Talking To Ghosts At Parties

Talking to Ghosts at Parties is Rick White's debut collection of thirty short (and very short) stories woven together across time, space and astral planes. An orphaned girl becomes a cat, a werewolf battles a distaste for his bistro's clientele, a man lives in a tower made of memories. Dark, poignant and funny - these are stories of how absurd it is to be human, how brave it is to be alive.
A breakout collection of stories full of unforgettable outcasts, underdogs, losers and oddballs by an author uniquely attuned to the restless rhythms of the offbeat. Talking to Ghosts at Parties dives deep and deftly examines the daily foibles of those on the fringes of modern life. A pitch-perfect portrait of an absurd world that demands revisiting and reliving and confirms Rick White as a spectacularly original, iconic and important voice in contemporary culture.
Rick White is a writer of short stories and flash fiction whose work has been widely published in literary journals and nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best of the Net and Best British & Irish Flash Fictions. Rick lives in Cheshire with his wife, Sarah, their daughter, Luna and their Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Harry. You can follow him on Twitter @ricketywhite.

Review :
"Told with honesty and wry humour, and with elements of magical realism and the fantastical, these stories also detail the absurdity in the mundane. This idiosyncratic collection is a joy to read."- Lucie McKnight Hardy -Author of Dead Relatives
"White moves effortlessly between voices, sexes, ages and perspectives with eloquent empathy, strong storytelling and deft comic timing. But the humour never punches down, and these tales that shine a tender, unflinching light on the unseen, the marginalised and the hopelessly human are shot through with a fierce compassion."- Dan Brotzel -Author of The Wolf in the Woods
"Talking to Ghosts at Parties is a fantastic glimpse into the absurd that travels the full spectrum of human emotion. White's stories are full of a cool intelligence and razor-sharp wit whisking readers from banal reality to wild surrealism and back again. Infused with wry humor, shrewd observations, punk rock sensibility and great heart, this collection embraces characters existing on the fringes of society."- Sara Dobbie -Author of Flight Instinct
"Each story is a delicious, mysterious morsel, a bite-sized offering of the wondrous, the odd, the surreal. Although Rick White's characters may look and sound like regular people, they are in fact outsiders and oddballs, struggling to make sense of their circumstances, their lives, other people, always only one slip-up away from revealing their true, transgressive selves. Like the character who lives in a tower of memories, they are all trapped in a prison of loneliness, so desperate to hide their essential deviancy from other people that they are too afraid to reach out, unable to comprehend that it is their extraordinary strangeness that makes them human."- Sian Hughes -Author of Pain Sluts
"Smart, sardonic, and thoroughly entertaining, Talking To Ghosts At Parties is a delight from start to finish, written by a master of flash fiction. In these pages, White has absolutely nailed both the art of dark humour and the art of the short form. The droll dialogue, the absurd circumstances, the cast of dysfunctional characters and the way their lives intertwine are all wickedly clever inventions by White, and make for a hilarious, riveting, incredibly satisfying read."- HLR -Author of History of Present Complaint
"Talking To Ghosts At Parties is a stunning debut collection from one of the most unique voices working in short fiction; and Rick White is only getting started - witty, dark, and memorable ... a rollicking good read."- Ross Jeffery -Author of Bram Stoker Award-nominated Tome