SPOTLIGHT: The Rogue Mountain by Joshua Tarquinio @tarquiniojoshua @smithpublicity
The Rogue Mountainsby Joshua Tarquinio
Smith Publicity
Hello readers!! Come take a look at this story about demons, monsters, death and more. Head on down to the excerpt to get a feel for what this book is about - I know I've just added this to my never ending TBR! Maybe you can join me - after all, what's one more book? 😈
A monster hunter arrives to help a
rural town with its infestation, but the seething hell spawn are the least of
his problems. The three lone mountains are also home to a powerful witch and a
primordial, maddening beast. It’ll take more than one person to eradicate the
“invasive species,” but the townspeople have problems (and secrets) of their
own.
With man no longer at the top of
the food chain, the question on everyone’s mind is, “What is mankind’s place in
nature?”
For that matter, what is monster’s?
About the Author:
Joshua Tarquinio draws from a
palate of interests including horror, fantasy, noir, adventure, mystery, philosophy,
religion, and science. He is also a photographer, musician, who lives in Pittsburgh, PA.
Author Q&A
Q: Talk about the world in which
the book takes place.
A: 20 years
before this story takes place, Heaven, Hell, and the other planes opened up on
Earth for what was expected to be the Final Battle, (Armageddon, End of Times,
etc.) but it turned out to not be that big of a deal and the world kept on.
When the dust settled, there were survivors from all sides of the conflict left
on Earth. Some of them were able to blend into society. Others not so much.
Some of the lesser beasts found their way to the fictitious mountain town of
Brothers, PA where the people have been coping with them ever since.
Q: And the
townspeople hunt the monsters?
A: Many do, but
the presence of a witch and a cave worm have made it impossible to eradicate
the creatures. So the people have learned to live with it. The book almost
takes a Western flavor at times because nobody can leave the house without a
gun and one of the main locations is a kind of saloon.
Q: Is the book only about hunting
monsters?
A: No. I think
it’s more about people trying to understand what they are. It begins with an
increasingly disillusioned tough girl looking for meaning, a hunter who
believes he has it, and a musician who can’t hold on to it for long. Throughout
the novel we see people bringing up the question of the nature of themselves
and others.
Q: But there’s
still monster hunting in it, right?
A: Yep.
Creatures from Hell, bullets and blood, nasty deaths, fear, suspense, action.
Q: So it’s not
for kids then.
A: Have you met
kids these days? Officially, I’d have to say no, but my teenage cousin has read
Game of Thrones, so what do I know?
Q: Sex?
A: What would
violence be without sex?
Q: Romance?
A: Eh. More
like mixed emotions ebbing and flowing. I went realistic with that one.
Q: Is it more
gory or psychological?
A: It leans
psychological, but you can’t bake a cake without breaking a few eggs.
Q: What’s your
audience? Who would read this book?
A: I honestly
think it will have a broad appeal for those who like the thriller/horror genre.
We tend to think of it as a “guy genre” but my editor, reviewer, and girlfriend
loved it and they’re all women. I think thanks to TV shows like the Walking
Dead and Game of Thrones we’re starting to see that audience demographics don’t
matter much if you’ve got a compelling story… which I believe I do.
Excerpt
The sun, still
behind the mountains, lit the sky enough to see, even in those woods where the
leaves had begun to change and fall. Ariana preferred the dull blue glow to the
contrast of a sunny day. In those woods, where death took many forms, every
stark shadow was a potential threat.
Tempest got
that feeling—that innate sense of danger animals get when a predator is
near—and she stopped. She stopped and gave a stamp, which she and Ariana
decided a long time ago was her way of warning her human.
Ariana stroked
Tempest's mane and asked, "Where is it, girl?" The human held her
breath and looked around, first for familiar shapes and then for movement...
Nothing yet.
The girl
clicked her tongue which was the signal (they had decided) to proceed with
caution and be prepared to turn tail. Reins in the left hand, Ariana slid her
right hand over the grip of the Smith and Wesson Model 19 on her hip.
Tempest took a
few more steps and stopped again. Ariana's fingers closed on the handle of her
sidearm. An alarm went off in her bones.
Ariana drew her
gun as a hunner dyer emerged, shrieking, from under a swath of leaves and dirt.
Tempest reared, brandishing her hooves.
Hunner dyers
most closely resembled carpenter ants, though they were only slightly smaller
than men. They had six legs and their bodies were segmented. Their abdomens
were proportionally small, allowing them to walk and stand on their hind legs.
Their thoraxes appeared to have human-like ribs on the outside. Patches of
coarse hair grew randomly. Their heads contained a loose ring of 24 black eyes,
a pair of fangs like a tarantula, a long, retractable middle tooth, and a
needly tongue for extracting whatever the tooth exposed.
"Hunner
dyer" was not the creature's proper name. It's just what everyone called
it. Ariana and Tempest had seen and killed a ton of them; shriek, click, bang.
This time, however, as Tempest’s hooves came back down, Ariana hesitated. This
time she felt different. This time she felt like a bully; like she had just
walked into the creature's home with the express purpose of killing it for no
reason. That was exactly as it always had been. Why it bothered her now, she
didn't have time to speculate.
The hunner dyer
lunged. Tempest turned and ran without a cue from Ariana. They beat a path back
across and down the hill. Though the monster gave chase, it couldn't keep up
with the horse. It was far behind by the time they reached the fence.
Ariana's nerves
balanced on a pinhead as she dismounted and opened the gate. She smiled at the
feeling as her hand shook on the gate latch. This was what she came for—the
adrenaline rush.
The hunner dyer
shrieked again. It had cleared the last hump and was on its way down to torture
and kill Ariana and her companion.
The girl threw
open the gate and led Tempest through. The monster descended, kicking up leaves
and shrieking every few breaths. Its movement was sloppy, as if it didn't know
how to run. It was neither a crawl nor a gallop, but something in between. Its
clawed forelimbs waved and reached, only touching the ground when it needed the
balance.
Ariana slammed
the gate closed as the monster slammed into it, giving the girl a good look at
about ten of her own reflections in its onyx black eyes. It ran its tooth
through the fence, reaching its limit an inch from Ariana's throat. The girl
flinched and fell backward.
This was an
unusual situation for Ariana. Typically, she would have shot the monster when
it first appeared and left it deeper in the woods. The fence itself was never
meant to hold the creatures of the mountains back, only deter them from the
areas where people live. Ariana had never seen what would happen if a monster
were given incentive to find a way over or through the fence.
She wished the
creature away as it rammed and beat at the fence. She wished for it to get
tired and go away. Then she thought she might have to kill it anyway, just to
make sure it didn't come back.
The hunner dyer
made her decision easy. It looked up, ran its forelimbs along the top of the
fence, then began to crawl up. It got one more shriek out before Ariana blew
its head off. The gunshot tapered off through the valley, leaving Ariana and
Tempest in dead silence once more.
The adrenaline
sat in Ariana's veins like stale coffee in a day-old pot. She wondered if that
would be the end of that thrill—one of the few thrills she had in her podunk,
one-horse, middle-of-bumfuck-nowhere town.
She opened the gate again and tied a rope
from Tempest's saddle to the carcass. Couldn't leave chum by the gate. Girl
mounted horse and they dragged the dead bug into the woods before heading home.
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