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 WALLY WALTNER: Overture of Shadow (Muses’ War Book 1)
Light reveals, shadow conceals. What we illuminate, we become.
In Breheimen, artisans and craftsmen aren’t just respected. They are revered. The Muse-touched are individuals whose creativity seems divinely inspired, capable of conjuring beauty so profound it borders on the mythical. Their gifts shape culture, hold political sway, and define the kingdom’s identity—the very spirit of the realm.
But when Master Bard Dorian Silversong is summoned to the capital by his mentor, he walks into a world unraveling. That same mentor, the head of the prestigious Collegium Bardica, has been murdered. Muse-touched artisans are vanishing. And at the heart of it all lies a web of courtly machinations and unseen forces determined to twist the bond between creator and creation for malevolent ends.
What if the power to create was the greatest one of all?
FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: The Clerics in the Kitchen (Timelines Universe Book 10)
When your meth lab is built on a factory scale…
The planet Sanddoom. Desert exile world for most of Earth’s Radical Islamic Fundamentalists. Run by Mad Mullahs, who repay the favor of American leniency by creating a world of slavery, insurgency, and export of dangerous drugs via their own outmigrating people, headed for other colony planets.
The first two are covered by a hands-off agreement with the Americans.
The last, not so much. And Captain Delaney Wolff Fox’s special assignments fire team, FTSA1, aren’t going to stand for it. Their job is to hunt down and eliminate
The Clerics in the Kitchen
FROM HOLLY CHISM, ON PRE-ORDER: Soul Inheritance
Fresh out of college, Evelyn Alexander’s first order of business was finding a place to live. One she could afford on her small inheritance before her job started. None of the local rental agencies had anything in her price range, but…she found a small Victorian house for sale, the only one mostly untouched in a decaying neighborhood of subdivided rental houses.
Complete with a ghost. A very attractive ghost. A very attractive ghost with a strong dislike of the idea of anyone changing his house. So, of course, she bought it. A cranky ghost for a roommate was still a better option than the tiny studio with criminal neighbors.
Between working to restore her new house, embezzlement at work and a murder next door, Evelyn has her hands full. As she works to get on her feet as a productive adult (and not fall in love with a ghost she can’t have), the problems start to snowball. And it’s only compounded by learning that her house has far more secrets than just a single, cranky (attractive) ghost…
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 KYRA HALLAND AND ON SALE FOR 99C THROUGH JUNE: Mages’ Home (Defenders of the Wildings Book 1
Once, they were hated and hunted by mage hunters and Plain folk alike. Now, former bounty hunters turned renegade mages Silas and Lainie Vendine finally have the life they dreamed of – a home and ranch of their own where they can live in peace and raise their family, and the friendship and respect of their non-magical neighbors.
When a company from across the western sea comes to Prairie Wells, bringing marvelous new inventions, Silas and Lainie figure it only means more prosperous times ahead for the town and for them – until an old and vicious hatred of mages rears its head.
As troubles stirred by unseen enemies divide the town, many of Silas and Lainie’s neighbors turn on them. When danger strikes at the heart of their home and family, Silas and Lainie must fight to protect everything they love, everything they’ve worked for, before it’s all destroyed.
If you love fantasy filled with romance and adventure in a unique setting, come join Silas and Lainie Vendine in this new tale from the Wildings. Mages’ Home is the first book of Defenders of the Wildings, a follow-up series to the epic romantic fantasy-western series Daughter of the Wildings. It is a self-contained series and can be enjoyed even if you haven’t read Daughter of the Wildings.
Contains language, violence, and mild sensual content.
EDITED BY MICHAEL BURNETT, WITH A STORY BY JOHN C. WRIGHT: ’til Death Do Us Part
Eleven stories of married couples facing adversity and adventure together.
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.
BY PETER RABE. REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Dig My Grave Deep (Annotated): The classic pulp noir
Danny Port wanted out. Being the right hand man to the boss of a political machine in a second rate city was no longer interesting, let alone exciting. But Boss Stoker wanted him to stay. And Stoker’s main competition, head of the local Reform Party Bellamy, wants him to switch teams. And nobody, but nobody, is willing to let him leave. Worst of all, every one of them knows about Shelly, and some of them even know what she means to Port.
- This iktaPOP Media edition has a new introduction giving the book genre and historical context.
FROM J. M. ANJERWIERDEN: Dagger in the Black (The Black Chronicles Book 7)
Peace was won in blood, but can it endure?
After a bold but costly raid, Morgan captured Hillman’s ‘Comrade Father.’
With him in custody, the war will soon be over…
…but the real challenge has just begun.
Convincing the rest of Hillman’s Navy to stand down will be the easy part. Healing the deep scars left by the war will be much harder. Between the righteous fury of Parlon’s people to the bitter divide between Hillman’s elite and the miners trapped below, revenge seems far more likely an outcome than reconciliation.
Can Morgan help her new home and her homeworld heal?
FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Other Rhodes (Rhodes Mysteries Book 1)
Lilly Gilden has a half-crazed cyborg in her airlock who thinks he’s Nick Rhodes,
a fictional 20th Century detective. If she doesn’t report him for destruction,
she’s guilty of a capital crime.
But with her husband missing, she’ll use every clue the cyborg holds,
and his detective abilities, to solve the crime her husband was investigating
when he disappeared.
With the help of a journalist who is more than he seems,
Lilly will risk everything to plunge into the interstellar underworld
and bring the love of her life home!
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: EDUCATION
According To Hoyt 
“I just heard – the Duke has been overthrown!”
“Funny; I didn’t have eDukation on my list for today.”
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That hurt. WHO has the garum gun. John has volunteered for a dousing!
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Like George, Duke of Clarence, I’d prefer drowning in a butt of malmsey.
Gotta put those butlers to proper use.
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wouldn’t we all?
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The two Rogues had Ultra Agent Blue Pixie blocked in when Ultra Agent Troll arrived.
“Two against one isn’t what I call a fair fight. I think you deserve an education on what a fair fight is all about,” Troll commented.
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I think I can manage a follow up to the last one:
“Very impressive, Saorlaith,” Lyall remarked as the contractors handed the screaming Bourdillon over to the authorities. “You certainly didn’t have a conventional magical education, did you?”
“Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t,” she chirped. “A lady’s got to have some secrets, you know.”
“That her, Lyall?”
A tall young man walked over to the duo after securing his shotgun. Other than his brown eyes, lack of facial scars, and perhaps a few subtle differences in features Riley Locke was the spitting image of his father, yet it always amused Lyall how prone he was to rash actions. If he hadn’t been on the receiving end of the Irish-American version of la chancla from their mother plenty of times, and thus known exactly where his temper came from, Lyall would wonder how Riley ended up being his brother rather than one of his cousins from Great Uncle Nathan and his daughter Lisa.
“Indeed. Saorlaith, this is my brother Riley, blunt instrument extraordinaire,” Lyall began, smirking at his brother. “Riley, this is Saorlaith Byrne, an…independent operative if you take my meaning. I apologize if he doesn’t, Saorlaith. I believe Riley was taking blows to the head before he was even born.”
Riley rolled his eyes and gave his brother a one-fingered salute before he said “Yes Lyall, we all know you have the galaxy brain of galaxy brains. Anyway, I just got off the phone with Dad. He told me she’s got to come to the debriefing.”
“For what?” Saorlaith asked, cocking her head.
“Most likely to sort out payment issues and to corroborate my report,” Lyall reassured her. “I know you’re getting quite the payday already but Eldean’s policy is always to ensure any help we get, however unexpected, is properly rewarded.”
“Yeah, all that candy ass crap he said.” Riley concurred, rolling his eyes and shaking his head.
“You gentlemen lead the way, then!” the girl said with a smile, though she matched Lyall’s pace. “You said your last name was Locke, right Lyall? And you’re with Eldean? Does that mean…?”
“Yes. My father is the assistant director and my great uncle is the owner and head of the agency,” Lyall answered, smiling back. “And rest assured we don’t catch any breaks for it. Sometimes I think my father and great uncle work me and Riley harder than anyone else on purpose.”
“Of course! No playing favorites after all,” the girl chirped. “And is your dad’s great-grandmother, well, your great-great-grandmother really Rhona the Stormbringer?”
“Of course a lovely Irish lass like yourself would know that,” Lyall chuckled. “Yes, we do indeed come from a long line of warriors for truth and justice. Are you sure you want to get too close to us, Saorlaith?”
“Your brother? Nah. You, on the other hand… There’s a reason you were doing the sneaky stuff, wasn’t there?”
“A gentleman has to keep a few secrets of his own, too, you know.” Lyall retorted with a wink.
Saorlaith and Lyall laughed as they walked towards the assembled vehicles. Today had been an interesting one indeed and Lyall hoped it wouldn’t become a different kind of interesting once he introduced Saorlaith to his father. He really hoped neither of them had to explain that crimson lightning spell Saorlaith had used against both the thug and Bourdillon himself. Whatever it was, he was sure his father wouldn’t like it.
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Nothing struck her. Nothing, indeed, showed about these flowers that the most rigorous of her master would have thought anomalous.
Then Grace gestured ahead of them.
The stand of daisies in vivid blue made her stop in her tracks. A sapphire blue, not a sky blue shade. Still yellow hearts.
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“I would have given as much care to a marvelous man with the same power, of course,” he confided.
Honor smiled and filed away the terms. Her education proceeded apace.
“And you will need to keep up your strength. News of your gift will spread most swiftly. Borne by wind.”
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“… and we spend at least an hour a day in ‘skull sessions,’ which are in a classroom. I can’t tell if I’m at football practice or school (ha-ha)! Miss you …”
Cari folded the letter and put it back in the envelope. I miss you too, Max, she thought.
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Ethan asked, “Professor O’Malley, just how did you get a doctorate in Applied Magic?”
“Whaddya mean, doctorate?” replied the Professor, exhaling cigar smoke. “Nobody has a doctorate in Applied Magic. This is all new. Who could possibly teach me?”
“But –”
“Listen, son, degree and education are two different things.”
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“Mr. G says I got an education,” Avrim said proudly to Mina. “He said when awful things happen to other people it’s an adventure, but when it happens to you it’s an experience. And boy, did we have an experience! He only got us lost once, but when we got there it rained, and rained, and rained. The truck got stuck, twice, and the tractor had to pull it out! And then he got sick and had to go to the hospital, and when he got out, Miss Dorothy got sick! And after the work was done and we started home, we had a tire blow out on the RV and got stuck on the Interstate! And the next day, when we were almost home, we had another tire go flat and had to wait for hours to get it fixed! It was terrible, terrible!”
Miss Dorothy looked at him, while Mina looked wide-eyed. “Did we get the work done?” Avrim nodded. “And did we meet new friends? And were people kind to us?” Avrim nodded again.
“I guess it wasn’t so bad,” he said. “But Miss Dorothy, I have a question.”
“Yes?”
“When do we leave again?”
(Pretty much this morning’s children’s lesson, delivered by my beloved’s alter-ego, Avrim T. Dragon III).
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“It hadn’t even been used on it. We, my brother Florian and I, know that because if it had, we would have been taught the results.”
Their expressions had not changed. Helena looked utterly bewildered, as if she could not imagine why Violetta had said she had shown her part.
“It’s easiest if I show you. And for that, we have to go to the library. This tower’s library.”
Helena blinked. Then she led the way. The others, reluctantly, followed, giving her, and the book she held, sidelong glances.
“You won’t see its effect if I cast it now, but look at this book.” She put it down. “It indexes where all the books in this library are.”
Augustus arched an eyebrow and looked at the shelves, instead. Jasper took up the book and leafed through it.
“It’s uncommonly well-ordered,” said Augustus.
Violetta giggled. “Melvin’s Mathematically Harmonious Disposition. They flew.”
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Buttercup’s once luxurious cream-colored fur hung lank and bedraggled, soaking wet and streaked with mud and oil. She had come here through some kind of…portal? In the pitch-blackness of the cavern, she had been unable to see but had felt it close over her, pulling her away from the other cats. This new place was dark, but not lightless, and her feline eyes drank in the dim light gratefully. The walls and floor seemed to be made of metal, and everything smelled of saltwater, rust, and oil. And cats.
She had been about to curl up in a corner and get some sleep — her whole body ached, for it seemed that she and her friends had spent days wandering in those labyringthine caverns — but now one source of the cat smell was standing in front of her, stiff with rage, screaming a challenge. Behind it stood several more.
“Please,” she said, “I don’t want any trouble. I don’t even know where I am. What is this place?”
Insane laughter echoed in response. “They all say that when they first arrive. All you need to know is that no cat gets out alive…and if you want to eat, you have to fight.”
And the cat launched itself at her.
Buttercup lost her footing, surprised by the sudden attack, but recovered quickly. Claws dug into her side, and she returned the favor as she twisted back to her feet and flew in for an attack of her own. The other cat was close to her size, but lighter; ill-fed, it had less muscle. And she had learned to fight from the best. She couldn’t keep up with Julius or Ares, but then no one could. Very few other cats could beat her, and it was clear that this cat was not among their number. She had already won; any second now, her attacker would realize the same and flee.
Her attacker did not flee. Instead, the attacks multiplied. Claws dug into her from all directions, and there was a searing pain as teeth tore into her leg. This is not how cats fight! She had seen dogs fight as a pack once, tearing a victim to bits in the blink of an eye. Panic began to set in. The weight of her opponents was bearing her down, and strong as she was, she was beginning to flag. She couldn’t stand against a half-dozen cats at once. Soon they would hit something vital, and she would die.
Then, suddenly, the weight against her increased, flattening her to the floor. Just as quickly, it decreased, and one of the other cats screamed in pain. For the first time, she sensed fear in her enemies. The tide of panic began to flow the other way. Buttercup couldn’t tell exactly what had happened, but it had given her an opening. She redoubled her efforts. More than that. As the panic receded, she realized that she had an edge in this fight, even against superior numbers. Most cat fights were decided by muscle mass and sheer aggression; most cats had little else to bring to a fight and little need for anything else, given their natural weaponry. But she had been taught by Ares, a most unusual feline. And although she was definitely not small, her sparring sessions against Ares and Julius, each a monster of a cat, had taught her how to use an opponent’s weight and aggression against him.
She slipped under an outstretched paw, accepting its strike in return for the chance to bite deeply into the tender folds where the foreleg met the chest. The cat recoiled and yelped. Her claws raked across another cat’s nose, springing involuntary tears into its eyes. And then, as suddenly as the fight had begun, it was over. The only remaining enemy was the cat that had challenged her; it circled warily, beaten but unwilling to give up. She could feel desperation rolling from it in waves.
And beside her — how was this possible? He had been lost for so long! — the solid, bulky form of Zane. It was hard to believe, but she knew his scent. Yellow eyes, shaggy black fur, impossibly matted as always, his fearsome fangs bared against her enemy — their enemy. He had turned the tide.
“You’d best leave real quick-like,” he snarled, “unless you want me and my friend here to give you a fatal education.”
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“Who has heard of the Carrington Event?” He looked out over the sea of faces, all wearing similar looks of bovine bewilderment. He groaned. “Such is the deplorable state of modern education. Very well, listen up.”
“On September first, eighteen fifty-nine, the sun farted in our general direction. A wave of plasma, highly energetic charged particles, caused massive worldwide electromagnetic disruptions for two days. Fortunately, at that time, we had very little that depended on electricity. The damage was limited to some telegraph operators getting painfully zapped by their equipment.”
“Today, a similar occurrence would be a civilization-ending catastrophe. The global blackouts would be just the beginning. Everywhere, power plants, generators and control circuits, transformers, substations, switches and circuit breakers would be damaged or destroyed. We spent more than a century incrementally building up all that infrastructure; rebuilding and replacing it all, with the factories deprived of electric power and their own equipment burned out, would take years if not a decade or more.”
“Try to envision it. A world returned to the nineteenth century. No communications. No G-P-S. No internet. No refrigerators. Thousand-foot skyscrapers with no lights, no fans, no water, no elevators. You don’t even want to know what years without electricity would do to food production. Billions of people starving and freezing in the dark.”
“One additional benefit of the Solar Shield is that it will prevent flares and other sun tantrums from wrecking everything we know. I don’t understand how anybody could be opposed to it.”
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I have not yet seen any reports of effects from today’s CME.
I don’t think we can be lucky every time.
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Can’t say I’ll run out to buy any of this week’s offerings. But the cover art for “’til Death Do Us Part” is fantastic!
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Today the whole class had taken a walk out to the edge of town. Sam wasn’t sure what their teacher was up to, and he certainly wasn’t going to ask.
Here civilization gave way to the wild, reminding one that Solace was in fact still a very raw world. Even the Kitties’ technology could tame a new planet only so fast.
Was this the old leomorph’s point — to remind everyone just how thin the margins were here, how easily they could be breached? Not just a Tchiador attack, but the sudden intrusion of wild nature — a storm, a seismic disturbance, or something nobody had even thought of.
And then, in the distance, Sam could hear some old, familiar music. Originally a protest against abuses of the UK’s school system when the songwriter had grown up, it had become a more generalized complaint against a certain kind of schoolwork.
No, Sam was not going to clue the instructor in on what those English lyrics were about.
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