It's Monday and you know what that means...
Another CCLaP book is born!
Today, Mark R Brand's speculative short story collection Long Live Us made its way out into the world. Be kind to it, world. Its very curious about you. Mark's stories reshape events and give them a strange and eerie bent. They grab you and shake you and some stick with you long after you've read them.
A family tensely waits out a meningitis scare in a quarantined home during the Great Recession. Small-town farmers in pre-war America battle a tree the size of a skyscraper. In a day-after-tomorrow dystopia, the new naughty contraband among rebellious teenagers is starchy carbohydrates. And in a barely recognizable far future, enlightened humanoids debate the implications of a mother who has smothered her child. These are just some of the speculative visions collected in the new "Long Live Us" by Chicago writer Mark R. Brand, author of the previous CCLaP hit "Life After Sleep." Known primarily as a science-fiction author, this new collection will certainly not disappoint Brand's existing fans, with pieces set among lunar colonists and blue-collar astronauts among other fanciful situations; but this is also Brand expanding his scope and vision for the first time, treating us with more down-to-earth stories set among contemporary families and even offering up a Great Depression tall tale.
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Reviews are coming in and everyone's got something sweet to say:
Angel from goodreads wasn't much of short story fan until Long Live Us. He gave it 5 Stars!
Ninian "really enjoyed this quirky collection".
Rebecca from Love at First Book wants to know which story is your favorite.
Dr. Lamb called it "an interesting, entertaining, and thought provoking read".
and Odd Engine compares Mark's writing to that of Roald Dahl, Joe Hill, and Chuck Palahniuk!
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I really fell hard for the stories in this collection. Mark has such an interesting way of looking at the world, and he's not afraid to twist it up for you. An alternative future where fatty foods are like drugs and only skinny kids get ahead, a family in lockdown sweat out a quarantine, and a young boy is picked on for believing his father is on a special mission on the moon...
You can now purchase a lovely, hand-made hard cover edition of Long Live Us on CCLaP's website.
(or download a free pdf there, too)
Whether you fancy yourself a fan of short stories or not, this collection will make you one for sure!
I definitely think that some people are scared away by short story collections, but I just feel that those people haven't read the "right" collection for them! This is one of those "right" collections in my opinion!
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