Ein Kleines [Nacht!] Promo

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Laura Montgomery

Sleeping Duty

Gilead Tan and Andrea Fielding survived their stint in the military, got married, signed up to emigrate to a terraformed colony world, and went into cold sleep for the journey from Earth. While they slept, the starship got lost and settled for a different world, a wild world. Three centuries after the founding of a colony on the uncharted planet, Gilead awakens to find humanity slipped back to medieval tech and a feudal structure. Worse, the people who want him awake won’t let him wake his wife.

M.S. O’Brien

On Magic

De Magia

This Dominican friar’s famous lectures on natural law, international law, and human rights changed the mind of Emperor Charles V on how the New World should be run. Like others of the Salamanca School, he had a great influence on the US founding fathers. But since Salamanca was also a focus of rumors about doctorates in magic being awarded by the Devil, he followed that up with a lecture on the theology of magic.

Without denying that Scripture is full of miracles and devilish doings, but also without paranoia about magicians and their supposed occult power, de Vitoria takes a calm academic approach to the one of the most controversial questions of his time. He provides an overview of ancient historical and philosophical sources, consults both common legends and new lore from the New World, quotes a lot of Aquinas, and points out that he doesn’t know anyone who’s actually seen anything magical.

Fascinating in itself as history and theology, this book will also give you ideas for fantasy and science fiction. (Will the next colonial period also be fascinated with the occult?) And it’s just $2.99!

58 thoughts on “Ein Kleines [Nacht!] Promo”

      1. I’ve been working on adapting the lyrics from Shut de do but am inevitably distracted into singing the old ones …

        Chorus:
        Check de box, let in de comments
        Check de box, get de comments in de mail
        Check de box, let in de comments
        Read de comments everything’s alright
        Read de comments everything’s alright

        When I was a baby child (Check de box, let in de comments)
        Good and bad was just a game (Check de box, get de comments in the mail)
        Many years and many trials (Check de box, let in de comments)
        Dey proved to me dey not the same (Check de box, get de comments in the night)

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          1. Y’all can check de box. I just subscribe to the rss feed instead of my phone sounding like an alarm is going off because it is blowing up with one of Her Beautiful But Evilness’ 300 comment threads

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  5. “points out that he doesn’t know anyone who’s actually seen anything magical”

    Or as H. Beam Piper had a character say “sorcerers are more heard about than seen”. [Wink]

    Thanks Sarah, both books are in my “to be purchased” list.

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    1. There’s no “Look Inside” option for the Magia book, an instant disqual for me, but I found some of the friar’s works online, is you’d like to get a taste of his thoughts. They’re worth a read, methinks. Looks to be a primary source of great use to anyone contemplating a novel set in that era and place or a similar sci-fi/fantasy culture.

      Click to access Francisco-de-Vitoria-on-War.pdf

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      1. Check again. The Look Inside is working for me now, so hopefully it is working for you!

        I don’t think there’s actually any way to disable it for Kindle books.

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          1. Those can be bad. Like the time I thought something was wrong with my new computer. It turned out that I hadn’t plugged the power cord into the back of it correctly. [Very Big Self-Kidding Grin]

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  6. Thank you, again, Sarah, for allowing other writers to share your space. You are a generous woman.

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    2. Curses! I stayed up all night reading it, way past my bed time. Just left a review. I shall blame Sarah for the lack of productivity and general sleepiness I shall experience today (I don’t want to hear anything about how I’m a big girl who could have just decided to save parts of the book for today, none of that self responsibility stuff from you people).

      I would blame Laura too, but I’m trying to stay on her good side so she’ll write a sequel. There is more, yes? (Tries to look very cute and fluffy.)

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      1. Thank you for the review. You are my favorite type of hawk. And, yes, I’m working on a sequel, and I’m about 20,000 words in. I’m even figuring out what’s happening next, which is useful.

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        1. Excellent! I really love Gilead, and am starting to warm up to other characters. I’m not going to say more in case of inadvertent spoilers, but I definitely want to see what happens next with everyone.

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    1. eI had not noticed that. I bought it because I have her Manx Prize. I love those kind of stories about some niche SF technology of the future. Hers was about cleaning orbital garbage. I read something similar years ago about UPS when the sub-orbital technology was affordable. Well thought details, and part of the ‘non-glamorous’ but still essential parts of the future.

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      1. Thank you, both. Thank you also for the review for Manx Prize, Donald. It made me very happy. :)

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        1. Just a reminder that reviews — positive preferably — should be posted to Amazon for the all-important bumping of rank for any book bought.

          Help our authors sell more books and recruit more Hunny.

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    1. I thank you muchly! I’m sure the good friar thanks you, too!

      (Just to clarify, I’m M.S. O’Brien. There are a lot of Maureen O’Briens who are published writers, including the Doctor Who actress/mystery writer. So I’m going with initials to avoid confusion.)

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    1. I don’t know, but I do know you don’t want to stand close behind any SCA/swordjock guys at a party who have their hands in that position. Because the next thing they do is demonstrate how they swung at that other guy, at which point anybody standing close behind them gets accidentally clocked.

      Why, yes, I only had to make that mistake once. It was memorable, though.

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  10. If any of you have YA titles–or your adult titles have likely teen appeal and are reasonably appropriate (like Freer’s Stardogs)– would you drop me a line with a blurb and a link? I am about done with reviewing Tor’s YAs which frees up slots for e-book/indies.

    No guarantees, but I will buy the e-book, and if I think it’s a non-rec or a “shrug” I just won’t post the review. Correia’s recent book bomb is a good example of a title that wouldn’t make the cut btw.

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    1. Overgrown Hobbit, I’d be happy to send you a review copy of the first book in my YA series, in paper or ebook, whatever your pleasure is. I’m working on contacting you elsewhere as well.

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    4. Sabrina Chase has a YA book out (Jinxers) but while it is a good book, I personally think her Sequoyah trilogy is both YA appropriate, and likely has “teen appeal” while definitely having MC’s that are positive examples. Also, they are great books. :)

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  11. Try the Treecats series (A Beautiful Friendship, Fire Season, Treecaat Wars) by David Weber and Jane Lindskold at Baen and the Michael Vey series from Mercury Ink (at Amazon or B&M).

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    1. Treecat books are outstanding. Jane has some Fantasy/Romance type novels that are pretty good to, although I don’t know how suitable for YA they are. Jane was one of the few authors I knew about during the SJW-Hugos-as-Art-ignore-the-unwashed-masses timeframe as she completed Zelazny’s Lord Demon (a bittersweet experience, the novel is outstanding, but you can see the ‘hooks’ into a 10-12 great novel series had he lived to write them).

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      1. While I like both Weber and Lindskold, I dropped the Treecat series after Fire Season, they were just meh, to me. IMHO the poorest books I have read by either author (I haven’t read Jane’s romance type novels, as I suspected they wouldn’t appeal to me).

        Weber just came out with a new collaboration with Timothy Zahn (the first of a series) that is billed as older YA, that is very good, however.

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    2. Yes, the Michael Vey series is very popular in my school library, and just won the Georgia book Award last year. Also, freer’s _Cuttlefish_ and _Steam Mole_. Then there is Oppel’s _Airborn_,which I really enjoyed. Best dirigible book ever. Are you interested in audio drama? I can recommend ARTC’s _Menace from earth_. This is an adaptation of the Heinlein story (adapted with permission.) (Disclosure:I work with ARTC). There is also Jessica Day George’s books and Mike Mullin’s Ashfall series, as well as Holm’s _Paper Magician._.

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  12. Huns rock! That’s all there is to it. You lot put Sleeping Duty into the top 10,000 as of 6 a.m. Eastern this morning. Thank you.

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      2. Thanks, Wes. It’s different from my other two, so I’ll be interested in what you think.

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  13. This should amuse folks… all y’all buyers and the blurb keywords got me and the respectable deceased Dominican to #5 on the Kindle Ebooks category of Satanism. (Which means it’s not a very active bunch of readers, or they’re doing other stuff on Friday and Saturday night.) Also #7 in Kindle Ebooks/History/Renaissance.

    They told me this would happen if I kept playing D&D and supported Sad Puppies.

    So I screencapped it, and I’m putting it up on my blog.

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  14. WordPress just did something weird. All of my Amazon links are now just showing their text instead of showing the covers like above. And apparently others are having this as well.

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      1. Totally OT, but I always thought your gravatar was a taxidermy wolf rug, (no, I have no idea WHY you would have that as a gravatar) until I just rolled the mouse over it, and it enlarged it.

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  16. I looked at the “On Magic” cover too quickly and my brain translated “M. S. O’Brien” into Miles O’Brien. I had no idea the Chief was such a renaissance man.

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