Feverish Fiction Vol. #1 edited by Sophia Faun

(pb; 2012: horror microstory anthology. Published by Hyperpyrexia Press.)

Overall review

This is a solid, gory B-movie story collection. Most of the forty-two entries published here have something to recommend them. (In an anthology this size, there are bound to be a few tales that are less wonderful than others.) Worth checking out, this.


Standout stories

1. “Devil’s Commisary” – Michael Faun: A demon cockroach attempts to elevate his staus through especially treacherous means. Fans of late Sixties rock ‘n’ roll may appreciate this story.


2. “The Avid Collector” – Michael Bergamotte: The employee of a wealthy family recounts the horrible tale of the family’s deviant son.


3. “Destiny of Lobster Boy” – Michael Faun: Short, sharp microtale about odious appetites and fast revenge, revolving around canries and a grotesque, wealthy man.


4. “Through the Lens of Insanity” – Michael Faun: A questionable monacle inspires alarm and murder ─ are the visions it reveals real? Fun, supernatural crime work.


5. “Destiny” – Michael Bergamotte: Memorable, excellent piece about a totalitarian government, a strange stone and a supposed criminal.


6. “The Sodomite of Seville” – Michael Faun: During the Spanish Inquistion, demonic doings disrupt the religious-toned purge. Excellent, blasphemous and worth remembering.


7. “The Dread at Scarfolk Cove” – Michael Bergamotte: Atmospheric, solid Lovecraftian microstory about a missing boy, a desperate father and an eerie seaside village.


8. “Trent Must Vent” – Michael Faun: Darkly funny piece about a man’s “therapy sessions” and his Autophagic therapist (of sorts).


9. “Elixir” – Greg Cole: Youthful rejuvenation takes a messy, stinking turn. Fun microwork.


10. “The Annual Olfactophilian Award” – Michael Faun: Laugh-out-loud, perverted read about panty-lovers.


11. “Possession” – M.T. Mathieson: The supernatural and the criminal are merged int his one. Fun stuff.


12. “The Killing Frequenzy” – Michael Faun: In 1968, a bullied student completes his odd, musical revenge. Especially entertaining entry in this collection.

**My latest poetry anthology, Mondo febrifuge: omnibus poems, was published today

I just published my second of two books this year - Mondo febrifuge: omnibus poems, which mixes older previous published (and reworked) mainstream verses with quite a few newer works penned within the past two years.

The poems are, per my usual style, rough and tumble free verse works that detail a tumultuous youth dealing with my own fictionalized dumbassery and growing up, a journey infused with the loving, often raw elements of familial discontent, religion, sex, horror films, heavy metal, nature (read: animals) and living in northern California and eastern Washington state.  While these poems are mainstream, many of them would sport hard R-ratings if they were films subjected to the MPAA film board.

Like Welcome to Horrorsex County: microstories, published earlier this autumn, it's a personal milestone book - a way for me to officially bid farewell to one phase of my writing and move onto the next, whatever its final form takes.

 Feel free to click on the above links if you (or anyone you know) would be interested in picking up the aforementioned books. They cost $9 or less (+s/h) apiece, and thanks for the support!

 (back cover of Mondo febrifuge)

Inside from the Outside: A Journey in Sudden Fiction, by Peter Baltensperger

(pb; 2013: microstory anthology)


From the back cover:

"Dealing with the basic elements that make us human, the short stories contained in Inside from the Outside represent explorations of various aspects of human nature in all its complexity and variety.  Author Peter Baltensperger has incorporated elements of experimental, surrealistic, and bizarre short fiction in the development of his themes."


Overall review:

Inside is not an anthology for mainstream genre readers looking for easy and obvious thrills; such readers may be disappointed  - underwhelmed or overwhelmed - by the sixty-four stand-alone, cerebral and symbol-laden vignettes and microstories in this collection.  The reason for this is that Baltensperger favors a psychologically-intense approach that loosely links these elements: the works Carl Jung and Sǿren Kierkegaard; nature appreciation; mirrors; circuses and parades; romance and sexuality; and (often) quiet reflective realizations.  

Normally, I wouldn't read such work - I'm largely a fiction-genre (crime, horror, etc.) junkie.  But Baltensperger's intriguing word pairings, his sublime and often poetic language and images, and skillful juggling of the aforementioned themes made Inside a wow-worthy anthology that stands out from others' mood-linked volumes that strive for such sublimations/realizations, but so often fall short.

Of course, not every piece in this sixty-four tale book completely thrilled me - a relative few felt superfluous, due to their too-similar elements which did little or nothing to further the concepts and emotions of preceding tales.  The occasional "lapse" tale is a given, of course (at least for this reader), in a collection with this many pieces, so it's a minor nit at worst.

Beyond that inevitable complaint, I found something - a character, a mating of choice words, an image - to enjoy in almost all of the mood stories represented here.  I should also note that this is a slow burn, read-a-few-tales-a-day work, a compilation to be read, analyzed and savored over a prolonged period of time.  (It took me two months to read this - a worthwhile endeavor, in my estimation.)

Worth owning, this - if you're looking for a romantic, cerebral and mood-suffusive anthology.


Standout stories:

1.)  "Through Disarticulations": Surreal, beautiful and romantic nature- and music-based piece.  Excellent.


2.)  "Snippets in a Hot Afternoon":  I especially enjoyed the effective, full-circle finish of this microstory.


3.)  "Equine Afternoons":  Dream-like microtale about a "woman with beautiful breasts", horses and squirrels.


4.)  "Dilemma for Rain":  Especially striking imagery in this one (e.g., "a herd of snails").


5.)  "Fusions and Diffusions":  A woman and an artist hook up.  Romantic, effective - I love the line: "Hunter took her to his apartment and painted a fragmented sentence for her, flashing colors splashed over a large canvass. . ."


6.)  "Under Uncertain Skies":  A storm brings together two carnival performers (a wolfman and a bearded lady).  Sweet work.


7.)  "Blind Eyes in a Dark Jungle":  Timely vignette about a shopping mall-traumatized woman.


8.)  "Rain Games":  Two temperamentally different brothers attend a party.  Effective, stripped-down tale of familial vengeance, in its various forms.


9.)  "By Fractured Continuations":  Effective mood piece about a woman wrestling with her sense of time and being.


10.)  "Whispers from the Rain":  Nighttime precipitation holds a special allure for a curious woman.  Sweet-toned offering.


11.)  "Spring Thaw":  Wintry thoughts negate a possible love match.


12.)  "Points of Diffusion":  A couple come together between corporate meetings and a placid lakeside.


13.)  "What Is and Can Be":  A man and woman conquer winter and  a mountain.


14.)  "For a Crescendo":  Music, insects and desire bring lovers together.


15.)  "Anatomy of a Treadmill Runner":  A runner goes through his circular routines.  The story structure reflects this.


16.)  "Inside a Puzzle":  An artist struggles to hold onto joyous moments.


17.)  "Parenthesis for a Liberation":  I love the images of this microtale, in which a fanciful woman exercises while her thoughts may or may not run wild.


18.)  "Tremolando for Rain":  Two lovers meet and celebrate during a rainstorm.  One of my favorite works in this collection.


19.)  "Performance Art in a Meadow":  A circus troupe perform and live their oddly relatable lives on a rainy day.


20.)  "Through Viscous Hours":  Gregory Bergman, a night-restless man, encounters a personalized source of terror while walking his dog.


21.)  "Going By Rivers":  Two lovers join each other on a river.  Romantic-effective work.


22.)  "Notes on a Journey":  A man revisits his hometown. Effective dovetail finish to this one.


23.)  "Dilemmas of Empty Spaces":  A woman ponders her strange sense of fulfillment, while nature works its own animalistic magic.

Anti-Twitter: 150 50-Word Stories by Harold Jaffe

(pb; 2010: microstory anthology. Cover image by Brandon Duncan)

From the back cover:

"These 50-word stories are based on 'found' texts from mainstream news sources and other public sites. Jaffe sculpts them to reveal their inner core, all niceties stripped away. Now the true motives, fears and sins of our age are on display for all who care to see.

"Amidst an internet-driven content boom, meaning has virtually disappeared. Anti-Twitter's extreme brevity demonstrates by example that brief need not = dumbed down. Though the stories describe a wide arc: high and pop culture, intimate and public, sordid and exalted, all subjects are equally laid bare by Jaffe. . ."

Review:

Excellent, cut-to-it-no-filler work that will have maximalists who still think Stephen King is a good writer grumbling and those of us - often called minimalists - who truly appreciate no-bullsh*t writing, celebrating.

Not all of Jaffe's 50-word microstories wowed me (some read like too-vague or inconclusive offerings), but most of them worked: trimming some of these from the book would have been wise, but even those few, flawed microstories are clearly reaching for something not normally reached for by most writers, so the mere fact of Jaffe attempting to do so makes these flawed works interesting, for the most part, rather than complete failures.

The forty-three microstories that wowed or intrigued me were pointed, funny, seething, ironic, playful and often disturbing in their blunt or wry assessments, e.g.:


Revolt

"A resident of Fort Sumner, New Mexico, trapped a mouse in his house.

"It was Fall, he was burning leaves outside, he tossed the alive mouse in the fire.

"But the mouse, inflamed, darted from the fire back into the house.

"The house and everything in it were incinerated."


This is one of my all-time favorite stories. I wish I had written this, one of the highest compliments I can pay any piece of writing.

Anti-Twitter is a smart, timely and great anthology - worth owning and re-reading.