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
BY EDMOND HAMILTON, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: The Hidden World (Annotated): The science fiction classic
Sudden, brilliant towers of light emanate from the Earth at three different points on the Equator, at specific intervals in time! Dr. Kelsall has a theory, that they come from a world inside our own world, and he takes his three comrades to the South American jungle where he predicts the fourth light will appear. But nothing, absolutely nothing, prepared the men for the alien menace they were about to face!
- This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving the book cultural and genre context.
FROM TIMOTHY WITCHAZEL: Noah and the Great Flood: A Poem in Alliterative Verse
A retelling of the story of Noah and the Ark in the style of Anglo-Saxon Alliterative Verse.
FROM MARY CATELLI: Dragon Slayer
The dragon must die. It haunts the land and strikes with fire and death without warning.
Prince Baudouin knows the perils, and how other knights have perish. Still, he is confident that he can slay the dragon. All he has to do is forge through the burnt wasteland about its mountain, and slay it.
All.
FROM HOLLY CHISM: Fixing Up Love
Amaryllis left school with a worthless degree and a fiance who wasn’t that into her. She refused to go back home to wallow in her family’s judgment of her choices, so she took refuge with her best friend instead. Her very handy best friend, who was fixing up a foreclosed house he’d bought. It was a really big job, and he could definitely use her help. His handiness kind of made her want to get handsy, but would fixing up the house together fix up their relationship as well?
FROM NATHAN BRINDLE: The Cross-Time Kamaitachi (Timelines Universe Book 5
I did not land here as a warrior, but a warrior I so soon became . . .
One moment, Dr. Yukiko Yamaguchi was in her high-tech singularity research lab in California, busily adjusting an electronically-leaky fitting playing hell with her instrument readings.
The next moment, she was falling through space, and landing hard in a wilderness area she would quickly discover was her family’s ancient stomping grounds in Japan – but with an apocalyptic twist.
A hundred years later, there would be legends of a great yōkai, a demon, whom some called a kamaitachi – a sort-of whirlwind, weasel-like creature with blades for claws, which catches up unwary humans and slices their skin. But this kamaitachi is no ordinary yōkai – rather, she is
The Cross-Time Kamaitachi
FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Lunar Surface Blues
The High Frontier is no place for foolishness, but nature can always make a better idiot.
Four years ago, Molly’s parents brought her up here to the Moon when their work brought them to Shepardsport. In the time since that move, she’s earned her place here and a seat on this field trip. Only one problem — she’s been given the worst possible EVA partner.
A pencil-necked dweeb with an attitude, Benji wants to be one of the guys. But his stunts keep putting them both in danger, and the adults keep blaming Molly.
When Benji gets in over his head, can Molly save him before it costs both their lives?
A short story of the Grissom timeline.
FROM MACKEY CHANDLER: Let Us Tell You Again (April Series Book 13)
The continuing story of April, Jeff, and Heather after they conspire to rebel against North America and their efforts to find friends and a safe haven in the stars. Continuing to close the time gap to the later Family Law series of books.
Heather and her peers impose a ban on armed ships beyond L1 in the Solar System and a prohibition for explorer ships going interstellar heavily armed. There are continuing stories of future characters still stuck on Earth.
Heather has a lot of help from her friends but it isn’t easy being the queen.
FROM KAREN MYERS: Broken Devices: A Lost Wizard’s Tale (The Chained Adept Book 3)
CHAINS WITHOUT WIZARDS AND A RISING COUNT OF THE DEAD.
The largest city in the world has just discovered its missing wizards. It seems the Kigali empire has ignited a panic that threatens internal ruin and the only chained wizard it knows that’s still alive is Penrys.
The living wizards and the dead are not her people, not unless she makes them so. All they have in common is a heavy chain and a dead past — the lives that were stolen from them are beyond recall.
What remains are unanswered questions about who made them this way. And why. And what Penrys plans to do to find out.
FROM BLAKE SMITH: A Kingdom of Glass: A Novel of The Garia Cycle
Zara hasn’t seen her family in eleven years, but she doesn’t mind. They sent her to live in a neighboring kingdom when she was small, and she’s adopted her foster parents in their place. She lives the life of an aristocratic Garian girl- riding her horse, shooting her bow, exploring the castle with her friends- and she has nothing to wish for.
Until she’s summoned home, to a prospective marriage she doesn’t want, family she doesn’t remember, and a poisonous royal court that threatens everything she’s ever known. The East Morlans are nothing like Garia, and Zara struggles to find her place among the scheming Morlander aristocrats. Along the way, she makes new friends, meets enemies, and falls in love. But secrets abound in the glittering palace, and Zara must discover who she can trust as she fights for her life and freedom in a fragile, beautiful, kingdom of glass.
FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Darkship Thieves
Athena Hera Sinistra never wanted to go to space.
Never wanted see the eerie glow of the Powerpods. Never wanted to visit Circum Terra. She never had any interest in finding out the truth about the Darkships.
You always get what you don’t ask for. Which must have been why she woke up in the dark of shipnight, within the greater night of space in her father’s space cruiser, knowing that there was a stranger in her room. In a short time, after taking out the stranger—who turned out to be one of her father’s bodyguards up to no good, she was hurtling away from the ship in a lifeboat to get help.
But what she got instead would be the adventure of a lifetime and perhaps a whole new world—if she managed to survive….
A Prometheus Award Winning Novel, written by a USA Today Bestseller.
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: Structure
According To Hoyt 
“What I want to know is why we don’t have archeological evidence for these so called “Ancients”. Surely, they could have built large structures that we could still find.”
“One, there were at least one Ice Age since their time. Even their structures couldn’t survive giant glaciers moving in. Two, even their time there weren’t many of them and not all of them created large structures. Third, too many of their structures required large inputs of this “Ultra” energy to remain stable. Once the “Ultra” energies fell to low levels, the structures collapsed.
Of course, we have been shown some of their underground fortresses that still survive under our largest mountains.”
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They had democrats back then as well.
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Nah, the Democrats only dream that they were like the Ancients.
The Ancients ruled because they had Power beyond that of the humans of their time.
They could be considered “gods” except for the fact that they never demanded worship.
They demanded that “mere” humans obey them and had the Power to back up their orders.
Democrats lack the Power that the Ancients had/have.
Note, the Ancients that came forward in time are aware that they are out-numbered by the Super-Beings who exist in the “current” time (in my story universe).
Individually, an Ancient is ten times more powerful than one Super-Being but one Ancient could face a hundred Super-Beings that would tell him “No Way Will We Obey You”.
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“Let’s go inside first,” said Jasper, knocking snow off his shoulders. “It will all look very different once we are sitting before the fire and drinking mulled cider.”
The children trooped off, and Rae snagged Marcus’s hand to pull him along.
It was better, Marcus conceded, but not very different.
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“When constructing pocket universes, pay attention to the fine structure constant. Adjusting it affects every parameter governing the pocket of space-time you control.”
I looked up from the lab insructions and wondered again why I ever majored in physics. Oh, yeah: because I fell hard for Marjorie, the lab assistant.
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Miss Sarkisian stepped out of the doorway just as the piano movers lost control of their load.
The piano structure.
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“Well, this is another nice mess you’ve gotten me into!”
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ARRRRRRRRGGGGHHHH!
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She stepped closer.
With thunderous finality, a door slammed shut behind her. In echoes, door after door shut, sealing her with, cutting off the sunshine, binding her into this room with its coffin and its corpse.
For a moment, she stood, stunned, unbelieving, as the echoes grew fainter, to silence.
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The data structures looked good. All Toni’s debugging tools were checking out green, which left her at a loss.
However, that didn’t change the simple fact that the code was choking on it, and she had a deadline to get this part of <i>Mekong Mighty Fighters</i> running. Which meant she had to figure out what she was overlooking, and fast.
It would be so much easier if she could just get another pair of eyes on it, someone who wasn’t so familiar with Digital Dreams code that they could see what was on the screen, not what they expected. But she was contractually forbidden to show proprietary code to outsiders.
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I don’t know if it’s any good, but some guy from Findlay, Dave Essinger, wrote an SF novel set in Dayton. It is called This World and the Next.
On Kindle.
He also has a survival thriller named Running Out, on Kindle.
Review by local newspaper/public radio guy on the Dayton Daily News.
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