Sarah A. Hoyt's Blog, page 383

Interesting Times -CACS

Sarah remarked that right now a number the people who write alternate columns for her are having interesting lives.

As my life has progressed I have pondered the Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.” I have concluded that what is considered as interesting times changes with perspective.

When I was in school I thought of the curse as quite a threat, generally encompassing great disasters and upheavals. I thought of interesting times as The Revolution (American and French), The La...

Inclusive of Psychopaths – Frank J. Fleming

*Once upon a time Frank’s blog was one of the things that kept me from bursting from the (glass fronted) political closet brandishing an AK-47. Now that I’m out in the open and everything, imagine my surprise when I found Frank was writing novels. In science fiction and everything. Give him a warm Hunnish welcome, and go buy his book. The alternative is too horrible to contemplate. – SAH*

Inclusive of Psychopaths– Frank J. Fleming

What makes good science fiction? Is it a fast-paced story? Int...

Plus Ca Change – David Pascoe

Plus Ca Change – David Pascoe

When I was a wee, young lad, my farthest horizons Down The Block To The Corner, and more distantly, The Annual 25-Hour Drive to Southern KCalifornia, I was confronted with the reality of, not only my personal mortality, but of the possibility – nay, the certainty of the extinction of humanity. No, not something as pedestrian as nuclear warfare. That, that actor who had the sheer, unmitigated gall to occupy the White House had seemed to put paid to the Gorby and t...

Good Little Girls

It won’t surprise anyone in this blog that I was a tomboy. There is a picture of me at seven or eight I posted in the diner, holding hands with my 10 year older, dark, bearded brother. I was wearing shorts and a scruffy t-shirt. (It was scruffy on account of my having a mania for it, all through that summer. Mom washed it at night – sometimes sending me into the washtank afterwards so I wouldn’t track mud through the house – and it was dry in the morning. It was orange and had a green anchor...

What White Privilege?- By Rhiain

*I don’t know Rhiain personally except she’s one of my fans. But reading this I realized we were sisters under the skin. Now, because I have spent the last five years, give or take, mainly indoors — I’m looking forward to better health allowing me to hike more again — I have only a vague soupcon of gold, (Spun Gold, according to paint chips) but my kids are… much darker and also blessed with more ethnic features. Being treated as victims embarrasses them, even if they grew up — writer’s sons...

Books For The Buying – Free Range Oyster

Hail, Huns! Welcome to the weekend, and welcome to another installment of the According to Hoyt Promo Post! And look, it’s only been a week since the last one; do try to contain your astonishment. [Actually, it’s been less than a week, since you were late last time… -Ed.] *thwacks editor* … *smiles sweetly* So, go enjoy some good reading material, leave reviews of what you’ve read, soak in the lovely weather as you’re able, and above all, enjoy your blessings. Also, please remember to offer p...

I Thought I Was Wrong

As some of you know, this is my fourth go-around with Through Fire, the book from Hades.

I don’t think it’s the book or the theme (though writing first person a woman who is very different from me is writing on the highest difficulty setting, mind) but the fact I wrote the first version while very, very (very) ill.

When I’m ill I suffer a dryness of imagination, so that writing becomes “arid” — as in I can write what happens but that’s all. there are no incidental fall-in characters (let’s al...

A Prayer For My Kind

Dear Author,

If you’re there, at the giant keyboard beyond reality, my colleague Terry Pratchett died, and I’d like to have a word with you, about his life, his work, his destination.

Yes, I know you’re not really an Author, but this is how my sadly limited human mind copes with it, so bear with me and allow me to address you as such.

This man Pratchett, you see, spent his life creating a reality, parallel to your own, but not un-akin and not a bad reflection of it, if I may say so. He used h...

Another Of Those Updates

Ladies and gentlemen, Phoenixes and Pegasi, and the odd alien this is your captain speaking. We’ve been over some turbulence lately, and I’ve not been handling it with my normal grace and aplomb, (for a blind elephant) so I thought it was high time you knew what was happening here up front in the flight deck.

If you’re a regular you know I used to do state of the writer fairly regularly, but there seem to have been some other things to talk about, recently, and besides I didn’t like the state...

Many Paths, Same Goal

So tonight – phone – had an interesting conversation with Bill Reader. He’s not a troll, and since we are friends he wouldn’t come to my blog to call me names, but he was making many of the objections made here over the weekend to the idea of working to take over the GOP.

We covered the reasons – mine and his – mine being of course the ones I laid out here. His being – his being younger than I – that he despairs of incremental gains, of slow victories.

Part of me understands. Honest. It’s a tou...