The
Mourner's Cradle: A
Widow's Journey
by
Tommy B. Smith
Genre:
Horror
The
tale of a widow's harrowing journey through grief and peril into the
cold remnants of a dead world.
Damon
Sharpe had in part found victory, he believed, in his battle to
unearth a
truth obscured by time.
By autumn, he was dead, leaving to his wife Anne a house of
unfulfilled wishes, remnants, and the key to the enigma of his
obsession, the Mourner’s Cradle.
A
journey through grief and peril delivers
Anne Sharpe from her home in St. Charles to the faraway skeletons of
a long-dead civilization where she will find the desperate answers
she seeks...or die trying.
Tommy
B. Smith is a writer of dark fiction, author of The Mourner's Cradle,
Poisonous, and the short story collection Pieces of Chaos, as well as
works appearing in numerous magazines and anthologies throughout the
years. His presence currently infests Fort Smith, Arkansas, where he
resides with his wife and cats.
GUEST POST
What
did you edit out of this book?
My
new book, The Mourner’s Cradle, ends on a certain note which might
have gone otherwise.
To
elaborate, the book originally had an additional chapter at its end.
Ultimately, I found the work stronger minus this addition, and
withdrawing it ended the book on a very different note.
I’ve
heard it mentioned that whether a story has a happy or unhappy ending
depends on where you end the story.
I’ll
divulge no spoilers for those who haven’t read the book, but I will
say that ending it on this note, the one you’ll see in the book,
held far more of an impact to me.
That
other chapter, for those who might wonder, was a chapter of
aftermath. While it might have fleshed out a certain aspect of the
world in The Mourner’s Cradle, by the end, I judged the story more
powerful without it.
What
kind of research do you do before you begin writing a book?
Sometimes
researching for a book means looking into the past or into the
imagination, whereas some projects require specific research.
The
history of St. Anthony’s Fire, also known as the Holy Fire,
interested me. Stories of mass poisonings, tales of people seeing
dragons and demons, entire villages vanishing. These accounts
inspired one of my short stories, Epitaph for Sol, which appeared in
my collection Pieces of Chaos.
With
a book such as The Mourner’s Cradle, research was more deliberate.
I consulted outdated research materials published in the 1970s,
because the book is set in 1979. The focus is on the views and
developments of that time period.
Then
the archaeological aspect came into effect. South American lore and
relics, those we had at that time, provided only a vague outline of
the ancient cultures in that region.
I
spent some time in New Mexico a couple of years ago, and now my
research has wandered into that territory, and I’ve begun writing a
story based in the region.
Being
a writer is a considerable part of life, on my end, and life and
research have a tendency to overlap.
Follow
the tour HERE
for exclusive excerpts, guest posts and a giveaway!
No comments:
Post a Comment