Amber Sparks is the author of May We Shed These Human Bodies, released by Curbside Splendor in 2012. The Atlantic called May We Shed These Human Bodies the Best Small Press Debut of 2012. Her work has been widely published in print and online and you can find it at ambernoellesparks.com or follow her on Twitter @ambernoelle.
Robert Kloss is the author of The Alligators of Abraham. His short fiction has been found in Crazyhorse, Gargoyle, Unsaid, and elsewhere. He is found online at robert-kloss.com.
Matt Kish is a self-taught artist & author of Moby-Dick
in Pictures: One Drawing for Every Page.
Is there no salvation in The Desert Places' world? Light barely
glimmers in all the time we track, from the universe's creation
until the extinction of the earth; even the best fruits of human
civilization are created as if some god would cease its slaughter
to revel in such a fantasy. [...] The book ends in annihilation,
but no note of triumph sounds for its protagonist. It's a pyrrhic
victory death gains for itself: in sating its eternal hunger, it
gets forever lonelier.
-- Daphne Sidor, Gaper's Block The collaborative guts of The Desert
Places confirms the massiveness of these authors' talents, and the
production of the book itself, with Matt Kish's brilliant
illustrations, makes this a horrific beauty you'll want to hold
against your skin.
-- J. A. Tyler, author of Colony Collapse The book gets inside your
head in the best possible way. It can shift your perspective. In
the same way that reading Blindness by Jos� Saramago makes you
re-appreciate the gift of sight, The Desert Places can make even
the smallest act of kindness seem extraordinary. I can think of no
better reason to pick up a copy than that.
-- Matt Weinkam, Passages North Hip readers already know that much
of the best new fiction comes from indie presses. It shouldn't be a
surprise that innovative small presses, such as Chicago's Curbside
Splendor, also have some of the best designs. This pocket-size,
illustrated book is a read you'll remember. --BuzzFeed The Desert
Places by Amber Sparks and Robert Kloss, with its illustrations by
Matt Kish, is one of the most intriguing, best looking, and overall
best releases from an indie press that I've read this year. In this
case, Curbside Splendor should be loaded up with heaps of praise
(but I'm sure they'd settle for just taking your money if you
wanted to give it to them) for putting out this little book that
takes its cues from the Bible, amplifies the Good Book's violence
and darkness, and then smashes it together with modern times.
-- Jason Diamond, Literary Editor, Flavorwire Amber Sparks and
Robert Kloss carve a shifting visage of evil in a gore of vignettes
that span ancient history and the star-searching future [...] Evil
tells his own tale in ten numbered chapters, slipping through time
and mass crimes against humanity [and articulating] the absorption
of human culture from myth to philosophy, the gobbling
indiscrimination of something worse than a hellhound at his
dinner.
-- Anna Wilson, New Delta Review The prose is lyrically bestial,
crimes of harmonic diction by Sparks and Kloss channeled into
elegiac carnage [...] Both authors deftly handle religion, myth,
and philosophy, juggling them, then ripping apart the old layers,
constructing new cities on the corpses of dead ones.
-- The Blog of Tieryas Sparks's story collection swirls with a Tim
Burton-like whimsy [...] Modern fables in which epiphanies replace
moral lessons and tales unfold with Grimm-like wickedness.
-- Publishers Weekly, on May We Shed These Human Bodies by Amber
Sparks Kloss peers inside, like some kind of mad historian, and
records all the best and the worst of us with a passion and
sometimes prophetic fervor.
-- The McNeese Review, on The Alligators of Abraham by Robert Kloss
Don't mistake this gorgeous and wholly original book for a
blow-by-blow comic-book-style retelling of Moby-Dick...Let it sit
on your coffee table as testament to what all of us human beings
can do if we stick with it.
-- Oprah.com, on Moby-Dick in Pictures by Matt Kish
Is there no salvation in The Desert Places' world? Light barely
glimmers in all the time we track, from the universe's creation
until the extinction of the earth; even the best fruits of human
civilization are created as if some god would cease its slaughter
to revel in such a fantasy. [...] The book ends in annihilation,
but no note of triumph sounds for its protagonist. It's a pyrrhic
victory death gains for itself: in sating its eternal hunger, it
gets forever lonelier.
-- Daphne Sidor, Gaper's Block The collaborative guts of The Desert
Places confirms the massiveness of these authors' talents, and the
production of the book itself, with Matt Kish's brilliant
illustrations, makes this a horrific beauty you'll want to hold
against your skin.
-- J. A. Tyler, author of Colony Collapse The book gets inside your
head in the best possible way. It can shift your perspective. In
the same way that reading Blindness by Jos� Saramago makes you
re-appreciate the gift of sight, The Desert Places can make even
the smallest act of kindness seem extraordinary. I can think of no
better reason to pick up a copy than that.
-- Matt Weinkam, Passages North Hip readers already know that much
of the best new fiction comes from indie presses. It shouldn't be a
surprise that innovative small presses, such as Chicago's Curbside
Splendor, also have some of the best designs. This pocket-size,
illustrated book is a read you'll remember. --BuzzFeed The Desert
Places by Amber Sparks and Robert Kloss, with its illustrations by
Matt Kish, is one of the most intriguing, best looking, and overall
best releases from an indie press that I've read this year. In this
case, Curbside Splendor should be loaded up with heaps of praise
(but I'm sure they'd settle for just taking your money if you
wanted to give it to them) for putting out this little book that
takes its cues from the Bible, amplifies the Good Book's violence
and darkness, and then smashes it together with modern times.
-- Jason Diamond, Literary Editor, Flavorwire Amber Sparks and
Robert Kloss carve a shifting visage of evil in a gore of vignettes
that span ancient history and the star-searching future [...] Evil
tells his own tale in ten numbered chapters, slipping through time
and mass crimes against humanity [and articulating] the absorption
of human culture from myth to philosophy, the gobbling
indiscrimination of something worse than a hellhound at his
dinner.
-- Anna Wilson, New Delta Review The prose is lyrically bestial,
crimes of harmonic diction by Sparks and Kloss channeled into
elegiac carnage [...] Both authors deftly handle religion, myth,
and philosophy, juggling them, then ripping apart the old layers,
constructing new cities on the corpses of dead ones.
-- The Blog of Tieryas Sparks's story collection swirls with a Tim
Burton-like whimsy [...] Modern fables in which epiphanies replace
moral lessons and tales unfold with Grimm-like wickedness.
-- Publishers Weekly, on May We Shed These Human Bodies by Amber
Sparks Kloss peers inside, like some kind of mad historian, and
records all the best and the worst of us with a passion and
sometimes prophetic fervor.
-- The McNeese Review, on The Alligators of Abraham by Robert Kloss
Don't mistake this gorgeous and wholly original book for a
blow-by-blow comic-book-style retelling of Moby-Dick...Let it sit
on your coffee table as testament to what all of us human beings
can do if we stick with it.
-- Oprah.com, on Moby-Dick in Pictures by Matt Kish
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