Praise for Now Playing by Shellie Zacharia
Shellie Zacharia’s short short, “The Tin Man,” was one of the first fiction submissions we selected for LAR #6. In a single paragraph, Zacharia creates a character at war with her own heart–which may be too big or too small, depending on where you’re standing. The unnamed woman breaks the reader’s heart as she careens from curiosity to self-flagellation to hope to fatalism to regret in fewer than 250 words. How does Zacharia do that?
The tough-love answer is that you have to figure it out for yourself. Fortunately, with a new collection due out from Keyhole Press, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to try. Below are blurbs from some of our favorite writers, followed by links to an interview with Shellie, a full review of Now Playing, and a the Keyhole website where you can pre-order.
Enjoy.
“The characters in Shellie Zacharia’s stories–usually female, always funny–enter these pages slightly perplexed by the world around them, confused and hurt by its failure to live up to their expectations. Expressed as daydreams and fantasies tainted by partially overcome regrets and past guilts, these once-high hopes are the true antagonists of these hilarious stories. Even when faced with long odds, Zacharia’s characters carry on, persisting in their pursuits of happiness, resisting easy and formulaic epiphanies in favor of the truer triumphs recorded here, each one earned with cosmic charm and considerate compassion. Now Playing is a work of great grace, rendered with inviting, entrancing sentences that glitter forth from each and every page, and is a must read debut collection of short fiction.” –Matt Bell, author of How They Were Found and The Collectors
“I love the stories here so much–their desire for things that matter, their willingness to take themselves unseriously. Don’t get me wrong; this is serious fiction, but never heavy. Their lightness lies in their belief that there’s still much in this world to discover–things of love, yearning, and bowling. Now Playing is chock-full of wondrous writing, each tiny and not-so-tiny story capturing what we’ve been thinking, only saying it better.” –Randall Brown, author of Mad to Live
“Like a buffet of desserts, Shellie Zacharia’s stories are colorful, rich, and occasionally outrageous. Zacharia’s intelligent prose delivers. ” –Stefanie Freele, author of Feeding Strays
“Funny, sad, touching and always entertaining, Shellie Zacharia’s stories are little nuggets of human longing, a bittersweet blend of laughter and melancholy. Now Playing is a luminous collection overflowing with deft turns of phrase and sparkling wit, and an array of quirky, flawed characters we laugh at and laugh with. Zacharia strikes hard with humor, tenderness, and the sad realization that we all want something beyond our reach. The voices are pitch perfect; I can follow her characters anywhere, from a Bed Bath & Beyond to a guitar lesson class to your momma’s disco. However outrageous or uproarious the situation, I always sympathize with the characters and wish along with them for a better place than where they are now.” –John Wang, Editor of Juked
http://www.theshortreview.com/reviews/ShellieZachariaNowPlaying.htm
http://www.theshortreview.com/authors/ShellieZacharia.htm
http://www.keyholemagazine.com/books
We at LAR suggest you support authors and small presses whenever possible, but here is an Amazon link for the other times.
