Short Street by Timothy Gager and I Am Going To Clone Myself Then Kill The Clone And Eat It by Sam Pink.

Travel equals time equals reading. Today we traveled and today we finished two somewhat diametrically opposed story collections, Short Street by Timothy Gager and I Am Going To Clone Myself Then Kill The Clone And Eat It by Sam Pink. The former is a tight collection of short stories as snapshots centered on a variety of problem drinkers and people on the make and the latter a group of flash fiction explosions centered on body parts and bodily fluids, dead animals and Katie Couric. And yet, they have much in common as well, sexual compulsions, religion, stabs at magical realism, anger and pain, and ultimately, characters who just cannot figure how to connect, with the world, with others and even with themselves. On a side note, we would like to add, that Sam's collection is the first one we have read where there is a story in the collection that was first published in This Zine Will Change Your Life. In this case it is the excellent Move In With Me and we are quite humbled and thrilled by this all at the same time.