AMUSEMENTS
Meanwhile, here are a few website interviewers who were kind enough to give space to some thoughts that were on my mind at the time.
LitMinds
The Official Website of Peter Quinones
Pilcrow Lit Fest’s Five
Here’s also a rather depraved short story I wrote, published as a print-yerself “mini book” by the fine folks of featherproof books; a story titled “The Lovers of Vertigo.”
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*These three slim volumes, which would take blessedly few hours to read end to end, comprise the entirety of my body of published work. I’ve been invited by the owner of this segment of cyberspace (upon rental agreement) to list here critical response to my novels (critical response that has been carefully filtered of any negativity, in the name of promoting love and goodwill). I hope these books sound good to you, and if they don’t, I assure you that the next one will be more to your liking.
Devils in the Sugar Shop (Unbridled Books).
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
A Book Sense pick—American Booksellers Association
A Midwest Connections selection, Midwest Booksellers Association
"This novel of desire, longing, love, and enduring friendship is like an expensive box of chocolates: each silken morsel is luscious and approvingly decadent, and with every bite you don't necessarily know what you're going to get."
—Library Journal (Starred Review)
"Sugar Shop is essentially a comedy of errors; it’s all about who knows what when, and who else is trying to prevent them from sharing that information with so and so. Schaffert writes with precision and charm, and does Omaha some serious justice."
—Time Out Chicago
“…consistently surprising and vibrant…Schaffert walks an uneasy line between the amusingly sexy and the scabrous.”
—Publishers Weekly
"I made the mistake of reading Devils in the Sugar Shop with a bad case of whiplash. Timothy Schaffert had me in agony and loving every minute. What a poignant, hilarious, deliciously perverse twist on the old school of Southern charm. Men should not be allowed to write women this well.”
—Joni Rodgers, author of Bald in the Land of Big Hair
"...Devils in the Sugar Shop, stocked with stiff cocktails, drag queens, and sexcapades, is as delectably campy as its title suggests..."
– Out
"There is a lot to like about Timothy Schaffert’s novel, Devils in the Sugar Shop. Set in the American heartland and populated by a richly rendered cast of women, it reads like a short story and is a model of compact story-telling. Lives unfold and come undone over a few days of an Omaha winter and though the specifics would make soap writers envious, it’s all so tightly wrapped up in the end you might feel like slapping a bow on it... a rather sweet and quirky story that leaves readers wanting more."
—X Factor
"Sugar Shop is a hilarious and smart tale that begs for a sequel. And maybe even a Showtime series."
—IN Los Angeles Magazine
“… a hilarious yet poignant story… reminiscent of Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters…”
—Nougat
“Schaffert has a good eye for the myriad ways we allow ourselves not to see our complicity in the difficulties of relationships, whether sexual or parental, and he’s able to mine this with good humor and wit.”
—PopMatters
“These unique characters, none of them mean-spirited, come to terms with the challenges they face, putting aside their cherished fairytale endings in favor of the practical demands of maturity. With broad humor and a talent for the inanities of modern life, the author’s spirited protagonists face their failed dreams with equanimity, celebrating the absurdities of the human condition, an endless capacity for forgiveness and the willingness to endure for the sake of those we love.”
—curledup.com
The Singing and Dancing Daughters of God (Unbridled Books)
A Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers pick for spring 2006, and a Pulpwood Queens Official Book Club Selection.
“… any of Mr. Schaffert’s characters is a country song waiting to happen. … With one tip of the hat (through Hud) to Larry McMurtry, another that ought to go to Richard Russo, Mr. Schaffert creates a comically mopey little burg full of whimsical dreams.”
— Janet Maslin, New York Times
“The Singing and Dancing Daughters of God showcases Schaffert's uncanny talent for combining the mystical and the realistic. Set in modern-day Nebraska, it nonetheless has a dreamlike quality, reminiscent of both a religious conversion and an alcoholic stupor at the same time.”
— The Barnes and Noble review from Discover Great New Writers
“A totally whacked-out yarn about a divorced couple who still haven't quite split up, Schaffert's book is both ruthlessly funny and utterly compassionate about his characters' ridiculous aspirations -- the main character sings country songs in a Ramada Inn, dreaming of making it big -- and tragic limitations.”
— Meghan Daum, Salon.com
“Nebraskan’s second novel impresses with its strong, eccentric characters and author’s obvious warmth for them.”
— Kansas City Star, from the list of the Star’s 100 Noteworthy Books of 2005
“Laced with hope and an aching sweetness, [The Singing and Dancing Daughters of God] is as whimsical and smile-inducing as its title. Readers will fall for Hud, his family, and the one-off inhabitants of the quirky little town from page one owing to Schaffert's homey yet elegant and precise prose. The only reason to put the book down is to make it last. Highly recommended...”
— Library Journal (starred review)
“Schaffert has wit and a lovely writing style.”
— Entertainment Weekly
The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters (Unbridled Books)
Winner of the Nebraska Book Award
“… spirited, offbeat… [Schaffert] creates a colorful, not unduly precious world in which everything seems to mirror the sisters’ idiosyncrasies. … Like his characters, Mr. Schaffert grew up on a farm in Nebraska and seems to have cultivated a sense of exquisite boredom mixed with wry humor. His book is likably attuned to its geography. … he displays an outlook well suited to the paradoxical.”
— Janet Maslin, The New York Times
“…boondocks-Gothic … quietly tragic… Set among the failed farms and roadside ruins of small-town Nebraska, the novel is a series of vignettes in the lives of two sisters on the cusp of adulthood. … The sisters lose their childhood innocence only to acquire an adult version, in which growing up requires them to abandon all faith and conviction. As long as the sisters have each other, nothing else matters.”
— The Washington Post
“One has to admire an author who sets his first novel in rural Nebraska. That landscape was put on the literary map a century ago by Willa Cather … in The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters by Timothy Schaffert, a narrative both sweet and audacious unfolds, encroaching Cather’s pinnacle just a bit. … I wanted to know what becomes of these brave and funny sisters. The descriptive gifts of the author are great.”
— United Press International
“Timothy Schaffert writes of connections made, connections broken, connections longed for. His writing is gritty and down to earth, and yet, he writes poetic images of powerful and painful beauty that transcend any earth-bound tether. Two sisters, powerfully joined even when far apart, move through seemingly unfathomable events, trying to make sense of their world, as it was, is, and will be. Schaffert is an estimable guide through their haunted existence.”
— Glenn Raucher, Literary Arts Coordinator, The Writer’s Voice New York
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Pilcrow Lit Fest, Chicago, May 22-25.
The Nebraska Summer Writers’ Conference, June 14-20, 2008; University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
(downtown) omaha lit fest, Sept. 19-20, 2008.
High-res images suitable for print use
Timothy Schaffert. Photo by Rodney Rahl. Right click save as
Devils in the Sugar Shop [Unbridled Books] Right click save as
*Drop me a line via this virtual system of cogs and tubes and funnels. I hope your message reaches me.
Timothy at omahalitfest.com (but replace the “at” with the at sign conveniently located on the “2” key of most English-speaking typewriters. Though I’m quite in favor of the at sign enjoying its phenomenal renaissance—it was quite at risk of falling completely into the annals of antiquity, were it not for email—I’m told if I list my contact without the at sign, I’m able to avoid spam. But I have to say I’ve been enjoying the names that show up as the senders of spam—Ophelia Bradshaw; Melba Page; Xavier Jenkins; Tremendous Knipp; Myra Gross—and the subject lines: “harmoniously famished”; “a confess a remark”; “to a saturnine”; “but possum to gnaw.”
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