Hairballs, Hiccups & Hope edited by Amanda Montandon

An Anthology Review

I’ll get to the actual book review part of the book review momentarily. That is, after all, kind of what I do and where the name of Jimbo’s Awesome Science Fiction and Fantasy Reviews comes from. I started this journey with a plan to shoot my mouth off about books and what I thought of them. That’s just me. For the nonce though, please abide with you while I share the story of another journey, and one that I think we all wish had never happened.

Awhile back (and I don’t have the exact date) Lori Janeksi, wife of author and publisher Matthew Bowman, suffered a serious spinal injury in an car accident. From what I understand, she was not paralyzed but there have still been a ton of expenses and whatnot, to go with (I’m assuming) some missed work and loss of income.

Our friends over at Raconteur Press decided to step in and help by publishing this anthology and donating “everything Amazon doesn’t take” (per Matthew) from Hairballs, Hiccups and Hope to help defray all of that. The editor of the work, Amanda Montandon, was then diagnosed with Stage Three Breast Cancer and managed to get this thing published anyway.

Guys, I don’t know if I’ve shared this at Jimbo’s or not, but I’m a two time Breast Cancer 3Day Walker (Michigan ‘07 and ‘08). I walked in honor of my Aunt Jan who is herself a survivor of Breast Cancer. I’ve seen and heard a lot as a result of those walks. Some were awesome stories of survival. Others had endings that weren’t so happy. In all cases though, there was a lot of suffering involved. Amanda got through it and got this thing out anyway. If any of you run into her, let her know that she’s earned an official spot on the Persons Respected by Jimbo list, right next to Dame Maggie Smith, who acted in the Harry Potter movies while suffering with breast cancer and the lady (I didn’t catch her name) who was suffering from breast cancer and walked the whole thing in a wheelchair pushed by others.

That’s me when I was thin.

If you’re the type who likes to buy things for charitable reasons just because I’ll drop a link here:

Hairballs, Hiccups and Hope

If you’d rather wait and find out what the hype is about and get your copy afterward, don’t panic. I’ll drop another link at the end. For what it’s worth I started this blog to get free books and I paid full price for Hairballs, Hiccups and Hope once I found out what it was all about.

And now it’s time for something totally different.

Picking up a copy of Hairballs, Hiccups and Hope is like taking a trip back to your childhood. It’s like living in a nice space where everything turns out okayish if you just keep moving and don’t break down in a pool of your own tears every time something goes wrong. The theme of this anthology would be clear even if it wasn’t specifically named in the title. Hope is something I can appreciate and something we all need. Seriously. There was a time in my life when I lost my hope and that almost ended very badly. Hope is something we all need to hang on to.

And it’s good to be reminded of that in the form of fiction. I get all of the money spent on self help books. I really do. They work for some people and I respect that. For those of us who prefer fiction to tackiness though, something like Hairballs, Hiccups and Hope works much better. It’s a reminder that things can turn out alright and that I can work toward helping myself and I don’t have to spend all day talking to myself or eating tuna fish while suspended from the ceiling by my toenails or whatever. I much prefer the fictional method.

Of course, the key to any anthology is the stories it contains. Reading this is, after all, the reason one buys the thing in the first place. And so, when one reviews an anthology it is that person’s responsibility to mention each of the stories and what the reviewer thought of them.

Wow. That sounded like, all serious and stuff. Formal isn’t my usual style but sometimes I hafta take it back to grad school to get the words to go. It takes much braining, but you yahoos are worth it. Well, most of you are, anyway.

At any rate…

The first story is “Temp Job” by Clair W. Kiernan. It’s the story of a brownie! And no, I don’t mean a miniature Girl Scout. Nor am I referring to the chocolate confection that I love so much. I mean it’s about a little person who swings by the house and fixes stuff while the inhabitants are sleeping. I need one of these guys if you meet one.

I don’t want to give up too much here, but the brownie dude ends up helping with more than just the household chores. This was the perfect story to start the anthology off with. It had the whole hopeful, crossed with helpful and just a touch of sweet and sappy added to get my brain prepared for what was coming.

Kevin Ikenberry’s “Shipminds and Ice Cream” follows, and it’s my kind of science fiction. This is the story of a man and his son. Grandpa has Alzheimers, or something similar. And it’s the story of a donation and a change. I loved this story. It’s all about leaving a legacy. Kudos to Ikenberry on this one.

Mice, cats, diplomacy and aliens all play a huge part in “Catastrophe at Huykala Station” by Ray Tabler. This one feels like a suspense tale ala Dan Brown as told by Robin Williams. Seriously.

It doesn’t get much better than unfriendly aliens being at the station and complaining to the human “consul” about a recently developed mouse problem. This all happens as the friendly neighborhood consul is about to book it back to human space. Of course, there is a solution to mice that all humans know about. “Hairballs” indeed!

A werewolf forced to leave his pack is the basis for Julie Frost’s “Alpha Equation.” This is a story of refusal to give up and found family. Great story. And one that makes my McCoy side (as in McCoys and Hatfields) smile. I’ll let you wonder why. Just know it fits.

T.C. Ross’s “It’s a Wonderful Life as a Cat” is a fun, silly, somewhat suspenseful, and I would say “heartwarming” except that I’m a dude and I’m not allowed to use terms like “heartwarming,” story about a woman who gets in a wreck and is critically injured, then has to spend the next twenty-four hours living inside of a cat’s head and making sure it survives for twenty-four hours. It’s fast paced and fun.

James Romag’s “Blotched Tea and Speckled Toast” was a hoot. Start off with the wrong aliens on the planet. Then add in a side of “OMG THEY’RE GONNA ARREST ME OVER WHAT!?!?!?!? and toss is a side of heist movie, only in prose form and told from the potential victims point of view. Oh, and a tight timetable that comes with an absolute demand for getting off planet on time. That’s this story. It’s got more twists than a bag for pretzels and it’s like ten pages long. It’s weird because Romag did a very good job of getting exactly what he needed to in this story, but I also feel like he could stretch this out into a novel and turn it into an even better story. I’ll have to take a look around and find out if Mr. Romag has published anything else because this is my first time experiencing this guy but I enjoyed it that much.

It’s been a long time since I’ve reviewed anything by Monalisa Foster and “The Donor” reminds me of why that was (is?) a mistake on my part. Our main character, Caterina, has a problem. She just lost her job. She needs a way to make money and, if the method she uses to raise funds is neither conventional nor possible in the real world, it makes sense in the context of the story and brings up some interesting questions. This one was a lot of fun and Caterina was quite the flavorful main character.

It’s going to be hard to describe the main character of “The Bookseller” by Marisa Wolf without being redundant. I mean, Hemma totally sells books. She’s a book seller. Of course, even as an avid reader, I’m not sure how many of the books she sells I’d read because reasons, but she sells books.

Her books are a different kind of “dangerous” than what we would typically think of when considering a “dangerous book” but trust me on this one, I’d be careful. Hemma’s adventures of book delivery are not your standard fare, but I enjoyed them just the same.

“Upchucked to Mars” by Kal Spriggs is my favorite story of the whole anthology. It follows the life of Norma Jean, and her boyfriend’s ambition to get to Mars. Well, it’s actually her goal too. Sort of. I mean, if it wasn’t for this whole fear of heights thing and the fact that she needed to do like elebenty bajillion credits a semester. But this is a woman who totally WUVS her boyfriend and has a big enough brain to get through the coursework…

Tenacity is the right word here. I love a main character who I can respect and Norma definitely meets that definition. She works hard and doesn’t give up ever. I’m definitely going to re-read this at some point.

“Autumn Eternal” by H.Y. Gregor is a romance story without all the icky sex parts and a story of a goal to be achieved. There’s some personal sacrifice in here as well. And some definite hard work. I liked “Autumn Eternal” for a lot of the same reasons I liked “Upchuck to Mars” but the stories are completely different. And that totally makes sense because Jimbo. Just trust me on this one.

Chris Hepler’s “Department of Superhero Registration” is a story that had me in stitches. In Hepler’s universe, superpowers aren’t good enough to make someone a superhero. They have to test into the role and some do fail. Add in an aspiring superhero with a weird power and things get funny. Good times.

“The Kitchen Witch” by Ted Begley reminds me of my grandma, but if you tell her I said that I’ll deny your very existence. No intelligent human being ever call my grandma a witch. But still and all, this is a story about love, food and kitchens. I really enjoyed this one and now I want some of my grandma’s hamburger soup. (And yes, I did say HAMBURGER soup. Don’t judge me. Or her. Especially her.)

Part of this story also reminded me of my daughters and their relationship with their grandmother on their mother’s side. My oldest loves to cook and my youngest says she’d like to open a bakery when she gets older. Probably. Unless she becomes a teacher or a zoologist.

And none of that even touches what makes a kitchen witch a kitchen witch, but I think I covered most of the important parts and I’d encourage you to read the story if you want more details.

“Frog Kiss” by Kevin Anderson sounds like a really entertaining version of a story told by a kid with a writing assignment to subvert an old trope. I mean, except for the part where Anderson writes better than that, but you get the idea. It’s about a guy, in a swamp, kissing frogs because, well, read the story. There are themes here about hard work and friendship as well. I enjoyed this one.

And that’s it. That’s your Jimbo-eye view of a really awesome anthology. I really did enjoy this one. There was a lot here but, at the end of the day, it was definitely an uplifting experience. It’s just that the different authors each used a different set of muscles to do the lifting.

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 H’s

Hairballs, Hiccups and Hope
Amanda Montandon, ed.
Raconteur Press, 2025

Hairballs, Hiccups and Hope is available for purchase at the following link. If you click the link and buy literally anything from Amazon, I get a small percentage at no additional cost to you.

Hairballs, Hiccups and Hope