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The Mythic South

I love a good ghost story year-round, not just in proximity to Halloween. I live in Alabama, in the Deep South, and I grew up with a superstitious bunch.

Every house was haunted. Every stand of trees hid a monster. And so, when it came time to write Every Mountain Made Low, I had to write a ghost story.

Loxley Fiddleback, like all the women of her family, is psychic sensitive, and able to see the dead. Unlike her mother, the dead also see Loxley, and will attack her on sight. Each frigid touch from a ghost brings horrible pain, but also certain knowledge, like the name of the deceased. The only way for Loxley to avoid them is to hold her breath when they’re near, and that brings me to my first myth:

Holding your breath near a cemetery

When I was a kid, we had two cemeteries on the way to school: one modern and one that predated the Civil War. On this side of the Atlantic, we’re not accustomed to any structures older than two hundred years, and so that second cemetery creeped the hell out of us. My sister told me to hold my breath or I’d breathe in an evil spirit, which was the consensus of the other kids. However, I wondered if the spirits could see the life you breathe out, almost like mosquitoes homing in on the biggest source of CO2. What would happen if they followed you and caught you? Would they cling to you like drowning victims searching for one last hold on the surface?

My friends were afraid of possession by sadistic, evil spirits. Now, I know we had all types in Athens, but it was hard to imagine any of them as forces of Satan or the like. I was scared they’d drag me back to their graves in a misguided attempt to save themselves.

But we do have a popular evil spirit in the South…

The Bell Witch

In the early 1800s, Kate Baggs died and became a malevolent spirit, haunting one family in Adams, Tennessee: The Bells. She’d curse the them by name, throwing their stuff around and torturing their poor daughter, Betsy. Joshua Bell came to believe his family was hexed by a witch, though he may have mislabeled her because it was a less civilized time, lacking a Tobin’s Spirit Guide to tell them it was clearly a poltergeist… I didn’t know much about her, until I went to high school with one of the Bell kids, many generations later.

The legend of the Bell Witch was so popular in its day that Native American mass murderer / President Andrew Jackson himself was alleged to investigate. He attempted to conjure the witch and fled in terror after she supposedly appeared, and he never made another attempt. Historians say it’s all conjecture, and I’m prone to agree. After all, it’s hard to believe that President would’ve turned tail at something so small as a demon after the evils he spearheaded.

At the height of the haunting, though, Joshua Bell responded to scratching and found a half-dog, half rabbit creature. Perhaps that creature was…

Tailypo

I will never forget the night we stayed in my Granny’s tin-roofed farmhouse in rural Mississippi, and my dad decided it was time to tell the story of Tailypo. The creature was a dog-sized feral thing whose tail had been cut off in a hungry moment by an Appalachian farmer. It would scratch at the walls and roof, begging in a man’s tongue for its long-eaten tail. The story builds as it asks over and over, “Where is my tail,” culminating in an old-fashioned dad-jump-scare, “YOU HAVE IT!” He left me and my sister to sleep in the old steel-framed bed while the storm coaxed the pecan tree outside to scratching the roof.

What I didn’t know at the time, was that Tailypo had a lot of history. It took a lot of forms over the years, but it had the quintessential element of American horror: the morality play. It was the farmer’s fault that this creature was going to kill him. After all, he’d stolen a piece of it in a desperate moment. I knew when I started writing Every Mountain Made Low that I had to prominently include the beast.

He’s a transaction, a penalty, a self-inflicted curse. The more of him I wrote, the more I loved the character as a devil offering a deal.

The Deep South is steeped in folklore

And there’s no way I could cover it all here or any book. I hope, however, that you’ll pick it up and look for a few of the tales contained in the main storyline. And I’m always interested in local folklore, so if you have a spooky childhood story, drop me a line on Twitter!

Every Mountain Made Low is out now!
Buy: UK|US|Rebellion Store

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Every Mountain Made Low available for pre-order now!

Good news, comrades! Alex White’s most excellent debut novel, Every Mountain Made Low, is available for preorder now. Quick, go get it!

We’re incredibly excited for you all to get your hands on Every Mountain Made Low. Here’s what you can expect from what is, in our opinion, an incredibly strong debut from a talented and exctiting new author:

Every Mountain Made Low

Loxley Fiddleback can see the dead,but the problem is… the dead can see her.

Ghosts have always been cruel to Loxley Fiddleback, especially the spirit of her only friend, alive only hours before. Loxley isn’t equipped to solve a murder: she lives near the bottom of a cutthroat, strip-mined metropolis known as “The Hole,” suffers from crippling anxiety and doesn’t cotton to strangers. Worse still, she’s haunted.

She inherited her ability to see spirits from the women of her family, but the dead see her, too. Ghosts are drawn to her like a bright fire, and their lightest touch leaves her with painful wounds.
Loxley swears to take blood for blood and find her friend’s killer. In doing so, she uncovers a conspiracy that rises all the way to the top of The Hole.

As her enemies grow wise to her existence, she becomes the quarry, hunted by a brutal enforcer named Hiram McClintock. In sore need of confederates, Loxley must descend into the strangest depths of the city in order to have the revenge she seeks and, ultimately, her own salvation.

Every Mountain Made Low is avaiable for pre-order now!
Pre-order: UK|US|Rebellion Store

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Cover reveal: Every Mountain Made Low

Behold, comrades: the gorgeous cover to Alex White’s Every Mountain Made Low. Is it now glorious (click the image above to see a super-sized version)?

Created by the supremely talented Jeffrey Alan Love, we’re particularly proud of this cover. Not only is it a stunner, but it does justice to the truly wonderful story that Alex has written. 

So what’s Every Mountain Made Low about you ask? Welll…

Loxley Fiddleback can see the dead, but the problem is… the dead can see her.

Ghosts have always been cruel to Loxley Fiddleback, especially the spirit of her only friend, alive only hours before. Loxley isn’t equipped to solve a murder: she lives near the bottom of a cutthroat, strip-mined metropolis known as “The Hole,” suffers from crippling anxiety and doesn’t cotton to strangers. Worse still, she’s haunted.

She inherited her ability to see spirits from the women of her family, but the dead see her, too. Ghosts are drawn to her like a bright fire, and their lightest touch leaves her with painful wounds.

Loxley swears to take blood for blood and find her friend’s killer. In doing so, she uncovers a conspiracy that rises all the way to the top of The Hole. As her enemies grow wise to her existence, she becomes the quarry, hunted by a brutal enforcer named Hiram McClintock. In sore need of confederates, Loxley must descend into the strangest depths of the city in order to have the revenge she seeks and, ultimately, her own salvation.

Every Mountain Made Low is coming from Solaris in October 2016. 

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Acquisition Announcement: Every Mountain Made Low by Alex White

ACQUISITION ANNOUNCEMENT:
EVERY MOUNTAIN MADE LOW BY ALEX WHITE

Solaris is thrilled to announce the acquisition of the World English Rights to Every Mountain Made Low, the debut genre-defying fantasy novel by Alex White: a highly talented new writer whose popular original podcast drama series, The Gearheart, has gathered over a million unique downloads since its start.

Solaris Books Editor-in-Chief, Jonathan Oliver, acquired the title from Connor Goldsmith at Fuse Literary Agency.

Featuring Pullman-esque world building and set in a future Alabama city known as ‘The Hole,’ Every Mountain Made Low tells the story of Loxley, a young autistic woman whose family have the ability to see the restless dead. But for Loxley, the spirits of the deceased can see her back; they’re drawn to her like a bright fire, and their lightest touch leaves her with painful wounds. She avoids them as best she can, but she can’t say no to the spectre of Nora, her only friend, who was alive just hours ago. Swearing to take blood for blood and find her friend’s killer, she finds herself drawn into a conspiracy that will see her hunted down by the brutal enforcer of the corporate interests who reign over the hellish city.

Every Mountain Made Low is an incredible and moving debut, featuring a timely and original protagonist inspired by the author’s own son:

“All too often, especially in film and television, autistic characters are reduced to superpowered drag-behinds for the heroes—nothing more than calculators with sad eyes and unbreakable innocence. They’re represented as people to abuse or save, but I believe they have their own stories to tell. My son has his daily struggles, and I’ve watched him develop from a wordless, happy toddler into a young boy with turbulent emotions. He may not be able to speak, but the hardships he faces and the victories he feels are no less real. I tried to model some of his behaviours into the character of Loxley and imagine a world where I didn’t exist—where his mother and I couldn’t help him. By necessity, Loxley has a better grasp of social interactions, but the inspiration for her difficulties is lifted directly from the real world. And, of course, being a grown woman, Loxley will have to face different obstacles than my son, both from her surroundings and her condition. Autistic characters with real agency are underrepresented in fiction, but it is my hope that I can join the precious few authors who do these narratives a service.” – Alex White, author of Every Mountain Made Low.

Speaking on his excitement of the acquisition Jonathan Oliver said “Alex’s prose is beautifully written, his world meticulously constructed, but it’s Loxley herself that readers will truly fall in love with. It’s not often that a novel treats the subject of autism so sensitively and from such an informed standpoint. Alex’s novel is as entertaining as it is intriguing and thought provoking. This is one to break apart the ghetto of genre and show the world why we have all the best stories.”

Every Mountain Made Low will publish into the UK, US and Canada in both trade paperback and eBook in 2016.

Alex White is an artist, composer and writer based in Alabama. His podcast The Gearheart has countless loyal listeners, with over a million episodes downloaded. Every Mountain Made Low is a passion project born of his experience as the father of a child on the autism spectrum, whom he believes can be as heroic as anyone else.

Press enquiries should be directed to Lydia Gittins on PublishingPress@rebellion.co.uk