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

FROM CEDAR SANDERSON: Tomato Wyrm.

Cecilia Duringhurst never expected to inherit anything, much less her estranged great-uncle’s country manor. It’s in a bit of a sorry state, coated with dog hair and staffed only by Jock, the old gamekeeper… but it comes with a greenhouse, large gardens, and the hopes of escaping city life.

Determined to save Hendre Court from ruin, she finds an unexpected ally in Greig MacDougall, Jock’s grandson and her new gardener. Together, they are swapping city life for muddy boots, endless weeding, and the fragile hope of turning heirloom tomatoes and cut flowers into a sustainable future.

As they dig in side by side, unearthing old secrets and new possibilities, Cecilia senses the estate holds more than soil and stone—something ancient and watchful that is tied to the Duringhurst line, and rooted to this hill.

Secrets and seedlings will burst forth in the spring… and just possibly, despite the frosts of misunderstandings and chill winds of finances, a relationship that will entwine all of them and blossom.

FROM ROSS HATHAWAY: Nothing Happened and This is The Report

IMAGINARY PROBLEMS ARE THE MOST DANGEROUS KIND.
That’s why no one is supposed to notice them.
Hidden inside the federal bureaucracy is a quiet agency tasked with handling things that must not be acknowledged, because the moment they become real, they become powerful. Cryptids, buried histories, unexplained phenomena, rumors that refuse to stay rumors: the Bureau of Imaginary Problems exists to ensure these things remain effectively imaginary.
Most days, that means paperwork. And cake. And pretending nothing happened.
But when a routine investigation uncovers connections between old legends, polluted creeks, forgotten civilizations, and creatures that refuse to stay in one story or one timeline; the Bureau faces its worst fear: a problem that keeps being believed.
As cryptids negotiate their place in the modern world, Time itself pushes back against containment, and oversight committees demand answers they don’t want, the Bureau must do what it has always done best: smooth reality, bury the truth, and protect the public from stories that could make the world unmanageable.
Because belief creates meaning.
Meaning creates agency.
And some problems can only be solved if everyone agrees they were imaginary all along.
Darkly comic, sharply satirical, and unsettlingly plausible, Nothing Happened and This Is the Report is an urban fantasy about myth, memory, and the dangerous comfort of not knowing—where the greatest threat isn’t what lurks in the shadows, but what happens when people start paying attention.
After-action paperwork pending.

FROM JESSICA SCHLENKER: Excessively Attentive

Elizabeth Bennet harboured few expectations for her trip to Kent. Primarily, she was to see her dear friend Charlotte, which necessarily entailed tolerating the odious Mr. Collins. Perhaps, if she were truly fortunate, she might even gain an introduction to the great Lady Catherine — whether she wished it or not. She promised to fill her letters home to her father with faithful recountings of any absurdities thus encountered; he almost promised to write back.

But when a revelation prompts Mr. Bennet to arrive in person, Elizabeth is drawn into the center of a long-buried family mystery. A single portrait holds the key, and the truth it unlocks threatens to upend everything she understands about her past and her expectations for her future.

Excessively Attentive is a Regency-set reimagining of Pride and Prejudice that remains faithful to Jane Austen’s wit, social precision, and moral insight. Thoughtful, character-driven, and richly grounded in period voice, this novel asks what it means to belong — not by birth alone, but by character, courage, and choice.

BY ED LACEY, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Dead End

Two big-city cops.

Bucky was young, strong and ambitious. Doc was older, smart, knowing all the ropes. They were partners — on special assignments and all the graft, including the favors of a red-hot blonde. And then came the big case, a kidnapping, and they wound up in a shabby, smelly hideout, with a million dollars in cash, and no place to spend it!

The iktaPOP Media edition of Ed Lacy’s classic noir novel includes an introduction by D. Jason Fleming that reflects on possible influences on the novel from Lacy’s life, with a digression into why it would make good material for a low budget film adaptation.

FROM JOHN BAILEY: THE GLOAM DOCTRINE (Science Fiction Singles)

The most dangerous weapon in the war is considered obsolete.

Captain Samuel “Sammy” Jackson was once destined for the most prestigious cockpit in the fleet—until he questioned the doctrine behind it. Now he flies the XN-47 Gloam: an ugly, slow, outdated two-man interceptor assigned to the men no one else wants.

The Gloam cannot dogfight.

It cannot outrun anything.

It cannot compete on paper.

But while sleek autonomous fighters vanish in perfect, inexplicable ambushes, the Gloams keep coming home.

Their secret isn’t superior technology. It’s inferior technology—manual switches, crude sensors, mismatched components, and human backseaters who don’t follow algorithms. The enemy’s artificial intelligences can predict every optimized system in the war. What they cannot model is stubborn, inconsistent, deeply human decision-making.

As victories mount and official credit vanishes, Jackson begins to understand the truth: the Gloams are winning a war no one is allowed to admit exists. High Command wants their chaos replaced with elegant automation. The enemy is already learning their patterns. And the only way to survive may be to fracture the fleet itself into something no machine can comprehend.

In the darkness between stars, speed is irrelevant.

Beauty is a liability.

And the future belongs to the ugly ships that refuse to be understood.

For fans of hard military science fiction, aviation history, The Right Stuff, The Forever War, and character-driven space combat grounded in real doctrine and politics.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Last History-Keeper: A Liquid Diet Chronicles Tale

Imagine what it would be like to remember all of history.

Justinian doesn’t have to imagine. He’s the last of a nearly-lost line of vampires, the last keeper of history, hunted by tyrant and monster alike, alive only because of the grace of God, and the luck of having an early pope hide him from those hunting him. He’s been in the catacombs of Vatican City ever since, hidden and safe.

But now…now he’s needed. Vampire, priest, visionary, historian, he’s been sent forth into the world, to walk it once again.

His ordained path leads him to…Manhattan, Kansas. To a brand new nest, filled with orphans and outcasts. And the journey takes him into the path of those who need his help: a six year old girl with an unmanageable memory, and a brand new line with gifts that terrify.

https://amzn.to/4qaAAyCFROM NATHAN BRINDLE: The Lion and the Lizard (Timelines Book 2)

---

Thirty years ago, Dr. Ariela Rivers Wolff, M.D., Ph.D., AKA The Lion of God, had a pretty exhausting week.

Her world was invaded by time-traveling soldiers, she was nearly turned into human toothpaste by an experimental dimension jumper when she went to find her parallel “Dad,” who just happens to be able to borrow a Space Force fleet to come and take out her world’s invaders . . . and then she found out she was considered by those same invaders to be a saint in their odd religion, and one of the targets of their invasion. If that wasn’t enough, she nearly fell completely out of the universe into a time rift, being saved only by the skin of her teeth by her parallel “Dad”.

After all that, learning she was going to be the one to bring universal healing and long life to the human race in her particular timeline was just the icing on the proverbial cake.

Anybody else would go home, turn off their phone, pull all the blinds, lock all the doors, and take the rest of their life off. But Ari isn’t “anybody else”. And her cult of admirers across two timelines won’t take “nobody home” for an answer.

Fast-forward thirty years. Scientists have detected radio transmissions in an unknown language from several hundred light years away. And now she’s been asked to use her special “saintly” skills as demonstrated on her last “mission” to make first contact with whoever they are.

And that’s only the beginning.

Looks like Ambassador Dr. Ariela Rivers Wolff, M.D., Ph.D., is going to have another pretty exhausting week. Or six.

FROM KAREN MYERS: To Carry the Horn – A Virginian in Elfland (The Hounds of Annwn Book 1

AN ENTIRE KINGDOM BUILT AROUND A SUPERNATURAL NEED FOR JUSTICE, ENFORCED BY THE WILD HUNT AND THE HOUNDS OF HELL.

What would you do if you blundered into a strange world, where all around you was the familiar landscape of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, but the inhabitants were the long-lived fae, and you the only human?

George Talbot Traherne stumbles across the murdered huntsman of the Wild Hunt, and is drafted into finding out who did it. Oh, and assigned the task of taking the huntsman’s place with the Hounds of Hell, whether he wants the job or not.

The antlered god Cernunnos is the sponsor of this kingdom, and he requires its king to conduct the annual hunt for justice in pursuit of an evil criminal, or else lose his right to the kingship, and possibly end up hunted himself.

Success is far from guaranteed, and no human has held the post. George discovers his own blood links to the fae king, and he’s determined to try. But Cernunnos himself has a personal role to play, and George will have to sort out just why he’s the one who’s been chosen for the task.

And whether he has any chance of surviving the job.

I DID TOO PUT A COLLECTION OUT: It’s up for pre-order, but for now Amazon won’t let me monetize the link. However, if you can’t wait: Done with Mirrors.

And meanwhile, you know, No Man’s Land is back at the end here like a cat that keeps showing up at dinnertime. And honestly? Same energy. Always gets food from this…. Why? I don’t know.

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: color