Ambushing the Void
Author: James McAdams
Publisher: Frayed Edge Press
ISBN: 9781642510232 (pbk.)
Physical description: 5.5x8.5; 150 p.
"James McAdam’s debut collection rivets and unravels, moving beyond 'genre' and into the liminal zones between language and consciousness: the taut here/there friction of becoming. In these stories, performance deconstructs—each mediated piece of everyday life held up for readers to reconfigure. It’s not enough to say Ambushing the Void is a page-turner, more than the expectation of nominal (and normative) progression, McAdam’s prose will make you stop: abrupt, arresting, relentless."
Chris Campanioni, author of A and B and Also Nothing and the Internet is for real
Ambushing the Void explores the margins of 21st century America, presenting characters seeking meaning in a world overrun by surveillance technologies, environmental decay, and drug epidemics. In “Red Tide,” a sober home uses predictive analytics to quantify recovery. In “Multiverses,” ghosts haunt the living via social media. “Such Strange Suns" presents a blind girl who misconstrues Amazon Alexa for God, while “Theory of Mind” reveals the world of professional Sock Puppets writing fake product reviews. These unforgettable, insightful stories are sympathetic and idiosyncratic reflections on contemporary life—virtual, real, and imagined.
James McAdams grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia and currently resides in St. Peters-burg, FL, where he teaches English at the University of South Florida, Ringling College of Art+Design, and Keep St. Pete Lit. He holds a Ph.D. in English from Lehigh University. His stories, poems, and essays have appeared in over fifty venues, including Amazon/Day One, Bending Genres, Superstition Review, and B.O.A.T.T. Press. He is Flash Fiction editor of Barren Magazine and is working on a novel-in-flash about the opioid epidemic.