Things Like This is a collection shaped by memory, family, change, and the fragile beauty tucked inside ordinary life. These pieces move through grief, childhood, love, aging, and wonder, finding what is tender and unsettling in the everyday. Alcock's language is vivid, lyrical, and sharply observant, rich with image and rhythm. He brings emotional depth to small moments, turning them into scenes that feel immediate, luminous, and quietly lasting. A beautiful read.
-Francine Witte, author of RADIO WATER Dave Alcock's prose poetry is like music propelling you across the dance floor of Things Like This, observing with unerring attention the small matters of nature, right at our feet, while keeping an eye out for human misstep and misdirection. These are the same tales told around the dervish bonfire, meditations sung out in Homeric wonderment and disappointment but always in awe. It's impossible not to watch and listen and dance to the stories in this siren song book.
-James Thomas, Co-editor of the Norton Flash Fiction anthologies
In his debut collection of flash literature, Things Like This, Dave Alcock explores the often-underestimated significance of marginal events. Day to day, we tend to overlook such events as trivial, yet they may shape our lives in unexpected ways. At turns eccentric, uncanny, enigmatic, visceral, and evocative, Alcock's memorable micro-works spotlight liminal spaces and reveal the extraordinary in the ordinary. A marvel.
-Clare MacQueen, editor of MacQueen's Quinterly
Dave Alcock's work speaks to me as much as any writer I know and more than most. He writes not so much of the huge life events, but, like a great haiku writer, finds those moments between the moments and investigates them with compassion. I read his work slowly, lingering over the meaning he's drawing from a seemingly innocuous event, then trying to resee it through my own lens. In this, he has me reinvestigating not only my whole life but the way I understand it. These are pieces that will challenge you and help you to grow.
-John Brantingham, author of Slowly Through the Grove
Dave Alcock is a writer based in Devon, England. His short forms have appeared in a range of online journals that includes Every Day Fiction, Flash Frontier, MacQueen's Quinterly, The Journal of Radical Wonder, and The Dribble Drabble Review. His work has been nominated for Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, and Best of the Net. Things Like This is his debut.
