My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Former Poet Laureate Billy Collins once told an audience that the study of literature, especially of poetry, is the study of death. Whatever a poem’s apparent subject—love, trees, soup—it’s the certainty of loss that powers the tensions holding a poem together. South Carolina Poetry Initiative prize winner, Worthy Evans, feels this loss in his debut poetry collection, Green Revolver, which examines work, family, war, and social contracts. Among the lively play of metaphors, alternative personas, and surrealistic narratives is a tense blend of alienation, angst, love, and even humor.

Green Revolver is divided into three sections, although the same topics inform them all. Anyone who has ever toiled in a corporate cubicle of motivational posters and stain resistant carpet will recognize the absurdity of “Instructions” in this snippet:

If you determine that work procedures
prevent the practice of processing,
treat the request as an inquiry.
Submitting a problem ticket
dismisses this appeal, but must
initiate from inside the QIC…

…treat the duplicate as
hyperlink for the existing
appeal…

Repeat.

Unlike Peter in the 1999 film Office Space, Evans has obviously gotten the memo on TPS reports. He hijacks corporate jargon and tunes the p, s, and t sounds to create music, humor, and parody. The final word, “Repeat,” is a curt reminder of existential despair.

Marriage comes under observation in “Sunset.” It begins, “The man and his wife walked up to the/canyon lip and he said It’s good,/not great. But the book said to do it/so here we are.” The people under scrutiny are never named, but the sense is that they are emblematic of many couples. The speaker reports, “The man said he and/the wife got married and later looked/to the west as it stood before Lake/Pontchartrain.” The man calls the woman “the” wife, not “my” wife, a small but important choice of the poet’s to hint at a bit of emotional distance and that “wife” is a sort of informal job title like “the pizza guy.” The speaker even introduces her as “his wife.” Recalling the view at the lake the man asserts, “That was better,/and so was this place in Australia.” There is a white space pause between verses and the next verse focuses on the wife. “The wife until this point had been silent./She was always the framer and picture/hanger for her husband,/she told me as/we were walking back to the gift shop/to look at posters, postcards and/screensavers of what we had just seen./I believe I’ll take this one, she said.” This brief encounter could be interpreted as sweet or incidental. Evans’ self-effacing record of the couple suggests a habit of consuming revisionist personal history. The “one” the wife takes at the gift shop is not the one she and her husband have experienced. Actual experience and memory are not up to her aesthetic standards so she substitutes a better, photoshopped version. Extending the unspoken cynicism, it is easy to assume the wife edits, crops, frames, and hangs glossy improvements in other areas of the couple’s lives. Both “Instructions and “Sunset” demonstrate the loss of meaningful productivity and the defeat of authentic memory by mass produced products.

Green Revolver includes poems which make use of male sports culture. Evans blends his knowledge of this culture with his understanding of the military in “The Lesson.” Having been a sportswriter and a combat engineer with the Army, he has credibility and fluency in this area. Although some of the poems in this book are written in the first person, “The Lesson” again makes use of a detached narrator.

Four hundred trainees bound for war
filled sections H through K in the ballpark,
ready to take in a game.

Time to pitch security notions
and pulling guard to watch college
boys in summer leagues 

…take a break and beat each other with
wooden bats and tricks rubbed up in the dirt.
The trainees holler the Soldier’s Creed

at attention, and got to the pitcher in
the fifth. His slider down and in went too far,
too hot to handle for his catcher, who 

pounced a mitt on the ball just as
the runner at second jumped for third. Catcher rifled
too hard around the right-handed batter

and the bullet sailed away from the third
baseman and into left…

As soon as it’s noted the college boys will be beating each other and using dirty tricks, it appears that summer baseball and war begin to overlap. Rifling and “the bullet” add to the idea. The poem then continues at a good clip:

Leftfielder threw
to catcher but by then our runner rounded
the bag and set his sights on home. When
the ball bounced back in, the run was on
the board. Some pats on the back…

When did the runner become “our” runner when he sets his sights for home? If he’s our runner, who are we? Who is the speaker now? Is he a college boy, trainee or both? “Set his sights” is a metaphor for aiming at something you are going to shoot, so the overlap carries forward. The home run is transformative as the point of view changes so the trainees are now promoted to soldiers and the pitcher has learned a lesson. War and baseball are not dissimilar: the opposing team is just another enemy and can’t a baseball game become training for war?

The poems discussed above are only a few of Worthy Evans’ shrewd riffs on the human condition. Readers will discover among the ballads of existential angst, the surprise of genuine affection without sentimentality, and the ordinary paired with dark whimsy. Evans’ first book combines Office Space with Fight Club and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Some of the poems in Green Revolver left me with more questions than answers. Others seemed to end in a poetic cul-de-sac of non sequitor. But this is Evans’ point of living in modern America: even as people gain connections via technology, they are losing pieces of themselves. In Green Revolver, life never contains clear answers and that even if you are a contributing member of society, you can still feel distant and alienated from your fellow human beings.

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• You’re wasting your time writing this garbage
• You’re just a dreamer!
• Why do you think anybody cares what you have to write?
• Nobody in your family ever did this before!
• When you fail, you’re going to be a laughing-stock and look at all of the time you wasted!
• You failed before and you’ll fail again—don’t even try!
  Writers are moody, on drugs and their families abandon them. You don’t want to become like that, do you?

If you have but it’s only come from your head, then you’ve been visited by the Inner Critic! As writers we constantly hear the Inner Critic because we’re doing something that’s not traditional “work.” We hear the IC because it’s trying to talk us out of being creative and different. Perhaps it’s saying that the world doesn’t need another poem or that we’re recycling an old idea no one will want to read about again. As writers, we will always find the IC lurking around corners and it’s our job to control it so it doesn’t control us.

What is your inner critic?

It’s an internal voice that nags, warns or shames you out of things you want to do. Basically it’s a survival instinct against criticism and rejection designed to keep you in your comfort zone, i.e. watching TV rather than work on your novel. It’s the adult to our creative child. It’s our fear of failure and of making a big mistake. On that note, the bigger the plan, the bigger the IC’s nags. 

But here’s a news flash for you: all writers are failures; they just know how to tame their inner critic through learning about it, recognizing it and forgiving themselves.

The IC loves giving you Negative self-talk. There’s a strong connection between

perfection and procrastination that feeds into the IC’s wicked maw. Here are a few examples:

Ex: this project has to be perfect or they’ll all think I’m dumb. So I’ll not start it until I get more research done

Ex: If I can’t do it right, then I won’t do it at all, so the piles of paper can still collect dust on the kitchen table

How Do We Manage Our Inner Critic: Learning, Recognizing and Forgiving

I.                   Learn

What does this critter called the Inner Critic look like? Give it a face. Is it your former French teacher, your mother, a demon with a long scarlet tail?

As mentioned earlier the Inner Critic likes to hang around corners, but he/she doesn’t like to have the center stage. When you start keeping tabs on your critic, or shining a light on your IC, it’s suddenly not as powerful anymore.

You can do this via writing down when the IC appears and even keep a log. Use Post It Notes, too, to see where these criticisms are coming from. What time of day do they seem strongest? Do they come after you’ve worked all day or after dinner?

Note: if you ignore your Critic, it will grow like dam waiting to burst. Keep tabs on it, say hello to it, but don’t take it seriously!

II.                Recognize

When you hear it start to chatter, be the Boss of your Critic, thank the Critic for his/her time and then send it packing!

III.             Forgive Yourself

Replace the Critic’s negative talk with a positive affirmation, such as “I am a creative person who is bursting with new ideas!”

You’re not perfect and you never will be, but so what? You’re a wonderful, competent person. Strive for excellence instead of perfection and you’ll likely accomplish more with less stress. Next time tell yourself, “I will strive for excellence” instead of “it has to be perfect”

Forgive yourself for all of your past mistakes and for all of your future mistakes. Let go of your self-branding or what your third grade teacher told you about being undisciplined. Tell yourself: maybe I am or maybe I’m not undisciplined, but in any case I’m forgiven and I can do better!

Don’t let yourself get into your own way on the path to success! As a writer, you’ll always have the Inner Critic in your life, but you can manage the Critic and do your own thing anyway. Grab the life you deserve and don’t let a silly Inner Critic stifle your passion and creativity to prevent you from being the amazing writer you are meant to be!

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My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The core of Ed Swartley’s message in When Did I Become the Oldest Person in the Room? is that writing is hard and not for the faint of heart. But if you really want to be a writer, then you need to practice your craft, read voraciously, and “love the chase for the perfect word.” Perhaps you’ll achieve immortality while you’re at it. Swartley says, “If you don’t love to write, give it up. It’s much too hard, much too taxing, the rewards much too elusive and fleeting.”

The book came about when Swartley discovered he wasn’t the youngest person in the room anymore and that he had valuable writing and life advice to share. The Oldest Person in the Room is geared mainly towards the aspiring writer, although more experienced writers may still benefit from his encouragment and wisdom.

This guide is hybrid of a practical English grammar guide with vignettes of Swartley’s life and philosophy. He references speeches, especially the speeches of Ronald Reagon, penned by Peggy Noonan, Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and the Bible. You can tell that Swartley has fun writing about sentence length, slang, common word choice errors, adverbs (Living with Lee), puns, and idioms. He also includes a chapter on formatting, type-faces, white space that every writer should know. Keep this guide in a safe place when you feel overwhelmed by writers’ block. Open it up to let Swartley’s tough teacher talk entice you to “Just Do It!”

He mentions several times throughout the guide that writing is a solitary art and that one needs to take “I Breaks” to stay focused and fresh. He also mentions “Eye Breaks,” to help your posture and remind you of your daily water consumption.

I would have preferred to have encountered more of his practical writing advice (The Lessons) closer to the beginning of the book, with some of his examples of good writing in the middle or towards the end. I found myself nodding my head at many of his tips, especially his 10-point diagnostic check used at the revision stage, but I had seen all of these tips before. But even if his tips aren’t new, the way he approached them was. He delivered his message about clarity and eloquence thorugh historical anecdotes and personal charm. This guide is good refresher for veteran writers, but beginning writers will be the ones who will most benefit from his tips.

***

Ed Swartley is a veteran of 12 years in daily newspaper journalism and 20 years as a marketing executive in education, banking and printing. The former Business Editor of the Colorado Springs Sun, he currently is Editor of the monthly Rocky Mountain Direct Marketing Association DirectLine. He provides professional services as an editor and writing consultant at www.fixadocument.com

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My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Reimagine, Richard Lee “Dick” Harris’s debut culmination of poems is not just another full-length poetry book, it is a memoir of a well-lived life. Harris, a former teacher, psychologist and college administrator grew up in the Upper Skagit River Valley in northwest Washington State. Nature, family history, and travel inform his poems, as does the work of Gary Snyder, Robinson Jeffers, and Wendell Berry. Expect to find farmlife, rivers, prairies and snow in many of his selections.

Harris has written his entire life, but only came to poetry in the early 1990s (in his late 50s) through the Iowa Summer Writing Festival (Harris attended ten seasons of workshops between 1997-2008), Elderhostels, open mic events, and a weekly writing group he facilitated at Barnes & Noble. As a way to acknowledge his prose and teaching past, Harris offers his reader thorough end notes about each poem, as well as a biography that pinpoints his work in a time and place. I also appreciated at the end of every poem how he added the location and year the poem originated.

Reimagine is divided into four sections: “Places,” “Moments,” “Souls Now Departed” and “Voices.” One of the strongest poems that emerged from his “Places” section is “The Prairie Rolls On” about his grandmother revisting her former homestead site.

Grandma’s eyes livened, her countenance relaxed.
I saw the bride she was in September 1906.
I saw unfold in the afternoon haze,
the stories in her journal of
she and Grandpa claiming
this prairie as their home.

Harris uses simple, straight language to make meaning and to capture images, which is his strong suit.

In the “Moments” section, Harris corrals the image of a dead deer combining horror and empathy in “The Commute”:

During an early dawn commute
in the after-fog of a summer storm
north of Calgary
through a windshield blurred with road oil
I see tire skids in the gravel
plowing ruts in the brink of a ditch
and
a deer half-buried in turgid muck
belly up
neck twisted
one bulbous eye staring into cattails

I drive on

Death is a common theme in poetry as poets strive to be witnesses to those who have left us. Harris carries this torch as he devotes a section (“Souls Now Departed”) to those who have passed on. He is careful not to veer to the expected or the trite in most of this section, although the last lines of “February 3, 1959″ did not surprise me.

On a farm-to-market road beyond grain bins north of town,
memorial flowers are scattered.
Across a farmer’s field,
three records and a stainless guitar shimmers in the sun;
inscribed “Peggy Sue, Donna, Chantilly Lace,”
and “Buddy Richie, The Big Bopper, 2/3/59”

–a tribute to youthful fame
–an immortale claim.

Harris trusts his line and image in “The Pink Balloon,” about the funeral of an old friend where one of the released balloons lingers after the others float away.

All rose, except one,
drifting toward broken cumulus
gliding across an azure sky.
Hestitant, it hovered near the ground
unwilling to leave, to let go

Dick Harris is a lover of words and the consummate lifelong learner. He is an optimist and a beliver in the enduring power of the human spirit. Each of his poems in this collection is a glimpse into another life, country or time. To make his work even more immediate, I would have liked to have seen Harris turn some of his work into persona poems, since so much of his work involves the voices of others. I would have also liked to have more read poems about his own past of growing up in the midst of the Great Depression in a logging community.

This is a strong first collection and I can’t wait to experience more of Dick Harris’ quiet, yet powerful verse.

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You’ll get the best bang for your editing buck if you give your editor a manuscript that’s already revised, proofed and read by a few key readers.  If you have plot questions, place them in a separate section so she can address them head-on. Don’t give your editor a dirty, unproofed manuscript unless you have agreed you need ghostwriting and/or developmental editing and that’s another post altogether. Always know that the more work your editor does on your manuscript, the more it will cost you.

Now on to why you should hire an editor:

A good editor will help you with…

1. timelines so you don’t confuse your reader
2. keeping your plot in focus so you don’t veer off
3. ideas you didn’t think of before
4. making your book reader-centered

Your editor will  

1. help you understand the writing process and its conventions
2. show objectivity and won’t be afraid to offer gentle honesty if you get lazy with your writing
3. give you accountability
4. help you get published by giving you an agent-ready manuscript
5. force you to examine your work and think about more possibilities. Are you using metaphors, does your work have a theme, what value does it provide the reader?
6. ask the tough questions of your characters, especially if you have a habit of protecting them and not placing them in enough conflict or challenge

When you’re hunting for the right editor, look beyond their fancy website, Facebook Page  and testimonials. Try to find someone through referrals and not through an ad. Find someone who has experience with editing fiction either freelance or with a publication house. Also see if you can find someone who teaches or who has previous teaching experience. Check out their publication credits. How many are fiction? Are these credits recent? Ask for references and check out their former clients. You may not receive all of your answers, but you will get a feel for this person before you invest your time and money.

Now you are ready to set up a phone conference and/or meet this person for the first time. Come prepared with questions and while you get to know your future editor, try to get a feel for their personality and work ethic. Is this someone you can trust? Do they seem to be reliable (you can check this if they respond well to phone calls or emails). When you are satisfied, ask for a contract and a deadline. Try to negotiate a flat fee if possible so you know exactly what you are paying. Ask to have your work edited in Word Track Changes so you can see exactly what you need to fix. After your editor completes your work ask for a follow-up meeting to answer any questions you have about their editing marks or their thought process.

When you find the right person to edit your work, you will see your writing grow. Try to keep this relationship for as long as possible. A good editor, like a good mechanic or hair stylist is hard to find and necessary to hold on to!

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Charismatic widower Tiger Morrison has spent a lifetime saving children from nature-deficit disorder, only to find himself in the fight of his life to protect his undisturbed world from land-grabbing developers in the southern Blue Ridge Mountains. He’s also fighting to win Katie Warlick, but she can’t forgive him for not wanting her the way she wanted him 20 years ago. While Tiger is involved in the struggle to save his camp, his daughter, Sammy, is trying to find her place in the clannish realm of summer youth camps. As she searches for her identity, she never suspects that a serial killer is stalking her.

Although flagged as a romantic thriller by its publisher, this is probably a little misleading; rather The Wind in the Woods can be described as a thriller that also contains a love story. The juxtaposition of the violent, stalking sociopath Gary Skinner with that of the beauty of the Green River Valley and the goodness of Tiger make this novel an interesting, if sometimes challenging read. Some may be uneasy with the descriptions of cruelty to both humans and animals, especially if they are expecting a straightforward romance. But rather than detract from the love story, the evil personified by Gary Skinner acts to underline the necessity of love in our lives, be it family love, romantic love and even our love for the beauty of nature.

The serial killer plotline is convincing and well-drawn. Senehi used the real life tale of 61-year-old serial killer Gary Michael Hilton as the basis for her portrayal of Gary Skinner. In deference to his victims’ families, Senehi has changed the name and location of “his” attacks, which are described so vividly in her novel. There are some truly chilling moments when she describes his preparations to go “hunting”.

And Senehi is also just as convincing when writing about the joy of interacting with nature through camping. Woven through her story is the 100-year-old history of summer youth camps in the Hendersonville/Brevard section of Western North Carolina (which has the highest concentration of summer camps in the United States) and her descriptions of the tight-knit youth camps where friendships are forged will bring back many readers’ fondest childhood camp memories. Senehi also uses the story of Tiger’s camp to underline the environmental issues that are affecting similar camps in North Carolina today.

The Wind in the Woods is Rose Senehi’s fifth novel, and the second in a series that take place in the Southern Blue Ridge Mountains. Her fourth novel, In the Shadows of Chimney Rock, was nominated for the 2009 SIBA Book Award by members of the Southern Independent Bookseller’s Alliance as the Best in Southern Literature for the year.

Contemporary fiction writer, Senehi, is noted for weaving environmental themes into her plots. A resident of Chimney Rock, North Carolina and Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, she moved from Upstate New York in 1996. Her other novels include: Pelican Watch, Windfall, and Shadows in the Grass. For more information about Rose Senehi visit her website at www.rosesenehi.com

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Frischkorn is a Connecticut girl and this state, along with New Jersey and New York, is where many of her poems live. While Connecticut can be considered developed, it also provides Frischkorn much inspiration in terms of rivers, farmland, maple trees, and bridges, of course. She also upends the notion of what nice girls should do or look like in “Great Lash,” which models itself closely to Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem, “We Real Cool.”

We cut school and watched Foxes
We cut school and drank vodka.
We cut school and got stoned,
did our makeup, walked the streets.

In the titular poem, “Girl on a Bridge,” Frischkorn plays with the title’s expectations by opening her poem with this line:”—And she tossed the red beret/into the Seine turning her back/on Paris forever. No she didn’t.” By acknowledging the image of the 1999 French movie by the same name, she’s free to go off to Greenwich, Connecticut, which she does:

—She was on a bridge
overlooking the Mianus.
Yes, with 95 South behind her.
She wore a blue ski cap
and a black pea coat. She looked

over—peered actually—and
turned around to hitch a ride
to the Kit Kat Club on NYC’s
East Side. That’s the kind of
girl she was. A straight shooter,
a go getter—not some freak
throwing good money away.

Frischkorn’s evocative use of enjambment in between stanzas propels the reader like she’s the one being pushed off a bridge. This poem, like so many of hers, is short, tells a complete story and lets the reader take an imaginative leap.

There’s not so much a leap in “Bees,” as there’s a sharp turn in the last line, which is so universal. We’ve all been told hurtful things about our bodies from people we look up. We then take what they say and believe it’s true when it’s not.

“Bee stings,”
he called
the bumps
under my t-shirt.

I had a crush
on Roger—
his blue eyes,
his blond hair.

That day
on my porch steps
wrecked by posture forever.

The poems where Frischkorn describes her father’s violence and lack of a safe zone growing up are some of the most powerful in the collection.

In “Sister,” the speaker is five and she sees her older sister escape a violent household, while she is told by her mother that “in families like ours the healthiest person leaves” which certainly doesn’t help the situation.

As a child she can’t verbalize her frustration and sadness, which is felt in her body. Not one to let an image opportunity to go to waste, Frischkorn transforms this sentiment into a closed seam because as a child she lacked a way to express herself.

I want to remind my mother that at five there is nowhere
to go, but my mouth

(full of coppery blood from biting my tongue)
is sewn tight with a gleam of steel and nylon thread—

the seams about to bust.

Towards the end of the collection, Frischkorn revisits her violent household in “Suspended,” which works as a bridge metaphor and repeats the image of a mouth. But this time, she incorporates her son who is more defiant than his mother was.

If I could go back and swallow my tongue…
Would my son have stayed in his room
instead of climbing out the window
not a star or moon to guide him?
Gone until we notice. We notice the quiet.

At this point in the poem, she employs anaphora (“this one”) to emphasize the weight of her past and the repetition of history of absent fathers:

I count and match them to my sins
—this one for the time I ran away to Chicago
—this one for staying out all night,
—this one for pushing my mother,
And this one and this one.
This one for thinking his father
was a safe haven, a respite, a man.

Maple leaves, chicken eggs and a venerable sex manual all press together in “The Joy of Sex,” which describes two young friends witnessing a couple, Lila and George, having sex who happen to be one girl’s brother and the other girl’s sister. The last image of transformation effectively transitions a hard, scraping image with a softer one:

We watch rock grind Lila’s spine
and splinter her tailbone. The petal
Shaped bruises, inside her pale thighs,
will bloom tomorrow.

Whenever we introduce bridges into writing our mind automatically turns to how bridges can symbolize change, passage, and conflict. They can also serve as a monument to the past or to the future. This is what Frischkorn does. She uses her bridges to stand in for her past and her subjects’ pasts, as they become proxies for the stored-up feelings that must now be released. Through clear language and images that are easy to visualize, she is at her best when she takes specific details to make them applicable for any reader who knows what it means to change.

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Just for you, I pulled together 10 benefits of a literary open mic:

Open Mics….

1. build your confidence and presentation skills—necessary skills for writers who need to stand out from the crowd
2. let you figure out your material before you submit it for publication
3. allow you to learn what five minutes feels like in the real world
4. get you to network and listen to other genres, and other styles of writing
5. help you build an audience so you’ll have folks who’ll support you and buy your eventual book
6. get you inspired from just being there
7. have you support local businesses since the open mics usually take place in a coffee shop, bookstore or other venue
8. have you support your local literary talent and you don’t have to read to do so!
9. make you dress up in your “writer” clothes
10. are a low-risk and low cost (free!) tactic to market yourself

On that last one, writers can always help their host by doing some of the open mic marketing. By that I mean, they can let their friends, neighbors and colleagues know that they are performing and would really enjoy their support by physically being there. Readers can also place their open mic reading on their websites, e-lists, Facebook status updates and Twitter feeds so their friends and followers can support them and also support the event. Smart writers know that if they piggy-back on a successful event that has a history of bringing a lot of traffic, they will attract more followers and visitors for themselves. Piggy-backing is a smart marketing move since it’s low-cost and brings people to an event that’s already established.

My friend and colleague Megan Cutter and I put on several open mics during the year. With a smart partner, it’s so much easier to organize and divide up tasks. Plus, your partner can also help you cross-market your open mic so it’s even more successful and beneficial for writers. To read more about Megan and How She Found Her Voice Through Open Mics, read here.

My next Open Mic that I’m co-facilitating with Megan Cutter will be held Friday June 18th at Scout & Molly’s ladies’ boutique in North Hills. We’ll start the readings at 7pm. I have a full list, but if you’re interested in being on my wait-list, email me here. More details about this event are available here, which is also a fundraiser for MS Society.

So what did I leave out? Tell me how open mics have helped you grow as a writer.

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My rating: 4 of 5 stars
It’s rare to find a literary collection of short stories that’s so darn readable and fun. Such is the case with Shellie Zacharia’s Now Playing, her debut fiction collection. Inside you’ll find stories about a kid cutting off her nose, a yard sale gone wrong, a lonely 6th grade teacher who steals a cardboard cutout of a lead singer from a music store, continuing ed sewing classes taught by a 4th grade loser, experimental disco theater,a shoplifting four-year-old, and more. Sure these stories are funny, but they are also poignant and real. Zacharia’s settings include a mix of urban and suburban: bowling alleys, community ed classrooms, art galleries, sheets, playgrounds, and Bed Bath and Beyond.

These characters yearn to live out loud and take chances in the middle of their working lives. They could be your sister, your next door neighbor or maybe yourself. Most of Zacharia’s characters are women in their mid-thirties who have careers that they’re somewhat satisfied with, but know that they played it safe while their former classmates took greater creative risks. Perhaps without even realizing it, they are all looking outside of themselves for the answers, while what they’re missing could be unearthed if only they looked deeper. Some may not agree with her happy or satisfactory endings, but Zacharia manages in a few pages to make her characters reach some peace and decide with optimism the right course to take for them.

Zacharia allows us a peak into their daily grind right at the moment they are turning a corner. Philip Gerard, author of Writing Creative Nonfiction is fond of saying, “Everything was fine until you showed up,” to referring to storytelling. The “you” refers to the catalyst, which can be a person or thing that drives the story to inspire the main character get up off of the couch and do something. Once her characters get going they don’t stop.

Many times this “you” is the past. How many times have you wondered what would happen if you ran into an old school chum and you hadn’t been exactly nice to them? Could you write an honest, yet scathing complaint letter like Lucy does in “Luckily, Lucy Sims Has No Stamps.” Or what would you do if you had to review an ex-boyfriend’s play? What kind of meeting will it be? Zacharia explores this exact thread in a few of her stories starting with the titular “Now Playing.”

In this story, the main character, a writer, has been assigned to write a review her old boyfriend’s experimental play for the independent paper she works for. The fun ensues when she’s late because she let a neighbor badly cut her bangs and because of that she didn’t get her 3-D glasses and playbill, which are both necessary since this is an experimental play. As the show continues, our character can’t figure it out and is wondering what she’s going to write about it her review. She finally decides what to do without being unethical.

One of my favorites was “Cardboard Ben” when Nikki, a schoolteacher steals a cardboard cutout of her old high school classmate, Ben Stevens, who is now a famous singer and guitarist. The funny thing is that store clerk lets her steal Ben because he’s “mainstream” and they get new cardboard music stars in all of the time. She keeps CB (Cardboard Ben) in her living room, talks to him, and wants him to become her muse, but she soon sees that it’s bordering on obsession when she mentions him frequently during class. A telling line is when Nikki’s friend, Vivian warns her, “It would be better if you said you were making out with Cardboard Ben. Don’t trade love for crafts. That’s what my grandmother did.” By the end, Nikki does the right thing.

A few of the stories have interconnected characters and Zacharia is very clever in making their plot lines overlap without forcing them to. I would have wanted to see more interconnected stories since she had started down that path and then stopped. Descriptive titles, dialogue, and quick brush strokes that reveal the core of a character are three of Zacharia’s main strengths. As a reader, you remember her details about her characters because they are quirky, extreme and make total sense because people are unpredictable and do funny things all of the time. When it comes to her titles, she loads up on description, like a poet would, so that she doesn’t need to be so expository within her narrative. This way the reader knows exactly what to expect and they can get comfortable fast. These are the opening lines in “After Carlos the Continuity Expert Quit the Movie and Headed to Costa Rica’: which we know right away is a description of Carlos.

He said it had to do with birds. They had names, beautiful names, and he’d call them out like he was reciting prayer: scarlet-thighed dacnis, chestnut-headed oropendola. The women on the set found it erotic, the way he said these names, but one day he was saying thrush-like schiffornis and then he was gone. He left a message on the director’s answering machine. She showed up for the filming of the diner scene for Emilio’s Girls and scowled a lot and drank enough coffee that her hands shook. Someone gave her a muscle relaxer, which helped.

Zacharia also has an uncanny ability to express what we are all thinking, but seldom say. In “Making the Bed,” Deborah ponders bedding and marriage:

So maybe they are not the finest sheets, but they are worn and washed and stained in the right way, darker where our bodies lie night after night, and someone might say those are love spots and I’d say they were right.

From her style and expertise with dialogue, Zacharia is one of those writers who is constantly observing human behavior while striving to write stories that reveal great connections and deeper truths. She does so remarkably in this collection without weighing down her narratives on a quest to be “literary” because her stories are like songs which all contain a melody, hook and bridge that make you want to listen to them over and over again.

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