TAMPA, FL. JUNE 25, 2020 — On July 14, Unsolicited Press will release Comets, a new book by Tampa writer and educator Joseph Allen Costa. Set in Ybor City, Comets is a collection of intertwining stories that examine the complexities of family and the ways that honor, tradition and responsibility create fissures in the human spirit. The book is based on the Ybor City cabinet shop his father owned for more than 60 years.
Author, Kevin Moffett writes of Comets, “Comets is a loving intergenerational look at Ybor City and the men who built it and were built by it. The collection is as insightful and satisfying and full of Lawrence’s “subtle interrelatedness” as any novel. It hums with buried circuitry.”
The twelve-story collection follows the life of Roberto, an angsty teen, who spends long days in his father’s cabinet shop staring out the garage door looking for a way out of his blue-collar struggle. He is incredibly perceptive to small details, but blind to the comic and sometimes tragic lives of his coworkers: Del, who stumbles into seven garbage bags of pot and sees it as financial freedom; Pernell, who has PTSD, a loveless marriage, and works 16-hour days believing that death can make him a hero; Crazy Jimmy, who speaks to his dead son and dreams of flying away with his homing pigeons; and Larry, the homeless jazz pianist, who fights demons, addictions, and racism.
Fueled by café con leche and Cuban sandwiches, Comets captures a microcosm of blue-collar problems with implications that go beyond racial, economic and cultural boundaries, illuminating a greater understanding of the human experiences we all share, while loss of childhood resonates as an overarching theme.
Joseph Allen Costa is a freelance writer and adjunct English professor in Tampa. He received his MFA in creative writing from the University of Tampa and his BA from the University of South Florida. Costa is the author of three novels, The Good, The Bad and The Goalie, Discovering Dynamite! Eye of the Storm, and one linked collection of short fiction, Comets. His short stories have appeared in BULL men’s fiction, Rabble Lit, the HCE Review, The Write Launch and in December Magazine as a finalist for the Curt Johnson Prose Awards.
For more information about Comets, or to speak with the writer and schedule an interview, contact Joseph Allen Costa at 813-731-7859 or josephcosta1@icloud.com. Unsolicited Press can be reached at (619) 354-8005 or managingeditor@unsolicitedpress.com.
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