Author Description

Like a cross between 'Flash Fiction International' and 'Best Travel Writing' but primarily about working class people in Portland, Oregon, Los Angeles, California, and Dublin, Ireland. A mixture of short stories, flash fiction, micro fiction, and a novella at the end comprising a plethora of characters and settings in these diverse, eclectic cities. (The novella includes one song and some essays by characters in the story.) (Some content is for mature readers only.) /THE BACK STORY: The title of this book was in part inspired by an old Garth Brooks favorite, "Friends in Low Places". (Which for non-native English speakers I'll say is a take off the threatening saying, "I have friends in high places", meaning rich and powerful, well-connected friends. And we have expressions about "a view from the top", like the view from a top executive's office.) Here my characters are generally poor, working class people and I want to tell their stories from their own perspectives since the working class are generally written about as objects of either derision or pity rather than human beings with their (our) own voices. I experimented with other titles during my undergrad years that were far less diplomatic (e.g. angry about social class injustice) but as I came to spend more time around people from financially wealthy backgrounds I began to have more sympathy for issues in their lives as I came to know them as people rather than as abstract objects of reverse-classist derision. /I had a great many story ideas and characters rattling around in my brain, from Oregon, California, Minnesota, and Ireland, and this was a great opportunity to give them a new home to live in so I could have my brain back, so to speak. I also included a few stories from my parents that they used to tell all of their kids over the years since they both had artistic aspirations that for various reasons, most of them to do with having to actually make money or with raising kids, went unfulfilled in their li