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

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

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, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. By clicking through and buying (anything book-related, 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. Remember though all of these submissions are from people willing to be associated with this blog. So if you’re trying to buy from people who don’t hate you, this is a good place to start.– SAH

FROM KEN LIZZI: Dekason (Twilight Galaxy Book 1)

On the feudal world of Kvasir, lowly armsman Carkston Monitor steals an ancient glider and launches a one-man raid to shatter two enemy armies—hoping to win a baron’s daughter and a seat among the Peerage. His audacious strike succeeds… and utterly ruins a secret plan of the nobility. Banished in disgrace, he’s dumped on the decaying planet Dekason, where stagnant syndicates duel with dueling swords and forbidden electromag pistols.

Now Carkston is done playing by anyone’s rules.

He forges a deadly alliance with an Unsanctioned House, turns rival nobles’ own vendettas against them, and unleashes a whirlwind of sabotage, estate raids, and blazing gunfights that threaten to topple the rotten aristocracy of a dying world.

One outcast. One stolen glider. One chance to seize the stars—or burn both planets down trying.

EDITED BY JANA S. BROWN: Tentacles and Tides (ExtraOrdinary Beasts) Paperback

What lurks beneath the waves?

Krakens. Sea serpents. Megalodons. Spirits of storm and tide.

In Tentacles and Tides, the ocean is anything but empty. Sailors glimpse impossible shapes below their hulls. Coastal towns bargain with ancient powers. Great whales guard secrets humanity was never meant to find.

And sometimes…

the monster is the one telling the story.

These speculative tales explore the creatures of the deep as heroes, villains, guardians, and forces of nature—where survival, awe, and terror swim side by side.

The sea is vast.
The sea is powerful.
And something beneath the surface is always watching.

FROM JOHN BAILEY: The Quiet Shape of Consequence (The Detective Stories)

When Daniel Whitaker receives the call that Richard Halse is dead, he responds exactly as expected: measured, cooperative, quietly attentive.

He answers every question.
He offers every reasonable detail.
He helps the investigation move forward.

What no one realizes is that Daniel is not uncovering the truth.
He is constructing it.

As suspicion shifts and the narrative tightens, Daniel refines his account with increasing precision—editing, shaping, and redirecting events with the calm discipline of a man who believes control is the same as innocence.

But truth does not disappear simply because it is managed.
And the story Daniel tells begins, slowly and inexorably, to resist him.

Told in a chilling first-person voice, The Quiet Shape of Consequence is a psychological thriller about self-deception, moral narrative, and the fragile distance between who we are and who we believe ourselves to be.

Because in the end, the most dangerous story is the one we tell ourselves.

BY MAX BRAND, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Train’s Trust (Annotated): The classic pulp western adventure

Steve Train, gambler, adventurer, clever rogue, didn’t care much for work. But then he was offered a job with no work, but plenty of danger. The job: track down outlaw Jim Nair — and hand him a pile of money!

  • This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction by indie author D. Jason Fleming giving historical and genre context to the novel.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: The Lion in Paradise (Timelines Book 3)

All Col. Dr. Ariela Rivers Wolff, M.D., Ph.D., USSFM – the Lion of God – wanted was a little piece of paradise to call her own.

Being stuck on a desert world – even if she was the CO of the premiere battalion of the 1st U.S. Space Force Marines that was based there – was not getting her any beach time. Mostly because, without an ocean, there’s really no beach at all.

But she’s got a fix for that problem.

Now, if only the academics studying the problem of terraforming the exile world of al-Saḥra’ would get out of her way . . .

. . . and if only the religious fanatics who want their planet left as a desert, despite all the water from the planet’s former oceans being accessible only a few miles down, will leave the terraforming project alone long enough to see the good it will bring them . . .

. . . then, the Lion would truly be in Paradise.

But even in paradise, black clouds – and black ships – can herald danger for the Lion, herself, and for her daughters as well.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Mesopredator Hustle

A dying star, and a station harvesting its planetary nebula for resources vital to a centuries-old war.

Amidst this beautiful but deadly stellar environment, a spy has infiltrated the star-lifting operations, creating “accidents” to take the lives of the crew. Can two troubleshooters from Engineering, one a human and the other a member of the feline Chongu, track down the killer when Security is certain the real problem is carelessness?

A short story of the Chongu Empire.

FROM KAREN MYERS: Broken Devices: A Lost Wizard’s Tale (The Chained Adept Book 3)

Book 3 of The Chained Adept

CHAINS WITHOUT WIZARDS AND A RISING COUNT OF THE DEAD.

The largest city in the world has just discovered its missing wizards. It seems the Kigali empire has ignited a panic that threatens internal ruin and the only chained wizard it knows that’s still alive is Penrys.

The living wizards and the dead are not her people, not unless she makes them so. All they have in common is a heavy chain and a dead past — the lives that were stolen from them are beyond recall.

What remains are unanswered questions about who made them this way. And why. And what Penrys plans to do to find out.

FROM PAM UPHOFF: Outcasts and Gods (Wine of the Gods Series Book 1)

First book of the Wine of the Gods

Wolfgang was a nice kid–until they decided he wasn’t even human.

Genetic engineering. First they cured the genetic diseases. Then they selected for the best natural traits. Then they made completely artificial genes. As the test children reached puberty, abilities that had always been lost in the random background noise were suddenly obvious. Telepathy, telekinesis. At first their creators sought to strengthen these traits. Then they began to fear them. They called them gods, and made them slaves.

Wolfgang Oldham was sixteen when the company laid claim to him. He escaped, and stayed free for three years. When he was arrested, identified and returned to the company, they trained him to be useful. They didn’t realize that they were training him to be dangerous

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Normalcy Bias: Look closer…things aren’t always what they seem to be.

Look closer. The things that you’re assuming you’re seeing? May not be what you think. Is that really a mouse, or is it a Brownie? Is that really an owl? Is that polished gemstone a stone…or an egg?

We take so many things for granted. Some of them may be harmless, but many are a lot less so. I wonder how many people ignore red flags every day, because they only see what they expect to see?

This collection takes what’s “normal” and asks “What if it’s something more?”

FROM MARY CATELLI: The Enchanted Princess Wakes

Once upon a time, a princess was cursed at her christening — but not the one you heard of.

When the fairy decreed that Rosaleen would fall into an enchanted sleep, and how she would wake, the grand plans of kings, to unite kingdoms, failed. They sent her to an out-of-the-way castle in the mountains, in hopes the curse would do no harm to anyone else.

There, alone, Rosaleen lived and learned, and realized that she herself had to be ready to face the curse, and when it broke.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT, YES AGAIN! 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.

AND BUY FROM PEOPLE WHO DON’T HATE YOU:
Shiny, Sharp, and Stylish…

Welcome! To Morrigan’s Mercantile!

Now with a lot more journals!

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: SCARCE

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

    1. I had a massive fight with my color printer before mass, which is when I do this post normally.
      The printer is fine. It’s a primadona. Our electricity went down with the thunderstorm overnight, and it was having fits over being “Improperly turned off and on” so I had to do all kinds of resets and such. Sigh. Took forever because I had no coffee in me.
      That’s all. I’m fine. The printer is fine. Mass was nice. There was this tiny baby girl wearing a pink tutu in the pew ahead of us, who flirted outrageously with my son….

      Liked by 3 people

      2. I remember when we were coming back from our USAF assignment in Japan, my then-toddler middle daughter spent the first part of the flight making peekaboo with the sailor in the row behind us.

        She’s thirty now, and as far as I know, plays peekaboo with only her cat or her husband (two different individuals).

        Liked by 2 people

      3. Dealing with computer-based problems Before Caffeine is not a fate I’d wish upon someone. (Certain people deserve far worse, but Present Company Excluded…)

        Liked by 2 people

  2. Being a timid sort, I dread the writing prompt.

    The whole idea scarce me.

    —

    And, though I was truly assured that Lovely DIL is literate, I am pleased to note Morrigan’s home page is now reduced by a character!

    Like

  3. Remember, o Readers, that you can be FORCE MULTIPLIERS!

    When you read books, you can rate and review them.

    Even short reviews are of aid to the writer, because sheer mass helps. (And if you really can’t review, still rate.)

    Liked by 2 people

  4. “Why?” said Donal. “There is scare chance that the king will throw him out.”

    “There is scare chance that the king will believe him,” said the mirror, “and that belief is what is needed. The henwife will not need to silence you, but only to laugh at your foolish madness.”

    Liked by 2 people

  5. Communist Russian proved that all economies are based on what is scarce, even when it is the economy itself that is scarce. The latter is doubly being proved in Cuba even as we speak…err post.

    Liked by 1 person

  6. The Unlimited Library was less a pocket dimension and more a Dyson Sphere for galaxies dimension. Every story ever told was housed within, in some form or fashion. From stone tablets to ballads recorded upon singing stones to scrolls to pseudo-intellect spirits, with each new story, even a variation upon an old theme, The Unlimited Library grew.

    The problem came in the sorting system. The Library had its own ideas about what went with what, and changed themes on a whim. It somehow made total sense to find the impossibly rare tomes of Plant Cultivation- not farming, but the Qi cultivation of sentient and irritatingly active plants through specific tonics, trials, and tribulations as well as direct combat- in the children’s books section.

    “Hah! You’ll never take down the Demon Tree with those weak attacks! Show me your true potential!”

    The image was one to cause headaches. Or nightmares. Her charge, the chosen scion of Constantia, unlikely Contender for the planet, incarnated into a divinely designed body… Was absolutely insane.

    “The floor is lava. You have to step on the brown or black ones to get close,” whispered the tiny little girl watching from the doorway.”

    It wasn’t really lava, but the red and orange pillows on the floor did seem to radiate a rather unpleasant amount of thermal mana. When a charging toddler skidded off a rolling pillow onto the lava he screeched loudly, causing Annika to lurch forward, her hand thrusting out with a telekinetic healing spell coming almost-

    Then she noticed the child laughing and scampering back to the doorway to charge in again. She heaved a sigh. Of course the Library wouldn’t let kids get hurt like that. Old habits died hard.

    Upon a veritable fortress of pillows in the center of the room stood Alan. Countless stuffed toys threatened to spill out of the fort as he tossed fluffy, ball shaped pillows at the children attempting to reach him.

    “You’re a thousand years too early to defeat me that easily! Come, receive defeat at my- oh, hey Anna-gack!”

    Upon noticing his fairy companion looking at him with a carefully neutral expression, tapping her fingers slowly on crossed arms the young man made a fatal error. He took his eyes off the fight in front of him.

    A quick jerk on his blanket cape by two of his much shorter opponents working together pulled the self proclaimed Demon Tree to the ground. Chaos then ensued as the red pillows covering the ground spontaneously flipped, turning blue and seeming to undulate like waves, then flipped again turning grass green. Every child swarmed the fallen tyrant, cheering and scooping up the stuffed toys, and, in several cases books.

    “I swear Alan I can scarce take my eyes off you for two seconds. Did you even find the tome first before engaging in purely puerile shenanigans again?”

    Liked by 1 person

  7. We’d spent the last week tracking down a smuggling ring. We were less concerned about the things they were smuggling — mostly foodstuffs that are a delicacy for one species, but toxic to others — as the possibility that they were a front for something more dire. When you’re in the midst of an existential war, you can’t afford the risk of someone selling out.

    After all the time we’d spent earning their trust, making them confident we were actual black marketeers, something must have slipped. We got to their hideout only to discover they’d made themselves scarce — and been thorough about covering their tracks.

    Back to square one.

    Liked by 1 person

  8. Prince Aurelius shifted. “What would this woman say if we found her?”
    “She vanished,” said Clara. “My father searched for her, and found nothing of her.”

    The prince twitched, but the princess leaned forward. “Did you learn the magic that you used from her?”

    Clara swallowed. “Yes. Yes, I did.”

    Liked by 1 person

  9. I am so glad we live in the electronic age of writing, I can only imagine what my manuscripts would have looked like on paper, oh not the typo’s, that would be bad enough, no I am taking about the Cheeto dust and other food stains. As it is knowledge of my vices are kept scarce, known only to me, my keyboard and muse’s conscious.

    Liked by 1 person

  10. (Part 1/3)

    Magda was pretty sure, at last, that she’d finished making the latest set of changes to the whole UV-link software stack. And, the IA quick-testing tools agreed, mostly, with her on it too. She glanced over at the clock display in the upper-right corner of her main screen — and almost yelped.

    It was nearly nine o’clock now, over four hours since the last time she’d taken a look (that she remembered). “Lost time” wasn’t solely about getting blind, stinking blotto drunk; often it was about programming…

    But she at least thought she was getting the hang of how things went, here at VE. Which was good, because for her first week or two here, she’d half despaired of ever really doing that… despite many encouraging and welcoming signs, from (very nearly) everyone here. Once, on up to Amelia Beddingford, herself, coming personally by for a five-minute chat. Nice; but also rather nerve-wracking, until she’d finally relaxed into it. Until she’d begun to have faith that here, at least, nothing was a scam.

    She moved slowly upward through the layers of editing and checking tools, like a diver slowly decompressing to avoid the bends. That’d taken her a dozen minutes more, by the end; and when she’d finished that, her colored “Christmas tree” by the side of the cubicle had gone from bright orange “Defcon 2” to almost-soothing green “Defcon 4” — and she manually flipped the switches to set it all the way down to deep-sky-blue “Defcon 5.” Once again, she marvelled at the experience of a software division ‘managed’ by an actual programmer, also a card-carrying night person and introvert, who still wrote actual-use production programs for the data-comm Web Between the Worlds that was Amelia and Rupert’s Venus Equilateral. (Two classic SF authors folded into one short signature; yes, that was VE, all the way.)

    “Could I interest you in what is alleged to be your favorite tea? Cinnamon orange pekoe?” Tom Scarce, one of the more-senior drive-ware programmers and one of three Old Hands assigned to her ‘mentorship circle’ (only that wasn’t just faddish Management by Cliches mumbo-jumbo, it more or less had been working or at least not-failing). He produced a large-size paper cup plus another one that she was by now sure held a half-dozen sugar cubes.

    “Yes, that would be wonderful. I’ve been in a deep dive, as you’ve likely been seeing…” She pointed to the stack of LED-colored lights. “Wasn’t any too sure about that thing either, at first, but it really seems to work.” He passed the cup to her, and she dropped three of the cubes into the cup and started stirring. “Though I don’t want this ‘fetching coffee’ business to ever go any full bit of cliche-crazy.” Sipped a little, carefully, went back to stirring. “And I’m still a little bit, well, deep under the sea right now.” And for a miracle, the tea was made right; not fecklessly weak, not over-steeped into bitter-heavy oblivion.

    “Just breathe in, and out. Inspire, outspire, and so forth.” His voice was even a bit self-mocking, aware of the sterotypical debris long associated with saying anything like that. Management by Cliches, or even legendary Management by Denial, as she’d heard about abundantly from the near past.

    “As long as it’s not ‘inspire, expire’ — there are stories told of that.” She tasted her tea again, swirled it one last time, poured it into her mug waiting on the desk. With the VE logo, V and a near-matching equilateral triangle. Then, the short Maxwell’s eqations (dF = ‘rho’ ; d*F = 0), then ‘E = m c^2’ for special relativity, then Einstein’s equation for general, then ‘yod-he-vav-he’ for the one authentic Theory of Everything.

    “I think you’re a little too young to actually have war stories from the bygone age of ‘AI will replace everybody’ — the mythology was strong in some people back in those days, and faithful herdborne idiocy abounded.

    “If I may ask, how are our Intelligence Amplification tools doing so far with your work process? That’s always one of the hardest things for us to customize, or have our people customize; it’s so individual it’s close to impossible to set things up beforehand, and the only way to learn how is really to just fiddle with it until it becomes natural. Like driving.”

    He’d slipped across modes almost without a break; double-clutched it deftly.

    Like

  11. (Part 2/3)

    “So should I give you the corporatized answer, or the real answer? Not so much between them — I’m one of those hands-on people who can write stuff herself almost as fast as I can tell an agentbot how, but the checking is really helpful. Remember, I did briefly work for a throwback company that was still running the old ‘AI can write the first draft for you, and then you can just clean out the bugs’ shtick — so I might be a bit prejudiced or even somewhat sensitive on those issues.”

    Tom actually, visibly winced, over the steam of his own high-test coffee. “Sometimes the only way some people can learn what doesn’t work is running right smack into the iceberg. Tough on the people who don’t get lifeboats, though. ‘Makes the decks look too cluttered,’ and all.” Sipped, with every evident sign of appreciation. “See that poster?” He pointed with his free hand at one of the tasteful but common e-ink posters VE kept lying about. Right now it was on ‘Whom does the Grail serve?’ around a high-res picture of a fancy jewelled chalice.

    “Yep. Took me awhile to figure out what it was all about, that one. Or at least make enough sense of what it means to me. And you do make good tea, which is not all that common for hardcore coffee drinkers.”

    “Elaborate. On the Grail question, if you would.” Smiling, but… earnest.

    “It’s about what we do, but also about what everyone does. I know that her British roots probably made Amelia more aware of it; but many of us had heard of such things back home in Iceland too. All those sagas, the bardic tradition that lurks just beneath the surface with us, also. So I knew how the Grail Question is meant to be asked, sooner not later, to avoid going all around the mountain the long way.” Magda sipped her tea, which was now cooled enough to be just the right temperature, and very good otherwise.

    “I’d say it’s about what we do, here at VE. How our broad data pipes from Earth back and forth to the Moon, to Mars, to the Lagrange points, even to the floater station on Venus herself… really do make a real contribution to people’s lives. Yes, the big transport companies have their own streams and use them in-house; yes, the close-in planetary swarmsats are a wholly different sort of business. But, it’s wonderful, most people mostly don’t need to worry about getting information there and back, even video or in quasi-real time.” (Lightspeed to Mars and back was whole minutes, not like the few-seconds’ round trip to the Moon, where you still said ‘over’ just to avoid the awkwardnesses.) She took another sip, and another. Went on.

    “And that’s the thing about the Grail Question, too, it keeps you on track in other ways. All that old stuff, about millions of ‘AI’-sats doing your thinking for you, about robots doing your driving and your shopping and so on for you, until you couldn’t half manage anything by yourself? That does not, for me, pass the ‘whom does the Grail serve’ test — who is it for? Making us humans into a bunch of, well, Wellsian Eloi? Nope. At least that is the way I and a lot of other people I know see it. Just like that old cliche of a ‘cashless society’ would’ve made us into a people who couldn’t buy and sell a bedspread to each other, without two credit card accounts and a live Internet connection. Here in the US, back in Iceland, all over the world. Maybe I’m the child of old backcountry farmers, and I am that, but still..!” And she smiled, in a way that invited agreement but did not need it. “Or have I gone a little too far, and not a drop of booze in it?”

    Tom Scarce laughed, in a full-bodied way that was like British stout ale. “‘Child of old backcountry farmers’ pretty much does it for me, likewise, though there’s Danville to our south and Lynchburg to our north, and more than a few other not-so-small places around our ‘backcountry’ too. So you won’t find much ‘shock’ or ‘awe’ at such notions with my people either. I know you’ve talked to Amelia, too; and you must surely have understood how she and Rupert are from the British same-same. At least once-upon-a-time.”

    “And now we toss the gigabits per second from world to world. Not exactly sheepfarming, or even the — tobacco farming? — your South Virginia used to run on from what I hear.” Magda inhaled the fragrant fumes of her tea, as Tom had his coffee; and recalled how her own name was more Polish or German than strictly Norse — and how her grandfather had come to Scotland from Poland to work the North Sea oil fields, then moved further on north and west when the Marxy Pox had grown a bit too pandemic in his Britain.

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  12. (Part 3/3)

    “Good solid sense doesn’t have an expiration date; and it does tend to be more than a little inspirational. You have to know where you stand, to go onward to the next stepping stone; or you’ll fall in the river and get wet or maybe even swept away. That’s just as true if you’re pushing bits from world to world, skipping from relay island to relay island because it’s a bit more efficient that way, if only you can build the infrastructure.” A far-off sort of sound, in his voice, as if recalling some millennium past.

    Magda smiled a little ruefully, and replied, “And yet ‘they’ used to tell everyone we’d not need any inspiration, the robots would have all the new and wise ideas for us, they’d figure it all out first and hand it to us in a neat shiny little silver package wrapped in a pretty pink bow.

    “Do you have any idea how good it is, Tom, to be able to talk to someone like you, or even I guess Amelia herself, once I got over my ‘oh now how dare I talk to the co-founder of VE all by myself’ yips? There’s been far too much of the old stale crazy, even here in the US, for me to really be completely comfortable much. Like walking on a lake, in the spring thaw.”

    It actually took Tom Scarce a moment to ‘get’ that last one — Virginia, not almost-arctic Iceland, never mind the North Atlantic Drift. Her accent was very real, but mostly faint and fugitive; and she’d learned English in school because everyone learned a few languages there, like no big deal.

    “Well, you’re at least mostly among friends, here; and Rupert and Amelia seldom if ever make real hiring mistakes, and never firing ones. You are aware, right, that you’ve been setting things at least a little on fire, just with what you’ve been doing even so far?”

    “Huh? I’m still trying to figure it all out, to tread water fast enough.” She sounded a bit surprised, even mystified. Took another drink of tea.

    “You’ve been hacking the UV-laser prototype target-acquisition and packet transmission software together, yourself, or just you and the IAs. Don’t you know how impressive that is? It’s interplanetary-scale data-piping in a part of the spectrum nobody’s actually using right now, outside of some guys, well, Amelia calls ’em boffins, working at NASA. You and the chips.”

    “Well, of course it’s me and the chips. We have an understanding, now; I ‘get’ how they and the data platforms work, they slip me hints as to how they can do it better. Metaphor, like a writer saying how her characters really wrote the story instead of her, I know; but it does work that way.” Magda inhaled scant and faint but fragrant fumes from her tea, and drank.

    “And that is how it’s done, Magda, in down-on-the-metal programming; never mind whether you’ve ever even seen the processors’ ISA or instruction set coding, far less written bare machine code in hex. You know those systems, you use that knowing, and that is how we outrun the also-rans. VE, us.”

    “Tom, how could anyone ever really do it otherwise? I mean, really do it?”

    There was a moment of silent communication, with no bits in it to measure.

    “‘Light, on the engine-room only, bright as our carbons burn; I’ve lost it since a thousand times, but never past return.’ Go home, Magda, at least do if you’re willin’ t’ listen to this old baccy-farmer’s grandson. Go do whatever’s got nothing to do with tracking across quarter-light-hours and adaptive encodings to maximize net throughput; simply go an’ do whatever else you and your soul also happen to crave, just as much as that.”

    Magda Gunnarsdottir drained the dregs of tea left in her mug, and looked up at Tom. “Take your own advice, then if you will, Senior Programmer. Do go on to your wife and your kids, and… make yourself scarce here.” And she winked at him, quick as the flash of a mirror shutter on a relaysat.

    Liked by 1 person

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

  14. The Esteemed Leader of Planet Flotsam sighed.  “That Starfleet envoy came by this morning,” he said.  “He kept on about the Federation’s Post-Scarcity Society.  No money, no want, and so forth.” 

    “And?” said his secretary.

    “So I asked him why the Federation needs to keep expanding.  He went away mad!” 

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  15. “I’d suggest it’s all about our Flotsomium reserves,” said the Esteemed Leader of Planet Flotsam’s secretary.  “To the Federation, that stuff’s pretty scarce, and our supply is virtually endless.”

    “Then we’d better draft a trade agreement,” said the Esteemed Leader.  “If we don’t, the Federation will take our Flotsomium anyway.”

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  16. Cherry Parker chuckled at the memory.  A few years before, a Halloween haunted house was set up in one of Epsilon Colony’s abandoned surface settlements.  Scare City wasn’t all that scary, but the girls made sure to act terrified so their boyfriends would hold them just a little bit tighter. 

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    1. True story…a few years ago my beloved set up our dragon (used for children’s time at church) at the end of the foyer for Halloween. Kids came in, and saw a small green stuffed dragon and a kettle of candy. And then the dragon would move and talk to them. We had a trio of pre-teen or maybe early-teen girls who screamed when Avrim T. Dragon (my beloved behind the curtain) spoke to them. He told them how to get candy and when they had it, they asked him if they could scream again. He replied, “Sure. Can I scream too?” They said yes, and so the four of them all screamed together.

      It remains one of my beloved’s favorite Halloween memories.

      Liked by 2 people

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