Excerpt Tour: Encounters With Old Coyote by Laura Koerber

 

ENCOUNTERS WITH OLD COYOTE

Laura Koerber

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GENRE:  Magical Realism

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"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.

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EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT

The next day Andrea saw the supernatural being. She'd spent most of the night curled up next to her body on the sleeping bag. Desolate and lost, what else could she do? Her body had looked frail and lonely, and she'd felt the same frailty and loneliness in what remained of her heart. In fact, she felt as if her ghost self was nothing more than her feelings expressed as a variation in the air. So, looking for comfort, she'd laid her ghost self down on the sleeping bag and curved herself around the small form of her body. All night long she'd studied the stars and worried about what the day would bring. 

    

The dawn had arrived gently as the stars winked out and the sky shaded from black to gray to a tender blue. The mountains, lit by the morning sun, were briefly yellow, then blue, then settled into beige and dark green. Dusty and dry, the flat land around Andrea's campsite was a landscape of scrubby grass and sagebrush. 

Andrea drifted slowly up and away from the body in the sleeping bag. She was feeling a lack of morning coffee and moved carefully, as if her ghost body might disintegrate, leaving her with nothing at all but a sad, disoriented consciousness. It was strange to get up and meet the day without any of the usual morning rituals: no breakfast, no teeth-brushing, no purring cat.

She was rotating slowly in the air, looking around with growing desperation, when the spirit emerged from the dawn light. He came into being gently, as if created by the molecules of morning air: a shape not quite human, not quite coyote, and completely unlike anything she'd ever seen before. With a full head of spiky deer antlers, bluish gray fur, and yellow coyote eyes, he clearly was a supernatural manifestation. 

Andrea stared into his yellow eyes, terrified. Her thoughts skittered around in her head. Should she fly away? Hide? But there was no place to hide in the flat, open landscape. She shrank back away warily and kept watch. The strange spirit approached her calmly, with the causal air of someone dropping in to visit a neighbor. Nodding briefly, he said, “Hi there.” 

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ABOUT the AUTHOR

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. 

Kirkus Review: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/jill-kearney/dog-thief-kearney/

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GIVEAWAY

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