Little Stories

My mind started racing. We had never really planned to live together; we hadnt planned on living apart, either. After she moved in with me, it was easier to get more involved than it was to cause a scene and split up?Ça What we had certainly wasnt the spiritual love of Shakespeares sonnets, but it was certainly a comfort born of affection and habit?Ça The tales and vignettes found in Little Stories were first penned by author Jeff Roberts during his undergraduate years at the University of Iowa, where he tried to balance school with the full-time task of being a writer. Whether hes writing about the end of a love relationship or the pain in dealing with the loss of a beloved pet, Roberts quietly moving stories are packed with real emotion and rich detail.Winner-The Literary Arts Guild Hawthorne Citation Award Best Short Story (2501-7500 words in length) 2010: The Red and the Black. Hawthorne Citation Award AnnouncementFinalist in the Short Story-Fiction Category of the 2009 Next Generation Indie Book AwardsFinalist in the Fiction & Literature: Short Story Fiction, ?ÇÿFiction & Literature: Anthologies and ?ÇÿBest New Fiction-USA Book News 2009 AwardsInterviewInterviewInterviewInterviewInterviewCritical Reviews”The hallmark of Roberts collection is his strong writing. He captures scenes with expertise, and his characters come to life through the dialogue. The authors stories are moving, light-hearted when appropriate, and explicitly human. In its best moments the powerful stories quickly become page turners once you get into the text.” Writers Digest”…Roberts demonstrates a talent for tapping into the fault lines of human landscapes and the brittleness of relationships that are felled with a single word.”Kirkus Discoveries”Gritty, dark and existential best describe these vignettes of life. Roberts may well be the new voice of the modern man, lost in the city of despair and despondency. Noir best describes the mood in most of the stories. One cannot help but feel that no matter what opportunities present themselves, Roberts narrator will not escape smoke-filled apartments and dark city streets. Even stories told from a different point of view cannot break away from the dismal landscape of walk-ups and tenements?ÇaThere is every possibility that Roberts, with time and experience, will emerge as a new Kerouac or Sartre. Roberts is a perfect candidate to pursue the noir novel, a genre for which he seems, at least at this time, well suited.”Author of Northern Escape and Death in the Desert ; R.L. Coffield”The unassuming title of Jeff Roberts Little Stories belies the richness of the narratives within. These character-driven stories are haunting and believable. A master of writing tight (as one of my college English profs termed it), Roberts is capable of crafting psychological portraits of his characters in very few words?ÇaMy personal favorites, A Triptych and The Red and The Black, revolve around a failing marriage, a lonely old man, and the death of Roberts grandfather. The characters in these stories are not happy people, but Roberts reveals glimpses of beauty in their lives. Readers will feel compassion for the characters, and squirm occasionally as they recognize aspects of themselves.”-Adrienne Muncy of BookReview.com”Jeff Roberts is an author to watch. His first book, LITTLE STORIES, a compilation of works written while an undergraduate at University of Iowa, is such a rich literary experience for the reader that it seems we have a very important new voice rising in American literature. He has the ability to observe quiet events of everyday life and from them mold brief episodes of stories that seem so much a part of our own experiences that he startles us with his intuitive eye. Most of the emotions he creates or shares suggest a preoccupation with the tenuous threads that hold our lives together?ÇaThis is a winsome little book, one that holds more moments worth re-reading than most au