SCAR TISSUE: Seven Stories of Love and Wounds by Marcus Sakey

Truly one of the wonderful things about digital self-publishing is that an author can collect and publish those short stories of his that would otherwise be unavailable to the reader. For example: Marcus Sakey's thrillers are well-known and widely praised, but until now his short stories have not garnered as much attention as they should. What a pity, because this collection reveals, perhaps even better than his novels, what a gifted and skilled writer Sakey is. There is an emotional core, a human heart beating at the center of each of these stories, a rhythm that resonates with the reader. Sakey hollows out a space in your soul for his characters where the reader can encompass the pain, the loss, and the lost.

In The Days When You Were Anything Else, meet a father who'll give his estranged daughter anything she asks for, even when she doesn't know or perhaps care about the repercussions.

As Breathing is a story about a hit man who gives up that life for the woman he loves, and goes into the heist business. But some things just come as natural as breathing.

Gravity and Need is one of the most extraordinary short stories I've read in a long while. It's about a couple who've always been close, closer than other couples. And equals in the relationship. Neither gives or demands more than the other. Then one of them has an accident, ends up in a wheelchair for life. And suddenly the relationship, and their lives, are out of balance. This story has a marvelous kind of serene tension, and an ending worthy of Serling or Hitchcock.

In the brilliant, Macavity-nominated The Desert Here and the Desert Far Away, Sakey uses the unusual second person POV to depict the rage, the isolation and detachment of a naive young soldier newly returned from one desert war to find himself drafted into another one at home.
 
Other stories in this collection include No One and Cobalt. Sakey also includes a work of micro-flash fiction, The Time Before the Last.  Bonus materials include excerpts from each of Sakey's first four novels as well as a sneek peak at his next book, untitled for now, due in June, 2011.

Kindle users can order SCAR TISSUE here, everyone else can get it at Smashwords.

And if you would like to check out one of Marcus Sakey's excellent stories free of charge, and you really should, click here, and use the code YB98Q at checkout.