On my flight from DC to Dallas, yesterday, i read Pete Vere's Schism and Other Stories a collection of Pete Vere's short stories, available at Francisidore Press for a dollar.

For a dollar, I thought it wasn't a bad deal. My wife and I read the stories together as we passed our little one back and forth until she fell asleep.

Schism and Other Stories is a collection of five short stories, all by Pete Vere. Mr. Vere, in the introduction, lets us know afore hand his enduring interest in the horror genre and his history as a re-membered schismatic Catholic. These two nuggets of information are important because they color the work in important ways. Some of the stories are as long as four to five pages and there is one that is a page long.

Peter Vere I think is making an important contribution to the Catholic horror and existential novel genre, which is, no doubt a developing genre. The story ideas were fresh and creative, displaying imagination and promise. There were some shortcomings. In some of the stories, especially the very short ones, Mr. Vere begins in the story teller mode and ends as a journalist reporting a story. The story telling is not always consistent, so that many characters are not sufficiently developed or the dialog seems to move too quickly and not build up gradually as it often does in everyday life. Without a gradual build up through dialog or without sufficient character development, it becomes difficult to empathize with the characters' drama. It is also hard to identify with the characters in the stories because they are obviously tied very closely to Mr. Vere's personal history, which is somewhat uncommon.

The two stories I enjoyed the most were "The Priest and the Raven," which I would give a high creep factor and "Schism," which was the most compelling of the stories. "Canons in the Night" is a story which I would classify in the genre of existential absurdity. The story invites introspection and reflects on some aspects of the absurdity of life, as I see it. It has the potential of a wonderful romantic story, but the earlier reflections apply here, the dialog seemed too rushed and the characters could have received more development. Nonetheless, there is a moving story there and you get the point. "Avenue of the Damned" was the shortest and one that I do not think attains the level of the others. It has a very interesting sketch and potential for a compelling story, but what we get is something of a journal report that is insufficiently developed. I think Mr. Vere can re-do this story and flesh it out much more, it would be interesting to get into the mind of the "damned" and understand her motives and her view of where she ends up. Finally, there is "The Forest and the Trees." I think this had the highest creep factor. The end leaves you scratching your head, but that may be the point, to make you read it over and more closely. Nonetheless, the story freaked me out, which is what you want horror to do.

The criticisms notwithstanding, you absolutely cannot go wrong for a dollar. Mr. Vere's writing style is very descriptive and some of his paragraph's are simply masterful. I happen to think that writing these stories was very cathartic for Mr. Vere, there is a very real quality about them. When I was done reading, I was entertained and I learned something. Not bad at all for a dollar.