In 1974 immediately after I left college, I was sent to Glenwood Springs, Colorado for a Texas based microfilm company. My job was to microfilm the courthouse records for Garfield County. The job lasted several months and in my free time I was able to become familiar with the area around Glenwood Springs and Grand Junction. It is a beautiful area and I enjoyed my time there which ran from sometime in January, 1974 until June. Platteville was selected only because of its proximity to Denver where the opening scene of Andy in the bus station took place.

The area of western Colorado is fascinating to explore because of the tremendous variety of terrain ranging from the high mountains of Aspen about 40 miles to the south, to the high prairie surrounding Grand Junction, and Grand Mesa, a 10,000 foot plateau just east of Grand Junction. Colorado National Monument is just west of Grand Junction and the Utah desert canyons are within an easy drive as well. There you can explore the famous Arches National Monument and Canyonlands National Park.

I’ve always preferred mountains for vacations and it was easy to imagine scenes placed in the scenic terrain and weather patterns of the area. Why not place a novel in and area where I’d like to vacation? It stimulates the imagination at every turn of the road.

Today we adopted our preliminary cover design. We’ll be making a few detail changes to it when we get the back cover copy finished. But, we thought you might want to see a thumbnail view of where we’re headed with the design, so here it is.

This particular photo captures the daydream-like quality image that Andy (and possibly Bronson) had in their minds while sitting on that boulder in Platteville looking West. Read the book after it comes out and tell me if you agree.

I was a professional photographer in Cheyenne at the time, and this photograph was what I call an “opportunity” shot because of the fluidity of scene change due to lighting, clouds and waning light just before sunset. The photo was taken in Colorado over 25 years ago when we were heading back to Cheyenne from a day of skiing at a Colorado ski resort somewhere West of Boulder. I was able to capture only a few frames before the clouds completely enveloped the snow covered peaks. A few minutes later the scene completely changed character and I packed up the camera and we headed back to Cheyenne.

The camera I was using was a wooden Tachihara 4″x5″ inch view camera. The film was Ektachrome Professional and the lens was a Schnieder 180mm Symmar.