Jay Nichols's Blog - Posts Tagged "prodigy"
Win a Free Copy of Canis Major!
If you like free stuff, enter to win a free paperback copy of my novel, Canis Major.
It’s an epic psychological thriller about dogs and people, death and life, art and destiny.
Synopsis:
After seventeen-year-old Russell Whitford confronts and kills a rabid dog, he seeks to prevent the news from reaching the dog’s owner, whose hair-trigger temper is well-known in the small town of Riley, Alabama. Russell can count on silence from two of the three witnesses who watched him hack Hector Graham’s Bloodhound to death, but the third, Michael O’Brien, isn’t like the other two. His allegiance isn’t as fixed as Russell would like it to be.
When the Centers for Disease Control arrive in town, and dogs begin running away, and gun shots start ringing out in the dead of night, Russell’s summer goes from bad to worse. All he wants to do is play his piano and guitar, maybe walk his dog every now and then, not have the weight of the universe hoisted upon his shoulders.
Here’s the intro:
Those mind-numbing days, how they creep—no, make that slither—underneath your fence, across your backyard, over your porch, through your kitchen, up your staircase, past your bedroom door, into your room, and kink up into a tight and tidy coil underneath your bed. If March enters a lion and leaves a lamb, then August slides in as easily and unobtrusively as a serpent seeking a cool place to lie. But it is always hesitant to leave. Once that cool, dark spot is found, nothing short of slaughter will get it to relinquish its position. It will hiss. It will strike. It will defend itself to its very death.
Yet it’s funny how, over time, we forget that a snake is even there. It slips from our minds because we want it to slip from our minds. As we prepare for the world of routine and structure, the egress of summer propels us away from thoughts of snakes and slaughter. We now have more important things to worry about. And when September arrives, bringing with it Labor Day and the first day of school, we are left to wonder how we could have possibly gotten out of August alive. Until that, too, slithers from our consciousness. Now it’s only a matter of days before the leaves outside our windows turn to flame. And the moment they do, you can bet we’ll begin ravaging our cedar chests for the heavy, woolen clothes we probably won’t even get to wear. Then comes Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years…
But wait—what about that serpent of August? Did it die when the seasons changed? Or is it still alive, waiting patiently, stealthily, for its month of glory to roll back around? If, say, in November, you were to reach under your bed for some wayward shoe, would August not spring forth and bite your prying hand?
The sad fact is that August never dies; it is merely forgotten. A month without borders, many have felt its doldrums in the middle of October, when the thermometer stretches its thin, red tongue to lap at the century mark. Yes, places like this exist, places where people talk slow and drink iced tea even slower, where good manners are not only charming but are de rigueur.
August is cruelest to these people. Like certain mites, it burrows beneath their skins and proceeds to slowly drive them mad with itches they cannot sufficiently scratch. The things they say…things like: “How about this heat?” To which some poor schlub has to, must, mutter back: “It ain’t the heat, it’s the humidity.” The truest of clichés. Knowing laughs all around. Because it is the humidity. And when the heat and the humidity combine: look out! Should you be so brave as to venture out in the middle of the day or climb inside your car after it has been baking in the merciless afternoon sun, sweat will drip down the small of your back in under a minute. Wait another five and the material around your armpits will darken and soak through. A damp shirt is the hallmark of the South. People wear their sweat-soaked shirts with pride. After all, why fight it? September is right around the corner and on its heels, October. Hey, it’s starting to feel cooler out already. Hell, Christmas’ll be here before we know it!
Does this train of thought sound delusional to you? If it does, then you’ve never dipped your soul below the Mason-Dixon Line. In the South, Better Days are only a week, month or growing season away. It’s a type of optimism that began long before General Lee lifted his pen in an Appomattox court house and…well…let’s just leave it at that. The truth is you can actually feel those Better Days coming, and the feeling is like no other in the world. It’s a feeling of arrival, a light hearted, bubbly sensation, like a pixie is flitting about inside your belly, kneading your solar plexus with fists too tiny to imagine.
Perhaps you will dream of your exciting future—a future filled with popularity, lavishness, subservient female companionship and, if you’re lucky, canine loyalty—you know, those sticky, summer dreams that seem more real than dreams dreamt any other time of year. Then as you wake the next morning, primed to explode with sanguine anticipation, you reach under your bed for that missing shoe and that…fucking…snake. Those blissful hopes and dreams of a bright new world? Gone.
Yes, these are the Dog Days, my friend—a period of lassitude and lethargy that oozed in when we were least expecting it, though we should have seen it coming all along. You’d be well-advised to remember that August is a month of death, disease, and mosquitos. Drought, heat, and rot. Incessantly drumming cicadas, aggressive cockroaches that won’t take no for an answer, and insidious termite invasions. And raccoons. Yes, raccoons. Should you see one of those creatures in the light of day stumbling along a backwoods dirt road as if drunk off of seventeen paw-fulls of grandpa’s best corn hooch, run like hell.
It shouldn’t be stumbling around like that. In fact, it shouldn’t even be there in the daytime. Then again, in all honesty, neither should you.
It’s an epic psychological thriller about dogs and people, death and life, art and destiny.
Synopsis:
After seventeen-year-old Russell Whitford confronts and kills a rabid dog, he seeks to prevent the news from reaching the dog’s owner, whose hair-trigger temper is well-known in the small town of Riley, Alabama. Russell can count on silence from two of the three witnesses who watched him hack Hector Graham’s Bloodhound to death, but the third, Michael O’Brien, isn’t like the other two. His allegiance isn’t as fixed as Russell would like it to be.
When the Centers for Disease Control arrive in town, and dogs begin running away, and gun shots start ringing out in the dead of night, Russell’s summer goes from bad to worse. All he wants to do is play his piano and guitar, maybe walk his dog every now and then, not have the weight of the universe hoisted upon his shoulders.
Here’s the intro:
Those mind-numbing days, how they creep—no, make that slither—underneath your fence, across your backyard, over your porch, through your kitchen, up your staircase, past your bedroom door, into your room, and kink up into a tight and tidy coil underneath your bed. If March enters a lion and leaves a lamb, then August slides in as easily and unobtrusively as a serpent seeking a cool place to lie. But it is always hesitant to leave. Once that cool, dark spot is found, nothing short of slaughter will get it to relinquish its position. It will hiss. It will strike. It will defend itself to its very death.
Yet it’s funny how, over time, we forget that a snake is even there. It slips from our minds because we want it to slip from our minds. As we prepare for the world of routine and structure, the egress of summer propels us away from thoughts of snakes and slaughter. We now have more important things to worry about. And when September arrives, bringing with it Labor Day and the first day of school, we are left to wonder how we could have possibly gotten out of August alive. Until that, too, slithers from our consciousness. Now it’s only a matter of days before the leaves outside our windows turn to flame. And the moment they do, you can bet we’ll begin ravaging our cedar chests for the heavy, woolen clothes we probably won’t even get to wear. Then comes Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years…
But wait—what about that serpent of August? Did it die when the seasons changed? Or is it still alive, waiting patiently, stealthily, for its month of glory to roll back around? If, say, in November, you were to reach under your bed for some wayward shoe, would August not spring forth and bite your prying hand?
The sad fact is that August never dies; it is merely forgotten. A month without borders, many have felt its doldrums in the middle of October, when the thermometer stretches its thin, red tongue to lap at the century mark. Yes, places like this exist, places where people talk slow and drink iced tea even slower, where good manners are not only charming but are de rigueur.
August is cruelest to these people. Like certain mites, it burrows beneath their skins and proceeds to slowly drive them mad with itches they cannot sufficiently scratch. The things they say…things like: “How about this heat?” To which some poor schlub has to, must, mutter back: “It ain’t the heat, it’s the humidity.” The truest of clichés. Knowing laughs all around. Because it is the humidity. And when the heat and the humidity combine: look out! Should you be so brave as to venture out in the middle of the day or climb inside your car after it has been baking in the merciless afternoon sun, sweat will drip down the small of your back in under a minute. Wait another five and the material around your armpits will darken and soak through. A damp shirt is the hallmark of the South. People wear their sweat-soaked shirts with pride. After all, why fight it? September is right around the corner and on its heels, October. Hey, it’s starting to feel cooler out already. Hell, Christmas’ll be here before we know it!
Does this train of thought sound delusional to you? If it does, then you’ve never dipped your soul below the Mason-Dixon Line. In the South, Better Days are only a week, month or growing season away. It’s a type of optimism that began long before General Lee lifted his pen in an Appomattox court house and…well…let’s just leave it at that. The truth is you can actually feel those Better Days coming, and the feeling is like no other in the world. It’s a feeling of arrival, a light hearted, bubbly sensation, like a pixie is flitting about inside your belly, kneading your solar plexus with fists too tiny to imagine.
Perhaps you will dream of your exciting future—a future filled with popularity, lavishness, subservient female companionship and, if you’re lucky, canine loyalty—you know, those sticky, summer dreams that seem more real than dreams dreamt any other time of year. Then as you wake the next morning, primed to explode with sanguine anticipation, you reach under your bed for that missing shoe and that…fucking…snake. Those blissful hopes and dreams of a bright new world? Gone.
Yes, these are the Dog Days, my friend—a period of lassitude and lethargy that oozed in when we were least expecting it, though we should have seen it coming all along. You’d be well-advised to remember that August is a month of death, disease, and mosquitos. Drought, heat, and rot. Incessantly drumming cicadas, aggressive cockroaches that won’t take no for an answer, and insidious termite invasions. And raccoons. Yes, raccoons. Should you see one of those creatures in the light of day stumbling along a backwoods dirt road as if drunk off of seventeen paw-fulls of grandpa’s best corn hooch, run like hell.
It shouldn’t be stumbling around like that. In fact, it shouldn’t even be there in the daytime. Then again, in all honesty, neither should you.
Free Summer Read: Canis Major (Because Why the Fuck Not?)
You should be reading Canis Major. As in right now.
Because you know this summer is going to be just miserable. If a tornado doesn't knock you five miles eastward, a hurricane will. And in the unlikely chance neither of those two disasters affects you in any way whatsoever, the heat will surely fry your pale ass to a bacony crisp.
So what's a reader to do? Venture out, assemble with other activists, and protest the big oil companies, whose extraction of poisonous compounds from the earth's crust and suppression of alternative energy technologies is likely fostering the climate change that is increasing hurricane strength and tornado activity, not to mention raising world-wide atmospheric temperatures, which in turn is frying your aforementioned ass? Nah, fuck that. It's too hot outside.
I'm no activist, but I am a writer, so this is what I'll be doing this summer:
I'm offering you a deal. Since I want as many interested people as I can find to read my book this summer, I will be offering it for free at Smashwords on select days. (It is free this weekend, 6/1-6/3). All I ask in return is for you guys to actually read it, or attempt to read it. I don't want any of this "Hey, a free book! I'll download it and add it to my To Read list with the 524,124 other books I'll never get to!" Also, I really want you to read it this summer. Since Canis Major is a summer book, it only makes sense.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Here's the link for a free download (remember: you must at least try to read it this summer)
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...
And a description:
After seventeen-year-old Russell Whitford confronts and kills a rabid dog, he seeks to prevent the news from reaching the dog's owner, whose hair-trigger temper is well-known in the small town of Riley, Alabama. Russell can count on silence from two of the three witnesses who watched him hack Hector Graham's Bloodhound to death, but the third, Michael O'Brien, isn't like the other two. His allegiance isn't as fixed as Russell would like it to be.
When the Centers for Disease Control arrive in town, and dogs begin running away, and gun shots start ringing out in the dead of night, Russell's summer goes from bad to worse. All he wants to do is play his piano and guitar, maybe walk his dog every now and then, not have the weight of the universe hoisted upon his shoulders.
Because you know this summer is going to be just miserable. If a tornado doesn't knock you five miles eastward, a hurricane will. And in the unlikely chance neither of those two disasters affects you in any way whatsoever, the heat will surely fry your pale ass to a bacony crisp.
So what's a reader to do? Venture out, assemble with other activists, and protest the big oil companies, whose extraction of poisonous compounds from the earth's crust and suppression of alternative energy technologies is likely fostering the climate change that is increasing hurricane strength and tornado activity, not to mention raising world-wide atmospheric temperatures, which in turn is frying your aforementioned ass? Nah, fuck that. It's too hot outside.
I'm no activist, but I am a writer, so this is what I'll be doing this summer:
I'm offering you a deal. Since I want as many interested people as I can find to read my book this summer, I will be offering it for free at Smashwords on select days. (It is free this weekend, 6/1-6/3). All I ask in return is for you guys to actually read it, or attempt to read it. I don't want any of this "Hey, a free book! I'll download it and add it to my To Read list with the 524,124 other books I'll never get to!" Also, I really want you to read it this summer. Since Canis Major is a summer book, it only makes sense.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Here's the link for a free download (remember: you must at least try to read it this summer)
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...
And a description:
After seventeen-year-old Russell Whitford confronts and kills a rabid dog, he seeks to prevent the news from reaching the dog's owner, whose hair-trigger temper is well-known in the small town of Riley, Alabama. Russell can count on silence from two of the three witnesses who watched him hack Hector Graham's Bloodhound to death, but the third, Michael O'Brien, isn't like the other two. His allegiance isn't as fixed as Russell would like it to be.
When the Centers for Disease Control arrive in town, and dogs begin running away, and gun shots start ringing out in the dead of night, Russell's summer goes from bad to worse. All he wants to do is play his piano and guitar, maybe walk his dog every now and then, not have the weight of the universe hoisted upon his shoulders.
Top Ten Reason to Read Canis Major This Summer
Top Ten Reason to Read Canis Major This Summer
10. No vampires or zombies
9. Teenagers saying "fuck" and "shit" every other sentence
8. Rabid dog(s)
7. A small redneck town in Alabama losing its goddamn mind over nothing
6. The enduring love between master and dog
5. A dirty cop who's in way too deep digging himself in even deeper
4. At $2.99 for Kindle Ebook and 192,000 words, that works out to be $0.0000015573 a word!
3. A deranged owner and his sick dog may be committing a most unwholesome kind of sodomy
2. Heatwave in Alabama during the Dog Days of Summer will make your summer seem more bearable in comparison
1. An ending that will freeze your heart, then thaw and shatter it
Get it here in Ebook and paperback formats:
http://www.amazon.com/Canis-Major-Jay...
10. No vampires or zombies
9. Teenagers saying "fuck" and "shit" every other sentence
8. Rabid dog(s)
7. A small redneck town in Alabama losing its goddamn mind over nothing
6. The enduring love between master and dog
5. A dirty cop who's in way too deep digging himself in even deeper
4. At $2.99 for Kindle Ebook and 192,000 words, that works out to be $0.0000015573 a word!
3. A deranged owner and his sick dog may be committing a most unwholesome kind of sodomy
2. Heatwave in Alabama during the Dog Days of Summer will make your summer seem more bearable in comparison
1. An ending that will freeze your heart, then thaw and shatter it
Get it here in Ebook and paperback formats:
http://www.amazon.com/Canis-Major-Jay...
