Five Minute Audio Teaser from Hallmarked Man Now Available Online

The marketing blitz for Hallmarked Man is in full swing. As it should be with only three weeks until its publication.

The author is conversing with fans on Twixter and Apple Audio Books has dropped a five minute teaser from Strike8, what I presume are the opening pages of the novel.

The epigraph was a surprise to me, the big reveal of the first pages was also the shock it was meant to be, and I was startled, too, by what this beginning suggests we’ll see in the end.

Thoughts on all of that after the jump! (I’m discussing the five minute clip, so of course there will be spoilers.)

First, one of the hardest habits for me to break in my resolve to advance a Fourth Generation of Rowling Studies is about playing the part of cheerleader and drum beater in tandem with the marketing efforts of Rowling-Galbraith’s publishers. Reacting to their every drop of pages or of her new Twitter headers and speculating about what this might mean is demeaning to both the uncompensated writer and the enthusiastic fan being ginned up for the latest release.

And yet here I am, sharing thoughts on the latest crumbs set out by Rowling, Inc. So be it. Old habits don’t die; they go into the basement and do push-ups in anticipation of the door at the top of the stairs being unlocked.

Next, the first epigraph is from Poem XI in  A. E. Housman’s Last Poems:

     Yonder see the morning blink:

         The sun is up, and up must I,

     To wash and dress and eat and drink

     And look at things and talk and think

         And work, and God knows why.

 

     Oh often have I washed and dressed

         And what’s to show for all my pain?

     Let me lie abed and rest:

     Ten thousand times I’ve done my best

         And all’s to do again.

The epigraph in the audio preview is the highlighted last line. Not having the complete chapter, I’m going to pass on speculating about its aptness. As much as Strike is fatigued and suffering from no little frustration with the circumstances of his life, the poem’s ‘clincher’ is a wonderful choice.

You can read the Wikipedia pages for A. E. Hausman here and Last Poems here. I have been working on Golden Threads and organizing possible online classes, so, if it is already common knowledge that all of Hallmarked Man’s epigraphs will be from Housman, I’m out of that loop.

The big surprise in the first five minutes is that Uncle Ted has died of a stroke. Major downer, of course, because who didn’t love Uncle Ted, the Good Dad? It is also something of a relief, truth be told. Having much of a book being consumed with Cormoran and Lucy caring for a two-time stroke-victim would, if the story were realistic, really cut into the Agency Love Triangle story and the murder mystery in hand.

I’m sure we’ll get the role Uncle Ted played in Leda’s story eventually, perhaps, with this being sounded at the very beginning of the story, at the very end of Hallmarked Man. Look for spectral influence throughout this book from a protective ghost, Ted Nancarrow.

If the story starts out with Robin sick, Murphy covering for her with Strike, and Cormoran, angry and frustrated, in the car alone on his way to meet Decima Mullins, thinking about Ted’s death, the end will naturally be the ‘wrap up’ of the Mullins murder case and with Strike at peace about Robin and Ryan or frustrated, a straight up latch or the beginning players and theme twisted into its opposite (‘Owl Post Again’ fashion).

And, really, that name — Decima Mullins! The fate sister who spins our destiny or “measured the thread of life with her rod” and is “responsible for measuring a person’s lifespan” (‘Decima’ is the Latin version of Lachesis, whom Serious Strikers remember from Lethal White). Looking up ‘Mullins’ in Rowling-Galbraith’s go-to Oxford Dictionary of English Surnames and we get a confirmation of that mythological thread-measurer; ‘Mullins’ means “dweller at the mills” (p 316).

My favorite part of the Wikipedia entry for ‘Decima (mythology)‘? “Her parents were Jupiter and Themis;” Themis being the “goddess and personification of justice, divine order, law, and custom,” the “second wife of Zeus.” It will be fun to see how Strike, the off-spring of Leda and the Zeus-Swan, gets along with his cousin…

For those of you riding the marketing blitz and chomping on the bit in anticipation, three cheers! I join you in looking forward to the advent and reading adventure of Hallmarked Man and the discussion of its Lake and Shed depths and heights.