"First Blush: North State Writers 2017 Anthology"

North State Writers (northstatewriters.com), a chartered member of the California Writers Club, has published "First Blush: North State Writers 2017 Anthology" ($13.95 in paperback from CreateSpace; also for Amazon Kindle). Twenty writers contributed thirty-eight short pieces and poems, with the cover by master illustrator Steve Ferchaud.

The book begins with T.B. O'Neill's "The Court Martial of Darren Sweet," an unsettling tale of the Vietnam War. "Now, understand," the narrator says, "I'm completely out of my comfort zone here." Part of the delight of the anthology is watching writers stretch, exploring new themes or coming at familiar ones from different directions. Cathy Chase offers a Hmong narrator in "The Flight To The Mekong River"; Joan Goodreau characterizes her son's diagnosis of autism as a tornado in "The Eye Of The Storm"; in "The Parade," William Douglas writes, "Late Sunday night, Billy and Allen stole an elephant."

In "Stroke Of A Pen" N.J. Hanson types a twisted tale of horror, and Mary Jensen offers a vehicular confession; Thatcher C. Nalley explores mental illness in "Pray Tell," and Steven J. Thompson poetizes in "White Or Red, Darling?" Michael Richards writes of home, and Vietnam.

Gail Stone has a racing tale featuring a 1970 split bumper orange Super Sport Camaro; her mother, Carol J. Gray, remembers "The Glass Roof" and her Rose Marie Reid bathing suit; Andrea Lavoy Wagner, in the poem "Fists," observes "Violence creates victims/ but it also creates conquerors." Linda Sue Forrister has an "October Epiphany," Margie Yee Webb writes of "Cat Mulan," N.L. Brumbaugh explores the King Tut Exhibit; and Eric Miller tells us "Wife Trumps Husband At Christmas" (if you want a new weed-eater, read this first).

Cara Gubbins writes of manatees in "The Release," Dan Irving offers a non-fiction biography of Yukon explorer James Foster Scott; Kathleen T. Hiatt tells the tale of a horrible car accident in "Sibling Rivalry"; Ken Young provides the first chapter of the second book in his "King's Frog Hunter" high fantasy trilogy.

"In the gloom of the Dudoon Bog," Young writes, "a lone rider weaved carefully between stagnant ponds, searching for a safe trail." In this anthology, the trails are rarely safe.