Two Nice Reviews

I have only written one genre-based short story. Not that I consider myself a literary or popular writer or anything else. I just know I'm not a Thriller/SciFi/Romance/Fantasy writer. The short fiction I usually write draws a lot of influence from George Saunders and other writers like him.

In January 2008 I was a fiction resident at the Vermont Studio Center. I was there for a month with my wife, artist Danielle Huey Kimzey, and we would go on these long walks into the countryside to catch up and talk about what we were working on in our studios. Sometimes we'd walk around at night and when the moon was out (or not out) it felt like we were walking around in our own ghost story. An aging Masonic lodge anchored the town center, leaning badly to one side and in general disrepair. Add to that all the other old buildings that figured prominently in local lore and a graveyard pre-dating the Revolution and it was a town with much more history than the small town in Texas where I grew up. So you get the idea: Johnson, Vermont has this old northeastern feel to it and I decided to write something different, set right there in town. The result was "The Kramers" and it ended up in Encounters Magazine three months ago.

And believe it or not, the Science Fiction Review and Tangent (which has been reviewing Science Fiction since 1993) had nice things to say about my story.

An excerpt from the Science Fiction Review:

"In 'The Kramers', Blake Kimzey shows us you can find true horror without any supernatural element at all. Tom Kramer works for the local Fish and Wildlife department, as did his father who committed suicide when he was a kid. His mother has psychological problems and this all leads to an end that will make you squirm."

An end that will make you squirm! Doesn't that make you want to read the piece? You can order Encounters Magazine on Amazon if you'd like.

An excerpt from Tangent:

"This is a neat, vivid little tale of modern horror, twisting the screw of a modern tragedy until the main character can take no more. The images are vivid and evoke a cold and snowy winter in Vermont, where the seasonal lack of sun and the relentless cold have been known to drive men mad."

Not sure when I'll have another genre story in print. And if you have a hard time waiting on the Post Office I can always just e-mail you the story.