START THE JOURNEY…
A RAVEN. A STORYTELLER. A WEAPON.
When Elān trapped a salmon-stealing raven in his cupboard, he never expected it would hold the key to saving his people from the shapeshifting Koosh invaders plaguing their shores. In exchange for its freedom, the raven offers a secret that can save Elān’s home: the Koosh have lost one of their most powerful weapons, and only the raven knows where it is.
Elān is tasked with captaining a canoe crewed by an unlikely team including a human bear-cousin, a massive wolf, and the endlessly vulgar raven. To retrieve the weapon, they will face stormy seas, cannibal giants and a changing world. But Elān is a storyteller, not a warrior.
As their world continues to fall to the Koosh, and alliances are challenged and broken, Elān must choose his role in his own epic story.
CONTINUE THE JOURNEY…
A WARRIOR. A WEAPON. A DOOR BETWEEN WORLDS.
The fierce warrior Kwa must take Elān’s place in their ongoing battle against the invading Koosh, in this thrilling sequel to The Door on the Sea!
Elān’s life changed forever when the loud-mouthed raven chose him to go on a journey to save his people. Now returned from his quest, Elān is changed, withdrawn—and will not touch the weapon he is destined to wield. Raven knows that Elān must take up the weapon for his people, or cast it back into the Koosh world through the Door. But Elān will not budge. The invading Koosh loom ever closer, and Elān’s people have no hero to fight for them.
So raven turns to Kwa, Elān’s sour yet tough companion.
Kwa is determined to prove herself, doing whatever it takes to become the warrior leader her people need her to be. With Chetdyl the wolf by her side, she prepares an attack against the Koosh. But she knows that what she really needs is the weapon Elān refuses to use. If he won’t use it, she will. But the weapon will not bow to her – unless she does as raven says and pushes Elān through the Door herself.
Homesickness and hobbit-fanaticism breathed The Door on the Sea to life. In 2013, I moved with my family for a half year’s stay in the Waikato of Aotearoa also known as Hamilton, New Zealand. I was at the University of Waikato ‘s School of Māori and Indigenous Studies. The Hobbit movie had just come out and all New Zealand was Tolkien-mad. My boys were in 1st and 5th grade and they too were fanatical about The Hobbit, as I too had been fanatical about the novel when I was their age. I admit to being myth-jealous: I wished my boys were as fanatical about Tlingit stories.
My boys were also tearfully homesick those first few weeks in Aotearoa. Tired of Tolkien worship and European mythmaking, tired of nightly tears, I found an hour almost every day to write a half page or so about a young warrior from the Flicker House off to battle the infamous Kóoshdakáa of Tlingit myth, the very same shapeshifters my grandmother scared me with as a child. I wanted to entertain my boys and frighten away their homesickness and learn them a little of their Tlingit heritage, and also dream up new Tlingit myths and stories.
Nearly every night as my boys lay in bed, I read them what I had written that day and asked for feedback. What should happen next? Where do we go from here? It worked: my boys were enthralled in the narrative and couldn’t wait to for our nightly readings. They wanted to be characters in the story: my oldest son wanted to be an armored wolf, my youngest wanted to be a middle-aged warrior. My oldest even created a large map of the narrative’s world on pieces of construction paper taped together (I’ve included a picture of that original map under the “map” tab of this website).
After each reading, they were full of suggestions about where the narrative should go. I took notes of their suggestions and have incorporated many of their ideas into this novel: an island of dangerous bears; human-bear-cousins who protect black bears when they hibernate; and, a pub named after one of their stuffed animals, to name just a few of their ideas. Some ideas I didn’t include (shrimp guns, for example—large shrimp that shoot lasers or heat waves when you squeeze them) and some ideas (owl warriors) may find home in later books.
Eventually, my boys found friends in Aotearoa—tēnā koutou, Māori whānau—and got over their homesickness and no longer needed my nightly readings. The novel, 40 or so single-spaced pages, sat unfinished on my computer long after we returned from New Zealand.
Then came Covid-19. Homebound and frightened, I rediscovered the novel, thought it not half bad, and decided to finish it. It was calming to escape the pandemic, if only briefly, and enter the Aaní world. At first, I wondered if I should make the novel as historically accurate as possible, but the thought exhausted me and robbed me of calmness. Why be constrained by attempting authenticity? Whose interpretation of authenticity should I use? Why not use the Tlingit stories I heard growing up as the basis to open a world of new mythmaking and storytelling? Why step into the contested pool of what is and what isn’t authentic Tlingit culture when I could leap into a salmon stream of the fantastic? This novel is what came from that leap. I hope others will leap into the stream with me.
