Month: September 2018
FREE? … Well perhaps a little piece of your soul will suffice…
Last night while you all slept safely in your beds, oblivious to the secrets that lie in wait in the darkness of the night, little did you know that plans were well underway to disturb whatever comfort blanket you use to help you sleep. The true darkness is about to descend once more you see, only this time there will be no place to hide. Sometimes, there is nothing like a little teaser…Forget the final season of Game of Thrones… Darkly Wood III is coming… Here is a hint of what is to come for the uninitiated and for those who have already strayed into the heart of Darkly Wood…
She lay there quite still, with blood slowly oozing from the near bald patch at the side of her head where only moments before, there had been a lush braid of thick, red hair. Pain is very subjective and if anything, often circumstantial. It wasn’t pain she felt when she looked down and saw her missing right foot. It was something new. She could hear a very familiar sound and in truth, while she knew it had something to do with her present predicament, she really didn’t care.
Two feet stood planted inches from her face and when she recognised them for what they were, she at last realised that she was lying on her side on the ground. They were very fine shoes made of leather. The toes narrowed to an almost impossible point and they were shiny, save a little dirt around the edges from the debris on the forest floor.
She scrambled to remember, as creeping into her consciousness was the rather frightening sound of an animal snarling. Something was pulling at her one remaining foot. What was it that she wanted to recall? There was something she was supposed to do, but it was impossible to gather her thoughts.
The fine shoes shifted on the earth beside her and the owner of the feet that filled them, looked down at her pathetic, frail little body. His lips curled to form a smile. Smiles came easily to him. Darkly Wood had seen many vile and dangerous people step beyond its fringes, but nothing compared to this man. The latest fresh face to visit Cranby, that little village tucked neatly below the hill that led to Darkly Wood, was far more menacing than anyone that had come before. He was truly dark and twisted, and he had brought with him something that no one could ever have expected.
That he didn’t look like much of a threat was deceptive, for looks are indeed deceiving. He had come with purpose, a creature devoid of fear, unmatched in cruelty and he brought something beyond darkness to the wood. The tales that had been told, the best of them, the worst of them, were all but a gentle prelude to the true darkness that had finally arrived. It wouldn’t be long now. Soon, the time would come for him to reveal his purpose. He raised his hand and the snarling stopped. There was a familiar scent in the air. The breeze when it came, carried a name he knew well and it gently ruffled the red feather in his fedora. Things would never be the same again in Darkly Wood…
…If you are still waiting to dip your toe into Darkly Wood, now is the perfect time. The first book in the series will be FREE from Thursday 13th September until Monday 17th September, so grab it while you can… but a note of caution… you might want to leave the lights on… Watch the trailer then click on the link below to download from your local Amazon store. Remember Book one is FREE from tomorrow, well I say free…but there is still the small question of your soul…
http://getbook.at/Darkly-Wood-II
Haven’t read a Max Power book yet? I think it’s time to pick one up.
Max Power’s books include, Darkly Wood, Darkly Wood II The woman who never wore shoes, Larry Flynn, Bad Blood and Little Big Boy
You can find more details about Max Power’s books here : –
http://www.amazon.com/author/maxpower
https://maxpowerbooks.wordpress.com
fhttp://facebook.com/maxpowerbooks
twitter @maxpowerbooks1
Universal book links
http://getbook.at/Darkly-Wood
http://getbook.at/Darkly-Wood-II
http://getbook.at/Little-Big-Boy
http://getbook.at/Larry-Flynn
http://getbook.at/Bad-Blood
Listening to a stranger’s bloody yarn on the road to nowhere…
I met an old man the other day, deep in the heart of the Galway countryside as I travelled across this lovely little Island to a meeting. He was driving a big old Massey Fergusson on a very narrow country road. Now as you do, I squeezed my car as far into the ditch as I could and he considered doing the same, but it was clear there wouldn’t be enough room for him to pass me as he had a wide cutting machine attached to the back of his tractor.
Now I don’t know how this would develop in whatever part of the world you live in, but in the west of Ireland on narrow bohereens, no one is really in that much of a hurry. What should have been a conversation prioritising a solution to our dilemma, turned out to be something entirely different.
Now Jimmy (that was his name as I quickly established) had a brother, who he suspected I should know because he had some vague connection to the same business I’m involved in. He struggled to understand that I didn’t know him, despite the fact that I lived on the far side of the country and there are another four and a half million of us floating around, but to be fair, I don’t know them all.
As we chatted blocking the little road in the middle of nowhere, I stood leaning against the side of my car, while he sat high in his tractor with the door open. It was initially a strained conversation over the noise of his big tractor engine, but somewhere along the way he turned it off. I didn’t even notice until after the fact. The quite was simply splendid, framed by sporadic birdsong or the buzz of the occasional bee as they passed by my head, intend on completing some work of their own.
He enquired where I had come from, by which he meant from which direction, as it was as clear as the nose on my face that I was from Dublin based on my D reg and my accent. He didn’t ask me where I was going for that would have been nosey. When I told him I had come from out the Oranmore direction, he told me he had a sister or sishter as he pronounced it, who nearly married a fella from Oranmore, but he turned out to be a bit of a blaggard and himself and the brother, had dealt with that problem. I asked how long ago that was and he had a little think, before telling me that was in nineteen hundred and forty seven, the same year his aunt had died. It was at that point that I realised how old he was so I had a good close look at him.
He must have been ninety if he was a day and there he was, a big fine agricultural looking man, still working, hands like plates and a head the shape of a turnip. I thought he had a look of invincibility until he flittered onto his next story.
Hi aunt had died in a farming accident ,something he didn’t elaborate on but instead diverted as it reminded him of his own dice with death last year. He had been trying to shift a bullock, to where or for what reason I didn’t question, and he had the creature tied up beside his tractor. Apparently the bullock took offence to being tethered and swung about, forcing the poor man onto the cutting blades attached to his tractor. Again out of politeness, I allowed him assume that I could make full sense of the picture he was painting, but my big urban head just imagined a Transformer-tractor stabbing him with a sword. I began silently singing my own version of the Transformers song in my head. “Transformers… Tractors in the nude”
I implored him to tell me more and he didn’t need much imploring, but first he had to clarify some detail. He was not at home at the time you see, but doing a favour for a cousin. He wouldn’t have minded, only sure wouldn’t it have been easier to get a pulse from a dead man, than to get the very same fella to put his hand in his pocket and stand you a round. Anyway the cousin lived near Loughrea by his account, and didn’t the blade slice open his stomach, Jimmy’s that is not the cousin (I had to keep up as he had a tendency to meander.) He lifted his auld geansaí and showed me his scar with pride.
Didn’t it slice open his stomach as he said and out came his guts. He was standing there in the middle of a field all alone, trying to tuck his guts back into himself, covered as he was in cowshite and muck, with not a soul to help him. You know I asked him what he did of course.
Now here is where I really did admire him, not for what he told me next, for it was clearly not true that he walked the 40kms (25 miles) to the hospital in Galway, holding his guts together with a pair of cowshite covered hands, but I admired him for the fact that on another day, a lesser man might nearly have believed him.
Content at having retold his story to a complete stranger, no doubt something he had done many times, he showed a little vulnerability. I’ve not been the same farming since, he told me. To be very honest, he continued, he had become nervous and stopped working with livestock altogether. He was getting a little old for that side of things. Suddenly through all the bravado and tall tales, I saw that this wasn’t a fine big sturdy farmer, rather a frail, lonely old man, once mighty no doubt, but weakened by the vagaries of old age. I admired him even more.
Anyway he said, he’d best be getting on. With that, he turned on the tractor engine and bid me adieu telling me I’d best step off to the side of the road for a minute. I stepped to the back of the car and he raised the big old yoke at the back of his tractor high in the air, and he was able to pass me by without a problem. He could of course, simply have done this in the beginning. But sure then we wouldn’t have met, nor passed the time of day and I wouldn’t have heard his story. Isn’t it a grand little country I live in…
Haven’t read a Max Power book yet? I think it’s time to pick one up.
Max Power’s books include, Darkly Wood, Darkly Wood II The woman who never wore shoes, Larry Flynn, Bad Blood and Little Big Boy
You can find more details about Max Power’s books here : –
http://www.amazon.com/author/maxpower
https://maxpowerbooks.wordpress.com
fhttp://facebook.com/maxpowerbooks
twitter @maxpowerbooks1
Universal book links
http://getbook.at/Darkly-Wood
http://getbook.at/Darkly-Wood-II
http://getbook.at/Little-Big-Boy
http://getbook.at/Larry-Flynn
http://getbook.at/Bad-Blood
A Date With. . . Max Power
My ‘date’ this time is Dublin born author Max Power. In his response to my first question he agrees that his Dublin childhood is an important influence, but goes on to say that it is only part of the story.
“The Jesuit maxim of ‘give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man’ is not something I buy into. It’s never too late to change direction. Perhaps the greatest influence in my writing has been the deaths of my mother, my father and my elder brother who died all too young aged 53. I struggled with grief when my mother passed in particular and I know in hindsight that I was damaged by not dealing fully with the loss at the time.
Love, loss and death are central themes in all of my books, I suspect largely because of how my life has developed…
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