How A Podcast Generated An Idea For A Novel

I confess that I am a creature of habit. It’s two cups of light roast coffee in the morning, a honey crisp apple with my lunch, and a 26-minute “earfest” with American Public Media’s (APM) Marketplace.

Today, I put forth a short tale of how a series of brief reports from the APM Marketplace podcast generated an idea for my first novel.

I freely admit that my idea may be as inconceivable as the possibility that anyone in government is “deep.” I will, however, let you, dear reader, be the judge. Just to be clear, you don’t have subpoena power, cannot convene a grand jury, and absolutely cannot award damages for any reader of my novel who suddenly encounters PTSD.

Because I care about you, I offer only a summary of the series of reports the podcast did during its nightly news roundup about the wildfires that struck the state in 2017.

 

In October 2017, a series of 250 wildfires started burning across the state of California. The wildfires broke out throughout Napa, Lake, Sonoma, Mendocino, Butte, and Solano Counties.

These wildfires caused around $14.5 billion in damages, including $11 billion in losses and $1.5 billion in fire suppression costs. These fires killed 44 people and hospitalized at least 192 others, making this one of the deadliest wildfire events in the United States during the past century.

Sadly, the 2020 wildfires have surpassed the 2017 fires in areas burned, property damage, and lives lost.

          This summary comprised a series of articles about these fires that burned for months. The enormity of the devastation soon became shrouded in contentious and vile debates about climate change, the lack of zoning regulations, careless homeowners, and even the President further polluting this rhetorical sinkhole with his blamestorming of state officials because they “didn’t like him.”

          From those articles, however, one statistic stood out for me.

By some accounts, more than 37,000 animals were displaced by the 2017 fires.

 

To be clear, it’s not that the loss of human life wasn’t tragic enough. There is a finality to the reporting of deaths. In the case of the 37,000 animals, there were so many questions.

Was the report counting only pets?

Did it include animals in nature?

How many pets were left homeless by the fires?

What happened to these homeless pets?

Where is California at with its movement toward no-kill shelters?

Were these homeless pets put in shelters adopted? Euthanized?

 

Then those questions formed a coherent structure and focused a beam onto a simple question: Could a pet suddenly homeless due to the fires incinerating homes find its way to its owners?

First, I researched dogs. Researchers from the Czech Republic equipped 27 dogs from 10 breeds with cameras and GPS collars, then monitored a combined total of 622 trials in forests.  The American Kennell Club reported the experiment as such: “…dogs walked through the forest with their owners, off-leash, until they scented their prey. When they departed to catch the prey, the owner remained in place. The team then studied the dogs’ return journeys to their owners—and it might be no surprise to learn that many dogs used their powerful noses to navigate, with almost 60 percent of them following their outbound route by tracing their own scent.”

What the experiment also showed is that dogs somehow also used magnetic fields as a location beacon. The precise mechanism isn’t well-understood.

Then I turned to cats. Even cat lovers find that cats are often a mystery to humans. Dog lovers praise the automatic subservience of canines to their human masters and decry the small acts of independence allegedly committed by cats who appear to plot an overthrow of human civilization. For some humans prone to conspiracy theories (today, that seems to be half the population), cats belong to some clandestine feline supremacist group with an ultimate goal of turning all Florida beaches into a giant litter box.

Since cats are not ideal testing subjects, researchers assume that cats may be among those animals able to sense the Earth’s magnetic fields. Also, the presence of iron in mammals’ inner ears and skin may act like a natural compass.

So it’s safe to say that cats and dogs have a better sense of direction than humans. After all, some drivers still get lost with the GPS on.

How about birds? That’s a no-brainer. We know that birds are equipped with an incredible sense of direction. After all, homing pigeons are famous for being able to navigate extremely long distances. Their “homing” is so reliable that they were used in World War I and World War II to deliver messages over enemy lines.

According to The Smithsonian Science Education Center, “researchers have discovered a small spot on the beak of pigeons and some other birds that contains magnetite. Magnetite is a magnetized rock, which may act as a tiny GPS unit for the homing pigeon by giving it information about its position relative to Earth’s poles.

“It is thought that birds can use both the beak magnetite and the eye sensors to travel long distances over areas that do not have many landmarks, such as the ocean.”

Researchers have also discovered deposits of magnetite have been found in bones in human noses. Can we use Earth’s magnetic field to know which way we are headed? Based on the fact that we still can’t find Waldo, Jimmy Hoffa, the off switch to Ted Cruz, and Carmen Sandiego, perhaps not.

So now, the idea formed a coherent thought. Please keep in mind. Coherent thought is not a regular occurrence for me.

A novel about pets left homeless by the suddenness of forest fires overtaking their humans’ homes? In some cases, the humans didn’t have a choice. It was either evacuate or burn up. In other cases, the pets were simply forgotten or neglected.

What are my credentials to write a novel?

Sadly, there are as sketchy as anyone in the U.S. House Of Representatives – a formerly illustrious body now made up of crooks, cranks, con artists, morons, misogynists, and misanthropes.

After toiling away in the Kafkaesque halls of bureaucratic middle management in a Fortune 50 company for almost 40 years, I became a freelance writer. I didn’t realize that a freelance writer essentially means writing for free most of the time.

Last year, I managed to publish a nonfiction book called Stop For My School Bus…Or Else. The book is a wild ride to learn about the noble school bus driver and includes detours into humor, sarcasm, irony, tragedy, and even redemption. Enter at your own peril the dystopian world of the school bus driver where true is false, to be on time is to be late, and all students should be classified as gifted.

To be clear, the thirst among the average reader to learn more about a school bus driver is about the same as that of a Pepsi fan to guzzle a Coke Zero.

Undeterred by abysmal failure and book revenues from that “school bus” book that enabled me to only buy a refurbished Kindle on Amazon, I began to plot this first novel.

I needed inspiration. So I went to my cat, Moogie, for help. A cream-colored barn cat who adores six-hour naps and snuggling with my partner Linda, Moogie refused to help unless he received 20 percent of all sales of the novel. Since 20 percent of zero still equaled zero (check my math here), I made the deal.

Here’s what Moogie came up with.

First, there would be four house cats in the novel because cats rule. Cat names were based on my dietary inclinations. Therefore, Jellybean, the main character, was born. Then my Star Trek nerdiness served up a Maine coon named Khan because, after all, The Wrath Of Khan is still the best Star Trek movie ever made. Then, my past ownership of a gorgeous Himalayan named Alana triggered nostalgia, and finally, there was Coco. This wide-eyed tabby was named after Linda’s daughter Courtney, affectionately known by her six nieces as “Coco.”

Second, there would be only one dog, and it would be a Golden retriever because they are very friendly and not too bright. (Moogie’s words, not mine.) Moogie wanted to call him Bark Obama or Woof Blitzer, but I came up with Rusty.

Third, we needed a bird, and Moogie recommended a parakeet because he felt they would make a delicious meal if only celebrity chef The Pioneer Woman would cook one up for him.

Finally, the evil characters. I wanted to use Karen, but that trope seemed too obvious and lacked imagination. I went with Debbie for an alcoholic, abusive cat owner. I have nothing against any Debbie, but it’s the female equivalent of Brian. You just know they’ll be irritating.

Then, I just had to find the discipline to write.

Please don’t think me too insensitive, but the COVID lockdown in March 2020 took away all my excuses not to write. And so I did. For a year, I wrote. Then rewrote. Then rewrote so more. Then checked grammar, syntax and went on a hunt for weasel words, phrases that mangled meaning, and sentences that defy logic.

The result was a novel called Away From Home.

Read the novel. You can be the judge. But before you take up your gavel, throw on your black robes, and affix your white magistrate wig, let me tell you one more important fact about the novel.

 

The cats talk, The dog talks. The parakeet talks. The cats think, often at a higher level than the humans in the novel. The dog feels greater compassion than many humans, especially those interested in the “me” instead of the “we.” Even the parakeet could beat many members of Congress in Final Jeopardy.

I know what you’re thinking.

“This is all just a big plug for the novel.”

I can’t prove my motivation. However, 99 percent of all novelists don’t make a living writing, nor are they known by anyone outside their family.

For me, this novel was never about how many people read it.

No, it’s about what people read into it.

What they take with them just after the words THE END appear.

Thank you, Marketplace.