BOOK PROMO
If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH
FROM JERRY BOYD: Steamed Punks
A truly strange derelict leads the crew to a planet that doesn’t quite make sense. Figuring it out takes time, and hard work. Fixing it takes even more. Come see how BSR deals with their latest adventure.
FROM HOLLY CHISM: Certified Public Assassin
Working as a Certified Public Assassin was, after all, the fastest way to pay down millions of dollars of medical debt. Between that payment and the student loans from getting her associates’ degree, she’s barely making enough to keep body and soul together, but the debt’s almost gone.
Except…she’s paid her student loans. Many times over. There’s something going on, and her handler can’t figure out what. Hiring a hacker to track whatever’s glitching in the student loans database and programming seemed to be a logical next step; however, it isn’t just a glitch. Somebody’s got it in for Molly…and for everyone that has a license to kill.
This has barreled from circumstance through happenstance, and straight into enemy action. But who’s the enemy?
FROM JOHN-RICHARD THOMPSON: Ramses Faro and The Labyrinth of the Crocodiles: Mysteries and Adventures of a Feline Egyptologist
Egypt, 1927. The Feline Egyptologist, Ramses Faro, and his two young companions Felicity and Sharrif, have stumbled upon a key to an ancient treasure of the pharaohs. Pursued by the; wicked cobra, Countess Serpentina von Hyss, their quest takes them from the hidden chambers beneath the Temple of Kom Ombo, to the pirate-infested waters of the Nile, and dep within a lethal maze hidden beneath the desert sands – all in the hope of unlocking the secrets of The Labyrinth of the Crocodiles.
Thrilling, furry fun for ages 8 – 99+ who are fans of Adventure, Egyptology (and cats!), with a story and setting that is both educational and engaging. Curiosity, danger, and mystery collide in a fast-paced tale that propels Ramses Faro and his friends into places unseen by the world for over two thousand years.
FROM TIM GILLILAND: Secret Agent To The Stars: Book Two of Lawyer To The Stars
Honor. Integrity. Brains.
Damien Durne, former Genetics researcher and occasional attorney has been recruited by the Protectorate Intelligence Service to be a field agent – much to his own surprise. But the threat to human kind from an enemy civilization is real, and The Protectorate is on the brink of war – one that they will certainly lose. His mission to discover the foe and prevent the annihilation of all mankind takes him from mountainous summits, to the edge of the abyss, and into the arms of the woman no man can resist.
JON LAFORCE: Hell’s Belles: Love and War Downrange
Two souls collide in the middle of a deadly war.
Sylvie Lyons, of Her Majesties’ Royal Engineers, had joined the Army to follow in the footsteps of her granddad, despite everything the old man had warned her about. Now a Sergeant, she promised herself as she sat in her truck and sweated in the heat of an Afghanistan summer, she would pay more attention to his advice. Being in some politicians’ bright idea of an experimental unit didn’t mean a bloody thing when an IED went off or an RPG decided that it had your number.
Sergeant Hondo Cassidy, United States Marine Corps, loved his job as an artilleryman. Nothing in life is better than throwing hate at the Taliban, along with anybody else who wants to buy in for a whipping. He was, however, looking forward to heading out of the sandbox, as the Marines called anything in the Middle East, shortly. When the word came down that Cassidy’s platoon was being kept in Afghanistan to provide security for Lyons’ engineers, he was more than a bit ticked off, but orders were orders.
FROM OLEG SAPPHIRE AND ALEXEY KOVTUNOV: The Healer’s Way (Book 1): A Portal Progression Fantasy Series
I was the most powerful healer in my world — the best, having devoted my entire life to mastering the art of healing. And yet, for whatever reason, my brother feared that I sought to claim his throne, and he marshaled his forces against me.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter, all the same I’d been planning on trying out a certain ritual and now…
I’m in another world altogether!? And this body I’m inhabiting, well, it’s not mine, but some young guy’s! And what’s it mean that in this world the gift of the healer is downright pathetic?
Apparently, they simply don’t know how to handle power.
FROM MACKEY CHANDLER: Fair Trade: An Alien Invasion Story
Most of my writing is in a series people seem to enjoy but there is a constant small crowd who say: I’d really like your take on an alien invasion story. Well this is for them. The bulk of the aliens come to Earth stories assume their vast superiority, sometimes invincibility. Sometimes they suddenly appear on the white house lawn dictating terms. I have yet to see one with them appearing at the Kremlin or Canberra which seems rather parochial. Other times they are so advanced they quarantine the Earth or Solar System without discussion because we are such barbarian slime-balls. They may alternately be impossible to talk to and attack without mercy. All these assume they come with a plan and the means to carry it out. Our own age of exploration showed things happen much less orderly. Islands and natives were happened upon while seeking someplace else or even because a storm or miscalculation left the ship lost. In that case there is no plan but survival with the assets at hand. As with any game remember that turnabout is fair play.
FROM LAURA MONTGOMERY: Under the Earthline: A Science Fiction Lost Colony Adventure (Martha’s Sons Book 3)
He’s a pawn between a politician’s vengeance and his family’s safety. In a space settlement on the verge of turmoil, he’ll play to win… or die trying.
With only a slender hold on their alien world, human settlers from a marooned starship inhabit a single terraformed valley. As technology frays, as the second generation of settlers cannibalizes its past, and as the governor cancels elections again, tension grows between the city and the western farms.
One Dawe son dead, one in exile, and Thaddeus Dawe now slated to serve as a hostage for his younger brother’s crimes, Thaddeus has a task. He must locate the colony’s last terraseeder for the secret enclave another brother works to carve from the northern wilderness. But with the governor’s men harboring no love for Dawes, and First Landing’s bureaucracy and its preeminent practitioner having other plans, Thaddeus is not the only one whose life is at risk.
Pick up Under the Earthline now for a tale of adventure, loyalty, and love!
FROM MARY CATELLI: Queen Shulamith’s Ball
A ball, a ball, Queen Shulamith would hold a ball. . . .In the magical city that all kingdoms can reach, and none can conquer, filled with kings and queens, intrigues and wonders, that the reclusive queen would stage a ball was a marvel among marvels.It will mean much to many: a young woman newly arrived in the city; a woman and a bear who dance on the street; two small orphans sent to the house of their great-great-grandfather; soldiers staging an invasion; and a queen securing her position.
FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Rockin’ the USA
It’s not easy being married to the leader of the band, even in the best of times. When everything becomes political, you’ve got a nightmare on your hands.
Laurel had her doubts when her husband signed on to headline Governor Thorne’s Independence Day concert in Candlestick Park. Now that the band’s committed to the appearance, the Flannigan Administration has decided to shut the show down, with prejudice.
Laurel knows she has to fight this attempt to stop the signal. But doing so may put her in more danger than she could ever have anticipated, and risk those she loves.
A story of the Grissom timeline, originally published in Liberty Island Magazine.
This edition also includes a bonus essay on the era of dictatorship in Grissom-timeline America.
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: STATUESQUE
According To Hoyt 
We’d finally made it into the labyrinthine castle’s throne room. I looked at Dave, who was standing, utterly shocked, at what we’d discovered. “Is that her?” I said, indicating the well-constructed beauty standing before the throne, who was wearing royal robes and a coronet, but otherwise looked…rather pale.
“Yeah,” said Dave, slowly. “The last time I saw her, she was certainly statuesque, but I think I’d have remembered if she’d been an actual marble statue, then.”
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“Boy! When said that she was Statuesque, I assume that you were talking about how she appeared, not that she was a Statue!”
The “statue” turned and said “Are you sure about that General?”
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Annike drew herself up to her full height, not quite managing to appear statuesque. “Can you control fires that you do not set yourself?”
“Yes, of course.” Hans hesitated, glanced about. “I can show you.”
Jasper said, looking at Marcus, “The more we learn about our dominions here, in safety, the less likely it is that we will return home to find ourselves in danger again, because we will be able to defend ourselves.”
Marcus drew his breath in and let it out again. “I have certainly found this place useful for mastering my own dominion.”
And I have no idea what I have let myself into, he thought. His gaze went from one face to the next, and he firmly reminded himself how grateful he would have been for any help at all after the land of the necromancers. Better, before they attacked, to defend the village from them.
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Steve Quartz phoned his assistant, Staś.
” ‘S’dat you, SQ?”
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Morton was so excited to be at the digs. The soldiers of the emperor, Terra Cora titans, stood row on row in silence. Kant came up beside him, arms crossed.
”Mort, look it all them Statues. They looks like they’d waiting on something.”
”They were. Waiting on the emperor.”
”waiting on him to do what?”
Morton looked his coworker up and down. “ I’d explain it to you, but I doubt you’d understand.”
Kant flushed, angry. “ I understand plenty. I know them soldiers, they was what you call in a statuesque. You know, like them Englishmen waiting in a line to get on the subway, or to be told what to do.”
Morton’s palm hit his face so hard he was sure it left a mark.
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“You mock the Englishman for being able to queue up neatly and statuesque-like, until you try to wait in line in other countries where this civilized and polite habit is utterly unknown. Have you ever seen Frenchmen line up for, say, a bus? They can wait in a neat line-sometimes- but as soon as the bus comes they immediately devolve into a teaming throng, chaotically pushing against the bus like piglets on a sow. And here in China? ‘Survival of the fittest’ is the most polite way of describing it.”
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“They said,” said Dennis scornfully, as the torchlight danced over the clearing in black and orange, “that you called her pretty.”
“She is,” said Hendrik. “You should have seen her in the fir grove, with sunlight shining about her, glowing in her white gown and fair hair.” He waved his hand. “True, she lacks the stately, queenly, statuesque beauty, but she will grow into it in time, no doubt. For now, she is as lovely as a birch grove with the sun shining through the green leaves, and her laughter is as sparkling as a running brook.”
Sylvie thought she would turn scarlet, her face heated so.
Hendrik spread his hands. “And from this, you learn it is unwise to let your son read through books of poetry. He may learn to talk like some courtier at court.”
Laughter resounded. Sylvie’s breath come out in a gush. No one talked of her like that at court. Probably because they did not think they could gain by it. They would talk to her father like that. More to her mother, and to the great nobles whom, they assumed, had influence at court.
The duke had heard much talk of that vein.
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“You’re smirking.” Jon noted, his voice sounding distant in his own ears.
“Hm-hm.” Ezak hummed in agreement, blue eyes laughing but absolutely fixed on the tall blonde.
“Please keep in mind that she’s my superior officer. Who is legally permitted to kill you. And who is armed.”
Somehow, the big man’s smirk got more obvious.
“I did notice the arms. They’re very nice arms, although they’re blocking my view of something I’m sure is even nicer.”
Jon looked to the officer, who was now also tapping her foot, as well as having her arms crossed across her chest.
“I don’t think she needs to speak the language to understand what you’re saying. Rocks would understand what you’re thinking.”
“A rock would agree, she is very statuesque.”
The shoe was headed for his head before Jon’s groan finished echoing. Apparently, she did speak the language. And understood puns.
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Love it.
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Poor Jon.
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No one understands puns. One lives them, or endures them, or afflicts them on others.
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TEEFS!
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That expression says, “I’ve just consumed the finest dog biscuit ever made. I’ll remember this moment forever!”
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Young Nigel Slim-Howland rolled his eyes. He and his classmates had to listen to stump speeches from Saint Purgatory’s aspiring politicos. Rogers Thornthwaite, the candidate from Nigel’s house, attempted a statuesque posture as he droned on about nothing memorable. His graceless posing reminded Nigel of a plasticine figurine being manipulated.
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Much earlier time and farther away place in the same world. And damn do I need to get this setting ironed out…
An elven woman stormed through the halls of Airgead Palace, her long, fur-lined coat trailing behind her and a long object wrapped in black cloth in her hands. Both the servants and guards scurried out of her way even if a few of the men would normally be admiring her. She was statuesque, her height and musculature would have been notable even if she were human and made her look almost divine to her fellow elves. The look was further accented by the pieces of golden armor over blue and grey clothing that she wore beneath her coat. She looked like a veritable goddess of war on a mission and only a fool would dare to stop her.
Naturally such a fool would make her presence felt in short order: “Dame Adara! Cease your insolence and stop where you are!”
Surprisingly, Adara did just that. She stopped in her tracks and turned around to face the woman who had called her name. To her credit, or perhaps foolishness, the woman did not step backwards and flinched as the knight stalked over to her, her armor clanking menacingly. The woman’s bodyguards, however, took an involuntary step back.
“So you can listen,” the woman sneered. “Return that sword to me this minute, Dame Adara.”
“Never,” Adara retorted, her blue eyes blazing with cold fury. “You have done enough to desecrate Her Majesty’s memory, Isidora. Her sword is going to a place where it will be properly cared for.”
“Insolent wench!” Isidora screamed, attempting to slap the knight before her only to screech and reel back when her hand met one of Adara’s gauntlets, which she had raised to defend herself against the clumsy blow.
“Let me be clear,” Adara stated, her words as cold as lands of Arctis. “Cordelia Pendragon is the only woman I will ever acknowledge as His Majesty Stefan’s empress. You cannot even hope to shine her greaves, much less sit on her throne. You have no right to any of her belongings; particularly not with the way you have treated them. I will be damned to the Abyssal Plane before I let you even lay a fingernail on her sword!”
For once in her life Isidora was silent. The elven knight didn’t even have to activate the magic in her gauntlets to drive the point home. Adara cast a quick look at her two bodyguards, who seemed hesitant to reach for their weapons.
“I take it none of you dispute matters further, then,” Adara said to the trio. “I bid you good day. May we never meet again, in this life or the next.”
Adara heard Isidora sputtering and screaming as she turned to leave. Maybe it was orders to arrest her; maybe it wasn’t. Nobody came after her regardless and she found who she was looking for shortly after exiting the palace gates: a red-haired elven woman in a leather duster notably shorter than her, scanning the area for trouble.
“Looks like you got out in one piece Adara,” she said with a wry smile when she saw her old friend, noting the intense expression on her face. “How fast and how far do we need to haul arse?”
“As far and as fast as we can manage while still being able to stay informed about the goings on in the palace.” Adara said, the weight of what she had done beginning to settle on her.
She had indeed done her late friend and comrade a favor. Cordelia had wielded the Winter Rose valiantly all those years ago and nothing was a greater symbol of their late empress’ strength than that. Of course Isidora would want it destroyed and of course Adara had to save it. Yet the price she paid for saving the sword…
“Adara?” her companion said, urging her forward. “Crazy Izzy would’ve found a way to get rid of you sooner or later. For good if she’d had more time to get settled in.”
“I know, Iris,” the knight sighed. “I can only hope Prince Noah will forgive me if we meet again.”
“Stefan and Cordy’s boy isn’t going to break so easily,” Iris replied, giving her friend the best smile that she could manage. “No way Crazy Izzy’s going to outfox Lady Violet and her old man the Marquis for one and both Lord Vittorio and that weird kid from Arctis’ve been looking after him at school. Don’t forget Cordy’s family!”
“Speaking of which, once you drop me off at our safehold inform Reynold that his niece’s blade is secure but his nephew will need him, Iris.” Adara said before strapping the weapon to her back.
“Of course,” the red-haired elf said, motioning for her associates to bring the horses they were looking after forward. “Blessings of the Pillars be with us, and the whole world. We damn well need it.”
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“Valeria of the Red Brotherhood
Tall and blonde and statuesque
Stygian fool tried to take advantage
And wound up with a knife in his fool chest.”
S.M. Stirling just released a pretty good Conan the Barbarian novel, hope he does more.
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Good to know and glad this little bit of scribbling brought it to mind. :)
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“Look!”
“And another one”
“Utterly unfair! Why don’t they carve statues of skinny girls?”
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If I were going to Denver soon, what would anyone say the best dish at Pete’s Kitchen is?
Thanks
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back last time I went? souvlaki, no argument.
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You can’t go wrong with souvlaki, most places that offer it.
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In all the times I’d known her, from our childhood together to the day she died, I’d never once thought of my best friend Carlotta as — statuesque.
Not in all our young adventures, not in all our student diligence and wild unsanctioned detours, not in our civil rivalry in love nor our co-marriage to dearest Richard, not in all our works together since. She simply wasn’t ever that kind of girl; good-looking, sure, but never haughty or remotely self-important. I’d known her for smart, then amazing; and since that first cold posthumous peek at her private notebooks, frankly and stunningly a genius.
But… statue-worthy?!?
And now, I knew better, seeing the proof they’d set up on the wide terrace along the west steps of Langmuir House — the building, not the family and Marquesan social-economic institution — over the 30 or 40 minutes I’d met with Lady Catherine Langmuir. Pale white marble, possibly the metamorphic synthetic sort for better uniformity; subtle touches of bright bronze here and there, too, likely aluminum bronze for better stability.
Carlotta Jacinta Singh Langmuir de Singh-Langmuir, the pedestal read. With the dates bookending her life, 2245 to 2277. And just to see the last bit, the House association on the end of her personal name, brought me chills. Even there in the warm late-morning sunlight. In a solitude I was sure was carefully and courteously contrived for me.
When I’d walked up these steps less than an hour ago, not quite at ease in the sort of formal dress one wore to an audience with the Langmuir Herself (and I never much did, otherwise), there had been no Subsidiary House of Singh-Langmuir — it had been created and vested in me, by the Langmuir Herself. Budded, not grafted, as they said, to the Langmuirs’ tree. With me its only living member, till I’d married (again) and borne children.
That’s what they said inside, the formal House bracelets Lady Languir had given me minutes ago. My fullest name, now: Izabella Marie Verkooerk Langmuir de Singh-Langmuir Langmuir. Mother of a whole House, if I dared.
But its founding member and namesake would always be Carlotta.
And that statue was her — unlike so many formalized, abstracted examples of the same attempted and failed capture. The soft, knowing smile, as when she’d solved something hard. The lift of her eyebrows, that at once noticed and challenged life’s various eccentricites. The three-half-twists wedding ring on her finger, like the gold one I still wore, one-sided and entire.
The things she held, symbolic in bright bronze. A Bohr atom, three rings as of carbon, in her left hand; and a three-dimensional 14-point version of a flat eight-pointed star in her right. The Westenra sisters had surely given us all the stars, centuries ago; but Carlotta’s variation (that I’d lately built out to completion and tested) did it all over again.
And just over that outstretched right hand of hers rose (or fell) the big bright almost-Earthly moon of Marquesas. As if she was about to hold that, too, as well as the symbolic stars… Something tugged at me, then; but I ducked and dodged it to walk around that amazing larger-than-life statue.
Carlotta, in life, had always been a bit shorter than me. Never again now.
And when I started to see what was carved into the back side of the base, it almost bowled me over. Again, as if its makers had known her. Exactly how she’d summed it all up to me, her Adjacency Principle that underlay so much of her transcendent math, and all our faster-than-light capabilities and technology besides; the one odd quirk of nature, that made it all run.
There is no such thing as far away.
And like that horrible afternoon on Pelham’s Parish, when they’d made me go to one of their offices to pick up her burned ashes (if I were ever to have anything of her left at all), something deep and wide moved in me.
As if Fate and the Universe slipped me a note: you’ve a package waiting.
I finished my circling inspection, returned to the spot only a step or two higher than the terrace where I’d first stopped to look.
There was the Moon again, almost as if she reached out to hold it…
This time, I yielded to the impulse, never mind how it might look to some unknown number of people who might be watching me, now or as recorded for some future — reached out, with my own right hand, as if to cup and hold it myself. In direct imitation of the statue.
Closed my hand, slowly, as if to grasp the impossible that odd perspective seemed to promise. And what I saw and felt wasn’t a lie of three ordinary dimensions becoming two, but a fact of eleven dimensions becoming four.
As if there was grand slow music playing in the background, as if Carlotta herself had told me how (though I’d found nothing specific in all the tiny fraction of her life’s notebooks I’d ever read so far)… now I knew just how to reach out and grab something, something far away in ordinary space.
(Because, of course, there’s never been any such thing as far away.)
It had to be marked out by fields, where it was; extremely intense fields by any normal standard, except in the operation of a starship’s drive, or the hard shielding that defended the militarily important. (Or, no go.)
Like, for example, some very cherished installation of the Empire of Man.
Say, for instance, their Government House on any of their Imperial Worlds.
Or indeed, Government Home itself, on their capital of New Constantinople.
And I smiled a kind of smile I never had, not even when I’d first taken the controls of our prototype ship Il Mio Cuore into my very own hands. On the old, storied West Steps of the Langmuirs’ ancestral House.
Writers talk about inspiration and gateway writing, scientists do too; and even turn-of-the-millennium mathematician Abraham Robinson had once said nearly the same for abstract math (but of course he’d been an aircraft engineer, first). This was like that. Picking up my package.
Now, I saw myself, in a ship or likely a small fleet of them, approaching as a braided, uneven ring in normal space. Centered on Government Home. Converging, till the pieces almost touched… and then vanishing, till all of them returned to our four-dimensional spacetime, light-years away.
(4, 6, 8, 12, or 20 ships, actually; some Platonic number.)
Call it space piracy; only not a piracy of ships, but of… bigger things.
“Doolittle’s raid, redux,” I said out loud. “Done, in two minutes over New Constantinople.” And my hand reached out, again; my fingers came together, again, with the Moon inside. Symbolically, but with all the diagrams and equations and geometries clear, so diamond-sharp and clear, in my mind.
I’d been trying to make our technology into a weapon of mass destruction. But what I’d needed to do was use it, as a weapon of mass… abduction.
And I bowed, formally as even women did here, the Singh-Langmuir Herself to the one who’d gone before her in our House; me to my friend, co-wife, and collaborator in so many things. Genius beyond my hope of understanding.
Reached out to take our Moon in hand, for a third time. Just as she did.
I smiled, picked up the skirts of my dress, and almost-ran very carefully down the rest of those 137 steps, to where I could catch a vehicle and go back to the military airfield that was our headquarters. I knew I’d need, and have, help. Especially Hannah Mackenzie, the native Marquesan who already understood the whole of Carlotta’s “opus” better than I did.
But the Empire of Man was soon to get the response they’d so… invited.
And Lady Catherine Langmuir had somehow sparked this off, with her gifts to me and to Carlotta. For the first time, I understood what kind of genius really was hers, to contribute from the very top of House Langmuir.
The priceless blessing of giving to her people, whatever way she could do, how to be and do their veriest best, for all of us; anyway and all-despite.
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Lovely.
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Statuesque they’d said she was. Bran disagreed. There was too much life in her to ever be statuesque. Delicate as moonlight and stronger than dreams. A proper lady in this tawdry kingdom. Of course they meant to destroy her. It was his father’s madness all over again.
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Varda Thorne cut a magnificent figure on the steps of the California State Capitol as she took the oath of office as the Golden State’s first female governor. She carried herself as well in a blue suit as she had in the robes of a Santa Clara County family court judge. Everybody had been worried her husband might show up in a lab coat with a pocket protector full of pens and pencils, given that he was an industrial chemist at one of Silicon Valley’s leading computer hardware manufacturers. But California’s new First Gentleman must’ve gotten some quick sartorial advice from Corporate, because he was turned out like one of the fashion plates from GQ that my old college roommate liked to keep on her “man wall.”
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