How to Make a Killing Jar
Utilizing an arsenal of tools amassed from years of study and teaching, Ace Baker unleashes a powerful collection of 12+1 tales.
Always compelling, sometimes irreverent, often shocking; revealing layers and levels not often achieved through short stories.
How to Make a Killing Jar will linger long after the last page is read, proving the world of fiction can unveil some harsh, hard, and sometimes humorous truths about the human condition.
Did you miss our LIVE VIRTUAL EVENT on Sunday, September 17? Follow the link to enjoy a look into Ace’s story writing practices, a reading, and a live Q&A.
“This book is disturbingly beautiful. The prose is magical. The moment you feel the dark sadness, it shocks you with a humorous touch. The characters move in this world with inner thoughts and motivations; sometimes, you want to question them, other times you want to hide from them. The language is poetic, a blessing to read, with repetitions and recurring motifs if you are the reader of it. Even if you are not, you will not stop reading until you have finished one story after another. Curiosity calls you back.”
Short story collection | 150 pages | book club guide included
Praise for Ace Baker’s Storytelling
“The Killing Jar”
“A wonderful story of love, heartbreak, and redemption, all sliding past each other in overlapping layers of depth and meaning.”
“This story is a tour de force that left me breathless and awed by the indelible images it thrust into my awareness. It’s a searing piece of writing—terse, taut, and terrific in its brilliant intensity, with the poetic commentaries falling like sparks from a brilliant rocket. A stand-out winner by anyone’s standards.”
“Plow Breaks Soil”
“Big Red Schoolhouse (the poem included in “Plow Breaks Soil”) keeps us up to our elbows in the muck of the moment…the poem is dynamic and dramatic in its details, as elegiac as it is realistic and beautifully sequenced though stanza and line…a choreographed chaos of feelings and action, dominated by a double dimension of obligation…”
“Graphic and painful, but so wonderful to read. Really interesting and compelling story.”
“Menos Coca, Más Cacao”
“Now that I know that Ace is also a poet, it makes sense because I noticed the rhythm and the flow and the pacing.”
Ace Baker is a writer, poet, and writing coach from Vancouver, Canada. His short story, "Victory Girl," won the Storyteller Award, and another, "Menos Coca, Más Cacao" won the Blank Spaces short fiction contest, "The Things We Leave Behind," and was published in an anthology by the same name. His poetry has won the SIWC, PNWA, and Magpie awards, among others. Both his prose and poetry have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and National Magazine Awards.
Story Titles:
My Singapore Garden
Cookie Monster
The Killing Jar
Plow Breaks Soil
The High Price of Fish
Build It Up Right
Menos Coca, Más Cacao
Flashmob Fisherwoman
(Don’t) Connect the Dots
Seven Shadows
Chameleon
Clue
Narrow Escape
