By T.J. Tranchell Every writer has a unique journey. Brian Asman’s has taken him from the world of bizarro and splatterpunk novellas to his first full-length novel, Good Dogs. Asman, who became a viral sensation for his haunted house novella, Man, Fuck This House, sees this journey as steps in a long-term plan. After half a dozen independently published novellas, the leap into a full-length novel was spurred by completing his MFA at UCR-Palm Desert’s low-residency program. Published first in 2021, Asman’s breakout novella is eye-catching not only for its title, but for his innovative use of social media to…
TCR Daily
By Samantha Alissa Martin Jennifer Brody—novelist, short-story writer, TV/film producer and writer, and writing instructor—dives into her obsession with “Dear John” letters, Ancient Chinese philosophy, and science in her latest novel, A Sacrifice of Blood and Stars. The story follows protagonist Hikari Skye (Kari) as she enlists to be part of Space Force in the midst of the Proxy Wars. The trouble is, her reputation is far from perfect, as her father’s status as a deserter seems to follow her all the way to space. To make matters worse, she is paired with her bully, Draeden Rache (Drae), through…
By Jesenia Chavez In her debut book, Hazel Kight Witham delves into middle school with a memoir in verse. She zeroes in on a fateful day where a young Witham reckons with her own fear and shame at her classmates discovering she has two moms. She loves her moms, Judie and Sharon, but middle school is an unfriendly place for anyone whose family does not fit into a heteronormative paradigm. Middle school, with all the awkwardness and intensity of pre-adolescence, comes to life on the pages through beautifully crafted poems with vivid details. Through notes interspersed throughout the book, Witham…
By T.J. Tranchell Good news for Brian Evenson fans: even after nearly thirty books, the short story writer, novelist, translator, and teacher still has plenty to say. His latest, Good Night, Sleep Tight, marks his ninth book with Coffee House Press. The new collection delves into Evenson’s unique space between science fiction and horror, while exploring what a post-human world might look like. Many of the stories confront ideas of parenthood and how that might be present in artificial intelligences. Each explores the meaning and mystery of being human, leaving readers satisfied with having more questions than answers in a…
Reviewed by Betty Fall Punchy, provocative, and full of unshakeable pride, NoNieqa Ramos’s They Thought They Buried Us takes a unique, if messy, approach to selling a horror story to its audience while not compromising the identity of its author or protagonist. The book follows Yuiza (she/they), a young Puerto Rican filmmaker, as they struggle to keep their head above water at Our Lady of Perpetual Mercy, a highly regarded boarding school with a murky past and dangerous present. Isolated from their friends and family, gaslighted and harassed by students and faculty alike, and haunted in their dreams by the…
By J. Schuberth Attica Locke has been busy. The award-winning novelist, screenwriter, and TV producer behind such shows as Empire, When They See Us, From Scratch, and Little Fires Everywhere is currently in a multi-year development deal with Universal Television, working on an adaptation of her Edgar-Award-winning Highway 59 trilogy, among other shows. The Coachella Review caught up with Locke to talk about her writing process; her love of TikTok; the aesthetic and political value of land; going to museums in a bathing suit; and the final book in her Highway 59 trilogy, Guide Me Home. The novel opens with…
Reviewed by Pallas Gutierrez In My Chicano Heart, Daniel A. Olivas presents thirty-one short stories about love, loss, and Chicane identity. The stories range from starkly realistic to deeply magical, and at the core of each one are expertly crafted characters. These characters span a wide range of backgrounds and experiences, from twelve-year-old James falling in love for the first time in “Lucky Dog,” to Alisa recovering from optical surgery in “Diplopia,” but they are all grounded in Olivas’s rich storytelling and clearly drawn realities. Five of the stories contained in My Chicano Heart are new, and in the collection’s…
if it meant you felt loved, i would do it. this is the sixth love language. it is a feeling, rather. it is happy and it is sad and it is neither. it is quite vermillion with a mystery that cannot be comprehended nor explained. i will love you, and you will be loved by me. but i will not be loved by you. the sixth love language is unrequited love, yet my soul cannot love in another way. you will be loved, by all means. every love language, i will give to you. i will cross the ends of…
By Daniel J. Collins Multi-hyphenate author Nicholas Belardes writes what he knows—the ecological landscape of Central California, the study of climate change and crisis, birds, the Chicano experience—and then blends and turbocharges it with the unknown, crafting energetic and complex works that combine the best elements of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. A graduate of UC Riverside Palm Desert’s Low Residency program with an MFA in fiction, Nick studied under horror writer Stephen Graham Jones and crime writer Tod Goldberg. His new book, The Deading, is an eco-horror tale that blends the sensibilities of both genres while also grounding the…
The world came into black and white, not like a movie, but the way a dog saw it: low to the ground, up the ass, running with no purpose/filled with the urge to find myself somewhere in the zig-zag path of movement my head bobbing incessantly, my tongue catching the taste of petrol in the air slowly, I let the emotions bathe me, scrubbing away all feeling I wake up in the water, lukewarm. Bibinaz Nami (she/her) is a freshman at UCLA and a co-founder of the literary youth organization The Imperfect Poets, where she plays a pivotal role in…
While Voice to Books has covered graphic novels and memoirs in the past, we couldn’t help noticing how many intriguing books from underrepresented communities have been published in the last three years—stories of difficult journeys, both physical and spiritual; of searching for one’s place in a new culture and finding an identity within a subculture; of intergenerational trauma and the struggle to improve one’s mental health when, traditionally, these topics are taboo. Though many of the five books we’ve reviewed feature teenage protagonists, these visually arresting stories, even at their most fantastical, offer insight into authentic and universal human…
Bleached bones, picked clean by a lion, are left to bake under the East African sun, says the reedy-voiced British narrator on the nature film I watch from beneath a mound of covers. The abandoned bones stop the elephant matriarch in her tracks. She raises her trunk to trumpet a call of distress across the plain, lamenting the death of one once part of her herd. Elephants can remember more than 200 individual, extended family members and recognize them by smell or call, as well as sight. An elephant never forgets. From my sickbed, I watch the matriarch fondle the…