Available from Arc Pair Press...
Named Honorable Mention on the 2018 Writer's Bone Year's Best List, in these seven stories, The Paper Life They Lead is an extravaganza of love, loss, fear, and absurdity, where the mundane leaps fervently into the realms of the fantastic and the silly.
Crerand is some rare kind of genius, offering unexpected shots of delight in stories that are miles high in imagination and distinctly and wonderfully weird. A Pontiac car goes to school and beyond, an airplane flight zooms into outer space, and in one especially daring, loopy story, a giant 7-toed sloth inhabits an abandoned zoo. I've never read anything quite like this collection--wild, wooly, and absolutely dazzling.
--Caroline Leavitt, author of Cruel Beautiful World and the New York Times Best Sellers Pictures of You and Is This Tomorrow
THE PAPER LIFE THEY LEAD is the rare book that is as hilarious as it is terrifying, as heartfelt as it is intellectual, as realistic as it is experimental. Patrick Crerand is a writer of enormous talent and depth of heart. I love these stories; everyone who reads them will too.
--Wiley Cash, author of The Last Ballad
These are some truly fine stories. What I love about Patrick Crerand is what I love about George Saunders: the persuasive absurdity, the human language (there is not a single imperfect word here) and the serious, serious laughter. I haven't had so much fun reading a book, and so much glorious heartbreak, in years.
--Daniel Wallace, author of Big Fish and Extraordinary Adventure
The Paper Life They Lead is some kind of wild mixture of Etgar Keret and Ray Bradbury. You're never totally sure what to believe, but you always know you're in good hands. Patrick Crerand renders strange people in a world that is recognizable but not quite, and he does so with humor, intelligence, and a little bit of an edge. These stories are daring and jump off the page.
--Tom McAllister, author of How to Be Safe