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All the Rivers Flow into the Sea by Khanh HaAll the Rivers Flow into the Sea and Other Stories by Khanh Ha

Publisher:  Eastover Press LLC (June 7, 2022)
Category: Short Stories, Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Vietnam
Tour dates: July 25-August 31, 2022
ISBN:  978-1958094020
Available in Print and ebook, 208 pages

 All the Rivers Flow into the Sea

Description All the Rivers Flow into the Sea by Khanh Ha


From Vietnam to America, this story collection, jewel-like, evocative, and layered, brings to readers a unique sense of love and passion alongside tragedy and darker themes of peril. The titular story features a love affair between an unlikely duo pushing against barely surmountable cultural barriers. In “The Yin-Yang Market,” magical realism and the beauty of innocence abounds in deep dark places, teeming with life and danger. “A Mute Girl’s Yarn” tells a magical coming-of-age story like sketches in a child’s fairy book.

Bringing together the damned, the unfit, the brave who succumb to the call of fate, All the Rivers Flow Into the Sea is a great journey where redemption and human goodness arise out of violence and beauty to become part of an essential mercy.

All the Rivers Flow into the Sea was selected as a winner of the 2021 EastOver Prize for Fiction and has received much advanced praise.

My Thoughts All the Rivers Flow into the Sea by Khanh Ha


Khanh Ha has released a new collection of short stories.  When Ha puts out a new novel or short story collection, it goes to the top of my list.  He has never disappointed and so is the case with this short story collection, ‘All Rivers Flow Into the Sea’!

Not all authors can write a good short story, it is a true art form an Ha has it.  I don’t give out 5-star reviews like candy however, every novel and short story collection of his had earned 5 stars, including this collection.

The stories are all about the people of Vietnam or the American soldiers who fought there.  They are all heart felt stories.  These are not stories that one ploughs through fast, they are to savor and contemplate.  I like to read one, put the book down and think. Many of these stories left me with my heart pounding with anxiety, like  the story about ‘The Woman-Child’. Cam live in a poor fishing village with her father.  Besides cooking for him, she has many other responsibilities like repairing his fishing nets every night. This is pain staking work but also becomes dangerous when a neighborhood drunk man appears and tries to rape her.  We learn this is not the first time. 

She has a new friend, a young Vietnamese-American man who is there working on his thesis about the environmental impact of shrimp farming.  This is a big problem in the country, much like Salmon farming is in North America.  He witnesses the attempted rape and asks Cam if she has told her father about it.  Her father basically shrugs it off and tells her to fight him off. Eventually the young man has to go back to the United States and hates leaving her.

I was delighted to hear the name Rossi again, that popped up in one of the stories about a U.S. man, Mr. Rossi, working as a diplomat towards the beginning of the Vietnam war. He was taking Vietnamese language lessons so he could better do his job.  Ha wrote an entire novel about Mrs. Rossi searching for the remains of her son, whom was an American solder fighting in the war.

I don’t want to giveaway to much from each story, you will have to read this collection for yourself. Be prepared for some sleepless nights contemplating some of these stories.  Also have some tissues available.  I am not trying to scare you off, ‘All Rivers Flow Into the Sea’ is a must read for literary fans!

Ha’s writing is mesmerizing and captivating. I completely forget my surroundings when I read his poetic prose.  I am transported to the places and people of whom he writes.  It is the closest thing to time travel one can experience. Highly recommended!

About Khanh HaAll the Rivers Flow into the Sea by Khanh Ha


Multi award winning author, Khanh Ha is the author of Flesh, The Demon Who Peddled Longing, and Mrs. Rossi’s Dream. He is a seven-time Pushcart nominee, finalist for the Mary McCarthy Prize, Many Voices Project, Prairie Schooner Book Prize, and The University of New Orleans Press Lab Prize. He is the recipient of the Sand Hills Prize for Best Fiction, the Robert Watson Literary Prize in Fiction, The Orison Anthology Award for Fiction, The James Knudsen Prize for Fiction, The C&R Press Fiction Prize, and The EastOver Fiction Prize.

Mrs. Rossi’s Dream was named Best New Book by Booklist and a 2019 Foreword Reviews INDIES Silver Winner and Bronze Winner. All the Rivers Flow into the Sea & Other Stories has already won the EastOver Fiction Prize.

Website: http://www.authorkhanhha.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KhanhHa69784776
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorkhanhha

Giveaway All the Rivers Flow into the Sea by Khanh Ha


This giveaway is for 3 print copies and is open to the U.S. only. This giveaway ends on Aug 27, 2022 midnight, pacific time.  Entries accepted via Rafflecopter only.

a Rafflecopter giveaway


Buy All the Rivers Flow into the Sea by Khanh Ha


Amazon
Barnes&Noble
IndieBound

Follow All the Rivers Flow into the Sea by Khanh Ha


Teddy Rose Book Reviews Plus July 25 Kickoff & Guest Post

Gud Reader GoodReads July 26 Review

Lu Ann Rockin’ Book Reviews July 29 Review

Katy Amazon August 1 Review

Sal Bound 4 Escape August 4 Review

Denise D. Amazon August 10 Review

Laura Celticlady’s Reviews August 12 Review & Excerpt

Gracie Goodreads August 15 Review

Bee Book Pleasures August 16 Review

DT Chantel Amazon August 17 Review

Jas International Book Reviews August 18 Review

Serena Savvy Verse & Wit August 18 Guest Post

Linda Goodreads August 19 Review

Suzie M. My Tangled Skeins Book Reviews August 22 Review & Interview

Serena Savvy Verse & Wit August 23 Review

Betty Goodreads August 24 Review

Teddy Rose Book Reviews Plus August 25 Review

Nancy Reading avidly August 26 Review

All the Rivers Flow into the Sea by Khanh Ha


All the Rivers Flow into the Sea by Khanh HaAll the Rivers Flow into the Sea and Other Stories by Khanh Ha

Publisher:  Eastover Press LLC (June 7, 2022)
Category: Short Stories, Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Vietnam
Tour dates: July 25-August 31, 2022
ISBN:  978-1958094020
Available in Print and ebook, 208 pages

 All the Rivers Flow into the Sea

Description All the Rivers Flow into the Sea by Khanh Ha


From Vietnam to America, this story collection, jewel-like, evocative, and layered, brings to readers a unique sense of love and passion alongside tragedy and darker themes of peril. The titular story features a love affair between an unlikely duo pushing against barely surmountable cultural barriers. In “The Yin-Yang Market,” magical realism and the beauty of innocence abounds in deep dark places, teeming with life and danger. “A Mute Girl’s Yarn” tells a magical coming-of-age story like sketches in a child’s fairy book.

Bringing together the damned, the unfit, the brave who succumb to the call of fate, All the Rivers Flow Into the Sea is a great journey where redemption and human goodness arise out of violence and beauty to become part of an essential mercy.

All the Rivers Flow into the Sea was selected as a winner of the 2021 EastOver Prize for Fiction and has received much advanced praise.

Praise All the Rivers Flow into the Sea by Khanh Ha


“These stories draw close connections between disparate cultures, Vietnam’s changing environments, and the American and Vietnamese people who engage on a different playing field than the war which brought them together in the past.”– Midwest Book Review

“All the Rivers Flow into the Sea is an extraordinary collection. The stories are fully rendered and finely nuanced, populated with vibrant characters shaped by war or haunted by tragedy. Their voices are as vivid as the landscapes the author conjured, at once exotic yet intimately familiar, all bound by threads of love and compassion. This is one of those rare collections I would keep and read again.”—Andrew X. Pham, winner of Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize and finalist of the The National Book Critics Circle Awards.

“Lush with natural detail and alive with crisp dialogue, in an unforgettable journey where cultures clash in affairs of the heart.”—John Balaban, recipient of The Academy of American Poets’ Lamont Prizeand William Carlos Williams Award

“Khanh Ha’s writing brings to the page love and passion mixed with the darkness of harrowing tragedy. The author plays with the emotions of the reader as he integrates lighter themes in times of darkness and, at times, infuses darkness into a seemingly lighter-themed story. I recommend this book for its character-driven stories and poetic lilt. All the Rivers Flow Into The Sea & Other Stories is a beautiful anthology of stories of love, passion, and kindness infused with the tragedy of war.”—Readers’ Favorite (5-star)

“Ha writes with an intimacy not often seen. The small bits of these characters’ lives become filled with meaning and significance. His stories and sentences flow together slowly and then seamlessly become something powerful. The language he chooses isn’t so much flowery as precise and sharply detailed, reminiscent of Joyce’s epiphany or the satori moment from Japanese literature. Each story is its own being, yet the whole works together to become something larger, universal.”­­-The US Review of Books

Guest Post by Khanh Ha

“Short Story Writing”

When writing short stories, you work in a confined space; so, everything should be concise and economical, much like journalism writing. In short stories you deal with a small cast of characters and a small number of scenes. If you start out as a short-story writer then later on try your hand at writing novel, you will carry with you those virtues that you’ve acquired previously—being concise and economical. However, what you will learn in writing a novel is patience. Do not look forward to finishing it in three days. You will also learn to be the manager of a much larger cast of characters, to get to know them, and make them relatable to your readers.

If you start out as a novelist then later on try to write short stories, you must discard your bad habits you’ve acquired from writing a novel. You can’t ramble. You can’t repeat yourself. You can’t be redundant. (These are the vices from writing a novel!) There is a great adjustment you must make moving from novel to short story; but in the end you’ll come out a better writer. I must say a true writer is one who can write novels and short stories, and is equally good at both.

Short stories share the same principle of structure like novels, i.e., there is a beginning, a middle, and an ending. However, many short stories do not seem to honor that—they come to an end (at least in their authors’ minds) which often raises the reader’s brow: “Where’s the beef?” The end of a short story must have a climax, something that leaves the reader think for some time afterward. A strong ending is similar to “a punch in the gut.”

To be economical in writing short story is to honor the maxim “less is more.” To put it differently, you must exert self-restraint in the pathos so your readers have room to participate, to see, to feel what you intend for them. In fact, the art of writing is the aura of self-control.

Yet what makes a short story interesting? It’s always the characters. With literary fiction, you deal with characters more than with plots. You deal with spontaneity and the dynamics of characterization which shapes the story line. You don’t shoehorn your characters into a predetermined plot. Depth of characterization is the heart of literary writing in addition to the mood, the atmosphere, the ambience, and the prose.

Last, you must show and do not tell. Try this sentence: “When I look up, I saw a girl walking down the stairs in her long white dress. She was so beautiful she took my breath away.” Can you visualize how beautiful she is? If adjectives can do the work for a writer, he won’t have to do much. Just throw in the adjectives. Just tell and don’t show. Writers who take pains to bring their characters alive avoid using adjectives to convince readers. So, let’s try again with a different scene: “I took one look at the kitchen sink after the party and recoiled in disgust.” In fact, the kitchen sink will look disgusting to readers if you can describe it in such a way that they feel such disgust for themselves.

The truth is you should show your story to readers through scenes. It will give your writing the dynamic of visual and sense. However, there is a warning here about scene vs narrative. You don’t want to convert all your narratives into scenes. Isn’t it a paradox? What’s the reason? You must vary the rhythm of your writing. Scene after scene without a break will be exhausting. You need to change it up to slow things down, to give readers a chance to catch their breath.

So, what makes a short story interesting? First, the characters. They don’t have to be sympathetic, but they must be engaging, interesting, or wicked in a perverted way like Lester Ballard in Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God.

Next, the scenes. Each scene must have drama. Or it must set up drama. But more importantly, you have to be excited about the scenes you write. If you don’t feel excited about them, do you expect your readers to get excited when they read them?

Scenes that don’t have much drama are filled with trivialities, flat dialogue, which neither show much about characterization nor advance the plot. Consequently, they don’t sustain the story line, thus failing to hold interest.

Last, the setting. Setting is about the mood, the ambience, the atmosphere of a locale. Wherever the story is to occur, you must know about its locale, including its fauna and flora. Though the setting is an important aspect in any story, the mood that fosters the setting is even more important. It must be atmospheric. The setting is like a restaurant that you pick for a date. But the ambiance that brings the mood must be there.

What about your intended audience? When you conceive a story, you don’t imagine it for an audience. That will come much later when the readers arrive in your make-believe world. It may be a paper moon sailing over a cardboard sea, but if it allows a reader to enter another place and time, to him it is believable.

(c) Khanh Ha, 2022

About Khanh HaAll the Rivers Flow into the Sea by Khanh Ha


Multi award winning author, Khanh Ha is the author of Flesh, The Demon Who Peddled Longing, and Mrs. Rossi’s Dream. He is a seven-time Pushcart nominee, finalist for the Mary McCarthy Prize, Many Voices Project, Prairie Schooner Book Prize, and The University of New Orleans Press Lab Prize. He is the recipient of the Sand Hills Prize for Best Fiction, the Robert Watson Literary Prize in Fiction, The Orison Anthology Award for Fiction, The James Knudsen Prize for Fiction, The C&R Press Fiction Prize, and The EastOver Fiction Prize.

Mrs. Rossi’s Dream was named Best New Book by Booklist and a 2019 Foreword Reviews INDIES Silver Winner and Bronze Winner. All the Rivers Flow into the Sea & Other Stories has already won the EastOver Fiction Prize.

Website: http://www.authorkhanhha.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KhanhHa69784776
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorkhanhha

Giveaway All the Rivers Flow into the Sea by Khanh Ha


This giveaway is for 3 print copies and is open to the U.S. only. This giveaway ends on Aug 27, 2022 midnight, pacific time.  Entries accepted via Rafflecopter only.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Buy All the Rivers Flow into the Sea by Khanh Ha


Amazon
Barnes&Noble
IndieBound

Follow All the Rivers Flow into the Sea by Khanh Ha


Teddy Rose Book Reviews Plus July 25 Kickoff & Guest Post

Gud Reader GoodReads July 26 Review

Lu Ann Rockin’ Book Reviews July 29 Review & Guest Post

Katy Amazon August 1 Review

Sal Bound 4 Escape August 4 Review

Denise D. Amazon August 10 Review

Laura Celticlady’s Reviews August 12 Review & Excerpt

Gracie Goodreads August 15 Review

Bee Book Pleasures August 16 Review

DT Chantel Amazon August 17 Review

Jas International Book Reviews August 18 Review

Linda Goodreads August 19 Review

Suzie M. My Tangled Skeins Book Reviews August 22 Review & Interview

Serena Savvy Verse & Wit August 23 Review

Betty Goodreads August 24 Review

Teddy Rose Book Reviews Plus August 25 Review

Nancy Reading avidly August 26 Review

All the Rivers Flow into the Sea by Khanh Ha