Coming Soon

Wide Open will be out on March 13, 2012.

I’ll be doing a blog tour from March 12th through March 25th.  There will be guest posts, interviews, reviews and giveaways.  I’ll post a schedule here soon.

Wide Open has already been reviewed in Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Romantic Times, and Booklist.

Publishers Weekly says: …Coates makes her premise believable through her canny and credible depiction of life in a rural backwater where the normal and paranormal seamlessly merge.

Kirkus says: Coates’ debut novel scores from a reader’s point of view….

Wide Open gets a ‘runner-up’ mention in Kirkus’s 10 Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books for March list.

And finally (for now!), Wide Open is one of the featured books for Bookreporter’s Spring Preview 2012.  Check it out for a chance to win a copy.

 

Eleven

Today, February 26, 2011, Billie, my Rottweiler turns 11.

I’m thrilled about this for so many reasons.

  • Because the average life of a Rottweiler is 9 to 10 years
  • Because she has seizures (reasonably well-controlled, but still)
  • Because her mother and her grandmother both died at 8
  • Because I love her and I’d like her to stay forever

Her registered name is Vogelhaus’ I’m a Charmer.  Sometimes I call her Charming Billie.  She’s from the ‘I’ litter and her parents were Ch. Vogelhaus’ Hot Rod Hummer and Ch. Wittz Orbit the Moon.

I first saw Billie when she was three, maybe four, weeks old.  She was from a litter of nine puppies.  The puppies all had ribbons around their necks to tell them apart.  There were four girls: the white girl, the yellow girl, the orange girl and the mauve girl.  Later, the yellow girl (or the orange girl, I forget) became the dotted ribbon girl.  That girl was Billie.  I let the breeder pick my puppy because good breeders know their puppies better than anyone and I was supposed to get the mauve girl.  But in the way of things, someone decided not to take a puppy and someone else decided to take one and the dotted ribbon girl came home with me.

I knew that the temperaments would be good because that was one of the reasons I wanted a puppy from this breeder and this litter.  She’s on the small side for a Rottweiler, around 75 pounds, but I think it’s stood her in good stead and though she’s eleven, she’s still easily able to go for walks and jump into the car and go tracking with me.

In tracking, she has her TD (Tracking Dog) title.  We’re working on VST (Variable Surface Tracking).  She has an RA (Rally Advanced) and 2/3rds of an RE (Rally Excellent).  And she’s a Therapy Dog, which I suspect she likes above all else.

And today she is eleven.