The blast that is the Stroke the Fire blog tour continues with a great little write-up and except on the every cool Book Devotee site:
Excerpt:
“STROKE THE FIRE”
“Man’s got a home, then that’s where he sleeps. Can’t, myself, see how you can stand the god-derned quiet out there in the flats,” Lew had said, listening to the music of the man’s voice.
The man shrugged, the tip of his cigar bobbing in the soft night. ”That it be. Name’s Last. Jeff Last.”
Lew wiped the grime off his hands (and hopefully the fool’s grin off his face) and offered his own. ”Lew. Just Lew around here.”
The handshake lasted a bit too long, long enough for the two men to size each other up. Lew in his Stinkhole clothes was a burly barrel of a man, all beard and round blue eyes. He looked fat from aways, but if you’re ever seen him haul cornmeal or lumber you’d know that it was iron, fella, strong, strong, iron and not just insulation against Craggy’s winds.
Last was long and lanky, and while the light was none too good in that narrow little ways between the public corral and Miller’s Fine Feeds, you could tell that he was a beanpole: Six feet easy, in buckskin and serape. In the dark beneath his wide brimmed hat, his shaved face was carved and as Craggy as Lew’s mountain home. The handshake had lasted way too long. Now, he thought, how to get this fine feller up the mountain…
“Gotta hit the trail if I’m ta make Ridgewood by dawn,” Jeff had said, and Lew’s heart had sunk down to his Stinkhole boots.
“Knows how it is–” he had said, starting to turn, maybe extend a hand, and an invitation for another time.
“But you is one fine figure of a man. Might temptin’–”
Lew stared, unsure of how exactly to respond.
“You think the same, Lew of the Mountain?” Jeff had said.
Even in the low light cast from the lanterns of Sal’s Lew could see Jeff’s fine figure, out in all it’s glory there in the “street” of Stinkhole.
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