Books on Books on Books
I’m terrible with introductions, so if you are okay with it, I’m okay with pretending that I swept into the room on a gust of bravado and good cheer, made a joke or two that hooked you, and now we’re past the pleasantries and ready to get down to the business at hand.
Good? Good.
If not, the Internet will provide you will all the information about me that you need except, perhaps, what I had for lunch (leftover lentils and cous cous, raspberries for a light dessert).
As the new Book Review Editor here, I think it would be important to say some things about me and books and why I’m here.
Some things about me and books:
I try to read as widely as I can, but sometimes that just doesn’t happen. When it doesn’t, I’m reading the grittier side of Southern Literature—where people drink and fight and do really stupid things in the name of love or lust or something else entirely.
I typically do not read genre fiction, but am willing to consider a book if the argument in favor of it is a) damn good or b) ends with the arguer buying me a nice glass of bourbon.
I have written reviews for a few different publications over the past two years because as I have grown as a fiction writer I’ve learned that it’s just as important to read as it is to write. If you aren’t reading—and reading critically to see what the author is doing right or wrong, well or not—then you’re going to miss out on a whole hell of a lot in the literary world. Reviewing, too, is just good literary citizenship. So there’s that.
When I don’t have a book in front of me, I teach College Writing at a small liberal arts institution in Central Florida and I brew beer/run social media for my town’s first craft brewery.
Enough about me, though. Onto the important stuff.
We’re looking for reviewers! Currently, we have some books that are lying around, waiting for your hands to pick them up and caress them, allowing them to release their wordy goodness.
The books we have are:
- The Masters Review, Volume III: Stories Selected by Lev Grossman (2014, The Masters Review)
- Mean Bastards Making Nice: Two Novellas by Djelloul Marbrook (2014, Leaky Boot Press)
- Night for Weeks: Poems by Teneice Durrant (2014, Two of Cups Press)
- When You Find Us We Will Be Gone: Stories by Christopher Linforth (2014, Lamar University Press)
- The Widow from Lake Bled: Selected Poems by Kirby Wright (2013, Moon Pie Press)
- The Garden of Good and Evil Pancakes by David S. Atkinson (2014, EAB Publishing)
- The Story of How All Animals Are Equal & Other Tales by Matt Runkle (2014, Brooklyn Arts Press)
- Sibs by Nathan Leslie (2014, Aqueous Books)
- The Downriver Horseshoe: Stories by Scott Miles (2014, Stolen Time Publishing)
If any of these are of interest, please email me at slaughter.sj@gmail.com. Please include a brief bio with any previous reviewing experience that you have. If there are clips you’d like me to look at, great, link or attach them as well.
Have you read a great book recently and written a review of it? Send it to me at slaughter.sj@gmail.com and I’ll be in touch. Please check out our archive to see what sorts of books we like to see reviewed.
If you are an author or publisher and are looking to send an ARC, great! Please send them to:
Sam Slaughter
PO Box 1064
336 E New York Ave
DeLand, FL 32724
We will do our best from there to get them out to eager reviewers.
That’s all for now. I’m looking forward to being here.
Photo By: az
