This spring we've made it our mission (even more than usual) to celebrate new releases in the wake of cancelled launch parties, book festivals, and reading series. With 49th Shelf Launchpad, we're holding virtual launch parties here on our platform complete with witty banter, great insight, and short and snappy readings to give you a taste of the books on offer. You can request these books from your local library, get them as e-books or audio books, order them from your local indie bookseller if they're delivering, buy them direct from the publisher or from online retailers.
Today we're launching Hunger Moon, by Traci Skuce, of which Julie Paul writes, "Read these stories and be transported back to the age before internet, to tree planting camps and lakeside holidays, to relentless heat and longing in both near and distant corners of the world, as characters wrestle with transitions and loss and come to a deeper understanding of what it is to be human."
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The Elevator Pitch. Tell us about your book in a sentence.
A collection of 13 short stories that explore spiritual longing in a secular world.
Describe your ideal reader.
Has read (and tried) Shakti Gawain’s Creative Visualization, listened to the Grease soundtrack as a kid, isn’t afraid of snakes, and loves a good road trip.
What authors/books is your work in conversation with:
Alice Munro, Lisa Moore, Lorrie Moore, Rebecca Lee, Jack Driscoll, Ben Fountain, Claire Davis.
What is something interesting you learned about your book/yourself/your subject during the process of creating and publishing your book?
That accessing the voice of the story is key. And once you find it, it must permeate every sentence.
What do you love about the short story form?
Great stories are like great poems. When they end, there’s an echo that lives on in the reader. As a writer, I love puzzling over the elements of my stories until that resonance rises out of them.
An important part of any book launch are the thank you’s. Go ahead, and acknowledge someone whose support has been integral to this project.
My husband, Jim, has been supportive throughout the writing of these stories, trusting my process, often more than I do.
What are you reading right now or next?
Prior to the pandemic, I won a copy of Rebecca Fisseha’s novel Daughters of Silence from the library. It’s next in my queue.
Traci Skuce's Hunger Moon is a collection of stories that echo with the yearning to be replenished, to be made full. Here are characters at cusp-points in their lives, attempting to shift their trajectories: to cease wrapping up their heart's desire in a pink bubble by launching it into the universe. Some turn to ESP, some to a belief in ghosts, some to the future caught inside a glass bottle, each character taking the hackneyed adage "Follow Your Bliss" too literally to blissfully follow their own storyline.
Emotional charged, evocative, and lush, Hunger Moon's thirteen short stories each set out on profound quests to satisfy an emotional hunger.
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