Interview with historical fiction author Anne Montgomery

Today’s special guest is historical fiction author Anne Montgomery and we’re chatting about Wolf Catcher.

Bio:
Anne Butler Montgomery has worked as a television sportscaster, newspaper and magazine writer, teacher, and amateur sports official. Her first TV job came at WRBL‐TV in Columbus, Georgia, and led to positions at WROC‐TV in Rochester, New York, KTSP‐TV in Phoenix, Arizona, and ESPN in Bristol, Connecticut, where she anchored the Emmy and ACE award‐winning SportsCenter. She finished her on‐camera broadcasting career with a two‐year stint as the studio host for the NBA’s Phoenix Suns. Montgomery was a freelance and/or staff reporter for six publications, writing sports, features, movie reviews, and archeological pieces. Her novels include The Castle, A Light in the Desert, Wild Horses on the Salt, The Scent of Rain, and Wolf Catcher. Montgomery taught sports reporting at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and high school journalism for 20 years. She was an amateur sports official for four decades, a time during which she called baseball, ice hockey, soccer, and basketball games and served as a high school football referee and crew chief. Montgomery is a foster mom to three sons and a daughter. When she can, she indulges in her passions: rock collecting, scuba diving, musical theater, and playing her guitar.

Welcome, Anne. Please tell us about your current release.
The past and present collide when a tenacious reporter seeks information on an eleventh century magician…and uncovers more than she bargained for.

In 1939, archeologists uncovered a tomb at the Northern Arizona site called Ridge Ruin. The man, bedecked in fine turquoise jewelry and intricate bead work, was surrounded by wooden swords with handles carved into animal hooves and human hands. The Hopi workers stepped back from the grave, knowing what the Moochiwimi sticks meant. This man, buried nine hundred years earlier, was a magician.

Former television journalist Kate Butler hangs on to her investigative reporting career by writing freelance magazine articles. Her research on The Magician shows he bore some European facial characteristics and physical qualities that made him different from the people who buried him. Her quest to discover The Magician’s origin carries her back to a time when the high desert world was shattered by the birth of a volcano and into the present-day dangers of archeological looting where black market sales of antiquities can lead to murder.

What inspired you to write this book?
I was a journalist for about 15 years in both television and print. I was hired by a magazine to investigate the origins of the man they call The Magician. Kate Butler, the protagonist of the modern-day portion of the story, encounters the same problems determining who The Magician might have been as I did. Though, I will admit, no one ever shot at me. I was so fascinated by the history I uncovered, as well as the problems associated with archeological looting, that I decided to write Wolf Catcher.

 

Excerpt from Wolf Catcher:
The history of man can be summed up in one word: migration.

In 1939, on the last day of excavation, a shovel broke through the floor of one of the pit houses at the Northern Arizona site archeologists called Ridge Ruin. The burial chamber overflowed with fabulous funerary objects: four hundred twenty carved arrowheads, twenty-five decorated pottery vessels, a large collection of minerals and crystals, reed tubes filled with pigments, myriad baskets, and shells from the far-off Pacific Ocean.

Then there was the man, bedecked in fine turquoise jewelry and intricate beadwork, his body surrounded by wooden swords with handles carved into animal hooves and human hands. The Hopi, there to help with the excavation, stepped back from the grave, knowing what the Moochiwimi sticks meant. This man, buried nine hundred years earlier, was a magician.

1098 A.D.

The azure sky revealed no signs of the violence that had changed the world. Only a pine-scented breeze pressed through gnarled stand of junipers that stretched along the wash. He closed his eyes and remembered the ragged band of refugees, the lingering sulfur smell of them, and the story they told. The ground, they said, heaved and broke open, a fissure splitting the earth in a roar of steam and brilliant flames that shot straight into the high desert night sky. The horizon burned with a rainbow of fire, not just orange and yellow, but greens and blues, the heavens saturated with blazing pillars.

Red clouds rose up, then settled upon the earth, building the mountain. Thick clods of burning stone had burst forth, raining on the terrified people who had tried to save the sacred corn. Tongues of flame battled with lightning strikes that zigzagged across the sky. Streams of orange liquid ran in burning rivers, devouring everything. Had the villagers not moved a good distance away earlier, they would certainly have been consumed by the angry creature living beneath the earth.

Surely, it was a sign that the People had been behaving badly.

A dark blue jay squawked and grabbed onto a twisted branch above him. The bird jerked its head, glaring with an obsidian eye. He smiled at the creature, then turned his thoughts back to the volcano, the place his father had instructed him to go. He glanced at the western sky. The journey from his village had taken several moons. It had been a difficult trek.

An animal’s howl reverberated off the stone slab on which he sat and melted away grisly visions of his village and the people he left behind.

He howled back; the sound indistinguishable from that of the animal. Moments later, a huge snow-colored kwewu bounded up the boulders to his side. The beast raised its snout and sniffed the air.

He pointed to the northwest, toward where he hoped to find the Volcano God’s home. “We will go that way, early in the morning.” He scratched the animal between the ears.

A short time later, he spread his bedroll in a shallow cave fronted by a dry wash and a small twisted pinyon. He placed the bundle of carved sticks to his left and the shiny stone blade to his right. Clutching the leather bundle he wore on a thong around his neck, he silently renewed his promise to complete his quest, and then prayed to the dead for their help.

When he was finished, he stretched out in the soft sand, closed his eyes, and reached one last time for the blade. The kwewu turned in three circles before dropping down at his side.

 

What exciting story are you working on next?
My next book was inspired by a soldier’s mysterious death at the end of World War II. It’s titled Forgotten Sons and is based on a packet of 77-year-old letters.

Excerpt from Forgotten Sons:
Inspired by a true story

A soldier’s mysterious death at the end of World War II drives a search for who he was and why he died.

Bud Richardville, an easy going, likable man, escapes the poverty of rural Indiana and is inducted into the Army as the United States prepares for the invasion of Europe in 1943. A chance comment has Bud assigned to a Graves Registration Company, arguably the most difficult job in the military. Bud and the other men in his unit are tasked with locating, identifying, and burying the dead. When Bud ships out, he leaves behind his new wife, Loryane, a mysterious woman who has stolen his heart but whose secretive nature and shadowy past leave many unanswered questions.

When Bud and his men hit the beach at Normandy, they are immediately thrust into the horrors of what working in a graves unit entails. They must clear away the corpses quickly, in order to protect incoming soldiers from the trauma of seeing the mounting cost of war. As the months drag on, Bud and his men are faced with cleaning up the ghastly remains of the Battle of the Bulge, the death tunnels beneath the bombed-out city of Brest, France, and the concentration camp at Dachau.

Bud’s personal life begins to unravel. His little boy is born too soon. Loryane gives him little comfort sharing nothing personal or kind in her infrequent letters. Then he meets Eva, a once aspiring concert pianist who, because of her husband’s work with the Resistance, is tortured by the Nazis. Still, Eva is an optimistic soul, who despite the war and her missing husband, can see a positive future.

The traumas caused by his work and losses in his personal life beat Bud down. He has a decision to make. Will he choose the right one?

When did you first consider yourself a writer?
I first became a writer when I got hired as a TV sportscaster. I was charged with writing numerous stories daily for each broadcast. Later, I moved into print reporting, where I had to write longer stories, so the jump to novels—just a lengthier form of storytelling— didn’t seem that strange.

Do you write full-time? If so, what’s your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
I have retired from full-time teaching, so, before now, I did most of my novel writing during summer breaks. That said, when I’m writing a novel, I generally spend a few hours on it each morning. I’m pretty good at schedules, so I can usually get a book done in a few months, as long as I’ve done my research.

Fun stuff
Much of my “free” time used to be taken up by sports officiating. I was an official for four decades, calling baseball, ice hockey, soccer, and basketball games, as well as high school football, which I worked for about 40 years and where I served as a referee and crew chief for 24.

I am an avid rock collector—I have about 400 specimens in my living room alone—so I love spending time in the wild, backcountry of my state of Arizona. I also love participating in musical theater and playing my guitar.

I’m a scuba diver and have a home on St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands, where I get to play in the sea whenever I want. Yep, I’m a spoiled girl.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
I am a low-level dyslexic, something I didn’t discover until later in life. I was always told I was just lazy and stupid. But I learned to deal with the issue, which requires that I write in silence with no distractions.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
First, I wanted to be an Olympic gold medalist in ice dancing, but I wasn’t very good. Then I wanted to be an actress, because I was in a lot of plays. But, since I loved sports, I decided to be a sportscaster. I didn’t understand it was a silly idea for a girl back in the 1970s. Everyone told me I’d never get that job, but they were wrong. I would go on to work at five TV stations, both locally and nationally. I eventually worked at ESPN where I was one of the first women to anchor SportsCenter.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
I am a foster mom and have shared my home with five young people over the years. It has been one of the greatest experiences of my life.

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