Author: Scott Nicholson
Publisher: Parkway Publishers
Binding: Paperback
Publication Date: 2000
Thanks You For The Flowers is a short anthology of 13 short stories. Most have a flavor of horror or darkness to them, so they were a little bit beyond my tastes. Or so I thought.
I was pleasantly surprised when I started reading some of the great words Nicholson uses. And while there is a feel for the authors getting his feet wet, he does a great job.
Of the 13 stories, The Vampire Shortstop was my favorite. How can you beat a story with a kid showing up for a Little League game as a vampire? Skin down right gave me the creeps, while Dead Air felt like Nicholson abridged a great novel into a few pages. In The Heart Of November was an awesome story for young adults and comes in as tied for my second favorite. Thirst and The Boy Who Saw Fire were very similar but the later had much better use of descriptive words. Very near to reading J. K. Rowling in some aspects, and thus my other second favorite. The Three Dollar Corpse tale was another nail biter and showed some great research. And after reading this (just like reading Truman Capote in college), I was reminded that truth is stranger than fiction.
Now for a bit of back-story on Scott and how I got my hands on an autographed copy of this book. While living in North Carolina (Shelby to be precise) between 1999 and 2001, I worked for a major bookstore in Gastonia. I won’t name the store, but let’s just say they had a million books. Anyway, we had the honor of having some great local talent come in for some signings. One of them being Scott. While I feel ashamed at not remembering him very well (I hate getting older), I still agree with the inscription he left with me.
“To Neil: A man who knows it’s easier to write ‘em than sell ‘em.”
All in all, a great short read, especially if you like the darker side of reading. Thanks for the great quote and the great reading Scott. Your words are as beautiful as flowers. No matter how scary they are.
