Far Away, As Close

Over the last few years or so we’ve been getting regular communications from New York here at CAP Towers, and specifically from one Seamus Scanlon, each new mail announcing, if a little diffidently, that said Seamus Scanlon has just won another short story competition.
  So it really shouldn’t come as any great surprise to learn that the Cairn Press will be publishing a collection of Seamus Scanlon’s short stories. To wit:

We are happy to announce the forthcoming publication of Seamus Scanlon’s remarkable short story collection, AS CLOSE AS YOU’LL EVER BE. Due for release in July, 2012, Scanlon’s collection is what can only be described as literary noir. Blood and memory fuel the elegant prosody that meanders between the spartan and the poetic, and the violence of Ireland is something that cannot be left behind.

  Intriguing, no? I met with Seamus Scanlon in September of last year, when a rabble of Irish crime writers toddled over to New York for the launch of DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS, and were so wonderfully received at Ireland House in NYU. At the time, if memory serves, Seamus was in something of a dilemma; keep writing the short stories he was so obviously good at, but which don’t necessarily sell very well as collections; or abandon the short stories for a novel, a form in which he wasn’t entirely confident of his ability. I’m delighted to see that Cairn Press had the foresight to follow through on Seamus’s natural ability as a short story writer, and not try to shoehorn him into something he isn’t. That said, he recently distinguished himself as a playwright too …
  Anyway, an ARC of AS CLOSE AS YOU’LL EVER BE is on its way to CAP Towers as you read, and as always, I’ll keep you posted. Meanwhile, clickety-click here for the Kindle-friendly taster, ‘My Beautifully Brash Beastly Belfast’ …