Pupdates, Novel Writing, and Dire Wolf Publishing

Why do I write?

What does writing have to do with the Dire Wolf Project?

Over the past few years, there have been a number of readers in the Dire Wolf community who have been asking me when my next book will be in print.

Abbot and the Stone is really coming together.

And many of you know that I LOVE to write! To me, a day without writing is like a day without sunshine. Writing opens the window of my soul and lets the fresh air in.

Abbot and the Stone has been a renovation project rather than a first time build. Like with carpentry projects, it is often easier to start from scratch than to remodel what is already in place.

Abbot and the Stone is just like that. Yet the more I remodel, the deeper the real story gets. It is far more complex and interesting than its simple, original version.

Dire Wolf Publishing, though still in its infancy, possesses the soul purpose of building our American Dirus culture. Every story we write or publish from other writers contains an American Dirus (or in some cases a dire wolf) playing a key role in the story.

Our standards are high.

Renovating Abbot and the Stone is a bit like a scene from that Disney animation, Ratatouie.

In that scene, the restaurant underling spills a pot of soup and attempts to fix it by adding random ingredients thereby ruining it.

The main character, a rat with a paramount level of cooking talent, cannot help himself. He adds just the right ingredients and creates something new. The resulting soup is amazing and the rat saves the restaurant as well as the underling’s job.

That’s the way my story is going.

Abbot and the Stone was one of my first attempts at writing a novel (Pursuit of the Keepers was actually my first). It was a more down-to-earth story with far less fantasy.

I guess you would call it a mystery/suspense with a tinge of romance. I never compose a story without romantic elements and an occasional touch of humor if it fits.

I began the remodeling of this story just two years ago. And it began like adding random ingredients to save the soup. The more ingredients I added, the more ingredients the story required to pull it together.

Yet now, it is set to be amazing. It has way more adult themes than my trilogy as I’m aiming at a more mature audience.

I’m sharing this with you, because it is an exciting piece to the Dire Wolf Project as we know it. All three books of the Jacob Lake Trilogy has had only four to five star reviews on Amazon. People love to read them.

And the reviews are genuine and sincere, all from readers I never met.

Abbot and the Stone is about a young archeologist, Valencio DeCaria. He is newly graduated, and feeling like his career is going nowhere. His luck changes when dark spirits chase him through Jerusalem’s old city where he finds opportunity to solve a mystery dating back to the Middle Ages.

A sacred Stone—a fragment with writing etched in gold lettering, had been taken from the city during the Crusades in 1270 A.D. The crusaders managed to haul the stone fragment back to France for God and country, but never made it to Paris.

They simply disappeared.

Valencio uncovers historical breadcrumbs left behind. If he can unravel the mystery and find the Stone, he just might make it into the annuls of archeological notoriety, perhaps even surpassing his snooty, overtly sophisticated mentor, Dr. Jonas Cumberland.

Torn in his attraction of two contrasting personalities while attempting to dodge the pursuit of Cumberland’s alleged hitman, DeCaria finds himself on a precipice of a moral pendulum, the cost of rising to the top.

And there are the ghosts who have haunted him since childhood.

And yes, the story contains a mysterious dog named Curry who plays an important, but very much unexpected role in the tale.

My work has been gleaning out the “little darlings” (as Stephen King calls them) while assembling the clues Valencio has to follow in order to keep the story moving.

I love writing because I find within it the art of taking the reader on an emotional journey, manipulating the expectations, and adding surprise turns without taking away plausibility.

If you love a good story, I’ll add an excerpt in tomorrow’s email.

Pupdate!

Jennifer is taking a short hiatus in Cincinnati where my cousins reside. Henry has turned out to be an amazing dog even after all that he has been through. We’re hoping he finds a home en route to Albuquerque.

She will be resuming her journey today.

Oh, and if this letter makes you curious as to whether or not my writing meets the hype I tend to give it, kindle and paperback versions of Pursuit of the Keepers et. al. are available on Amazon:  

https://www.amazon.com/Pursuit-Keepers-Jacob-Lake-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B09FLZQ2SX

Jennifer Stoeckl is the co-founder of the Dire Wolf Project, founder of the DireWolf Guardians American Dirus Dog Training Program, and owner/operator of DireWolf Dogs of Vallecito. She lives in the beautiful inland northwest among the Ponderosa pine forests with her pack of American Dirus dogs.