Excerpt 1:
Every star in
heaven was out that night. Every single star from the brightest and most
glaring to the softest and faintest. Together they made interwoven skeins,
almost like smoke but shiny, in an arc across the blackness of the universe. I
carefully tilted back my head and looked up. Amazing, I thought. Stars all
over. Some were lone rangers, sparkling in solitary splendor while others
gathered in groups and patterns and sparkled together like choral singers.
Others were so far away and so faint that they were like silvery dust. I
thought maybe somewhere out there intelligent life was looking down here at me.
Me, the fuckup.
I had no idea how
I was going to get home. I was out in the boonies somewhere, sitting in a ditch
by a gravel road that obviously didn’t get much traffic after dark. I couldn’t
see much, but I had the impression of trees on the far side of the road and a
pasture on the near side, an impression based mostly on smell. The near side
smelled of damp grass and manure and the far side smelled like the ravine
behind my house: leaves, bark, moss, dirt. I saw no lights which meant there
was no farm nearby or, at least, not one with anyone up late. The one bit of
good news was that most of my spewing had gone all over the inside of the
Mustang and not on me. I had some puke on my sleeve from wiping my face and
some on my knees from I don’t know how, but my chest was clean of vomit. And my
hair. So at least I wouldn’t be covered with puke when I found someone to help
me. But I probably stank from the skunk weed and the cigarettes. Icky.
I negotiated my
way very carefully out of the roadside ditch mostly by crawling. Once I felt
the gravel under my hands, I carefully hoisted myself upright again and stood
swaying, but balanced, until I felt more or less stable. Then I started to
walk. I had to go slowly because the road was rising and falling beneath my
feet, and my toes kept catching on the gravel. My knees were as wobbly as
Jello. I was aware of my bones, my joints, and my head bobbin’ along at the end
of my neck. I had to conserve my energy, too, because it was going to be a long
walk home.
But it felt good
to be upright and to have enough control to move. It actually felt good to
shamble along. And I liked the clean, cool feel of the night air sliding by my
hot forehead and sighing in and out of my burnt lungs. The air, scents, stars,
and blackness all mixed together around me and inside me, healing me. All I had
to do was keep moving and I’d be okay and I would never, ever screw myself up
with too much booze again. And then I saw the coyote.
Excerpt 2:
Then I went in to
confess.
I felt soothed
the minute the walls closed around me. Warmed with the glow of the stained
glass windows, the church interior was both lofty and cozy. The high ceiling
made me feel small, but in a good way, like I was a small part of something
huge. It was strange to be there without my family, but I didn’t feel alone.
And I loved the silence. Padding
quietly down the aisle toward the front, I chose a pew and settled in to wait.
There were two
women ahead of me. Churches, at least Catholic ones, attract lonely women. My
mom called them church mice. I hoped they wouldn’t take too long at confession.
Then I felt bad for sneering at them as church mice and for thinking their
confessions were not as important as mine. I heard a movement and a teen-aged
girl left confession and headed up the aisle toward the back door with quick,
quiet strides. The church ladies watched her leave, then glanced at each other.
Then one gathered up her purse and disappeared into the confessional. Of
course, everyone wonders what everyone else is confessing to. Was that girl
pregnant? Her head had been down. Or was she abused and seeking help? Or, more
likely, her mother sent her because they got into a spat, and the mother wanted
to emphasize that God was on the side of adults.
I needed to
focus my mind and get my confession organized. I started talking in my head:
“Father, I have sinned. My sin is one of omission. I know of a bad thing that
happened, and I didn’t tell anyone. My sin is also that it took me a long time
to realize for sure that it was a bad thing. I was confused about that. My sin
is that I don’t want the crime to be reported to the police because I don’t
want to get involved in it. I feel bad that it happened, but I don’t want to
have anything to do with it now. I just want to offload my guilt and get on
with my life.” I stopped, stunned at myself. That last was part was my real
reason for confession—I was there to offload the whole incident and get
absolved, so I could forget about it. But the rape wasn’t mine to forget and
leave behind.
A door clicked
and heels tapped. Church lady #1 was leaving. She gave her friend a quick
smile. I thought: They’re meeting for coffee or something afterwards. This is
their social life. What was it for me? A get-out-of-responsibility pass? I
didn’t wait for my chance to confess. Instead, I jumped to my feet with the
word “rape” rocketing around in my head until it drove me out of the church
like a whipped horse. I stumbled outside into the heat of the summer day where
a blue sky was smiling and people were driving around doing ordinary innocent
things, and I was the guy who didn’t deserve to be in church because I just
wanted to forget about a rape.
Excerpt 3:
We headed out on
our hike, following the trail that ran along the river. The water was a lovely
coppery brown from tannins and gleamed with golden light in the sun. The air,
cooled by the water, was moist and buggy. Puppy waded through the grass down to
the water’s edge and scooped up a handful to splash on her face. Then she bent
down to unlace her sneakers, slipped barefoot into the river, turned, and
smiled at me. And I got a stab to the heart that nearly made me fall to my
knees.
She was so…not
beautiful. Appealing. Thin brown legs disappearing into the bright ripples of
the river. Arms outstretched with joy, that elfin grin, and those
strangely-colored eyes. Her wild hair. I wanted to splash out into the water
and hug her, but I didn’t. Instead, I just stood like a dork on the trail and
felt my face turn to mush. To cover up my embarrassment, I bent down to undo my
shoes laces and took a long time deliberately fumbling until the skin on my
face stopped burning. I didn’t look up until I heard her slogging upstream.
I followed. The
water felt fresh and cool. The bottom of the river varied from sandy to pebbly,
and was easier walking than I expected. The hard part was the tilt; the river
bed sloped sharply from the shallow edge to the deeper middle. I had to fling
out my arms like a tight-rope walker to keep my balance.
Puppy had the
same problem. I watched her thin legs cutting through the water, watched her
stumble and nearly fall, and watched her laugh back at me over her shoulder.
Then she began to run, splashing like a little kid up the stream. I ran
flailing after her. She scrambled out onto a sandbar.
I waded onto the
shore, amazed. Tucked into the curve of the river was a swath of golden brown
sand that I’d never seen before. The sandbar was edged by a thick stand of
willows on one side and the curve of the river on the other. On the far side of
the river, the hills climbed steeply, densely covered with maples and oaks.
Except for the jet trail across the sky, we were cut off from civilization. I
couldn’t hear the sound of traffic or lawn mowers, the shouting of kids playing
in the park, or any of the other ordinary suburban noises. Instead, I heard
birdsong.
Puppy plopped
herself down on the sand and grinned up at me. “It’s really nice here.” I
settled beside her, conscious of the sand that was going to stick to my butt
and dirty up the inside of Mom’s car. “I used to come down to the park nearly
every day,” I told her. “Not this exact spot. I mean down to the river. I even
came down here in the winter for ice skating.”
“That would be
fun.” She leaned back, shook her hair out, and flopped all the way back into
the sand. “If I lived around here, I’d be down here all the time.” Her shirt
rode up and I could see her belly button: an innie, with silvery sand sparkling
on her dark tan. She didn’t have any concern about getting her clothes or her
hair dirty. In fact, she stretched luxuriantly, rubbing the sand into her
shoulders and her bare feet.
I heard the
rattle of a woodpecker far off in the woods. The jet trail dissipated from the
hard blue sky. I leaned back into the sand and felt the heat soaking into my
shoulder blades. A light breeze cooled the skin on my wet legs. My heart was
full of emotions...so many that I couldn’t name them all. I tried to imagine
luxuriating in warm sand with some girl from St Anne’s and almost laughed.
Yeah, right! In a pleated skirt and knee highs!
“Puppy, you’re
different than any other girl I’ve ever met.” Had I spoken aloud? I guess so,
because she stopped wriggling in the sand and rolled over on her side, the
better to look at me. “What do you mean?’
Can you, for
those who don't know you already, tell something about yourself and how you
became an author?
I became an author because of a midnight
rescue of a dog. I wrote a story about the experience. I think it is safe to say that now because
the statute of limitations for a gross misdemeanor is up. I checked.
Seriously, that’s
what happened. And after the first story, other stories appeared on other
topics, mostly related to life here on an island in Puget Sound. Don’t think
that island life is idyllic! This is Appalachia with water fronts. So the
stories are about drug addition, alcoholism, death, and abuse. Most have
something to do with a person’s relationship with an animal.
After about a year rereading and rewriting,
I decided that I was done. I thought that maybe the stories were okay: readable
and perhaps publishable. I got them all done up as a book and then sent a copy
to Kirkus Review. Nervously, I waited for the reaction of a professional.
To my intense pleasure and surprise, I got a
starred review, my book was highlighted for a month, and I made their list of
100 indy best books of the year. That gave me the confidence to write more.
Tell us something really
interesting that's happened to you!
I lost my bra at a truck stop about an
hour’s drive from the Arctic Circle.
I was on a camping trip in Yukon
Territory, driving up the Dempster Highway, which is a gravel road that starts
in Dawson and goes almost to the Arctic Ocean. After driving all day on that
gravel road—and had some adventures there, but that’s another story—I went into
the motel office to get some “loonies” so I could shower off the road dust. I
was carrying a change of clothes.
Then I went around back to the pay showers
and got all cleaned up. But, oh no! As I was putting clean clothes on, it
became clear that I did not have a fresh bra. Where was it? Not on the floor,
not mixed up with my dirty clothes. But no worries, right? Must’ve left it in
my tent. So I went and looked. No bra.
Ooops. I had a creeping feeling of dread
and embarrassment, but I had to check. A peek through the glass doors to the
motel lobby, and the mystery was solved. There in the middle of the lobby floor
was my bra. Just laying there like bait. And a dozen or so Canadian truck
drivers were lounging around the lobby, watching. I retreated back to my tent.
What are some of your pet
peeves?
I hate people who pump their gas, and then
get in their car, and then…don’t drive away. They sit there. The brake lights go on and
off. They sit some more. I have no idea what they are doing. The next time I am
stuck behind one of these jerks, waiting to get to the pump, I’m going to run
up and shout at the driver, “Use your gas pedal! Why did you buy gas if you
aren’t going to actually drive away?” Except with lots of swear words.
As a writer, what would you
choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal?
Raven
What inspired you to write
this book?
Brett Kavanaugh. Well, not
directly. While watching the confirmation hearings, I got really interested in
the situation of the male witness to a rape or sexual abuse situation. How does
the male witness respond? The story of the abuse of a girl being covered up to
protect the future of boy is a pretty common one. Small town football teams
make the news this way every now and then.
Many of the “Me Too” stories
are about women who are told to keep their mouths shut to protect the career of
a man.
These stories are centered on the
female—which is how it should be. Still, what about the witness? An event like
that is going to be pivotal. Will the witness side with the abuser, or with the
abused? The context of such stories is nearly always one that protects the
abuser and gives the witness a framework of values to justify that protection.
So the most likely outcome is that the witness will protect the abuser. But
what if the witness doesn’t?
That’s the question that interested me.
How did you come up with the
concept and characters for the book?
Coyote Summer fuses two things: a real
social problem and tricksters. Why? I suppose because I am a politically aware
person who needs the escapism of magic. I am interested in how people change
themselves, so all of my books are character-driven and involve changes inside
the main character in response to some external event that challenges their
assumptions.
And in all of my novels a trickster
either is the main character or is the change agent that impacts the main
character. Nearly every culture has stories about a character who is lawless
and creative. The trickster can be the hero in some stories and the bad guy in
others. The stories function both as entertainment and as an aspect of a
broader spiritual tradition. To Native people of the Pacific Northwest, Raven
was the trickster. In the Southwest, the trickster was Coyote. In pre-Christian
Ireland, the tricksters were called pucas and they were shapeshifters. The
ancient Greeks had Hermes.
Tricksters are catalysts. They represent
randomness, chaos, creativity, and change. They stir things up so that the
predictable doesn’t happen and something unexpected
does. So in each of my books, there is a trickster somewhere, stirring things
up, a catalyst for change.
Who designed your book covers?
Tamira Thayne of Who Chains You
does the designs. Who Chains You is a niche publisher who specializes on
animal-theme books. She has a lovely line of children’s books,
really beautifully illustrated. She also is a writer and is working on a
rollicking, adventurous YA series. Tamira comes from a background in animal
rescue. She was the founder of a nationwide dog rescue group called Dogs
Deserve Better. I highly recommend her website if you are gift shopping for
kids or if you like stories about animals and animal/human relationships.
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