YEAR OF THE TIGER Launches!

Yes, tonight is Halloween, which still comes every October without fail. The customs and rituals remain the same. The weather may be different (we suffered through an ice storm here a few days ago), and nobody has invented new candy. If you want to read a Halloween post, I can recommend one I wrote previously (click here).

Instead, because nothing is normal this year, I've launched my latest novel, YEAR OF THE TIGER, an action / adventure story about the hunt for a man-eating tiger in 1986 (which was, in the oriental calendar, a year of the tiger). Of course, it is much more than that simple straight-forward plot, as compelling as it may be. The theme of hunting can also be taken as the search for pride, power, revenge - anything a human desires and is willing to fight for, including love.

What makes this story special (you may quote me in your review) is the magical realism aspect in which the main character and the tiger seem to share a consciousness. I say "seem" because we are left to wonder whether it is real or if it is only the man's delusions. In the end, does it really matter? Or does it make everything that has happened up to the end matter deeply? 

One Beta reader (two revisions ago) remarked that everyone in the story is corrupt and unlikable. I took exception to that characterization of my characters. Everyone has good reasons for the way they are and why they act the way they do. I chalk it up to basic human foibles which in some of us are taken to extremes. They all have some redeeming quality, too, whenever the situation allows.

Not even our tiger protagonist (part of the story is told through the tiger's point of view - yes, anthropomorphism run amok!) is saved from the curse of being a bad actor. He is, after all, a man-eater - but not without plausible reasons which drove him into that role. Still, he wrestles with himself over his actions and whether they are right or wrong. A tiger that shares its consciousness with a human mind can do that.

Some have described this tale as a "slow burn" while at least one colleague has elsewhere eschewed the "slow burn" description for wasting readers' time setting up the final section which actually is interesting. Yes and no. In the case of YEAR OF THE TIGER, tension does build more or less continuously throughout the story as our heroes get closer to achieving their goal, but events interspersed throughout ratchet up the violence and anticipate the next event. There is no wasting of readers' time with trivial side tracks. That is what revision is for. 

If you like your Halloween with a side of something scary, this novel has its frightening moments - scenes as visceral as any I have ever written, and, perhaps more unsettling, the moral dilemmas which unfold as a result. In the end, we all die a little and yet feel strangely reborn.

Of course YEAR OF THE TIGER is available on Amazon in both ebook format for Kindle and in paperback. In time, the paperback may be available from Barnes & Noble's website - but not in their brick and mortar stores despite me being a "local author". You can read more about the history behind this novel in previous blog posts beginning with this one.

(Note: There seem to be a few other books on Amazon with the same or similar title. Do not be confused. Mine is the only one, it would seem, that actually involves hunting a tiger. You may need to scroll down a bit - or just click on the link at the top right corner of this blog page.)

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