from the eighth Kate Shugak novel
Excerpt:
In his authority as harbormaster Shitting Seagull retained the right to reserve transient parking for ships belonging to such extraterrestrial visitors as wandered out this far on the galactic rim. He had been doing so for twenty years, ever since he first took on the job. The mayor would have fired him for this partiality except that each month, rent for transient parking accumulated in the city account at the National Bank of Alaska, twenty cents per foot per day, for nine hundred feet of dock. It was deposited directly into the account, in the exact amount required per foot of slip space. When rents had gone up two years before, the amount had obligingly adjusted itself accordingly. The mayor decided what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him, although it made sport fishermen in for the day a little irritable, because no one could see the visiting spaceships except Gull.
Fun fact: I don’t know what could be more fun than Gull, unless maybe it’s the four aunties, who make their up close and personal debut here. I grew up around strong women like my mother and Susan English and Katie Kashevarof and my friend Kathy. Look around Alaska now and you see women in leadership positions everywhere. It may seem counterintuitive to its frontier reputation but Alaska is a good place for women to get ahead, and for one fictional woman to excel.
