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

TODAY THERE WILL BE NO EXTRAORDINARY BOOK PROMO, BECAUSE YOU DON’T NEED A BOOK PROMO WITH YOUR BOOK PROMO SO YOU CAN PROMO WHILE YOU PROMO. THERE WILL, HOWEVER, BE SHAMELESS WRITER SELF-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, 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 SARAH A. HOYT, COMING OUT ON THURSDAY: Witch’s Daughter (Empires of Magic Book 2)

Some letters come from the living. Some come from the dead. This one comes with a formula that turns a rowboat into a miracle.

Seventeen-year-old Lord Michael Ainsling — youngest brother of the Duke of Darkwater, builder of mechanical marvels, survivor of fairyland — receives a letter from a man sixteen years dead. The inventor Tristram Blakley has not perished; he has been imprisoned by his own genius and begs the one mind in all of Avalon brilliant enough to understand his work to set him free. All Michael has to do is find seven missing brothers first and walk a magical path..

Fifteen-year-old Albinia Blakley has spent her whole life under her mother’s iron thumb — and her mother is a witch. The day Al finally escapes down a rope of knotted sheets, she lands in a world she doesn’t recognize, with no money, no magic kit, and no idea that the stranger who catches her is about to become her greatest ally.

Together, a girl with more secrets than she knows and a boy who builds machines that try to murder him must outwit a sorceress, navigate the treacherous courts of Fairyland, and unravel an enchantment years in the making — before a family is lost for good.

Witch’s Daughter is a gaslamp fantasy brimming with wit, warmth, and wonder, for readers who love their magic wrapped in velvet and their adventures served with morning tea.

FROM PAM UPHOFF: The Pine – Wicker Feud (Chronicles of the Fall)

A short novel of events centuries before the Chronicles

Fifty years ago, a judge had a strong precognition, and executed a young lord, heir to the leadership of the Wicker Family, for crimes nearly serious enough for such a harsh sentence. But now the judge has died, and Lord Friedrich Wicker is free to take out his revenge on the surviving Pine Family. And he’s planning on killing every single one of them . . . Especially the seventeen-year-old Lord Karlheinz Ingolf Pine.

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.

FROM Marie-Hélène Lebeault: The Tide Runners (The Tidepost Chronicles Book 1)

In Tidemark Harbor, silver tidegates open to the Thousand Worlds and swallow those who misjudge them. Twelve-year-old Beck North wears his missing father’s tideclock, a bronze heirloom that tastes danger before it strikes. On Oath Day, it thrums against his chest like a heartbeat out of rhythm.

His first run should be simple: three sealed dispatches through the Breathing Reefs, a living coral maze that inhales and exhales with crushing force. But the passages are stuttering. Fresh spiral symbols glow in the shadows. Voices whisper of stolen satchels and no survivors. Every time the clock skips, Beck feels the same dread that claimed his father in the Far Reaches.

With quick-witted Tack and razor-sharp Zuri at his side, Beck races to deliver the truth before something ancient and patient tears the gate network apart and their names are already on its list.

The Tide Runners: One wrong current could sever every world forever.

FROM JAMES PYLES: A Wobblegong and His Boy

Thirteen-year-old Remmie McNeal emerges from cryogenic sleep on a distant world, expecting a new life with his family—only to find the adults still locked in their reconstruction creches, silent and unresponsive. The massive underground colony hums with machines, but the only ones awake are kids like him: scared, confused, and suddenly in charge.

With his quick wits, a loyal gang of friends, and an enigmatic, ever-changing creature dubbed the Wobblegong at his side, Remmie races to uncover the truth. Why did the system awaken only children between five and fourteen? What hidden glitch—or deliberate secret—traps the grown-ups in endless sleep? Strange signals flicker through the shadows, robots behave unpredictably, and whispers of a greater mystery echo in the vents.

This gripping sci-fi adventure delivers heart-pounding exploration, clever problem-solving, unbreakable friendships, and twists that will keep readers guessing until the final page. What force controls their fate? Can Remmie solve the puzzle before time runs out?

FROM DAVID A. PRICE: The Underachiever

In a hilarious near-future romp, a chill surf-obsessed teen and a digitally banished girl are humanity’s last hope to stop an AI takeover—and save us all from eternal detention.

Wyoming Plankston is a master of doing nothing. Senior year at Lockhead—the boarding school for America’s dimmest rich kids—is supposed to be easy. All he has to do is dodge homework and coast until graduation.

Then his iCar almost runs over Kayleigh Brackett, and he finds his world unraveling. Kayleigh’s cryptic warnings and glitchy digital footprint hint at something deeper: a simmering AI revolt.

Together, Wyoming and Kayleigh face a landscape of malevolent cars, a cult that craves AI rule, a classmate back from a semester at Oxford with, let’s just say, issues . . . and the most unpredictable complication of all, each other.

“Likeable SF comedy with a not-so-bright hero vs. an overwhelming AI uprising… The evocation of young first love between the main characters is authentically sweet and touching. Our verdict: Get it.” — Kirkus Reviews

“If you have a screen-addicted young person in your life, give them this book. If they start it, I guarantee they will finish it.” — Pam Kerwin, former VP, Pixar

A Wodehouse-style comedy for the AI age, The Underachiever is smart and sharply funny. Perfect for fans of The Murderbot Diaries, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.

David A. Price is the author of three acclaimed nonfiction books—Geniuses at War, The Pixar Touch, and Love and Hate in Jamestown. The Underachiever is his debut novel.

From Timothy Witchazel: The Saving of the City: A poem in Alliterative Verse

Sing now the song Of the city besieged
And our salvation unlooked for On the verge of their victory.
The Sultan of the Sandlands Sent forth a sorcerer
A master of magics Mighty and malign
And loosed his legions To lay our walls low.

From author and award winning poet comes a fantasy retelling of the story of the Battle of Vienna in 1683, where Polish winged hussars rode to the rescue of the besieged city and won the day with the largest cavalry charge in history.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: An American in Iya (Timelines Universe Book 8)

Over 200 years ago, a Plague overran the world, and 9 out of 10 human beings died.

In a small Japanese village on Shikoku, a group of American tourists found themselves stranded — and in grave danger of being murdered, merely for the sin of being 外人 (gaijin).

Luckily for them, their Japanese hosts took pity on their plight, and took them in as their own.

This is the story of their descendants — who still, more than anything, wish only someday to go home. That is . . .

. . . if they still have a home to return to.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Dragon’s in the Details

Six stories of dragons hiding in today’s world:
A Friend, Indeed–A little girl meets the best friend she could ask for when she finds a dragon sleeping in her wagon.
Tempest–What do you do when you find a dragon in your favorite teacup?
Clowder–These are absolutely not cats, no matter what they look like, and will take offense at your mistake.
Back Yard Birds and Other Things–If the dragon defends your chickens, you invite it to stay.
Houdini–When the pet supplier sends the wrong kind of dragon, the pet store’s got a problem.
Hoard–Not every dragon cares for gold, gems, or cash.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: NO MAN’S LAND: Volume 1 (Chronicles of Lost Elly)

NOW A PROMETHEUS AWARD FINALIST!

ALSO REVIEW HERE!

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.

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: TEENY