[guest blog] Stina Leicht

"This, milord, is my family's ax. We have owned it for almost nine hundred years, see. Of course, sometimes it needed a new blade. And sometimes it has required a new handle, new designs on the metalwork, a little refreshing of the ornamentation… but is this not the nine-hundred-year-old ax of my family? And because it has changed gently over time, it is still a pretty good ax, y'know."

---from The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett

The 1970s was one of the most turbulent eras America has ever faced. I remember the protests, the Vietnam War, the gas shortages, the women's liberation movement, the civil rights movement, the push back from the establishment--the chaos and fear. All of it was being fought over. Everything seemed unsettled. I remember how frightened the adults were, and I remember how frightened the kids were in return. Now that I think about it, maybe the reason I've always loved SF and Fantasy is because I'm a child of that era. From the beginning for me, the joy of SF--the adventure--was associated with the danger of facing issues no normal adult was willing to discuss, let alone face. Maybe that's why I believe that SF is at its best when addressing difficult topics. We all need a place where it's safe to explore the possibilities--no matter how dangerous or unsettling, and fiction is that best safe place. That's why so much of what's happening in SF right now, this push for inclusiveness, is so important. It's also why I'm so invested in what's happening. It isn't entirely because I'm a female. It's because I love SF so very much. I want it to survive and thrive. I want it to continue to be a viable genre.

I want SF to be that nine-hundred-year-old ax, handed down to future generations, damn it.

That said, I feel as a writer of SF that I have certain responsibilities when I address difficult subjects. First and foremost--don't do more harm. That means I need to be as informed as I can. That means research. It also means exploring the subject from many different points of view, as many as I can manage, and being open to where those points of view might lead even if it's uncomfortable. It means listening and understanding and having empathy and perspective. It means thinking outside myself, my experiences, my milieu. Second, don't dictate to the reader their experience. That means allowing the reader to fill in the blanks for themselves because it's important to have some humility. I'm only one flawed human being, after all. I don't have all the answers, and I never will, but I can ask the questions and provide a space to explore them. Mistakes will be made along the way, and that's okay too. Own those suckers. They do you no good if you deny them because you can't learn from mistakes you don't claim. Always remember you're learning like everyone else and strive not to make the same mistake again.

For example, I tend to use tropes, and one of my favorite things to do is to take a SF trope and turn it upside down or sideways because I enjoy getting a different perspective. The trouble with using tropes in this way is that sometimes people don't get past the trope recognition stage. Add a strong emotional reaction on top of it, and it can be even more difficult. But that's part of being a writer. Sometimes the reader isn't going to understand, and I have to be all right with that. Also? It's possible I made a mistake. See above.

Readers have certain responsibilities too. Reading fiction is an interactive experience. You're meant to fill in certain details for yourself. It's what makes your experience of a book your own. It's intended to be that way. But it's also important to remember that your experience, the information with which you fill in those blanks may not match anyone else's. You may never know what the author was really thinking when they wrote something. It's all right to guess. Such things add depth. It's all right to have a strong reaction too. But what if you like a story, and it turns out to be problematic? Stories are written by human beings and human beings aren't perfect. It's going to happen. It has happened, and continues to happen. The important thing to remember is that, while the work in question may be flawed, it's okay to enjoy it. However, don't make excuses. Be strong enough to admit it's problematic. If you can't, at the very least have the strength of character to allow that other points of view are valid because they are. You don't have to agree with a different perspective in order to acknowledge its validity. Allow for the possibility. Make room for it to be explored. That's what SF is about, after all--exploring the possibility.

Many, many thanks to Joe for letting me guest blog today. If you haven't checked into his books, well… what are you doing here?

[Thanks, Stina!]

This Week WIll Be Guest Blogging: I Will Be Elsewhere, Others Will Be Here

Due to the shift in ownership of one of my publishers, I'd like to take this opportunity to announce that I will be blogging at other people's blogs, and other people will be blogging here.

This trend will continue for a little while, until such time as I am out of places to guest blog or ridiculously rich and famous. One of the two.

Tomorrow, I expect Stina Leicht will be dropping the truth bombs on your head, and Carol Wolf and Zachary Jernigan will be by a little later this week.

We're all undoubtedly scribbling away at what we think we need to share with the people that are around the different places.

Scrape Together Dues

Some time this month I'm going to be scraping together my membership dues once again for the SFWA. There was a lot of heat publicly, and agents and editors have a very down perspective sometimes on the role SFWA plays in genre. But, here's the thing: an unbiased 3rd party is exactly what everyone needs. The SFWA role in the Skyhorse/Start thing was one of being that unbiased 3rd party, facilitating a difficult situation to make it better.

No organization is perfect, but between Writer Beware, the Emergency Medical Fund, and the tireless work of volunteers like Mary Robinette-Kowal, I can think of few organizations I'd rather support more than this one.

Every volunteer organization will have a few bumps and hiccups along the way. Honestly, I've been tossing a few of the last few issues of the bulletin into the trash with tongs because of the cover art, alone, and I have found little of value inside its pages even when the art wasn't an embarrassment.

Still, some times a lot of good can come from a lot of people getting together and at trying to do good. If you want the group to do better, volunteer your time, as you are able, to make it so.

And, don't get caught up in all that silly drama. It's true of the blog-o-sphere, as well. For a group of fans that proposes to come together based on a shared sense of wonder and the fantastic, we can be quick to replicate the tribal boundaries that demarcate all the jr. high school cafeterias. Be open, and accept all comers and prove that we are doing this better, building a future better. If you have time for drama, remember what your mama taught you, when you had time for drama as a young person, and she would find things for you to do.

Like write books.

Thanks SFWA, and I'll be scraping together some dues soon-ish.

Dogs and Horses.

Official news has hit: Skyhorse/Start is acquiring Night Shade Books, and the first two novels of the Dogsland Trilogy are part of the deal. In the process of this, a lot of dirty laundry came to light.  Paperwork that hadn’t been delivered for months appeared, at last, in the light of day. In this big reveal, we learned that 2nd novel of the Dogsland trilogy was sacrificed to a distribution crossover, and very little meaningful effort to promote the book happened, despite the verbal and written promises of the publisher. The book wasn’t even included in the company catalog.

Despite the troubles, the series was still praised by John Clute, Publisher’s Weekly, Jesse Bullington,Jon Ginsburg-Stevens, and Paul Goat Allen. It received critical acclaim, landed on best-of-the-year lists, and generally won over the small audience it was presented to.

This news means that there’s a whole new opportunity for readers to discover books about which John Clute said “..this could mark the beginning of something very good indeed from a genuine hard puncher.” (Strange Horizons, June 20, 2011). The third book is forthcoming from WordHorde later this year. The first two will be part of Skyhorse’s resurrection of Night Shade, available from PGW for fine bookstores everywhere.

The Dogsland trilogy begins with Never Knew Another, where two children of demons discover each other in the midst of the poverty and degradation of a city that would burn them alive for the crime of existing.The two demon children find love for a little while, but it is overshadowed by the city and people that pull them apart.

Now's the time to get on board, so go forth and check out the books at your preferred retailer, and maybe be so kind as to drop a review as you're able.

Thanks for your support during these challenging times.

J. M. McD

squash borers taking what's theirs

An abundance of squash the last two weeks has thinned with the rise of squash borers after a huge rainstorm. I pulled one plant that was so devoured it wasn't even connected to the ground anymore. Another, I pulled from the flimsy threads that remained while the plant was clearly dead. I expected this, but I couldn't do anything during the storm. And, after the storm, I knew the bugs would rise. Mosquitos come for all blood, all flesh. Squash bugs mate unchecked, and there's nothing I do to stop them. I pulled a potato vine from the ground devoured inside-out by insects too numerous to name. The Tycoon tomatoes, so immensely productive a week ago are nearly dead. One of the pumpkin vines has already died. The other pushes on, without a plant upon its stalks, seeking out more good soil, more light.

Gardening is seasonal. There is a time when the plants have done the best they can and they fade. It's time to clear out the dead, clear out the weeds, prepare the soil, and plant again.

Short stories are seasonal things, I think. They grow hard like little radish seeds, pushing up from the mental detritus of the soil of the mind. They grow infectious, pushing until they flower and seed and die away. Distractions come to devour them, and many die before they flower.

Novels are long-season crops, at worst, with one harvest at the end of a long, long season pulling weeds, and perennials at their very best. They grow slow from young seedling, and then when they finally - finally - mature, the fruits come, and come again and come again. Watch the tree, weed around it, and mulch it now and then. Fertilize the soil a while, and spread some word to keep people knowing, and seeking, and devouring what comes from all that old labor done and just maintained in shape and best growing condition now.

Even then the borers come to dig into the trunks of the trees, sometimes. Hopefully not today. I'm watching my little peach trees close. I pore over the spreadsheets and see what's happening to the novels, wonder what to do next.

Night Shade Unknown

We still do not know the outcome of the pending thing with Skyhorse/Start, so we still do not know what will happen to our lovely books. In the mean time, might I suggest now is a great time to pick up a copy or two, if you were so inclined but putting it off for some reason? There's no telling what will happen if bankruptcy court steps into the picture. Also, frankly, it's not like Night Shade knew what they were doing to promote the books. Even if the deal goes through, they will likely not be long for this world without a lot more support from the world.

Thank you, and happy Monday.

Growing Experiments

I've been attempting to grow an Asian Pear tree from seeds that came from the store-bought fruit. This is how the stuff is supposed to be done, after all. Johnny Appleseed wasn't out spreading scionwood, but seeds. I've got these four seedlings in a pot, from the four seeds at the heart of the fruit. What happens next is I wait until they're six inches tall. Then, I carefully re-pot them into gallon pots from the garage. Then, next year or the year after, if they've survived, I've got these trees on their own roots ready to go in the ground somewhere. Or, I can use their whips for grafting. Pears are supposed to be the easiest thing for beginning grafters. I could pick up a common flowering pear, which is a preferred rootstock around here and inexpensive at the hardware store, and graft the whips that way, to propagate full-size, commercial-quality trees of whatever variety results.

Some fruit is best not done this way. Apples grown commercially are interplanted with crab apples, and take on the crab's characteristic during pollination. Oranges grow true from seed, sometimes, but sometimes they don't, and they're a challenge to get to an age when they can fruit. Lychee trees are beautiful, but they can't handle dry weather below 40 degrees, so unless I had a really, really big greenhouse... Everything that's alive wants to live and to keep living.

It's the sort of thing that's fun to do with your kids, I guess. It's a children's game, to start a tree from seed and keep it alive.

Asian pears often come true, or close enough, from seed. The crisp, apple pears need only another of their kind to fruit. There isn't a crab-pear, or a flowering pear, or any other inedible variety that will pollinate them with their finicky early bloom. Cherries, plums, and peaches can be done this way, and especially apricots, but keep them in pots as long as you can because the rootstock will not be safe in the ground. Avocados and Mangoes can be easily grown this way, too, if your climate is warm enough. Oranges and lemons often grow true from seed, though it might take 15 years to see fruit without grafting onto mature rootstock.

Nothing wrong with that, mind you.

It looks like we don't see a lot of trees grown on their own rootstock, in part because it's so much easier to graft a whole lot of a quality variety than it is to root cuttings carefully. In the regions where they grow well, things like apples and jujubes and persimmon can be grown on their own roots, straight from seed. Fruit quality will be interesting to discover, though. And by "interesting" I mean wait a few years and discover how very likely it is to be no good.

It's a fun project, though, particularly for the young people and young at heart. And it gets a little extra value out of that 4 dollar Asian Pear I bought on a whim, which was really expensive but tasted amazing.

I blogged over at APEX about Weird Fiction and Furniture

I really liked the Book of Cthulhu, and it's sequel, but I also don't think of them as Weird Fiction anymore, since the feeling of Weirdness is lost in repetition.

Lovecraftian is it's own thing, now, right? It's not Weird so much as it is just another tradition of Dark Fantasy with all the furniture of genre that entails. 

Explicated here: http://www.apexbookcompany.com/2013/05/weird-fiction-when-does-weird-become-normal-guest-post-by-j-m-mcdermott/

Also, if anyone's writing about Weird Fiction in this moment in time, you have to talk about the awesomeness of Weird Fiction Review, which has very quickly become one of the best on-line venues for the strange. It wasn't so much that I was writing about Lovecraftian Weird Fiction as I was writing about How Weird Fiction Review Has Changed my Perspective.

Anyway. Comments here will be ignored. Go comment over there, and check out some awesome Apex titles while you're at it. For example, did you know the latest issue of Apex Magazine has a story by Joe Lansdale in it?

The Cleanest Phone

Unbeknownst to me, my cellphone was jammed deep in a pocket of some gym shorts, that were gross and needed washing. The phone was pretty gross, too. But, at least it functioned. Now, it does not. The phone is dead. It is clean, and dead. 

We heard it bang-bang-banging in the dryer, and couldn't figure out what it was until we also noticed my phone was missing, and I went digging way down deep into the unholy depths of those gym shorts. Why are the pockets of gym shorts so much deeper and easier to lose things in than regular pockets? If I was a smurf looking for a place to hide, that'd be the place to go. No one would even notice me if the gym shorts were blue. I'd hide there, until such time as the laundry pile started to move, and then I'd be shocked to discover I was trapped deep in a pocket, unable to escape from the unexpected flood.

The phone is dead. I will be poking around and seeing if I can't find something else to jam into my ear and mumble at.

Let's See How Books are Made

This man has blogged for the day, which promotes his books, which are visible to the right.

Get Off Of My Lawn, Screaming At Clouds, etc.

I recently revealed my passionate disgust with the category of "New Adult" that seems to be the talk of genre marketing people all over the place.

The premise, if I understand it correctly, is that a lot of young people who are not yet 30, thereabout, read a lot of YA novels, and do not find books that tell their stories as adults, who are not yet full adults, and don't see a lot of books about them and their needs on the market, written by people like them.

That's not necessarily wicked. Of course, plenty of these books exist if you bother to look around a little, and most people know that. So, it's not really a category that seems necessary at its face. But, no category really is, is it? There wouldn't be anything in here to trigger my gut disgust response, without the influence of a new marketing category and how marketers are selling us this new category.

First, I want to separate the books from the category that is being invented to house them on the shelf. I will not be discussing the books, just the premises of the category I'm pulling off marketing materials and discussion in the sphere of books. For instance, THE GREAT GATSBY carries all the markers of this new category, and it's an amazing masterpiece of American literature, when you think of it as Nick Carraway's novel, and not Gatsby's.

But, let's talk about this category that's being invented before us. "New Adult" they say. A category to feature the coming-of-age stories of young women and men who are in college or recently out of college and looking for their place in the world. Firstly, I have a strong suspicion that the "Coming-of-age" aspect is a front for something else entirely. These are books designed and packaged to sell to a demographic. They are a quest for the next 50 Shades of Gray. This is not a quest to find the stories of this generation so much as it is to find the Next Big Thing for Money! Not necessarily a wicked thing to do, sure.

But, what a strange period of life to focus on, and what strange reasons to focus on it. It speaks to a culture that is privileged to have time to discover the self and obsess over our first loves. You know, when I was permatemping in data entry for a year as a young adult, or slinging coffee at Starbucks, I was a little bit busy trying to find my way out of the menial, poverty-stricken end of the job-market to be concerned about finding my true self in adulthood, and honestly I couldn't have cared less about my first failed love, because that sort of obsession comes from a place of great privilege. If you have time for that, pat yourself on the back. I still don't have time to romanticize life's transitions. I've had to work too hard through all of them.

I see this as a genre of privilege, in so many ways. Questioning your life in this language of finding your place in the world, your sense of self and identity is a luxury that comes from knowing that you can change jobs, change lovers, and still find security and new hope. You're looking for your "place in the world" instead of just receiving your place from your situation as is. The less money you come from, the less choice you have. New Adult, if you expand it to include Lena Dunham's work and others like it in the current zeitgeist, seems to be a literature category of young people who feel hobbled by too many choices, and perceive that as a great struggle. Lack of choice is the actual struggle. Finding choice when there appears to be none is the actual struggle. Too much choice is the self-made disaster of buying into the myth of a true self. You are you are you, and nobody can take that away from you. Happiness is something you can work towards, or it is something you have stumbled upon. Knowing what makes you happy is a myth, because it presumes a choice. Happiness comes from being able to make the choice, period, and being in a place where you can make choices.

Adulthood isn't a series of status symbols or a sense of happiness or making good use of ambiguous choices. It is a number, nothing more. Maturity is what we're really talking about, and the way this is being handled in the category of New Adult is a slap in the face of the great YA protagonists... More on that in a minute.

Feeding into that myth of self-discovery, though, is a marketing ploy to convince you that you need to buy into consumer culture to find your true self. Buy this book, and it will speak to you - yes, you! - and help you find your true self. Buy this product, to signal to other consumers that you aren't a girl, but aren't yet a woman, aren't a boy, but aren't yet a man. Try to hang onto your youth as long as you can, because you will be cool. Being cool is important. Buying cool things is important.

Finding self is a series of luxury goods that marketing departments are selling you.

And what of this category of books is so different than the many, many texts like THE GREAT GATSBY, which seem to be exactly like a New Adult book in every way - a coming-of-age tale about a wealthy-enough young man (Nick Carraway) that turns 30 during the novel and has the time and space to find himself as an in-betweener, not a boy and not yet a man? What about Girl, Interrupted? What about Middlesex? These sort of books mostly exist already. It's just marketing packaging that suggests they don't. If you can't find these books, I don't really know what to tell you except that maybe you could start a group on GoodReads and see what turns up.

Actual voyages of self-discovery begin by learning and reading about people and places that are not just like you.

Ultimately, when people say they want "New Adult" books, that are like YA books except for adults, they are also sort of pooing on the great YA books that aren't even really anything but amazing books that happen to have young protagonists. Harper Lee's amazing American classic, and Sandra Cisneros' House on Mango Street and Paper Towns by John Green and hundreds of other amazing books, are as deep and powerful and incredible as any book anywhere. They just happen to feature young protagonists. This is to say that adult books are already like YA books except they're about adults. That's not a new thing. That's the way things have been since forever. And vice versa.

Maturity is what we should really be talking about, and what makes someone mature, when we talk about adulthood. Here's where my hackles are up in this new category: One of the great themes and points of YA is that maturity comes at a young age, and courage and good decisions and all the responsibilities of the adult world happen whether we're ready for them or not. Pushing against that and reaching back into childhood and feeling like you're still a kid inside with this new marketing category ignores the greatness of Harry Potter, and just about every YA and MG protagonist I ever rooted for, who had to be more adult than adults despite their young age. YA is often about how quickly we all have to grow up and mature, and how wonderful it is to do so. NA seems to be about the awkward transition, or something, where we're not ready to be a grown up? But life is always awkward and the transition and growth and first moments don't stop until you're dead. Plus, the transitions only get more awkward as you get older. If you think your first love is awkward, imagine having your first kid! You can break-up with your first love, but it's much, much harder to break-up with your first kid! The transition into a retirement home, into dementia, etc. may be the most awkward transition there is, in fact. Transitioning through life in all its awkwardness and all its phases is what general fiction has been talking about forever and ever. This is not worthy of a new category of fiction, particularly with the gift-wrapping of a cynical marketing guru talking down to readers.

My Lawn, you should get off it, I guess. Down with corporate marketing-department-driven art. Something-something read more and better books, read wider and learn of yourself by reading widely in every genre, living curiously, and ignoring the identity that comes from purchasing power. You new adults get off my lawn!

I'm ranting. This is a rant. It changes nothing and will only serve to confound and diminish me if I continue. I stop now.

Art is like Being Haunted: a spoiler-free review of WHAT MAKES YOU DIE by Tom Piccirilli

Delirious artistry comes down to us, as it always does, from Dionysus. Take two of these and write until tomorrow morning, so to speak. Tom Pic, the character who is also a screenwriter is no stranger to the demons that walk the edges of the page. His latest book decides to let the demons step into center stage and walkabout, and merge and blend with all the people and places that populate a page under the best and worst of circumstances. In some respects, one question comes to mind, if this character is as bad news as he seems to be, and as bad news as everyone says he is, are the people who put up with him real or a hallucination?

WHAT MAKES YOU DIE is a hallucination of a novel, with a narrator so unreliable, you never know who is living or who is a ghost, because he never knows who is living or who is a ghost. The whole work is reminiscent of the drug-addled, psychosis of the late 60s. It could just be a dream of a bum, talking to himself, and stumbling from one abandoned building to another, clutching at drugs as if they were the dreams of Hollywood, flickering in the dark on the screen, and not the other way around where the drugs create the dreams.

He has written a screenplay. Or, rather, he has written part of one. It is a very exciting screenplay. There's a dead body on the roof. There's a leg in the bathtub. It might be the leg of the character who is missing a leg. It is an amazing screenplay for someone climbing their way up to the top, or struggling on their way back to the bottom. It is apparently so good, even the deadbeat Hollywood agent can see that something is special, here. Something is different. Money can be made with it. Go forth, then, Tommy, and figure out how to finish.

He has no memory of the script, and was locked up in a psychoward for attempting to carve a komodo dragon ghost out of his stomach. Here is a moment where we can delineate the horror genre from the fantasy one: The narrator does not believe there's really a ghost inside of him, and prefers to stick to the knowledge that he is hallucinating. Do you believe him? Is this the way a hallucinating man interacts with his world? Is this what it takes to create great art? Do you have to carve the art out of your gut like excising a parasitic demon?

Hollywood hands over all proceedings in the text. He stumbles through his own memories, glories and failures, while stumbling between his mother's house and all the places the wasted man shamble when they are procrastinating.

Hallucination, then: Beside this haunted man's agent's office, where he had gone for a meeting, there is a store that sells witchcraft supplies and he meets a white witch who wishes to help. Which is it, then? Which side is the hallucination in the convenient coin toss? Is the agency real, but the Wiccan a lie? Is the Wiccan real, and did it draw him there under the pretext of the agency contract, because deep down, poor ol' Tom needs to be healed? My advice is trust no one, and try to stay focused on what feels real, because feelings don't lie in fiction. If it feels real, then it might as well be real. If it is real to Tom, it's real.

There's so much to get lost in here. The memories of Hollywood seem hyperreal, and we suspect they aren't true early in the book. No one is that lucky. But, we suspect they might be true, because Hollywood and art is a world of nothing but luck. Is the Laurence Welk show really playing in the other room for the sister that never changes the channel? Is it even on TV anymore? Which of the phantasms that pass through these pages is alive, and which is dead? The author is not interested in answering that question, and merely drops clues like the Welk music, that something isn't right.

Okay, so let's move on to other things. There's a missing girl deep in the past, and a father that died young from cancer. Both seem to be things that broke the main character off the normal path, and into the writing path. It's as if their ghosts haunt the man. The absence haunts him. Literally, perhaps, he is haunted. A young boy was hit by a car, dragged to his death across the blacktop. All these accumulated ghosts weigh him down; he writes to them. He's trapped inside the veil of the phantasms, wandering the streets lost in his own head. He knows there's this amazing screenplay inside of him, if only he can cut deep enough, and dig out the damn dead dragon that's curled up in there.

Fiction is only a lie if you refuse to hear the truth. Komodo dragons in the belly, and a maze of confusion, uncertainty, failure, and strong liquor, then. Feel something. Do something.

Read this book.

Weekend Getaway

When a dachshund, placed in a racing shoot, and encouraged to run across the field when said shoot opens, most don't quite understand what they are supposed to do. They wander about, with a dazed look on their faces, happy to see all the people and other dogs. Some have been training for this day, and they shoot across the field. loping like nimble gazelle, except with tiny, tiny legs. For most racing dachshunds, finishing the race is quite enough of a challenge that attempting to achieve speed is too difficult. Confused by the crowd, and desiring to meet all the people, even fast dachshunds might try to run around the sides, and say hello to all the people and fellow dachshunds.

A band was playing. Dogs barked among the rows of festival tents.



We walked downtown, and visited some of the shops, and I learned what "antiquing" was, and found it to be a strange, and dull sport, and not as much fun as dachshund races, but there were some really nifty old books in one of the shops, with the sort of illustrations that were only made before the second world war.

Small town festivals are a hoot. So are large groups of dachshunds.

Wear closed-toe shoes.

Pick a corner of the world...

The Golden Horde was a powerful political body that ruled in the Ukraine, taking over from the kings that came before. They were the Western edge of the Mongolian empire, and re-organized the native Varyngian people there to their liking. For two hundred years, they ruled. Even after their empire began to crumble, and they were merely the Great Horde, they ruled. The Polish and Lithuanian kings pushed back in a deluge that lasted decades, to drive away the Tartarian warlords that nibbled at the edge of their nations.

Before the Golden Horde, was another ruler, and another empire. Before that, they were Byantium, and the Varyngian guards were sworn to the emperor, and feared.

Pick any corner of this planet, and there is the ebb and flow of nations and kings. Before the white men came here, where I live now, the Caddo lived in fear of the Comanche, who were newcomers, just as the Caddo had driven their own former masters south, into Northern Mexico. The Karankawa Indians clung to the coast line, at the edges of rivers, making casseroles out of native bell peppers and the human arms of their enemies. Pick anywhere, at all. The ebb and flow of history drives new kings and pulls them down.

Every time I pass the history section of the store, I wonder if I could just pick one corner of the world, and go back into the dark shadows of the past, when history was being born, and learn everything I could through time, and write everything I could from that knowledge. But, there's just too many fascinating corners. There's so much history in history. There's so much striving and inspiring and amazing.

When I pass on from this life, I hope there is a well where my soul can drink that contains inside of it the knowledge of history - all history. I could spend an eternity at the pool, reinventing the past through my own imagination.

There was a nation once - a powerful and fearsome nation - that was called the Golden Horde. Poland and Lithuania together beat it down into the dust of time.