Book Promo
If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH
FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: The Lion and the Darkness (Timelines Book 4)
The Long-Awaited Sequel to The Lion in Paradise
At long last, Ariela Rivers Wolff begins her mission to the Simulated Worlds.
As the Martyr of Sardristra, she finds herself in the position of a Joan of Arc, burned at the stake for preaching a sermon of love to a very violent race of . . . blue, four-legged, four-armed, sort-of-horse analogs. Five hundred years later in their history, she finds a totally-reversed welcome as “Saint Ardreyelya” in the country in which she first appeared. Will she be able to prevent the rest of the world from destroying “her” people before she can convert them, too?
As the Goddess of Mahoukai, she finds herself the deity of a world religion in a world governed by magic. And like all worlds with magic, inevitably there is a Demon Lord. She’ll have to deal with that Demon Lord before the world of Mahoukai can be realized into the True Universe . . . but in the event, the Demon Lord is an infiltrated agent of the very enemies she is sworn to fight in the real world. Can The Lion of God take on a Darkness, single-handed? If not, it may spell doom for the inhabitants of Mahoukai – and for herself.
EDITED BY JAMES YOUNG, WITH A STORY BY LEE ALLRED: Hooves, Tracks and Sabers!: Tales of Alternate History (Raconteur Press Anthologies Book 29)
Alternate history allows us to explore, in thrilling detail, what might have been. Come with these authors down the untrodden divergences from reality, while still staying close to the possible. Can history be fun? Yes! Be entertained by these stories and find yourself wondering along with the authors. What if…? Cavalry had evolved from hooves, sabers, and tracks in other ways than we know happened.
WITH A STORY BY LAURA MONTGOMERY: Tales of the United States Space Force
TALES OF THE UNITED STATES SPACE FORCE: New fiction and nonfiction focusing on the United States Space Force from top authors.
It has been six decades since mankind first shook off the yoke of gravity and flew into outer space. After cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s first fateful trip into the vastness beyond our atmosphere, the Apollo missions landed twelve men on the moon. Since the building of the International Space Station, humankind established a semi-permanent base in space.
But wherever people and their interests go, the military and law must eventually follow. Enter the Space Force!
In an increasingly unstable geopolitical environment, the wars of tomorrow may well be fought and won in space. Russia and China have successfully tested anti-satellite missiles. A Russian satellite approached a U.S. government satellite close enough to conduct an attack, forcing evasive maneuvering. Analysts believe the Chinese government has launched a satellite equipped with a robotic arm that could be used to manipulate and disable other satellites. With satellites critical to everything from weather forecasting to disaster response, agriculture to environmental monitoring—pizza delivery tracking to guiding missiles during war—a lot is riding on a safe and secure space program.
Here then, stories and essays of the United States Space Force, the first new United States military service since the establishment of the Air Force in 1947.
With stories by Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven, Harry Turtledove, Brian Trent, Gregory Benford & James Benford, David Brin, Jody Lynn Nye, Martin L. Shoemaker, M.T. Reiten, Avery Parks, C. Stuart Hardwick, Karl K. Gallagher, Gustavo Bondoni, Liam Hogan, Henry Herz, Marie Vibbert, Laura Montgomery, Sylvie Althoff, and Matt Bille.
Essays by: “Star Wars” program chief space laser engineer William F. Otto, USAF space office Michael Morton (ret.), and C. Stuart Hardwick.
At the publisher’s request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).
FROM LL LOYD: Mysterious Guardian Thief J.B.: Good-bye, Marianna Rose
Unexpected visitors send the Mysterious Guardian Thief J.B. to the phantom planet Fahlon, where he encounters an old love and new danger.
After a surprise attack leaves a dead woman at his feet, J.B. and his partner-in-crime Poe head for Fahlon, a world that can travel between dimensions. It’s a bittersweet return to a place J.B. remembers fondly. Unfortunately Fahlon isn’t the world he left behind. Something has changed it – and that change threatens its destruction. Can the Guardian Thief save Fahlon – and the Marianna Rose – in time?
FROM J. L. CURTIS: The Grey Man- Sunset
Whoever said retirement was quiet never met John Cronin…
The old man may have retired for the final time from the Sheriff’s office, but there are still cows to run, court cases to testify at, and consultation calls to tap decades of experience. And that’s not even counting the cold cases he’s still trying to solve…
With his granddaughter Jesse running the gun store and managing the ranch books, and her husband leaning how to fill Cronin’s shoes on investigations and arrests, John is keeping busy training the next generation, while settling a few old scores!
FROM KAREN MYERS: Mistress of Animals: A Lost Wizard’s Tale (The Chained Adept Book 2)
AN ERRANT CHILD WITH DISASTROUS POWERS AND NO ONE TO STAND IN HER WAY.
Penrys, the wizard with a chain and an unknown past, is drafted to find out what has happened to an entire clan of the nomadic Zannib. Nothing but their empty tents remain, abandoned on the autumn steppe with their herds.
This wasn’t a detour she’d planned on making, but there’s little choice. Winter is coming, and hundreds are missing.
The locals don’t trust her, but that’s nothing new. The question is, can she trust herself, when she discovers what her life might have been? Assuming, of course, that the price of so many dead was worth paying for it.
FROM HOLLY CHISM: Pendragon Resurgent (Legends Book 2)
Life is much better when nobody is trying to kill you.
Sara Hawke, now a university professor, has had five years where nobody was trying to kill her…if you don’t count her course load’s grading. Five years of watching over and helping raise orphaned young dragons.
Her comfortable life comes to an end when she’s attacked by Eastern Dragons, once again—this time, though, her attackers aren’t in the ruling elite. She’s in for the fight of her life again, only this time, Mordred is on the other side of the world, and she must first reach his side before they can succeed.
The running fight to survive brings to light old treachery, blackest magic…and new hope and new allies.
FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Perfect Darkness
What would perfect darkness look like? And what would happen if you saw it?
When Pavlik becomes obsessed with the idea of seeing perfect darkness, it becomes a distraction from the pod’s duty as asteroid miners. Little does he know that danger lies in opening one’s mind to the things that lurk in perfect darkness. Things that endanger his pod-brothers, even all of Briar’s Children.
FROM PAM UPHOFF: Recovery Agent
Mike’s nephew Ari was kidnapped and recovered by an unknown man.
Mike helped get the ten-year-old all the way home . . . to find Ari’s father dead, and the relatives circling . . .
The police seem to be more interested in the rescuer than the kidnapping.
Falk was the youngest detective on the investigation, that had just gone sideways, as it seems the boy had been rescued by an infamous assassin. As an important and wealthy man’s relatives fight to control his estate and his only child . . . Falk is starting to realize his own family is entangled in the apparently natural death, the kidnapping . . . and the Recovery Agent.
Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.
So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.
We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.
If you have questions, feel free to ask.
Your writing prompt this week is: concentrate
According To Hoyt 
“I’m trying,” Aoi hissed, glaring at the book she had been pretending to read for the last ten minutes, “to concentrate right now.”
“You’re trying,” I sighed, “to ignore what’s going on, because of how bad it is.”
“Can’t I do both?”
“No, I need you fully engaged,” I replied and stuck my finger on one of the pages of the book. “Little too early to ask for more help, I will admit, we need you on station. Now.”
“Concentrate, my boy, concentrate”, the Ancient said. “Focus on the mouse and imagine that it is a rabbit”.
The young man concentrated and there was a burst of power from him. Then he opened his eyes and instead of a mouse there was a rabbit in front of him.
“I did but how do I change it back into a mouse?”
“Watch it and learn.” After a moment, there was another glow of energy and the rabbit turned into a mouse again.
“Did you do that Master?”
“No, it is relatedly easy to warp reality but reality always restores itself. If I had changed the mouse, it would have stayed a rabbit for a matter of hours and then returned to being a mouse. There are ways to “fool” reality permanently or at least for centuries, but you aren’t ready to learn that.”
“Wow!” Then the young man said “I’m feeling tired.”
“But of course, it may look like magic to others, but it is hard work for us.”
She checked the level of the liquid in the pot. It was maybe a finger-joint lower than it had been an hour ago. She checked the depth of the remaining liquid.
She sighed and slumped over the counter. “Only seven more hours of boiling to go, at this rate.”
Nicely done! Implying the prompt word.
Thanks you! That is my usual goal when I write these.
Thunk, rattle, rattle. The brightly colored cube or dried, compressed fruit essence dropped from the pouch and rattled into the glass.
I sighed. When the aliens said that their rations were like orange concentrate, I should have known that the translation was literal.
Last week, June 2, 2024, had a very special promo on Robert “Bob” Hall. He died June 4th. His obituary is here
https://www.channel3000.com/obituaries/robert-a-hall/article_b4c2f082-2545-11ef-b4ff-7b0c558e4188.html
“Even we don’t really understand how these gadgets work, most of the time. Not in any detail. Even the basic principles are far too complex to make sense to the unaugmented human brain.”
“I’ve taken a few IQ tests. Mostly scored in the one-fifties. My wife is at least as smart as I am, if not smarter. But that’s just in our normal state. Both of us have computers more advanced than you can imagine linked to our central nervous systems. Computers with more than a billion times the processing power of the human brain, even a paramount genius like Einstein or Hawking. How it works is, we merge our consciousness with those computers and increase our thinking capacity. Not a billion times, or anything close; no, only a thousand times or more.”
He snickered. “Try to imagine what we can do with an IQ of two hundred thousand.”
He let them think that over. “To achieve that state of cybernetically expanded consciousness requires intense concentration, which we can only sustain for ten minutes or so, but…during that interval we possess the intellect of gods. The universe seems as simple to us as a child’s toy, and technological miracles a trivial exercise. Then, we have to let go. We shrink back to being merely human, and can but marvel at what we have wrought.”
“So, we can’t explain how any of these devices work in English, any more than nuclear physics and quantum theory could be explained in Edo Japanese. You don’t have the words, or the concepts. Nor can you learn them.”
Thank you for boosting the signal!
“The number of incoming prisoners has dwindled to a trickle.”
“Really?”
“Yes, the concentrate is very low.”
“I’ll take the prisoner downstairs,” said Tom condescendingly!
“There’s a state trooper in a helicopter!” Tom shouted, overbearingly.
“I need more people to say yes to this petition.”
“Why?”
“My pay depends on it. They give me more for each person that signs and says ‘yes, they’ll support it.’ It’s all based on my consent rate.”
That actually took me a minute to figure out. The wheels grind slowly and all that!
David shifted on his feet. Come on, he thought, walking up to Carolyn was the hard part. Now concentrate! “So, Carolyn,” he started, “we’re gonna be having a hocksop…” Dammit!
“A what?” giggled Carolyn.
“I mean soxshop,” he sputtered.
“Come again?”
“We’re havin’ this dance, see, and I thought maybe…”
David lathered up. He thought shaving with a blade was somehow more authentic than using the autodepilator. However, he was unaware how much attention it required. It took him a moment to realize that lather turning pink was neither expected nor desired, and that the styptic pencil burned like hell.
He knew the sock-hop would be noisy, with countless distractions, so David made a conscious effort to give Carolyn his full attention. As stunning (and distracting) as she was, he hoped Carolyn would likewise pay attention to him. But not so much that she’d notice where he’d nicked himself shaving.
New Concentration Concentrate™! Just one drop, and your ADD will become ASD* instantly!
[If concentration lasts more than four hours, contact your psychiatrist once you notice.]
Sylvie bit her lip. Her mind felt utterly blank just when she needed to think. “Has — has anyone sent a message to my father?” She remembered what Hendrick had said about messengers, and hurried at add, “Could we have gotten news back?”
“Yes, we could have. Because the soldiers know that your father has heard. They talk about it in the woods. It has made them angry and frightened.”
Sylvie winced. She hoped she hadn’t looked too silly. “If we got him a message — “
“We would need some way to show it was really from you.”
“Send my dress?”
Nomination time:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/22837935-july-2024
He turned his attention to the hedge again. Once he gathered all the knowledge he could about it, and what it enclosed, then he could ponder what the wizard had intended by it. Perhaps he should ponder first what he could do with it, and whether it might prove dangerous.
There is an unfortunate tendency to disparage hedge wizards.
Well, once the term was an insult, there was a circular effect.
The Reader wonders – did you just describe a hedge fund? They have wizards after a fashion.
These wizards have actual ability to produce real-world results.
Rand raised a hand in a gesture of restraint. “We’re not supposed to use these chemicals in higher concentrations than twenty percent–“
The Shep glowered at him. “Kid, I know what I’m doing. Now run and play with your classmates while the adult takes care of matters.”
Much as Rand couldn’t shake his ill-ease, he could tell he wasn’t going to win this argument. In any case, he had a class in fifteen minutes, and he didn’t want to be late. He just hoped he wouldn’t hear an explosion or any other awful mishap as he walked to the classroom.
“So why on Earth, I mean, why in the world, would you need to build a pipeline thousands of miles long, when you can get the same stuff from out of thin air, literally, right where you are?”
“Umm, Charles? You just answered your own question — out of thin air.” Lyudmilla was smiling again, that specific way that — once you’d bothered to notice it through knowing her long enough — always, always and invariably, meant she was right and knew it and you would soon too.
“Even back on Earth, air’s almost a thousand times less dense than water; here on Mars it’s about a hundred times rarer yet. For the little uses of just a pound or a ton at a time, every once in a while, it’s true it’ll never be worth the trouble of doing what I’m proposing.
“But, think about something like large-scale synthesis of hydrocarbons, say, pseudo-petroleum by the Fischer-Tropsch process or something. Using tons of CO2 per second. Now, go work out how much air your intake has to grab, I mean how fast an intake speed over how big an area, and I happily predict it’ll knock your socks off. Of course, you could still do it if you absolutely had to; and of course ‘in situ resource utilization’ really does hint at using what you have where you are, right where you are and not just somewhere else on the same planet.” Lyudmilla smiled again, a different way, as if agreeing it was about dang time she took a breath.
“Then you get to remember that there’s literally millions of tons of the stuff, not everything else in our air but CO2, frozen out by the square mile across the polar ice caps — or dry-ice caps, to be more precise. It gets several feet thick over even a single winter, up there in the cold and dark. All by itself, all for free, nothing to do but watch and wait.
“So why not mine it, there? Scoop up the stuff with a dozer-loader, dump it in a pressure chamber, use the ‘waste’ heat from your reactor power plant to melt it to liquid CO2 at 60-ish PSI or more… then just let the gunk settle out of the liquid, filter it, centrifuge it or whatever. Now you have tons-per-second of the stuff concentrated, decently pure, and all you had to do was strip-mine it off the empty frozen polar lowland wastes come late winter or very early spring.
“And next, you only have to build a pipeline to send it down to the lower latitudes, to only those big, heavy-industrial users that will pay. Even, if you’re really ambitious, use some to feed a local polar industrial use of the raw CO2, and ship fake-petroleum or graphite-composite whatever, do what your customers might be doing with it if you weren’t doing it first.”
Charles smiled, himself, and ruefully. “Of course I’ll be busy running the numbers myself, but I’ve no doubt at all you’ll’ve nailed it again.
“How is it you naturally think this way, Lyudmilla? You seem to think big when most of the rest of Redside is all ‘Lone Ranger’ and ‘individualists do not organize’ and ‘Mars is an archipelago of city-states’ and all?”
And this time she smiled dazzlingly. “Perhaps it’s just the odd sort of mind that I have. Perhaps it’s the old family business, time out of mind, and I don’t mean just us Ostrovskys either.” She began to look at him a different way, with her head sort of cocked to one side. With a fond, soft kind of smile, quite unlike her earlier techno-geek-in-high-cotton manner.
“Ever heard of the ‘Rus’ from way back in the old days? The ones who, I am oversimplifying a huge bit, put the ‘Ros’ in ‘Rossiya’ originally, not so very long after the A.D. clock passed zero.”
“Weren’t they sort of like east-Viking traders? Built what turned into a sort of early proto-Russian trading Empire? Seems I remember first ‘Kievan Rus’ and then a bit later, I dunno, ‘Moskva Rus’ or something?”
“Yes, to the same sort of, well, impressionistic level of actual historical accuracy I was trying to hit, Charles, you got it right.” And Lyudmilla’s smile got downright-dazzling again. “So from way, way back, it really and truly is a thing, for us to think big and in terms of large scale trading and organization. Dump all the Tsarist and Marxist crapola, drop the heavy memories of the grinding Tartar Yoke, those are our real roots, at least for my own kind of Russian.
“New planet, brand new deck and brand new game. But maybe, maybe, the old rules. Our old classic time-proven Rus rules, only now back in the saddle again.”
(See also earlier unrelated sort-of vignette, from image prompt(s) a couple of days ago…)
(Vignette now stuck in Moderation Purgatory, so I’ll wait to see if it’s set free. And, for anyone wanting more, sooner, see image-inspired ‘girl and streetcar’ quasi-vignette, which did post successfully a couple of hours ago — see June 7.
And, WPDE, delenda est, delenda est…)
…we used to drink orange juice from concentrate…
That’s why the exam rooms are covered in sticky orange stuff after administering the Bar exam.
The Bar exam for lawyers, or the one for bartenders? 😛
“The obvious solution to this murder is chemical, my dear Watson.” The robotic investigator ignored me for a few moments, using an attachment to remove the faint collection of white flakes at the bottom of the full bathtub and depositing them in an evidence bag.
“I’m afraid I don’t see, Sher-LOK,” I had to respond, regretting for the thousandth time allowing my robotic partner to name himself.
“Why it is simplicity itself.” He held the bag up and turned it until the stub of one dissolving tooth could be seen. “If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate.”