An Aberrant Mind by Ken MacGregor

I wasn't entirely sure what I was going to find when I opened the pages to this book.  I've read Ken MacGregor a bit in the past... but the cover for this one had me wondering how far he would go. 

I know Ken, he's a very nice man, with wonderful children.  A kind man.  A thoughtful man.  And after reading this, I can now also say that he is a man who has an imagination that goes to places - almost without effort - that I wish I could go more often.  It's odd to say that, considering that scary stuff and the like have never really been my thing.  But this... this is different.

In each of these short stories, Ken takes your brain to some strange and beyond interesting places.

When you get the book, and you really should, here are a few you'll not want to read too slowly...

Tom's Personal Demons has got to be my favorite of the lot.  If you've ever been a kid, or known a child, who has been afraid of the dark, this story will resonate with you.  Here's the thing I liked best about it: I felt emotionally connected to these people and the darkness.  It sounds strange - even stranger after you read the story - but I felt like I completely understood what poor Tom was experiencing, but more, the way Carla was accepting, and the way she helped Stephanie to connect to her father.  It's difficult to explain without spoilers, but suffice to say that the gentleness of parenting here, except when it wasn't, caught me in an uncomfortably familiar place.  That, and I've never experienced the dark as a living entity before... and now, I feel it a little differently.

Bad Squirrel was especially fun for me, because, growing up with a father who did all he can to defeat them, and me cheering for the squirrels every time, this one made me happy in a place I'm not necessarily proud of acknowledging.

In Karen Gets Her Man, I was again reminded why storytellers and those who indulge in hours of vicarious living through the written word are the luckiest people on the planet.  Storytellers and their readers get to do, be, and say things that would get most humans sent to solitary confinement forever.  Fiction is our get out of jail free card, and we know it.  This is the story every woman secretly plans for, at the same time she plans her wedding... but most never talk about it.  

I waited far too long to read this short story collection by the hugely talented Ken MacGregor.  You shouldn't!

---