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 CEDAR SANDERSON: Giant Counting Robots
The robots are coming! The robots are coming! Whatever we do, we’ve got to be cunning!
Count along as they thunder into your town! Then translate into binary to communicate with them. This book is intended to be fun to read aloud, engage with, and grow along with a young reader until they’re ready for code-breaking!
From simple numerical concepts to the more complex, this is a read-aloud, learning, teaching book.
Most of all, though?
IT’S GOT ROBOTS!
So many robots of all shapes and sizes!
Count all the robots, they’re full of surprises!
This picture book will appeal to ages 3 to 10 as it can be read aloud, used to teach numbers and counting, and later, binary coding! Fun, educational, but most of all… The robots are coming! We can’t stop them at all!
FROM HOLLY LEROY: Hostile Earth
Terra Vonn is fighting to survive in a destroyed world, surrounded by unspeakable horror . . . and things are about to get much worse. After witnessing the vicious murder of her mother, Terra has a singular focus—exacting revenge on the killers. But before she can complete her plans, savagery intervenes and she is cast alone into a brutal post-apocalyptic world. As she trails the men south through a land filled with cannibalistic criminals, slave traders, and lunatics, the hunter becomes the hunted. Terra quickly learns that she is neither as tough nor as brave as she thinks she is. Worse, she may be the only one who stands between what little remains of civilization and destruction.
FROM P. L. KENNY: A Deadly Dish: A Rafe Merritt Thriller
“She’s some dish.”
“Make sure you don’t take a bite of that dish, Lake.” Rafe lowered himself into the sedan’s backseat. “Remember she’s suspected of murdering a dozen men that we know of. I’d hate to have to tell your mother you were lucky thirteen.”
Police Commissioner Rafe Merritt has his hands full when a dangerous beauty comes to town. With the bodies piling up and a target on his back, can the young commissioner put an end to the murder spree before he becomes the next victim of the “Deadly Dish”?
A mystery thriller short story in the pulp tradition of The Shadow, The Whisperer, and Bulldog Drummond.
FROM L. DOUGLAS GARRETT AND NICKY ROBINSON: Remember the Dead: A Collection (Remember The Trade Book 1)
What was The Project? How did it start? What happened to forge the man known as David Cox? Six short stories and a new novella, alongside the original Remember When tell the tales that begin the Remember The Trade series.
His job was to be a bad guy for a good cause. David Cox was a mercenary soldier and agent, selected and trained for the dirty jobs of clandestine operations. But David was only supposed to be a cover identity. And once he’d learned how powerful it was to be ruthless, how could he resist bringing that home?The Remember The Dead collection contains the eponymous new novella of a pivotal mission in 1980, the formative year of David Cox’s career. The short stories and vignettes of other missions and characters help paint the picture of his early years.
WITH A STORY FROM CHARLI COX (AND ONE FROM MARK WANDREY): Express Elevator to Hell (Universes at War Book 1)
Attack! Attack! Attack!
The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and for the people on a starship waiting to make a planetary assault, that trip will be as fast as possible so they can—hopefully—make it through the enemy’s defenses. Some liken such a trip as being on an express elevator to hell.
But a planetary assault is a dangerous thing, and it can have consequences for the assaulters as well as those being assaulted. Are you ready to join the attack?
Fifteen of today’s leading scifi authors take you on a variety of science fiction assaults that will have you on the edge of your seats as you go in with the first wave. Are you ready to jump on board the express elevator to hell?
You better be, because it’s going down!
FROM MARY CATELLI: Dragonfire and Time
An angry dragon demands justice of the king.
Mae, a royal wizard, is assigned the task: the dragon had metted out her own justice, burning a thief with dragonfire, but she had seen him since, whole and sound, and this she will not tolerate, so Mae must put an end to it.
Mae goes to discover the truth of this before the dragon leaves its lair to extract her own justice. And in her search of the spring festivities, learns more secrets than the dragon had even guessed of.
FROM HOLLY CHISM: Holidays and Holy Days (Modern Gods)
Hera was hard at work in her counseling office when her clients started cancelling for Thanksgiving travel. She…hadn’t realized that a) that was coming up, or b) what it actually about…until she did a little research and decided to celebrate. In the process, she learns about Christmas coming, and decides that it’s high time somebody threw Christ a birthday party.
Of course, nothing goes as planned, but when does it ever?
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: DOMINEERING
According To Hoyt 
Albert said, “This could be interesting.”
Harry replied, “What could be interesting?”
“Manfield just entered the lounge and he’s heading for Josephine’s table”.
“The Dragon Lady vs the Dragon Lord? Maybe too interesting. Both are very Domineering especially when it comes to sex”.
“Chuckle Chuckle” Jackson commented. “What would be interesting is if somebody tried to interfere with their relationship.”
Albert replied “What do you mean?”
“You’re behind the times. Manfield and Josephine were partnered in a mission a few weeks ago and while it was a tough mission, they came out of the mission as committed partners. Of course, nobody knows (or really wants to know) about what their bedroom activities are like.”
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“You always feel everything, Jasper,” said Cora. “You keep trying to run everything.”
“It’s a good warning,” said Marcus. “To be hidden from sight is not always to be hidden. Even in this house, there is the danger of people, and worse than people, and you may need to hide.”
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Thanks for including Express Elevator to Hell.
I greatly appreciate it!
Charli
Sent from Proton Mail Android
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“Clara, where is Fred?”
“He’s down at the club as usual. He goes to fleece the unwise at tile games, usually Matador.”
“Ah. Off domineering.”
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Oof.
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Lady Clarissa moved around the ballroom, still on the lookout for Von Flying Squirrel. Her younger sister, Lady Natasha Von Krakenstat, sidled up with all the smoothness and unconcerned aristocratic poise to match Clarissa’s own, everything their domineering governess had been able to pound into two rambunctious tree-climbing young girls growing up at Stately Krakenstat Manor.
”Tash, you see Squirrel?” Clarissa asked when they were close enough to not be overheard, covering her mouth with a flick of her fan to block lip readers.
”Not yet,” Natasha replied, laughing and covering her mouth as if Clarissa had spoken some witty barb about one of the young dandies in attendance. ‘Tash still showed a trace of the odd accent she’d had to adopt on her last job for naval intelligence, deep undercover on the planet Porto, and she still sounded vaguely Russian to Clarissa’s ear.
”If they make a move here, a lot of people will get hurt…” Clarissa noted, looking around with her fake bright court smile on her face.
”If they do, Moose and Squirrel must die,” replied Natasha, with all the deadly seriousness in her voice absent from her own court-appropriate pleasant-but-vacant expression.
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Salute to all, and thank you for listing Remember The Dead: A collection!
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“But then, the king would hear of your obstructing us for the time to gather them. Even the knights of the Dark Forest must respect the king outside the Dark Forest. Unless you are going to claim that this boy is part of your domain?”
The captain looked at him.
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Troy Darlington was the sort of guy who knew just how to push his way into a crowd and loom over everybody to get whatever he wanted. Maureen had been glad when he finally graduated and was no longer prowling the halls of the high school with his goons — until she realized that leaving high school didn’t mean he’d left town. And if anything, he was even worse now that he was an adult, because he knew that if it was his word against that of a high school student, he could get the authorities to take him seriously and discount a mere student.
Especially a student who was stigmatized by the gift she’d so happily blabbed about when she didn’t know better, a psi talent that now marked her out as a Sharp.
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Sarah, I love your book recommendations. I also get them from local library. But they would be improved if they had this info when appropriate “Warning, contains the words ‘her wife’ or ‘his husband’ so I wouldn’t waste an hour before having to stop reading.
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None of my books contain those words, (There might be a passing reference in the list of lost in DST. But I’ve never written lesbians, and my gay characters are not in marriage relationships) so you’re actually weird and probably lying.
Also, when dealing with the future these things could happen. Note assuming the writer approves of the future as written is insane. Even though I — personally — approve of civil marriage for gay people for a bunch of sociologically sane reasons.
It seems to me you’re telling porkies and not doing it very well. Go away. The adults are talking.
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…
Although I am impressed you are getting these books at the local library, someone’s really on top of stuff getting the special orders in.
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“Look, Gran’ma, someday when I grow up I’m gonna major in domineering!”
Katherine Westfield Westenra looked at the piece of rough play-drawing paper suddenly in her hand, and smiled; half in amusement and half in outright wonder. Yes, the illustration was done in crayon, merely a bold sketch of an idea. But it was clear enough what Lucy meant was something very close to ‘domicile engineering’ — and the sky was butterscotch and the ground was orange-dun, and there was an intersecting-circles frame in half-globe intricacy to the boundary between the cityscape inside and the more-than-desert outside. She knew many adults of her acquaintance would have struggled to get so many details right, even if they had tried…
Inwardly, she shuddered a bit at the structural demands a dome of even a few football fields’ size would make, to contain a full atmosphere away from the near-vacuum ‘air’ of Mars. “So, Lucy, tell me what and where this is.” (And Kate was rewarded with an instant’s appraising look, to one of the five people anywhere who were allowed to call her overtly Odd granddaughters by anything but their true, precisely-exact and proper, names.)
“It’s an exo-domicile, a dome city, on Mars of course. Someday people are going to settle there and of course I and Emilie want to help. And since it’s our birthday, it seemed like we ought to look forward a bit. She was the one who said it’d be better to have a full half-sphere instead of less than that, so the ‘bubble’ sits taller and the pull of the cables comes up right plumb, instead of up and inwards.” They’d been making up their own words from the day they’d learned to talk, of course, a sort of open-API version of twinspeak. But it had taken Katherine years to understand it as reflective of a completely idiosyncratic, conceptually near-idioglossial inner view of the world and everything in it.
Not only the world as it was; but the world as it genuinely could be.
And she’d had first-year college engineering students grasp less, than the drawing in bold Crayola hues now displayed in her hand clearly showed.
“But of course, people have to get there first. Maybe that’s going to be the hard part; but of course, people will get there if they really try.”
Kate wasn’t so sanguine, the way Apollo had just… slammed to a stop.
“And maybe someday you might need to help, but that’s for a day far off. Go and play a while with Em, so we can get the cake set up, and we’ll do all the needful for you two and your friends.” (Friends, few but fast, in echo of her own childhood and her husband’s. And dark chocolate cake “of course” with dark chocolate icing, always that or bust, for those two.)
“And I’ll put this up on the refrigerator for us all to look at, later.”
…
(Forty years later)
Lucille smiled as she looked up from the cyberslate in her hand, and its old (very zero-generation) image, to something very like the reality. It was not quite the same, even allowing for the absence of super-longchain polyethlyenes and buckyfibers in her once-upon-a-time world. The idea of a transparent high-strength material was a bit… outside their ken, then.
Of course — she smiled again at their old catchphrase — this place was a bit further out and further up than Mars, to boot. And said that, half but only half out-loud.
“And not quite something to fit under a refrigerator magnet, either.” Her fraternal twin’s voice was quiet, here in the miniature observation dome that served also as a contingency equipment airlock. “But at least here, in contrast to the real Red Planet, we don’t have to worry about all that perchlorate-scrubbing ritual they had to mess with. One reason, I guess, we somehow never made it there after all.”
“Too much to do, Emilie. Too many details to attend to, too much to pull into this world from the world of things-to-come we’ve always lived in.”
By the time they’d been ready to move from the Moon, onwards, and pretty much had to do it to escape the quasi-Eurocratic encroachments coming up from Earth… the asteroids had been the logical place. And of course, by then they’d done it in The Truth May Vary in all her miles-long (and FTL jump-displacement drive) glory. And from there, of course, ad astra.
(For that matter, too, Moondust is not entirely, let’s say, benign.)
What is it, she wondered, about how we tend to pull a bubble of the not so widely believed, but still eminently possible, around ourselves? Is it we are truly, in the conventional sense, domineering? Or only that we can see a ways into the future, while others only try and look for its shiny surface?
Three questions, at least, that yet needed no real or practical answer.
Harry Harrison had put it, once: “When it’s steamboat time, you steam.” With obvious corollary, either you do it, or someone else will, for you.
“But this little world, under a fair golden sun, does well enough in its stead. Assuming we’d really need of a Mars for more than inspiration, at all.” It had been called Thrudhvang, in the mythological place-naming tradition, by the mostly-Icelandic first-wave settlers after the land of Thor’s family home and hold. Which given its tropics-to-icefields climate and forty-hour day (dragged slow by the nearby K9 sun), wasn’t so inappropriate.
55 light-years wasn’t so very far to go, either — not any more.
And once those semi-engineered lichens and plants (a touch of biological antifreeze, a trick of using redder/near-infrared sun courtesy of variant bacterial chorophyll) had done their slow job of bringing life to, well, life here — perhaps quite the going and happening semi-Earthy place.
But for them and their figurative-literal fellow travellers, planets were by now not really, truly, where it was at after all. This, or any other.
“Come on, Lucille, we deserve some birthday cake before this sun sets.”
And as they turned, hand-in-hand as if it were twoscore years ago, loomed the deepjumpship This Ship Will Carry — a sphere five miles across that needed only generated gravity to perch lightly and easily on the ground. That could make her own air and water and anything, at need, and mine the basics from any asteroid or iceball anywhere. Which was, presently, where they made their home away from all the complications of ‘mainstream’ life.
It was just one of many, as The Truth May Vary had been their first prototype and flagship — and in many ways, now up in planetary orbit, still was.
The Dark Fleet was where they lived, now, more than any settled place. As the old-time (and quite Odd) schoolteacher had written, “The planet is the cradle of the mind, but one ought not stay in the cradle forever.”
Though of course, you could rightly say that of The Big Dark, too. Someday later, surely, it’d be time for them and their people to come back to the sunny warmth and the light. In the meantime, only a pied-a-terre, here…
“It may not be Mars,” said Lucille Westenra. “But it’s still mighty fine.”
The words cast into the high lintel of the big descent door to the light and airy, very much Old-Mars-esque underworld here were bold and clear.
Domineering, Ltd.
Thrudhvang Customization and Transhipping Installation
Inter Sidera, Ibi Libertas.
“Out among the stars, there is freedom to be found.”
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My characters will build a habitat dome too:
“Air pressure inside the dome will exert an upward force of almost eight hundred million tons. We’ll counteract that by simply making the dome weigh eight hundred million tons. The dome will be made of diamond, ten thousand meters in diameter, two and a half meters thick in the middle, three and a half around the edge. Supported by a diamond rim wall five meters thick and two hundred meters tall, that extends another two hundred meters underground to a diamond foundation, the whole bottom sealed by a diamond plate a meter thick. All of it formed as a single, solid, perfect diamond. There will be six underground access ways, passing through airlocks with diamond doors ten meters wide, five meters high, two meters thick, weighing three hundred and fifty tons each.”
“We have confirmed that the dome will support itself after the planet is terraformed and there’s an atmosphere outside.”
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Thank you so much for including Hostile Earth in your promotion. I really appreciate it.
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Reginald seethed. “Why must you always humiliate me like this at parties? You’re so domineering!”
Ginger’s reply was as ice cold as Reginald’s was blistering hot. “Reggie, dear, you know I was like this when we married. And the word is ‘dominatrix’. Now, put on the mask and shut up.”
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