Book Promo

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, 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 HOLLY CHISM: Having a Pint (Liquid Diet Chronicles Book 2)

Even the dead have to make a living…

Meg Turner, vampire accountant and investments advisor, has plenty of living clients, but not many among her fellow undead. That’s about to change: she’s been invited to a regional business fair for her kind. She’ll get to meet and greet more bloodsuckers than she really wanted to (hopefully without having to suck up to any of them). than just the two Vampire cops she helped track down and stake her late, unlamented sire—and hopefully make some friends and answer some questions.

Unfortunately, she’s got a Line Progenitor who’s begun invading her dreams, and a serial killer stalking her future clients to distract her from growing her business. Throw in a sick roommate not long before the conference starts, a mafia messenger boy left on her front porch, and only one car to juggle all of her responsibilities toward her roommate and unexpected guest. And then on top of that, she has the business fair over an hour away that features vampire karaoke, nosy, pushy elder bloodsuckers, and one particular elder who’s friends with her unwelcome dream guest. Seriously, it’s enough to drive her to drink something other than coffee or blood.

Just why did she think this whole conference thing sounded like a good idea, again?

BY MAX BRAND, WITH INTRODUCTION BY D. JASON FLEMING: The Cross Brand (Annotated): The classic pulp western

Jack Bristol did shoot the sheriff, and then took his horse and ran a thousand miles, thinking he would be condemned a murderer for defending himself. Then he met old Hank Sherry, who greeted him by burning a cross into his forehead without any explanation of why. Escaping the crazy old man, riding into Culver Valley gave him a hint: everybody who saw the cross thought he was Sherry’s son — and should be hanged! How could Bristol escape the respectable citizens of the Valley, who wanted him dead, and yet win the heart of the girl who knew, somehow, that he was innocent?

• This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving the novel genre and historical context.

FROM MEL DUNAY: Wolf’s Trail (Hunter Healer King Book 1

The name’s Chloe Fortebat, and I am in trouble. I left my father’s ranch on the plains to come to the Old World: a place of airships, steampower, and monsters nobody talks about. Now I’m dodging giant werewolves with fangs the size of my knife, and the hunters crazy enough to go after them. The most dangerous of these doesn’t look the part: a quiet, sharp-dressed medical man with a tired face….

My name is Dr. Maxim os Storm, and I hunt the beasts that haunt the night. The leader of this pack of werewolves has set his mark on Miss Fortebat, but this brave lady would rather fight him than let him make her his tool. As far as I am concerned, that makes her my ally. My only chance of curing her lies with an ancient machine, hidden by my people in the caves beneath Wolf Island. We must keep that artifact out of the werewolf’s grasp at all costs, for he would put it to a terrible use….

FROM DALE COZORT: There Will Always Be An England

In the Alternate History novel, two weeks after the D-Day landings, 1944 Britain disappears, replaced by a version of Britain from the distant past, before modern humans made it to Europe. Billy Chandler, like all Allied soldiers in the Normandy bridgehead is suddenly in a desperate situation, cut off from British-based air support, reinforcements and supplies. Meanwhile, deep in the past, 1944 Britain is in its own fight for survival, isolated in a time when Neanderthals rule Europe and no humans have reached the Americas and struggling to feed itself.

The Allies in Normandy struggle to hold out against increasingly powerful German attacks, running low on food and ammunition. Meanwhile, 1944 Britain struggles to survive, a modern nation in a Stone Age world.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT, STILL ON SALE FOR 99C: Darkship Revenge (Darkship Thieves Book 5)

The World Can’t Be Made Safe….

But it doesn’t mean Athena Hera Sinistra isn’t ready to try. Flying back to Earth Orbit from her asteroid home, leaving behind unresolved questions and turmoil, Athena becomes a new mother in orbit.

As is perhaps fitting, her daughter is born during battle with an unknown foe.

A battle that ends with Kit – Athena’s husband – missing, and Athena’s ship damaged.

So Athena names her daughter Eris, and goes to war.

What follows is a non-stop fight by a very angry mother, who wishes to make the world(s) safe for her newborn daughter, and other children too.

When the adventure is over, it is just the start of another, where children will be rescued, old tyrants brought to justice, and freedom restored.

If it can be.

FROM AURORA DAWN: Hallowing Eve: A Billionaire Boss Romance

Billionaire boss Lucas Danvers keeps his assistant, Evelyn Fontana, very close and very busy. He values her efficiency and intelligence and needs it available to him at all times. It certainly isn’t because he’s in love with her and wants to keep her away from other men. It’s simply a question of respecting her abilities.

That is, until she breaks their tradition of couples’ costumes for the company Halloween party, for which she is solely responsible. When she shows up to the shindig as Eve to his Executive Vice-President Nick Wilbright’s Adam, he has no choice but to disrupt their Edenic date plans dressed as Lucifer. Even if he wants to change the traditional story just a bit.

Nick Wilbright’s been in love with his best friend since college, but Lucas’ procession of supermodels, starlets, and superhot women of all sorts have kept him from making his feelings known. Not to mention that it’s obvious he’s in love with his assistant. Then Evelyn comes to him with a proposition: attend the company Halloween party with her, in matching costumes meant to provoke Lucas to finally pick one of them. Or both.
Will Lucas re-enact the scene in the Garden, or can he tempt both Adam and Eve into sin?

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Phoenix Dreams

In Greek myth, the phoenix is a bird that rises from its own ashes. Growing up in the city named for it, Toni knew the story well, and being a gamer made her used to death being negotiable.

During a visit to her grandfather’s ranch, she discovered a cache of books and videos from the lost golden age of space travel. Entranced by the enthusiasm of Roger Chaffee for his upcoming spaceflight, she was shocked and angered to learn the disaster that happened only days after his interview.

When she expressed her desire to get him his spaceflight, her family’s anger came as an even bigger shock. But she refused to forget, no matter how hard her parents tried to distract her, to prevent her from researching online.

Her determination would lead her along strange paths that would end in a desperate cross-country chase and the realization of a dream decades deferred.

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: Dance

Apropos:

Estate Planning by David Bock

Two thousand and twenty was a horrible year for many people for a variety of reasons. In addition to the most common, I lost both my parents that year. My father, who lived in Florida, died in April and my mother, who lived in New York City, died in September.

This post is not in any way an attempt to garner pity but to help others learn from my experiences.

When my father passed, it was not a complete shock as he’d been fighting cancer for a number of years. Also, as an engineer by training, his estate was fairly well organized. This greatly simplified things for his wife after he passed as most of the legal and other end of life arrangements and documents had been prepared. There were, of course, some snags and surprises here or there, but for the most part, my father had done his best to ease the path for his wife and heirs after he was gone.

My mother’s passing was more of a shock, but the post death situation was even more so. She had not left a will or any other end of life legal documents we could find when we were able to get to her NYC apartment in mid-October. The only thing she’d done was pre-pay her funeral expenses. While this helped, trying to deal with her estate from eight hundred miles away without those documents was challenging to say the least.

As my older brother no longer lives in the country, it fell to me to take care of things. Which I had to do remotely and during the times of covid, with all the shutdowns and restrictions New York City could apply. I was eventually able to get a copy of her death certificate from the county, which enabled me to contact her creditors and get that part moving.

With the help of a cousin (our angel when my mother was in the hospital and a great help after she died) who used to practice family law, I was able to apply to be assigned Administrator of the estate. This was simplified due to the value of my mother’s possessions falling below an arbitrary line and therefore considered a “small” estate. I mailed the paperwork, properly signed and notarized, to the county court at the end of October.

This is where things took a turn for the surreal. It took over two business weeks for my paperwork to get from Knoxville Tennessee to New York City. Half of that was just getting from Knoxville to Memphis. But it finally arrived. I’d been advised to let some time pass due to the offices being closed and people working from home.

For thee and a-half months I heard nothing. Finally, in mid-February I called the court, only to get a recording telling me the offices were still closed and try an email. My first two emails went unanswered, the third received a terse and uninformative reply. Six weeks after the first email, I finally managed to reach someone who could help. At this point, things started to move faster. It turned out there was a piece of information missing which they’d known about since mid-November but hadn’t informed me. With that corrected, I was told the paperwork would be mailed out by the end of the week.

Two weeks later I still hadn’t received anything so I emailed again. Someone had forgotten to put it in the mail and I was told it would go out on the following Monday. It arrived the next Friday.

At this point, it was over seven months since she’d died and because there was no will or a named beneficiary, we hadn’t been able to clear out her apartment, close her bank account, order her tombstone, or deal with a number of other issues.

A week after the paperwork arrived, we were back up in New York City working on all those things. While both physically and emotionally exhausting, the week was very productive, thanks in large part to some wonderful people who looked for solutions when others would have shrugged their shoulders.

The week after we got back with a carload of books, photos, and other keepsakes, I was able to get a Federal Tax ID number and open an estate bank account so I could start dealing with estate expenses and, assuming there’s anything left, disbursement to my mother’s heirs.

Most of this aggravation could have been avoided if my mother had legally named a beneficiary or estate executor. Detailed instructions regarding what she wanted done would have helped even more. However, as with many people, she didn’t want to consider her own mortality too closely.

The most important lesson to be learned here is get your legal house in order while you have time to consider options and make your own decisions. Everyone dies eventually, make it easier on those left behind by managing your estate as much as you can. Also, don’t forget to inform responsible parties and update any instructions as circumstances change.

Also, cull your old documents regularly. This was not a habit either of my parents had as we found paperwork, including tax returns that went back to the 1940s. Unless you run a business, there’s rarely a need to keep more than seven years of tax returns or one year of credit card statements, utility bills, etc. Make it a regular part of your annual routine to purge older papers. Consider it a favor to your heirs. As a bonus feature, it means less clutter for you.

Hopefully this post can help someone avoid repeating my experiences. They certainly modified my habits.

Brena Bock Author Page

David Bock Author Page

Team And More

So…. I actually have guest posts, and I should have posted today. One of those at least. But it’s my anniversary and SOMEONE keeps interrupting my attempts at quality time with the computer. GEESH

Yeah. Okay. So, Dan keeps interrupting me, and I feel it would be a little rude to say no right now considering he made me — cough — an honest woman 38 years ago today.

On that note…. THIRTY EIGHT YEARS? where did the time got? And what happened to these kids?

This is the time of year to give/receive gifts.

Now, I’ve written before about the lousy economic sense of gift-giving. There is always a ton of money that gets wasted. We have some friends that have the strangest gift giving ability. Like… No. there is no way to explain. If its both perfect and needed, they give it to me the day after I order it for myself.

Yes, there are also friends who marvelously discover my wish list and are smart enough to navigate what I’m saving for the kids, as opposed to what I want for myself.

But there is an inability to tell what someone wants that makes the mismatch inevitable, particularly in the very large aggregate numbers.

And that’s why communism doesn’t work.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, to get down to brass tacks about gifting.

When I was a kid, I loved receiving Christmas gifts — who doesn’t, right? — but Portuguese Christmas gifts are different. The whole family gets together and give you ONE thing. So, you know, I usually got a doll for Christmas, and later a book. Later yet I got money or clothes. (You know you’re a grownup when money or clothes excite you.)

But when I started making a little money I found the real joy, which was to give gifts. I would plot for months to give someone something. It was always something I knew they liked or wanted and would never buy for themselves.

I managed to be the only person to give mom stuff she didn’t hate — mostly jewelry because our tastes are similar, so I knew what she wanted. Not real jewelry, but Portugal means sometimes you need costume jewelry. And when I couldn’t afford anything else, I wrote a poem for my best friend and illustrated it.

Now I’m not going to claim I always get the perfect gift. I very often don’t. But when I do, there is this feeling of elation. It’s much better than getting a gift.

And then there’s kids, and gifts from the kids and for the kids. We just want to make them happy, and … well, when the kids are grownup, you have to balance not overwhelming them and not offending their sense of independence. So it’s difficult but they try.

But the truly ridiculous thing? We’ll love anything they give us, no matter how silly.

Now, mind you, this year I got amazing gifts. DIL gave me jam she made! And she helped me in the kitchen on Christmas day. And future DIL and son cleaned my garage, which might be the best present I’ve ever gotten from anywhere. Yeah, there were also actual gifts, but those were my favorite.

And then there’s …. well, they were both here, for pretty much the whole day. And that’s very much the best gift ever: having the family together for a whole day. It’s a rare and precious thing, more and more as they grow into their own lives, and it’s distilled sweetness and joy for us as parents.

There is nothing that compares to that. A perfect day with the kids and their spices (well, only one is a spouse so far, so we’ve decided their collective name is spices) when we got to be together as a family and enjoy each other.

And the memory of that to take to the days when that is impossible for whatever reason.

Those are gifts beyond price, and quite beyond economic calculation or mismatch.

When I was young I used to resent “skinny, well-put-together blondes” at first sight. Particularly if they were named Ashley. No. I don’t know why, but we lived in North Carolina at the time, and I swear they were cranking these girls out in a factory somewhere, and they were all named Ashley.

Why did I resent them? Stupid reasons. Mostly, they had this air of having been brought up to wealth and privilege, the kind that always told them what fork to use and what clothes to wear in all situations and– Well, in my twenties and having just changed culture/country/language, I felt like a complete mess, and like I was falling apart all the time, and never knew what to do, what to wear, when to speak and when to keep my mouth shut. (The last one might be incurable.)

So my perception is that these people had it too easy while I had it too hard. I think I was wrong on both counts. I mean, I’m not going to recommend moving across the world in your early twenties and invalidating both your professional credentials such as they were and your nascent ability to pass as an adult, but if you do and survive, and acclimate, you’re probably better able to make it in life than if you hadn’t. Not less.

And having met a few of these women over the intervening decades, some of them actually from the background I imagined from them, we’ll say they had their own challenges, and in the end I probably did better (maybe not monetarily, but in every way that counts than they did.)

So, what is this all about, other than confusing all my readers named Ashley? (No, I don’t hate the name.)

Well. It’s the whole Diversity, Equity and Inclusion bullshit. (They probably thought Liberty, Fraternity, Equality was too tainted.)

Today again I woke up to talk of “reparations” from people who never held slaves to people who were never slaves, which is this type of thinking all over.

Sure, some of us come from backgrounds that were less than ideal. As a friend told me recently, having come to the same conclusion I did a few decades ago, the Bible is right about sin marking a family for seven generations. Not because it’s a curse from above, but because it’s almost impossible to get past the echoes of bad thing in less time.

Thing is — think about it — you’re descended, proximally, (Those you might have met) from four individuals, the products of four different families. Now think about human families in general. If you’re descended from four families that within the last seven generations didn’t have a major trauma, you’re a rare unicorn and should register yourself as an endangered species.

And trauma passes on, and affects people. Then there are neurological conditions and physical conditions and–

Look, I hate the ‘neuro typical’ and ‘neuro atypical’ slang, because almost all of us are battling something, even if just minor sensory stuff. But then again, I’ve just recently convinced myself (kind of) that being ADD is NOT a MORAL failing.

I don’t know every one of you reading this, but I would bet almost everyone of you has something you battle with on the regular. Either illness, or a weird brain glitch, of the PTSD fall out of a less than sane family/growing up situation. Because we’re human. We’re broken.

“But Sarah,” you say. “The American revolution was based on equality.”

Kind of. It was based on equality before the law. You weren’t a nobleman and exempt in certain circumstances; you weren’t a peasant and able to be killed impunely, etc. etc. etc.

That’s fine. In fact that’s great, and if we could get back to that equality under the law, I’d be ecstatic. But that’s not what the Equity BS is about.

The Equity nonsense claims to look into your life, and see where you’re not on a par with those around you, and do something to compensate you. But before you get all excited about how they’re going to compensate you for ADHD, or because your parents had a messy divorce when you were five, or because your great grandfather was a murderous drunkard… yeah, no.

You see, even individuals can’t tell when others are being held back by something. We all tend to imagine anyone bluffing their way to life and presenting an “okay” face have it easy. Well, like anything like this administered by government, it’s all about punishing success. If you managed to get your ducks in a row (I’m fairly sure one of mine is a turkey) and make it, particularly monetarily, because that’s what government is best at measuring, then you must have had it easy, and people who didn’t make it must have stuff given to them.

It’s kind of like the whole slavery stuff. Oh, please. If you want to give someone compensation for stuff done to their ancestors, compensate people for their ancestors being forced onto welfare, and the perverse incentives of the same, but abolish welfare first. (First, do no harm.) Because that has had a far more permanent impoverish-and-destroy effect on the population.

People who came out of slavery were doing pretty well, despite legal hobbles and other issues, before the shackles of victimhood and welfare were dropped on them (and others.) Not saying slavery and transport across the ocean was good, right or something to repeat, but let’s face it, not many immigrants came to this shore under ideal conditions, and three? four generations later trauma is trauma is trauma and the fine lines worn out. And while the people actually enslaved deserved compensation, they are long dead, and what plagues their descendants is not even the ghost of slavery, just a society offering all sorts of perverse incentives (of which reparations would be another.)

Also, how are they going to determine this? by level of tan? Because a lot of darker-skinned people are descended from voluntary immigrants. Take Kamala Harris (Or don’t. Judging by the dead eyes, she’s been taken enough) she might tan, but she has no African ancestors and certainly no enslaved ancestors. Barrack Obama has African ancestors, but no traceable slave ancestry. Etc, etc, etc. 

Why should the Obama daughters be entitled to “reparations” and my kids (whose family this side of the ocean never owned slaves, ever) have to pay them?

Well because government is not going to go over the ancestry of everyone in the US — and you’d be surprised how many “white” Americans are descended from enslaved Africans. Heck, so would a lot of them — and examine all claims. They’re going to assume you’re entitled to compensation if you tan. (And I look forward to a discussion of the levels of tan.)

Unfortunately that’s how the whole DEI thing is being administered. No, scrap that, it’s unfortunate the whole DEI project is being administered at all. I liked it better when they first came out calling it DIE before deciding it was too on the nose and changing it to DEI. Because there is no way way to do it ethically, rationally or even in a way that causes no harm.

First diversity. Diversity of what? Not of opinions. That’s anathema to the left who is in charge of this. There is only one set of beliefs. And yet “diversity” is somehow supposed to improve everything, by bringing in people who look different but think exactly the same. So, you know… multiple levels of tan, different genitalia (there are only two types), different types of sexual attraction, and let’s count the people who say they should have had different genitalia, and…. apparently now we’re supposed to include the people who can’t or won’t lose weight (as one of the can’t I still think this is stupid.)

Here’s the thing all these games are a problem, because hiring or promoting or giving privileges to anyone for any reason other than competence slowly degrades society. There is never “just as capable.” That’s not how people work. And if you’re hiring for anything but capable, you’ve got a really high chance you’re not hiring someone who is capable.

Take the whole “women” being a downtrodden minority and having to be preferentially hired for male dominated professions. Men and women are different. And no, we’re not going to play the games of ‘but the same nutrition’ because we know that’s not true. It’s not how any of this works. Hormones have consequences, and they have consequences before you are born. There is a long post coming on this, and I’ve pointed out I have a lot of sympathy for people who think they were born in the wrong body, and if they’re adults, it’s their decision to make whether living under the appearance of the other sex is better (the appearance because in current state of science you can’t really change) and I only get really upset at messing with kids or people too young to know better. HOWEVER hear me out: none of us knows what living as the other sex truly is. We are, however “non-conforming” we consider ourselves to be, all locked into being who we are well before we are born. Hormones form us before then. Not just in how our bodies grow and are arranged, but in our brains too.

Now I’m not going to say women can’t be almost as strong (or stronger than some) men, or that they can’t be good at visual and spacial reasoning, or even good in male professions. Human ability is a continuum and a few women make better engineers than even the best men. And some women are strong enough to be firefighters. And–

However, the women whose minds and bodies run that way, and who have an interest in the fields will find them, in a free society.

The fact is that for whatever reason most women prefer to work with people; most men prefer to work with things. (Note, most. Not all.)

Trying to do DEI and bring those numbers to parity ignores that people aren’t the same and even groups can’t be made the same. Forcing it just brings in people who don’t want to do the thing, and might in fact be incapable of doing the thing.

In the end it does nothing, except create very unhappy people and destroy society. It’s sort of like Liberty, equality and fraternity: Two things that can’t be enforced or even measured with any kind of general rule, and one that will destroy everything.

It’s a bad idea, instituted by people who act as if they’ve never met a living human, in the service of lies they were told as children, and which not even children should believe. And if continued (it’s been in place a long time, though not by that name) it will literally dismantle human civilization.

It’s time for DEI, but really DIE to die, die, die!

The house is full and I have a million things to cook!

See you tomorrow.

ON SALE RIGHT NOW: (A new section for this time period when a lot of people have a lot of things for sale)!

Also I wish to remind everyone that you can order now on sale, and have a bunch of books delivered to your loved one’s kindle on Christmas morning and look like a big spender!

ON SALE FOR 99c

FROM D. A. BROCK: Texas in the Med: Republic of Texas Navy

September, 1940…

The Battle of Britain is at its height. Every day RAF and Allied fighters rise to meet the swarms of German planes seeking to bomb Britain into submission.

In the Mediterranean, the Royal Navy, badly overstretched by the loss of the French Navy, struggles against the powerful Italian Navy to keep that vital waterway open while supporting the besieged island fortress of Malta.

To aid their ally, the Republic of Texas is sending Vice Admiral Karl von Stahlberg and the Texas Naval Expeditionary Force. Can his small force of cruisers, destroyers, and two aircraft carriers stem the rising tide of Europe’s dictators as the tyrant Pétain works to break up the Allies?

FROM TOM VEAL: Strange Tales for Strange Times

If you think you live in strange times, these tales will show you what strangeness really is.

• “The Miracle Wrought by Silas Gantry”: A down-on-his-luck pastor performs a world-shaking miracle, then has to endure the unanticipated consequences of a world where everyone believes in deity.
• “Shadowloves: A Tale of Desire”: Approaching middle age, a man who let romance pass him by rekindles an old flame at an exotic resort, only to discover that it won’t let him go.
• “The Monkey and the Amazon: A Tale of Illusions”: In ancient Babylon, the alleged daughter of a warrior princess finds her fate entangled with a monkey that is more than it seems.
• “Igor’s Campaign: A Tale of Ambition”: The World Science Fiction Convention comes to Yeltsin-era Russia and turns into a scene of speculative stock frenzy.
• “A Fire at the End of Time: A Tale of Immortality”: On the universe’s last-born planet, a young scholar is offered a fearful chance to prolong his life past the death of the stars.
• “Daimon Born: The First Adventure of Theagonistes”: In the realm above the Moon, a daimon who seeks to penetrate the cosmos-enclosing Empyrean changes the Earth forever.
• “Pages from the Universal Library”: The Universal Library contains every book that has been or can be written. Presented here are reviews of works that lack only a connection to our version of reality. You will discover how thwarting the 9/11 plot led to the impeachment of George W. Bush, which holiday could not be decolonized, who made cricket America’s national pastime (with an assist from the designated hitter rule) and why a German politician killed in the military coup of 1936 became a progressive hero.
• “Clicks & Colluders”: A Russian spy, a naïve journalistic neophyte and the aftermath of Hillary Clinton’s election victory, which quickly veers in directions almost as strange as real life.

When you finish these stories, you will appreciate the placidity of the mundane world.

from sarah a. hoyt

Christmas In the Stars: A collection of Christmas Short Stories

This is a collection of four Christmas short stories.
It starts with a star-explorer stranded in unknown coordinates listening very hard for sleigh bells. Then there are two deserters of a doomed planetary war, in a forsaken planet, trying to do the right thing to secure peace and good will, even if one of them happens to be dead. And did you know there was a small, sweet robot at the nativity? Also, sometimes, all you need for a Merry Christmas is a cat.
This is a short collection, but it’s heartwarming and cozy, and the sort of thing to read on a snowy afternoon, by your fireplace, with a cup of eggnog nearby.

Odd Magics: Tales for the Lost

Odd Magics
This is a very strange collection of fairytales, recast for modern life. In it the prize isn’t always to the fairest, the
magic is rarely to the strongest.
But lonely introverts do find love, women who never gave it a thought find themselves at the center of romance.
Doing what’s right will see you to the happily ever after.
And sometimes you have to kiss an accountant to find your prince.

A Few Good Men

Lucius Dante Maximillian Keeva was born a prince…

or so close to it as makes no difference. He is the son of one of the fifty Good Men who — between them — partition and rule all of the Earth.
But for the last fourteen years, he’s been imprisoned in a small cell, in what amounts to solitary confinement.
You can’t stay sane in solitary confinement that long, not even if someone supplies you with reading material.
When Luce escapes, he finds that his family is dead and people are trying to kill him. He doesn’t respond as a sane man would.
It is just as well.
Restoring a constitutional republic to a world gone mad, five hundred years after the fabled USA vanished from the face of the Earth is not a job for a sane man.
And Luce Keeva is just the madman for the job.

THE REST OF THE BOOKS!

BY ANTHONY GILMORE, HARRY BATES AND DESMOND W. HALL, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Space Hawk: The COMPLETE Hawk Carse Stories: The Retro Pulp Space Opera Non-Classics!

In 1931, Harry Bates, the editor of Astounding Stories, was dissatisfied with the quality of the fiction he was getting from writers. So he, along with his assistant Desmond W. Hall, rolled up their sleeves and created a protagonist, and antagonist, and wrote four stories to show the other writers “how to do it right”.

The result, Hawk Carse, and his nemesis, the diabolical Ku Sui, are certainly memorable. As critic Schuyler P. Miller put it, “Hawk Carse was so bad, he was almost good.”

This iktaPOP Media collection of the original stories includes, for the first time, the fifth and last Hawk Carse story, “The Return of Hawk Carse”, written by Harry Bates alone, and published in 1942 in Amazing Stories rather than Astounding.

• This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving the stories genre and historical context.

FROM KATHRYN ZURMEHLY: Doomwalker

Dark powers are on the move in a world on the brink of chaos… Paladin Valen has hunted the broken remnants of the dead elven gods all his life. Now he is tasked with delivering a warning from his goddess. Called ‘Doomwalker’ for reasons he does not understand, Valen makes his way toward the great capital city of Crownshold with a sense of duty and foreboding. He crosses paths with the elf Maryx, a spy for the doomed kingdom of the elves. She is bound to him through childhood oaths that connect her to the terrible destiny of the ‘Doomwalker’. War is coming to the land and it is hard on their heels. Accursed warriors stalk the woods and an army moves towards the city with no sign of their passing but burning villages. Valen and Maryx’s fate looms over them, though just what that fate will be, neither can tell.

FROM CARLINE FURLONG: The Guardian Cycle, Vol.1: In Dreams and Other Stories

A man whose debts must be paid by vengeance. A woman desperate to save her husband. A grieving father finding a young enemy soldier on his veritable doorstep…

These fantasy and soft sci-fi stories wonder whether or not heroes need families. Are we not told that families slow the hero down? Is it not typically implied that they get in the way of the adventure? Are they a burden, or truly the greatest strength from which the hero and those he loves can draw?

Six tales in this collection center on family, faith, and self-sacrificing love as men and women fight for the ones whom they hold most dear. Whether the enemy is inner turmoil, a nightmare, or a demon really does not matter. If the threat seeks to harm a member of the family, it is going to pay dearly.

FROM MOE LANE: Ghosts on an Alien Wind

Science Fiction! Horror! Adventure!

Something murdered the Galaxy. There was no warning, no explanation, and no mercy… except for humanity. Humans were the only sapients spared, and nobody knows why. Now Earth and her colonies gingerly explore the Tomb Worlds, picking through the ruins of dead civilizations for answers, or at least treasures. The researchers sent out can bring back wonders. If they survive.

Pamela Tanaka is the Chief Pilot for a research outpost on the terrifyingly comfortable world of One-Eighteen, and she is precisely where she wants to be. But when madness, murder, and mass sacrifice profane her chosen home, she must search for answers on her own – but not “before it’s too late.” Everybody who goes to the Tomb Worlds knows ‘too late’ has already come and gone.

FROM I. M. LERNER AND CATHERINE OSORNIO: The Hidden Entrance (Under the Staircase – An Economic Adventure Series for Kids Book 2)

On a hunch, he pressed down on the ledge, first on Hubris and then on Nemesis.
Crrrr….
The click-clackety sound of moving gears creaked loudly on the other side of the wall.
Slowly the bookshelf slid aside, revealing a dark hallway.

After spending the summer discovering the Under the Staircase Society, Nate, Maya, and Maggie are finally back at school. But while Nate would be happy puttering in his workshop and tinkering with his 3D printer, he can’t stand by as their beloved Apprenticeship Program comes under attack. The discovery of The Road to Serfdom sparks a chain of events they could never have expected. From Cipher Wheels to Cicero, secret desks to hidden passages, the kids must solve the mystery…before it’s too late!

Under the Staircase® Books A mystery and adventure series that teaches treasured values: personal responsibility, individual liberty, and economic freedom.

Psst! Parents & Teachers: The second book in the series introduces a variety of Friedrich Hayek’s economic concepts—individualism and collectivism, the knowledge problem, the fatal conceit, and other topics—using examples from kids’ day-to-day lives in school, with friends, and in familiar situations.

FROM KAREN MYERS: King of the May – A Virginian in Elfland

Book 3 of The Hounds of Annwn.

MORE VALUABLE AS A WEAPON THAN A KINGMAKER, HE MUST MAKE HIS OWN CHOICES TO SECURE THE FUTURE.

George Talbot Traherne, the human huntsman for the Wild Hunt, had hoped to settle into a quiet life with his new family, but it was not to be. Gwyn ap Nudd, Prince of Annwn, has plans to secure his domain in the new world from the overbearing interference of his father Lludd, the King of Britain.

The security of George’s family is bound to that of his overlord, and he vows to help. But when he and his companions stand against Lludd and his allies at court, disaster overturns all their plans and even threatens the Hounds of Annwn themselves.

George and his patron, the antlered god Cernunnos, must survive a subtle attack that undermines them both. Other gods and gods-to-be have taken an interest, but the fae are divided in their allegiances and fear the threat of deadly new powers in their unchanging lives.

George and his companions must save themselves if they are to persuade their potential allies to help. But how can they do so, attacked on so many fronts at once? Will he put his family into greater jeopardy by trying to defend them?

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Bite Sized (Liquid Diet Chronicles Book 1)

Meg Turner has been a vampire for twenty years. Her favorite food is rapists. Which is how she met Andi Donahue, her new best friend/ girl Friday.

And then the nightmares start. And the bodies start showing up–bled out and raped. Just like Meg was. They don’t have a whole lot of time to stop the killer before he strikes again, and only one way to stop the killer.

But how can Andi help Meg stop a killer she can’t even see?

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Beach House on the Moon

The Moon is a dead world, airless and desolate. Emmaline Waite has known this fact since childhood, when she watched the Apollo landings.

But here she sits on the shores of the Sea of Tranquillity, looking up at the gibbous Earth as the waves roll in. What madness can this be?

She gets no time to contemplate that question, for she is not alone. She is about to enter a realm of love and fear, of mindbending secrets that change her understanding of human history, and of self-sacrifice.

Her life will never be the same.

ALSO, ATTENTION, PLEASE, THIS CHRISTMAS, CEDAR SANDERSON HAS A CHRISTMAS GIFT FOR HER READERS: 

Just So

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: smart

I started to write this post yesterday, then realized I didn’t have quite enough brain. (Yes, I am better today. Should be perfectly fine by tomorrow. I’m taking quantities of C and D that probably will make me glow in the dark, but it’s working.)

And then this morning I realized the problem was that I didn’t actually have all the factors in play. So, indulge me while I lay the background, shall I?

I’ve been reading They Walked Like Men by Clifford Simak. It is in many ways a gimmick book, and as a fellow professional now I can see where he rushed the ending and to an extent stuck the landing, though I’m not sure how I’d do it differently, except take a few more pages and resolve on logic issue.

My guess is either editor breathing down his neck, or he was out of allotted words and didn’t feel like going back to the beginning to start cutting at it.

BUT note its good enough that I’m not going to give you spoilers. You should read it. To this day, Dan and I get antsy if we’re driving a mountain road, and there’s a car with a single light behind us. Also, the book has one of my favorite openings ever in science fiction, closely followed (note FOLLOWED) by Puppet Masters and preceded by Citizen of the Galaxy and Have Spacesuit.

Anyway, the entire gimmick of the book is that the Earth is under alien invasion using the forms we have for normal commerce/interaction. And that there’s nothing we can do about it, since the majority of people not only don’t know the aliens exist, but don’t believe you if you tell them. And so the invasion proceeds apace, because other than the people who were brought forcibly in contact with it, NO ONE BELIEVES it. It’s that outrageous that people can’t process it.

I’ve read this book every few years since I was 12 or so, but this year it hit like a brick, for obvious reasons.

Oh, not the aliens. Despite Tucker Carlson, I don’t believe there are aliens and having the government scream there are every time they want to distract us is not enhancing credibility.

I mean the “corrupting our institutions to acquire power and wealth, in such a way that no one believes it. Particularly none of those who should and could do something about it.

And you know, in the book the whole thing is solved when the character proves aliens exist.

In a way that solution is right, because secrecy allows a lot of things to flourish that would be stopped right quick if they were out in the open.

Take election fraud. If it were properly reported, we’d already have one day, paper only, purple fingers, not to mention none of the crazy like “same day registration”. But most people don’t know how crazy and easy to fraud it is. They would not themselves commit fraud, so why would anyone else. And our news…. er…. democrat operatives with bylines aren’t reporting stuff like “no other country does this, because every time stuff like vote by mail is tried anywhere, the fraud is always next level”. Or “they will register you to vote, if you’re a foreign national signing up for a driver’s license with your passport.”

But the myriad and crazy ways to cheat are so many and so unreported, that their obvious outrageousness makes them hard to believe. People think fraud is a little thing on the margins. 2020 was step one at breaking that “it can’t be real” but many in the establishment and out really want to deny it and go back to sleep. The entire “it’s time to talk of something else” is indicative of this. No, sorry. If our method of elections is broken, NOTHING ELSE is important. Because you can’t win elections rigged against you. It’s the only thing to talk about. Forever. Until it’s fixed. The public seems to sense this, btw, even those who would like everything to “go back to normal”. I think it accounts for Trump’s lead almost by itself.

The thing is Trump’s election in 2016 started ripping off a lot of those masks. Partly — and only partly — because Trump will say things everyone is afraid to say, out loud. (Which, to an extent is why he was elected in the first place.)

But partly because the left went so insane at the unexpected election result that it ripped off its own mask in favor of going completely and thoroughly nuts in public.

What I was missing yesterday is that there have been several of these “steps” and they still keep coming. Because having lost their minds, the left isn’t find it. And the very things they do are only holding because they’re so stupid they’re unbelievable. BUT every time they do the next one, the previous becomes more believable. Also, they’re increasingly, like the cheating, in front of G-d and everyone, really blatant.

And it feels like each of these incidents puts people in the frame of mind to see things clearer. And sometimes makes it so you just can’t ignore it. Each hit reveals “the aliens” doing the unthinkable.

And ooh, boy, the hits have been coming fast and furious the last three years. The covidiocy, and then every revelatory hit coming out about it. The red speech. The lawsuits against Trump. Oh, yeah, the entire conspiracy nonsense during his presidency, from the “Russia, Russia, Russia” to the insane stuff they brought up against his supreme court nominees, all of it made the masks fall off, and people go “Oh.”

Now, the masks go back on, and people try to go back to the safe place, because, well, no one, not even me, likes the hideousness revealed. OTOH those of us, like me, who have seen it for a long time, feel a certain amount of relief when it’s out in the open.

But the people trying to get back “to normal” keep having the “normal” ripped off their eyes again and again. There is no road back to normal. None.

At this point, the left is so much in evil villain mode (partly because they always were, partly because their hiding methods are working less and less every year, thanks to the net. Hence why they are now attacking the first amendment) that they can’t help themselves. So, you know, when Hamas does horrible stuff in Israel, they think it makes perfect sense to tear down hostage posts and attack Jews. Because…. why not? They thought this would be absolutely a good strategy. Because stuff like this has always worked before, and they missed how utterly horrendous the attacks were, and how in public they were.

So, the masks were ripped off yet again. And then watching University presidents, all women, and all obviously and clearly incompetents trying to defend it was just sh*t icing on the sh*t cake.

I feel like the results of that haven’t yet fully played out, but like it moved everyone to yet another stage of “Oh, you’re just really evil and there is no truth in you.”

My guess is Trump or no Trump the hits are going to keep coming. At this point, they can’t help themselves. They don’t know what else to do but keep trying to herd us by doing stuff that’s absolutely horrifying.

They’re doing what they always did, only up to eleventy now, and out in the open. And they don’t know why we’re all going “whoa, now!”

And it’s going to keep happening. Trump started it, but at this point it’s a perpetual motion machine. The masks just keep falling.

Thing is we need them to fall harder and faster, because it’s our only chance to avoid more unpleasant options.

Without spoilering too much, there is a moment in Simak’s book (And he’d be horrified at my seeing it this way, btw, for his time he was very much progressive as you’ll find reading the book) when the president offers to nuke the aliens, and the main character says “Why? Everyone knows they exist now. They can no longer operate. It was the secrecy that allowed it.”

It’s the same thing. We need all the ugliness to come out as fast as possible, so the masks can’t go back on.

Because as evil and dirty as our “elites” are the only thing that allows them to operate is the nice-nice mask, and people wanting to pretend they see no evil.

Remove that and they’re done. They become a shame, a reproach, and a laugh stock.

Which for them is worse than death.

So in the coming year, I wish you the masks falling harder and faster. And no worries, they will be.

Just refuse to forget the masks that fell. Keep notes if you have to. And bring them up when people try to look away.

The sewer is horrible. But it might save us from worse choices.

Don’t look away.