finding the lit: vol. 4

reviews

Oct 15, 2024

Welcome to finding the lit, where I share the fiction I’ve been reading and enjoying on Substack.

There’s been a larger gap between vol. 3 and vol. 4 due to my ongoing (and perhaps ill-guided) efforts to craft a novel on Substack. I’ve still been reading a lot of Substack (non-fiction always finds its way into the mix, too, somehow) but the writing about the good writing has taken a back seat to transcribing the novel into my Substack canon, unfortunately.

And as I mentioned on the previous finding the lit, I was working on an intro like the one you’re reading now:

I once again sat here and typed a much longer intro that I think should maybe be a non-fic post of its own, so there is currently a very rough first pass at an essay sitting in my drafts about fiction on Substack in general and what it really means to re-stack someone’s fiction and the power that has in growing our community.

One of the great lessons I’ve learned on Substack is knowing when something is a Post or a Note. I opted to make this one a Note, which went over well:

However, I’d like to note that many people seem to have misinterpreted my message. I was not advocating for DIRECT self-promotion, although I do support that. I also find self-promotion icky and hard to do, even though I do it.

My personal rules for self-promotion are:

limit promotion to three promos per post (don’t spam)
put some creative effort into the attempts

Your rules can be different and that’s fine. If you violate the above, I don’t hate you.

Anyways, what I was trying (and perhaps failing) to say in the Note was that you should RESTACK the RESTACKS of others about your posts. Someone says something nice about your work? LET US KNOW. My first rule about self-promotion doesn’t apply here. Spam restacks.

finding the lit is my attempt to contribute to that Substack Restack of Approval ecosystem I was trying to describe. Once again, there are plenty of other fiction aggregating ‘stacks out there, so if you’re suspicious of my opinions and their merit, I urge you to read my own work first. I try to focus on lesser known authors and literary fiction, with varying degrees of success.

Although, I’ve got a few genre things this week as promised last week. It’s tough to avoid in spooky season!

Without further ado — here’s vol. 4 —

Starting with good ole literary fiction, I am proud of finding

Faith Amenn

. This has to be a nom de plume, right? Well, according to them, it’s not! Remarkable name, either way. I made note of a couple of interesting grammar things in this one, but more than that I felt it espoused its minimal plot (a bad date) in a subtle and very modern way. And isn’t that a definition of good lit fic?

They’ve posted a few times since then, so be sure to check those out. One of the reasons I try to discover and feature fiction writers early in their journey is to encourage them to keep going.

October is rough (literarily speaking) for someone who has a weak constitution and is adverse to gore and anything too scary. But I made a commitment to try and be a little creeped out this autumn. This short story by my horror favorites,

EJ Trask

and

Sean Thomas McDonnell

, could do little else. The tension drew me in, but like all great thrillers, it was the deeper message that I outlined in my Note that kept me thinking once it was concluded.

All of my effusive praise in this Note is for real.

One of the greatest things about Substack is the sandbox it provides for great collaborators and ideas to come to fruition so easily. Hope to keep seeing more of this.

James Worth

has captivated me with his prose for some time now. Combine that with the themes of this story and it touched me in such a personal way that I was brought to tears. As I pointed out in my Note, the personifications in this story are what made it stick to me.

James has also been writing a novel, Mars in Retrograde, which I hope you’ll check out as he publishes it on Substack. The themes of the short story above have their own place in the upcoming novel I will be posting on Substack.

Let the memories run behind her eyes…

Jane Dougherty

hooked me on that line on in her story about a seer whose father bargained her away in exchange for her powers. The wider allegories in the piece are strong and I think what made it popular.

This was her first post apparently. It looks like Jane writes mostly fantasy and had a few posts since this I haven’t had the chance to check out, but I think she has a good chance of becoming the fantasy equivalent of EJ/Sean for me!

Nathan Slake

was one of the first people to engage with my stories here on Substack. It’s because of his kind words and encouragement that I’m here, and to pay forward that generosity to others is very much the driving spirit of the finding the lit series.

Nathan glides in and out of genres, but I think his most defining pieces and his influences fall within the ‘magical realism’ space, which is very literary adjacent.

As in this story, you’ll often find yourself blinking twice at some of the occurrences he contrives, in the best of possible ways.

Nathan isn’t exactly unknown in the literary community on here, but if you haven’t read him, please do, because you can tell just by the small segment I posted above that he’s a master.

That’s a wrap on vol. 4!

I’ll leave you with this:

And here’s a meta update from a while back about my plans for releasing a novel on Substack: