Customer Reviews

Anywhere but Here

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The most interesting thing about this collection is that the author writes in a variety of different voices in a convincing way. Anyone who's toiled at a daily newspaper will appreciate the one about the sad reporter. There's a lot of sadness here, the kind of short stories that kind of put you in a funk! But in a good way.

I bumped into the author in an unlikely setting and immediately ordered this book, and I'm glad I did.

From "Christmas on the Rocks," a true holiday tale for our times -- and a story featured in this book:

"Downtown Reliance, Ohio, embraced Christmas Eve like a little boy forced into an awkward and unwelcome holiday hug with an obese great-aunt reeking of well-fermented halitosis, mothball-dusted velvet, perm solution, mentholated Misty Lights, and decaffeinated Folgers spiked with saccharine, non-dairy creamer, and peppermint schnapps. That is to say that impending Christmas seemed an awkward fit with the town I call home. But that is the way it had always seemed to me, ever since I gave up running away to exotic locales (At least, as exotic as I could afford at that particular moment in time; one year it was Steubenville.) every Christmas and instead resigned myself to hunkering down for the holidays in the little post-industrial, bucket-kicking burg."

For more information, excertps, and reviews, see [...] -- straight from the Rust Belt, shining gems of local literature!