Our special guest today is Mary Maddox, author of Talion.
The dying body has a thousand voices, and all of them speak to Conrad (Rad) Sanders. Fifteen-year-old Lisa Duncan has no idea she has attracted Rad’s interest. At a mountain resort in Utah, he watches as vivacious Lisa begins an unlikely friendship with Lu Jakes, the strange and introverted daughter of employees there. Lu enters his fantasies as well. He learns she is being abused by her stepmother and toys with the notion of freeing her from her sad life and keeping her awhile as his captive. Lu seems like an easy conquest who could be persuaded to act out his fantasy by turning against her new friend.
But someone else is watching over Lu.
Talion appears to Lu as an angelic vision. He offers her love and counsel, the courage to defend herself from bullies at school and a way to free herself from her stepmother’s violence. He seems to know beforehand what will happen. But Talion’s true nature is unclear. His guidance leads Lu into dark places, moving her inevitably closer to the world inhabited by Rad. When she and Lisa are thrust into that darkness, will Talion come to her aid? Or will he become the killer’s ally?
I Love Books by Mary Maddox
I love their smell, fresh in bookstores or ripened in libraries, enticing me into unknown worlds. I love the heft of a book in my hands, the texture of its pages beneath my fingers, the high gloss of illustrations and photographs. In old books, illustrations were sometimes protected by sheets of onionskin paper. Not anymore. I suspect mechanized book production would crumple onionskin or tear it to pieces. I’m one of many readers who love books in this sensuous way. Since it’s a kind of nostalgia, I expect to encounter it in older readers, but some of my students, college freshmen, feel the same way. “I don’t want a Kindle,” one girl said. “I like to turn the pages.”
And here I run up against a contradiction in myself. I like to turn the pages too, but I own – and frequently use – both a Kindle and an iPad for reading. Part of the reason has nothing to do with reading. I’m drawn to anything electronic and would probably buy every new device to hit the market if I had the money.
I got a Kindle for the convenience. I’m running out of bookshelf space, which I must share with my husband and his hundreds of film and military history books. The books I would have bought in paperback I now buy on Kindle. I can read the Kindle at dinner without staining it with tomato sauce, bring it on trips and have a choice of reading material, and even take it to the gym. No more struggling to turn pages as I work out on the elliptical machine. Finally, there is the instant gratification of ordering a title and having it downloaded in sixty seconds.
I use the iPad mostly for its Internet capability and apps (especially Scrabble!), but it’s more convenient than the Kindle for reading in bed since its backlight makes a reading light unnecessary.
Some writers and publishers are worried about the impact of electronic readers on traditional publishing. How worried seems to depend on the worrier’s economic or emotional investment in traditional publishing. Others are rushing to take advantage of the opportunities in electronic publishing. While change is inevitable, I hope good old-fashioned books will always be available and appreciated. The world would be a poorer place without the smell and feel and page-turning delight of books.
Read what critics are saying about Talion!
"In spare unflinching scenes, Mary Maddox’s offers up a bold and haunting debut novel with her Talion. Without doubt, there will be readers that will be genuinely disturbed by the cruel and sinister elements of the yarn that focuses on such themes as madness, murder, obsession, sadism, and lust. Nonetheless, after putting the book to rest, I had to admit that it does reflect some of the shocking elements of human nature that, unfortunately, are fundamentally present in our society and are often attributed to the darker side of human nature.
The tale is jump-started when Conrad (Rad) Sanders, using the pseudonym Jonathan Myers, checks into the Hidden Creek Lodge in the fictional town of Deliverance, Utah. Debbie and Hank Darlington are the owners of the lodge, and their beautiful teenage niece Lisa is visiting with them. While Lisa checks out the lodge’s surroundings, she meets Lu, who lives in a trailer with her detestable step-mother Noreen and her alcoholic father, Duane. Lu is depicted as being inept and gawky, who is prone to delusional episodes, where she imagines herself communicating with eery creatures that she names Delatar, Black Claw and Talion. In addition, Lu wishes her step-mother were dead. Duane, who was down-and-out, was hired with his wife to do cleaning and odd jobs around the lodge by his old buddy Hank, who felt sorry for him.
As the story shifts to Rad, readers are exposed to the workings of a deranged and depraved character in all its complexity, who has committed horrendous acts. One caveat, if you are squeamish, I doubt if you will be able to stomach Maddox’s detailed graphic and ghoulish descriptions of unspeakable acts that are not exactly suitable for polite everyday conversation. The boundaries of the noir with its mournful, gloomy and depressive elements are pushed almost to the edge of darkness. On the other hand, I have to admit that the novel’s two hundred and eighty-eight pages are never dull or boring, as Maddox skillfully creates a shocking mix of the bleak atmospheric tones of the macabre with the supernatural, while holding onto the page-turning exhilaration of a real thriller with its superb tension and suspense. This is one haunting read that is sure to give you nightmares!
Mary Maddox teaches composition and literature at Eastern Illinois University. She has dedicated her book to her husband and who, as she states, had faith in her work even when she did not. I would tend to agree with her husband and I hope to read more from this fine author."
-Norm Goldman, Publisher and Editor, Bookpleasures
PURCHASE A COPY OF TALION HERE!
She lives in Charleston, Illinois with her husband, film scholar Joe Heumann. Her interests include riding her horse, Tucker, and playing club and tournament Scrabble. Mary’s short stories have appeared in a number of magazines including Farmer’s Market, Yellow Silk, and The Scream Online. Her writing has been honored with awards from the Illinois Arts Council.
Talion, her debut novel, is available at Barnesandnoble.com as a trade paperback and at Amazon.com as both a paperback and a Kindle book. You can visit her at her Web site http://www.marymaddox.com/ , read her blog at http://blog.marymaddox.com, and follow her on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/Dreambeast7.
I love books too, so I appreciate this book. I am a new follower sent from The Book Connection blog.
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