Cover Image for Shoebox Train Wreck (and blurbs)

This week, I got my first look at the cover for my collection (March 2012, Chizine Publications), Shoebox Train Wreck.  It's a collection of 16 stories that run the gamut from literary to noir to horror to fantasy/ scifi.  Most of them have been previously published, but a few are original to the collection.  Here's the cover:

Pretty sweet, eh?  Erik Mohr did the cover, and I'm not sure I've seen one of his that I didn't like.  He really captured the overall vibe of the collection with the cover.

And what about the collection?  Well, I've had some folks read it already who have been kind enough to offer blurbs.

"Outstanding! John Mantooth is an exciting new voice in dark fiction."

Douglas Clegg

"John Mantooth's short stories crackle with intelligence and violence.  He writes about desperate and simple lives gone not-so-simple, and those lives beat with a savvy and familiar broken heart.  His down-and-out characters are ugly and beautiful, and most importantly, compelling.  John is the real deal, and I think I hate him for it."  

Paul Tremblay, author of The Little Sleep.

"John Mantooth writes with enviable grace, vigor, ease. These stories pulsate with the inevitable pain of familial love, and loss, and the horrors of the human condition while remaining peopled with unforgettable characters who move through their lives toward moments of personal realization and doom that can only come from the Southern experience. Mantooth has here collected a group of stories that exceeds the sum of its parts. You won't regret picking up this collection and will think on these amazing and heartfelt stories long after you've closed the covers. Absolutely brilliant." - John Hornor Jacobs, author of Southern Gods, This Dark Earth, and The Twelve Fingered Boy

Hopefully, I'll have some more blurbs to post in the coming days...