Yes, it's been a while . . .( Recipe included! Don't stop reading!)

But I've been just a little bit preoccupied with this whole book publishing thing.  Well, actually not the publishing part so much (I have a publisher who's doing that) as the publicity and marketing part.  There's a hell of a lot more to this than I realized, and it takes a lot of time and energy.  

I'm telling you, it would really be so much easier on me if I could just say, "Hey, did you know my book Coyote Summer is out now?(which it will be any day, i promise)  Why don't you go and buy a copy?  And while you're at it, why don't you buy a copy for your local library?

Or your child's school library?"

Or actually, you can just go into the library and request it, and most of the time they will order it for you.  Not that you wouldn't want your own copy as well.

That would be so easy.  Then everyone would go out and buy a copy, and they would be like, "Wow, what a great book!  I think I will recommend this to all my friends and neighbors!"
And that would be that.

But I'm told it doesn't happen that way.  Which is annoying, to say the least.  Because I would much rather be writing new books than trying to get you read the ones I have already written.  Frankly, I'm kind of tired of those books already.  I mean, I'm not one for re-reading a book anyway, here I am forced to read my own writing over and over again.  It's a good thing I like the way I write.  It's an even better thing that I find me funny and amusing.  Often when no one else does.

i really are funny

So anyway, I've been proofing and making up teacher worksheets for the book so teachers can use it for reading or science assignments in class if they want.  Even though it's fiction, the facts are real.

 And I've been writing people asking them to write one or two line blurbs for the cover of the book.  People I don't even know, which I hate.

So with all this going on, can you blame me for ignoring my blog?
Of course you can.  Mea Culpa.  Have a recipe.  It's on the house.

BLACK PEPPER PARMESAN DRESSING

 Mayonnaise                       1 gallon

Sour cream                         ½ gallon

White vinegar                    ½ cup

Garlic, chopped                 2T

Cracked black pepper     4T

Worcestershire sauce    ½ cup

FRESH grated parmesan 8 cups

Mix all ingredients. This is a base recipe. Thin for service with milk. Approximately 1 cup milk to a quart.

(Yeah, I know, it's got that gallon thing going on again. but this one is an easy conversion.  Just divide by 4 and use quarts. Or send me a note to show you really care and I will do the conversion for you to your personal requirements. Now there's an offer you don't get every day.)

Don't panic . . .

This looks much harder than it actually is. Honest. Although it is a bit more work than, say, opening a can of cream of mushroom soup and pouring it over some frozen tilapia fillets. Not that there's anything wrong with that. (Although, actually, there is. It's just wrong, on so many levels.)

I digress. What a surprise. 

But you will probably save this to serve for a dinner party, where you want to thrill and impress your guests. Or perhaps a valentines day or birthday dinner for a loved one.

I'm betting it is fairly unlikely you are going to come home from work and say, "I think I'll whip up a nice striped bass en papillote for my supper tonight." 

Although you totally should. You deserve it.

Striped Bass en Papillote 

6 teaspoons unsalted butter, softened 
1/2 pound fresh spinach, cleaned and roughly chopped 
2 cups sliced asparagus 
½ cup thick sliced crimini mushrooms 
4 (6-ounce) skinless fillets of wild striped bass 
Kosher salt 
Freshly ground black pepper 
1/2 cup chopped parsley leaves 
4 springs fresh thyme 
2 medium shallots, very finely chopped (or ¼ cup fine chopped onion) 
1 garlic clove, very finely chopped 
1/4 cup dry white wine
Lemon wedges, to serve

 Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. 
Fold 4 large square sheets of parchment paper in half. 
Starting at the fold, cut out a large half heart shape. 

Open the paper flat on a surface with the point of the heart towards you. 
Butter the centers of each heart lightly with a teaspoon of the butter. 
Divide the vegetables into four piles. 
Place a pile onto each heart, centering it on 1 side of the heart, towards the crease. Season the fish well with salt and pepper and place a fillet on top of each pile of vegetables.
Place 1 teaspoon of butter on each fillet and sprinkle each with some of the parsley, thyme, shallots, and garlic. 
Drizzle a little white wine over each. 
Fold the paper over to cover the fish. Starting at the top of the heart, tightly fold over the edges, overlapping each time, all the way to the point, until it is sealed. Tuck under the last fold to keep it closed.
Butter the tops of the packets with the remaining butter. 
Place the packages onto a baking sheet and put them into the oven for 15 minutes. 

You can do this on a pan on the grill if you want, but the cooking time is tricky. 
To serve, put the papillotes onto plates and unfold them at the table. (Be careful of the hot steam.) Serve with lemon wedges. 

 When I first began cooking at the Allen House in 1982, serving striped bass in the restaurant was a big deal. The years of fishing guides pulling in boatloads of fifty, sixty, even seventy pounders were a mere fond memory, leaving only pictures on the restaurant walls of huge catches filling skiffs and lined up on the fish dock.

But in the 70's strict regulations had been put into place concerning the size and weight of a “keeper.” Commercial fishermen were not allowed to catch striped bass at all. Only sport fishermen with rod and reel were allowed to catch and keep bass. And a special license was needed to be able to buy,sell,or serve striped bass. 

this is an example of a bass that should not be served.

 We were considered very lucky, as we had three striped bass fisherman working out of the Allen House. Any catch that was the proper size and over the customer’s limit they were allowed to sell to us. I don’t remember the exact size limits at that time but I believe at one point nothing under 40 inches was considered a keeper. And that is one big fish, especially when you consider the bass is a wide bodied fish. 

george is the only one of our guides from that time still fishing

The fishermen were required to bring us the bass whole, just in case somebody needed to check and make sure the fish was the proper size and weight. Since we had to accept them whole, Steve decided to turn this into a merchandising gimmick. He’d place the whole fish on ice in the raw bar out by the dining room. Then the first person to order striped bass got to watch Steve go out and wrestle a huge fish out of the raw bar and carry it into the kitchen to be portioned. 

Because we had to fillet on the fly, usually in the middle of at least two other dinner orders, I quickly learned the best way to gut, fillet, skin and portion a fish so large it took up half the work space in our tiny kitchen. I also spent a lot of time after service was over cleaning scales out of odd places where they’d flown in the heat of battle. 

Our restaurant was, at that time, one of the few places where you could almost always be assured of being able to order striped bass, and over the years we became famous for it. even as the striped bass population slowly increased and the fish became easier to acquire and serve.

Duane and Tyler

My cousin wrote me the other day . . .

"When's that coyote girl book coming out?"

 “Coyote girl.” Sounds like it should take place somewhere in the southwest and involve a young Native American woman and some kind of ceremony.  Sort of a Lois Lenski Strawberry Girl vibe.

(For the record, I am NOT comparing myself to Lois Lenski.) 

It’s got a nice ring, though.  Maybe I should let my cousin name all my books from now on. 

Coyote Girl.

  Ghost/thief Girl.

Hurricane Girl.

Hmmm . . .

Well, it's too late for this series.  This is the Summerhood Island series. 

Coyote Summer, Ghost/Thief Summer, Hurricane Summer. Each book takes place over the course of a single summer.

And this first book, it’s not really about the coyotes. Just like the second is not really about the ghost/thief, and the third’s not really about a hurricane. 

Although all these things are integral to the stories.

photo n. brodeur

You see, these books are really about the girl, Jessie Silva. 

Coyotes, ghost/thieves, and hurricanes are what involve Jessie, but they aren't really what the books are about.  

The summers of a girl who lives on an island, an almost magical place where kids can still wander freely, still have adventures, still go off on their own and be safe; a place where a young girl is free to make choices and deal with their consequences without fear of predatory adults, or drive by shootings, or muggings; the feelings of a girl who grows up in those summers- that’s what the books are about.

photo matt lovell

photo a. hinson

Jessie Silva: a girl who can live the childhood you had, or wish you'd had, depending on your age and situation. A childhood most kids reading these books will never have a chance to experience. 

Because the world has changed. And maybe it never was as safe as some of us thought. Maybe the freedom we had as children was an illusion. 

malia. photo m. shaver

But not on this island. Here, in these books, in this place, even in this day and age, a girl can wander. And have adventures. And live the childhood we wish we had, the one every child should have- but can't. 

Except in books.

The more things change . . .

MV CUTTYHUNK

FERRY ALERT

the more things change. 

WEST END LIGHT HOUSE  AND COAST GUARD

COAST GUARD HOUSE AT FERRY DOCK

POST OFFICE

POST OFFICE CIRCA 1890'S

CHURCH AT TURN OF CENTURY

CHURCH TODAY

Yes I know that’s not the way the adage goes, but I’m rewriting it.  At least for now.  I’m in the middle of my last week in what used to be my apartment on Cuttyhunk Island.  The building is a rental now but I took the downstairs for the entire summer because I wasn’t ready to say goodbye yet.

Now it’s time.  

We brought a few things home in the car after our July visit, (my dad's fishing pole, a couple of pictures, a few mementos) and I have to decide what to leave (besides a couple of boxes of my books) in the blue tote that’s going to stay in my sister’s basement.  One tote.  Mostly filled with books.

There is nothing I can’t leave behind left in the apartment.  Anything I couldn’t bear to never see again has already gone to our new house in Virginia.  All I’m dealing with is the practical; what would I really like to have in whatever place I stay in next year?  

When I rented back my apartment this year I thought I’d be spending the whole season here, spring summer and fall.  I hadn’t planned on suddenly ending up with a house in the middle of Lexington Virginia that needed furniture and fences and decks and porches and so on.  The upshot is, I haven’t spent much time here in the summer.  Not nearly enough.

And yet I’m not taking this place again next year.  I’m not going to tie myself down.  I probably won’t be here more than a few weeks anyway, to do a couple of readings and hawk my new book.

Surprisingly, I’m okay with that.  I think I’ve finally said goodbye to this house, and what living here meant.

  It gets easier, I find.  It took me years to say goodbye to the Allen House.

But things change, and change, and change again. 

the poplars at turn of century

The Allen House, now a private home.

 And you get used to it, hopefully.  And you move on.  Again, hopefully.  Sometimes you even grow a little bit.

When I left Cuttyhunk the first time I didn’t return for eight years.  This time, I’m not looking at it as leaving.

I’m just going to take a little break and try spending a summer in the valley I’ve called home for fifteen years.

What a concept.

So I’ve been reading . . .

a book about the New Bedford docks by Rory Nugent, and it started me thinking about my time on Cuttyhunk Island again.  Nugent’s book is called Down at the Docks, and it’s basically a history of the New Bedford waterfront through the eyes of a number of different people.

Although Cuttyhunk:Life on the Rock was first person anecdotal, many of the things I learned on the island I learned secondhand.  Sometimes third or fourth hand.  Way too many stories to put into one book, and of course there are always stories within the stories.  I’ve often been accused of telling a story by starting with the stories within the stories within the stories, which some people find much too time-consuming to listen to. 

I realize it is difficult to believe people such as these exist.  I have trouble believing it myself.  I mean, if you don’t know the back story and sometimes even the back story’s back story, how can you ever really understand what went on?  Of course, these are probably the same people who skip to the back of the book to see how it ends.  Heathens, I call them.

But I digress.  Astoundingly unusual for me, but it does happen.  

Back to the point – those stories that don’t get told.  What happens to them?

I can’t answer that from a philosophical point of view.  I didn’t take those classes in college.  

In my world the stories that didn’t make it into the book still get told to anyone who asks, some of them in conversation, some in letters or emails.  They used to make their way into poems, often slipping in without my knowledge or permission.  That happens a lot with poems.

But I don’t write poetry anymore.  

So where do the stories slip in?  Right now they’re sliding into my new series of middle readers.  Not the way they are told in my memoir, but pieced together like a quilt; a fragment from this story, a snip of that memory…

THE AVALON

 photo A. Hinson

WINTER HOUSE

 photo A. Hinson

THE ALLEN HOUSE

 (For example, in the book I'm working on now, 2nd in the Summerhood Island series, all three of these buildings have been morphed into one- The Sea Inn.)

A memoir should tell the truth, at least the truth as far as the author can remember it.

But fiction is made of a different cloth.  It can stretch in any direction, start out with a name or a place and weave more names and places from other times and other memories onto the beginning, into the middle, at the end, around the edges until you have something that resembles a place you have known, or a person you have met The end result is not like any place or anyone real.  Sometimes it's a quilt. Sometimes it's just a raggedy mish-mash. This is fiction.  This is what I’m writing now.  And I have to admit that the freedom  to invent, and re-invent - is lovely.

I got . . .

into a slightly “argumentative“ discussion about coyotes at dinner the other night. Since one of the gentlemen I was having this discussion with had supplied the lovely crab appetizer I was consuming at that very moment and the other gentleman in the discussion was my host, I decided it would perhaps be polite or at least politic  to drop the subject. 

Those of you who know me well might be shocked at this, but then, I am getting older, and perhaps a tad wiser. Instead, I decided to write a blog. Perhaps they won’t read it. In any case, dinner is over.

My new book comes out this fall, as most of you know by now. It’s called Coyote Summer, and the coyotes, if not the good guys, are at least sympathetic and misunderstood. Here are some facts about coyotes most people don’t know: 

Coyotes are also called America’s song dogs. They are extremely adaptable, and as we move into their territory with our cities and suburbs, they continue to survive and thrive on our trash and vermin. Coyotes are found in almost every major city in America.

coyote on Portland's metro system

 It is common for a coyote in winter to take more interest in your canine companion.  From the coyote's perspective, the territory is like a singles bar - "I wonder if that German shepherd would make a nice boyfriend? ... Nah, not my type". 

A coyote is also a curious animal, so just because it stares at you is no cause for alarm.  Chances are excellent, that after curiosity is satiated, the coyote will continue about its business of performing free pest control in your community.

city coyote

Love is their bond. Coyotes often mate for life and "never divorce" - according to the largest urban coyote study in America.

project coyote picture

Coyotes rarely attack humans. Between 1960 and 2006 there were only 159 reported cases of bites across North America. By comparison in 2012 there were 5,000 reported bites by domestic dogs in Cook County, which contains Chicago, alone. 

Nonetheless, in 2009 a young woman was killed by coyotes while hiking in Nova Scotia; scientists do not understand why. One suggestion is that the animals found in eastern America are a coyote-wolf hybrid that hunt more frequently in packs and can take down larger prey.

In America’s cities the key to the coyote’s success is its virtual invisibility, and sightings of the animal during the recent mating season were unusual enough to have been the subject of news reports. This is no accident. Those who watch the beasts say that the coyote is more nocturnal when it lives in cities than when it is in the wild, which has undoubtedly helped its quiet conquest of parts of metropolitan America. Most people do not actually know they have coyotes living in their neighborhood, and conflicts only arise when an individual becomes a problem—perhaps having developed a taste for kitchen scraps. 

Once known as the “ghosts of the plains” coyotes are increasingly known as the “ghosts of the cities”. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=NQzA_ENM9Xo&t=28

For tons of coyote information go to www.projectcoyote.org

Here I am . . .

.

Back on “the Rock” again, after a hiatus of less than a month.

3 ½ weeks of decision making about the new house, leaving others to do the actual physical work. 

Deborah to install curtain rods and shades, hang said curtains, install my spice rack, unpack and set up numerous and assorted fans, portable air conditioners, dehumidifiers, bookshelves, Orlando and Jack and their assorted sons in laws to rebuild and enlarge the back deck, Everette and his crew to screen in the front porch, Deborah to sand and stain old pieces and turn them into amazing furniture.  

Actually, Deborah supervised most of the work she jobbed out, as well. So what did I do?

Hmm.

A little pruning, garden and yard reclamation, some mulching – oh, yes, and I picked berries and hunted mushrooms and went to farmers markets and walked dogs around town. 

Wow. 

No wonder I am so tired. 

Whew.

Oh, and I spray-painted a table and some chairs, and Higgins and Jim made the seat covers out of foam and material Deborah ordered.

I have an amazing wife.

She’s home getting ready to teach again after a year’s sabbatical.  I went blueberry picking this morning.

Blueberry cobbler.

5 quarts frozen blueberries

½ cup sugar

¼ cup lemon juice

1 tablespoon cornstarch

4 cups white cake mix

2 cups water

Pour blueberries in a 2 inch deep hotel sized pan.  Mix together sugar, lemon juice, and cornstarch.  Add mixture to blueberries, mixing in well.  In separate bowl, mix cake mix and water.  Pour over blueberry mixture, spreading evenly.  Bake at 350° for about one hour or until browned evenly.

And this afternoon I went clamming.

 Clams Casino

Stuffing for 3 dozen Littleneck clams

1 cup minced bacon

1 ½ cups onion, finely diced

¼ pound butter

1/3 cup green pepper, diced

¼ cup red pepper, diced

¼ cup seasoned bread crumbs

Sauté bacon and onion until onion is transparent. Add peppers and sauté till soft.

Add butter and melt, then stir breadcrumbs into the mixture. Remove from heat and chill.

Mound stuffing over the top of each raw clam and bake at 350° until warm throughout.

Tomorrow I’ll get back to work. Honest.

In really exciting news, I got first cover proofs for my middle reader Coyote Summer!. More on that whole writing thing later.