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

Book 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 PAM UPHOFF: Profit & Freedom (Chronicles of the Fall Book 23)

The disruption of the attack on the 300, and then the invasion has left twin sisters unsupervised . . .

Noeme and Juna Jaeger, at the age of fifteen, might have put a toe over the line of strict legality to make sure they stayed safe . . . then they helped a couple of their friends . . .

And then . . . why not? Why not turn it into a business? Save some other kids, and make money doing it! What could possibly go wrong?

FROM CEDAR SANDERSON: Fen Dead (The Groundskeeper Book 6)

In the misty fen on the edge of town, a murdered man refuses to stay buried.

Chloe Brandt, groundskeeper of Belleview cemetery and reluctant apprentice mediator to the dead, has been called in to help. The deeper she digs into the strange killing, the more she realizes some bindings run deeper than any grave.

Armed with a glowing jar of restless oil, a crew of sectretive gnomes, and more confidence than caution, Chloe must navigate deceptions and dangerous liminal spaces before the fen claims another soul. In a world where even the dead keep secrets, the only way forward is to get your hands dirty.

FROM KEN LIZZI: Long Gambit: Book Two of The Twilight Galaxy Series

The Long Gambit is the second book in Ken Lizzi’s Twilight Galaxy — the ongoing saga of the free trader Long Gambit and the crew who keep her flying through a slowly collapsing galaxy.

Captain Pyater Welloons is one missed payment from losing everything. His ship is clamped to the pad for unpaid moorage fees, his accounts are nearly dry, and the only job on the board is a humanitarian rush run: twelve million doses of medicine for a plague-stricken backwater called Owming.

The catch is that Welloons has to source the drug himself — on Ixtpa, a planet where nearly everyone is chemically modified and the automated factories run themselves while the population drifts pleasantly toward oblivion. The one compound he needs has been bought up to the last ampule to treat a cattle plague on another world. So Welloons does the only thing a man in his position can do: he plans a heist.

What follows is a working-crew space adventure with teeth — a midnight break-in through an automated underground, a street ambush, a slow-motion brush with suffocation when a part nobody replaced finally fails, and an ambush by two pirate ships that knew exactly where the Long Gambit would be. The crew’s best hope turns out to be a piece of bargain-bin junk the captain told them to throw out.

And when the ship finally reaches Owming, Welloons discovers that delivering the medicine and getting it to the dying are two very different problems — and that the people who ordered it may be the last ones who want it to arrive.

For readers of working-ship, declining-empire space adventure in the tradition of C.J. Cherryh’s merchanters, Andre Norton’s Solar Queen, and Nathan Lowell’s Solar Clipper. Dry humor, a crew worth riding with, and a captain who keeps his word even when it costs him. The story is the point.

EDITED BY DAVID BADURINA: Pet Monsters: Ten Tales of Monsters and the Kids Who Befriend Them (Raconteur Press Anthologies Book 78)

You were a weird kid once. So were they — right up until the monster showed up.A boy brings a rotten sandwich back to life and discovers the truest
friend he has ever had. A lonely girl pulls a crashed alien out of a cornfield. A grieving kid hides a fire-breathing salamander in his dead
father’s office. And out past the porch light, something with too many tentacles is looking up at the same stars — and quietly noticing the
marriage coming apart inside the house.Pet Monsters gathers ten original stories about the strange, misunderstood creatures
that crash into ordinary lives, and the children brave enough to love them back. They are funny, they are frightening, and underneath every
one of them runs the same current: what it costs to be an outcast, what it means to finally be understood, and how much it hurts to let go.For readers raised on E.T., The Iron Giant, and Something Wicked This Way Comes, and for anyone who still, on the right kind of night, half-hopes to find something waiting at the edge of the yard. In the tradition of Ray Bradbury and Joe Hill: ten tales where childhood wonder shades, story by story, into the uncanny and the unforgettable.Ten
authors. Ten monsters. One anthology about the friends we lose, the people we become, and the small impossible miracle of being seen.

FROM LEE ECKHARDT: King of the Zombie Moonmen

Craig Holdren is a typical young slacker, until, thanks to an inheritance from his mysterious Uncle Jack, he finds his way into another world. It is a world much like his own, except for flying saucers, atomic-powered cars, rocket ships, unearthly zombies, renegade robots, giant spiders, ferocious rock creatures and an imminent invasion from outer space. Here Craig finds his true destiny when he takes Uncle Jack’s place as the legendary Flying Commando – the only man who can stop Retik, King of the Zombie Moonmen, from conquering the entire Universe!

FROM KAREN MYERS: Second Sight: A Science Fiction Short Story

A Science Fiction Short Story

BORROWING SOMEONE ELSE’S PERCEPTIONS FOR A POPULAR DEVICE CAN ONLY MEAN COMMERCIAL SUCCESS. RIGHT?

Samar Dix, the inventor of the popular DixOcular replacement eyes with their numerous enhancements, has run out of ideas and needs another hit. Engaging a visionary painter to create the first in a series of Artist models promises to yield an entirely new way of looking at his world.

But looking through another’s eyes isn’t quite as simple as he thinks, and no amount of tweaking will yield entirely predictable, or safe, results.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: A Huntress on the Rocks (Timelines Universe Book 4)

A young military intelligence agent. Hunting a murderous drug dealer across a floating city on a water world light-years from Earth – with only his name, and a vague description of what he might look like. Will she finally find her quarry and bring him to justice, or will cases of mistaken identity mean she’ll simply end up

A Huntress on the Rocks

(A Delaney Wolff Fox story)

FROM MARY CATELLI: Even After

Mirror, mirror on the wall — can I be safe when I am tall?

Rumpelstiltskin got the baby.

Rapunzel and her prince never again met.

Snow White still sleeps in the forest.

Biancabella, Snow White’s half-sister, knows that if she is more beautiful than her mother, trouble will follow again. Her appeal to the magic mirror only gains her stories of how hard it is to fight the evil sorceresses and wizards and witches who have banded together to bring unhappy endings.

But with her mother seeking to constrain her, Biancabella knows she may have no choice to use that knowledge to attempt to escape.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Margins of Mundania

A tween boy’s Christmas gift opens a world of wonder and brings joy to a whole town fallen on hard times. A young New Englander in the early Twentieth Century discovers that some parts of human history don’t bear too close examination. A literary critic in the old Soviet Union must confront his own moral cowardice.

These stories, along with a multitude of bite-sized works of flash fiction, carry you from the most prosaic of events to the moments of awe that offer glimpses of matters larger than ourselves.

FROM JOHN BAILEY: The Evening Performance: A Novel of Theatrical Discipline and International Espionage (The Aurigan Conflict)

A retired accountant notices that the actors aren’t saying their lines correctly.

Four intelligence services notice something else entirely.

At the Grand Imperial Theatre, The Kingdom at the Edge of the World appears to be an ordinary theatrical production. But beneath the costumes, stage directions, and carefully rehearsed dialogue lies an international communications network—one that has operated undetected for years.

British Intelligence is watching. The Aurigans are watching. The mysterious Grey Office is watching. Several other intelligence services are watching.

And then there is Cedric Pritchard.

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: structure.