Reviews
A FIELD GUIDE TO MURDER & FLY FISHING
“These stories bristle with energy and immediacy. The writing is spare and meticulous and packs a hefty emotional punch. I am not exaggerating when I say this collection kept me up at nights. I just couldn’t stop reading.” — Addison Independent
“I found myself consuming [these] thirteen tightly wound tales with addictive delight.” — Fiction Writers Review
“This collection of stories by Tim Weed is grounded in the specificity of its settings, all of which contain hazards of one kind or another: a mountain lake, a jungle peak, an Amazonian river, a prairie giving way to construction, a seashore suddenly overcome by the tide, a city stuck in the past, a snowy slope (or two). But it is also full of mystery, and much of the mystery is cosmic. Its stories are about transgression and karma, and a natural order that seems to render its characters uncertain of their own reality. It is written so deftly, with such a light touch, that suspense builds in each story like a gathering storm.” — Midwest Book Review
“Tim Weed proves himself a skilled creator of a sense of place . . . each story deposits one definitively into a geography, of mind and map.” — The Boston Globe
“From the mountain lakes of the Colorado Rockies to the cobbled streets of Spain, this fascinating collection of short stories never disappoints. A Field Guide to Murder and Fly Fishing is a collection you’ll be happy to get lost in.” — Ploughshares
“Each story is a jewel, cracking open what matters most: love, family, and our big beautiful planet.” — Ann Hood, author of The Book That Matters Most
“If you seek a guide—on coming of age, lost love, temptations both resisted and surrendered to, and the need to both engage with and respect the planet—Weed’s book is a good choice. It won’t tell you which laws to obey and which to break—but it will show you, with simultaneous beauty and savagery, what will happen either way.” — Colorado Review
“Tim Weed’s A Field Guide to Murder & Fly Fishing is a fiction collection of the first order. I found myself parceling out the stories to make them last. These are stories that will live a long time both on the page and in your heart.” — Joseph Monninger, author of The World as We Know It.
“Weed’s stories . . . have their roots in the relationships between men and boys, and between men and nature, and they are colored by his long experience as a travel and adventure writer . . . His characters are fishermen, mountaineers, and teenagers all on a quest for self-discovery. From the title page to the last page, this is a book of gems.” — Big Sky Journal
“Provocative and memorable, this collection strikes all the right chords.” — Main Street Rag
“Weed’s short stories draw us away from the blue light of device screens. Under the blue skies and dark waters of A Field Guide to Murder & Fly Fishing, readers can feel pain, empathy, and purpose bubbling out from the sharp-detailed mental images.” — Pleiades
“Like other talented writers in this genre, Weed is not hampered by the brevity of the medium . . . His denouements are unpredictable and sometimes even merely hinted at, leaving the reader to fall back on his or her own imagination as to how the tale ends, which sounds frustrating but is actually quite a tantalizing device.” — Trout Fisherman(UK)
“Weed begins with the assumption that his readers are ready and able to see that the world is not as it seems. Things happen we cannot anticipate, and men change in surprising ways. Humans and their sometimes mysterious natures are all it takes for Weed to spin fiction of the first order.” — The Brattleboro Reformer
“[In “Tower Eight”] Weed delves into adolescent friendship and the idea of being an outsider with great care for his characters. The tale begins and ends with one character musing on the reality of the other. The surreal ploy is subtle enough to bring the story into the realm of good literature, making the reader question perceptions of reality. Weed’s prose is weightless, and weighty, all at once.” — Seven Days
“In his first short story collection, novelist Tim Weed shows his stunningly impressive range—transporting readers from the heights of the Andes and the depths of the Amazon to the backstreets of Rome and Granada. Many of Weed’s stories have a hint of the mysterious, even the supernatural, but they are all grounded in sharply-rendered material worlds so fresh one feels one might step directly into the literary photographs he has created and stroll around for a while. A top-notch debut, not to be missed.” — Jacob Appel, author of Einstein’s Beach House
“Gearing up or slowing down, these short stories are a great way to leap into summer reading.” — Petoskey News-Review
“Two young boys learn about death and mercy on a camping trip, a fishing guide contemplates and crosses a dark line during an excursion with a rich, entitled client and a teenager following the Grateful Dead for a summer tour plunges into a frightening drug addled spiral. These are just some of the characters searching for truth and meaning in life and death in the new short story collection by Vermont author Tim Weed.” — Vermont Public Radio
“It’s the book Hemingway and Salinger and Rick Bass would write if they traveled the world together and then got stranded in a canoe. But better!” — Eleanor Henderson, author of Ten Thousand Saints
“A Field Guide to Murder & Fly Fishing is more than a collection of adventure stories. It is a significant and moving collection of ideas, snapshots, and visions that leave a lasting impression. Never predictable, this collection is a must for travelers, adventure seekers, and anyone who cares to examine the depth of [Weed’s] varied and flawed characters.” — We Are the Curriculum
“The Money Pill” feels like essential literature—for its self-awareness, its bold impeachment of globalism, and its sultry, sticky atmosphere of arousal and shame.” — Necessary Fiction
‘“As readers, we have been given passports into Tim Weed’s fictional worlds. We cannot alter the fates of those we have joined but, if we give them a chance, they could alter ours.” — Small Press Book Review
“Immersive, visceral, and chock full of sensory detail, A Field Guide to Murder & Fly Fishing is a winner from first story to last.” — Mark Stevens, Don’t Need a Diagram.
“Immersive . . . This riveting portrayal of early Colonial New England shines a speculative but compelling light on the time and place.” — Kirkus Reviews. Read the full review here.
“Tim Weed’s Will Poole’s Island is a doorway to an earlier world when the United States existed as a borderless tract of land whose dimensions could hardly be imagined. This is a superb novel, written with truth and daring at its core.” — Joseph Monninger, National Endowment for the Arts Fellow and author of The World as We Know It
“Will Poole’s Island does several things and does them well. It is a sweet coming-of-age story, a riveting adventure tale, an insightful analysis of a difficult time in American history and an eloquent plea for understanding among all peoples.” — The Recorder, Greenfield, Mass. Read the full review here.
“It’s been so long since I felt like a little girl in love with books again. Treasure Island, Island of the Blue Dolphins, The Yearling, lazing around on a spot of sunshine totally engrossed in this other, historical world, that’s how I feel about Will Poole’s Island.” — Suzanne Kingsbury, author of The Summer Fletcher Greel Loved Me
“An interesting read exploring how the pursuit of personal destiny requires leaving behind the protection of one’s homeland. In parallel, it also explores the borderlands between historical fiction and fantasy.” — Historical Novel Society. Read the full review here.
“This novel has everything a teen could hope for in a historical fiction book, including elements of magic, a journey across the sea and enough conflict and suspense to keep the pages turning. Moreover, the novel provides excellent, although indirect, commentary on current events.” — Homeschooling for Teens
“If you like history, and especially if you are fascinated, as I am, by not only Colonial times but by seafaring on the one hand and Native American culture on the other, you will adore this book.” — Carolyn Quinn, Splendiferous Everything. Read the full review here.
“Will Poole put me in mind of other boys in other places who ran away into the great wide world, searching for their place in it, also casting their lots with a social or cultural Other: Huck Finn, Jim Hawkins, and, most of all, Kim. Their stories had equally strong senses of place, with a similar innocence; Kipling’s Kim combined those with a spiritual element. And like Kim, Will Poole’s Island ends with a satisfying, ethereal quality.” — Patrick Joyce, author and blogger.
“Will Poole’s Island . . . is a perfect fit for the Thanksgiving season.” Peter Biello, Vermont Public Radio. Listen to the full interview here.
“Will Poole’s journey is an exciting glimpse back in time.” — Susan Warmack, Native American Advancement Foundation
“Will Poole’s Island is more than a coming of age story . . . the reader is left with a longing to find that place, that moment when everything is right and the everything is possible. It is a longing we all search for spiritually, geographically, and emotionally. This book proves that oppression, obstacles, fate, and the world we live in should not stop us from seeking that place. If we can’t find it right now, walk in the shoes of Will Poole and rediscover that lost island in your life. It will inspire you.” — Ron Samul, author and blogger. Read the full review here.
“Will Poole’s Island takes you and throws you head first into the 17th century. So evocative in every sense of the word, it’s as if the scenes surround you as you read – the sights, sounds, and smells waft around you as you turn the pages . . . It’s both an adventure story and a coming of age story but it’s the friendship between Will and Squamiset which will linger with me for a long time to come.” — The Book Trail.
“Why not get a cup of tea or coffee and settle in a comfortable chair for a good read? Let Will show you the east coast in the 1600’s. You’ll enjoy the author’s writing style and his storytelling.” — Jo Ann Hakola, Journey of a Bookseller. Read the full review here.
“The characters, the Indian villages, the English plantation, and the sea vessels are all as real as the room I am sitting in. Though this is a work of fiction, it serves as a true escape to a time early in southern New England’s history, much of which has been fragmented and lost due to a lack of surviving records and the unfortunate destruction of the Native American culture during the Great Migration era.” — D T Griffith, author and blogger. Read the full review here.
“Filled with page-turners that good adventures have always delivered, here’s an unusual coming-of-age story that’s far more than an escape from prejudicial vengeance, blending with a resonating appreciation of free spirit in its many forms. Enjoy this ripping good tale of life on the run, adventures’ energies released, and lives found and re-invented.” — Whitney Scott, TallGrass Writers Guild
SHORT FICTION
“The third story to grace the pages of Experienced is Tim Weed’s “Steal Your Face.” It’s a short story that would make Mark Twain proud, as if Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn found themselves on tour with Jerry and the boys and culminated their eventful summers on a head full of acid in Colorado at the Red Rocks amphitheater in Boulder.” —Roland Goity, Vagabondage Press
“‘Steal Your Face’ is one of my favorite fictional narratives in the book as it captures the strangeness of phyiscal/emotional/mental reality in the confusing days of a teen who spends the summer of 1983 following the Grateful Dead. The understated, almost deadpan tone of the narrator made me want to read more.” —Ed Wagemann, Generation A.D.D.
“Tim Weed’s Steal Your Face recounts the misadventures of a young man as he follows the Grateful Dead, during which time he must contend with drug fueled crowds, exploding VW buses, and his own fuzzy expectations about romantic relationships . . . There’s a very real and touching nostalgia seeping through these pages, a steady drip that induces bittersweet twinges in the stomach. It’s being old enough to witness the evolution, to recognize landmarks representing a different era.” —Mel Bosworth, The Small Press Book Review
“Other pieces acknowledge the harsh, sometimes violent effects of the terrain. A casual snowmobile excursion grows tense with a frightening change of the weather; a friend’s plan for revenge, despite the narrator’s best intentions, goes horribly wrong; a school-sanctioned ski trip ends in tragedy for two misfit students. The strength of the collection is found in moments of unexpected beauty and the resolve, despite the difficulties, to continue the climb.” —Booklist review of The Mountain anthology.
More short fiction reviews at . . .
The Nervous Breakdown * Book Pleasures * Stereo Subversion
NONFICTION
“More fabulous writing about complex cities with Tim Weed writing about Havana, at The Morning News. Weed writes beautifully about the colliding meanings witnessed everyday in a Havana opulent, rotting, decaying, seductive . . .” —Dan Hill, City of Sound
“For this reader, Tight Lines’ most compelling essays express the powerful allure of water. In “Jetties,” Tim Weed (a past contributor to Northern Woodlands) reflects on wading along the Atlantic’s rocky, seething shoreline for stripers amid crashing waves . . . Such vivid imagery abounds in Tight Lines.” —Ray Chapin, Northern Woodlands
Tim Weed 
Good readinng this post