Houston, Texas: Texas Book Publishers Association (March 23, 2023)

Paperback. Signed.

New.

In the twilight of the twenty-first century, Alton B. Tapscott battles hurricanes, his children, the trappings of polite society, organized religion, and the inescapable control of technology - his only weapons being his cat, a pair of prescription arthritic socks, and his new WiFi-enabled hearing aide.

With humor and heart, Chinese New Year details the life of an average American Hero of a certain age as he catches an Uber, enters an assisted living facility, sees a baseball game, attends an irreverent celebration of Mass, bingo, and celebrates Chinese New Year. It deals with fate, free will, friendship, and what it might really mean to remember who we want to be.

Getting old feels inevitable, but time runs out quickly on a life well-lived, and for a lucky few before they're back in diapers.

The Chinese New Year is a collection of stories meant to educate those from young adults to the elderly on the treatment our current political and healthcare systems place on our citizens. It shows different walks of life ending in the same situation and their decisions to rise to the occasion or wilt. A story like this on the middle class and the middle of the political spectrum is absent from America's multicultural landscape and currently lacking in the marketplace, offering a perspective of the millennial generation's impact on the world through their relationships with other groups, ideals of the future, outlook on life, and pension for regret, and examines the nuance of the society's middle ground and exhaustion between current political extremes.

C.E. O'Banion is a father of two and a writer based out of Baton Rouge, LA. He writes about his generation, his family, his hometown, and chain Mexican restaurants. His short stories and essays have previously appeared online and in print in The Southern Review, The Deal Mule, Mouthing Off Magazine, Whalebone Magainze, Short Beasts, and others, while some humorous essays and nonfiction can be found in The National Enquirer and other local newspapers. He is also an editor of Two Hawks Quarterly out of Antioch University (Los Angeles). Chinese New Year is his debut novel, and he has also completed a collection of short stories about his youth and upbringing in East Texas. He plans to continue writing fiction and nonfiction for local papers and journals, as well as re-entering the education field. His short nonfiction was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2022.C.E. graduated from Louisiana State University with a Bachelor's in English then law school at LSU. After some years, he attended and completed an MFA degree in creative writing from the UCLA Writing Workshop and Antioch University Los Angeles' MFA program. He's worked as an attorney, teacher, lobbyist, and nursing home administrator. C.E. and his wife, Melissa, have been married for seven years and have two children: Flannery (4) and Henry (2). They have a dog, Joan of Bark, and a cat, EZ Mac, and they enjoy their time in Baton Rouge.