Book Promo And Vignettes By Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

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)

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 CEDAR SANDERSON: Following Trouble : A Tale of Underhill (Pixie for Hire)

Lom has a new mission, to track down illicit magical use. Something is going on in the gritty underworld of Cincinnati, where the nightclubs are still hosting gambling and the organized crime runs more smoothly than the bureaucracy. He’s about to find out if he’s going to get lucky… or get dead.

FROM DALE COZORT: There Will Always Be An England II: Planet Ripper

A gripping blend of alternate history, science fiction, and military adventure set in a world where time travel, alien invasion, and World War II-era conflicts collide.

1944 Britain spent twelve grueling years in the Stone Age, leaving its World War II Allies to fight on alone and forcing brutal decisions: dispatching stranded US troops to ancient North America, while wartime factories crumbled to rust. When the nation snaps back to 1944—mere weeks after it left—it’s a superpower, boasting jets, nuclear reactors, advanced computers, and television, light-years ahead of the world.

But this Britain is a fragile giant, its defenses geared for Neanderthal raids, not modern warfare. As Nazi Germany eyes the vulnerable country, eager to exploit the chaos, an even greater peril looms: a huge, derelict artificial moon orbits Earth, self-repairing with each orbit. Whoever seizes it could dominate the planet—or doom it.

In this pulse-pounding alternate history, survival hangs on getting rusting equipment back in the fight while turning Britain’s advanced technology to war.

FROM RACONTEUR PRESS: Alien Family Traditions (Raconteur Press Anthologies Book 58)

In a galaxy torn by war, where battles shatter civilizations, the heart of family endures. From adoptions that bridge species to foster homes offering refuge to aliens and humans alike, love becomes the ultimate rebellion against conflict. Discover uplifting tales of unlikely kin—blood, chosen, or found—building havens of hope amidst chaos. In this heartwarming collection, explore the lives of those who choose compassion over strife, the consequences that reshape worlds, and the reasons why family, in all its forms, is the brightest light in the darkest times. A feel-good celebration of unity and resilience that will leave you inspired.

FROM JOHN BAILEY: Stories of Asteroid Mining: Hardships in the Belt

Stories of Asteroid Mining: Hardships in the Belt
by John Bailey

In the ruthless frontier of the asteroid belt, fortunes are carved from stone—and lives are shattered in silence.

Stories of Asteroid Mining tells three gripping tales from the boom era of space’s final gold rush. Elias Varn, the wiry mechanic-turned-prospector, claws his way to success and returns home to marry his sweetheart. Torin Kade, a hopeful coder from Europa, finds only betrayal and loss in the void. And Cassian Holt, the cunning tycoon, builds a mining empire from the wreckage of failed dreams.

From the dust-choked hulls of Vesta’s saloons to the icy stars above Ceres, these stories chronicle the harsh realities of life in the Belt. In a world where oxygen costs more than whiskey, and claim-jumpers hunt in stealth ships, only the sharp, the stubborn, or the soulless survive.

For fans of hard sci-fi, space Westerns, and frontier capitalism, this gritty anthology exposes the sacrifices made to mine the sky—and what’s left when the stars no longer shine for you.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: On Account of a Dame (Timelines Universe Book 9

Welcome to the New Jazz Age!

It’s the Roaring Twenties all over again — well — the 2120’s, that is. Where New York City has reverted to its Jazz Age roots of two centuries before. What’s missing? Prohibition, and gun control. What’s not missing? Tough guys, and the dames who (sometimes) love them. Gin joints. Speakeasies. Dance halls. The Social Register is still a thing, and the Beautiful People litter the society pages of the local hypernews sites.

Enter a typical gumshoe private detective — a member of that high society himself, yet a man who left society long ago for other pursuits. And his latest client, a rich young woman of leisure, who needs her new husband followed.

Throw in the recently-crowned queen of one of Chinatown’s tongs, a beautiful investment wizard from upstate, and a hundred million dollars in assets, and suddenly it’s all

On Account of a Dame

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 TIMOTHY WITCHAZEL: Joshua and the Battle of Jericho: A Poem in Alliterative Verse

From author and poet Timothy V. Witchazel comes the story of Joshua and the Battle of Jericho in alliterative verse. Tracing the story of the Israelites from the parting of the Red Sea to the fall of the walls of Jericho, the story is retold in the style of Beowulf, Piers Plowman, and other Anglo-Saxon poems.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Having a Pint (Liquid Diet Chronicles Book 2)

Even the dead have to make a living…

Meg Turner, vampire accountant and investments advisor, has plenty of living clients, but not many among her fellow undead. That’s about to change: she’s been invited to a regional business fair for her kind. She’ll get to meet and greet more bloodsuckers than she really wanted to (hopefully without having to suck up to any of them). than just the two Vampire cops she helped track down and stake her late, unlamented sire—and hopefully make some friends and answer some questions.

Unfortunately, she’s got a Line Progenitor who’s begun invading her dreams, and a serial killer stalking her future clients to distract her from growing her business. Throw in a sick roommate not long before the conference starts, a mafia messenger boy left on her front porch, and only one car to juggle all of her responsibilities toward her roommate and unexpected guest. And then on top of that, she has the business fair over an hour away that features vampire karaoke, nosy, pushy elder bloodsuckers, and one particular elder who’s friends with her unwelcome dream guest. Seriously, it’s enough to drive her to drink something other than coffee or blood.

Just why did she think this whole conference thing sounded like a good idea, again?

FROM MARY CATELLI: The Maze, the Manor, and the Unicorn

A short story of banishment and magical intrigues.

Cecily had been a lady-in-waiting. Exiled to Clearwater — for her health — after she angered Queen Blanche, she has nothing to do but wait.

Until an ambassador is sent there, for his health, and Cecily finds that the court intrigues reach farther than she had known they could.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Time Enough to Spy

A spy has at long last come in from the cold — but all is not as it seems. The longer his debriefing continues, the more uneasy he becomes. In particular, how can he reconcile his presence here with the impossibility of both rescue and escape from a polity with the power to remodel the bodies of their subjects at will?

What secret hides behind those cool professional faces of the agents who briefed him so long ago? Has he been induced to betray all he was sent to protect?

A short story of the Madrian Empire.

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: Frantic

45 thoughts on “Book Promo And Vignettes By Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike”

  1. Augustus straightened. “Better laughter than frantic running about, but we could have died there.”

    Violetta wondered if they could avoid making jests when that had roused such laughter, but she said nothing. They pressed on.

    “How do we know the heart of the labyrinth when we find it?” said Helena.

    Like

  2. Can’t think of a vignette right now but I’m not going to be frantic about it.

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  3. We started our attack run on the enemy fleet, but then Fran’s fighter suddenly twitched out of close formation, pitching and yawing wildly.

    “Fran’s what’s wro…” said the new flight lead over general comms, but then Fran’s fighter fired a railgun stream and two torps, scoring direct hits on a cruiser off to the side now which our formation definitely was not making an attack run.

    The cruiser appeared to lose main power, venting atmo and rolling. Fran’s ship smoothly maneuvered back in alignment with our formation’s attack vector as we continued our run on the mass of ships screening the enemy carrier.

    I switched to a private link to the flight leader. “Don’t worry, boss,” I said. “Fran gets sudden 4d inspirations and just takes the shots. It’s almost subconscious for her, and she never misses. That’s why she’s not ever slotted in the center of our formation.”

    ”So, just instantaneous?” he queried.

    ”Yeah, she just sees the solution and twitches to the shot. We just call them a Fran Tic.”

    Liked by 1 person

    1. East Sussex, in England, is not known for a lot – except among fish fanciers.

      Alfie Skinner, guppy-meister of Frant, allowed his tank to go uncleaned for a month. His fish became infected wth an evolved parasite. It spread, somehow, away from Alfie’s home.

      It’s technically Ichthyophthirius multifiliis alfiei but better known as Frant Ick.

      Liked by 1 person

  4. Frantic: what happens when you face the music.

    https://twitchy.com/samj/2025/08/10/old-fbi-swamp-rats-issue-warning-n2417051

    Aww, would you look at that? Former FBI swamp rats … sorry … officials have issued an open letter warning that Trump, Patel, and Gabbard’s efforts are undoing all of their work. Wait. Undoing ALL of their work? Say it ain’t so! You mean this administration is undoing all of the damage they have done not only to the agency but to the country for the past decades?

    SAY IT AIN’T SO.

    Ha.

    HA ha.

    HA HA HA HA HA.

    Popcorn, popped.

    🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿

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  5. Drak gave the speaker a level look that conveyed his lack of amusement at the comment. “We’ve been on the road for a month and sent our man ahead to arrange things yesterday. Are you saying that the warehouse space is now… unavailable?”

    “We.. we… we had an emergency shipment come in.”

    Drak put his hand on his sword and glared. The man’s frantic, verbal scrambling was amusing, but he needed this solved quickly.

    “Uhh. Give me a minute. I’ll get this fixed.”

    “You’d better.”

    The man scurried away to solve the issue.

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      1. I hope you picked up some from my mentions in both my newsletters.

        (I’m really struggling with executive function right now. We had a death in the family, and while it wasn’t unexpected — 86 with ongoing heart issues — it still came as a shock.)

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        1. May the soul of the dear departed rest in peace and may perpetual light shine upon them.

          And may angels surround you and console you as you grieve.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. I think it happens to all of us as we grow older. I’m not sure how many of my high school classmates we’ve lost — my family moved right after I graduated, and after my grandmother passed away in ’95, I lost the last link to that community.

            The older I get, the more I understand Tolkien’s idea of the elven sea-longing. I wrote a flash fiction piece about it a while back, and it’s going to be in the collection I’ve been trying to put together for the last year, as every obstacle imaginable has cropped up to keep me from getting it done.

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            1. The older I get, the more I understand Tolkien’s idea of the elven sea-longing. 

              And why Aragorn, throwback to the Dunedain, alone was given “the grace to go at my will, and give back the Gift. Now, therefore, I will sleep.”

              I rather doubt that Tolkien was unaware of the German meaning of gift.

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      2. If you want to see a team in frantic activity, you need to be at the Lab when the NASA Administrator comes to visit. Double that if he’s bringing Senators and Congressmen and -women along with him.

        Toni Hargreaves still had over three thousand lines of code to write for DisPater, but right now the software team’s immediate boss had them all straightening their cubicles. After all, the Adminstrator was a retired US Navy Admiral as well as an astronaut, so he’d expect everything to be shipshape.

        Liked by 1 person

  7. I always describe my mindset on the pre-visit survey at the shrink’s office as ‘frantic.’ Like many others of my generation, I’m plagued with PTSD. Decades of combat with the mutagenic races has left my psyche torn and scarred. Their shifting forms and fiery eyes are the what nightmares are made of. We encountered them near the Core, learning only too late of their insane, aggressive xenophobia.

    Liked by 1 person

  8. I always describe my mindset on the pre-visit survey at the shrink’s office as ‘frantic.’ Like many others of my generation, I’m plagued with PTSD. Decades of combat with the mutagenic races has left my psyche torn and scarred. Their shifting forms and fiery eyes are the what nightmares are made of. We encountered them near the Core, learning only too late of their insane, aggressive xenophobia.

    Like

  9. I am really looking forward to reading part three. I want to find out what *really* happened in history, since I’m sure that both Ella and Britannia have it wrong.

    As well as things like technology disguised as magic (which makes me wonder if the other side has magic disguised as technology).

    Liked by 2 people

  10. When I came in, Aretta was frantically throwing stuff out of her closet. “Quoi!? Quoi!? Quoi?” she hissed under her breath, dresses and blouses and skirts flying out and hitting the wall on the other side of the room, missing the bed entirely. “Where are you?”

    I tapped the side of the bedroom door with my knuckles and asked calmly, “Are you doing well, mon lepoard?“

    Aretta turned and glared at me angrily, then she let her face relax completely. “I’m angry, but not at you, Duchess,” she sighed, and looked at the fluffy white blouse in her hand, dropping it to the floor. “I know we’re going to that event this evening, but I… feel dressed wrong in the choices we have here. I want…,” and here her voice trailed off, oddly soft in a woman so tall and strong.

    “Pretty princess time?” I sighed and came over to gently scratch the back of her neck.

    “I want to be the prettiest of all princesses,” Aretta admitted. “It is so rare that I am allowed to be pretty, and I want to be pretty tonight.”

    I nodded. “I’ll get Deborah and Oshun up here; we’ll figure something out.”

    “This is Narobi,” Aretta grumbled, leaning into my fingers. “It will be hard to find a pretty princess for me. Especially navigating the politics.”

    “And this will stop Deborah how?” I asked, eyebrow raised.

    Aretta giggled, a happy sound coming deep from her chest. “She won’t fail. The results will be interesting, we understand.”

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  13. For once in my life I wish a plan would actually work.

    Rushing to get it done won’t make it happen sooner.

    Although I have come close at times.

    Not that I have a whole lot to complain about.

    Too bad.

    I’ll keep trying.

    Can’t ever give up or surrender.

    Liked by 1 person

  14. The priest headed for her after Mass. A man barely her age, she thought.

    Honor did not move.

    “My daughter,” he said. “It is good that you made time in all your frantic work.”

    She bowed her head. “There is much more to do, God willing.”

    “May He bless you.”

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  15. Julian frantically racked his brain, searching for a reason why Mrs. Plightly handed him the note. What had he done to deserve a Summons to the Principle? He didn’t understand. What he did understand was Mrs. Plightly’s vaguely triumphant expression. She hated him, Julian knew, like she hated all schoolboys.

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  17. The school secretary looked at the summons, rolled her eyes, and directed Julian wait by the door to the vice principal’s office. Just the vice principal? he thought. Was that better or worse than seeing the Big Cheese? He tried rationalizing it, one way or the other, but couldn’t focus.

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      1. It is very, very hard for a Principal to chew out properly, when one’s hijinks have caused him a very bad case of giggles.

        Liked by 2 people

  18. “Hurry!” said Mafeo, stepping forward. “We have to get the other one and be back quickly. The Archmage is in a dreadful hurry. I don’t know how long she will wait for us!”

    They scurried off, and Scholastica let out her breath. A chance for a rest here, however brief.

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  19. The girl still did not speak.

    Lenore tried to tell herself that this patient waiting was a welcome relief from all the days of frantic racing about after those knaves and scoundrels who attacked on sight.

    “Like you just want to talk,” said the girl scornfully. “You and this Walkelin.”

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  20. Hello,

    My name is Susan and I’m a bookaholic.

    I search frantically around the room for a friendly face.

    The facilitator leans forward, a grim inches from my face.

    “You’ve been to the Sunday Book Promo again, haven’t you?”

    “Yes”

    “Well, I’m not sure this is the best group for you. You seem to make little effort to even avoid your known triggers. “

    “I avoid Amazon. ” I protested.

    ” Really, really? And where did you put your pre-orders in? Kroegers?”

    ” That’s a fair cop.” I said to her uncomprehending face.

    “Well, clearly, you don’t even want to take responsibility for your behavior. (I told you she was uncomprehending.)

    “That’s what “”fair cop”” means.” I explained. “But it’s okay. I feel like I have another group and they like me there.”

    Probably. Because BOOKS!!!

    No point in telling her the links go strait to Amazon. I don’t even have to type it in.

    Liked by 1 person

  21. Pingback: Instapundit » Blog Archive » ON SUNDAYS I RUN A PROMO POST FOR (MOSTLY) INDIE AUTHORS:  Book Promo And Vignettes By Luke, Mary C

  22. I have an unrelated question: should I read A Few Good Men as a stand alone book, or with the knowledge of having read books 1 & 2?

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