ABOUT • AUTHOR • setting • STORIES • Read • LISTEN

THE STORY

Loveless Oregon is a short story collection about death, rebirth, prosperity and its pitfalls. Each story takes place in the same building in the same town, across many years. The stories feature disparate characters and different situations linked by their geography and omnipresent supernatural forces. From a down-on-his-luck stranded traveling salesman in the 1970s to a duo of precocious Alsea Native children 700 years in the past, the stories are woven with delicate, whimsical attention to detail and acute sense of place. Welcome to Loveless.

“Loveless Oregon is boundless, imaginative storytelling in a hyper-specific microcosm.”

BACK TO TOp

ELLIOT MATSON

Elliot Matson quickly found inspiration in his adopted Pacific Northwest home, writing two novels set in and around Portland. However, the Oregon coast, from its geologic idiosyncrasies to its ethnographic and cultural history, fascinated him as well. In Loveless Oregon, Matson weaves together characters, styles, genres, history and mythos into a collection that stands as both separate short stories and an interconnected novel told through multiple perspectives.

BACK TO TOp

LOVELESS, OREGON

A blink-and-you-miss-it town on the Oregon coast, Loveless is a little more than a row of shops along Highway 101. Full of quirk and character, one building in particular has changed facade, ownership and identity numerous times throughout the town’s existence. Each story takes place in this cursed building, and in some cases, the space it occupies decades or centuries prior.

BACK TO TOP

LOVE ME LIKE THAT

In 1964, struggling rockabilly musician Keith “Tex” Bartlett finds himself in Loveless, Oregon, performing at a sorry excuse for a music venue. Keith becomes stuck in a loop between maintaining his artistic integrity trying to write his sophomore album and selling out to write a Woodie Guthrie-esque advertisement for the Oregon Coast.

PRAYING FOR BAD DAYS

Two estranged sisters meet in a trendy, present-day Loveless café. Decades-old tensions reignite and secrets come to light as Cass, a blue-collar townie who never left, discusses the condition of their ailing mother with Val, a bougie NYC sophisticate who put Loveless in the rearview a long time ago.

APPOINTMENTS

Martha Gardenia’s consignment dress shop is thriving in mid-90s Loveless. But not for the reasons you might expect. Martha plays appointment Wack-a-Mole throughout her day, juggling an array of regular annoying customers and increasingly shady characters.

WATCHER

Things were going well for Aemon’s whale watching tours business five years ago—but not in 1988. Faced with a never-ending migratory dry spell in the wettest part of the country, the proprietor feels constantly trapped, down on his luck and ready to crack. Until a mysterious phone call instills a new purpose.

DERMITT’S NUTS

1970s traveling salesman Dermitt M. Downs has an inventory problem. In order to get out of Loveless, Oregon, he needs gas in his car, and in order to buy gas he needs to sell his trunkful of Carlotti’s Ceramic Ice Cream Cones. However, the only viable customers are the uninterested elderly owners of the town’s taffy and ice cream shop. Dermitt’s overwhelming positivity, he hopes, is his secret to success.

COLD ROSES

In the early 1950s, Maynard Clay agrees to let a Hollywood film crew shoot some of their noir detective feature in his struggling boutique hotel. As he witnesses the director, producer and crew mercilessly deconstruct the space and life he built with his late husband, Gavin, Maynard confronts feelings of his own identity and memories of Gavin’s mysterious disappearance.

TURN ME LOOSE

When fleeing, injured outlaw Henry Handsome comes knocking at homesteader Cyril O’Dowd’s door on the barren Oregon coast, she’s reluctant to help. Against her better judgement, she lets the man in but regrets her decision when a US Marshal visits. As the Marshal pries and questions, Henry learns that he and Cyril may be cut from the same cloth after all.

BEFORE IT GETS DARK

Candice Kane (@yesyoucandice) works in a trendy Loveless coffee shop by day and dreams of becoming an influencer by night—and most of the day. Having left collegiate opportunity, her Iowa home and family behind, she’s determined to make it out in the Pacific Wonderland, where self-doubt and loneliness are routinely laid on thicker than a caramel shot in an artisanal brew.

(I’M GOIN’ TO THE) OREGON COAST

A lyrical and musical transcription of musician Tex Bartlett’s hit song recorded in partnership with the Oregon Coast Tourism Bureau in an effort to draw acclaim, interest and dollars to the small towns dotting the state’s Pacific border.

INCANTATION

700 years in the past, Alsea brother and sister, Mootcik and Saa, set off on an adventure away from their coastal village into the wilderness. But when the children get lost and a mysterious stranger offers assistance with a price, they have to decide how to navigate the situation and find their way back home.