Sky Joust- The Purple Onion vs The Pestilence
Page 20
Victor stopped.
“That’s right. It’s me, you smug son of a bitch. Me!”
So there it is, thought Victor. The old ogre is still calling the shots.
“Oh, you know it, baby!” cried Todd in his chair, his broken voice carrying over a microphone he had activated on his chair. “This is still my town.”
Victor entered the waiting elevator and pressed the button to close the doors.
“Or do you think no one can stop you?” Todd’s voice persisted. “I’ll stop you. You’re just an onion! Hear me? A purple. Fucking. Onion!”
In a fit of anger, Victor balled a fist and punched out the ceiling light. In the darkness of the car, there was no possibility for mistake. Twin pinpricks of gold light had appeared in his pupils.
“You are goddamn right,” he said.
THANKS FOR READING
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More stories about The Purple Onion are forthcoming, as well as other tales about Dodoville's eccentric citizens.
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Now that I have that out of the way, let me say what a pleasure it was to work on this adventure. My goal was to write "The Fast & The Furious but with horses." Whenever in doubt, I asked myself, What would Justin Lin do? The Purple Onion is named for a coffee shop where I did a lot of the work on my first (yet unpublished) novel. The character was created in response to a call for superhero stories, but he quickly grew out of his limit of ten thousand words. Dodoville was originally my pet name for Manhattan's East Village in 2012, when, in a testy mood, I decided everyone into styles at least four centuries extinct. Gradually, the city developed as part of a blog project where I wrote about its more famous persons and places, tucked away in the shadow of one of the world's largest active volcanoes. Skiapods first intrigued me as a grade schooler looking in my social studies textbook at woodcuts of exotic humans as imagined by medieval Europeans. My interest was rekindled as an adult reading Umberto Eco's Baudolino. I invented the Church of the Knight Errant while staring at a round table on the grounds of the Scarritt Bennett Center, a rather monastic looking campus here in Nashville.
For their insightful readings of early versions of Sky Joust, I'd like to thank Holly Hollar, Ashley Roth, Jay Traub, and Emily Weaver. This book is undoubtedly more fun for your contributions.
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These titles are also available in audiobook!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Will Madden is a Nashville based author, originally from the Bronx, New York. He holds a degree in something ridiculous from a fancy institution of higher education. By day he performs manual labor so that by night he has enough brain power to deliver the hard-hitting truths about the struggles of imaginary monsters. He juggles and knits.
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Copyright © 2018 by Will Madden
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Printed in the United States of America
First Printing, 2018
Square Straw Press
Nashville, TN