Tropic Midtown (paperback)

A realistic account of average dreams, mediocre futures, and hopeful earnestness at its best. We are deeper into the first century of this millennium, yet the beige and pasty comfort of middle culture is becoming stronger as alternative literature continues to embellish the mundane, endlessly secreting thick and intense nectar of hopeless and utter complacency. Will ours be a place in society to complain of adequacy, adoration, and love? How shall we attest to this seemingly undeserved privilege? The choice to familiarize with others or to become closer with an established family becomes the style of a fashionable existence, where the objects of attention are but a vehicle to new levels of boredom. Excitement appears from the impending doom of a glitch in the matrix of existential inconsistency, but always and often appeased with swift quickness, revealing the happy ending encapsulated in the minor struggle of increasingly high expectations or a tested subpar denouement.

- CATALINA VALLEJOS