The tales collected in Julie Rogers's Seven Shorts can be compared to a wintry landscape: what lurks beneath is cloaked by deceptive beauty. They hold literary garments elegant and genteel, belying curves and forms patiently waiting—at any moment—to shock, or even enlighten. Cover your eyes, spin you a few times, and shove you into a room with . . . never mind.
Seven Shorts cannot be labeled Horror, Dark Fantasy, Magical Realism or anything so reductive. Nonetheless, connoisseurs of those traditions will find much here to like—even love. Spanning decades—1969 to 2045—the narratives weave through classic territories, striking in their range and fertility of imagination. One of them garnered Rogers the 1999 Writer's Digest Writing Competition Grand Prize.
With Seven Shorts, Julie Rogers creates her own genre, one surging with emotion, wit, and stark-raving sanity.
