Family. The ties that bind. The veins that fuse. The blood that spills. Picking up where ENJOY ME left off, WESTERN PALACES returns us, kicking and screaming, to Luke's world of zombies, bipedal crickets, ghosts, and debilitating fear. All on the streets of San Francisco, where storm drains back up with body parts and giant balls of intestines patrol the hills. But that's just fine because Luke's longtime obsession, Cameron, has finally accepted him. She and her son offer Luke the family he always wanted. But something isn't right. Something is never right. It could have something to do with the body in the closet. Who knows. Friendless, jobless, and always ready to vomit, Luke is just beginning to learn to trust when he recognizes there isn't a solitary thing worth trusting in his world. And just when he was discovering his softer side. In WESTERN PALACES, Luke is ever-desperate to find his place in the world. He's getting to the point, though, where a simple acknowledgment of his existence would suffice. Luke is a man-child that just wants to be a boy, a real boy. Unfortunately, he may just discover his worst fears aren't even close-this roller coaster is always going to veer way off into the darkest part of the ether. And you're welcome to join Luke, puking and laughing the whole livelong way.WESTERN PALACES, like ENJOY ME, is a collection of linked stories, telling the horrific, surreal, bizarre, and often hilarious tales of Luke, a down and out writer just trying to get by while stewing in his own misanthropy, loneliness, and self-loathing. Thirteen stories comprise this sequel, including Molotov Cocktails, Everything Is Going To Be OK, Serene Moments, Picture This, Last Call, Christmas In Tenderloin, We Have Breadsticks, The Gift, San Francisco Beached, Glass Eye, Not Syd, Funereal, and Western Palaces.
About the Author: Logan Ryan Smith writes unclassifiable fiction that fits somewhere in between literary, transgressive, and surreal, all with a dark comedy underbelly and lyrical leaning. Enjoy Me, a collection of interconnected stories, was his first book of fiction, and the precursor to Western Palaces. His second book of fiction, a twisted novella titled My Eyes Are Black Holes, follows the story of another unreliable narrator navigating his way through his own faulty memories, haunts, and the mysterious Chicago mansion he lives within. Though focusing exclusively on fiction now, his poetry books include The Singers & The Notes (Dusie Press, 2007), Stupid Birds (Transmission Press, 2007), and, most recently, Bug House (Mission Cleaners Books, 2013)-a narrative series of poems that shares many of the same fantastical and thematic elements of his fiction. Logan's stories have appeared in, among others, Hobart Journal, Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, and Great Lakes Review, which nominated his story "Bret Easton Ellis" for a Pushcart Prize. He currently lives in Chicago.