for the first time in two days, and Bill had gone to work for a day just to make sure nothing was on fire there. Why was the nurse mad at me? She was middle aged, with fading blond hair, wearing scrubs with a candy cane pattern and her name tag, unbelievably, read Karen.

“I beg your pardon,” I said. I craned my neck around her, as she stood at the door, and saw Jeffrey was still as he had been, pale, with bandages on his head, instead of his shock of brown hair in perpetual disarray. All the machines around him were beeping as they’d been. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Your dog,” Karen, the nurse said, with withering disdain. “Your dog was here with your son while you were gone.”

“We don’t have a dog!” If I could unpack it there would be a lot more to say to that. We’d always meant to have a dog, but we’d moved so much it had never happened. Last Christmas, we’d given fourteen-year-old Jeffrey a stuffed spaniel doll, for the do he’d always wanted but we’d never given him.

Nurse Karen gave me a dubious look, like she knew I really had a dog I wasn’t admitting to, and probably was secreting him into the hospital in the pocket of my jacket. “There was a dog on your son’s bed,” she said. “A brown and white spaniel.”

I frowned at her. “Then I think you have a problem in the hospital.” And then I walked around her to the bed.

The room was very silent, except for the electronic bleeps and gurgles of the equipment connected to Jeffrey. And my heart squeezed.

He looked so pale and so still. I remembered the times when he was little and I couldn’t wait till he was asleep. All the tiptoeing around, trying not to wake him up. And now I’d give anything to see him wake up and yell at me.

Bill must have come in while I was staring, because he said, behind me, “You know what I’d like most of all?”

I turned my head. “For him to wake up and yell at us?”

“No,” he said. “Well, yes, but… If it must be like this…” He swallowed so hard I heard it. “If he must die, then I would like to have a do over. To have more time. If all the time we were going to have Jeffrey was fourteen years and no more, I’d like to have worked less. To have spent more time with him. Playing trains when he was little. Going for walks. Just… hanging out.”

I stepped back to lean into him. “I know what you mean, but if you’d done that we wouldn’t have been able to provide for him. He wouldn’t have had all the toys he had. We wouldn’t have lived in the kind of house we did. He wouldn’t have had the friends he had–” I paused.

“Which means he wouldn’t have been in the car accident, with his friends’ mom driving, and the car packed with teens?”

I sighed. “We can’t do that. We can’t go back and redo things. There would have been other problems and other regrets if we’d done that.” Because I didn’t know what else to do, I walked to the bed, and started arranging the thin, nasty-feeling blanket over my son. And paused. “There’s … dog hair on this blanket.”

Bill blinked at me. “That’s funny. As I was leaving, I thought I saw a dog. Like…. I thought I saw Fuzzy, come to life. I swear he passed me in the hall but when I turned around he wasn’t there.” He made a sound that was a laugh, except there was no joy at all in it. “If I had only one wish, I’d go back in time, not moved the last two times and gotten Jeffrey a dog when he was nine, back in Elmheim, where we had the fenced backyard.”

“I don’t think we can wish for time travel,” I said. “And I don’t think Fuzzy took living form to come visit Jeffrey.”

“No. Probably not.” He swallowed again. “You know, the docs say we should let him go. Just turn off the machines.”

“I know,” I said. “Perhaps we can wait just one more day. Just past tomorrow. Past Christmas day.”

Bill sighed. I knew why. Every day Jeffrey stayed connected, it meant another million dollars or so. If the health insurance didn’t pay out for the days above doctor recommendation, we’d be paying for it the rest of our lives.

Bill squeezed my shoulder, as though he could hear my thoughts. “What else are we going to spend the money on? I know we wanted many, but we only ever had Jeffrey. He’s all we have.”

Everyone who has had a loved one in the hospital, struggling between life and death, knows the next day and a half. Which is a good thing, because I don’t think I could tell you what happened. I must have eaten, because I don’t remember being hungry. And I probably dozed in the uncomfortable straight backed chairs of the waiting room. I almost for sure walked around, because I’d catch myself doing it, now and then.

Bill and I didn’t talk. Not even when we were together. There was nothing to say. We were both too busy wishing for the impossible.

I found myself on Christmas day sitting at one of the grey formica tables, in the cafeteria. There was a little paper Christmas tree in the middle of the table. I had a half-filled coffee cup between my hands. I had no memory of having drank any coffee.

It was years since I last prayed. I’d been taught to pray as a little kid, but then my teenage doubts and adult skepticism had intruded. I still loved the story of the child who was God in the flesh, born in an humble stable. I loved the shepherds and the ox and all the little sheep. But I hadn’t believed enough to address a creator, or to ask for anything.

But now I found myself wondering where Jeffrey would go if he died. If there was something else. He was just a kid. He was quite likely to go right if they told him to go left, to go up fi they told him to go down. Simply because he was trying to be himself and he didn’t know what that was except “not what people tell me to be.” And perhaps that’s what I’d done for so long. Perhaps there was nothing there to ask help from. But if there was–

One thing was for sure. We were past what we could ask of medicine and science. The doctor had told us Jeffrey would die. Was dead already, except for the machines breathing for him.

I looked up feeling stupid, staring at the ceiling of the cafeteria. It was a stupid textured popcorn ceiling of seventies vintage, and looking grey and dingy, but I thought up at it, anyway, “God, if you’re up there, give us time. Time to see Jeffrey grown up. Time to get to know him. Time to–” I sighed. “We’ll get him a dog. We’ll spend time with him. We’ll try to give him all the connections we haven’t before. I promise. We’ll change our way of life. We only have one child, but we’ll make space for him in our lives, anyway.”

There was no sound of trumpets, no big response. Well, did I expect one?

The coffee in the cup was cold, but I drank it anyway. We only had twelve hours with Jeffrey, they were supposed to come and disconnect him early morning. I’d go back and watch him sleep, like I used to do when he was a baby.

As I neared the room, I heard a snuffle, and hope shot through me. Jeffrey had woken up!

I walked into the room and stopped, stock still. On the bed was a brown and white spaniel. He was doing that thing that dogs do with their butts when they’re happy. You know what I mean. He was wagging his whole butt not just his tail. And he kept nudging Jeffrey’s hand, and doing it again. Every time he nudged Jeffrey’s hand he must have disturbed some sensor, because something beeped angrily.

I stopped, stuck between removing the dog before he hurt Jeffrey and shock the dog was there at all.

“I said, no dogs in the hospital,” Karen said behind me.

I turned back “It’s not our dog.”

“Then why is he here?”

“I don’t know. You tell me why–” I stopped because she looked like she was in utter shock, mouth half open, staring. I turned back. The dog was gone.

He hadn’t gone past us, but he was gone. I rushed to the bed, started straightening the covers, as though the dog could be hidden under them.

“Mom?” Jeffrey said. I looked up. He was blinking and looked pretty groggy. His voice sounded awful too, raspy and hoarse.

“Yeah,” I said. “Jeffrey. You’re awake Jeffrey.”

He gave me a dopey smile. “I dreamed Fuzzy and I were playing on this big backyard.” Then he tried to look serious. “I mean, Fuzzy was a real dog and we were playing and–“

I nodded. I couldn’t speak.

It was a long road back. A year of physical therapy and treatment.

And then one day coming out of a physical therapy appointment, there was a dog waiting by our SUV in the parking lot. He was…. I suppose a chocolate and white spaniel. Except he was so dirty we thought he was yellow and black.

We’d tried really. I mean, we weren’t going to steal someone’s dog. We took him home and washed him three times. In doggy shampoo once, twice in dawn, and then, on the advice of our vet, had rubbed corn starch into his fur and brushed it out again and again and again.

When it was done, yeah, he was a purebred and a youngish dog, probably not fully out of puppyhood. He acted like he belonged to Jeffrey too.

We put up posters, and called all the sites that monitor lost pets. And we had him scanned but he didn’t have a chip. Oh, and he acted like he belonged to Jeffrey.

Well…. Our condo in an high rise in Denver Colorado was no place for a dog. But the dog was helping Jeffrey more than all the therapies. So we looked for a house in the suburbs, one with a fenced yard.

The Christmas two years after Jeffrey had woken up, you could barely tell he’d ever been in the accident. I was cooking Christmas dinner and looking out the kitchen window, at Jeffrey and Fuzzy in the backyard.

“He looks exactly like the dog in the hospital,” Bill said.

“He does?” I said. Then “I mean, he does, but when did you see him?”

“He came to get me in the cafeteria when Jeffrey woke up. He stood there bork, bork, borking, like Fuzzy does when he wants attention.” We’d early on decided that Fuzzy didn’t bark, he borked. It was very clear that was the sound he made. “And he wouldn’t let anyone catch him till I followed him. But then he disappeared at the door to the room.”

I frowned. “Do you think Fuzzy traveled back in time to wake Jeffrey? Is that what you’re saying?”

He grinned. “No. Or perhaps yes. I don’t know. Perhaps dogs travel outside time. I mean, we never figured out how Fuzzy found us, or where he came from. Perhaps–“

“Perhaps he came to give us more time. Real time with our son?”

Bill put his arm around my shoulders, which impaired my ability to drain the potatoes, but I wasn’t going to complain.

“Perhaps. Perhaps he came to bork up at us and give us a lot more Christmases.”

Outside, Fuzzy was dancing in front of Jeffrey, doing the whole butt waggle while Jeffrey held Fuzzy’s toy cow up, then threw it.

Fuzzy ran after it, then caught it and tossed it in the air ecstatically. Then turned and bork bork borked in joy, before picking up the cow and bringing it to Jeffrey and dancing in front of him begging him to throw it.

Where does dog start and angel end. I was told angel meant messenger. And Fuzzy was surely a messenger. We’d got the best miracle of all. We had time. And this time we would not waste it.

*Sorry this so late. It is part of the Winter Fundraiser.

I’’m running a mid winter fundraiser for the blog. You know why.

There’s a Give Send Go for the Winter Fundraiser and well, if you need anything else including a snail mail address, please go here.

But I don’t like to ask for money without giving something back.

It is also my Christmas gift to you. I hope you enjoy it.
I’ve been doing readings and short stories, to feel I’m giving something back for my Winter fundraiser. (There will be dog story either tonight or tomorrow. Was going to be tonight, but my kid informed me he’s taking me to a movie this afternoon, so I guess not? Anyway, since we’ve been having a furry Christmas season, this one will be The Bork of Christmas. But yesterday one of you contacted me asking for a link to the reading I did for my substack subscribers (I intend to do three a month for paid, one for free. In case I haven’t got around to doing chapters, because well… maybe next year will be better? I’ll try at least. Anyway, right now the ones out are all free and I see no reason not to share the links here. So, hold up.

READINGS:

The Littlest Nightmare.

Tic Toc.

Call the Mom Squad

Short stories, so far:

Claws For Christmas

A Squirrel for Christmas

The Chinchilla Of Hope.)

I’ll post something tomorrow, but not a full post. Merry Christmas to those who celebrate, and happy first day of Hanukah. May your day be happy and full of love. -SAH)

I’m going to beg your indulgence

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

While I finish a short story. I’m not at all sure when it will be done. Could be tonight. You see, we’re also helping Charlie move, and making sure he has everything he needs, and–

So. I thought I could do a regular (economics!) post and a short later, but I woke up very late, had one of those nights when there’s no comfortable position. (I hate being old.)

Therefore The Bork Of Christmas will be late.

Sorry.

Book Promo And Vignettes By Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike

Posted on by Sarah A. 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

*THERE WILL BE SOME OF MY BOOKS ON SALE ON CHRISTMAS EVE. HOPEFULLY I REMEMBER TO POST THEM… YEAH. IT’S LIKE THAT. – SAH*

FROM HOLLY LEROY: You Kill Me – A Lt. Eve Sharpe Thriller

Love J. A. Konrath’s Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels? Try Lt. Eve Sharpe.
LIEUTENANT EVE SHARPE should have seen the avalanche of trouble headed her way but events had dulled her edge and crumbled her foundation of toughness. With the press and politicians all coming for her, Eve begins to question whether she is really a cold blooded murderer or simply losing her mind. Was it an officer involved shooting gone wrong? An honest mistake? Or, something much, much worse?

There’s one thing for sure, it has turned the Chicago Police Department upside down, and Lieutenant Eve Sharpe’s life along with it.

FROM LESLEE SHEU: Kumasagi, Part 4: Sindhupat

To heal the blood of the earth, a secret bond must be revealed…

Asta travels to Sindhupat Island, hoping to meet a spiritual master who will help her overcome her difficulties with the mystic arts. The island, however, reveals a deeper purpose when Asta begins to have disturbing visions from Najat’s childhood there.

Warned by Najat’s memories, Asta learns that the island’s most famous denizen, Delan Gampoban, is not the man that songs and stories of legend would have him seem. With the island’s sacred grotto in ruins, Asta follows the clues to how the grotto might be restored—putting her on a collision course with the man who tormented Najat for years.

In Shakti Lake City, Najat still holds a portion of Asta’s kana, which may be the key to bringing forth new life from the island’s destin cove. Najat and Asta’s connection allows them to work together across the distance … but soon they may be forced to give up their bond forever.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Holidays and Holy Days (Modern Gods)

Hera was hard at work in her counseling office when her clients started cancelling for Thanksgiving travel. She…hadn’t realized that a) that was coming up, or b) what it actually about…until she did a little research and decided to celebrate. In the process, she learns about Christmas coming, and decides that it’s high time somebody threw Christ a birthday party.

Of course, nothing goes as planned, but when does it ever?

FROM DALE COZORT: Through the Wild Gate

Robinette Thornburg, the half-human daughter of ultra-rich Robert Thornburg, thought she was fully human, just weird, for the first twenty-one years of her life. She went to expensive private schools, then Harvard. On her twenty-first birthday, she learned that she was half Mangi, the result of an encounter between her father and a primitive near-human woman from the Wild, an alternate reality North America where primitive humans arrived half a million years ago, but no modern humans ever did.

That was the first she had heard of Mangi or the Wild, closely held secrets of the wealthy families who control Gates to it, but she finds out far more than she wants to about the Wild when mysterious enemies kidnap her and leave her to die in the Wild, naked and weaponless.

Robinette nearly starves before finding her way back to our world through an early, uncontrolled Gate. She vows revenge, but on who? She teams up with Eric Carter, a down on his luck private eye and former bodyguard to her father. The two try to figure out who kidnapped Robinette and why, a quest that takes them through the decadent world of the Gate families, the only law in the Wild. It also takes them back to the Wild and then to a final confrontation with, their lives and the fate of the Wild at stake.

FROM MARY CATELLI: Fever and Snow

A short story of a curse, a king, and a child.

A warlord of fire can lay curses of fever. A woman of snow can freeze a man to death.

Pierre, knight of the king, is burning with fever from the curse of the warlord when he learns a possibility that might save him — and the kingdom. It turns on a child.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Grandmaster’s Gambit

The disastrous war of 1913 is over, and young journalist Isaak Babel has used his fame as a war correspondent to win a peacetime job covering an international chess tournament in New York City. However, trouble is aboard the airship Grossdeuschland, in the form of the notorious Bolshevik terrorist Koba and his henchmen. Men with a dark plan, and New York City will not welcome their visit.

ADDENDUM: I’ve been doing readings and short stories, to feel I’m giving something back for my Winter fundraiser. (There will be dog story either tonight or tomorrow. Was going to be tonight, but my kid informed me he’s taking me to a movie this afternoon, so I guess not? Anyway, since we’ve been having a furry Christmas season, this one will be The Bork of Christmas. But yesterday one of you contacted me asking for a link to the reading I did for my substack subscribers (I intend to do three a month for paid, one for free. In case I haven’t got around to doing chapters, because well… maybe next year will be better? I’ll try at least. Anyway, right now the ones out are all free and I see no reason not to share the links here. So, hold up.

READINGS:

The Littlest Nightmare.

Tic Toc.

Call the Mom Squad

Short stories, so far:

Claws For Christmas

A Squirrel for Christmas

The Chinchilla Of Hope.)

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: REWARD

An Apology But Not An Explanation

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

I’ve already apologized in the post itself and on twitter, but it occurs to me I need to do it for the people who subscribe.

If you’re looking at the page wondering who replaced me, that probably makes twice in two days. It is true I make it a policy not to apologize to those screaming offense. That policy remains in place.

You see normally when I offend people it is by doing or saying something I believe, and if it offends them, that’s their problem not mine.

This one I did not mean, I have no real explanation for, and it was heinous because of the times we live in.

For those who missed it, yesterday I put up one meme in the compilation that was or could be interpreted as antisemitic. In fact, that was the simplest interpretation.

And I have no explanation for it, or none that makes sense to me. It was a two panel, top and bottom meme. And the problem is that I didn’t see the bottom panel. Period. What I saw was the top that said “CNN says Earth is [amount] in debt. Who do we owe that debt to, the Decepticons?” This tickled my economics nerd sense of humor, because of course, we talk of debt and of borrowing from the future, but that’s not precisely true. You should put a pin in that, or it will turn into a whole new post. I’ll do one tomorrow. The truth is that we’re stealing from the present, which yes, means our kids will be poorer, but we’re not actually borrowing from them.

But the idea of the whole Earth, with no universal governing authority, made me giggle, so it went in. I never saw the second panel, which had a Decepticon “Jew” caricature. (To be fair, this has happened before. Today we’re reconfiguring my office, as I get no internet up there, so I’m doing the posts on the laptot, and sometimes the bottom is hard to see, and since then I overtop in posting, I might never see the bottom.)

I have no explanation for this, save that I was ill for two months and am now rushing to catch up one everything, house and work, on top of the holidays and with a guest in the house who is moving out in stages this weekend. All of which means I’m running around like a lunatic and was dealing with other problems while putting up the promo post. (This is normal.) And the promo post is fussy and fiddly to put up.

Also, yes, the meme came in a compilation one of my friends sends me, and no, he’s not anti-semitic. He apologized for it, but the fault is mine, because I do nix some of his every week, sometimes because I think he missed the subtle dig — at conservatives or Trump or something hidden in them — or because I fail to “get” them. (Apparently both he and I, not being anti-semites or hanging out in such places missed “Decepticon” having become a slur. Both of us thought of it as the Science Fiction meaning.)

So I wouldn’t just ‘pass his meme on’ with no thought.

Again no explanation. Except it’s like when I gave my kitten the old cats meds and spend a day terrified he’d die on me (It was Indy. Obviously he’s fine.) They don’t look a thing alike, but Havey was running from me, Indy ran up to me and my brain went “Cat shape” and popped the pill in his mouth. Which I realized was wrong as he swallowed. This was about a year and a half ago, and I also had no explanation for it except “I was very tired.” And apparently a meat-robot took over while my brain went to sleep.

Anyway, I normally wouldn’t bother apologizing for such a slip. After all, it can be interpreted as my friend did, as so over the top it mocks anti-Semites.

But unfortunately since 10/7 there has been a weird wave of anti-semitism everywhere, and while it of course is mostly a leftist thing, it seems to have infected some people theoretically on our side. I know for my Jewish friends the experience is often of seeing friends and neighbors remove the mask to show a hideous face beneath.

And while no rational human being can think I suddenly became anti-Semitic, (In fact, that would be evidence there was a pod in the basement and something was wearing a Sarah suit.) we don’t live in rational times, and as I said some people I’d never have dreamed of being that ridiculous seem to believe the most atrocious stuff.

So, I’m apologizing if I induced someone’s PTSD to act up, and I’m apologizing for putting up something I do not in fact believe, not even as a joke.

I have no idea how it happened, but it’s been brought home to me perhaps sleep is not the enemy. And I need to look at every meme very carefully before it goes up.

I’m very sorry if I hurt some of you. It wasn’t intentional. And I literally didn’t mean it. I just missed a second panel on the meme.

If I EVER post something like that again, take it as a cue for a welfare check, because something went wrong.

Thank you.

Memes We Have Seen On High

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

(Decepticon-Jew meme, I only saw the black part, not the lower frame, and was amused by the “who the heck is Earth in debt to, the decepticons? Because “earth in debt” makes NO SENSE. And knowing the person who sent it tome, my guess is he ALSO only saw the top frame. I don’t understand how it happened other than “Dangerously tired.”. Sorry. Removed. — SAH)