Moon Willow Press announces a new literary road novel, Infernal Drums, by author Anthony Wright.

PORT MOODY, BC, CANADA, May 02, 2011 (Press-News.org) Anthony Wright, also author of the short story collection Smoke Ghosts & Other Outr� Tales, presents powerful storytelling with a sense of compassion for people, the environment, and indigenous customs and beliefs. His perceptive description of native peoples, places, and beliefs mingles with modern-day explorers and flirts with magical realism. Wright has been compared to Burroughs, Bowles, Dostoyevsky, Kerouac, and even to some degree Joyce as he searches out the sacred and profane of contemporary society.

Infernal Drums explores the spiritual awakening of protagonist Jonah Everman, who regards himself as a writer who drifts, but is really a drifter who writes. Journeying to Mexico, he runs afoul of the law and pays out big to avoid jail. He then heads to the capital where he finds a few kindred spirits, newspaper work, and trouble in spades. Forging an unholy alliance with occult forces, Jonah�EUR s moral destruction seems assured. Or is it?

"Infernal Drums takes the reader on a guided tour into the festering underworld of the drug war torn Mexico recent headlines have taught us all to fear. Anthony Wright knows his way around this seedy battlefield."

-William Hjortsberg, author/screenwriter of Falling Angel (Angel Heart) and Legend

About the Author and Press

Anthony Wright was born in Melbourne, Australia, graduated in film production at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and traveled through 20 countries before settling in Mexico City in 1993. He lived and worked as a journalist before returning to Melbourne in 2001, where he completed an education diploma at the University of Melbourne and began work as a teacher. He returned to Mexico City in 2008. His fiction, journalism, poetry and photography have been published in Australia, China, England, Mexico and the United States.

Moon Willow Press is a new small press in Port Moody, British Columbia, working to give back to the environment in order to offset materials used in publishing. Publisher Mary Woodbury has signed the Book Treatise on Environmentally Responsible Publishing and is a member of Green Press Initiative. MWP prints only on post-consumer and FSC-certified fiber and donates a portion of her profits to Eco-Libris: Plant a tree for every book you read. Eco-Libris works with tree-planting partners in Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, Panama, and Malawi.

Book Information:

http://www.moonwillowpress.com/category/titles/infernal-drums/

Category: Fiction
Release Date: April 30, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-9813924-3-1
Paperback Price: $18.95 CND + shipping
E-book: $5.99
Book info: Trade paperback, 276 pp.
Distribution: Shipped to buyer; Kindle edition available soon
Environmental savings per book: 2 fully grown trees; 1,114 gallons of water; 68 pounds of solid waste; and 231 pounds of greenhouse gases were saved per book, as MWP printed on chlorine free paper made with 100% post-consumer waste (except for the cover, printed on FSC-certified paper)

Media contacts

Mary Woodbury, Publisher
Moon Willow Press
(778) 855-4925
editor@moonwillowpress.com

Anthony Wright, Author
awrightgrant@yahoo.com

Synopsis (Contains Spoilers)

Infernal Drums begins with the protagonist, Jonah Everman, postulating on the miseries of incarceration. Jonah, native of an unnamed Western land, journeys to Mexico on the New Year, 1996. He regards himself as a writer who drifts, but is essentially a drifter who writes. He runs afoul of the law on the Pacific coast�EUR"courtesy of a drugs bust. Paying his way out of trouble, Jonah heads to Mexico City where he meets a seedy Australian adventurer, Bazza Torsvan�EUR"an ex-teacher who chose exile to avoid the legal fallout after hitting a student during a schoolyard dust-up. Bazza struggles to transcend an existence that does not correspond to his illusions.

Jonah�EUR s need to make money becomes urgent, and Bazza, working as a finance journalist, helps land him a job on The Mexican Standard�EUR"an English language newspaper staffed by an international crew of flotsam and jetsam. The editor, Mal Barbary�EUR"a one-eyed despot roundly hated by all (and who nurses a dark secret)�EUR"systematically torments the new recruit. Jonah next becomes drawn to Robinson Croves�EUR"a young American ne�EUR er-do-well, the son of a diplomat and an adept of the occult. After Bazza leaves to pursue his vanishing act in the islands off Honduras, Jonah and Robinson feed off each other�EUR s angst. The pair finds a target for their pain: Mal Barbary�EUR"and invoke a death curse utilizing a mix of Mexican witchcraft and Haitian voodoo.

Robinson enlists the aid of Nimbo Cienfuegos�EUR"a radical academic linked to a shadowy rebel group�EUR"to help stage the final phase of the curse. Meanwhile, a deranged stranger known as �EUR�the Spook�EUR courts Nimbo. It is a dangerous seduction: Soon Nimbo develops an agenda of his own.

Increasingly desiring to abandon the city, Jonah�EUR s innate fatalism�EUR"and a beautiful Mexican journalist, Estefania Lujan�EUR"stay his hand. The curse, once embarked upon, transmutes into an assassination attempt on The Standard�EUR s publisher, dooming the main players and leaving innocent victims in its bullet-spattered wake. Sentenced to virtual life in prison, Jonah attains an ironic epiphany on the cusp of the new millennium.

�EUR"Anthony Wright, 2011

Moon Willow Press is a new small independent press, publishing 4-10 books per year and following the Green Press Initiative model. For more information, please contact us at editor@moonwillowpress.com