A fragmented, kaleidoscopic portrait of an aborted young adulthood, in the worst corners Los Angeles and the entertainment industry have to offer. This novel follows a pair of starving artists, in a relationship and careers whose maturation have been rudely arrested, and doomed to fail despite their best efforts, for economic reasons before they have even begun. They further grapple with addiction, promiscuity, and egos which do not help matters any. The narrative is structured episodically, organized around an illuminating array of thematically significant, iconic locations, both familiar and legendary, to residents of the city and also for those who know them from portrayals in popular media. About the Author: A graduate of the University of Southern California's Cinema-Television Production program, Jerome Berglund spent a picaresque decade in the entertainment industry before returning to the Midwest where he was born and raised. His recent and forthcoming writing publications include short stories in Paragon Press, Stardust, and the Watershed Review, a play in Iris Literary Journal, and poetry in the Dewdrop, Wild Roof, and a Flying Ketchup Press anthology collection. He is also an established, award-winning fine art photographer, whose black and white pictures have been exhibited in galleries across New York, Minneapolis, and Santa Monica.

From an old folks home on the outskirts of war-torn Minneapolis, one unkempt millennial expounds upon the phenomena of his day, from the Coronavirus to the George Floyd and Breona Taylor murders, and subsequent protests to abolish the police by #BlackLivesMatter and Antifa. Further riffing upon the #MeToo movement and its surreal echoing across #PizzaGate, in the desolation of late-stage capitalism there are no shortage rife subjects to explore sardonically. As the plague doctors skulk about in the dark of night, walling in presumed infectious, hauling out dead on carts before prying the gold from their teeth, a rat-catching herald mounts the soapbox and cries out the news. Including poems and haikus exploring Covid & the Coronavirus, quarantine, Masks, Black Lives Matter, the murders of George Floyd and Breona Taylor, systemic racism, defunding and abolishing the police, Antifa, Antifascism protests, rioting, the burning of 3rd Precinct in Minneapolis (which the author was present before), the #MeToo movement, addiction, alcoholism, art school, the entertainment industry, young love, yearning, generational divides between Baby Boomers and Millennials, Trump, Biden, Pizzagate, Epstein, gun ownership, late stage capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, mandatory vaccinations, environmentalism, climate change, overpopulation, ecofascism, the military industrial complex, billionaires, proud boys, lynchings, punching nazi's, tearing down statues of slaveowners, for-profit prisons, the war on drugs, and socioeconomic inequality. A graduate of the University of Southern California's Cinema-Television Production program, Jerome Berglund spent a picaresque decade in the entertainment industry before returning to the Midwest where he was born and raised. His recent and forthcoming writing publications include short stories in Paragon Press, Stardust, and the Watershed Review, a play in Iris Literary Journal, and poetry in the Dewdrop, Wild Roof, and a Flying Ketchup Press anthology collection. He is also an established, award-winning fine art photographer, whose black and white pictures have been exhibited in galleries across New York, Minneapolis, and Santa Monica.

When tragedy strikes a renowned throuple of big cat wranglers, and their third wheel is slain by a tiger performer, the distraught female lead commits suicide by feline, and her reeling husband follows shortly in her footsteps, but not before releasing their entire blood-thirsty menagerie of exotic beasts upon a small Nevada town just outside Vegas, to stalk unsuspecting residents in search of easy prey. About the Author: A graduate of the University of Southern California's Cinema-Television Production program, Jerome Berglund spent a picaresque decade in the entertainment industry before returning to the Midwest where he was born and raised. His recent and forthcoming writing publications include short stories in Paragon Press, Stardust, and the Watershed Review, a play in Iris Literary Journal, and poetry in the Dewdrop, Wild Roof, and a Flying Ketchup Press anthology collection. He is also an established, award-winning fine art photographer, whose black and white pictures have been exhibited in galleries across New York, Minneapolis, and Santa Monica.

A curated selection of moderately deranged short stories about death and dying, featuring a fantastic collection of grifters, witches, clergymen, poltergeists, sex workers, simpletons, demigods, serial killers, mutants, popes, bounty hunters, junkies, freaks, pythons, contortionists, aliens, bank robbers, lizard women, killer cops, glass eaters, and some we assume good people. About the Author: A graduate of the University of Southern California's Cinema-Television Production program, Jerome Berglund spent a picaresque decade in the entertainment industry before returning to the Midwest where he was born and raised. His recent and forthcoming writing publications include short stories in Paragon Press, Stardust, and the Watershed Review, a play in Iris Literary Journal, and poetry in the Dewdrop, Wild Roof, and a Flying Ketchup Press anthology collection. He is also an established, award-winning fine art photographer, whose black and white pictures have been exhibited in galleries across New York, Minneapolis, and Santa Monica.