AUTHOR INSIGHTS
What do you like to do when you are not writing?
I have a broad range of interests. I enjoy spending time with my wife and our adult children and four grandchildren. I love nature, and most activities that take advantage of being a part of it. Especially fishing, being on a lake or drifting down a scenic river, hiking, and camping. I read extensively, being a fan of the work of authors old and new, fiction and nonfiction. What I tend to favor are the literary classics of old, the novels of authors living in our times, as well as books which contain snapshots of history and the notable people who left an important mark upon it. I also love to make music and listen to it being performed well by others who are more talented in that arena than I am.
Why Do You Write?
Again, I am a reader.
Such has been the case all my life. From childhood into the so-called golden years. Hundreds if not thousands of different authors, books, and genres.
Despite the convenience and opportunities offered by today’s digital world, I prefer books and reading them the old-fashioned way. Hardcover or paperback, but books, not devices.
I am also a writer.
I love to write stories. Occasionally, inspiration strikes and I take the time to put down on paper the words that shape up in my mind from an idea into a story. Edit them into something coherent and worth reading.
I occasionally ponder why I feel compelled to write, and more recently, to publish the stories that I have created.
The answer to that self-searching inquiry comes up differently from occasion to occasion. I write because I can. I write because I want to share a particular story. I write because I love to read books and I want some that I have created myself out there at large in the world. I write because I want to leave something behind, something for me to be remembered by other than a headstone after I am gone. I write because it is fun to do so when inspiration is there. And on and on. Maybe it is a combination of all those reasons, or of others that I haven’t yet been able to articulate.
The one thing that I do know, and which has always been true, is that I don’t write for the purpose of making money. While there are costs associated with copyrighting a book, assigning it an ISBN, and getting it published, when I am writing a story the content of what I generate is not shaped by a concern over what words, ideas, and books will sell, and which won’t. On the contrary, I give that possible concern zero thought.
Whatever my motivation for writing may be, given the approach to putting books out there which I follow, I have no agent, no publisher other than myself, and not even a professional editor to whom I must answer. (I do get editing input from my wife and family, which is quite helpful and for which I am very grateful.) As such, the ideas that well up within me as notions seeking expression end up getting published, for better or worse, essentially unfiltered—uninfluenced by outside commercial input.
Writers come in all shapes and sizes. They are often as different as night and day. The stories they tell and the books they publish reflect the amazing breadth of experience, diversity of subject matter, and varied degrees of passion and talent that one might expect from a universe of authors spanning the history of the written word.
My singular unfiltered voice apparently wanted to be heard; to be added into the whirlpool of literature that exists out there for the reading public to admire or disdain, such as might be their pleasure. I have succumbed to the calling of that voice and ventured to enter my stories into the public arena.
And so it is, that this reader is also a writer.
Regarding Hunters of the Dawn, what inspired the story?
Somewhere along about halfway into the 2024 fall salmon run at the Columbia River estuary, with my wife Lori at home occupied with other family and grandmotherly duties while I was away at fish camp, I wrote her a letter. It began with a date and the usual “My dearest…” salutation, and then a story about a man in a dugout canoe with a spear in his hand hunting salmon in brackish river water inexplicably spilled out over the next ten or so pages. When I paused at the end of that flurry of written words, I ended the letter with an expression of my undying affection for her and my signature, as all good dispatches to your soulmate back at home must be concluded. Before I mailed it from the coast to her, I scanned a digital copy of the letter to keep for myself for future reference because I liked how the odd little story had turned out. Then as I fished over the next few weeks, usually alone in the boat and using much more sophisticated methods than my protagonist in the handwritten story had at his disposal, it occurred to me I could take this little story further, beginning with what this indigenous American had done with his kill after beaching the dugout. Having always been fascinated with primitive man and the hunter gatherer in us, and loving nature and the Pacific Northwest as I do, the rest of the chapters ended up morphing into more of a “what must it have been like living along the Columbia River estuary eight thousand years ago” piece than the fish camp story it had started out being. In any event, in the end, I realized the original writing made much more sense being expanded into a short novel about life and survival at the dawn of humanity than it ever did as a love letter.
How much research was done in writing Hunters of the Dawn?
Quite a bit. General information about the nature of human populations in the timeframe depicted in the novel, more specific intelligence about what tools, weapons, and shelter Pacific Northwest inhabitants had at their disposal, and the facts and data which formed the basis for the discussion of the Cascadia Subduction Zone and its tsunami history in the region were absorbed simply by my having read for enjoyment the books which are listed as resources at the end of the novel. Beyond that, further research was done by me to gain a better understanding of how best to portray the more intimate aspects of the lives of these primitive people. Hunting, gathering, trapping, processing their food and creating garments, managing the dynamics of their own village interactions, and trading with and at times defending against ill intentions of other tribes. There being no actual historical record of human activity then, at some point in trying to write about how things must have been for the people of the Pacific Northwest eight thousand years ago my imagination did end up taking over. Hence the book is represented as being nothing more than a work of fiction, although I did my best to depict as realistically as possible the lifestyle and survival challenges faced by the characters in the story; staying as much as possible within the bounds of the pertinent archaeological and anthropological facts (about my subjects and the time and place into which I had inserted them) gleaned from my research.
Who illustrated it?
I did. I take all the blame! I felt this book’s individual chapters would benefit from an introductory illustration of the primary animal or event after which each was titled. I had no experience as a sketch artist before tackling these drawings, but I studied up a bit on how to do simple black and white pencil drawings and then gave it a run. It seemed best to adorn a book about primitive times with pictures that weren’t especially sophisticated, and I assumed, perhaps naively, that even amateur efforts could probably clear that low bar. In any event, basically, I just drew the eighteen sketches myself, scanned them one at a time, and inserted them into the book.
How did you come up with the title for Hunters of the Dawn?
It was the name that my clever wife suggested, and it seemed to fit the story better than what I had originally intended to name it.
Will there be an audio version?
Yes. I will be working on producing an audio version of Hunters of the Dawn. When it’s done, I’ll post a notice of availability here on the website.
Will there be a sequel to it?
Perhaps. I have given some thought to researching and writing a book that would be more along the lines of being a “prequel”, set in the time when megafauna (mastodon, saber toothed cats, and such) were still present on the North American continent.
Have you written other books?
I have written short stories throughout the course of my life. Before retiring in 2021 from a 40 plus year career as a lawyer, I did not have the time and energy to work through the process of publishing writings. Now I do. Hunters of the Dawn became my first publishing project. I enjoyed learning about the process and am currently working on preparing one or more groupings of other stories for publication. When ready, I’ll post notice of availability to the website.
What is the plan for you as an author going forward?
The first thing to do is to finish compiling the short stories I have already written into one or more books that can be published, hopefully sooner rather than later. After that, we will see what happens. I still love to write. I continue to want my writings to be out there, and available to be read. As time permits and inspiration occurs, now that I know how to self-publish, my tackling of additional writing projects can certainly be expected.