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Fans of dark fiction in the short story format will find this work especially intriguing. Each of the Parker’s spooky stories is populated by a variety of unpleasant characters, such as devils, demons, a witch, and other evil, frightening creatures. The author is talented at creating thought-provoking word pictures in addition to truly scathing dialogue. The author also makes salient responses a byword. Parker has organized this lengthy anthology of tales into short groups by part numbers, flower colors, and names. Artistic creativity and attention to detail are abundantly evident throughout this book. The author prefers the personal label of non-binary (i.e. they/them/their/theirs), but questions the readers’ thoughts as to whether the stories are coding each of the main characters as a woman, a man, transgender, non-binary, or even human.
The opinions of others clearly hold significance, which is a trait common to most writers. In fact, Parker admits that this work was previously published to gain the title of author and was originally published under a group license that gave the curious free access to the writing. Parker hoped this might make it a cult classic among those readers. This current definitive version entertains as well as offers a plethora of helpful advice on developing one’s creativity. Numerous footnotes provide insights into the starting points for each creative idea. These include segment fragments, a drawing, auto-corrections or challenges, and prompts from former writing classes. Explaining how all those chosen catchy titles would be interesting but might go back years. Suffice it to say that what Parker has produced provides not only entertaining tales but also glimpses into the craft behind them.