A novelette of about 9000 words.
Self-driving car, autonomous car, assisted driving, learning to drive, science fiction, scifi, specfic, speculative fiction, short story, emerging technology, woman, women, driving, driver, student driver, defamiliarization, making the familiar unfamiliar, Dodge Charger, 1969, Mojave Desert, southwest, AI, psuedo-AI, Siri, Cortana, digital assistant, decentralized grid, smart grid, relationship, boyfriend, girlfriend, retreat, finding yourself, automation, smart cart
S.A. Barton lives in coastal Virginia with his wife, grown stepson, two under-5s, and demanding cat (as they all are). His path to the present was a strange, sometimes harrowing, and winding one – a life of domesticity and writing seemed altogether out of the question until it happened – and you may find this reflected in his writing. He has previously appeared in the pages of Penumbra magazine, Daily Science Fiction, and most recently Amazing Stories as one of the winners of the Gernsback Writing Contest.
He is also proud to be a self-published author with dozens of short story ebook singles to his credit, which may be found through sabarton.com. He also tweets far too much as @Tao23 and supports his work with the welcome help of his kindly Patreon patrons.
While most of S.A. Barton's work is in science fiction, some of it strays into other genres such as fantasy, mainstream, alternate history and others -- like the cat, it wanders some.