I started writing this book back in 2004. I used to go sit in a coffee shop for three hours and force myself to write. Sometimes I’d drag my former managing editor, David Allen, along. He’s friends with Blue Like Jazz author Don Miller and he was encouraged (by Don) to write his own book. While writing is a creative endeavor to be sure, I found that forcing myself to be creative works. I’d crank out 10,000 words or so each time I’d spend a three-hour chunk of time at one of those coffee shops. For one reason or another (and I can give you one major one right of the bat in two words: magazine deadlines) it took me five years to finish this novel – Desert High.
They say that every author’s first novel is all about themselves and I have to admit this is absolutely true for Desert High. It’s fiction, but it’s filled with little anecdotes about me and my passions. There’s details in here about my job as HM Magazine editor, music (there’s even a Pretenders concert at Gazzari’s in Los Angeles that’s in there), football, airplanes, coffee and popular culture.
You see, I was grew up as a military brat. My dad was a US Air Force test pilot and fighter pilot. I grew up around airplanes and test flight. In fact, I went to all four years of high school at Desert High on Edwards Air Force Base in California. This is the setting for most of the book.
The story is set against the backdrop of flight testing at Edwards Air Force Base right in the middle of the Mojave Desert. I played football at Desert High and it was the source of a lot of fun … and ultimately heartbreak. You see, at the end of my senior year we were competing in the CIF playoffs. We were playing the Mammoth Huskies on the field at Bishop Mountain. We won the game fair and square, but were denied because the Mammoth players cheated … and got away with it. One of my passwords is “Mammoth Sucks” (haha).
I realize that a lot of athletes will cry foul on the wrong end of a defeat, but the referees who called this game actually met in Lancaster, California on the Tuesday following the game and admitted that they were wrong. They apologized, our coach told us later.
I’m sorry, but an apology doesn’t do much for a 17-year old football player. As a bunch of 40-something year-old geezers now, a lot of us Desert Scorpions are still not over this play.
The kickstarter campaign video I made even has some footage of the actual play and how it went down. It still hurts to watch it.
So, here’s the plot: The Air Force calls me up at my office in Austin, Texas and my brother-in-law, Major Martin Maier, informs me that they’ve built a time machine and they need a guinea pig to fly it back in time to fix a relatively insignificant event in the past – like a high school football game.
That’s the premise of my first novel, Desert High. I’ve tried to mix elements of test flight, like the movie The Right Stuff along with the thrills and drama of high school football, like Friday Night Lights and Varsity Blues; along with the science fiction of Back to the Future.
If you check out my latest kickstarter campaign, you’ll hear some of these same details (in fact, I used the text of this blog for my script). I’ve finished the book and am going to self-publish it under the monicker of HM Press. I need to raise 1800 dollars to print a few hundred copies. One of the “rewards” for donating to this campaign is one of these Desert High bracelets I’ve designed. I plan on posting some mp3 files and various images and documents of resource material I collected in writing this novel. I wanted to make it as accurate as possible, so grocery store prices, NFL football game scores and technology of the time (the year 1980) are all actual. Test me on this.
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