On August first, Jeff Fearnside’s collection of linked essays, Ships in the Desert, will be published by the Santa Fe Writers Project.

From 2002 to 2004, Jeff served as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer teaching English in Kazakhstan, and he ended up living there for almost four years. During that time, he worked in Kyrgyzstan as well, and he traveled along the Silk Road throughout Muslim Asia.

In Ships in the Desert, Jeff takes us to the heart of his experiences in Central Asia and considers how they shed light on such universal issues as environmental degradation, and religious and cultural intolerance. To quote a description from the cover of the book:

“Fearnside creates a compelling narrative about this faraway land and soon realizes how the local, personal stories are, in fact, global stories. Fearnside sees firsthand the unnatural disaster of the Aral Sea—a man-made environmental crisis that has devastated the region and impacts the entire world. He examines the sometimes controversial ethics of Western missionaries, and reflects on personal and social change once he returns to the States.”

Recently, Beth Castrodale of Small Press Picks had the pleasure of interviewing Jeff about Ships in the Desert. (In 2017, she reviewed his story collection Making Love While Levitating Three Feet in the Air, praising “its deep explorations of diverse lives and experiences” and “its immersion in place.”)

On June 15th, Immoral Origins, the first book in Lee Matthew Goldberg’s Desire Card series of international thrillers, will be published by Wolfpack Publishing/Rough Edges Press. The second book, Prey No More, will drop on July 6th.  The series is described as mixing “Elmore Leonard with a Tarantino edge. It explores the characters and situations around a card (and sinister organization) that promises ‘any wish fulfilled for the right price,’ and what we will do to survive when money isn’t enough to get everything we want.” You can learn more about Immoral Origins here, and also check out the first chapter of the book.

Recently, Beth Castrodale of Small Press Picks had the pleasure of interviewing Lee about Immoral Origins and the series as a whole.

May 1^st, 1988. In Near Haven—Matthew Stephen Sirois’s provocative and deftly paced debut novel—it’s the date a comet is predicted to strike the Earth, ending civilization. In the face of what appears to be certain doom, society crumbles in advance of the comet—from helplessness and hopelessness, and from the violence they fuel.

But not everyone is hopeless, including the novel’s protagonist and conscience, Tom Beaumont, whose story begins about ten months before the comet’s expected arrival. A boat builder in the fictional seaside town of Near Haven, Maine, Tom is skeptical about assurances that the comet will strike, and about pretty much every other variety of received wisdom. His views isolate him from just about everyone other than his friend Neville “Nev” Bradford, who, with Tom, struggles to survive as social order dissolves.

As a huge fan of short fiction, I initiated Short Story Shout-Out a couple of months ago. Here’s a recap of my reason for doing so:

In my first Short Story Shout-Out, I focused on two new literary journals (The Offing and Pear Drop) that are publishing remarkable works of short fiction. This time around, I’m focusing on stories from just one new publication, Mud City Journal, which describes itself as “an online literary journal promoting the ideals and vision of the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) Low Residency MFA Program.” The stories discussed below are from the Mud City Journal’s recently published second issue, and I highly recommend each one of them.

I’m a huge fan of short stories, and it’s been a great pleasure to review multi-author anthologies, as well as collections by such writers as Lee A. Jacobus, Garnett Kilberg Cohen, Jennifer Woodworth, Dale Bridges, Wendy J. Fox, Adetokunbo Abiola, Paula Bomer, Melody Mansfield, Steven Schwartz, and Jessica Francis Kane.

But recently something occurred to me: given the wealth of literary journals publishing new stories every day, why limit myself to anthologies and collections? Why not say a few words every now and then about individual (recently published) stories that I have found especially moving, funny, thought-provoking, or wonderfully strange? So this will be the first of what I hope will be somewhat regular posts about just those kinds of stories. The pieces discussed in this post come from two fairly new journals: The Offing and Pear Drop.

Dear Readers,

I’m going to be taking a bit of a break from Small Press Picks to deal with some personal issues (mainly, the loss of two parents in four months’ time) and to try to get a new novel of mine out into the world. I am looking forward to getting back into the reviewing saddle in the spring, and I hope you’ll tune back in then.

Thanks,

Beth Castrodale

Editor, Small Press Picks