Sorry to be so absent lately, life gets a little to real sometimes. However, I'd like to take some time today and introduce you to Ruth Emmie Lang, a woman I first met on Litsy, and the author of Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance. This is a debut novel so extraordinary that Book of the Month even made it one of their October picks, and an exclusive one at that since Lang's title was released in November. I got a copy of it through Net Galley, so I've been sitting on this gem for a while, and it is certainly a book to read when life gets a little to real.
Also, check out this book trailer! Book trailers are one of my favorite ways to get into a novel and see the world it's written in come to life.
About the Author
Ruth Emmie Lang was born in Glasgow, Scotland and has the red hair to prove it. When she was four years old, she immigrated to Ohio where she has lived for the last 27 years. She has since lost her Scottish accent, but still has the hair. Ruth currently lives in Columbus, Ohio with her husband and dreams of someday owning a little house in the woods where she can write more books. Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance is her first novel.
You can learn more about Ruth and her work right here!
I'd also encourage all of you to order Ruth's book through whichever platform you like! It's available on Amazon, Kindle, B&N, Nook, Indiebound, iBooks, and Kobo.
For audiobook lovers you can also get it on Audible!
Happy Reading!!
XoXo
BrainyHeroine
(Here's an excerpt to really get you interested!)
roa r k e
“A betting man can lose a dollar. It’s the man he bets on that can lose an eye.” My mother would say this with a confidence that sug gested there were no other possible outcomes, that there were thou sands of oneeyed boys out there apologizing to their mothers for not taking their advice.
I, remarkably,
still had both my eyes despite my impulse to hurl myself off things
that were often a generous distance from the ground. Some of my other hobbies included running with sharp objects, lighting fires, and lighting sharp objects on fire and launching them into the sky with my slingshot. So, naturally, when it was my turn in Truth or Dare, my friends never had to ask.
“Dare!” I hollered and headbutted a tree.
The other kids laughed.
That was my favorite part.
“I dare you to . . .” Mike looked around the forest for something I hadn’t yet climbed,
eaten, or peed on. One time, he puked after I made him eat a worm, so I ate ten worms and a beetle just to make him look like a baby
in front of pretty
Ruby S.
“This’d
better be good,” Ruby said as she perched herself
on a tree stump like it was box seats at the opera, pointing her candy heart nose at the ceiling as she admired the crown molding.
Mike thought for a moment longer, then flashed me a wily grin. “Did you hear about the thing that ate Gretchen’s dog?”
“Again?” I scoffed. Mike’s cousin Gretchen was always making up stories. Her most recent string of lies featuring beloved family pets meeting strange
and untimely demises. She
was pretty weird.
“This one’s real!”
Mike insisted. “Charlie got off his leash and started sniffing around this old cabin by the creek. She tried to call him back, but he wouldn’t come. Then like a minute later, she saw this
halfman, halfspider
thing
looking back at
her through the win dow, and she bolted.”
Ruby gasped and leaned forward on her stump. “She just left Charlie there?”
Mike nodded and continued, “She
showed me the place. It’s creepy. Covered in cobwebs and stuff. I wanted to look inside, but Gretchen
started crying ’cause she didn’t want me leaving her there by herself. She’s scared
of spiders.”
“I think you’re the one who’s afraid of spiders,” I said, wiggling my fingers like they were eight hairy legs.
Mike didn’t take the bait. He leveled his gaze on me and said, “I dare you to touch it.”
“What? The
cabin?”
Mike nodded, searching my face for signs of fear. “What d’ya say?
Truth or—” “Dare.”
“That’s it.” Mike pointed to a ramshackle cabin made of splintered, gray wood. The windows were dark and shrouded by cobwebs. It ap peared no one was home.
This was going to be easy. “So, I just have to walk up and touch it?” I asked.
Mike hesitated, clearly thrown off by how unfazed I was. “Yeah . . . but you have to keep your hand on it for at least twenty seconds.”
I almost laughed. This was weak, even for Mike.
“Guys,
look,” Ruby said, pointing
to a small flock of sparrows that had settled on the roof of the cabin.
“What is
it?” I asked, failing to see what was so interesting about a bunch of birds.
“Just
watch,” she said.
One by one, the
birds beat their wings, but none of them lifted off. It was as if something was anchoring them by their tiny wishbone feet. They furiously flapped and chirped for help as their heads jumpcut from one angle to the next, searching the sky for hawks or eagles.
“Poor birds!” Ruby cared enough
to exclaim, but not
enough
to do
something about it. She turned to me. “You
have to save them.”
“Yeah, Roarke. Save them.” Mike nudged me forward.
For the
first time in my life, I hesitated. I didn’t hesitate when I drove my uncle’s truck when he left it running in the driveway, or when I caught that snake and wore it like a necktie. But something about this was different.
My heart fluttered; my pulse raced. I was . . .
“What’s wrong? Scared Old Man Spider’s gonna eat you?” “No!” I sounded more defensive than I’d have liked. I could see
the other kids doubting me, Ruby doubting me.
I headbutted the nearest tree, took one last look at Ruby’s candy heart nose, and ran to my almost
certain doom.
I slowed to a stop within spitting distance of the cabin—twenty three feet, my personal best. I made sure the coast was clear before I pulled myself onto the branch of a sagging elm and shimmied over to the eaves of Old Man Spider’s roof. Then I realized what was keep ing the birds from leaving. Most of the cottage’s roof was missing, and in its place was what looked like a tarp made of spider’s silk. I carefully placed my weight on one of the several rotten twobyfours that remained
of the original roof and went to work freeing
the birds with my Swiss Army knife, cutting the threads that bound their tiny feet while being careful not to step on the sticky stuff myself.
I could see Ruby from where I was, so I decided to make a show
of it. I leaped from board to board, bird to bird, cutting them loose and throwing my arms in the air as if I had performed some kind of magic trick. Ruby’s lips were moving, probably
saying something like, “Oh! Did you see that? Roarke is so brave.” When all the birds were free, I took a bow and wondered if I’d get a kiss later. Then came time for my final trick: the Disappearing Act. Like a trapdoor,
the board beneath my feet gave way, and I fell.
I braced myself for the landing I had nailed a hundred times be fore from the tops of trees, roofs, and bridges, but it never came. I found myself
cradled in a hammock of spider silk not three feet from the ground. I had fallen into Old Man Spider’s trap.
I struggled to break free but only succeeded in making myself more tangled. Where was my knife? Not in my pocket. I eventually spotted it suspended several feet above me from a single thread of silk. I could see the
webbing had caught the blade, not the
handle, so all I could do was wait as gravity cut through the thread and hope it didn’t land on any part of me that contained a vital organ.
As my eyes adjusted to the dark, my surroundings revealed themselves. The room itself was spartan—the only pieces of furniture were a
kitchen table and
a sofa
bed with springs
sticking out of the mattress. It was what was above eye level that was cluttered.
Spoons, toothbrushes, socks, tweezers, tennis rackets, and other household miscellany hung suspended in long, sticky tendrils
that dangled from large sheets of cobweb on the
ceiling. It was as if all those items had gotten stuck at some point and whoever lived here just hadn’t both ered to cut them down.
I heard a shuffling noise behind me. My heart raced as I imag ined a giant halfman, halfspider pinning me down with its hairy arms as it prepared to devour me headfirst. Luckily, the thing that found me was no mutant humanspider hybrid, but entirely man: two legs, two arms, two eyes, hair mostly concentrated
on his scalp. He also had two pant legs and two sleeves—both of which were soiled and frayed—and a long, saltandpepper beard that he most likely used as a napkin from the amount of food particles that were nestled
in it.
I guess he wasn’t so much old as he was dirty, although I could see how it might be hard to tell from a distance.
“What’s this?” His look of surprise
suggested he had never seen a child before.
“Get away
from me!”
I shouted and struggled against the web bing that bound me.
“You’ll pardon my
asking, but this
is
my house.
Why do you ask that I remove myself from it when you are
the one dropping in unannounced?”
“I’m not
scared of you!”
The man once again looked surprised. “And why should you be?” “Because! You . . . you’re a villain!”
“A villain?”
“You trap animals in your web and eat them!” I said bluntly.
“I think you have me confused with someone else. Have you tried Myra Oswald on South Street? She’s an odd one.”
“What about . . . kids?”
“Of course
not! Eating children is a ghastly business.”
My muscles relaxed a little. “Then why do you live in this creepy place?”
“Because I needed a place to stay and it was available. The roof needed some
patchingup, so my eightlegged friends offered to fix it for me. Would you like
something to eat? Cheese? Watermelon?”
I liked both cheese and watermelon, and Old Man Spider didn’t seem so bad, but I wanted out of that web. “No, thanks. Could you help cut me out? My knife got stuck.”
He gazed up at the hole in his ceiling. “What were you doing up there, anyway?”
I
told him about the birds, the bet, and Mike.
“I tell them not to land on the roof, but they keep doing it. You could say they’re a little flighty.” He paused like
actors do in sitcoms after they’ve told a joke, only I had no idea what the joke was. “Never mind,” he added flatly.
“Can you get me outta here or not?”
“Of course, of course!” Old Man Spider went to work untangling my mess. “This might take a while. As you can see, when things get caught, I usually just leave them where they are.”
I glanced at a cheese grater hanging not ten inches from my face and wondered
if he just stood in the middle of the living room to grate his cheese.
“What is your name, young man?” “Roarke.”
“Roarke, Roarke . . .” The man ran off and rummaged through a kitchen drawer. He pulled out a leatherbound book and flipped through it. “Rachel, Randy, Reginald, Ronald. No Roarke. You’re the first!” He excitedly scribbled something in the book. “I try not to repeat names. You don’t know how many Johns I’ve told to skedad dle! My goal is to know one person of every name. I haven’t met another Weylyn, yet. That’s my name—Weylyn Grey,” he said, shaking my hand. His name suited him. He had gray eyes that shone like fish scales
in the light.
The web was starting to make my skin itch. “I really gotta go home.”
“Of course.
My apologies.” Weylyn got back to work.
I hoped my mom had bought more chocolate
milk.
Maybe she’d let me have some after she made me try on that eye patch again and asked me how I’d like to have one of my own.
“So, what’s
a smart boy like you doing climbing on people’s roofs? You could’ve hurt yourself.”
“I’ve done much
crazier stuff than that.”
I told him some of my best stories: the one about the sewer and the train tracks and the neighbor’s dogs. Weylyn seemed un impressed.
“What? You
got something better?” Weylyn smiled. “I was young once, too.”
