40 Short Short Stories About L.A. Life

  Like the flash of a camera, each short short story in L.A. Flash captures a moment of time in Los Angeles, both past and present. From Latino and Armenian families to Russian immigrants, the diverse groups that are uniquely L.A. deal with vendettas, brujas (witches), and karmic paybacks in their daily lives. Adults and children face unexpected turns of events, which not only give endings a twist, but offer a keener sense of the character's emotions: the young teen testing the allure of her new body, the terminal cancer patient trying to make amends, the social worker assessing the homeboy seeking custody of his child, the young mother hitchhiking with babies across the country. Although fiction, the authenticity of the stories derives from an element in each being inspired by an actual situation experienced by or shared with the author by family, friends, colleagues, former students, and even a taxi driver in the midst of a long drive across the city. These pieces of people's lives all form the mosaic that is Los Angeles.