A high school long-distance track runner, Mya puts in her miles in the arroyos of the Apache Mountains. She passes Hot Dog, a mangy chihuahua mix with diseased skin, and Spike, a lean ugly whippet. She runs past a half-empty housing development. On one of her practice runs, she felt something strange:
“... My whole body hiccoughs. I could puke. I could pee. I freeze. I stare. Right in front of me, a big, clawed arm pushes through the crap, draws it aside. Claws like Tinker Toys, thick and woody, attached to a shaggy hand bigger than my head.”
Soon thereafter, a friend called to say her tia saw a pink roadrunner.
Find out how this high schooler and her best friend, Mona, navigate life, ghosts and other scary things in “Naco Pink,” a new novel by Bisbee writer Chris Dietz. Hint: It doesn’t end well.
Still, it’s a story Dietz had to tell.
“It’s a strange thing; (the characters) want their stories told,” he said.
Dietz writes about what he knows: the canyonlands of Bisbee. He knows young people from his time as a high school science teacher, and he knows writing. “Naco Pink” was born in an era of his life when he had time, though the time was hard earned.
“In 2017, I became quite ill, and I had to quit teaching,” Dietz said.
He had cobalt poisoning from having hip replacement surgery. Symptoms can include neuropathy, but “it affects your nervous system; it can affect the heart; it can affect the brain,” he said.
No one in Arizona could provide a cure.
“It’s just being looked at a lot more seriously (now) because of the number of devices that we are implanting in our bodies,” Dietz said.
“My device in my hip was metal on metal and it was breaking off molecules of … cobalt so that was what was making me so ill.”
Dietz was convinced he was going to die. On the other hand, the illness gave him time to write novels, something he had always wanted to do.
“The great irony was I was really sick, thinking I was going to die, but I had time,” he said. “I was able to turn that into a writing blitz, blitz and bliss.”
From 2017 to 2021, Dietz wrote 10 novels.
“It was an incredible, productive period, but it was full of pain trying to survive cobalt poisoning,” he said.
He credits his wife and children with saving him.
Dietz, 72, is a hippie at heart. He met his wife in college and they hitchhiked across the United States, visiting nearly every state. They’ve lived in Europe, and they’ve taught school, with 80 years of experience between them. Dietz has taught science at high schools and college and at Fort Huachuca. During that time, he and his wife raised a family, and he wrote poetry on the side, being heavily influenced by Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart. He even had a band, the Monsters of Love, a poetry performance noise band.
Dietz said he has always been a voracious reader, particularly science fiction and fantasy so it’s no surprise that “Naco Pink” falls into these categories. Story ideas come from within himself in a rather interesting way.
“My sense is it’s from dreams, intuition, meditation,” he said. “One of the ways that I deal with pain and worry is to meditate, and meditation, I think, lends itself to writing.”
When Dietz decides to write a novel, he begins with characters. He does not outline, nor does he plan. His characters guide him.
“I have this sense of them almost coming to me and wanting to tell their story,” he said.
Dietz sometimes sees things in his backyard or in front of his home that open up a way for a character to emerge.
“I had this image for ‘Naco Pink,’” he said. “I had this young woman jogging in my neighborhood because I live right on the road to Naco and that’s how this whole thing started. I wanted to know who this young woman was and what she was doing out there jogging with all the washes and arroyos through the desert.”
Lest any reader think the story is going to be wrapped up in a nice bow, Dietz gave a warning.
“I had a dream, and I was at the playing field in Bisbee High School and (characters) Mya and Mona were in the bleachers,” he said. “They told me how it was having to end and it was such a shock I woke up crying. It has a horrific ending, and I don’t know if it’s an appropriate Young Adult ending.”
In the end, the story is really about something we cannot live without.
“The point of the whole thing and what a lot of these books are about, is this area on the border in the near future,” Dietz said. “In Naco’s near future water is running out, people are leaving and all that’s left are Dollar Stores.”
“Naco Pink”
232 pages; available on amazon.com
