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 HOLLY CHISM: Having a Pint (Liquid Diet Chronicles Book 2)
Even the dead have to make a living…
Meg Turner, vampire accountant and investments advisor, has plenty of living clients, but not many among her fellow undead. That’s about to change: she’s been invited to a regional business fair for her kind. She’ll get to meet and greet more bloodsuckers than she really wanted to (hopefully without having to suck up to any of them). than just the two Vampire cops she helped track down and stake her late, unlamented sire—and hopefully make some friends and answer some questions.
Unfortunately, she’s got a Line Progenitor who’s begun invading her dreams, and a serial killer stalking her future clients to distract her from growing her business. Throw in a sick roommate not long before the conference starts, a mafia messenger boy left on her front porch, and only one car to juggle all of her responsibilities toward her roommate and unexpected guest. And then on top of that, she has the business fair over an hour away that features vampire karaoke, nosy, pushy elder bloodsuckers, and one particular elder who’s friends with her unwelcome dream guest. Seriously, it’s enough to drive her to drink something other than coffee or blood.
Just why did she think this whole conference thing sounded like a good idea, again?
BY MAX BRAND, WITH INTRODUCTION BY D. JASON FLEMING: The Cross Brand (Annotated): The classic pulp western
Jack Bristol did shoot the sheriff, and then took his horse and ran a thousand miles, thinking he would be condemned a murderer for defending himself. Then he met old Hank Sherry, who greeted him by burning a cross into his forehead without any explanation of why. Escaping the crazy old man, riding into Culver Valley gave him a hint: everybody who saw the cross thought he was Sherry’s son — and should be hanged! How could Bristol escape the respectable citizens of the Valley, who wanted him dead, and yet win the heart of the girl who knew, somehow, that he was innocent?
- This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving the novel genre and historical context.
FROM MEL DUNAY: Wolf’s Trail (Hunter Healer King Book 1
The name’s Chloe Fortebat, and I am in trouble. I left my father’s ranch on the plains to come to the Old World: a place of airships, steampower, and monsters nobody talks about. Now I’m dodging giant werewolves with fangs the size of my knife, and the hunters crazy enough to go after them. The most dangerous of these doesn’t look the part: a quiet, sharp-dressed medical man with a tired face….
My name is Dr. Maxim os Storm, and I hunt the beasts that haunt the night. The leader of this pack of werewolves has set his mark on Miss Fortebat, but this brave lady would rather fight him than let him make her his tool. As far as I am concerned, that makes her my ally. My only chance of curing her lies with an ancient machine, hidden by my people in the caves beneath Wolf Island. We must keep that artifact out of the werewolf’s grasp at all costs, for he would put it to a terrible use….
FROM DALE COZORT: There Will Always Be An England
In the Alternate History novel, two weeks after the D-Day landings, 1944 Britain disappears, replaced by a version of Britain from the distant past, before modern humans made it to Europe. Billy Chandler, like all Allied soldiers in the Normandy bridgehead is suddenly in a desperate situation, cut off from British-based air support, reinforcements and supplies. Meanwhile, deep in the past, 1944 Britain is in its own fight for survival, isolated in a time when Neanderthals rule Europe and no humans have reached the Americas and struggling to feed itself.
The Allies in Normandy struggle to hold out against increasingly powerful German attacks, running low on food and ammunition. Meanwhile, 1944 Britain struggles to survive, a modern nation in a Stone Age world.
FROM SARAH A. HOYT, STILL ON SALE FOR 99C: Darkship Revenge (Darkship Thieves Book 5)
The World Can’t Be Made Safe….
But it doesn’t mean Athena Hera Sinistra isn’t ready to try. Flying back to Earth Orbit from her asteroid home, leaving behind unresolved questions and turmoil, Athena becomes a new mother in orbit.
As is perhaps fitting, her daughter is born during battle with an unknown foe.
A battle that ends with Kit – Athena’s husband – missing, and Athena’s ship damaged.
So Athena names her daughter Eris, and goes to war.
What follows is a non-stop fight by a very angry mother, who wishes to make the world(s) safe for her newborn daughter, and other children too.
When the adventure is over, it is just the start of another, where children will be rescued, old tyrants brought to justice, and freedom restored.
If it can be.
FROM AURORA DAWN: Hallowing Eve: A Billionaire Boss Romance
Billionaire boss Lucas Danvers keeps his assistant, Evelyn Fontana, very close and very busy. He values her efficiency and intelligence and needs it available to him at all times. It certainly isn’t because he’s in love with her and wants to keep her away from other men. It’s simply a question of respecting her abilities.
That is, until she breaks their tradition of couples’ costumes for the company Halloween party, for which she is solely responsible. When she shows up to the shindig as Eve to his Executive Vice-President Nick Wilbright’s Adam, he has no choice but to disrupt their Edenic date plans dressed as Lucifer. Even if he wants to change the traditional story just a bit.
Nick Wilbright’s been in love with his best friend since college, but Lucas’ procession of supermodels, starlets, and superhot women of all sorts have kept him from making his feelings known. Not to mention that it’s obvious he’s in love with his assistant. Then Evelyn comes to him with a proposition: attend the company Halloween party with her, in matching costumes meant to provoke Lucas to finally pick one of them. Or both.
Will Lucas re-enact the scene in the Garden, or can he tempt both Adam and Eve into sin?
FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Phoenix Dreams
In Greek myth, the phoenix is a bird that rises from its own ashes. Growing up in the city named for it, Toni knew the story well, and being a gamer made her used to death being negotiable.
During a visit to her grandfather’s ranch, she discovered a cache of books and videos from the lost golden age of space travel. Entranced by the enthusiasm of Roger Chaffee for his upcoming spaceflight, she was shocked and angered to learn the disaster that happened only days after his interview.
When she expressed her desire to get him his spaceflight, her family’s anger came as an even bigger shock. But she refused to forget, no matter how hard her parents tried to distract her, to prevent her from researching online.
Her determination would lead her along strange paths that would end in a desperate cross-country chase and the realization of a dream decades deferred.
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: Dance
Apropos:
According To Hoyt 
There’ll be dancing Rand had said.
Tara still wasn’t sure what to think. Back in the timeline she’d left behind, the only dancing she got to do was the square dancing in music class back in grade school. Getting invited to high school dances was something that happened to other girls.
But Rand had insisted she’d have a lot more fun if she came than if she stayed in her module lounge studying — or at least looking like she was studying. So here she was, dressed in her NASA blues and feeling very awkward beside Rand.
The dining commons looked so different with all the tables folded up and cleared away. A few of the chairs remained, scattered in groups along the walls. The floor-to-ceiling monitors were playing patterns rather than the usual video feeds, and if that wasn’t a disco ball hanging from the middle of the ceiling, it was a pretty good imitation.
“Look over there.” Rand gestured to the far wall.
Behind the portable DJ’s mixer board sat Spruance Del Curtin, going over something on a tablet. Probably his planned sets, although it could be just about anything. So much was controlled via digital devices up here, and if you knew the necessary passwords, you could check pretty much anything from anywhere.
And then she realized the really important part. Sprue would be busy all evening, leaving him with no time to hit on her.
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“I don’t care what those idiots on the internet said – this dance is the finals, and if you grab my ‘bustle’ I will stop right here and kick your ‘bustle’ into the year after next.”
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William Stevens, called Troll, watched the dance floor waiting for his friend to arrive.
“Hey big boy, want a dance?”
William turned to see Angela Matthews, called Blue Fairy, looking up at him. At five foot in height, she was much shorter than his ten foot self.
“Managed to sneak up on me again. I’d love to dance with you but why would a pretty fairy like you want to dance with an ugly troll like me?”
“Mostly because I like you and very secondarily I want to annoy some God’s-Gift-To-Women jerks.”
Offering his arm to Angela, William chuckled and said “Well, if they’re still alive, they couldn’t be too big of jerks.”
She laughed as they headed for the dance floor. “Well, they aren’t worth my time or your time to demolish.”
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Of course this group would take this word in this direction…
“Kind of you to save me the trouble, vile witch.” Carys thought as she pulled Zornitsa back from a burst of searing flame before turning around to face the source: Mad Empress Lysandra herself at the helm of her infernal mech.
“Oh dear. Oh dearie me,” she taunted before lapsing into a girlish giggle unbecoming of a woman her age. “How can the High Sorceress and Lady Zornitsa both be so blind? I think you need to crack the whip on your maintenance crew harder, child.”
Never one for subtlety, Lysandra extended a barbed whip from Yurena’s wrist and took a wide swing at her. Fire behind her, a whip in front of her, Carys quickly put up a wind shield as she braced herself with her spear. It kept her weapon from getting tangled in Lysandra’s but wasn’t enough to keep her from staggering.
“My Lady! Are you alright?!” a male voice shouted before a massive white knight arrived at her side. Of course. Edmund and Alpheratz.
“Of course, my dear Edmund,” the Mad Empress said, retracting the whip before extending Yurena’s hand, another fireball forming. “Just about to send this pretentious whelp to her final reward.
“You talk too much, insane buffoon!” Carys thought, having regained her balance. Lysandra alone was bad enough, but Edmund too? Where had Vincent gone? No matter. If she had to send this infernal couple to Hell all by herself she would.
Zornitsa was already geared for wind magic so she stuck with that to start with, winds beginning to stir in front of her as she extended Zornitsa’s hand. An immense tornado shot out towards Lysandra and Edmund, tearing out chunks of the land as it did so. She knew she couldn’t settle for just the winds, though, and moved to an adjacent school of elements. Lightning. Thunder rumbled as she raised her spear and roared as she swung it downwards, calling down bolts from the heavens on the Mad Empress of Arev and her wicked Lord Protector.
Yet she soon found herself in a cloud of steam. Who was it?! Had Lysandra acted in the time she had conjured up the two spells?! No. It blew off to the side as soon as it had come and a green, winged titan walked through. Vincent!
“Sorry I’m late, Carys!” he panted, taking a ready stance with his gunblade. “Assassin problems.”
“Please tell me Azahara didn’t hit you with a talisman, Vincent,” she sighed. “Actually, do so later. Let us not make the same mistake those two did!”
The one-two punch of wind and lightning hadn’t left Yurena and Alpheratz smoking piles of scrap but Carys hadn’t expected to fell opponents of this caliber that easily. It had, however, visibly shaken them.
“Useless girl!” Lysandra screeched. “What use are your Yamatai arts if you can’t send that disgusting revenant to Tartarus, Espina?!”
“Be fair, My Lady,” Edmund replied smoothly, transforming his rapier into a kilij of light. “She knows that the honor of killing Austin and destroying Ashleshia cannot go to anyone other than Alpheratz and I.”
“If that was her holding back to soften me up for you I’d hate to see what her going all out looks like…” Vincent muttered, preparing a shadow charge to match Edmund’s blade enchantment.
“True enough I suppose!” Lysandra conceded with an insane chuckle. “Let us enjoy what is sure to be our last dance with this pitiful child and her Undying pet.”
“Of course, My Lady.”
“Laugh now, madwoman. In the end, it will be Vincent and I who will shatter your delusions of grandeur!” Carys spat, thunder rumbling as she prepared another round of lightning and Vincent moved to intercept Edmund.
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Waltz? Of course! You are very welcome!
Brought to you by Ceti Alpha Five Earworms, LLP.
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and a Whole album about the year that was:
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Currently working through the Darkship books and am now at #3. It will be a while until I get to book 5…but I will Reviens for it!
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Being thrown into a ball with no notion of how to dance, let alone how to handle the dance of who spoke to whom, and what each word actually meant, would be easier than this.
Ciara looked grave, and Felix felt his heart sink, certain he had missed something important.
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Somehow, I know exactly how they feel…
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“It’s been a long time, I know, and maybe you don’t remember. But if you do… why did you say my friend was crazy to ask you to the Sadie Hawkins dance? That hurt her. And, well, we both figured you’d be thrilled, delighted, even desperate for anyone to any ask you, since you were a geek or nerd when that…wasn’t a popular thing.”
“I only realized YEARS later you were there for ‘moral support.’ Let me explain how it looked to me. I had YEARS of girls playing games with me just to bug off – even when I knew that was what they were doing it still HURT. That was my experience. I had learned, painfully, that anything that sounded good would end up being a setup to mock and hurt.”
“But that wasn’t-”
“Maybe not, but THINK! Did she try to get to know me or get me to know her AT ALL, beforehand? No. Did you come up to me beforehand and say ‘Look, I have this friend who genuinely wants to go the dance, but is a bit shy so… and could you either tell me NO right now to avoid trouble, or say ‘yes’?’ No, THAT did not happen. Instead, you did a SNEAK ATTACK and I was OUTNUMBERED and with my history of EVERY thing like that being a joke at my expense, what the FSCK DID YOU THINK WOULD HAPPEN? OF FSCKING COURSE I reacted poorly! And… I never learned how to dance, so that’s another way I’d be made the fool.”
“But-”
“Look at it from my perspective, would you? Had it been set up even slightly better I’d have agreed. I DESPERATELY WANTED something like that – but I could NOT take chances. I had LEARNED MY LESSON. Now, all these years later… I hope I didn’t truly hurt your friend. And you know what? I’d still love to dance with someone who WANTED to dance with me. Not some stupid gym or Phy. Ed. thing. And… that has NOT happened yet. Yeah, I know, it’s FAR too late…”
“I had NO IDEA you were THAT broken.”
“I didn’t break myself. The ‘mean girl’ thing? It’s real.”
“That’s in the past.”
“I wish. Evolution means BAD THINGS get re-lived as if they were still happening RIGHT NOW as a means of teaching self-preservation. I re-live this crap Every. Damned. Day.”
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“Want to dance?”
“For real or is this just a Sympathy Dance?”
“Argh, you’re impossible!”
“No. I am FAR TOO POSSIBLE. See, I’ve learned.”
“Don’t you EVER just.. have fun?”
“I’d love to. But guess what? I’ve learned, no…I’ve BEEN TAUGHT, to NOT TRUST.”
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This one hits a little too close to home. Female dishonesty is what drove me to celibacy.
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I will say simply that the original issue is Not Fiction. That it got ANY followup is… speculative.
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My sympathies.
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That is really deep. Sounds like you’ve been on the other side of hurt
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“She didn’t come for a ball and to dance,” called a woman. “She came to discuss war. She is not expecting great festivities.” A woman of middle years, her blond hair turning silver, came out and curtsied. “Your Majesty, the garden is lovely while you wait.”
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c4c
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Peasant lasses and lads were dancing over the grass, exclaiming over how the wolf monster had been slain. Some babbled about how it must have been magical, because it had shrunk in death.
Karl’s mouth drew into a line, and Lenore giggled.
Karl looked back and forth. wondered if he had learned that the monsters would be more dangerous than was actually true much of the time.
Victor and Leonid swaggered across the grass, and Victor confided in them that the peasants had actually claimed that the wolf’s pawprints had shrunk as well.
Henrik clapped them both on the back.
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Alone in a crowd, thought Christine a trifle moodily, holding her cold ‘sparkling wine’ and looking, as if from some small distance, at the people swirling around her. Sitting here a couple-three thousand miles from home, in borrowed clothes, saying goodbye to oh-so-lovely ’23 and hello to cat-lurking ’24. She took another sip. Whee.
It was good, though. Not that half-bad “Brut” or that pretty-bad “Extra Dry” stuff they pushed in the grocery stores back home. Ought to be a few perks, though, to crossing the Atlantic only to see all your luggage fetch up in a different country entirely…
“So here’s to me,” she said, half out loud to no-one. “Truly ‘An American in Paris’ this New Year’s; even if mostly In Name Only.”
“Hey, you’re not alone in that,” said the passing man in the suit and hat, almost as if he’d stepped out of one of those 30s-40s movies himself. But he had that ease and bearing, very much not as if he was playing dress-up for a night, or bearing his suit like some obligatory uniform; almost as if he was really enjoying wearing it, right down to the fedora. “You look like you’re dressed for a bit of a party, too, and there you sit, merrily dropping classic movie titles like you know them well.”
She couldn’t help laughing. “These aren’t even my clothes, most of which are busy orbiting the general vicinity of Stuttgart. But my landlady, I guess, of the roominghouse, I suppose, I’m staying in, has a son who had a girfriend-gone-bad who’d left her clothes; so, rescued. He’d likely even be here with me, but he has connections to the IDF and he’s off in the Mideast somewhere undisclosed, helping out with cleanup on aisle Gaza.”
“His loss is my gain, then,” he said easily. “Unless you’d really prefer to pop quips to the empty air all by yourself? Or slowly work yourself up to asking someone likely and more French-adjacent for a dance?”
“Not much chance of the last, not after the — umm, extended day I’ve had, twelve hours past ETA. I mean, everybody was very nice, as odd as that may sound, and Madame Fournier was absolutely indulgent. But, the Day the Sun Stood Still.” She took another tiny drink. “By the way, I’m Christine Clark. Formerly known as Christine Foster, previously Christine Clark, quite often confusingly known as Chris.” She offered her hand.
And he really, literally tipped his hat to her before taking her hand in his. “Cole Parker, no relation to Cole Porter. Actually,” and he gave her an impish sort of grin, “my real first name is Bernard, but nobody’s ever been able to get away with calling me that for long.” He put his drink, a flawless pale-amber gem in a small glass, down on the table; but did not move to sit down. Instead, he stretched out his open hand.
“Now that we know each other a bit, might I have this dance?” He switched to French. “We really must ‘dance again’ — now, after everything.”
Chris grinned. “‘Danser Encore?’ — I loved that one, not too many anti-lockdown protest songs you can dance to!” And she fell back a begrudged little into the here and now. “But there’s nothing playing and no-one dancing just now.” Somehow, her near-exhaustion was forgotten.
Again that smile. “I have a comprehensive solution, if you dare.” And in what seemed to her like an instant, they were up facing each other, and he was singing slow for her, in a suprisingly deep and strong and resonant voice,
“There may be trouble ahead,
But while there’s music, and moonlight,
And love and romance,
Let’s face the music, and dance.
Before the fiddlers have fled…”
Christine could feel her eyes going wide, and it wasn’t the champagne. “So wait, you’re going to be the music for us, too? You and Irving Berlin??”
“Well, Fred and Ginger aren’t exactly around, and I’ve learned over these past few excessively strange years that if you truly want something, then sometimes you just have to make it go, yourself. So, from the top?”
And suddenly all the hours of unpredicted disappointments and unrequited patience and empty assurances simply — fell away. As if the old song with its familiar lyrics were a key, to unlock… something.
Something that all the years of the estate and the lawyers and the divorce and the lawyers and the covidiocy and the politicians had all of them all but buried, but not ever even nearly smothered, deep in her.
And, yes, it truly was a near-full waning gibbous moon, out just outside.
“There may be trouble ahead,
But while there’s music, and moonlight…
Only this time she was singing with him, as well as dancing; and pouring into the words maybe even more meaning than Berlin and his old-Hollywood employers ever meant to build in. And he could dance better than sing.
And it didn’t take even till the end of Cole’s first run-through of the song for another voice, of a dark-haired woman dragging her own partner out onto the floor, to join Cole’s and hers. It wasn’t even nearly another “Danser Encore” — but it was quite as self-organizing, as ‘viral’.
By the third time, he and she had had enough. But the magic was set, the spell was cast, the chain reaction was running. In a quiet litle place, in a nondescript (and so more authentic) tiny corner of the City of Light.
He had a new space blog and an equally-nascent video feed. “It’s not exactly Everyday Astronaut, or even Ellie in Space, but it’s pretty neat.” And in spare moments from that, he was even starting to write science fiction.
“Okay, that’s interesting, I am too. I needed something that was actually creative, not merely… damage control. Or simply, to be blunt, set-up unavoidable failure.” And she was grinning. “It’s not as if we’re ever gonna be the next Sharon Lee and Steve Miller or anything, but have you thought any of collaborating?”
“Don’t laugh. I’ve actually been praying on that awhile, to meet someone I could share my writing with… covering space these days is just so danged inspirational. So much ugliness, so much evil, so much danger to so many of us and civilization itself too, of course. But, I had this epiphany, after a while of the same stuff as you’ve had to weather; what’s the strategy, for times like these, then? Wind yourself up in knots? Or, learn to… dance?
“Imagine this is 1923 turning over to 1924. Or worse, 1942 to 1943. Right here in occupied Paris. My mother’s high school French teacher was a kid in Paris, back then… so, is it really so very hard for us, now, even so?
“And isn’t this what cultural evolution looks like, has to? Smooth times and easy ones really don’t change or grow us much, now, do they?”
The dance was still going, when she said to him. “Enough of this, fun as it is for me, too. For now, there’s moonlight, and music… let’s face the music and dance.” Held out her hand to Cole, as he’d done first.
For once, for a wonder, the New Year turned with hardly a quiver at all.
[[And… a Happy New Year to all!]]
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Very nice.
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He looked back at the table. “And those who aren’t using them are the worse knaves. Do not dance about with folly about not using charms being innocent. They are willing to arm others for mere money. And then they are useless for honest work. All who argue are evil.”
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Happy New Year to all!
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May we survive this one too.
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We will survive, and thrive, in time!
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“This is a crisis!” groused Nigel Slim-Howland. “I’m to take Clarissa to a formal affair where we’ll have to dance. I can’t dance!”
“Did you not learn ballroom dancing at university?” said Jenkins, Nigel’s cyborg butler.
“At Virginia Tech? I didn’t learn dancing. I learned drinking beer and watching football!”
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The Reader loved the entire sequence! It has a steampunk feel to it. However, depending on when in time this was set, beer at Virginia Tech may have been hard to come by since the county it is in was dry until 1972. The Reader knows because he started there in 1971 (Virginia Tech is ‘Ye Ole Land Grant University the Reader occasionally refers to).
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For what it’s worth, I suppose this tale’s set in the not-too-distant future. Having said that, my own school (the Land Grant in Indiana) was a dry campus, though all that meant was getting beer was inconvenient, but not impossible. Of course, having to go to the next county, or even across state lines, to get your alcohol might have been even more complicated.
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Heh. Flat State U. had two departments with brewing clubs. No, one was NOT the Chemistry Department.
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Since the Reader’s father also attended Ye Ole Land Grant U, the Reader had introductions to some nice folks in the hills around Blacksburg who made moonshine.
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“Can you teach me to waltz?” asked Nigel.
“Delighted, sir. I am equipped with a ballroom dancing module,” replied Gwendolyn, Nigel’s maid.
Jenkins put some Strauss on the stereo, while Gwendolyn showed Nigel where to place his hands.
“Now what?” said Nigel.
“You’re supposed to lead me, sir!” Gwendolyn giggled.
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Gwendolyn’s tactile sensors detected “hands on waist and limbs.” Gwendolyn’s aural sensors detected “formal ball, date with Clarissa.” Contextually, that boiled down to, “prepare human for successful interaction,” which Gwendolyn performed efficiently.
But for some reason, Gwendolyn’s core temperature rose, while her servomotors knotted her face into a jealous pout.
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I so need a ‘Gwendolyn’… if only for an hour or two a week. Or month.
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Well, iffn’ you wanted to learn to waltz…
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Gwendolyn’s instructions paid off as Nigel and Clarissa spun effortlessly from one end of the ballroom to the other. “Where did you learn to dance so well?” Clarissa asked.
“Oh, my maid taught me. She’s quite good,” replied Nigel.
“Wonderful!” said Clarissa. I’ll bet she’s good, that little robot hussy!
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And with that, Happy New Year, Everybody!
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I’ve had worse waltzing partners than Maxim. He was extremely careful to keep his face turned towards mine at all times. He didn’t step on my feet even once. He clasped my waist firmly, with a strength that I knew well, but without inappropriate tightness. But he moved more briskly than gracefully, a half-beat too fast for the music, and kept glancing sideways at the other dancers and whisking me out of their way at the last minute.
“I’m sorry,” he said after one near-miss. “This sort of thing is rather a challenge for me.”
I laughed. “Then why did you ask me?”
“I’ve found you a good companion in other challenges,” he said, and dodged us past another couple.
“Is that a compliment?” I asked.
“An honest observation.”
“I’ll be honest with you too, then: this is much more exciting than if you were actually good at this.”
He looked me straight in the eye then, smiled at me…and bumped into another couple. Fortunately, it was Bertram and his partner, and the Prime Minister accepted Maxim’s rather fractured apologies with an amusing eye and a booming chuckle.
“Really Max, think nothing of it! I’m too pleased to see you out on the dance floor.”
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A promise to myself, and myself alone, on this day when I put up a new calendar.
This year, I shall dance. I shall dance, every day, just as hard, and as swiftly, and as gracefully, as I can manage. I shall dance with purpose, to accomplish those things that need to be done, and are within my capability.
But I shall not neglect, whether the day is bright with sunlight, or dark with thunderheads, to dance with joy, to remember that the world, and the people within it that I see every day, even if only in words painted upon a screen, is a truly wonderful place, and that I am fortunate to have a small part in the whirling pattern of life.
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