Writing in a Hurricane
(Do any of my 1980s peeps hear that title to the tune of “Rock You Like a Hurricane” by the Scorpions? Just me? Huh…)
Back in September 2022, I was planning two things: A trip to Prince Edward Island to visit my kid, who was attending veterinary school there, and the writing of Take Some Tahini (Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat 6). Since part of Take Some Tahini is set in Nova Scotia, and in the story Tobias Rogan and his mate Kyle Slidell take a road trip to the province, I decided to incorporate some book research into my own trip and follow the route Tobias and Kyle would take in the book.
As I was preparing to leave, on September 21, 2022, I checked the weather forecast for all of the areas through which I would be driving, ending with Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. It looked like there might be some rain and storminess with Hurricane Fiona moving up the east coast of the U.S. and Canada, but I figured I would be fine. Fiona was forecast to drop to tropical storm level by the time it reached the Canadian Maritimes, and I would be safely in my motel before any unpleasant weather hit Charlottetown.
I left my home in Massachusetts on Thursday, Sept. 22, and followed the route Tobias and Kyle would take from Massachusetts to Lubec, Maine. Lubec is about as far east as you can go in Maine, and I’d chosen it as the location of the home of the Alpha of Easternmost Pack in the Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat series. I spent a peaceful night in an AirBnB at West Quoddy Station.
Before I left Lubec on the morning of Sept. 23, I drove to West Quoddy Head, the easternmost point in the United States, as Tobias and Kyle would do in the book. Though the lighthouse and park weren’t open for the day yet, I was able to get some pictures. Off to the south, I could see dark clouds heralding the approach of Fiona, but I still wasn’t worried.
I arrived in Charlottetown that afternoon to hear an updated forecast. Fiona was now a post-tropical system, with Prince Edward Island, among other locations, in its direct path. When I checked into Royalty Maples motel and cottages (I was in the motel section) in Charlottetown, I was advised to prepare for a power outage.
I visited a couple of grocery stores to make sure I had nonperishable food that wouldn’t require cooking. I made sure my laptop, my phone, and my portable phone charger were all fully charged, knowing that I could also charge the phone and charger in my car if need be. That evening, the motel owners came around to each room and cottage with battery-operated lights in case the power went out.
The power went out.
Fiona hit PEI after dark that night. I went to bed thinking, “Oh, this is just rain and wind, we’ll be fine,” and was awakened at two a.m. by water POURING into the room through the overhead light fixtures. After calls to the motel management and the non-emergency fire department numbers, I put down pots to catch the water and tried to go back to sleep.
In the morning, Saturday Sept. 24, daylight revealed countless branches and even trees down around the motel. Shingles had been torn off the roof of the multi-room motel part of Royalty Maples; the individual cottages all had metal roofing, so those were fine. There was no electricity anywhere in Charlottetown…or, as I found out, anywhere on Prince Edward Island. The Royalty Maples owners moved me and one other couple who had weathered the storm there to metal-roofed cottages for the duration of our stays.
Royalty Maples and the immediate surrounding area were without power until Monday evening. My kid, about 3 kilometers away, didn’t get power back until Wednesday, after I’d already returned to Massachusetts. My trip off the island was a bit concerning. Most gas stations had no power, so no gas. I found one several kilometers away that was allowing people to put in up to $20 in gas, which was enough to get me into New Brunswick, where the storm had done far less damage. As I drove, I had to go around multiple downed trees, and had to alter my route a couple of times due to roads being closed entirely.
Fiona devastated Prince Edward Island, along with parts of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. Even now, nearly two years later, there are still large areas of PEI with fallen trees and debris left from that storm. Some people didn’t get their power back until days or even weeks later. I was very thankful to the people at Royalty Maples for ensuring the safety and comfort of their guests as well as they could.
During the aftermath of the storm, I did manage to get some writing done while I was at Royalty Maples, though it was sporadic because I needed to conserve my laptop power and I was distracted by checking the local news on my phone.
The storm didn’t make its way into the story. After the losses and fear it caused on Prince Edward Island and in other parts of the Maritimes, I felt like it was too soon to write about it. I do have a souvenir of it, though; a month later, when I opened the hood of my car to fill the windshield wash fluid, I discovered a shingle from the Royalty Maples roof.
Tobias Rogan never wanted to be a leader. But here he is, the Anax of the United States, ruler of all werewolves in the country. Only two weeks after winning the rank in a challenge fight against his senile predecessor, Tobias and his mate Kyle are still adjusting to their new reality when a frantic call alerts Tobias to the massacre of nearly half the wolves in a pack in North Dakota–including the pack’s Alpha and Beta.
An investigation reveals that the wolves responsible for the attack are from Canada. Tobias reaches out to Silas Creighton, Anax of Canada, and finds someone like-minded in wanting peace between the wolves of the two countries. At Silas’s invitation, Tobias and his mate Kyle, along with their new guard Quinn Boucher, sole survivor of the North Dakota massacre, travel to Nova Scotia to put an end to the conflict between the American and Canadian werewolves. But not all wolves are interested in peace–and not all want Tobias to survive the trip.
Warnings: violence, gun violence, discussion of past sexual abuse, homophobia
About the Series
Kyle Slidell didn’t move to Boston expecting to be changed into a werewolf. But that’s what happened. He can’t control whether he shifts at the full moon, but he can damn sure continue being vegan–even in wolf form.
Tobias Rogan, Alpha of Boston North Pack, never expected to fall in love with anyone, let alone a man. A male Alpha is not supposed to have a male partner. But when he meets Kyle, he’s immediately attracted. And after Kyle is changed, Tobias realizes the truth: Kyle is not only his partner, but his mate.
The werewolf world isn’t a simple place, and Kyle and Tobias are thrown into the middle of conflict within and among the packs of the United States–a conflict that extends all the way to the top of the werewolf hierarchy. Can they and their love survive what they face?
Amazon
Karenna is giving away a $10 Amazon gift card with this tour:
I debated knocking and decided to just try the doorknob. Kyle had better hearing than the rest of us. He knew I was here. If he didn’t want me to enter the apartment, he would have locked the door.
He hadn’t. The knob turned easily, and I pushed the door open and entered the living room that had been mine for decades.
The light in the room was off, but the kitchen light was on. I set down my bag and walked slowly into the other room. And there, I found my mate.
Seeing Kyle sitting there, at the same table in the same apartment where our relationship had grown, felt like a knife in my heart. I’d found him. But the way he looked at me almost made me wish I hadn’t. I’d never seen such pain and anger in his eyes.
His eyes mirrored my own emotions. Pain at how he’d left me, not a word to me, not even speaking to me when I reached out. Rage at being abandoned by the one person who had sworn never to do that.
I didn’t know whether to hug him or beat the shit out of him. I did neither, just stood in the doorway, fists clenched, waiting for him to fucking say something so I could.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.” I went toward the other chair but stopped. If I got too close to him, I might lunge across the table and strangle him. I closed my eyes just long enough to let an image of the ocean form. It didn’t calm me as much as usual, but at least it washed away the urge to hurt Kyle for hurting me. Which was good. I would never hurt Kyle.
I had before. I hadn’t meant to, but I had. And I’d sworn I never would again.
I took a deep breath and opened my eyes. “You’re here.”
“And the sky is blue, grass is green, and werewolves have fur.” He folded his arms. “You found me. Now what?”
His tone was completely flat. No anger, which would have been a good sign if he’d shown any other emotion. But there was nothing. He didn’t want me there. I could feel that through our bond, which was actually a good sign. The bond was still intact. But the way he spoke, the way he looked at me, sent my temper on the upswing again. How fucking dare he be a sarcastic asshole after what he’d done to me?
I gritted my teeth and forced another long, slow breath. “We talk. You tell me why you left, and we decide if we can fix it.”
“And if we can’t?”
“Then at least we talked to each other!” My voice rose, and I didn’t give a shit, even though Kirk could hear and probably everyone in the other two buildings could as well. “You just took off, Kyle. You didn’t say a damn thing, just took off. I was worried.” My eyes watered, and I blinked a few times as my anger ebbed. “I love you.”
“You have a weird way of showing it.” He sighed. “Sit down, would you? Unless you’re trying some Anax intimidation tactic on me.”
“I’m not.” I sat and leaned my elbows on the table. “How could you do that? How could you just leave without saying a fucking word?”
“I didn’t know what to say. You would have told me not to go. And I wouldn’t have gone. And I would have kept dealing with all that shit.”
“What shit?”
“You know.” He waved. “I’m a weakness for you. I shouldn’t exist or whatever. Those assholes back in California.”
“So you fucking walked out on me because of them?” I was so furious I was shaking. “You left as soon as I was gone. You knew you were going. You were gone by the time I called you, and you didn’t say a goddamn word. How could you do that?”
“I should have.” This time, emotion filled his tone. “I’m sorry, Tobias. I just…I needed to get the fuck out of there. And I knew you would have told me not to go. I didn’t want to do this.”
“Do what?”
“This.” He gestured toward me. “Argue. Process our feelings. I just wanted to get away from the homophobes and the memories. Living in that house…I’m guessing you have some decent memories of the place. You went there for years for the national gatherings. A couple weeks ago was my first time being there, and I spent most of the gathering in a goddamn cage, Tobias.”
I felt like he had jammed a blade into my heart. Involuntarily, I took a step back. How had I not realized? I knew all too well what trauma could do, but I hadn’t even considered how Kyle must feel waking up every single day in the place where he’d been dragged away from me and locked in a tiny basement cell.
Karenna is a polyamorous, nonbinary human who lives in Massachusetts with her husband. She also has two adult children and three “bonus” kids, four grandchildren, and two and a half cats. (Half in terms of time the cat lives with her, not in terms of the cat itself…)
Author Website: https://karennacolcroft.com
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