Author: reckonreview

  • Horror in the Hills

    A review of C.W. Blackwell’s Song of the Red Squire By Chris McGinley There’s a renewed interest in folk horror out there!  In literature, film, and television, artists are resuscitating the sub-genre . . . or maybe it never left us. Either way, it’s popular again.  Like any genre, there will always be debate about…

  • Country Craft: Crafting a Legacy

    By Stuart Phillips Recently, a writer called my work “honest and soulful.” That was touching, especially since I didn’t know he had read anything of mine. The realization that you never know who reads, and likes, your work reminded me of when I came home to Mississippi after my first hitch in the Army. One…

  • His Other Best Friend

    Fiction by George Wood Jack Grimes and Charlie McGinn had finished their Sunday morning breakfasts of biscuits and sausage gravy and were waiting for their checks.  Jack nursed a last cup of coffee and said: “If you got time, I got someone to introduce you to.” “Got nothing but time.” Charlie said, working over his…

  • Gould Climbs Out of the Saddle

    A review of Scott Gould’s The Hammerhead Chronicles By Jon Sokol Prize-winning author Scott Gould has a unique way of taking diverse characters found in everyday life and shoving them together in unbelievable, yet somehow awkwardly familiar circumstances to create stories filled with wickedly sharp humor, heart-rending grief, and soulful observations on the human condition.…

  • Rest

    Creative Nonfiction by Dani Nichols The snow softens the sound of everything – the gate thuds instead of clanging, the horses’ feet clomp softly through the drifts. A week or two ago someone slid off the highway into a cow pasture – we heard sirens coming to help, but not the crash. Everything is muffled…

  • Everything That Sinks Must Emerge

    A Review of Kelly J. Ford’s Real Bad Things By Wiley Reiver As I made my way through Kelly J. Ford’s stellar second novel, I kept thinking of how much Flannery O’Connor would have enjoyed and appreciated this story. Now, stay with me here. I’m entirely confident that as an artist with a cogent, comprehensive…

  • Buried Nitrogen: The Parable of the Persimmon

    By Sandra K. Barnidge The persimmons on her tree were still green, but Cheryl the Neighbor told us to go for it anyway. “Before the critters get ’em,” she said. Possums had been spotted on a neighbor’s persimmon tree the week before. A raccoon family was prowling the neighborhood, too. It was now or never,…

  • Jackalope Kings

    Fiction by Libby Cudmore Bad news comes with a human messenger. Your Aunt Mo calls between spreadsheets and Zoom to tell you that your Uncle Pete was found dead in his apartment. No cause yet; could be a heart attack, could be pain pills, could be the guns he started stockpiling in these last few…

  • Brutal and Beautiful

    A REview of CHarles Dodd White’s Lambs of Men By Chris McGinley Novelist Charles Dodd White knows the Appalachian mountainside.  He knows the flora, the fauna, the geography.  He knows the waterways and the weather.  He knows how the light hits the trees at different times of day, and the way the air of the…

  • Flexing My Creative Muscles: Playing the Ukulele, UAS, & 30-Day Challenges

    By Melissa Llanes Brownlee I know. I know. The ukulele, right? How stereotypically Hawai’ian of me. Would you believe me if I told you that I had never owned an ukulele in my entire life until I moved to Japan? Well, it’s true. I bought a $50 (well 5000 yen) ukulele around 2010 from a…