A Look at Books by BP Authors

A.M. Stickel (for BP #46)

     Don’t make me go there if your home’s like those in Cindy Rosmus’ NO PLACE LIKE HOME. From a safe mental distance, feel relieved at not living where her ten short stories are set. If her take isn’t chilling enough, try Kent Robinson’s WHY YOU SHOULD SHUDDER. The former work is put out by Fossil Publications, the latter by AuthorHouse™. Now, with the niceties out of the way, let us proceed to the dissection.

     Cindy’s “How Deep Will the Darkness Be?” and “Il Odore di  Morte” have both appeared in issues of BP. In the first, an overimaginative 1970s schoolgirl pours out the darkness in her tormented soul; in the second, a woman can smell the funeral flowers before the ‘dead’ person dies. On “The Hot Seat” a young wife overcomes her fear of fire long enough to punish the man who used it to imprison her in a poisoned relationship. Both “Miss You” and the title story reveal female obsessions and how such women hate having to share. Another exploited lover does a double take while dying her hair in “Seeing Red.” A group of lowlife, loser housemates (“Fools and Drunks…”) experience tragedy, and ironic justice, at an impromptu BBQ. “Desaparecido” draws a drunk toward temperance via an alternate twilight-zone-like homecoming. “The President Is Dead” presents a child’s retrospective on the JFK assassination, and, in “Santy’s Wish List,” another child’s Christmas wish sobers an alienated department-store Santa.

     Cindy, who edits YELLOW MAMA, BP’s sister publication, knows how to draw us readers in with her well-rounded, realistic characters and stark settings. Her dark writing  improves with each story collection, since she ruthlessly edits out all the nonessentials, leaving only the most basic elements. This collection’s covers, by Gin L. Fenton and Tim Ramstad, are masterfully executed and compliment the content. Our own Kenny Crist has done the polishing, leaving few flaws in yet another Fossil Publications gem.

     No way can I do justice to the excellent Kent Robinson 27-tale collection, WHY YOU SHOULD SHUDDER. So I’ll just touch on some highlights. This writer is to horror what Gary Larson (FAR SIDE) is to cartoons. His tales leave the reader creeped out, but in a humorous way. A bit over 10 years ago (and way before my time), BP published one of his collected stories, “Picking Up Around the House”; in 2009, we will publish his equally bizarre “Gatling Gunn.” In the former, a sewage worker’s search for the ideal mate ends in success...if you’re into good necrophiliac housekeeping.

     While most of the stories have been previously published in a variety of magazines, the 5 which are fresh are real killers. Dispelling the myth of childhood innocence, the writer shows he knows kids and teens, like those who haunt the future world of “Deviate” or the black cat and his boy in “Kiddy Cat.” Speaking of unthinkable futures, Los Angeles is set to evolve into “Hell A.”—a place where “Middle of the Road Rage” rules alongside the fallen angels. But the scariest story of all—“Love is in the Airbrush”—is at the end of the book, and gives the surprise ending a whole new twist. It’s a scream.

     Hey, if you don’t buy Kent Robinson’s WHY YOU SHOULD SHUDDER, you’ll kick yourself later for being so stingy with your fun funds; then you’ll really shudder. Call 888-280-7715 to order in hard or soft cover (with an unforgettable eyeball in the Kelly Barrow illo), or go to your local bookseller/on-line retailer. Enough already.