CSFF Blog Tour – Blaggard’s Moon, Day 2

I was miffed, to say the least, when I discovered yesterday that the post I’d set to publish in the morning, didn’t. For those of you who stopped by hoping to find a list of participating blogger links, I apologize.

But I’m not about to let a rough start spoil this tour for Blaggard’s Moon. With good reason, this is one of those books that gets high acclaim from a wide variety of readers. For an excellent story summary, I suggest Fred Warren‘s. Rachel Starr Thomson has an especially thoughtful post. Brandon Barr, Jill Williamson, and Epic Rat posted reviews you might be interested in (and if you’d like to win a free copy Epic Rat is holding a contest)—you’ll get an interesting balance if you look at all three.

Keanan Brand has a study of the word “blaggard” that is interesting as well as a post highlighting his favorite passage. How different from the one I want to share!

Phyllis Wheeler takes an excellent look at The Nearing Vast Web site. Her post prompted me to visit there again myself—which is where I found this picture of our quiet, hard-working author, George Bryan (he goes by Bryan) Polivka, here participating in a book signing.

Jason Joyner does a nice overview (with links to several reviews) of the Trophy Chase Trilogy—and has some pirate fun along the way. Certainly for anyone who just discovered Nearing Vast, I hope you put the trilogy on your to-buy list, along with Blaggard’s Moon.

So here’s the writing sample I chose, in part because it shows the depth of character development, in part because it shows the writer’s and the character’s voice so well. In part because it shows how Polivka weaves his themes into the story seamlessly.

It seemed to Delaney like it was usually women that made up those things a man couldn’t ever get over. Like Yer Poor Ma, who he could never forget. She’d been his whole world once, though she was in fact just a small, no-account woman who got herself married to a drunk, and had a kid. She wasn’t any kind of special person in any way. But she was still his Poor Ma. She still had magic in her songs, and a heart that blazed like a cookstove in his memory, and she was all inside him and would never leave him. She would always be singing him lullabies as the dark waves rose.

And Maybelle Cuddy. Just a barmaid, a plain barmaid, not like Jenta, but a regular girl serving up ale and getting pinched and slapping away rude hands and counting her tips at the end of a day. But oh, those eyes. That voice. Those things she said to him. He thought he could leave her behind, but he couldn’t. She’d always be in his heart now, always promising she’d love him forever [….]

It was as though men just couldn’t help themselves. Look at Conch Imbry, as fierce a man as ever was, and yet Jenta Stillmithers had softened him all up. She was stroking his hand, and he was a puppy dog. It was like … it was like women were made to do that to men. Like men were made with a big soft spot, and no matter how tough they got they couldn’t protect themselves there. Like maybe, when God took that rib from the man to make the woman, the way the priests told it from their Scripture books, he left a hole in the man. One that she could always slide into. And the man couldn’t stop her doing it, either.

Hmmm. Pretty good writing, don’t you think?