Book Promo And Vignettes By Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

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 PAM UPHOFF: Origin Stories (Chronicles of the Fall Book 11)

Six stories in the Troystvennyy Soyuz on the run up to and during the Fall of the Alliance.

Young people with problems with the brutal society, and all too often their own families. Young men and women reaching for a better future, as everything changes around them.

FROM D. A. BROCK: Tales of the Texas Navy: Volume 1

This mini-anthology contains two short stories in the ‘Republic of Texas Navy’ universe, revealing heretofore unknown facets of that world.

FROM KEN LIZZI: Semi-Autos and Sorcery: The Complete Series: An Urban Fantasy (Semi-Autos & Sorcery Box Sets Book 1)

The Complete Semi-Autos and Sorcery Boxset.

FROM M.C.A. HOGARTH: Haley and the Town of Refuge (Haley and Nana Book 6)

A girl, a town… and a final choice.

Spring is just around the corner when the town of Refuge is at last asked to confront the Trial’s true challenge, an event that kicks off a furor in its population. But for Haley Landry, level 9 Questgiver, the challenge is more personal. After nine months of working with the alien system and overseeing the growth of her tiny town, a questline brings her to a crossroads, not only for herself, but for Refuge as well.

It’s the hardest decision Haley has had to make, and no one can make it for her. But her choice will shape the future, inside her heart, and out of it.

Join Haley, Nana, and the residents of Refuge for one final adventure in this cozy LitRPG apocalypse. There’s a brownie recipe in the back, because no matter how heavy the material, that’s still the kind of series this is.

FROM LIANE ZANE: The Covert Guardian (The Unsanctioned Guardians Book 1)

Prequel to the Elioud Legacy series

Every hero starts somewhere. She’s going to take the fast track from student to trained covert operative.

Six months ago, Olivia Markham testified in the grueling murder trial of her cousin Emily’s killer. When her boyfriend Jamie surprises Olivia with a trip to Ibiza, party island of the world, her family and friends urge her to go. After all, Emily had been her best friend, the one she’d planned to room with at Brown University her freshman year.

Olivia gets her chance to let loose—only not in the way anyone could foresee.

What was supposed to be a vacation dancing and drinking on the beach trying to move on from her cousin’s death turns into a nightmare terrorist attack instead. As men with automatic weapons and knives move through screaming, swimsuit-clad, and drunken tourists, Olivia can’t flee. She has to do something. Even if it kills her. So she stops and confronts a knife-wielding man who’d just slaughtered a young couple.

It was a foolhardy act.

But Olivia’s presence of mind and surprising fighting skills don’t go unnoticed—or in vain. A team from the Special Activities Division, the CIA’s ultra-clandestine paramilitary unit, miraculously intervenes. What happens next changes the course of Olivia’s life forever.

Set six years before THE HARLEQUIN & THE DRANGÙE, THE COVERT GUARDIAN narrates Olivia Markham’s genesis from idealistic college student to trained intelligence operative.

“I took the opportunity to read The Covert Guardian twice. What an intriguing plot — what interesting characters – what wonderful geographical and cultural contexts. Zane is one helluva researcher. I’m a fan!!!!” Ted Fichtl, Col. USA, Retired

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Dragon’s in the Details

Six stories of dragons hiding in today’s world:
A Friend, Indeed–A little girl meets the best friend she could ask for when she finds a dragon sleeping in her wagon.
Tempest–What do you do when you find a dragon in your favorite teacup?
Clowder–These are absolutely not cats, no matter what they look like, and will take offense at your mistake.
Back Yard Birds and Other Things–If the dragon defends your chickens, you invite it to stay.
Houdini–When the pet supplier sends the wrong kind of dragon, the pet store’s got a problem.
Hoard–Not every dragon cares for gold, gems, or cash.

FROM MARY CATELLI: Through A Mirror, Darkly

What lies behind a reflection?

Powers have filled the world with both heroes and villains.  Helen, despite her own powers, had acquired the name Sanddollar but stayed out of the fights.

When the enigmatic chess masters create a mirrored world reflecting her own home and the world about it, it’s not so easy to escape.  All the more in that the people of that world are a dark reflection of all those she knows.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Margins of Mundania

A tween boy’s Christmas gift opens a world of wonder and brings joy to a whole town fallen on hard times. A young New Englander in the early Twentieth Century discovers that some parts of human history don’t bear too close examination. A literary critic in the old Soviet Union must confront his own moral cowardice.

These stories, along with a multitude of bite-sized works of flash fiction, carry you from the most prosaic of events to the moments of awe that offer glimpses of matters larger than ourselves.

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: CLIP

30 thoughts on “Book Promo And Vignettes By Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike”

  1. “Boy! If you mess with my daughter, I’ll have you clipped!”

    The young man ran away with his hands covering his groin.

    Like

  2. I pulled out the Kriss harness from the back of the truck and started to pull it on over my armor, doing a bounce-check to make sure nothing rattled. Shamblers weren’t exactly the most observant of undead, but why take chances?

    Keannu was already pulling on his harness-I made it very clear that he was to stay away from trouble and having him loaded with an HK416 was the best way I could do that if he was getting out of the SUV. “Why an SMG loadout?” he asked, eyebrow raised.

    “Maybe too far for a shotgun, probably too close for rifle,” I replied, checking the zippers. “So, I’ve got eight stick mags for the Kriss, mixed silver and hollow point, six conventional Glock mags with the same mix.” I grabbed a roll of gaffer’s tape and taped down one of the harness pouches that was loose. “Two frags, but that’s mostly in case of an emergency, not very useful against the undead.” I tapped the canteen on my left hip, opposite my Glock. “Holy water, because if someone’s calling in zombies they might call other things.” My wakizashi was just below that, “I’ve got a chopper in case I need one, medical kit here,” and tapped the fanny pack on my butt, “and all the other gear. Spare knives and multi-tool as well.”

    I pulled out one of the magazines and checked the back-it was low, and I pulled out one of fast-load clips Milo had made for Glock magazines out of the ammo box. Load fifteen rounds of .45 ACP, put it on top of the mag, push it down in a single move, and you loaded the entire magazine. The rest of the mags were fully loaded. Function-check my flashlights and laser, check to make sure the suppressor was attached and ready to go. I was firing full-powered ammo, but I’d found that shambers were good with some kinds of noise and gunshots were one of them. Finally, I put on my radio and helmet. “LAPD’s on channel one and two, we’re on channel three. If you need the rest of the team, channel four, and MCB is on channel five,” and I looked at his rifle. He was ready to go, loaded and with a live round in the chamber, selector set for burst and his index finger welded to the side of the receiver, nowhere near the trigger. “Watch the SUV and be traffic control to get anybody that doesn’t look like they’re bitten out of the way. If you suspect, stop ’em and tell them to wait for the paramedics. Zip-tie and secure them to something if you have to. We’ll let MCB decide if there’s a problem.”

    Keannu snorted angrily at that. He had exactly one run-in with the LA MCB assholes on our week-long ride-along and he hated them already. “I’ll send Jackson and Kuo your way when they get here.”

    I smiled and checked my helmet strap. Great thing about me was that unlike many of my team-mates, I didn’t need optics for this half-light dusk gloom the park had. “Stay focused and stay smart, newbie. The ladies at Umami Union want to see you again,” giving him a gentle tap against his helmet.

    He chuckled, “Will do, boss,” and brought his rifle to port arms. I turned around and dove into the gloomy dusk, hunting for zombies.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. I paid for its placement. I really thought they should let me keep it, like a pierced earring, but during the mastectomy, the surgeon reclaimed the titanium clip identifying the tumor.

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  5. These little DVRs stored everything in three-minute clips, which meant having to go through dozens of files in search of that minute or two of video information you were looking for. And given that this model was old enough that it couldn’t use modern high-capacity SD cards, trying to find the right one also meant looking through a whole heap of those tiny microSD cards. Put one into the reader, plug it into the USB jack and wait for it to mount, go through all those files, then dismount and start the procedure all over again.

    Somewhere in there was the information Mikhael Yehuda was looking for. Information that might make the difference between success and failure in the mission, even life and death for the team on it.

    This was the difference between being part of a government’s intelligence agency and working for a resistance organization that was having to cobble its intelligence infrastructure together using off-the-shelf consumer-grade equipment. But the big brains back in Jerusalem had decided he was most valuable here, playing the long game in a US where the Administration was recycling way too many ugly old anti-Semitic tropes against people who had been touched by their own Cold War genetic engineering programs.

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  7. “What happened?” she called.

    Someone noticed her, and Master Gregor walked forward, still breathing hard. They must have traveled quite hard.

    His voice was clipped as he spoke. “The duke came with his men. They had heard a tale that the princess worked as a scullery maid in our kitchen.”

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  12. Drat. Where is that paperclip? It better not have fallen into the laptop before I got the cover replaced…

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  13. Clipping and pasting a line from the last book promo to make an old-man’s grumble.

    “A tween boy’s Christmas gift opens a world of wonder and brings joy to a whole town fallen on hard times.”

    I am annoyed that “tween” has come to mean “younger than a teenager” rather than Tolkien’s usage of “older than a teenager, someone (or at least some Hobbit) who is in their twenties.” What was wrong with “pre-teen”?

    (Now get off my lawn!)

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  14. “Real” vignette (bignette?) to come later, but for now…

    Mid-2024 Billionaire Corporate Space Race Update

    Elon Musk’s SpaceX has flown ~375 orbital missions, on three different rockets, incl. about 7/8 of this year’s total mass to orbit, and the biggest rocket ever flown.

    Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, despite some sanguine indicators and a predicted September “New Glenn” test flight, still has yet to orbit so much as a paper clip.

    Like

    1. Out here, before Josh Harris’ consortium bought the team, there was some question who would buy the Washington Commanders. For a long time, Jeff Bezos was considered one of the likely candidates.

      Like

  15. A split second after Max passed the ball, the tackler hit him in the legs, his shoulder impacting the back of Max’s left knee. The referee stopped play, and disqualified the tackler– it was a truly egregious foul. Max was oblivious, aware only of the pain before he passed out.

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  16. Cari was watching when it happened, and couldn’t avoid seeing video clips of the tackle later. She wanted to do to the tackler what the tackler did to Max, but once the painkillers set in, Max told her that if he hadn’t turned, it would have been a legal hit.

    Like

  18. Young Nigel clawed his way free of the barber’s gown as Lily, his cyborg friend, held up the clippers and smiled. “Really,” he said, “I think this sort of thing is best left to the professionals!”

    “Oh, poo!” said Lily, sounding disappointed, “I’ve got a tonsorial module installed, you know!”

    Like

  19. Thank you for the promo, Sarah.

    Bang! Bang! Ping!

    Moving quickly, Sgt. Stryker stuffed another en-bloc clip into his M1 as he changed positions in the Tunisian sands. He didn’t want that German patrol to find him.

    ”Damn it, ell-tee, I told you we should have taken that left turn at El Bequirke!”

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  20. “Clip that docking buffer and you’ll never pilot again.” Kenya Weathers shot the academy instructor a “Yeah, right” look from the corner of her eye. He was a real hardass: tough, but fair. She had been handling simple RCS maneuvers since she was a kid on her dad’s space tug.

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  21. The captain’s voice was clipped as he gave the orders the next morning. The rest of the guards seemed equally disgruntled.

    The two messengers stood in radiant smugness as they took their leave, bearing what was needed for the journey, even as they assured the captain that the orders had, indeed, only been for Aidan and not at all what would happen to the soldiers there to guard the young prince.

    Aidan stood, using his long practice to keep his face a stony mask. Nothing he said would matter. It was hard to feel pity for soldiers who felt none.

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  22. Anders rushed into the monitor-wonderland of the analysis room with a sort of little-boy excitement. “Figured out that new dim nova with the oddball spectral lines nobody could make sense of,” he said.

    Colette Mattin raised one eyebrow. “All by yourself?” she inquired and not at all scoffed (yet). Still waiting for her own imagery of the same weird new puzzle to download from the huge satellite telescope.

    “All their programs searched in red shift, a few searched in only slight blue shift. Conventional, but wrong. It’s perfectly ordinary H and He and metals, local ISM mixtures — but approaching us at 10.7% of the speed of light. Of course that makes no astrophysical sense. I had to dig way into the guts of our program to even find the search parameters to change. Yes, I know that’s quite a clip. But it’s the only way the lines ever match.”

    Both eyebrows raised, her wide almost-violet anime-esque eyes practically bugged out in surprise. But Colette did manage not to swear in village French. “That’s totally insane. Nothing could… especially, given how it was not visible, at all, from the archive images before. What do you guess got a star moving so fast? That’s almost got to be extragalactic, it’s so far above galactic escape velocity it’s not even funny.”

    Anders van Rijn (only a very distant relation to That Painter Guy) smiled. “It’s clearly not a star, Colette. There’s no photosphere emission, it’s as hot as chromosphere emission, sure enough, but as you said there wasn’t anything visible there before. Something ramming through the traces of gas in the interstellar medium. My guess is, the ‘something’ is a big hard magnetic field, that wasn’t there before. The signature fits a really big bow shock, bigger than the orbit of the Moon, and still growing.”

    Her face still screwed up in puzzlement, the kind that made you not care at all what you looked like to others; she managed “Okay, I’ll believe you on that for the moment, but what makes a magnetic field just turn on like that? From something moving that fast? Are you thinking it’s a runaway neutron star from a supernova explosion or something? And even then…”

    Anders held up a finger. “You’re still stuck on the wrong track. You’re an astrophysicist, you’re thinking astrophysics. But, remember that offset in position, from different space telescopes? Not clear enough to get a true parallax, but still hinting it’s closer…”

    “God’s blood, Anders! You’re not seriously suggesting this is some kind of little-green-men source, are you?” Still in English, so, not too excited.

    “Not a pulsar, Colette. A ship. Using a magnetic-sail drag brake. Crazy as its light curve is, for a nova or supernova of any kind, it fits a simple model for ‘inflating’ a hoop magsail, pumping up the current slowly given a constant-power source for the energy stored in the field…”

    She shook her head, as if to clear it. “Like von Braun said about Ulam’s crazy ‘Orion’ idea, to drive a spaceship with nuclear bombs: This is not nuts, Anders, this is super-nuts. We’re astronomers, not SETI flakes.”

    He shrugged, subtly but almost eloquently. “Time will tell, I guess. If it is dim and nearby, at that rate it’ll be much closer in a few months, or several months. If it’s truly braking to a near-stop near us, of course, it’ll take longer to get really close than with a pure fly-by…”

    And she shook her head, again, more calmly. “It turns out we got really, madly lucky with the Milliarcsecond Optical Array — the best telescope there is, and they’re doing a recalibration. Someone in a group I know talked them into borrowing some of that calibration time to ‘shoot’ the nova; not publication-quality observation time, but it should tell us if the object is a star-like source far away, or… little green men coming by for a drop-in visit. And it just so happens the first composite image from the MOA is about to be up for me… now!”

    And with a flourish she put the image up on five of the biggest monitors, just as she’d set up half an hour ago. And then gasped.

    “Sweet breath of Paradise, that’s not a nova. It looks like a planetary nebula, but it’s not! And, do you see that purple ring?” Colette’s fingers flew over the keyboards, pulling the different false-colors in the image apart and putting them back together again, in raw command-line mode…

    Highlighted in deep violet, about two-thirds of the way out to the edge of the disk of greenish-glowing gas, was a blurry thin ring. “So, does that look like a magnetic hoop sail to you, Anders? You worked on that project for a couple of years in Boston, before you came here…”

    It actually took him a few moments to find his voice again. “The big glow looks exactly like a magsail bow shock, axial-mode with the current ring just about where that violet-purple, uh, feature is. But it shouldn’t be visible, like that, inside the shock and the magnetopause the flow is very different of course, and…”

    “The purple is false-color for deep vacuum ultraviolet. That’s not what you get from hydrogen, by the way, no matter what you do to it; it’s even below the Lyman-limit line. But it looks to be… right where I’d guess your mag-sail ring would be.” She was absorbed, now, not skeptical.

    “Maybe it’s not a material ring. Maybe that’s some kind of current in a stabilized plasma, or a… something. Ringsails always have the problem that if anything ever breaks the ring, anywhere, that’s bad. Of course your image there could be sharper…”

    Colette laughed. “You’re kidding, right? The MOA’s the best telescope in operation or planned, outside of those crazy ideas using gravity lenses or planetary-atmospheric refraction. Unless you want to divert a quarter of someone’s GDP to making a better one..?”

    “It’s asymmetric. Look, there’s even a ‘tail’ back in the fainter part of the image. That means it’s not only braking, it’s ‘tacking’ with ‘lift’ — the ringsail is tilted to push sideways, not just back.”

    “Okay, so if the lift is opposite the ‘tail’ — it’s almost aligned to the orbital ‘north’ of the Solar System, above the ecliptic plane. As if it’s diverting its course to pass above all of our planets…”

    “Or to finish its near-to-us braking up there, then maybe turn down to the Sun and planets at the very end, when it’s slow enough not to be much of a hazard..?” Anders shrugged.

    “You do know magsail brakes, right? How would you like to be part of one of those five-dozen-authors papers? Because I have a feeling my mailbox is about to blow up, if it isn’t doing it already.”

    “Search for terrestrial intelligence, reach out and touch someone edition, here we come,” said Anders almost reverently.

    (4th try, WPDE)

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