Tasty Morsels of Meat

Today has been the kind of day a wordsmith just loves. I attended the final events of the Emerging Writers' Festival at the Abbotsford Convent where the subject of discussion was how to be a healthy writer. The gist of it was that too much sitting and scotch was bad and a bit of yoga and jogging good... I couldn't disagree with that.

However, the most satisfying part was coming home to find that "Hoffman's Creeper and Other Disturbing Tales" had been reviewed on Amazon by American writer and fiction reviewer, Lindsey Beth Goddard. It's the first (but I trust not the last) review of my collection and to put it simply, it's a touching one.

 

Here it is:     

 

Definitely worth your while, June 2, 2013

This review is from: Hoffman's Creeper and Other Disturbing Tales (Paperback)

Cameron Trost understands the most important thing about writing, something that is often forgotten by rising authors as they struggle to perfect technique and style. The bottom line is: A story should make the reader want to keep reading. It should entice them. The ending should be a tasty morsel of meat dangled before a hungry predator who wants nothing more than to devour it. Why the intense metaphor, you ask? Because that is what stood out about Hoffman's Creeper and Other Disturbing Tales. The common thread between all these stories was not the characters, the settings, or even the genre... It was simply that they all possessed the same powerful ability to keep you turning the pages.

I could gripe if I wanted to. There were moments when the text wasn't as polished as it could be. Phrases like "all of a sudden" make an appearance too often. Sometimes there is "showing" instead of "telling". That is the only reason I gave this book four stars instead of five. I give an enthusiastic five stars to the ideas behind these engaging tales. Had the author written them five years into the future when he is bound to have an even firmer grasp on language and technique, I'm certain he'd be winning awards. Watch for this guy. Rarely do I read a collection of shorts and come away saying that I enjoyed every single story. Hoffman's Creeper is most definitely worth your while!