Heart Songs Vol 1: Book Review

Are you an omnivore?  I'm not asking if you eat meat, veggies, fruit and grains, but if you are the kind of reader who loves to read EVERYTHING.  I am. 

I love poetry. Edna St. Vincent Millay is a long term favorite.  

I love science fiction/fantasy.  Sanderson, Weber, Bujold

I love well done Christian fiction. Patrick Carr

I love non-fiction- We have been back on a Metaxes kick at our house. 

I love short stories- Especially the ones for kids. I enjoyed the Dahl, Kipling and Dickens short fiction pieces we've done for homeschool at least as much the kids did.

I love to read.

And so when I heard through the social media grapevine that Susan Elliot was putting together an anthology of women from her blog www.churchofchristwomenauthors.com, I was all in.  Because if I contributed, she'd send me the book.  See what kind of person I am? I was as interested in getting a copy of the book as being in it.  Some kind of writer right?

Seriously, I was pumped that she included an essay from the blog and equally excited to get the copies in the mail.  

Heart Songs Vol. 1 (Link) is a fun read.  There are short works of fiction, fantasy, and romance as well as poetry and religious non-fiction.  Like any anthology not all of the pieces were to my taste, but I found lots to enjoy and just as importantly lots of new authors to explore further.  

One of my favorite stories was a science fiction short story, "The Viper's Pit."  Like every good short story it had a bit of mystery, characters that popped to life and a twist at the end. LIke every good piece of science fiction it had aliens, strange cultures and humans being human no matter their setting.   I hopped right over to Lynn Nodima's author page to see what else she had written.  I just downloaded another short story of her's that I'll be enjoying with my afternoon snack! 

Susan Elliot, who not only organized and published the anthology but contributed to it, agreed to write a blog post that I will be posting on Monday about the process.  The publishing was only one of the challenges she faced.  (Just to give you a hint her newest book is "Yes, I Shot Him: A Stroke Caregiver's Journey & Guide".)

As a reader I am always looking for new authors.  And it's often a shot in the dark.  Even if I like the story, I am not willing to read books that fill my mind with trash.  So a chance to get a bunch of different authors all of which write clean wholesome work together to find out what I might enjoy is a one to be embraced.  If you are looking for the same thing, head over to Amazon and grab a copy of Heart Songs (you can get it as an ebook or a print copy).