About a year ago, I started talking about self-publishing a small collection of stories set in the desert. I had two stories finished, but that seemed like too few to justify a collection, and so I began working on a third. Then that third story began giving me trouble, because I couldn’t decide on its point of view. It just didn’t seem to be working, so I put the story and the book project aside to work on a novel. I also thought it would be good to get at least one of the stories published somewhere before self-publishing the collection.
Meanwhile, Google cancelled its Glass product, which made me think that third story was dead too, since it was all about a guy who annoys his hiking buddies by wearing his Google Glass all the time. (In fact, I’ve been thinking of subtitling this trilogy, “Three assholes in the desert.” If you get the song reference in that title, then you know the following lyric might be something like, “Which one will the desert kill?” And there are a few near-death experiences in these stories.)
A year later, the stars seem to be aligning on the publication front (more on that to come), and that good news gave me a flash of inspiration to quickly solve the third story’s point of view problem. (Actually, I just listened to the Creative Writing 101 advice I had been telling myself but ignoring all along: avoid head-jumping.) As for the fact that Glass no longer exists, I’d always figured that this was a more advanced version of Glass, so I just called it Glass 2.0, as if Google had rebooted the technology.
So now I’m working toward releasing Desert Trilogy this fall, with the cover featuring a handsome photograph of a Joshua Tree by Steve Berardi (used with permission). I’ve posted a teaser for “Glass” here, and I’ve set up a new page introducing Desert Trilogy here. I hope you’ll check them both out, and as always, leave any feedback in the comments. You can sign up to receive updates on Desert Trilogy by filling out the form below.
