The King of Lighting Fixtures: Stories [Paperback]

Wanderers and writers, gangbangers and lawyers, dreamers and devils.The King of Lighting Fixturespaints an idiosyncratic but honest portrait of Los Angeles, depicting how the city both entrances and confounds. Each story serves as a reflection of Daniel A. Olivas’s grand City of Angels, a “magical metropolis where dreams come true.”

The characters here represent all walks of L.A. life—from Satan’s reluctant Craigslist roommate to a young girl coping with trauma at her brother’s wake—and their tales ebb and flow among various styles, including magical realism, social realism, and speculative fiction. Like a jazz album, they glide and bop, tease and illuminate, sadden and hearten as they navigate effortlessly from meta to fabulist, from flash fiction to longer, more complex narratives.

These are literary sketches of a Los Angeles that will surprise, connect, and disrupt readers wherever they may live.
 

Wanderers and writers, gangbangers and lawyers, dreamers and devils.The King of Lighting Fixturespaints an idiosyncratic but honest portrait of Los Angeles, depicting how the city both entrances and confounds. Each story serves as a reflection of Daniel A. Olivas’s grand City of Angels, a “magical metropolis where dreams come true.”

“What unites the work is a sense of place.”—Los Angeles Times

“Olivas, the king of flash fiction, flexes both magical realist and realist muscles.”—NBC News

“The collection cements his place in the magical realism tradition of García Márquez and Urrea, and showcases his skills as a master stylist and self-aware observer of life's little vignettes.”—Shelf Awareness

“[A] bold insistence on leaving a few seams visible, a few threads frayed—even on pulling the rug away entirely&mdl£ª