Fiction author Robin Brande talks about writing, reading, and other vital matters

My husband, the Bear dog, and I are heading for Colorado tomorrow. I hear the temps are 70 in the day, 40 at night. What’s that like?

Colorado has THE best coffee ever brewed. It’s one of the reasons I go there twice a year. The best coffee in the world is Camp 4 Coffee in Crested Butte. (They deliver–try some. My favorite is their Sledge Hammer–talk about putting hair on your chest.) The second-best in the world is in Telluride, at the Tomboy Coffee Roasters. I purposely plan our trips around being in these towns in the morning. Those two coffees just make me so happy.

This time while we’re there we’ll scatter our old dog’s ashes up on a mountain where we loved to go hiking with him. He died last summer, and we tried to scatter the ashes then, but I just couldn’t let go yet. I kept sobbing the whole drive up to the trail head. I had this huge hole in my heart, and the only thing I could think of to fill it was to get another Labrador puppy right away. We found a beautiful litter in Colorado. And now we have little Bear.

Okay, not so little anymore. Eighty-three pounds and counting. He was one of a litter of twelve, and when I told the breeder we were heading back her way next week, she decided to organize a puppy reunion party. So on Monday night there will be a mass of big black dogs in her back yard, all sniffing each other and trying to decide where they know each other from. Or maybe they’ll remember right away, and go back to tumbling in the grass nipping each other’s ears. I think it will be a blast.

I have a lot to thank those puppies for. They gave me the entire subplot for my novel EVOLUTION, ME, AND OTHER FREAKS OF NATURE. I came back from Colorado with Bear last summer, sat down, and wrote a novel so quickly it made my fingers burn. And now it’s coming out next summer. I owe Bear and his brothers and sisters a big bag of pigs’ ears.

As if all those activities weren’t enough, the three of us are going to go backpacking for a week. Strap a pack on Bear and make him carry his own kibble. Strap a pack on me and send me grinding up hills while my brain wanders and plots my next novel (I’ve written three novels that way so far). Snuggle up at night in a tent between my husband and my big warm dog. Really, few things are so wonderful.

The world’s greatest coffee, a dog party, beautiful wilderness, cool temperatures, days spent trudging up and down mountains with a ridiculously heavy pack on my shoulders–ahhhh. Truly heaven.

I’ll write to you from the road.

Technorati Tags: Writing, Publishing, Dogs, Puppies, Labrador Retrievers, Pets, Colorado, Camp 4 Coffee, Tomboy Coffee Roasters, Coffee, Backpacking, Hiking, Wilderness, Mountain Climbing, Camping

Posted on Saturday, August 12th, 2006 at 8:38 am under Dogs, Life, Writing . Subscribe to responses: RSS 2.0 Comment Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.