Tuesday, November 3
Today is the morning Poacher’s Moon begins, below Tanner Gap.
Poacher’s Moon opens on a date: Tuesday, November 3. That’s today.
At ten minutes to seven that morning, with frost still on the roadside grass, game warden Wade Holloway walks down a bank below the Tanner Gap road and finds a black bear that has been dead less than six hours. Four ravens are already working the laurel slick. Everything that follows in the book starts there.
There’s no hidden meaning in the date. I picked it because it’s one of the most beautiful times of the year in western North Carolina. The color has come down off the high ridges, the mornings are sharp, and the hollows hold the fog until the sun gets over the mountain.
That’s the tension I wanted in the opening scene. The reader is standing in the middle of God’s creation in all its splendor, and at the same time looking at the ugliest thing some of the locals are capable of. It’s the beauty of what God made, and the tarnish we add to it.
If you haven’t started the book yet, today is a good day to. You can read the opening free on Amazon and walk down that bank with Wade.