My Scenes From The Second Storey piece ‘The Piano Song’ scored a mention over at Scary Minds:And finally Cat Sparks delivers a modern fable in The Piano Song that rams home a Down Under horror concept of not accepting your place in the order of things, for Sparks a bit of chaos is the preferred option. I was also getting a slight wink at the Reader aimed at the whole insipid celebrity culture thing we have going down presently. Strangely after two years of writing reviews for ScaryMinds this is the first Cat Sparks story I’ve actually read, what’s that about?Lately, I’ve been discovering reviews of my stories in which the reviewers have actually understood what I was trying to achieve. Is it the standard of my writing or the standard of reviewing that’s improving?
review
Just finished reading The Limits of Enchantment by Graham Joyce, a book I grabbed off the shelf last Monday as I headed out the door to spend a couple of hours on public transport. I needed a book guaranteed to be engaging and Joyce is one of those rare creatures — an author who never disappoints. Not ever. Not once. No matter how uninterested I may be in his subject matter, he always manages to charm and win me over. This one even made me tear up in a couple of places.
show off
There’s a terrific review of Sprawl over on Guy Salvidge’s blog. Here’s what he had to say about my story:I enjoyed most of the stories in this anthology, but the one I probably enjoyed the most was “All the Love in the World” by Cat Sparks. This is a post-apocalyptic tale but, importantly, Sparks has managed to avoid re-treading most if not all of the clichés of the genre. In doing so she has created something exciting indeed. The Crescent is a self-sufficient enclave that is home to a number of survivors of the unspecified calamity, and all is relatively well until our protagonist loses her lover Jon to the interloper Jeannie. When Jon falls sick, she leaves the enclave in search of antibiotics, with surprising results.
X6 review
Keith Stevenson’s X6 novellanthology which includes my story Heart of Stone scored a damn fine review from Richard Larson over at Strange Horizons. Here’s my bit:"Heart of Stone," by Cat Sparks, features journalist Jade Stone on an investigation of strange occurrences most likely related to the presence of aliens. The questions raised here are grand and existential: "What if we are alone? How’s that for a terrifying thought. One tiny planet brimming with life, a good whack of it hurtling down the road to extinction. What price do you put on life when there’s nothing and no-one else out there?" (p. 314) The story has a dark, noirish feel as Jade questions a variety of people related to a series of strange deaths. She soon discovers that there has been a massive cover-up on the part of mysterious authorities, and her investigation becomes extremely personal when she is targeted by…