Daniel M. Bensen's Blog

Sharp Eye Preview II

In our last episode, the Plonjado dove into the Cannibal Sea, searching for a treasure to launch the Kamesan’s war on heaven. What is that treasure? Find out in our second generous preview of SHARP EYE.
If you read my first draft of this scene, you'll see we dug a lot deeper as we revised. One good example is the skandalopetra, the round stone the Plonjado uses as a weight and guide underwater. That came from good, old-fashioned research.
And then, would you believe that the awesome power of Sharp Eye's MacGuffin arose from my selfish desire to smuggle my characters' internal dialogue into the comic? Artyom and Jason worked hard to show when the Plonjado is thinking and when...something else is speaking.
And that's it for now! Today we are very nearly half way through our campaign, and 160% funded. Thank you all for that. And we're getting close to that glimmery, glossy cover. Help us to meet that stretch goal by telling your friends to pledge to Sharp Eye.

Cannibal Sea: first draft of Sharp Eye

Way back in November of 2019, I sat in a cafe and wrote this very first draft of the sequel to First Knife, the comic we much later named "Sharp Eye." Back the Sharp Eye Kickstarter to get your own copy. The raft rocks on the blood-warm swell of the Cannibal Sea.
Behind the raft looms the sacred timbers of a Bequa caravel, its sails reefed against totem-carved masts. Behind that: the cracked and sun-glazed dome of ancient Mayami. Trapped hurricanes pile like volcanoes on the horizon.
Plonjadò A stands on the edge, his eyes closed, palms pressed to his hips, breathing his prayer.
He is an old man, hair and beard stubble white against very black skin, and he wears only a belt of weights. In the water at his feet bobs a white buoy, marked with the green and gold microchip of House Komèsan.
“What’s he waiting for?” Grumbles the mercenary on the deck of the caravel.
Plonjadò cannot hear her. He curls his toes around the hot sea-bamboo of his raft, barrel chest rising, falling, waiting for God to breathe into him.
When he was a boy and still had his eardrums, Plonjadò A could wait a year for a real breath. As an apprentice, he might spend days fasting and praying, then dive barely 50 meters. Now, inspiration comes to him every day and still they demand more. Still he will give it.
“They call it ‘Opening the Lungs of God.'” Lady Sardodj Komèsan Nan looks down on the little black figure on the pale raft. Sardodj’s parasol is finest plastic, painted silver and dangling with microchips. “A sacred ritual of my people.”
Her plumed mantel rises about her shoulders as she turns, hands on hips, grinning at her bodyguard. “I think it’s a rather fitting way to begin a war with heaven.”
“Whatever you say, Komèsan.” The mercenary is leaning against the railing on the ship’s far side, face hidden under the shadow cast by her hat. She caresses the barrel of her rifle and spits tobacco juice into the red brine. “Just tell me when to shoot the shaman.”
The breath comes to Plonjadò, and he opens his eyes. He knows the merchant princess plans to kill him. Only now, though, with the breath of God in his chest, does he know why he should not let her. More is demanded of him.
His arms rise and his breath gusts out. Plonjadò dives.
The Cannibal Sea is as warm and red as blood, teaming with jellyfish.
Stings slide off his oiled skin as Plonjadò reaches out. His fingers find the rope that depends from the buoy and thread themselves around it. as he sinks.
The water embraces him. Pain rises in his jaw, a dim memory of the pressure that took his hearing. Soft algae brush his cheeks.
Plonjadò feels the seabed and grips the buoy’s rope to slow his dive. In the red blackness, he sweeps out his arms, fingers splayed to feel for the treasure that the Komèsan princess says must be here.
Blind now, as well as deaf, Plonjadò forms a picture with his fingertips. There is the anchor of the buoy, buried in the fine blanket of dead algae. There is a long, smooth curve – the carbon fiber hull of an ancient ship. Another curve is a skull. There is the jaw, and there the fence posts of ribs. A long, smooth bone…
And the water lights up.
It looks like a heart, beating with light, nested within counter-rotating loops of black chain. Plonjadò squints against it, the blood pounding around his eyes. He reaches past the orbiting chains, touches the heart again, and for the first time in thirty years, he hears a voice.
“Greetings, master. What do you wish of me?”
The voice is high and sweet. A child playing make-believe.
Plonjadò takes up the heart and holds it against his chest. The chains break like smoke and reform around him. Wider, they orbit faster.
My child, he thinks, my only wish is to keep you safe.
The caravel rocks in a sudden upwelling of water. Sardodj grips the rail and narrows her eyes at the blood-colored water. At the contrail of bubbles speeding north, away from her. She glances at the compass, which is now also pointing north. Five minutes ago, it wasn’t.
“Well, shit,” she says.

Sharp Eye Preview

Last night, still woozy from a 12-hour flight, I drank a toast with Simon and Artyom and made myself even woozier. Then I pressed that big, green button and our Kickstarter went live.
It was late evening in Sofia, but my internal clock told me it was early morning in Seattle. I felt like I'd only just climbed out of Lake Union, but my back was sore, the cat had used my pillow as a litter box, and the whiskey was still in my luggage*. I added another layer of Fabreeze to my mattress and went to watch a bed-time cartoon with my kids. When I woke up twelve hours later, Sharp Eye was funded.
Thank you. Thanks to Artyom, who would not let go of this project, Jason, who sprinted all summer to get the colors ready, Simon, who shepherded us through the whole process, and of course you, you beasts! You funded our comic! We can print it now!
What comes next is simple and exciting. We already have Sharp Eye ready, so all you have to do is sit tight while we finish the campaign and send CRWN what they need. Then you'll get a comic that is either beautiful, extra beautiful, or shining with celestial splendor, depending on which stretch goals we meet.
At the end of the campaign, on or near October 3rd, we'll have a virtual launch party. You'll get a link.
Finally, I'll polish the script for the next issue, and Artyom will start drawing it. Sharp Eye 2 will come out in fall 2026.
Enjoy the first six pages of the comic, and if you haven't yet, go make your pledge to get a copy of Sharp Eye.
Again, thank you all. And talk to you soon,
Dan
Visit Sharp Eye's page
Check out Simon's Patreon and Artyom's Patreon
*I used Jimador in our toast.

July Newsletter: Shamarandura

I kicked harder, sweeping another armful of water back and away, and gaining another body length toward the paddle board. With my next stroke, I pushed my shoulders up and bent back my head to see my daughter dig in her paddle and propel herself into the distant Aegean.
The Bulgarian word shamandura means “a buoy,” and not, as it seems to me it should, a mystical lamasery that only appears once every ten thousand years. Likewise, shamar, is not a diamond market on the Silk Road, but a slap across the face.
Last summer, I combined the words and invented the game of Shamarandura, in which you swim out to a buoy and give it a slap. We generally use the smaller, nearby buoys for our slapping purposes. The bottom there is only seven or eight feet down, and you can dive to see the sand bags that anchor the buoys, sheltering hand-length, curled gobies.
The gobies are black, with large chipmonk-cheeks and fat, powerful tails. On the Black Sea coast, you can buy gobies fried and eat those cheeks, but on the Aegean, it’s the cuttlefish and squid that are in danger. These are facts that should reassure me as to my place at the top of the marine food chain, but the fact of the matter is that I don’t like swimming past the little buoys.
There’s a bigger one out there, encrusted with barnacles, its line trailing into murk. I swim over depths like those and I can’t help but imagine movement. Long, langorous swirls, as of a tail. A tentacle.
But you gotta work off that calamari somehow. What better way to conquer my fear and maintain my beach bod than this offer to my wife: “They can paddle out to the far-away buoy, and I’ll swim with them.”
I didn’t know it at the time, but one stroke of my little niece’s oar was the equivalent to four of my most powerful, avuncular strokes. Going all out, I could just barely catch up with the board, and when I stopped to rest, the girls powered steadily away.
I kicked, I breathed, I flipped over and let the burn drain out of my arms. I treaded water and gave my legs a rest while the girls gave the buoy a thorough spanking. My chest and arms hurt too much to worry about sea monsters.
“Now let’s go back.”
And the paddle dug in again.
***
I have quite a lot of news. Expect a post with more details next week, but for now I’ll keep things simple: Wealthgiver will end in two weeks. Paid subscribers will read the end of the whole novel on August 14th. Free subscribers will have to wait until October. So come on:
After Wealthgiver, paid subscribers will get a little vacation treat: two short stories from my friend and colleague Emil Minchev. Get ready for some yummy Balkan horror.
Finally, Wealthgiver I: Darkness, is now available for pre-order. For those of you who prefer all the chapters together, or who want a physical book, click here.
***
And I read some things:
In Xanadu: A Quest* by William Dalrymple - Another excellent recommendation from  Jane Psmith. This is an interestingly recent travelogue, from a near three decades ago, when men were more daring and the net of managerial technocracy clung less tightly, and any feckless couple of British twenty-somethings could sneak, bluff, and bumble their way across a hostile frontier. It’s rather funny, more than a little terrifying, and very human. How to give people an excuse not to kill you through body language alone.

Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman - I’d been putting of trying this book because I don’t like video games and I think LitRPGs are dumb. But, like Invading the System, Carl makes it clear that it’s bad when a vast, unstoppable system destroys your life and forces you to kill your neighbors to gain points. The demon was an especially nice touch.
Carl's Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman - Not as good as book one. It wasn’t so much the shift from pop-culture humor to fantasy adventure. Doomsday was just rushed. Fewer ideas, less heart. I home Dinniman hits his stride for book 3.
Captain Trader Helmsman Spy by Karl K. Gallagher - I was a bit leery of this book, because it switches from the story of Marcus, to that of his father Niko, whose ship has been dragooned into spy duty. I enjoyed the exploration of the Censorate, both physical and sociological, and the human side of the story was good enough to make me care. What I like most about this series is how personal it is. Characters don’t solve problems by submitting the proper form to the correct department before the deadline. They talk to each other man to man. Or sometimes fight to the death. It’s a trade-off.
Outlaw of the Outer Stars by John C. Wright - Another great beach read from Wright’s pulpy homage to Star Wars. In this, the 4th book,the overarching plot is well on its way, with Lyra, Athos, and Flint getting themselves in ever deeper trouble. Most of the book we spend with Athos, himself, who is in very deep, indeed. Frogs everywhere.
The Paladin by David Ignatius - It would have been a decent book if it hadn’t been so heavily censored. In this political thriller set in 2016. The main character refers to Trump as “the president,” for whom he voted, but now regrets it. There’s a plot about deepfake videos and Kompromat and spies betraying each other, but every now and then the author feels the need to assure us that he’s not a bad Republican.
Epic The Musical by Jorge Rivera-Herrans - I got this recommendation from Author Update, which I also recommend, as an example of the next wave of story fashion in the 2020s: ruthless and bloodthirsty. Umstattd says it’s a retelling of the Odyssea that doesn’t try to “fix” the story, but it does. It’s just that instead of shoehorning in a lesson about diversity, the message is “kill whoever might become a problem later.” Hoo boy.
Pandemonia: A Novel Plague Plague Novel by Johnson Riggs - Full Disclosure: the author is a friend. Fuller disclosure, I had to push at the beginning. I was glad I did, though. Everything straightens out once the poison is in the water supply and our hero has been sent on his epic quest. From then on it's just big, dumb epic fun. There's a wizard whose magic is based on bodily secretions ("My prostatism is nothing compared to your pro-statism!"), a ramen-loving pilot from "South Direa," and of course our hero, Pickle, who waterboards prisoners the fun way ("Hope you like shredding gnar, bro!"). Imagine if Xanth had less weird eighties sex stuff and Cracked dot com didn't signal its twenty-teens virtue. Pandemonia is a novel of the twenty-twenties: offensively virtuous, and with only normal sex stuff.
Macedonian baked giant beans from the Syntrofia restaurant in Psarades on Lake Prespa - From our third trip to Lake Prespa, an annual vacation that we undertake not only because this place makes the best baked beans from Tirana to Sofia. Here’s the recipe:
Ingredients: Fasolia gigantes or other giant white beans, dried Florina peppers, olive onion, oil, dried spearmint, paprika, salt.
Directions: Soak the beans overnight. Cut up the onion and peppers and fry them in “a lot” of olive oil. I think this is really a lot, like a third of the volume of the beans. Put the oil, onions, peppers, and oil into a clay pot or Dutch oven. Season with spearmint, paprika, and salt. Bake until the beans are soft.
That’s the recipe I got from the chef, but I think there’s another “ingredient” she didn’t mention. I tasted a fishy, meaty flavor, which I think comes from the fact that she soaked the beans in lake water. To mimic this, I’ll try soaking my beans in dashi. Not until the weather has cooled down, though.

See you next month
*All book links are Amazon affiliate links

Uncle Cheech: June Newsletter

June is always a slog. The kids are out of school, but I’m not. I have to find an air-conditioner to huddle under while I plan lessons. I teach, I write, I try to compose invoices, always besieged by my adorable daughters, who only want to be played with before we grow too old for these games, Dad. Next year we’ll be going out with boys and studying for our high school entrance exams, but this summer, this last golden solstice of childhood, while the swallows swoop low across the sweet stalks of new-mown hay, now, Father, we want to eat ice cream and go roller-skating.
So, there I was, wiping blood from Ellie’s knees and helping her back into her shoes. She wasn’t crying any more because her mouth was full of ice-cream. I let her finish it while I went to play basketball with Maggie and my nephew Stefan.
Maggie has the advantage of extensive, Go-Go-Gadget arms and legs, but Stefan has the advantage of knowing how to play basketball. He’s seven years old and shares a name with Steph Curry. He wishes I would call him “Stef” instead of “Stefi” or “Stefcho,” and retaliates by not calling me “Chicho Dan,” but “Uncle Cheech.”
Maggie felt better when she teamed up with Stefan against me and Ellie, and could learn the joy of beating someone taller than you. After they told me it was against the rules to stand one step back from the basket and bounce the ball again and again off the backboard until it finally goes through the basket, her team won.
By the time they beat me, the sun had set behind the school and the basketball court was in the cool shadow of the school. I’ve spent a lot of time in that park this year, working out in the bitterly early morning. In September, I’ll return at 6 goddamn 30 AM for more woozy chin-ups every weekday, but in June, school was over, and the cousins were visiting. We could just play.

​***

In other news, I have finished Wealthgiver. It is done and polished, ready for publication, and it’s going to work like this: on August 18th, paid subscribers and $3+ patrons will be able to read the last chapter (as well as all the previous ones). Free subscribers will have to wait until the 23rd of October. Then, in time for Halloween, we’ll celebrate the launch of Wealthgiver on Amazon. Tell me if you want to join the lunch party.
New stories are also incoming. Subscribe if you aren’t already for my next post, which will be about my plans for the year. If you join my discord server, you’ll be informed, and you’ll be able to talk about scifi and fantasy. Also, if you haven’t already, please fill out my reader survey to get a signed book plate shipped to you.
And I read some things this month.
Written in Fire* by Marcus Sakey - This is the last book in a series that, in spite of itself, was almost very good. At its heart, the Brilliance Saga is a story of inter-generational war, with Baby Boomers trying to brainwash and annihilate super-powered Millennials (Xers are just doing their best, man). In this last book, however, moralizing took over. Again and again, Sakey takes us to the edge, then says, “don’t worry, the disaster didn’t happen. Oh, you wanted to see it happen? You enjoy reading about this sort of thing, you sicko?” It’s insulting.
Giants of Pangea by John C. Wright - Sometimes I just gotta read another of John C. Wright’s pulpy candy bars. In this one (second of a series), Colonel Preston Lost, soldier, millionaire, ace pilot, and daring outdoorsman, continues to nearly get killed in all the ways a man can die on a far-future super-continent inhabited by post-human mutants, god-tech artifacts, and dinosaurs. Maybe the demon-worshiping giants and GM super-monkeys would leave him alone if only this guy would stop righting wrongs and defending the defenseless. He won't, though. This is how you write a hero.
Cræft by Alex Langlands - Unfortunately 
Jane Psmith’s review was much better than the book, itself. The author is an archaeologist who participated in a couple of “what life was like back then” documentaries, and has done many more re-enactments in his own time on his farm. His descriptions of hay-making, wall-building, and hedge-maintenance were the best part of the book, but I was disappointed by the lack of stories about working on the documentary set and in the dig-site transect. Maybe Langlands was afraid of being sued? Compared to The Craftsman and even The Wood for the Trees, Cræft is disappointingly thin. And I know this annoys no one but me, but the Old English letter æsċ did not represent a diphthong, Langlands. It’s /æ/ as in cat.

In the Palace of Shadow and Joy by D.J. Butler - The fun of speculative fiction is when you read it and think, “Ah yes! This is all in free-fall.” Or “Electricity hasn’t been invented yet, so…” or “he has to drink blood every day, which means…” But in Shadow and Joy, there are no implications in the premise to solidify into action. There isn’t much of a premise at all. Characters: check. Setting: okay. Plot: sort of. But this story never comes together. It felt like a novelized run-through of an RPG campaign.
Mr. Monday by Garth Nix - I read this in my twenties and now I’m reading it to my daughters, which is a bit spooky. “Did he know the Pandemic was going to happen?” Then there’s this point in the first chapter where the introduction to the Will of the Architect runs across an angel’s foot, and the angel realizes how very badly things have gone wrong. Yeah.
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell - More fun than Tolstoy and more piercing than Twain, with the added trick of getting us to enjoy our ride with a fairly unlikable person. Scarlet is cunning, not intelligent, lustful, not loving, and so selfish she comes out the other side and saves the lives of everyone in her family. Like a lot of fallen woman stories, this one loses steam near the end when everything bad happens, but whatever. It’s a masterpiece.
One Blue’s Waters by Gene Wolf - Horn isn’t quite as much fun to follow as Silk, but, well, no spoilers. In this short review, the one thing I’ll call to attention in this generally excellent book is the way Wolfe dealt with the diary aspect of the story. Unlike Book of the New Sun, which was supposedly written by the narrator over the course of a few nights, The Book of the Short Sun was written as series of confessions interleaved with accounts of whatever the narrator happened to be doing in his old age the Raja of a small kingdom. Now I want the narrators of all the first-person books I read to take some time out between chapters to go fight a war.
Phrenotopia - Why do we have brains above our mouths and squid have brains around their mouths? On an alien planet, are brains (or mouths) likely to evolve at all? This channel narrates the evolutionary story of the main branches of our tree of life (as guessed-at based on DNA, fossils, and comparative anatomy) and discusses which outcomes were random chance and which weren’t. Pure gold!
Kiabugboy - I have never seen extinct marine invertebrates portrayed better. Look at this Mosura swim around. Look at that wobbly little guy!
Tomosteen - My kids introduced their cousins to this Japanese guy who makes lego food and pretends to eat it using stop-motion. Don’t eat legos, kids.
*Links to books are Amazon affiliate links

May Newsletter: Mystery Dumplings

Prague is the most beautiful city I’ve walked through, and maybe the hardest in which to stay low-carb.
We were in Czechia to attend a wedding, walking down Národní Street on our way to meet the bride and groom, when my kids saw the dumpling shop. You could get dumplings with duck in them, mango, raspberries and cream cheese. Mystery Dumplings.
Each was the size of my fist, and we ate them on a little island in the Vltava while an amateur orchestra played under the bridge, sheltered from the drizzle. Maggie and Ellie didn’t finish their dumplings and gave the rest to me, and that was just five minutes before brunch in Café Slavia. They served Viennese coffee there that was three quarters whipped cream, millet porridge, and croque Madame.
“I’m trying to stay low-carb,” I said pathetically.
“I’m sorry we are…” the groom searched for the right word. “…an obstacle.”
This was the first time any of us had met in person. The bride had read Fellow Tetrapod and invited me to a Discord server. We’d talked once on Zoom. Going from there to Wedding Guest was a little odd for me, but she’d famously met the groom in the comments sections of a youtube video.
We talked about the upcoming wedding, of course, and the dramas of family, the Prague Zoo, and our countries’ respective science fiction communities.
“There’s a lot of Czech science fiction.”
“I know,” I said, thinking of RUR and War with the Newts. “Is there any new stuff?”
The groom escorted us to an enormous bookstore with a long row of new Czech fantastika three shelves high (names include: Blaho, Rachot, Huňová, Bakly, Kyša Šlechta, Neff, Hamouz, Heteša, Bureš, Fabian, Kotouč) as well as some of the most beautiful editions of Pratchett I’ve seen.
“We have a big convention in the spring,” he said. “I know some people there. You should come.” I agreed that I would, wondering why I hadn’t gone to any other local conventions, not even in Sofia.
“My problem is I think out loud,” I said. An excuse. “That makes it hard for me to have a conversation in Bulgarian. I’m trying to make contacts…” I trailed off, tangled up in the desire to not appear afraid.
“My dream — I’ve got to, uh, I have to really improve my Czech.” The bride looked down at her fingers, which she was bending back. “But, um, I want to translate these books into English.”
She spoke like someone who writes more than she talks. With hesitancy, fighting against perfectionism, maybe, but not against fear. This was someone who crossed an ocean to get married with far less assurance than I did. Later, in her wedding dress and dizzy with relief and Toscana Bianco after the ceremony, she would shake hands with me on an editing deal. That’s as much professional networking as I’ve done in six months.
Since the internet soured for me, I’d been trying to ignore it and build real-world connections. “Don’t work with anyone you can’t have coffee with,” I told myself once after a particularly nasty email. It’s an attitude that has handicapped me. But there we were, having coffee (and, later, white wine). There is much we can accomplish if we get out of our own way

I did some housekeeping this month. Do you know there’s an index of Wealthgiver where you can see all the chapters in order? Do you know about the poll I sent out to readers? With prizes? How about my Discord server? Join it and tell me what you think. There are prizes there, too.
I see other writers giving writing updates. Would you be interested in reading something like that? Here it is: in all the previous drafts, I told myself I’d definitely write that battle scene someday. In May, I finally had no choice but to do it. I had a flash while journaling of an oncoming shell embedded in smoke like a grape in a cloud of cotton. And I wrote that battle. Whew!
***
And I read some stuff:
1633* by David Weber and Eric Flint - I liked Island in the Sea of Time and this one is similar: an Appalachian mining town was zapped to 17th century Germany by Alien Space Bats for no discernible reason. There are some interesting characters and a lot of historical details, but this book suffers from the same problem as many alternate histories: the authors playing dollies with their favorite historical figures and political ideologies. Gustavus Adolphus was a good guy. He woulda voted Democrat.
Seize What’s Held Dear by Karl Gallagher - In the third book in the series, our heroes push back the oppressive Censorate and try to figure out what to do with the planet they’ve liberated. The pacing is a little off, but there’s a good balance of high-level military maneuvering and life on the personal level.
Cat Burglar of the Constellations by John C. Wright - This is the third book of the Starquest Series and it goes down like popcorn. Maybe buffalo wings. It’s tighter and more consistent than book two, and does a better job of weaving the big plot arcs around the central story (about a jewel heist). Risking a spoiler: a whole sequence of events I thought was a flashback to the distant past…wasn’t! Awesome.
I spent the month reading some enormously long novels and a draft of an unpublished work that I can’t yet discuss.
Apothecary Diaries - I watched season one with my wife and daughters. It’s fun as a series of little mysteries set in the harem of a fictional Chinese emperor. Yes, there’s lots of sexual innuendo and interpersonal drama. My 12-year-old daughter is very interested.
The Last Human  by Trantor Publishing
 - I listened to the first several chapters on Youtube, which is not a platform that fits my life. Any chance of getting you to crosspost on Spotify, Trantor? But I kept at it because it’s a good reader and a good story. Far future, humans have become the galaxy’s endangered species, replaced by creatures mostly (but not all) descended from one or another genetic engineering project. Our narrator is an orphan raised by bugs who grows up to rule the galaxy. It’s what I wanted Sun Eater to be.

“Food for the Moon” by John Carter
 - Carter was inspired by Curtis Yarvin’s “Orbital Authority”: a polity that squats on the ultimate high ground of orbit, dropping tungsten rods on anyone who threatens their position. Carter points out that such a regime would be hellishly tyrannical, and speculates about the revolution that might topple it. Great idea-fodder.

“Bone” by Karl Gallagher
 - a short story about a miner on Europa who has a disagreement with his colleague.

“In praise of Japanese small” by Chris Arnade
 - a travel essay about the different things that the builders of Japanese and American cities care about. Arnade is the best travel writer I know of, and always both kind and insightful.

“Finland as Germania” by Razib Khan
 - in this podcast, Khan connects a pair of recent preprints about ancient DNA to an old question: where did the Germanic-speaking people come from? As always I appreciate his ability to distill complicated data, and clearly communicate the resulting best guess.

“Book Review: Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids” by Astral Codex Ten
 - Scott Alexander is at his best when his feet are on the ground and his tongue is in his cheek. This review was funny enough to make me read it aloud to my wife, and that’s the highest praise I can give. To Scott, if you’re reading this, it does get easier.

“REVIEW: Cambridge Latin Course Unit 1” by Jane Psmith
 - With her usual incisive humor, Psmith lays out the problems of modern language learning, a subject very close to my heart. I agree with her. Although it is better to be fluent and inaccurate than the reverse, if you want to understand and be understood, you have to buckle down and memorize some conjugation tables.


See you next month
*All book links are Amazon Affiliate links

Orbit Needs You

The knock came again.
Professor Zhena Döch paused in his lecture. His hands dropped from their gesture and his mouth closed in a frown. "I said come in."
The student closest to the door — today it was little Thiy — shook her head. "Professor, none of us can hear anything."
"Really?" Zhena took a step toward the door. "Are you — ? Ah." He smiled at his student,wagging his finger. "You wouldn't pull a joke like this on an old man, Miss Thiy."
"Oh, Professor, you're not so old." She dimpled at him. "But really, nobody's knocking here."
"It must be on your end," said Meyar, seated next to Thiy.
Zhena turned to her. He valued Meyar's eagerness to learn — she had the mind for it — but sometimes he wished she didn't always sit in the front row in those distracting tops with the square necklines.
The knock came for a third time and Zhena jerked up his head. "My end," he repeated. "But that's not — oh!" He had been about to say "that's not possible," but of course it was possible for there to be a visitor on his end of this virtual lesson. It just wasn't good. Not at all.
"I'm sorry, ladies, I mean, students, but I have to get this. I'll message you with the homework. My apologies. Show me real view."
The lecture hall was replaced by the cell of Zhena Döch. He stood alone in a cube three meters on a side, with a bioprinter, smart-matter furniture, and a communication link. In his first days here, he had confirmed that the apparent gravity was due to spin, and the strength of the Coriolis effect indicated that this habitat was small. Its diameter might be no more than the height of this cell. Zhena might be gigameters from Orbit, and completely alone.
The door slid open.
Behind it waited an orderly, white and black, padded, the size of recliner on four large wheels.
Zhena drew back, holding his arms up in front of him, mouth dry with fear and disgust. He knew it was useless to resist, but it had been so long since he'd had to. The last orderly that they'd sent was…when? And why knock? Why bother knocking? As if he had a visitor. As if he could open his own door. Forty years. That was how long it had been.
"What are you doing here?" Zhena heard the whine in his voice, hated it, and hated them for making him like this. Turning him into this. "I haven't done anything."
"Get out of the way!"
Zhena squinted. That was not the voice of an orderly. It was far too annoying to be artificial. A person? It was! They'd sent a person.
"My God!" Zhena dropped his arms and craned his neck to see around the orderly. "Welcome!"
The orderly wheeled into the cell and pivoted, exposing a man in the uniform of an officer the Rebel Order. He was short, his face not plump, but soft, as if it had been molded out of dough a few minutes before.
Zhena didn't care. "My God," he said again, stepping forward, arms outstretched. "You're the first human being I've seen in forty years!"
The Orderly rolled between him and Zhena. The officer squinted at him from around the corner of the machine, face scrunched.
"Tell him!"
"This is Captain Vwa Mes of the Rebel Order of Orbital Authority, here to deliver a message." A pause, where Captain Mes failed to do so. The orderly continued. "Professor Döch, Orbit needs you."
Zhena took a step back, confused. "Needs me? You have me."
Mes emerged from behind the robot, tugging down the hem of his beige tunic. "We need you to work for us."
"I'm already working for you," said Zhena. "My team recently completed the designs for the ship to colonize Europa."
"Yeah, it blew up."
"It failed? Why wasn't I – oh, but of course I am being told." Zhena ran his hand over his scalp, trying act like an engineer and not a kicked dog. "I appreciate – I can't tell you how much I appreciate — that they sent you here in person to tell me. What exactly happened?"
"They blew it up, I said."
"Who blew it up? My ship?"
Mes groaned and rolled his eyes. "Explain it to him."
"Your level of compliance so far has been excellent," said the orderly. "You should be proud, Professor Döch. We certainly are, which is why we are upgrading both your need-to-know and consent thresholds, as well as your standard of living."
Zhena had been about to ask again who had destroyed his ship. Now, he saw that they didn't want him to know that. Perhaps the Rebel Victory hadn't been as complete as he'd been told. Or maybe they just wanted him to think that, the manipulative bastards.
The old instincts were waking up. Zhena passed his eyes over that hateful beige uniform. What question would they expect from him. "You're moving me? But, what about my students? I was in the middle of a class."
"Come on," said Mes. "You don't have any students."
Zhena stared, half-formed plans dissolving. "What?"
"Explain it to him."
"Professor Döch," said the orderly. "The students in your simulated classrooms were simulated."
"How long?"
Mes stared at him. "How long what?"
"Your participation in training environments began with your period incarceration," said the orderly.
"Who was the last real person I talked to?" asked Zhena.
"We don't say 'real' any more."
The orderly waited until Mes had finished before it spoke: "Before Captain Mes, the last time you spoke to a human personality running on a neurological substrate was Her Honor Shew Mikhawa, the judge who sentenced you."
Zhena swayed on his feet. "Forty years. For forty years you've punished me."
"Stop talking like that," snapped Mes. "You've just been playing games all this time, and you didn't even figure it out until just now."
Zhena tried to wrap his mind around the enormity of it. All of his post-war career. All those students, colleagues, students who had graduated to become colleagues. "Why expend so much energy on me?"
"From the beginning of your incarceration, the models trained by your lectures provided solutions to technical problems that offset their compute expenditures."
Had the enemy been so cruel? Yes. And they still were.
"How I wish you would just give me an honest punch in the gut," he said. "Or kill me."
"Maybe we will," said Mes.
Zhena took in the curl to his little lip. The little canine behind it. "You're a soft little turd," he realized. "You're less real than my simulated students. Why would the rebels send you? Or are you the best they have?"
Captain Mes had flinched back, hand to his chest, eyes squeezed shut as if he'd been physically attacked. It didn't look like an act.
"That's — this is barbaric!" His brows furrowed and his lip stuck out. "I'm a captain in the Rebel Order! He can't speak to me that way."
The order rolled forward. "Professor Döch, this is the best you deserve. You are a traitor, a Techie, and a resource-sink."
Zhena looked up at the impassive wall of plastic foam. "You told me Orbit needed me."
"Threaten him!"
"If you want any sort of life, you will respect your commanding officer and follow his orders."
Zhena bared his teeth and nodded. "Any sort of life," he said. A life. A lie. A prison.
He leaned sideways until he could meet the boy's eyes. "I'm sorry, sir," Zhena said. "I've been alone for a long time. A very long time."
Mes sniffed and looked away. "Now make him agree to help us."
"I was not threatening you, Professor Döch," said the orderly, "but your life could well be at risk if if you do not give your whole-hearted cooperation to the war effort."
"Or worse," said Mes.
Zhena did not ask 'what war?' or 'against whom?' because the rebels would never tell him they had a worthy enemy. Them and their beige suits and their information hygiene. They'd kept him imprisoned for forty years. Him! Zhena Döch! He had written the book on orbital warfare, and those spoiled children had torn it to shreds. They'd drowned Zhena's ships in cheap robots, killed his friends, locked him away, tricked him into playing their stupid games. They'd tricked him.
The rebels had told Zhena he was forgiven, that he was a professor, teaching his valuable incites to the next generation. They'd told him he was still important and useful, and he, Zhena Döch, had believed them.
He was so tired. And for all he knew this was yet another trick. They might be testing him, or testing a new demoralization technique. This orderly and this contemptible little parody of a soldier might be virtual, or simply lying. Zhena, himself, might be an emulation in a server bank, or a brain in jar. Or in hell.
But he had been a teacher for a long time, and an engineer for longer. There was a problem here, and Zhena found the old eagerness rising in him. His hands reached out, itching to grab and fix.
"How exactly," he asked, "did my ship fail?"

Parental Negligence

Tuk ne se vzema
A se ostava
“Come on, kids!”
The alpine meadow was so close to the border that our phones got welcome messages from the Republic of North Macedonia. Grass spread out before us, speckled with violets and only slightly soggy, to a hill and a little white church.
Pavlina wanted to walk up there, and I was eager to walk off some of the Easter cake I’d eaten, but Maggie and Ellie had found a stick. Their desires were, in decreasing order: twirl the stick, take the stick from the other one, complain about the stick being taken, complain about the stick not be shared, scream, roll around on the wet grass, give up the stick, share the stick, find anything else to play with, walk up the hill.
So, we left them. Pavlina and I hiked until our children were tiny, brightly colored dots, rolling around in a field of green, almost inaudible.
Imagine a long box, covered in cement and peeling whitewash, pierced by a few tiny windows. The roof line was slightly lopsided, and there was no steeple, just a collapsing, gazebo-like enclosure that might have once held a bell. The church was completely empty, but it was not abandoned. Keys hung on a nail hammered into the door frame, along with a note: Here nothing is taken, only left.
It meant that you don’t go to church go get something from God, but to leave something for Him. Also don’t steal the candles.
“The Macedonian style,” said Pavlina. “We’ve seen churches like this in Kavala and Prespa.”
The door was not in the church’s southern face, leading directly into the nave. To the right is the templon, decorated with icons. The second to the left is the patron of this church, I think Saint George. Look up and see Christ on the cross, with a snake under His feet and Adam’s skull under the snake. Further up, and Christ Pantocrator sits at the center of the ceiling, surrounding by angels.
The builders of this church had installed columns to hold that ceiling up with a degree of craftsmanship that I am in no position to criticize. I will say that the columns had been sponged with white and gray paint and had little sculpted lumps decorating their capitals. They meandered quite a bit on their journey from the floor to the ceiling, but they got there.
On the walk up, I’d been chattering something I’d read online, which Pavlina says she finds soothing. On the way back, though, I was quieter. We commented to each other on the wildflowers and mountains visible to the north and east. When our children were our age, what would exasperate them about our generation?
When we found them, Maggie and Ellie were still arguing about the stick.

In other news, I broke through a wall with Wealthgiver, which was a big battle scene with no predecessors from previous drafts as from a few notes on the order of “that sure was a cool scene we just witnessed.” Now, the battle scene is done, and in fact higher-tier patrons can read it here.
That chapter will become available to everyone in a couple of months, which might be news to you. Yes, readers, every chapter of Wealthgiver becomes free to the public after 10 weeks. The whole first third of the book is free right now. You can read it on Substack, Patreon, or Royal Road.
If you go to Patreon, this is the page to use. The platform should automatically generate an index, but it keeps scrambling the order and dropping chapters. Use the index that I made.
Finally, I had a bit of fun in the First Knife* universe, creating a post-apocalyptic version of English called Vekhiz.

And I read some books last month.
The Fourth Turning is Here by Neil Howe*
This book is as interesting and flawed in the same way as American nations. Where Woodard says “Yankees be like this,” Howe says “Boomer be like that.” The best parts of this book are when it’s most like a novel, with characters struggling in and remaking a world, only to be betrayed by the children they bring up in that world. I keep thinking about it, casting people I know and read about into the mold of Hero, Artist, and so on, and that’s fun. As entertaining as it is to slice people up in different ways, though, I’m not sure how quickly this lens stops illuminating and starts blinding.
Crashing the System by Inadvisably Compelled
The author sent me a copy and asked for a review, but I’d actually already pre-ordered my own. I’m glad I did, because Inadvisably Compelled usually delivers on his promises. In this case, that means the utter destruction of the magical, galaxy-spanning System. The way he takes it out is good, although I wish he’d dug in more. There are a couple of places (the bad guys achieving godhood, the side-kick’s bringing people into their conspiracy) where success came too easily. I did appreciate it, though, when those self-satisfied bumblers vanished up their own asses.
Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy
I wouldn’t excommunicate Tolstoy for writing this book, but I don’t want to read it again. It’s a fine story all the way up to the end, at which point it collapses into a treatise on a particular form of 19th-century land taxation, called Georgism. There’s a reason Tolstoy is remembered as a genius novelist and not a genius economics communicator. What about the characters, Lev?
Frieren
I watched this anime with my wife and daughters because it’s an interesting meditation on time and mortality. There are times, too, where the animators deciding to really put their hearts and souls into showing a character slightly change the angle of her chin. Nice. But for the love of conflict, nobody has an emotional range beyond somewhat satisfied or slightly piqued. They’ll stand in front of each other and monotone about how much they want to kill each other for half an hour. Somebody have an emotional breakdown!
Road Belong Cargo (a review) by Jane Psmith
A fine companion to Germs, Guns, and Steel. So good a companion, in fact, that you don’t need to bother with Jared Diamond. Just read about what was really going on with Yali and the Cargo Cults, which is a specific kind of civilization crab-bucket that can keep you down for forty thousand years.

See you next month
*Links to books are all Amazon affiliate links

The Vekhiz Language

I was looking at the California vowel shift and thinking how, if it continued, it would create a vertical vowel system where there are just unrounded and rounded allophones of /i/, /e/, and /a/, with no back vowels at all. Thinking about how such a thing might be accomplished (no literacy, the complete breakdown of civilization, isolation from influence from other languages), I thought of the barbaric future world of the comic First Knife, which I wrote with Simon Roy and Artyom Trakhanov several years ago, and whose sequel we're now preparing. Subscribe to find out more about that ;)
But anyway, maybe in some secluded Rocky Mountain valley, the descendants of 21st-century Californians might survive as mystical mountain-men. How exactly would you say "The Rocky Mountains" in their mystical mountain language?

Although the Vekhi call their homeland Dekhmwuz /ˈdekhˈmwɶz/, they would probably translate "The Rocky Mountains" as Dwuzawekhsall /ˈdwɶzaˈwekhsal/.
d-wu-z-a-wekh-s-alldef-MOUNTAIN-plural.head-plural.tail-ROCK-plural.tail-adj"the mountains are rocky-like""Vekhi" itself is an semi-exonym applied to them by the Hudsoni and Yanqui civilizations to the east. The hillsmen’s own name for themselves is Vekhsa /ˈvekhsa/, clipped from such sentences as Vekhses /ˈvekhˈses/.
vekh-s-esROCK-head-(plural.tail)-1ST.plur.tail (this particular tail-pronoun has a 0-prefix)"Rock is us."A Vekhiz sentence is composed of a “head” and “tail,” citation form H-z and z-T, combined form H-z-T. For example:
Mountain: Mwuraz- -zwu, Mwurazwu ("A mountain is a mountain")Rock: Vekhs- -zhwekh, Vekhshwekh ("A rock is a rock")Fish: Fes- -fesh, fefesh (“A fish is a fish”)Eating: Iyaz- -ziya (“Eating is eating”)So much for copular constructions. Here’s how action verbs work:
“Daniel eats a fish.”Deyangalziyafesh /ˈdejaŋaɫˈzijafˈeʃ/Deyangal-z-iy-a-feshDANIEL-head-EAT-tail-FISHOn the other hand:
Deyangalzyiwafesh /ˈdejaŋaɫˈzjiwaˈfeʃ/Daniel is eaten by a fishDeyangal-z-yi-w-a-feshDANIEL-head-EAT-passive-tail-FISHHow did such an alien language evolve from English? In fact, the only differences are pronunciation and the way speakers break utterances up into words.
Take Dwuzawekhsall (“The mountains are rocky”). Vekhiz speakers would break that into dwuza (the definite form of Mwuza, “mountains”) and zawekhsall (the plural tail form of vekhiz “rocky,” with the adjectival suffix -all).
However, you or I would break it down as:
D wuz a wekhs-allThe mountains are rockies-like.That's a 1-to-1 translation. It only departs from general American at the end, because sound shifts leveled "are rocky" "are rockies" and "are rocks" into one form, and Vekhiz-speakers had to clamp "-like" to the end in order to disambiguate the adjective and the noun.
So that’s Vekhiz. It's more of a game than a conlang, and I've been having fun with it. I like the Bronze-age majesty of "Deyangalz" and whenever I say "Dwuzawekhsall" out loud, I get the tune to "nkosi sikelel iAfrica" stuck in my head.
Ask me, and I’ll give you your name in Vekhiz ;)

March newsletter: It's a Trotten

So there I was, turning the little crank that lifted the surface of my Ikea desk. Higher. Higher! Even higher, so that when I stand at its western edge, my left temple brushes the corner of the skylight. That’s the only place in this sloped-ceilinged loft where I can stand fully erect.
Then came the enjoyable task of sifting through all my books to find the works of reference I could shelve under my new desk. Birds of Europe, An Introduction to Sumerian Grammar. Gnomes. My old, dusty art supplies.
I left things that way for a whole week of classes, prep for classes, writing, and housework. I managed for a time to stand at my desk (or rather to plant my elbows and dangle off it) after a long day and write in my journal.
Finally, on a Saturday, I opened my sketchbook to its most recent page. Six months ago, I’d inked over a pencil drawing of men and beasts. Now, I started thinking about color palettes. Red, brown, black, and pine green for contrast. What would that look like? With if successive green washes gave depth, and green made shadows? Too much, it would turn out, but I didn’t know that then. I wanted to find out.
I’d catch myself asking are you painting? Are you making art again? For the first tie in half a year? Why don’t you paint more often? I quieted myself. Just dip the brush, touch the pigment, add and squeeze the water away. Smell that sweet, wet paper. And while you’re waiting for it to dry, take up that pencil. What if a deer walked on its hind legs? What would that look like?
Some blog, maybe it was A Quantum of Caring on Tumblr, called it “base expansion.” You invest energy in objects and practices that gain you more energy. You go to Ikea, invest in a Trotten, and you find yourself standing taller.
In other news, I drew this castle-head guy and wrote a long-form review of Theft of Fire.

Big news about Wealthgiver, but I’m not quite ready to share it yet.

​And I read a whole lot last month:
Between Home and Ruin  by Karl K. Gallagher
The previous book in this series promised us a war, and we got one. The fun is watching exactly how. The diplomatic maneuvering felt very real, even better than the space battle and detective side-story. All three threads of the story deliver what I appreciate most in plotting, which is when you think A is going to happen, B happens instead, and B is more interesting than A. I will definitely read the third book in this series, and everything else Gallagher might write.
Nine Lives by Aimen Dean
This ghostwritten autobiography of an Al-Qaeda defector shows us what espionage looked like between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Abraham Accords.
James Herriot's Dog Stories by James Herriot
I read this collection to my daughters, for whom it was perfect. No sex, but some men and women eyeing each other significantly. Serious consideration of mortality, but no hopelessness. And cute and funny doggies. I looked forward to bedtime.
The Everlasting Man  by G.K. Chesterton
Chesterton gives his history of the Western world, from cave paintings to cities growing around the periphery of the inland sea to the Roman crisis of faith and its resolution in the coming of Jesus Christ. Apparently, he wrote this book contra H. G. Wells, but I don't care about the disagreements of two old scholars. I appreciate Chesterton's timeline of civilization superimposed over my own life from childhood to now. It's a story I'm glad to be part of.
Balkan Ghosts by Robert D. Kaplan
I’ve lived in Bulgaria since 2008, so I was fascinated by the impressions of another American who visited this country both before and immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall. His observation that Bulgarians weren't allowed to complain before 1989 made much clear to me. But seriously, I value this book's "what-it-is-like-ness" as well as its summaries of the parallel but mutually-ignoring histories of Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece. Kaplan talks too much about the line between "east" and "west," but maybe that just reflects how much has changed.
Alternate Routes  by Tim Powers
This book starts out with a great concept and a blast of an opening, but about halfway through it runs out of momentum and falls apart. I admire how much backstory the characters have and how quickly we get to know them and their problem, a villain compellingly similar to C.S. Lewis’s Doctor Frost.But then it seems like Powers doesn’t know what to do. He loses track of how his ghosts and their world work and what his characters want. I gave up about halfway through.
Exodus from the Long Sun  by Gene Wolfe
The third Book of the Long Sun having wrapped up the story of Patera Silk, this fourth book feels a bit in excess, until you realize it is a bridge between Silk and Horn, who fictionally wrote this series, and will star in the next (The Book of the Short Sun). A good story in itself, Exodus also makes sense of much of what happened in the previous three books. "Of course we didn't know at then that Patera Quetzal was an Inhumu." Awesome.
Secret Agents of the Galaxy  by John C. Wright
Another ride, though not as wild as the last one. While the previous book pulled us through the death-defying pirate hunt of Athos Lone, this second book focuses more on the psyonic espionage of Lyra Centauri. This is less exciting, and her story and Athos's have little to do with each other. Between the first and last scene, both of which are excellent and gripping, the rest of the book sags. However, I'm still eagerly awaiting book three. Wright's mediocrity is everyone else's mastery.
See you next month