Mutt leapt up to the seat of the snow machine as Kate thumbed the throttle and together they roared twenty-five miles over unplowed road to Niniltna, four miles past the village to the ghost town of Kanuyaq, and up the rutted, icy path to the Step. There, Kate dismounted, postholed through the snow to the…
“Sit still,” Dinah said, yanking Kate’s head around by a fistful of hair. “Ouch!” Kate, wedged into Katya’s high chair, muttered something beneath her breath. “Stop whining,” Dinah said, no sympathy in face or voice. “It wasn’t my idea to give you a crew cut.” “It’s not a crew cut.” “It might as well be. …
ONE Niniltna, June 25 “Lots of spirits all over, this year,”They whisper. —A Quick Brush of Wings, Mary TallMountain They would argue later about when it all began, perhaps with the death in July, or maybe the meeting in Washington, D.C. the month before, or even with the fall of the Berlin Wall in…
This is the cover art (and pre-order links) for the next Kate Shugak novel. I’ll be publishing teeny, tiny excerpts from it in the next four newsletters so you should definitely sign up for it here. This, aspiring authors, is what we in the biz call “promotion.” I wrote about it before here, and I’ll…
Thanks to Nic Cheetham and all the wonderful people at Aries Fiction, today sees the return of the first three Kate Shugak novels in paperback! [There is a buy link beneath each of the cover art images above. In case you were interested.] It’s been about twenty years since Kates 2-9 dematerialized from paperback existence.…
Her first startled glance showed no one in immediate distress, with the exception of Mutt, who had been slumbering peacefully next to the fire. She shot to her feet, looked wildly in every direction, put her muzzle up in an emphatic and unequivocal howl of protest and vanished into the brush. Dieter had produced a…
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…
Excerpt: Kate looked from the garage door lying flat on the ground to the cache crumpled up on the opposite side of the yard and sat down hard on the doorstep, the rifle clutched in her hands, waiting for her heart rate to drop below 200. “Breakup,” she said. Fun fact: Breakup has been called…
On the importance of setting. Can’t remember who I wrote this for. The US Coast Guard invited me to do a ridealong on cutter Alex Haley in the Bering Sea in February of 2004. I was invited to write a daily blog from the ship so the shorebound families of the crew could eyewitness as…
Excerpt: There was a large boulder on the near bank, the top worn smooth from years of use by Shugak backsides. Kate sat down. Mutt sat next to her and leaned up against her legs, a warm, heavy presence. They watched the horizon, waiting. At first it was no more than a luminous outlining of…
