Fiction
CD's novel, Afterheat, has been published by Empty City Press.
Afterheat is the term for extreme temperatures generated by nuclear explosions and nuclear reactors. It is a persistent heat that must be removed now, and a year from now. Dangerous and explosive, it is a fire that cannot be put out. Like memory.
The book can also be purchased at Gateway Regional Arts Center in Mt. Sterling, Kentucky.
Listen
CD’s story “Vigilantes of Vance,” from Blue Land, was one of The Drum literary magazine’s top 10 listener favorites.
CD’s story collection is also available from the Gateway Regional Arts Center.
“Exceptionally well-wrought stories… Wendell Berry might envy Collins’ achievement … altogether brilliant collection.”
— Ray Olson, Booklist
“Collins has the voice of a natural born storyteller. The stories in this collection have the compressed beauty of poetry and the richness of novels. Original and unforgettable ….”
— Stephen McCauley, author, The Object of My Affection
“In this gripping collection of stories it's as if we meet the descendants of the tenant farmers documented so famously by James Agee and Walker Evans. But while treating her people with dignity and empathy, CD Collins also claims her rights as an insider. Beautifully crafted, Blue Land is both heartbreaking and hilarious.”
— Alexandra
Marshall
author of five novels, including Gus in Bronze
and
The Court of Common Pleas
“C.D. Collins tunes her ear to the speech rhythms of her native Kentucky and her heart to the covert joys and enduring sorrows of her characters in Blue Land. ‘I get the picture. First despair then tunnels of light,’ says the burn-scarred narrator of ‘Jesus and the Sineaters,’ and these words evoke the power of this debut collection: Collins plumbs a fiery, unforgettable vein.”
— Jennifer
Barber
author of Rigging the Wind
“Blue Land is full of wild and unforgettable stories whose first lines promise everything and whose endings bring that promise home with grace and heart.”
— Pamela
Painter
author of the story collections
Getting to Know
the Weather and The
Long and Short of It