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 KAREN MYERS: On a Crooked Track: A Lost Wizard’s Tale
SETTING A TRAP TO CATCH THE MAKERS OF CHAINED WIZARDS.
A clue has sent Penrys back to Ellech, the country where she first appeared four short years ago with her mind wiped, her body stripped, and her neck chained. It’s time to enlist the help of the Collegium of Wizards which sheltered her then.
Things don’t work out that way, and she finds herself retracing a dead scholar’s crooked track and setting herself up as a target to confirm her growing suspicions. But what happens to bait when the prey shows its teeth?
In this conclusion to the series, tracking old crimes brings new dangers, and a chance for redemption.
FROM E. L. LYONS: Starlight Jewel: Gifts of the Auldtree, First Book
The human city of Minalav is renowned for its lavish balls, where nobles bring wealth from distant lands to the Starlight Palace, to be romanced—and robbed—by the half-human hybrids who live below the city. The wealthy guests leave without their treasure, and with no memory of their evening—except the unforgettable feelings that bring them back, season after season. But the magic of Minalav is built on dark secrets and lies.
Axly, a hybrid assassin and seductress-thief, will do anything to protect her human half-brother. The path of blood and chaos she carves will tip the precious balance of Minalav, and the world around it.
BY PETER RABE, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Dig My Grave Deep (Annotated): The classic pulp noir
Danny Port wanted out. Being the right hand man to the boss of a political machine in a second rate city was no longer interesting, let alone exciting. But Boss Stoker wanted him to stay. And Stoker’s main competition, head of the local Reform Party Bellamy, wants him to switch teams. And nobody, but nobody, is willing to let him leave. Worst of all, every one of them knows about Shelly, and some of them even know what she means to Port.
This iktaPOP Media edition has a new introduction giving the book genre and historical context.
FROM PAM UPHOFF: Special Agent (Fall of the Alliance)
A Novella about events before the Fall of the Alliance
Konstantin Aslanov has to split his time between his job at the Bureau of Intelligence and partnering with his wife in their horse show business. So while Ninochka is winning in the show ring, Kon is off investigating.
Because something odd is happening in the multidimensional universe.
FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: A Hymn for Those Who Fall Forever
Endings always hurt, but Vitali Grigorenko never expected a nightmare in orbit.
Assigned to command the last flight of the orbiter Baikal, Vitali had started the mission in a nostalgic mood. That went out the airlock when he saw the body tumbling through space just beyond the flight deck windows. A body in NASA blue, not Russian tan.
Now he’s trying to get to the bottom of a murder in space, and his own country’s space program as much a hindrance as a help. It’s becoming clear that politics is involved, on both sides of what used to be the Iron Curtain, and he’s going to need to go clear to the top.
A short story of the Grissom timeline.
FROM SCOTT JONES: Hero Complex: A Thomas Cole Book
After ten years and fifteen combat deployments overseas Ex Army Ranger Thomas Cole is living a simple, peaceful life. But when a woman from his past, a woman he once loved, asks him to use his Special Operations training and skills to help her, he reluctantly sets aside his quiet life. What begins as a favor leads Tom to stolen drugs, dead bodies, meth dealers and White Supremacist, sending him down a path of death and danger with no turning back.
FROM LIANE ZANE: The Covert Guardian
Prequel to the Elioud Legacy series
Every hero starts somewhere. She’s going to take the fast track from student to trained covert operative.
Six weeks ago, Olivia Markham testified in the grueling murder trial of her cousin Emily’s killer. When her boyfriend Jamie surprises Olivia with a trip to Ibiza, party island of the world, her family and friends urge her to go. After all, Emily had been her best friend, the one she’d planned to room with at Brown University her freshman year.
Olivia gets her chance to let loose—only not in the way anyone could foresee.
What was supposed to be a vacation dancing and drinking on the beach trying to move on from her cousin’s death turns into a nightmare terrorist attack instead. As men with automatic weapons and knives move through screaming, swimsuit-clad, and drunken tourists, Olivia can’t flee. She has to do something. Even if it kills her. So she stops and confronts a knife-wielding man who’d just slaughtered a young couple.
It was a foolhardy act.But Olivia’s presence of mind and surprising fighting skills don’t go unnoticed—or in vain. A team from the Special Activities Division, the CIA’s ultra-clandestine paramilitary unit, miraculously intervenes. What happens next changes the course of Olivia’s life forever.
Set six years before THE HARLEQUIN & THE DRANGÙE, THE COVERT GUARDIAN narrates Olivia Markham’s genesis from idealistic college student to trained intelligence operative.
FROM HOLY CHISM: Fire and Forge (Modern Gods Book 3)
Long after their worshipers are forgotten, the gods are still holding up a corner of the bar at the Godshead Tavern. Some have learned since their stories became myths, some never did, and some are still finding old curses coming back to haunt…
Poseidon wants Artemis to lift Medusa’s curse so he and Medusa can resume relations, while Chronos seeks another chance to be whole and get to know his kids.
Meanwhile, Ares falls head over heels for a mortal half his size who manages to kick his ass not once but twice, and Loki’s son is trying to rebuild his life (and his credit) after a short marriage to Pandora.
Life and love runs smoothly for no one, god or mortal. And another disaster is brewing…
And… Some writers and their endless self-promo….
I’m serializing two novels on a substack called Chapter House. This is a link to the free portions of the books, which are updated two chapters a week till done. (And then I’ll start other novels ;))
These serializations are part of the author’s funding of her high fallutin’ lifestyle of two meals a day, roof over head and food for cats. Not the only ones, of course. I will be publishing other books, while these are being written in public, as it were.
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: Nerve
(I’ve got some nerve bumping the promo post to Monday!)
According To Hoyt 
“You got a lot of nerve coming here!”
“Chuckle Chuckle. You say that after purchasing the land under my refuge? Of course, you imagine that because my public image is that of a good guy that I won’t do anything to you.”
“But of course, with my money, I can use purely legal means against you so-called good guys.”
“Or so you think. As it is, I’ve moved my refuge off Earth where you can’t legally touch it. On the other hand, you’re a smart guy so you should start thinking about the ways I could use my powers against your properties. Ways that you couldn’t prove that I did it.
You’ve acted against me before in ways that I couldn’t legally prove that it was you. A friend commented to me that turn-about is fair play. Think of that smart guy.”
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“You’ve got a lot of nerve drinking from the half pitcher without a glass” the barmaid scolded me.
“Me sainted mother always told me to mind me P’s and Q’s. This is a Quart, a Q, and I mind it very well thank you” I amusingly replied.
“Still its undignified” she countered.
“Just think of it as a large mug, it does have a handle after all, the bonus is its less glasses for you to clean” I countered.
“Humphf” she answered.
I didn’t have the heart to ask her if it was dignified she didn’t wear a bra and both of her endowments were larger than her own head, or the fact that she had piercings. Nerve indeed.
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What the HELL is this… ” he read the printout slowly, “..S-{2-[Di(propan-2-yl)amino]ethyl} O-ethyl methylphosphonothioate?!”
“It is also known as ‘VX’, sir.”
“Oh. CRUD.”
“Yes, sir. If we are very, very lucky.”
“It’s VX. Lady Luck is long gone from this scene. And left US behind to deal with… this… stuff.”
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ready the carp howitzer
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Well done, Orvan. 50 on the nose. I have no idea if the punctuation and spelling of the chemical formula is correct. Does that drive your proofreaders crazy?
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“Looks like we have another wiseguy on the forum”, said ‘Nother Mack.
“Really?” asked Sara Adroit, Mistress of Words.
“He’s trying to create a club: Nobody Ever Rates Vignettes Effectively.”
Sara huffed, “Well, he’s got some nerv… oh! I almost fell for it!”
“Me tooI! Shall we ban him?”
“Absolutely!”
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LOL!
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Um, it took me a minute…
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“Looks like we have another wiseguy on the forum”, said ‘Nother Mack.
“Really?” asked Sara Adroit, Mistress of Words.
“He’s trying to create a club: Nobody Ever Rates Vignettes Effectively.”
Sara huffed, “Well, he’s got some nerv… oh! I almost fell for it!”
“Me tooI! Shall we ban him?”
“Absolutely!”
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The nerve of it!
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(Apologies for the duplicate post. Not sure what happened)
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It’s Word Press. ‘Nuff said?
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word press does that sometime.
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“Your mother wears army boots!” he taunted.
“Indeed. And she taught me how to cook in camp, and introduced me to the sword too. Unlike your mother, who only followed the camps.” I replied.
I could tell I struck a nerve when his face went white, and he began stammering.
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“Your sainted mother’s teeth are so funky she spits butter” he taunted.
“Last time I heard that I fell off my pet stegosaurus, I am only insulted by your lack of intelligence. You are worth killing only to improved the IQ around here” I replied.
Everyone in the bar started laughing. He went to draw his sword and I stabbed him through the heart with mine before he even cleared the sheath. I threw the over endowed barmaid I had nick named Tinsel Tits a gold sovereign.
” That should cover the clean up and burial, Bury it wherever you bury the extremely stupid” I informed her.
The Nerve of some people.
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The one I heard was, “Aw, yer Mama swims after troopships!”
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Space battle stuff:
Rescuing Finlandia’s survivors required Dagger to pull alongside, leaving a gap of no more than three meters between the two vessels. It was delicate maneuvering, requiring low speed and steady nerves at the helm. Only then could Dagger’s engineers cut a hole in Finlandia’s side and deploy an emergency airlock.
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Looking at the reports, Dr. David Cambridge noted that Able Mariner Charlie Tristam kept power and oxygen flowing to surviving Finlandia crew, even as his compartment in Engineering became untenable. Some nerve, that boy, he thought, but some price he paid. He wondered if he should tell Cherry, Charlie’s girlfriend.
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Okay, I get it — lighten up!
Clarissa’s car sped away while Nigel Slim-Howland watched through a window. “The nerve of Gwendolyn, slapping Clarissa!” he snarled, having dismissed his maid.
“Companion’s actions are not driven by nerve, sir,” explained his butler Jenkins. “but by simple cost-benefit estimates.”
Those costs and benefits, however, were lost on Nigel Slim-Howland.
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That night at the local, Jenkins placed himself between Nigel Slim-Howland and a belligerent drunk. Jenkins stood unmoving, while the drunk glowered.
“You’ve got nerbs of shteel, Gwampa” said the drunk as his buddies grabbed him.
“It’s not my nerves that are steel,” said Jenkins. “Nor am I a grandfather.”
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The ladies’ monthly bridge game was not going well. Jane had escaped to the kitchen on the pretext of emptying ashtrays when Grace Tolber came in, furious.
“Christine’s got some nerve complaining about my bidding!” she muttered.
“She does that every time, Grace. You know she used to play in tournaments…”
“And she never misses a chance to remind us.” Grace sighed. “I know I’m not up to her standards, but I don’t have time to play cards all day long. I have children to raise.”
“Christine doesn’t have any family here. Sometimes I think that’s why she’s –” Jane cut off the sentence as the woman herself entered the kitchen. “Did you need something, Christine?”
“Just some water. It’s a little warm today.” Though she must surely have heard the end of the conversation, Mrs. Pardell showed no sign of it. “Thank you for hosting this month, Jane.”
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This reminds me of a story my mother had, when she was with the lady’s bridge group in 1961 or so. Husbands worked at the nearby USAF base, except one, who was with the FBI. One unpleasant woman went on about “my Charlie this,” or “my Charlie that,” ending with “they wanted my Charlie for the CIA, you know!”
The British exchange officer’s wife asked, “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand. What’s the difference between the FBI and the CIA?”
The FBI agent’s wife remained mum while another wife piped in, “Oh, they’re actually very similar, but the FBI’s much more exclusive.”
Later that woman told my mother, “She was driving me crazy, so I had to let her have it!”
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Oh that’s excellent!
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Autumn stared at her sword as if she were amazed that she had dared use it. Her skills were little better than any noble maiden taught enough to show her how to pick out good swordsmen from bad.
“If we actually have to fight, we tipped our hands,” she said.
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The king and his sons had no need to know that. A princess had no need to cringe before them. Least of all with an army behind her, and knowledge that a prince of this land had trespassed in her father’s kingdom.
She straightened and let her guards escort her.
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She crumpled like a rag, but no sooner had she touched the waters than she seemed to dissolve into it leaving no trace.
Henrik laughed, the sound booming over the flood. “That’s the way to do it! No need to work up nerve. They fall like leaves when you attack!”
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They fell. One by one. Some came close enough that she stepped back, not daring to face those thorns. Who knew whether they were poisoned? But this fight was harder than any of the knights.
When she stood triumphant over them, she could only wonder how her prowess worked, then.
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Figured this would come from a certain breakthrough! Set well into the past.
“Lysandra! What is the meaning of this?!”
“But Daddy!” the woman pouted, seemingly oblivious to the glares she had attracted. “Uncle Selim said I could take Yusuf around with me!”
She extended a finger, pointing a sharp, blood-red nail at a boy who certainly didn’t look anything like a Yusuf. He had fair skin, blonde hair, and light blue eyes, not at all what one would expect of a member of Sultan Selim V of Odrysia’s personal guard. That is, unless they were familiar with how they came to join the brotherhood.
The Sultan, for his part, simply chuckled and said “I believe we have reached the point where we must discuss the most sensitive matters of state, Iraklis.”
The Emperor of Arev nodded and turned to to the man next to him. “Minister Stamatios, you are dismissed. Take the guards out of the room.”
“Vizier Doruk, I give you the same orders,” the Sultan of Odrysia added before turning to the blonde boy. “Yusuf? You are to accompany Princess Lysandra wherever she may go. Remember that she is Prince Vahit’s cousin so protect her as you would me.”
“As you command, Your Majesty.” the boy responded with a salute before both the Sultan’s and Emperor’s retinues departed, leaving the rulers of the two most powerful empires in eastern Chaldenia alone.
“The princess is a spirited one, is she not?” Selim remarked, giving his counterpart an amused smile. “Most men would not have the nerve to barge into such a meeting over such a trivial matter.”
“There is nothing trivial where Lysandra’s whims go.” Iraklis sighed. “What she wants, she gets, whatever lies between her and it be damned.”
“Forgive my poor memory, but how old is she again?” the Sultan asked.
“She’ll be turning 28 in a week,” the Emperor responded wearily. “And she still expects to be spoiled like a teenager.”
“And you have not had any success finding her a husband?”
“No,” Emperor Iraklis growled. “Every last damned one of them winds up dead, a vegetable, or so far out of their minds they have to be committed. Even a noble of Yamatai with…certain connections came to a bad end.”
Selim swore and made one of his people’s gestures to ward off evil at the news. “Is every woman in your family a devil, Iraklis?!”
“And what would Thalia say if she heard you speak such words, Selim?” the Emperor of Arev remarked, allowing himself a sly smile.”
“That flattery would get me everywhere of course,” the Sultan of Odrysia replied, the two men enjoying a moment of laughter before returning to the matter at hand. “I have an idea, Iraklis. Allah forgive me, it is a gamble, but it may solve a problem for both of us.”
“Go on.” Iraklis prompted with a wave of his hand.
“Yusuf has been a…difficult case, shall we say,” Selim began. “Don’t misunderstand me. His swordsmanship and marksmanship are superb and he even has a gift for magic. Yet even Tarik can only exert so much control over him.”
“Lysandra apparently knows a kindred spirit when she finds one.” the Emperor sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration.
“So you see where I am going with this,” Selim continued, punctuating his statement with a clap. “If you are willing I can transfer Yusuf to your household to serve as Princess Lysandra’s bodyguard and servant.”
“What would I gain from two loose cannons in the palace, Selim?” the Emperor of Arev asked, his voice as steely as his glare.
“Either he will end her, she will end him, or ideally they will end each other,” the Sultan concluded with a grin, spreading his hands. “As I say, though, it is a gamble. They could very well form a two-headed beast the likes of which have not been seen outside your people’s old folk tales and infidel scriptures. No offense of course.”
“It is a gamble worth taking, though,” Iraklis concurred after a long pause. “Very well. I will let her think that she wore us down through her willpower so Uncle Selim and Aunt Thalia can give her the best birthday present a 28 year old girl could ask for.”
Selim laughed uproariously at the devious expression on his counterpart’s face. “Very good, Iraklis! I knew there was a reason I liked you!”
“Just one question, though,” the Emperor said, an expression of curiosity on his wizened face. “Yusuf hardly seems like a fitting name for the boy once he comes here. Do you remember what his name was before he was conscripted?”
“Conscripted? Always the diplomat, aren’t you?” Selim asked. “Actually, I do know. It’s quite the story. I remember when Tarik brought him back from the auction. He said the boy was the bastard of a Wenlock noble whose birth caused great scandal among his family. They were very devoted to their infidel ways, you see. Anyway, the noble abandoned his mistress and bastard in Elmaslar and they were caught by the guards. The mistress died and the boy was brought to auction. Tarik said there was a look of such hate in the boy’s eyes he had to bid on him for my guard. He said it would be a waste to let him go off to be buggered by Mataracı the wine merchant when he could be the one to awaken Elnath from his slumber.”
“Which obviously did not happen.” Iraklis remarked.
“No, but Yusuf did prove himself useful regardless,” Selim continued. “Ah, right, his original name. The Wenlock noble’s name was Baines. I do not know if Yusuf cares for that name or not. But his given name? That he was proud of. It came from his maternal grandfather. Edmund. Edmund Hiram Baines.”
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“If we want to get a ship to Mars quickly, we’ll have to use nuclear power.”
“You have a lot of nerve to say that. Orion?”
“No. NERVA.”
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Carp Slapping Dance Time.
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Leonid Gruzinsky studied the man sitting in front of him, slumped in a most un-military posture. It was hard to believe this was the same Maximov who had troubled him since the day he was commanding a helicopter regiment, when 40th Army first entered Afghanistan. The same Maximov whose connections in Moscow made it impossible to dismiss him from any post he was given.
This was the man who betrayed his own commanding officer, almost two years ago now. So what had it gotten Maximov? He’d proved utterly incapable of the administrative duties involved in commanding 40th Army, and in the end he’d lost his nerve and fled, leaving his subordinates to manage something resembling an orderly withdrawal back into the Rodina.
Gruzinsky grasped Maximov’s chin, forced him to look up. “Give me one reason why I should not shoot you here and now.”
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He rose up from the chair in the waiting room as the County Hospital police entered the private clinic.
“Never say nerve,” he rasped
He started to grimace a little as he continued, “It was a nerve that went sideways and grew into a soft-tissue sarcoma in my cheek. To cut to the chase, I’m six years cancer-free; but I’m missing a good deal of jawbone and teeth. I’ve got ‘flaps’ as they call them, muscles and skin cut out of my thighs decorating the inside of my mouth and one temple where the cancer had microscopically started to spread. I miss biting apples and I need to drink coffee through a straw.”
One of the policemen started to repeat the accusation, but the big man cut him off.
“Nerve? Yeah, I’ve got nerve. Two cancers defeated, five separate layoffs and a total of 40 months unemployment after age 50. I am not a tough guy; but I’m not so easy to get rid of. What do you think you can do that those hospitals and the liquid mustard gas they used for chemo couldn’t.”
“They killed off all my weaknesses but one,” he growled. “Now I don’t get angry. I get mad.”
He took a step toward them and whispered, “So just back out of here slowly and you might all make it back home tonight.”
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“I am surprised you would face me Count Graham, what did we run out of sycophants so soon?” I tauntingly asked him.
“Don’t pretend you were not sent here by another. How much money did it cost you to challenge me?” He asked.
“Had money been involved I would have asked only for a farthing, that is all you are worth” I spat out.
“The nerve” he said as he grabbed for his sword.
Again he was run through before his sword left his sheath., I spat on his corpse. It was a fitting end to a dreadful human being.
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I then wondered when the bar maid Tinsel Tits was doing now. I am male, they were real and rather large, and we all like a challenge now don’t we…I laughed. Who knows maybe the lady of the house wouldn’t be quite as ugly as I would suspect? Their lands were now mine, if they only knew.
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I just sat there and looked at him, an utterly deadpan expression on my face. “We’ve been stuck in this ship for the last six months. I told you I was on my last nerve with you today. And what do you do? You make microwave popcorn-which isn’t bad in itself.
“But you can’t make it without fucking scorching half of it, every single time,” I hissed in anger.
“I hate not having any unpopped kernels in there. It’s how they make their money, you don’t get all the popcorn.”
I hit him in the gut with the wrench.
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Nomination time:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/22571804-august-2023—-c-s-lewis
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