I am a novelist with work published in science fiction, fantasy, mystery and historical "novelized biography". I've won the Prometheus award and the Dragon award. I also write under the names Elise Hyatt and Sarah D'Almeida. http://sarahahoyt.com/
Yuri Popov was born and raised on a primitive Research World, where his scientist dad and uncle worked, avoiding the rest of the family.
But as he approaches his eighteenth birthday, it’s time to meet that family, and deal with a culture having more trouble adjusting to the new reality, than Yuri the Tiger Hunter will have dealing with a modern society.
For nearly ten years, Surela “Rel” Silin Eddings has been plying the galactic waters on the merchant vessel Earthrise, picking up sundries for the home system from which she remains exiled… and enjoying herself despite it. How else, with a congenial crew, dozens of worlds to explore, and so many things to learn? Most days, she can even forget she’s a criminal to her own people, and that’s the way she likes it. The last thing Surela wants is a new mission… particularly one that involves haring off into the unknown reaches of space in search of an Eldritch from a House predisposed to hate her for her misdeeds. But the Empress has decided one of the Eldritch’s waywards needs to come home, and Surela’s the woman to fetch her.As usual, nothing goes as planned…
High above Earth, the privately funded Aurora III space station represents the next step in human progress—clean energy, advanced research, and confidence born of flawless simulations.
When a revolutionary experiment known as Project Helios Seed is activated, the crew expects routine success. Instead, they encounter something no model predicted: a hybrid organic–silicon system that adapts faster than human oversight can contain.
As subtle anomalies multiply and safeguards quietly erode, the crew of Aurora III must confront a growing truth—technology that feels familiar can still become dangerous when its limits are assumed rather than enforced. With time running out and Earth preparing drastic countermeasures, the station’s crew faces a final test of responsibility, restraint, and courage.
The Quiet Orbit: The Aurora III Incident is a calm, suspenseful science-fiction novel in the tradition of classic mid-century stories—where professionalism matters, heroism is measured, and survival depends not on panic, but on doing things the right way.
On a remote mining station, Nyalin hides a secret that would make her a hunted woman—she is a Crystal Keeper, a protector of a shard of the powerful Starfire crystal. However, when a strange shuttle falls through a portal near the mining station, she can no longer avoid her responsibilities. The human pilot, Vellin, is part of a research team that has developed gateways for instant travel anywhere in the universe without requiring a Starfire crystal, and he has been followed by an enemy through the portal.
To stop dangerous forces from possessing the gateways to spread destruction, Nya must team up with Vel and risk exposing her secret. In their race to destroy the gateways, they will find allies and enemies… and a new reason to worry.
The name’s Chloe Fortebat, and I don’t understand this place at all.
First I helped Maxim kill a werewolf, then I kissed him, and then I found out that he was about twice as old as he looked. Now Maxim is about to be crowned King of the Stormcrows aboard a luxury airship, and I am invited, even though things are pretty awkward between us right now. But this ship feels more like a cage with each passing hour. A passenger’s horse has turned up missing. A crewman has turned up dead. And before it all started, I heard noises in the cargo hold. But Maxim has a mind as sharp as my banishing dagger, and between us, we will take down whatever monster is stalking this airship.
My name is Dr. Maxim os Storm, and I hunt the beasts that haunt the night.
With my coronation only hours away, something stalks the shadows of this vessel: a monster that answers to a human being. But who, and for what purpose? Despite our recent complications, Chloe’s courage and loyalty make her my strongest ally. The crown of the Stormcrows may await me, but first, we have a mystery to solve. Together.
For fans of Lindsay Buroker and Patricia Briggs, here is a dual POV gaslamp fantasy with monster hunting, a slow-burn romance subplot, and a reluctant king facing his destiny. Book 2 of the Hunter Healer King Trilogy.
A choir girl cast into the Pit through an egregious clerical error Her strapping Guardian Angel A condemned hitman … and Derek
–a crossroads demon who’s been secretly storing up power for millennia.
He wants revenge on everyone on his extensive list, from Lucifer all the way up to Daddy and every devil and angel between. It’s a frankly impossible goal for a low-level guy like him, but “dream big” is his motto and sheer spite keeps him going.
Now he’s stuck escorting three idiots through Hell—and Derek has a history with the angel, thanks very much. An infernal rebellion looms along with a premature Armageddon, and the black and withered thing Derek used to call a conscience rears its stupid, stupid head. He’s faced with a choice.
Rescue friends he never thought he’d make from a boss he never really thought he’d defy, at the possible cost of his life, such as it is…
When his company demands either a move to Mars or the loss of his job, perpetual plaintiff Lewis Ostrow finds he can’t even get a ticket to the world without lawyers.
Space Bats & Butterflies pulls together an eclectic collection of seventeen of the best alternate history or time-travel stories, book excerpts, essays and world-building exercises from the ninety-plus issues of a long-running Alternate History zine. • An alternate World War II-The Moscow Option-1942. • Was a Japanese invasion of Hawaii possible? • Could you do a better job than Roosevelt in the lead-up to Pearl Harbor? • Alternate timelines and the Prime Directive Fiction stories and excerpts: • Modern-day US finds an alternate timeline where the Roman Empire stagnated and Europe never reached the New World. It’s 1492 all over again, but this time with an entire new world to exploit. • Outnumbered four to one, New England’s Indians make one last doomed attempt to push the English into the see, but this time they have a dangerous ally who may help them win. • The Space Bats don’t want to invade Earth. They just collect unique human minds the way we collect rare coins. • Red Potter is unemployed, homeless and humanity’s last desperate chance in a time war that has lasted a million years. • World War II Europe meets an alternate North America cut off from the rest of the world since the middle of the American Revolution. • A boy and girl from alternate realities become friends, but they can’t both be real.
Cherchez la femme, they told McBride. Find the woman. He hit the trail in the suburbs of L.A., and wound up in the heart of Montana; in the heart of a bitter, bullet-baited gubernatorial election; in the heart of the one woman he would have given his life to put behind bars.
This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving the book historical and genre context.
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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.
Ah, Europe, so close to Marx, so far from G-d. And sanity. And freedom. And–
This is not how I wanted to spend my Christmas day, but here we are. This happened: State Dept. Bars Five Europeans for ‘Extraterritorial Censorship of Americans’ and the worst kind of Europeans lost their tiny addled minds and took to twitter to pound their pigeon chests, show off their three chest hairs and attempt to wag their shriveled micro penises in our faces.
Which in turn gave me heartburn and caused me to slap them around twitter like a cat with a catnip-infused mouse. This is probably not the charitable attitude I should exhibit on a holy day. But here we are.
Faced with stuff like this:
I had to respond. All the wrong assumptions and unearned superiority in that post are so densely packed they could easily cause a black hole to spontaneously occur. (And probably have. in the poster’s mind.)
I didn’t even answer all of them with this: Unfortunately we ALSO have a welfare system Our higher education is about as rotten as yours, because you can’t help guzzling up what ours puts out. But I guess ours is more creative? Europe has sucky public transport, but since they all live on top of each other, they can all travel in sardine cans. Europe has “higher life expectancy” because they kill a lot of babies born at marginal weights. Europe has lower cost of living and WORTH EVERY PENNY — it sucks. They’re not even aware how much it thoroughly sucks and how constrained. However, more power to them. Europe has cheap health care. You get what you pay for. And the last time they innovated in anything is… the nineteenth century, I think. Europe has constrained speech codes Europe is committing suicide through their belief in the cult of global warming. I used to be European and I CAN say this: Europe is like being an adolescent who is profoundly depressed and on the verge of committing suicide, while throwing a tantrum about not being the best ever. They’re senescent teens. I wouldn’t live there for double the money and half the time. Thank you for playing though. We DO need a sucky example of how not to commit suicide by socialism. You did not live in vain.
But I could have unpacked a lot more. Like say, the fact our life expectancy mostly refer to recent imports having it out with other recent imports, or higher accidents caused by recent imports, or–
Seriously. the myopia is amazing. The truly fun part was in the responses to his post idiot Europeans saying “I visited America. I would never want to live there.” From which I have to assume they’re either lying with every tooth in their mouths, or that they visited East St. Louis, Detroit, and the South side of Chicago, exclusively. Or they think our homeless are homeless through lack of housing or the inherent cruelty of the system or whatever, instead of because they live in a society so affluent and full of charitable people that they can afford to be drug-addled raccoons in human form.
The truth is that the first time I read The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress and Heinlein said that there was nothing in the Soviet Union that The US didn’t have bigger and better in Podunk, I rolled to disbelieve. I was, after all, European at the time and I had no idea what Podunk was like. Now? I’d extend that to ALL OF EUROPE.
Children. I’d rather live in a low-income trailer park in the US than in a luxury high rise in Europe. Much of the same problems, but in the US there would be a pathway up and out and fairly easy if you stay off drugs, are willing to work your ass off and don’t disdain those trying to help you up.
While in Europe there simply isn’t a way up. They’re bound up with self-righteousness that demands they commit suicide. And their media lies about the US so much they have no idea there is an alternative to their suicide by socialism.
It’s like talking to people who say “Well, of course we drink a little bit of poison at every meal. What would you want us to do? Guzzle the whole bottle at once?” And they can’t hear you when you shout “JUST STOP TAKING THE POISON.” Because they heard that over here where we don’t take the poison — or to be fair, take less poison than they do — we’re dying like flies. AND THEY NEVER CHECK.
More shocking though, is the spate of telling us that we’re SOMEHOW controlling their speech by not letting them control ours. It’s bizarre and makes you fell like you fell down a rabbit hole.
I think their belief they can somehow discern “bad speech” and “things that shouldn’t be said” is at best naive, and at worst outright evil.
To any European reading this: it’s not that we believe everything everyone says is good or true. It’s that we believe when all speech is legal, the bad nonsense — say the Communist manifesto, or Mein Kampf — obviously shows itself for nonsense.
Also, that we don’t trust anyone to make the decision on what we should see or read. After all, Biden tried to create a disinformation czar, mostly to silence people like me about how Covid wasn’t really a lethal pandemic and how the vaccine was worse than the disease. Gestures at what has come out the last three years. As I was saying: when people decide what is true and control speech, it’s easy to fall down the rabbit hole of your leaders’ crazy beliefs.
In this case I’d like to point out to everyone from Great Britain that just because your king wants you to go extinct/be genetically swamped it doesn’t mean he’s right. Also he’s an idiot who doesn’t understand what culture is and how it affects people.
BUT beyond all that, if Europeans want to keep their people blindfolded and keep feeding them lies about the US, that’s as may be. They just can’t ask us to do it for them. They can restrict their people’s internet access like China does.
And they certainly can’t come over here AGAINST OUR LAWS and punish our people for things that are within the law for us. That’s a no no. It would be a no no even if they were at parity of force with us, but they’re not. If they piss us off, we can swat them and not even feel it.
Which is why they’re trying to use moral superiority.
Will never happen, obviously. Well, barring divine intervention, which is what the song refers to, obviously. Because peace on Earth, on the whole Earth depends on “If only everybody” and never in the history of ever has everybody done anything including “don’t drop anvils on your foot on purpose” or anything else blindingly obvious.
So we’ll pray for peace on Earth, but let’s concentrate on the other half of that verse “good will to men.”
Look, it’s not very clear if it’s good will to men from men or good will to men from G-d.
Given in the earliest myths of mankind various goddlings extinguished mankind because it made too much noise, it is perfectly possible that our subconscious considers goodwill to men from G-d almost at the level of miracle of Peace on Earth.
But the truth is even good will to men from men is very hard.
Because you start out with the best of intentions and then the other person takes advantage and you’ll never have good will again because what if those so and sos take advantage of us? Particularly if they already have? And they have….
So, you know….
That’s where we are, and I don’t blame anyone for not trusting the so and sos. I don’t trust them either. They’ve gone past shenanigans against us and embraced full blown evil sometime ago. No, I haven’t forgotten the no so subtle push for cannibalism the last few years of the auto pen.
As long as the left continues committed to evil, to the point they’d take poison if we said poison is bad, we can’t extend good will. Extending good will is asking to be destroyed.
However–
There’s always an however, isn’t there? There are people waking up on that side. More and more every day it seems like.
Are they with us? Well, no they aren’t. Their mental model is still entirely Marxist and some of them will go very, very wrong. BUT when they first start changing, when they first back away from full psychosis, go ahead, extend good will.
Half the time it won’t be worth it. The other half? it will be glorious. Let’s not forget that the most effective people on the right were once on the left, including Thomas Sowell and Ronald Reagan (And Trump. I mean, for these days he’s on the right. Or at least he’s the flag of the right.) Arguably even me, since I was raised European and you don’t get more left than that.
Give the hatchlings a chance. Half of them will turn into scorpions, but the other half are eagles in waiting. (Who is running around with the My Little Genetics Kit again?)
In that sense good will is not only possible, but it’s the sanest, most rational, most self-interested thing you can do.
Extend the hand of welcome and watch carefully. It takes time to extripate Marxism from mind and heart, even if you’re trying. it is, after all, acculturation, which means it’s like dying and being reborn.
With wisdom and gentleness, maybe we can snatch some brands from the fire.
I’ve been a little… not here for the last three days or so. The truth is that the house is on the verge of becoming unlivable to me. No, not in the sense that we need major renovations. (We do need to have a roofer take a look, but that’s something else.)
It’s more that we moved in a hurry for various reasons. (We were supposed to take six months, and spend a week each place, but health and weirdness dictated a pack everything, sort on the other end, strategy. (Never a good thing.)
And then I never really had time to fully unpack and sort, on top of which I spent the last year being sick and highjacked by a novel (not that the second part is much better now) and–
And for someone who most of the time can’t even and just throws things in the nearest available location, I don’t do very well in unstructured, much less messy environments. The house isn’t normally dirty, (there are weeks) but it is cluttered with totally random piles of stuff, to the point we can’t even figure out where things are, and sometimes have to rebuy. More importantly several rooms are unusuable: the living room was never unpacked and right now the guest room is full of stuff that needs to be sorted. The supposed to be hobby and art room has become a dump site for “drop things here” and … and I can’t live like this.
For reasons of “I have to paint the front door before I do the dishes” (You know what I mean. Sometimes tasks have to be chained, and it’s not even logical from the outside, but it’s how it has to be) I started with our bedroom. The idea being that we have a huge master bedroom, and very well lit and I need a place to sew. Right now the sewing stuff is making the guest bedroom semi-unusable AND can’t be used for sewing because it’s dark and cramped. SO–
So I’ll move the sewing stuff up, and put it under the bed, put the under the bed storage (not much. My wedding dress, my citizenship skirt suit and such) under the guest bed, and make our bedroom more useable.
Except the bedroom still had the last three unopened boxes, and a bunch of things piled on them because the closet is definitely inadequate.
Oh, there was also a bin that as full of random stuff, a chair that needed to be put on the curb and– SO MUCH STUFF. Among other things, what was under our bed included several bins of jeans that don’t fit me. These were things I unpacked and put under the bed in the last 3 years. WHY? I don’t know. I mean, these aren’t designer jeans or anything, just jeans that don’t fit me.
Took me two days to clean the bedroom.
In the process I did a rigorous evaluation of “will I ever wear this again” and took … well. Two back-of-the-SUV-fulls to the local goodwill. Next up is the hobby room which is unusable through too much stuff. It will probably start getting done after Christmas. (I still have cookies to make.)
And this brought up a curious thing: hobbies. I have supplies for more hobbies than I’ll EVER engage in. Hobbies and books.
I realized that I don’t really have time to do most of the things I have materials for, or even any interest in doing them.
Which brings up: Why the heck do I have them?
Well. That led to a trip down the rabbit hole.
Some of them I did for a while back in Colorado, some as long as ten years ago. Then for whatever reason lost interest or stopped having time. One of these was egg carving. I wanted to do egg carving, and continued trying until…. until I could do it. And then went completely cold on it. Just no interest.
Other stuff, I just used to enjoy playing with and now don’t because our life has changed. It was one thing to sit down where the kids were doing their homework and paint stuff, but now I really don’t have a place to paint.
Art… well, I could do it, but the drive to do it seems to have gone. I might at some point enroll in classes again, so not getting rid of all art materials.
However, at the bottom of it, what I realized was that I bought supplies, etc. for a lot of crafts that I’ve only played at, because fundamentally, at the heart I thought that writing was about played out. I think I’ve admitted I considered retiring in 2018. I was so burned out it wasn’t even funny, and I thought indie would never make enough money.
Well, crafting pulls from the same place as writing, so I could silence the stories and just make cute stuff.
This was never an expressed idea, but I realize now it was always back there, which is why buying craft supplies and learning new crafts was such an obsession. When it all blew up, I could get crafting immediately.
Well… How do I put this delicately?
No Man’s Land has changed everything. No, it hasn’t made me rich, even if it is a steady seller, but I’ve made more than I would from trad pub already. And more importantly, it “unburned” me. De-crispified me. And showed me what something can do if I do what other people would probably consider “mild” promotion.
So–
So I really don’t have time for crafts and for the last six months have felt guilty over how much I’ve spent on materials over the years and felt I had to do them so I could get rid of the supplies.
But my time is better employed in writing, editing, publishing, learning how to publish more effectively, and helping friends with their writing.
I mean, not just that will make me money (though that helps) but it is what I actually WANT to do.
Which I guess is why the hobby room has become so cluttered as I piled everything in it trying to hide it.
Yesterday I realized all those supplies have already served their purpose. No, seriously. Look, their purpose was to make me less anxious about what would happen if I couldn’t write anymore. And they’ve served admirably. BUT THEY DON’T OWN ME.
So, a lot of kids of huns are getting craft and art supplies. I’m keeping some art books, but honestly they probably can move downstairs to the library. I’m keeping the charcoals, the pencils and the pastels, because I’d like to go back to drawing portraits very slowly since I don’t have much time. I’m pretty much ditching everything else and about 1/2 the sewing supplies. (I’ll still sew, mind you, and might even make stuff to sell, but not…. not consistently and not as an obligation.) Most of what I’m keeping is stuff I can do on the sofa in the evening, when I’m out words: crochet and cross stitch and such.
The rest goes out. In boxes. With instructional books.
Just deciding that was enormously freeing. I CAN do stuff, but I don’t HAVE to do stuff. It’s not a job.
Because it’s important, sometimes, to not think in words, I can take a day a week and sew something or play with drawing someone. BUT it’s not mandatory. And if I succeed in reducing the hobby stuff enough, it’s 3 to 5 boxes when next we move (sewing is probably ten, mind you) and no big deal. And the hobby room with be useable for my art (and for Little Pickle to do her pricing and such which she doesn’t have room for in their place.)
I don’t need to feel like I HAVE to do things. Hobbies are not jobs. I don’t owe it to the supplies to use them.
Why am I sharing this? Because the last five years changed people’s lives. A lot. And probably changed all your lives too. Things and hobbies and ways of spending time changed.
Perhaps you too have a bunch of clutter in your house that you feel obligated to?
If so, don’t be afraid to part with it. Even the jeans that don’t fit anymore.
Look, I’m not a minimalist. I have tons of things that don’t spark joy but are needed. And besides minimalism is a luxury belief. It only works if you’re sure you can buy it again if you need it, no matter how suddenly.
BUT when you can’t find anything or use entire rooms in your house because it’s full of stuff you’ll never use again? Let it go.
It feels wonderful. It is however eating my life. After the New year I’ll make a goal of a room a week and take a couple hours a day to deal with things. (Except the living room/library. It’s going to take a month. But that’s life.)
This might be jumping the gun on New Year’s, but look around. What will free you if you let it go?
I’m not going to tell you that AI doesn’t have hallucinations. I know it does.
Not just midje, which sometimes decides everyone walks backwards every time, but even when writing ONLY blurbs with AI (look, if I didn’t do that, I’d put up book blurbs that say “yeah, this certainly is a book” so I either bother my first readers to write them, or run them by AI) you have to tell it not to cite imaginary reviews in imaginary publications.
So, yes, AI hallucinates. But frankly, that only makes it appear to be more human than it is or could be. (It’s not human, it’s not sentient, it’s not out to get you.) because humans hallucinate too.
So, to begin with, the TPUSA event? Well…. it’s a private organization started by a man whose motto was “I’ll talk to anyone”.
Of course they let Tucker come and talk. That’s their thing. I mean, look, they’d probably let Occasional Cortex come and talk if she asked. Because there’s nothing that exposes crazy cakes and evil as letting them talk. In that sense, I have nothing against it. There is no use getting riled up about it.
Treat Tucker as you’d treat any crazy on the left. It’s just crazy. And he’s obviously — paid? Possessed? Who knows? — become a shill for islamofacism, which is at least as bad as communism and worse in places. (And his other ardent love, paid or not is super Stronk! So.)
Point and laugh, people, point and laugh.
What it isn’t: A sign of schism on the right.
Sure, that’s what the left is selling, but I’ve told you this before, you are not OBLIGATED to buy what they sell. “But Fox News.” Yes, like Tucker, Fox News is not on your side. (I realized this as they reported Trump’s address to the nation as “trying to shore up his splintering coalition.”
There is no splintering coalition. There never was. for one, we’re not so much a coalition as a bunch of people who found a life raft to get away from the sea of crazy that was drowning us. We were never one. We don’t need to be one. We’re not leftists. We’ll row together as long as we’re going the same way, and pitch people overboard when they’re being crazy. (It’s easier to point and laugh if they’re not on the raft.)
This is not cancelling. I never said “don’t let Tucker talk.” I said, answer his speech vigorously. even if the vigor goes into quack quack quack giggle.
The problem I’m having is that people on our side are buying the bullshit, and thinking there is a huge groyper contingent, and that we absolutely need to worry about splintering the movement in two and…
And that psyops wasn’t even aimed at US. Sure, the left thought we might all jump on the groyper bandwagon because they project and think we’re all REALLY secretly racist, sexist, homophobic and anti-semitic. However the psy ops is because they’ve revealed themselves as major anti-semites and they want to convince Jews the right is worse. That’s it. It’s not even Jews who are on the right. They’re just trying to keep the lefty Jews in the plantation.
We’re not the target. Stop ringing your hands. The “falling apart” is an hallucination. We were never together, except in trying to get the crazy away from us. And while Tucker at least appeared to be OF us at one time, now he isn’t.
Here I must interject that a lot of bloggers and pundits on the right go crazy eventually. (Yes, I did have a big advantage, starting out as an SF/F writer. I’m more used to managing the crazy since sanity is a negotiated thing.) I am sure although I’m not going to mention it we all remember one very prominent case who lost his mind in the blog wars.
Look, the job doesn’t pay much, is stressful as heck, and you have to work under a CONTINUOUS barrage of slander and hate. It’s amazing more of us don’t crack wide.
BUT the whole “rising antisemitism” on the right is an hallucination worthy of an AI. There is a small group of the same ol’ pundits and their groupies. And it’s been proven (the Nick Fuentes thing) most of it is being bolstered paid for and given the appearance of support by our adversaries abroad. Which is why gnashing your teeth about it now is stupid.
As is the “falling apart.”
It’s curious to note these hallucinations are achieved the same way as AI hallucinations: by planting a lot of false information everywhere, via bots and the fifty cent (or kopek) army so that the people not paying attention catch it in the air and get the “there’s no smoke without fire” syndrome and start imagining vast hordes of anti-Semites out in the hinterlands. (I mean, there are some. We’re a continent sized nation. There’s some of EVERYTHING.)
Yeah, there will be some anti-Israel sentiment planted, because they pile on on the back of USAID without realizing that what Israel does is test weapons for us. (And also they pay for those.)
Vance? Well, he’s a little taken up with the hallucination and calling for unity. You have to forgive him. Remember he came from the ivy leagues. He might not be a leftist, but he was around them a lot. So he’s afraid we’ll start witch hunts and cannibal fests like the left does.
And we ABSOLUTELY SHOULDN’T DO THAT.
The crazies are the crazies, and they’re obvious. And we shouldn’t silence them. Just point and laugh, people. Point and laugh.
Meanwhile back at the ranch does any of you ever wonder about these “outrages” being ginned up when something bad just came out about the left? Like photos of Bill Clinton in the Epstein trove? Because you should.
When the media force feeds you “The right is in trouble” look at what was just revealed about the left, and point at that.
I’m running for doctors’ appointments, but please, please, please, take the word of the chronic depressive who reality checks ALL THE TIME. There is no big falling apart. There is no big anti-Semitic push on the right. Yes, there is that on the left, but it was always there. They just let the mask slip.
Be not afraid. Go bake some cookies. You’ll feel better.
Dragon shifter Tom Ormson wanted two things: to serve killer souvlaki at his Colorado diner and enjoy married life with his pregnant panther-shifter wife. Instead, he got unwanted psi powers and a dragon triad syndicate demanding his leadership.
When Kyrie’s grandfather is found murdered, police officer Rafiel—Tom and Kyrie’s closest friend—must solve the case while being pulled into a power struggle for lion clan leadership. With all shifter clans in turmoil, separating allies from suspects becomes a deadly game.
The suspect list grows wilder by the minute: murderous chicken shifters, a skull-collecting otter who teaches art history, a Minotaur delivery man, chaos-causing spider monkeys, and an alligator shifter who might be a double agent. Meanwhile, Rafiel’s dragon girlfriend visiting town might get caught in the crossfire.
In Goldport, Colorado, the special of the day comes with a side of shapeshifter chaos. Just don’t ask about the capybara incident.
It is New Year’s Day in Goldport Colorado, the most shifter-infested town in the known universe. At the George — the diner where shifters gather — Kyrie is about to give birth, Tom is getting psychic messages from the Great Sky Dragon and Rafiel is looking for information on why the mayor exploded. Fasten your seat belts. This is going to be a fast ride into adventure and shape-shifting, after which things will never be the same.
A collection of short stories by Award-Winning Author Sarah A. Hoyt. From parallel worlds where pulp dreams become reality to futures where bioengineered humans spark both conflict and heroism, from an alternate Tudor England to the tangled complexities of time wars—this science fiction collection offers glimpses of worlds undreamed. Some visions will haunt you. Others will inspire hope you’ll wish could be real. With the vivid storytelling and slambang adventure that has earned her recognition in Analog, Asimov’s, and Weird Tales, Hoyt delivers fiction marked by rational optimism—a rarity in genre works. Her stories celebrate the worth of the individual against the sweep of history, featuring characters who face impossible odds yet never surrender their humanity. Several stories are set in her Prometheus Award-winning Darkship universe. With an introduction by Science Fiction Author Sabrina Chase
The collection contains the stories: Wait Until The War Is Over, Only The Lonely, Lost, Neptune’s Orphans, After the Sabines, The Serpent’s Tail, Spinning Away, The Private Wound, Super Lamb Banana, To Learn To Forget, Things Remembered, The Bombs Bursting in Air, On A Far Distant Shore, So Little And So Light.
Note I put both the last two of the Shifters’ series on sale because they’re one long continuous story, really.
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, by clicking through and buying (anything, 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.– SAH
Christmas In Time: Six Stories of Time Travel and Second Chances
Time is not an Ocean. But then again it is.
From award-winning author Sarah A. Hoyt come six tales of time travel, parallel worlds, and the furthest reaches of space—all bound together by Christmas miracles and the choices that define us.
Meet Time Corps agents who risk madness to prevent reality from splintering. Follow a mathematician pulled into a parallel universe where his twin captains starships between worlds. Watch as mysterious children arrive from impossible futures, and discover Victorian lighthouses that serve as anchors in the storm of time itself. Journey from blood-soaked space stations to asteroid colonies at the edge of the known universe.
This collection includes “What Child Is This,” a prequel to Hoyt’s acclaimed novel No Man’s Land, revealing how a child’s accidental time-slip can save a man’s life and create the bonds of family love.
Love in all the wrong places – Caro Robertson was a professional researcher, employee and occasional on-air reporter for a national public radio outlet; the perfect job, the perfect condo, the perfect fiancée. She had the college education, the job, the social position, the perfect life … and then in one fell swoop, everything went sour. Wrong. Disastrously wrong. In the space of a single week, she lost her beloved pet, the perfect fiancée and then her job. What was left for her, but to return to Alder Grove, the little town in Texas where she lived as a child and try to rebuild that life and a new career? Mark Bascomb – owner of a small fabrication business, small-town handyman, veteran and high-school drop-out; everything in life that Caro Robertson wasn’t. Could they find common ground with each other, a common interest, even love, when they are so different? Find out when the sparks fly in Alder Grove, in this short romance novel by the author of the Chronicles of Luna City, and the Adelsverein Trilogy.
The treasured anadi who must learn what it means to choose… the mysterious chenji whose magic comes at a terrible price… the jeweler who finds that love requires facing the unknowable future… and the Claw of the empire who discovers that loyalty has limits. Clays Upon the Sands, volume 2 in the Jokka Clays series, collects seven more stories of the Jokka of Ke Bakil, an alien species with two chances to change sexes: female, neuter or male… a species where destiny and biology intertwine in ways both beautiful and heartbreaking. Whether it’s accepting an unwanted Turning, defying an empire’s cruelty, or learning that some truths can only be spoken in the dark, each Jokkad must navigate the complex currents of identity, duty, and desire.
Seven voices. Seven transformations. A world where nothing is certain but change itself. Come explore.
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 Diamond Tail Ranch was supposed to be a sure-fire money-making business enterprise. Former Senator Nearing had convinced many friends back East to invest in it. But it has been losing money for five years or more.
Fresh of a hitch in the Navy, Ed Barrett hires onto the Diamond Ranch to try his hand as a cowpuncher. And also to check up on his family’s investment, now his responsibility since his father died while he was in the service. Why isn’t the ranch paying? Who is rustling the cattle? And what is the hold that the foreman, Findlay, has over former Senator Nearing?
George Washington Ogden’s well-constructed tale is full of gun-blazing action, rip-roaring adventure, and well-observed detail from a period he lived through himself.
The Long Fight
For years, old Solomon Heiskell told anyone who would listen that his land had oil in it. After years of drilling, and finding nothing but dirt and rock, his son Ared gave up the dream and took up sheep farming, even as so much oil was being discovered a few miles away that Oil City sprang up overnight. But when his flock is slaughtered in the night, and his father vanishes, Ared uses his remaining capital to buy a drilling rig and hire out to any of the smaller landowners in the area that will have him. The big money doesn’t want competition from wildcatters, they want control. And his father’s reputation as an eccentric shadows the son.
But come what may, Ared Heiskell has signed on for — The Long Fight!
The Trail Rider
In the heart of Kansas, Texas Hartwell arrives seeking a fresh start, only to be drawn into a web of deceit and danger. Hired as a trail rider, Hartwell’s life takes a dark turn when he is framed for introducing infected cattle onto the range. As accusations fly and tensions rise, Hartwell must fight to clear his name while navigating a landscape rife with betrayal and unexpected alliances.
Amidst the chaos, Hartwell finds solace in his love for Sallie McCoy, the dedicated schoolteacher who sees the truth in his eyes. Yet, his path is complicated by Fannie Goodnight, a woman caught in the crosshairs of the cattle rustlers, who harbors a secret affection for him. Uncle Boley, the loyal bootmaker, stands steadfast by Hartwell’s side, offering unwavering support in the face of adversity.
Hartwell must confront his enemies, unmask the traitors, reclaim his honor and protect those he loves.
Join Texas Hartwell on a journey of redemption and resilience, where the line between friend and foe is blurred, and the true measure of a man is tested.
In the shadows between law and chaos, there are always men willing to get their hands dirty… but even the roughest men have lines they won’t cross. From rain-soaked city streets to war-torn alien landscapes, from 1940s Arizona to cyberpunk futures, these stories follow enforcers, fixers, and hard cases who make their living in the gray areas of justice. When push comes to shove and everything is on the line, they face the ultimate question: What separates a man doing his job from the monsters he fights? The answer lies in where they refuse to compromise, that line that defines who they are when all other choices have been stripped away. Dive into tales of detectives battling shadows and saving innocents; protagonists drawing moral lines in corrupt worlds; private eyes and ex-soldiers facing impossible choices, and learn what it means for a man to be High Class Muscle.
Returned from long years in interstellar space to longer decades missed on Earth, a starship’s crew face their biggest obstacle yet: Human Resources.
Fresh off their victorious defense of a starship captain on mutiny charges, attorneys Calvin Tondini and Sara Seastrom must now pivot to a new challenge: defending the same starship crew’s hard-earned salaries. Bureaucrats citing relativity want to apply a different clock than bargained for in the crew’s original contract.
Whatever may be said about Einstein, time, and space, the crew’s attorneys know that money isn’t relative.
Check out Took Their Wages for a sober analysis of this timely question.
Crack Of Thunder; Swing Of Fate is set in central Florida in the spring of 1998. It is a teen sports story that follows the journey of 12-year-old Patrick Collins as he navigates the challenges of participating for the first time on a Little League baseball team, the Yankees. Based on actual events the story explores themes of personal growth, teamwork, rivalry, and the pursuit of excellence. Successful as a player on a physically demanding Pop Warner football team Patrick is skilled on the gridiron at making rapid decisions on the fly. New to the sport of league baseball, Patrick struggles with the batting, catching and throwing skills required. His greatest struggle is the intense confrontation between pitcher and batter. Mother Nature threatens the Yankees success. Spring and summer thunderstorms in Florida equal the world’s maximum thunderstorm areas of equatorial Africa and the Amazon basin. Mother nature can determine which team wins.
Professor Harold Pippinger is close to the end of a long career. He dreams of retiring with an “emeritus” title. But his hopes are upended after one of his students, an angry young woman named Mona Morrisset, accuses him of sexual harassment. He is suspended from the teaching that he loves and tossed into the looking-glass world of Title IX enforcement, where no one in the all-powerful Office of Diversity and Inclusion will tell him exactly what he’s done. Meanwhile, Mona realizes she’s set more powerful forces in motion than she intended. She’s tortured by second thoughts. If only she’d waited, given herself time to think before calling the Bias Response Team. Her anguish increases when the case leaks and violent protests erupt over what campus feminists see as the school’s endemic sexism. When the mayhem gains the attention of state lawmakers, the future of the entire college is thrown into doubt. Harold twists in the wind as he awaits the decision of the Special Examiner assigned to hear his case. When it leaks, the shock waves reverberate from the college to the state capital.
The year is 2239, and humanity stands on the brink of its greatest expansion yet. From the mining outposts of Ceres, the crew of the Aurora Venture launches toward Jupiter’s moons—Ganymede, Europa, and Callisto—with orders to establish permanent survey bases and expand the reach of the Outer Worlds Fleet.
But the Jovian frontier is far more dangerous than expected.
Lysa Hartmann battles a resurging claustrophobia that threatens to undermine her ascent through the Fleet. Dr. Senzo Marik, haunted by a past tragedy on Ceres, faces unsettling seismic anomalies beneath Europa’s ice sheets. Engineer Eila Trujillo fights a losing race against the environment as melt shafts collapse and radiation storms close in. And Captain Roald Jin must decide how far he’s willing to go to save his people—even if it means sacrificing mission-critical equipment. When a catastrophic icequake traps crew members deep under Europa’s surface, the team braves unstable tunnels, rising meltwater, and collapsing caverns in a desperate rescue. Joined by late-arriving specialist Grigor Valko, they discover that survival on the frontier demands both courage and unbreakable unity.
The Jovian Frontier is a gripping tale of exploration, danger, and the enduring human spirit—an opening chapter to a sweeping saga of expansion toward Saturn and beyond.
Laurel floats disconnected from her new teaching position at a Catholic school. Homeschooled herself, she questions whether she can fit in. When she rescues children from a car crash the school staff leap to help her. And gossip about it. An unexpected mentor, her first grade students, and a handsome firefighter all conspire to break through the wall she’s built against the school. She learns to delight in everything from her students to the Christmas pageant. As mysterious incidents start to proliferate Laurel struggles for answers. A sudden death brings everything to a head. Can Laurel work out the mystery of who is damaging the school and why, before the body count starts to rise? If you like young heroines steadfastly working to get things right, you’ll love this cozy voyage of schoolhouse mystery and self-discovery. Pick up a copy today to join Laurel in her new life.
In Virginia’s fog-choked Blue Ridge Valley, one slashed throat ignites a holy war that threatens to level two universities. Televangelist Phineas Barnstable is found butchered in his tithe-funded mansion, and the leaked video of his corpse detonates a scandal that bankrupts his namesake Christian college. Its only hope: a high-stakes merger with secular Blue Ridge Valley University, championed by iron-willed president Riley Dennison—ex-Army CID, cybercrime hunter, and visionary architect of a research powerhouse poised to dominate directed-energy and biomedical photonics. But foreign powers and a shadowy American billionaire will kill to stop it.
As Bible-thumping zealots clash with masked faculty radicals and outside operatives flood the valley, bodies fall with surgical precision—lasered hearts, designer toxins, livestreamed executions—each murder staged with twisted theatrical flair. Racing the clock, Riley and velvet-on-steel security chief Victoria Lehman must expose a conspiracy spanning Tehran, Beijing, fake NGOs, and a trusted insider intent on burning it all down. All the while, battling the destructive culture of failed American higher education.
Invasion from an alternate timeline? It’s December 1937 in a world exactly like ours except that it is about to veer wildly into alternate history. It’s less than two years before World War II broke out historically in Europe. War has already come to much of Asia, with Japan invading China. An isolationist US fears it will be drawn into that conflict, especially after the Japanese sink the US gunboat Panay. Just when President Franklin Roosevelt thinks he has that crisis under control, he faces a bigger issue. High tech descendants of the Wokuo, Japanese pirates and smugglers who should have vanished over three hundred years ago, flood into the Pacific coast off California.
The Wokuo are both refugees and invaders, fleeing from war in an alternate reality where they survived and grew strong, while looking for new conquests to replace their lost empire. They set their sights on California. President Roosevelt sends disgraced former Colonel Martin to California to organize resistance to the invaders, but the Colonel has his own issues, buried deep in his brain and waiting to cause disaster.
An afternoon for sketching in peace – that was all Nadine Darby wanted. She thought she was taking a shortcut to get past an overgrown levee and gain a better view of the Mississippi for some landscape work. Instead she ended up somewhere else. A place called Elyssium, where the past walks alongside the present. Where you can see a modern car pull up and a Confederate Navy officer climb out, talking on a cellphone.
On the riverbank Nadine met a strange little man who told her he was an artist as well, and showed her his sketchbook to prove it. But no sooner had Nadine made her first friend than she discovered all was not well. She watched in helpless horror as a young man was pursued, arrested and beaten by thugs from an institution that goes by the official name of the City Orphanage, but is generally called the Workhouse by the inhabitants of Port of White Fleet.
Nadine can count herself fortunate that she fell into the company of a man who has little use for this organization. But his efforts to help her attain her artistic ambitions instead attract the attention she must avoid, and draws her into quarrels that have simmered for decades.
Can Nadine thread her way through the myriad perils of this world and save herself and her new-found friends? And even if she defeats the Workhouse, will it be at the cost of losing everything she’s found here?
Goblin Bazaar, then, is merely another offshoot of the uncanny, popping up like a mushroom on the village green. Offering strange wares, you must tread with caution into its aisles. Remember, always be wary, because gaining the desires of your heart may not grant you what you wish…
The stories in this volume deal with those who buy things that haunt them. Those who cheat and discover the consequences of their actions. The truth behind real customer service. The humans who seek to keep the goblins at bay. The ins and outs of running a booth at any market, be it craft or goblin – some things are universal!
The name’s Chloe Fortebat, and I don’t understand this place at all. I left my father’s ranch to come to the Old World, a place of airships, steampower, and monsters that nobody talks about. Now I’m dodging giant werewolves with fangs the size of my knife. My only guide is a monster hunter who doesn’t look the part: a quiet, sharp-dressed medical man with a mysterious past. But he knows how to stop these werewolves, and he’s my best chance at surviving the Old World. My name is Dr. Maxim os Storm, and I hunt the beasts that haunt the night. A werewolf has set his mark on Miss Fortebat, but this brave lady would rather fight him than let him make her his tool. My only chance of curing her lies with an ancient machine, hidden by my people in the caves beneath Wolf Island. She and I must work together to keep that artifact out of the werewolf’s grasp at all costs, for he would put it to a terrible use. But I can only help her if I take on a responsibility I’ve already rejected once: the kingship of my people. For fans of Lindsay Buroker and Patricia Briggs, here is a dual POV gaslamp fantasy with monster hunting, a slow-burn romance subplot, and a reluctant king facing his destiny. Book 1 of the Hunter Healer King Trilogy.
Two novellas of magic and adventure. . . Caught between pirates who would force him to use wizardry in their aid, and a king who would force him to spy, Alik will need every scrap of wits and wizardry to forge his own path. A curse of ill luck leaves Perriel and Gareth trapped in an endless winter, with only the faintest hope of breaking free.
Working as a Certified Public Assassin was, after all, the fastest way to pay down millions of dollars of medical debt. Between that payment and the student loans from getting her associates’ degree, she’s barely making enough to keep body and soul together, but the debt’s almost gone.
Except…she’s paid her student loans. Many times over. There’s something going on, and her handler can’t figure out what. Hiring a hacker to track whatever’s glitching in the student loans database and programming seemed to be a logical next step; however, it isn’t just a glitch. Somebody’s got it in for Molly…and for everyone that has a license to kill.
This has barreled from circumstance through happenstance, and straight into enemy action. But who’s the enemy?
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.
Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.
On a lost colony world, mad geneticists thought they could eliminate inequality by making everyone hermaphrodite. They were wrong. Catastrophically wrong. Now technology indistinguishable from magic courses through the veins of the inhabitants, making their barbaric civilization survivable—and Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Kayel Hayden, Viscount Webson, Envoy of the Star Empire—Skip to his friends— has just crash-landed through a time-space rift into the middle of it all. Dodging assassins and plummeting from high windows was just the beginning. With a desperate king and an archmagician as his only allies, Scipio must outrun death itself while battling beasts, traitors, and infiltrators bent on finishing what the founders started: total destruction. Two worlds. One chance. No time to lose.
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.
According To Hoyt 