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 DAN MELSON: Bubbles Of Creation (Connected Realms Book 3)
It’s fascinating at the junction of universes – until one of them starts throwing shockwaves!
Alexan and Petra have settled into an idyllic life as Jarl and Frue of Ygg, each satisfying their respective divine curses. But Siluria next door starts generating massive shockwaves, unable to absorb the energy being generated by the scourgings every seven days. Worse, Siluria is home to the warlike diligar, who are likely to launch an invasion as their home is ravaged.
It’s hard to unravel a puzzle the size of several universes. Alexan has only just begun to solve it when one of his experiments poisons an enigmatic divinity far greater than himself or Petra.
But mistakes can also provide opportunities.
Book Three of Connected Realms
FROM CAROLINE FURLONG: Theophany
Ten years ago the Savients took over Niban, forcing the independent inhabitants into poverty and despair. Bass White saw the careless cruelty of the Savients kill his mother and his father. When a resistance cell is discovered in his city bloc, the Savients seek to make everyone pay.
With his wife Amie, Bass races into the caverns to escape the Savients’ brutal enforcers: the Atrasai. The couple barely make it to the limits of known territory outside their underground city, however, before the Atrasai catch up with them. It would take a miracle to save them…
…or a combat medic robot.
Join Bass and Amie in this sci-fi story of healing, hope, and wonder. After a decade of fear and pain, even a little light can bring out the best in man and machine. But will the best be enough to heal?
FROM J. MANFRED WEICHSEL: The Calydonian Boar Hunt
King Oeneus has just been given the secret of wine by the god Dionysus. Unable to hold his liquor, the drunken monarch forgets to honor Artemis at the harvest festival. In revenge, the angry goddess sends a crazed wild boar to ravage the kingdom with burning breath and razor-sharp tusks. Nothing can stop it.
The befuddled king, desperate to save his land, calls upon the greatest heroes of Greece to hunt the beast. Meleager, the king’s son, reluctantly finds himself leading a group of men he doesn’t respect or trust.
Soon the party of mighty mythical heroes is on the trail of the fearsome monster – but one of them is a heroine! Atalanta is a huntress to match Artemis herself, and quickly wins the heart of Meleager, despite the objections of the others.
Will one of the men make the kill, or will they be humiliated when the prize goes to a woman? Will Prince Meleager woo and win Atalanta, or will the gods intervene? Who will die and who will survive in this tale of loves and even greater lusts in ancient Greece?
A rip-roaring tale of jealousy and foul play, a family at war with itself and a battle of the sexes – told in Weichsel’s unique, no-holds-barred style. A pulse-pounding adventure that will appeal to fans of fantasy and horror, a wild ride through the weirder corners of Greek mythology. Strap on your sandals, grab your spear, and get ready to hunt the wildest boar of them all.
FROM JOHN DAVID MARTIN: The Lost Sword and Other Stories: A Collection of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Alternate History
Jared Thorne: A para-human detective and his dryad wife hunting for a legendary lost sword in a multi-dimensional city.
Eysteinn Bjarnarson: A descendant of the viking who settled North America fighting to win the love of the town beauty. His only opposition? A monster of Indigenous Canadian legend and…her father.
Captain Faust of the North American Marine Corps: A descendant of one Dr. Johannes Faust who learns some deals are heriditary. But can they be re-written?
Milo “Wolfkiller” Patel: A teenage bullrider on an alien world facing the challenge of his young career.
Pawel and Tamar: Newlywed asteroid miners whose wedding cruise from the trans-Martian orbit out to the belt turns deadly.
These are the characters whose stories I have faithfully recorded for you here.
FROM JESSICA MEIGS: The Becoming (The Becoming Series Book 1)
The Michaluk Virus is loose.
It will take all of Cade’s skills to survive it.
A deadly virus has escaped the CDC in Atlanta, and Cade Alton is blindsided when it reaches Memphis and strikes down the heart of her family in a frenzy of blood and terror. Forced to dredge up military skills she hasn’t used in years, Cade teams up with her best friend in order to survive the onslaught and escape the city.
But fleeing Memphis doesn’t mean the end of her troubles. As the virus continues its relentless spread across the Southeastern United States, she finds herself surrounded by virtual strangers who have banded together for survival. And not everyone is getting along.
When the virus reaches their Mississippi safe house and they’re forced to flee, Cade is faced with a difficult choice: accompany her best friend back to Memphis in a search for his wife, or travel with the others to rescue a survivor trapped in Biloxi. No matter which she chooses, the options will have deep repercussions not only on her life, but on the group’s very survival.
If you love survivor-focused post-apocalyptic stories in the vein of the Rot & Ruin Series by Jonathan Maberry or Mira Grant’s Feed Series, then you’ll want to take a bite out of Jessica Meigs’ The Becoming!
Pick up your copy of The Becoming and start the epic tale of survival today!
FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Last Pendragon (Legends Book 1)
“The last thing I expected when I went to grieve in the mountains was to get chased by werewolves, kidnapped by a dragon, or meet a legend. But that was exactly what happened.”–Sara Hawke
Sara Hawke, a highly-educated former PhD candidate in Linguistics, is plunged into a situation that strains her skepticism: first she meets a pack of werewolves while camping on the night of the full moon, then she’s rescued by a man the werewolves seemed to fear. Her rescuer then decides that she’ll be good company until he decides to let her go. Then he tells her that she has the potential to be a sorceress, and offers to teach her.
Along the way, she learns that legends aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be, and are occasionally more than they seem…
FROM KAREN MYERS: Tales of Annwn – A Virginian in Elfland (The Hounds of Annwn Story Collections Book 1)
A Collection of Five Short Stories from The Hounds of Annwn.
The Call – A very young Rhian discovers her beast-sense and, with it, the call of a lost hound.
It’s not safe in the woods where cries for help can attract unwelcome attention, but two youngsters discover their courage in the teeth of necessity.
Under the Bough – Angharad hasn’t lived with anyone for hundreds of years, but now she is ready to tie the knot with George Talbot Traherne, the human who has entered the fae otherworld to serve as huntsman for the Wild Hunt. As soon as she can make up her mind, anyway.
George has been swept away by his new job and the people he has met, and by none more so than Angharad. But how can she value the short life of a human? And what will happen to her after he’s gone?
Night Hunt – When George Talbot Traherne goes night hunting for fox in Virginia, he learns about unworthy men from the old-timers drinking moonshine around the fire and makes his own choices.
Who could have anticipated that the same impulse that won him his old bluetick coonhound would lead him to his new wife and the hounds of Annwn? Every choice has a cost, he realizes, but never a regret.
Cariad – Luhedoc is off with his adopted nephew Benitoe to fetch horses for the Golden Cockerel Inn. He’s been reunited with his beloved Maëlys at last, but how can he fit into her capable life as an innkeeper? What use is he to her now, after all these years?
Luhedoc needs to relearn an important lesson about confidence.
FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Bowl of Red (The Shifter Series Book 4)
Dragon shifter Tom Ormson wanted two things: to serve killer souvlaki at his Colorado diner and enjoy married life with his pregnant panther-shifter wife. Instead, he got unwanted psi powers and a dragon triad syndicate demanding his leadership.
When Kyrie’s grandfather is found murdered, police officer Rafiel—Tom and Kyrie’s closest friend—must solve the case while being pulled into a power struggle for lion clan leadership. With all shifter clans in turmoil, separating allies from suspects becomes a deadly game.
The suspect list grows wilder by the minute: murderous chicken shifters, a skull-collecting otter who teaches art history, a Minotaur delivery man, chaos-causing spider monkeys, and an alligator shifter who might be a double agent. Meanwhile, Rafiel’s dragon girlfriend visiting town might get caught in the crossfire.
In Goldport, Colorado, the special of the day comes with a side of shapeshifter chaos. Just don’t ask about the capybara incident.
FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Sound of One Child Crying
Who is the child Reza can hear crying every time she goes to the new addition to the Royal Library? Her boss insists there is no child, that it is nothing more than her uncanny sensitivity to the unseen world making a nuisance of itself.
Worse, searching for answers gets her angry rebukes about respect for the dead. The further Reza goes, the more certain she becomes that someone is hiding an ugly secret.
It’s a secret that traces back two generations, to a dark period in this land’s history. A time most people would prefer to forget, not caring that denial doesn’t make a problem go away.
The truth may set you free, but not without a price. And Reza fears that death itself might turn out to be an easier price than the one demanded of her.
FROM CHRISTOPHER WOERNER: 202504 Here Comes the Judge
Collection of current events and various thoughts from April 2025. Things are getting messier and we’re all just trying to hold on. This is my attempt to keep track of what’s going on and why. Whatever court of law we’re headed towards, we’re all defendants and don’t even understand all the charges. Can we trust the judge to do the right thing?
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: JEALOUS
According To Hoyt 
“Hey Fred! Why are you here? I heard you got married to ten glorious women!”.
“George, have you ever tried to live with ten Jealous Wives?”
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One of the great things about Dawn Empire military caste polyamory? We don’t get a lot of the usual issues you have in baselines trying polyamorous relationships. No Lesbian Bed Death, no Queen Bee and hive behaviors, no ladies stabbing each other in the back (because that’s where the knife goes!), no boys beating the shit out of each other wondering about their own genetic contributions…
…on the other hand, if I didn’t know how much Sayuri loved me, I would be terrifyingly jealous of her relationship with Kurt. Mostly because-damn it, I somehow got that blonde, androgynous, Aryan/Nordic Waffen SS, dominantly submissive, boytoy desire myself. That you could tell he was hung like a blue whale on Viagra didn’t hurt, either.
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Remember that you can extend the revolution past buying books. If you rate and review books, you spread the word!
Even short reviews help.
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How much more Cora and Diggory could do than the rest of them.
He shook his head and told himself not to be a fool. Cora and Diggory might envy the ease of doing less work. They’d have to get more of the pay than the rest.
Hans walked over.
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“I can’t do it. I can’t make this group work.”
“Why not, Beth?”
“The group dynamics don’t work. Too many strong personalities, all vying for the limelight. I just can’t make it work. At all.”
“So, in other words, you’re telling me that…”
“Yes. I just can’t gel us together.”
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*Snort!*
And this, after Beth made everyone take the Myers-Briggs test so she could see inside everyone’s head (in my USAF days, I knew a young captain who actually did this).
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Violetta nodded slowly. So many years. She could manage to not distinguish herself even among such a small year of scholars, except that — her gaze skittered over the tower — the game said that someone could die here.
She knew the game could be wrong. How many lives could she risk on that?
Florian must have done well. Ice could do quite a lot of damage to stonework, if applied correctly. Then she frowned.
“Violetta?” said Sophie, sharply.
“I beg your pardon,” said Violetta. “I was secretly plotting my nefarious technique to outdo you all in destroying the tower, and overawe all the teachers.”
Their laughter rang.
“Do remember,” said Emalie, “that you are setting the standard here. If you do so splendidly here, they will expect more in the other feats.”
She hoped she kept her face like a mask. That was a danger that she would have to risk.
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Like her classmates, Kay opened her envelope. It was Assignment Friday – the contents of the envelopes explained where they would attend school next fall. Kay had worked hard on all three academic goals: Proficiency, Dedication, and Community Values. She was sure to be promoted, and didn’t envy those who weren’t.
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“Eastern Alternative Academy” read Kay’s assignment. “Eastern Alternative? How? That where they send the kids who –” Kay couldn’t finish the thought. She felt cold and hot, both at once. Her breathing became rapid, as did her heartbeat. Two aisles over, Kay saw Alex: squinting, nose wrinkled, and grinning evilly.
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Plot bunny, free to a good home:
Racehorses get blood-tested for various drugs before each race. One lab comes to dominate that business, by being faster, more accurate, and cheaper than the rest. Unbeknownst, (1) they’re being subsidized, as a long-term investment, and (2) they’re gene-sequencing all the blood they receive. Eventually their library contains the entire extant Throroughbred genome, and they start to assemble the perfect racehorse from snippets. Then they start cloning …
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True headline, man Found Dead in Kangaroo and Wallaby enclosure. I predict this will be all the rage on British TV in a year or so. It’s perfect for their socialist tendencies. I can see it now, Kangaroo kills human defending the planet. Of course it is all the fault of global warming. Even though Global Warming has been happening for the last forty thousand years. The only real problem is college students even if they don’t believe it are using it to get laid. Jealous? Of Course I am, ahh to have youth back and be as dumb as I was back then, even with what I know now I still couldn’t keep a straight face long enough to get laid…snark
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Coming to the academy reunion was a mistake. Eric sat at a secluded table and watched Burke dancing with Cheryl. Cheryl, who had been his fiancé until Burke slipped her that love enchantment in potions class.
The band stopped for a break, and Burke came to sit beside Eric while Cheryl went to the loo. Burke flashed an evil grin. “What’s wrong, mate? Still jealous?”
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Nomination time:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/23128215-june-2025—-history
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She nodded. “It will be useful if true. Probably. You may need a guard as much as the others whose powers do not defend them. Susan has an advantage in that she can use the fire to defend as well as to scry. Some are too valuable to risk battle.”
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The suspense is over, a bolt-from-the-blue text message told Allie. My “Operation Luna” is officially a go!
Kara had half typed a follow-up when her phone rang. Of course it was Allie.
“You mean, really, truly, for-sure you’re going??” Half-breathless.
“A month on-site at Moonbase Beta, all expenses paid.” They both knew only stars and captains of industry could afford a trip otherwise. “Working as an intern in the bio part of chemo-bio life support, of course; but even on the work side it’ll be truly wonderful to actually be there, not just sort-of be there by TP. You can’t taste or smell anything, ever, and of course a few seconds of round-trip light delay feel like minutes when you’re actually trying to do anything.”
With high-bandwidth laser comms linked to netsats in low (Earth) orbit, it was even pretty easy and affordable to ‘drive’ a be-there-bot on the Moon. For a few minutes. At the end of a long waiting list. With a halfway good excuse why it wouldn’t just be you ooh-ing and ah-ing and goofing around.
4K stereo images, hear-a-pin-drop audio, sure. But still not at all the same as presence without any tele in front, inside a Base or outside.
“Kara, I’m envious. I mean, I’m bright argon-laser green with jealousy. Of course you are getting a degree in exo-bio-cycling tech, and I’m not. You will actually walk in the footsteps of Neil Armstrong! Not literally of course, they’d probably toss you out an airlock if you stepped on the old bootprints of One Small Step For A Man, but figuratively…” The noise she made wasn’t quite a giggle,.
And Kara chuckled. “Never get within a dozen miles of it. Literally. That whole site, all of them even the Lunokhods, have the full Artemis Safety Zone thing; and the Apollo manned sites have rover-bot-patrols and tele robo-guards. And serious fencing all round, inside that. When they say ‘historic heritage of Mankind’ they’re not messing around…
“But it’s not even figuratively, Allie. To get out on the surface, just in a suit? That’s a pretty big deal; you have to have the certifications and the training, you need a good reason to be racking up the cosmic-ray dose plus whatever’s solar if it’s daytime, and you have to go through all that decontam stuff with the moondust once you finish — powdered regolith is pretty nasty, sharp and abrasive and reactive and even the Apollo guys got it all over their suits and inside the LEM. You get sprayed with liquid nitrogen or argon, for one thing, to lift that stuff off, before you even get close to doffing your suit.
“The sad truth is, we don’t even get real suit training. If something were to happen, going there or back, we’re supposed to zip up in rescue balls.”
She actually, undeniably, sighed. “But telepresence from a mile away is a whole different ball game than from back on Earth. At a millisecond for every 93 miles or so apart, it’s almost instant for anywhere near you. You raise your head to look up at the Earth overhead, and the bot’s done it.”
“I’m so sorry you have to put up with that, Kara, my commiseration knows no bounds. I’ll remember to feel so sorry for you when you’re stuck eating seaweed, or algae crackers, or krillburgers, for a whole month.” It was hard to keep the smile and smirk and merriment out of her voice; but Allie knew if she started laughing how hard it’d be to stop.
This was such good, good news — even at second hand to a real Moonster.
“Um, Allie? Have you ever thought through the resource-usage accounting for taking, say, carbon and hydrogen and nitrogen up to Moonbase? Yes, you can bake a little water out of the soil and rocks, but all that’s still in short supply so far; and you need rocket fuel to get anything back home.
“But as long as it’s going to be processed anyway, there’s actually little reason not to take your hydrogen and carbon and nitrogen — most of CHON as they call it — up in the form of, well, filet mignon or Australian or Parmesan cheese, or anything else you want. The carbon ends up as CO2, the nitrogen mostly ends up as urea, which pyrolyzes right to CO2 and ammonia. The oxygen is pretty plentiful up there, often as a byproduct, but that’s most of what a rocket eats anyway so there’s a lot of demand… see?
“You don’t even need to dehydrate everything; water is useful too, now.”
There was a pause on the line. “Oh. You even explained all that to me, at least once, Allie, and I do mean in ways us not-exo-eco people can easily understand — even a mere wanna-be astrophysicist like yours, truly.
“But I never made the connection, before, to Moonbase’s being any sort of all you can eat smorgasbord buffet!” She was silent a moment. “But have you ever found out whether you’re spacesick? I mean, two or three days to the Moon, on any sane sort of trajectory..?”
“Not nearly for that long. They send the OTV/landers, modified Starship orbiters as I think you know, out in pairs, with longchain polyethlyene cables a mile long or so. They link up and spin, you can even get spin as part of your TLI into transfer orbit or TEI coming back. You start out at about Mars spin-gravity, going up, dropping down in steps to Moon gravity the last day before you land.
“But no, they don’t even send you on the Vomit Comet ride ahead of time anymore. You just find out the hard way, because there’s still not much to do if you get spacesick but ride it out. Or sick when you get home, like poor old Don Pettit. Happy 7-0 birthday, mega-barf-o-rama!”
“But very few people get, ah, low-gravity-sick in Moon gravity. And you’ll still be standing up there in some dome, soon enough, looking up at me and our whole Earth through, what, an inch of plastic or something? Wow.”
“Umm… again, it’s not quite like that. Well, they do have a few simple domes like that, but again, no radiation shielding there, just like the old Apollo LEM or the first Artemis landings. So they still limit you to just minutes, standing there like that. There are the aquapromenades, as you know walkway tunnels across the surface; but there’s several feet of water between you and the outside, for the radiation, and it is a lot like looking through a fishbowl. At least once you’re approved, they give you some decent be-there-bot time, so I should be able to experience it, even look out over Kanashima’s Zen Garden before I go.
“And there are places where you can see the stars; you just have to look through that inch or so of plastic or reinforced glass into vacuum, then next through a double-mirror like a huge periscope. There you can stand for hours if you want, unless too many Loonies have signed up to gaze.
“I really am looking forward to work, too. Balancing polycultures of algae and methanotrophs, separately but maybe together too. Another swing at the day-night problem. I know you know a lunar day is a month long; so how do you square that with what plants expect? You could put ’em on flats that roll on wheels on rails, hoist ’em up into long unshielded greenhouses for 12 hours, then drop ’em down below again for ‘night’ while other plantings get their turn in the sun; but then comes a 2-week lunar night. Big LED or other sunlamps are power hogs and a giant pain in the neck, so what do we do with all that?
“Oh, and mushrooms. I think mushroom culture, using up stalks and stems and stuff, is better than feeding those to bugs for the chickens to eat or something; but there’s a huge lot of work yet to do. I’m even supposed to be on tunneling-machine detail a few times, helping monitor ‘autonomous’ machines as they run.
“It sounds like a month-long SF convention; but they swear their managers know all about burnout and how to avoid it.”
“Um, Kara? How did your mother take this?”
“Gotta go find out. Soon. You were the first one I told, Allie.”
“Thank you and bless you for that, Kara. Keep me in the loop, I mean it.”
“Will do. Over and out, Allie.”
“Roger that.”
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“Of course Maria Haber is jealous.” Although Amanda knew it was risky to respond so terribly to this man, even in spirit form, the condescension of telling her what she already knew was getting under her skin.
The ghostly Stalin smiled, but it was the smile of a cat toying with a mouse. “But not the way you think. Yes, she envies you the children and grandchildren that fill your family with joy, but that is small compared to the status you refuse to claim. Be very sure, if she had any connection to royalty, she would not hesitate to take every advantage of it.”
As quickly as he had come, he was gone, leaving Amanda shivering in her empty office. What was his angle? One would think a good Communist would have nothing but contempt for royalty, even an Imperial Family created as a result of his own secret human cloning program.
On the other hand, that assumed that this apparition was indeed the ghost of the “miraculous Georgian” who’d tyrannized the old Soviet Union for almost three decades. Amanda recalled one of her discussions with Sergei Gerasimov about his dissertation, how Bulgakov’s Woland could be read as a symbol for Stalin. Might the opposite be true in her case, and “Stalin” be in fact a mask for a far darker and more dire entity?
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ABC and CBS were distressed when Leno took over the Tonight Show on That Other Network; they were Jay-less.
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