According To Hoyt

EXTRAORDINARY BOOK PROMO RESUMES TOMORROW EVENING. SORRY FOR THE HIATUS BUT FIRST MY ASSISTANT GOT SICK, AND THEN MY CPAP WAS MALFUNCTIONING LEADING TO ME JUST ABOUT FACE PLANTING BY 8 PM. BUT WE’RE BETTER, BOTH OF US.

TODAY THERE WILL BE NO EXTRAORDINARY BOOK PROMO, BECAUSE YOU DON’T NEED A BOOK PROMO WITH YOUR BOOK PROMO SO YOU CAN PROMO WHILE YOU PROMO. THERE WILL, HOWEVER, BE SHAMELESS WRITER SELF-PROMO. BECAUSE SOMETIMES I HAVE TO 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, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. By clicking through and buying (anything book-related, 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. Remember though all of these submissions are from people willing to be associated with this blog. So if you’re trying to buy from people who don’t hate you, this is a good place to start.– SAH

FROM SARAH A. HOYT, FIRST STARTED ON THIS BLOG: Witch’s Daughter (Empires of Magic Book 2)

Some letters come from the living. Some come from the dead. This one comes with a formula that turns a rowboat into a miracle.

Seventeen-year-old Lord Michael Ainsling — youngest brother of the Duke of Darkwater, builder of mechanical marvels, survivor of fairyland — receives a letter from a man sixteen years dead. The inventor Tristram Blakley has not perished; he has been imprisoned by his own genius and begs the one mind in all of Avalon brilliant enough to understand his work to set him free. All Michael has to do is find seven missing brothers first and walk a magical path..

Fifteen-year-old Albinia Blakley has spent her whole life under her mother’s iron thumb — and her mother is a witch. The day Al finally escapes down a rope of knotted sheets, she lands in a world she doesn’t recognize, with no money, no magic kit, and no idea that the stranger who catches her is about to become her greatest ally.

Together, a girl with more secrets than she knows and a boy who builds machines that try to murder him must outwit a sorceress, navigate the treacherous courts of Fairyland, and unravel an enchantment years in the making — before a family is lost for good.

Witch’s Daughter is a gaslamp fantasy brimming with wit, warmth, and wonder, for readers who love their magic wrapped in velvet and their adventures served with morning tea.

FROM SCOTT MCCREA: U.S. Marshal Ezra Flint: Flint’s Bullet: A Western Adventure (A U.S. Marshal Ezra Flint Western Book 9)

Another pulse-pounding Marshal Ezra Flint adventure from award-winning author Scott McCrea!

U.S. Marshal Ezra Flint has a target painted on his back when “Killer” Cain Bendo hires four professional gunmen to assassinate him. Now Flint is on the run, searching for his attempted killers while trying to protect his friends, Deputy P.J. Dunn and sawbones Doc Prouty, who defy his orders and try to help. Can Killer Cain Bendo measure Flint for a coffin while still in prison? Or will Flint go from prey… to predator?

Saddle up for the most explosive Flint adventure yet!

FROM RON CORRIVEAU: The Least Significant

An alien thief has escaped to Earth with an object of critical importance to his planet.

With the authorities close behind, the thief plans to hide by blending in among the people. But there’s a problem. His native form would make him stand out, so he’ll need to borrow a human body.

And he has a specific one in mind.

Catherine and Marcus are a young couple enjoying the evening of their engagement in downtown Dallas when Marcus suddenly vanishes from the sidewalk in a burst of shimmering lights. Unable to explain his disappearance, Catherine is soon approached by a mysterious man who tells her the thief he is chasing has taken over Marcus’ body and displaced his essence to another dimension.

Unsure whether to believe him, Catherine reluctantly agrees to help when she learns the man can return Marcus to his body. But, as they begin to close in on the thief, Catherine uncovers a shocking truth about Marcus and the alien planet more fantastic than she ever imagined.

FROM J. KENTON PIERCE: An Apple for the Legion: A Tales From the Long Night Novella

From the universe of the 2026 Prometheus Award finalist A Kiss for Damocles — welcome to the Tales from the Long Night.

Third Decanus Kaur was engineered for this.

The Mutual Prosperity builds its legionaries from the genes of heroes — and Kaur carries the literal face of Tanveer Kaur, hero of the Spring Thunder Campaign, the soldier whose sacrifice helped pull humanity back from extinction. She has trained since birth to liberate the enslaved populations of the Terran Commonwealth. She has memorized the Social Virtues. She has crushed her doubts, disciplined her questions, and proven herself a worthy daughter of humanity’s finest.

Then she lands on Hesperides Colony, and the liberation refuses to go as planned.

The colonists fight like they mean it — not from ideology or fanaticism, but because they have something worth protecting. When her commander hands her a contraband biography of her own mother and tells her to read it, the headaches begin. Because what Tanveer Kaur actually believed, actually said, in her own unedited words — it doesn’t match anything the Prosperity taught her daughter.

Then the volcano erupts.

Cut off from Fleet. No resupply. No evacuation. A dying colony buried under ash, a population the Prosperity considers expendable, and orders that grow more monstrous by the hour. Kaur is twenty-three years old. She commands ten legionaries. And the man who has spent decades teaching her what it truly means to honor her heritage is running out of time to finish the lesson.

An Apple for the Legion is a gripping, character-driven military science fiction novella — precise, dark, and impossible to set aside. A story set in the Tales from the Long Night: a universe where humanity survived the stars and built something that might not have been worth saving.

FROM RACONTEUR PRESS, EDITED BY RITA BEEMAN: Auntie Heroes (Raconteur Press Anthologies Book 74)

They’ve been overlooked, underestimated, and politely sidelined for decades. Fine. That’s fine. Let them keep underestimating.

In the pages of Auntie Heroes, meet ten women of a certain vintage who possess particular sets of skills and absolutely zero patience for the alternative. A fire fairy stepmother navigating werewolves and blended family politics. A retired intelligence operative who knits Kevlar scarves and outsmarts Belarusian thieves in a foreign embassy. A grandmother farming fourteen hundred acres with alien assistance — and handling the unfriendly ones with a shotgun full of rock salt. A sharp-eyed matron in a Lovecraftian coastal town who defeats an elder god with Eternal Father Strong to Save and a can of extra-hold hairspray. A suburban gardener who discovers her neighbor’s invasive kudzu is a Cold War-era biological antenna siphoning encrypted data from Fort Meade — and handles it accordingly.

Across fairy tales, spy thrillers, alien farms, suburban horror, and the salt-choked streets of a town that smells permanently of low tide, these women share one defining trait: they have been here long enough to know exactly what needs doing. And they will absolutely do it.

Stories include: “Stepmother Ever After” by Nancy Frye • “Calhoun Blood” by D.S. Ligon • “The Squamous Among Us” by Spearman Burke • “Salon and Subversion” by Tuvela Thomas • “A Dressing Down” by Aelth Faye • “From the Ashes” by TC Ross • “Knit One, Sanction Two” by Ted Begley • “Pruning with Extreme Prejudice” by Michael Patrick Coady • “Walking the Beans” by Rick Cutler • “The Knitting Circle at Innsmouth” by Malory

The world has a great many hind ends that require a proper thrashing. We’re betting on the lady with the flamethrower.

FROM D. W. PATTERSON: Zero Point

Zero Point: A Novel

Jack Carson had a stroke of luck; a great-uncle had left him land in Arizona.

But that’s when Jack’s luck began to change, mysterious sights and sounds threatened to make his inheritance worthless as a center for the study of physics.

Marta Merritt decided to help, and she didn’t think it a mystery, she thought it was an artifact of a forgotten physics theory called pilot-wave mechanics.

To build the center they would have to find out, and they would have to stay alive to do so.

Zero Point is a novel in a new series of Quantum Adventures which extrapolates future, cutting-edge science from today’s research papers.

For news and future releases see the author’s website, http://www.dwpatterson.com, or hit the Follow button below.

Hard Science Fiction – Old School.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Detritus

Nick Bryant was a junkie. Lived on the streets, and everything. And then, he saved a baby girl from drowning, and fell into the role of protector. As he, the baby, and her older brother get to know one another, he decides that maybe, there’s more left to him than the drugs, and decides to try to live again. And maybe build a family.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: The Lion and the Darkness (Timelines Book 4)

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.

FROM KAREN MYERS: King of the May – A Virginian in Elfland (The Hounds of Annwn Book 3)

Book 3 of The Hounds of Annwn.

MORE VALUABLE AS A WEAPON THAN A KINGMAKER, HE MUST MAKE HIS OWN CHOICES TO SECURE THE FUTURE.

George Talbot Traherne, the human huntsman for the Wild Hunt, had hoped to settle into a quiet life with his new family, but it was not to be. Gwyn ap Nudd, Prince of Annwn, has plans to secure his domain in the new world from the overbearing interference of his father Lludd, the King of Britain.

The security of George’s family is bound to that of his overlord, and he vows to help. But when he and his companions stand against Lludd and his allies at court, disaster overturns all their plans and even threatens the Hounds of Annwn themselves.

George and his patron, the antlered god Cernunnos, must survive a subtle attack that undermines them both. Other gods and gods-to-be have taken an interest, but the fae are divided in their allegiances and fear the threat of deadly new powers in their unchanging lives.

George and his companions must save themselves if they are to persuade their potential allies to help. But how can they do so, attacked on so many fronts at once? Will he put his family into greater jeopardy by trying to defend them?

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Spiral Horn, Spiral Tusk

A unicorn’s horn for the king, a medal for the admiral — but what for the lass who makes it possible?

Rissa possesses the dolphin-singer gift, which saved her life when the thief-taker found her. If she can guide the fleet to the white whale with the spiral tusk, she might win back her freedom.

But first she must return to land — and the sea has become angry at her betrayal…

A short story of the Ixilon universe

Originally published in Beyond the Last Star: Stories from the Next Beginning, edited by Sherwood Smith.

FROM JOHN BAILEY: THE CONCIERGE OF HÔTEL AURORE (Science Fiction Singles)

In the occupied colony of Nouvelle Bruges, the Hôtel Aurore still welcomes its guests.

The concierge still keeps her records.
The elevators still run on time.
The system still functions.

And that is precisely the problem.

When the Aurigan Compact seizes control of the colony, they do not burn cities or break institutions. They refine them. Every person is classified. Every movement recorded. Every discrepancy corrected.

At the center of it all stands Élise Marceau, senior concierge—overlooked, precise, and quietly indispensable.

She does not fight with weapons.
She does not organize rebellions.
She does not leave her post.

Instead, she begins to make small corrections.

A name adjusted.
A room reassigned.
A transfer that already happened—on paper.

Soon, people begin to disappear from the system without disappearing at all.

As an Aurigan audit closes in and the machinery of control tightens, Élise and her colleagues transform the hotel into something else entirely: a place where the records lie just enough to keep people alive.

In a world where identity is defined by documentation, survival depends on a simple question:

What happens when the system is no longer accurate?

Perfect for readers of intelligent, atmospheric science fiction, The Concierge of Hôtel Aurore is a story of quiet defiance, bureaucratic warfare, and the power of small acts to disrupt even the most perfect system.

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: Complex.

In a short story a few years ago, my husband coined the term Feffers as a short hand for all the sad mouths who yell “Fix Earth First” every time anyone tries to escape the crab bucket this our native rock.

It is the perfect term, since without the first F it’s a pejorative anyway. And heaven knows, I start using it, in a tone like a spitting cat, when I’m following some cool event or development on X and find myself mired in comment after comment of “We could eliminate poverty” (Spoiler: Poverty always wins wars on poverty.) Or “We have so many problems here on Earth” or similar stupidity.

They are wrong. No, I can’t absolutely prove it for the reason that sociological experiments are really hard to run on an entire society. This could be solved by having a portal that allows us to observe parallel worlds that took alternate paths, but younger son refuses to invent the technology. Out of contrarianess I’m sure.

However we have a similar thing, called history.

The truth is that human societies that don’t move out of their space and colonize and change become stagnant and become stagnant in peculiar ways.

Take Africa — oh, please, for the love of Bob, take Africa. No one sane wants it, as China is finding out. — it’s a collection of the most successful, stable, environment adapted cultures. Not saying they didn’t have inside-continent colonization: Zulus. But by and large, the people who remain in Africa, as natives, (to the extent that they’re not mixed by virtue of colonization from elsewhere) are the descendants of those strong enough and fitting in enough not to be chased, pushed or coventry-ed out.

Those who got pushed out, starting in pre-neolithic days, populated the Earth and came up with endless variations on culture, some of which were so successful they returned to colonize Africa.

The ones who stayed? They were perfectly suited to the environment and strong tribal culture. You could say they were optimized evolutionarily, by pushing out all who don’t fit. And the result is…

Well, you can survive in Africa at a relatively low level of productivity and organization. Which is good, because it is what Africa always devolves to. In the words of my friend Lawdog “Africa always wins.”

How do I know this is cultural and not racial? Well, pre- weaponization of race by shitty Marxists, the Africans who got away voluntarily tended to do very well. Even some of the involuntary ones, once pulled away from the general tribal culture, adapted and were high achieving. But in locus, the culture that never left? “Africa wins” is the saddest term I can think of.

Or if you want to pick on another extreme of culture, by a people that even racists can’t claim suffer from some deficiency in that imperfect (and weird) measurement of “IQ” , let’s take the Chinese. One on one, test on test, the Chinese are the highest scoring humans when it comes to IQ tests.

On the more important side, because IQ is a fickle measurement, Chinese who leave China tend to do very well indeed, particularly if they are ISOLATED and on their own. I.e. away from the culture.

But you can’t read a Chinese history book without getting the impression of a movie stuck on repeat. Great flourishing and advances, then erase it all from history and start again, forever. And the culture has certain limiting blind spots of legalism and worship of the written word that make the whole thing unable to get very far. The result? China has been marinading in tears and wasted potential for thousands of years and imports all important advances from abroad.

I firmly believe this is the result of failing to colonize: Failing to go elsewhere and be challenged by different environments, different interactions, different challenges. Humans, like all animals tend to get too well adapted to their environment, too comfortable in their sameness and routine. And then it becomes codified and an iron crab bucket you cannot break.

Our culture (Western culture in this case, not specifically American) is showing some signs of trying to enter into exactly those cycles of destruction and restarting.

We need to break the bonds. We need to go elsewhere, reach further, challenge ourselves, and let those ideas come back to challenge those who stay at home.

Because comfort and safety are not survival-enhancing characteristics for cultures (or humans) in the long run.

As for fixing all the problems on Earth first, most of those problems are only problems as defined by crazy people.

Stuff like inequality is just a sign of freedom. Free humans are inherently unequal because they value and work towards different things. It’s only slaves who are held to complete equality.

Even poverty is not exactly a problem to be solved. First it depends on what you define as poverty. And second, poverty has been the condition of humanity for most of its existence. Trying to overcome it has propelled some of our greatest triumphs. And trying to fix it for other people has never worked. Never.

Whatever problems we have are more likely to be fixed by going out of the Earth: higher, further, more risky. As far as we can go. To the distant stars.

Because it is there that we’ll find the solution to problems we don’t even know we have. And also from there that will come the leavening and innovation that will renew all of humanity and cause us to survive longer and reach further than we think possible.

Shut up Feffers. The rest of us are going to the stars.

So today is release day for Witch’s Daughter and I’m feeling lazy. You can of course discuss whatever you want in comments. There’s lots of good stuff in the news today, and some weird stuff. (Like when isn’t there.)

Witch’s Daughter was started, I want to say ten years ago, just as the wheels were coming off my ability to work, with a series of illnesses and frankly just coping with the altitude, though I didn’t know it was that. For explanation: Other than sending my auto-immune through the roof (Since we’ve been at low altitude I haven’t needed my inhaler, except when I’m ill with something that brings the asthma up) it seemed to be doing something to my cognition, and I have no idea what. Doesn’t seem to be oxygen, or at least my oxygen measured by the finger thingy never got that low. What I can tell you is that while driving to Las Vegas for the con, if we hit above 6000 feet something happened. First I became very confused, as though drunk, and then at 9000 feet I fell asleep. I could not stay awake. No clue what causes that. Sure it’s a form of altitude sickness, but not sure what.

The problem is our last house in Colorado was on a ridge and over 6000 feet, and apparently I was going… um… Odd. I held it together enough for posts and short stories, but I couldn’t carry the idea through for even short novels.

I started them. I mean, the ideas arrived on schedule and were compelling, but I’d get either to the middle or in the case of Witch’s Daughter about 2/3 in and I’d glitch and couldn’t figure out how to close it.

In the case of WD, as you know, if you follow my substack, I had so many internal contradictions and failure to follow through that I couldn’t close if I tried. It took me racing to the finish, then doing a FULL correction and fixes rewrite. Now it’s actually all working and makes sense. (And yes, I’m going to try that with Winter Prince, done on my substack, too.)

Anyway, I have… well, 10 novels off the top of my head that are half or more done, and I’ve declared this year “The year of finishing everything.” (I actually think more novels are waiting in my files, and that this will turn into the “years of finishing everything.”)

Don’t panic thought, Orphans of the Stars (Second of the Chronicles of Lost Elly) advances. The slow down on that was being sick, not the other novels. I’m treating the other novels as the morning/early stuff, then Orphans.

Anyway, you can treat this as an open thread if you wish, but I’m going upstairs to work on Rhodes to Hell. Right now reading back into it, and cussing myself for all the dead ends I dropped in. Need to clean that up. Also, why didn’t you guys tell me the WORLD is profoundly evil? (World as in the world-build.) Apparently I didn’t notice. I’m not saying I won’t write more. It’s a noir, so the evil is there for the pure of heart to fight against, but yeeech.

For now, I leave you with a book that deserves some press on its release day. (And no, you don’t need to read Witchfinder to get this. Regency with magic, tight close in third person, same as Witchfinder, but in this case only two POVs, a self-contained adventure and much shorter. I hesitate to label it a YA because the series isn’t, but it kind of is.)

Paper editions release tomorrow and the day after.

Witch’s daughter – by sarah A. hoyt

Some letters come from the living. Some come from the dead. This one comes with a formula that turns a rowboat into a miracle.

Seventeen-year-old Lord Michael Ainsling — youngest brother of the Duke of Darkwater, builder of mechanical marvels, survivor of fairyland — receives a letter from a man sixteen years dead. The inventor Tristram Blakley has not perished; he has been imprisoned by his own genius and begs the one mind in all of Avalon brilliant enough to understand his work to set him free. All Michael has to do is find seven missing brothers first and walk a magical path..

Fifteen-year-old Albinia Blakley has spent her whole life under her mother’s iron thumb — and her mother is a witch. The day Al finally escapes down a rope of knotted sheets, she lands in a world she doesn’t recognize, with no money, no magic kit, and no idea that the stranger who catches her is about to become her greatest ally.

Together, a girl with more secrets than she knows and a boy who builds machines that try to murder him must outwit a sorceress, navigate the treacherous courts of Fairyland, and unravel an enchantment years in the making — before a family is lost for good.

Witch’s Daughter is a gaslamp fantasy brimming with wit, warmth, and wonder, for readers who love their magic wrapped in velvet and their adventures served with morning tea.

But not tonight. My assistant has a case of the never-get-wells that’s floored her (and she’s a kid.) And I am feeling like crud and didn’t sleep almost at all last night. Also had bad news about my brother this morning. No, he’s still with us, but… if you’re the praying kind, a prayer heavenward appreciated.

I’m debating going to bed early.

It’s always darkest before dawn is a funny statement. Is it? The few times I’ve been awake before dawn, it was a gradual lightening, so actually it was a little lighter, though I grant you it might appear darker, in the shadows, in comparison to the growing light.

Yes, that is a fine example of how my mind works. It’s also very relevant to our situation, because a lot of the things that people freak out about in societal and political matters are only visible because we have the net, and we have social media where we can talk back (thank you Elon) and we can see how dark things are in spots because they’re getting light in others.

For contrast see Europe where they’re sleep walking in utter darkness and don’t seem to notice anything is wrong.

But that’s not the point of this post. Or perhaps it is — sorry, I slept about four hours, and once this is up, I’m going to nap — because we are now in a changed information landscape, one for which none of us, not even broadly speaking the two political sides (there’s more than that, but broadly) have any referent or any model.

Which means that you can’t really know what will result from this or that, and only fools think they do. However, due to the fact things are changing towards greater individual knowledge and information (not to mention choice) technologically, the collectivists keep getting their asses handed to them by what they think are their greatest victories.

In a way Wile E. Coyote has become their spirit animal. Their plans are ever more elaborate and infallible. And they bite the planners in the *ss every time.

I’m writing this today because of Virginia yesterday. Fraud? Stupidity? I don’t know. And yes, there will be legal cases, but– Given that and the willful stalling of the SAVE act it’s putting the midterms in jeopardy.

Which normally wouldn’t freak me out AT ALL because well, it’s two years, we’ll come back. Except that the left is so rabidly insane, two years can be near lethal, and also they’ll try to rig everything so they never lose again, and so much of our electoral map is already f*cked beyond belief. And they really are going to try to push for executions and who knows what this time.

BUT then again, they already wanted to criminalize opposition during the reign of the auto-pen. And they wanted to do all manner of horrible things to us. Mostly they managed to do horrible economic damage to the point I was wondering if we’d survive, and we’re relatively economically secure with no kids in the house. And even if they don’t steal any more elections for a while, it’s going to take a long time to come back from it. Worse if they get another turn at the levers.

On the other hand, guys, I was pretty despondent and broken after watching the 2020 election stolen. If I could go back, would I go and fix that, given the power?

Not on your life. As much as it hurt and as much as it cost us, it changed the political landscape completely. Without 2020 2024 and everything that happened since would be impossible. It was their rigging of a color revolution that revealed who they are to a point everything changed.

Will it suck living tadpoles if they win the midterms? Oh, heck, don’t get me started. I saw my beloved Colorado stolen and despoiled.

Will it be the end?

I doubt it. Their time has passed. The tech is ranked against them. And they’re snakebit, anyway. Reality fights on our side, and they can’t find reality with two hands and a seeing eye dog.

It will be tough. Horrible. But it might prove their final undoing.

Be not afraid.

It’s always darkest before dawn.

Go light a fire.

*The Amazon links in this post all use my associate’s link, and therefore I earn a small commission from your purchases, at no extra cost to you.

I have a list my assistant is compiling of authors to promote who answered the call by responding if they were not afraid of being associated with this blog. I will be post them in the evening, ten at a time. Hopefully you find some new reads. If nothing else, you know these people are fearless. – SAH*

Meet Pam Uphoff

I grew up in California, one of those horse-mad girls.

Horse books, Horse drawings, riding lessons . . . the parents finally surrendered when I was thirteen and bought a horse. And another. And another.

I still have two, a granddaughter and great grandson of my first very own, don’t-have-to-share-with-the-sisters, horse.

My reading slipped from horse and dog stories to science fiction, but even though I’m writing science fiction, there seem to be rather a lot of horses in the stories, somehow. And dinosaurs.

My stories in my favorite Fictional Universe, Wine of the Gods, are going up, book by book.

https://pamuphoff.livejournal.com/

Pam Uphoff would like you to consider her book: Fancy Free

In the last parts of the Twenty-first century, AI, Artificial Intelligence is commonplace. Highly able computers, and nothing more . . . until some rare and as yet unidentified trigger creates an actual personality.

Artificial Personalities, APs or hals, are illegal. Destroyed upon discovery. Even Beowulf, the AP the government controls, and uses to hunt down emerging hals, isn’t legally recognized, has no right to existence.
So you’d think that when the Special Grid Security Unit started paying extra attention to the area where a certain cooking show operates, Fancy Farmer—the AP who runs the show—would be concerned.
But Fancy has a bigger problem.
She’s been stolen.

Meet Alma T. C. Boykin

I grew up devouring every kind of book I could get my hands on, then locked onto military history, fantasy, and science fiction. At age 16 I discovered military science fiction in the form of David Drake’s Hammers Slammers series and was hooked. I went to college Back East then returned to the High Plains of Texas and worked for a living, while reading anything that would stay still long enough. That career took me across the US, and eventually dumped me into graduate school. My specialty was history but since I still couldn’t stop reading, it shifted into a subfield that incorporated science as well as traditional history. Readers will find influences ranging from David Drake to Russian fairy tales to Eastern European history in my work, with some geology and agriculture blended in, and a dollop of humor.

I currently live on the High Plains once more, now with a grumpy calico cat and a large number of books. A pipe from the old organ at Stift Vorau, Austria resides on my desk.

https://almatcboykin.wordpress.com/

Alma T. C. Boykin would like you to consider her book: Merchant and Magic (Merchant and Empire Book 1)

When Magic Fails…

Tycho Rhonarida Galnaar trades hides—hides tanned, hides untanned, with and without fleeces, nothing risky. He prefers steady, low-key trade, a quiet home life, and reliable business partners. Slow and steady bring wealth and do not draw the attention of nobles, thieves, or the gods. Especially not of the gods!

Counterfeit coin and cursed grain…

But the gods have other plans. Tycho’s secret—his absolute inability to work or even see magic in a world that depends on it—may be the key to solving a mystery, and saving a city. Tycho wants no part in mysteries or adventure. He’s a merchant, nothing more.

Trade is Tycho’s world. That world changes under his feet.

Meet Mel Dunay

https://jaglionpress.com/

I write plot-first fantasy and science-fiction, where my characters fight tyrants and other monsters, escape murder charges and slavery, and occasionally save civilization as they know it. While they’re having these adventures, they also forge strong emotional connections with their comrades, but they come from cultures that do not treat physical intimacy lightly, and with all that danger around, they usually don’t have time for it anyway. If you like a little humor, a little romance, lots of adventure, and no explicit content, welcome! You’ve come to the right place. I write for readers who want meaningful romantic subplots without explicit content, and adventure that never gets sidelined by the love story.

I’ve traveled all over the world, but now I live in the American Midwest with my extended family. I have no cats, only a vacuum robot named Minnie, who probably would not play nicely with the feline species. My hobbies include film editing, bookbinding and finding writer support tasks for AI. However, I prefer to keep the actual story drafting (also known as the fun part) firmly in human hands.

Mel Dunay would like you to consider her novel: Shadow Captain (Star Master Book 1)

His one chance to escape slavery could trap his brother in a terrible fate! Jetay has been on the run with his brother for a long time, hiding his psychic powers from the evil Red Knights. Living as a slave on a star freighter, Jetay dreams of freeing himself and his brother, and of wielding his powers openly. On a frontier planet, Lady Lanati of the Partisan Alliance seeks his help for a secret mission. It will take him across the stars to the edge of a black hole, with a Red Knight chasing him every step of the way. He might finally get a chance to use his powers for good. But the price of that chance may be too high, putting his brother in grave danger. Can Jetay save himself and his brother without sacrificing Lanati and her friends? If he can’t find a way to save them all, the battle against evil may be over before it begins….

Meet Mary Catelli

https://writingandreflections.substack.com/

Mary Catelli is an avid reader of fantasy, science fiction, history, fairy tales, philosophy, folklore and a lot of other things. (Including the backs of cereal boxes.)

Which, in due course, overflowed into writing fantasy (and some science fiction).

Mary Catelli would like you to consider her book: Even After

Mirror, mirror on the wall — can I be safe when I am tall?

Rumpelstiltskin got the baby.

Rapunzel and her prince never again met.

Snow White still sleeps in the forest.

Biancabella, Snow White’s half-sister, knows that if she is more beautiful than her mother, trouble will follow again. Her appeal to the magic mirror only gains her stories of how hard it is to fight the evil sorceresses and wizards and witches who have banded together to bring unhappy endings.

But with her mother seeking to constrain her, Biancabella knows she may have no choice to use that knowledge to attempt to escape.

Meet Doug Irvin

Doug Irvin has been reading – and writing! – from an early age. In the early ’80’s he had the dubious honor of causing a couple of short story magazines to fold. He hopes that trait has ended!

Irvin writes in a variety of genres, but uses his own name for most.

Doug Irvin would like you to consider his book: A Spaceship For Joe

Joe has a problem. It’s summer vacation, and all his friends are unavailable. One moved away, another is
sick and the others are all gone for some reason or another.
In desperation Joe looks for his uncle, who makes a suggestion that he build himself a fort, and even
volunteers the space and materials for it.
But Joe has other ideas. He doesn’t want a simple fort; he wants a spaceship!
There’s just one problem with that. He built it too convincingly ….

Meet David Lloyd Sutton

Who is sane enough not to have anything like social media.

David Lloyd Sutton would like you to consider his book: Longest Run

Longest Run is set in North America a thousand years after nuclear war has knocked the tectonic plates off the table. Ecologies are in flux. People are trying to cope with the mess they have made. Since that mess includes humanity’s own genetic instability, Brand Levin is willingly engaged in a live-or-die wilderness proving trip; at stake his right to become a parent.

Meet Allene Lowrey

Allene Lowrey has been prone to flights of fancy for the better part of her existence, and has always been one to try putting them down on paper. She loves to play with mythology in her writing, especially in her fantasy.

Ever since she discovered the genre Allene has gravitated toward fantasy epics, although she does occasionally escape gravity’s pull to play around in other SF/F subgenres.

An Idaho native, Allene has also lived in Oregon and Indiana, and currently resides in Saipan with her husband and young son.

Twitter: @arlowrey MeWe: @allenelowrey.84 Blog: allenelowrey.com

Allene Lowrey would like you to consider her book: Einarr Stigandersen and the Jotunhall: A Young Adult action-adventure Viking fantasy (The Adventures of Einarr Stigandersen Book 1)

A foiled elopement. A giant’s treasure. An impossible quest that will almost certainly get him killed.

Once upon a time, Stigander Raenson was heir to a thanedom. Until a curse drove him, his family, and his crew out of their homes. For years, they have all wandered the cold seas looking for treasure, glory, and a way to end the curse.

Now Einarr, Stigander’s only son, lives a vagabond’s life on the sea, never giving much thought to the home he barely remembers. That is, until an unexpected squall and a pirate attack send them to winter at the Hall of his father’s childhood friend – and his beautiful daughter. The Jarl intends to marry her to an old man, but they only have eyes for each other.

A desperate gambit lands them both in trouble. Now Einarr has just a single season to convince the Jarl that he would be a worthy match for the Lady Runa, the Jarl’s only child. Will he return in one piece, or will the Jarl’s impossible quest be Einarr’s undoing?

Meet Herbert Nowell

http://herbertnowell.com/

Herbert Nowell would like you to consider his book: Lost Daughter of Amazons (Leo and Zoe Book 1)

Leonides Tzimiskes served in the Imperial Legions for twenty years and riding into the sunset to collect his reward, a frontier villa and farm.

Then, in the town of Nikaia a young woman claiming to be a lost daughter of an Amazon challenged him to solve a local problem.

Now Leonides must choose between continuing to a life of ease that comes with a villa and rescuing people who might not want it.

And he must choose knowing that if he chooses the latter he might not live to collect the former.

Meet Leigh Kimmel

I started writing stories in grade school because everyone was tired of listening to me tell them all about the world next door, where things went a little differently. Of course it was a long, hard road from those first eager scribbles about hidden worlds under or behind the ordinary one to my first professional sale. And then the sharp disappointment of watching it melt away to nothing when an embezzler stole the publisher’s finances and the magazine died stillborn. Sometimes it seemed like success existed only to be snatched away from me, so that I could be scolded and punished when I expressed dismay at yet another sharp disappointment. But finally a few magazines and anthologies survived long enough to see my words into print.

Meanwhile, I discovered the success that could come from publishing non-fiction. For a brief time I was bringing in a decent income writing articles for ready-reference publications. And then the housing market crashed, libraries cut their budgets, and that stream of income dried up.

So I built websites. I blogged. I built under and fought the tendency to become bitter. And all the time I kept on writing about the world next door, where things go just a little differently than in the fields where we know.

Facebook: leigh.kimmel

X: @LeighKimmel

Leigh Kimmel would like you to consider her book: The War That Came to Houston

In the midst of preparations for a critical mission, Leland Andersen can’t afford the return of a childhood nightmare. Yet night after night the vision torments him, of an astronaut dying in flames.

Nora McKinzie is a Houston police officer — and a member of an ancient order founded to fight eldritch entities wherever they might flee. When she receives a warning that a sworn enemy is on the move again, her obligations come into conflict with each other.

Both of them are present when Johnson Space Center comes under attack by terrorists. And they both know that the official explanations don’t hold together.

Two people, one deadly secret — and an enemy from beyond time and space.

A novel of the Grissom timeline.

Previously serialized under the title A Separate War.

A dog returns to his vomit and a sow to her mire, and Sarah and the Clankers are back together and… well… not precisely live (not half of the group, at least) again.

This whole thing is fascinating, because I realized I’d skipped two important songs, the one for the birth of Selbur’s baby and the other Ad Leed listening to the gem playing. (The problem is you tube won’t let me reorganize the playlist. Sorry.)

And then, once I’d done that, it just kept pouring out, so there’s two more songs. I’m not going to apologize for the Looking For Home song. As weird as it is there isn’t anything even vaguely perverse going on, it’s the nature of the people of No Man’s Land, is all. This book is ridiculously wholesome despite itself. And if you read the book, you’ll sigh and say with me “Skip, you idiot.” Actually that also applies to the last song. Anyway.

One of my earliest “how things work” memories were of my parents having their house built. They did this when I was five and six. I think it took a year and a half, but it might have been longer, because construction used to take a long time, being done in a mostly artisanal way.

Anyway, before that, and I don’t know how long — but it’s tied in my brain with the idea of “how large is Portugal” being the size of my thumb nail at five, in our home globe — they bought land to build on. And I got to look at the deed of sale. My parents had been saving to buy land for a long time so they were very proud of themselves, and one or the other of them — probably dad, the geek — unrolled the deed for me to read.

I no longer remember the wording, but I retain the sense that the deed said the Portuguese state was graciously allowing my parents to hold this land, after which came the transaction certification that they’d bought the land from so and so for x amount.

At the time I remember this hit me as odd. What did the state have to do with the sale of a small parcel of land. It stayed with me enough that much later, when I was doing research in the city library (it’s not a lending library. More like an archive of important documents) I looked up old deeds of sale, and found that they’d just replaced the king’s name with the name of the Portuguese Republic. Because the conceit was that the entire country was the fiefdom of the king, and he was letting people hold portions of it. This was simply transferred to the state owning the country, etc.

Note I’m not a lawyer and my interest in Portuguese jurisprudence is less than zero. But at the time this was my understanding, and I bet it’s the understanding of many people there. Many people all over Europe, really.

As in, monarchy didn’t get vanquished so much as replaced with a collective, but he idea that the state has all power RIGHTLY over individuals remains. Because it’s always been like that and it will always be like that. It’s like when my school in an excess of revolutionary fervor in the seventies replaced the director with a directive committee. It just transferred authority to a group, it didn’t give the teachers — or heaven forfend — the students any real purchase or right on the power.

I was reading recently — and I’m sorry, I’ve slept since and I’ve been ill which means my memory is a mush so I can’t remember who except it was someone I admire — someone saying that the problem with what happened to the American state starting with Woodrow Wilson is that we replaced the idea of inalienable rights descending to us from “nature and nature’s G-d” with the state. With holding the rights the state lets us have and that’s it.

And since then the wheels have been if not off, turning very weirdly in this our American project. Because we more or less half-gave-up our project for the idea that Europe had the right idea for the future. Look, guys I don’t understand it any more than you do, but you can see it’s true. You can also see the idea was loose in the world when Heinlein makes some noise in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress about our constitution being suitable for an agrarian republic but the industrial era needing something else. Pfui. (And I don’t think he was advocating it. Merely playing with it. He was, at heart, a constitutionalist.)

Because that’s not who or what we are. This was the illusion that everything would work better if centrally administered, which was brought to full flower in communism which is why it called itself “scientific.”

Because making widgets was easier mass produced and in a central location, it was assume everything was better mass produced, centralized and optimized for the most people, instead of tailored to the individual.

This as we know now is wrong. our idea of inalienable individual rights was indeed ahead of its time, as meshes well with the idea that economic decisions are best if made at the individual level. That is most efficient and in the end better for everyone. In fact, it is the only way to keep society from devolving into a dystopian nightmare, because the more the government controls, the more it wants to control and the more it entices the type of people who want to control others completely.

On this 250th anniversary it’s time to turn back to our declaration of independence and our constitution, which are the documents most appropriate to governing our people and making us strong and prosperous.

Now, is our way best for Europe? I don’t know. I mean, instinctively I want to say yes, and they would benefit greatly from adopting it.

Which is true. Except that… Cultures are stubborn things, and I don’t think the Europeans as they are now can understand or support our ideas of government. They’ve tried over a hundred years, and what a muck they’ve made of it.

At this point I’d say let’s each of us return to own ideas of government. We can choose to be free and they, if they are lucky, can choose to be owned by “benevolently” neglectful kings more intent on their pleasures than on controlling everyone and everything. Heaven knows, just having a monarch who views the kingdom as possessions not to be abused would be a vast improvement for them.

As for us, ladies, gentlemen and gentle-barbarians, let’s get back to our understanding of things and pare government down as close to the level of the individual as possible and keep the Federal government ONLY for essential duties ascribed to it by the constitution!

It’s time.

*The Amazon links in this post all use my associate’s link, and therefore I earn a small commission from your purchases, at no extra cost to you.

I have a list my assistant is compiling of authors to promote who answered the call by responding if they were not afraid of being associated with this blog. I will be post them in the evening, ten at a time. Hopefully you find some new reads. If nothing else, you know these people are fearless. – SAH*

Meet John Bailey

John Bailey is a storyteller who traverses the ages—whether roaming the scorched deserts of Mars, the crumbling cathedrals of Reformation Europe, or the haunted back alleys of 1912 Shanghai. With a pen rooted in conviction and imagination, he writes tales where faith meets fire, where courage is tested, and where truth costs everything.

His works span genres but share a common spirit: from Flames of the Word: Stories of Reform and Renewal, which breathes life into the heroic journeys of the great Reformers and Bible translators, to Red Dust, Steam, and Glory, a collection of pulpy, high-octane spiritual adventures set among the stars, and The Phantom Atlas, a globe-spanning supernatural mystery set on the eve of modernity.

Drawing on deep historical research and a love of golden-age adventure, John crafts stories that are both thrilling and thoughtful—celebrating conviction, sacrifice, and the eternal battle between light and shadow. He writes for readers who hunger for meaning as much as excitement.

When not writing, John explores historical sites, teaches, and hikes through forgotten places with a notebook in hand. He lives in the American Southwest with his family and far too many books.

John Bailey would like you to consider his book: Quade! Book I: The Titan Contract (The Quade Expeditions 1)

On Titan, survival isn’t guaranteed. Trust is even rarer.

Commander Elias Quade was preparing to retire.

Then the offer came.

A buried alien vault beneath the methane storms of Titan.
A sealed artifact no one has opened.
A private contract no one else will take.

The risk is extreme. The pay is exceptional.

But Quade quickly discovers he’s not alone.

A rival expedition—backed by the powerful Axiom Directorate—is already moving in. Corporate interference, sabotage, and cryovolcanic instability turn the mission into a race against time.

As drones fail, temperatures plummet, and the terrain fractures beneath their feet, Quade must rely on skill, discipline, and human resilience—not just machines—to survive.

What they recover will point to something far larger than a single artifact.

And someone is willing to reshape humanity’s future to control it.

The Titan Contract is the first novel in The Quade Expeditions, a hard science fiction survival series blending realistic space exploration, corporate rivalry, and high-stakes planetary danger.

Perfect for readers who enjoy:

• Competent protagonists
• Realistic technology
• Survival against hostile environments
• Moral tension without melodrama

The Expedition begins here.

X.com-@JohnBailey64182

Meet Frederick Gero Heimbach

Look for Frederick Gero Heimbach’s fiction in Analog Science Fiction and Fact and at Mysterion Online. He was editor of the podcast Protecting Project Pulp throughout its run. He can be found on the internet as Fredösphere and in the real world as a resident of Ann Arbor, Michigan, along with his family. He is the author of two novels: The Devil’s Dictum and Ronald Reagan’s Brilliant Bullet.

X.com- @Fredosphere

Frederick Gero Heimbach would like you to try his novel: Buckingham Runner

I’m sixteen and I’m living in a prison. It’s called Buckingham Palace. I’m Alfred, Prince of Wales.

My parents are dead. My grandma–the Queen–has lost her mind. My only friend is an alcoholic corgi named Wormwood. I’m being raised by bureaucrats. Who hate me.

The tabloids call me ROYAL BRAT. That’s for getting kicked out of Eton. For setting fire to the chapel. And stabbing the headmaster in the foot with a syringe.

I’m doing a runner. Someone’s got to help me!

Maybe those kids can. Yeah, them. In the Westminster School uniforms. The clever clogs, raising their hands, answering the teacher’s questions. The athlete, the genius, the girlboss, the babe. Each with a brilliant future. At Oxford. Or Cambridge.

Would they throw that away for my sake? Would they risk getting sacked from London’s top school to help a poor tosser like me? When guards are watching my every move, listening in on every conversation? Me, with a bloody GPS tracker in my hip?

I’m a hot mess. They’ve got it all together. I’m a prisoner. They can go anywhere. I’ll never escape–unless they take pity on me.They better. I’m this close to striking the match that burns Buckingham Palace to the ground.

Meet M. L. Durkins

To hear about his writing – X.com-@Aliantha50

M. L. Durkins would like you to read his book: Of Wizards and Warriors: at Aden’s Rest

Students…swords…magic…monsters…what could possibly go wrong?No, this story would be different, Fred decided. This story was going to turn on them doing the right things to defeat the bad guy. And the first thing to do was to work together…

Parmea, a nation beset by barbarians and monsters on all sides, depends on the graduates
of Aden’s Rest Academy and other schools like it to supply competent warriors and wizards to
protect its people from the Vinrayid who are determined to conquer them. Fred and her best
friend Cass are beginning their first year at Aden’s Rest. She has always longed to be a mighty
warrior, and he has always dreamed of being a powerful mage. Will their dreams set them on the
path to be the defenders Parmea needs?

Meet Kit Sun Cheah

Singapore’s first Hugo and Dragon Award nominated writer. A blogger and martial artist, he is the Herald of the Pulp Revolution, combining the aesthetics and mindset of the pulp era with modern-day tastes and tradecraft.

Author of the Covenant Chronicles and Song of Karma series.

Website: cheahkitsun.com

Twitter: @thebencheah

Facebook: benjamin.cheah.7

MeWe: bit.ly/2D1L2UK

Steemit: @cheah

Kit Sun Cheah would like you to consider his book: Saga of the Swordbreaker 1: Dawn of the Broken Sword

Li Ming is a small-town boy with big dreams.

In the era of the Five States and Ten Corporations, the immortals of the jianghu stand head and shoulders above the masses. Li Ming aspires to join their ranks.

But the world of the rivers and lakes is fraught with peril. Deception and danger lurk in the shadows. Bloodthirsty beasts roam the wilds. Martial cultivators constantly battle for wealth, glory and status.

Armed with his ancestral swordbreaker, Li Ming enters the jianghu as a biaohang, eager to deliver justice with steel and magic—and to chase the dream of immortality.

But first, he must prove himself worthy.

Meet Bryce Beatty

Sometimes I feel like I was born 70 years too late. I love big band jazz and swing dancing. I read pulp novels written by folks like Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs & Lester Dent. I often listen to old time radio programs. I dig the style of the 30’s and 40’s. But then again, I also love my Kindle, air conditioning, and YouTube, so maybe I’m lucky to be right when I am.

Other stuff: I’m very religious (LDS). Politically, I am libertarian. I love my family (a wife, three little girls, and a son). I love old pulp novels, radio theater, swing dancing, jazz and blues music, firearms, writing, reading and I believe in being prepared, laughing often, and showing respect to people around me.

Bryce Beatty would like you to consider his book: Escape from OUB-8

Space pirates murdered his crew. Time for some payback. 

Cavalier Burns is the first mate on an interstellar freighter, and his only goal in life is to someday become the captain of his own vessel. That dream is shattered when pirates assault his ship. It is only by accident that he is left alive. Burning with hatred toward his shipmates’ killers, he is willing to throw his life away if it means exacting revenge on the brutal aliens.

All that changes when he learns he’s not the only innocent on board the pirates’ space station. Now, Cav must race the clock and find a way to get everyone off the ugliest base he’s ever seen.

Fans of furious space-going action and adventure will love this short space opera.

Meet Adam Gulledge

X.com- @werewolftale

Adam Gulledge would like you to consider his book: Werewolf Tale

Days after he and a friend discover the victim of a werewolf, Alex Stryker is attacked and bitten.

As his wounds heal, his senses sharpen, and his anxiety around strangers mounts, he prepares for what he sees as a frightful transformation during the next full moon.

And what he may have to explain if his family or his friends ever find out what he is.

Meet Jerry Stratton

Jerry Stratton writes at Mimsy Were the Borogoves on politics, technology, and programming for all.

He studied Psychology at Cornell University and guitar at Musicians Institute in Hollywood, California.

He has appeared in at least one bad movie from the eighties and participated in at least one ill-fated pre-Internet hypermedia startup.

X.com- @hoboes

Jerry Stratton would like you to consider his book: The Padgett Sunday Supper Club Ice Cream Cookery: Twenty-three great recipes for ice cream from your home freezer

Twenty-five great ice creams and other frozen desserts from vintage cookbooks 1927 and up. Lemon Sorbet, Candy Cane, Cherry-Almond, Chocolate, Coffee, Cranberry, Mango, Maple, Peach, Peanut, Saffron, Vanilla, and Walnut! Including Italian and Russian.

Meet Rob Howell

Rob Howell writes epic fantasy, space opera, military science fiction, alternate history and whatever else seems interesting.

He is a reformed medieval academic, a former IT professional, and a retired soda jerk.

His parents discovered quickly books were the only way to keep Rob quiet. He latched onto the Hardy Boys series first and then anything he could reach. Without books, it’s unlikely all three would have survived.

Now he and his wife run a quilt store, so he’s learned more about fabric and quilting than younger him ever believed possible. However, it means he’s surrounded by sewing machines, of which he has a healthy, non-irrational fear.

X.com link – @rhodri2112

Rob Howell would like you to consider his novel: A Lake Most Deep: The Edwardsaga (Firehall Sagas Book 1)

“Rob mixes intrigue, murder, and magic into his own cool blend.” – Larry Correia

Edward sought a future of honor and hope, but only got murder and mayhem.

He came to the Empire of Makhaira to join the Imperial Guard, who admit only the best. Instead, he pledges his sword—and his life—to an innkeeper rather than the emperor.

In a land known for intricate plots and ancestral enmities, the empire’s corruption seeks to end his life with knives in the night and hidden treachery. And he must face these blades while memories of a father slain, a king defied, and oaths broken threaten his soul.

Can he find the one bringing schism, death, and hate before that steel tastes his blood? Or will be just another who came to the empire to lose everything?

Meet Z. M. Renick

Z. M. Renick was born in Boulder, Colorado and spent almost all her life there until she went to Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She returned to Boulder to do her PhD in theoretical computer science, then worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the related field of computational biology. She has also been writing science fiction and fantasy during the copious freetime that a PhD student and scientist usually has. As funding got shorter, however, her freetime grew more extensive, and there has been more time for writing.

Currently, she lives in Longmont with her husband, three-year-old daughter, and 80-lbs. Labrador retriever. When she’s not serving as the ringmaster of that particular circus, she’s working on putting out more books in the Seelie Court series, as well as creating other fantasy worlds.

X.com link -@ArianneTillay

Z. M. Renick would like you to consider her novel: Red Lights on Silver Mountain Road (The Seelie Court Book 1)

Emma Greer became a deputy in order to help people, so when a friend suspects that his brother’s fatal crash on Silver Mountain Road was no accident, she’s eager to come to his aid. Trouble is, Emma doesn’t believe that the accident was arranged or even that it would be humanly possible for it to have been so. But she soon learns that what’s humanly possible is only the beginning of what can happen on Silver Mountain Road. Creatures unlike any Emma has ever imagined lurk along its shoulders, and an ancient evil has discovered a new way of committing murder. Emma must find a way to vanquish that evil, or she might become its next victim.

Meet Raven Kamali

Raven Kamali is a multi-genre author and poet based in Queensland, Australia. She writes both fiction and non-fiction, drawing on a diverse range of interests and experiences. She holds a degree in Ancient History and Latin, with a particular focus on the Roman Republic and the Julio-Claudian dynasty.

Her debut novella, “Adam”—a political science fiction story exploring the emergence of self-aware artificial intelligence—was originally published under the pseudonym “The Blue Raven”.

She is currently working on her next novel, a science fiction thriller titled “Lazarus”.

X.com-@Raven_Kamali

Raven Kamali would like you to consider her to consider her book: I am Chaos

A nobleman makes a deal with his evil twin. He will be given power and immortality, but he must first become his servant.