The Special Book Promo Goes On

Some of you are probably aware of the kerfuffle where Devon Eriksen was kicked out (on spurious grounds) from a contest he never entered because he said things the left does not like on X.

In the aftermath of this I became aware of how many of “our people” (defined as political positions to the right of Lenin) who are indie have no idea that a lot of writers/storytellers are on their side. There is the assumption, fostered by traditional publishing, that all writers and artists are “of course” left.

So people try to join leftist groups (which to be fair, are more numerous because people on the right aren’t very organized as a rule.) They try to keep their heads down and pretend to be what they’re not.

This is all wrong. We are the majority and it’s time to know we’re so, and we’re not alone. The preference falsification has to end. And readers have to know they can buy from writers and artists who don’t hate them.

I put up a challenge on Twitter called “Step out of the shadows” and promised to promote everyone not afraid to be seen associating with me (and Devon, by implication.)

So, here we are. Needless to say I haven’t read all these books, so look at samples, and exert the normal caution.

FROM CHRIS SCHNEE: Virtual Horizon (Thousand Tales Book 1)

The future’s getting better; the Game is here to help!

In 2036, college-bound Paul gets pushed into playing a video game called Thousand Tales. Its playful AI gamemaster, Ludo, wants a few favors from him and from his ambitious friend Linda. The reward? Immortality.

Ludo starts selling “uploading”, a process that puts a human mind permanently into the game world. In there you can shapeshift, fight monsters, cast spells, even fall in love. The “hero discount” Paul and Linda earn is tempting, but ends up separating them. One friend is left to play Thousand Tales on an ordinary video screen, while the other wakes up in its fantasy realm as one of the first full-time residents.

Ludo’s new recruit tries to turn Thousand Tales into a society that lets uploaded humans, AIs, and ordinary gamers work and play together. Meanwhile, there’s plenty to do in the real world: live on an ocean colony, train cyborg raccoons, and start a new space program.

Can Paul and Linda work together between the real and virtual worlds, to make sure no one vision of the future ruins the others?

“Virtual Horizon” is an upbeat novel of the future frontier. It’s part of the “LitRPG” or “GameLit” subgenre combining science fiction with the world of gaming. There’s much more to see in the Thousand Tales setting, and most of it can be read in any order, but this is the best starting point!

(Note to readers of “Thousand Tales: How We Won the Game”: This book is a massively rewritten and expanded story based on the core plotline, with a novel’s worth of new material.)

FROM MELISSA CAVE: Traitor Son: Book 1 of the Empire of the Stars

Do the promises of war ever survive the peace?

At the end of a brutal war, Remin of Andelin promised his knights that he would build them a good place, far from the carnage of war and the poisonous intrigues of the Empire. But the only thing more difficult than winning a war is securing the peace.

Welcome to the Andelin Valley, where the days are filled with the backbreaking labor of building a city and the nights bring monsters summoned in the waning days of the war. The Andelin devils dare even the sacred soil of the Empire, and it takes all of Remin’s military genius to keep his people alive. Yet even in the face of bandits, traitors, and the implacable hatred of the Emperor, the greatest danger to Remin might be his new wife.

Princess Ophele Agnephus. Daughter of the Stars, the Exile Princess, she is the daughter of the Divine Emperor who executed Remin’s family. Raised in secret and given in the place of her sister as a reward for Remin’s war victory, Ophele carries a secret that could topple the Empire: his family was innocent. But will she risk her life to reveal her family’s crimes?

A tale of love and redemption. As the summer bleeds on and the walls of their city rise, Remin finds himself drawn to Ophele, who shares so many of his dreams and sorrows. She could be everything: his love and his wife, the mother of his children, the foundation of a dynasty that will last forever. Or she could be the Emperor’s weapon, placed at his side to destroy everything he has left.

A marriage built in the ashes of betrayal. A land built on the ruins of a century of war. And a people determined to rise, with shattered trust and an unquenchable hope…if Ophele can only make them believe it is possible. Traitor Son is the story of a people broken by tragedy, a hero torn between his duty and his dreams, and a young woman who must find the courage to take her place at his side, before their own devils tear them apart.

Begin an unforgettable journey with Traitor Son, the first book of the Empire of the Stars. Perfect for fans of epic fantasy, knights and nobility, and tales of resilience and redemption.

FROM STEPHEN HUBBARD: A Conspiracy of Ravens (The Codex of Wretches & Kings Book 1)

Once and an age —

The precipice of war is never more than the width of a blade away. Now, when the legendary assassin known as the Black Rose has slaughtered Baron Dartris Gorsha and all who made up his house, then fled with the nobleman’s young daughter, three nations that knew tenuous peace prepare for the brutality of prolonged conflict.

Yet a new and mysterious danger has emerged. The Shrike arrives to offer mercy and vengeance in equal measure to all those with a role to play, bringing cryptic messages from his unnamed master. Underlying his threats is one simple command: Retrieve the daughter of Gorsha.

Three Ravens of Danot — Celnor, Derrigan, and Martyn — are called upon to protect the child, and they seek answers to troubling questions and motivations. Manipulated by their queen, feeling as no more than pawns in the history unfolding around them, they conspire to bring about what they believe is a necessary change to the balance of power.

The secrets of their own shadowed pasts serve to pull at their union, threatening to unmake their pact, and leading them to ask one simple question: Are there roads too entrenched in darkness to allow for redemption?

In a time of growing doom and dread, when long lost magic begins to find a new foothold, Wretches and Kings alike maneuver and scheme as the Codex is inscribed with the fell deeds and heroic sacrifice compelled by a conspiracy of Ravens.

FROM T. ALAN HONE AND JAMES BERNADIN: Secret Sky: The Young Universe.

The stars speak in a language of secrets, yet their stories cannot remain hidden forever.

Billions of years ago, on one of the first-ever Earths, a boy named Skylar will walk away from his home for the last time. Beset by dreams where he flies through the early universe as a sentient starship, he will never be safe if his secret gets out. His only chance to stay alive is to fall in with the same knights who destroyed his peasant village and live under the shadow of the king who sent them to exterminate Skylar’s people.

But powerful dreams have a way of shaping reality, and with each midnight flight across the cosmos, Skylar finds his world—and himself—changing. Magic is another thing which should only exist in dreams, yet Skylar has it—one more secret that needs keeping.

Against a waking life full of monsters, warriors, swords, sorcery, treasure, and ancient mysteries, Skylar has only one key for putting all the pieces together: the Secret Sky that haunts his sleeping mind.

FROM MELISSA OLTHOFF AND CASEY MOORES: Forlorn Hope (Blood and Armor Book 4)

After Nisti Khan’s return from her No Fail mission in Iran, she is celebrated as a savior of the young Kurdish Republic. However, their country has many enemies, and within weeks, they are on the brink of yet another war. When Syria invades, Nisti finds herself on the front lines of the most critical battle—defending the beating heart of their country, the capital city of Kirkuk.

After a judgement call goes wrong, Nisti finds herself banished from the battlefield and relegated to a staff job. To regain her place on the frontlines, she’ll have to prove herself once again.

A successful deep strike by the Second GOG Division should have ended the war, but the Syrian onslaught continues. As losses mount, Nisti must learn the source and take the battle to the enemy. But can she figure out who the real enemy is before her country falls?

FROM BECKY R. JONES: Academic Magic

Zoe O’Brien has found her dream job at a small liberal arts college teaching the history of Medieval witchcraft and magic. Academic life is exactly what she expected it to be…until the squirrels stop by to talk with her and her department chair and best friend turn out to be mages.

Zoe discovers a world of magic and power she never knew existed. She and other faculty mages race to stop a coven from raising a demon on the winter solstice while simultaneously grading piles of final exams and reading the tortured prose of undergraduate term papers. Can Zoe master her new-found powers in time?

FROM HALDANE B. DOYLE: Our Vitreous Womb: Book 1-4

“Utopia is wherever you were born to belong.”

After thirty thousand years we’ve forgotten your age of machines.
On this resource-stripped planet our people are rising.
We Ostrals are both one and many.
A superorganism of superior organisms.
A hypersymbiont beyond mere technology.

The continent of Ostrala is pregnant with possibility.
Our vitreous womb swells with uncountable souls.
Suffer not our culled, that we may reach perfection.
And welcome the stranger (or parts thereof) so we may always grow.

FROM CHRISTIAN WARREN FREED: Dreams of Winter: A Military Space Opera (The Forgotten Gods Tales Book 1)

“Steven Erikson meets George Martin!”

3000 years have passed since the time of the gods. Humanity spreads across the universe, raising a mighty empire. But all is not well. Unrest simmers. Darkness threatens.

Inquisitor Tolde Breed has been a loyal agent of the Inquisition for years. A man with a haunted past, he roots out heresy wherever he finds it, but when the Inquisitor General sends him to planet Crimeat to investigate a mysterious prison break Tolde begins to believe his life’s work has been in vain. The ghosts of his past have returned, and they brought the winds of war with them.
Can Tolde stop the universe’s greatest evil from returning or is it already too late?
Dreams of Winter is the explosive first volume of the Forgotten Gods Tales and a must read for military science fiction fans everywhere. Buy your copy today and enter a universe of magic, treachery, and desperation.

FROM JOHN LOCKESON: The Transcendent Ethics of Liberty: A concise guide to the universal ethics of human freedom and dignity

Your liberty is no illusion.
It is no gift of government or society.
It emerges from the very fabric of reality itself.
Embrace that which is rightfully yours, a magnificent birthright of liberty.


Derived directly from observations of reality, a transcendent, universal ethical framework of liberty based on the primary truth of absolute ownership of the self, the self’s actions, and the products of those actions is presented.

This work integrates many philosophical components, some old and familiar and some new and surprising, weaving them into a coherent tapestry that builds a comprehensive deductive case supporting broad human liberty bounded by limits of justice as the supreme universal ethic of sapient entities everywhere.

FROM DAN MELSON: Measure Of Adulthood (The Politics of Empire Book 4)

Kusaan del. It means ‘divine finger’

The Empire of Humanity is locked in a war for survival with the Fractal Demons. Years on, the dice are still tumbling. Billions have died and planets have been destroyed. Meanwhile, an old loose end has resurfaced and forced Grace to confront a mistake from her teenage years – her son by a long-dead lover has lost his adulthood, and only Grace can save him from exile.

But the Fractal Demons initiate a new strategy, and are starting to turn the tide in their favor. Grace is unlucky enough to be assigned to deal with one of their first strikes under the new strategy, and she’s unable to prevent several million deaths.

But she’s learned enough to master her problems, both as the new mother of a two hundred year old son, and as one of those defending the masses of the Empire from assault by the demons. She has grown from her origins, and just because she seems to have a knack for attracting trouble doesn’t mean she can’t handle it. When the divine finger points at her, she steps up to deal with it.

More tomorrow night. And if you wish to send a book now, feel free. Step out of the shadows: bookpimping at outlook.com