The Cathounds

Good Friday to all of my readers. Today I’m going to switch genre and talk about three of the books that I’ve edited for a friend of mine, Chuck Neighbors. My friend Chuck and I served together at Norfolk Virginia in the old US Atlantic Command back in the early 1990s. I was the Army Operations officer there and Chuck was my naval assistant, logistical officer. I used to always laugh that Chuck taught me a new language at Norfolk he taught me how to speak ‘Squid’, that strange language that only sailors use. I learned about bulkheads, battens, geedunks, ladders and passageways and all other kinds of naval jargon.

On my first sea voyage with the Navy on the USS Mount Whitney Chuck taught me all about seafaring. This included navigating around the passageways and determining what deck I had to be on to find different things. He made sure that I knew where my fire station was and where all the protective equipment was located just in case something happened. He was a great teacher.

Chuck and I both stayed in touch with one another long after we both retired. Every time that I would go down to Nashville where Chuck retired we would get together.

One tragic day I got a call from his wife and she informed me that he had had a stroke. I drove from West Virginia and went down to Clarksville Tennessee where he was in a long term State Veterans Home to see him. The stroke was rough on Chuck. It left him unable to walk and his cognitive abilities were impaired as well. Not knowing how he was actually faring I took one of my new books down just to give him something to read that was different from what they had at the veteran’s home. To this day I don’t know how much of this he actually read.

But during that visit, I found out that Chuck was also an author. He had written two books, both of them were science fiction books, both unpublished. Now as I mentioned in my opening I’m not a sci-fi fan, it’s not that I don’t like the genre it’s just that I’ve never really gotten involved in reading much of it.

Chuck’s wife and I were talking as we drove back to their home in the Nashville suburbs and she mentioned that Chuck had these two books he had written. She wanted to know if there was any way I could work with Chuck to get them published. I was between books at the time and I thought that would be an interesting project. I told his wife that I didn’t want my name associated with the books in any way other than being an editor. I wanted to make sure that any profits that the books made went straight to the Neighbors’ family.

His wife found the first book on their computer and I copied it onto mine and went back to West Virginia and started reading the book. The book was entitled “Destiny”.

As I was reading the book the deeper I got into it the more fascinating it became Now it needed a lot of editing. Chuck’s writing style was a lot different than mine and I tried to maintain his style as much as I could when I made the necessary corrections to his book.

It was an interesting storyline, unusual in the science fiction genre. The book takes place in the 26th century on the planet Destiny. The planet is an earth-like planet in a nearby Galaxy that was colonized by 100 families. The territories of the Planet had been divided equally amongst the 100 families with each family owning an enormous estate. These estates were named by their original owners and the primary estate that we are dealing with was called ‘HomeFall’.  These estates were large fiefdoms and the heirs we’re considered nobility on the planet.

The protagonist in the book is a young girl, Katy Sterling, an 18 year old orphan who attended her planet’s Naval Academy. During her time at the Academy she becomes a highly decorated hero on her planet. She participated in a number of expeditions during her midshipman’s tours at the Academy.

Chuck had to explain to me about the midshipmen’s tours. Between each year of someone’s studies at the Naval Academy they would go out and perform duties to learn seamanship and to learn about being in the Navy. In the case of our hero during each of her midshipman’s tours she’s involved in a major incident where she becomes the hero.

Hopefully this gives you sort of an idea of the flow of the books. I personally felt that this was a very unique series of books because of who the hero was, a young woman; it’s a coming-of-age set of novels. We watch her progress from being a very young, naïve, farm girl who’s blessed with great leadership talents. Then we see her develop as the heiress of HomeFall, ultimately assuming a leadership position in the government of her planet.

So what is a ‘Cathound’, the title of today’s blog?

In the second book we are introduced to a mythical character that exists on the planet Destiny called a Cathound. While our hero Katy Sterling is exploring her newly inherited castle she sees a large picture, maybe 300 years old, painted on one of the walls of the oldest part of the mansion. It shows a man standing between two large animals. These animals have the body of a very large dog but the head and eyes and ears of a cat. Katy’s Regent explains to her that these animals are basically a myth and that they are sort of like Bigfoot on old earth. However, Katy’s Major Domo indicates that these creatures do exist and that at one time the rulers of HomeFall actually had a relationship with these animals.

In the book our hero is involved in a crash of her small single seated aircraft deep in the unexplored forests of her estate while she is doing a general exploration of her holdings. During the crash she comes face to face with a Cathound. She finds that she can actually communicate with them telepathically. Thus begins the story of the Cathounds and their intervention and to Katy’s life as she begins her rule of her vast estate.

Chuck’s stories about the Cathounds ended at that point. There wasn’t a lot of mention of their intervention into the story. But that changes in the third book of the series.

Chuck’s wife told me though that he had the outline for a third book and she asked me to take a look at it. The idea was, we hoped, that we could work with Chuck to help  Improve his cognitive abilities by getting him involved in writing projects again. The outline was very detailed and of course having edited the first two books I had a good understanding of the characters and sort of the writing style that Chuck had developed.

Well our project didn’t work. I would write two pages at a time and e-mail them to his wife. Debbie would then take them to the nursing home and ask Chuck to read through them and make editorial comments and some discussions about what I had written. Six pages into the book Chuck had a second stroke. His wife had a difficult time getting him to do any work on the book at all and she asked me to go ahead and write it for them.

Chuck left me an excellent outline and it made it easy for me to go through the process, again knowing the characters, Chuck’s writing style, and completing the book. We titled this book “The Planet’s Revenge: the Katy Sterling Saga Continues”. In this book the Cathounds begin playing a very important part and the plot line. Through their telepathic discussions with Katy she learned a lot about the death of the previous heir, her uncle. She finds that some of the other things that have been happening to her on the planet are actually assassination plots against her. She finds that other heirs of the planet are greedily trying to kill her to absorb parts of her estate into theirs.

The Cathounds, being telepathic, are able to assist Katy and undermining the assassin’s plots and in the end establishing the identity of the conspirators.

I really hope that you will find this series of books interesting. I’ve listed them in my website under the listing of books that I’ve written. If you go to the science fiction category on my website you’ll find all three of Chuck’s books; you can order them from Amazon directly from my website. These are a great read especially for a teenager. The hero in all the books is a young girl; it’s a coming-of-age story. There’s light romance, but what goes on goes on with the window shades down, as my dad used to say. You can imagine what’s happening when the romance is in play but it’s all in your imagination.

Again, Chuck’s three books are entitled:

“Destiny”

“HomeFall”

“The Planet’s Revenge, the Katy Sterling Saga Continues.”

If you’re enjoying these blogs please drop me a comment or if you have any questions that I might answer, again submit a comment on the comment pages. I’m always glad to hear from you.

Again, please take a look at all of my books that I have listed. They can be purchased from Amazon.com with the click of a button directly from my website, www.ptaylorvietnamadvisor.com.  Until next Friday, Have a good week.

The Advisor Series:

• “The Advisor, Kien Bing, South Vietnam, 1969-1970. A Novel” (Available on Amazon ASIN: B09L4X5NQ3)
• “The Province Senior Intelligence Advisor, Kien Song Province 1970-1971; A Novel” (Available on Amazon ASIN: B0BHL2XCX5)
• “The Hardchargers,” Vietnam 1972-1973; A Novel” (Available on Amazon ASIN: B0C7SPR1JY)
• “The Tuscarora Trail” (Available on Amazon ASIN: B0D3QY2GM6)

Check out my website for other books that I’ve written or edited.

Website: ptaylorvietnamadvisor.com