Now available

I signed publishing contract with LangenMüeller for GERMAN translation of The Clan of the Wolf, the first novel in the Zhòh Trilogy.

Zhòh: der Wölfesclan is due for publication  January 20, 2021. 

Thanks  to Werner Schmitz for his  translation.

Here is link to the book-https://www.langenmueller.de/
 

In Chapter Five, ‘The Primordial Beast,’ of Wolves of the Yukon, I invented the chance meeting of a wolf pack and Jack London in winter of 1897-98. London’s most famous short story, To Build a Fire also takes place along a northern river during a deep Yukon cold spell. A lone traveler freezes his feet in overflow and attempts to build a fire to save  himself. I included London’s theme of frozen feet in my wolf story because I managed to get away with it some fifty years ago, much to my chagrin.

 In 1968, I was a junior high school student at Scollard Hall in North Bay, Ontario. I wrote an English composition called The Flickering Flame, loosely inspired by London’s famous short story. My story also explored the fate of a man attempting to build a fire to keep from freezing. Unlike London’s chilling ending, my character lived.

Father Westfall, at his desk at the front of the all boy class, began leafing through our compositions while we worked silently at our desks. He opened the first story and began stabbing into it with his red pencil. Soon he came to my story with the unmistakable drawing of yellow flame blazing from the title page. As he read, his brow furrowed, and his interest began to grow—and it was not good. He flipped the pages back and forth and read on, glancing up at me now and then.  I pretended to be deeply engrossed in my daily work but saw his hard looks and my heart began racing. Then he rose from his chair and left the classroom. He was infamous for class discipline and none of us dared to utter a word or clown around in his absence.

He returned in a few minutes with a Jack London collection pressed against his black cassock. He sat down and made sure I could see his plan. Opening London’s collection, he placed it beside mine, the flickering flame looking like it was about to be extinguished. His eyes shot back and forth between London’s story and mine, his pencil flying across the pages. Then he stopped and closed the book. Casually moving my story aside, he pulled a new one from the pile and began another round of editing. Expecting the very worst, I sat uncomfortably until the bell rang, sure to be humiliated as a plagiarist. I tried to escape among the throng of exited classmates but as I tried to slip by, he pulled me aside with a beckoning finger. I stood awkwardly in front of him, prepared for certain disgrace. 

‘It’s just different enough’, was all he said as he waved me to the open door and literary freedom.   

I am excited to announce I have finished the first draft of Destiny of the Wolf, the final book in the Zhòh Trilogy. 

I will keep you posted on when the book will be available. 

Something made him stop. They were moving over the ice sheet into a blistering wind with only the pale band of winter light on the horizon to guide them. In a semi-trance, Kazan’s head had been down, wrapped inside his parka hood. Exhausted, he had not noticed the wind-scalloped drifts had changed to a soft blanket of ankle-deep snow. Through the slits of his skin visor he peered down at his feet. Beneath the soles of the ice-caked mukluks he felt the surface of the glacier suddenly shift and crack and his heart lurched. He froze, gripping his spear, afraid to make a move. Someone shouted but the wind erased the words before they reached his ears. He shifted his weight onto his back foot and slowly turned, feeling the snow sag under him. A gust of wind caught his pack and he stumbled. The surface suddenly collapsed and he fell into a hole to his armpits. He hung over the snow-covered crevice, wedged tightly in the hole by his pack and dart quiver. He pressed down on the spear, desperately trying to spread his weight as wind lashed his face. Someone was running toward him, shouting his name when the snow suddenly buckled around him. “No!” he shouted, but Kural’s hand was there gripping his pack. The snow bridge crumbled and he dropped until he was suspended over the black void, clutching the spear shaft with both hands. “Hold on!” Kural grunted as his hand reached down and pulled him by the hood. But Kazan could not hold on—his fingers were prying from the spear. He cried out, trying to find his grip again. Suddenly he was falling. Kural was kneeling on the snow bridge, pulling on Kazan’s hood with all his strength, knowing that if he let go, he was gone. A hand shot up, grabbing the sleeve of his parka. Kural groaned as every muscle strained in his back and arms. The bridge suddenly collapsed and Kazan disappeared below in tumbling slabs of snow and ice. “Kazan!” he shouted, scrambling away from the widening chasm. Glancing back, he saw the others through the driving snow. They were standing, looking at him, their hooded faces in shock.