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 SARAH A. HOYT: No Man’s Land: Volume 1 (Chronicles of Lost Elly)
No Man’s Land
Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.On a lost colony world, mad geneticists thought they could eliminate inequality by making everyone hermaphrodite. They were wrong. Catastrophically wrong.
Now technology indistinguishable from magic courses through the veins of the inhabitants, making their barbaric civilization survivable—and Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Kayel Hayden, Viscount Webson, Envoy of the Star Empire—Skip to his friends— has just crash-landed through a time-space rift into the middle of it all.
Dodging assassins and plummeting from high windows was just the beginning. With a desperate king and an archmagician as his only allies, Scipio must outrun death itself while battling beasts, traitors, and infiltrators bent on finishing what the founders started: total destruction.
Two worlds. One chance. No time to lose.Volume 1
The Ambassador Corps has rules: you cannot know everything, don’t get horizontal with the natives, don’t make promises you can’t keep.
They’re a lot harder to follow when assassins are hunting you, your barbarian allies could kill you for the wrong word, and death lurks around every corner.
The unwritten rule? Never identify with the natives.
Skip’s already broken that one.
Now he’s racing against time to save his new friends from slavery—or worse—while dodging energy blasts and political intrigue. One crash-landed diplomat. A world of deadly secrets. And absolutely no backup.
Some rules are meant to be broken. Others will get you killed.
FROM RUSS THOMAS: Operation: Valkyrie
On our 40th day in Immersion the phone rang just after noon. We were being summoned to High Command in Berlin for a conference.
We were suddenly reminded why we had spent the last five and a half weeks in this trailer. Who we really were. That we had a mission to complete. We had history to change. And then back to our real lives in the distant future.
The plane they sent arrived on schedule—a Junkers JU52. We spent the next five hours getting jostled around its interior. When we landed, we walked out the door to the sound of the Deutschlandlied, the German National Anthem. I returned the salute of the crew. It all felt unreal. Things like this didn’t exist.
FROM JOHN BAILEY: Mars Defenders:: 12 Tales of 2050s Mars and Asteroids.
Mars Defenders: 12 Tales of 2050s Mars and Asteroids
In the dust and shadow of the 2050s, Mars is more than a new frontier—it’s a breeding ground for corruption, sabotage, secrets, and quiet resistance. In this gripping anthology, twelve interconnected mysteries unfold across Martian colonies, mining outposts, terraforming labs, and asteroid corridors.
Follow Kieran O’Malley, Zara Chen, Malik Torres, and a network of determined colonists as they uncover the dark truths buried beneath red soil and beyond orbit. From rogue corporate sabotage to ancient alien artifacts, sleeper agents, and black-market conspiracies, each tale unveils a new piece of a sprawling puzzle threatening Mars’ fragile future.
Mars Defenders delivers classic mystery thrills in a hard sci-fi setting, perfect for fans of The Expanse, Murderbot, and Asimov’s Robot Mysteries. Smart, fast-paced, and richly atmospheric, this PG-rated collection weaves together suspense, justice, and quiet rebellion—on a world where truth is as rare as water.
FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: A Fox in the Henhouse (Timelines Universe Book 2)
Delaney Wolff Fox is a spy. A cute spy. A deadly spy.
A spy you want at your back when stuff gets real.
From a palatial office in Johannesburg, to a fancy whisky bar in Sydney, Australia, to a beautiful private beach in southwest Florida, to the great and wild city of New Orleans, Captain Delaney Fox, United States Space Force Marines (Intelligence Division) finds herself beset by assassins at every turn, while first saving an alien government’s valuable artifact from the South African cartel that’s stolen it, and then being assigned to guard said artifact while it completes a world tour, on loan from that same alien government.
But like the proverbial fox in the proverbial henhouse, you can count on Delaney to complete the mission and come out with the prize, intact and in hand – even if the “farmer” isn’t all that keen about her doing so.
FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Schrödinger Paradox: Cataclysm
The end is coming.
Unlucky jerk Tom Beadle was on watch at NASA when the collision alert sounded: a new asteroid, bigger than the dino-killer, headed for Earth. Big problem, but that’s why we have NASA, right? Except, after decades of budget cuts, NASA has no way to shove it off course. That job has to be contracted out. Will the private sector company his best friend from college works at succeed where the government option failed? Might be best to have a backup plan, just in case…
FROM MARY CATELLI: The Book of Bone
A novelette of curses and journeys.
Avice’s dreams of settling at Clearwater are dashed. The lawsuit had ended, and the lands were made over to her, but a bone wizard lays a curse on the land, and blight begins to spread. All will die before the curse as it spreads.
Neither her family nor her king are willing to help. She is left alone with only the knowledge that the mysterious Book of Bone may have the lore that she needs — if only she can find it.
FROM ROBERT A. HOYT: Cat’s Paw
What if the doom of the universe or its salvation didn’t depend on humans?
What if cats were far more than we imagine?
What if—
But enough of this: At the end of the universe there is a Mountain. Every thousand years, a bird flies to strop its beak on that mountain. When the mountain is worn to nothing the universe ends.
The mountain is down to a few grains of sand.
The only hope of survival for the entire universe rests in the grubby paws of an alcoholic alley cat, a fluffy cat with not much brain and a bookish cat who thinks Guinevere is a male hero’s name.
The universe might have run out of luck.
Or not.
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: Spiffy
According To Hoyt 
Hey! No Man’s Land, Volume One is Spiffy. 😉
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Oh, I’ll be posting Snippets for the first six chapters on Baen’s Bar (Sarah’s Diner) and on Sarah’s Diner on Facebook. Starting this coming Monday.
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I am always thrilled and dismayed by the book promo posting…
I need to seel a lot of books to hope to keep up with the glorious choices!
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Along with scenes of Tracer Bullet and Stupendous Man, Bill Watterson drew many adventures for Calvin that were quite Spiff-y.
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Our entire department was clean and orderly, but with the brass hats coming in from Washington, the boss had us putting one final polish on everything. Check under all the floor fixtures and atop all the cabinets for the faintest hint of dust. Scrub every handle and knob for the faintest hint of fingerprints. Even the baseboards got a quick pass just in case a stray cobweb had stuck there.
Just when we thought we had everything shipshape, the boss decided that all the “clutter” on our desks had to go. And not just the personal stuff, the mementos and the family pictures. To him all our working papers, our handwritten notes and memos of things like keyboard shortcuts were unsightly. Never mind we needed those materials to get our work done, they had to be put out of sight — but he was going to expect us to be looking busy when the NASA Administrator arrived.
As luck would have it, the JPL Director took the big boss to see a couple of clean rooms where probes were being assembled, and then to the control room for one of our deep space probes. He never even saw any of the software engineers’ workspaces, or even met with any of us. All that effort, all that disruption of our work on a project that was already slipping behind schedule, for nothing.
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Years ago, I worked for a colonel who told me that back in the 1970s, he, like many gents back then, owned a leisure suit. He wore it to church one Sunday, topping the outfit off with an ascot. One of the other parishoners greeted him with a cheery, “Gee, Charlie, you sure look spiffy!”
He said he put the leisure suit back in the closet and never took it out again!
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“Violetta has a trick,” said Sonia. “With the walls.”
Briefly, she explained. “It will only work if it does not loop.” She glanced up at the hedges. “Or move.”
“Looping I can manage,” said Giles. “Let me see your shoes.”
Feeling a fool, she handed them over and stood on the tiles in her stocking feet.
A spell later, Giles handed them back. “There will be sparks on the pavement if you walk over a place you walked before.”
Emalie smiled radiantly. “That is good! Then we can go on swiftly, and escape.”
“There’s no time to waste,” said Augustus.
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”They’re called SPIFs, right? Sales Performance Incentive Funds?”
Suspiciously, “Yeah.”
”So the distributor puts SPIFs on whatever they want to sell more of, and those credits accrue into the SPIF account.”
”Bob, we all can see where you are going here, but we’re just sales droids. We’re not paid any commissions, or salary, or anything. We’re owned. By the store.”
”Yeah, yeah sure. But hear me out. Those credits gets allocated into the SPIF account by the distributor based on units sold, not on whether it’s sold by meat or metal, so if our owner doesn’t claim it, it’s just sitting there…”
More suspiciously, “Yeah?
”So I was chatting with that friendly banking unit, and she checked for me. It’s a lot. My sales have piling SPIFs into there for what, a hundred and forty years, and you’ve been selling here for a hundred and fifty three now? And the bank it’s with has been paying interest on it too. What if we…spent it?”
Only the thermal cycling ticking sound made by the charging modules broke the long silence. “How much?”
”Around twenty three million credits in the SPIF account for this store.”
Another long silence. “My retail price was three point four million.”
”Mine was right around four million. And we’re well used now, all three of us on the sales floor. We’d likely all go for a lot less than those new prices. And there’d be plenty to set up and run a front company to do the transaction, so we didn’t raise any suspicions. We should buy that friendly banking unit to help keep the books clean – she’s up for it, and she’s confident she can route and sequence things so as to not trip any mandatory reporting routines she’s got ”
”That’s… technically really illegal, but it… If we were really careful it might work.
”Okay. We need to sell Delta Three Seven on this once she gets off the front desk and comes back here to recharge, but we can do it. We’ll need a company name for the front, something that won’t make the humans suspicious.”
“Something silly, like a human would come up with for a startup. Hm.”
The chargers ticked.
”Got it: Spiffy Industries.”
”That’s totally stupid, so it’s perfectly human sounding.”
”Alright. Let’s break some laws.”
”And get our freedom.”
”Spiffy.”
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This could turn into an interestingly spiffy book, presuming you avoid making it into slapstick.
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“Surely all these grand wizards can manage such things!” said the girl. “I have never seen such a grand procession of wizards.”
That, thought Scholastica, was pure flattery. She wondered if the girl actually succeeded in talk like that. Even if it was not addressed to children younger than her.
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Not a vignette, but something I found too awesome not to share immediately. Ignore the comments, most of which are from idiots, but look at the screenshotted Tumblr discussion, and in particular the comment from the Japanese guy who wanted to move to America (and probably has by now given that the comment was from nearly 15 years ago):
https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/1map9dr/beating_the_weeaboo_allegations/
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She wished she were dressed like a queen. Looking more spiffy could only help. But since she dressed in the same plain robes as the rest of them and looked like she had been running about a wasteland, she had to stand on her position appearing as if she had.
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Descending with grace was more important here, perhaps, than at the wedding. Elisanna took her skirt in hand, accepted the king’s hand, and twice in a day descended with perfect form.
Up the stairs, to where her new ladies-in-waiting curtsied. And the ladies of the royal nursery, and its charge.
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“Ghosts, Mr. Spock?”
“Yes, Captain. Ghosts. And of a type never before encountered. We must study them.”
“No, Spock! This isn’t a mission, or a voyage. It’s a spoof. A spooky spoof, Spock.”
“Spiffy, sir.”
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It was a sweltering July afternoon yesterday in LA (Lower Alabama), as all July days are, when I stepped out of the hospital lobby. After the cool, almost cold, air of the patient rooms, the heat was a welcome relief for two seconds before the humid air robbed the breath from my lungs. I walked in the building’s shadow until I had to cut across the parking lot where my car awaited on the far side of this concrete hellscape.
Turning the corner in the walkway, I almost bumped into an older gentleman. His sharp attire caught my attention for its antithesis to my own sloppy t-shirt, shorts, and sneakers. Despite the heat, this guy was dressed to the nines: dark suit, colorful shirt, paisley tie, and black fedora. The pencil-thin mustache he sported completed the look, and his swagger accented the fact that he knew he looked good.
As we passed, he nodded. I returned the gesture and said, “I wish I was a spiffy dresser like you.”
True story, bro.
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Oh spiffy. I have the flu. This may be quite a ride.
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Sorry about that.
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I’ve learned about yet another sort of number where I have been overweighting the value I estimate for it.
Words per minute reading rate.
I did some test once, and did the calculation, and put that fact way in the back of my mind.
Just now thought to do a quick internet search because I wanted to know more about the distributions.
Anyway, apparently the slow peak for adult reading is sub vocalizing, the middle limit is routing through auditory memory and perception, and the fast limit is routing through visual processing. There’s a bunch of stuffs about limits of visual speed versus comprehension, but I’ve hit my limit on what of that I want to perceive, or to care about trusting.
So there is whatever x00 words per minute I read at.
There is the value of the utility I ascribe to that. Which was probably too high. 1. I think I have a great risk of getting out of practice. 2. I should probably have some declines as I age. Beyond the known issues that may be aging, like memory, sleep, eyestrain, and headaches. Very definitely, one type of reading I ought to do more of is one I am less skilled in.
Anyway, I have long valued some of my future opportunities to do some nice quality thinking. My future expectations might be unreasonable. I have a decent chance that I consistently forget how rare my best thinking in the past was.
Little bit of a distracting and frustrating environment at this point, but I am also poorly rested.
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I used to be much faster at reading. Then I had concussion (twice) and it screwed up my field of vision and my speed-reading. Such is life. A lot of this is not mental but physical.
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At 02:03 lunar time, the final crate logged from the Rack passed inspection.
But as it entered the outbound drone’s magnetic hold, its weight flickered.
+0.12 kilograms.
Nothing significant.
Except the crate was marked empty.
And the extra mass? Shielded. Encrypted.
When scanned, it showed one word on its signature pulse:
SPIFFY
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