Jordan Lapp

Fantasy for Good: A Charitable Anthology, edited by Jordan Ellinger and Richard Salter, is a volume of mostly original short stories, the proceeds of which are earmarked for research into colon cancer, a disease that has taken many fantasy writers from us, among them Roger Zelazny and Jay Lake. There are a number of stories by the biggest names in fantasy of today (including George R. R. Martin and Neil Gaiman) and yesterday (including the aforementioned Roger Zelazny and Jay Lake) that are reprints from earlier collections, but aside from that handful of stories, the 29 tales in this book were written for this publication specifically. As with any such anthology, each reader will have favourites and those less good; I liked stories by James Enge, Katherine Kerr, Carrie Vaughn, Michael Ezell, Samit Basu and Kelley Armstrong in particular, but almost all the stories here are quite good. The book is divided into sections, including "Sword and Sorcery," "Fairy Tales," "The Paranormal," "Urban Fantasy," and "Weird Fantasy"; it concludes with an informational essay on "Colon Cancer - Signs and Warnings," for readers to learn about this terrible disease. Even if I didn't have a good friend battling colon cancer at the time of this writing, I would have bought the anthology because of the high quality of writing contained therein; the fact that it does have a charitable focus is an added bonus. Recommended!… (mer)

Flash fiction is generally recognized as being fiction under a thousand words - the perfect length for a coffee break - but despite its appeal as a quick read, it is not simplistic. Quite the opposite; it can and should be one of the most demanding literary forms, with a need for perfectly crafted prose, a complete story arc in a tight space, and an immediately engaging hook.

The Best of Every Day Fiction 2008 brings together one hundred flash fiction pieces selected from Every Day Fiction's first year of publication. These stories cross boundaries of genre and geography, with tastes of science fiction, humour, romance, fantasy, horror, and surrealism alongside the more traditional literary pieces, from authors writing in Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Finland, India, Israel, Nigeria, the United Kingdom and the United States.… (mer)