Randy Thornhorn's Blog, page 10
August 21, 2014
Thornhorn working on thought crime…
Working on my latest thought crime.
August 14, 2014
A little WICKED TEMPER interlude…
Before the woods gave him up, Matthew saw a few more things. With each dark discovery, he kept leaving parts of his head behind. The sun went steadily and, after a hair and shirt snagging push, Matthew stumbled into a wild chestnut grove. In the broken light, white chickens scratched at the mossy mountain skin, milling about. They were just a smattering of dumb cluckers, not like Bob’s flock. Nobody would know if he drop-kicked a few for fun. But right now, Matthew’s stilts were wobbly, his shoes full of sweat and mud, his feet were raw with blisters. Seeing the chickens, he felt closer to the homestead, though: a whoop or two away. So he limped faster. His moves stringhalted now, thanks to the hole in his thigh. It ain’t the gore-horn that kills you, he chanted softly. It’s the hole. The hole. The hole. It ain’t the gore-horn that kills you. It’s the hole.
Another half hour of misery was still ahead of him. But Matthew finally took a wild left turn through laurel briar and around a wasp’s nest and he came to a dead stop. What he saw down slope made him squeak like a rubber toy.
It was Bob Nottingham’s smokehouse.
Matthew left the leafy steambath. He tripped down to the house. Tizzy was waiting on the wagon tongue. She sat there boiling in her own little popskull, in the late glare of day.
“I doubt you could catch a bug in a bucket,” she said, once his tale of woe was told.
“He was sneaky. He threw me.”
“Yeah, and I’m wily Delilah.”
“I’m telling ye, Tizzy now—don’t rile me up. He’s a sneaky, backtracking shitrag and that’s all they is to it.”
“Take a rest, hogboy. You look thirsty.”
“I told ye don’t never call me no hog—”
“I’m sorry. I’m just hot, dern it.”
“Let’s git on in the house then. I need better shade and cool water.”
“Nope,” she said, chin on her knees. She would not even look at the house.
“And why not?”
“They’s something unfit about this place. It’s unfit, Matthew.”
“Well, I ain’t gone argue about that.”
“I’m as much to blame as you.”
“To blame? Fer what?”
“Well, I been thinking,” Tizzy said, picking up speed. “Why do we always gotta be running from something or running after something else?”
“Huh? What’s got into you while I was gone?”
“If we live backwards and upside down from the way of things, we ends up in unfit places.”
“Doll baby, I’d give you a pill but I ain’t got one,” he said. She was going frantic on him.
“Matthew, I wonder sometimes if we ain’t just whirlygigs, for no good reason at all. You know? Whirlygigs. Seeds. We just is. And we fall. And we don’t need no reason at all. And that’s okey-dokey. Besides, they ain’t none.”
“They ain’t no what?”
“No good reason at all.”
Matthew tried to decipher her. But not for long. He gave up quickly and dragged himself inside where he drank six dippers. He almost stopped there, then decided to have a seventh. The seventh dipper finally slaked his thirst, so Matthew took off his shoes. He took out his pocketknife and found a bottle of red iodine in a kitchen cupboard. Then he tip-toed back outside, cussing the hurt of it all the way. His blisters got doctored while he sat with Tizzy and watched the sun go down. They bided slow time until the man’s return.
from Wicked Temper by Randy Thornhorn
______________
August 11, 2014
SavannahNow promotes The Kestrel Waters
A heads up: Today and tomorrow The Savannah Morning News is doing featured promotion of The Kestrel Waters on their website, SavannahNow.com
Four ads in four spots simultaneously on the homepage.
Click:
Souls in Distress
Role models are the death of art.
Art that depicts humanity is mostly built on badly-cracked people and broken relationships. If the folk of great story and song were fully realized human beings or the well-adjusted sort, there would be no Shakespeare. Passion eschews serenity and is not kind to contentment.
RT
August 6, 2014
The Kestrel Waters: Andrea's Review
RT
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I won a free copy of The Kestrel Waters through a giveaway on Goodreads, in return, this is my review.
Oh. My. God.
While I am quite the picky reader, I found myself lost in this story. I never wanted to put the book down. The characters are beautifully crafted with so much mystery that leaves you wanting to learn more. Bettilia is the most mysterious. She has a past that leaves you questioning everything about her. She is wild and unorthodox. Kestrel is more of the curious and rebellious sort- though Glenn seems to be the one the consequential hardships fall upon. Chalice seems more of the pretty, to-good type and she seems lost in the sidelines quite often. I do have to thank the author, though. I questioned what happened to her several times and I was not left disappointed with no answers, but also not overwhelmed with too much needless information on a side character.
Throughout the story, I was left with hundreds if new questions and only a few answers. Bettilia takes on a spiritual feel near the end of the book- which left me confused and needy for more answers. I am still left with several "why"s now that I have finally finished the book, but what else would make me want to buy another book in the series (say, Wicked Temper, the prequel?)
Randy Thornhorn's writing is poetic and so deep that I cannot help but want to keep reading. There is never a dull moment, yet his style is paced well enough to prevent the reader from feeling rushed. The meaningful parts were obviously meaningful by the extra emphasis he placed in his descriptions where the side events were short and to the point (but, again, not rushed!).
One of the things I noticed; now that I have finished reading; is that, unlike many other books I have read in the past, this book would be just as good the second read through. I will definitely be rereading this one- I'd hate to miss something huge that I may have rushed over the first time (I always tend to rush over those heated scenes with that need to know what happens next or how it ends)!
I will definitely be looking for more of Mr. Thornhorn's books.
Finally, I would like to thank Randy Thornhorn (and RosaSharn Press) for providing me with this copy and allowing me the opportunity to read such a great book. I will definitely be recommending this to others.
July 30, 2014
Win A Free Kindle Ebook: THE KESTREL WATERS
The only qualification is that you have to be willing to write an honest Amazon review if you read it (especially if you read it and like it).
Come and get em while they're hot off the server!
__________
The Kestrel Waters: A Tale of Love and Devil">
A Celestial Fire in July…
All the angels of Tie Siding were on fire.
The famous sky was gone.
Presumably the mountains were still there, invisible in haze.
OK,
there was only one angel, but she was a torch in the wind, beside
the wind-ripped American flag the post office flies.
OK, she wasn’t
literally on fire.
Maybe her angelic red hair made me think she was
ablaze as it flaunted the prairie and made a festival of itself.
There
was a fireworks stand nearby, entirely beside the point, as was the
Fourth of July.
It was really dry.
It was fire season.
It was the
wind festival, featuring an angel standing in it, letting her red hair
conflagrate history, reduce it to ash, bid it start anew, erase the sky
with atrocity’s own smoke.
She wore, besides her flame of hair,
blue jeans and a singlet.
She was violent in the wind.
I started
walking toward her.
I’m still walking toward her, no idea what to
say when I get there.
.
.
.
(Fire Season by James Galvin)
July 29, 2014
Coming Soon…
“I ain’t got to make no sense, Mizz Gideon, ain’t got to make sense of nothing,” Malakoff drawled. “Somewhere, out there, baby kittens are entertainment with lit cigarettes. And this sad old world is senseless. But I will make a big breakfast out of these boys if they lay hands on me again. Yep, Miss Giddy. Don’t blink. Don’t want you to miss nothing. Right, boys? We’ll all undergo a tick or two of reee-organization. For Daddy’s entertainment.”
July 25, 2014
On Sale Now: HOWLS OF A HELLHOUND ELECTRIC (Riddle Top Magpies & Bobnot Boogies & A Ragged Love Story or Two)
Collected together for the first time, Randy Thornhorn’s lyric, comic, and haunting short stories conjure up the fever and folly-filled lives of Riddle Top magpies, Bobnot boogies, and Cayuga Ridge folk—in other words: Thornhorn people. People who resemble everything human and a few odd creatures besides. Here we find fiery baptisms, legless dancers, rockabilly lovers, Buffalo soldiers, spidery wombs, sapphic ghosts, and big lusty birds who'll wink at you. Scenes unfold of passion, buffoonery, mud-dobbers, murder, and the wonder working power in the blood. Here violence forever lurks, waiting to be unleashed with the beasts in the shadows, amidst the howls of the hellhound electric.
Author of the acclaimed novels The Kestrel Waters and Wicked Temper, and the longest fiction ever published in The Oxford American Magazine (who hailed him as “One of the South’s wildest new voices”), Randy Thornhorn finally leads this congregation of his unforgettable fables:
The Hole And Dobber’s Head (longest story published in The Oxford American), Tarbaby, The Axman’s Shift (abridged), Johabeth’s Holler, The Rain Goblin, Psalm Of The Emu, O Isle Spinner, Hushabye Yule, Turpitude, and Dearest Corliss.
Don’t miss this opportunity to read all these mindblowing stories, together, together, at last!
http://www.amazon.com/Howls-Hellhound...
On Sale Now: HOWLS OF A HELLHOUND ELECTRIC (Riddle Top Magpies & Bobnot Boogies & A Ragged Love Story or Two)
Ten stark and stunning tales set under the jagged shadow of Riddle Top, in a darkling mountain world—a world of unholy mirth and madness, of gods and demons you never knew existed.
Collected together for the first time, Randy Thornhorn’s lyric, comic, and haunting short stories conjure up the fever and folly-filled lives of Riddle Top magpies, Bobnot boogies, and Cayuga Ridge folk—in other words: Thornhorn people. People who resemble everything human and a few odd creatures besides. Here we find fiery baptisms, legless dancers, rockabilly lovers, Buffalo soldiers, spidery wombs, sapphic ghosts, and big lusty birds who’ll wink at you. Scenes unfold of passion, buffoonery, mud-dobbers, murder, and the wonder working power in the blood. Here violence forever lurks, waiting to be unleashed with the beasts in the shadows, amidst the howls of the hellhound electric.
Author of the acclaimed novels The Kestrel Waters and Wicked Temper, and the longest fiction ever published in The Oxford American Magazine (who hailed him as “One of the South’s wildest new voices”), Randy Thornhorn finally leads this congregation of his unforgettable fables:
The Hole And Dobber’s Head (longest story published in The Oxford American), Tarbaby, The Axman’s Shift (abridged), Johabeth’s Holler, The Rain Goblin, Psalm Of The Emu, O Isle Spinner, Hushabye Yule, Turpitude, and Dearest Corliss.
Don’t miss this opportunity to read all these mindblowing stories, together, together, at last!
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