When writer Bernard Schweizer was attempting to negotiate the publishing world and find a home for his debut novel, he soon found himself running headlong into rules and restrictions to which he had been unaware. Terms like “sensitivity reader,” “cultural appropriation,” “trigger scene,” and “own-voice protagonist.” Somewhat confused and annoyed, Schweizer considered this new world of gatekeeping to be ridiculously censorious and stifling to creativity. Writers were being expected to hold back on what they wanted to express because of the fear of their material causing offense to some as-yet-unknown reader. As Schweizer writes in the introduction to NOTHING SACRED (Outspoken Voices in Contemporary Fiction), “[i]t occurred to me that editors and agents had come to regard any unpublished literary effort not as a potential work of art but as a possible crime scene littered with evidence of violated decorum.”
In order to shake things up, Schweizer decided to start his own publishing company. The mission for his Heresy Press would be to offer a home to frustrated writers who were unafraid to push against the idea of having to second-guess their material in case it could be deemed troubling or problematic—to build a home for work that centers “literary quality above ideological conformity.” NOTHING SACRED (Outspoken Voices in Contemporary Fiction) is the first anthology from Heresy Press, and it’s loaded with quality short stories from writers who come from various backgrounds. Each has their own voice and style that is worth paying attention to, no matter how uncomfortable their words may make the reader feel. Readers who only read the publisher’s mission statement could be forgiven for thinking this might be a collection of war-on-woke tales, or deliberately provocative prose whose only aim is to kick a hornet’s nest. This is not the case at all. Though a number of the tales are indeed provocative and hard-hitting in their style and subject matter, each has an honesty at its core, a human truth that is recognizable. For the most part, the writing is more poetic than polemic.
Highlights include Michael R. Liska’s “The Child Star,” in which the slow fade into Hollywood obscurity has derailed a former celebrity. Its bitter skewering of the Hollywood machine echoes Brett Easton Ellis (American Psycho) at his most vicious. “Collateral Damage” by T. Nicole Eyer looks at the repercussions of a he said/she said sexual harassment case, where the destruction causes ripples far wider than its initial point of impact. Elsewhere there are tales touching on internet pornography and AI, both hot topics as troublesome as they are intriguing. The bulk of the collection comprises contemporary stories set in a modern world, but there are nods to sci-fi in places and some alternative history—most notably “Night of the Living Baseheads” by Tia Ja’nae, in which Malcolm X goes up against zombies.
NOTHING SACRED (Outspoken Voices in Contemporary Fiction) is a finely edited, well-designed anthology of contemporary fiction. A bright start for a bold, small press.
~Kent Lane for IndieReader