John C. Krieg

Zingers: Five Novellas Blowing Like Dust on the Desert Wind: (Softcover: $25: 368pp, 6X9”, ISBN: 978-1-68114-541-9; Hardcover: $40: ISBN: 978-1-68114-542-6; EBook: $2.99: ISBN: 978-1-68114-543-3; Amazon Soft Cover: ISBN: 979-8-596069-48-8; Kindle eBook: ASIN: B08T81QK34; LCCN: 2020912844; Edited by Kate Lucas; Release: November 1, 2020; Fiction—Humorous—General; Purchase on Amazon or Barnes & Noble): While all readers want to be entertained and captivated by stories that sing, this collection of five novellas, all set in the deserts of the American Southwest, are stories that zing.  A zinger is an amusing remark, and even more than that, refers to an outstanding person or thing.  Come on this journey that stretches from the shores of the ill-fated Salton Sea of Southern California, all the way to greed riddled Las Vegas, Nevada, and every arid region in between.  This cast of characters that ranges from the lowly and destitute to the richest of the rich real estate developers also includes guerilla marijuana growers, star crossed lovers, and professional gamblers.  Whether the conniving or the innocent, all are weaved together by one thread of commonality: they are subject to the whims of a harsh desert environment that paradoxically torments and nourishes them at every turn.

John C. Krieg is a retired landscape architect and land planner who formerly practiced in Arizona, California, and Nevada. He is also retired from the International Society of Arboriculture (ISA) where he was a certified arborist. Krieg currently holds seven active categories of California state contracting licenses, including the highest category of Class A General Engineering. He has written a college textbook entitled Desert Landscape Architecture (1999, CRC Press). John has had pieces published in A Gathering of the Tribes, Alternating Current, Blue Mountain Review, Clark Street Review, Conceit, Homestead Review, Line Rider Press, LOL Comedy, Lucky Jefferson, Oddball Magazine, Palm Springs Life, Pandemonium, Pegasus, Pen and Pendulum, Saint Ann’s Review, Squawk Back, The Courtship of Winds, The Mindful Word, The Writing Disorder,and Wilderness House Literary Review. In conjunction with filmmaker/photographer Charles Sappington, John has completed a two-part documentary film entitled Landscape Architecture: The Next Generation (2010). In some underground circles, John is considered a master grower of marijuana and holds as a lifelong goal the desire to see marijuana federally legalized. Nothing else will do. To that end he has two books coming out in 2020 from Red Dashboard LLC Publications: More Marijuana Tales and It’s Just Marijuana.