Reviewed by Author C.V. Hunt

5 out of 5

ABOUT:

Featuring fallen angels, demons, lycanthropes, monsters and a disembodied hand (or is it), Outside the Wire is a collection of six previously published short stories about things we don’t want to let in, all anthologized for your reading pleasure.

REVIEW:

Richard Farnsworth presents us with a collection of short stories in Outside The Wire. Two of these are just snippets of larger stories, Succumbing To Gravity (everyone who knows me, knows I will force you to read this book), and Gift Of The Bouda. Both of which show how well Farnsworth can write the internal struggle.

I found all of the other short stories just as engaging as Richard’s previous works. One story, B.E.K.s is about ??? The writer created some terrifying creatures. Who, or what, they are remain a mystery to the reader and the characters in the story. In other stories, it’s same with the mysterious creations. The Sacrifices Of Automated Tabulation a woman starts a new job, only to find out things are not what they seem.

The Long Road To Sanctum feels familiar. The rules and aspects of the story seem to coincide with the were-creatures of Gift Of The Bouda.

I absolutely love Farnsworth’s gift for writing the dilemma of the internal struggle, and he showcases the highlights of this in Dougies’s Hand. The story is about a young man with an uncontrolled hand, which reminded me of Idle Hands, or the fight Ash puts up in Evil Dead.

The last story of the collection, Virtual Huntress, brings the horrors of the very possible to light. I think I’ve already stated this a million times, but the real monsters are always the scariest.

Richard Farnsworth has proved yet again, whatever genre, or path he takes in his writing, he will always have my attention.

Reviewed by Author C. V. Hunt

ABOUT:

A man and a woman on their first date discover they have amazing powers.

A Tyrannosaurus Rex enjoys modern life as the guardian and spiritual mentor of Seattle.

An angry stoplight manages traffic for the lawless humans it despises.

An immortal and indestructible man discovers the horror and beauty of living forever.

A serpent exchanges emails with government agencies, confessing to a lifelong murder spree.

A feral cat sends psychic postcards to the family dog he left behind.

A child abandoned into foster care grows into a very, very hungry man.

A boy competes with his older brother for the affections of a girl before discovering a mysterious hole in the bottom of a lake.

An old man reminisces on his career as a disease engineer for a shadowy world organization.

A teenage girl and her kid brother make their way through a post-apocalyptic Seattle while being pursued by a large, lonely zombie.

The black hole at the center of our galaxy delivers a fierce and final soliloquy.

From the author of WARM BODIES, a collection of strange stories about strange people, strange creatures, and strange objects experiencing joys and hungers that are not strange at all.

20 stories, including “Grass Through The Concerete” a novella set in the world of WARM BODIES.

Limited Edition designed and published by the author. Only 500 copies will be made. All copies are signed.

REVIEW:

I think the back cover of this book describes The Hungry Mouth the best.

Short and long stories about people, animals, cars, crashes, love, disease, death, dinosaurs, black holes, breakups, zombies, gods, children, happiness, and hunger.

Isaac Marion is best known for his novel Warm Bodies, which is well on its way to a movie theater near you. The Hungry Mouth is a compilation of stories by Isaac, with a story toward the end a bit longer than the others called, Grass Through The Concrete. Warm Bodies fans can rejoice. The author has taken us back to the zombie fall-out. We meet Nora at sixteen and Julie at age ten, as they struggle in a world that has crashed and burned. The heartfelt sentiments are just as deep as its predecessor, and the strange sad satire is just as thick.

The other stories in The Hungry Mouth leading up to the zombie prequel were just as satisfying. They were bizarre, horrifying, comical, and thought provoking. She And I Walking stood out as one of my favorites. It’s about a man waiting for his blind date, only to bump into another girl waiting for her blind date. Their walk together explores what Love should and could be.

Jerry Lives Forever is another that stood out in my mind. It’s about an immortal man, and his exploration for happiness as the universe around him crumbles is thought provoking and insightful.

I know Warm Bodies fans will come for Grass Through The Concrete, but I hope that they give the other stories a chance. The variety of emotions and satire that are compiled in this book are too good to be true. But hurry, the author only printed 500 copies, and they can only be obtained through his website: http://www.thehungrymouth.com/

Reviewed by Susan Anderson

Inside a Mind Gone Feral

FOUR D is a collection of four stories by Gregory Morrison that I would describe as speculative fiction.

While the author is a talented writer with a bright future, reading FOUR D was a painful experience for me. There were times of absorption as I groped for understanding, times of interest, especially in the first story, but most of the time I was perplexed, much as the first readers of Edgar Allen Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue” or readers of, say, Albert Camus’ works must have felt.

In his opening remarks, the author tells us that the hero “lives in a world of disappearing people and objects, which might or might not be important.”

It was the phrase, “might or might not be important” that puzzled me. After reading the book, however, I decided that FOUR D was a wild ride inside of a mind gone feral, and that whatever meaning could be squeezed from the words, derived from such a tragicomic experience, but that meaning did not reside in the words themselves. Put another way, the author seems to be saying that there is no meaning, only life devoured by meaninglessness—what the author calls “space” in the first short story.

Some of my favorite works have a character similar to the protagonist in FOUR D, but there is always a foil, someone with a rational mind, a character of equal weight, but a lucid, caring, flesh and blood character, one who lends perspective. I didn’t see any such character in any of the stories so as a reader I felt like I was drowning.

At times FOUR D had a wry humor:

My mother sent me an apple pie with a card. “I’m scared,” it said. What does she mean? I’m scared too! She saw something else. Her phone stopped working, and now we are writing letters to each other. “How are you?” “Making a soup.” “I’m ashamed.” She mentioned the crow that had disappeared in front of her while flying by. It was the biggest event in her life; mine will be tomorrow.

Gregory Morrison is a talented writer of great promise. He writes in English, a language that is not his mother tongue and this in itself is an amazing feat. But while there were times of clarity and humor, in the end, FOUR D did not work for me because of its repetitive narrative, much of which could have been cut, because of its sometimes stiff language: what little dialogue it contained was cumbersome, for example, this telephone conversation,  location 1688:

“Hi, Bob!” “Hi, Luidgi, how are you? Everything all right?’ Bob had some worry and care in his voice. They all already know that we have split up, Luidgi was guessing. “Everything is just fine!” he answered. “Do you know what day it is?” “He’s busy; you know him. We are meeting in a restaurant called ‘P.’ I’ll text you the address.” “See you later, Bob.”

I applaud Gregory Morrison for attempting something radical. With revisions FOUR D could be cutting edge, but this edition falls short.

Note: there are some grammatical errors that were overlooked in the edition I read. In two places “sell” was used to refer to cell phone, and the following, location 224:

She changed her underwear and pulled her hear back with a hair band.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

‘Fat from Papa’s Head’ is a collection of short stories targeted at young adults. All of the protagonists are young African-American male teenagers and young adults. The main characters in these stories are at pivotal points in their young lives. Some of the youth are at rite-of-passage moments, and others are merely faced with decisions.

This collection was composed in response to the author’s conversations with incarcerated African-American male youth. The discussions centered on reading materials, and the need and want for stories that reflected their lives. These stories are an attempt to meet that need and want.

REVIEW:

Thanks to the Discovery Channel and A&E, there are enough “reality” shows to entertain or educate us on what life might be like for a troubled young African American man who finds himself locked away at too early of an age.

Perhaps he has children of his own, while still a child at heart himself. He is mad at the white world or he falls in with the wrong crowd. He is arrested. He is labeled. He is forgotten.

But Tony Lindsay has not forgotten these young men.  In fact, he has written a collection of stories just for them.

Most of the stories center on everyday activities and events that affect any young incorrigible teen. From religion and God, to family and respect. There are even stories about standing up for what you believe in, making tough decisions, and of course, a bit of sex education.

There are 15 stories total, and at just 160 pages, the feel good reads reminded me of the infamous Chicken Soup books.

Tony Lindsay has created a gift for a generational minority that is frequently accused or overlooked. This book would make a great graduation gift for any black teen in your life that may be stubborn when it comes to listening to you, but could easily be encouraged with kind words, written or spoken, behind closed doors. Tony is on their side, and after you read and share this book, you will be too.

4 out of 5

Reviewed by Author C.V. Hunt

ABOUT:

Ridley Case is in a race against time to discover the secrets of a very strange apartment tower. Will he be able to save its residents before something terrible takes place?

REVIEW:

Harry Wall’s Man by John Leahy is one story from an anthology.

After Ridley Case attends the funeral of one of the most admired architects in the industry, Harry Wall, he is approached by Harry’s estranged wife to investigate his final days. Harry seemed to have it all: a beautiful wife, money, and success. Then something happened as he began to design a new apartment building in the shape of a standing man.

When Ridley enters Harry’s home, what he finds is more than shocking. Among the decaying life that Harry left behind, Mr. Case finds the diagrams of “The Man”, along with scribbled and maddening plans of a life that it could gain.

With Harry’s notes in hand, Ridley seeks information from the internet to find another man that will help him warn the building’s residents.

John Leahy does a fantastic job of captivating his audience. Right when you want to dismiss the story as fiction, Leahy pulls you back in for a ride. Even though this story was short, it was well written and pulled me in.

My Funny Valentine: America’s Most Hilarious Writers Take On Love, Romance, and Other Complications
edited by Karla Telega and Linton Robinson
Bauu Institute
Copyright © November 2011
ISBN: 978-1936955046
$9.95 Paperback
$2.99 Kindle
196 Pages

ABOUT:
Somebody once said, “To learn to love, learn to laugh.” Either way, you’ll find the love of laughter, or at least a couple of good laughs about love, in this book.

Here Valentine’s Day gets treated by some of the funniest writers in America: the people who win the humor contests, who write syndicated chuckle columns, who appear on comedy stages and write the jokes you hear on TV. A fun read, a new and different gift on “love day,” an open invitation to have a laugh at the comedy we know and celebrate as “Love.”

REVIEW:

The problem with themed books centered around holidays is that their selling window is very small, and Valentine’s Day is one the smallest.  While most people are out shopping for balloons, roses, and candy, the Valentine’s display in the bookstore is usually centered around humor, children’s picture books, or sarcasm.

My Funny Valentine has all of these key aspects, with humor being the least of the three.

“Complications” is the key word in the title.  The book is made up of over 40 short stories and three illustrations.  And almost every other story is made up of all the predictable sarcasm and clichés that have made up any stand-up comic’s routine about the holiday.

Cupid, greeting cards, candy, husbands, marriage, loyalty, devotion, couples, dates, women, jewelry, it’s all in there. And when it’s not a chicken soup moment, it’s a rolling of the eyes following by a “bada bing” snare and cymbal crash.

I’m not sure who chose the label “Most Hilarious Writers” for this collective either, but they were very wrong.  Most of them I’d never heard of.  If you check out their other publications by clicking on each author at the Amazon listing, you’ll discover most of them have no previous publications outside of this one.

And the rest are small press titles varying from nonfiction pieces, some actual chicken soup anthology inclusions, self-help books, and badly rated sci fi.

If you are single and hate this holiday, this book won’t provide you with any laughs. And as for sarcasm, just go sit at the bar at Applebee’s with every other sucker today and wait it out like everyone else.

Having read and reviewed James Hutchings’s Two Fisted Tweets I have to say that Mr. Hutchings is a master at microfiction. Able to tell a story in 172 characters or less in order to meet the Twitter guideline in TFT, Hutchings now treats his readers to longer pieces of work (but not too long) and poems in his new book called The New Death and Others.

Hutchings relies heavily on the use of anthropomorphism (look that one up!) and personification, giving human qualities and voices to abstract states and inanimate objects which presents many of his stories in almost a fable-like storytale feel that relies heavily on tongue-in-cheek humor and irony.

You’ll stop and scratch your head and ponder the meaning of many of his twisted little tales, or laugh out loud at the silliness which is exactly what Hutchings intended.  Here is an author that enjoys puns and jokes, and obviously enjoys entertaining others.  There are even foot notes in some of the stories which actually turn out to be additional jokes.

There are numerous poems throughout the book, many of which were inspired by other famous authors’ writings.  Definitely good reason to seek out the works he’s cited so that you can compare them and discover Hutchings’s meanings and reason for inspiration.

Here is one of my favorite short poems:

If My Life Was Filmed

If my life was filmed, it would
go straight to DVD
and someone who was famous once
would have the role of me
and if five stars meant ‘excellent’
you’d give it two or three
and most of those who rented it
would watch ironically.

Years later they would track me down
and do an interview.
They say “I heard you died,” and I’d
say “Yeah, I heard that too.”
“Is any of it fictional?”
“Perhaps a scene or two.
There weren’t as many ninjas, but
the rest is mostly true.”
If you are looking for some light, interesting reading and wish to be entertained (and don’t mind a lot of cats), The New Death and Others is worth a look and worth the buck!

Kimberly Kinrade and I have something in common.  We both write to free ourselves “from the tyranny of my words” as she says in a small entry in the beginning of her anthology, Bits of You & Pieces of Me.  I shook my head in agreement when I read that.  Her book is a collection of short stories, journal essays, and poems – a well organized file of information from deep within the mind of a writer. While I do enjoy reading such collections from indie authors, it is often hard to make a connection with any one piece since they are just a few pages.

Most of her characters in her short stories remain nameless, so it’s very easy for the reader to assume the author may be talking about herself.  If that is the case, then the book takes on the persona of a personal memoir for both the author and the reader and the “pieces of me” are shocking at times and definitely dwell past the surface letting us get a glimpse of who this author really is. If I am wrong, then these characters that have taken shape and form in Miss Kinrade’s mind, only to be given life on paper, demand center stage and I would like to see them panned out into longer pieces of fiction.

In one piece called “A Writer’s Mind,” the author even admits, I can have brilliant ideas, I may even be able to give voice to them, but can I bring them to the page and maintain the integrity of the thought?  That’s the greatest challenge. And the greatest joy.

Again, a statement I completely agree with as long as you integrate your reader.  At times, I thought Miss Kinrade had forgotten about the reader, or only scratched that surface I mentioned earlier.  On the page, she “tells” us what’s going on instead of “showing” us so we are often left out of the picture.  Sure, she lived it, she saw it, she said it, so the author has the advantage here of knowing what is going on.  It is an even greater challenge to be able to show the reader that joy you have, to paint a beautiful picture using only words, only black and white.  While we may want to stay true to our essays or journal entries, we sometimes still have to paint a picture.

As for the poetry, a well read person will easily catch on to some of what has inspired Miss Kinrade while she composed these essays and poems. With pieces called “Till Death Do Us Part” and “Death Be Not Proud,” they mirror pieces we have seen before, but there is no plagiarism here. Only the thought that you might have read that somewhere before.  So, unfortunately for me, some of the poems lacked originality. There is anger, sadness, desire, love, all the qualities of poetry we’ve read before that have become almost as cliché as the titles themselves.

My favorite piece is called “All I Ever Needed to Learn…” in which an unnamed person, possibly the author, contemplates how maybe she actually didn’t learn everything she needed to know in kindergarten.  She recalls her yearning for knowledge and is proud that she now sees that same yearning in her own children.  It is these life lessons no teacher can teach us.  The same can be said for talent.  A teacher can teach us the techniques of writing, but the creativity and art of it is often natural or learned from experience.  Miss Kinrade should be pleased as I can see both technique and creativity here.

At 120 pages, Bits of You & Pieces of Me is a quick read.  Most of the poems are less than a dozen or so lines long.  I enjoyed the moments spent with Miss Kinrade, the pieces that she revealed to me. But I would have liked to have seen a few bits more. A page in the back advertises a work of fiction due out later this year, The Reluctant Familiar: Book 1 of The Magicked Series.  I believe it may hold more promise for this author in being a longer developed piece, and I personally look forward to reading it. As for her freshman effort, the bits and pieces make up a decent picture as a whole that many anthology lovers will appreciate, but it left me wanting more in the end.

Having reviewed self-published books for over three years now, I appreciate the bizarre and unique.  I’m convinced we all have a book inside of us; some of us just have to be willing to break the conventional mold to write it.  I have huge respect for anyone willing to use POD technology to do just that these days.  And thank goodness for outlets like Smashwords.com that allow us to reach readers who might appreciate the same.

To think we once moaned about the formatting of page numbers and paragraph breaks in self-published books.  True Ebooks don’t have page numbers!  And while I still show concern for proper formatting, you have to applaud a book that steps outside those boundaries too and pulls it off successfully!

That’s exactly what James Hutchings has done with his book, Two-Fisted Tweets, available at Smashwords. While others out there have collected their personal Twitter tweets and formatted and published them, James has actually composed extremely short stories using the Twitter guideline of 142 characters or less, sometimes even dropping a period (.) at the end to meet the character count.

His book only contains 30 stories, so as you can imagine in PDF format it’s very short.  7 pages to be exact!

Forgot plot and POV and character traits.  Hutchings has given us extreme flash fiction at its best, presenting the reader with the bare essence of a story that you will ponder long after you’ve read it.  Here are a few of my favorites:

They withdrew his invitation to speak at the conference on stalking. But he knew they didn’t mean it.

“Mum, Dad,” said the nervous young vampire, “there’s something I have to tell you. I’m…sparkly.”

There are a few writers that I follow on Twitter who post thoughts full of irony or sarcasm or extremely short stories on a daily basis.  They break up the monotony of everyone else tweeting news clips or what line they are standing in every day, and most of all they make me smile.  They make me remember the punchlines  to share with someone in conversation later.  Who cares what the joke was, right?

So in keeping with Twitter rules (with 8 characters to spare), I’ll just say this…   Hutchings may not have a lot to say in his book Two-Fisted Tweets, but his 142 character stories speak volumes. I highly recommend!

I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing several short story anthologies published through Lulu, and I have to say that Jeremy Boland’s collection is one of the best.  Not only are the stories fresh and original, but the physical book itself is an excellent example of a self-published author getting it right.  That’s why I’m going to talk about the book quality first.

The book itself is the first from Lulu I’ve seen in person in the 4.3 x 6.9 size.  While the $16.95 price tag may seem a bit high for this deluxe “pocket sized” book, I’d probably still buy it at full price off a bookstore shelf.  Jeremy’s original artwork on the cover is also fun and colorful, and a bit humorous after you read the stories and learn who these characters are.

Inside formatting is pretty much tight and clean, although all of the front matter has headers and page numbers.  The title page is page 1.  This is a sure sign of amateur, but I didn’t even notice it the first time I sat down to read the book. It’s a common mistake that only other people and authors in the industry would notice. The book still has a classic look and feel to it, almost graphic novel-like. Jeremy’s website also echoes that look and I enjoyed taking a look around there after reading his book.

There are eleven short stories in the book.  The first, “Counting Sheep,” reminded me of something from an early Stephen King anthology like Skeleton Crew. A man is counting sheep to try to fall back asleep and this is timed with an intruder breaking into his house to kill him.

This is followed by another odd tale about a werewolf hunter meeting with his psychiatrist, a new twist on an old genre that has unfortunately been shadowed by all the recent vampire phenomenon. Speaking of classics, Jeremy also treats us to a flesh eating zombie attack paralleled to a strange love story.  And better yet, he’s included a spaceship/alien tale as well.

Science fiction, murder and mystery, horror and gore, there’s a bit of everything here for people who love the genre and prefer to read short stories.  Jeremy’s style is also very simplistic.  There’s not a lot of connection to be made with his characters, but sometimes that’s okay.  After all, they are short stories.  His may lack a certain depth, but I can appreciate that from time to time when I just want to be entertained and don’t expect to be thinking of the characters long after the last page. The only thing I would have liked even better is a few illustrations to really round out that graphic novel feel I got here.  Here’s a bit from the end of “Truckstop Unicorn”…

Was I fighting myself?  Was she fighting herself?  I don’t know the answer to that, I just know that I won. I’m here and she’s not. all that’s left is a sane man stuck in a crazy bitch’s body and all he wants is his life back.

It doesn’t even matter if it’s real or not. It doesn’t matter that life started out for me as some crazy fan’s fantasy, that I was only modeled after what she knew of you. All I want is to be back in my house, here. To go back to being the reclusive writer I remember being.

Overall, I found this to be a fun book that’s definitely worth checking out.  I love the look, it’s sassy title, and the feel of the book itself, and I enjoyed the stories inside as well. Mr. Boland has written and published a work that’s new and fresh to the genre, and worth a read! Check it out…

Visit the author online!

Read a preview of the book!