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, 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 DAVE FREER, THE FIRST WINNER OF THE SPECIAL AWARD FOR YOUNG ADULT FICTION: Storm Dragon.

Winner of the First Special Prometheus Award for Young Adult Fiction 2026

Skut Harkkson hates Highpoint Station. He hates the concrete dome, the expensive food, the mean kids who know his father’s farm is three hundred miles away and that he can’t go home. He misses Faraway — real land, real tides, real work — and every day locked inside the settlement’s walls makes him feel like something important is dying.

Then he finds the storm-dragon.

The creature is tiny, half-dead, and furious — and somehow it talks directly into his head. Not words, exactly. Feelings. Hungry. Cold. Trust. Skut names it Snarky, hides it in his shirt, and starts sneaking outside the settlement’s walls to feed it. Which is how he ends up fishing the forbidden lower jetties with Podge Greene — the new kid who survived a planetary invasion at age ten and isn’t afraid of much. The two of them, with Snarky riding Skut’s shoulder and diving for fish, start to build something that looks almost like a life worth living.

But Vann’s World has three moons, tides that kill without warning, and predators that make Earth’s wildlife look like house pets. And none of that matters when the real threat arrives: a Ghat slaver ship, landing under false papers, loaded with soldiers who have done this to entire planets before.

Now Skut, Podge, and Snarky are outside the walls in the dark, with a handful of adults, two flechette pistols, a forklift, and a storm-dragon who generates five hundred volts and is willing to use them. The settlement is locked down. The hostages are running out of time. The VIP ship is landing in the morning — straight into a trap.

What follows is a boys’ adventure in the oldest, best sense: two kids who actually know things figure out how to win against people who should be unbeatable. Vann’s World is alive and deadly and extraordinary, and Skut and Podge understand it in ways the invaders never will.

Storm-Dragon is a standalone novel — fast-moving, funny in the right places, and built on the principle that boys who read voraciously deserve stories that don’t condescend to them.

FROM LEE ECKHARDT: NAUTILUS ISLAND: A Novel of Captain Nemo and the Nautilus

William Wordsworth said that every book is a separate world; this proves to be true when two teenagers are swept into an alternate universe where Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo is a living, breathing person. Aboard Nemo’s incredible Nautilus and fighting an invasion from still another universe, they voyage from the Pacific to the Atlantic and, finally, to the ultimate showdown with the enemy on the shores of Antarctica. For any fan of Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas.

FROM SCOTT MCCREA: U.S. Marshal Ezra Flint: Double Flint: A Western Adventure (A U.S. Marshal Ezra Flint Western Book 12)

An exciting new Marshal Ezra Flint adventure from the pen of best-selling author Scott McCrea!

Marshal Ezra Flint is on the trail of mad-dog killer Spider Ames. When the two men trade bullets, Flint wings the wanted man who escapes, leaving behind his engraved Sharps rifle.

Flint rides into the town of Mossy Creek, which is still reeling from the latest Spider Ames outrage. When Marshal Hunter Robinson sees the engraved Sharps, he’s convinced the Ezra Flint is his man … and he won’t rest until Flint dangles from the end of a rope!

“…hard to put down. If you like good Western fiction, you will love this book.” – Roundup Magazine review of Hard as Flint

FROM K. W. ABBOTT: The Kestrel Veil Incident: A Military First Contact Science Fiction Novel (The Solmare Cycle Book 1)

The frontier was never empty.

Fresh from the Unified Fleet Authority Academy, Captain Calder Venn receives his first command: the ISV Kestrel Veil, a small scout ship assigned to a routine survey mission along the edge of explored space.

The assignment should have been uneventful.

Instead, a single impossible sensor contact changes everything.

As the Kestrel Veil follows evidence that should not exist, Calder and his crew uncover signs that humanity’s oldest assumption may be catastrophically wrong. Beyond the borders Fleet has charted for generations lies not an empty galaxy, but a civilization that has been watching from the darkness all along.

Far from home and operating under strict protocols designed for a simpler universe, the crew must balance caution, curiosity, and survival while every observation carries the potential to reshape doctrine, diplomacy, and the future of humanity itself.

The Kestrel Veil Incident is the first novel in The Solmare Cycle, a military science fiction series blending first-contact mystery, realistic space operations, and institutional decision-making in the tradition of thoughtful, character-driven science fiction.

Perfect for readers who enjoy military science fiction, first-contact stories, and hard science fiction with a strong procedural focus.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: The Lion of God (Timelines Book 1)

John Wolff has been handed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Again.

He’s already saved the love of his life from an early death – thirty years after she died.

Now, a beautiful young woman, who is clearly his daughter, has appeared from the timeline branch where that same love of his life survived and married his counterpart.

She says they need his help fighting off invaders from the far future. Who, by the way, are looking for him. Why? Because they want the starship drive he and a friend invented, the precursor to their time machine. Problem is, in her timeline, it hasn’t been invented yet.

What man can resist a cry for help from his own daughter?

Particularly when the invaders think she’s a saint. Or possibly, a devil wearing saint’s clothing. And they’re looking for her, too.

Thus begins the Timelines Saga, and the story of the Lion of God.

FROM DALE COZORT: New Galveston Book 1: Operation Croatoan

In February 1939, with World War II looming, the US Navy held a massive naval exercise in the Caribbean, involving almost fifty thousand sailors and marines. President Franklin Roosevelt personally attended.

In this alternate history novel, the US of 1939 disappears at the peak of the exercise, along with the rest of the New World. In its place is a New World still inhabited only by Indians.

While the US remnants try to make a new home for themselves, Nazis, Fascists and Japanese Imperialists scheme with Aztecs and other Indian powers to take over the resource-rich and now nearly defenseless New World.

Nazi Germany pours resources into it’s navy and into an advanced new generation of cargo planes. By summer 1941, the Nazis are ready to move. A mysterious “Operation Croatoan” is at the core of their schemes. Milo Gentry and a handful of other Americans race to figure out what the Axis powers are up to and stop them.

FROM KAREN MYERS: Tales of Annwn – A Virginian in Elfland (The Hounds of Annwn Story Collections Book 1)

A Collection of Five Short Stories from The Hounds of Annwn.

The Call – A very young Rhian discovers her beast-sense and, with it, the call of a lost hound.

It’s not safe in the woods where cries for help can attract unwelcome attention, but two youngsters discover their courage in the teeth of necessity.

Under the Bough – Angharad hasn’t lived with anyone for hundreds of years, but now she is ready to tie the knot with George Talbot Traherne, the human who has entered the fae otherworld to serve as huntsman for the Wild Hunt. As soon as she can make up her mind, anyway.

George has been swept away by his new job and the people he has met, and by none more so than Angharad. But how can she value the short life of a human? And what will happen to her after he’s gone?

Night Hunt – When George Talbot Traherne goes night hunting for fox in Virginia, he learns about unworthy men from the old-timers drinking moonshine around the fire and makes his own choices.

Who could have anticipated that the same impulse that won him his old bluetick coonhound would lead him to his new wife and the hounds of Annwn? Every choice has a cost, he realizes, but never a regret.

Cariad – Luhedoc is off with his adopted nephew Benitoe to fetch horses for the Golden Cockerel Inn. He’s been reunited with his beloved Maëlys at last, but how can he fit into her capable life as an innkeeper? What use is he to her now, after all these years?

Luhedoc needs to relearn an important lesson about confidence.

The Empty Hills – George Talbot Traherne arranges a small tour of the local human world for his fae family and friends, hoping to share some of the sense of wonder he discovered when he encountered the fae otherworld.

He’s worried about discovery by other humans, but things don’t turn out quite the way he expects.

FROM JOHN BAILEY: Correspondent from Aurora (The Aurigan Conflict)

Warships are being built in secret.

The truth is being buried.

And one reporter may be the only man who can expose it.

When veteran Anglo correspondent Martin Hale is assigned to Aurora Prime, he expects censorship, surveillance, and carefully managed propaganda. What he discovers is far more dangerous. Beneath the gleaming towers of the Aurigan Directorate, citizens disappear without explanation, resistance networks operate in the shadows, and a massive military buildup threatens the fragile peace of human space.

As Hale digs deeper, he finds an unlikely ally in Elena Voss, an Aurigan archivist whose loyalty to family gradually draws her into a struggle she never intended to join. Together they uncover evidence that could alter the balance of power across dozens of star systems.

But the Directorate has its own defenders.

Colonel Lukas Renn, a cunning security officer with ambitions of his own, is determined to possess both the truth and the woman Hale has come to love. Above him stands Colonel Viktor Draeg, a relentless enforcer willing to sacrifice anyone to protect the regime.

Caught between spies, secret police, resistance fighters, and rival star nations, Hale must decide how much he is willing to risk for a story.

Because in a society built on lies, the truth is the most dangerous weapon of all.

Correspondent from Aurora combines classic wartime espionage, old-fashioned adventure, and sweeping science-fiction worldbuilding in a tale inspired by the great newspaper thrillers of the 1930s and 1940s.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Love in the Time of Campaigning

As Frank Correra brings his family to a lunar settlement to get them away from a worsening political situation on Earth, he reminisces about how he and his wife met.

Frank had always dreamed of the skies. As a clone of an astronaut who subsequently became a US Senator, Frank thought he had a clear path ahead of him. But when it comes time to apply for the Air Force Academy, it is an election year. His ur-brother can’t promise a nomination until he’s won another term, and this year promises a hard race to run. When the other side puts up an ugly attack ad, can Frank find a way to discredit it before it destroys his ur-brother’s chance of re-election, and with it Frank’s slot at an Academy appointment?

A short story of the Grissom timeline.

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 to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: slave.