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

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Book promo

*This is not an excuse for this being late. It’s a “argh” stop giving me things I didn’t ask for, directed at wordpress. No really. WordPress decided to add an experimental “AI assistant” to help me “write your posts.” So, something I don’t need, which gets invoked whenever I want to do something more than image and text, or even to format a blog. And when it comes up, it bolixes everything. Not just wordpress, which hangs up on an infinite loop, but also the browser. For something I don’t need, didn’t ask for and frankly don’t want. GRRRRRR. So this is my FOURTH attempt at this post, and …. three hours! Word press always delenda est, of course, but could it please stop trying to be smart? We can deal with its stupidity. This attempt at intelligence on the other hand is over the top stupid. – SAH*

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

Edited by Jamie Ibson, with a story by Dan Bridgwater: We Dare: Old Age and Treachery.

Fifteen outstanding authors. Fifteen stories about people who have been there before!
Never underestimate an old man in a business where men die young.
War is a young man’s game, and one where failure usually leads to your death. There’s a reason some people survive when others don’t—they’re faster, stronger, smarter, and usually luckier than everybody else—and you antagonize them at your own peril!
From knowing how to judge the intelligence data to understanding how to play “the long game,” or just having the experience from past operations to be able to tell when things are about to go wrong, these old men and women know what they’re doing… and woe betide the new recruits who don’t listen. Be careful, because that old timer sitting next to you—the one who doesn’t say much—may have a skill or maybe even a robot that’s going to kick your butt!
For, as the old-timers know, an ounce of experience is worth a pound of youthful exuberance!

From Karen Myers: Broken Devices: A Lost Wizard’s Tale (The Chained Adept Book 3)

Book 3 of The Chained Adept
CHAINS WITHOUT WIZARDS AND A RISING COUNT OF THE DEAD.
The largest city in the world has just discovered its missing wizards. It seems the Kigali empire has ignited a panic that threatens internal ruin and the only chained wizard it knows that’s still alive is Penrys.
The living wizards and the dead are not her people, not unless she makes them so. All they have in common is a heavy chain and a dead past — the lives that were stolen from them are beyond recall.
What remains are unanswered questions about who made them this way. And why. And what Penrys plans to do to find out.

From Holly Chism: Lizzy’s Tail

A small, plush horse learns what it means to be real when a little girl chooses her and takes her home. Through adventures and accidents, Lizzy the horse becomes real to her little girl, Carrie, even though she is still a toy.

By Robert J. Horton, Revived by D. Jason Fleming: Three Riders (Annotated): a pulp western omnibus

iktaPOP Media proudly presents three classic westerns by pulp author Robert J. Horton!
Rider o’ the Stars
When he was hired on to the Diamond H Ranch, the stranger gave his name as Dane. After seeing his skill with rope and gun folks started calling him “Lightning Dane”.
Was he a gunman? An outlaw? Why was he here? Nobody knew except Dane himself. And he wasn’t talking.
The Prairie Shrine
Annalee Bronson and her mother left everything behind when her father died, setting out to homestead in the prairielands of Montana. But being from the east, they simply don’t have the experience to cope with all the circumstances they find themselves caught up in.
Luckily, prairie poet and loafer Andy Sawtelle and mysterious gunman Silent Scott are more than willing to lend a helping hand.
The Man of the Desert
It starts with a stampede, and never lets up from there!

From Leigh Kimmel: The History of the Implementation of the Library Computer System (LCS) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Originally the author’s thesis for a master’s degree at Illinois State University, this work examines the history fo library automation at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from the earliest beginnings through the implementation of the Library Computer System (LCS) under the leadership of Hugh Atkinson to the creation of the ILLINET Online (IO) system. All of the chainges are studied in teh contest of the Illinois Board of Higher education (IBHE) mandate for library resource sharing throughout Illinois’ academic libraries to reduce expenditures while maintaining quality scholarship and education, and of the effects these changes had on library services to the user population.
The process of implementing LCS is studied to show the way in which the library administration handled the various crises as they arose and what effects these decisions had on the long-term structure of the system. Following implementation, it continues to study the subsequent developments of the online computer system to increase service to the library’s users. In addition, three doctoral dissertation are examined which used LCS as a research tool for the study of collection and use patterns in academic libraries. Finally, the author examines the results of automation at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the context of the academic community and the state of Illinois at large, and draws conclusions from them.

From Lawdog: The Africa Files (The LawDog Files Book 2)

Africa is different.

Most people who grew up in the Western world don’t realize just how different.

In this volume, LawDog relates stories of growing up in West Africa, including run-ins with the flora and fauna, a younger brother, their engineer father and redheaded mother.

The Africa Files isn’t just a collection of childhood shenanigans, though there’s a lot of that, but also a fond recollection of a time and place that shaped a Texas lawman.

From Blake Smith: A Kingdom of Glass: A Novel of The Garia Cycle.

Zara hasn’t seen her family in eleven years, but she doesn’t mind. They sent her to live in a neighboring kingdom when she was small, and she’s adopted her foster parents in their place. She lives the life of an aristocratic Garian girl- riding her horse, shooting her bow, exploring the castle with her friends- and she has nothing to wish for.
Until she’s summoned home, to a prospective marriage she doesn’t want, family she doesn’t remember, and a poisonous royal court that threatens everything she’s ever known. The East Morlans are nothing like Garia, and Zara struggles to find her place among the scheming Morlander aristocrats. Along the way, she makes new friends, meets enemies, and falls in love. But secrets abound in the glittering palace, and Zara must discover who she can trust as she fights for her life and freedom in a fragile, beautiful, kingdom of glass.

From Pam Uphoff: Aslanov (Fall of the Alliance.)

The Three Hundred Families control the Three Part Alliance. To the Elite, their Family is their first priority.
Twenty years before the Fall . . .
Lord Dzon Konstantin Aslanov returns Home after a five year long assignment to another World to find his Family as poor a fit as ever. He is about to find out the cost of disobedience.
If only they’d tell Konstantin why he needed to marry so soon, to the right woman. And not like his idiot brother eloping with . . . the daughter of Kon’s new boss at the Bureau of Intelligence. And why should Kon marry this particular woman when her aunt was so much more interesting . . .
As Kon investigates government contract fraud, he begins to suspect his Family is involved . . .
And the consequences . . . deadly

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: TASTEFUL

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

  1. The tale pale gentleman said “My Dear, you look very tasteful… in that dress”.

    The lightly tanned gentlewoman replied “Thank you sir and your suit makes you look very refined. But, I must remind you that I’m not “your dear” and I react poorly to those who try to take what is not theirs.”

    The pale gentleman bowed and replied “I quite understand, and I hope this evening with bring us mutual pleasure.”

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  2. “This line of work isn’t, ah… what’s the word I’m looking for? Tasteful! Yes, that’s it. This isn’t a particularly tasteful line of work.”

    “We’re in the revenge business, pal. You want a job that’s tasteful, go work at a restaurant.”

    Liked by 1 person

  3. Software being more “helpful”. Quit Being Helpful! I have lost so much time fighting my tools that some marketing “person” made the developer do something that worked for the marketing person but just makes it work horrible for those of us that don’t think in cute fuzzy wuzzy pretty colors or flashy screens and fancy animations or weird ass fonts/pictures! (SOME of us have dyslexia and have to memorize every bloody version of an icon)

    Liked by 1 person

    1. @ BobbieSue > “tools that some marketing “person” made the developer do”

      I agree totally with the general sentiment of “don’t help me with things that I don’t want.”
      In re your particular comment, when I was working as a programmer, our definition of software (lifted from some long forgotten source) was: “the thing we write that makes the hardware do what the salesman sold.”

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    2. I’ve seen so many things recently that boil down to “new AI feature already knows what you want!” No, it forking doesn’t. If the AI or anybody involved in it knew what I wanted they’d stop forking around with my tools and LEAVE ME ALONE. I can’t even tell you how tired I am of New AI Powered Assistants popping up and telling me to do something I don’t need or want to do. At this point, if it’s not integrated with some kind of AI tomfoolery, you can sign me up for two of it.

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      1. Have you looked at the Windows 11 stuff?

        “Well, we KNOW that all these things aren’t REALLY wanted, because the systems that give us feedback say they’re not used.”

        … WEIRDEST “our only customers are zero privacy businesses” argument ever.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. There is no way to turn off Windows 11 communication with the mothership short of buying the enterprise version. The Reader has tried, which is why the one laptop he bought that came with it is now running Linux. Other machines in the Reader’s abode are being converted as time allows.

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          1. ????

            look at the searches for “how to stop windows 11 upgrade” and the stuff about limiting updates by regidit to … uh.. ten update something or other.

            It works.

            Iknow this because I want my bar on the left or rright!

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            1. The Reader’s misunderstanding. You can stop the upgrade. If you have Win 11 you can’t stop it from phoning home.

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            2. Oh, you are one of THOSE Wierdo’s. The bar belongs on the TOP /impish grin. But I want to do “Bad Things” to those folks that took that ability away. wastage of limited screen real-estate makes developer cranky.

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      1. I get emails from a place that has “promos” in the title. And I constantly have to resist seeing it as “pronouns”. (It probably helps that it’s kinda spammy, so I don’t read it much.)

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  5. She looked down her nose at the shabby man before her.
    “Tasteful you are not” She accused.
    He spat on the ground.
    “Maybe, maybe not, but you’re alive and unmolested. I’d call that tasteful in my book” he gruffly replied.
    “Hmmm” she replied
    “Truth be told I’ve never found a tasteful way to kill, even goblins such as these” He replied.

    Liked by 1 person

  6. She chewed the forkful, and chewed some more, eventually swallowing with the help of a glass of water.

    The other girl watched anxiously. “Well?”

    “Well. There are a lot of spices.. which… certainly makes it full of… different… tastes.” She cleared her throat. “I’m just no sure they all go together very well.”

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  7. As June walked into Kathleen’s living room, she was greeted by a storm of noise. The Girl Scout cooky orders had been delivered; every one of the girls was busy stacking their orders, but her daughter Susan was practically in tears, with her pile of cooky boxes noticeably smaller than the others.

    “There aren’t enough Thin Mints, Mommy! Everybody took them all!”

    “We’re one carton short,” a harassed Kathleen explained. “I must have miscounted. I’m so sorry to ask, but is there any way you could pick it up from the Council office? Maybe tomorrow? I’m kind of overwhelmed here…”

    Kathleen was perpetually overwhelmed, or so it seemed to June. The living room was a mess of cardboard cartons, dirty white carpet and semi-intact furniture. The coffee table’s broken leg was propped up with a couple of bricks, and the room doubled as storage for Scouting supplies. “Tasteful” was not a word that would ever apply here, and for a moment June felt the satisfaction of knowing that her own living room was clean and quiet. But then again, her front room was never used except at Christmastime or for bridge parties… and Kathleen had been the only woman willing to take on the job of running the troop. Plus, it was clear that Susan would not calm down until she was able to get her cookies for delivery. Hiding her reluctance, June agreed.

    The 5 freeway was snarled in traffic the next day, of course. June gripped the wheel in frustration until she suddenly remembered that Kathleen’s husband James was employed by the city’s Community Services department. The regional park managers had had a very public clash with the property developer over the delay in payment for the tract they’d purchased; wasn’t that just before the murder? she wondered. She determined to deliver the cookies as late in the day as possible, hoping to catch James after dinner. At least this way her errand would double as an excuse to get any information from James that she could.

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  8. Dressing for your first time at the Vatican and meeting a Cardinal requires you to be both tasteful and discrete. Skirts below the knees, long sleeves, covered shoulders, nothing that was insulting of Christianity, that kind of thing.

    Then, you have Viola and Charlotte, who view this as a challenge to make sure that I was the sexiest thing in there not wearing a habit while following all of the rules. Because their Solist needed to make the very best first impression.

    So, I had covered shoulders-and a carefully “plunging” neckline panel made of lighter black silk than the rest of my dress. The sleeves reached my wrists-and were so smooth that you could tell how shapely my arms were. My skirt was of the perfect length and cut so that you could tell that I had a butt-and the waist cincher ensured that you understood that I had some very dangerous curves indeed.

    I wore a black shawl over my shoulders as I got out of the car, carefully wrapped and folded for perfect discretion. That the shawl was silk so sheer you could thread it through a needle without binding shouldn’t have been surprising. My shoes were sensible thigh-high boots…that were plain black patent leather, skin-tight, and didn’t need anything other than their appearance to tell you how well-made they were.

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  9. “If something’s tasteful or not will depend a lot on what someone’s taste is.” Ezhak explained with a very earnest light in his blue eyes. “Sometimes quantity has a quality all its own, too.”
    Jon looked skeptical.
    “… I don’t think that will help for the question of tasteful nudity.”

    Liked by 1 person

          1. The Reader only knows one reason to use it. His disabled son uses it with an adaptive keyboard because all of the keyboard shortcuts from Office 2003 are still in it (even though they aren’t visible till you delve in the settings). The keyboard shortcuts in LibreOffice don’t match and it is missing quite a few.

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          2. I really hope there’s not an algorithm up in Redmond measuring my tastefulness (or worse). Maybe that’s why I use Libre Office on my personal rigs. Although “not Microsoft” might not be the blessing I’d like to think it is.

            Liked by 1 person

          3. It’s bloated, it’s cranky, it got rid of some things I liked [of course], and it’s rentware, not owned. In my dream world, I’d still be able to buy the stripped-down “student” version I had back in college and grad school. No bells and whistles, no frills, less bloat, and it did everything I needed without complaining too much. Yes, I could out-type it and make it lock, but that was also a hardware problem.

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  11. Young Nigel was the very definition of indignant. “The nerve my sister has! ‘Wearing sneakers with a suit is in poor taste!’ Doesn’t she know that’s the style? Bloody hell!”

    Lily eyed him calmly. “First of all, Nigel, your language is quite impolite. And I’ve sad news about the shoes…”

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  12. For non-lethal police use-of-force protocols, a new variable-power Tasers is under trial. Peace officers will make an informed judgement of potential for physical conflict. People who are cooperative and friendly will be given, at most, a low-power shock. But if you’ve got an attitude, you are apt to be Tased-full.

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      1. Just send the carp that’s gone off, and isn’t very tasteful any more – or maybe is now rather too tasteful.

        Liked by 1 person

          1. “Load the howitzers with carp and fire for effect” Master SGT Cranston screamed to the Battery.

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  13. “I remember one of my teaching assistants at Tech,” recollected Nigel Slim-Howland, “who really hated anything remotely distasteful in our essays. Lots of red ink, loud public tongue-lashings, it was dreadful! One day I commented, ‘Aren’t you being a little obstreperous in your expurgations?’ Dear me, if looks could kill!”

    Apologies to Mary Catelli! :-)

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  14. Her hand was steady, and her little smile was not in the least pleasant. “In point of fact, I consider it quite tasteful. It fits my hand comfortably, has no unnecessary fripperies to get snagged in the lining of my purse, and is of sufficient caliber to dissuade unwelcome advances — or to permanently put off those that won’t take the hint.”

    Liked by 1 person

  15. Ciara knelt a minute longer, they did not think of perturbing her, before she rose and turned to face them.
    She looked at Lucie, puzzled, and turned to Autumn with only a flicker of recognition. Then, Autumn supposed, neither one of them was done up with the refinement to attend a ball, or any other festivities they had ever met at, before. Ciara dressed like any wise woman faced with a walk in the woods, and she herself was just as glad she had not looked in her own reflection in the river. She ran a hand through her hair.

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  16. “I hope the prince is like the one Tattercoats married,” said Rosaleen. Amy arched an eyebrow. Nan turned toward her. “If I had to go to the ball dressed like this, all the lords and ladies would laugh. But Tattercoats met her prince on the road, and he did not care that she was dressed in tatters.”
    “She did have a gooseherd playing a pipe to dance to,” said Meg solemnly.
    “And he vanished afterward. Still, there are princes who would not care though the music was magical.”
    “We did bring gowns,” said Nan, even more solemnly. “And fine ones.”

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  17. She looked up to see a youth in the doorway, looking at them as if to decry their acts as lacking in taste. Pale, a bit haggard, dressed in ill-fitting clothes. Saying nothing.
    Petternella raised her hands, and a glow of green and blue rose above them.
    The youth flinched.

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  18. “No doubt this is occasion for rejoicing,” said the priest, dryly. “A new power is a gift from Heaven, and has often resulted in a defeat of evil.”
    “Any knight can defeat evil,” said the grand master. “An earth-based one who manifests great strength can.”
    “Some evils. No doubt she can not defeat all, but perhaps she can defeat new ones. You will not see it by staring at her, and it shows poor taste as well. Let her manifest her power. Then she will be able to defeat evils that other knights can not.”

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  19. Well, Commander Bond. You got your way on uniforms. Dinner was your choice. Accommodations for the evening changed for your expectations.

    Your taste-card is taste-full, and now we get to specify your assignment, without considering your preferences.

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  21. Satisfied that the cryo-tank stir was progressing normally, Lucius Belfontaine turned to his EVA partner in this little foray. “So what’s got you thinking so hard, Air Force?”

    Yes, that was a flinch, although Shelly was trying hard not to let it be seen. “Just wondering about the family background of our dear friend, RAF Squadron Leader Bertram Wellington-Jones.”

    “How so?”

    Shelly glanced around, as if the subject of their conversation might hear them, in spite of being in the Soviet moonbase, with several hundred meters of vacuum between them. “He always acts as if he has such impeccable taste in life, the very image of the modern gentleman — but half the time he makes me think of the tuna fish in that old ad.”

    That comment puzzled Lucius for a moment, until he remembered the silly fish that thought the brand was looking for tuna with good taste, not tuna that tasted good. “Got it. I’ve never had the privilege of being stationed over there, but from what I’ve heard, you tend to see that from people whose families are just below the aristocracy. The Lord So-and-so’s can afford to be a little careless here and there, but that next layer down tends to be really anxious about their status, so they focus on hitting all the markers.”

    “Yeah, that’s about right. All the symbols and no substance.”

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  22. Simone had worked her way to stand just behind the prince. She reached into the slit in her gown and pulled out her dagger. In a moment, she would have her revenge. But suddenly her arm and shoulder were gripped, and a voice whispered in her ear. “In many cultures, it is acceptable for a woman to wear a dagger to a formal occasion. This is not one of them, and even if it were, it is never tasteful for such a dagger to be poisoned or cursed. Yours is both. Drop it, or i will break your arm.”

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  23. These all look interesting.

    BTW, did Pete Abrams set some sort of call back record this week with “You’re in my spot, Toots?” (see footnote, sluggy.com, 230613).

    Like

  24. A tale of impending disaster:

    Standing before the bathroom sink, Max was ready for his big date with Cari: Freshly cleaned, pressed, starched, and wearing his fancy suit. He’d even made a few (mostly unnecessary) passes with Father’s electric shaver! All very tasteful. What else? Oh, Father’s cologne. A capful ought to do, he thought.

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  25. Though a few are bewildering (probably based on stories I don’t know), all those vignettes are entertaining. Thank you.

    Like

  26. Here goes (not 50 words)…

    “I find this truly distasteful. I do.”
    The older, well-dressed man snapped his suit coat sharply to shake off some of the fine dust that had settled on it. The twin suns – barely discernible as separate entities for the day – beat down upon the gathering. He moved slowly around a kneeling man.
    He put out his hand and received a needle blaster from an associate.
    He put the blaster to the bottom of the kneeling man’s skull.
    “You wouldn’t even cooperate to make this efficient and clean. Really, Mark, you’re not accomplishing anything by resisting. Instead of a simple hump in the desert, now we’ll have to leave you for the carrion birds. And I’ll have to ensure no one can resurrect your memories. At least no one will notice the gore on that tasteless shirt you’re so fond of.”
    “Goodbye, Mark.”
    Then a small noise quickly rose to a crescendo as a craft crossed over the nearest ridge, directly out of the suns….

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  27. I was very excited to see that D. Jason Fleming had republished “Man of the Desert”! Then I noticed that it was by Robert Horton, not Grace Livingston Hill. Should have known Hill was too tasteful for the Fleming treatment. :)

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  29. It took Vincent longer than usual to locate the subject. He’d overlooked her twice until his chemically enhanced senses detected the distinctive odor of a female werewolf. It was her tasteful clothing that had fooled him. Werewolf females tended to dress “trailer trash” provocative when in human form but this woman looked like a vampire had given her fashion advice.

    Not that it made much difference. She had murdered at least four non-combatants and the bounty for her death was proportionally large.

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  30. I was wondering who’d take this one and damn, should’ve known it would be one of my two scariest! Set in the same world as Noah the Paladin Emperor, but in a very different location some years earlier:

    “I see you are as punctual as ever, Matriarch Elena.”

    “Of course, Orsi dear,” the woman replied with a smile. “I know how valuable Chairman Ferenczy’s time is.”

    The woman who entered the office looked to be in her mid-40s, yet everyone present knew she was quite a bit older. They also knew she was concealing a firearm in her blazer, a tasteful addition to her attire, but so was almost everyone in the office, including the Chairman. Of course if it came to violence between her and Chairman Ferenczy everyone also knew that it would come to magic rather than bullets, including the hulk in front of the door. He was the only one not concealing his weapon, but it was his job as the Chairman’s bodyguard to serve as a deterrent.

    “Speaking of the Chairman’s time, be a dear and let me pass please, Parvan.” Elena said, addressing the man with an almost cloying smile. He shifted uncomfortably before a voice came from behind the door: “No need to delay things any further. Let her in.”

    The large man eyed the visitor suspiciously before he opened the door and stepped to the side. Yet his demeanor was simply that of a professional keeping his employer’s security in mind. Elena didn’t break her smile as she walked past him and closed the door behind him.

    “To what do I owe the pleasure, Witch?” the man at the desk, Chairman of the Altan Council, asked coldly.

    “That’s no way to greet a guest, Necromancer,” his visitor, one of the leaders of Nimbus’ order of assassins, retorted, giving him a maternal smile. “Especially not one you invited yourself, my dear Thanos.”

    “You have not earned the right to use that name, Matriarch Elena.” he spat, giving her a venomous glare.

    “Oh very well. Athanasios it is, Chairman,” she replied, her dark brown eyes twinkling with amusement. “Shall we get down to business?”

    Thunder roared and lightning flashed across the sky as Elena finished her question. On any other continent a thunderstorm would be a poetic opening to a meeting between Nimbus’ two most powerful practitioners of the darkest magic but in Nimbus, where the Pillar of Lightning’s power ran rampant, they were an everyday event. Heavy rain began to fall and the wind picked up as Chairman Ferenczy organized his papers. It was almost as if the Pillar itself knew that this meeting would not end in death for either the necromancer or the assassin but rather, would end in something that could tear the world itself apart.

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  31. Having trouble creating and “manifesting” your own personal sense of style? Not interested in those hard-to-find, expensive, maybe unreliable “style consultants” you’ve heard about? Tired of being blown around, here and there across the landscape, by the always-fickle winds of fashion?

    Help is on the way! Our Tasteful(TM & R) application can give you the personal edge you want — always available, never intrusive, adaptable and trainable to your personal standards and ideas of who you want to be, to the world that’s looking at you! Multiple input modes including photos, seasonal color palettes, question-and-answer, ranking of pre-made style suggestions according to your own preferences, tweakable settings to home in on the very best variation, and “please suggest something for me” mode — Tasteful(R) is your new portable, affordable algorithmic style consultant that’s all about you and your own personal taste… not “what’s in this year” that “they” want you to buy quick but not cheap!

    “Oh, my, that sounds like the best idea ever,” said Oliver, with irony heavy as depleted uranium. “Whenever they say ‘affordable’ you ought to take the hint, it’s anything but.” He sipped his dry white wine, taking in the wonderful rest of the cozy outdoor-dining setting and trying again to tune out the intermittent Muzakadverts as much as possible.

    “So, do you like what I’m wearing today?”, asked Gillian, in that sort of neutral-but-not-neutral way that with some — but not her — portended an oncoming half-camouflaged relationship minefield. Looking at him under the rim of her sun-hat with a soft smile, and not at all an “armed” one.

    “Not only do I like what I see on you, dear Gillian, I seem rather quite definitely to remember telling you so, not too many minutes ago.”

    “Okay, then, give me a minute and I’ll show you something. Maybe even a bit interesting.” Her hand dived into the large, more then handbag sized “carpetbag” — her word — she usually carried, brought out her grossly oversized phone-that’s-really-a-tablet. Bent to it with some considerable degree of focus.

    “Gillian, for heaven’s sake don’t go to their Web site and impulse-buy that thing just to do some show-and-tell, you oughtn’t waste your money on my account.” He glanced at her coffee, the overpriced foreign kind in the tiny little cups that got undrinkably cold even faster.

    “Don’t worry, Oliver, I don’t have to buy anything; and if I did they offer a full 90-day moneyback guarantee.” She didn’t mumble but had that sort of absent-minded flatness in her voice that said most of her was occupied elsewhere; and her busy fingers told easily where.

    Oliver sat and watched her, which was always a pretty good “default” to whatever else might not be doing; and reflected that this Australian wine was (again) just about the equal of the best of California.

    Hope both stay available, given their current mad politics…

    “Okay, now, here. Look familiar?” Gillian held out her paperback-sized display over their appetizers.

    Which grabbed his attention in turn; because the picture, almost a sort of digital cartoon version of the half-dozen or so fashion sketches he’d ever seen, both was and wasn’t her, in front of him in her long print dress and hat. It was cartoonish, the person there not photographically Gillian; but the resemblance was… uncanny.

    And the dress, hat, a few other accessories matched hers very well too; not perfectly, but most impressively. And the overall impression from both versions was strikingly similar in the end — quite positively, too.

    It was also labeled, subtly but clearly, as “Tasteful(R) personal sketch 0324-fall-Gillian.” So no question what it was or from whence it’d come.

    “Liking what you see?”, she asked, the moment he looked up. “Not in the loaded way a lot of women ask it, of course.” She took up her little bit of coffee and drank down maybe a third of what was left, smirking at that.

    “It’s truly uncanny,” he said slowly. “It is and it isn’t you, but that comes with a style drawing, I suppose. And obviously it can learn pretty well, some way; because I know that you, my dear Gillian, did not purchase your sense of style somehow pre-manufactured in a box.” He took a sip of his wine, again, considering.

    “It only came out of beta a few months ago, but they’ve been flacking it pretty hard — remember your first radio ad for Duck Duck Go, and how very strange that sounded first off? And it does work, as long as you bother to spend enough time ‘training’ it — which can mean, once you answer all its basic questions or hand it a photo to analyze, simply looking at some of its ‘suggestions’ one after another, and tweaking them to suit or ranking them or both. It does basically ‘throw darts at a board’ to make those, by the way; it’s a ‘non-deterministic algorithm’ that won’t repeat itself, or even come close unless you’ve narrowed its target range too much. And of course, you can always ask for another spin of the wheel…

    “It’s really rather well done, and much less expensive than you seem to be thinking. I’ve bought casual dresses on sale for less, and it’s also buy-ware not rent-ware… once you’ve bought it, it’s yours.”

    Oliver’s mind was running faster and faster, that way it did when (back in its own idiosyncratic, dark and obscure recesses) it found a thing to be Genuinely Of Interest. “So this is basically a fashion / style version of one of those old D&D character generators, back when everybody wrote programs instead of downloading ‘apps’ to do what you want? You tell it to generate, say, five or fifty ‘Gillian’s fall wardrobe’ sketches, and it does, mostly at random except for the constraints you put on it, right?”

    “Yes, very much like that, Oliver. You seem to have had the same sort of hopelessly corrupt and dissipated previous life as I did.” Gillian’s green eyes were genuinely sparkling at the memory.

    “So this churns out five or a dozen character sheets for you, or at least the stats, and then you pick the very best one to play? Or in this case wear?”

    “No, its ‘hit ratio’ is much better than that, once you get it trained; but of course which ones you pick is also input to the program. It has a ‘feedback questionnaire’ on how well your outfits worked for you when you wore them, too — and it interfaces with a good many on-line retailers, so you can tell it to generate from what’s on the Web or sometimes actually in stock to buy now, and you can go from looking at a dozen or so sketches to having an order on the way in maybe an hour or so if you want.”

    Oliver smiled in that particular way of his, not quite carnivorous but also not entirely nice. “So, would you say this one is a ‘killer app’ for real and for true, then?”

    “Yes, I believe I would, more or less. Given how I never fully buy into all that ‘killer app’ stuff, no matter what; too much programming from too young an age, I guess.”

    “Then I can just about tell you what this ‘killer app’ is targeting for its ‘kill’ — and it’s nothing less than the entire top-down, ruled by the Imperators in Rome, dictatorial model of ‘fashion’ as we’ve known it over the years. Though some of us, having been lucky enough to be born male, merely need deal with its mad excesses and occasional horrors at second hand.”

    Gillian picked up her own wine glass, a more balanced semi-sweet white. “Then come very soon the day ‘they have made a desert and called it peace’ on that score, my dear Oliver. I’ve told you what happened when those Empresses dictated indecently short skirts be ‘required’ for a second time after flopping utterly the first; so I will not spoil this fine unseasonably cool and beautiful fall day of ours with all that, once again.

    “But such a day cannot ever come too soon for me. To fashion peace!”

    And they drank, as the winds of fall swirled a few random dead leaves around them and their table.

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