Review 10: Footsteps in the Darkness

Footsteps in the Darkness
by Matthew Kerry
Copyright: © 2008
100 Pages
$9.06 Paperback
Free E-Book

I can’t resist a good short story anthology. I love being able to sit down with a collection and read two or three stories, and be able to walk away from it for a few days if I choose and not feel like I’m missing out on something. I’ve got closure in a matter of a few pages. For me, writing a short story is a nice way to get a character out of my head who I’ve been thinking about, to expel some creative energy that’s dying to get onto the white page. Novel writing is a long slow journey, and just as prosperous, but sometimes we need that quick fix. A short story is a cup of coffee in the early morning, and Matthew Kerry’s book of shorts is a whole pot!

Footsteps in the Darkness is a collection of stories each playing on a variety of themes which surprisingly relate. I was quickly reminded of Will Entrekin or Paul Ciccone, both authors who have been reviewed here at LLBR. We all know that short story collections and poetry make difficult books to get attention to in the traditional markets. Just visit your local Barnes and Noble and peruse these sections. Chances are there aren’t very many shelves devoted to them and if there are, they are stocked loosely and with older well-known short story writers such as Flannery O’Connor or poets like Emily Dickinson.

But it can happen. Stephen King has been very successful with his short story collections such as The Night Shift, and take a look at what makes up most of the erotica and GLBT market these days. Entrekin, Ciccone, and now Matthew Kerry all prove that the art of the short story is alive and well. And it is indeed an honor to find such outstanding writing among us at Lulu.com.

Matthew begins his collection with a story called “The Bigger Picture.” It’s the story of an awkward meeting between a newspaper photographer and his chief editor. The author’s vivid attention to detail is what makes this story work.

The Editor stormed through the room. Eyes peered up fearfully from shimmering computer screens and watched him stride past the desks from which loose papers fluttered and whispered to the ground in his wake. The door slammed behind him, causing the windows to shudder with the vibration and cups of
coffee to ripple and shimmer. The reporters, columnists and sub-editors exchanged long, raised eyebrow glances full of relief that it was not their turn.

Next is a piece called “Hard Copy,” which deals with plagiarism and which any writer can appreciate. It begins with the description of a nameless female taking time to enjoy nature and her surroundings outside a bustling city while making her own paper to bind into homemade books which she has written. Oddly enough, there’s a few lines about photography which resonates the meaning behind the first short story previously mentioned.

Similarly, photographs do not give a true depiction of life. They are convenient and useful but life is never fixed, people never stand posing with fake smiles glued to their faces and birds are never stopped midflight, hanging in midair. Attempting to pin these things down to something so one-dimensional and motionless as postcards and photographs means that they lose the pulsing vibrancy of life and transiency that makes them so special to begin with.

The story turns to a man in the city who has obviously acquired one of the woman’s self-published books. It’s a classic, and he intends on retyping it into an acceptable 8×11 Times New Roman formatted manuscript which he can sell to a traditional publisher as his own. But what he soon finds out is that it’s not always the words on the page that give a story it’s value. It’s how they are written.

Four more brilliant stories follow which are just as good, if not better, than the ones I’ve chosen to tell you about here so far. The last story is the one for which the book also takes its name. It is the story of four travelers seeking shelter from a violent storm. They come upon a church where an elderly priest offers them refuge. They repay the priest for his hospitality by doing odd chores the next day to aid the priest and fix up the church. The next day, more visitors arrive revealing the four earlier travelers may not have been as courteous as the priest mistakened them to be.

The abrupt ending, a foundation for all of Kerry’s tales here, leaves the reader to ultimately decide what comes next. Like the photograph theme in the first story, it’s only a snapshot of life which the reader gets to be a part of for a short while. And you will want to be a part of it. Treat yourself to the free download or support this Lulu author by purchasing the paperback edition of Footsteps in the Darkness. Either way, you will not be disappointed!