Randy Thornhorn's Blog, page 11

Mark Twain, Naked

“Modesty antedates clothes and will be resumed when clothes are no more. Modesty died when clothes were born. Modesty died when false modesty was born.” – Mark Twain, a Biography

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The Book Lady

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Coming Soon: HOWLS OF A HELLHOUND ELECTRIC (Riddle Top Magpies & Bobnot Boogies)

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Coming Soon: HOWLS OF A HELLHOUND ELECTRIC (Riddle Top Magpies & Bobnot Boogies & A Ragged Love Story or Two)

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Coming Soon: HOWLS OF A HELLHOUND ELECTRIC (Riddle Top Magpies & Bobnot Boogies)

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R.W. Ridley Review – The Kestrel Waters: “Another Southern Masterpiece”

Here’s what you should know about Randy Thornhorn. He dives deep as a writer and creates a lyrical wonderland as a storyteller. He has the talent to blend a kind of mystical back drop with gritty southern realism that I didn’t think was possible. He did that with Wicked Temper, the first book I read written by him, and he did it again with The Kestrel Waters, the second book I read by him. And I will read a third and fourth and onward until his pen stops bleeding or fingers stop tapping. He’s a writer you read obsessively, compulsively – pick your adverb of need.

In The Kestrel Waters you have a tale of bluegrass playing brothers, the Brothers Brass. The way Mr. Thornhorn draws us into this musical fantasy is seamless from the opening pages. It’s incredibly easy to see them spontaneously and feverishly playing a tune on a train ride to their next gig. Using their southern charm to chat up pretty girls and looking for trouble. This is a love story at its core, and the reader is taken there experiencing the passion, appetites and misfortune that such a “nail to the head” provides the oldest brother, Kestrel. It’s a story of family ties and sacrifices that are at once beautiful and tragic.

If I had to pick one thing that sets this author apart from other southern storytellers (beyond his ability to mix of fantasy and realism), it would be the masterful way the sprinkles backwoods dialect into meaningful dialogue. You almost get the sense that you’re learning a long lost language, one that is simple and alluring.

Once again, my hat is off to Mr. Thornhorn. Here’s hoping he gets the recognition he deserves.

~ R.W. Ridley

http://www.amazon.com/The-Kestrel-Wat...


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(My heartfelt thanks again to author R.W. Ridley for his amazing, humbling review. Be sure to visit his endlessly fascinating blog, which you can find at this link. - RT)

R.W. Ridley Review – The Kestrel Waters: “Another Southern Masterpiece”

Here’s what you should know about Randy Thornhorn. He dives deep as a writer and creates a lyrical wonderland as a storyteller. He has the talent to blend a kind of mystical back drop with gritty southern realism that I didn’t think was possible. He did that with Wicked Temper, the first book I read written by him, and he did it again with The Kestrel Waters, the second book I read by him. And I will read a third and fourth and onward until his pen stops bleeding or fingers stop tapping. He’s a writer you read obsessively, compulsively – pick your adverb of need.

In The Kestrel Waters you have a tale of bluegrass playing brothers, the Brothers Brass. The way Mr. Thornhorn draws us into this musical fantasy is seamless from the opening pages. It’s incredibly easy to see them spontaneously and feverishly playing a tune on a train ride to their next gig. Using their southern charm to chat up pretty girls and looking for trouble. This is a love story at its core, and the reader is taken there experiencing the passion, appetites and misfortune that such a “nail to the head” provides the oldest brother, Kestrel. It’s a story of family ties and sacrifices that are at once beautiful and tragic.

If I had to pick one thing that sets this author apart from other southern storytellers (beyond his ability to mix of fantasy and realism), it would be the masterful way the sprinkles backwoods dialect into meaningful dialogue. You almost get the sense that you’re learning a long lost language, one that is simple and alluring.

Once again, my hat is off to Mr. Thornhorn. Here’s hoping he gets the recognition he deserves.

~ R.W. Ridley

http://www.amazon.com/The-Kestrel-Wat...

____________________________

(My heartfelt thanks again to author R.W. Ridley for his amazing, humbling review. Be sure to visit his endlessly fascinating blog, which you can find at this link. – RT)

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BAD WAY OUT: A Midnight Express Through The Pines

If, on the Amazon hunt for your next sexy and riveting backwoods thriller, you stumble or fall into Bad Way Out by C. Hoyt Caldwell, you will have landed in an infested nest of raunch and dirty thrills and one great summer read. If it were not for the breeze of human decency blowing through these savage and carnal events, this book’s many pleasures might be found guilty. You might even think James Lee Burke abandoned Cajun lit, but left his prose to spit and smolder under a stretch of hot asphalt that cuts through God’s Little Acre.

Having dropped into this den of vipers and criminal intent you will soon meet many a dark heart where the sun refuses to shine. Take a deep breath and leave the wrangling to C. Hoyt Caldwell. Because, Caldwell, he knows these folk, and to read his pages is to let these intoxicating tongues in, under your skin, where the tension coils like a copperhead.

Caldwell’s voice slashes through the modern canebreak of plagued hill folk, the moonshine trade, the meth heads, the lure of fast money in meagre doses, and the occasional freak of nature one must take in stride to walk—then run for your life—through these troubled hills. At times Caldwell’s writing hurls us along at a spare but breakneck pace, with the surety of some Hemingway riding the horn and rails on his midnight express through the pines. There are no super heroes here. But there is the stray good man and good beast of the woods. Blessedly, there are good women to be had here too, if a man makes an effort. Some effort is required because, for better or worse, these hollers are still endowed with those shirt-busting lusty country girls who would turn most any man to beast and then make the beast go bad.

Pipe-puffing bootlegger E.R. Percy is aware of the beast within him. Yet he is one of those stray good men, a common man, unadorned. He is wise to the woods where he must hide to cook his brain-curdling brew, doing his business in the dark places. He is wise to the evil and the freaks that too often crawl out of those trees. Even if that cold-blooded evil snakes into Percy’s life and business out of a slimy, big city cesspool. In this modern cautionary telling, Percy soon finds he must call on homefolk and kinfolk, uneasy friends and even freaks, to fight this urban viper in their midst.

You see, E.R. Percy is a bit of Dixie-fried Raymond Chandler, a turn I find refreshing. Instead of Chandler’s mean streets, E.R. Percy is a character who is not mean but must travel these mean backroads, cleaving to his own countryman’s code, remaining “neither tarnished nor afraid”, lest he lose his very soul. In the process, Percy remains the only hope for salvation to so many of the lost souls he encounters daily in this nefarious neck of the woods. He knows that most will end their days washed only in the blood money of outsiders.

Bad Way Out is one damn good book, a relentless and hellbent ride, and it deserves to be read.

C. Hoyt Caldwell rips the skin off any Dollywood (or Deliverance) delusions of the Blue Ridge fantasy, revealing the often cruel and grinding poverty in the hopeless hollers, hidden behind the tourist traps. He does not flinch. He does not blink. He shines naked light on the despair that drives the two-bit psychobilly underworld of today—where common but nasty acts, ruthless doings, and dirty cash can leave you only a bad way out.

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RT

Amazon vs. Hachette – An Indie Author’s Thoughts | R.W. Ridley

I find little to add and nothing to refute about author R.W. Ridley’s comments here. Other than heart, clear-eyed pragmatism is what I admire most when deciding which step is the next right thing. Ridley’s got both. Most readers could care less when it comes to the print publisher’s mechanism. I don’t believe the desire for the visceral page—with its texture, its scent, its nurture—will ever be completely trumped by the e-book, despite any grand Amazonian e-dreams. But Ridley is dead right. Amazon will win. Lots of readers want bookstores with bookstacks to be meandered. Readers also want Amazon, which began by peddling books. And, whether they will admit it or not, a lot of readers today, well, they want Amazon more. A lot more. Not that bookstores are going away; in fact, their profits have seen a recent upswing, with a dollop of cream and nutmeg, and a cupcake on the side.

As to the titanic publishing houses and the creaking old publishing model, I will not sink into too much despair over this shuffle of the deck chairs. This cycle is old, it’s new, it’s Darwinian. Only them who best adapts will weather long enough to win the reader’s heart—and those three little digits on the backside.

Click to read R.W. Ridley on Amazon vs. Hachette:

Amazon vs. Hachette – An Indie Author’s Thoughts | R.W. Ridley.