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

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

I WASN’T GOING TO REPEAT THIS WARNING, BUT OBVIOUSLY I HAVE TO:
OKAY, PLEASE LISTEN: THIS IS STATED ABOVE, BUT AGAIN: ALL I NEED FROM YOU IF YOU WANT YOUR BOOK PROMOTED IS A LINK TO AMAZON. Please, for the love of all gods and fishes and all the birds in the sea, DO NOT SEND ME THE BOOK, THE COVER, THE BLURB, OR WORSE YOUR ENTIRE LIFE STORY. I get a ton of spam on that email because it’s here every week. PLEASE don’t make me read five pages to figure out if you’re someone sending me a link or a spam bot. If you’re afraid the link might not work, you can also send me your name and the book title with the link. That’s acceptable too. BUT DON’T SEND ME THE UNABRIDGED WORKS OF TOLSTOY WITH THE LINK AT THE END.
I’ve had about enough so this is the new policy: IF YOU MAKE ME WORK TOO HARD, I’LL REPLACE YOUR BOOK COVER WITH A PICTURE OF A CAT GIRL. MEOW AND SHAME OR SOMETHING – SAH

FROM ARI H. MENDELSON: Consent (Kingmaker)

Tech billionaire Jerry Neville holds the key to a groundbreaking technology capable of manipulating anyone’s decisions. However, Neville’s Chinese backers demand perfection, threatening dire consequences unless the flaws are fixed.

Targeted for artificial seduction by Neville’s algorithm is Hollywood actress Meghan Peters.

Meanwhile, a group of independent journalists rises to expose the truth in a world where even our thoughts can be controlled.

Lying in wait for the crusading reporters is Mei Hua Chang, a Chinese spy whose beauty and charm are matched only by her cunning.

In Consent, prepare to be captivated by relentless action, nerve-wracking suspense, and a profound examination of power and persuasion.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: The Reason (Timelines Universe Book 1)

January 1993. Somalia. Operation Restore Hope. A Marine platoon pulling a security patrol runs into an insurgent ambush in Mogadishu, and when the platoon commander winds up unconscious from a blow to the head taken when an IED rolls his command Humvee, and the First Sergeant is killed as soon as he exits his vehicle, command falls to a badly wounded gunnery sergeant — initially trapped in the same vehicle with his platoon commander and their driver, but conscious and alert and ready to bring some personal hell down on the RIFs…if he can just get out of this damn vehicle, grab a rifle, and drag himself and his busted-up, non-working leg over to a firing point without bleeding out. June 1993. Washington, DC. A First Lieutenant with a freshly-healed scar on his head encounters a beautiful redheaded floor nurse at Bethesda Naval Hospital. He’s there to see his Gunny, who’s been stuck in the hospital with a broken femur since he was transported home in February. He’s the platoon commander who was knocked hors de combat by the IED, and he’s been sent to find out why his Gunny is obstinately refusing to accept an important decoration for his participation in the incident. Turns out that’s going to be quite a job, because Gunny’s got his reason. Will the Lieutenant, and his ally the nurse, be able to convince his Gunny there’s a better reason to accept the decoration? Might be they’ll need a little help from a friend…

FROM M. LEE MOORE: Logan Mitchell and the Earthrise Light

As Logan Mitchell counts down the days to his dad’s Christmas return from the Asteroid Belt, an illness begins spreading among the newest arrivals to the Mars colony. With tensions rising and people falling ill, Logan and his friends must step in to support the struggling families, while bringing the community closer together than ever before.

Logan Mitchell and the Earthrise Light is a heartfelt sci-fi adventure about bravery, belonging, and the power of community when it matters most.

FROM EDWARD WILLET: The Haunted Horn

Perfect for fans of R.L. Stine and John Bellairs: a spine-tingling mix of schoolyard showdowns, family drama, and Civil War ghosts that will keep you up past lights-out!

On a disastrous Friday in Oak Bluff, Arkansas, brainy eighth-grader Alex Mitchell buys a battered old Civil War bugle at a dusty auction—and his luck goes from bad to worse. School bully Sammy Findlater wants it for his “trophy” collection, and standing up to Sammy (and his hulking gang) means bruises, dead animals in lockers, and a garbage-splattered chase through town.

But when Alex blows the tarnished horn, something even more frightening stirs. Chilling midnight marches echo down his alley, ghostly Confederate soldiers trample the town square, and a wide-eyed boy in a ragged gray uniform stares up at his window, whispering, “I’m going home.”

As the anniversary of the Civil War Battle of Oak Bluff nears, the spirits grow dangerously solid: campfires scorch grass, cannons uproot from concrete, and downtown teeters on fiery ruin.

With bullies on his tail and a supernatural showdown brewing, Alex must team up with tough-as-nails Annie Parker to unravel the mystery. Can he summon the courage to sound the bugle at the right moment and lay the ghosts to rest—or will history repeat itself in a terrifying clash that destroys everything?

FROM MARY CATELLI: Madeleine and the Mists

Enchanted pools, shadowy dragons, wolves that spring from the mists and vanish into them again, paths that are longer, or shorter, than they should be, given where they went. . . the Misty Hills were filled with marvels. Madeleine still left the hills, years ago, to marry against her father’s will. If her husband’s family is less than welcoming, she still is glad she married him, and they have a son, two years old. But her husband’s overlord has fallen afoul of the king. And all his men fall with him, including her husband. She sets out, to seek the queen and try to bypass the king — and the Misty Hills. Some things are not so easily evaded.

J. KENTON PIERCE: The Warlord of Greenline Town (Tales From the Long Night Book 2)

In the ruins of Hesperides Colony, scarred by volcanic winters and orbital threats, Captain Ravati Aziz safeguards underground Greenline Town. A veteran trooper turned cop, she balances family with bondmates and kids amid a corrupt town council, brutal Blackcheek gangs, and nomadic Pridesmen driving herds through deadly badlands.

When a notorious homesteader unearths a crashed starship packed with lost tech and comes to Greenline looking for help, Ravati volunteers, knowing what’s at stake.As vanished Gentle Walkers return with secrets and politicians scheme for power, Ravati allies with warriors and scholars to defend her home.

In a brutal world of hard choices, can she stop Greenline’s slide into tyranny?

FROM ERIC THOMSON: No Honor in Death (Siobhan Dunmoore Book 1)

Siobhan Dunmoore was losing the war one ship at a time. The Shrehari Empire had burned more hulls out from under her than any other officer in the Fleet. Some said she was too aggressive. Others said too reckless. The enemy called her something else—something they spat with fear. None of it mattered. Not all her enemies wore Imperial uniforms. And the only reputation she had left was for bad luck.

She was dragging another wreck home, crew half‑dead, systems failing. This time she’d bluffed her way out by the skin of her teeth. She wanted rest. The Admiralty wanted her back in the fight.

They gave her Stingray. The Fleet’s cursed frigate. Captain disgraced, crew broken, ship rotting. The last of her kind still limping through the war. Admirals whispered about scrapping her, breaking up the jinx. But the war was bleeding ships, and anything that could still fire had to fight.

So Dunmoore went from staring down the Empire’s finest on a battleship’s burning bridge to commanding a crew ready to mutiny, admirals sharpening knives, and a mystery that stank of death. Stingray’s curse wasn’t just sailor’s talk. Something was wrong. The crew kept their mouths shut. Politics pressed in. Her own demons clawed at her.

Taking that frigate into battle was suicide. But Dunmoore had never walked away from a fight. Failure wasn’t an option. Defeat wasn’t acceptable. Death was just a hole in the ground. Victory was the only honor left. She’d drag Stingray back from hell—or go down damned forever.

BY EDMOND HAMILTON, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: The Complete Interstellar Patrol (Annotated): A pulp space opera omnibus

In 1928, Edmond Hamilton published Crashing Suns in Weird Tales magazine, at approximately the same time that E.E. Smith’s Skylark of Space was published in Amazing Stories, giving both men the distinction of creating the genre of space opera. Hamilton, however, was the first to create a series, writing further stories in his Interstellar Patrol Series in 1929 and 1930, then writing a final one in 1934.

Here in one volume is every Interstellar Patrol story Hamilton published, including the novel Outside the Universe. What the stories lack in characterization and scientific plausibility, they more than make up for in enthusiasm, spectacle, and sheer breakneck pacing.

• This iktaPOP Media omnibus includes new introductions that give the stories genre and historical context.

FROM DALE COZORT: The Best of Space Bats & Butterflies – Book Two

Space Bats & Butterflies Book Two is another eclectic collection of the best alternate history or time-travel stories, book excerpts, essays and world-building exercises from the ninety-plus issues of a long-running Alternate History zine.
• Part Two of a two-part book-length alternate World War II scenario-The Moscow Option-1942.
• The Interrupted Trajectory: Indians without the Old World.
• Could you save the Incas from Spanish conquest?
• American Revolution: Britain Keeps the Deep South
• D-Day Landings Fail.
Fiction stories and excerpts:
• World War II Germany invades a divided alternate history US that still uses black powder muskets.
• Bootleggers from the 1920s invade a far-future sanctuary for massacre victims.
• Modern US collides with an alternate reality full of deadly animals.
• Tasmanian Wolves are supposed to be extinct. What is one doing in a Illinois cornfield?
• An ageless, vastly intelligent dog holds the secrets to immortality. Can he survive long enough to give it to humanity?

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 MACKEY CHANDLER: Fair Trade: An Alien Invasion Story

Most of my writing is in a series people seem to enjoy but there is a constant small crowd who say: I’d really like your take on an alien invasion story. Well this is for them. The bulk of the aliens come to Earth stories assume their vast superiority, sometimes invincibility. Sometimes they suddenly appear on the white house lawn dictating terms. I have yet to see one with them appearing at the Kremlin or Canberra which seems rather parochial. Other times they are so advanced they quarantine the Earth or Solar System without discussion because we are such barbarian slime-balls. They may alternately be impossible to talk to and attack without mercy. All these assume they come with a plan and the means to carry it out. Our own age of exploration showed things happen much less orderly. Islands and natives were happened upon while seeking someplace else or even because a storm or miscalculation left the ship lost. In that case there is no plan but survival with the assets at hand. As with any game remember that turnabout is fair play.

FROM KAREN MYERS: The Chained Adept: A Lost Wizard’s Tale

MEET A POWERFUL WIZARD WITH UNANSWERED QUESTIONS–AND AN UNBREAKABLE CHAIN AROUND HER NECK.

Have you ever wondered how you might rise to a dangerous situation and become the hero that was needed?

The wizard Penrys has barely gained her footing in the country where she was found three years ago, chained around the neck and wiped of all knowledge. And now, an ill-planned experiment has sent her a quarter of the way around her world.

One magic working has called to another and landed Penrys in the middle of an ugly war between neighboring countries, half a world away.

No one has any reason to trust her amid rumors of wizards where they don’t belong. And she fears to let them know just what she can do — especially since she can’t explain herself to them and she doesn’t know everything about herself either.

Penrys has her own problems, and she doesn’t have any place in this conflict. But they need her, whether they realize it or not. And so she’s determined to try and lend a hand, if she can. Whatever it takes.

And once she discovers there’s another chained adept, even stronger than she is, she’s hooked. Friend or foe, she has questions for him — oh, yes, she does.

All she wants is a firm foundation for the rest of her life, with a side helping of retribution, and if she has to fix things along the way, well, so be it.

The Chained Adept is the first book of the series.

FROM A. PALMER: Wonder: Sermons From a Servant

After Trouble, after Hope, there is Wonder.

God brings people through many stages in life, and as before, these poems describe mine. I offer them humbly, in case anyone else out there feels the way I do.

BY J. D. COOPER: Lessons

The “lessons” herein are meant to answer real-world questions asked of the author in his busy suburban pediatric practice. There are more fatherless teenagers than can be counted. Almost daily, young men and women who desperately want someone to guide them, teach them, and love them unconditionally, ask questions about how to “adult.”
This book is overtly Christian. There are no apologies for that, but the reader has the right to not be blindsided. You have been warned. It is real-world gritty. Trauma happens, and it is the job of human beings who love their fellow man to rescue the broken. This book discusses delicate topics like sex, puberty, and teenage hormones. There are also lessons on aspects of manhood like courage, hard work, and commitment. Finally, this story is emotional. We hide who we are from each other. Still, on occasion, the author gets to peek behind the curtain and sees the loneliness and desperation of teenagers who just want to be loved.
Love them. Love them all.

FROM DEX QUIRE: The Transformations, a Tale of Modern Sin

That meme or pop-up or spam – you know the one – it’s everywhere on the internet. It urges men to enlarge a certain body part. But really – who or what kind of man would buy into that nonsense? The narrator of “The Transformations,” for one. He applies Onan’s Enlarging Ointment to himself and promptly turns into a donkey. Our foolish narrator is then raked across a pile of intriguing and entertaining encounters including lockdown at the zoo, bizarre sex, friendship with a drunken elephant, eco-terrorism, semi-slavery by pious religious communards, sea voyages, depraved tourists, drug pirates and other magically or demonically inspired bi-peds. The novel is an obvious homage to Apuleius’ “the Golden Ass” while offering a modern, magical realist update in vivacious and witty prose. Blue Guitar Press invites you to enjoy Dex Quire’s world of wonders and transformations.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: No Man’s Land: Volume 1 (Chronicles of Lost Elly)

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.

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: COPPER