Backstory: Doves in a Tempest-The Valley of Horror

When I set out to write Doves, my primary objective was to craft a coming-of-age story involving pre-adolescent and early adolescent characters, and delve into the psychological and physiological changes faced by children of those ages. They say to write what you know, so I set the story in 1958, when I was the age of the characters (yes, I really am that old), and in the neighborhood, and even the house, where I grew up. I changed the names of local streets, but kept the names of major thoroughfares unchanged. My actual neighborhood was not really a planned development the way it’s depicted. I lived in Stevie’s house, but changed the floorplan to suit the story. A few of the other homes were modeled on the homes of some of my friends. I anticipate that anyone who grew up in North Austin during that time will enjoy figuring out the actual street names. The restaurant names, The Frisco, The Chicken Shack, Holiday House, were all real restaurants, which are all now closed. The grocery store, Big Bear, was a real store. It had a great arcade game with a little bear you would “shoot” with a beam of light. Stieglitz Drugs was based on Naus Drugstore and Tarrytown Pharmacy. Martin’s Kumback Place (Dirty’s), and Scholz Garten are real Austin icons that exist to this day. Shoal Creek still floods in a heavy deluge, and The Tavern still gets flooded, as does House Park. And yes, a friend of mine did end up with a water moccasin on his back porch during one of the floods. We really did walk across Shoal Creek on the handrail of the yellow footbridge, and I was terrified.

The story itself had its genesis in the program called “MKUltra” run by the CIA from 1953 through the early 60’s. This program sought to develop drugs and procedures for brainwashing and torturing captured enemies. During the life-span of this effort, hundreds of experiments were conducted on unwitting citizens, using LSD and other drugs such as psilocybin.

The book was also influenced by all those science fiction movies that were popular in the 1950s, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), comes to mind. Over 200 of these movies were produced in the 50s. I was also a fan of The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and The Outer Limits. Doves has been described in multiple reviews as having a “Twilight Zone vibe,” so those comments were spot-on.

Hopefully Doves appeals to a wide audience, but if, like me, you grew up in the 50s, and particularly if you grew up in Austin, you should not miss it.

Backstory: Anna Belle Cook and The Boy Who Talked to Dogs

When I was growing up in 1950s Austin, Bobby, a boy of about 6 who had a developmental disability, lived in our neighborhood. I never knew his exact diagnosis, but he was severely impaired, frequently misunderstood questions, and only spoke in short sentences. I’m ashamed to say that he was not treated with the understanding he would be in today’s world. In this story I wanted to give him more compassionate friends than he found in our neighborhood, and “borrowed” the HI-Q gang from Doves, and Anna Belle in particular, to provide that compassion.  

The dogs in this story were real dogs. Sam was very much as I described him. He just wandered around the neighborhood, and I never knew who, if anyone, owned him.  Sam was absolutely infested with ticks, and I (not Bobby), would sit for hours trying to pick them all off of him. I don’t know why I never thought to get some tick powder. He also loved to fetch balls and never seemed to tire of the game.

I owned a little beagle named Ichabod, which we shortened to Icky. He loved to shoot out of the fence and run away if you weren’t careful, and would be gone for hours. Once he brought home a live chicken.

Cindy was the smartest dog I’ve ever owned. We picked her up at the pound after Icky tangled with a car during one of his escapes. The card said she was a mix of a husky and a Pomeranian, and she looked like a slightly smaller Siberian Husky. She was beautiful, intelligent, and loved to do her “talking like humans” trick.

The character of Bodean Dudding was borrowed from my short story, The Man Who Learned to Talk to Dogs. Are you sensing a theme here?