Sarah A. Hoyt's Blog, page 68

I enjoin you to pause by Holly Frost

I Enjoin You to Pause by Holly Frost

Okay, you all know how, when it gets to be winter (yes, I know, you and you don’t have winter, so pay double attention, it’ll be your own rear you save twice), you drive down the icy road, and you stop at a red light. The light turns green, and you pause, and you wait, just to see if the guy with the red who is half a block away can actually stop or if he’s going to come skidding and spinning through the intersection. You know how that is? And the guy ...

Farewell to A Friend

It probably shouldn’t surprise me that this year would have a final sting and take one of my mentors and friends as it ends.

Okay, I’m personifying the year and that’s stupid, but it is has been a bad one.

I first met David Drake because when I was sat down for a signing, I noticed the corner with the Baen (mostly) guys was the happiest, most cheerful bunch. The others sat at the tables, either in gloom or being “G-d or Shakespeare” as Diana Wynne Jones called it.

But the Baen peopl...

On Sale Now and new stuff -THIS IS A PINNED POST, Post of the day Below

THIS IS A PINNED POST, Post of the day Below

Deep Pink (Magis Book 1) -99c

Like all Private Detectives, Seamus Lebanon [Leb] Magis has often been told to go to Hell. He just never thought he’d actually have to go. But when an old client asks him to investigate why Death Metal bands are dressing in pink – with butterfly mustache clips – and singing about puppies and kittens in a bad imitation of K-pop bands, Leb knows there’s something foul in the realm of music. When the something grow...

On Sale Now and new stuff

Draw One In The Dark (The Shifter Series Book 1) On Sale for 99c

Something or someone is killing shape shifters in the small mountain town of Goldport, Colorado. Kyrie Smith, a server at a local diner, is the last person to solve the mystery. Except of course for the fact that she changes into a panther and that her co-worker, Tom Ormson, who changes into a dragon, thinks he might have killed someone. Add in a policeman who shape-shifts into a lion, a father who is suffering from remorse...

No, Mr. Bond, I expect You To Meme

...

We Shall Have A Great Simplification

The desire for simplicity in humans is a recurring dream, like equality and fraternity and such. It is also always bad news when it’s applied outside the individual.

“I want to simplify my life” is okay, if often misguided if not thoroughly thought through and negotiated, because “simplicity” has trade offs and most of what you’ll think will make your life very simple will actually make it massively more complicated in the details or in ways you didn’t think of.

There are two ways I c...

Stars In Their Eyes

This is one of those practical posts I have to do from time to time.

I’m not going to cover everything, so there might be a guest post on this later.

First, before you start, will the gentleman in the back stop chewing gum quite so loudly? please note the pinned post at the top of the blog. The books on sale have rolled over. And yes, as of right now there’s only one, but two more will join on the 9th.

Thank you. Now, let’s resume our unscheduled insanity explanation of rating and ...

Nature, Tooth, claw And All

Yesterday, by accident, at night, I read about the barbaric things done to women in Israel by the Hamass terrorist attack on 10/7. I enjoin you not to follow that link, if you don’t want my nightmares last night.

And I woke up and was thinking… well, about a lot of things.

The only thing unusual about the way Hamass treated those women (and children) is that they killed most of them. Unusual, I mean from an historical perspective.

I was thinking of the rape of the Sabines, upon whi...

Keep Your Hair On

Some of you seemed to think my post yesterday referred to a sort of apocalypse or disaster. That’s not what I meant. The only ominous part about it is that things we’ve learned to take for granted, like, oh, long distance travel and money enough to do it might not be for some for a while.

For the record, they weren’t when I was young. People are always puzzled that growing up in Europe, I never went to the major touristic points. Well, you know, I flew for the first time at 18 when I ca...

Last Call

First, be not alarmed. I’ve had this feeling before and it was wrong, or at least the decay and loss I feared was slow and grinding, not catastrophic and eminent.

Or it applied very personally to me. I mean to an extent 2013 WAS the last summer for our family, not due to catastrophe, but to the boys no longer being kids and things changing markedly. Also to us moving a lot over the next two years. So when I kept getting that feeling of “the last halcyon Summer” I wasn’t wrong. It was just...