7 California Entertainments

Author: The Pacific Desperado

ISBN 978-1-947532-40-3 (eBook)

302 pages

In this volume of short and long tales the Pacific Desperado offers the curious reader a selection of unexpected takes on life here in the Golden State: An artificial intelligence experiment goes awry in an out-of-the-way coffeehouse. A romance survives a major earthquake only to succumb to a series of aftershocks. A grisly murder on a secluded beach is suddenly overshadowed by an even more horrific specter. An addict claims to be a reincarnation of the sorcerer Merlin at another beach. A would-be suicide attacks the men who are trying to save his life. The gardens of the young and the strange are conveyed upon the freeways of Nouveau L.A. And a war resistor who went to prison for his beliefs is thrown together with dissolute veterans back on the mean streets of the state capital. The Desperado gives as much space to the surly grit of California as he does to its obvious charms, having experienced both sides of the state himself—sometimes virtually simultaneously. Finally, a “Myth to Rescue a Dying Planet” sums up the import of the seven preceding “entertainments.”