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: Sheriff Bob (Bob and Nikki Book 38)
Getting out from under the Commonwealth’s thumb should be a good thing. Of course, there are a lot of people who think that means the Earth is fair game. BSR has to keep them from exploiting the folks back home. Of course, the fellow Bob outsmarted on Tantrum isn’t taking it well, either. Come see what the fleet has to do to keep Earth safe.
FROM PAM UPHOFF: Dare (Fall of the Alliance Book 9).
Arkady was a servant’s bastard, but when he needed to update his records, his friends dared him to claim a father . . .
A year after the Japanese left the Alliance, then turned to attack the Home World . . . things are getting back to normal on Home. Normal being the usual viciously competitive power struggles, both personal and to maintain the class structure of Lords and the brain chipped slaves . . .
The Lebedov Family is undergoing a shift in it’s internal structure as the older Lords die of natural causes . . . and sometimes helped along . . .
Arkady may not have chosen the best time to try to join the ranks of the Lords . . .
FROM ROBERT ZIMMERMAN: Conscious Choice: The Origins of Slavery in America and Why it Matters Today and for Our Future in Outer Space.
Robert Zubrin: “Zimmerman’s ground-breaking history provides every future generation the basic framework for establishing new societies on other worlds. We would be wise to heed what he says.”
The human race is about to go to the stars. Big rockets are being built, and nations and private citizens worldwide are planning the first permanent settlements in space.
When we get there, will we know what to do to make those first colonies just and prosperous places for all humans?
FROM DANIEL ZEIDLER: A Circle of Stars.
A novella-sized tale of adventure, humor, good versus evil, and Cops & Dragons.
Brynn Starsinger, Lieutenant of the Queen’s Watch, is an anomaly among the elves of the City: an orphan seemingly born with no ability to work magic. After being falsely accused of murder, she is sentenced to face the justice of the mysterious Fey Lord. Though Bryn fears her life is over, the Fey Lord angrily declares the covenant had been broken and merely sends her off to sleep. When she is awakened by Turo, a dragon of many questions, and Bryn discovers the Fey Lord has been defeated, his forest left devastated, and everyone in her beloved City has vanished. Now Bryn and Turo must race against time to not only save the elves of the City, but also thwart the sinister plans of the Cult of the Fallen God.
FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Last Pendragon (Legends Book 1)
“The last thing I expected when I went to grieve in the mountains was to get chased by werewolves, kidnapped by a dragon, or meet a legend. But that was exactly what happened.”–Sara HawkeSara Hawke, a highly-educated former PhD candidate in Linguistics, is plunged into a situation that strains her skepticism: first she meets a pack of werewolves while camping on the night of the full moon, then she’s rescued by a man the werewolves seemed to fear. Her rescuer then decides that she’ll be good company until he decides to let her go. Then he tells her that she has the potential to be a sorceress, and offers to teach her. Along the way, she learns that legends aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be, and are occasionally more than they seem…
FROM RIP PAULEY: Scarboy
‘He heard and felt something behind him that chilled and stopped him. It was a growl-the last sound he would have expected in the tight, dark space. His foot had touched something, solid but not hard. His mind flashed with images of wild animals cornered in dark spaces-rabid raccoons, possums, badgers? But these were animals from his mother’s stories of Virginia, not of the city, not of Boston. Sam wanted to turn and look but held still. He decided to move his foot back again. He felt the resistance, and again, there was the growl. It was gravelly, rising from some animal depth. It was not a small animal. What could it possibly be? Sam couldn’t stop himself from turning…..
………………………………
Scarboy… the story of an extraordinary German shepherd’s journey through the lives of four souls in culturally-torn late 1960s America – a hippie poet, a black boy, a racist cop, and an ailing musical prodigy – and how he changes their lives forever.
Rip Pauley is a former Hollywood screenwriter now living in South Carolina. “Scarboy” is his second novel.
FROM DALE COZORT: The King’s Fifth: A Snapshot Novel
An American teenager is caught up in a hunt for treasure in the murky politics of independent conquistador kingdoms built on the ruins of Aztec cities.
In this alternate history novel, fifteen-year-old Elijah Haigh’s mom sends him to live with his army major father because he keeps getting into trouble. Bad move. His dad is stationed in New Galveston, in an alternate reality where Spanish Conquistadors set up independent kingdoms in the ruins of the Aztec empire. Apache raiders still roam nearby, while the US and a surviving Tsarist Russia come from their own realities to compete for influence and natural resources among the conquistador kingdoms and search for the fabled King’s Fifth, a lost and possibly mythical gold hoard supposedly held in trust for the King of Spain until it was lost during civil wars among the conquistadors.
Elijah goes on a joyride with Julius Butcher, a teenage Indian guide, and ends up in the middle of a scramble for that gold hoard and a high stakes competition for influence in the alternate reality between the Russians and Americans.
FROM CHRISTOPHER WOERNER: Perhaps Not
The latest collection of essays, jokes and news headlines. Side A is mostly about the ‘woke’ agenda and the need for resistance, becoming standard current events towards the end. Side B is pop culture, mostly focusing on a handful of rock bands, movies, comics and the ongoing strike. The upcoming collapse is getting nearer, that’s what I’ve been covering all this time. If you need to stock up on back-up supplies, this one’s for you. Or not.
FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Baying of the Hounds
In the world we know, Nikola Tesla’s Wardencliffe experiment proved a costly failure and was ultimately torn down for scrap. But what if things had gone differently and he pressed his work to completion? In a world similar to but unlike our own, Tesla completes his transmission tower. But when he turns it on, he discovers his calculations were incomplete. Some unknown factor has created a connection with another world with physical laws unlike our own. The commingling of curved and angular space has led to catastrophe. Now his greatest rival, Thomas Alva Edison, compels him to repair the damage. To do so, Tesla must make his way through a ruined city to the locus of the damage. And through his mind echoes the baying of unseen hounds. A short story originally published in the anthology Steampunk Cthulhu.
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: Peep
According To Hoyt 
(Might want to put a clickable title on this post. You only have the in-post title. :) )
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GAH. So tired today.
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hug
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Three hundred eggs.
Alice Murcheson looked over them basking under the infrared lamps. A proper hatchery would’ve had machinery to turn the eggs. However, these had been just days from hatching when they’d arrived on the lander, so it hadn’t been practical to have Engineering fabricate something. Mark ’em and turn ’em by hand, just like she’d done in the tiny incubator at home for her 4H and FFA projects.
A tedious job, and a demanding one. As such, she didn’t want to assign it to the kids who filled the feeders and waterers all over Shepardsport’s livestock barns. And with Levi Matthews, her director of animal husbandry, in charge of the lab animals up at Science as well, she couldn’t very well put the task on him.
So here she was, turning each egg one by one. On the other hand, it was turning out to have some surprising benefits. She could hear the peeping of the chicks getting ready to hatch.
As she picked up another egg, it gave a quiver and a hole appeared on the side, through which she could see a little beak. She quickly set it back in its place to let the chick finish hatching. Unlike mammals, which were propelled down the birth canal by the contractions of the mother’s muscular uterus, birds needed to peck their own way out of the egg to be strong.
It still felt good to log that first hatching.
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Heh, thought this was the direction this one might go…
“Good morning, Dame Scarlett!” the receptionist chirped before wrinkling her nose. “Oh, gross! Smells like dead incubus.”
“Your nose is sharp, Lena!” the Glyph Knight said, untying the sack and pulling a grotesque head out of it. “Behold the Peeping Tom of Simon Street!”
“It was one of those? That’s weird!” Lena replied, giving the dead monster a look of disgust. “Normally they don’t just stop at looking!”
“Looks like this was a Minor Corrupted,”Scarlett clarified, brushing a blood red lock of hair out of her face. “Pervert got possessed and became one with the incubus who got him. I got him before he could move from looking to worse.”
“If anyone could, it’s you, Dame Scarlett!” Lena said with a sigh. It wasn’t hard to figure out how she’d done it. Dame Scarlett’s figure was the envy of many women in Agkelos, not just the Order, and she knew how to play it up when dealing with certain demons – most of which weren’t prepared for the formidable magic and fencing skills she had at her disposal!
Still, she knew even an elite Glyph Knight like her couldn’t handle everything on her own. Lena couldn’t help but ask “Dame Scarlett? I know this one was weak but don’t you prepare for stronger demons, too, especially on sensitive occasions like this?”
“I try,” the woman replied with a smile. “It’s not always easy to find someone who has my back but I think I finally found a reliable one. Well, when I can drag him out of the bar he’s always hanging out at of course!”
“Bar? You don’t mean…?”
The answer to Lena’s question walked through the door a moment later, a tall man wearing a black cloak adorned with Azuman patterns in teal. His signature Azuman blade was at his side and the receptionist noted that he was still wearing his blonde hair in a ponytail. Lena had never known him to let his hair get that long back when he was working entirely on his own. She could only think of one reason why he’d kept it that length and giggled.”
“Good morning, Sir Maximilian!” she greeted him. “Thanks for making sure that incubus didn’t touch Dame Scarlett!”
“There was no need for any action on my part beyond taking its head,” the man replied with a shrug. “All it took was some fireworks from her to finish the perverted fiend off.”
“I still couldn’t have done it without you, Max!” Scarlett replied, winking at the swordsman.
“And I wouldn’t have wanted you to face it alone either.” he said, smiling at the fencer.
“Either head to the back for processing or get a room, you two!” Lena chided, chuckling and shaking her head.
“How about one then the other?” Scarlett remarked with a sly grin, walking past the desk with Maximilian behind her.
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PEEP!
The sensor made another chirping noise as James swept it in front of him. It was a “whisker”-a short-range, high-powered radar sensor used by spacers to find small objects during space walks. Why rely upon fallible eyes when you could use a radar gun the size of a large coffee cup to find things by sweeping it across the area?
PEEP! PEEP!
Is that? James asked, but there was a small sound in his implants as ATHENA interrupted.
No, wrong return and too small, she replied, with a moment’s pause. Try sweeping up slightly higher and to the right.
PEEP PEEP! PEEP! PEEP PEEP!
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“She was luckier than us, in that she did not have any trouble escaping,” said Ciara.
“We can’t escape.” Felix stood up and gestured at chains on another wall. “There’s another prisoner. I, at least, am honor-bound to help him. There were two of us so she could choose the better for her purposes. This — ” He waved a hand at the bowl. Another drop resounded. “Was her way of not wasting me. I do not know why. But Karlos was fated for worse.”
Ah. Ciara drew a deep breath. The other two women made not a peep, but they, too, knew this was why paladins were needed.
“Which door did they use?”
He pointed. Then he scowled. “I will look for any sword or stick along the way, in order to help.”
Ciara managed a smile. With a flourish, she produced the sword. “I think this is yours.”
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Nothing about Little Bo Peep? [Crazy Grin]
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Not a peep about the shepherdess, can’t pull the wool over your eyes.
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having fish fry, need the carp…
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Ah, reverse psychology, pretending you want the carp. Clever…
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Trying to scare the carp out of us.
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Sgt Smith scanned the biofeedback receptors from his squads suits. The Polymedical-Enabled Enhancement Pods were working well, for once.
“Ok, chickies! We’re heading out. I know the enemy has a vote on this, but just watch your sectors, do your jobs, and I don’t want a PEEP out of any one of you.”
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The magic instructor folded his arms and glared at Traci. “What, pray tell, is this?” He unfolded long enough to wave at the mass of pastel-colored marshmallow treats covering the dirt of the parking area.
She gulped, “Um, Peeps™ on earth? Sir?”
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3 points for the pun.
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Jot couldn’t tell what the noise was: like a peep, but when he turned he saw nothing. Then he heard it again, behind him as before. He whirled back around futilely. Only when he looked up and saw Miki grinning impishly did he realize he’d been had. “In-Between Elf trick?”
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Near Max’s hospital bed, a machine peeped quietly, steadily. Cari watched him sleep, knowing she couldn’t, even if she wanted to. Her body was exhausted, but her eyes were propped open by caffeine and worry. She’d seen him injured, hours before. “Why’d he pick such a rough sport?” she lamented.
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Since I have peeps in my kitchen, this one is appropriate. 16 pullet eggs, 3 hatched. My sister wanted babies from her roo that disappeared…
Cara gently stroked the surface of the egg, hiding the movement under a pretense of a welfare check. It pulsed slightly against her fingers. Rather than being pointed at one end as a chicken’s egg might be, it was perfectly round and slightly rough. It sat with 18 of its siblings, the last of over 2000 that had started the journey from amber to live egg.
She jerked her hand back as the egg rocked. The sound it made wasn’t the half-expected peep, but a hissing moan that excited those around it.
Eggs rocked wildly, smashed into each other, and hissing half-birds emerged into the light. Cara, watched, enthralled, then shocked and horrified as the hissing hatchling tore into the egg beside it, killing its sibling and spraying blood across the remaining eggs.
Her shocked cry brought others of the lab team running, but by that time there were only three left.
Cara looked up at the office manager, who shrugged, visibly unconcerned by the carnage. “Next batch, we hatch them separately and provide meat.” One shoulder lifted. “You know what we’re doing here. Best not to get attached.”
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By the doorway, Rosaleen stood, feeling foolish, knowing that Liam would make her welcome if she stepped forward.
She felt certain she had not made a peep, but he looked over and stood.
“Watching the weather?” he said.
“I am worried about it,” she said. “I lived in the mountains.”
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“Just as well to have something ready for the festival,” said the man, jovially.
“How true,” said Marcus, warily. He had heard not a peep, but there would be a festivity here. He should see which saint the church was dedicated to, though he would probably still need to ask.
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Charles was uneasy. Being a loadmaster for ISS resupply was a tedious, exacting job, and cultural accommodations were… difficult. A war could break out between nations over otherwise insignificant slights. He looked at the packing box for Easter treats to the International Space Station. It was still two peeps full.
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With a grunt, the bearded man shoved the beam aside, revealing a honey drenched child, sitting in a puddle of half disintegrated candy and rambunctious, winged kittens.
“What?” he began, shoving aside more debris, “How?”
The boy opened his mouth, but was interrupted by his rescuer, “No! Not a peep!”
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The last total solar eclipse passed north of us in Oregon, and I was reluctant to brave the traffic. However, the October event passes over us, and we’ll get to see a the annular eclipse, so the sun will still peep past the moon. I’ll take it; it’ll be the best eclipse in my lifetime.
(Waiting for Murphy to deliver monsoonal rainstorms for the day. It’ll be what it will be.)
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Sarah: thanks very much for including my book.
Best, R. Pauley
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