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
ON SALE RIGHT NOW: (A new section for this time period, and after when a lot of people have a lot of things for sale)
(Oh, and if you have things on sale, why haven’t you sent them in to be promoted? Allergy to money? Chafing at the thought of lucre? Hives at the idea of wealth?)
YES THE FIRST TWO ARE ABOVE IN THE PERMA PINNED POST, BUT SOME PEOPLE ARE INSUFFERABLE IN THEIR SELF PROMOTION, WHAT CAN I SAY?
Also I wish to remind everyone that you can order now on sale, and have a bunch of books delivered to your loved one’s kindle on Christmas morning and look like a big spender!
FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Draw One In The Dark (The Shifter Series Book 1)
Something or someone is killing shape shifters in the small mountain town of Goldport, Colorado. Kyrie Smith, a server at a local diner, is the last person to solve the mystery. Except of course for the fact that she changes into a panther and that her co-worker, Tom Ormson, who changes into a dragon, thinks he might have killed someone. Add in a policeman who shape-shifts into a lion, a father who is suffering from remorse about how he raised his son, and a triad of dragon shape shifters on the trail of a magical object known as The Pearl of Heaven and the adventure is bound to get very exciting indeed. Solving the crime is difficult enough, but so is — for our characters — trusting someone with secrets long-held. Originally published by Baen Books.
FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Deep Pink (Magis Book 1)
Like all Private Detectives, Seamus Lebanon [Leb] Magis has often been told to go to Hell. He just never thought he’d actually have to go. But when an old client asks him to investigate why Death Metal bands are dressing in pink – with butterfly mustache clips – and singing about puppies and kittens in a bad imitation of K-pop bands, Leb knows there’s something foul in the realm of music. When the something grows to include the woman he fell in love with in kindergarten and a missing six-year-old girl, Leb climbs into his battered Suburban and like a knight of old goes forth to do battles with the legions of Hell. This is when things become insane…. Or perhaps in the interest of truth we should say more insane.
FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Here Be Dragons: A collection of short stories
A collection of short stories by Award Winning Author Sarah A. Hoyt. From dark worlds ruled by vampires, to magical high schools, to future worlds where super-men have as many problems as mere mortals, this collection shows humans embattled, imperiled, in trouble, but never giving up. Angel in Flight is set in Sarah Hoyt’s popular Darkship series. The collection contains the stories: It Came Upon A Midnight Clear First Blood, Created He Them, A Grain Of Salt, Shepherds and Wolves, Blood Ransom,The Price Of Gold,Around the Bend,An Answer From The North, Heart’s Fire,Whom The Gods Love,Angel In Flight,Dragons as well as an introduction by fantasy writer Cedar Sanderson.
THE REST OF THE BOOKS!
FROM L. JAGI LAMPLIGHTER: Guardians of the Twilight Lands: The Sixth Book of Unexpected Enlightenment (Books of Unexpected Enlightenment 6)
An old enemy returns!
With the Heer of Dunderberg dead, Rachel Griffin is determined to save her beloved Roanoke Academy before time runs out, but to do this, a new covenant must be forged with the island’s fairies. On top of this, an old enemy has escaped and might reappear any moment
Rachel has learned not to wish on stars, but what should she do when she yearns for help? She is troubled by other questions, too: Where do the dead go? What became of her beloved late grandfather? Most annoying of all, with such a wonderful boyfriend, how can she be in love with two boys?
As her fourteenth birthday approaches, the answer to these questions awaits her, along with wonders such as she has never seen.
But there are terrible things ahead, too.
FROM KARL K. GALLAGHER: Trouble In My Day (Fall of the Censor Book 6
Cut off by an enemy offensive, Marcus Landry must take his ships behind Censorate lines, fighting to find a way home and find new support for the rebellion.
After leading the resistance against the Censorate occupation of his adopted homeworld, Marcus Landry is the natural choice to lead Corwynt’s new ships against the enemy. He’s never commanded a warship before. But his crews are as new on the job, and someone has to be in charge. He’ll take his rebels out to liberate other worlds from the Censor’s grasp and give them ancient books proscribed by the Censorate. Some were even written on Old Earth, before the Censor depopulated it.
Admiral Pinoy has been granted the ultimate gift of the Censor: command of a fleet to crush the rebels and barbarians disturbing the proper order of humanity. He will correct his past mistakes over the bodies of his enemies. First, he must teach troops used to ruling defenseless subjects how to fight an enemy who fights back.
Marcus Landry is racing the enemy to rejoin the free people. Rebels are gathering to defend their new freedom, but will they be enough to defeat the forces of the Censorate?
Read book six in the nine book Fall of the Censor series. The first four books were finalists for the Prometheus Award for Best Libertarian Science Fiction Novel.
FROM MELISSA MCSHANE: Warts and All The Expanded Deluxe Edition
Beginner witch Chloe has a problem. There’s a frog in her tub who says he used to be a man. Worse, his memory is slipping away from him. Magic doesn’t work, so there’s only one way she can think of to turn him back—but can she bring herself to do it?
And that’s only the beginning of her challenges…
In these fourteen short fairy tale retellings, including “Little Red Riding Hood,” “The Frog Prince,” and “The Princess and the Pea,” follow the adventures of Chloe and her family as they fall into one fairy tale after another.
This expanded, deluxe edition includes three new stories and illustrations by Caitlin Walsh.
FROM JAMES DAIN: Everyone Dies in Youngstown: A Noir Action Thriller Mystery
Can a man stand by when his brother’s been murdered?
It’s a dog-eat-dog world in rustbelt Youngstown, Ohio–but MJ Shea, a small-time cocaine runner, is making out just fine, thank you.
Until his crack-addicted brother turns up on the street, his brains blown all over the pavement.
The cops can’t be bothered investigating a simple gangland murder.
And no one wants to tangle with Waylay May, the city’s brutal drug lord.
But with his own life on the line, MJ must fight his way through the lies and hidden dangers of the forbidding streets to get justice for his dead brother.
And what he finds will change everything, forever.
Prepare to stay up late reading this gritty, fast-paced novel by best selling thriller writer James Dain, Best Novel Winner at the Los Angeles Neo-Noir Festival.
Click the BUY button now to join the action!
FROM DEVON ERIKSEN: Theft of Fire: Orbital Space #1
At the frozen edge of the solar system lies a hidden treasure which could spell their fortune or their destruction—but only if they survive each other first.
Marcus Warnoc has a little problem. His asteroid mining ship—his inheritance, his livelihood, and his home—has been hijacked by a pint-sized corporate heiress with enough blackmail material to sink him for good, a secret mission she won’t tell him about, and enough courage to get them both killed. She may have him dead to rights, but if he doesn’t turn the tables on this spoiled Martian snob, he’ll be dead, period. He’s not giving up without a fight.
He has a plan.
Miranda Foxgrove has the opportunity of a lifetime almost within her grasp if she can reach it. Her stolen spacecraft came with a stubborn, resourceful captain who refuses to cooperate—but he’s one of the few men alive who can snatch an unimaginable treasure from beneath the muzzles of countless railguns. And if this foulmouthed Belter thug doesn’t want to cooperate, she’ll find a way to force him. She’s come too far to give up now.
She has a plan.
They’re about to find out that a plan is a list of things that won’t happen.
Order your copy of Theft of Fire today
FROM SCOTT MCCREA: Tom Mix And The Wild West Christmas: A Western Adventure (Tales of Tom Mix Book 9)
Marshal Tom Mix plans on spending a quiet Christmas at home when he gets an urgent message from Buffalo Bill Cody. The famous showman is doing a special Christmas performance of the Wild West Show for an orphan asylum where he will distribute thousands of dollars’ worth of presents, and he wants Tom to guard them.
When the presents are stolen just before Christmas, Tom and Buffalo Bill team up to find them, resulting in a raucous Christmas Caper that will fill you with holiday cheer!
Join acclaimed Western writer Scott McCrea for this special Christmas book in the Tales of Tom Mix series!
The Critics Say:
“Well done, Mr. McCrea.” – Western author Jeremy Perry
“It’s easy to read; fast paced; packed with action; and full of characters you’re soon rootin’ for, as well as those you can’t wait to meet a grizzly end. It’s great fun to read.” – Western author Andrew Weston
“Scott McCrea’s prose is tight and smooth, and delivers a fair number of smiles.” — Evan Lewis, Davy Crockett’s Almanack
“Recommended!” — Jeff Arnold’s West
“Looking forward to the next one!” — Toby Roan, Fifty Westerns From the Fifties Blog
FROM HOLLY CHISM: Pendragon Resurgent (Legends Book 2)
Life is much better when nobody is trying to kill you.
Sara Hawke, now a university professor, has had five years where nobody was trying to kill her…if you don’t count her course load’s grading. Five years of watching over and helping raise orphaned young dragons.
Her comfortable life comes to an end when she’s attacked by Eastern Dragons, once again—this time, though, her attackers aren’t in the ruling elite. She’s in for the fight of her life again, only this time, Mordred is on the other side of the world, and she must first reach his side before they can succeed.
The running fight to survive brings to light old treachery, blackest magic…and new hope and new allies.
FROM ANNA FERREIRA: Christmas at Blackheath
Agnes Rawlins would never dream of showing a melancholy face to her brother’s guests. She may be a spinster, and treated little better than any common housekeeper, but she is responsible for bringing Christmas cheer into the dark and rambling Blackheath Manor, and she does not shirk her duty, even when she has little reason to celebrate.
William Marlowe, Viscount Claridge, has reluctantly accepted an invitation to spend the Christmas season at Blackheath. It’s not his first choice- how anyone could wish to spend time in the gloomy manor house is beyond him- but when he meets the kind and gentle lady of the house, he finds that Christmas at Blackheath might not be so bad after all.
FROM KAREN MYERS: Broken Devices: A Lost Wizard’s Tale (The Chained Adept Book 3
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 LEIGH KIMMEL: Time Slips
What if our most treasured verities were in fact wrong?
To be selected for Project Mercury and be one of America’s first astronauts was a dream come true for test pilot Deke Slayton. But fellow Mercury astronaut Al Shepard kept telling old stories from his native New England, tales of monstrous entities like Cthulhu and Yog Sothoth. Earlier generations had viewed them as demons, but might they in fact be aliens, here long before humanity?
Soon Deke discovers evidence that something is watching the US space program. Something that begrudges humanity the stars and would put a ceiling on human attainment. Something that can manipulate time itself.
HP Lovecraft wrote that we dwell on a placid island of ignorance amidst the dark ocean of infinity, and that we were not meant to travel far.
What might the US space program have looked like in a cosmos filled with hostile eldritch entities? Would they notice us as playthings? Or as a nuisance to be dealt with?
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: LIGHT
According To Hoyt 
“I thought your power was generate light”?
“Nope, my power is making things lighter than they were”.
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“Over here.” They picked their way through a maze of pallets stacked head-high with…mostly junk, from what she could see. Old computers, CRT monitors, dead printers and other obsolete equipment, all festooned with rats nests of tangled wires. The real surprise came when her guides stepped into the side of a pallet and disappeared.
She balked for a moment, then followed. The pallet faded from view just before she smacked into it, revealing a cleared area nearly a hundred feet across with a no-shit flying saucer parked in the middle. It couldn’t be anything else. Over sixty feet in diameter, twenty feet high, perched on three legs supported by gleaming metal rods thick as her arm.
They had stopped a few feet away, watching her with matching smug grins.
“What…?” She glanced around, confused. Everything looked different from what it had just a couple of steps back.
He explained, “It’s a cloaking field. It modifies light to mask whatever’s inside.”
“And it’s hiding…that.”
“Uh-huh.”
She turned an accusing glare on the purple-haired woman standing beside him. “I thought you never lied.”
Her grin remained smug. “I didn’t lie. I never told anybody we’re not building a space ship in the parking lot.”
He gestured invitingly to one leg, wider than the other two, with steps leading up into the hull. “Come on aboard. We’ll show you around.”
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“There I was being pushed by muscles out of the only place I have ever known, almost crushed I tell you. Then I burst forth out into the light and this guy in green scrubs grabs me by my feet and smacks me on the ass, and tells me welcome to the world. I tell you what this is not what I signed up for” baby Milo opined.
“I know what you mean, there should be laws against such abuse” Baby Jessica said.
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“But it doesn’t tell us that. Does anyone think that any of these piles are more profitable than others?”
Autumn said nothing, looked down, and froze in place.
“It is very unlikely,” said Karlos, “that they would shed light on her deeds. She would put it in flowery, misleading language.”
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Of course this is what I’d end up with.
How many times was this now? Vincent always hoped it’d be the last but neither he nor his opponent could ever manage it. A majestic white mech stood before him wielding a Wenlock sword rapier, a weapon unheard of in the Arev Army, or for that matter among the Odrysian Sultan’s personal guard where he trained. He knew that sword could take the form of an Odrysian kilij of fire or light whenever his opponent willed it, though. That a man like Edmund Baines could wield the element of light in particular showed that whatever was beyond this world had an absurd sense of humor, not that he got a glimpse of it when he had died himself.
“Don’t think your newfound willingness to use sorcery will catch me off guard again, Austin,” Edmund hissed, transforming his blade into a kilij of light exactly as Vincent had expected him to. “This time I will send you to Tartarus once and for all.”
“You will go to your final reward as well, vile mother of monsters.” a haughty voice threatened, the white knight’s cyan eyes flashing menacingly.
“You both will die fanatics’ deaths first, Edmund and Alpheratz,” Ashleshia retorted as Vincent had her move into position, readying a shadow charge in her gunblade. “Let us not waste any more time with banter, Vincent.”
The Undying soldier simply nodded and moved to attach, firing up the shadow charge right when Alpheratz raised his enchanted blade. The clash of opposing forces drove the two combatants backwards and they both decided to shift to the same tactic at the same time: magic. After a short charge Vincent’s blades of shadow met Edmund’s spears of light in another violent explosion. Ash covered herself with her wings and Alpheratz raised a barrier in response as mechs from both sides went flying. If he and Edmund had managed that much with their power, one could only wonder what was happening between Carys and the Mad Empress wherever they had gotten off to.
“Afraid for Lady Carys, Austin?” Edmund taunted as the locked blades, backing up his swing with a fire enchantment this time.
“Afraid of seeing you crying after she’s done with your Mad Empress, maybe.” Vincent retorted, meeting the flame with a neutral charge from Ash’s gunblade.
A crowd from both alliances gathered as the Gunblade Emperor and Lord Protector fought, neither man able to get an advantage over the other. What, if anything, would break, none of them knew.
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Tara always dreaded Ms Rothfuss’s tests. That woman’s idea of making sure you’d done your assigned readings was to quiz you on a whole bunch of trivia, like identifying the sources of random quotes. Some were obvious, like Big Al Shepard’s “Light this candle,” but others were so obscure that Tara wondered if she was expected to commit those texts to memory, not just read and take notes. Did Ms Rothfuss not realize that her methods were leading her students to focus on looking for potential gotchas, rather than learning how to analyze and synthesize the information, like the science teachers?
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“My name is Psycho, anyone of you homos touch my stuff and I’ll Kill you” Psycho said.
“Lighten up Francis” Sgt. Hulka said.
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David Drake just passed away. It was announced on his official Facebook by his webmaster.
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Dang.
I met him many years ago, at the second ConGlomeration (Louisville sf convention, now defunct).
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I know. He was a darned good writer, and a gentleman.
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I know. we were friends. One knows one’s friends will depart and probably earlier if they’re older than one, but it still hurts.
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Loved his books. Thank you Mr Drake for all the hours of enjoyment, for opening my eyes when I needed them open. May your journey lead to the promised land.
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I met him once. Good man. Heck of a writer. He will be missed.
From the earth we rise. To the mud we return. The earth is the richer, and we the poorer today.
May his family, friends, and the lives he touched be blessed with the strength, grace, and comfort that Himself can provide.
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Another of the brightest stars in our little pocket universe has gone dark.
One of the few who could bring soldiers to life – and make you want to be in the column marching with them.
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That’s a shame. I think I’ll re-read the Belisarius series in his memory.
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I just finished re-reading it.
One of his writerly virtues was using historical events as the basis of stories, and telling you what they were so you could look them up for yourself if you so chose.
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Sorry indeed to hear this, but not so surprised; I stumbled over the announcement he’d not be writing any more some months ago checking something on his Web site, and that made it obvious it was for health reasons, and ones not expected to improve.
Still a great loss, and not only from the usual much-reading-pleasure angle. He had a way of writing that brought the humanity of his characters often into clear relief, and one can learn much about how to write well simply by following along and paying due attention.
His book “Redliners” highlights this even more; though it’s a far-future SF novel set in a grim war by a rather despotic pan-human government, the 20th-anniversary edition (Baen) has a substantial appendix of letter/excerpts from real-world combat veterans, who’d found reading it (only reading it) to be a real help in dealing with their own actual post-war trauma.
Now, that’s true Human Wave writing, in all-capital letters.
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His book The Forlorn Hope remains one of my all time favorites. Exactly the sort of book one wishes had a sequel, but never does.
Requiescat in Pace
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The inner door opened and a bank of lights shone into the airlock, blinding Fred as he stood there in his bulky obviously-Earther spacesuit. He noticed as the slight vapor from the repressurization cycle cleared that he could see several laser beams directed at his chest.
“Helmet Off” came the order, a woman’s hard voice, booming over the loudspeakers.
Fred unlatched and rotated his helmet off, noting the air was fresh and without obvious odor, unlike the inside of his suit.
“You have now entered Belt territory. You will comply with all instructions. Put your helmet down, then stand facing the light, hands out to your sides, and step forward to the green square.”
Fred complied, carefully.
“He’s clear,” a man’s voice from his left side.
The bright lights shining in his face shut off, leaving Fred blinking. A group of men and women approached while others hung back, continuing to cover him with stubby firearms of some sort. As his vision cleared he noticed they were all dressed in what he knew from historical media as “business casual”, circa 2020 or so. And their hair was all similarly styled, shortish in most cases but not all. They would have been perfect for casting as extras in any modern holos examining those critical formative years of the New Peace Order that Fred had fled.
This was in vast contrast to Fred’s own conservative mohawk, which sported only three neon colors. His coworkers, well, ex-coworkers as he was now a wanted fugitive, so they had undoubtedly been called on to loudly denounce him at the mandatory HR meeting this week, often sported the entire officially approved rainbow colors in their hairstyles as signs of solidarity with everyone who was designated oppressed this week. And they wore the officially encouraged clothing of revealing straps and chains, just like he wore inside his suit.
‘Enough woolgathering, Fred. This is important.’
He hoped he could get past this interview. If the EarthPeace goons ever caught him he’d certainly be reeducated until he was recycled to feed Mother Gaia.
“Okay Pal, what’s your name…”
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Sparked by the fine cover art above, which made me wonder why it was the Belters who always have the mohawks, while the Earthers are basically current fashion except Nehru jackets…
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“I don’t like it.”
Sergeant Jim was not the only one who disliked splitting the party. The troops muttered and cussed. First the new guy goes missing. Now they were down a client.
“Nor do I, sergeant. But the company does not lose contracts. Not even when the employer tries to fuck us over.”
The old noncom looked like he wanted to cuss, too. He didn’t though. Not in front of the men.
“Beasts and bandits will be on us like flies on fresh droppings, sir. We’ll have to send a runner to the Stone. Better to hold tight and wait for reinforcements. We are not responsible for a client abandoning us on his own.”
Halveric grunted. The sergeant leaned closer and hid his words.
“That’s not what this is really about, though, is it sir? This is about the kid. You think you can find him? Really?”
“I do.”
The answer was as soft as a gentle breeze, but solid as stone. Sergeant Jim nodded, his eyes never leaving his commanding officer.
“Dig in lads. We are staying put for now. Scorp, you’re fetching reinforcements for us. Be quick about it.”
The grumbling ceased immediately as the troops busied themselves in checking their gear, the travois, and their charges. In a defensible position, with the wounded armed and in good position, three effectives could cause a lot of trouble for most anything that came sniffing around.
With time to properly fortify and lay traps, there were few things that wanted to mess with the company. Even mindless beasts could tell when the prey was not worth the trouble. The dangerous part would be getting set up in time. There was blood in the air already, and corpses floating in the mire.
“Best get going sir. Find him. Bring ‘im back to us.” After a beat, he added, “and maybe that good for nothing live one, too. Even if you have to drag him back to us.”
Hal nodded. The faint, almost ghostly sense of magic was fading. But he could still feel it. There was time yet.
Faint glimmers of the coming dawn could be seen through the trees as he loped over the uneven ground as only the undead could. The living needed the light. Most of them, anyway.
To the men of the company, darkness was their home. The soft shimmers of silver, red, and gold outlined the world in fire and finery. The rich blues of shadow were as welcome as a fire on a cold night.
And within those shadows, he found man sized footprints. Traveling in the same direction as the source of the magic.
Halveric did not believe in happy coincidences. Men had tried to capture and study the undead before, for means both fair and foul. Either way, the parties involved either learned the folly of their errors-
Or their remains were left as a terrible warning.
*
It had been only three days since he’d earned a name. Less than a month since he was born.
And now he was alone.
Between one moment and the next, he’d been fighting a damnably tough chork that seemed to just laugh as it bled and then he’d stabbed it in the face hard enough to make it die. And then he was here. Wherever here was.
Eel whirled around. His spear threatened nothing more dangerous than rocks and trees for all he could tell. He shield warded off a pleasant breeze.
There was no Sergeant Jim to bark orders at him in a way that kept him alert and diligent. No captain to give him direction. No living men to protect from bandits, monsters, and demonspawn. And thankfully, none of those either.
He was in a forest glade with a large rock outcropping to the west. Judging by the dawn glow, he’d appeared facing north. That did not necessarily mean he’d come from the south. Magic could be tricky with teleportation. At least that was what Sergeant Jim said.
Which way was the dawn when they had been fighting? Eel wasn’t quite sure. What with the magic and the blessings and the flaming spear, he’d not been paying enough attention. Another thing the Sergeant did not like was inattention.
At that moment, the young undead wanted nothing more than for his Sergeant to yell at him.
That would put him back with the team. He was just starting to think he might belong there. Out here, alone? The captain had told him things about what happened to a lone undead out in the wilds. They weren’t good things. At all.
Eel took another careful look around the clearing. It would make sense to stay put so he could be found. Perhaps the Sergeant knew a way to track the magic that sent him here. Maybe he was on the way already. Maybe-
There was a light between the trees to the south. Had it been there already? He couldn’t be sure. It wasn’t moving. It looked like firelight. A camp maybe?
It might be better to take a look. If there was a camp, that was a distinct location rather than some random clearing in the woods. Maybe the camp was more defensible than just having his back to a sheer rock that wasn’t too high.
Eel headed towards the camp, attempting to be stealthy the way Scorp tried to show him. Before entering the tree line, he stopped and set up a trail sign like he’d been taught. The living tended to overlook the seemingly random pile of sticks and rocks.
But to the company, it would be as clear as a battle standard. “South. Fire. Light.”
Nothing in the forest tried to ambush him as he crept through the underbrush. He stepped over dead wood and around wet patches in the leaf litter, evidence of someone else’s kills. A sobering reminder of the fate of the weak in this world.
He really didn’t want to die for good. Eel very much wanted to hear TB trying to put one over on Sergeant Jim again. He wanted to clean gear like the newbie he was, dig ditches, and rifle through the nasty undergarments of bandits. He didn’t want to get eaten and pooped out, waiting eternally for his soul respository to be carried back to the Stone, like the others said would happen, either.
After what seemed like days of sneaking the glow began to draw nearer. There land rose and fell, then rose again to a sharp ridge covered in vine covered trees. He had to leave his shield behind as he wormed his way through the vegetation to peer down over the ridge and into the light.
What he saw below shocked him to the core.
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Nomination time:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/22678204-january-2024
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The banqueting hall gleamed. If the windows were not enough to light it up, every guest wore gold or jewels, and the table was set with silver and crystal.
She rather gleamed herself, Rosaleen reminded herself. The maids had a reason to deck her in brocade, with sapphires and silver.
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Sunlight shone through the leaves here and there, leaving a splatter of light spots on the leaf mould. The leaves did not leave the day dark, though. He could see any sign of necromancy, or other magic. If they devised some new spellcraft, it would still contrast with the forest.
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“So then, Em, what do you have for me this fine and soggy evening?” Walter de la Mare’s voice didn’t exactly boom out as he spoke; but it was clear enough to Sellina from even that much how he had a way of grabbing your attention, whether you willed it or no.
And while “Em” was a perfectly standard contraction of “Emma” around here and about now, one could also (if sufficiently in the know) have taken it for a quiet reference to her old work-name “Emerald” — very much not any public sort of thing, now or earlier.
“Oh, the usual, small wonders and assorted what-nots; maybe a bit more to one side tonight. But how are you, Walter, you half-drowned rat of a one?”
You could easily find in Emma Longworth’s counter-greeting more than a hint of New Galveston’s dockside, less than a dozen miles away. Genuine enough, her mixed-up Irish-Ozzie accent; still yet, in so many ways, it misled. But then, Emma had long been old in the craft.
Just as she was by now old at the work of an Independent Researcher, even in a world where it might so easily be grounds for shunning or tarring and feathering or worse. A globe still… skittish, or snakebit, by the Fall and its proof the ‘Old Tech’ could simply drop dead in its tracks; as once already (lifetimes back) it had.
“Well enough, Emma, well enough. Of course they’re still busy calling me a horse’s ass, half the time. And of course, I’d only worry any if all at once they’d stop.”
Walter looked indeed a little like a rat, or a weasel, or a rabbit; one of those faces that seemed to blur into non-recognition within minutes. Such a gift in Sellina’s and Emma’s joint old line of work, agents and spies and operatives. Not so much, one might think, for a politician like de la Mare; yet it seemed to work well enough for him too.
Most of all he looked like a diligent but excitable otter, merry and bold in his enthusiasms, forthright in his approvals and disapprovals. Such a non-political sort of, well, animal — yet so many of his enemies had met their doom; only rarely their deaths, but still a final sort of end.
“And by the way, this is my apprentice Sellina Kurucal, you’d not’ve had the privilege before. And of course your dark shadow Alvin there needs no further introduction to us.” Bodyguard, enforcer, old man-of-the-docks as much as Emma was or more. Yet… no more beyond, a far simpler a person.
Walter’s sandy, non-descript, damp eyebrows lifted in the odd, artificial, sunny-neutral light — so unlike lamps or candles or arclights or gas. “In what aspect of all your varied work, exactly, apprenticed?”
“All of them. Old and new. I’d wager she’d do well-enough even as a slip of a dock-runner, could we cast her back to ten years old or so. Though as her name may declare, she’s here an adult from far across the Wide Sea.”
And Walter de la Mare, limelight-shy eternal survivor of the Republic and its ever-sharp-clawed politics, sketched a small bow to Sellina. Silent, absent, casual, yet very real. And looked Emma right square, right sudden, in the eye.
“So what’s your big news, tonight?”
“Only that there’s a way to resurrect pretty much all the Old Tech we’ve bothered to keep, or seems to be. Brought to us on wings of starlight. And thus surely, in the fullness of time, the common knowledge of all. Written openly in the bright twinklings of our night sky.”
De la Mare didn’t more than blink. “Well, sure-enough you’d done a bit of such yourself, up till now, down here in your secret lair.”
“No. I’ve had to basically re-engineer everything I’ve done from the very ground up, myself. It’s not easy even if you have the… master key to all of the Old Tech, or very nearly.” And her eyes went soft, if only for a moment — recalling that long train ride ‘home’ with a hand-size piece of antiquity, bearing its fine-etched (but encoded) knowledge.
Over a week in a train carriage, taking the long way around and back from the Union with her stolen forbidden old knowledge, nothing to do but hide like a noblewoman and wait to reach the Republic. Nothing to do; except in her half-boredom re-invent statistical cryptography, and solve the cipher, and begin to read the old secrets (that their preservers evidently wanted a finder of futurity to earn, not merely exploit for free and easy).
“When I was a child, I spoke as a child and acted as a child; but when I became a woman, I put away all childish things” — more or less. Emma had boarded that train an operative, and left it and her job (three stops, two provinces too early) a free agent, on a very-personal life’s mission.
Knowing what was possible, mebbe-so even how to bring it back.
Worm, come meet butterflyhood. (And never, ever look back again.)
“So you’re gonna explain all that. Right?” Walter smiled, but intensely.
“You know how I’ve been watchin’ the stars for signals? Seein’ if one of the other planets of the Old Diaspora is up-and-on-its-feet again? Also, how I’d seen a signal from one of ’em — its light, the sun’s light as it reaches us entire, modulated millions of times a second in ways that just fairly scream applied Old Tech, starship-level tech?
“Well now it’s not only greetin’s and ramblin’s and diplomaty-nonsense. It has a recipe, of sorts, for bringing Old Tech devices back to work, given they’re intact. Basically you replace their yttrium field cores with new ones of yttrium selenide; rarely an isotope-twiddled selenium, but it’s an explicit, direct set of rules for you to follow.”
She looked square back at him. “And it’s worked now twice out of twice.”
There was a silence, there twenty feet under Galveston, below its streets and sidewalks and the sound of horses and coaches and wagons and more than a few victrolas playing out their music from windows and porches on a warm drippy autumn evening.
“All o’ that, hm? With all those attics and junkyards and old barns we’ve still got, after more than a century, full o’ old stuff like that.” De la Mare’s voice was quiet, unusually soft indeed. “And you’d trust us, me, with all that, now, or at least soon? Is that what you’re sayin’ to me?”
“The Republic’s been good enough to me, Walter. Tried to kill me more’n a few times, recently, that’s how I met Sellina — but yet who does she work for, with, now?” Very Socratic, likely; but pure Emma Longworth.
“Surely you’re kidding, Senator de la Mare.” Sellina’s voice rose strong, if maybe unwaited-for, into the silence between utterances. “Speaking to you and Emma as a former outsider, recruited here by our Service in its ever-hungry need — yes, perhaps our Republic is a fair bit corrupt, not as ruled by the ‘people’ as they’d like or think, somewhat like a joint of mutton never at its prime and going ‘off’ here and there in its age. But if it’s that, then the Socialist Union, that mulish hybrid of Fourieriste socialism and Marxian socialism, is a manure sandwich on fuzzy blue-green bread, smeared with corpseflower jam and garnished with foxglove sprigs.
“No comparison. None at all. Perhaps the Soyuz is better than the old Empire it and we replaced — but remember someone took an atomic-core bomb out of the Old Ages and turned Novy Novgorod into Grozny Novgorod to see that horror off. I’d say, having spent more than a few missions over in their glorious Union Socialiste, not so wildly much an improvement. And begging your pardon, honored sir, if I’ve spoken out of turn.”
Walter de la Mare grinned and bowed deep. “Mayhap you’ll read over one or two of my speeches, in days and weeks to come, if you would..?”
“We don’t have anything like the industrial base they did, not when our people tread Tsiolkovsky Prospekt and Goddard Avenue yet shy away from aught more than steamships and railroads and ironclads. But still,” Emma continued with a quiet hunger, “I’d love to see this world from above.”
(Based on pre-existing setting and characters… yet new even for me!)
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And a hopefully only semi-off-topic, yet inescapably posthumous, birthday wish today the 10th for Ada Augusta Byron King, Lady Lovelace. “The world’s first computer programmer” might miss just a bit from being a proper description; but it’s certain her paper of the 1840s has a clear explicit trace of an executing computer (Analytical Engine) program, calculating (in the now-typical recursive/iterative way) successive Bernoulli numbers from earlier ones.
My own take on the point is that it hinges on the apparent fact that Babbage’s instruction set wasn’t fully complete at the time — people are still disputing whether its branch operation (and there is one, see the work of Allan Bromley and others on what’s basically Babbage-era microcode) was supposed to go both forward and backward, or only forward — even today.
But, if not completely “the world’s first” — then as close as possible, and not far short of it.
Happy birthday, almost-Lady Byron. And thank you, from ones who followed in your wake.
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“Do we go with or without the light” the young kit asked of its mother.
“We thrive in-between” replied the mother rabbit.
“But how shall we see?” asked the kit.
“The lights of moon and stars guide us. The sun is not the only way” was the reply.
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Thanks for including “Theft of Fire” on this list, Sarah! Today is its one-month publication anniversary, I’m so excited!
For anyone who’s hesitant to buy a book that isn’t currently discounted, I’d love to point you towards the review John Walker (the co-founder of Autodesk!) wrote 🙂
https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/books-on-the-shelf/3789/12
“With his first novel, Theft of Fire, Devon Eriksen has jumped in at the top of the game… This is a glorious adventure and a delight to read.”
I think your readers will also enjoy the libertarian themes of Devon’s book!
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I don’t often comment on these threads because I don’t do well with writing prompts. I want to let you/everyone know that I do appreciate the promos. With so many books on Amazon, having something that shines a light on the good ones is much appreciated.
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Thank you. It’s work, but work that needs done. there’s something else planned, but I need to talk to my web guy, instead of ignoring him unless he asks pointed questions. this is entirely my fault, between ADD, overbooking and depression.
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