Normally Special is our first title, a collection of 23 big, fierce stories by xTx.
Normally Special is currently in its third printing and shipping in 3-5 days. E-books will be delivered within 48 hours of receipt of your order. Thanks for your patronage.
Please add this title to your bookshelf on Goodreads!
If you’d like to buy both a combination of Tiny Hardcore titles, we have a deal for you.
BLURBS
“After reading Normally Special, if I knew xTx’s legal name, I’d file a restraining order. Maybe she’s Aileen Wuornos. Maybe she’s a wiccan living under A.M. Homes’s bed. I don’t know, she freaks me the hell out. ‘You should be glad I cannot tie knots or have access to a gun safe,’ she writes in the last of these 23 texts, each somehow both demented and courageous, desperate and ready to brawl. I’d be glad of that if I believed it; you can practically smell the rope burn on the skin coming off these ransom letter sex threats. I’m leaving the door unlocked. ”
—Blake Butler, author of There Is No Year
“Know that to open xTx’s Normally Special is to cut through caution tape, and what you witness there will at turns startle, shock, reverberate, and stay. Though sometimes brutal, sometimes devastating, I couldn’t look away. Especially not from the skill. Not from the beauty. Not from the truth. xTx is a voice unlike any other I know.”
—Ethel Rohan, author of Cut Through the Bone
“The stories in Normally Special are artfully connected, linked by thin chains like those we hang around our necks with wrecked-love at their center. The book moves fluidly, shapes as it goes, & doesn’t ever leave us feeling severed. If Roxane Gay’s editing is to blame for this book, then glory be to her reader-eye. Or if this is just where xTx is headed, hoorah, I love following these blooded tracks in the sand. & if this is what can be expected from Tiny Hardcore Press, I am game to read the next & the next & the next. Understand that this is bone goodness wrapped in massacres of lovely, & if I wasn’t before, I am now an official fan of xTx.”
—J.A. Tyler, at Big Other
“xTx’s stories embody the terrors, wounds and deep emotions that tremor through our bodies as we walk around in our daily lives, pretending everything is alright. Nothing is alright of course, but xTx turning our hidden selves into meaningful stories helps a whole hell of a lot.”
—Paula Bomer, author of Baby
CONTENTS
For the Girl Who Doesn’t Know She Has Everything
The Duty Mouths Bring
Water is Thrown on the Witch
The Importance of Folding Towels
Standoff
Father’s Day
Marci is Going to Shoot Up Meth With Her Friend
She Who Subjected the Sun
For Her
The Honking Was Deafening
Their Daughter Played With the Boxes
The Mill Pond
Good Boy, Fritos
A Brief History of Masturbation
Fireflies
Exactly Raisins
I Love My Dad, My Dad Loves Me
There was no mother in that house. There were a lot of boys and men and there was me. That is all. That is how it was.
An Unsteady Place
Because Seven Ate Nine
I Wish They Knew
Things I Could Tell You
Because I Am Not a Monster
SAMPLES
Standoff, Word Riot, September 2010
She Who Subjected The Sun, Emprise Review, November 2010
Because Seven Ate Nine, Wigleaf, November 2010