Goodreads asked Vu Tran:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Vu Tran I was asked to contribute a short story for a crime anthology called Vegas Noir. My job was to write about Chinatown, and the story I wrote—"This Or Any Desert"—was eventually selected for the Best American Mystery Stories 2009. The characters stuck with me, mostly because each of their stories felt much bigger and deeper than what was contained in those 25 pages, and could overlap in a way that felt right for a novel. "This Or Any Desert" ended up being the second chapter of Dragonfish. In fact, that was the title of the novel for a long time.

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