Belated Mini-Tour and Blog Tour Recap; More Notices for In the Devil's Territory

Good News: In the Devil's Territory is for sale, half-off, at the Dzanc website.

Despite promising prompt mini-tour and blog tour recaps, I have posted nothing for a month. You might think this means I am lazy, but I would like to point out that I recently completed a fifty-page story comprised entirely of letters sent from Haiti to Florida and Virginia in the 1980's. You might think that this sounds boring, but I would like to point out that the letters bring news of (1) an illicit relationship between a 41-year-old missionary and the 18-year-old visitor who becomes his bride; (2) the fall of the Baby Doc regime; (3) instructions for raising razor wire above the walls of your gated compound; and (4) a bullet in an envelope.

Mini-tour recap: (1) Gosh, it was fun. In Kentucky, I got to kick it (picture here, from the Lexington Herald-Leader) with Jim Tomlinson, author of Things Kept, Things Left Behind, and Chekhov's true heir! High school students drove from faraway Cynthiana with their school librarian to hear us read! The Jessamine County library director took me on a tour of Centre College, and, in the Cracker Barrel, showed me the uniforms worn by their football team the evening they beat Harvard! (2) In North Carolina, I watched Barack Obama win the election on the hotel television! I watched Oprah Winfrey make a handkerchief of a stranger! I watched John McCain give a gracious concession speech! I visited the yellow-leafed campus of Wake Forest University! I read with Denzil Strickland, author of Swimmers in the Sea! The Winston-Salem Borders sold out of In the Devil's Territory! I partied late into the night with Sheryl Monks and Kevin Morgan Watson of Press53! At midnight, we ate Krispy Kremes!

Blog Tour Recap:

1. Sarah Weinman asked me to weigh in on the relationship between literature and crime fiction for her Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind blog, and much debate followed in the comments section, and on other blogs.

2. At Largehearted Boy, I gushed about David Bazan and Pedro the Lion.

3. At Laura Benedict's Notes from the Handbasket, I posted about ten books I'd like my children to read before they're grown.

4. Syntax of Things asked me to type a little about "The San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl Party," recently named one of the 100 Distinguished Sports Stories of 2007 by the editors of Best American Sports Writing 2008.

More Recent Notices in Newspapers, Magazines, and Blogs:

1. This review of Best American Mystery Stories in the London Metro suggests my story "A Day Meant to Do Less" is up to "tricks," while mystery blog The Little Professor prefers to say it has an "interesting narrative structure."

2. The Palm Beach Post, my hometown newspaper, said "A Love Story" was a "typically strange vignette from the mean streets of Palm Beach County," and "A Day Meant to Do Less" was "a stunning story."

3. Toledo Blade quotes me as saying: "The darkest things define us," which I'm pretty sure is a misparaphrase of a quote from a William Gay story I didn't quite succeed in properly remembering.

4. Lit blogger Katrina Denza writes: "I read a lot of short story collections and once in a while I come across one that does more than dazzle on the technical level, does more than introduce me to foreign lands, does more than show me a different side of humanity. Once in a while I come across a collection, such as this one, Kyle Minor’s “In the Devil’s Territory,” that does all those things and at the same time, reaches in and holds my heart all the way through, sometimes giving it a pinch or a jab, and other times stretching it, stretching, until I fear the very flesh of it might rip, then massaging it gently back to …to…well to a state of calm, but most definitely changed."

5. Jason Skipper at Third Coast Magazine writes: "Throughout this striking collection, we are reminded that everyone harbors a secret life, in one way or another. The stories live beyond the page, make you look around, in classrooms and grocery stores and churches, in living rooms and across kitchen tables. They make you wonder what people need to confess but cannot—and if they did, could we bear to
hear it?"