*So, you’ll love this one: If you saw this post come up essentially empty except for intros, that was what was saved in draft. When I finished writing the post and tried to publish, it failed because — it told me — I didn’t have permission to publish posts. Since I’m the owner and sole poster here, that was…. weird. I thought “Ahah, Worpress is being funky” found the draft post, which is usually updated to the last minute, and published that. It came up empty. So I went to edit and copy-pasted the contents. No, I have no clue what’s going on, but this is stupidity of a very high order. Very high. As in Colorado-high.- SAH*
Book promo
If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE. That helps defray my time cost of about 2 hours a day on the blog, time probably better spent on fiction. ;)*
FROM PAM UPHOFF: Murder in the Rigel Brigade (Fall of the Alliance Book 6)
Detective Inspector Smirnov is back!
On medical leave, with his leg in a cast, so the man gunned down in the street wasn’t his case. Even thought he’d been in a meeting with the man just a few hours before.
No, his problem was reviving the Rigel Brigade because a cross dimensional World has set it’s sights on Rigel as a nice place to acquire.
So it’s time for a cross-dimensional shopping trip for the equipment and personnel the Brigade is going to need.
And return to find the Council Chairman and eight others dead in a brutal assassination.
Can Inspector Smirnov solve the crimes while training the Brigade? And can he do it before the next invasion?
FROM AMIE GIBBONS: Scorpions of the Deep: A Southern Psychic Thriller (The Scorpions Demonic Thrillers Book 1)
If you love chilling, demonic horror that’ll keep you up at night, and stories of the ultimate battle between good and evil for humanity’s soul, then plunge into this pulse pounding, paranormal thriller series from bestselling author Amie Gibbons.
Since The Fall, demons have walked the Earth. Most people these days don’t believe. But as the world grows darker, what they don’t know will hurt them.
Sarah Blakely’s back home after her life falls apart. With no plan, no direction, and no hope, she could use something to believe in. Especially after her depressed mind starts playing tricks on her.
She’s seeing and hearing things that aren’t there, that can’t be there, because the supernatural isn’t real…
Sarah’s either losing her mind, or there are more things in Hell and Earth than are dreamt of in her philosophy, and they’re using her depression to break her. She’s not sure which would be worse… but she’s about to find out.
FROM DAVID COLLINS: The Void Ripper (Starship Medusa Book 1)
The AI informed Jason that due him having to some traces of alien DNA, he was now the Captain of a massive alien Starship. That should have been good news.
Except that a lot of government agencies had different ideas about the massive ship.
And then there were all these other different alien races, and the wars.
And the AI, it may have gone a little insane being a derelict for centuries…
But real problem was, Jasons DNA had a second trait, one that shouldn’t be there…
FROM CLAYTON BARNETT: Obligations of Rank
Empress Faustina has always ruthlessly used those around her. With her three sons now young men, it is their turn.
To the imperium’s west, the Texans are increasingly unhappy with the empress, especially following her use of a fusion weapon against the city of St. Louis. A broken demi-human, Edward, is sent to patch up what affairs he can.
North, fleeing the ice and snow of a coming ice age, the Canadians and their army are on the Ohio River, threatening territory the imperium considers its own. Young human Robert, undercover as a simply legionary, joins a task force to find out what is going on.
But the prize is the terraforming of Mars, led by the Russian Empire. Crown Prince Laszlo, a friend of the Russian court, takes an experimental ship to determine what they and their Machine allies are doing on the once-red planet.
FROM PAUL CLAYTON: Escape From the Future and Other Stories
What if you had access to a time machine and could go back to visit a deceased love… one more time. Would you?
In 1962, Bobby Newman’s Grandpa, a basement inventor, loses his wife to cancer, then begins to lose his mind to grief. While tuning up his not-yet-perfected time machine for one last visit with his wife, he ends up going the wrong way… into the dystopian future of 2025. Inexplicably, he sends the machine back.
Fourteen-year-old Bobby uses it to lead Mom and Dad on a mission to find Grandpa and bring him back.
But Grandpa has other ideas…
FROM SAM SCHALL: Destiny from Ashes
Colonel Ashlyn Shaw is on a collision course with an enemy determined to destroy her and all she holds dear. Honor demands she not turn away from the upcoming battle. Duty requires her to do whatever is necessary to protect her command and her home system. The Corps and her family stand with her, ready and willing to do whatever it takes to finally bring this war to an end.
But when the enemy turns out to be closer than she thinks, how will Ashlyn react? Will this finally be what breaks her or will it see the might of the Fuerconese Marine Corps raining death and destruction down on all who would stand against Fuercon and her enemies?
Honor and duty. Corps and family. These are the hills upon which Ash and every Marine in her command will live and possibly die as they fight to protect Fuercon and her allies.
FROM DAVE FREER: Cloud-Castles
Augustus Thistlewood was an idealist. The youngest scion of a vastly wealthy family, he’d come to help the poor, deprived people of the strange world of Sybill III – a gas-dwarf world with no habitable land. The human population, descendants of a crashed convict transport, lived on a tiny, crowded, alien antigravity plate they called ‘the Big Syd’, drifting through the clouds in the upper atmosphere. It was a few square miles of squalor, in a vast sea of sky, ruled by the degenerate relics of two alien empires.
The problem was that the people of the Big Syd wanted to help themselves, first – to his money, his liberty, and even his life.
Only two things stood between them and this: the first was his ‘assistant’ Briz, – a ragged urchin he’d picked up as a guide. She reckoned if anyone was going to steal from Augustus, it was going to be her, even if she had to keep him alive so that she could do it. And the second thing was Augustus himself. He didn’t know what ‘giving up’ meant. Actually, he didn’t know what most things meant. As a naïve, wide-eyed innocent blundering through the cess-pit of Sybill III, he was going to have to learn, mostly the hard way. Some of that learning was going to be out in the strange society that existed on the endless drifting clumps of airborne vegetation, and the Cloud-Castles of the aliens who hunted across them. Most of it was learning that philanthropy wasn’t quite what they’d taught him in college.
FROM KATRINA LEGG: Some Like it Bot (Noir Good Deed Goes Unpunished)
When the blonde bombshell walked into his office, Deputy Corbin was certain he’d seen this show before.
Then she asked him to solve her murder.
Deputy Corbin will have to follow a convoluted trail of lust and madness to save the tragic starlet… and he might not be in time, even if he figures out who did it.
This is a long short story, not quite a novella, and should not be mistaken for a novel.
FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Other Rhodes (Rhodes Mysteries Book 1)
Lily Gilden has a half-crazed cyborg in her airlock who thinks he’s Nick Rhodes,
a fictional 20th Century detective. If she doesn’t report him for destruction,
she’s guilty of a capital crime.
But with her husband missing, she’ll use every clue the cyborg holds,
and his detective abilities, to solve the crime her husband was investigating
when he disappeared.
With the help of a journalist who is more than he seems,
Lily will risk everything to plunge into the interstellar underworld
and bring the love of her life home!
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.
If you have questions, feel free to ask.
Your writing prompt this week is: RECESS
According To Hoyt 
The two Ultras hovered over the ruins of the playground.
“What the heck happened here?”
“A bunch of bullies were picking on a kid and the kid’s powers awoke. Fortunately, nobody was killed but the kid wrecked the playground.”
“Well, this is one recess the children won’t forget.”
So what if he had trouble sitting still, something that he steadily got better at over time, but that would never be easy? No one expected that of little boys, and while school was hard to endure, there was recess and lunch and the older kids were expected to help the younger kids in the one-room schoolhouse, so there was at least some moving around.
And although he had trouble sitting still in a chair inside, he had no trouble being quiet and motionless outside.
“Not inside!” Jean interrupted, seeing where this was headed. It wasn’t a temper tantrum, now. It was two brothers rough-housing. With weapons-grade metal. They’d be okay, but he was pretty sure his apartment wouldn’t be.
The phone on the table rang. Breda picked up, saying “Second Lieutenant Breda,” and listened for a moment. Then, covering the mouthpiece, “It’s Havoc. He’s got two boys over there who need recess. Wants to know where to take them.”
Roy took the phone from Breda. “Can’t you just take Ed somewhere? Or will Al just wreck the place while you’re gone?”
A leg of a wooden stool splintered, trampled by heavy boots: backed up against the breakfast counter, Dominic was being throttled by the enraged little Ranger. Reaching back behind him, the Director grabbed an
empty coffee mug and slammed it on the Ranger’s thick skull. Temporarily addled, Evangelo let go, and Dominic pushed him away with a boot to the groin.
…This is the way it always ends up— the Watcher thought to himself; a man has a perfectly good reason to kill someone, and he gets talked out of it because of some sad-eyed seductress…
The Watcher frowned. If ever there was a good reason to just kill someone, here it was—an evil plan, genocide, etcetera…
Dominic threw Evangelo across the sturdy coffee table; the Ranger slid across it and careened into the end table with its unlit kerosene lamp, overturning the lamp and spilling its oil everywhere. The sharp odor of
flammable liquids filled the air—that’ll have to be cleaned up before we can light a fire this evening grunted the comfort-minded Watcher.
Odd, to be the voice of reason here—but then again, breaking up fights part of the Watcher’s job description back in the days as Public Servant, and this fight was proving damaging to the comfy surroundings. If they
burn down the cabin, I’ll never get a bath, the Watcher grumbled. More importantly, it was distressing an already distressed Rose.
A flurry of fists exploded from behind the couch and bashed into the wall, knocking down a shelf of books. A translation of Confucius slid to the ground along with the entire works of Shakespeare; Zora Neale
Hurston and a whole host of twentieth century authors came flying through the air, with William F. Buckley landing next to Gore Vidal in a tangled heap of torn pages. The Watcher reached down and picked up
Kipling, and “Recessional” floated to the floor in tatters.
Oh, Hell naw… the Watcher grumbled inwardly. It is one thing to kill a man, but it is quite another to kill a
book. Provoked, the Watcher removed his own badge and laid it on the table. It was time to stop this carnage.
WATCHER of the DAMNED: Babe’s Blood
The table was set into a small recess in the wall-if I had to make a guess from the mandatory hatches, it was covering up water pipes-and you had to maneuver carefully to find your seat.
“Great thing about this seat,” Avetta chucked, “is the water makes it hard for other people to listen in, messes up bugs and such.”
The underlying noise wasn’t a problem, but if you had time and a good software package, you could make the words out. Probably not in real time, which I was willing to live with right now in exchange for making things easier all around for everyone. “So, what is going on here?”
Um, excuse me. I posted two vignettes (well, neither went as low as 50 this time) and they didn’t post. Last time I kept posting, I ended up with lots of duplicates, so just letting you know. Thanks, Bye.
I’ll go look. (Kicks word press.)
There was a recess in the wall, with an unlit candle before an icon of the Three Wise Men. Ava drew a deep breath. She could come back to it for her prayers. For now, she would look about the room. See where the windows looked out, and upon what.
“Mommy?” That afternoon Julie had been much less talkative than usual. Instead of watching TV after school as she usually did, she had wandered into the kitchen and was now sitting sideways on one of the chairs around the table, watching her mother cook.
“What is it, Julie?” Nancy, still not certain what she was going to fix for dinner, had grabbed a chunk of still-frozen hamburger and was now turning it over and over in the pan, shaving cooked meat off the central mass as it slowly shrank in size. The excitement at Grandon Elementary after the discovery of a dead body across the street had delayed their return home.
“Do you think the police will find out why that man died?”
Nancy sighed, turned the burner down to low and came to sit with her daughter. “Yes, I do. And I hope it’s soon. I guess everyone at school was talking about it today?”
“They were all standing by the fence at recess watching the police. Bruce Fraser said a mad killer did it and then all the girls started to scream…” Julie clutched her mother’s hand and looked down at the floor.
“Oh, honey. There is no mad killer. It was probably an accident, maybe he got hit by a car.” Privately, Nancy was not at all sure that was the case, but it was clear her daughter needed reassurance. “I bet nothing like that will ever happen again. And I’m not surprised Bruce was making up stories. He probably wanted to feel important. He doesn’t know any more than anybody else about what happened.” Trying to redirect her daughter’s thoughts, she added: “We can have dessert tonight. Do you want to help me with that raisin spice cake that you like?”
Julie cheered up immediately. “Oh yes, mommy!”
“Okay, you feed the dog and I’ll get the flour and the raisins.”
“You’ll love the tacos there. It’s not really a hole-in-the-wall, it’s actually too smalll. More of a recess. But the tacos are divine!”
“OK, I’ll try it. But be warned, I’m pretty picky about my Mexican food.”
He stepped into an alcove, little more than a recess in the wall, as half a dozen matrons bustled by. Some gave him a glance, as if to ensure that their charges were not flirting in a place that would not hide them from the gazes of others, or rumors.
So, to paraphrase Dorothy Parker: This wasn’t just plain stupidity, this was fancy stupidity. This was stupidity with raisins in it.
“At the least, you have to talk to the gardeners first. Whether to plant in the open, or in a recess, or where the earth is damp, or sheltered from wind.”
“She didn’t tell me anything,” said Rosaleen.
“Rest assured, the gardeners will tell you everything that she did not.”
Nomination time:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/22235707-july-2022
From their niches on the cathedral walls, the carved saints looked with equal indifference. Rose stumbled. His hand tightened on her arm, steadying her so that she did not fall. Though she thought she might have bruises on the arm, she made it to the great hall and their seats.
“You know that Stalin’s mother and his daughter both had red hair.” The speaker was a short man with dark hair and olive complexion, and while he spoke fluent English, his speech was more harsh and guttural than the typical Russian accent.
Shelly narrowed her eyes and studied him. He’d spoken so matter-of-factly, leaving her wondering why the heck he’d brought the subject up. Was it just the fact that her own hair had more than a touch of red, unsurprising given how much Scandinavian ancestry most people in the Upper Midwest had?
However, she didn’t want to respond too harshly. Even if she didn’t have intel that suggested Yakov Tsiklauri had ties to the KGB, she would not want to offend him. She might be delivering vital equipment, but she was still a guest here in the Soviet moonbase, breathing their air.
“I think I’ve heard that was the case. It’s unsurprising,given that red hair is a recessive trait.” No, it would probably not be wise to mention the story brought back by the American reporter who’d visited Tbilisi, that the “Stalin” down there had identical twin sons with coppery hair that would do an Irishman proud.
Jenny was just buffing the last of a dozen small turnings when April came into the shop.
“Oh, these are beautiful! “ her friend exclaimed as she picked up one after another. “I love the different woods you used. And you’ve made boxes and eggs and little bowls and vases and all! Are they for sale?”
“No,” Jenny explained. “I made them to put on display in the den.”
“You mean on that wall with all the different sized cubby-holes recessed into it?”
“Yes, there. I’m going to call these my Recess Pieces.”
Hopefully holding up net for incoming dinner? 😉
The Reader sends a couple of minnows your way. Not worth a carp.
[groan] Carp-ocalypse launched.
Appetizer and entree both! Thank you, thank you! 🙂
Kyle pressed himself into the recess in the wall as his father and his ‘guest’ passed through the hall. A cold chill accompanied that visitor, and the carved, expressionless features told him more than he wanted to know. What was a member of the Hunt doing here?
I wish they had recess for cancer patients…
Nice set of promos this week! Thanks!
Jane waited outside her father’s courtroom until there was a pause in the proceedings. Then she poked her head around the door.
He spotted her immediately and banged his gavel. “15 minute recess.”
They met in chambers and hugged.
“You’re home! I’m so happy to see you!”
“Me too, Dad!”
She pulled him along though ornate halls and up a gilded stairway to the second story, pointing out decorations and artifacts of interest along the way. In front of a recess, she stopped and showed him a fragment of a broken chair.
“This was part of a throne belonging to the former Queen of the Unseelie, Stjörnulaus, she of the Darkest Heart. This part escaped destruction when Great Kali turned her wrath on the Unseelie all those eons ago, and was kept here in mockery by the present Queen. It came to us when she granted us the castle and lands.”
“Given your supposed failure, why did she give you this place?” asked Bob curiously, running his fingers over the ancient wood. “It seems quite fancy.”
“It is finished,” said Sá Miður with a spiteful smile. “She thought to insult and torment us by giving it, because there is nothing left to do here. Every surface in it is drawn and carved in the finest of detail. Her staff was drawing on the very grass of the lawn when we chased them out. But I have other things to take up my time now, seeing to the mindless ones and sharing with my mistress. The pointless decoration of sewage pipes and flagstones holds no interest for me any longer. It is perfect for our requirements, and the knowledge that we are well pleased with her gift is like a poisoned thorn under her thumbnail. Our renown has grown among the Unseelie as well, thanks to this gift.”
“I should chide you for enjoying her discomfort that much, but as it happens I’ve met the Unseelie Queen,” said Bob thoughtfully. “So I won’t.”
“The prosecution…”
“Gleep!”
“…shall demonstrate that Mrs. Popper did wantonly and…”
“Gleep!”
“…with malice aforethought take her husband’s life by means of…”
“Gleep!”
The D.A. broke off, and scowled at the hotly blushing defense attorney. “Your Honor,” he said, “I move a ten-minute recess while Counsel deals with her hiccups.”
The ground shook lightly, and across the corridor a wall slumped in a cloud of dust as it shivered past its breaking strain.
He glanced at his watch, and said “Right, that’s the last. We’ve moved out of the orbital debris cloud, and recess is over. Time to start rebuilding.”
Have you read “The Void Ripper?” It is unreadable. Apparently the author never heard of spell check. Also very disconcerting that every character is written in first person mode. I gave up after 3 chapters.
Read the intro. I haven’t read any of them. You have a problem, leave a review on Amazon. You stop it.