“All Happy Families” on the Emerging Writers Network
My story “All Happy Families,” from the anthology Chicago Noir (Akashic Books, 20005), got a very kind write-up on the Emerging Writers Network:
The story, which is actually a letter being written by an individual who has just knocked off a bank, to his former lover, possibly wife, who has left him due to an infidelity. The thing that caught my attention in Ervin’s writing was his absolute great sense of timing. The story, happening in the protagonist’s mind, more or less, as he’s writing it out, wanders to various topics, most frequently the Cubs (again, this is in Chicago Noir).
Where Ervin’s timing comes into play is in these forays into the Cubs, or the occasional tidbit of information such as the fact that the night Roger Clemens set the single game strikeout record, is also the night of the Chernobyl meltdown, never last too long. Just as I, as the reader, begin to wonder where the protagonist is going with these wanderings, he’s back on track to the present time. Never taking too long to get back, nor shortcutting the tangetial foray.