What’s on Your Bookshelf?: Why Did You Put Pumpkin Spice in My Grandfather’s Ashes edition

Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week – our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool people in the industry about books! Once again, the cowardly autumn breezes have completely messed up my schedule, so no cool people in the industry this week. Instead, here’s a short excerpt from another strange story I’ve been writing, which for some reason also involves poultry.

Atop the town hall rises a lone gray-black spire, hideously scorched and crooked like a broken finger.

Above the hill on which the rectory stands, the sky opens up forever.

Below the hill that raises the mansion lies the village, chirping like electric wires, along with the collective crowing of the eighty-eight ash-gray roosters that mistake the ever-creaking sky for an endless dawn.

And no one lives their vigil, because no one who lives there sleeps. It’s the roosters, you see. They never stop crowing, so it’s always time to get out of bed.

If you ask the people who live there why they don’t just take the roosters away, they say, Well, it’s not their fault. They’re just doing what roosters do. Crowing at the cracked sky.

When you ask them why they never tried to fix the air, they say, Well, that’s how it was when we came here.

If you ask roosters why the sky is cracked, they tend to shit their pants and keep crowing, while being sure that the dawn will never end.

As always, let me know what you read below, and let’s pray for a return to hosting next week. That, or I can just get back to dealing with my emails. Book now!