Every story in THE LOW DESERT came from somewhere. Sometimes it’s an image or it’s a song or it’s another story or it’s a weird, dumb, or criminal idea that has come to me while I’m driving or showering. This book is also notable because I get to bring back some of my favorite characters from previous books…you know…who are…dead. So don’t be surprised if you run into a few ghosts in these pages. It’s intentional. If I’m haunted by them, you have to be, too. The front note of the book is from the Talmud: A prisoner cannot free himself. You’ll find, as you read, that everyone is locked in a cell somewhere. Here’s some insight into the genesis of each of the 12 stories in my new book.

The Royal Californian: The internet tells me that on November 4^th of 2018, I posted an update on Facebook that said, “For about 20 years, I’ve wanted to write a short story about a guy who sings ‘Brick’ by Ben Folds Five at Karaoke, but that’s as far as I’ve gotten with it.” I don’t know when that idea first took hold of me, but it seemed like the kind of character trait (flaw?) I’d give a character, but I just didn’t know who that guy was. And then, one day, I was driving down a street in Indio, where I live, and noticed this sketchy hotel that I’ve driven by maybe a thousand times in my life. But this time, I really saw it. Then I noticed that it had a bar connected to it – I’d somehow never seen this, but it had been there all the while – but it was closed for renovations and was soon to become a ball called Steers. I was taken with a single thought: Who the fuck would stay there? And then, moments later, I thought, I wonder if Steers will have Karaoke? And then I drove home and started writing.

The Low Desert: I’ve been thinking about writing a book about the Salton Sea in the 1950s and 60s for a long time, but I’ve had the champagne problem, since 2007, of having books under contract every year that weren’t this Salton Sea idea. So I’ve written about the Salton Sea in other guises, essentially while I’ve done research and prepared. When I decided to do this collection in between Gangster Nation and the concluding Rabbi David Cohen book, I took a shot to see if I could write what I thought of as maybe the opening chapter of a Salton Sea book as a stand-alone short story. I used a different style than I’ve been using recently but a character I’ve used before: Morris Drew, who first showed up in my book Living Dead Girl as a sheriff and who previously has appeared in a few short stories of mine, too. But then in the middle of writing the story, I realized that maybe I’d like to try to write it as a pilot, too. So I did that, also. Soooo. We’ll see!

Palm Springs: An earlier version of this story appeared in my book Other Resort Cities, but it’s been substantially changed and updated to tie it into the larger Gangsterverse. The story first came to me about ten years ago when I was listening to my friend Jay Ray’s song “Palm Springs,” about a couple spending time in a depressing Palm Springs casino. Something just clicked in my head about the people I’ve seen working in those casinos, about all the cocktail waitresses and bartenders I’ve known living in resort cities for much of my life, and about how those lives often dovetail precariously close to those people on the other side of the law.  

The Spare: Wanna hear a secret? “The Spare” is the prologue of the next Gangsterland book. Or, well, a lot of it is. It fills in a big bit of backstory: How Sal Cupertine’s father died. And why. But it’s also a standalone short story that will take fans of the novels into back into the world with a character you may be interested in: Sal Cupertine’s father. But there’s also plenty of other weird little things in this sad, fucked up, super violent story. Nobody is precisely who you think they are in these books, I hope, and you’re about to find out about a good guy who is a bad guy.

Goon #4: One of my heroes, Lawrence Block, asked me for a short story that took place – in some fashion – in higher education. That was the only proviso. It just so happened that I’d just gone to lunch with my friend, the writer Rob Bowman, and talked about my desire to write a story about one of those guys in the background of crime movies, the guy holding the briefcase, the guy in the sunglasses who gets shot, the guy John Wick shoots, the nameless goon. What is his life like? Well. Now I know. It originally appeared — in a somewhat different form — in an anthology called The Darkling Halls of Ivy, which is pretty terrific.

The Last Good Man: The oldest story in the book…and also one of the newest. I originally wrote this story in 1998. I re-wrote it in 2009. I rewrote it again in 2015, turning it into a Christmas story. And then again in 2020, turning it in with my final rewrites in April. It’s actually the first story I ever wrote about Morris Drew and I’ve rewritten the story as his life has come into more full view for me, over the last two decades. I promise not to mess with it anymore. I know what I’m doing now. I promise.

Pilgrims: I’m interested in the aftermath of conflict as often as I am interested in the conflict itself and I really like dropping in on a character at different points in their life to see how they’re doing. In this case, it’s the character Tania, who is the main character of Palm Springs. This story picks up ten years after that story and finds her in a new stage of her life and in her search for her missing child, Natalya.

Mazel: Another story that expands and examines the world I’ve created in Gangsterland and Gangster Nation, but from a different angle – in this case, an FBI agent who happens to belong to a synagogue in Summerlin and needs to meet the new rabbi to discuss finding a cemetery plot. I wrote this story for my friend Kristy Cade, who was suffering from cancer at the time, and who told me a story of something that happened to her, and asked me if I would write it into something. So I did. I snuck it into this story. Kristy is doing well now but this story will always be for her.

Professor Rainmaker: An older version of this story appeared in Other Resort Cities. But in this new version, you begin to see the long tail of influence of the Chicago crime families…all the way to a hydrology professor at Cal State Fullerton…and how a simple mistake can cause someone to show up with a gun.

The Salt: A substantially different version of this appeared in Other Resort Cities…but now that I’ve written The Low Desert, I know some things I didn’t know when I wrote The Salt…so unfortunately, Morris Drew’s life gets no easier. This story really was the precursor to a lot of things in this book — both in terms of location and emotion. A small touchstone.

Ragtown: I can’t tell you anything about this one. You need to read this book in order. Don’t read this first. I’m telling you.

Gangway: One of my favorite characters in the Gangster books is Peaches Pocotillo. I knew when I started this book that I had to write his origin story. Along the way, he’s going to come into contact with some familiar faces. He may or may not kill them. You really never know.