Time to Crow!
My dear friend Gerri Leen has just had her first book published, Life Without Crows, which can be bought here on Amazon or here on Barnes and Noble com. It's a collection of 24 stories ranging from flash fiction to novelettes in length. I was a first reader (i.e., beta) for these stories, so I am by no means an unbiased reviewer, but for what it's worth, I love these stories. Most of them can be described as "speculative fiction" - fantasy, science fiction, horror - with a smattering of what might be called "literary fiction."
Gerri's style is clean, spare and often lyrical and stands out to me for the way it catches various voices: from a tough old lady remembering her good times with truckers in "Memory Lane" to the down to earth survivor in the post-apocalyptic tale "Life Without Crows" to the old groom of a talking race horse who manages his own career in "Bluegrass Dreams Aren’t for Free" to a subversive Biblical Ruth in "Whither Thou Goest." The stories feature historical figures like Anne Boleyn and Francis Drake; Egyptian, Greek, and Chinese goddesses and Biblical figures; early hominids, dragons, ghosts, vampires and were-crows and robots and aliens. Memorable characters who grab at the heart, stories that often have a twist in the tale, that make you laugh or cry or gasp--served with lovely prose and featuring eye-poppingly gorgeous illustrations by Maggie Middleton, a young artist. (The beautiful cover art is "The Song of Eternity," by another artist, Richard Kirsten-Daiensai.)
What's not to love? You can find her Official Home Page here and she's also gerrileen on live journal. Some of her stories can be read for free online on her site, so you can give them a try to see if her style might appeal to you.
Some of you may know Gerri as djinn_fic. She's de-cloaked on her own fandom Live Journal un-f-locked so I can mention that--so she's one of our own. One of those who has made the leap from fan fiction to professional sales. Someone I was privileged to know from my Star Trek fandom days who I had watched make her first professional sale to the Strange New Worlds VII Star Trek pro anthology and on to over 50 publications of short works sold to magazines, literary journals and anthologies including Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress XXIII (Where "The Vessel," included in the new book, debuted). I'm proud to know her as a person and a writer. Damn bursting with pride. I hope you'll buy and enjoy her book!
(And that someday, many of you on my f-list will be bragging about your first books.)
I now return you to your frantic fan fiction reading. *waves* Miss you guys! *returns to fanfic hiatus* *flails* *bounces off walls*