Blog Archives
I Was Inspired by Nature
Rooster follows a field trialer, young handlers, and a dog as they navigate the world of American bird dog field trials, where loyalty, cruelty, hope, and grudges shape what it means to believe in one another. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The inspiration, as told in the begining of the story, was Rooster, the yellow eyed, floppy eared, orange “mongrel breed” of a pointing dog that wanted to play along with the English Pointers and English Setters in that cowboy sport of the American Horse Back Field Trial. As Sparky explains in Part One, Chapter Five, it is the dharma of the pointing dog. I was inspired by nature, and then, as Sparky further explains, karma took over from there.
Rooster is an underdog in a world that values pedigree. What did you want his journey to represent?
I wanted Rooster to represent the lyrics of the theme song, the leitmotif of the story, that the trails we ride over mountains and hills, across rivers and streams are made of hopes and dreams.
How did you decide how much realism and how much folklore or animal fantasy to weave into the story?
Well, Rooster and Sparky are real. Yet, they are, like any dog owner will tell you, magical. The best way to convey both that reality and that magic is through the fable. Every fable contains a bit of truth, a slice of reality. While dogs and their companionship, especially as teammates in sport, are magical, you need to portray that reality in order to fully portray that magic. I also did want to tell people about the sport of the American Horseback Field trial. It is a little known slice of Americana, a relection of American values of competitive good sportsmanship, that is worth talking about.
The book explores both the beauty and harshness of field trialing. Was it important for you to show both sides?
Yes. A fable has to have its adversities, the conflicts or struggles that the moral of the fable overcomes in the end. Like Amy tells Mike at the barn in Part Three, Chapter “There are two sides to the business of training and running field trial dogs. There’s the reality, which can be black and white, and sometimess even a dark gray like storm clouds, and then there’s the fantasy. The fantasy isn’t so much make believe, as it is what you want to believe.” The moral of the Rooster fable is to believe in your hopes and dreams.
Author Links: Roosterafable.com | Facebook
There is the teenaged Michael, a novice who, with Tom’s niece Amy, shares Tom’s dreams in a sport where the competition can be conspiratorial and snarling. And, then, there is Rooster, the flop eared, yellow-eyed “mongrel breed” with just enough heart to make a fanciful dream come true.
But, in their way is Red Eyes, a devil of a dog, a gun slinger dog in a cowboy kind of game. And, there are the men that made him that way, Buck Arness and Tall Charlie Hinkle, recognizable by their wiry frames and ashen skin, by the dirt beneath their fingernails.
Not above sabotage, inclined to wait in ambuscade, they are coming east to the Nationals, coming east to best Tom and Mike and Rooster.
