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 JAMES YOUNG: Dispatches From Valhalla: An Alternate History Collection
“But now and again, the traveler reaches eminences where he sees…the deathless deeds of the great who have passed to Valhalla…” – George S. Patton
This collection contains “What ifs…” of military alternate history so daring their heroes would be welcomed into any warriors’ hall:
tand on the deck of the H.M.S. Illustrious off the Falkland Islands as the Royal Navy sails into the first carrier battle since 1945 in “Fate of the Falklands”
- In “The Lightnings and the Cactus,” see what happens when an unfortunate heart attack leads to P-38 Lightnings arriving at Henderson Field in October 1942
- Ride with M-18 Hellcats as they come to the aid of Task Force Smith in “Mr. Dewey’s Tank Corps”
- Finally, witness Vice Admiral Lee’s Task Force 34 clash with the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Center Force in the novella Wonder No More.
Ten years after Acts of War’s publication, long-term Usurper’s War readers will also be thrilled to find two entries in James Young’s signature universe:
- “Winifred,” the origin story in which a lost RAF bomber crew jettisons their payload…and changes history
- The Victorious Meeting, a novella that not only tells the story of the Royal Navy’s actions in Against the Tide Imperial, but sets the stage for A Feather Upon the Waves, the final novel in the series.
Whether you’re a new alternate history fan or an experienced traveler of the multiverse, you’ll find great tales within Dispatches from Valhalla. So grab the proverbial mead horn, erm, beverage of choice and prepared to be regaled once more by tales of battles that never were…but could have been.
Note: This is a collection of reprinted stories from anthologies and novellas that James Young has published since 2019. They have been placed in this single volume for your entertainment and ease of discovery.
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 HOLLY CHISM: The Schrödinger Paradox
To save the future, sometimes you have to reach to the past to change it. And in the face of extinction, you do what you must, regardless of who stands in the way.
Cataclysm
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 JOHN D. MARTIN: A Clever, Chimerical, Clinical, and Charming Collection of 100 German Words: Absolutely Informative, Completely Trivial, yet Infinitely Useful … Useful Book of 100 German Words of the Day)
We’ve all seen the memes about that… crossword puzzle game being played in German, right? Well, here you have a collection of some of the most staggering linguistic morphological nightmares ever found in the wilds of German and Austrian newspapers, magazines, websites, and academic publications. All of these are to prove just how accurate those memes really were… no…. to prove how understated those memes really were. Along with the gigantic chimeras of the compound word world, there are some everyday vocabulary items you might actually use some day. Viel Spaß!
FROM MARY CATELLI: The Other Princess
This time, they invited the last fairy to the christening.
Elise, uncursed at her christening, received strange gifts about castles and roses. With such good fortune, what more does she need? She grows up forever in the shadow of her lovely, cursed, tragic cousin.
Even when the curse falls, and Princess Isabelle lies in enchanted sleep, life must go on for Princess Elise. Despite the curse, the kingdom can not sleep itself, and neither can she.
FROM JOHN D. MARTIN: Charis Colony: The Battle for McGuire Point
Raj and Shirin thought they were safe. They thought their son was safe. They had fled their family home in Mondal’s Landing and to the protected enclave of McGuire Point, out of the reach of Colonial Security. But when Colonial Security attacks the Point and the cost of ending hostilities is returning the couple and their son to the Landing, what decision will Governor McGuire make? And will their newfound home stand by them or sell them out?
From the review of Charis Colony: The Landing at ricochet.com:
“Charis Colony: The Landing” offers a story that is fast-paced and cerebral. Raj Mondal is forced to confront long-held beliefs and challenge authority for the first time. Martin offers readers several competing views of society in this novel.
Mark Lardas, at ricochet.com and at marklardas.com
FROM MACKEY CHANDLER: The Long Voyage of the Little Fleet:
In the first book of this series “Family Law”, Lee’s parents and their business partner Gordon found a class A habitable planet. They thought their quest as explorers was over and they’d live a life of ease. But before they could return and register their claim Lee’s parents died doing a survey of the surface. That left Lee two-thirds owner of the claim and their partner Gordon obligated by his word with her parents to raise Lee. She had grown up aboard ship with her uncle Gordon and he was the only family she’d ever known. Him adopting her was an obvious arrangement – to them. Other people didn’t see it so clearly over the picky little fact Gordon wasn’t human.
After finding prejudice and hostility on several worlds Lee was of the opinion planets might be nice to visit, but terrible places to live. She wanted back in space exploring. Fortunately Gordon was agreeable and the income from their discovery made outfitting an expedition possible. Lee wanted to go DEEP – out where it was entirely unknown and the potential prizes huge. After all, if they kept exploring tentatively they might run up against the border of some bold star faring race who had gobbled up all the best real estate. It wasn’t hard to find others of a like mind for a really long voyage. This sequel to “Family Law” is the story of their incredible voyage.
FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Baying of the Hounds
In the world we know, Nikola Tesla’s Wardencliffe experiment proved a costly failure and was ultimately torn down for scrap. But what if things had gone differently and he pressed his work to completion? In a world similar to but unlike our own, Tesla completes his transmission tower. But when he turns it on, he discovers his calculations were incomplete. Some unknown factor has created a connection with another world with physical laws unlike our own. The commingling of curved and angular space has led to catastrophe. Now his greatest rival, Thomas Alva Edison, compels him to repair the damage. To do so, Tesla must make his way through a ruined city to the locus of the damage. And through his mind echoes the baying of unseen hounds. A short story originally published in the anthology Steampunk Cthulhu.
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: Earthy
According To Hoyt 
The people inside were escaping. For a moment, he wished for Hans, or Cora. Or even Diggory. Earthy powers could smother the fire.
To drag them in to fight someone as evil as Blaize? He dived to the attack, sending out light so silvery and strong as to blind her.
LikeLike
“Through the Dark Forest?” said one guard. “That’s the shortest only in distance!”
Much laughter and some earthy comments later, one messenger declared that they were to obey the king and bring Prince Aidan as directly as possible.
“The king knows every journey has its dangers,” said the other messenger.
LikeLike
“His language was really Marsy.”
“What?”
“If he was born on Earth, it would Earthy language, but he was born on Mars so it’s Marsy.”
LikeLike
Marsy dotes?
LikeLike
And Dosy dotes.
LikeLike
and littlamsey divey
LikeLike
Well, a kiddlddedivytoo, woodenshoe!
Having coffee, attempting Monday.
LikeLike
A pond meant an earthy creature was hardly the wisest. He hesitated over them, and finally picked out a pike. He would have to hope he choose wisely.
He mounted his horse.
“I scarcely know whether to hope she comes today.”
“I think she will. We’re too close to escape.”
LikeLike
“What the… probability schism? Oh bloody… now how do we decide… the target planet seems to have multiplexed in the probability-space.”
“How many?”
“One.. two.. three… four…. five.”
“Alright, A-through-E. I am going to guess that ‘A’ is the nice safe original, which the newest to this crew can handle… and I and my bunch of… oddballs.. will be Earthy, er dealing with Earth-E… as it’s likely to be least familiar and thus most dangerous to normal people. Sort of the rest assuming increasing weirdness and danger the further from ‘A’.”
“You’re just hoping get a unicorn ride, aren’t you?”
“Unicorn? When there might be gryphons? Or… even… a factual and unbiased Associated Press.”
“Let’s not get carried away. Stick to looking for gryphons and unicorns, not some impossible nonsense.”
LikeLike
“What to do, what to do.” Randolph lamented, rolling his eyes and nearly dropping his wine glass.
“Bored, sir?” his lackey, Sir Smithers asked.
“Truth Smithers. Lady Janice’s parties are always dull. Let us decamp this miserably tedious gathering and find us a more entertaining, nay, more earthy recreational venue.”
LikeLike
The moist alien soil he was digging his fox hole in had an odd earthly smell, close but not quite right. He remembered the smell on Minos Seven it had an odd cinnamon smell to it. Then there was Janus six and it’s bright blue color, and it smelled like copper. Still this wasn’t bad, close he thought again, as he lifted another shovel full of dirt and piled it up around the hole. Soon the unit would be dug in waiting on the attack, another planet, another war, just the way it was.
LikeLike
Melania noted an odd earthly smell on Don’s golf clothes.
“Not another peaceful democracy loving communist sniper?’ Melania asked.
“Nope just another Democrat trying to cheat the people of America of a choice, you know like the lying communist whores in media” Don amusingly said.
Remember they are not after Trump, they are after each and everyone of you, Trump is just in the way.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I approve this message.
LikeLike
The earthy smell was the first thing I noticed as consciousness returned.
Which was worrying because I didn’t think I had landed anywhere that dirt was involved. The smell grew and faded, and I opened my eyes.
The black, oily blob in front of my eyes moved away, stopped, then came back. “NOT HUMAN OKAY?” the voice boomed, the blob shivering as it used its entire body as a speaker.
“I’m okay,” I thought furiously, then had a oh shit moment as I realized what I was looking at.
“NOT HUMAN OKAY, I’M HAPPY!” the shoggoth quivered in sincere joy and rolled away.
LikeLike
The Director of Community Integrity wore jeans and a flannel shirt, and his office was decorated with pictures of cowboys and pickup trucks. “This job’s mostly bullshit,” he drawled, “people got rights and all. But when folks mouth off about stuff they don’t know shit about, we gotta step in.”
LikeLike
Like his ur-brother, Ken Redmond had a rather earthy sense of humor. In addition to his infamous “round tuit,” which went to any department he deemed excessively slow, he’d now instituted a “poop award” which went to anyone responsible for a particularly egregious mistake.
So far, the piece of lunar olivine carved into the shape of a heap of fecal matter had remained on its shelf in his office, since he wasn’t going to give one extra post facto. But everyone knew it was only a matter of time.
LikeLike
:-D Reminds me of an incident at work. One of the programmers won the ‘1984 Disk Hog Award’ for filling up almost an entire 350 MB Fujitsu Eagle hard drive on the VAX.
These days, 350 MB is like nothing. A movie, or a few hours of music. A 128 GB USB stick costs $7. Back then, an Eagle weighed 200 pounds and cost $12,000. Taking up most of the space on one was a big deal.
The award itself was a cheap trophy, a faux-gold-plated plastic pig on a platform with an engraved brass plaque. He proudly displayed it for years.
LikeLike
“The Cats of America made a deal with Donald Trump, he kicks out the hungry, hungry Hatians, they give him nine lives. Now you you know why he’s surviving all the assassination attempts. Also Earthy-something.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Barnard and Nobel, booksellers and book publishers! My name is Clarissa, I hope you’re having a good afternoon, how may I help you?” Her voice was one faint shade short of genuinely-chirpy, and it was almost two o’clock.
“Hello, Clarissa, I’m J. S. Dumont, and I need to report that the first batch of 50 printed copies of my new book, No Earthly Language and Other Stories, arrived — well, they arrived here rather badly defective. My order number is 8-5-7 3-0-1 2-3-5.”
“Oh, that doesn’t sound good. Were some of them damaged in shipping?”
“No, it’s a more fundamental defect. Some important text is… wrong. By which I mean the title on all the covers is seriously, well, mis-spelled.”
“Oh, that’s not good. Surely our spellchecking would’ve caught it. And I also see you’ve already approved the images for the pages themselves, the galley proofs as they used to say, so it couldn’t be that…” There was a sort of regretful skepticism in her voice, Joanne had by now decided.
“And by the way, I actually loved your book. I was one of the volunteer focus groupers for the text, for the cold pre-reviews for our Web site. It’s hard to believe anything’s gone badly wrong…” Concerned-but, still.
“The title is okay in the e-book file and the cover image to go with it. But I paid extra for some cover art, nothing fancy but new, just for the printed edition — and I guess in transcribing the type to go over the new illustration, they missed the target a bit. Why don’t you simply call up your publisher’s printery image of the cover if you can, you’ll see what I mean… Look for yourself, go letter for letter if you have to.”
Figuring her suggestion might save a few more ‘oh-really’ exchanges…
“Okay, wait a moment. Here it is, the cover looks just as spooky and sort of quasi-Lovecraftian as I remember the story, and there it is, No Earthly Language and — oh, wait, actually it says ‘No Earthy Language’ in place of ‘Earthly’ — so it really does seem we got that one wrong. Good thing we went with a first-run of 50 print-on-request copies then, I suppose.”
‘We’ ordered fifty instead of two hundred, at my half-hour’s insistence…
Joanne did not count even so far as two, but did have to work not to grind her teeth. “Yes, ‘No Earthy Language’ sounds like something you’d find on the wall of an old spinster’s 19th-century roominghouse, off in the corner where the ‘board’ part of the room-and-board happened. A prudish spinster, at that. Whereas ‘No Earthly Language’ conjures up the ancient Near East and pyramids and sphinxes; and other, deep-time things — that don’t belong there, either.” And she paused, still carefully not counting to anything. “It sounds like only a handful, maybe, ‘only’ fifty copies; but since I’ve already paid in advance several hundred dollars for those, and now with the titles all fouled up like that, it might be rather hard to make it good.”
“Yes, I can see how you’re not satisfied with your order. And I also have found your e-mail of a week ago, too.” Joanne found her singular for a series of five unanswered messages a little odd, but swept on past that.
“So, do you want me to return the books? Surely it’ll be simple for you to re-do the run, and hopefully it’ll be in time for that convention I have coming up in three weeks..?” Joanne wasn’t sparing the suggestion, not at all leery of being slightly, passively, subtly aggressive at this point.
“Um, let’s not jump the gun now, um, Miz Dumont. I’m not authorized to do something so, um, precipitate. Perhaps once I run this past my supervisor in Customer Satisfaction, and once we have some time to run down just how this spelling error was not caught?” She wasn’t really doing that modern, every single sentence ends with a question inflection thing, but… it sounded so much like “pass the buck” to Joanne it made her almost want to sigh, right out loud right over the phone.
“I ought to point out I never saw an image of the new cover until I’d got the order, and signed for delivery and opened the box…” She left her own response hanging in midair, too.
“I’m escalating this issue right now, Miz Dumont. And attaching the mail message you sent us, first. Perhaps we’ve made inquiries, based on that.”
Pigs will break the sound barrier like an X-15, first, thought Joanne.
Counted to six, for Mach Six for an Aurora. “So, can you give me any sort of timeline as to when I should hear? Or a number to call back, other than this one, to follow up?” Anything tangible at all, she did not say.
“Any further action will of course have to be approved by my supervisor, or by the persons handling your earlier e-mail. Having now escalated your complaint, Miz Dumont, I’m afraid I can’t do anything further at this time about your difficulty, myself.
“Now, was there anything else today?” Brightly, like a rising brass sun.
“No, thank you for your time, Clarissa. Have a nice day.” Almost like a pre-programmed sequencer, busily launching a rocket to orbit… while also trying so hard not to think of Anne McCaffrey, and ‘Get of the Unicorn.’ (Tradpub. Eeek!)
But between the time she said good-bye and finished hanging up the phone, suddenly Joanne Dumont Carter had a thought. A dangerous thought, like the one that had told her to just indulge her arrogance enough to monkey-copy that creepy famous guy from New England and his Truly Weird Tales.
“No Earthy Language,” she said softly to herself. “Old Ma Bailey’s Parlor and Boardinghouse, Strictly For Well Brought Up Folk. Somewhere in the now not so Old West, maybe Kansas or the Indian Territory or Utah. But over on the other side of the tracks, out by the stockyards with their long-stale bovine perfume, something far older than the white man yet lurks…”
There was a smile on her face, with just a hint of otherworldly hunger.
“Didn’t Larry Niven once say he’d had the Earth rotating backwards, in his first edition of ‘Ringworld’ — somewhere or other, later? Maybe I can add ‘No Earthy Language’ as a special-perk short story to the first dozen ones who buy this, umm, fumble-up? Or maybe I should keep a dozen back from the very bottom of the box, to go up some years later on my Web site..?”
One thing she’d learned, even better, writing Antoinette Dupuy and her not so conventional adventures in late-1800s Egypt: it do-pay to be inventive.
Lemons, lemonade, and — sometimes only sometimes — Tarzana.
(Disclaimer: a work of utter fiction, based on zero personal experience!)
LikeLike
So, did she get her alignment in time for the confluence? :)
LikeLike
50 words is SHORT. Since no one else made the cutoff and I’m trying to write again… Our intrepid werewolf heroes are telepathic as wolves; hence the italics.
“What is that smell?” Tom asked as he stopped. Luke wasn’t paying attention, just enjoying the run through the forest. Skidding to a halt, he swerved just enough to avoid ramming his nose into Tom’s rear end.
“Don’t do that!” Luke complained.
“You should be paying attention. That smell. What is it?”
Luke sniffed. “Earthy. Damp. Peat. Decay. Some sort of mushroom, maybe.”
“As if we’d be that lucky,” Tom scoffed.
The ground behind them shifted. The two wolves turned in time to see the monster break through the forest floor. It looked like cross between a night crawler and a boa constrictor. Now that it was above ground, the slime coating it was obviously the source of the smell. It opened its mouth, showing far too many teeth, and hissed.
They looked at each other. “Well, that’s a new one.” They pounced; Tom went left, Luke to the right.
Do I get a bonus for being exactly three times too long?
LikeLike
I habitually do multiples of 50 when I can’t curb myself to 50.
LikeLike
Back in 1990, when I got my first computer, I thought a 20 megabyte hard drive was huge after carting a box of floppies around campus.
Now my biggest machine has a 500 gigabyte SSD and two rotationals, one 4 terabyte and the other 8 terabyte. I also have a 1 terabyte external that I use for transferring data from the laptop, after we had trouble with corruption on FireWire/Thunderbolt data transfers.
LikeLike
That was supposed to be a reply to the reply to my vignette. The iPhone is not the best way to do a comment chain.
LikeLike
On German words: in the past I have used this nice word as a test case for voice output programs: “Vierwaldstätterseedampfschiffsaktiengesellschaftsratspräsident”. I don’t know if that word has been seen in the wild, but it’s a properly constructed word with a clear meaning (“Chairman of the board of directors of the Lake Lucerne steamship company”).
:-)
LikeLiked by 1 person