"Do What the Boss Says: Stories of Family and Childhood" by Michael Loveday
Do What the Boss Says: Stories of Family and Childhood is a collection of short-short stories exploring the adult-child dynamic. A daughter nervously visits her father who has now become a stranger; a young Irish girl substitutes a cardboard cut-out for her presence within her own family; a naive schoolboy is tricked by a more streetwise passer-by; a child tries to impress her village by breaking the world record for stepping in and out of a doorway. This chapbook offers you a kaleidoscopic view of the pressures, conflicts and joys of childhood and family life: from surreal fables to memoir, to idiosyncratic realism, to ghost stories about weird encounters.
Michael Loveday is a fiction writer and poet, and has been an editor and tutor of creative writing for more than a decade. His other publications are: the craft guide Unlocking the Novella-in-Flash: from Blank Page to Finished Manuscript (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2022); the hybrid novella-in-flash Three Men on the Edge (V. Press, 2018); and the poetry chapbook He Said / She Said (HappenStance Press, 2011). Michael lives in Bath, England, and mentors novella-in-flash writers through his online programme at www.novella-in-flash.com.
Immerse in your characters’ lives and spend more time getting to know these people than you would for a one-off flash fiction. Let yourself fall in love with them more. And then be patient and see what unfolds!
September 27, 2022
This is a rare treat. A piercing collection of flash fiction around very familiar dynamics of family life, yet each warped and stretched to intensity as though Angela Carter does kitchen sink. It gets quite uncomfortable in places but is always strangely moving and often funny. And the writing! So natural and seemingly free-flowing, yet quite exceptionally precise. A joy!
November 20, 2022
I am here and loving every second because I can take pleasure in the moment. When it gets to be too much, I will leave.
The same pleasure might be found in Do What the Boss Says: Stories of Family and Childhood. These are the crazy moments of childhood drama. When we view these moments as part of a totality, we might get caught up in later or earlier times. We might think these events led to something bigger. But if we view them as their own special time and place, we can understand what is beautiful or horrible and simply wonder-making about them.
John Brantingham, The Journal of Radical Wonder
January 20, 2023
Each story is a finely tuned delight: featherweight sized but packing a heavyweight left hook. Absurd, uncanny, and beguiling, they are as daring as they are deft, as inviting as they are sinister, as friendly as they are heart-holding. Every corner, every line, reveals an unexpected surprise and collectively these beautifully crafted stories dance a jangling tightrope of family relationships. Buy it and delve into their tiny colossal worlds.
31 December 2022
- Company: Bamboo Dart Press
- Release Date: November 5, 2022
- Availability: 4
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$7.99