Spinetingler Magazine reviews Click-Clack from Warmed and Bound: “This vignette is a song masquerading as short story. It achieves this with a brilliance as flawless as any modern masterpiece of music.”

“Click-Clack” is a favorite of my stories. It has a rhythm and a focus that I am particularly proud of. So, it makes me all warm and bound to read Matthew C. Funk‘s review of the story at Spinetinger Magazine. Spinetingler, for whatever beautiful reason, has decided to review a handful of stories from the recent Warmed and Bound anthology, in which my story, along with 37 others, appear for your reading pleasure.

Rather than blather on, I’ll just post a few of Mr. Funk’s words:

Click-Clack by Caleb J. Ross is attuned to these mortal rhythms, and makes them sing seamlessly in a narrative that is as much a ballad as it is lyrical prose. This vignette is a song masquerading as short story. It achieves this with a brilliance as flawless as any modern masterpiece of music.

Ross crafts wondrously illustrated personalities. Jack and Ernie are vivid as both symbols in a fable and people in a beautiful and brutal struggle.

This deep understanding of the dynamic between father and son is just one aspect of Click-Clack’s beauty. Ross also infuses the work with flourishes of consonance, rhyming words in a subtle way that make the power of rhythm a real force for the reader…His rhythms run through it like tides. They rise and fade in the writing like the passing of trains.

Click-Clack hits all the right notes. It is a pin-point, sad-hearted portrait of the track of birth and death that fathers and sons must follow. It took on speed, swept me up and kept echoing after it passed…Do not miss this train.

Read the full review at Spintingler Magazine. While there, take in the rest of the words, both kind and not so kind, about Warmed and Bound.