Hello, reader who is also a reader, and welcome to Booked For The Week – our regular Sunday chat with a bunch of wonderful industry people about books! Once again, the dreaded autumn gusts have thrown my schedule into disarray, so no wonderful industry people this week. Instead, here's a quick excerpt from another weird story I started writing, which for some reason involves poultry.
On top of the town hall rises a solitary gray-black tower, leaning like a broken finger, terribly scorched.
Above the hill where the vicarage stands, the sky cracks forever.
Below the hill that raises the vicarage, the village sings like electric wires with the collective crowing of eighty-eight ash-grey roosters that stir the sky, which is constantly crackling with a never-ending dawn.
And there is no one who experiences their awakening, because no one who lives there sleeps. Roosters, you see. They never stop crowing, so there is always time to get out of bed.
If you ask the people who live there why they don't get rid of the roosters, they'll say, “Well, it's not their fault. They're just doing what roosters do. They're crowing at the cracked sky.”
If you ask them why they never tried to find a way to fix the sky, they will simply say: This is how it was when we came here.
If you ask roosters why the sky is cracking, they'll usually just take a shit and continue crowing in the never-ending dawn.
As always, let me know what you're reading below and let's pray we can get back to hosting next week. Or I can get back to you on my emails. Book now!