Book Promo and Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Book promo

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH

FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN: Herbs and Empire: Merchant and Empire Book Eight

When Saxo smeared herbs onto the great-hauler’s leg, he just wanted to ease the bird’s pain, not turn his world upside-down.

Saxo, called Birdson, has no family, friends, or skills, aside from caring for Master Agri’s great-haulers, the birds of burden in the Northern Empire. A beast healer priest discovers Saxo’s secret—the boy is an herb healer with a beast calming magic.

Now, Master Jeaspe wants to train Saxo to heal. Master Agri wants Saxo’s gifts—and income—for his own use. Yoorst, Lord of the Beasts, has other plans.

When the gods speak, men obey. If they are wise.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Schrödinger Paradox: Heisenberg’s Point of Observation

To save the future, sometimes you have to reach to the past.
Thomas Sutton was not your average fourteen year old, not even in an Ark City. Born in one of the three refuges of the last remnants of life on earth, deep underground, he knows his history. A century after an asteroid shattered and struck the earth, they have been trapped below by volcanic eruptions, toxic gasses, and radioactive dust. But what if he could…change things? What if he could reach the past, to prevent the asteroid’s impact?

FROM JERRY BOYD: Shipping Out (Bob and Nikki Book 34)

After as much as the company has practiced bugging out, you wouldn’t think that loading up a few hundred folks and their belongings would be that tough, would you? Well, if that’s what you think, you haven’t met our shepherd. Tag along and see how they come up with solutions to problems they didn’t even know they had.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Beach House on the Moon

The Moon is a dead world, airless and desolate. Emmaline Waite has known this fact since childhood, when she watched the Apollo landings.

But here she sits on the shores of the Sea of Tranquillity, looking up at the gibbous Earth as the waves roll in. What madness can this be?

She gets no time to contemplate that question, for she is not alone. She is about to enter a realm of love and fear, of mindbending secrets that change her understanding of human history, and of self-sacrifice.

Her life will never be the same.

FROM DAVID VINING: Colonial Nightmare

When George Washington was 21 years old, he went on a dangerous mission into the wilds of the Ohio River Valley to deliver a message from the Virginia colonial governor to a French military base, Fort Le Boeuf, a message to prevent war between England and France. The journey was harrowing and dangerous as Washington, joined by frontiersman Christopher Gist and Iroquois leader Tanacharison, also called the Half-King, braved the bitter cold of an unforgiving winter.

Washington wrote of his journey as a report to the governor, but he gave an incomplete portrait of the goings on of his journey, for he was attacked. He was attacked by something he could not explain. Something not of the New World but of the Old. Something that had preyed upon innocent for centuries. Something that scared him so much that he refused to report it to anyone.

Here, for the first time, is the full account of the colonial major’s journey. Far more than an act to prevent conflict between nations, it became a conflict that pitted evil against a man unlike any other, a man who had to potential within him to lead a nation.

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: CROWDED

95 thoughts on “Book Promo and Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike”

  1. Leaving a c4c here before the comments section gets too crowded. More later, hopefully.

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  2. “Lisa, this place is getting Too Crowded!”

    “Frank, there isn’t a ship or habitat within ten thousand miles of our ship.”

    “That’s still too close! I can smell them!”

    “Well I hope you don’t feel crowded in our ship because I’m not leaving!”

    “Ah no. Shall we get more crowded in bed?”

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  3. They looked out over the narrow valley, watching the teeming masses of monsters bumping up against each other and snarling a bit but, oddly, not fighting each other.

    “Yeah, we’re not going down there.” One said.

    The other nodded. “But I’m not sure we have enough explosives to bury them from up here.”

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  4. June pushed her cart through the crowded supermarket, daughter in tow. Susan, having recently decided that she was too big to sit in the “toddler seat,” was happily wandering the aisles and gazing around. June suddenly noticed that her daughter had disappeared, but a moment later realized that they had just passed the toy section. With a sigh she turned back to find Susan staring, entranced, at the array of bright plastic dolls, toys and… cap pistols?

    Maryanne Walsh greeted her with a grin. “My Keith gets stuck here every time we come to the store.” The two children, the same age, had found common ground over the board games and decks of cards. “At least the Christmas decorations aren’t out yet.”

    “It won’t be long,” June said grimly. “The Sears catalogs should be coming in a few weeks, and then it will be nonstop all the way till Christmas.”

    The women chatted about the doings at the last PTA meeting for a moment before Maryanne ventured, “I heard the last community meeting ran way over time with all the arguments. Do you know if they’re any closer to settling the financing problem, or if they know what happened to that bank manager?”

    June wondered how she’d become the news source for her neighbors – but of course finding the body had a lot to do with that. “I haven’t heard from the police recently. There’s a new development sign posted on the lot across from the school, so maybe another company is taking over from Orange Grove.”

    “And maybe not. Mike thinks this new company might just be the old one with a name change. But,” the other woman shrugged, “it’s all talk. Got to get this food home before everything thaws. Keith! No, I’m not buying you another cap gun…” and with a wave, she headed back to the front of the store.

    June got her daughter’s attention and headed to the produce section, wondering if she could find any information about the new property management group. Start with the phone book, she thought, and made a mental note to look them up as soon as she got home.

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  5. “This is why I put the hoverfans in.” Var grinned as he started spinning up the rotating barrels on Pharaoh’s twin chainguns. He could almost feel the capacitors filling up to the discharge point. By the time his mech jumped off the cliff edge, the guns would be firing at a devastating rate. The hovers would control his descent and let him direct his fire as he descended into the narrow, crowded lanes of the choke point below. Of course Team Crimson would concentrate their fire on him; they’d have to. But Var had, pound-for-pound, the most durable mech ever made. He was betting on being able to soak it all up and hit the ground in fighting shape. This was what he had built Pharaoh to do. And he knew his teammates well: the second the enemy shifted focus to the new threat, Baz and Toad would race their speedy hovercraft across the no-man’s land, and Pteri would be right behind them. This battle was already over. Crimson just didn’t know it yet.

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    1. Hoo, boy. This sounds like an excellent plan – assuming the opposite side doesn’t have some nasty surprise(s) up their mech-sleeves.

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      1. They usually didn’t. :) This is based on a game I used to play, and man, it was a lot of fun…until the devs listened to the wrong people and ruined it. Still kind of sad about that, four years later.

        Liked by 1 person

          1. And that might be one of many differences between books and games. In a game, you can strategize to your heart’s content and then wipe your foes off the face of the map.

            In a book, if the plan is spelled out in the same detail as above… there’ll be some reason it doesn’t work. Possibly a BBEG making their first appearance by trouncing the overconfident hero. Because if you describe the plan and it actually works, the plan becomes a spoiler, and the action scenes no longer have much tension to them. (Some basic advice stolen from How Not To Write A Novel.)

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            1. Right. If this one does work as planned, and the heroes/main characters actually do start winning +75% of the time, there’s got to be a wrench that gets thrown into the works pretty soon. And if I ever do get around to writing this up like a real story, there will be.

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  6. “Where shall we go tonight?” he mused. “To the Grande Cabaret?”

    “Oh, nobody goes there any more,” she said dismissively. “It’s too crowded.”

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  7. Even with the sheer size of Aife, the double-compartment that Katie had wasn’t crowded at all. “So, what are you thinking about, cailín?”

    Silence was Katie’s friend. It had been for the last ten years. She knew silence.

    “Let me tell you what I suspect,” Aife chuckled, shaking her head in humor. “Top or bottom bunk, which one is yours?”

    “Bottom,” Katie replied softly.

    “My apologies,” and somehow Aife folded her seven-foot body to sit comfortably on the lower bunk. “You’re thinking that our captain has a fetish for young girl-flesh, which is why he saved you. Or that this is some kind of game. Or that he’s going to demand things of you that you wouldn’t give for just three hots a day and place to sleep that doesn’t smell bad. If you want to fail, keep those thoughts firmly in your mind.

    “If you want to succeed, and perhaps be something more than a port doxy,” Aife continued, and paused as Katie realized that her fists were so tight, the nails were cutting into her palms.

    “Never a doxy,” Katie hissed. “Kept my legs closed, might have given people blow jobs, but never uncrossed my knees.”

    Aife tilted her head in acknowledgement. “Never a doxy. And James doesn’t want a shipboard doxy, either. Don’t let your youthful cynicism and fear get in the way of an opportunity here, child. I was afraid that I’d have to be his doxy to keep my place, but I’m working to raise him to be his chéad bhean. And if you’ll help me, there may be a place for a dara bean chéile. If not, we shall part well and on the best of terms.”

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    1. Not sure what either of those terms means, but this is neat! There’s a certain cornered-cat feeling to Katie, which works quite well.

      Liked by 1 person

      2. Cailín-Child.
        Chéad bhean-First wife
        Dara bean chéile-Second wife. Aife’s people practice nonsororal polygamy (rarely polyandry, but it does happen) and since she was here first and Katie is clearly a child by most standards…

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    1. Any context here? It sounds interesting, but I don’t yet know what it means.

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      1. It’s a finance term. A crowded trade is when too many people have bet the same way on the same thing. If something goes wrong then there’s often a crash.

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        1. Ah, I see. Kind of like the Reddit thing? Or something entirely different? (I can see the Reddit thing being that, but in miniature, and only/mostly affecting hedge funds.)

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          1. Kinda, that originated as a special situation. The “meme” thing was certainly crowded but GameStop was sublimely stupid.

            Crowded trades are fairly common. Right now you have just about everybody piling into what they’re calling the “magnificent 7”. Basically big tech. That’s becoming crowded because you have lots of money bet on it, all the same way. The other 493 names in the S&P 500 are still down, but those 7 names are enough to make the index as a whole go up. Several being trillion dollar market value now. Thats supposed to be about AI. Should there be a stumble, like e.g., AAPL’s goggles, there might be a rush to the exit. Too many people trying to go the same way at the same time is the other side of a bubble,

            Couple of years ago it was China, before that mortgage securities, before that dot com. My Da used to tell me stories about the nifty 50 before it became the name of the Indian stock Index, obviously no one told them what it meant or maybe they didn’t care.

            BTW, “name” is just a posh way of saying company, mostly in credit and I’m a credit guy. You can call them firms or names, but almost never companies. Ill disguised criminal enterprise is right out.

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            1. Noted. Thanks! (Context filled in for the use of the term ‘name,’ but I’m glad I’ve got a definition/explanation to rely on should context be lacking in some other setting.)

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            2. Interesting. Got another, “whistling past the graveyard,” report today, talking about how wonderful the job market has been, and still is, even though it’s starting to soften…
              Uh huh. Right. That’s why we keep meeting people who tell us they can’t find anyone who wants to work.

              Liked by 1 person

              1. There is a bull case, not much of one, but it’s there, The market is a very good predictor of jobs, with about a 4-6 month lag. it’s been working exactly as it always has in this cycle. If the market actually does power higher from here then this might be as bad as it gets. I’m ignoring Payroll Employment since that’s the top line one everyone looks at and it includes the birth/death adjustment, which simply doesn’t work at turning points. They’re not actually lying for Biden here, how it’s calculated is well known and we saw exactly this back in 2007/08.

                Respondeo dicendum, the market is not really up here, it’s just 7 names and the rest of the market is still in the doldrums. The weight of the evidence is that we’re going to see a typical downturn. Initial claims are up. Continuing claims are up into recession territory and the unemployment rate has started to jump — it was up this month, though you wouldn’t know that from the media, Even ignoring a Germany and the ongoing collapse in China, I suspect we’re in a recession now.

                HOPE is the acronym for the market: Housing, new Orders, Profit, Employment. Employment is the last hurdle before la deluge, and it’s leaking badly,

                As I said, there is a bull case and one should respect it, but I just don’t see it. Hope I’m wrong, doubt I am.

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  10. With the last sound of the spell, a shimmer passed through the flock.

    Thousands, tens of thousands of birds simply stopped. The feathery rain of half-kilo corpses lasted nearly a minute, building up like horrible black snow.

    A useful tool, that Crowdead spell.

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    1. Grooooaaaannnn. Noses up safety guard on Big Red Button ICBC launch in three … two… one… Meow! Presses button with paw

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      1. Miss!

        Only 1600 miles TX to OR, so need an IRBC.

        Maybe folks in Kamchatka need fish from the sky. Re-entry friction probably cooks it – could you add a lemon to the next round?

        (Did you ever drive highway 90 between 80 and 94? You get a fine tour of [old? deactivated? maybe …] Peacekeeper Missile sites. Maybe MIRV warheads include carp.)

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  11. “Tell me, brother Simon” said the old monk. “You are troubled. It is customary for a dying man to give a final confession of his sins, but because I am dying, I am given to perceive a little of the other ream. You are old, with much learning and wisdom acquired over…centuries, I guess. But you also are also lonely and burdened with secrets. Can you not share some of yours? ”
    Simon began to chuckle. His chuckle grew into a laugh, a choked one, at first, and then and open roar. In moments, he was laughing so hard he was crying. Patiently the old man waited.
    “That is the best joke I have heard in many years. You are correct. I have heard so many confessions from dying men, the thought of giving one to a dying man is such a reversal I couldn’t help myself. Yes, my friend. You have earned this. Hear, then the confession of a man who is far from dying.
    “I have walked the earth since before the Great Flood. I knew Abraham and Moses and our Lord himself. I have seen great cities and entire civilizations rise, flower, and crumble into dust. How can I tell the tale of my years? It is too long.
    “You have seen much. Will you also see the end?
    “Perhaps. I do not know. ”
    “Is it nigh? Men fear so. ”
    ” I do not think so. Not yet nor for many years to come.”
    “How do you know this? “Are you some kind of prophet?”
    Simon grimaced. “Perhaps, of some kind. But of this I do not speak. One secret I may share with you is that there are other lands across the sea. They are not known here, but I have visited them and I know some of their tale. The world must become one before the end comes. ”
    “And how will the world become one?”
    “I am looking for a visionary, a water-crosser, to open the way.”
    “Could you not do so?”
    “That is not my task. I may follow, but must not lead.”
    “And where will you find this visionary?”
    “I do not know. This is what troubles me. There have been many I thought would be the one, but they have all fallen short”
    “I have heard of one such, a Genoese seafarer. Foolish, people call him, but there is something”…
    Brother Martin began to cough, a violent wracking cough that left him weakened”.
    “I am sorry” he said “my strength fails”.
    “It is enough. Sleep, my friend. You have given me ease. ” Obediently, the old man’s eyes closed.
    As he left the room, one of the other monks came up. “You were with Brother Martin? How is he?”.
    “He has heard part of my confession, but I fear he will not live for long. Perhaps a priest should give him the last rites. ”
    “Surely you mean he has given his confession?”
    Simon gave him a twisted smile. “That will be the tale”. He left before the monk could inquire further, to eat his evening meal, and afterward went out into the city.
    The streets were crowded. The city was crowded. The whole country was crowded. All Christendom was crowded. He was crowded, with thoughts, feelings and memories. So, a cloistered monk had heard of this man he had been seeking, and recognized him, when he himself, who prided himself on knowing who was who and what was what, had missed him. A Genoese seafarer? Which one could that be?
    The monastery’s death bell began tolling. “Rest in peace, little boy” he thought. “You have done well. I will look once more, with your eyes”.

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    1. This is really cool. An ironic reversal, certainly, and an interesting plot-hook for the finding of Christopher Columbus (I’m guessing).

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  12. My post… it was eaten… (sob)
    Here we go again.

    June pushed her cart through the crowded supermarket, trailed by her daughter, who had recently decided that she was too old for the “toddler seat.” She suddenly noticed that Susan was no longer beside her, but then realized that she had just passed the toy aisle. Turning her cart around, she backtracked and turned down the aisle to find her daughter entranced by displays of plastic toys, dolls and… cap pistols?

    Maryanne Walsh flashed her a grin. “Every time we come to the store, I can’t get my Keith out of here.” The two children appeared to have found common ground among the decks of cards and board games. Keith grabbed a plastic ball and started to bounce it.

    “At least the Christmas decorations aren’t out yet, but the Sears catalogs will be out in a couple of weeks.” Both women sighed. “Then it’ll be nonstop till Christmas.”

    June traded remarks with Maryanne about the recent PTA meeting, and then the other woman asked hesitantly: “I heard the community group meeting last week ran way over time. They’re still arguing about the settlement Orange Grove Property needs to make. Have you heard anything new about that or… what happened to the bank manager?”

    June wondered how she had become the source of information about the murder, but had to admit that the fact that she had found the body probably explained it. “I haven’t really heard anything but I did notice yesterday that there’s a new real estate sign on the lot where they found him. Pacific Properties. I wonder if some other company is taking over?”

    “Maybe.” Maryanne shrugged. “But Mark said something about companies changing names, making deals, basically the people behind it might still be the same. He knows a lot more about finance than I do. But,” her focus changed, “I’ve got to get home before all this food thaws out. Keith! No, I’m not getting you another cap gun1” She waved to June and headed back to the front of the store.

    Thoughtfully, June got Susan’s attention and moved to the produce section. How do I find out more about Pacific Properties? she wondered, making a mental note to check the phone book as soon as they got home.

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    1. Suburban Mothers Mystery? Now that’s an interesting twist on the genre. Nicely done! (My one nitpick would be the ‘1’ instead of a ‘!’ in paragraph 6, but it’s not a real problem. Shift keys are annoying, and the dark goddess Tyops oversees us all.)

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    2. Possibly shady real estate companies? Say it ain’t so! It kind of reminds me of when my daughter’s apartment building changed ownership. The new owners didn’t seem to know all that much about property management, and eventually they cleared all the tenants out so they could renovate the building and rent it to rich people.

      My daughter did a little detective work on the new owners — a pair of East Coasters, with a definite air of parvenu about them. Somehow your story made me remember all that.

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    3. I’m curious about the time setting. I spotted about three references to things that don’t exist, or at least aren’t common anymore.

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  13. Bokrug turned from the window overlooking the crowded street and sighed silently to himself. Chthulhu was one of the more sophisticated of the Old Ones but he just did not understand the realities of the modern world. He must really be desperate to show up here in Sarnath asking for help.

    “We tried that!” Bokrug said, “First with Stalin and then that German fruitcake. Next there was the brutally vicious Chinese guy and, after him, a half dozen minor butchers. The greatest necromantic experiment in the history of this pathetic plane and your damned city is still setting on the bottom of the ocean.”

    Chthulhu took on a hurt expression and started to speak but Bokrug held up a finger to silence his brother as he continued, “Even if we did raise it, it would take a century just to clean it out. Since it sank, trillions of animals have lived, bred, crapped, and died there. Frankly I’d much rather be outside here eating the occasional soul than sleeping in an ancient, barnacle encrusted ruin covered in fish shit.”

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  14. Paul Ehrlich from the rooftops shouted
    That the world was way too crowded
    Soon there’ll be no place to stand
    Reproduction must be banned

    Then the growth of populations
    Of all the world’s growing nations
    Dropped with a booming thud
    His big “bomb” a resounding dud.

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      1. Did he repent or did he falter
        Or his bet with Simon alter?
        No! and whilst his error’s often quoted
        The creepy fool got promoted..

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      1. Just finished Herbs and am going back to the Space Marine anthology. The TBR stack is impressive, and I’m glad it’s not paper.

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  16. The evening sky was gray and dreary when Lord Fyreheart returned home, the light of Sigfrey hidden behind gathering storm clouds. The aged iron gate creaked open at a touch of the nobleman’s hand, the rap of his cane echoing in perfect pace with his footsteps upon the cobblestone path. A pair of guards stood at the doors, still and silent statues as their lord approached.

    He paid them no more heed than they did him, fiddling in his pockets for a few moments before drawing out the key. Old locks clunked into place, and the doors slid open noiselessly, revealing the shadowed interior of the great hall. They also revealed the figure standing at the far end of the hall, his back to the doors, studying a portrait that hung upon the wall.

    Fyreheart stepped in calmly, his steady limp revealing not even an instant’s hesitation as armored figures stepped from the shadows and shut the doors noiselessly behind him. More figures moved in dark alcoves, and soft scraping sounds heralded the lighting of a dozen oil braziers.

    Tap, tap, tap, rang the cane upon the floor as its wielder crossed over the elaborate mosaic of tile inlaid in ancient stone. Finally, he stood beside his white-robed guest, gazing up at the same ancient portrait.

    Fyreheart bowed his head politely. “Your Grace.”

    “Tristan,” Duke Arngett murmured in answer, his eyes not wavering from the portrait.

    “To what do I owe the honor?”

    Silence hung in the air for a long moment. Then the Duke turned from the painting to face the manor’s lord.

    “You have disappointed me, Tristan. Our agreement -”

    “Forgive me, Your Grace, but we had no agreement.”

    The Duke’s face twisted faintly, his angry glare meeting nothing but peaceful implacability. “You said -”

    “I said nothing. You demanded that I lie to a good man, my friend, and assumed by my silence that I had agreed.” Lord Fyreheart tilted his head to one side, looking up towards the Duke with an unreadable expression. “It’s dangerous to assume, Your Grace. And foolish.”

    The Duke twisted on a heel, boots ringing against the stonework as he strode further in, towards the study. “I sent a messenger,” he called back, his voice sharp and cold as a dagger’s blade. “To inform you of my displeasure, and instruct you to attend me at Sunspire.”

    Fyreheart followed at a more sedate pace, the Duke’s armored guard closing in around him in silent formation. “It was quite a crowded street, Your Grace. It’s possible I might have missed him.”

    “He was found dead in the street an hour after I sent him. There was a sword wound through his heart.”

    Fyreheart cocked his head to one side. “That would rather seem to explain why I missed him.”

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    1. Don’t you just hate it? You try your best to be menacing: white robes, a bevy of armored goons, minimalist words like “disappointed” to express your rage — but the guy you’re trying to scare is much, much cooler than you are!

      What’s a villain to do? (The Duke is the villain, isn’t he?)

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Article adjectives are such little things. And yet… the gap between ‘the villain’ and ‘a villain’ is so very, very wide.

        Duke Arngett is a dangerous man in many ways, and would consider himself an avatar of the gods if he actually believed the gods existed. (In personality, he might be turning into a version of Judge Frollo, but with Wrath and Greed replacing Lust.)

        But although he’s known to be the main power in the land and the head of a swiftly-growing purge of ‘traitors, spies, and heretics,’ he’s not nearly so great and terrible as he thinks he is.

        Particularly compared to the Being currently masquerading as Lord Fyreheart.

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        1. Being currently masquerading as Lord Fyreheart

          Lord Fyreheart seems to be a good alias for a Dragon. [Very Big Dragon Grin]

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  17. Lily maneuvered through the crowded theme park with ease, chirping “excuse me” or “pardon” as she dodged around prams and pensioners. Young Nigel had trouble keeping up, and twice lost sight of her as she raced ahead of him. Finally reaching her destination, Lily turned and looked at Nigel expectantly.

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  18. The carousel whirled round. Young Nigel, on the painted steed next to Lly’s, heard his partner’s delighted giggles while catching fleeting glimpses of the crowds of people waiting their turn. “I wonder who they think Lily is,” he thought. “My wee sister? My best friend? My cousin? Or someone else?”

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    1. Fun! (I think you meant Lily, not Lly. Curse you, Tysop! shakes fist at computer)

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      1. Oh yes — they say the best proofreading’s done after you hit submit! Glad you liked the post, by the way. I’m still fleshing out Young Nigel and Lily, though coming up with an actual plot to put them in might be a challenge.

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  19. Alighting from the carousel, Young Nigel said, “Lily, did you enjoy the ride?”

    “Oh, yes,” Lily replied. “I always have!”

    “You’ve ridden one before?”

    Lily paused. “Oh, perhaps I should say it’s a pre-build memory.”

    Nigel didn’t want to be reminded of that. Suddenly the crowds seemed oppressive and noisy.

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  20. Two abreast would be crowded on this path.
    They walked up.
    No one came out to greet them. Within, tall, luminous figures stood about one in the center, kneeling before a font. Some of the luminous ones had wings. Others were taller than human, but wore armor and bore spears.

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    1. Ooh. This sounds really interesting. Angelic figures, or fey in nature? Or something else entirely?

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          1. This is not quite RPGlit. But it has elements.

            (It stems from my working nine works of art, based on the alignments, into a story. Without, thank you, the philosophically incoherent alignments.)

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  21. These roads had never been crowded, but were so empty now that she hesitated whenever they saw another traveler, even an old woman lugging firewood to her hut.
    The day they saw a company of rough-clad men, the dwarves were hustling her aside before she saw any more of them.

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  22. He should have stayed in the village. Somehow. Hidden in the church for sanctuary, perhaps. But they would have come to gawk, worse than the necromancers, who at least regarded the children as not things to stare at. He did not think he could abide their crowding in on him.

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    1. I’d personally advise against trying to take sanctuary in fictional churches. If you’re not being slaughtered on the steps, you’re being emotionally and psychologically abused by the city Judge who thinks he’s religious.

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  23. She breathed in and out again. Whatever happened, she would be knighted. It did not matter for that whether the chapel was adorned with tapestries and flowers and crowded with well-wishers of the highest birth or as bare as it was, whether the festivities would last all day or merely for the length of necessity, whether those performing the rite rejoiced to enroll her in the number of the order, or did it out of rote.
    The priest emerged, grave and carefully attired in his vestments. He nodded to her, and at least seemed to grasp the gravity of knighting.

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  24. The Grundulans were ugly, there was just no other way to put it, butt ugly. Every other species in the galaxy knew it as well, and mercilessly made fun of them. To compensate they started conquering their neighbors. They built a horde of ugly ships and an ugly army to punish all of those who had made fun of them.
    “Well Human, now it is your turn to submit” the Grundulan leader vowed.
    I could have begged, this small planet had no real defenses, save a few hyper-sonic missiles, I could have done lots of things. I knew once the Human Federation heard of this attack they would respond in kind. It would lead to years of stellar warfare and billions of deaths.
    “Do you know you were so ugly as a child your sire and dame had to put dongo steaks around your neck for the chackta to play with you” I replied.
    “You will die Human, all of you will die” he screamed out in rage.
    The Horde came in then at almost full speed, the ships were all trying to be first to kill me. They crowded this corner of the sky in a boiling mass. Just how I wanted them, I fired two of the three hyper-sonic missiles at the boiling mass of ships. They had crowded so close together that as the first missile struck the mass of ships a chain reaction occurred where the following ships were consumed in the conflagration.
    “Tough, but ugly and stupid” I said out loud. .

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  25. JohnS beat me to it — I have to take 2nd place as a designated carp-impact-point

    Most of us know that a group of them is called a murder of crows. But what if the cause of a bunch of crows expiring is not from a nefarious act, but instead directly from natural causes from being overcrowded – is this a crowded crow-dead?

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    1. And what if we heard about the event from crow-to-crow rumors – that might be crowed-sourced.

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  26. How did three Amerikanski astronauts manage to take up more space than all seven of the cosmonauts? Valery Mishin watched the three space-suited figures crossing the regolith to their lander. Was it just a matter of their having a much larger moonbase, so they weren’t as accustomed to working in crowded quarters?

    It would be so much easier if he could ask Tsiklauri. The Georgian had spent some time in the US as a trade representative, so he’d be familiar with their culture.

    However, Tsiklauri was almost certainly KGB. When dealing with a Chekist, questions could be as dangerous as answers.

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  27. They walked, arm in arm, in watery sunlight, dawn redwoods on their left and towering sequoias on their right. Although of course this wasn’t any kind of nature preserve, it was quite — enchanting.

    “I’d thought, back in the dark attic of my mind, your ‘Old Mars’ would be more… crowded. You know, a space frontier on a new non-habitable planet, where you need pressure to be able to breathe, even if you took your own air with you — would be, what was it Clarke said once, ‘Steerage to the Stars’ or something. But Garrett my dear, this sure isn’t that.” Nick’s voice was slow and a little dreamy-sounding. “I mean, it’s not like your planet helpfully gives you good air and weather, radiation shielding, and all the rest free for the taking, along with continents’ worth of land.”

    Their slow path took them in and out of dappled shadow, cast by limbs a few feet or a couple hundred feet above. But mostly stayed in warm sun.

    “It’s not totally untrue; there was this thing where you took a nice big cylindrical propellant tank you’d landed, welded a doubled flat plate on one of the diameters, and split it into two half-cylinder ‘Quonset habs’ you could just plunk down, any flat place, and cover with dirt for cosmic shielding. And actually, if you go ‘downtown’ in Hong Kong Lighter today, there’s crowding enough to suit Old Hong Kong in plenty. Some of the best cooking to be found Redside, too, of course, if you like theirs.”

    They strolled along together, barely anyone even to nod a hello to as they did. Sharing silences as easily as conversation.

    “But I guess our biggest influence was simple intent. Somewhere there’s a big recorded talk by Emilie Westenra, ‘Design for Abundance or Design for Constriction’ — it says precisely what it means. Either you build in the idea, the fundamental principle, you’re going to aim for a high quality and level of life from the start, get there as soon and direct as you may; or else you’ll likely run into some artificial limit you built in earlier, by unchecked assumption or pure carelessness.

    “Someone else back then said ‘Half the worst design decisions ever made were driven by premature optimization’ — you’re not really sure what you want to do or need to do, but you go on and cast things in cement anyway. And before the first re-usable spaceships were flying, and flying again, a guy named Jerry Pournelle was talking about ‘Survival with Style’ while all the dim-doomers were quacking ‘Limits to Growth!’ like Chicken Little hung upside down.”

    A not-quite-nice smile curved Nicola’s lips. “Was that back when Ireland was talking about murdering all their cows, because cow-farts were about to burn up the planet, or some such nonsense? Silly wack any ecological engineer worth her salt could dismiss in a paragraph and vivisect into undying infamy in four pages?” She smiled, remembering.

    “No, that would’ve been during the Little Dystopia, when stuff like that spread beyond conventional ‘wisdom’ into action. The, ah, ‘Club of Rome’ I think, had gone from ‘Limits to Growth!’ all the sad and sorry way to ‘Humanity is a cancer upon the Earth!’ by then.”

    A few passers-by turned their heads at Nicola’s raw, uninhibited outright laugh then. But even their looks were politely interested, not censorious. “Well, it seems clear we’ve ‘metastasized’ far beyond ‘the Earth’, today; poor old clucky hens, they must be spinning in their graves fast enough to risk total structural breakup by now. But seriously, Garrett, what kind of mad, sour-clabbered misanthropy does it take, to be able to hate your fellow-man so?”

    “‘People, who hate people, are the saddest people in all the worlds.’ It’s supposed to be riffing off some old song. But speaking of more sane and practical matters, did you know, figuratively, much of our bio-cycles do run on cow farts, here?”

    Suddenly she looked pensive. “You must be talking about methane, and I know some station ecologies generate and use it… you mean those nice methane-eating bacteria, or yeasts, I believe there’s some of each kind?”

    “Yes, found in nature before we even got to engineering ’em. Just imagine you’ve landed a nice big tank of liquid hydrogen. Heat it up, mix it with CO2 from the atmosphere, run it past a catalyst — now you get methane and water, the 19th-century Sabatier process — both easier to store than LH2. Same for living-spaces CO2 on a long voyage. Now add a bit of oxygen to the methane, keeping enough methane to be outside flammability of course, and bubble it through your methanophage medium. Most of your methane gets ‘fixed’ as biomass, not oxidized for energy. Now you’ve got an equivalent of photosynthesis but without slow, area-intensive ‘growing’ — though you could add lights to your ‘bioreactor’ too. Almost all the mass, Martian.

    “You do have to provide nutrients like fixed nitrogen and minerals; but other ‘bugs’ can digest raw rock dust for you, if you feed ’em what your methanophages can provide. Three or four connected bio-reactors at most, and there you go. No huge ‘fields’ of plants that have to be up on the surface under glass, or down in an artificially-lighted agri-tunnel. All your bio-energy supply comes in, industrially, as… syn-cow-farts.” He looked right at her, now, not vaguely off into near-infinite spaces. “Of course I do hope that’s not Too Much Information, there.”

    “Hah. Get me started about applications field-physics. Or even political economy, though I know I’ll never play at the level of Thomas Jefferson or Margaret Thatcher or Kari Lake. And what we were talking about earlier, it really is near to the saddest thing about all that sad-sack lot, the waste involved. You’ve heard of the Production Possibility Frontier, the edge between what you can make and can’t, vs. — anything and everything you ever could make, the entire complete multidimensional trade-off?”

    “Yes, isn’t that a Pareto thing? Years since I looked at it, though.”

    “Well, the simple summary of the whole ‘limits to growth’ and ‘lock down’ and ‘live lightly on the Earth’ thing is… falling way off that boundary. To do far less than you could, when you could do so much more and so much better, for anyone or for everyone, in so many directions.” She looked at him quite directly now. “So many people say, ho hum. But the unnecessary waste of such a thing! Scarcity is not a virtue and it never has been, never will be. As you say, always design for abundance. Build it in, like good security, right from the start.”

    “Yes. And the Little Dystopia was surely that, scarcity and want and less of everything a virtue — except for its Elite Expert Class. In intent, and sometimes even in reality; though they tried a lot harder than they ever succeeded. Thank heaven.”

    Nick smiled, suddenly and not nicely. “Was it Adams who wrote, first you need a government that can control the people, then make it so people can control the government? Hah! Not even the right things in the wrong order. I can’t ever remember for sure, it makes me too mad. Control us any way you want to do? Try.” Her raised right hand flexed… suggestively. “‘Touch not the cat ‘bot a glove’, says the clan motto. Always remember, a European wild cat may look like a sand cat, but it’s all different inside and cannot be domesticated.”

    But Garrett Fitzgerald was smiling, merrily. “Redwood City here traces to that time, long before Jack Castroneves set boot in the dust. Back during all that lockdown, shutdown stuff, a guy in San Francisco dreamed of Mars and a free city under a hill… first it was a ‘Webcomic’, then it was a ‘shared concept’, then it was an actual plan. Took quite a while till the first plasma lance cut the ground, even longer for the trees to grow. But here they are, here we are; and this is only in the Solar System.”

    And smiled brightly. “‘Think globally, act locally’ works in time, too.”

    (Includes some pre-existing setting and characters.)

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    1. Excellent points! If you’re trying to work this into a book, I’d recommend slimming the paragraphs down and summarizing as much as you possibly can. What feels a little like moralizing is most palatable in tiny bites, mixed in with a riveting story.

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      2. That’s actually something I’d wondered about, editing (down in length a little) after writing (which is ‘gateway’ enough that this is how these two people think and talk). May or may not be a truism, but talking about politics can be rather more interesting than listening to other people talk about politics (or engineering or whatever). And it’s also been said the real art of dialogue is saying things that sound like what people say, but not always exactly in the exact words they’d say it…

        He’s from Hypatia Colony on Mars, which is one of that society’s semi-independent colony ‘polities’ — think almost like a loose federation of city-states. She’s from Marquesas, quite a few light-years away, the (in this setting) infamous planet ‘with five governments or none’ (i.e. the Five Great Houses) so even more cussedly ornery and ‘ungovernable’ in nature.

        Meanwhile the Empire of Man is the biggest interstellar thing going, and it’s at least as self defensive and top-down ‘of course we’re right, we’re us’ as the British Empire was in its own heyday in our history. (Yes, there’s about to be something of a war, around that theme. So if you imagine this as two patriots having a chat somewhere around 1774 or so, not too very bad an analogy.)

        But on a deeper level, I believe this is the very first time I’ve ever ‘caught’ anyone from this particular timeline (closely indeed like ours) talking about the details of the Crazy Years, or politics as it applies to us here-and-now. The whole lockdown-shutdown, “green” revolution thing of today is enough of a historical ‘break’ in our actual history I’ve not been quite sure how to insert it into this fictional sequence of events; and it seems I’m not alone in that.

        Seanan McGuire mentions, in the foreword/afterword material to her latest ‘Incryptid’ novel, that’s she’s not included the ‘pandemic’ or its corollaries in story events at all; maybe never will, because (still paraphrasing madly) it might be very hard to without breaking things. I guess it really is true, one of the biggest problems with future history can be the present.

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  29. Back in 1894, a doctor near Medora, ND was called out to a local ranch, where he’d been told a man had been kicked to death by a horse. He looked the body over, and agreed….but when the neighbors prepared the body for burial they found a bullet hole in its chest.
    After investigation, the rancher’s 15-year-old hired hand confessed to the shooting. He also told the law he did it because the rancher paid him $200. The boy was convicted of murder and shipped off to reform school.
    The rancher (and his wife) were tried for murder in 1895, in Bismarck, 100 miles east of Medora.
    The two of them alibied each other and the jury voted to acquit. This didn’t sit well with the good people of Medora, so they hung the jury in effigy.
    Which is why Medora’s “hanging tree,” was so darn crowded.
    (So says the sign outside the Billings County Courthouse Museum. The story tickles me, it being so very American).

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  30. Nope, they just gave new meaning to the term, “hung jury.”
    The banner they put up on the building behind the tree also expressed their feelings. Suggested the jury would burn in hell, and asking how much they were paid.
    For the record, the rancher and his wife sold the ranch and moved out of the area. Wise move.

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  31. Took me a bit to come up with this but I had little doubt one character would run with it! What it turned into, though…

    The battlefield was always significantly less crowded once Carys began to work her magic. She, Vincent, and Alphonse were getting the hang of working in tandem: Vincent stood as her shield, making quick work of anyone who would disrupt her spellcasting while Alphonse took advantage of the visible threat posed by Carys and Vincent to attack their foes from the shadows, as well as watching for enemy movement within them.

    “Sir Vincent! Behind Lady Carys!”

    The veteran knight’s warning came just in time. Vincent moved to intercept a golden blur speeding her way, spreading Ashleshia’s wings in a protective barrier as he raised his gunblade. He growled as he met the enemy’s advance with a swing and pulled the trigger, gritting his teeth at the impact. The golden blur soon focused into another mech which recovered with a graceful backflip. Its slim figure was reminiscent of the hooded ne’er-do-wells that prowled through medieval cities in the old stories, yet it was armed with a Yamatai sword rather than a dagger or two, and a high quality one at that. Its gleaming white edge contrasted its black blade and its handle was wrapped in gold cloth.

    Rather than being disturbed by this event the pilot responded with a familiar girlish giggle with an edge of cruel mockery: “Oh, Vinnie-kun! Why do you have to keep stopping poor Sakura-chan from having fun?!”

    Memories came flooding back to Vincent. That strange Yamatai girl at Eike’s bar that approached him out of nowhere and that Brad had been so taken with when he arrived. He knew she was no ordinary tourist; he could see that in her ice-cold, whiskey-colored eyes. He just had no idea what kind of professional she was until now.

    “We’re on the battlefield, not in a bar,” Vincent retorted, staring down the newcomer. “I think you can drop your little act now.”

    “Always one to get to the point, aren’t you?” the girl replied with a sigh, her Bastetani accent reasserting itself. “Still, permit me to properly introduce myself to you and your companions, Vincent Austin. I am Azahara Espina, Chosen of Shaula, the Topaz Shadow.”

    “Yet you leave off the part where you’re King Alonso’s personal hatchet woman.” Carys spat, raising Zornitsa’s spear and pointing it at the newcomer.

    “Spare me your contempt, Lady Carys. You’ve killed more people in this battle alone than I have in my entire life,” Azahara remarked dryly. “Who is the real shinigami here?”

    “You may contemplate that in Hell!” the sorceress growled, fire gathering at the tip of the Amethyst Sage’s spear. “Out of the way, Vincent!”

    “Don’t waste your power. If I wanted any of you dead I wouldn’t have let Sir Alphonse spot me,” the assassin replied. “Rather, I simply came here to deliver a message to the three of you. First, to Sir Alphonse: His Majesty has neither forgiven or forgotten your sins. I will collect what is due from you on his behalf. Enjoy what time you have left until then.”

    “You are welcome to try.” Alphonse said, his tone cool and even.

    “Secondly, for you, Sir Vincent,” she continued, her mech shifting its gaze to Ashleshia. “If you ever wish to be free of the burden you bear as an Undying I am able to grant you proper passage to Yomi.”

    “Many have tried, all have failed,” Vincent shot back. “It’ll take more than Yamatai swordplay to do me in.”

    “I was not talking about conventional methods,” Azahara replied, raising the Topaz Shadow’s left hand. A card with Yamatai characters briefly appeared in it before vanishing in a flash of light. Vincent cried out in pain at the flash. What had she done?!

    “His curse is not for you to break!” Carys shouted, pushing past the reeling Ashleshia to confront the Bastetani warrior.

    “Perhaps not,” the assassin shrugged. “I have no specific message from His Majesty for you, Lady Carys. Just know that if you continue to associate with the satsujin-sha and the fu shisha you do so at your own risk. Farewell, fellow Chosen!”

    Azahara gestured to Alphonse and then to Vincent as she spoke the Yamatai phrases before she disappeared in a golden flash. The fire dissipated from Zornitsa’s spear as Carys swore. “Smarmy wench! Who does she think she is?! And what is this ‘Vinnie-kun’ and ‘Sakura-chan’ business, Vincent?!”

    “Long story, and not that kind of story, no worries.” Vincent sighed as Alphonse sat inside Sadalmelik in silence. Even if King Alonso hadn’t dispatched his entire army Azahara’s presence alone just made the campaign against the Mad Empress that much more difficult.

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