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 PAM UPHOFF: Ivan Zima
A novella about a Master Mentalist who has lost his ability to collect the Power for the magic that keeps the True Men in control of the Three Part Alliance. He’s lost his job, his family has distanced itself from him . . .
Ivan Zima didn’t quit, he adopted his servants and got on with life. And when those kids went off to college, he adopted more kids. After all, who doesn’t need a horse-crazy teenager, a juvenile delinquent, and three cute little girls as your empire crumbles and falls?
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.
BY HENRY KUTTNER, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Elak of Atlantis (Annotated): The complete classic sword & sorcery tales
Join Elak on perilous quests across the ancient world! These four classic sword-and-sorcery tales by the masterful Henry Kuttner take us to realms of wonder and terror.
Across the mystical landscapes of lost Atlantis, Elak faces down ferocious monsters, cunning foes, and alien magical arts. With his unmatched skill with a sword and unyielding will to survive, Elak battles to protect the innocent and vanquish evil in this action-packed collection.
With their unique blend of swashbuckling adventure, fantastical world-building, and Lovecraftian horror, Kuttner’s Elak tales have captivated fans of fantasy and science fiction for generations.
- This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving the stories genre and historical context.
FROM C. CHANCY: Count Taka and the Vampire Brides
Welcome, traveler, to wild Tramontana!
Here you will find snowclad mountains, roaring rivers, vast caves perhaps never seen before by mortal man! Here the strong Horses of Night roam the mountainsides – perhaps you can tame one to ride with your charms. Here the shepherds call to the long-fleeced sheep, the sheep to their sweet lambs – and you can find true telemea, the softest and freshest of cheese, in the gift shop, herb-flavored, a dozen special varieties-
Eh? You’re not here for the gift shop?
Ah, the cameras, of course! Forgive me, most of the photographers we see head straight for the ski lifts. Or the whitewater. Yet there’s so much more to Tramontana! The healthy farmers bringing in the hay, the soaring churches, the wild gypsy dancers – you must dance with the gypsies – and Raven Castle! Oh, there’s a place of history… and mystery.
It held the line against the Turks, they say, and the ancient lords rooted out all manner of uncanny beings… or bargained with them. Have you heard the rumors? That Count Herodes has ruled from that castle for over a hundred years? True, I tell you, all true!
…Monsters don’t exist, eh? Well, well, take your photographs, and we’ll see!
FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Dragon’s in the Details
Six stories of dragons hiding in today’s world:
A Friend, Indeed–A little girl meets the best friend she could ask for when she finds a dragon sleeping in her wagon.
Tempest–What do you do when you find a dragon in your favorite teacup?
Clowder–These are absolutely not cats, no matter what they look like, and will take offense at your mistake.
Back Yard Birds and Other Things–If the dragon defends your chickens, you invite it to stay.
Houdini–When the pet supplier sends the wrong kind of dragon, the pet store’s got a problem.
Hoard–Not every dragon cares for gold, gems, or cash.
FROM MACKEY CHANDLER: April (April series Book 1)
April is an exceptional young lady and something of a snoop. After a chance encounter with a spy, she finds herself involved with political intrigues that stretch her abilities. There is a terrible danger she, and her friends and family, will lose the only home she has ever known, and be forced to live on the slum ball Earth below. It’s more than an almost fourteen year old should have to deal with. Fortunately she has a lot of smart friends and allies. It’s a good thing because things get very rough and dicey. They challenge the political status quo, and with a small population the only advantage they have in war is a thin technological edge. The entire “April” series is building towards a merge with the future series that starts with “Family Law”.
FROM DECLAN FINN: Fae’d To Black (Honeymoon from Hell Book 5)
THE HONEYMOON FROM HELL COMES TO AN END! THE FINAL BOOK IN THE EXPLOSIVE SERIES.
Something has been hunting Marco and Amanda before they were married. It has stalked them across the country. It sits in the dark, hiding in the shadows.
The two of them need a plan to drag the monster into the light. They need bait … and they may be it.It’s time to hunt the darkness down, once and for all.
FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Margins of Mundania
A tween boy’s Christmas gift opens a world of wonder and brings joy to a whole town fallen on hard times. A young New Englander in the early Twentieth Century discovers that some parts of human history don’t bear too close examination. A literary critic in the old Soviet Union must confront his own moral cowardice.
These stories, along with a multitude of bite-sized works of flash fiction, carry you from the most prosaic of events to the moments of awe that offer glimpses of matters larger than ourselves.
FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Draw One In The Dark (The Shifter Series Book 1)
Deep in the Colorado Rockies, Kyrie Smith has mastered the art of keeping secrets: like how she turns into a panther at will, or how she’s trying to solve a string of shifter murders while serving up the daily special. But she’s not the only one with something to hide.
Take her coworker Tom Ormson—your typical guy next door, if your typical guy could transform into a dragon and might have accidentally killed someone. Then there’s the lion-shifting cop investigating the murders, a guilt-ridden father, and a trio of dragon shifters hunting for something called the Pearl of Heaven.
As if navigating a world of supernatural intrigue wasn’t complicated enough, Tom’s falling for Kyrie, discovering powers that shouldn’t exist, and learning that trust is a two-way street paved with decades of secrets. In Goldport, Colorado, where the coffee’s always hot and the shifters are always watching, solving a murder might be the easiest part of Kyrie’s day.
Welcome to small-town life where everyone has something to hide—and some of those secrets have scales, claws, and a tendency to roar.
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: GRATE
According To Hoyt 
“Hey! There are iron bars blocking those windows!”
“Just great.”
“Nope, those are grates.”
[Very Big Twisted Grin]
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👏
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I felt thE lak of some Sword&Sorcery, and Kuttner is usually good – chalk up a sale!
Of course, all I read is Suitable For All Ages – it’s G-Rated.
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Love the cover on Elak.
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Thank you!
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I hope it doesn’t grate as today, five-twentyfive-twentyfive, I wish everyone a great Towel Day.
Do you know where your towel is?
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My towel is next to me in my fully operational TARDIS.
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Fully operational? What about the chameleon circuit?
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That’s been fixed. 😊
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The soprano’s voice effortlessly reached towards the regions that people normally used to call dogs. While skilled, she tended towards pitchiness and was thankful that my hearing was beginning to go. Her song was beginning to grate at my ears. But, being polite, I still applauded when the song finished.
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Opera applause can also be in appreciation that that horrible screeching noise has finally ended.
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Being a barbarian, I do not speak Italian.
So, a great number of female-specific arias seem to me a lament for her lost dog.
I don’t speak German, either, but the German arias suggest somebody stole that dog, and someone is gonna git it!
Give me a naughty Rhinemaiden anytime.
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I’ve only ever seen one opera, Lucia di Lammermoor, performed some years ago at Indiana University when my youngest was undergrad there. The opera took place in Scotland, where we meet tenors and basses with such Scottish names as Edgardo, Enrico, and Arturo. English translations were projected on a screen below the stage, though I don’t remember them doing much good.
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And evoking images of a chainsaw cutting sheet metal.
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Then she blinked.
Roderick was there, doing something with a grate, if she saw correctly.
Augustus had laid claim the hollow for the tower. And Augustus was of scrupulously ordered habits.
“You!” Roderick turned as he bellowed, and his hands flared up. “What are you doing here? Barging in again?”
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Passepartout crouched over the grate, carefully stacking the coals. Phileas Fogg was exact in his ideas of the proper construction of a coal fire, as in so many other things, and his servant had come to realize that constructing the fire symmetrically minimized the amount of smoke emanating from it.
The hour was late, and the rain had continued all day. Just as Passepartout finished cleaning the coal dust from the hearth, a ring came from the bell at the front door. Fogg looked surprised.
“I was not expecting anyone. Passepartout, please see if this call can wait until tomorrow.” The servant was back in a few moments with a visiting card and a look of curiosity.
“M’sieur, it is Sir Andrew Gastrell. He says it is urgent.”
“Ah, from the Reform Club.” Fogg’s eyebrows rose. “Please send him in.”
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Jules Verne fanfic? Cool!
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“No, no, the spell calls for grated cheese, not gated cheese!”
Which is why we have had cheese-laden dishes for every meal for the past two weeks.
It was a 25-kilo oopsie.
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A kilo-oopsie is 1000 times worse than the regular kind.
Contrariwise, I knew a nice woman named Millie Putz; she and her husband had children, so perhaps that was a misnomer.
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Nigel Slim-Howland winced as his sister Agnes hammered ruthlessly at the piano keyboard. “Sir, do you find her performance distasteful?” asked Jenkins, his cyborg butler.
“I must admit,” said Nigel, “I find her technique terribly grating, like listening to Wagnerian opera, or Rush.”
“A most severe, yet apt, criticism, Sir.”
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“Here, now,” said one woman, her voice grating, “you can not just come in and start ordering us around. You don’t even know what’s going on here, you just came in last night.”
“So are you going to deal with the wyvern?”
“There’s nothing for it,” said one enormous man.
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Was talking with middle daughter a moment ago; she and her husband attended a performance of a French electronic dance music (EDM) combo, and they both had a wonderful time. This group’s music, she said, was melodic, as opposed to American EDM groups, whose music sounds like a dentist’s drill.
Note: Simile used with permission
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Let’s see if I can pull something off with this bunch, especially since I’ve got quite a bit of writing rust on me…
Lyall Locke sighed as he heard a loud clang. Of course his idiot brother blasted a grate out of his way instead of using more finesse. Still, that was why he was the diversion and Lyall was doing the actual work. He brushed a lock of dark red hair out of his face as he made one last check of his equipment. Radio, check. Knife, check. Handgun, check. Some pyrotechnics of his own, both for distraction and destruction? Check. He didn’t quite have the magical knack for those as his brother did though he did have more going for him than his father at least. Satisfied, Lyall whispered a spell that rendered him invisible, or close enough to it anyway, and slipped into the building.
The plan was simple enough. Riley and a few of the agency’s contractors would attack the building head on, hopefully taking out as much of the voodoo priest’s minions as possible, while Lyall dealt with their target one way or another. The agency would be making a tidy profit whether they brought Mr. Bourdillon out dead or alive after all. Just the way he liked it.
Something seemed wrong to Lyall shortly after he slipped inside, however. Security was too light even with the assault at the door. Dumisani Bourdillon might be many vile things but he was certainly no fool. There’s no way he wouldn’t have at least prepared for the possibility that Riley was a diversion. Unless…
“Heads up, Lyall!” Riley’s voice came over the earpiece. “I don’t think you’re alone in there.”
“Other than Bourdillon’s thugs, you mean.” Lyall hissed back.
“Of course! Quit acting so high and mighty,” his brother snapped. “We’re not getting as many thugs up front as we thought we were.”
“Likewise, things are too quiet back he-” Lyall’s response was cut off by a hideous scream from further up the hallway. “Hold a moment.”
LYall quietly drew both his handgun and his knife, holding them in the way his father taught him. He had learned this particular style of close combat from one of Great Uncle Nathan’s brothers who’d been in the special forces and it had served him well indeed. He took a moment to reinforce his stealth enchantment and moved towards the scream quickly and quietly.
Whatever he had expected it hadn’t been that. One of Bourdillon’s thugs was lying on the ground twitching and screaming. Waves of blood red lightning coursed over him and he wasn’t sure if it was part of some kind of binding charm or something else. Whatever it was, he wouldn’t be getting back up any time soon.
Yet his sight didn’t linger on the whimpering thug for long. There was another, admittedly more appealing sight nearby. It was a slender young woman with blonde hair tied in a braid. She had elegant features, a beauty mark on her right cheek hear her upper lip, and entrancing gold eyes ringed with blue. Lyall wasn’t sure how long he’d been staring at her but he broke contact when he saw shadows gathering in her right hand. His enchantment fell away as he rolled to the side, dodging the sphere of darkness she threw in his direction.
“Don’t move!” she said, pointing her own gun at him. “Huh. You don’t seem to be one of Bourdillon’s gang. Too pasty.”
“Speak for yourself,” Lyall replied, mot making any moves with his gun. “Somehow I don’t think there are many lovely Irish lasses signing up for gigs like these down here.”
“Well, aren’t you a flatterer?” she said, her eyes twinkling with amusement. “You must be here for Bourdillon’s head, too. From the gear I’m guessing you’re with the noisy gentlemen up front?”
“I can neither confirm nor -” Lyall’s response was cut off by Riley’s voice coming over the radio.
“Lyall! What is it?!”
“…Thank you for giving it away, dear brother.” Lyall sighed before responding. “Keep holding, Riley.”
“I knew it!” the girl said with a grin. “Good to know we’re on the same side at least.”
“Possibly. I’m Lyall Locke, with Eldean Investigations and Security. Who are you and why are you here?”
“Eldean, huh? Should’ve known they’d be here too!” the girl said, lowering her gun and giving Lyall a bright, if a bit unsettling smile. “Saorlaith Byrne at you’re service, here to solve a problem for a particular family Mr. Bourdillon upset very, very badly.”
Now it made sense. They went by a variety of names but there were certain independent operatives who thrived in the grey areas where agencies like Great Uncle Nathan’s couldn’t help but weren’t so bad you needed someone like Dumisani Bourdillon’s help either. This Saorlaith’s skill set lined up with that perfectly, as did the black and blue combat attire she wore. Whatever that crimson lightning spell was it certainly wasn’t standard magic school curriculum. Or law enforcement training either for that matter.
“Say no more, then,” Lyall said with a casual smile. “I’m sure a sophisticated young lady like yourself knows that old saw about the enemy of my enemy, right?”
“My enemy’s enemy. No more, no less,” she replied with a smirk. “But if you’re with Eldean I figure you won’t shoot me in the back at least. Shall we get what we came for?”
“Indeed we shall. Preferably before my brother gets here. Speaking of,” Lyall responded before keying his radio. “Sorry, Riley. Contact with the third party has been established. She’s an independent operative gunning for Bourdillon and has agreed to cooperate with us.”
“Huh? So soon. Be careful, Lyall,” Riley replied. “Remember to think with the head on your shoulders here!”
“Duly noted, dear brother,” Lyall shot back before turning to his new companion. “So what’s your plan? I usually take the stealthy approach while my brother does the door kicking but you seem to have other ideas.”
“Sure, I can be sneaky,” Saorlaith said. “Might make for a fun change of pace!”
“Then let’s put an end to Mr. Bourdillon, shall we?”
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General Kelley looked confused. “A Stargate? Like the TV show? An interstellar wormhole transport device?”
”No, sir,” said Captain Freeman from the podium, shaking his head. ”It reads ‘Star GRATE’. The translation package noted the name could also be translated as ‘stellar shredder’. Our info dump from the aliens, what they called their ‘first contact orientation package’, say it’s a weapon that actually has been used, though it is not in the hands, well, grasping appendages, of any of the nearby civilizations. It is a step up from all the planet-killer weapons listed in the data dump. From the technical details, an analogy would be that it does to stars what happens to cheese when a you run it across a cheese grater: It gravitically shreds them by removing stellar material asymmetrically, until the star destabilizes and goes nova.”
”Okay,” said Admiral Harriman, “that’s bad.”
”Yes, sir. Luckily it appears to be a relatively close range weapon with a relatively long deployment time required, so an effective area denial defense out to around two or so AU would keep that particular weapon system from being employed,” Freeman said as he bumped to the next PowerPoint slide in the deck, which had the GFO-simplified illustrating diagram, specifically created by his intel NCOs in format simple enough for General and Flag Officers to grasp.
”Well,” said the Admiral, shaking his head, “we certainly need to get on creating something of any defense whatsoever. Or anything to even get out that far. So what did they give us in that package for defenses? Or propulsion?”
”Defensive Technologies is the next section of the brief, sir,” Freemen said. “The Technology section is the largest section in the brief after that, and it does have a fair amount on ship drives, life support, their gravity manipulation tech, and other general use systems. Colonel Greason will be presenting the Defensive section next.” Freeman clicked to the next slide before he left the podium, handing the clicker to his Space Force counterpart in the Pentagon intel shop, Lt. Col. Sally Greason. As she started he noted the slide number at the bottom right corner on the screen. 145 of 700. It was going to be another long day.
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The Reader envisions all of Microsoft Office 365 groaning under the weight of those 700 slides in PowerPoint. That said, in all of the Reader’s dealings with the DOD he never saw a slide deck with more than about 200 slides.
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Average a minute and a half per slide, and 200 slides gives five hours of screen time.
A couple of those slides need to be
https://wgnradio.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2013/01/letsallgotothelobby-30275373.jpg?resize=768,576
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Yeah, and any GFO brief that went that long would probably get the briefer referred on charges. Probably break it up – and just the highlights for the stars-wearers. Details are what staff is for.
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They swept in through the air, like hawks, though too large and too human-like to be hawks.
Marcus fled for the trees, and the youngsters scattered, making it too difficult for the creatures to swoop down on them.
Their screams of rage were grating as they flew over the trees.
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Site C-1 wasn’t easy to get to, but then again I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
First things first, you needed to lift a huge-ass grate over a concrete storm drain box. I was clever and set up a hydraulic pump that would lift the grate from one side, the handle concealed in an old telephone equipment box. Six pumps of the handle was enough to slip in without issue on my belly, landing quietly in the drain box.
I counted holes on the inside of the box and slipped a finger into one of the reinforcing holes, causing the pump to release pressure and drop the grate back into place. When I left, there was a concealed handle nearby that I would use to pump the grate back open. Two different holes in arm’s reach allowed me to push the buttons there, holding them for exactly five seconds. When I pulled my fingers out, a latch popped open and I pulled it out and down, revealing a ceramet tunnel that I had to crouch to walk down, barely wider than my shoulders.
Once I closed the hatch and reset the switch, soft white light panels lit up down the tunnel. I headed down the tunnel, counting light panels because I had to get this count right. Exactly thirty-three panels down, I put my palms to the sides of the light panel and pushed up. If you walked past this panel, you would hit a dead end and have to come back to the start to reset the system. I pushed up on the panels far enough, a new concealed hatch opened up, smoothly dropping to the floor in the next tunnel on soundless hydraulics. I stepped down into a wider tunnel, tall enough for me to walk upright and have a few inches of space overhead and wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side. After I stepped inside, I pulled the handle on the inside and the hatch closed up, new lighting panels lighting up in perfect daylight illumination.
I headed down the hallway, stopped at a blast door in front of a metal grate. There was a water-proof box on the wall and opened the box up to reveal a set of switches. Flipping the fourth, second, third, and first switches in that order caused the latches in the blast door to release and I carefully pushed my way through into Site C-1. If I needed to do a decontamination shower, I would flip the switches in reverse numerical order, trading security for speed.
C-1 was, literally, one of my first emergency sites. In a shielded and stealthy reinforced ceramet box about thirty-by-thirty was everything I needed to survive for at least a month-rations, water, medical supplies, a secure box with some weapons. Two fold-down bunks were in one corner, a wet nook in the other with a reclamation shower and toilet. Sealed packages had a variety of clothing, two emergency suits, money, and blankets. A computer terminal with well-concealed links to the surveillance systems and the processor bank under the floor. A small micro-fabber sat near the door, barely larger than a copier in case I needed to make anything. And two backpacks sat nearby with everything I would need to restart The Mission again.
A momentary hum confirmed that C-1 was drawing on power from the capacitors, then the high-voltage line nearby. A small reactor was buried under the floor, below the processor core, just in case. My ears popped as the hatch closed and the slight overpressure resumed.
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“It’s not bad enough, the way your lies grate upon my nerves; now you want me to lie!”
“Using their preferred gender pronouns is not lying!”
“Saying that men are women, or women are men, those are lies. I will not lie.”
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To all appearances, it was an ordinary cast-iron grate over some kind of pipe. Maybe a sewer, maybe an air duct, but nothing remarkable to anyone familiar with the urban environment.
But when you looked into it, you could see strange glimmers, like figures barely glimpsed walking through a mysterious landscape that corresponded to no known world. Which lead to whether the grate was intended to keep them in, or us out.
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