Hawthorne by Heath Lowrance...a review

Don't go to Coyote Hill, they'd told him in the last town. They got they-selves some black magic out there. It ain't natural. They's things that hunt out in that desert, demons and what-not. And they don't care none if it's beast or man they kill ...

Heath Lowrance knows how to start a story, doesn’t he? This collection of linked tales centers on the enigmatic Hawthorne, a gray-eyed man on a tall black horse who has been known by other names at other times and places. He is a man who can be touched by innocence, but not by beauty and his path is a lonely one. And a bloody one. Because where Hawthorne goes, death follows.

If your only experience with the “weird western” genre is the movie Cowboys and Aliens, you’re in for a treat. These stories are filled with monsters, both supernatural and human, and after you read the story, “the Spider Tribe,” you will never look at arachnids the same way again. Lowrance braids his stories together out of bits and pieces of western myth—the lone avenger, coyote legends—and ties them off with a modern, blood-soaked sensibility that is tough and taut. When he writes a fight scene, you feel the fist impact the flesh and get the idea that maybe the writer’s been in a fight or two himself. Do yourself a favor and read Hawthorne while you’re waiting for the Dark Tower miniseries to air. Enjoy the underpinnings of the horror and the atmospherics of the land that Hawthorne inhabits. And enjoy being scared to death. When the gray-eyed man with the scarred face shows up, things get weird. 

I interviewed Heath Lowrance four years ago. (I know a good writer when I read one.) You can read that interview here.

One Under the Sun...the new trailer is here!

The new trailer for the science fiction movie I wrote, One Under the Sun, is now playing on YouTube. It's also now on pre-order at iTunes, and will be available as VOD later this year. Yes, I am excited.  (Especially since I've never seen the movie all the way through.) Follow the movie on Facebook. Follow us on Instagram (@oneunderthesunmovie).  Generally--get in touch!!!

It's tome to not be nice

In the movie Road House, the late Patrick Swayze plays legendary bouncer Dalton and in one of the movie's best moments, he tells some wannabe bouncers the way it's going to be. "Be nice," he says. "Until it's time not to be nice any more."

I think about that sometimes when I hear people offering up lame arguments for something, like abolishing school lunches because it affront's a kid's "dignity" to be offered food when he's hungry. (That, to me, is Paul Ryan's lowest moment and it had to beat out stiff competition for the honor.)

So, when I saw this meme about gun conrol, all I could think of was, "Yes."

Americans for Responsible Solutions
Everytown for Gun Safety
Newtown Action Alliance

Derek Murphy Knows Things

Derek Murphy is a book designer with a PhD in literature. I ran across this excellent blogpost he did (* Cover Design Secrets publishers use to manipulate readers into buying their books) If you're an indie author who creates your own covers, or someone who buys a lot of premades, like I do, the article is definitely worth the read.

In one instance, he points out that an author's name looks a little "crowded" on the cover. That's a problem I run into when I use my real name. On premade covers, designers often use the placeholder text: Book Title and Author Name. As it happens, "Author Name" has the same number of letters as my pseudonym, "Kat Parrish," so I usually have a pretty good idea of how it's going to look on the cover. "Katherine Tomlinson," though, is a long name, taking up 19 spaces with the space between my first and last names. It's annoying to fall in love with a design and know that your name is just not going to look good all spelled out.

The Midnight Queen is (Almost) Here

The Midnight Queen, the conclusion of the three-partstory cycle that began with Bride of the Midnight King, is in final edits. I wrote much of it while sitting by the bedside of my hospitalized best friend, who was mercifully asleep most of the time. (He's fine now.)

 The setting helped put me in the mood to write about witch kings and dark omens. (Hospitals at night are creepy places. There's a reason why Lars von Trier's The Kingdom was so eerily effective. If you've never seen it, check out the trailer here.)

I love my characters in this series and am sorry to leave them behind, but it's time. The book will be out later this month. The cover is by the wonderful people at Indie Author Services.

A book to boost your faith in humanity

I've known people who chose to die by their own hands, including one who jumped off a bridge to end his life. I found this book by accident while I was checking on titles for a client. It's about a man named Kevin Briggs who is known for talking suicides out of jumping off the iconic Golden Gate Bridge. There's a video about him on YouTube, or you can get the book here.

I write urban fantasy, and in my fiction there are "protector" characers who have a calling to help humanity. It's not often you ruin into one of these people in real life. 

Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist

I am a huge fan of Ryan Gattis' multi-POV novel All Involved, which revolves around the L.A. riots that ensued when an all white jury acquitted four white cops for the horrific beating of Rodney King. When this book popped up on a friend's list of the books she'd read last year, I was intrigued enough by the title, to find out more. Set in 1999 during the Seattle protests over the World Trade Organization meeting being held there, Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist was Sunil Yapa's debut novel. Here's the NPR review of it. Like All Involved, the story is told by multiple characters, including a kid who's in the streets, not to protest but to sell marijuana to the activists. The NPR reviewer found Yapa's work full of compassion but decided, ultimately, that his execution was a little amateurish.On Amazon, the book has 92 reviews and comes in with a solid 4-star ranking. The top review is headlined, "Edgy, Dystopian, Melodramatic Lyricism." I'm willing to forgive a lot if a book gives me passion and lyricism. This may be my first book purchase of 2017. I'll get it here.