Must Read, Should Read, Might Read

Sacchi Green

I might have said Am-Reading rather than Must Read, since I’m on the very last story in an anthology edited by a friend for her own small, fairly new press, but it’s a prime example of a Must Read situation. There are certain complications to having close friends who are writers and editors. In this case we never pressure each other for reviews, or even ask, but we do read each other’s work and, when appropriate, post reviews. I couldn’t review her last book, a novel, because I’d already written a blurb for the back cover. In fact I had beta-read it, with genuine enjoyment and admiration: Medusa’s Touch, by Emily L. Byrne. (Lisabet will know of whom I speak.)

This time, as I said, I’m reading an anthology she edited and published, with stories by fifteen writers, with a wide variety of styles, perspectives, and themes. This is Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space) edited by Catherine Lundoff. Yes, Catherine has recently shifted to using a different name for her erotic works, and this book is not erotica.

I’ve almost finished it, and know already that I can heartily recommend it, but as anyone who’s done much editing knows, it’s hard to look at a story with a reader’s eyes and suppress your inner editor. Silly things occur to me. Should all three stories with one-eyed characters have been presented next to each other? But other than that, they’re as diverse as can be, so I shouldn’t be picky. Two or three typos—but after those either there weren’t any or I was too involved with the stories that I didn’t notice, which is as it should be. An immense diversity of themes and setting and mood and bursts of wild creativity, but I found that a simpler, more straightforward piece, set in the Louisiana bayous rather than more distant and fictional realms, was one of my favorites. That means, of course, that by then I was in full reader mode, no longer editorial, which is a very fine tribute to the book as a whole.

I’ll finish the book, and then read it over again to compensate for the fact that my own mood on first reading was soured by some personal stresses. It will be hard not to get too close to spoiler territory, since many stories have such clever twists and even the setting of at least one is revealed slowly and turns out to be the main and startling feature. I may not be able to resist mentioning it in a review. We’ll see.
https://www.amazon.com/Scourge-Seas-Space-Catherine-Lundoff-ebook/dp/B07JF3XGLN/ref=sr_1_1_twi_kin_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1544456962&sr=1-1&keywords=catherine+lundoff

Onward to Should Read. This, of course, is a list that could wrap around the world a time or two, but I’ll just mention the most recent two books. The Learning Curve: an Anthology of Lessons Learned is from Dirt Roads Books, a charity project with all the proceeds going to an organization helping to educate girls in Africa. I have a story in it, set during WWII, and definitely not erotica, although I might some day expand it to be more of a romance, and a paranormal one at that. In any case, I should read the whole thing, and help to publicize it. https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Curve-Anthology-Lessons-Learned/dp/194725328X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1544456863&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Learning+Curve%2C+Dirt+Roads+Books


The other book is A Few More Winter Tales, edited by Matt Bright mostly with reprints to give the writers more exposure. Catherine Lundoff has a story in this one, too.  My story comes first and is entirely included in the “Look Inside!” feature of Amazon. Not erotica—my point of view character is the wooden bird in a Swiss cuckoo clock, who gets confused as to what he sees some humans doing should be reported to Santa as naughty, or nice. Okay, maybe very subtly erotica. amazon.com/dp/B07L2CX1GF


And the Might Read category, which should probably be Must Read: Old letters. A few more than a hundred years old, the others spanning the century up to maybe the turn of our century. Letters (some of them even from me when I lived in California) saved by my parents and bundled up in various places around the house I just sold for my father, now near me in an extended care facility. I should read those letters I really should. There’s a lot of history there even beyond family matters.  I should read them, I really should. But will I?

I might.