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Theodore Jerome (Ted) Cohen is an award-winning author who has published more than ten novels--all but one of them mystery/thrillers--two books of short stories, and a Flash Fiction Anthology series. He also writes illustrated storybooks for children (K-3) in the series Stories for the Early Years. During the course of his 45-year career he worked as an engineer, scientist, CBS Radio Station News Service (RSNS) commentator, private investigator, and Antarctic explorer. What he's been able to do with his background is mix fiction with reality in ways that even his family and friends have been unable to unravel!
Dr.Cohen's writings (he holds three degrees in the physical sciences from the University of Wisconsin - Madison) have received the highest reviews from Feathered Quill, Hollywood Book Reviews, Kirkus Discoveries, Pacific Book Review, Reader Views, and Readers' Favorite, among others, with many of his books recognized for their excellence through medals awarded by several of these same organizations following their annual book competitions.
In addition to his adult and childrens books, Dr. Cohen writes Young Adult (YA) novels under the pen name Alyssa Devine. His YA novel The Hypnotist (Lexile® measure 930L) currently is in the Core Genre (Mystery) Reading Program at Neshaminy High School in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where he is a guest lecturer on the subject of mystery writing.
Reviewed by Joel R. Dennstedt for Readers' Favorite
Theodore Jerome Cohen (sometimes aka Alyssa Devine) is a storyteller par excellence, and he proves himself anew in this most recent collection of short-short fiction (aka Flash Fiction) Creative Ink, Flashy Fiction: Flash Fiction Anthology – Book 4. Cohen demonstrates that he can grab your interest from the start, engage your curiosity through a meagre 250 words or so, and land a finishing punchline that may just leave you breathless. Hyperbole? Just read his first story about a wartime British girl sitting with her doll post-Blitz. (Perhaps the most compelling of the lot.) If this story does not grip you by the throat, evoke the kind of anguish fully-fledged war novels seek desperately to produce, and leave you saddened beyond its minimalist length, you are free to turn in your human card.
Per Theodore Jerome Cohen, as stated in his introduction to Creative Ink, Flashy Fiction, the included stories are based upon single photographs selected serendipitously at random. They do not feel so random. Each photograph (presented and captioned at each chapter heading) cries out for an explanatory story. The precise story, surprisingly, that Cohen proceeds to tell. It’s uncanny. And it makes you wonder which came first – the photo or the story. From Cohen’s remarkably concise and polished writing, and his unquestionable ability to fabricate a story both meaningful and precise, one cannot be sure. One can, however, rely on this storyteller’s ability to send you to a place and time both real and altered by imagination. Where once again you might ask: which is real and which is imagination? No hyperbole. These stories are wonderful.
