Tag Archives: meso-american

Warning: This Post Contains Shameless Self-Promotion

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New Cover

Recently I finished editing the first draft of “Fire in the Ocean,” the sequel to “The Obsidian Mirror.” I sent it off to my alpha readers and editor, and I can finally relax and think about something else for a while.

Such as promoting “The Obsidian Mirror.” While I was in the throes of writing the sequel, I did next to nothing about promoting my published work. A writer’s work is never done, I guess.

Why should you read “The Obsidian Mirror”? Short answer: because it’s a fun read. I read largely for entertainment. I like books that take you away and let you live someone else’s life for a while. I wrote “Obsidian” to be that kind of book: a diversion, a book I would love reading myself. It’s probably not a coincidence that the second publisher of the book is Diversion Books—they specialize in just that kind of novel.

Another reason to read “Obsidian” is because it is based on the mythologies and folklore of the Americas, which makes it a bit different. The idea occurred to me after finishing one of Robert Jordan’s “Wheel of Time” novels. I loved the book, but started wondering why so much fantasy is based on proto-European, pre-Industrial Age tropes such as elves, faeries, dragons, and caped adventurers. The Americas have thousands of mythologies, folk tales and traditions that are largely ignored by fantasy writers.

I began writing “The Obsidian Mirror” as a kind of personal experiment. Meso-American gods and Coyote the Trickster, an Inuit ice demon and a mannegishi named Fred are some of the characters. What I did not anticipate is that I would fall in love with my characters and be driven to finish the book. Having done that, I felt compelled to get it published.

I don’t have much to brag about. I’m not a best-selling author. I have won no prestigious awards for my fiction writing. But I do have one thing that gives me modest bragging rights.

I have heard authors talk about receiving hundreds of rejection slips. One writer said he had a drawer filled with 450 rejection slips for his novel. That didn’t happen with “The Obsidian Mirror.” I approached perhaps 10 publishers and/or agents before AEC Stellar agreed to publish the book. When AEC Stellar bit the dust, I approached about five publishers before Diversion Books picked it up, re-published it and agreed to publish the sequel.

So I may not have sold a million copies, but I never had any problem finding a publisher. As a matter of fact, years after I originally submitted the manuscript to their slush pile, Baen Books got back to me and said they were interested in it. The early bird gets the book, Baen.

So why am I proud of this? Because I have some independent assessments that people will enjoy reading my novel. Add to that, the several four- and five-star reviews on Amazon, and you might conclude that you would enjoy it, too. To make it super-easy for you to find the book, here it is: http://amzn.to/1MQBvkd

I did warn you.

 

 

Interview with K.D. Keenan on (r)Evolution with HiC

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K.D. Keenan, author of "The Obsidian Mirror"

K.D. Keenan, author of “The Obsidian Mirror”

http://player.cinchcast.com/?platformId=1&assetType=single&assetId=5859167

Check Out Books Podcasts at Blog Talk Radio with Firefly Willows LIVE on BlogTalkRadio

The Launch Party, Coyotes, Mannegishi, and What Comes Next

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Chaco, the Coyote Trickster

The launch party for “The Obsidian Mirror” went beautifully last Saturday afternoon. Kepler’s Bookstore in Menlo Park, CA graciously hosted the event, and there was a good crowd of people there. I did a very brief reading and answered questions.

Here’s a sampling of what I was asked:

Q: Is your protagonist (Sierra) autobiographical?

A: Sierra is concerned about the environment; so am I. Sierra is a PR executive, and used to be one. Sierra designs silver jewelry, and I do, too. There the resemblance ends because Sierra is way cooler than I am. (I didn’t mention this, but she’s also younger and more athletic than me.)

Q: What started you writing the book?

A: I had recently finished a Robert Jordan novel that involved riding horses, armor, swords, sorcery, etc. I really enjoyed the book, but later I wondered why, with thousands of legends, mythologies, folk tales and traditions, the New World is rarely used as inspiration for fantasy. Most epic fantasy, at any rate, is usually set in some pre-Industrial Age, pseudo-European environment. Elves, faeries, trolls, ogres, goblins, vampires, etc. are staple fare.

I love swords-and-sorcery, don’t get me wrong! But I had time (my freelance writing business was slow at the time), so I began writing a story based on New World traditions as an experiment. Before long, the characters took over and I HAD to finish the story.

Q: Is Chaco (Coyotl the Trickster) based on a person in your life?

A: I said Chaco was based on my husband, Tom, but I was kidding. Coyotl the Trickster is a folk hero among many of the Native American tribes. I should have mentioned that appearance-wise, I saw Chaco, in his manifestation as a deliciously sexy young man (as opposed to his coyote gig), as Gael García Bernal, the excellent Mexican actor who (among many other roles) played Ché Guevara in “The Motorcycle Diaries.”

One person thanked me for not making Chaco the villain. I started out thinking that since Chaco was The Trickster, he ought to be rather ambiguous; the reader would not be sure whether he was good or bad. I really, truly would have liked to write him that way, but he came out more of a scamp than a real rogue. (That was all his doing, not mine. I had other ideas.)

Q: What other characters are in the book?

A: There’s Fred the Mannegishi. Mannegishi are sort of like leprechauns in that they are small and green, but mostly because they are mischievous. Mannegishi are from legends of the Cree tribe. Fred is truly unreliable, but as one person present said (she had edited the manuscript for me), “Fred seemed like a pain in the butt at first, but he became my favorite character.”

I was asked if I made up Fred’s appearance, but I followed the description of Mannegishi in Wikipedia. I rarely made up anything about the supernatural characters; I tended to follow the traditional descriptions if they were available. Of course, much of my research consisted of strolling around the Internet when I needed a new monster. As the New Yorker cartoon has it, “Nobody knows you’re a dog on the Internet.” By the same token, it’s hard to know whether you’re reading something authentic, or a made-up legend by a tequila company or something. As “The Obsidian Mirror” is fiction—and fantasy fiction at that—I didn’t worry too much about academic purity.

 Q: Do you have a sequel planned?

 A: Yes, two. The next book will be set in Hawai’I, where Fred might meet some cousins of his. “The Obsidian Mirror” has an underlying theme of threat to our natural environment, which will continue to be a theme of my work. I am very concerned about the Pacific Gyre, also known as the Pacific Garbage Patch, a continent-size vortex of plastic particles in the ocean swirling around Hawai’i. But I do not plan on getting preachy. The books have to be fun to read, or no one will read them.

Of course, I may have to make the ultimate sacrifice and travel to Hawai’i to do research. A writer’s life is so hard.

The third sequel will be set in Mexico, and will have something to do with the Virgin of Guadalupe as Tonantzin, the Aztec flower goddess. I don’t know much more about it yet.

After answering questions, I sat down at the assigned table and signed books. The store sold out, with Kepler’s purchasing the last one for the staff. I hope they enjoy it as much as I enjoyed the party. I got a ton of compliments on the food—which I never touched because I was too wound-up!

From Sea to Poisoned Sea

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Image: High Contrast

Image: High Contrast

Growing up, I learned in school about the natural wonders of our great land—the deep forests, crystalline rivers, wide and sweeping plans, and pristine deserts. This was probably reinforced by various Disney nature films depicting animals in the wild, with not a telephone line in sight.

Imagine my surprise when I got a little older and found out about “dead” lakes so polluted that nothing much could live in them. Rivers that caught on fire from time to time. Sweeping landscapes of gray factories belching dirty smoke into the air, surrounded by heaps of toxic slag. And because I lived a mere 100 miles from Los Angeles, that mother of all urban blight, the pall of grayish-brown smog that obscured the nearby 8,000-foot-plus-high mountains on many days.

I know it sounds as if I were a complete naïf, but I was stunned. The people who were dumping toxins and garbage into the water had to live here, too. Their children were being exposed to poison in the air and water. They had to look at the blight of human ingenuity, right along with the rest of us. So what could they possibly be thinking?

Many decades later, I am still wondering. It has never made sense to me that people would crap all over their own dinner tables. And it has never made sense to me that governments allow them to do this. Every time I read about some scheme to defang the EPA, or lower air and water quality standards, or build another nuclear power plant even after the disasters at Three-Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukishima, I am newly gob-stopped. Why would anyone knowingly and deliberately destroy the only home we possess?

That’s one reason I wrote “The Obsidian Mirror.” In it, the ancient and evil Necocyaotl devises a new way to entice people to “look into the obsidian mirror,” after which they become so focused on their personal wants and desires that they are willing to despoil the earth to obtain them. He does this by spreading his evil essence in a fiendishly clever way, using modern technology.

To be honest, it’s the only explanation I can understand. Nothing else makes any sense at all. Profit motive, you say? That’s like burning down your own house to warm your hands for a bit. Until I get a better explanation, I’m sticking with the Necocyaotl Theory.

I Took My Skull Back to the Place It Came From (Almost)

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When I turned six years old, my grandfather gave me a present. It wasn’t wrapped, as I recall, but just placed in a plain cardboard box. As it happened, it was my favorite gift that year: a genuine human skull.

My grandfather, Frank W. Moore, was an adventurous man. In the earlier days of the 20th century, he helled around California in a Model T, driving across the desert before there was such a thing as “off-road” driving. He had a sailboat called “Amy H” in which he explored the California coast and offshore islands. (My grandmother was not named Amy H. I think the boat came with the name and he never got around to changing it.) In those days, California was underpopulated and he had the freedom to go pretty much wherever he wanted to do whatever he felt like. One of the things he liked to do was go out with his buddy, Dr. Walter B. Power, and cut down billboards.

On one occasion in 1917, he landed on San Nicholas Island, later made famous by writer Scott O’Dell as “The Island of the Blue Dolphins.” On or near the beach, he saw a white dome poking up out of the sand. He uncovered it and found a skull with half of its lower mandible. The teeth (those that were left) were ground down quite smooth as a result of the inhabitants’ diet of shellfish which contained a lot of sand. My grandfather took the skull home, where it became an object of envy for my mother, who had ambitions of becoming an archeologist (and eventually did). Mom named it Yorick after the skull in “Hamlet.”

In those days, there was no Native American Repatriation Act, aimed at restoring the remains of Native Americans to their tribes and homelands. The battle of Wounded Knee was a mere 27 years in the past when my grandfather found the skull, and the term “Native American” hadn’t yet been coined. Indians, in short, were not highly regarded by the mainstream culture back then. No one thought twice about my grandfather taking Yorick from his resting place on San Nicholas Island.

In 1917, there were no inhabitants on the island. The Nicoleños (or Ghalas-at) had been almost exterminated by Russian fur-trappers. In 1835, the padres of the California mission system moved five of the six remaining inhabitants to the mainland. The one who stayed, Juana Maria, became known as “The Lone Woman.” She lived there, utterly alone, until her removal from the island in 1853. She died not long after.

My mother thought the skull was that of a young male in his 20’s, pointing to the supra-orbital ridges and cranial sutures, and we continued to refer to it as Yorick. Sensibilities toward Native Americans hadn’t improved too much by the time my childhood rolled around, so I happily took Yorick to show-and-tell sessions at school–and I have to tell you, he never failed to make a hit appearance. No one could top me when it came to show-and-tell; imagine following my human skull with your toy cap gun (also a perfectly acceptable show-and-tell item in the 1950’s).

I took as much care of Yorick as a small child might be expected to do, but one day, something heavy fell on him as he rested in my off-duty Easter basket. My mother undertook to glue him back together–and while she was engaged in this project, the chipmunk I had taken home for the weekend from my third grade classroom escaped in the family room and took up residence in the couch. Mom thought this would be a good way to start a book: “While I was glueing my daughter’s skull back together, the chipmunk got loose.” I thought this had promise, but she never did write the book.

When my own children were in elementary school, I let them take Yorick to their show-and-tell sessions. He was as much a hit as ever, but I heard back from one teacher that Yorick was an inappropriate show-and-tell subject. She mentioned the Native American Repatriation Act, and I realized with something of a shock that Yorick was, of course, subject to that law. That ended Yorick’s career in show-and-tell.

I suppose I should have realized earlier that Yorick had been a human being whose remains had been wrested from his native land in an insensitive and chauvinistic manner. But Yorick had been a fixture in my life, and I hadn’t really thought of him as such. He spent the next couple of decades in a cardboard box. Out of sight, out of mind.

When I finished “The Obsidian Mirror” and began to look for a publisher, I remembered my unfulfilled obligation. My novel is based on New World legends, myths, and folk tales, and I recognized my enormous debt to the Native Americans and their many cultures. I thought if I got published–by a real publisher, not self-published–the finest way to celebrate this would be to repatriate Yorick to whichever Native American tribe now held the responsibility for those long-dead people of San Nicholas Island. I thought the Chumash were the most likely, as they are the tribe that lives around Santa Barbara now. I pledged to Yorick and the Powers That Be that I would repatriate Yorick if my book were picked up by a publisher. (I planned to self-publish if I failed to find a publisher, but I didn’t even contemplate what I would do with Yorick in that case.)

Well, AEC Stellar Publishing is bringing out “The Obsidian Mirror” sometime this summer. So I had a promise to keep.

To be honest, I had never before investigated where San Nicholas Island was, precisely, or what had become of it. I had assumed, as the island is considered part of the Channel Islands group, it had been rid of its introduced species like rats and goats and made into a nature preserve like Anacapa. A group of us sat in our living room this past holiday season and did some research. Some of us (not me) were voluble in proposing that we hire a fishing boat and go out to San Nicholas to rebury Yorick ourselves.

It turned out that San Nicholas Island is considerably south of the other Channel Islands (except for Santa Catalina and San Clemente), and sits perhaps 100 miles out to sea from the Southern California coast.

The Channel Islands

The Channel Islands

It also turned out that the island is under the jurisdiction of the United States Navy, which uses it for weapons research. The occupants of a fishing boat that attempted to land would probably be arrested. Some of the group still wanted to do it. “We’ll just tell them we’re old and we got lost,” said my friend Meg. Nope. Nope. Nope. Not going there. I reserve my feckless adventuring for my fiction writing.

I contacted my cousin Sally, who lives near Santa Barbara. Sally suggested contacting Dr. John Johnson, an anthropologist specializing in the Channel Island Indians. Dr. Johnson, a very kind and knowledgeable man, explained that there was an investigation underway to try to determine who (if any) were the legitimate descendants of the Nicoleños. And the organization in charge of the investigation? The U.S. Navy. I don’t have a whole lot of faith that the U.S. Navy feels any urgency about resolving this problem, but according to Dr. Johnson, there isn’t any alternative. Repatriated remains go to the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, where Dr. Johnson works. He assured me that there is a special area where these remains are kept until they can be interred in an appropriate manner and place. Yorick would stay in the museum until the Navy decided where he belonged.

Well, Santa Barbara was at least closer to San Nicholas Island than Yorick has been in more than half a century. I made an appointment with Dr. Johnson to turn Yorick over.

When my husband and I went to Santa Barbara, Dr. Johnson spent some time examining the skull, then said, “I think what we have here is actually Yoricka.” He believes that the skull was that of an older woman, not a young man, and showed us why he thought so. (Sorry, Mom. I think he’s right.) He asked me details about my grandfather and mother and I filled out some paperwork. Then it was time to say goodbye. On the way out of the museum, my husband turned to me and asked, “Feeling a little sad?”

I said, “Yes.” I wish I had taken a picture of Yorick before we left. After all, he–she–was a member of my family for 97 years. I wish I had known who you really were, Yorika. I hope you find your way back to your Island of the Blue Dolphins.

How’s This Coyote? I’d Really Like Your Opinion.

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Many of you were kind enough to comment on three different versions of Chaco: my supernatural character who can appear either as a ridiculously beautiful young man, or as a coyote. (But not just any coyote; he is Coyotl the Trickster).

My publisher had asked for a somewhat lighter feel to the image because the tone of the book overall is light. Chaco is (usually) a cheerful guy.

The vote was overwhelmingly in favor of my original, Chaco #1, with 10 votes, #2 got three votes, and #3 got two votes. I also favor the original.

However, my friend Erica Chase asked, “Is there a happier looking coyote?” I thought this was nothing short of brilliant (typical of Erica). So I went looking for a coyote whose expression was less threatening and more upbeat. And then tried to match the coyote with an image of a young man that more or less matched (or was at least complementary to) the coyote’s expression. The image below is the result, and if you would be so obliging, I’d like to know if you think this is an improvement. Or not. (To see the three images I posted for comment, please go to https://obsidianmirrorblog.wordpress.com/2013/12/13/vote-for-your-favorite-coyote/)

New Coyote/Chaco

New Coyote/Chaco

Vote for Your Favorite Coyote!

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I sent last week’s cover art to my publisher. One of his comments was: “…the book itself also felt a bit more light hearted than the dark cover with the serious boy (who was definitely not so serious in my mind, as I read anyway).”

The man (Chaco) changing into a coyote is central to my story. Chaco is Coyotl, the trickster folk hero of many Native American cultures. He can shift back and forth at will, and this comes in handy several times during the story. So I’d really like to use the image of the shape-shifting man-coyote. But my publisher is right: the tone of the book is on the lighter side.

I picked out a few more handsome latino men from iStock.com, where there is a plethora of such men on sale for very little money, and created two alternatives to my original. I present them here for your deliberation: which is the best Chaco: #1, #2, or #3?

I eagerly await your judgement!

Chaco #1

Chaco #1

Chaco #2

Chaco #2

Chaco #3

Chaco #3

Whack Me Twice and I’ll Listen

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Smack Me

Despite my conviction that I had finished rewriting my novel, “The Obsidian Mirror,” I once again found myself in the throes of a rewrite.

Rewriting sucks. You know that if you’re a writer. It’s like taking apart a complex piece of machinery and putting it all back together so that it works better than it did before. You don’t want to go through all that labor, sigh happily at your achievement—then spy a couple of leftover parts on the floor that are absolutely required for the thing to operate.

But I suddenly became convinced that yes, indeed, I needed to revise the prologue and first two chapters. It came about because of a comment I received from a publisher. He said that the first chapter was full of a lot of unimportant stuff that didn’t push the plot forward, and it took too long to get to the intriguing fantasy elements.

To be honest, I had heard this before. An agent said the first chapter was “boring, boring, boring.” With a crit like that, you’d have thought I’d have jumped on it. However, the agent in question turned out not to be interested in fantasy. I questioned the judgment of someone who didn’t even care about my genre. Also, the manuscript had been read carefully by a published fantasy writer who did a fantastic job of reviewing the book and giving me feedback—and she was cool with the first chapter, so I figured what does the non-fantasy-reading agent know? I was wary of succumbing to self-doubt as well, because self-doubt will suck all the vitality out of your writing if you let it.

But a second critique that basically said the same thing convinced me that self-doubt was very far from being the issue here. A rereading of the prologue and first two chapters confirmed it.

There was nothing wrong with the prologue; it just needed to be tucked into the first chapter in a logical way. But the first chapter—oh, dear. It was all about how my heroine, Sierra, got fired. It contained a lot of backstory, which would be needed at some point, but I focused on her firing, talking about it to her friend Kaylee, going home, feeling bad, etc. In my naiveté, I thought this would introduce conflict and engage the reader. But I guess getting fired isn’t as interesting as I had assumed. In fact, I was personally bored with the whole thing.

So I condensed the prologue and chapters one and two into a single chapter. It’s a long one—about 4,000 words. I slashed about 3,000 words from the overall length of the novel, bringing it to nearly 100,000. I was worried about losing critical backstory, but I found various places in the early chapters to slip it all in. (Fingers crossed. Knock on wood and all that.)

I’m very happy with the result. It pulls the reader in quickly, keeps the action moving, introduces the fantasy elements immediately, and (I hope) piques the reader’s curiosity from the start.

I’d be humbly delighted if you would take a little time to read the new chapter one of my novel. If you agree with me that it works well, would you be kind enough to leave a comment? And if you don’t agree with me, I’d like to hear that, too.

I do listen. Most of the time. Really.

My Mom: the Female Indiana Jones

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Barbara IndianaAs I have mentioned a few times in this blog, I wrote “The Obsidian Mirror” based on American archetypes. I am no expert on Native American folklore, but perhaps I know a little bit more than the average person because my mother was an archeologist specializing in southwestern Native American cultures. She also excavated in Yucatan and Guatamala, helping to uncover Mayan pyramids and temples that had been lost to the jungle hundreds of years ago.

In fact, my mom, Barbara Moore Doyle, was sort of a young, female Indiana Jones. She was excavating at about the same time—the late 1930’s. In the service of archeology, she wielded a machete, slashing through the Central American jungles. At a dig somewhere in the wilds of Arizona she got blood poisoning after falling off the buckboard of a roadster and scraping up her legs. They were excavating far from any hospital—in fact they were far from any roads at the time. A young Apache medical student named Tom White Cloud (what a romantic name!) fixed up a drip of some sort and saved her life.

My mother-to-be climbed up the side of a pyramid in Guatamala and came face-to-face with a fer-de-lance, one of the most poisonous and aggressive snakes in the world.

“What did you do?” I asked breathlessly when she told me this story.

“I made a split-second decision between snakebite in the middle of the jungle where there were no hospitals or anti-venom—or falling. I decided to fall, and…just let go.”

“What did the snake do?”

“I don’t know, but I think he was just as surprised as I was.”

Fortunately, she rolled to the bottom of the pyramid with nothing worse than a bruise or two.

She witnessed strange rituals during the night of Dia de las Muertes in Tegucigalpa, and was perhaps the first and only woman, white or Indian, who was invited into a working Hopi Kiva.

Most of the time, of course, she spent crouched in ditches with a pick and camelhair brush, painstakingly removing dirt and rocks to discover whatever was there to be found. She taught me to walk in the desert with the “archeologist’s stoop,” scanning the ground for potsherds or worked flints. (Also rattlesnakes.) It was like a treasure hunt, and I still have the bits of ancient painted pottery and arrowheads gleaned from these expeditions.

My young mother even ran afoul of the Nazis. During a sojourn in Mexico City, she dated a man named Oswald (last name forgotten by me) who was the brother of the head of the Nazi Party in Mexico. He would take her to the Nazi Officer’s Club, where there was a huge portrait of Adolf Hitler hanging in the dining room. I was scandalized that she would date a Nazi, but she said that Oswald himself was not a Nazi and said that he quietly scoffed at the self-important posturing of the party members.

My mother’s archeology career came to an end with the entrance of the United States into WWII. She returned home to California and got a job as a riveter at Lockheed-Martin. Being bright, she worked her way up and obtained Top Secret clearance as an aircraft inspector. Inspecting aircraft equipped with radar required Top Secret clearance, as it was still highly classified technology. One day, she came home after work to find two FBI men waiting in her parents’ living room. They had intercepted a letter to her from her friend Oswald. Oswald had crossed the Mexican border into Arizona, possibly to avoid being drafted into the German army. He was promptly picked up and placed in an internment camp for suspect nationals. Oswald, with touching sentimentality, wrote to my mother asking her to marry him so that he could get out of the camp. As all the mail from camp inmates was intercepted and read, the FBI decided his plea was actually code—and addressed to a woman with Top Secret clearance, it set off alarm bells.

My mother explained the situation. Wonder of wonders, they believed her, and she served out the war at Lockheed-Martin, inspecting airplanes. She never went back to archeology. She had met my father when he was stationed at the University of Redlands with a VF12 unit of Marines. They fell in love, and were married toward the end of the war. My father had distinctly Victorian ideas, and disapproved of working women, so that was that.

As a child, I was fascinated by my mother’s early adventures, and asked to hear her stories over and over. I also asked her to tell me Native American folktales, and explain the different cultures and religions to me. As an adult, I asked Mom to write down her adventures for me, because I was afraid I would forget the details. She promised to do so, but was always too busy. By the time I thought to record them on tape, it was too late. My funny, bright, kindhearted, brave mother had descended into dementia, never to recover.

But I had grown up in a house decorated with Navajo rugs, Hopi kachinas, and many ancient pots, arrowheads, fired clay sculptures from Mayan ruins, spearheads, spindles, and other archeological bricabrac she had squirreled away for herself. (These days, it would be considered criminal to take such things from their sites, but back in the day, if the young archeologists took a few souvenirs, nobody cared.) I had the best show-and-tell possession ever: a human skull. (My grandfather had found it on an unpopulated island in 1917 and gave it to me for my sixth birthday—much to my mother’s disgust. She had wanted that skull herself, and it was one of the reasons she had become interested in archeology.) So it was no surprise that these influences came through when I finally decided to write a novel.

When (I won’t say if) my novel is published, I will dedicate it to my mother. She not only gave me a love of Native American traditions, she also believed in me as a writer. My only regret is that she didn’t live to read “The Obsidian Mirror,” because she would have loved it.

The Coyote Who Taught Me How To Live

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Okay, instead of writing this blog post, I’m actually supposed to be finishing up a white paper on implementation of the new ICD-10 codes in the healthcare industry. Hard to believe I could tear myself away from that kind of topic to write about coyotes—but that’s what I’m doing.

One of the main characters in “The Obsidian Mirror” is Coyotl, the Trickster. Like Anansi, the trickster spider in African folktales, Coyotl or Coyote is the loveable but sneaky culture hero who tries to put things over on others and sometimes ends up tricking himself. He often attempts to be helpful, as in the tale where he brings fire to the people from the gods. In that story, coyote winds up burning his tail, which is why the coyote’s tail tip is always black. There are many ribald stories about Coyote and various beautiful maidens, including the time that Coyote lost his penis…ahem. Getting off track here…

Coyotl is described as an Avatar in “The Obsidian Mirror” because I wanted to stay away from defining the immortal characters too closely. I also wanted to stay away from religion as much as possible. Religion today is a touchy subject, and I just didn’t want to go there.

In “The Obsidian Mirror,” Coyotl can take the form of a beautiful, sexy young man named Chaco. I originally named the character “Chuy,” (pronounced “Chewy”) which is the Mexican nickname for people named “Jésus.”  There were two problems with this. Unless you speak Spanish, you wouldn’t know how to pronounce his name. And those who do know that people nicknamed Chuy are really named Jésus might think I was trying to create a Christ figure—which I was, most emphatically, not trying to do. I wanted the character to be uninhibitedly sexy and approachable, with a hint of rascal. “Chaco” sounds good, and it is also the name of a marvelous archeological site in New Mexico, Chaco Canyon. As the novel uses American myths and legends, many of which are Native American, it just felt right. (I kind of missed Chuy, though. I named the character after my hairdresser.)

I had a transformative adventure with a coyote once. I was young, and I had a broken heart. I called my cousin Esther, who was about my mother’s age, to ask if I could stay with her for a few days. Esther lived (still does, at the age of 100) on a ranch near the coast of California, one of the happiest places I have ever known, and very beautiful. Esther and her family had always been kind to me, and the ranch was my emotional refuge. So, packing my aching heart and some jeans, I got on a Greyhound bus to visit.

Esther welcomed me and gave me ample space to reflect on where I was and how I had come to be there. I was at a true turning point in my life, hurt, confused, and wondering what on earth I was going to do. My self-confidence was at an all-time low, and at that age, self-confidence wasn’t something I possessed in huge measure.

I developed a daily routine. I would get up, have breakfast with Esther, and then take my little knapsack out for a lengthy walk around the ranch. The knapsack had a notebook for writing and a sketchbook and watercolors for painting. Accompanied by the ranch dogs, Doña and Jack, I would wander all over the ranch, stopping to do nude sunbathing now and again. I wrote and wrote and wrote in my journal, pouring out my misery, uncertainty and pain on paper.

The ranch was about 2,000 acres of rolling hills covered with golden grass and dark-green California liveoak trees. There was no one around except for the cattle and the dogs. It was quiet except for the wind whistling through the grass, making it toss like waves on the ocean. It smelled wonderful—sagebrush, wildflowers and a soupçon of cattle flop. It was the perfect place to be introspective and miserable.

One day, probably four or five days into my visit, I was walking on the ranch road with Doña and Jack. Suddenly, the dogs took off like a shot, something they had never done before. Then I saw they were chasing a coyote through the brush. I eventually wrote a poem about the experience that followed, as it had a huge impact on me that has reverberated ever since:

Coyote

I took the ranch road in the morning

hefting a backpack and an aching heart

the dogs went with me

ranging front and back

I sent my feet ahead, forcing one step and then another

the point is to keep going, don’t you see

the dogs launched into the brush

white dust sparkling above the road

they ran like greyhounds

though both were furry and fat

squinting into the sun I saw him

a lean gray shape loping easily

soaring over fragrant sagebrush

dogs crashing in his wake

coyote

trickster

survivor

little wolf

god’s dog

dogs and coyote

all vanished into the spiced gold of the hillside

the dogs came back

tongues flopping loose

dripping foam

ribs heaving

paws caked with dust

their faces said don’t ask

we sat in the cool of a gray-green liveoak

there he was again

the dogs could not resist

coyote’s gray brush held high

he paused to look over his shoulder

not once but many times

were they following?

could they keep up?

he grinned all the same

I heard him laugh

I know I heard him laugh

the dogs came back quickly

collapsing to either side of me

fat sides

shuddering like overheated engines

hairy faces downcast and pained

I sat in the shade and waited

he sauntered into our clearing

the Fred Astaire of small wolves

the dogs gave not one sign

of his presence but panted on

coyote cocked his head, curious

barked once or twice

the dogs now deaf and blind

turned their pleading eyes to me

he sat on his haunches and studied us

a sorry lot, I guess

he tipped his pointed snout to heaven

and howled

howled like all the mad things of earth

howled like a girl with a broken heart

the sulking dogs were still

but I howled back

he stopped to listen

he answered me

howl for howl we made the dry hills ring

I howled for the pain of losing

for the pain of past loss

for the pain to come

and ended laughing

coyote picked up his paws and yapped three times

once more stung to action

the dogs crashed after him

in hot-breathed pursuit

the last I saw of coyote

was his gray tail sailing over the thistles

coyote

trickster

survivor

little wolf

god’s dog

I’m still laughing

During our mutual hootenanny, the coyote was sitting about 15 feet away from me. I was frightened at first; he wasn’t acting like a normal coyote, so I wondered whether he had rabies. He approached a human and two dogs with no fear at all. But it became quickly clear to me that he wasn’t sick. He was having a lot of very obvious fun. He thought I was pretty amusing, but he loved it when he could persuade the dogs to run after him. He was jaunty and quite sure of himself.

Coyotes are consummate survivors. Their numbers and their range have increased dramatically since the 1800’s because they deal quite well with the presence of humans (and the presence of human garbage and pets). They are omnivores who both hunt and scavenge, living off just about anything, from salmonberries to the occasional shi’tsu.

After meeting that coyote, I decided to be a survivor myself. I decided that I was strong, and that no one would ever make me feel small and weak again. I decided to fight for what I wanted, and refuse to allow anyone else to determine the course of my life.

I returned from my visit with Esther to a fresh round of heartbreak. But this time, I fought back. I didn’t let it overwhelm me. I endured a steep depression that I thought would never end. I made some terrible mistakes, but in the end, I learned to love myself and discovered how to be happy most of the time.

I owe much of that to a lesson from a mischievous little wolf who spent a few minutes singing to me. In a way, “The Obsidian Mirror” is my love song back to him.