Category: Uncategorized

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

FROM MARTIN L. SHOEMAKER: Funeral for a Friend (The Route Books of Bobo Buttons, Private Eye Book 3)

Fall of a Sky Dancer

When Bobo Buttons, Private Eye takes a side trip to visit Jock Robin’s grave, he sees a family conducting their own funeral. To his surprise, he recognizes one of the mourners: an acrobat from a rival show, a man whom Bobo recently saved from prison. The deceased is the acrobat’s wife, and his family and others think he killed her. The fall of this Sky Dancer is tearing the circus apart.

So the show’s Governor hires Bobo to find the truth. Bobo goes undercover in hostile territory to dig up the real story, secrets that someone has already killed to conceal…

FROM DALE COZORT: Raphaela, Princess of the Jungle: A Snapshot Novel (Snapshot Jungle Adventures Book 2)

Nearly a hundred years ago, in an alternate reality Africa dotted with lost cities, Raphaela of Zan was eleven years old and dying of a rapid aging disease. A mysterious gray-eyed man gave her a drink he claimed would cure her. Instead, it stopped her from aging at all, trapping her in an eleven-year-old body, on the verge of life, but never able to truly live. Now, the rapid aging disease is back, threatening to turn her into a withered crone before she has a chance to live. Can she survive man-apes, Romans and Mad Puritans to find the gray-eyed man and convince him to save her?

FROM NATHAN BRINDLE: The Clerics in the Kitchen (Timelines Universe Book 10)

When your meth lab is built on a factory scale…

The planet Sanddoom. Desert exile world for most of Earth’s Radical Islamic Fundamentalists. Run by Mad Mullahs, who repay the favor of American leniency by creating a world of slavery, insurgency, and export of dangerous drugs via their own outmigrating people, headed for other colony planets.

The first two are covered by a hands-off agreement with the Americans.

The last, not so much. And Captain Delaney Wolff Fox’s special assignments fire team, FTSA1, aren’t going to stand for it. Their job is to hunt down and eliminate

The Clerics in the Kitchen

FROM MATTHEW C. LUCAS: Space Station Halcyon: “Now Under New Management!”

Welcome to Space Station Halcyon!
(Management is not responsible for anything that happens to you)

Joey Mumbai’s down on his luck and over his head. To pay off his gambling debts, he’s forced to run an old space station at the end of the galaxy as a “legitimate business” for the mob. All Joey has to do is make money—and not attract any attention. But Space Station Halcyon is like a floating death trap, with a rage-filled manatee, a psychotically cheerful computer, and a sports bar that may or may not be possessed.

When a government code inspector and her enforcerbot drop by the station, Joey must bluff, bribe, and connive his way through interstellar bureaucracy, laser gun fights, and the worst beer in the galaxy. Can Joey turn his derelict station and degenerate crew into something resembling legality? Or is the whole place going to explode in a cloud of code violations? Or maybe both?

Space Station Halcyon is a wild and raucous sci-fi comedy about bad luck, worse decisions, and the cosmic horror of being put in charge. A Hitchhiker’s Guide-esque romp that answers the eternal question: “Who’s in charge around here?”

FROM JOHN BAILEY: The Triton Enigma (The Outer Worlds Saga Book 4)

On Neptune’s frozen moon, humanity finds a warning written in stone.

When the exploratory vessel Argo reaches Neptune, its crew expects silence, ice, and scientific routine. Instead, they uncover impossible signals coming from Triton—a moon that should not exist in its present orbit, and may not belong to our solar system at all.

Beneath Triton’s frozen surface lie ruins older than Earth’s history, carved with Egyptian hieroglyphs no human hand could have made. As military commander Colonel Marcus Hale struggles to keep his crew alive against failing suits and relentless cold, idealistic scientists push to decode the message left behind by a vanished civilization.

What they learn is both astonishing and unsettling: Triton was once a waystation for a wandering world—Pluto—cast adrift across the galaxy after its creators destroyed their own sun through reckless science.

As time, oxygen, and power run out, the crew must decide what to tell Earth—and whether humanity is ready to hear a warning written millions of years ago:

Some knowledge comes at too great a cost.

Written in the spirit of classic 1950s science fiction, The Triton Enigma is a tale of exploration, moral responsibility, and the thin line between discovery and disaster.

FROM DAVE FREER: If I Wake Before I Die

The Hotel Miroir, with it’s mirrored halls and endless repeated patterns – not all quite the same. A place of fractal patterns where universes — might have been and could be collide. A place where Lark had once danced with the man she would always wait for.

FROM PAM UPHOFF: Dumas (Machine World Book 1)

Dumas house Zeller. A Servants bastard who was caught using Mentalist Powers and chipped. Still brilliant, but without Power, with speech issues, sold . . . But he’s got a Grand Plan . . .

A small part of the Baranov Family has been kicked out of Baranov House after their son is accused of improprieties with the Family Head’s daughter. Retreating to their old hunting lodge on a low population World, with their old servants and a couple of new ones, they’re going to find themselves right on the spot when the Machines arrive.

FROM BLAKE SMITH: The Hartington Inheritance (The Hartington Series Book 1)

Almira Hartington was heir to the largest fortune in the galaxy, amassed by her father during his time as a director of the Andromeda Company. But when Sir Josiah commits suicide, Almira discovers that she and her siblings are penniless. All three of them must learn to work if they wish to eat, and are quickly scattered to the far reaches of the universe. Almira stubbornly remains on-planet, determined to remain respectable despite the sneers of her former friends.

Sir Percy Wallingham pities the new Lady Hartington. But the lady’s family will take care of her, surely? It’s only after he encounters Almira in her new circumstances that he realizes the extent of her troubles and is determined to help her if he can. He doesn’t know that a scandal is brewing around Sir Josiah’s death and Almira’s exile from society. But it could cost him his life, and the lady he has come to love.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Done With Mirrors: A Collection of Short Stories (Sarah A. Hoyt’s Short Story Collections)

DONE WITH MIRRORS

From Prometheus Award winner Sarah A. Hoyt comes a dazzling collection that showcases why her work has appeared in Analog, Asimov’s, and Weird Tales—and why readers can’t get enough.

Magic-soaked noir in 1920s Denver. Mirror-hopping time lords fleeing across infinite universes. Survival in John Ringo’s zombie apocalypse. Murder and mystery in the world of Darkships and Rhodes. Each story in this collection pulls you into a different world—and refuses to let go.

Previously published in acclaimed anthologies from Baen and Chris Kennedy Publishing, these nine tales span Hoyt’s most beloved universes alongside standalone adventures. Whether she’s writing in Ringo’s Black Tide Rising series, exploring her own Darkships and Rhodes worlds, or crafting speculative noir that defies categorization, Hoyt delivers the vivid storytelling and emotional resonance that has earned her a devoted following.

From rain-slicked streets where magic and murder collide to the far reaches of space-time itself, Done With Mirrors demonstrates the genre-hopping brilliance of one of speculative fiction’s most versatile voices.

Nine stories. Nine worlds. One unforgettable collection.

Contains the short stories: Honey Fall; Scrubbing Clean; Last Chance; Great Reckoning in a Small Room; Horse’s Heart; Do No Harm; Dead End Rhodes; Knights of Time; Done with Mirrors.

With an introduction by Holly Chism.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: No Man’s Land: Volume 1 (Chronicles of Lost Elly) – STILL THE PASSION PROJECT!

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.

Volume 1
The Ambassador Corps has rules: you cannot know everything, don’t get horizontal with the natives, don’t make promises you can’t keep.
They’re a lot harder to follow when assassins are hunting you, your barbarian allies could kill you for the wrong word, and death lurks around every corner.
The unwritten rule? Never identify with the natives.
Skip’s already broken that one.
Now he’s racing against time to save his new friends from slavery—or worse—while dodging energy blasts and political intrigue. One crash-landed diplomat. A world of deadly secrets. And absolutely no backup.

Some rules are meant to be broken. Others will get you killed.

And yes, I do know that finding your own work funny is like eating your own nail pairings, and yet… this amuses me unduly:

AND MANFRED WEICHSEL IS HAVING A KICKSTARTER FOR HIS ACTION GIRLS PROJECT: Action Girls: Triple Threat – Illustrated Omnibus

Hollywood pulp, grotesque spectacle, and the high cost of chasing fame

Note I’m making this small, as some of you apparently read this post at work or near small children. It’s not pornographic, just spicy, but still I don’t want to get anyone in trouble!

Vignette Writing Challenge!

This is one of those fun days when I failed to get a prompt for vignettes thanks, probably, to the inscrutable hamsters of the internet. So as usual, I’m giving you an image to write a challenge about. Have at it.

Several years ago, my brother thought is appropriate to send me a stupid little video about how many wars the US has been in. And the conclusion from this was that the US is a warmonger, of course. (There is a reason we don’t talk politics, yes.)

The fact that several of these wars were waged against the US (England, we’re looking at you) though the revolutionary war is a matter of opinion. I’m sure that Dan’s ancestors would say that England waged war on the colonies, which is why the colonies had to secede, but I understand Great Britain has a different opinion. OTOH it’s arrant nonsense to blame us for the wars we got involved in to save European butt (mostly against the Germans) or for defending allies during the cold war when the USSR went on the prowl.

Yes, we’ve been at war a lot, and I suspect there’s more wars ahead. Part of this is that we fit uncomfortably in the world and that for some reason we haven’t responded to provocations harshly enough that people leave us alone. Also that as the single hegemon we’re going to have a lot of countries taking pot shots at us.

This does not mean we’re a war like country. Americans are the weirdest at war, because we keep trying not to hurt people. Which is of course stupid. And perhaps it’s time to realize that sometimes hurting a few people in a targeted way is the best way to avoid hurting a LOT of people over the long run. Yes, we have pride and a certain military attitude, and are the only country in the West that still knows how to fight. But we view it very much as “If you want peace, prepare for war.”

However Europeans have a big hole in their head. I know because I went to school there for… way too many years. On account of being born there/being one of them until 27. Which means that I heard the stories they tell themselves, in the classroom but also the media, fiction, etc.

They believe — no, listen — they believe two things cause war: nationalism and being prepared for war.

When they study the causes of WWI for instance it’s all flattened down to “The culture in Germany was so militaristic, and they were nationalists” when the fact is the main cause of WWI was internationalism: the empires and links between empires which would drag the whole world into war if the fuse went up. Also it was monarchy and family quarrels, but that’s something else.

It certainly had nothing to do with people waving the flag and the common man loving his country. Because I love America it doesn’t mean I want to go and pound Mexico or Canada. Even if Canada is doing its best to kill batchlots of their own population and sell out to Beijing. And yeah I’d prefer Mexico not export its narco-issues and half of its population to us. Yeah, the food is cool, but the intake of Marxist Koolaid is higher than in our college campus and the chip on the shoulder and culture make things difficult for us. I’m not saying a few of them can’t come over, but no more mass immigration. Oh, and I’m even less inclined to go off and stomp further distant countries.

Unless of course they are interfering with us.Which yes, Venezuela, Iran and of course China and arguably Russia were/are.

So us retaliating and slapping them so hard their great grandkids say ouch is justified. And it’s not because we’re patriots or “militaristic.” It’s because they’re screwing with us. (Don’t touch our boats. Or our citizens. Or our homeland. Or, really anything of ours. How hard is that to understand?)

The whole idea that patriotism and being armed CAUSE war is USSR propaganda, of course. No, seriously. They hated both people being attached to their own countries and being able to defend themselves. Mostly because international socialism, which flies under the flag of socialism/communism, only meant one thing: Russian nationalism. Russia puppeted the USSR as its ticket to conquer every country it considered a threat.

If you’ve studied Russian history you know that it considers every country a threat. So for Russia to feel safe, it needed a world empire. And it viewed communism as its ticket to such world empire.

Which means that it preached internationalism, because internationalism means you won’t fight back when they take your homeland. And it preached pacifism, because pacifists don’t fight back.

Its accusations against the US were always that it was militaristic and imperialistic and aggressive, which was projecting with an IMAX.

But you can’t argue with the logic that if other countries didn’t defend themselves militarily the world would be peaceful, peacefully living in squalor under the Soviet boot and sending the best of everything to Mother Russia….

But Sarah the USSR fell. Yes, it did, physically. It became unable to hold its empire because frankly socialism of any kind kills, fast or slow, but it always kills, and at some point it couldn’t occupy other countries and steal from them fast enough to keep its citizens even semi-contented.

However its ideological debris went on, in Western universities which it conquered and particularly in the upper class of the US where, thanks to decades of controlling the industrial-entertainment complex, it had become a positional good.

Which is why you see spectacularly and extensively maleducated leftists claim things like if you defund the police crime will stop. Or if we disarm no on one will attack us.

These are delusions that don’t survive kindergarten. Bullies don’t stop hitting you if you don’t hit back. Nor is life pleasant under their boot. But if you’re educated enough you can believe it. I suppose.

Will this debris survive? I don’t know. I always said that communism would have to die here, where it infiltrated our elites and academia. But at the same time, I very much wouldn’t like it to die in blood. Because that will change us in ways we won’t like. Maybe it needs to be. But I’d rather not.

I very much hope, though, that things change in such a way that we can indeed give peace a chance. And our only chance at peace is to smack those who disturb OUR peace hard enough to make them stop it. Then go away and come back if they do it again.

It certainly beats being the world’s social worker and (actually, in point of fact) funding communism by other names abroad. (Even in the weird format of transexual operas in Bolivia, yes, it’s Marxism if not actual communism at the heart of it. And I suspect anyway the money went directly to groups who hate us, rather than their stated purpose.)

Peace is possible: through superior firepower and willingness to use it in the most devastating and efficient (and sparing) way achievable.

We should try that.

*UPDATE: I think maybe I should let the regulars know that for the last 3 days this blog has been under continuous attempted DOS attack. I’m getting hits so massive that anything but my gold-plated hosting service would already have buckled. Truth is, so far the gold plated hosting service has paid for itself. But combined with very hostile uninformed and incoherent (not approved, natch) comments it makes me wonder HOW I pissed on their cheerios this time? Anyone have any idea? Just curious. The opinions of fools don’t interest me but sometimes they amuse me — SAH.*

When I was in 12th grade in Ohio in the early eighties, my Comparative Political Systems teacher (whom I liked) had made an effigy of Iran’s Ayatollah and hung it from the blind support bar at the window.

He could go on for hours and there might have been spit flecking (I DID say I liked him, right) on the subject of why the Ayatollah needed to die. He was right, of course. And it was both baffling and puzzling to me why we hadn’t done it yet.

It’s been puzzling or infuriating, depending on how you look at it, to me for 47 years. I understood marginally, maybe, why we didn’t bomb the living daylights out of them until they surrendered when they were holding our hostages. But why stay our hand after they were freed?

Oh there were reasons and due to our apparent wild overestimation of Russian capabilities, the first stopping point was probably “if we attack Iran it might precipitate WWIII. Which is why our overestimation of their capabilities, based on obviously faulty intelligence is a crying shame and evil and cost in human lives and suffering, because we let the USSR get away with many things and stopped ourselves from taking needed action for fear of starting WWIII and the “end of all life on Earth.”

Fine. We didn’t know it was faulty and we were trying to be the life-preserving humans in the world. And yet–

The USSR fell how long ago? And we kept tolerating a country that not only horribly mistreated its population, but which financed terrorism against us, and which routinely shouted “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.” We just pretended it was a rational author and sometimes — Obama — gave it pallets of cash.

It is a mark of historical illiteracy that — though I think the polls are (duh) manipulated — around half of the population think we just attacked Iran out of nowhere, not that this should have happened almost half a century ago.

I think the final trammel that gave way was Trump realizing that no, Russia can’t retaliate even if it tried. Their three day war on the Ukraine that has turned into the tar baby for Russia and a graveyard for Putin’s dream of reviving the USSR, was clear as print on that. If Putin could we’d already be nuked and Ukraine for sure long ago. Therefore, he can’t.

So Trump decided we could just do things and did them. First with getting Maduro out of Venezuela (Henceforth referred to as Demadurizing Venezuela.) and then using extensive Ayatollah be gone on Iran. Which is still ongoing.

The left losing their mind explains that there was something holding our — particularly democrat presidents’ — hands before this than “fear of retaliation.”

I honestly think — PSYCHOLOGICALLY — the left has convinced itself it is illicit for the US to lose force to defend its own interests. The left is chronically addicted to getting us involved in war on behalf of other people: Somalis, Balkan people, etc PROVIDED we have nothing to gain from it. Remember when their big accusation against war in Iraq was “No War For Oil.”? This is exemplary of rats in heads. After all, given that industrial civilization can’t subsist without energy, why not make war for oil? If in addition to that one has a legitimate beef against the country, why not take the oil for our trouble?

But in the left’s mind even if the war were licit, our PROFITING from it would make it wrong.

The truth of course is that for most of human history nations have fought exclusively for their own interests or what they perceived to be their own interests. (Sometimes they were very wrong.)

But now we’ve done it. I am relieved on behalf of the people of Iran who have suffered enough. And my dream for them is “No more Ayatollahs”. Is this likely? I don’t know. Sometimes when people have been crushed for a long time, they have trouble coming back from it.

Which is why the reasonable thing is to get rid of their awful leaders, let them figure it out, and if they get another set of awful leaders get rid of those, rinse and repeat.

The point being that we’re not obligated to nation build. We’re not obligated to make sure the people are okay. We’re not obligated to export democracy.

Yes, we’ve done it in the past, kind of, but — glares at Europe — with indifferent success. Culture is something we don’t fully understand and old cultures tend to re-emerge.

There is only ONE way to make a country in your image and semblance. Invade and stay there for generations, heavily punishing those who don’t get with the program. (Tips hat towards Rome.)

But I don’t want America to do that, and if we did it would change us as much as we change the world. I like America as America (I’d like it to be even more America.) It just wouldn’t be a good idea.

Barring that nation building is just an illusion.

So, in this era when we can just do things, we are allowed to use our force for OUR OWN INTERESTS. Which means we punish countries and leaders who do things against US interests and keep doing so until they stop getting up our nose.

And that’s enough, in this era when we can just do things.

For most of my life, I was convinced I was on the wrong path.

Am I?

I no longer think so. But you see, the problem is that women — and men — of my generation and after (I don’t know before) were raised on the certainty that we must have a career. And careers were to have a certain touch feel. I wasn’t sure exactly how — though briefly I considered that I might achieve this if I owned a chain of magazines, but I was supposed to go to work nine to five at an office with large windows and some kind of assistant that brought me tea. Everything else was, of necessity the wrong career.

Also, though we’d decided we had to stay home and raise the kids because, well, with kids like ours it would be cruel and unusual to throw them at daycare, I felt very guilty I wasn’t bringing in a lot more money. Like for instance at least half what Dan made. Every time we were tight, every time we had to make compromises, every time I couldn’t buy the kids what they needed and had to settle for something not so good, I thought I was in the wrong career.

Worse — did everyone else do this — I decided on what I wanted to be when I was six and frankly knew bloody nothing of the world or what a writing career entailed. From things I had gleaned in books, I thought your agents were kind of like your bosses, and that your editors did their best to keep you publishing. Maybe it was true, at one point, but not when I came in.

My so called career careened from disaster to rescue to fresh disaster, from ridiculous contretemps to people taking a strong dislike to me for reasons I could not figure out. I lived on edge, afraid it would crash at any time, for twenty years. And of course, working even when my mind didn’t. Enjoy what I did? Most of the time I wasn’t sure I could drag myself to the end, and when I did, I had to think of starting the next novel.

It’s hard to feel a lot of joy in your work, or pride in your accomplishments when you’re so burned out that even when you finish a book that you can’t remember what you actually put in it ten minutes after you’re done.

Was all of it a slog? No, but eventually it was. And the more sloggish it became, the more I dreamed of “the career.” Mostly a career in translation — since that was the only real honest employment I had a chance at turning into a career — but it never happened. I almost took a job as a translator in Denver, but we lived in the Springs, and it didn’t pay quite enough to commute that far. It certainly didn’t pay enough for Dan to quit his jobs in the Springs, so I turned it down at the least minute.

By then I was starting to get a feeling THAT career too would be a disappointment. I’d seen Dan go through enough issues in his career. Not as bad as mine, granted, but– And though his career was what he wanted to be, I also knew that like me his satisfaction and joy had shifted to something else: our life together, the children. But of course, the children weren’t a career. It wasn’t what I was raised to expect.

So?

So, I’ve come to realize that most people don’t have careers. They have jobs they do. Some are better suited to their jobs than others, and over time they might come to realize they’re good at what they do and enjoy that fact. But most of of the time people do what they can do, perhaps what they decided to do early on, perhaps what they fell into, and they make enough money for their purposes. And they keep doing it.

Right now everything is embuggered because all our institutions have been infiltrated and destroyed from the inside, our personal relationships have been poisoned by group victimhood to the point that people don’t relate properly, and it is not only marriages that have suffered, but every day life, and so it is only the blessed few whose jobs aren’t cursed with a bit of that insanity and nonsense. Most of my friends have had problems, some worse than my so called career had.

Most people’s happiness lies not in their jobs. That was a lie they told us. Jobs are not “careers” of the glittering kind. Even the kind of Hollywood “careers” that set the idea that a career should be all we ever dreamed of, and make us happy and fulfilled were, it turns out, not that at all, but more akin to the so called career.

Most people’s joy and happiness lie in their marriages, in their children, or failing those, in their parents, their pets, even their hobbies.

People who put their hope of joy and fulfillment in their careers will be disappointed over and over again. Because that’s not what careers or even jobs are for. They are to allow you to survive so you can pursue your happiness. We’re fortunate that jobs today allow us to do that without — in most cases — killing us at forty. And that we have weekends off. And that most of us live long enough to retire.

Because the center of our lives is not work or a career.

And yet, and I can’t explain it, in the last six years I’ve slowly and through some truly horrific events and doubts come to realize that my job is exactly what it should be; that I’m doing exactly what I should be doing; and to derive (almost) as much joy from my writing, both here and in fiction, as I did from raising my kids.

More than that — you have to understand I’m a religious believer, but not a believer in woo woo or fate, so this is weird — I believe I was placed here by a higher power and that I’m doing exactly what I should be doing.

Even though I’m not making nearly that much money. And I certainly am not amazingly famous. And I certainly don’t have any kind of glittering career.

And yet my so called career feels right, and like exactly what I should be doing.

Even trifling, “unimportant” jobs can be what you’re supposed to do. Where you’re supposed to be. And you can derive comfort from that, if not great amounts of money or acclaim or “glittering” career.

And yes, there will be slogs and horrible times. The world is what it is. And I can’t promise you’ll come to the conclusion you are exactly where you’re supposed to be.

On the other hand it is what happened to me.

And yet, through and despite my so called career, my disappointment of it, my hatred of it, my acceptance of it, my love of it (Of course it might be Stockholm syndrome, but I don’t think so.) most of my love, my happiness, my joy was my family.

It still is.

And as a friend reminded me today, the so called career is still alive when it should not be. It should have been dead long ago. After all when I came into the field, the average career was three books. After that no one would publish you. Now it’s only one. If you don’t hit the jackpot out the gate, you’re cooked, at least if you’re with one of the big houses.

And yet, 25 years later, through some improbable saves and some bizarre miracles, the so called career marches on. Maybe that’s why I have the sense I’m doing what I was meant to do.

Or maybe, just maybe I’m that stubborn.

And I have absolutely no idea why I wrote this, or if anyone out there needed to hear it, or even why anyone out there WOULD need to hear such a bizarre tale.

I just felt I should put down these rather unorganized thoughts. Now you deal with it. I do hope someone needed to hear it.

*A minor update before your Tuesday-Sunday book promo. For those who saw me at ConFinement coughing and hacking and having trouble with the whole upper respiratory symptoms: I actually brought meds in the car for the trip in fear it would be doing that all the way home. And it was fairly horrible at the con, to the point I was always exhausted JUST from coughing. Spoiler: I stopped coughing completely about an hour into our car trip, and haven’t needed inhaler or cough syrup or any of it. I think the issues was a combination of very strong scent soap booth (Don’t get me wrong. It’s that lady’s right to sell them, and the booth was very popular. I use scented soap myself. It was just a LARGE booth and therefore overwhelming) and some ijit smoking pot near our room. I’ll note here that since the latest bout of thyroid I have ALMOST no sense of smell, but I smelled pot in the elevator and apparently it was very obvious on our floor. Again, for the record, whatever, and there are actually people who use it for medical conditions, but if you’re in a hotel would you have mercy on us poor asthmatics (I can’t smelll it but my bronchi and lungs still respond, and I’m deathly allergic) and use comestibles or whatever. Thank you. My lungs thank you. Anyway, if you were worried, I’m perfectly fine. Of course I started coughing while writing this, because my brain is like that. But it will stop as soon as I do the rest of the promo.

HOWEVER, I SPENT A LOT OF TIME HIDING IN MY ROOM, BECAUSE EXHAUSTED, SO I MIGHT HAVE ESCAPED CONTAGION — FINGERS CROSSED — BUT APPARENT THE FLU WAS MAKING THE ROUNDS OF THE CON. SO IF YOU’RE FEELING ODD, GET TESTED. – SAH*

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

BY JOHN VAN STRY: Lock & Load (Valley of Fire)

In the heart of the Fire Nebula, war rages across the stars. Crown Prince Wolf Alexander-Morgan and Princess Mariella, forged in the crucible of combat and mech warfare, stand at the forefront of a desperate counterstrike against a ruthless empire that has already struck at their homeworlds. With elite squadrons, aging battleships revived from slumber, and hard-won alliances hanging by a thread, they prepare to carry the fight straight to the enemy’s stronghold.

But victory demands more than firepower. As hidden truths surface, old grudges resurface, and the line between ally and threat blurs, Wolf and Mariella must navigate treacherous politics, overwhelming odds, and the weight of their own destinies. One wrong move could doom their kingdom—or end the war in flames.

Pulse-pounding space battles, brutal ground assaults, and the clash of crowns await in the explosive conclusion to the Valley of Fire trilogy. In a galaxy where loyalty is tested in fire, some legends are born… and others are extinguished.

FROM CEDAR SANDERSON: Tanager’s Fleet (The Tanager Book 3)

Captain Jem Raznick and the weary crew of the Tanager crave a moment’s peace after grueling evacuation runs across star systems. But spymaster Jade Star’s urgent summons shatters that hope, yanking them back to the fog-shrouded swamps of Boudreaux. Posing as orchid hunters, they must infiltrate the murky underbelly of the port to find missing operative Dilar Restin, and the explosive secrets he’s uncovered, before it’s too late.

What begins as a covert rescue spirals into a deadly trap: buried family betrayals surface, pirate shadows close in, and unexpected allies emerge from the mist with their own hidden agendas. Only when the true stakes are revealed, the culmination of Jade’s decades-long master plan, does the crew realize the galaxy itself hangs in the balance, with one wrong move dooming them all.

In this gripping space opera finale, Jem races to untangle a web of galactic deceit, protect his makeshift family, and ignite a defiant legacy. Heroism isn’t born in solitude. It is forged in the fierce, unbreakable unity that defies the encroaching void.

FROM SHANE GRIES: Battle Drills: Kill Zone

In the frozen kill zones of Tau Ceti IV, Terran Marine Private David Hernandez fights a brutal war against the relentless Kharkan hordes. But when peace shatters the battlefield in the most unexpected way, survival takes on a new meaning—one far from the front lines.

Years later, Hernandez joins the elite mercenaries of Jackson Solutions, trading fatigues for high-stakes contracts in the lawless Zone of Separation. Amid corporate betrayals, pirate raids, and shadowy alliances, he uncovers a conspiracy that could ignite interstellar chaos.

As loyalties fracture and enemies close in, Hernandez must master the deadliest battle drills of all: trust no one, and fight to the last breath.

FROM URNA SEMPER: The Pearl Crucible: A Dardana Fenek Mystery (Incidents on Iphigenia Book 4)

In Aulis, capital of the distant world Iphigenia, Dardana Fenek is a detective with more secrets than clients. Stumbling into a high-stakes murder investigation, she finds herself in a race against time to make her career—or end her life.
In a society where clones are property, and women are second-class citizens, Dardana lives on a knife’s edge. Can a detective with everything to lose solve the case of a lifetime? Or will enemies seen and unseen destroy her?
With her loyal partner and lover Barsina—an indentured clone girl won at cards—she finds conspiracies reaching from grimy Aulis markets to a desert archaeological dig. Complicating the case is handsome Ensign-Captain Mardonios, whose attraction to Dardana is matched by his dedication to justice.
As the clock ticks and a household of servants faces execution, Dardana confronts corrupt officials, a ruthless madam, and her own mysterious past to unveil the truth about a fifteen-hundred-year-old painting…

FROM JOE HUFFER: Hoosier Flats: A Novel of the Greatest Generation

In rural small-town 1930’s Indiana, a boy becomes a bootlegger– and a man too.

Fifteen-year-old Matt Wyatt knows the Depression is squeezing the life out of his family’s farm. When the Crawford clan offers his father a lifeline — cash in exchange for quiet runs of moonshine–Matt becomes the least-suspected bootlegger in Polk County. What starts as a thrill soon plunges young Matt into a world of violence, loyalty, and moral compromise.

Anchored by the girl who steals his heart, Matt navigates dusty back roads, outlaw justice, and the thin divide between right and wrong as one run goes terribly wrong and the consequences will follow him far beyond the Indiana flatlands he calls home.

Spanning the last days of Prohibition to the shock of Pearl Harbor and World War II, Hoosier Flats is a coming-of-age novel about duty, family, and the heavy price of growing up in hard times.

FROM JAKE BARTER: The Sniper

A debt of honor. A murdered son. A war that comes home.

Joseph Boghadair was once one of the U.S. Army’s deadliest snipers. Now retired and struggling to support his family, his life is shattered when his son is murdered.

With the justice system offering no answers, Boghadair turns to the one man who still owes him everything.

Paul Connors is the richest man in the world—though almost no one knows it. Years earlier, in Iraq, Boghadair saved Connors’ life. Now Connors intends to repay that debt, using resources and influence few people even realize exist.

What begins as a personal mission of revenge quickly uncovers a powerful conspiracy buried deep within the federal government. As Boghadair takes up the rifle once more, Connors brings overwhelming force to bear, pushing the conflict into the open and making secrecy impossible.

Each strike raises the stakes. Each move draws more attention. And once the war is declared, there’s no turning back.

The Sniper is an action-driven techno-political thriller about loyalty forged in war, justice pursued outside the system, and how far two men are willing to go when the enemy is no longer overseas—but at home.

FROM MOE LANE: Frozen Dreams (Tom Vargas Mysteries Book 1)

This is going to be the best post-apocalyptic high urban fantasy pulp detective novel you will read today!

Cin City. The tinsel crown of the magical Kingdom of New California – and Tom Vargas’s favorite place in the whole, wide world. Sure, as a Shamus he has to Clear a lot of Cases, listen to a lot of lies, and get battered and bruised in the process, but it’s worth it. Cin City is worth it.

But when trouble shows up as a dead mage at the Castle, he’s got to work fast and smart to save his city. New California doesn’t have mages, you see. And Cin City is safe for just as long as nobody can prove otherwise.

(Note: this book has a sequel, but it is not part of an epic fantasy trilogy.)

FROM CHARLI COX: The Fae Wars: Northwest Front

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Fae Wars returns on a new front as war rages in the Pacific Northwest!

Corporal Erik Doherty isn’t some kind of special operations super soldier; he’s just an infantry grunt trying to get by in what was once the United States Army, now an enforcement arm of the Fae overlords. When orders come down from a chain of command more interested in boot licking their new masters than protecting American citizens, he has to make the choice. To serve and live, or run and die?

Ashleigh Greene is a teenage girl with a price on her head, the Fae looking for retribution for the killing of one of their nobles. As her hometown burns behind her, she flees into the mist shrouded forests of the Pacific Northwest, her family killed by dragon fire and her world destroyed.

On separate paths, each human comes face to face with a haunting legend that has lived for thousands of years. One that has been waiting, watching, and hating the old enemy that has finally returned. Together, they bring war to the Fae in a battle for honor and revenge.

Book seven in the best-selling Fae Wars series!

BY ED LACY, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Room to Swing (Annotated): The Pulp Noir Classic

Black private eye Toussaint Moore knew a murder frame-up when he saw one, especially when it was hung neatly around his neck. Instead of dawdling around New York waiting for the NYPD to arrest him for a murder he didn’t commit, he followed the one lead he had: the victim’s hometown in Ohio. Only a stone’s throw north of Jim Crow Kentucky. If he can’t find who wanted that white man dead, and quick, all he’s going to have left is room to swing!

Winner of the 1958 Edgar Award for Best Mystery Novel by the Mystery Writers of America.

• This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction by D. Jason Fleming giving historical and genre context to the novel.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: On Account of a Dame (Timelines Universe Book 9)

Welcome to the New Jazz Age!

It’s the Roaring Twenties all over again — well — the 2120’s, that is. Where New York City has reverted to its Jazz Age roots of two centuries before. What’s missing? Prohibition, and gun control. What’s not missing? Tough guys, and the dames who (sometimes) love them. Gin joints. Speakeasies. Dance halls. The Social Register is still a thing, and the Beautiful People litter the society pages of the local hypernews sites.

Enter a typical gumshoe private detective — a member of that high society himself, yet a man who left society long ago for other pursuits. And his latest client, a rich young woman of leisure, who needs her new husband followed.

Throw in the recently-crowned queen of one of Chinatown’s tongs, a beautiful investment wizard from upstate, and a hundred million dollars in assets, and suddenly it’s all

On Account of a Dame

FROM JOHN MARTIN: Another Clever, Chimerical, and Charming Collection of 100 German (or at least Germanic) Words: Once again, Absolutely Informative, Completely Trivial, … Book of 100 German Words of the Day 2)

We’ve all seen the memes about that… crossword puzzle game being played in German, right? Well, here you have a collection of some of the most staggering linguistic morphological nightmares ever found in the wilds of German and Austrian newspapers, magazines, nature shows, legal documents, websites, and academic publications. All of these are to prove just how accurate those memes really were… no…. to prove how understated those memes really were. Along with the gigantic chimeras of the compound word world, there are some everyday vocabulary items you might actually use some day. Viel Spaß!

FROM JOHN BAILEY: Quade! Book I: The Titan Contract (The Quade Expeditions 1)

On Titan, survival isn’t guaranteed. Trust is even rarer.

Commander Elias Quade was preparing to retire.

Then the offer came.

A buried alien vault beneath the methane storms of Titan.
A sealed artifact no one has opened.
A private contract no one else will take.

The risk is extreme. The pay is exceptional.

But Quade quickly discovers he’s not alone.

A rival expedition—backed by the powerful Axiom Directorate—is already moving in. Corporate interference, sabotage, and cryovolcanic instability turn the mission into a race against time.

As drones fail, temperatures plummet, and the terrain fractures beneath their feet, Quade must rely on skill, discipline, and human resilience—not just machines—to survive.

What they recover will point to something far larger than a single artifact.

And someone is willing to reshape humanity’s future to control it.

The Titan Contract is the first novel in The Quade Expeditions, a hard science fiction survival series blending realistic space exploration, corporate rivalry, and high-stakes planetary danger.

Perfect for readers who enjoy:

• Competent protagonists
• Realistic technology
• Survival against hostile environments
• Moral tension without melodrama

The expedition begins here.

FROM KAREN MYERS: The Ways of Winter – A Virginian in Elfland (The Hounds of Annwn Book 2)

Book 2 of The Hounds of Annwn

TRAPPED BEHIND ENEMY LINES, CAN HE FIND THE STRENGTH TO DEFEND ALL THAT HE VALUES MOST, OR EVEN JUST TO SURVIVE?

It’s the dead of winter and George Talbot Traherne, the new human huntsman for the Wild Hunt, is in trouble. The damage in Gwyn ap Nudd’s domain reveals the deadly powers of a dangerous foe who has mastered an unstoppable weapon and threatens the fae dominions in both the new and the old worlds.

Secure in his unbreachable stronghold, the enemy holds hostages and has no compunction about using them in deadly experiments with newly discovered way-technology. Only George has a chance to reach him in time to prevent the loss of thousands of lives, even if it costs him everything.

Welcome to the portrait of a paladin in-the-making, Can he carry out a rescue without the deaths of all involved? Will his patron, the antlered god Cernunnos, help him, or just write him off as a dead loss? He has a family to protect and a world to save, and little time to do it in.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Universal Donor (Modern Gods)

Same liver, different vulture…

When you know you can regenerate any organ, fast…why not donate your kidneys?

Prometheus has been a teacher all of his life, nearly. Sometimes, like with teaching Man to harness fire, it got him in trouble. Sometimes, he’s able to make an even bigger difference for his students. Especially when they need a kidney as much as they need knowledge.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Done With Mirrors: A Collection of Short Stories (Sarah A. Hoyt’s Short Story Collections)

DONE WITH MIRRORS

From Prometheus Award winner Sarah A. Hoyt comes a dazzling collection that showcases why her work has appeared in Analog, Asimov’s, and Weird Tales—and why readers can’t get enough.

Magic-soaked noir in 1920s Denver. Mirror-hopping time lords fleeing across infinite universes. Survival in John Ringo’s zombie apocalypse. Murder and mystery in the world of Darkships and Rhodes. Each story in this collection pulls you into a different world—and refuses to let go.

Previously published in acclaimed anthologies from Baen and Chris Kennedy Publishing, these nine tales span Hoyt’s most beloved universes alongside standalone adventures. Whether she’s writing in Ringo’s Black Tide Rising series, exploring her own Darkships and Rhodes worlds, or crafting speculative noir that defies categorization, Hoyt delivers the vivid storytelling and emotional resonance that has earned her a devoted following.

From rain-slicked streets where magic and murder collide to the far reaches of space-time itself, Done With Mirrors demonstrates the genre-hopping brilliance of one of speculative fiction’s most versatile voices.

Nine stories. Nine worlds. One unforgettable collection.

Contains the short stories: Honey Fall; Scrubbing Clean; Last Chance; Great Reckoning in a Small Room; Horse’s Heart; Do No Harm; Dead End Rhodes; Knights of Time; Done with Mirrors.

With an introduction by Holly Chism.

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 ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: SOAK

There is a post going around “right wing” (defined as to the right of Lenin) on twitter. Some of these people are people whose posts are normally thoughtful and full of insight. So I presume they’re thinking with something other than their brains — at a guess their justifiable anger — because the course they’re recommending serves no one but the left and the enemies of freedom.

The “idea” goes something like this: “If the Save Act doesn’t pass, we’re going to punish the GOP in the midterms because it’s obvious they’re a uniparty and they won’t do anything they were elected to do.”

People, I’m old. I’m tired. Sarah finds her ear trumpet, puts it to her ear, looks at the argument again, and says “Eh, sonny? Say again? You’re coming in broken and dumb as fuck.”

What? Some of you in the audience are going to pound your chests and tell me that piece of arrant stupidity above is sane or makes any sense? Bah. You’re blinded by the noise.

Fact the first: The GOP majority in the Senate is razor thin. No, truly. It’s razor thin. There isn’t much give.

Fact the second: That razor thin majority includes couple/half dozen rinos. Yes, this upsets me as much as it does you, BUT the fact is until things change on the ground, their districts ARE going to elect rinos. Still better to have them in the tent, because sometimes they’ll play.

Fact the third: Democrats are increasingly panicked, and the SAVE act panics them — justly — more than anything else, as it’s basically the end of their rule if it passes. So not, their coalition won’t splinter, except maybe by one or two.

Fact the fourth: Fillibuster allows them to stop votes on this. Yes, we could do away with the fillibuster, but I’ll remind you it kept us from going full UK under the autopen.

Fact the fifth: No, if the SAVE act doesn’t pass, it doesn’t mean all is lost. And if it did, why insist we must “vote them out” they would be, since all would be lost. We still won election since 2016, and 2020 required an extraordinary amount of effort from the left to steal. They won’t be able to muster that AGAIN.

Fact the sixth: As long as we don’t let states count votes for days, and stay on the cases that do, and blow up every instance of fraud on social media, we’ll be fine.

So — why these posts? Because they help the democrats. If you convince the GOP voters to punish them for not doing what they don’t have the votes to do, then you can bring in the full circus of Democrat rule.

Who does this benefit? The dying democrat party.

What do they intend to do? Well, look to Virginia and to what they’ve said. They’re talking camps and executions for those of us who are vocal.

Yes, in a normally functioning Republic you can punish one side by voting for the other. We’re no longer and haven’t been, really, for my entire time as an American (It’s just more open now.) In the republic as it is right now, if you vote to punish the GOP you’re voting for a passel of lunatics that outright proclaim themselves “socialists” or “Communists” and whose first priority is the destruction of our country.

Worse, you’d be doing this to punish the GOP for not doing something they simply don’t have the numbers to do.

As I said “Coming in broken and dumb as fuck.”

UNLESS YOUR INTENT IS TO HAND US BOUND TO OUR FOES.

It’s not? Then start examining the “oh, I’m so mad” posts that come across your timeline.

In the current state of the republic, there is nothing for it but to buckle down for the long run. Yeah, if we have to continue voting GOP they’ll get above their station. Which is why we must get over rough ground as fast as possible.

For right now, weld your ticket to “Straight vote GOP” and be ready to thwart fraud from the left.

Because the only chance our great country has is not to let the lunatics touch the levers of power for at least 12 years. And meanwhile, yes, work at replacing the RINOS and work as hard as you can at changing the culture.

And refuse to commit suicide by voting for the other side.

Because stupidity is a capital crime. It always is.

Ending the con exhausted because I’m apparently allergic to something in the hotel, and last night was the first night I slept since we got here. I spent the other nights coughing. Yesterday I finally got cough syrup, and slept. So I’m more than a little wrecked, and trying to rest before we head back so I don’t end up getting ill.

How out of it was I? Well I typed 42 instead of 47 on the title of the post last night and didn’t notice until midday today. Hey, the numbers look alike, right?

The promo post will PROBABLY be Tuesday. There’s a chance of being able to do it tomorrow, but it’s unlikely. OTOH it gives you more time to send me your books to promote, right?

This blog (and this writer) will be back on its regular schedule till Tuesday.

Should I warn you when I’ll be out of pocket, so you can lay in popcorn for whatever will happen in the international sphere?

First, a request to President Trump:

Sir, may I humbly request you stop doing awesome stuff on Saturday. This humble meme gatherer would like her afternoons off. Thank you for your attention to this matter — SAH.

To the people belly aching about war with Iran: BITCHES, I watched our country be humiliated by the taking of hostages. My 12 th grade class song was “And I Ran, I ran so far away” and no, it wasn’t talking about aerobics. We’ve watched Iran finance destruction against the US and Israel and taunt our presidents. We watched them arguably interfere with our elections for decades.
Yeah, we bombed the evil oppressive regime of Iran. Don’t like it? Go cry SOMEWHERE ELSE. Your crocodile tears give me a rash.