Sarah A. Hoyt's Blog, page 275

The Writer is in a State

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So, ladies, gentlemen and small squirrels, I’m here to assure you that I did not forget Dark Fate, though my idea is to take a stray week in February, write it to the end, and then put it up in great big chunks.  Um… Might be in March.

You see, I didn’t forget either Alien Curse OR A Well Inlaid Death (the next Dyce mystery, for which I have a cover and everything done by the amazingly talented Jack Wylder, see above.)  I’m just running about 3 weeks late on when I intended to release things...

The Weight of History

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I realized the other day that I was born the same distance from the end of World War II as we are now from 9/11.

It seems like a weird idea.  After all, 9/11 happened yesterday, just about.  I remember the shock, and worrying about Dan (he was working in DC at the time) and bringing out the bourbon and frying doughnuts.  I remember months of not being able to think straight.

But WWII was ancient history when I was born, a thing of the past done and over with.  It helps process things like th...

Ah, Interpretation!- On The State And Revolution Part 2– by Amanda S. Green

[image error] Ah, Interpretation!- On The State And Revolution Part 2– by Amanda S. Green

Or how Lenin proves he’s no better than those he condemns.

In the previous post, I noted how Lenin opened  The State and Revolution with a condemnation of those “socialists” who didn’t follow his own particular brand of socialism. In good lawyer fashion, he accused the Mensheviks and others of watering down the doctrines of Marx and Engels. In the second chapter of  The State and Revolution he continues that attack....

The Right Way to Grieve and Support the Grieving By Out of the Darkness

[image error] The Right Way to Grieve and Support the Grieving By Out of the Darkness

Grieving is a topic most of us wish we could ignore, but is an absolutely universal process. We will all grieve a loss and we will all support someone who is grieving. It’s not just about death either, but about any kind of loss that one experiences. This can mean losing a job through termination or retirement, your worldview shifting, the end of a relationship, or simply growing out of an old identity. Anything that cau...

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

I[image error]‘ve been saying for a long time that the way in which our environment is particularly abnormal, compared to most of the history of the human race, is that we’re saturated with story.

Humans like stories.  We seek them out.  It is entirely possible that is the difference between us and the various human breeds that existed before us.  Of course, we can’t know unless someone invents a machine to observe the past.  Pre-history by definition left no records of stories, unless, of course, cave pa...

You Go To War With The Underwear You Got On*

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One of the things that has always puzzled me about the left is that they assume wars are volitional, there is no reason at all behind them, and people just “decide” to go to war.

I used to think this silliness had started with the boomers and Vietnam, until someone gave me the collected, bound periodicals of World War I and I researched World War II, and nope, even then there were people treating war as a decision we could choose to engage in or not.

Sure, maybe WWI for America specifically...

Sunday Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike And A Bonanza of Book Promo.

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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...

Researching Your Fairy Tales – by Mary Catelli

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[Yes, I know you’re going to say that this post is more suited to MGC.  And I confess that Mary wrote it thinking of writers.  But how many of us have had to defend Western culture in conventions, or even conversations, and point out that no, it’s not all “prince rescues princess”.  This gives you the background to point out most of what current crazies fight is imaginary.  Strong (really strong, not b*tchy) women have ALWAYS been appreciated, and western culture is no worse than others (and...

The Ground Moving Under Our Feet

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This post is prompted by something that Amanda said on the comments to her post, yesterday: that traditional publishing should have seen the writing on the wall when their midlist writers started leaving en-masse for indie, but instead they lashed out and called writers widgets and said we could be replaced by others just like us… which is true… to a point.  The point is what they were missing: that things had changed, that there were other avenues, that the ones wedded to the old system and...

The State and Revolution Pt. 1 – by Amanda S. Green

[image error] The State and Revolution Pt. 1 – by Amanda S. Green

Class Society and the State

Reading Lenin, whether you’re doing it in the original Russian or in English, is like reading a mix of law school textbook and philosophic arguments. You have to pay a great deal of attention to not only what he says but how he says it. Worse, reading it today, it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking how reasonable what he wrote more than a century ago seems. After all, we’ve heard so much of it as recently...