It probably isn’t what pops into most people’s minds when they think about Las Vegas, but I find this city an endlessly inspiring and motivating place to write. Maybe it’s the ebullient creativity of the place in general, or maybe it’s because there are endless quantities of untold stories. One feeling I get regularly is that it’s like Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles, a city that’s just emerging from a rowdy adolescence into an adulthood it has yet to define. Like the unpaved Mulholland Drive of Chandler’s day, there are dirt roads here that will soon be asphalt thoroughfares. There are corrupt government officials who were invincible old boys and girls when the town was little more than an extended family. They’re withering under the gaze of a larger, more diverse population, and I have the feeling that within a decade or so, southern Nevada politics will resemble the scene in L.A. more than the Dodge City feel they have now. But whether that happens for real remains to be seen. Entranced by the unfolding drama, I plan to remain to see it. And write about it.