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 DENTON SALLE: Sailing the Clouds of Morning: Avatar Wizard Book 7 (The Avatar Wizard)
The sorcerer shook himself and glared at Jeremy. “You challenge me to a duel, boy?”
He flared his nimbus, so a sphere of greenish-black power surrounded him.
“I’ll drink your life, and your body will be my puppet.”
Once, the volkh ruled the world like gods. Then, the Dark arose and the war shattered the world. The northern Empire finally triumphed and survived at great cost, losing its golden capital and many of its people. The southern empire, Fabled Sheba, fell and lies in ruins to this day. Mighty relics and artifacts remain there, lost in the destruction caused by the last queen’s final spell.
Jeremy and his companions, with Gerasim’s sister Nataliia and the volkva Tanya, must first travel to the ruins of the City, then to Sheba to fulfill the quest laid upon him. In addition to recovering the rod of power, he needs to return the crown of Sheba to Master Eyasu, lest the tensions in the Sheban diaspora erupt into civil war.
Fly with him in the rebuilt Hawk Ship as they travel south to a city ruined by the desperate acts of opening a hellgate. Then cross the Inland Sea with its wonders to an ancient land, destroyed by a desperate spell. A spell so powerful that, while crushing the Dark’s southern hosts, the land remains cursed to this day. Join with them as they risk their lives and very souls in a dead city, and then risk more dangers to find the secrets hidden in the City of Bees.
Meanwhile, unable to go with him, Galena has to cope alone with her mother’s plots to prevent her marriage to Jeremy. Which may mean reaching out to the scariest person she knows. The lily of the volkhvy, the mightiest sorceress in the world, Vasilia Still-heart.
Click now to return to Jeremy’s world and travel with him on the Hawk ship to the ruins of the City and beyond, where heroic deeds and wonders wait.
FROM KAL SPRIGGS: Valor’s Liberation: A Young Adult Military Science Fiction Novel (Children of Valor Book 10)
“The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” -Thomas Jefferson
The world of Century is under alien occupation, and their military forces seek to end it.
For two years they have built up forces, whatever they could beg, borrow, and even steal. And now they’re going home to kick the Culmor Empire right off their world.
No one has worked harder than Jiden Armstrong to make that possible. Only on the eve of the attack, she’s still recovering from injuries, she’s sidelined, and unable to help free her homeworld.
Except the aliens have a doomsday plan and they’re willing to bombard the planet from orbit rather than let it go. There’s one option left: someone has to lead a team to infiltrate the planet, to descend into a million-year-old alien facility, to awaken long dormant defensive systems, and to protect the world of Century.
Jiden is the only one with the right skills, the right knowledge, and the abilities to pull it off. What no one knows is that something awaits her, buried and waiting beneath the sands of Century, a hidden threat that will challenge everything she is, and she will need every bit of valor to liberate her world.
FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: I’m the Beautiful But Evil Space Princess Who Rules A Galactic Empire But Really Wants To Leave People Ruthlessly Alone: Volume 2 (I’m The Beautiful But … Wants To Leave People Ruthlessly Alone!)
Princess Regnant Alice and her companions, after a trip to Prince Daniel’s world Xeros, and a visit to Lost Terra and a meeting with Michael, the mysterious, ancient human, have been directed by Michael to travel to Mahoukai — a world of magical beings who will be able to properly train and guide Prince Daniel’s sister Alouette in the use of her inborn magical powers.
But a nagging question continues to bug both Alice and her father, Roger; what is really going on, back on Capital? Is a revolution brewing? Is the Lord Chancellor, Rupert, somehow involved, and at what level? Eventually they must bid a reluctant farewell to the Mahoukaian Great Mages of Antiquity, and end Alice’s six month absence from her Throne.
And what they find on Capital is far, far beyond anything they might have imagined from 50,000 light years away.
The second volume of the BBESP light novel!
FROM CLAIRE MERRICK: The Screaming Tree
Being a teenager is hard. Moving from California to a small town in the South is even harder. Cught in a supernatural war?
Hardest.
The Screaming Tree divides the town of Verity, Tennessee, east from west. Its two knothole “Faces” gaze out like ancient lords over the half they claim as their own. As long as the spirits remain content, the town thrives, but everyone fears what might happen if their feud spills beyond the branches.
When 13-year-old Bea Durant and her father move into their new home, they are presented with the Rules for their side of town: Never paint the house anything but green. Hang a wind chime to be warned of foul moves. No matter how loud or sudden, never investigate the Screaming.
Bea never considered herself a rulebreaker. She has better things to do like make new friends and fit in at a new school. But a reckless decision on a stormy night draws the spirit from the opposite side of town to her doorstep. Specifically, into her bedroom. She’s left with no choice but to shelter the injured mage…and hope his mortal enemy doesn’t discover them. To protect her new home, Bea might have to break every Rule that has kept Verity safe for centuries.
FROM HOLLY CHISM: Whine in a Box (Liquid Diet Chronicles Book 3)
Maybe chasing murderers wasn’t so bad after all…
Meg Turner, vampire, accountant, and investments advisor…is a political radical. By vampire standards, at least. She’s young, American, and wasn’t inducted into the unlife in the usual way. Which means she’s not a European feudalist. So, when other vampires started asking to move into her territory, she wasn’t sure how to react, other than to welcome some of them. She has a chance to shape an entire territory, if she wants.
(She doesn’t)
Her allies have other plans, though. And, between those plans being sprung on her without much warning, her nearest neighbor coming under attack (and sending his helpless civilians to her for shelter), her mother showing up on her doorstep, looking for answers to why she’d not gotten in contact in the last twenty years…yeah. She’s got a reason to whine.
And that’s not even counting the rising panic over a brand new virus…that shouldn’t affect her people, but will anyway.
FROM SARAH A. HOYT: 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 LEIGH KIMMEL: Technoserf
The Madrian Empire rules worlds as numerous as the grains of sand on a beach. When the Madrians conquered Roby’s homeworld, they brought him to this godforsaken lump of a world, to toil at their will.
Now the Gate has failed, leaving them without communications or transport to the rest of the Empire. When Roby identifies the problem, he’s offered a chance to fix it.
Roby now faces a quandry. Even if he can repair the damage, should he? Will he be better off reunited with the masters’ metropole? Or will he only complicate a difficult life?
FROM JOHN BAILEY: The Affair of the Ambassador’s Comet (Inspector Matthias Veyron Stories Book 3)
Above Rigel 5, where the ancient Shepherd Comet blazes for the first time in forty years, diplomats from across the sector have gathered to renew humanity’s most important interstellar trade agreement.
Then Ambassador Corvin Halbrecht collapses at the gala reception — and the comet is blamed.
A rare neurotoxin. A convenient suspect. A cover story built from science no one will want to challenge.
Inspector Matthias Veyron arrives to find a station full of diplomats more concerned with political consequence than the truth, a young scientist wrongly accused, and evidence pointing toward a fraud that has corrupted the compact for two decades.
In a world of grand alliances and calculated appearances, murder is almost always about something smaller.
The Affair of the Ambassador’s Comet is a gripping mystery of science, diplomacy, and quiet ambition — perfect for readers who enjoy Agatha Christie-style detection, atmospheric science fiction, and mysteries with genuine intellectual substance.
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: IDEA
I don’t have any idea about what to write as a vignette. [Very Big Crazy Grin]
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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.)
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‘Big box you have there.’
‘Yup, just came – let’s open it!
‘Oh, it’s my new Philosophy Kit! See, here’s a bag of postulates, a can, hmm, labeled operators, and another bag of, well I dunno. Marked ‘open in case of emergency’ – oh, it’s the pre-formed conclusions.’
‘Wow – when it comes to kits, those folks at IDEA go all out!’
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Well, at least you still have to assemble it. Some places they come already built out, and bought sight-unseen.
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“You have two brothers, don’t you? It would be wiser to put you in with Roderick. He might consider you.”
Violetta hesitated. She could not remember how important Roderick would be. But — “Neither one is even married. Let alone has heirs. I think he would be too wary of me.”
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“And you are?” the maître d’ asked, a look of assumed superiority clearly evident on his face. His French accent only served to amplify the condescending attitude.
I flipped open my badge. “Detective Hunter Grey, IDEA.”
He regarded me with an upraised eyebrow, but his disdain was unshaken. “L’Ochre is the only restaurant on Mars to receive not one but two Michelin Stars. I fail to see what business the Interplanetary Drug Enforcement Agency would have here. We cater to only the most elite clientele.”
“Well, Frenchie,” I told him, “it’s been my experience that the fatter the wallet, the bigger the kink. I have business with Thomas Wyndham sitting at that table right there. You can step aside or I can slap the cuffs on you as well.”
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Nice set of promos! Looking forward to Kal’s latest effort!!!
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I had an idea for this week’s vignette. Unfortunately, it got away before I could get the leash on it.
If anyone sees a screaming idea running down the street, please do not attempt to capture it. I suspect that it may be slightly rabid…
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“That’s your big idea?” sniffed Cherry Parker. “Leave me alone on Epsilon Colony for six months?” Charlie Tristam joining the Fleet didn’t appeal to Cherry at all. “No, Darling,” said Charlie. “The idea is I go to boot camp and A-school on Earth, then get reassigned back here. They promised.”
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Years later, Cherry reflected on Charlie’s determination. Charlie was full of ideas – he wanted to make something of himself. He had the idea the Fleet would make him an actual person, someone worthy. But to Cherry, Charlie always was, and while he proved it, she wished he’d never had to.
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“Your big idea was to rob one of the biggest banks in the world?”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time…”
“A bank that is a front for the secret society that rules everything?”
“If I was going to steal from someone, doesn’t that sound like the first bunch of people you want to steal from?”
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Thank you all!!
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I have an idea. I really do. And then it turns into three or four and all of them start yammering at me to “Write me first! Write me first!”
i can’t discuss them here as She warned me about planting story ideas (even involuntarily) was a BadThing.
All I can say is the pile of unwritten novels is growing faster than those I am allowed to finish.
God bless you all with a safe and productive week!
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“the pile of unwritten novels is growing faster than those I am allowed to finish.”
They do that.
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“Since the princess had already bought plenty of thread to sew it with.” The older woman snorted and muttered about fine court ladies feigning that they sewed. One of the others said, “I can show you fine wares, my lady.” As that was the idea, Clara nodded and followed her.
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(Part 1/2)
Blair Northcott looked up from her book with a start.
No, wait, it really couldn’t be that simple… could it?!?
With her mind full of an actual experiment that could settle it.
It wasn’t a paper on topological coupling — or even topology — or even properly speaking a new (or old) speculation on how to cross space, faster than the speed of light. It was a “classic” science-fiction novel from the Dawn Age of spaceflight itself — and one phrase had sent her tumbling out of its fictional ‘verse and bolt upright in the real world. Not even words truly original to the long-dead author, but (almost surely, if not quite provably) pinched from a longer-dead philosopher of vaguely the same era, ‘only’ a century and a half further back.
“The Will and the Idea” — in the pages of the book, it was enough to set off a most improbable quasi-nuclear explosive (unless it was enclosed in ‘inert lead isotope’ and good luck identifying that substance, too). You didn’t collect enough of it in one place to push a neutron multiplication factor over one, or something simple like that; no, you just thought it into blowing up. (Historically the fusion bomb had been a novelty back then; probably such a thought-touched-off hyper-explosive had something to do with all the then-ambient thermonuclear angst.)
But, its basic idea… that ‘will and faith’ thing, that sounded so very much like literal magic — might just fill in a critical, empty spot.
Centuries of trying to use general relativity — “traversable wormholes” and “Krasnikov tubes” and even “Alcubierre regions” — to actually get somewhere faster than a 10%-c slowboat had all run aground on other, and pre-requisite, ‘impossibilities’ (in at least the literary sense). Mostly “exotic matter” as in negative-total-energy matter — something like the still-rumored “dark energy” that was gravitationally repulsive instead of attractive, but seen on galaxy-size scales at the smallest.
The problem with exotic matter was nobody knew how to make it, or where to find it, or anything remotely like a proof it could even exist at all.
And, lacking that, the very math that had held out hope — snuffed it out instead.
Her mentor had had a different idea: if you can’t use relativity, subvert it. Mathematically, general relativity was a thing of ‘manifolds’ and a ‘four-dimensional spacetime continuum’ — curved, but still more or less a surface, formally a metric space. Beneath that, though, was another level: a topology, basically a connectedness of points, of what point was next to another point and what was not. Relativity rested on such a foundation.
Bertol Tremaine had remembered a basic, critical, mathematical fact: the very same set of points could have more than one topology laid onto it, so that points that were part of the same “neigborhood” in one topology could be very far apart in another. And, if that other topology were reachable, physically usable, engineering-ly accessible — normal spacetime was the long way around, and an alter-topology might be a clever shortcut.
He’d done a lot more, though, before she’d even met him: he’d found a way to couple a variable topology to what amounted to a field theory. In her mind, he’d gone Albert Einstein one better, who’d coupled curvature (but not torsion) to geometry to make general-relativistic gravity. Even he had had to luck into his friend, Marcel Grossman, pointing him at a pre-cooked mathematical framework for all that — only the big thing had been, Nature itself had agreed with Einstein’s guesswork. Experiments and all.
In twenty-six years, there had been zero evidence Nature did the same for field-variable topologies. Professor Tremaine’s math didn’t seem to have a blessed thing to do with actual, physical reality yet; and never mind the very simple (compared to relativity) and low-power (compared to suns and even to supernovae) equipment he’d designed, and built, and operated. Which did (in the sense of producing any result) nothing. Which of course disproved none of it, either; so he’d kept on. And, for these past seventeen years, so had she, herself.
One really big oddity about his theory: it didn’t predict everything, it was not ‘Cauchy complete’ — there was always at least one bifurcation. A way the machine did nothing; another way it… split points and opened a Gate. More than one future, always far less than perfect determinism.
It was worse than quantum mechanics, which was still a mare’s nest after all these centuries of much prediction and often little sense. This was a pure classical theory, Tremaine topodynamics — so, it ought to be causal.
His devices were like a rocket engine, without any igniting spark. With no clear suggestion, so far, of how one might be struck.
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(Part 2/2)
“The Will and The Idea,” said Blair out loud. “I must be mad.” But she did know, now that she’d had the idea, it would bedevil her until she’d tried it, really tried it. And all she had to do was make yet another run, just like so many hundreds of runs before… only with one little extra kick.
She went to the window, looked out over the sleepy midnight of Staircase Rock, on the Left Shore, under the two (little, almost Mars-like) moons of Lightfall. She could just do this. Bert wouldn’t mind, she’d done a Lord’s plenty by now of solo parameter runs. She reached for her sweatshirt…
– – –
A hour later Meredith, the nearer and brighter moon, was almost down, far out over the sea. And the main Gate unit was idling, and the secondary one three miles away was running compatibly (which ought to cut uncertainty in where the other opening might be, to almost nothing). In theory; in the branch of its predictions where anything ‘interesting’ happened of course.
All the recorders were running. She’d archived all the settings, just in case something inconceivably ‘interesting’ did happen. There was a remote controller in her hand, and she hit the Execute button. Hums, and crackle as the sequencer drove the discharges. Okay… it would continue running in active ‘opening’ mode for maybe a minute more now.
She stretched out her left index finger, to the plane of where the split topology was supposed to manifest. “Open, Sesame,” she said, hokey as it was. But yet, for her it sharply focused the Will and the Idea… along with all the detailed physics and mathematics, saying what should happen, very exactly how. If the world now followed The Path Not Taken, before.
Nothing. She drew back her finger, concentrated thoughts otherwise almost blank still.
There was a soft little purple corona-like glow, right there, in the air.
It split and spread, in the (always before allegedly) active plane. A teacup’s mouth wide disk of soft, opaque lavender fire — and the theory had predicted such. Blair knew her eyes had to be wide like saucers, and didn’t care.
Abruptly the fire flew apart to the edges, and she could see clearly again inside the lavender ring, still slowly growing towards its yard-wide final diameter (at least in theory). Through it, past that still-fuzzy ring.
What she saw was a room miles away, instruments, a camera that — she made herself look at a monitor — saw her, broadcast through the fiber-optic network between.
Spacetime’s nearness had been pulled apart, stitched back together, so it connected here with there, continuous again but in a different way. Blair made herself move out of the way, align the lasers, get the timings.
Light went both ways through the… Gate, exact to the nanosecond. Instant as theory said it had to be traversing such a Gate, to preserve causality.
She fished out her handheld, almost dropping it. There should be no need to shut this down for at least another hour; the field would be (and, it was) quite stable in either this ‘open’ or (normal) ‘closed’ configurations.
“Bert? Get over here to the main lab. The Northumbrian Navigator has gone and stumbled ashore on to our Promised Land. Tap the data feeds and see.”
There was a mumbling of noises. Likely simply the background playlist of a man too long used to being a cat-toy of hope. Then: “How? What?” Awed.
“It turns out all you have to do is want it hard enough. Or, as the guy said who wrote the words that made me try this… ‘The Will and the Idea.’
“And, I know we’re already here, our ancestors having done the big scary slowboat thing once before, but… now it’s ‘The Stars Our Destination.'”
Through her now two-foot-wide Gate, Blair waved at the camera; three miles and yet inarguably also only a few feet away.
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“Ouch!”
“What is it? Are you injured?”
“Just an idea… a nasty one.”
“Like the phosphorus glitter bomb?”
“Er, not quite. You know the multiple-universe- theory where every decision splits the world into branches? Supposedly there would be one where every decision was as good as it could be. Call it Heaven if you like.”
“Alright, so Hell is where every decision was as bad as possible? So..?”
“So what if this” waves around “is Heaven? What if this is as good as it can get?”
“Alright, that is a bad idea. You are probably in need of a nap.”
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It had seemed like a good idea at the time.
That’s how so many misadventures began. Someone’s bright idea, whether it was a business venture that was built on purest vaporware or an expedition to a place that turned out to be a lot more dangerous than anyone realized.
Now it looked like all humanity was going to pay the price for someone’s bright idea of attacking what was actually a mission to bring us into a protective alliance before their xenocidal enemies could find us. Which meant that we needed to fix the blame on someone who was an actual problem — and had the wherewithal to commit the crime.
Much as we would’ve liked to point the finger at the ayatollahs, Iran’s space program was not up to the task — and we’d ensured they’d never lay their hands on nuke. So North Korea it would be.
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