Doing One Of Those Book Signing Things

My books have now been placed in several independent bookstores in the KC area and March 7 I'll be doing a book signing at one of them, Prospero's Parkside in Blue Springs, MO. It's just east of Kansas City. The store owner, Eve Brackenbury, a poetess, pulled images from my Facebook page and did a really cool image to advertise the signing and used that image as the store's current facebook cover.

Here's the image. I'm looking forward to this evening. She also serves wine! So if you know anyone in the area, please alert them. I may bring a few liquid reinforcements myself because, to tell the truth, I'm scare as hell about the whole thing.

And I've been invited to Lawrence, KS to be interviewed on an internet radio program. Details to follow...

Nice recent reviews:

For Crazy About You

I found this story so captivating that I couldn't stop reading once I started, I happen to work at the state hospital depicted in this story and it is incredible fact or fiction, the detail that was written I could see everything he wrote so I was able to follow it with such ease and enjoyed it very much. A very believable story that seemed so familiar. I have recommended this to everyone that I know. I only found one issue with the story and that was, that it wasn't longer......Thanks Randy for such an absolutely amazing read!!!

For Heart Chants

Very intriguing story with a fascinating story line, and interesting subject matter as well, with the Navajo culture and mysticism factoring in to the plot. Heart wrenching history of the Navajo people revealed in the story. Suspenseful, fast paced, unique. Loved it, highly recommended.

For Rabbletown: Life in These United Christian States of Holy America

Once I got past the first few pages, I couldn't put this book down. It's actually a short novel but the story held my interest. The story is of an America where the government and society have been restructured along dogmatic lines that suggest christian dominionism, a nightmare christian theocracy at its height during the late 21st century. By the end of the book, I was disappointed that there was not a second book that picks up where the first leaves off. Can we hope for a Book II, Mr. Attwood?

For Tortured Truths

Tortured Truths by Randy Attwood is a suspense thriller starring Phillip McGuire a journalist who has recently escaped the claws of his middle eastern torturers. In bad shape both physically and mentally he pursues a simpler life and leaves his journalism background behind although not completely. He returns to his hometown in an effort to heal and live a simpler life, getting back in touch with old friends and opening a bar. He soon finds a mystery that needs resolving as people begin turning up dead.

The plot thickens and excitement ascends to a shreaking climax with every word in this thriller. Gruesome and colorful text flows into a string of scenes that coalesce inside the reader's mind with each turn of the page.Character's are vividly displayed through dialogue and narrative giving the reader a sense of being in the thick of the action.

A well written and most definitely stinging suspense thriller that is a must read!

"Heart Chants" Building an Audience

Found a copy of S.I. Hayakawa's "Language in Action" at an estate sale and at the beginning of the chapter on Affective Communication, he uses this quote from T.S. Eliot:

What I call the "auditory imagination" is the feeling for syllable and rhythm, penetrating far below the conscious levels of thought and feeling, invigorating every word; sinking to the most primitive and forgotten, returning to the origin and bringing something back, seeking the beginning and the end.

Throughout my writing life I've felt that if I get the right words in the right order it would create in the reader a deep resonance that was almost like music. I think T.S. Eliot's descriptions gets closer to what I had tried to express.

I like to think that the preface to Heart Chants accomplishes this feeling.

In the beginning was the wind. And when the earth came, the wind cared for it. And when the darkness came, the wind breezed across it beautifully. And when the dawn came and laid its lightness over the darkness, We, the People, were created. And the wind kissed our faces.

Sales of Heart Chants have been building, sufficient that it went as high as #56 in one of its subcategories and past the #100 rank in another category. These are highly transitory, so I have no idea where it may be ranked if you check on its status.

But I'm pleased good reviews continue to arrive:

Heart Chants by Randy Attwood is an enticing novel rich in Native American lore and steeped in mystery. Packed with intrigue from the start, Phil McGuire is back, and with cracked ribs as he threw himself into the hands of three Chinese men to save a beautiful Chinese damsel in distress, Hsu Chi. As he lays recovering in bed two Native American girls go missing and as a favor to a friend and assistance with his recovery another Native American girl Zonnie comes to stay with him. Hsu Chi finds him as well and a love affair sparks between them. While Phil is recovering with the aid of two beautiful women a young half white half Navajo man, self proclaimed Ko-yo-teh, is following the vision of his grandfather to rid the land of the white people. Increasing suspense builds as the reader is plunged into Ko-yo-teh's world and Phil assists in solving the mystery of the missing girls. The elements within the novel merge together as the developing plot becomes progressively more compelling for a riveting, unforgettable, and unsuspected ending.

The amount of research and knowledge of the Navajo poured into this story is incredible. Randy Attwood spared no expense so to speak as he lavishly and with great respect brings forth the mystical Navajo legends and thought. There is also an acceptance as in the first segment of the Phil McGuire series of peoples of varying cultures. In this novel Randy Attwood brilliantly entwines mystery and suspense with a twist of Native American history which is truly the humble beginnings of American history unknown to most.

The written words in Heart Chants flow with ease keeping the reader always turning one more page seeking the treasures and secrets each offers. Randy Attwood has an unflawed ability to create characters that capture the reader's attention; one may find themselves both loving and hating even the most despicable misguided personalities. From beginning to end Heart Chants is an exciting novel that is in my opinion arguably one of the best releases of the New Year.

Heart Chants is an impeccably written novel with a truly unique plot that is truly a must read.

I keep expecting the paperback version of Heart Chants to be available on the Amazon site any day now.

"Heart Chants" Now Available on Amazon

Heart Chants, is now available for Kindle users. Don't have a Kindle? You can get a free app for your PC or Mac desktop or phones that lets you read Kindle books on those devices.

Pre-release reviews for Heart Chants were very favorable:

Bernina Gray

Navajo artist

Heart Chants is an intricately woven tale around the life, tradition, and wonders of the Diné people. It leaves you wanting to unravel more stories behind the people, place and creation of it all.

  

Richard Sutton

(Direct reservation trader since 1985 in authentic Navajo art)

Master storyteller Randy Attwood scores again. This time, he’s traced an unexpected, jarring intersection of cultures and bruised mental states that lead the reader into the deepest shadows. Beliefs can sustain a people when all else fails. Sometimes, belief must be tempered with understanding. When that is lacking, evil seeps in. Heart Chants illustrates how even evil done for reasons of restoring harmony is simply, evil. His evocative descriptions of Southwestern vistas and his detail rich research into the Navajo culture pay back in an absorbing reading experience.

 Sean Bennick

(Seattle area writer)

Reading Heart Chants has made me want to read the rest of Phillip McGuire's exploits.

From the first sentence we sense... something unsettling and other worldly. Randy Attwood paints a picture for the reader simply but expertly. His dialog has you hovering over the shoulders of the characters. Where some authors leave you as an observer, Randy involves the reader - drawing them in deeply from the start.

He builds the relationship between his characters with the same delicate strokes and soft colors he uses to create the setting. You learn about Phil through injuries of exploits unseen and it's almost perfect. I say almost because I don't think Phil would like anything to be perfect. I think that would piss him off.

The story reads easy, and moves at a good pace. There are elements of Noir Fiction as things move forward, and I found myself enjoying a genre I had long ago abandoned.

We are involved in both the richness of the Navajo culture and the intrigue of the Chinese Political Environment of the late '80s. For both, be prepared to do a little research to fill in some blanks, it will improve your understanding greatly.

As in real life, some people are who they seem and others aren't. The characters grow and question the world around them, finding connections between their lives and between monsters both real and mythical. Most importantly, Randy honors the voices of his characters and their culture in a way few can match. The result is a mini education of the Navajo people from disparate viewpoints.

More than most authors, Randy Attwood puts you in the setting. You find yourself walking through the lands of Navajo, and exploring the town of Lawrence, Kansas. Again I'll avoid any more detail than this so you can explore and experience the settings on your own.

The ending, while not the one I expected, was satisfying and somehow, well there's no other word for it, perfect. Sorry, Phil - but sometimes things are perfect, even when they aren't.

Just remember, Coyote is a trickster and the magic of the ancient world is real.

Steve Glassman

Reviewer for Midwest Review of Books

(Here's a review of Attwood's second mystery novel. In it he does the unthinkable--he writes a Hillerman-like mystery set among the Navajo--and he stays even with Hillerman and even exceeds him in the ethnology, hard as that is to believe. This is a heck of a book. I have left much of the hyperbole out of the review in order to keep the review from sounding as though it was written by a PR man.)

Randy Attwood has done a gutsy thing. He has gone up against the legacy of Tony Hillerman in the second novel of his Philip McGuire crime series. Even better he wins the bet, not because his crime novel is better than any of Hillerman’s, although it might be and probably is, but because he has the good sense to play off Hillerman in a totally novel way.

The action in Attwood’s novel is set in the Midwest in the outlying Kansas City suburb of Lawrence. Some may know the burg as the seat of the University of Kansas Jayhawks, but it is also home to Haskell Indian College. Philip McGuire, the novel’s main viewpoint character and protagonist, has settled there after a short career as a foreign correspondent which culminated in his being taken hostage, his hand mutilated, and then released by the Hezbollah in Lebanon right after they blow up the Marine base in the early 1980s.  McGuire retains his intrigue of foreign things. His love interest in the novel is the lovely Chinese activist Hsu  Chi. Yes, Chinese in a novel that delves more deeply into Navajo cosmology than any Hillerman novel I’m familiar with ever went.

The bad guy, and wow is he ever a bad guy, is a Navajo half caste, who comes to Lawrence to live with and then assassinate his birth mother. He builds a hogan inside the barn on his mom’s place after he inherits the property, and takes a job as janitor at Haskell Junior College. There is a deep method to this plan. He had been raised in the Southwest and had been trying since his youth to become a full-blooded Navajo in spirit. As a byproduct his spiritual quest, he fervently believes, will also drive the white man from Navajo land. At Haskell he finds three Navajo coeds whose Navajo connections and gruesome deaths and gory dismemberment (and cannibalization) will complete the black magic ritual he had started in the Southwest. At this point, the usefulness to the general reader of some familiarity with Navajo ritual thanks to Hillerman novels should be apparent.

Two of the coeds are indeed abducted and ritually slain. In an unrelated subplot McGuire’s Chinese love interest is made off with by red Chinese agents, and almost immediately afterwards so is the third Navajo girl. A Navajo tribal policeman arrives in Lawrence to investigate the disappearances. Though interesting enough in his way, this cop is no rival to Hillerman’s twin protagonists. He resembles nothing so much as a dutiful nightclub bouncer. The investigation tool he brings along to find the girls goes one up on Hillerman. It’s an elderly seer known only by the reverend old-age title of Hosteen. He knows not a word of English and is guided only by his knowledge of Navajo ways.

Attwood pulls the various storylines and conceptual elements together in a most satisfying and compelling conclusion. If you like hardboiled mysteries or Hillerman or novels with multi-ethnic subplots, this is a book for you.

Katy Sozaeva

Top 1000 Amazon reviewer

My Thoughts: This book provides a peek into the legends and lore of the Diné, or as they are commonly known, the Navajo. Their creation story is beautiful.

“In the beginning was the wind. And when the earth came, the wind cared for it. And when the darkness came, the wind breezed across it beautifully. And when the dawn came and laid its lightness over the darkness, We, the People, were created. And the wind kissed our faces.”

Phil McGuire's portion of the story focuses on two young women—Hsu Chi and Zonnie—whom he takes in to try to protect, Hsu Chi from anti-democratic Chinese gangs, and Zonnie from whoever or whatever has taken away two of her friends, also Navajo, from their college. Attwood has obviously done a great deal of research into the Diné culture, legends and lore and shows the reader exactly how beautiful that culture was, and how much the European settlers destroyed in their hubris. I do not know if there are any reparations to be made for the damage we did to the native cultures here, but I find it been heartbreaking how much knowledge has been lost. It would behoove us to find those who have kept this knowledge and preserve it before it is gone forever.

I found the talk Ko-yo-teh had with the old man at the filling station very funny, especially when the old man repeated the message he had sent to the moon in Navajo: “Watch out for these guys; they come to take your land.” Sad, of course, but also very funny. It fits in with the overall theme of the book, which is well represented by this quote:

“I'm convinced the deepest passion mankind has is the need to inflict belief on another person. Belief in God, belief in these words as God's words, belief in this interpretation of these words, belief in these acts in the name of God. If it's not religion, it's politics.”

Like all of Randy Attwood's stories, this one is absolutely amazing. I kept having goose bumps from reading it. Highly recommended for those who enjoy a good story, especially if you are interested in Native American stories and culture.

Synopsis: Burnt-out foreign correspondent Phillip McGuire, who gave up journalism, is now happy owning and running a bar in Lawrence, Kansas. He's happy with his new house in the country. But he's not happy. When two Navajo female students are missing from Haskell Indian college, he agrees to shelter a third. And then a mysterious beautiful Chinese woman stumbles into his life. And all the while, Coyote is working on the largest sandpainting ever created and advancing his plan to reopen the gates to the Navajo's Holy People.

First Pre-release Reviews for "Heart Chants," #2 in Mystery Series, Encouragingly Wonderful

This is an apprehensive time. The digital formats for Heart Chants arrived the other day and I sent them to readers who indicated they would be willing to read, and perhaps review, pre-release copies of this novel that is strongly dependent on the Navajo creation story.

Heart Chants is #2 in the Phillip McGuire mystery/suspense series. Tortured Truths, #1 in the series, came out in October.

Phillip is a burnt-out foreign correspondent who, after being kidnapped and tortured by the Hezbollah in Beirut and released, says enough is enough. He quits journalism and returns to his college town of Lawrence, KS to own and run a bar where adventures come his way.

Heart Chants has a major character who is half-Navajo and half-white who believes he is a witch and knows how to create the largest sandpainting every created and do a chant that will reopen the gates to the

Holy People, from whom he can acquire new gifts to deal with the White Man.

Two reviews have come in now, one of them from a direct reservation art dealer with the Navajo since 1985. Here's what Richard Sutton had to say:

Master storyteller Randy Attwood scores again. This time, he’s traced an unexpected, jarring intersection of cultures and bruised mental states that leads the reader into the deepest shadows. Beliefs can sustain a people when all else fails. Sometimes, belief must be tempered with understanding. When that is lacking, evil seeps in. Heart Chants illustrates how even evil done for reasons of restoring harmony is simply, evil. His evocative descriptions of Southwestern vistas and his detail rich research into the Navajo culture, pay back in an absorbing reading experience.

Seattle area author Sean Bennick in a longer review was also very positive. That review can be found on Goodreads here and if you are member of Goodreads or join up for free you can put Heart Chants on your to read list. You'll see a "want to read" button. Last I check 220 people had put Tortured Truths on their to-read list.

You can't pre-order the book, but if you are interested, just email me and I'll send you an alert when the book is available. It should be out early next year. randyattwood@hotmail.com

Paragraphs Reynolds Price Found "Lovely"

I came across those paragraphs that were the only things I had to show the Southern writer Reynolds Price when he came to visit our creative writing class at KU in the late 1960s. He called them "lovely." They actually got  published in that odd yearbook done by KU in 1971. I look at them now, 40-some years after they were written, and think: "Hey, this isn't bad stuff. Rhythms are good. Emotions are honest. What more do you want?"

Weather and Her 

By Randy Attwood

(c) 2013 by Randy Attwood

Soft Rains

When the rains were soft in the fall we would stay in bed, just looking at each other's eyes and listening to the sounds of the drops as they hit the roof and the collecting puddles. Then, there would be the battle of who could tickle the other person out of bed so that one of us would have to go and make the coffee and bring two cups back to bed where we would listen to the rain again.

March Snows

The snows came in March and it was unfair because that same morning there had been the smell of spring in the air. But during the night the snows came, and I awoke when I heard the wind. I got up and parted the curtains and looked out at the street lamp and saw the snow blowing as it collected in drifts around the trees and her car in the driveway. A happiness I did not understand filled me when I looked down at the bed where she slept. I slid down under the covers again and she stirred, her lips slightly parted and her yellow hair everywhere. I pulled her close to me and slowly inhaled our warmth—man warm and woman warm together—as the wind continued to howl.

Tightly

During those nights, I would hold her as tightly as I could, my lips pressed into her arm as it tightened around my neck in the darkness. If there was anything else anywhere else, it was unnecessary to look for it. The smell of her hair and my nose against her throat and always through to more, always into never ending, stop at never ending and search for more and through and out and into never ending, stopped just before never ending, only close away from never ending, search again for never ending and quick-found oblivion stretching farther, reaching never ending. No thought. Only long and tight-filled ending.

Storm

Holding hands, we stood under the protection of the roof of the porch and watched the thunder and the lightning bring the night. It also brought the rains from the east: Enraged hard rains that whipped the ground like a savage madman, raging hell against the earth for being secure, not having to roam the restless skies like they, the rains. They beat and beat and pounded upon the ground–the ground that either soaked the rains or ran them off to the rivers; but the earth remained, infuriating the rain that screamed its hate with wind: A jealous shrieking wind that came down crushing into our faces as we braced against each other on the porch.

Wind

The wind blew all that day and it was impossible to be away from it because you could still feel it in your hair when you were inside. The only thing was to hope that it wouldn't last too long. But it stayed through the next two days bringing only heat and exasperation and a feeing of helplessness. It was impossible to concentrate on anything. Even the love-making took on an exasperated feeling, some helpless fight against the wind.

"Why does the wind bother you so?" she asked.

"It's constant sound and feel. It leaves me weak."

"Why weak?"

"I don't know. I'm sorry. Kiss me again and I'll ignore it."

I couldn't ignore it, but it helped to have her weight on top of me, pinning me, and I slept well that way, secure that the wind would not blow me away.

END

Thoughts on "Then and Now: The Harmony of the Instantaneous All" and That 1-star Review

I now have a significant number of works out there from novels to novellas to short stories and collections. When I get asked which one is my favorite, the standard response is that they are like your children. What I find interesting in the question is to ponder which among my works are least read. I like Then and Now: The Harmony of the Instantaneous All very much. Whenever I reread it, I really get drawn into it anew. It's set in Lawrence during that turbulent spring of 1970. It's a fictional retelling, but with enough true events to enhance the drama for the characters. It's the only work of mine that has received a one-star review, which I found really interesting because the writer was really upset with himself, not with me. He wanted to have written a similar novel about those times. Listen to parts of the review from "John Brown:"

Disclosure: I have only scanned this book. This book purports to be about Lawrence Kansas in 1969 and 1970. I was there. I ended up in federal prison as a result of an alleged bombing conspiracy. I was personally in the middle of all this author mentions. I was ten feet from Nick Rice when he was shot dead by police in the midst of an unarmed crowd. I was suspected by the Feds of many acts described here in. I was friends with all the main players. This author was not. What I have read is a sorry shadow of the reality of what happened and does an injustice to it.... So many books written about those times are, like this one, written by fringe players or are heavily romanticized, or are somehow apologetic.... someday maybe someone, somewhere will actually write a piece of fiction that catches the reality, but it has not happened yet. Actually, I once tried and the result ended up being over a thousand pages long (no one in their right mind would pick up a thousand page novel by an unheard of author). I was asked to revise it way downward. I couldn't do it and by then it was the year 2000 and I couldn't figure why I was even writing this anymore....

Yes, I was on the fringe, but I was there. I was in the center of my being and the whole purpose of writing Then and Now was to get back to that being and those times. I wasn't writing a history. Nick Rice didn't die in my story, another character, near and dear to the main character, Stan, did. I was writing something that I hoped young people could read today and relate to. So John Brown's anger is displaced. He's angry at himself. Then and Now has not been a sales success. But for me, it is an artistic success. I'm happy with it.

From a writing technique, Then and Now presents an interesting point of view approach. Stan Nelson tells why he is writing Then and Now and creates characters from those times and then traces them to the now, and shows them those parts to see how accurate they are. I think it sets up an interesting push and pull. Listen to Stan as he explains why he is doing what he is doing:

I don't want an essay. I want a re-creation. I want the ultimate in fiction -- to live again in those times. Not so I can understand them. I don't want to understand the 60s. I want to have them again. Live, breathe and feel them again. The ultimate fantasy. Some friends believe it will be therapeutic for me, a kind of acting out that I'll be able to realize as such and so analyze. Others say, Stan, man, it's just escapism, dangerous avoidance of the now. I guess I have to ask myself somewhere along in this thing if there is going to be any worth here for me. I just can't deal with the question now, man -- dude -- bud -- pal: whatever is the generic non-sarcastic appellation in your argot for "friend."

Actually, I'd like to meet this John Brown. I'd like to see his manuscript. I think we might become friends.

Short Story "Confidence" Published by New Digital Publication "Eleven to Seven"

Thanks to an alphabetical listing, my short story "Confidence" is the first story listed in a new digital publication "Eleven to Seven." I think we're going to see more and more of these sorts of creative outlets open up. I hadn't published "Confidence" myself, so I am glad it has now found a home. The author who gives away his fiction for these sorts of endeavors hopes exposure to the published piece prompts a reader to search for more of his or her work.

I wrote "Confidence" when I was in my twenties. I was exploring the short story environment. I thought the piece of fiction at less than 500 words worked well, but it was never accepted to the literary journals where I submitted it. And so it sat in the file cabinet for, well, decades now.

I think it shows what can be accomplished in the short format. A character is established and something life-changing occurs to him. The challenge is to make it occur for the reader in a convincing and connecting sort of way. Hope you'll check it out.