*Runner-Up, 2021 Carmel Digital Literary Award*

‘Smacked is a moving collection of stories about addiction told with heart-stopping narrative control and emotional resonance.’ - Roanna Gonsalves, 2021 Carmel Digital Literary Award judge

‘Hecq writes playfully and with irony, thrumming prose and poetry in self-aware stories gravid with familiar yet unfamiliar protagonists and their dented victims or saviours. Smacked and other stories of addiction is a tight rope of connections and metaphors, the reader walking on tiptoe with a balancing pole, yet at the same time craving a haircut or a quince.’ - Eugen Bacon, author of Claiming T-Mo and The Road to Woop Woop & Other Stories