"Stranger
Souls are like cherry blossoms in various stages of
bloom. Some are fully formed others are promising buds, moody slices of life.
Most of these tales are noir in nature. Dark streets and bars, hustlers and
whiskey drinkers, Goths and vampires."
--Bill
King, Searchwarp.com
Stranger Souls is the fragmentation of a personality, mine. I am the
killer, the vampire, the drunk, the lover, the star. As are you
Stranger Souls is a pastiche of genre's, science
fiction, sword and sorcery are represented as well as traditional fiction to
create a whole. Each story is a crossroads, where the characters meet to try and
understand the strategies each employs to avoid the void, as it were, to fill
the hole we all feel within ourselves. The world presented may resemble a world
you think you're familiar with, but it isn't. The whole being created is a
replication of the known world to explore a truth of life. There are two
'cycles' within the stories. The first cycle takes place in neighborhood bar
from the perspective of its different customers. There's also the Hollywood
cycle, that attempts to study fame and the seeking of fame and how it affects
the people involved. Stranger Souls is a journey from the darker aspects of life
and ourselves, to the light, and trying to reconcile that darkness with
happiness.
Includes the stories:
The
Softest Metal
When The Butterfly Screamed
Are
You Safe?
Pursued
Jym's work has appeared in:
Sonar4ezine
Literal Translations
99 Burning
Raintiger.com
The Doors Collectors Magazine
Taproot Magazine
Silent But Deadly
Tight Magazine
Struggle Magazine
"Those already familiar with Jim’s
works know of his dynamic use of imagery and mastery of dialogue.
Those who don’t know of Jim’s writing need to get with the program.
Stranger Souls by Jim Cherry is a
collection of short stories that implores the reader that these
stories are his or her own. That in fact these words are not Jim’s
but somehow stolen through the ether and adopted as his own. Jim’s
use of imagery somehow invokes the reader to think that indeed these
weird scenes are their own, somehow told via a third disembodied
voice. That somehow this author has crept inside their mind and
plastered their experiences to text. But yet in every chapter lies
an unseen, unprovoked ending. Leaving one to think, “I thought it
was going this way, but I never expected that.” It’s this type of
writing that sets Jim’s work apart from others. Buy Jim’s book, the
interview and conversation with Jim Morrison alone makes it worth
the price."
--Michael
White, Doors4scorpywag The Online Doors Fanzine
