Includes "Pray for Rain," winner of the Blue Mesa Review 2008 fiction prize.

The stories in Precarious are about doing the right thing and regretting it. About men who are still boys. About making bets and dancing naked.

They play out in rain-soaked Seattle and drought-stricken California. In the front seat of Mom’s Malibu and a vacation cabin on Cape Cod. On a tiny island and in a desert filled with light and heat and sand that slips through your fingers like friendships you once had.

In these fifteen stories you will meet a boy trying to make it through that summer between the end of high school and the start of something else. A girl so alive you can feel her heartbeat from half a mile away. A woman attracted to a man with muscles, because it makes her feel safe . . . until it doesn’t. A man who can only imagine what it’s like to sleep with many different women, but that’s OK—he has a good imagination.

In prose that is by turns spare and lyrical, the stories of Precarious capture the feeling of late summer. A never-ending game of Kick the Can. All sense of time lost among the stars.

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The Author

Al Riske was born in Shelton, Washington, and earned a degree in communications from Linfield College in Oregon. He has worked as a newspaper reporter, magazine editor, copywriter, and ghostwriter.

His short stories have appeared in the Beloit Fiction Journal, Hobart, Pindeldyboz, Switchback, Word Riot, and the Blue Mesa Review, where his story "Pray for Rain" won the review's 2008 fiction prize. He now lives in California with his wife, Joanne, and their dog, Bodie. He is currently working on a novel.

For more about Al Riske, go to alriske.blogspot and for more on Precarious, see precariouscollection.wordpress

Excerpt

From the short story “Sleeping with Smiley” in Precarious: I remember the river and the way it looked at dawn: the glassy water and the wisps of fog. I can still smell the sea air and hear the trawlers chugging out past the jetty in the distance. I remember the feel of my oars catching the water in time with Curt's. The muscles don't forget. I can feel the strain even now in my legs and lower back, in my shoulders and in my arms. I hear the rhythm of our seats sliding up and back in Mr. Alt's racing shell.

It was that summer between the end of high school and the start of something else. Curt and I were best friends, and more often than not you could find us sculling on the Rogue at dawn. We had been at it since May, coming out to the river before school nearly every day. The boat was long, narrow, and unforgiving. It dumped us in the river our first time out, and the water felt like ice that had only just melted…

Reviews

“The art of the short story is alive and well in the hands of Al Riske, who understands how to walk the tightrope of subtle emotional resonance.”

--Catherine Ryan Hyde, author of Pay It Forward, Love in the Present Tense, Chasing Windmills, and many others.

“Riske’s characters brim with the fears, desires, and idiosyncrasies of real, complex human beings. In the collision of spiritual and sexual concerns that plague them, we find a truth that makes us believers in the power of his fiction.”

--Laura Matter, Blue Mesa Review

 "Enthusiastically recommended."

--Midwest Book Review

"You will enjoy each page of this book and hope there is just one more when you are finished reading."

--Victoria Gonzalez, Reader Views

"The writing is Hemingway lean and it's clear that one of Riske's strongest gifts as a storyteller is his witty dialogue."

--Gretchen Clark, author of "This Is a Woman" and other essays

"A hugely talented writer, Al Riske beautifully captures the nuanced behavior of relationships and the universal struggle to understand why we do what we do."

--Rachel Canon, author of The Anniversary

"His prose is so sharp and the characters sketched so vividly that I was transported right into the world he created."

--Mark Richardson, author of "Tattoo Woman" and other stories

"This book will stay with you long after you close it and put it away. You'll no doubt pick it up again for a second read, maybe even a third."

--Reading at the Beach

"These are stories that you find yourself in--the highest compliment I can pay an author. You see your own foibles and, if you're lucky, an occasional glance at your own grace."

--Terry McKenzie, TMACWORDS

"Al Riske has taken this form [the short story] and made light in his collection Precarious, not that he has made light of his characters though. He has given them voices of volume, of life. Each story carries weight of its own, leading to the common denominator that we are all flawed."

--Sky Sanchez, San Francisco Book Review

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