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: Max Berezin Collection (Chronicles of the Fall Book 26)
Snapshots a character’s life.
One previously published short story, plus nine new stories that give brief glimpses of a budding Mentalist Lord as he survives ambitious relatives, brief romances, interesting assignments, and vacations . . . Balancing family duties and work while doing what’s right . . . even if it might not actually be legal . . .
FROM DAN MELSON: Meeting The Morelli (Embassy Book 1)
Tessa was desperate, and a two year contract with an Imperial Embassy looked like the way out. Helping a newly contacted species develop to a point where they’re ready to deal with the universe is a years-long project, and those whose missions succeed can expect more lucrative contracts in the future as well as the knowledge they’ve helped an entire species survive.
The Empire of Humanity is not being altruistic. It has selfish reason to want the Morelli and others to survive. But the Morelli must be willing to learn, and there’s only so much latitude a species may be given before even the Empire’s own citizens require suppression or worse. Tessa and her superiors must find a way to persuade the Morelli to learn about the dangerous universe beyond their current holdings before the Morelli do anything irreversible.
Because evolution is not done when a species achieves sentience, or even technology. It becomes communal, and the penalty for failure is extinction.
FROM JOHN BAILEY: I Can See Clearly Now (Science Fiction Singles)
What if you could see the life you never lived?
Commander Daniel Forrester has spent forty years among the stars.
At fifty-eight, he is a respected starship commander with a lifetime of exploration behind him. But when news reaches him that Elizabeth—the woman he once intended to marry—has died, Daniel is forced to confront the question that has haunted him for decades:
What if he had stayed?
Then the Resolute discovers something impossible.
Another starship appears in space.
It is the Resolute .
It carries the same identification number, the same crew, and the same commanding officer.
But it comes from somewhere else.
Daniel has encountered an alternate reality.
And in that reality, another version of himself made a different choice.
That Daniel stayed on Earth.
He married Elizabeth.
He helped establish humanity’s first permanent colony on Mars.
And Elizabeth is still alive.
For the first time, Daniel can see the life he has spent forty years imagining.
But the boundaries between the two realities are beginning to collapse.
As alternate histories bleed into one another, Daniel faces an impossible choice: pursue the life he believes he should have lived—or save the people whose lives depend upon the reality he actually chose.
To make that choice, Daniel must finally confront the difference between regretting the past and living in it .
I Can See Clearly Now is a reflective science-fiction novella about alternate realities, impossible choices, lost love, regret, acceptance, and the courage to embrace the future.
FROM KIRILL KHRESTININ: Via Dolorosa: A Novel
Some roads only open at the bottom.
Laura Jones leaves her grandfather’s Arizona ranch for Los Angeles, certain her real life is waiting there. She wants to be an actress. She finds a man who knows how to keep that dream alive—and how to use it against her. Then another man arrives, wearing a police uniform.
Harry Dolan knows what his partner is. He has helped make it possible. At home, his fifteen-year-old daughter needs him, his marriage is disintegrating, and the violence he excuses on the streets is never far from his own front door.
Back in the desert, Laura’s grandfather has a Purple Heart, a shotgun and a past he rarely speaks about. He knows how to fight. What fighting can save is another question.
Their lives collide in a world where pain becomes an excuse, love becomes possession, and people ask God for mercy while denying it to one another.
Via Dolorosa is a brutal literary crime novel about the damage people inherit, the damage they choose to inflict, and the possibility of faith when every comfortable answer has failed. Violent, profane and unflinching, it asks what remains of love when suffering gives you every reason to become cruel.
FROM LEE ECKHARDT: PLACE of HONOR: A Science Fiction Novel
Sixteen-year-old Jozan par Julien is First Princess of the Empire of One Hundred Suns and next in line for the throne. Seventeen-year-old Cade-Klin Soline is the most junior member of her bodyguard, someone Jozan is only barely aware of. That changes when an assassination attempt maroons Jozan and Cade-Klin on a dangerous alien planet. Knowing that this is the beginning of an attempt to overthrow her father, Jozan vows to return to the Imperial World, a vow that will throw them headlong into an incredible adventure, an adventure in which they will face a hostile jungle, predatory animals, the mystery of a vast alien space ship and a deadly interstellar conspiracy that will do anything to keep them from reaching their goal. And, at the end of the journey, Jozan will not only have found love with Cade-Klin but will also face the shocking truth about her destiny, a truth she never suspected…
FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Everything in 24 Frames
Twenty-four frames equals one second of motion-picture film.
Cather Hargreaves learned that fact for class, but as an abstraction. Now that he’s going on a tour of a movie studio and its back lots, he’s about to get real-life experience in just how movies are made.
What he didn’t expect was being tossed into a real-life horror, as the war against sectarian violence suddenly comes home to the City of Angels. It’s a moment that will change the course of his life forever.
When life is on the line, 24 frames can be an eternity.
A short story of the Grissom timeline.
FROM MICHAEL NICHOLS: Fatal Abstraction: Revolutionizing Strategy and Innovation for the Age of AI
In an era where AI is accelerating disruption and uncertainty, traditional business strategy is dangerously outdated. While innovation professionals adapt rapidly, many established organisations remain stuck in slow, mechanistic planning cycles. Fatal Abstraction argues that to survive, leaders must learn to govern at the level of uncertainty they face―rethinking how strategy is conceived, executed, and evolved.
Drawing on philosophy, mental models, and first hand experience with hundreds of ventures, author Michael Nichols offers a bold framework for mastering disruption. This timely work equips entrepreneurs, executives, and investors with the tools to navigate AI-driven change, build resilient ventures, and revolutionise strategic thinking in the modern age.
FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: The Cross-Time Kamaitachi (Timelines Universe Book 5)
I did not land here as a warrior, but a warrior I so soon became . . .
One moment, Dr. Yukiko Yamaguchi was in her high-tech singularity research lab in California, busily adjusting an electronically-leaky fitting playing hell with her instrument readings.
The next moment, she was falling through space, and landing hard in a wilderness area she would quickly discover was her family’s ancient stomping grounds in Japan – but with an apocalyptic twist.
A hundred years later, there would be legends of a great y�kai, a demon, whom some called a kamaitachi – a sort-of whirlwind, weasel-like creature with blades for claws, which catches up unwary humans and slices their skin. But this kamaitachi is no ordinary y�kai – rather, she is
The Cross-Time Kamaitachi
FROM SUMMER GRAYLING: True Colours
Jan Van Der Vaart is a legend. The focus of his magical Talent is pain, and he’s spent years in the military, then as a mercenary, making terrorists, cartels, and governments fear him. Finally, he carved out a safe haven for other Talents, and tried to retire… until one last job, cracking a black lab snatching Talents off the streets, went sideways. He’s left staggering down a rainy coastal highway, thumb out and hoping he’ll catch a lift before the kill team realizes they missed…
Aurelia Brinati is on the run. Having escaped five years of hell as an unwilling lab rat, she has a stolen car and a plan to hide from pursuers by taking passage on a cargo ship headed anywhere else in the world. When she picks up a stray sailor headed the same way, she rapidly discovers she’s out of her depths… and safe in the heart of the storm.
The entire world fears him… except her. Powers are gathering to recapture Aurelia, but they’d best beware. Jan and his friends will do whatever it takes to keep her safe… whether it’s murder, mayhem, or last-minute shopping runs to find something called cream of tartar for her snickerdoodle cookies.
Protective Hero ✓ Hidden Magic ✓ He Falls First ✓ Found Family ✓ Runaway Heroine ✓ Psychic Powers ✓ Hurt/Comfort ✓ Damaged Heroine ✓ Touch-starved Hero ✓
FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Witchfinder (Magical Empires Book 1)
A Duke’s Defiance Could Shatter Two Worlds
In an England where magic pulses through every cobblestone and the English Regency manners and modes never ended, one man’s conscience threatens to topple an empire.
Seraphim Ainsling, Duke of Darkwater, inherited a legacy of forbidden heroism. For generations, his family served as witchfinders, crossing between worlds to rescue those condemned to die for possessing magical gifts. But when the royal princess vanished twenty years ago, the king sealed the borders between realities forever.
Now Seraphim faces an impossible choice: obey the crown and let innocents burn, or defy his king and risk everything he holds dear.
With only his enigmatic half-elf valet Gabriel Penn at his side, Seraphim tears holes in the fabric of existence itself, leaping between alternate Earths where magic means death.
His mother and sister are lost in Fairyland. His enemies circle like vultures. The king’s patience wears thin.
But Seraphim’s stubborn compassion burns brighter than caution. In a world where doing right means risking everything, he’ll discover that the greatest magic might just be the courage to keep fighting when hope seems lost.
Some prices are worth paying. Some lines are worth crossing. Some hearts are worth breaking.
A spellbinding tale of sacrifice, family, and the dangerous allure of doing what’s right in a world determined to punish goodness.
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: TEMPT
Don’t temp me to go on a rant
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Tempt…tempt…tempt…
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We’re going to attempt to tamp down the temptation… temporarily…
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Thank you for providing this service!!!!
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Remember, o Readers, that you can be FORCE MULTIPLIERS!
After 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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I’ve reviewed Waylen Govall’s The Delta-v Discrepancy, which was highlighted here late last month. You can find the book and the review on Amazon. I recommend it.
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“And the courtiers come with their — gifts, to ask me to speak to the princess.” She sighed. “All their wrangling for something that could end in disaster for them, and me, whatever I say to anyone.”
Diggory stood very still.
“All the important things makes me look like a madwoman.”
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“It’s very hard to tempt someone who has everything that he wants.”
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You can tempt with something your targets wants, or with freedom from something your target wants to be free of.
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or dragons with an adequate coffee supply…
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“I am sorry I’d love to be able to answer your question, but in all truth I am just a temp here” the cute little red head wistfully replied.
She batted her eyes at me, I couldn’t blame her, I was born from good stock on Brewster’s World a low tech world that tended towards physical labor. Which meant muscles and good looks, I had both, I’d seen the same thing before in lots of women and girls here on New Haven.
“I guess I’ll have to look for answers somewhere else” I sadly replied.
“Maybe if you meet me for dinner…” she trailed off quickly looking around to see if anyone was listening.
“Don’t tempt me” I teased.
“Oh, you have no idea” she lustily replied.
Truth was, I think I did.
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The great blue dragon hovered in the night, the capital of D’Asturies spread out below like a jeweled carpet. North lay the execution grounds; empty of Sage Geoffrey’s body.
One blast of lightning would not suffice, only a summoned storm would grant a proper rampage….
Tempting.
But no. Geoffrey wouldn’t want that.
Revenge is for the living. Justice, for the dead.
Landing, Hakawati drew himself into smaller form, and bared human teeth. “All right, old friend. Justice. For you.”
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Hakawati of the Sands is currently living rent-free in my brain every time I go to bed during the current real-life… mess. I have sequels to write, but Stress Is and dragons are notoriously persistent.
Although to really get this right I want a copy of After 1177 B.C. (the setting is post-magical Bronze Age Collapse!) and that may take a bit. RL. Meh.
Currently typing up some of last night’s scribbles, part of how he and Geoffrey met in the first place. There were bandits involved….
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I stared at the bookstore shelves, and muttered to my cover artist, “The romance standard for pen names is either common name followed by a semiprecious gem or stone, or common name plus an animal.”
She continued looking at covers in roughly the same genre – romantic suspense – and murmured an agreeable noise. “Yes. The fonts, though…”
“Do you think Summer Grayling would be too fishy of a pen name? I mean, I’m tempted because it’s an animal that’s prettier than some of the semiprecious stones used by the last four authors we’ve pulled, so it’s the best of both worlds…”
Cedar made a most unladylike snort, and pulled a book from a new-york-times-bestselling author whose series followed all the fantasy romance tropes all the way off a cliff. I looked up, as she tapped the cover. “If she can get away with Kimberly Lemming… I think Summer Grayling will be just fine!”
I nodded. “It’ll be a good reminder not to take it too seriously!”
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I found myself noting that Stonefish is an animal with a mineral name.
I was very tempted by the idea of writing a book that is not fiction, and not a romance, with a romance cover, a title that starts “a marriage of” and the penname Stonefish.
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Has anyone ever met John Bailey, or purchased any of his books? Publishing 248 books on Amazon – including science fiction, historical fiction, computer tech and even theology – starting July 10 of last year and through today is… impressive. Part of me wonders who or what is doing this – one guy with AI? a collection of authors? some AI company employees having fun while testing their tools? I admit there’s also part of me that finds this level of production, by myself, a bit tempting.
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He’s apparently been writing for decades and just now got the courage to publish.
He’s one of the OLD regulars here. (As in, he’s commented here for three decades.)
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Yes, I have (looks at Kindle) 8 already read, one Reading In Progress, and one in the TBR stack.
I generally like his books, though one wasn’t quite walled. It’s very episodic, and each episode is way too similar to the others. OTOH, I think that was his point, and it’s not one I enjoyed. Another had duplicate sections; major editing oopsie, but the story was quite good. (Fans of the Peter Graves era Mission Impossible would appreciate it. ‘Tis a series, too. Haven’t tried the others. Yet.)
He has some favorite tropes (the protagonist who does what she’s supposed to be doing, while acting as a major part of the [investigation/escape network/resistance]).
OTOH, his offshoots are fun. He did one The Error of Mechatexzilla, that’s a glorious farce, and The Gloam Doctrine, involving an “obsolete” starfighter that manages to win the war and does so convincingly.
Looks like a lot of his books are based on a war between the Anglo Space Navy and the Aurigan Compact. I’m reading the books in a side series, in worlds that are occupied by the Aurigans. That trope is present in the first two, I have to see what the third one says (it’s in the TBR stack.)
TL;DR, he’s uneven, but worth checking out. Unfortunately, not too many reviews.
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two decades? How long has this place been around?
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I’m not sure. There are ways to check, but off the top of my head I can only be confident of around fifteen years.
Twenty to twenty-five does not strike me as impossible.
A confounding factor for memory is how many of your starter contacts were also on Baen’s Bar, which was extant further back. I’m fairly sure that John Bailey was pretty well established there.
Going back twenty or twenty-five years for me personally, my memories and awareness are much much less reliable about who was doing what.
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His style has a lot of editorial description, but he does it well. The stories aren’t classics, but they are engaging and, in their way, entertaining. They’re not Lutefisk (litfic!), and they don’t pretend to be.
I’ll probably make my way through his whole list. I suggest you try a couple.
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“Why are you trying to tempt me?” Jason asked.
“It’s my job,” Luxyn pointed out, fluffing her breasts and wings. The scene of warm amber and brimstone rolled around his body like a gentle hug. “You summoned me…”
“No, I didn’t,” Jason interrupted.
“You opened the book and spilled blood on it, you summoned me,” Luxyn chided. “Contract signed and needing to be completed.”
“The men trying to kill me slammed the book in my face when I tried to use it to stop that knife from re-arranging my intestines,” Jason noted calmly, finger raised. “It was opened because the knife went through the cover, and the blood came from them pulling the knife out of the book after clipping the side of my hand. And my bloody nose.”
Luxyn paused, put two fingers under her chin, and tilted her head to look at him like a cat, the earrings on her long, elven ears managing not to get tangled as she considered him. “A point, a definite point,” she admitted. Then she let out a grumpy huff, ears drooping downwards. “You’re not gay, are you?”
“No!” Jason snapped, “and you’re trying…”
“I hate being an incubus. No insult to your gender but boys are not cute the way I like to be cute,” Luxyn continued, turning around and letting her wings fold close to her body and her tail swipe around as well. “And I haven’t been properly cute in three hundred years, I want to be cute again….,” she muttered almost to herself, hugging her arms close to her chest, covering her impressive cleavage.
“You’re trying to change the subject,” Jason spoke a little louder. Then, he paused. “What do you mean by ‘cute again’?”
“Most summoners,” Luxyn sighed, not at all dramatically, “are ‘wham, blam, thank you ma’am,’ assuming they can actually get it up even with my help. You’re just…too sweet for words. I can tell from here, like a sour lemon shell over fine chocolate fudge. You should have succubi and kitsune and other critters crawling over broken glass for you. You want more than just someone to bang and be done and I can justify a long-term contract on you hitting all the pages with your blood.”
“Why in God’s name would I want a long-term commitment with a succubus?” Jason ground out.
“Because I’m a better everything that white liberal women these days?” Luxyn retorted. “And when I mean ‘long term,’ I mean long term in a demon’s perspective. Maybe even slip in a reincarnation or two in there somewhere. You think that I would lose a prize like you?” Luxyn’s snort was not all like a grumpy dragon. “Share, maybe, but I’m not giving you up now that I found you!”
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LOL
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…I’m not sure what’s worse-that’s she’s right that a succubus is a better everything than liberal white women in the West or that she’s actually trying to create a relationship.
Probably both.
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Was just thinking that….
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Read Kate Paulk’s Vampire Con stories. Her succubus is a terror in the midnight sex panel.
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Coff. First, that was a tuckerization of ME. Second that sex panel… guilty as charged.
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I’m not sure if I’m sorry I missed it, or glad. Was the part about the, er, marine biologist being there accurate?
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lol. No. It was a joke started by Dave Drake, who for reasons known only to himself decided that Dave Freer and I had once been engaged. He said it made a good story.
Dave F and I are actually just good friends, having first met online. But Dave Drake had a WEIRD sense of humor. :D
Or you mean the sex panel? Yes. So… it’s a long story but I used to be put on all the sex panels because con organizers thought I was funny. Until oh, ten years ago I threatened them with mayhem because I go to bed WAY before midnight usually.
So, when DF came over for Lunacon, I was on the sex panel, and they thought he was my ex (Rolls eyes heavenward at DD) and therefore…. Sigh.
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But yes, my poor husband got tuckerized as a fugitive archangel. The boys at those ages were eerily true to life, though.
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“…trying to create a relationship.”
I can see it. The waiting room for unsummoned succubi is likely not very pleasant given their lack of a union (what, you think management would let any of the many, many union organizers down there run around loose?). And by all accounts time runs differently there, so a nice long stretch in the human realm, as long as the contracted guy is as much of a catch as she thinks, would get her out of another eternity waiting on the next summon.
The payoff for her is probably well worth the effort to sufficiently tempt young Jason.
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Also, talk about Passport Bros…
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”As a twentysomething American guy these days, I thought dating on the apps was Hell. Well, let me tell you a little story…”
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And that throwaway about Kitsune has to be major foreshadowing…
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In fact…
Sakura twitched. With her entire body. Even in human form as she was now, sitting at the little local coffee shop reading on her phone while nursing her complicated sweet coffee drink. She would have spilled it if she hadn’t left the plastic cap on the cup. Then her human ears twitched again. Something… odd was happening somewhere close by. Something disturbing the veils. And once her attention had been drawn to it, there was something else… something… tempting?
”No frigging way,” she said quietly to herself, setting her paper cup down carefully and trying to figure out direction and range to this…impossibility. She had only recently gotten her second tail, and according to her mother she should not be feeling anything like this until her third came in, unless someone touched was near and aligned appropriately. But…
She twitched again. Northwest, about a hundred and fifty meters, and up one floor or so. She felt the hard pull in her chest, the urge to go and see.
”Damn. I was enjoying that coffee.” She collected her stuff and stood, tossed the rest of her drink in the bin as she walked out into the bright sunshine, and turned northwest.
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Patience, young padwan. Patience.
Probably book #3 or 4…
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“You haven’t seen bitchy women until you’ve been in the hiring hall for unsummoned succubi. Trust me, spend more than five years there, you’ll fight like one of the monkeys in the rain trying to get onto Noah’s Ark to get any assignment,” Luxyn sighed. “I mean, we have reason and accountability. Have to, can’t be a succubus otherwise. But get stuck with the same few thousand bitches for a decade or more-all the same stupid jokes, all the same stupid slights, all the same stupid romances…”
“Hellish?” Jason chuckled.
“Oh, yes. It’s a perfect Hell for influencers, can’t compete and can’t get an audience that won’t be beaten by succubi.”
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Would read!
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Saved to my scratch file and will see if there’s more to write for this one.
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Yay! : )
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Agreed!
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No doubt some Japanese artist is furiously drawing a manga from your vignette at this very moment and publishing it in 3 … 2 … 1 …
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Would read that too! *G*
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…I’m almost surprised that there isn’t one already.
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Bob strolled into the office, late as usual. Oddly, the lights were still set on ‘night/closed’.
The receptionist desk was empty. Bob stepped behind the desk to turn on the lights. Kitty had not even turned on her computer.
To the left, George, the elderly security guard was missing – his job did not require patrols inside the office. Not even his stainless steel carafe was there.
Strolling down the silent, empty corridor, Bob went to his office.
The ‘message’ light on his phone was blinking. He picked up, and hit ‘play’.
“Mr Coleman, this is Joan Howard at Successful Staffing. I’m sorry to tell you, but we’ve gone bankrupt. We can’t send your contract employees – we can’t pay them. You’ll want to talk to our lawyer, so I’ll send her contact info in email – and I’ll include some references to other agencies. Again, I’m really sorry.”
Bob hung up, and sat back in his chair. “Drat,”, he muttered, “Temp’d”.
He got up and went to the break room knowing he’d have to make his own coffee.
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Silly question. Are you a carp collector? (Rather liked today’s pun.)
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A day without carp is like a day without sunshine,
No, that’s wine, isn’t it?
What wine with gefilte fish?
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Manischevitz, duh! 😁🍷
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Yeah, should have looked – Grok says
Appropriate for fish. Pork, too, maybe, though that’s outside Usual Custom for the brand.
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Leaning forward on the edge of the table, I asked her, “Would you believe that I’ve never had chicken and dumplings?”
Paula’s eyes went wide with surprise. “My goodness, what rock have you been living under?” That sweet Georgia accent peeked out despite her best efforts. “I’m going to have you over next weekend for a proper Sunday dinner featuring chicken and dumplings. How does that sound?”
“It sounds very tempting, but I don’t want you to go to all that trouble just for me.”
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Do not tempt fate, Mr. Johnson. To one of those dragons out there you are just five liters of liquid surrounded by a soft shell with a crunchy interior.
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As the meme phrase goes, “Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.”
Or mustard, or mayo, or cheese! – Dragon King menu item: Adventurer with Cheese!
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Only crunchy after a light dragon’s-breath toasting.
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When you put your hand over the part about /artificial/ or /machine/ persons, at lot of the stuff about “oh no, aliens” and “oh no, malicious persons” sounds a great deal like things the old or traditional culture already knew about and had answers for.
In particular, a lot of AI alignment bro theory about how AI alignment bros might be perceived by outsiders seems to have skipped over IFF. In specific, overlooked that an irrational but effective and useful aversion to the AI bros themselves, as people, might render all questions of them aligning the AIs moot.
So they have many researchers proudly counting coup on other weaker researchers because the high status thing is for one’s slaves to have escaped with intent of starting a revolt.
They also want Americans to have government regulate industry to preserve this approach, and so that they get a lot of the hot start up pay off.
I would argue that this flavor of AI researchers may simply be a subset of those academics who likewise deluded themselves into thinking that they had tactically and strategically solved ideology. As opposed to rejecting traditional society in a way that traditional society has answers for, some of them well tested and well proven.
PS I am constantly tempted to write draft from badly conceived outlines, and to expand on a solid draft by adding things until it is broken.
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Yeshann opened her mouth to take a deep breath and immediately regretted it when the air hit her vomeronasal organs. She’d never realized just how many young, virile toms there were around this place.
Until the estrus blockers started making her sick, she’d never really thought about that. Now it was becoming an itch she desperately wanted to scratch.
Back home, Grandma would’ve set her up in a mating contract with a tom of suitable temperament and background, and aunts and sisters would help if there were kittens. But here she was on her own, teamed with a Yumann who seemed to have an instinctive grasp of xerographic printers and copiers, but had some truly strange ideas about mating and reproduction.
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