reviews_and_ramblings | Excerpt Day: The Art of Dying by Josh Lanyon & Jordan Castillo Price

The Art of Dying, Partners in Crime #4, by Josh Lanyon & Jordan Castillo Price
Release Date: 05/2009
Publisher: MLR Press
ISBN: 978-1-934531-25-9
Publisher Link: http://www.mlrbooks.com/ShowBook.php?book=PIC00004

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Amazon: The Art of Dying: Partners in Crime #4

Blurb: Lovers and Other Strangers by Josh Lanyon Recovering from a near fatal accident, artist Finn Barret returns to Seal Island in Maine to rest and recuperate. But Seal Island is haunted with memories, some sweet, some sad; three years ago Finn found his lover in the arms of Fitch, Finn's twin brother. Since that day, Finn has seen neither Conlan nor Fitch. In fact, no one has seen Fitch. What happened to him? Did Fitch run away, as everyone believes? Or did he meet a more sinister fate? To put the past to rest - and see if there's any chance of a future with Con - Finn must discover the truth. But the deeper he digs, the more reason he has to fear Con is the only one who knows what truly happened to Fitch...

Body Art by Jordan Castillo Price His lover has betrayed and swindled Ray Carlucci out of everything he valued, including a tattoo business. Hounded by creditors, weary of heart, he accepts the job of chauffeur and body man for the dying owner of a remote estate. The island, minus its wealthy summer colony, is colorless in winter and Ray thinks he understands why staff on the estate periodically desert. But, he's baffled by, then drawn to, Anton, the eccentric artist who haunts the forest, bringing strange life to bizarre and disquieting sculptures amidst the ice and trees. When the body of a man who once held Ray's job rises from the frosty earth, Ray wonders what part Anton's wildness has in the escalating violence.

Excerpt:

From Body Art by Jordan Castillo Price

A noise startled me from sleep, just as I started to fall hard and fast. I sat up and shook off the sickening lurch of sudden wakefulness at the cusp of dreaming. The house smelled wrong, of someplace that had been vacant - just a couple of weeks, but long enough to develop the sour stink of disuse. It sounded wrong too, surrounded by the continuous drone of cicadas and crickets and the dry friction of leaves on the roof as the wind made the branches scour the shingles.

Another noise rose from the layered background of insects and flora: a sharp crunch, like something breaking.

I flipped on the bedside light, dug out some jeans and a T-shirt that wouldn't look any the worse for wear if I snagged them on the undergrowth, unearthed my leather jacket and biker boots from the heaviest suitcase, and went outside for a look.

The first startling thing was that the moon was bright. Maybe I'd seen it, or something like it, in paintings or in films. But there were no streetlights on Red Wing Island to taint the glow of the stars. The porch light that had lit my way from the main house to the garage was off. And since all of the neighbors had migrated back to their winter homes, the houses all around the estate were dark too.

I had never seen the moon so bright.

I stared up at it as if I'd never seen the moon, period. It was so intensely luminous, that maybe I never had, not really.

Another loud crack from the tree line startled me out of my moongazing as effectively as it had pulled me from the oblivion of sleep. I wished I had a flashlight. I could probably find one in the garage or the car, if I knew where to look, but I didn't. Still, I needed to see for myself what was going bump in the night if I ever hoped to get to sleep. I took a few steps toward the trees and listened. Cicadas droned louder than I would've ever thought possible, louder still if you actually tuned in to them and tried to imagine where that wall of noise might actually be coming from.

A few more steps, and I was at the tree line. The wooded area wasn't large, maybe ten yards deep, and beyond that, more moonlight, bright through the black vertical slashes of the tree trunks. I eased forward, feeling for rocks and fallen branches with my boots as I half shuffled, half walked. I was almost through the trees when I heard the sound again.

Crrack.

I squatted and groped. My fingers brushed fallen leaves and points of cool sliminess, probably slugs. I flicked them away, found a branch with the diameter of a Louisville Slugger TPX, and hefted it. Longer than a TPX. Awkward. But better than nothing.

I inched to the clearing with my heart in my throat, dead sure that every shuffle, every tentative step, had sent a telltale crackle broadcasting my presence throughout the island. A twig snapped. I froze. The drone around me continued, unaffected. I took another few steps forward, now moving even slower, and as I came to the edge of a clearing, I saw him.

A man.

More accurately, the guy in black from the side of the road. Or if you wanted to split hairs, his silhouette. He hung from the lowest branch of a tree, maybe seven feet off the ground, arms and legs locked around the tree limb. His long coat, long hair - and now a long scarf that he'd added to his ensemble - dangled beneath him. He inched forward and caught a smaller branch with one hand. Moonlight glinted off metal as he pulled a blade from the grip of his teeth. He clenched hard with his legs and started to saw at the smaller branch. When he'd sawed about halfway through, he bent the branch back upon itself.

Craack.

"What are you doing?" I called.

His silhouette shifted as he faced me. He tucked the knife away, let go with his legs, hung for a second by his hands, and then dropped. The leaves below him gave off a rumpled sigh.

He trailed the branch he'd cut behind him as he crossed the clearing. It dragged through the fallen leaves with a shish-shish-shish. He walked like a runway model, all attitude and hips. And when he stopped in front of me and tossed his dark hair over his shoulder so he could get a look at me, I forgot how to breathe. He was breathtaking, in a wasted sort of way. All soulful eyes and long sideburns and five o'clock shadow.

"What are you doing?" I said a second time. Because what else could I say? Don't tell me you're an overbooked gardener? Or, it's late? Or, what's it gonna take to get you out of all those clothes?

"I'd tell you," he said. "But then you'd think I'm crazy."

I was forming a fast opinion of him, all right, but crazy wasn't the word that sprang to mind. Hot. That was more like it. Because straight men didn't walk that way, and no matter how much I told myself not to notice, my eyes kept raking him up and down. "Try me."

A full smile then, wide enough that moonlight glinted, bluish, off his teeth. His teeth had character. Not quite straight, a hairline gap between the front two. Very white.

"What am I doing? Trying to make sense of the world. Just like everybody else."

He pivoted on one foot, stepped over the branch, and started walking back the way he'd come. I watched the silhouette of his back and tried to decide if he was real or just a really vivid dream induced by the scent of mothballs and bleach.

He paused halfway across the clearing and looked back at me. "Aren't you curious?" he said.

The thought of waking up in my garage apartment the next morning to a day of cleaning up blood and shit, and if I was lucky, driving Mrs. White to an ophthalmologist's appointment, without ever knowing what the mystery man in the trees was actually doing...that really didn't seem like an option. I followed.

He walked quickly, sure-footed in the dark. I walked right behind him in the path he created by dragging his branch. He strode up to a tripod of tree branches tethered at the top in a crude tepee shape, and he propped the branch he was dragging against the existing structure. "Give me a hand, and I'll show you," he said.

He kicked a couple of the branches apart and centered the new branch between them. "Hold this." He grabbed me by the wrist and guided my hand to the hub where the four branches met, then pulled a ball of twine from his pocket and wrapped the joint. He drew his knife, cut the twine, then tucked the knife away again.

"My mother told me never to talk to strange men with knives," I said.

"Good thing your mother's not here."

****

Read the first chapter of Body Art here: http://jordancastilloprice.com/bodyart.html

Excerpt Day: The Art of Dying by Josh Lanyon & Jordan Castillo Price

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