Tales From an Odd Mind by author Nom D. Plume
Thank you to the pseudo-named author for providing me with a copy of their book in exchange for this honest review.
Tales From an Odd Mind is a collection of short stories with a few poems thrown in for good measure. The short story collection is divided into a few different sections to contain slightly different themes and styles. The stories are all quite short, typically only a few pages, with the poems never spanning past 2.
My favorite section is the first. It’s all short stories that are read as first chapters to yet unfinished novels. I love this idea for a short story collection. Each story is designed to grab your attention and leave you wanting more. It’s a creative exercise that I’m sure many writers use as a way of brainstorming but few actually use to publish. It could even be used as a sort of audience focus test to see which ideas would sell better.
There were a handful of these first chapters that I would definitely continue to read as a full book. I want to know what happens! The chapter entitlted “Origin and Dandelion” was especially intirguing to me. It has a mysterious character and style that I would really like to be able to follow up on. It got me hooked just like a first chapter should!
As with almost all short story collections there are some that are weaker than others but none of the stories in this collection were ever bad. Some were more to my tastes than others but none were written poorly. A key to reading short story collections is to appreciate the variety and attempt to broaden what you would normally consider to be your taste in literature.
The stories mostly have either a mystery or sci fi bend to them but many genres are represented. There are bound to be a couple that stand out to any reader. Ones that resonate with you may be different than the ones that resonate with me.
Tales From an Odd Mind delights further by having nice title pages with pictures for each story. It helps keep each of the short stories from blending together if you decide to read more than one at a time.
It is a quick read, I finished it over a couple of coffee breaks. But it was a nice pause in between some of my heavier reading. I strongly recommend this strategy to any short story books, I want to take time to reflect on each story. Reading them back to back makes them all to blended.
If you like short stories of any genre I can recommend this collection and I would definitely read another collection from this pseudo-named author Nom D. Plume.
4/5 mysteries ❓❓❓❓
For another great self published story collection check out Strange Stories
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