As we head into the holiday season, the Mad Geniuses thought we’d do a little self-promotion. Yes, yes, I know. We usually “forget” to promote our work. This time, someone–and I’m not naming any names (Pam)–reminded us we needed to do something. So here goes.
Dave Freer
John Norway is an alcoholic, a double amputee combat veteran, a street beggar with nothing much to live for. But once — before conscription – he’d been a rally driver. One of the best, at the wheel of Lucky Number 7. Now… Ariel the rat wants to have him drive in a desperate race against death, and the ‘magh.
The only question: does Norway want to win that race?
And will it solve Fat Fal’s inflatable rattess problem?
A Rats, Bats and Vats Short Story.
*
Orkise is loose. The snake-god of plague has been awakened by Lucia del Maino, the bastard daughter of the recently overthrown duke of Milan, Phillipo Visconti. With the venomous magic of Orkise at her command, Lucia plots to marry and then murder the usurper who now rules Milan, the condottiere Carlo Sforza—known to friend and foe alike as the Wolf the North.
Other trouble is brewing as well. Sforza has his own bastard, Benito Valdosta, who is returning to Venice after having conquered the Byzantine empire. Benito has a score to settle with his father, and he will have the help of his half-brother Marco, who is the embodiment of ancient Etruria’s mighty Winged Lion of St. Mark.
Adding further to Sforza’s predicament, yet another power has entered the fray. The terrifying sorcerer Count Mindaug has decided to settle in Milan. Will he ally with Sforza, or oppose him? Either will bring trouble, for if Mindaug aids the usurper he will arouse the fury of the Holy Roman Empire and the Knights of the Holy Trinity. Both of those great forces have sworn to destroy Mindaug and anyone who shelters him.
On his side, Sforza has only the skill and cunning of his physician, Francisco Turner—who is on good terms with the Valdosta brothers and may be able to neutralize Venetian hostility. But even if he can, will that be enough to save the Wolf of the North? For out there in the countryside of northern Italy, Orkise is uncoiling all the plagues of hell.
Amanda S. Green
At war with an old enemy, betrayed by a supposed ally, Fuercon is a system on the brink of disaster. All that stands between it and defeat are its Space Navy and Marines – and the fact the betrayer does not yet know its secret plans have been discovered. But will that be enough to turn the tide of war?
Honor and duty.
Honor and duty have guided Colonel Ashlyn Shaw’s life for as long as she can remember. Honor kept her sane when she was betrayed by those she had fought beside. Duty gave her reason to trust again once the betrayal came to light and her name, as well as the names of her fellow Devil Dogs, was cleared. Now she and the Marines under her command are once again asked to risk their lives to protect Fuercon from its enemies.
Family and the Corps.
They are why she fights. She knows what will happen to them should Fuercon fall to the Callusians. Their lives are worth any sacrifice she must make to help keep their homeworld safe.
Betrayal.
The not-so-secret driving force of Ashlyn’s life. Four years ago, someone betrayed her and her command. That person now works to betray Fuercon. Ashlyn is determined to discover who – and why – and bring them to justice.
The storm clouds of war gather and time is running out. Will Ashlyn and the Devil Dogs be able to turn back the enemy and unmask the betrayer before all is lost?
*
When Meg Sheridan arrived in Mossy Creek, Texas, she had one goal in mind: to fulfill her mother’s dying wish. Now, less than a month after burying her mother, all Meg knows about the town is that it has always been a haven for the Others, even before they made their existence known to the world. As an Other herself, that should reassure Meg. Instead, it raises more questions than it answers. More than that, she has one very large problem. She doesn’t know why her mother wanted her to come to Mossy Creek. Worse, she soon learns not everyone is willing to welcome her with open arms.
Faced with the daunting task of discovering not only why her mother sent her to Mossy Creek but also with uncovering why her mother fled there years before, Meg is determined to find the truth. Along the way, she discovers something else. Even in death, her mother is looking out for her – if Meg will let her.
And if she will accept the friendship and love of those who knew her mother all those years ago.
But danger awaits her as well. Secrets decades old and resentments going back generations seethe just below the surface. Do those secrets have anything to do with why Meg’s mother wanted her to come to town? Will discovering them help her understand why her mother fled Mossy Creek so long ago?
Or will they lead to something much more sinister. . . and deadly?
Sarah A. Hoyt
From a parallel world where we have all the dreams of pulp writers, to a future where bioengineering kindles new hates and new heroes, to a different Tudor England, to the intricacies of time wars, this science fiction collection provides a glimpse of things undreamed… some from which we’ll gladly waken, and some we’d very much like to be true.
Contains the short stories: Wait Until The War Is Over, Only The Lonely, Lost, Neptune’s Orphans, After the Sabines, The Serpent’s Tail, Spinning Away, The Private Wound, Super Lamb Banana, To Learn To Forget, Things Remembered, The Bombs Bursting in Air, On A Far Distant Shore, So Little And So Light.
*
A new world. New magic. New history.
After Halley’s Comet was destroyed in a magical battle in 1759, the backlash separated the entire New World from the Old in an event known as The Sundering. Now isolated from the rest of the globe, America has become a very different place, where magic works and history has been changed forever.
It is 1803—a new 1803. Young Meriwether Lewis, footloose and intrigued, goes to hear a lecture in St. Louis by the venerated old wizard Benjamin Franklin. Franklin’s talk is disrupted by the attack of a winged fire-breathing beast, much like legends from Lewis’s own Welsh heritage. In the aftermath, Franklin tells the young man that he knows of a great, growing evil that lurks in the uncharted Arcane Territories west of the Mississippi.
Using his own vast fortune, Franklin commissions Lewis and his own talented partner William Clark to embark on a remarkable voyage of exploration, to meet and document the indigenous tribes, to find a route all the way to the Pacific Ocean—and perhaps beyond the magical veil to Europe again—and to stop the growing evil that is filling the American West. For while the Sundering separated the rest of the world and granted the original colonists unexpected magical gifts, sorcery inspired by native legends has also been ignited. And the Arcane Territories may hold unparalleled dangers for the expedition, both natural and magical.
Accompanied by the brilliant shape-shifting sorceress Sacajawea, Lewis and Clark set off on an unparalleled adventure across a landscape that no European has ever seen.
Margaret Ball
Thalia Kostis and her cohort knew the CIA was funding their group of research mathemagicians, but they’d never demanded results like this before! After terrorists use magic to kidnap hostages from the agency’s headquarters, the Center for Applied Topology finds themselves torn from their cubicles and dragged across three continents, from holding cells to terrorist safehouses as the superiors who never believed in them before are now demanding impossible results.
Now academics who can’t organize a donut run are finding out there are worse fates than loss of funding… If they don’t find and stop the magicians responsible, they’re going to lose their lives!
*
Thalia Kostis will be the first to tell you it’s not magic, it’s theoretical math when she walks a Möbius strip through walls to her office at the Institute for Applied Topology. CIA Case Officer Bradislav Lensky doesn’t care what it is, as long as she can help track down a smuggling ring and the terrorists in their safe house in Austin. The other magicians nearby don’t agree, and don’t care for new rivals either!
Now Thalia and the rest of her misfit crew are in a race against time, terrorists, common sense, grackles, and their graduate advisor to save the day!
Alma Boykin
Ah, October, when the ghosts, and spirits walk, and the Off Ramp of Doom falls quiet. Too quiet…
Lelia Chan and her Familiar, Tay, continue learning about magic and what mages do. When a customer drops a strange silver disk in Belle, Book, and Blacklight, it starts a chain of events that pull Lelia deeper into shadow magic. André Lestrange and Rodney return to help sort out the off-ramp. Someone else returns, someone who wants to open doors best left closed. Lelia and Company have their hands and paws full dealing with the forces of darkness and bad jokes.
Evil walks on All Hallows Eve. It’s up to Lelia and Tay to send it back where it belongs. Or else.
CedarSanderson
All Steven wanted was a lab job to get experience. His boss acted like a mad scientist, but that wasn’t the problem. No, the problem started with disappearances around the lab, and then it really escalated. Steven finds himself scrambling to cope with gremlins, chemical spills, and much worse things when the government agents show up… because they are recruiting and don’t take no for an answer!
*
Five Space Opera tales, short stories and novellas with a foreward written by Peter Grant.
Tamashira has a dilemma. Stay with the ship and crew she knows, or risk being stranded on an unknown planet forever when the warp node goes out of resonance. Really, it’s not a hard decision to make. But then a girl is kidnapped and she must face her past or have a death on her conscience.
Lira is a space scout. Like the mountain men of old Earth, she explores and blazes trails. But her duty has taken her to a very settled planet, to retrieve a young woman, and it’s no milk run.
Lissa looks to the stars, excited to leap off the Earth and into her destiny. But first, there is someone she has to see one more time.
A lonely young woman on a faraway planet tends her family and wishes she had someone to talk to, other than family. High above in a courier ship, a ship’s officer is about to learn how content she really is, even if she doesn’t feel that way…
Susan is not afraid of bugs. But when she makes a second contact with aliens, that lack of xenophobia might not be enough to keep her alive. The cat is, she learns, sometimes smarter than the human.
Pam Uphoff
Dimensional “Cubbies” in high rise, high tech towers are the new way to live. Fourteen year old Alice Brown and sixteen year old Joe Mata learn separately that thousands of cubbies all packed in close have enabled access to new dimensions. Dimensions where the Intelligent computers are fighting for control of worlds where humans are considered vermin.
*
When the Miss Outer Space beauty pageant decided they should hold the contest in outer space, they created an irresistible prize for the pirates that preyed on ship on both sides of the Pegasi Rift. And an opportunity for politicians on both sides.
Check out the author pages for our other bloggers:
Mad Genius Club 
Thanks, Amanda!
Bravo!
23 skidoo
Might toss this in, too?
There’s an eArc out that has a story by Sarah?
Storming the Tower of Babel — Sarah Hoyt
https://www.baen.com/voices-of-the-fall-earc.html
Should get you there?
Go on, you know you want it!
This is in John Ringo’s Black Tide Rising world, so zombies and action… zombopalypse?