Calder G. Lorenz is the author of One Way Down (Or Another), his debut novel from Civil Coping Mechanisms. Born in Washington D.C., he has lived ​and worked ​in Canada, and now resides in San Francisco, California.

His shorter fiction has been published in sPARKLE & bLINK 2.4, Switchback, Curly Red Stories, FictionDaily, Two Dollar Radio’s Noise, Literary Orphans, Crack the Spine, Black Heart Magazine, Litro Magazine, The Forge Literary, ​The Birds We Piled Loosely, ​and gravel.

He has an MFA from the University of San Francisco and works in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District at St. Anthony’s Dining Room.

Hell, if I stay in San Francisco, I’ll end up worse than dead, I’ll end up working just so that I can afford to be broke. I’ll end up like the men who stood in line to build the Golden Gate Bridge, only to fall from the heavens, replaced by the next man in line, just another asshole caught in a net, suspended there, broken back and all, dangling, hung out halfway to hell.

The voice above belongs to a young man who will cross every barrier he’d promised himself was un-crossable. He will have fistfights, soul fights. He will relapse. He will try to go home. He will try his best to ruin his life and the question is this: will he succeed?