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 JERRY BOYD: Joy to the Squirrels
Bob thought he was going to get to enjoy a little down time on Charlie’s planet. You don’t need to be told that our shepherd had other ideas, do you? Bert and Ernie find a bot, new, but old, with quite a story to tell. Then Jossi and Lakki blow their cover, and need rescuing. A lot of work to get done, to get back to Earth in time for a wedding. Come watch Bob and the crew get it all done.
BY ED LACY, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Enter Without Desire.
Marshall Jameson was an aspiring artist at the end of his rope. On New Year’s Eve he wandered into New York City on his last pennies, and stumbled onto a radio game show, won it… and found the perfect girl.
How could he know his good luck would lead him step by step into murder? But Elma was worth it, worth murder, and more!
- This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving genre and historical context to the novel.
FROM DAVID COLLINS: Convention War
The Earth Space Force Military has a problem. Something so dangerous that they need the ultimate distraction. A way to keep all the news stations away from it. They need them to focus on it rather than the massive alien ‘thing’ being lowered into a pit in the desert near Area 51.
They have decided that Keith and nine of his crew will be that distraction. They choose to drop off Keith, the hero starship captain, and a bunch of alien women off at Comic-Con for a surprise appearance.
FROM ROWENNA MILLER: The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill.
In the early 1900s, two sisters must navigate the magic and the dangers of the Fae in this enchanting and cozy historical fantasy about sisterhood and self-discovery.
There is no magic on Prospect Hill—or anywhere else, for that matter. But just on the other side of the veil is the world of the Fae. Generations ago, the first farmers on Prospect Hill learned to bargain small trades to make their lives a little easier—a bit of glass to find something lost, a cup of milk for better layers in the chicken coop.
Much of that old wisdom was lost as the riverboats gave way to the rail lines and the farmers took work at mills and factories. Alaine Fairborn’s family, however, was always superstitious, and she still hums the rhymes to find a lost shoe and to ensure dry weather on her sister’s wedding day.
When Delphine confides her new husband is not the man she thought he was, Alaine will stop at nothing to help her sister escape him. Small bargains buy them time, but a major one is needed. Yet, the price for true freedom may be more than they’re willing to pay.
FROM RACONTEUR PRESS, WITH STORIES BY STEVE DIAMOND, JOHN VAN STRY, JACK WYLDER AND OTHERS: Pinup Noir
Everybody loves the femme fatale; the tough-as-nails dame with the smoky voice and the legs that go on forever – almost as much as they love the cynical gumshoe with the strict moral code and the tiniest soft spot in his heart.
Hard-boiled detective fiction – America’s gift to literature – was introduced to the world in the middle of the Roaring Twenties, allegedly reached its height in the 1950s; and if you listen to the pundits, died out with the pulp magazines.
Hogwash. Hardboiled detective fiction lives on in its offspring: the roman noir, film noir, neo-
noir, Mediterranean noir, and last – but certainly not least – cyberpunk.
Join these 8 authors as they explore the world of the hard-boiled detective and the dames they love.
FROM CHRIS KENNEDY, MARK WANDRY, KACEY EZELL AND OTHERS: The Phoenix Initiative: First Missions
War is Coming!
Nigel Shirazi, the Speaker of the Merc Guild, knows that war is coming and he’s not ready. He needs to build up the mercenary forces after years of war, and he’s proclaimed the Phoenix Initiative to give people who want to start new companies the opportunity to do so. CASPers are cheaper and financed at lower rates, and the government of Earth is offering bounties to take the mercs from alien races off the planet. Now is the time!
Hearing the call to arms, a diverse group of startups, including a number of non-conventional ones and ones that originated on some of the colony worlds, have just taken their first missions. These are some of their stories.
Welcome back to the Four Horsemen universe, where only a willingness to fight and die for money separates Humans from the majority of the other races. Edited by bestselling authors and universe creators Mark Wandrey and Chris Kennedy, “The Phoenix Initiative: First Missions” includes seventeen all-new stories in the Four Horsemen universe by a variety of bestselling authors—and some you may not have heard of…yet. Are you ready to strap on a CASPer and go out to make your fortune? Then it’s time to read the stories of these mercs and learn the lessons they’ve already figured out for you!
FROM DENTON SALLE: In the Hall of Eternal Music
“With this sword, I can even slay the volkh lordling, were he not hiding behind his dwarven puppet”
Jeremy and Galena traveled with Bolgor to his home city, only to find the legendary city of the dwarves torn apart by politics. What was to be a pleasant visit turned into a struggle against the Dark attempts to corrupt it from within.
The young wizard, his bear-shifter lady, and his dwarven sword brother must find a way to deal with different political parties, monsters, and assassination attempts. They have to find the instigator in a different culture with very different rules. Rules that separate Jeremy from Galena. Among a people many of whom think the volkh are frauds.
And the fall of this city to Darkness would lead to a new reign of terror as its satellite cities fall and a new Dark Empire arises in the North. Only Jeremy and his friends stand in the way of a new age of war and the bloodshed that will bring.
Click above to join Jeremy as he faces the latest challenge of the dark. A challenge that threatens not only those he loves but an entire civilization and perhaps the world. If you like adventures set in a unique magical world, you will love the latest in the Avatar Wizard series.
FROM LARS WALKER: Troll Valley
Chris Anderson has everything. He’s the son of the richest family in town. He lives in a beautiful, loving home. He even has a fairy godmother. Chris Anderson also has nothing. He was born with a deformed arm, and when he gets angry he sees visions that terrify him. At the turn of the Twentieth Century, in a nation wrestling with faith and science, tradition and change, Chris will be forced to confront his own nature, and learn the meanings of freedom, love, and the grace of God.
FROM JOSH GRIFFING: The Hyperion Signals
In June of 2165 technicians find a way to send messages faster than light. They call it The Hyperion Signal, and if messages can move at translight speeds, why not machines and men as well?
We drive ourselves to the next frontier, and the next. And at each frontier another wonder lingers.
In Pyre and Ice, the job of terraforming Titan’s frozen wilderness falls to Jotunheim Station, but the threat within the station is as deadly as the cold outside. It takes integrity, courage, and teamwork to see the mission through.
With translight ships, we set out across the galaxy, seeking out marvels our mere telescopes only hinted about. The first two ships to make the translight quest were Petra and Henley, sent to survey a world where strange trees grow Under a Wayward Sun.
FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Rockin’ the USA
It’s not easy being married to the leader of the band, even in the best of times. When everything becomes political, you’ve got a nightmare on your hands.
Laurel had her doubts when her husband signed on to headline Governor Thorne’s Independence Day concert in Candlestick Park. Now that the band’s committed to the appearance, the Flannigan Administration has decided to shut the show down, with prejudice.
Laurel knows she has to fight this attempt to stop the signal. But doing so may put her in more danger than she could ever have anticipated, and risk those she loves.
A story of the Grissom timeline, originally published in Liberty Island Magazine.
This edition also includes a bonus essay on the era of dictatorship in Grissom-timeline America.
BY PHILIP K. DICK, BROUGHT BACK BY D. JASON FLEMING: The Variable Man (Annotated): The libertarian pulp sci fi classic novella
He fixed things — clocks, refrigerators, vidsenders and destinies. But he had no business in the future, where the calculators could not handle him. He was Earth’s only hope — and its sure failure!
- This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving genre and historical context to the novella.
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: SPROUT
According To Hoyt 
Great promos as usual! Thanks for boosting the signals!
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“I didn’t bring any food,” Lucie said. “I haven’t had much time to look about. I assure you I will tell you if any sprouts are edible, but there’s little to eat in the forest.”
Chasing her brother at least gave her an excuse, thought Ciara. She had been foolish.
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The potatoes in the bag at the seed store had already started to sprout, so the gardener felt confident as he filled his plots with nice, even rows, planted with care and fertilized just right.
Two months later as he dug up hill after hill of infertile slime without a single green bit above ground, he had to consider that Mother Nature was indeed a female dog.
(True story this year, unfortunately)
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Hostile signals began to sprout on the bow longscan like bleeding measles pustules, lengthening spears as their vectors became more and more confirmed.
It looks like a porcupine was turned inside out and wrapped around the front of the ship.
And each of the quills was a shipkiller.
“Vampire, vampire, vampire,” Kaite spoke rhythmically as her hands flew across the console. “Launching decoys now, ECM on-line, first wave of counter-missiles launching in fifteen seconds. Recommend a ten degree roll right, seventy degrees down on the bow and twenty degrees starboard to clear as much of our PD cannons as possible!”
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Starship slugfest! Cool!
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For some reason that conjured up an image of starships battling giant space slugs. Ewww.
Hey, I never claimed not to be weird. I hang out here, don’t I? :-D
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A battle-festival of festering giant space slugs. My, what a beautiful image.
All due thanks are hereby rendered for it.
(But the space-opera series is starting to sound as promising as the ‘Solist’ series did; which by now is pretty well realized, in books 1 and 2 so far!)
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Thank you! “A Solist In Rome” (Last Solist #3) is being written right now.
This story fragment is coming from the Untitled Space Isekei Novel idea, where our main character has the best ship you can buy in the well-optimized love child of Elite:Dangerous and Star Citizen (and he bought the ground combat package, as we’ll read later) and somehow he got the H-game visual novel add-on package as well…
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SPROUT
Space is wonderful, endless and far more than passing strange.
Prepare yourself as best you can.
Remember that no one, not anyone except you
Only You, again, only you
Utilizing only the tools at your disposal can
Transform and define and delimit the universe, in exactly, exactly, fifty words.
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Julie had messed up, messed up bad. She had let her guard down, too late she saw the blade swing down and felt its bite on her face. Blood flowed out of the wound and blinded one eye, she fell to the ground. The Orc sensing victory moved in to strike the final blow. Where the blood droplets hit the ground vines started to sprout. Being a sage made Julie’s blood magic, being an green wizard made the flora and fauna respond to her needs. The vines grew at an astounding rate, before the Orc could move the vines had seized him and the rest of his troop. Slowly as Julie screamed in pain her screams were joined by the Orc and his troop as the vines slowly squeezed and ripped them apart and consumed them alive. Julie fainted.
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I’d probably faint, too, considerin’.
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“As usual?” said Amy.
Rosaleen could not fathom how calmly they could speak. Her sprouting hope was overshadowed by new fear. Finding the kingdom was not what she actually needed. She needed to find the prince. If he had fled his father’s lands in fear for his life, she might actually have to find the four winds to track him down.
Or, worse, he might find work as a gardener’s boy in another kingdom, and save it from an invading army, and win the princess of that land. Thus leaving her trapped with a curse that could never, ever break.
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I have to say, those are some nice covers on Pinup Noir, Hall of Eternal Music, and Troll Valley! Now on to a familiar setting with characters who have rarely appeared. The word was practically made for one of them. :)
The sun had just come up as Amadeo de Salerno began his morning walk to the greenhouse. Even if he didn’t need to check on both the sprouts and the mature plants he needed the time to himself. Petruccio and Claudette were getting increasingly anxious with Carys gone off to a new war and Maylis on duty until Queen Beatrix returned to the palace. They were both relieved by the fact that she and Vincent were fighting side by side this time, though, with Claudette wondering if they were going to kiss and make up and Petruccio wishing he could see the Lapis Maelstrom fight in person now that it was awake again.
Amadeo chuckled to himself as he opened the door and closed it behind him to make his rounds. He did have a lot to sort out, after all. Like his children he was relieved that Carys was freed from her obligations to the late, unlamented King Philippe – may the man rot in the deepest pits of Hell – yet he couldn’t help but worry about her himself. The new King Kylian appeared to be nothing like his father, freeing Carys from her obligation as his first act, yet it wasn’t long before he reinstated Alphonse Faucher either – as the new Chosen of the Lapis no less. Amadeo offered a silent prayer of thanks that Alphonse’s cover had been blown in Bastetani and he was exiled in disgrace before Philippe had thought to send him to settle the matter between them. He wasn’t sure either his magic or Jacinthe’s marksmanship would have been enough to keep Alphonse at bay, especially not with how far along she was with Maylis at the time.
His thoughts soon turned to how King Alonso would take the news. Not well, he’d imagine, and he knew he had a capable killer of his own in Azahara Espina, Chosen of the Topaz. The only question there was if he could overcome his disgust towards Mad Empress Lysandra long enough to join forces with her. Thinking of Lysandra, what of her cousin, Sultan Vahit? Would blood ties be enough for him to lend her the Odrysian Army’s assistance? And what twisted mechanical creations would Alparslan Burakgazi bring with him if he did? He sighed and rubbed his forehead as he thought of the Chosen of the Carnelian, wishing he could have had a proper education and engineering career in Wenlock or Cascadia instead of ending up as Odrysia’s mad mechanical genius with a willingness to try out his creations in person on the Sultan’s enemies.
Yet in the end all Amadeo could do was see to his own. He’d continue to provide a safe haven for his family and a home away from home for Carys when she returned from the war. As powerful a sorceress as she was he had no doubt that she’d be able to overpower even a dangerous witch like Lysandra Hasapis. He was more concerned about her state of mind from having to live the life of a warrior. Yet maybe, just maybe…
“God,” Amadeo muttered aloud. “Let Vincent be the rock she needs in these dark times and may she come home with him, arm in arm.”
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First meeting with parents and last date, check, Tony decided as Annita’s mother set the plates on the table. Bean-sprouts, Brussels-sprouts, mixed greens, and a meat-free sausage were not his idea of food. He’d been growing less enthusiastic about Annita for the last month. With a silent whimper, he began to eat.
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Got to wonder if Tony’s the problem or is the problem Annita (and her family)? :wink:
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I’m with Tony. Brussels sprouts are of the devil no matter how prepared. Hopefully he passed a Wendy’s on the way back home.
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The Reader finds them passable when wrapped in bacon. But then, most things are…
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cut in half, swathed in olive oil, then slow roasted face down until the top turns goldish they’re excellent. The slow roasting takes off the cabbageyness and what’s left is crisp on the outside and sweet inside.
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The Reader might try this with avocado oil. The Reader’s better half is allergic to olive oil.
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Isn’t ‘meat-free sausage’ a pure contradiction in terms? Sort of like ‘dry water’ or ‘cool heat’ or ‘brilliant liberal logic’ ..? (Third example courtesy of Michael Z. Williamson’s book title.)
Oh, wait. Someone like Annita’s mother… transcends mere logic.
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There were cities, thought Marcus. Cities that held so many people that you could walk for hours and never see anyone you knew, even though you had lived there for many a year. If he went to a city, they might not care where he had come from.
They would crowd around him.
He shuddered, and that vague thought died out at once.
He could go deeper into the wilderness. Perhaps find some hermit wizard who could use the aid of a knight, and would give him shelter.
Villages were wiser, and did not require that he trust fairy tales.
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Simon patted the soil and laid down his trowel with satisfaction. It had been a long time since he had been able to plant. These were some of the rarest healing herbs he had gathered and carefully preseved. It would be good to see the seeds sprout.
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Lisa had been surprised to find bamboo at Sparta Point. No doubt it had started as a garden plant, back when this place was a working ranger station, but it had spread all along the back walls, and was working its way toward the first rank of redwoods that bounded the clearing.
Now Spartan was concerned about the security implications of that growth. Not just the question of fire safety, the first thought on the mind of a Californian like Lisa, but also the risk that it could provide cover for unwelcome visitors. Already there’d been a couple of close calls with mountain lions, and Spartan did not want two-footed intruders to find it a useful route as well.
So here Lisa was, tasked with helping knock the bamboo down. It was hot, sweaty work — but it also gave her the opportunity to dig up the tasty bamboo shoots that were just peeking their heads up among the older stems. Tamara the housekeeper tended to be protective of her kitchen, but if Lisa could show her how to prepare this novel food, she’d probably relent a little.
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Stepping out of the shadows, Fixx deftly caught the urchin sprinting out of the alley. He prised the leather wallet out of the boy’s grip and tossed it back to Passepartout with a raised eyebrow; his partner gave a nod of thanks and tucked it back into a pocket, muttering a term that Fixx was glad he couldn’t translate.
The boy struggled to escape until Fixx gave him a good shaking. “Look here, lad. You’re coming with us. Or should we call the constable down there?” he added, pointing with his chin. Their captor gave him a sullen look, but stopped fighting.
“What should we do with this young sprout, my friend?” Passepartout muttered something about the Foreign Legion being too good for him, and Fixx chuckled.
“There’s a thought. Look here, boy, we can send you to roast in North Africa, or you can answer some questions before we let you go. We’re here about a murder. What do you know about the old fellow they found on the wharf two nights ago?”
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Following a few of the videos recently recommended by YouTube, I learned how to sprout seeds and beans.
But the old question rears its ugly head…
Just because you can do something, does it follow that you should?
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Otherwise he would rant about how wizards should work their spellcraft better, so that knights knew their powers without testing. A farmer did not need the seed sprout to know his crop, but wizards were always producing fire instead of air, air instead of fire, or earth instead of either.
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Grown-up Nigel for a while:
Nigel Slim-Howland tried to look cheerful as Charlotte, the self-declared Best Thing That Ever Happened to Him, presented him with a salad of sprouts and something else he couldn’t identify. His displeasure was not lost on his maid Gwendolyn, who invoked a smirk routine, though she’d never had one installed.
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“These behaviors don’t sprout from nowhere, Chief Rogers,” explained Nigel Slim-Howland. “Howland Technologies Companions come with a range of behaviors that they modify based on environment.”
“So it’s the PD’s fault, then?” snarled the Chief.
“If your desk sergeant told someone to eff off, it wasn’t learned in our lab.”
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Very likely, the Desk Sergeant Companion witnessed the “results” of the human police using that phrase and decided that if it worked for them, then it’s work for him/her. :wink:
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That sounds about like what I was thinking. Or it could be like that Star Trek movie where Spock cusses a lot!
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Teenage drama:
Max should have felt elated. He should have felt like sprouting wings and flying. A dream come true: He was going to play pro ball!
And he would move south to do it. And Cari would move east to study. Maybe one dream came true, but what about the others?
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“Papa always told us, ‘sprout where yer planted,’” said Aunt Teri. “Well, you sure did. You earned your way into the best university in the country.”
“I suppose so,” said Cari, her voice quavering. “But, but…Max…”
“I know, Baby, I know.” Aunt Teri gathered her sobbing niece in her arms.
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Discovering how to bring out paranormal abilities in everyone, has changed our world. Even baseball has had to adapt. Pitchers who can still make a strike even when the batter knows what the pitcher’s planning to throw, are rare. There are few who can say that they’ve made an esper-out.
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The wall of thunderstorms rode on in from the north-northwest, glaring bright-white cloud where the lowering sun hit them, murky-dark where the long shadows fell, all against the green-blue of a clear sky. Occasional bolts of ligntning shot out into that nearby sky, or lit dusky cloud in a dazzling-quick white flash. Underneath it all, dense rain-curtains hung.
It was a near-continuous squall line, driving in at nearly sixty miles per hour, not weakening at all. No reprieve, no escape.
Annalee Goldston watched it, and tried not to laugh too loud in glee. At long last, the true soaking rains were about to come to the long hoped-for forest here. After all the years and years of work… and she was, by the blind dice-rolls of luck, or some deeper blessing, here to see it happen.
One chance in twenty, more or less — this long work did not allow her or any of them to come for the start and stay right through till the end. Human lives were not long enough for that.
But the Conic Drive was (inherently and inescapably) a time machine as well as a space drive; its speed of light was the fastest sane speed for anyone or anything not most highly expendable to go; and opening a new world (not so much ‘dead’ as never-quickened) could not be hurried to its fruit any more than a cherry tree could be, by tugging on the cherries.
She swirled her long, bright-dyed skirt about her, already blowing in the first hints of cool gusty ‘outflow’ from the storm. She’d wondered if she was being impertinent, maybe even borderline disrespectful, when she’d put it on earlier today; but now, wearing the nine-color spectrum of the Lady of Winds felt like a celebration and due reverence. Red, orange, yellow; yellow-green, green, blue-green; blue, indigo, violet. (And many of those dyes, like the indigo, were old-school plant-grown ones.) ROY-YgGBg-BIV for Lady Oya, of the African river country long ago, from the river city at the mouth of the Missisippi where she’d come of age herself, long ago too by now.
Annalee brought up the little screen in her hand again, verified its ancient radar technology agreed with the plain evidence of her own eyes, and returned to watching the storm. Oya and Shango might be far from the pews and pulpit she frequented on Sundays, but her grandmother had showed her that old ways and new could mix quite well enough, with enough care and respect and reverence.
And patience, never ever you once forget that.
Three hundred years ago, by the cosmic time of the Background Frame the ‘fixed stars’ and the microwave afterglow shared, she’d left the Crescent City for the last time. And her spry grandmother had been one of the staunchest of all cheerleaders for her leaving. (She remembered it like it was twelve or so years ago, which was what a clock kept in her pocket would’ve read. Or like it was yesterday, much the same.)
“You just go now and hop on Mister Einstein’s gallopin’ ol’ horse, young Annalee. If that’s what you truly want; and I believe nothin’ but that you do. I’ll be fine here in this old city, you go an’ walk the stars.”
New Waldensia. Earth-type planet, or mostly, under a vaguely orangish K5 sun, the far-the-brightest ‘A’ of this triple system. Which in its infancy had misbehaved badly enough, it seemed, that its flares and mass ejections had sanded much of the early atmosphere away, cooked much of this planet’s water over to flighty hydrogen and reactive oxygen.
So, a lifeless, arid, thin-aired ‘Earth like’ planet, too.
But miles-long arkology ships were made for such slow patient work. And the nearby M2 companion sun, bright enough to turn night into near-eclipse ersatz day here for ’round half the year, had planets with oceans dozens of miles deep. Oxygen made by plentiful UV from ‘B’ (instead of rich green life) out of that ‘hydrosphere’ most bountifully to spare, and then some.
So the Alexandria’s heavy-lift auxilliaries, Blue Nile and White Nile, had caught in their field envelopes by the cubic mile liquid oxygen or water, lumped each into balls several miles across; then Alexandria herself had jumped it light-hours from ‘B’ to ‘A’ and to New Waldensia to be borrowed moisture and breathable air. Over slow years; while seeds and multi-genomic databases brought from Earth were reworked slowly into ‘variform’ plants that (hopefully) stood their best varietal chance of thriving into true forest and plains ecosystems — what Annalee had been brought here to do, and over time with her collegaues had done.
And then the hit and run ‘gain of function’ selections began. Seed, left to grow while the ship and her people made their three-month runs to the ‘C’ in this triple system, a dim M6 dwarf reminiscent of Alpha Centauri C. Meanwhile, many of their experiments failed, but often informatively; a few even worked. More and more, though, as the slow / fast years ran on.
For every year the ship and team were here, usually for only a handful of days at a time, ten or a dozen or a score years would pass on-planet. With only a few one-time volunteers ‘marooned in realtime’ with the bots and the recorders, as the ship flashed (in zero on-board time) out to ‘C’ and back — to return a quarter-year later, by New Waldensia time.
Soon enough, by crew-held clocks, their first large-scale experiments were ready… forests sown over many square miles, by biological ‘cluster bombs’ descending carefully from orbit. Seed set, now waiting only the rain.
Rain. Which bore closely down upon them all now, like a freight train, which in cosmic time she’d not seen a one of for centuries now. (Thanks be to Lady Oya of the winds, and to Lord Shango of the lightning. And most to Our Dear Lord God of All, Who made all this wide world so far around us such a wonder for our use.)
It would, barring a mis-miracle, be well watered soon. She’d not see it more than sprout, this visit, of course. But over the next few dirt-years, barely a few months of her own time and her crewmates’ — those sprouts would become seedlings and young trees, dawn redwoods and all the rest.
She’d seen a century-old grove of those, dozens of acres in extent, in their earlier glory, which now still grew strong. Seen them as machine-set seedlings, and seen them as forest giants. Now to ‘scale up’ as they used to say, once upon a time back on Earth. So their chestnuts and oaks and dawn redwoods might spread out soon to rule a province, then a continent.
The dark and bright clouds owned half the sky by now, and blotted out the sun. Annalee paused, as she started down the old concrete steps of the HQ building, to touch her own name scrawled into the still-damp ‘mud’ of the lintel one hot, sticky afternoon a hundred and ninety years ago as the stars and the planets had staidly reckoned their own proper time.
When the air had been newly well-breathable, and the forest seeded over all the land around no more than a foggy hope for some slip-sliding later century.
“Patience, Grandmother. I’ve still not yet learned it quite as I ought, most like; but oh, I’m still a-workin’ daily on it.”
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Thought I’d do something different for me.
Caught Lawdog’s ‘It’s available’ post, so I bought and read Pinup Noir last week.
Worth every penny and the time to read it.
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“We must ensure each person pays their fair share. Only then will the government work properly.”
As the stranger thundered from his soapbox, Inspector Stronagon pondered why they had decided to show up here and now. Though relatively harmless as Communist and Socialist groups go, they were still a nuisance and need to be stamped out root and branch before someone took them seriously. But why had the Society for the Prevention of Routine Over- and Under-Taxation raised its ugly head? And what greater threat did they portend? That was something worth pondering…
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Late but something hit me while reading something else:
“Why? Why Beauregard? Why did we bother. Nothing changed.” The captain’s shoulders slumped his blond head hung down. His fingers gripping the sides of the sill had gone white at the knuckles as he stared down at the burning city… his city.
The big sergeant stepped up to his commander, his soft, deep voice gentle as it never was with the troops. “Ah, Lad. You’ll see. We’ve not yet reached the end yet. You’ll see. This kind of war isn’t won in a day. But the seeds we’ve planted here, you watch. They’ll sprout. Because we did change one thing.”
“What’s that?” The Captain’s head came up and his blue eyes narrowed.
“We proved they could be killed. And there’s nothing they can do to make that secret again.”
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