About the Book
M. M. De Voe’s odd, dark stories represent some of her best stories from 2005 to the present. De Voe juggles literary fiction with fables, science fiction with horror, pagan satire with the fantastical. But what shines through is intelligence and daring. The ability to write from the point of view of a variety of narrators—some worthy, even heroic, others flawed to the extreme. De Voe leaves you wondering, what is real and what is unreal? Who are the reliable narrators and who are inglorious charlatans?
Dive in to the haunted atmosphere of “Shutter,” as we linger on the outskirts of horror past or horror-to-be. “Tastemakers” satirizes a modern obsession with life as performance art. “The Mayor of Flashback” is pure literary fiction that intertwines memories of 9/11 in Manhattan, Russian escapades, and the sometimes elastic bonds of marriage. “Empty” takes us into a corporate Twilight Zone, while “Cake” is a frightening peek into a domestic world, where keeping an eye on the children may not necessarily be for their safety. Toward the end, “A Rose” delivers a knockout punch of shifting fables and narrators that shows in a single story what this author’s imagination can accomplish.
M. M. De Voe is an internationally published fictionista who once danced for the Pope and later ran away with a group of jugglers. Her writing has won over twenty awards. Columbia University Writing Fellow, MFA under Michael Cunningham and Matthew Sharpe. Founder of the literary nonprofit Pen Parentis, a process described in her memoir/productivity guidebook for writers who are parents, Book & Baby. Inaugural member of the Lithuanian Writers of the Diaspora Forum. She lives in Manhattan.
Praise for A Flash of Darkness
“M. M. De Voe’s collection, A Flash of Darkness, showcases deviously decadent morsels à la BlackMirror. Despair, longing, and regret linger in these unnerving, provocative stories.”
—Amy Grech, horror author with stories in Even in the Grave, Roi Fainéant Press & Tales from the Canyons of the Damned
“Witty dialogue and sharp prose… Wickedly fun and deeply cutting… These stories dance across the page, inviting us into worlds that are slightly off-kilter but familiar and as creepy as a funhouse mirror.”
—Tommy Dean, author of Hollows
“Milda De Voe gives you femme Kafka in A Flash of Darkness — but American style: ‘with noises and lights that simulate the beautiful side of violence.’ The stories cruise the scene with a chess-playing vicious granny and a Svetlana lounging against a furry elk, ‘calling to mind every vodka ad young American Jim had ever taped to a dorm room ceiling,’ One swain can’t hold his date’s hand ; though she has left it on the table: a treat between beers.’ De Voe’s especially brilliant on family life, and ends the book with a quirky story about a husband and what else? Horror.”
—Terese Svoboda, author of Dog on Fire
