Tasty Treat

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This is very fine writing. I especially like the dark humor. Sort of like a cross between Poe and Stephen King. Did you have to revise much? Nice work.

--QP

 

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Good god, dirtydog. You are seeing a therapist, aren't you??? ... LOL

 

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This is scary stuff, dirtydog. Being buried alive is just about the most horrible fate that can befall a person, and so I guess it makes sense that fundamental evil will be inextricably be involved with it.

I don't care for the title, though. It doesn't fit, for me. It needs to be something more dramatic, but also maybe more understated.

 

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Well, how does any writing compete with movies? They're different media, and they have different strengths. There are plenty of people who still enjoy reading just as much as the movies.

My reaction to that was the same as my reaction to the guy who cut off his arm to escape being trapped by a boulder ... oh really? I'm not saying the stories aren't true ... only that I find them incredulous to the point of wanting more proof.

In this case, there were witnesses who supposedly saw the attack and described it to the authorities. So what the hell were they doing while this was going on? Coyotes are not large animals. It's not difficult to run them off. Besides that, unlike wolves, coyotes are normally solitary, opportunistic hunters. It's very, very unusual for them to hunt in a pack.

Again, I'm not saying the story isn't true. Just that it raises a lot of questions.

I know. That's why I didn't like it. It's too coy.

 

I wouldn't worry too much about that. Writing has scared me far more than I think any movie ever could.

That's just as good a topic for a horror story. Why must it be ghouls and vampires?

 

Are you sure we're talking about the same animals? I know we don't exactly live in each other's back yards. I live very close to Nova Scotia, and as far as I'm aware coyotes around here usually hunt in small packs. I'd say a 'band' of at least three or four and maybe as many as eight or ten.

 

Here's a link to the Taylor Mitchell tragedy: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/nova-scotia/story/2009/10/28/ns-coyote-attack-died.html
Now you know as much as I do. In Cypress Hills, Alberta, the major threats are Conservation Officers (prone to rabies) and drunks (you can listen to them beat up their girl friends and each other). There are also a few cougars.

Actually, I don't think I'm up for putting someone else's death on the Internet and packaging it as literary entertainment.

 

Well, it's entirely possible we're not, figuratively speaking. Coyotes are adaptable critters. Maybe coyote hunting culture in northeastern Canada differs from that of southern Arizona. The desert in general is not conducive to group hunting. The prey is too scarce.

They do gather in small groups on late summer evenings to sing (a territorial thing), but I've never seen more than two of them together, and from what I've read, they don't. But it sounds like the "Canuck cousins" have worked out a different strategy from the "Yank cousins".

I still find it incredulous they would attack and kill a person, though.

 

... You used it as an example and I did the same. I'm not saying you should write out the story of this specific girl's death, just that the subject matter is well within the realm of what you could write about.

You probably have it there with availability of prey. In Canada you have a lot of larger prey; I'm guessing not so much in Arizona. Whether they would kill a person or not is pretty questionable, but they do at least travel in numbers.

 

Truman Capote did. I think it's ok as long as you're not doing a tabloid number on it. Speaking of ghoulishness, that's it.

 

These posts are pretty off topic, which is Tasty Treat. Anyway, staying off topic:
There are coywolves in the northeast U.S. which are bigger and more aggressive than coyotes, but they weren't mentioned as a suspect in the Taylor Mitchell case. Just goes to show that wolves, like people, will mate with just about anything.

Truman Capote: I saw a film on this mincing little guy and he's not someone I'd care to emulate.

Jack London, in White Fang, has a good scene where the wolves eat the sled dogs one at a time and then go for the people, but it's not considered realistic by anyone I've talked to or read.

There is probably plenty of precedent if the writer takes a tragedy and re-writes characters and other details until he's got tragic fiction. For example, Thirteenth Valley, by John del Vecchio, details small unit action by the U.S. army in Vietnam, specifically the 101st Airborne in 1970 in the Ashau valley. In some cases (such as the Vietnam war) those involved in a tragedy may want to be remembered in nonfiction or fiction. Del Vecchio has one character saying to another, "if you get back to the World, tell them what really happened here."

I just don't want to manufacture entertainment out of someone's real tragedy.

 

My advice: take your inspiration where you can get it. Writing is more than mere entertainment.

 

I feel sorry for your cat. I even feel sorry for the 67 year old prostitute!

 

I'm not really sure how to take that...

 

Oh come on now, dirtydog. "Mincing" or not, he's a great writer. You can separate someone's personal life from their professional life.