I was invited to be a guest speaker at the North Lake College Arts & Literary Festival. I'll be giving my talk "Writing Out of the Wilderness: How to Survive Rejection and Forge a Path to Publication."
The process of acceptance-rejection is not unlike the lone dance of the fiddler crab. A man writes a book - why? Because he wants to...Now the purpose of a book I suppose is to amuse, interest, instruct but its warmer purpose is just to associate with the reader. You use symbols he can understand so that the two of you can be together. The circle is not closed until the trinity is present - the writer, the book, and the reader.I'll be talking about how we as writers can close that circle: you, your book, and your reader. And you can find more information about my talk at local NPR-Affiliate KERA's Art&Seek Website, which I'm thrilled is promoting the event. So if you’re in the Dallas area next Monday night and hankering for a talk about writing, I’d love to see you!
You can read the rest of the review here. And if you'd like to buy a copy of Families Among Us, you can do so here. Thanks for reading!When a writer tells vibrant stories that bleed into the margins, and when a sharp design meets fitting, fascinating artwork, the result is too great to ignore. In other words, the result is Families Among Us. An entire universe lives within these forty pages, spun into existence with the sincere cadence of an ancient origin story. For readers, this chapbook is a welcome pause from realism, a chance to give in to and live briefly in the fantastical.
Small and special, the characters in these six stories sprout wings and slither. They grow snouts, claws, and fur. Kimzey’s stories have been called, “beautifully written universes” and they are exactly that.You can check out the whole list here. And if you'd like to order Families Among Us, you can do so here. Thanks for reading!
Following the likes of Orson Welles and his radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds, Rod Serling and the television series The Twilight Zone, and John Carpenter and his film The Thing, Blake Kimzey and his chapbook collection of short stories Families Among Us delve deep into different, yet equally mysterious phenomena. Kimzey’s collection proposes that we need look no further than our own homes and communities for the source of the curious and the bizarre, and it is through these otherworldly, yet earthly, creations that we discover that which binds us all.You can read the whole review here. And if you'd still like to purchase a copy of Families Among Us, you can do so here. Thanks for reading!
You can read the rest of the review here. And if you'd like to buy a copy of Families Among Us, you can do so here.Lovely and Majestic...Using fantastical elements that push effortlessly through the narratives, Kimzey has fashioned six allegories about the inevitability of change, people trying to love what is different from themselves, and the hardship and heartbreak that comes with being part of a family.
Families Among Us is a daring book. It’s not just that Kimzey writes about kids (and adults) turning into animals or magical creatures, taking off their clothes and scurrying or flying into the wild. No, it's that each of these disquieting stories force the reader to experience familiar emotional realities with the wonder and surprise of a child. Kimzey's world is new and dangerous, even sobering, precisely because its strangeness drives us into the heart of the familiar, into childhood's loneliness and consuming anxiety.
This, I suspect, is just what Kimzey wants. Each story, even those told from the perspective of adults, affects a dream-like quality, though not necessarily one of nightmare. This mood is achieved though natural, unobtrusive, even quietly beautiful prose. The understated prose allows us to engage the fantastic without distraction. And it’s these surprises themselves which meet us again and again in Families Among Us and become the collection’s most immediate source of delight.
As with Kafka’s work, after living in these stories for a couple days, they get even stranger, and new layers emerge.You can read the rest of the review here. I can't thank Fiction Southeast or reviewer Joel Looper enough for these kind words!
