Puzzing Things
Chapbook Editor, Puzzling Things (author: Candice Kelsey), Fauxmoir Press, August 2023
“I highly recommend Rachel Baila to anyone who is looking for an editor. She is thorough, considerate, and always professional. Immediately, I she made it clear that she cared about my manuscript, that she believed in my words, and that she was committed to putting it out into the world.
I have worked with five other editors and publishers, but Rachel’s approach was different. First, she was not judgmental about my work, and second, she prioritized communication. She asked me questions throughout the process, clarifying thoughts, events, and stories while fielding my many questions and edits. Together we produced the best version of my manuscript. Most importantly, however, once we were done, the book was still my book, and one that made me proud thanks to Rachel. ”
Candice Kelsey’s debut creative nonfiction collection, Puzzling Things, addresses life's myriad of confusing situations, relationships, and more. It speaks to the current collective mindset of disorientation and disruption. The setting of each piece confronts “place” and emotively demonstrates how that informs craft and personal revelation.
Praise for Puzzling Things:
Childhood is life’s ultimate puzzle. We keep living it, searching for solutions, often desperately, all our lives. Kelsey’s Puzzling Things writes of these logic-defying puzzles that engage and shape our lives. A probing, insightful narrative.
-BettyJoyce Nash, Everybody Here is Kin, forthcoming 2023, Madville Publishing
Family, history, and universal longing intersect through Puzzling Things in a masterful weave. Each story and its accompanying puzzle is a doorway into a literary and figurative world that is always compelling, sometimes harrowing, sometimes shocking but always timeless. Kelsey writes with the depth of experience that allows her readers to step forward and follow the narration to a place that is both sophisticated and yet completely natural. I couldn't put it down.
-Dhana Musil, author of Write As If Your Parents are Dead, has stories in Grain, Tahoma Literary Review, The Puritan, and various anthologies
