In the interim a few nice media hits came in for our titles, and some lovely blurbs for Cynthia Flood and KD Miller especially. Congratulations to all. I also wanted to share a beautiful poem that seems appropriate as we sit here between Christmas and Epiphany, which is by our own Marsha Pomerantz and ran recently in Raritan. It's there if you scroll down.
Onward, upward, 2014 ho!—
T.
1. Strength of Bone review from The National Post syndicated by PostMedia News
Which means you may have seen it in Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal, Regina, Windsor, Ottawa, Canada.com, & more.
2. Red Girl Rat Boy makes National Post’s Best of 2013 Short Fiction List (Steven Beattie)
"These stories shine like glass, but glass that is coloured and curved and prismatic. Flood’s brief, technically adventurous tales sparkle and glitter in dazzling, yet frequently unexpected ways.”
3. Red Girl Rat Boy makes Globe & Mail’s Books of 2013 Short Fiction List (Caroline Adderson)
"In Red Girl Rat Boy Cynthia Flood has pared her style down to a clipped staccato that is at first jarring, then mesmerizing. How does she scrape the narrative so close to the bone, yet still manage to emotionally engage the reader? Because she’s a master, carefully maximizing the potential of each word."
4. Red Girl Rat Boy reviewed on The Coastal Spectator
"These stories are told in a voice that navigates like an underground stream through the deepest channels of the psyche. These stories are felt in the marrow."
5. KD Miller’s Brown Dwarf reviewed in FreeFall Magazine
"Brown Dwarf ... creeps up on you with its increasing complexity and deft handling of an adolescent mindset. More than a mystery, it explores not only the limits of memory—how our perception of events shifts as we age and change into adults—but also the sometimes irrational dynamics of relationships between friends, and between child and parent … deeply affecting.”
“MacLeod so beautifully articulates everyday events that even the most normal (even mundane) occurrence becomes breathtaking. He takes his reader to a reality in which everything is nuanced. Every object, interaction and event has a beautiful poignancy to it, and it is in illuminating this beauty to his reader that MacLeod succeeds in breaking his reader’s hearts … a collection that should be consumed carefully."
Of which this is the first.
Saint Luke Paints the Virgin
As soon as his brush lifted,
the elixir of her withdrew,
leaving her mud in small
shaped phrases. He was
painting his desire to hold
her always and want her
never. I’d trade always for
an apple, said the assistant,
stroking the arc of a cheek as
his teeth marked minutes along
his lips. Holiness is separation,
pooling just beyond depiction
in a single swimming thought.
That Luke could ever get her
down was either blasphemy
or fantasy, and both options
beckoned. Know me, he heard her say.
Take my likeness, make me likely.
As soon as his brush lifted,
the elixir of her withdrew,
leaving her mud in small
shaped phrases. He was
painting his desire to hold
her always and want her
never. I’d trade always for
an apple, said the assistant,
stroking the arc of a cheek as
his teeth marked minutes along
his lips. Holiness is separation,
pooling just beyond depiction
in a single swimming thought.
That Luke could ever get her
down was either blasphemy
or fantasy, and both options
beckoned. Know me, he heard her say.
Take my likeness, make me likely.
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