Maine Sunday Telegram included a review of Foley Craddock on Oct 3…
A positive review on the whole, but Ms. Merker does begin by calling the choice of title “unfortunate” in the opening sentance. Lesson One: if you’re going to write a positive review, do not open with a criticism. So we’ll skip that bit and since it was relatively long we’ll just hit the highlights:
Readers are the beneficiaries of the ardent editorial hours of Sven Davisson, a nephew of Ruth Moore and the literary executive [sic] of the estate of both women, and Gary Lawless and his Blackberry Press.
Ruth Moore’s knack of capturing Maine coastcal life and linguistics is as relevant today as it was in the early 20th century when she began writing and publishing her stories, poetry and novels. The New York Times wrote, “It is doubtful that any American writer has done a better job of communicating a people, their talk, their thoughts, their geography, and their way of life.” [snip]
Moore’s stories, as you read them, feel like you are sitting around a kitchen table, close to a wood stove, just having conversation, so true is her ear catching, conveying ordinary talk with all its saltiness.
Eleanor Mayo’s stories are quite different–no dialect here, but a sure sense of a woman’s voice, fiction that includes social commentary with a keen sense of transition. [snip]
Davisson notes in his introduction that “both writers had the gift of capturing the universal in the local.” He quotes a New York Times review of one of Moore’s novels: “To deal in human universals, making the individual everybody yes keeping him a sacred self, is a gift most writers lack.” (John Gould, April 1951) [snip]
Such are the writings of Moore and Mayo that their work defies being boxed in by the decades in which they wrote. There is the charm of their humor, the nostalgia of another era, but always the steadying factor of Maine people who do not seem to change….
The new issue of Ashé Journal is now available at 
Just finished Tom Dolby’s Trouble Boy (Kensington, 2004) which it seems was the gay novel of the season–if one discounts the novelization of Latter Days. Judging from the reviews at Amazon, everyone loved this book. I get the feel though it’s in the same way that every old queen loves the cute young twink at the bar–rationalizing it to his personality or intelligence. I just don’t get this book. It wasn’t bad per se and, I do think, it served the summer novel niche well. But I am still not able to make the simple leap to generate interest or energy for these characters and their (yawn) pursuit of happiness. It’s the closest to a gay Bright Lights Big City that I’ve come across… But then I didn’t get the appeal of that book either. Fluff. Not fluffer. Do we really need twink fiction? And if we do then I will leave you with one question…. Why!?