Joe C. Smolen, AKA L.W. Smolen is an Oregon Coast writer of insufficiently exaggerated notoriety. Never having been arrested, he lives with his wife, Sherrie, and the ghost of their black Standard Poodle, Rico Suave, in a really pretty good prairie-style house they built themselves. Since the literary magazine Fleas on the Dog has permanently stopped accepting submissions, in order to read L.W. Smolen’s 2021 short fiction, A Real Guy, you are referred to his website joecsmolen.com. Some of L.W’s other, subsequent short fictions are archived at Olive Tree Review, Ginosko, Cardinal Sins Journal, Wrath Bearing Tree, Wilderness House, etc. Kirkus Reviews once interpreted his work favorably.