Dear Robert,
I don’t remember you but I know where I met you. You had a table at Continuum 15 in 2015. I know this because I put a bookmark in with saying ‘Continuum 15 2015’. And while I don’t remember you as such, I do remember discussing my love for anthologies. It was the perfect place to discuss anthologies. I bought your book on trust, hoping you’d understood what I was looking for in a short story. All of the books I bought that weekend were added to my TBR Pile, I’m eventually reading them. I picked your book last week; they say you should never judge a book by its cover, instead I judged it by its thickness. I wanted something of a medium size and the spine of your book fitted the bill.
Some of your stories made me stop and think. I was absolutely sure I knew how they’d finish, it turned out, in the last couple of sentences I had absolutely no idea what your brain was doing. One of them, the twist was in the last sentence, and what a doozy of a twist. Some of them had me in tears, so moving.
I have mixed feelings about ‘The Doppleganger Gambit’. While I love how you’ve put it together, and I love the idea that humans might have worked on reducing the population numbers, I’m not sure I like the how. But it was nicely put together.
‘The Lost Chapter’ had me. I really enjoyed the science in it. And do you know what’s really hard? Writing a public letter to you about your own book. It’s incredibly hard to tell you the parts I really liked without giving spoilers to my readers. Suffice to say I will be buying more books by you.
The last thing before I give my readers a link to your book. Where did you find your cover illustrator? I spent some time just looking at it. It looks fairly straightforward, until my eye adjusts and I realise there are spheres as well. I can now move in and out to seeing it straight but to also see the spheres. As with some of your stories my brain is going skew whiff trying to make sense of it. And here’s the link for any readers who want to buy this book, so much science.
I’m sorry I don’t remember you. Next time I see your table somewhere I will remember because of this book. I will come over and plague you with excitement about having read and enjoyed your book.
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