I’m finally awake enough to work. About time.
So I’m going to try to work. It’s important.
Will do something more posty tomorrow.
And don’t tell me:
Because let’s face it, ya’ll are goofy.
To amuse you while mommy is working I’m not here, why don’t you hie over M. C. A. Hogarth’s post on how to write blurbs, and then write blurbs for the books below, which, yes, I totally made up (in a hurry, from Pixabay. With the fonts on the laptop). Make them interesting!
According To Hoyt 
c4c
For a moment there, I thought it was a carp on that fence post..
For “The Witch Cat Murder”
Lord Ycrad had investigated thousands of magical murders but had never had a Murder where the only suspect to the Witch’s murder was her Cat and no way could a handless Cat would have killed the Witch That Way!. 😉
Should I mention that this was a Locked Room Murder where the only beings in the room were the Cat and the Witch? 😀
Witch cat is witch?
Never mind that; I want to know what fonts you used!
Comic Sands or Deli-Gothic, because it’s about a dead Sand-Witch.
The prime suspect in the untimely demise of Lord Penrose was the witch’s cat. But which witch”s cat? And as it (whichever one it was, or both) was, or were, Mistress Melisande’s familiars, could she be held responsible for His Lordship’s murder? These were the questions plaguing Constable Pettigrew, and that was before the appearance of the rat . . .
…the rat immediately ratted out the cat, but how far can you trust a rat? Especially when the rat had such a hard time deciding which witch’s cat to rat out…
er…. witch mysteries — feels forced to say — are all modern day and set in the US.
What a wonderful array of covers! I especially want to read Finding Home, and Changeling’s Mirror looks appealing partly because it features neither a changeling nor a mirror.
Those who enjoy packages for contents that don’t exist are invited to peruse Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual (at thrilling-tales.webomator.com), which at its Derange-O-Lab section features the astonishing Pulp-O-Mizer, where you can create your own pulp sci-fi magazine cover in the finest retro style. I’m ordering 2 for decorating my new dream home in Delray Beach. Then again, most of you probably know all about it already….
Ooh, let me try!
ASHES OF FATE
It was supposed to be a break from work. But when you’re a medium, sometimes your job comes after you…
Miriam Weeks had Big Plans for her week in the wilderness: hiking, fishing, sleeping beneath the stars. But not an hour in and she’s found human remains–and the former inhabitant has wicked tales to tell about murder, betrayal, and corruption in the local park service.
Thrust suddenly into the middle of a conspiracy, and unable to contact the authorities dead man Fritz Friar insists are in on it, Miriam must figure out how to use the word of a man no one even believes was murdered in order to bring justice to those still living.
Can one medium stand up to City Hall? Or will Fritz’s secrets have died with him?
Book 1 of Miriam Medium, Private Eye!
…okay the whole conceit, Cait, is that it’s Ashes of Fate because the remains were burned. Mention that next time. 9_9
I am not Goofy. I’m unique.
I’m more of a Wile E. Coyote.
I want to read some of those books, just from the cover, so y’all best get to writing.
Over the Stars and Faraway
A poignant story about a sensitive astronaut who must struggle with his gender fluidity on a starship crewed entirely by genetic males. Seems that seeking love and fortune in the outer rim is not as easy as it looks.
Gah my brain is fried
io9 and Tor will love it.
The Earth War blurb:
“You call that a death ray, @ssholes? Wait until you see what WE make out of that!”
After twenty years on the galactic frontier, holding the line against the vicious Draknoi, Gunnery Sergeant Joe Buckley was tired of fighting. But when corruption in high places led Draknoi battle-saucers into the heart of Federation space, he would need all his skills to save his family from … THE EARTH WAR
A cat … a rat … and a slim, mysterious woman in a pointed black hat. Were any of them involved in the murder? Detective Sergeant Joe Buckley had to find out. But wait — where did the body go?
A transdimensional experiment gone horribly wrong left Joe Buckley stranded in a blizzard on an unknown planet. Was there any way to return? Would he ever be able to hug his wife and children again? And did the mysterious firefly aliens have a way to help him with his goal of FINDING HOME?
When an arsonist torched his nightclub, fado singer Jao Buckley watched his life’s dreams go up in smoke. But then a dark woman with a mysterious aura offered to restore them — if he were willing to take a terrible risk. Did he have the strength to try? Could he possibly succeed? Or would he die, cold and lonely, among the ASHES OF FATE?
Props on making Joe Buckley part of this.
Um, is that called foreshadowing, when Joe Buckley shows up? Or just Easter Eggs?
It could be either, or both, or even neither. Buckley doesn’t always die. He made it through Spoor & Flint’s Boundary trilogy alive, which may count as trope subversion rather than Easter Egg or foreshadowing.
Hey, I needed a name. And since I doubt I will ever actually write any of these, Joe is in peril he will never escape! MUA-ha-ha-ha-haaaa…
Hey, I needed a name. Also, it’s unlikely that I will ever write any of these stories, and that means Joe Buckley is in PERIL and can NEVER ESCAPE! MUA-ha-ha-ha-haaaaa….
PS: Should that last one have been Joao Buckley? (I don’t know Portuguese.)
(also, if this is a duplicate, WPDE)
But it’s quite a nice post.
I’ve been fondling it, and haven’t picked up a single splinter.
A post that penetrates is an impudent post, practically a prurient peg.
Ashes of Fate
“The things she loves most will burn.”
Not an auspicious birth augury, and Phyria grew up knowing it was true. The scorched dolls and dresses, burned meals . . . At puberty, her family’s house was utterly destroyed by fire.
Thrown out of her village, Phyria has decided to find something that needs to be destroyed, determined to love, whatever it is . . . and as she wanders through her kingdom, hearing rumors of war, it looks like she’s going to have to love an entire evil empire.
You really *must* write this.
Free Book Idea! Free to good home . . . Why is everyone running away? Oh. Right. Yeah, I have too many ideas, too.
Finding Home
Fairfax the Mad had tarried too long, scavenging, and was outside the gates when the Change hit. He knows that Home is somewhere in the chaos of smoke and fog, where it’s more dangerous to believe in something that doesn’t exist than to dismiss as illusion something that is real.
He needs to find Home before another Change takes safety even further away. And before something that doesn’t exist gets hungry.
Bored and looking for an excuse not to go home, Gwen makes an impulsive decision to follow a sign pointing to ‘Nowhere’. She never expected the things she found when she got there, or the people she met.
She also wasn’t sure she ever wanted to go home.
Finding Home
Joe knew his house was right there – all he’d done is walk out into the weird storm to check his fence after those odd lights blazed into his front window – but now he couldn’t seem to find it, or his truck, or anything that looked normal at all.
Then the buxom elf girl ran out of the flashing fog chased by those centaurs…
And yes, I know, cover mismatch – I do realize if one has a book featuring buxom elf girls they should appear on the cover, but that’s the story that came through under that cover…
And where are the centaurs in the picture, hrm?
I figured some of those bright spots were the famous Blazing Optics of Kentaurus.
you sure got my attention
Love at first sight? Or is the post non-responsive. See the next installment on Tuesday.
*carefully checks the fire under the still*
“Ashes of Fate”
Once upon a time, it was thought that the universe was bound by inexorable causal laws, and that reason proceeded from conforming ideas to independent objective facts of existence. Officially, physics has supposedly disproven “realism” since the quantum revolution of the 1920s. But philosophy student Mira Alcubierre knows that the consequences of such a shift cannot be contained in mere microscopic curiosities. It isn’t possible for a world to be “a little bit solipsist”.
Now a series of mysterious crimes are plaguing her small eccentric college town. For the authorities, they are merely a baffling enigma, but for Alyx they are the signature of something that shouldn’t be possible. Someone is advertising, for those with eyes to see, that they’ve found the frayed edges of the world, edges that would make cause and effect a plaything. Bringing a conclusion to this case may require abandoning the order which makes concluding anything possible.
Mira – I need my characters to stop changing their names mid paragraph. AA is a different character.
Macro quantum effects will do that, you know.
“I love this post”
Why not Mynot? From the charming open skies of North Dakota, to the 100 mile drive to the nearest 7-11, to the ludicrously frigid winters that will freeze a bucket of water tossed into mid-air before it hits the ground, Mynot has almost everything. Except for almost everything.
Nevertheless, the needs of the Air Force come first, so 2Lt Cartan packed as many novels as would fit in the trunk of his car, and proceeded. Will the time pass before his sanity runs out?
She’s on fire.
Smoke is rising from her as the fire burns her slowly away. And if Thalia can’t break the curse with seven days, she will be nothing but ashes.
I like several of those covers…
Made while half asleep (I woke up late) on only what I had on my laptop
“The Earth War”
It’s taken billionaire William Doors almost three decades, but at long last his plan to save Earth from climate change is about to come to fruition. The considerable time and money spent working behind the scenes has finally consolidated the necessary power in the hands of the world’s governors to overrule those individuals whose petty short-sightedness would doom us all. At last, the great healing is about to begin. And NOTHING will be allowed to stop his great work.
Gaia’s in a bit of a pickle. According to her estimates, some long-planned regional humidity adjustments must take place within the next five orbits, or the results will be catastrophic to her inhabitants (not to mention her parched skin!). Unfortunately, some madman with too much money and time on his hands has decided to interfere with her plans. It’s going to take all of the strength and effort that she can muster, along with some unlikely allies, to win THE EARTH WAR!
LOL 😆
When Leora graduated from High School, she thought she knew what her life would be. She would get her doctorate in art history, marry Clyde, raise two beautiful children, and live prosperously in one of New York’ City’s suburbs. Then everything went wrong. First Clyde dumped her. Then, disease, death, and disaster ravaged her comfortable family life. Every one of her hopes and dreams burned away. Could Leora rebuild a new life from the ashes of her fate?
“They Missed Their Old Planet…”
NOT THIS TIME
THE EARTH WAR
see also Facebook for cover graphics
“Gentlemen, we are aiming for the stars! A pity, we keep hitting London instead!” Werner von Braun (roughly paraphrased from memory.)
“Once the rockets go up,
who cares where they come down.
That’s not my department,
says Werner von Braun.”
— Tom Lehrer “Werner von Braun”
The thing is, getting the rockets to go up, and not explode much mid-air, is a worthy achievement in its own right. For its time, that was pioneering work in aerospace engineering.
Designing, manufacturing, and testing rockets for reliability is genuinely difficult, even with modern tools. It does look easier inside of an organization with institutional memory of successful projects.
Caveat: I would be much more interested in building weapons, than I would in vehicles for exploration.
As a kid, I remember several times when a satellite launch failed. I don’t recall if any of the more spectacular failures made it on the evening news, but I do recall seeing announcements that X’s launch was scrubbed because reasons. Getting the rockets to go up with reliability was impressive. (Wonders about the failure rate for the V2 launches.)
With respect to weaponry versus exploration, note that the launch vehicles for the Mercury and Gemini programs had been originally designed as ICBMs. Apparently, even the Saturn family was originally intended to be a military heavy lift vehicle.
So, you can do both. 🙂
Those book covers are absolutely convincing. Wow!
The United Nations of Earth exiled us to space thirty years ago.
Called us ‘free thinkers’ and ‘libertarians’.
We’re back, and we’re taking our homeworld back.
THE EARTH WAR
The ALIEN NAME HERE had long and undistinguished history of interstellar plunder. The races of this spiral arm didn’t look like much, but what little they had was more than ALIEN NAME HERE could handle. The mottled blue ball beneath them was their last chance at the score that could save their horde cred…
Ciara, living in the dream of Faerie, received a magical gift: a mirror that shows things as they are. Now she need only hold up the mirror to see the mysterious lights hanging in air, the harsh coast outside the window, the lack of sky.
Now she needs to decide what she must do, because the Queen of Faerie will have no mercy on a changeling who can see Faerie as it is.
“Changeling’s Mirror”
Richard Boquet never did fit in. So much so, that his private explanation for the absurd world he found himself in was that he was an alien impostor swapped at birth. After his first serious accident during a prank gone bad, the baffled confusion of his surgeon forced him to reconsider this as the most likely explanation. What sort of beings would leave a Cuckoo’s egg in the nest of mankind?
For all their strangeness, Richard is forced to admit that he *likes* humanity. Now he’ll have to find a way to win the trust of, and marshall the strengths of his human family and friends against an unseen enemy that is doing everything to exploit man’s weaknesses. He’ll have to face their most ingenious general: A young man from nowhere, now heir to a sinister political dynasty, apparently human, with all the charisma that Richard never had, and ice in his eyes: his “brother”.
The Earth War
Once the premier dance club in the galaxy, Janie’s Paradise Garage has been struggling ever since her childhood rival, Pink Floyd, opened his own disco club, Dance Dance Revolution in the same city on Terra. But Janie has discovered a secret weapon, the best special effects spaceship in the galaxy, Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium. The problem is that the ship has been mothballed outside the defunct Club 54, 6000 light years away in the Crab Nebula and her enemy will do anything to stop, including galactic war!
I have that guest post you asked for a while back, Miss Sarah. Sorry it took so long, just let me know where to send it.
scifi hoyt at g mail dot com
Sent.
The Earth War:
They thought it would be easy. Until the death rays cleverly disguised as skyscrapers opened fire. Now the war really begins.
“Earth War” by R. M. Nixon is a thriller space opera! It’s a ninety-four gun salute to everything hard science fiction fans love. Patrick Wolfram enlists in Technician’s Space Navy to travel the stars and find adventure. Upon graduating from Basic and Advanced, he reports to the frigate TSS Nimrod. There he discovers the enemy of all spacers, boredom. Battles with pirates cure that quickly. After saving his officer from a pirate’s plasma beam, he’s promoted. At large on leave, he stubbles upon a clue to the pirates’ profits. Can he get back to his ship with the information before having an unfortunate accident involving a malfunctioning airlock? Buy this book and find out! You’ll have fun along with Wolfram as he rides the space ways!
Dear Sir,
I am submitting to your SAE Journal of Sustainable Transportation, Energy, Environment, and Policy my article “Systemic Inequality in Automobile Manufacture, Sale, and Operation Laws and Regulations”. In this paper I explore the institutionalized racism and cultural genocide inherent in the past 75 years of developments in automobile laws and regulations.
It is an honor and delight to know so many strange people.
Note: I have not done the work on this. I also have no grudge against SAE; It is just that the combination of automobile laws and regulations, the displacement of the 1950s and 1960s American automobile culture, and the impact of regulation on limiting access by the historically disadvantaged makes this a particularly appropriate way to implement the troll/argument.
I might have a grudge against SAE if I knew it well; many organizations have disappointed me recently.
OVER THE STARS AND FAR AWAY
NASA Astronaut Lincoln Bryce expected a routine mission to the new lunar outpost. What he found instead was a wormhole, part of an ancient, star-spanning network, which drops him on a planet on the other side of the galaxy. With no other option but to keep going, Bryce must survive the strange alien worlds he finds himself on and master the secrets of the wormholes — or else be lost forever.
OVER THE STARS AND FAR AWAY
“A collection of favorite short stories by Keith Laumer, John Ringo, David Drake, Gordon R. Dickson, Robert Heinlein, and six new authors we believe you’ll learn to like as much as we do…”
Maybe if I’d ever watched those Sharpe’s Rifles stories I wouldn’t feel that way; but I almost rewrote the lyrics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over_the_Hills_and_Far_Away_(traditional_song)#John_Tams_lyrics
The Greng ships arrived and, ignoring all attempts to communicate, started…digging up dirt. Vast swaths of dirt, no matter if people or cities were in the way. They just hoovered up the very earth itself.
Wendy understood: Fertile soil, not the dry dead ashes found throughout the solar system and apparently beyond, was the most valuable commodity imaginable – and all that dirt was sitting there just waiting to be scooped up by the Greng – unless she and her the rest of her think tank could both figure out some way to stop them, and then convince the idiots running the government what needed to be done to win THE EARTH WAR.
A bad rewording of John Tam’s lyrics…
Here’s forty credits on the drum
For those who volunteer to come,
To ‘list and fight the foe today
Over the Stars and far away
Chorus
O’er the Stars and o’er the void
Through battles ‘cross the stars deployed
The King commands and we obey
Over the Stars and far away
When duty calls me I must go
To stand and face another foe
But part of me will always stray
Over the Stars and far away
[Chorus]
If I should fall to rise no more
As many comrades did before
Then ask the fifes and drums to play
Over the Stars and far away
[Chorus]
Then fall in lads behind the drum
With colors blazing like the sun
Along the road to come what may
Over the Stars and far away
[This stuff is beyond “outrageously inspirational” — it’s almost like catnip for (us susceptible) humans…]
ASHES OF FATE
Be Careful What You Wish For…
Fatima “Constance” Ngoro has a problem. That’s nothing new. It’s a bigger and a harder one than ever before, of course… because nothing defeats like success.
But at least it’s a brand new problem. For her and everyone around her.
Raised a princess of a royal line — without the burdens of being part of a royal house or a risk of having to rule anything — with the best of tutors and finest of graces. Then fallen into the milling chaos that the new invaders from Europe brought to Africa and its Old Kingdoms. Rising to the challenge as the old magics came back to life… only to find that the Old Kingdoms knew full well how to make a bloody mess of things, long before the chalkfaces ever came.
Now, amid the ashes of her dreams to bring back the best (and only the best) of what had been… with magic tearing apart so much of what she’s fought to preserve and restore… can she find at last the true still calm place to stand on inside, that will let her see clear and act insightfully?
Will she live up to her tutor’s old nickname as her world needs her most — and pull the enduring blessings of wisdom out of the smoldering ashes of fate?
(Sequel to the innovative alternate-history novel Fires of Victory.)
THE EARTH WAR
Now, The War’s Come Home
Pavel Aleksandrov and Cassandra Yates left Old Earth the same way, years and years ago — separately, as children, alone and lost in the crowds of cargo on the bulk transports of the UN Bureau of Excess Population Relocation.
Now, no thanks at all to ExPop or the United Nations government here or out among the stars, they’re coming home. Together. United in a way all their own.
Along with a few score thousand friends. And a bit of hardware this and that. And a certain… level of skill, tempered in the Rising and the Wars of the Stars.
They were supposed to work and die. Instead they fought and lived. And found more than a few fellow travellers and fellow survivors as they did. Along with more of the lost arts of the ancient Vaqueros than Earth would ever believe.
Most dangerous of all to the Regime, they found each other.
Earth has declared them and their Rising a menace that has to be stamped out, an existential threat to its World State that must go extinct.
Which means the homecoming Paul and Cassie never wanted — is here.
Now, the final battle is inevitable.
But will it be another Yorktown… or a new Culloden Moor?
(Sequel to The Star Rising and The Star Wars.)
[Obligatory tip o’ the hat to Jerry Pournelle, peace be unto him, my “ExPop” is pertty much his “BuReloc” from the Co-Dominium future history with the serial numbers filed mostly off. And, for Sarah our Blogmistress in overpopulation skeptic mode: no reason why an Earth of 5 billion, 3 billion, 1 billion cannot be considered “overpopulated” — all that needs is a sufficiently high background level of ambient craziness, cf. “Georgia Guide Stones”… (spit!).]
[This is the last one. I finally had to stop last night when the battery in the tablet I was using hit about 11%…]
OVER THE STARS AND FAR AWAY
The Last Shuttle Flight From Faerie Leaves In…
Once upon a time back in the misty days of Celtic legend, it was “stepping on a stray sod” that could toss you out of the human world into the Otherworld.
Later on, in the glitzy days of shiny Roswell roadside diners and glittery things seen in the skies, it was “the aliens” that might spirit you away, and perhaps leave a changeling in your place, or eventually return you more (or less) okay.
But for James Mackay, payload specialist for a breakthough new zero-gee drug purification module, the last thing he imagined was for his tour on the ISS to be rudely interrupted by… lords and ladies of Faerie in shiny silver ships.
Now he’s understood that Faerie is really another dimension co-existent with ours, and that its people (sometimes not so nice or caring) have been after getting what they want from us and our world for millennia (of ours at least).
And how Faerie, with its different time and space, could just be the key to star travel that humanity has dreamed about for so long — hyperspace, only with elves and pookas and waterhorses. (Oh, my.)
All he has to do, to do anything with that, is go “Over the Hills and Far Away…”
Back — Home.
(Sequel to the offbeat fantasy-SF novel Silver Saucers of Faerie.)
[Okay, almost the last time. It’s better without the formatting typo, really.]
OVER THE STARS AND FAR AWAY
The Last Shuttle Flight From Faerie Leaves In…
Once upon a time back in the misty days of Celtic legend, it was “stepping on a stray sod” that could toss you out of the human world into the Otherworld.
Later on, in the glitzy days of shiny Roswell roadside diners and glittery things seen in the skies, it was “the aliens” that might spirit you away, and perhaps leave a changeling in your place, or eventually return you more (or less) okay.
But for James Mackay, payload specialist for a breakthough new zero-gee drug purification module, the last thing he imagined was for his tour on the ISS to be rudely interrupted by… lords and ladies of Faerie in shiny silver ships.
Now he’s understood that Faerie is really another dimension co-existent with ours, and that its people (sometimes not so nice or caring) have been after getting what they want from us and our world for millennia (of ours at least).
And how Faerie, with its different time and space, could just be the key to star travel that humanity has dreamed about for so long — hyperspace, only with elves and pookas and waterhorses. (Oh, my.)
All he has to do, to do anything with that, is go “Over the Hills and Far Away…”
Back — Home.
(Sequel to the offbeat fantasy-SF novel Silver Saucers of Faerie.)
I like the cute little mushroom house.
I had a similar toy when I was little.