This new and necessary book -- a collection of author profiles, literary journalism and speculative pieces about the Southland's writing and publishing scene -- aims to capture the Southern california of here and now. We want to get at the Los Angeles that came after the gumshoes, the wisecracking Englishmen, after the Boosters, the Beats, and the boozers, after the despairing heroines of Joan Didion and the coked-up rich kids of Bret Easton Ellis.