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 MAX COSSAK: Domesticated Terrorists
When his client is railroaded in a DC court, Sam Lapidos decides to give up the practice of law and renew his long dormant interest in exploring nature. His maiden journey into the woods miscarries when an assassin tries to kill him. His friends rally to his defense and gather in his home. His attackers develop their own conflicts, as incompetence, confusion and dissension rile their ranks. What happens next is known only to the author and his readers.
FROM DOUG IRVIN: A Spaceship For Joe
Joe has a problem. It’s summer vacation, and all his friends are unavailable. One moved away, another is
sick and the others are all gone for some reason or another.
In desperation Joe looks for his uncle, who makes a suggestion that he build himself a fort, and even
volunteers the space and materials for it.
But Joe has other ideas. He doesn’t want a simple fort; he wants a spaceship!
There’s just one problem with that. He built it too convincingly ….
FROM LILANIA BEGLEY: Dust Storm: A short SciFi Romance
The deadly planet of Sumire continues to hold secrets. Lyndi of the Space Patrol must make an arrest, before the threatening dust storm arrives. Her partner is a man she can’t trust, whose name she doesn’t even know. Racing against time, and the threat of the Djinn, they might not make it…
FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Schrödinger Paradox: Cataclysm
The end is coming.Unlucky
jerk Tom Beadle was on watch at NASA when the collision alert sounded: a
new asteroid, bigger than the dino-killer, headed for Earth. Big
problem, but that’s why we have NASA, right? Except, after decades of
budget cuts, NASA has no way to shove it off course. That job has to be
contracted out. Will the private sector company his best friend from
college works at succeed where the government option failed? Might be
best to have a backup plan, just in case…
FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: A Hymn for Those Who Fall Forever
Endings always hurt, but Vitali Grigorenko never expected a nightmare in orbit.
Assigned to command the last flight of the orbiter Baikal, Vitali had started the mission in a nostalgic mood. That went out the airlock when he saw the body tumbling through space just beyond the flight deck windows. A body in NASA blue, not Russian tan.
Now he’s trying to get to the bottom of a murder in space, and his own country’s space program as much a hindrance as a help. It’s becoming clear that politics is involved, on both sides of what used to be the Iron Curtain, and he’s going to need to go clear to the top.
A short story of the Grissom timeline.
LEIGH IS HAVING A KICKSTARTER FOR “A TASTING PLATTER” OF HER WORK IF YOU WANT TO GIVE IT A LOOK: Shards of Broken Light
FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN: Castles, Creatures, and Nights: Familiar Generations Book Three
Strange things stalk the nights. Especially nights when the land remembers …
- Christmas brings surprises both welcome and otherwise for Jude and Shoim. Can they survive the peak of baking season, or will Shoim finally end up in a pie?
- Mike and Rich find themselves over their heads, assigned to observe delicate diplomatic negotiations in a haunted—perhaps—castle. Abyssal beasts might be easier to survive.
- Deborah, Hiram, and Art try to prove that they are grown-up magic users. Their parents disagree.
- How does a Hunter say what he cannot speak, mourn when tears are forbidden?
- And more!
Jojn the next generation of mages, sorcerers, Healers, and Hunters on a wild trip through nights silent and otherwise.
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: Plan
According To Hoyt 
“What are they planning?”
“My Lord and our Lady? I don’t know but at least one of their plans succeeded and I’m enjoying it” as he kissed his wife.
LikeLike
Nice set of promos today!
Plan? We don’t need no steekin’ plan! Hold my beer and watch…oops…
LikeLike
“‘The best-laid plans of mice and men go oft agley,'” Yiona purred. “Fortunately, I’m neither.”
LikeLike
The Most Beautiful Angel™ approached the Throne, a sly smile on his face. “Majesty! You recall the saying of your playthings, “Man proposes, G-D disposes?”
“OF COURSE I AM LUCIFER. WHY DO YOU ASK?”
“Well, Sire, I have a cunning plan …”
~
Rgrds,
RES
LikeLiked by 1 person
Vote time:
https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/284773-which-short-work-shall-we-read-in-february
LikeLike
Walk up to the door calmly, as if she meant no more than to be rid of actual rats, instead of figurative ones gnawing at the city.
With the door closed behind her, she climbed the stairs. This was the simplest part of the plan. If she could not do it, she should resign the whole matter in shame. She would not be able to do what was needed. A lady who could not secure her place against interlopers should marry a merchant for money, and let him trade off her blue blood.
There were no herbs in the room.
LikeLike
“Oh god, oh god, this was not part of the plan…”
If the sound of running feet in the hallway outside my office hadn’t already clued me in, that phrase would have done the trick. I don’t think PFC Jenkins even knew that he was speaking out loud, let alone loud enough for me to hear through the closed door. I was half tempted to pretend I hadn’t heard it and let things play out, because whatever was going on, Jenkins richly deserved whatever fallout would come his way. But since it would probably splash on his squad leader as well, and McNair didn’t deserve to be caught in the backlash, I opened the door.
I did not expect the armadillo.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Regular sized armadillo or super-sized armadillo? [Crazy Grin]
LikeLike
Or New Jericho Armadillo?
https://phoenixpoint.fandom.com/wiki/Armadillo
LikeLike
Or the three cases of Lone Star…
LikeLike
Everything was going as planned.
That worried Leonid more than any number of minor hiccups would. What had he overlooked? What might be taking him by surprise?
LikeLike
“I have a plan” Marcus told him.
“Oh god not another one of those, last time you had a plan we were both almost killed, not to mention we can never go to Burundia again” Dmitri said.
I wonder if my protege` would feel better if he knew it wasn’t my plan?
LikeLike
“I have a cunning plan.”
Does that plan involve conquering America and leaving us all ruthlessly free to live as we wish?
LikeLike
Does it involve Baldrick?
LikeLiked by 1 person
His plans are not as cunning as a fox who’s just been appointed Professor of Cunning at the University of Oxford, or so I remember…
LikeLiked by 1 person
A Tetraptych:
People on Epsilon Colony made plans. They looked forward. That was what being a deep space colonist was all about. The magnificent Epsilon Spaceport was planned, and realized. The capital and outlying towns were planned and built. Families were planned and grown. The Anteran Hierarchy invasion, however, changed all that.
LikeLike
Charlie Tristram had it all planned out. After basic training and A-school on Earth, he’d be assigned to the Reserve Task Force back home at Epsilon Colony. For the most part, that plan came to fruition. Electrician’s Mate 3d Class Tristram was assigned to “keep the lights on” aboard Finlandia.
LikeLike
Cherry Parker was hopeful. If her Charlie got assigned back to Epsilon Colony after training, things might really look up for the two of them. She could quit her job at the diner. Maybe she could go to school. Maybe they could – well, maybe she shouldn’t plan too far ahead.
LikeLike
David Cambridge and his wife Caroline didn’t plan much. He was a physician supporting the Reserve Task Force, and would remain at Epsilon Colony as long as needed. She was Director of Primary Weapons aboard Finlandia., and in deep space most of the time. Planning was difficult, if not pointless.
LikeLike
“I have a plan,” I sighed.
“That’s the scary part, you usually do,” Mindy chuckled mirthlessly. “It’s almost always a good plan. Then things go wrong, you start to improvise, then things start catching on fire very quickly.”
LikeLike
Seems a record number of electric bicycles and scooters are catching fire. Almost 270 fires in New York alone last year. And, since they are usually parked in swarms, when one goes up it takes a dozen more with it, accompanied by huge clouds of dense black smoke.
Thus we see Yet Another brilliant left-wing plan run aground on the rocks of intransigent reality. Unless it was their intent to stop
Global WarmingClimate Change by burning down New York City…LikeLike
She drew a deep breath. Given their plan was that she would drive the cart anywhere that looked good to her, even if things went wrong, the plan would not go awry.
After a moment, she reached for the reins and put them between her knees. Horses started to form.
LikeLike
“So, if you might, Miss Tattersall, tell me — what makes it go?”
Professor Richardson didn’t sound curious, but distracted, as if he was making conversation or laboriously manufacturing it. For all he’d arranged their interplanetary cargo / personnel pod passage on the very shortest of short notices, he was clearly not having fun boarding.
“It’s a yoyodrive, with assorted backups. We’ll be there at the very best one-gee constant-boost time from Eris to AEgir, four and a half days or four and three-quarters standard. One Eris gee the whole way, accelerating then decelerating. It’s just — extremely awkward, to have spin or induced gravity on-pod while we’re docked to a station.”
He was making heavy weather of null-gee maneuvering; not “bouncing off the walls” but rather the reverse. Climbing slowly and a bit carefully up/across the ladder; plainly not only ill at ease but disposed, if only he could, to alternately hugging the ladder as if for dear life, and going steadily onward at the speed of an intent and determined sloth.
“It’s reassuring to hear we’re not to be floating adrift in midair all the next nearly-a-week to Xenobia; but, I’ll ask again, what is it makes this thing go?” He sounded as if he was snatching scraps of attention to speak, from utter concentration or profound desperation.
“Humor me, if you will, Miss Tattersall, of the goodness of your heart or superior ‘streetwisdom’ of your Terraformer origins. Enlighten me, what on Eris or in the benighted void is a yoyodrive?
“Or, third-times-the-charm… what makes this thing go?”
She could understand. That 23rd-century drug family could grant immunity to spacesickness, 99+% of the time — it could not confer gracefulness. Or any further genuine comfort in free-fall, really, beyond not-barfing.
“Well, Professor, and first of all still not really a Terraformer, though my culture is Martian- and Terraformer-derived. Most of my life has been spent on planets, ones that aren’t ‘fixer-uppers’ and as are comfortable as Eris is today.
“But what makes this thing go, on Plan A at least, is simply the station on the other end, Xenobia the moon of AEgir the big gas giant, pulling on us through the substring. There’s the equivalent of a big traction engine that pulls on that, like a cablecar clamped to its drive cable. Except the cable is made out of… subatomic fields, like a cosmic string but not. We call it a yoyodrive, because it works just like winding up a yo-yo.”
There was a sort of snicker, all the more emphatic for not being quite as a human would’ve made it, from Tatiana. Then the old jingle. “Yoyodyne, A Growing Excited Company!”
Henrietta made the strange-but-routine contortion of her body that let her look back, past a somewhat-grim-looking but steady Professor Finch, to see her old physics-lab partner (and interstellar exchange student) the Giant Frog From Outer Space (as the yellow-sheets of the 20th would’ve put it). Her own hands and fingers still found the ladder rungs just fine on their own. “You say that, and there was indeed such a company back in the 27th; but do you know where they got that from, originally?”
Tatiana ‘smiled’ in that Toad-ish way of hers, and quoted again. “‘Don’t be mean, you don’t have to be mean. Just remember, no matter where you go, there you are!'”
And they both laughed; which echoed oddly in this personnel tube running a couple-dozen decks or so ‘vertically’ through the long, thin-ish pod.
“Miss Tattersall, Hetty, I know you and your Ssenndalit friend — and no, do not tell me what horrible semantic mistake I’ve made mispronouncing Toad-speak this time, either of you — are still having a jolly re-union good old time, but I and Dave do have some pertinent questions.
“And unless you want to keep on hearing them, these next four days..?”
Odd, how that over-his-glasses look could be encoded, verbally.
But, likely too, just as well Harold Finch couldn’t see her brief smile.
“Okay, like I said, there’s a station anchored at Xenobia, where we’re going, that’ll be pulling on this ship, or pod, as soon as we’re underway. Yes, the ‘string’ really is hundreds of millions of miles or kay long, nearly three AU. No, it doesn’t interact with matter except at the ends, you could wave a hammer through it all day and never notice a thing. Yes, it does ‘roll up’ into nothing (but energy) at either end, as you please, or ‘spool out’ again with enough power applied. And there’s a similar station on Chaos, the moon of Eris you’ve seen all your lives.
“Pull toward our goal, half the time, to speed up; pull back toward Eris and Chaos on another string the rest of the way, to slow down. Clear? We can ‘harvest’ energy through the strings, if we need; but we oughtn’t.”
“Miss Tattersall” — again from right in front of her, why in all the wide black sky had they allowed Richardson to go first? — “you did mention a Plan A, these ‘string’ things. Which implies a Plan B? Other engines, or drives or whatever, that hopefully are up to A.D. 4096 standards?”
Oh, right. Otherwise they’d have him as the rogue caboose, six decks behind.
“Right, Plan B is having someone come out from Xenobia, or Xenobia Station at the L2 point just outward from it, in a rocketship to fetch us. Likely they’d bring a replacement string endpoint, so we can proceed as before. The rocket itself probably a fusion or gas-core drive, quite routine and reliable since the first couple Dawn Centuries of interplanetary flight.
“Plan C, in case ships are scheduled-solid somehow, is a sort of, I guess, gravity drive. We can generate an artificial-gravity field, not the short-range ones we use normally but one that makes us act like we’re a million or so times heavier than we are. This Sun’s gravity, or AEgir’s if we’re close enough, decelerates us into a normal orbit, once we slow down and then shut off the drive. Then we wait for Plan B.”
“We wait, Miss Tattersall?” Richardson couldn’t be winded; but sounded it.
“There’s always food enough for a month, irradiated and cold-stored. We’d be living on steak and potatoes or whatnot. Or stuff you’d not want to be clued further into, for Tatiana. Beyond that we recycle CO2 into methane, 19th-century tech, which then feeds bacteria and yeast and algae and so on and so forth, good old 21st-century Mars tech. ‘Unexciting but wholesome’ as they used to say, back in those days. Oh, and oxygen, too.”
“So is there a Plan D, just to be complete?” Hetty couldn’t see any of the chromophore-patches on Tatiana’s skin; but she felt sure from the way she’d said it, there were at least fugitive flashes of cobalt-blue levity.
“Yes, actually, you three. There’s a rocket drive backup, if we really do need it. One they try hard not to mention to the causual trip passenger, especially to groundpounders; no offense, Professors.
“It uses our radiation/navigation shield, pulsed to high intensity, and a supply of fuel pellets. The fuel, deuterium and uranium, gets zapped by a high-energy discharge from the quintessence accumulators and imploded. A marble-sized pellet compresses, heats, fuses and then fissions, makes the cutest little microexplosion, directed by Dyson’s Free Expansion of A Gas principles. The shield bounces the radiation and propellant, the isometric frame-drag of the shield means we feel pure zero-gee all the meantime.
“Chitty-chitty, Bang! Bang!” She smiled, broadly, in lieu of chuckling.
“Our own little mini-Orion nuclear rocket. With more than enough specific impulse and delta-vee to slow down and travel all by ourselves, no help from Mum or Dad, onward to Xenobia Station.”
“Wonderful,” Richardson groused sourly. “Plan O, for Oh Crap, a nuclear bomb or five hundred is exactly what we need right now.”
“Be of good cheer, Professor,” Tatiana said merrily. “Five days from now, we’ll all be ready to unveil the Secret of Area 41 at last!”
(Slightly pre-existing setting… of possibly a ‘Galactic Enquirer’ entry.)
LikeLike
Phileas Fogg regarded the men seated in his office: Fixx, grim and patient, with years of investigative experience behind him; Passepartout, boyish, optimistic, and currently with an inspired gleam in his eye. This pairing had worked out better than he had hoped, and he was developing future plans for them. Indeed, one of his whist partners had recently confided in him regarding a problem: possible embezzlement from his firm…
“Tell me, gentlemen. Exactly what happened today on the ship Bellehurst, and what do you propose to do next?”
LikeLike
“I have a plan,” said Timmy, pointing to his scribbles on the back of a piece of wrapping paper. “This year we catch Santa for sure.”
Several hours later as he and his conspirators lay sleeping around the fireplace, a familiar bearded intruder gently slipped presents next to each of them before departing on his rounds. Sometimes, the best plans fail for the best reasons.
LikeLike
It was an absolute disaster. The enemy looked impressive on paper, massive numbers of well-designed ships, highly trained sailors from a thousand-year plus long maritime tradition, and some of the best weapons that were ever put to sea. But, what existed on paper and was shown to the party bosses was not reality, which is why much of the People’s Liberation Army, Navy, or PLAN, was now lying at the bottom of the ocean.
LikeLike
Wasn’t expecting to come up with this one!
“My Lady?”
Edmund Baines walked into the Emperor of Arev’s private chambers. Lysandra stood over a charred, mangled corpse that only vaguely resembled anything human. Her thorned whip was in her right hand and red light faded from her left. Edmund was indifferent to the sight and smell of death; he had seen much worse in the battle where had earned the name Yusuf so long ago.
“Do not worry, dear Edmund,” she said, turning away from the corpse with a twisted smile of triumph. “Poor Stelios never had a chance. Since you’re here I take it the rest of my newly departed brother’s forces have been cowed?”
“For the most part,” Edmund stated calmly. “The fact that you were able to prevent him from approaching Alpheratz, much less boarding him, gave is an immense advantage. The path is clear for you to board Yurena should you wish to rout the last of his forces permanently.”
“I think I might just do that.” Lysandra said with a dreamy sigh and feral grin before giving the remains of her brother a demonic scowl.
Both her late, lamented father and unlamented brother had always underestimated her. She had heard the gossip. Poor dotty Lysandra would never amount to anything more than a nuisance so marry her off to some foreign sybarite or another. Was the fact that she was never convicted of any of their demises – even the Yamatai kaizoku with his yakuza connections and ninjas in his employ – not enough to show them that she had to be taken seriously?
Well. She had certainly shown them. Her father’s age might have caught up to him before she could settle matters with him – and same for dear old Uncle Selim for that matter – but Lysandra Hasapis was no fool. She knew that they hoped that she and Edmund would kill each other. Yet their plan ended in failure and blood; with Stelios and his children dead Lysandra was now the only member of the royal family left to take the throne of Arev.
“Come, Edmund dear!” Lysandra chirped, walking briskly past her bodyguard. “Let us finish disposing of this disgusting rabble.”
“At once, My Lady!” he replied, closing his eyes and bowing his head to the new Empress of Arev.
“And do try to find something better than that ratty old Ippotos you were assigned. Maybe Eurytos? Nobody’s taken him out since Father died. Oh!” Lysandra stopped suddenly, turned on her heel, and ran back to Edmund. “Oh, how silly of me! Alpheratz doesn’t have a Chosen anymore with my brother being permanently indisposed! Go to him first, Edmund! That’s an order!”
If the former Janissary thought Lysandra’s suggestion that he try to awaken the Diamond Paladin insane he didn’t show any signs of it. “Your orders in this matter are absolute, My Lady.”
LikeLike