Crossroads

by Diamaya Dawn (Editor in Chief), A. Maguire (Managing Editor), Patrick Link (Fiction Editor)

Life is full of decisions we make, taking us along one road or down another.

There are moments in life, unexpected or tragic or magical, where unpredicted happiness can turn us from a planned path, where events we hoped for are abandoned on the way, and dreams are left forgotten by the roadside. And sometimes, the choices we make bring pain or joy in ways utterly unforeseen, for ourselves and for those we love.

Twenty-five extraordinary writers write about the pivotal decisions that influenced a life or lives, as well as the consequences of those decisions, and give us a short story collection to be remembered.


Lit Up Press Anthologies #1

150 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 10, 2019

About the author

Writer, poet and the editor-in-chief of the Lit Up Press. A native Athenian, she can usually be found at the shores of warm coasts, dancing under the moonlight and the rain, or otherwise plotting fictional worlds, pouring her heart into poetry, and editing manuscripts of extraordinary writers.
Part normal, part Greek.

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

As its title suggests, this collection focusses on diverging paths, and those which might be followed in given circumstances. The range of choices explored by the authors is engagingly wide, stemming from worlds on their way out, ones which are all too present (like Brian Kerg's look at recent wars) and worlds that haven't arrived yet. The most striking aspect of the best stories is perhaps less the pivot (which, after all, we guess is on its way) and more the security of the narrative voice and command of structure. Erica Rex offers us a nuanced view of conflicting dependencies in "Using", while Ryan Bell's Meera struggles with one specific and difficult choice in a world dangling more obvious choices of genetic selection in front of its inhabitants. Claudia Clarke's "Echorus" is both elegiac and haunting. Most convincing of all, for me, is A. Maguire's "All The Shades of Blue", registering with deceptive mastery the stable foundations of daily life, and the changes imposed of a second that will lead it inexorably into a strained and different continuity. But there are many other voices here, options aplenty, and readers will discover many more joys in this anthology.

[Matt Tomic · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderfully varied collection by some great writers.