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: Vyatkin

Seventeen-year-old Afanasiy Vyatkin, orphaned when the Japanese attacked his world, has nowhere to go but the Vyatkin Family House in the capital city of the Alliance.He finds the Great House overwhelmed by refugees.A few nice refugees, an ambitious servant, some retired old men.Outnumbered by the rude, aggressive, bullying refugees, fighting to maintain their status after the disastrous war. Penniless, powerful . . .and dangerous in their desperation to scramble to the top of the ruble heap of their lives..Afanasiy has no trouble separating friends from enemies. And the enemies have underestimated him . . .

FROM MARY CATELLI: Writing and Reflections Volume 3: Essays on the Writing Process from World-Building to Words

Reflections on the many and far-flung fields that writing can touch upon, from original inspiration to the final work.

Magic and science. Talking birds and cats. Ideas and their origins. Magic, in schools, on the battlefield, and whether it is evil. Fairy tales. Exposition. Utopias. Wandering heroes in series. Wicked stepmothers and their motives. And more.

FROM CJ RUSSELL: The Shape of Home (Home, Retirement & Other Misadventures Book 1)

In a future where bringing home a dragon involves months of preparation, Kay and Terry thought they were ready.

They had survived four months of inspections, installed the required safety equipment, studied dragon development, and even convinced the authorities that their dachshund, Queenie, could be trusted around an egg.

Then the egg hatched.

Dimples grows from a tiny purple-and-turquoise hatchling into a full-grown Chinese dragon with strong opinions, a talent for circumventing household rules, and an unquestioned place in the family. Years pass. The household changes. New companions arrive, old routines settle in, and life becomes the comfortable collection of people, animals, arguments, habits, and cookie-related negotiations that Kay thinks of simply as home.

Until one day, home changes shape.

Faced with a future she never planned for, Kay must decide whether home is something you lose—or something you can build again somewhere entirely new.

The Shape of Home is a warm, gently funny science-fiction story about family, grief, dragons, dogs, and starting over when life refuses to follow the plan.

FROM DALE COZORT: Devouring Wind (Exchange Book 2)

“They’re coming for us, from the sky and emptiness.” Ten months ago, technology guru Sharon Mack and her autistic and strangely prescient daughter Bethany were trapped in the wild alternate version of Earth called Bear Country. They took refuge at Fort Eegan, an outpost built by a peculiar cult with mysterious ties to the US government. Now a new Exchange brings terrifying new consequences.

The new Exchange blocks Fort Eegan’s water supply, threatening deprivation now and catastrophic floods in the future. It also pits Fort Eegan against beings with superior technology, inhuman ruthlessness and a weapon capable of devouring everything in its path, including Fort Eegan.

In spite of the danger from the new Exchange, the humans of Bear Country are nearing a war with one another. Ruthless escaped convicts hold hundreds of women hostage. With supplies dwindling, they eye Fort Eegan’s already limited resources. Inside and outside the fort, conflicts fester among the isolated humans, including a deadly love triangle. Fort Eegan’s only hope is to unite before it is blown away by the devouring winds.

FROM HYEOK LIM: No Valid Mandate

Twenty thousand passengers sleep aboard the colony ship Continuance. Only 4,000 can reach the surface—and fifteen randomly chosen jurors must decide who gets those places.

Ethics auditor Mara Venn knows that a survival calculation is not permission. Before the landing window closes, the jurors must write one rule, see the names it selects, and decide whether they have the right to make that choice irreversible.

Then a competing survival list—prepared before the disaster—surfaces. Its authority is doubtful, and Mara’s own unfinished review is part of the evidence. As each new fact changes what the jury can justify, damage keeps shrinking what the ship can physically do. Principles become names. Every delay costs another option. And some of the people arguing hardest for fairness stand to benefit from the rules they defend.

No Valid Mandate is a closed-system science-fiction thriller and fair-play institutional mystery about survival, consent, and the terrifying question of whether anyone has the right to make such a choice.

FROM JOHN BAILEY: The Ambassador Missed the BBQ (The Aurigan Conflict)

A murdered diplomat. A locked room. A stolen corpse. A fraudulent treaty worth trillions.

And the best BBQ in the Quadrant.

Commander Art Bellamy expected a routine diplomatic assignment aboard the USS White House . Instead, he finds himself investigating a murder complicated by diplomatic immunity, manipulated security records, competing governments, corporate corruption, and a mysterious eleven-minute gap.

Someone aboard the ship killed Sir Reginald Percival-Smythe and staged the crime to look like an international assassination.

Then the body disappears.

As Bellamy digs deeper, he discovers that the murder is only one piece of a much larger conspiracy surrounding a treaty that could transfer control of strategic infrastructure worth trillions of credits.

Everyone aboard the White House has something to hide.

The question is which secret matters.

Bellamy isn’t a genius who solves crimes through miraculous flashes of inspiration. He’s a professional investigator who notices the details everyone else overlooks.

And one tiny detail may bring down an enormous conspiracy:

BBQ ash on a pair of diplomatic shoes.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Shadow over Leningrad

In Stalin’s Soviet Union, Tikhon Grigoriev lives a precarious life. He knows too much. He’s seen too much. A single misstep could destroy him, and if he stumbles, he will take his family down with him. With Leningrad besieged by Nazi armies, the danger has only increased.

He’s not a man who wants to come to the notice of those in high places. But when he solved a murder that seemed supernatural, impossible, he attracted the attention of Leningrad’s First Party Secretary.

So when a plot of land grows vegetables of unusual size and vigor, and anyone who eats them goes mad, who should be called upon to solve the mystery but Tikhon Grigoriev. However, these secrets could get him far worse than a bullet in the head. For during the White Nights the boundaries between worlds grow thin, and in some of those worlds humanity can have no place.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: The Lion and the Darkness (Timelines Book 4)

The Long-Awaited Sequel to The Lion in Paradise

At long last, Ariela Rivers Wolff begins her mission to the Simulated Worlds.

As the Martyr of Sardristra, she finds herself in the position of a Joan of Arc, burned at the stake for preaching a sermon of love to a very violent race of . . . blue, four-legged, four-armed, sort-of-horse analogs. Five hundred years later in their history, she finds a totally-reversed welcome as “Saint Ardreyelya” in the country in which she first appeared. Will she be able to prevent the rest of the world from destroying “her” people before she can convert them, too?

As the Goddess of Mahoukai, she finds herself the deity of a world religion in a world governed by magic. And like all worlds with magic, inevitably there is a Demon Lord. She’ll have to deal with that Demon Lord before the world of Mahoukai can be realized into the True Universe . . . but in the event, the Demon Lord is an infiltrated agent of the very enemies she is sworn to fight in the real world. Can The Lion of God take on a Darkness, single-handed? If not, it may spell doom for the inhabitants of Mahoukai – and for herself.

FROM ELISE HYATT: Dipped, Stripped and Dead (Daring Finds)

DEAD MAN’S REFINISH Some people find antiques. Dyce Dare finds trouble.

Ever tried fishing a Victorian sideboard out of a dumpster only to hook a dead body instead? Welcome to Dyce Dare’s life, where nothing goes according to plan—and never has.

At six, she wanted to be a ballerina (until gravity repeatedly suggested otherwise). At ten, she dreamed of lion taming (until Fluffy the cat staged a mutiny). Now at twenty-nine, she’s just trying to keep her furniture refinishing business afloat so she can upgrade her son’s diet from “pancakes” to “anything else, please.”

But when her latest dumpster dive yields a half-melted corpse instead of salvageable furniture, Dyce reluctantly adds “amateur detective” to her lengthy resume of career failures. Because nothing says “responsible single mom” like poking around a murder investigation, right?

Between dodging danger, dealing with her quirky neighbors, and trying not to embarrass herself in front of a certain handsome police officer, Dyce is about to discover that her talent for refinishing furniture might just extend to refinishing crime scenes.

Dipped, Stripped and Dead – Sometimes the best way to clean up your life is to solve a murder.

(Warning: May contain splinters, sarcasm, and one very determined single mom who definitely didn’t plan on any of this.)

FROM STEPHEN KRUEGER: Law Future

The anthology has 25 original legal science-fiction stories: 3 short-short stories, 18 short stories, 2 novelettes, and 2 novellas. Plus 1 original preface, 1 original essay, and 1 original Post Scriptum.“Science fiction” intends a recital, the foundation of which is a yet-to-be technology. Usual yet-to-be technologies are space travel, time travel, and terraforming.
“Legal” intends that a substantive law matter is central to a recital.
The target audiences are lawyers and sci-fi readers. To that end, excellent writing prevails. There is not a single blasphemous, scatological, or reproductive word in the anthology. An aficionado or aficionada of quality legal fiction and of first-rate science fiction will be happy with the anthology.

FROM ROSS HATHAWAY: Grimm’s Anatomy : Stay, Don’t Stare

Welcome to Mercy General. Please state your name, your symptoms, and whether your condition is currently metaphorical.
Dr. Tessa Ward thought she was leaving trauma surgery for something quieter.
She was wrong.
Mercy General’s East Annex is home to Supernatural Pathology, the department where medicine meets the things ordinary hospitals prefer not to put on the billing form. Its waiting room may contain a werewolf with sinusitis, a vampire arguing with Insurance, a haunted umbrella, or someone whose curse has become visible on an X-ray.
Under the watchful eye of veteran nurse Hattie Boone, Tessa learns quickly that supernatural medicine has rules of its own.
A diagnosis can change a patient.
Observation can become pressure.
A story recognized too confidently can turn into a cage.
And sometimes the most dangerous thing a doctor can do is decide she already knows what role the patient is supposed to play.
When a series of narrative injuries begins overwhelming the East Annex, Tessa and her increasingly improbable team must invent a new kind of medicine on the fly. Their patients include people being rewritten by fairy tales, transformed by other people’s expectations, trapped inside identities they never chose, and treated as symbols when what they desperately need is to be treated as people.

FROM LEE ECKHARDT: SHADOWS of the FUTURE: A Science Fiction Novel

Young Kenji Ansara desires, more than anything, two things in life: first to become an interstellar archeologist and second to study the enigmatic race humans call the Buiders. In all the galaxy there is only one sign of the Builders, on the frozen planet Eiskonig; there are no others. Where did the Builders come from, and why did they leave only a few small structures behind, structures made of a material human science has been unable to analyze? Do the Builders still exist, and, if so, where are they? These are mysteries Kenji aches to solve.
Then his chance comes. Another Builder site has been discovered on a world many light-years away; an exploration team is being formed and Kenji will be part of it. But others are racing Kenji’s expedition to the new planet, people who want the Builders advanced technology for themselves. People who are willing to kill to possess it…

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: FLAP