although he knows the Dark Man is hovering over his shoulder. I have many favorite characters: Pearl Prynne (yest, the very same) who at age 80+ but with a body as lithesome as a young boy, seduces the youthful Rafael Rafael back in Boston, who Narcissus-like falls in love with his image, that is, his Echo-sister, and goes off to sea to get away from it all. Terrific novel, up-to-the-minute historical fiction with a great sense of humor about the 'National Intention,' the ship whose near-insane Commodore, with a very motley crew, manages to take the outpost of Monterey California for three days in 1842.

You can find more information on my work at You can also find my blog on the techniques of literary fiction, The Formalist Fiction Writer, at Thanks, My second novel, The Master of Monterey, was published in 2003, and my third novel, The Garden of the World, was published in 2012.

My first novel, The Blossom Festival, won the Western States Book Award in fiction and was chosen for the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Program. I also had a novella coming out in 2015 entitled Camp Olvido. My fourth novel, The Goodbye House, was published in the fall of 2015. I've been teaching Creative Writing in Ohio for some time now, but I'm still writing about the part of California that feels like home to me: the East Bay, the Silicon Valley, the Monterey Bay Area. I want to write stories that have deep roots, that always see the present as connected to the past, and that are concerned with the fate of place as well as with the fate of people. I write fiction set in Northern California, where I grew up. I've been teaching Creative Writing for nearly twenty years, and I've been writing for as long as I can remember.

Camp Olvido by Lawrence Coates