Just One Thing with David Byron Queen

David Byron Queen’s September issue story “Fantastic” is quite a whirlwind—and given what David shares here for our Just One Thing feature, that impression makes a lot of sense:

“In the summer of 2019, my wife and I embarked on a whirlwind road trip—Missoula to Los Angeles, to San Francisco, and back to Missoula in one week. Something like 2,500 miles in total. It was an exhausting amount of driving, but a pretty magical adventure. Looking back, the trip feels like a strange dream—the highways, the desert, the casinos—all still such a jumble in my memory. I wrote the first draft of ‘Fantastic’ in a burst one night just a few days after. I hadn’t written anything new in months at the time, so it’s hard not to see the writing and the trip as connected. The dreamy surrealism of the landscape certainly found its way in. Oh and I did actually see a camel sitting out behind a gas station in Nevada. At least, I think I did. You never quite know out there.”