ENCOUNTERS WITH OLD COYOTE
Laura Koerber
GENRE: Magical Realism
BLURB:
"One thing about people—they need to tell stories. They can't stop themselves. Stories all the time. That's how they understand things." So said Coyote to Andrea, shortly after she died. Andrea had never believed in any kind of afterlife or gods, so she was surprised to find herself still somewhat alive, floating in the form of a ghost in the soft, dry desert air of Nevada. She was even more surprised to meet a supernatural being with a coyote's face, antlers, and the supplies for making coffee.
"I don't understand why I'm a ghost," Andrea said.
Coyote set his coffee cup down on the dirt beside his rock. He glanced at Andrea, grimaced, and said, “Okay, I'll try to explain. Since you humans like stories, I'll try to explain that way. I'll tell you some stories.”
So come along with Coyote and Andrea as they share stories about life and death, spiders in the bathroom and how Andrea lost her bra at a truck stop, enemy gods and pottery shards, adventures in vomit, what scientists say about dark matter and the fifth force, and other topics both sublime and ridiculous.
Excerpt:
After Andrea died, she found herself in the condition of being a ghost. This was a surprise to her because, as an atheist, she'd assumed that death was the end. Oblivion. The absence of experience. No awareness or capacity for awareness. Her life as wife, novelist, and white middle class college professor hadn't prepared her for an afterlife, and yet there she was, a wisp of a gleam in the night air, floating over her dead body. She felt cheated and angry because it had taken quite a bit of determination on her part to die. It was an unpleasant shock to go through all that effort—a trip to Nevada, a bottle of wine, a handful of pills, plus a plastic bag over her head—just to find herself not quite altogether dead after all.
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
I live on a island in the Puget Sound with my husband and my dogs. I am a retired teacher, presently doing in -home care for disabled people while volunteering at a cat rescue
My degree is in art, and I am a painter, graphic artist, and ceramic sculptor. The writing started about five years ago, a surprise to me and everyone who knows me, since I had never written anything before. To my immense gratitude, my first book received outstanding reviews and made the Kirkus Review list of one hundred best indy books of 2015.
Since then, I have written ten books. People seem to like them; I get lots of four and five star reviews. My books are a bit unconventional; I mix magical realism with dystopia in many of them. My stories tend to be character-driven and include ghosts and spirits.
I think I learned to write by reading. I am a voracious omnivore of books.
9 comments:
Thank you so much for featuring ENCOUNTERS WITH OLD COYOTE today.
This looks like a fantastic read. Thanks for sharing.
I like the title and cover. Sounds like a good story.
Sounds like a good book.
Thank you for hosting my book! I am so embarrassed that I didn't post this morning, but I do have an excuse: my dog got in an accident on the bluffs. We walk our dogs on a trail along the bluffs every morning and then go down to the beach for off leash time. Our big black dog, Bodhi, chased a squirrel up into the trees and bramble on the bluff--it's very steep!--and got himself stuck up there. I'm seventy years old and have osteoporosis, but I scrambled up from the bottom, while my husband (also old) ran back up the trail and looked for him from the top. After a lot of running around and yelling and excitement, my neighbor used his climbing rig to go over the cliff edge and down. He found our idiot dog and they scrambled down to the beach. In all the uproar, I forgot about the tour starting today! Again, I am sorry!
This sounds like a great book to read.
Thank you, everyone who has expressed an interest. Just so you know--the book is not entirely autobiographical since I'm not dead! However, many of the stories are true or close to being true. I did lose my bra in the lobby of a truck stop near the Arctic Circle. I did steal a dog. I did encounter a spider in the bathroom, an encounter which resulted in me running naked out of the house and onto the deck. However, I have not ever met a coyote spirit. I wish I would! Again, thanks for the interest.
cool
looks like a fun one
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