Coming April First: Back to Santa Fe Author Discusses Doggy Inspiration

SANTA FE, N.M. - March 22, 2014 - PRLog -- Santa Fe, NM: Author W.T. Durand, whose new, humorous mystery novel, Back to Santa Fe releases April 1, 2014, remembers a huge, dog-shaped hole under a friend's carport.

"A couple we'd known for years moved to a new home in Santa Fe with their three dogs. We paid a visit about a month later. When we got out of the car, tow of the dogs came running up to say, "Hi" and we looked around for Tommy. Tommy was a really big, full-sized red Airedale, so I was concerend when I didn't see him. A few steps, closer to their door, and suddenly, Tommy's head pops into view above the ground above us! He'd dug himself a nice, deep hole in the red clay soil, vaguely shaped like a dog lying down. His human "mom" told us he spent the entire day lying in that hole. It was a pretty big excavation, and I asked why they didn;t fill it in, but she told us, "If we fill it in, he'll just dig another one. At least this one's almost out of the way."

Durand went on to say, "I guess thathole started me thinking about the kinds of things that one might find buried in some of the old backyards around Santa Fe. It's hard to keep a dog from digging. Everybody knows that."

Back to Santa Fe tells the story of the journey of Sullivan Ortega, mostly an internal one, as he tries to discover what really happened to his kid sister, killed in an accident on a county road in Rio Arriba County, north of Santa Fe. It has left an ugly, black burn mark in an arroyo very near to the Santuario de Chimayo, which lies a bit further along the road. In an often blind process, Sullivan uncovers all kinds of things he never intended to reveal. Many strain his tolerance and stoke his unruly temper. Through it all, he has a willing accomplice in his Retreiver/Sheepdog mix, McAllister.

"McAllister is the one link to stability that Sullivan's got. His only real friend, when this sorry struggle begins. He is a compilation of most dogs I've known, including a shaggy, sheepdog mix we had when I was a kid. He loved to dig, too."

Whatever McAllister digs up, comes into play within the pages of this new novel. If you know the Southwest or have ever wanted to, there's a lot of new material covered in these pages that you won't read in the tourism brochures. The initial release on April Fool's morning, will be as eBook in any format through Smashwords.com. For more information, contact the author through http://www.sailletales.com/?page_id=2731, on his publisher's imprint site.