Whenever I’m asked about private credit lately. On Fox Business, on podcasts, at conferences:

Really not looking forward to flying today.

Good evening. My March public newsletter is out now:

Lyn Alden

March 2026 Newsletter: A Flywheel of Chaos

March 22, 2026 This newsletter issue discusses the self-reinforcing nature of geopolitical crises, and explores to what extent the war against Iran...

This issue discusses potential macro impacts from the war on Iran, how sovereign debt bubbles and war tend to occur in clusters, the three pillar portfolio strategy, and updates on the model portfolio.

Unfortunately, Chuck Norris was the only person who could stop this train.

The Stolguard Incident was ranked the top new release in Amazon this weekend for both the cyberpunk and technothriller genres. (It’s also currently the best seller in the space marine category, despite a distinct lack of space marines. Which, I mean, okay.) Thanks everyone for checking it out!

Amazon

Amazon

Last night when I finished work and joined my husband for movie night, he instead showed me a video about Newcomb’s paradox and we spent two hours debating it until bed. Anyway how is everyone’s weekend going?

My novel, The Stolguard Incident, is now available! Amazon (print and ebook):

Amazon

Amazon

Barnes & Noble (print only): https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-stolguard-incident-lyn-alden/1149667780 Here’s the premise: “In the late 21st century, society is more fractured than ever. Billions satisfy their every whim in virtual worlds, leaving those in power free to tighten their grip on the real one. When a terrorist with strange abilities begins a campaign of violence, military investigator Asim Rahal is thrust into a race against time to find and stop her. But each step of his pursuit reveals the threat to be far worse than he could have imagined, and uncovering it may cost him everything. Truth has always come with a price. Every hero asks themselves what’s worth dying for. The harder question is: what’s worth killing for?” You can check out more info here:

Lyn Alden

New Book: The Stolguard Incident

An overview of The Stolguard Incident by Lyn Alden- 2026's hot new upmarket sci fi thriller.

That feeling when the year is 2026, you haven’t gone to the post office to mail anything for years, and you partially forget what you’re even supposed to do as you walk up to the counter.

Making a movie that is both scary and funny is extremely rare. Usually if it's funny, that significantly reduces how scary it is. And if it's truly scary, it's unlikely to be funny. Anyway, here's a review of Deadstream (2022) which managed to be both scary and funny. I'm personally not much of a horror film fan, but my husband loves them. So we watch them semi-regularly. Jump scares freak me out, along with the tension leading up to potential jump scares, so I'm that cliche person watching the tv like "nope, nope, don't go in there, nope, why would you do this" while clinging to my husband's arm or something. There's a big ecosystem of low-budget horror films that are made with a lot of care and attention, and this is one of them. It was made by a husband and wife team, and the husband also starred in it. I watched some behind-the-scenes info about it, and the detail that went in was pretty crazy. The non-spoiler premise is that there is a famous streamer who does all sorts of wacky stunts for his audience, but he messed up and got demonetized and cancelled for a while. He's trying to make a comeback now, so he is facing his biggest fear: spending a night alone in a haunted house while livestreaming it. This premise is smart, since it lets them face a lot of horror tropes head-on. Often, horror films are frustrating because characters make stupid decisions like splitting up, or checking on something creepy when they clearly shouldn't, etc. But since this is an influencer doing everything for money and audience, he has rules set up that he *has* to check anything creepy out or he will forfeit the stream's sponsor money, and he has to do certain other things that purposely make it scarier or riskier. It's not an elevated, thematic film at all. Instead, it's a well-executed satirical B-movie that fully owns what it is. Was pleasantly surprised.

I understand why people use AI to generate posts on social media, but I don’t understand why people use AI to generate replies to other people’s posts (other than for influencing campaigns). I see this all the time on X. A small account will reply to one of my posts with something that is clearly AI generated. But it’s actually an attempt at being conversational- it agrees with and summarizes/rephrases my post, and then asks a follow-up question. It’s not some bot generating fake momentum for a polarizing topic or stirring hate and chaos. Not sure I understand why so many people would set up a bot to do those types of semi-constructive replies. I guess they could be trying to grow an account by being perceived as a thoughtful participant, and their human owner might intend to use the account in the future (or in some cases already does use it too) but it doesn’t see to be working for the ones I looked at.

Men and women writing about how the opposite sex is dumb or to blame for everything, has got to be some of the lowest IQ slop on social media at the moment. It’s often framed in intellectual-sounding ways tied to evolution and such, with a kernals of truth, but then it’s cherry-picked and pretty visibly biased, and the same sort of accounts keep putting out tons of it like an obsession. Most of it is a waste of time. Just do cool things.

In a world of AI slop writing, I’m prioritizing brevity more than ever. As Blaise Pascal (not Mark Twain to whom it is often attributed) once wrote, “I only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.” I am increasingly putting in the time to make things shorter.