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

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? <ahem>
<In-universe voice>
Although the Vekhi call their homeland Dekhmwuz /ˈdekhˈmwɶz/, they would probably translate "The Rocky Mountains" as Dwuzawekhsall /ˈdwɶzaˈwekhsal/.

• d-wu-z-a-wekh-s-all
• def-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-es
• ROCK-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-fesh
• DANIEL-head-EAT-tail-FISH

On the other hand:

• Deyangalzyiwafesh /ˈdejaŋaɫˈzjiwaˈfeʃ/
• Daniel is eaten by a fish
• Deyangal-z-yi-w-a-fesh
• DANIEL-head-EAT-passive-tail-FISH

How 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-all
• The 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 ;)

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