Reckon Review

Author: reckonreview

  • 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…

  • What’s Mine and Yours

    Creative Nonfiction by Sam DeLeo Our plan, if it could be called that, had been to catch a few long rides all the way to Los Angeles. Once there, we’d lounge poolside for the holiday weekend at the home of Will’s wealthy family, who were, according to him, direct heirs to the Hilton Hotel fortune.…

  • It Never Leaves

    A review of Curtis Ippolito’s Burying the Newspaper Man By Justin Lee There is a line from a City & Colour song that kept coming to mind while reading this story. It goes: “A haunted man who can’t outrun his ghosts. They’re in my skin and my bones.” I feel like that is a perfect…

  • Altered Earths – Storyteller as Scientist: An Experiment in Four Variables

    By S.E. Hartz I want to write this essay as a scientist would. I do not come with a conclusive thesis but with a working theory and a hypothesis to guide my investigation. The theory: things I have learned or explored in the laboratory and field can guide my fiction in new directions. The hypothesis:…

  • Back the Blue

    Fiction by Anthony Neil Smith Back the blue? Fuck yeah, I back the blue. You saw the flag waving out front of the house? Black and gray Amer’can flag, blue line running through it. I’ve got two more on my truck. Bumper sticker, too. Oh, and the tattoo. See? I’ll flex it for you. I…

  • Adversity and The Artist: The Persistent Myth of Inspirational Suffering

    By Barlow Adams There’s a certain hubris in agreeing to pen a column about writing through adversity. It’s an invitation to the powers that be to take you down a notch. Let me tell you, those bastards listen. In the months since I signed on to write this column it’s been an onslaught of death,…

  • Somewhere in the middle of nowhere on the last car of the last train to LA, I fell in love

    FLASH Fiction by Barbara Byar I followed the Hansel and Gretel trail of floor lights to a quiet corner of the slumbering car. Stared out the window at the star soup. Pulled out my notebook. There was no movement from under the blanket of your pea coat, so I jumped when you spoke. What are…

  • Brothers in Harms

    A Review of Mark Westmoreland’s A Mourning Song By Wiley Reiver Mark Westmoreland’s A Mourning Song, (Shotgun Honey, 2023) the sequel to his gritty, snarling A Violent Gospel, explores the consequences of violence and loss in a way not often found in genre fiction. To be sure, this second story about Mack and Marshall Dooley…