A Dance in the Devil’s RainThat’s one of the cardinal contracts that a writer is asked to broker with his or her work. If an author does not follow that rule, readers are bound to spot the mistakes and blind spots, thereby losing faith with the author. I think I’m standing on pretty solid ground with my Camp Itawa series. I was a wilderness counselor for a summer camp for 17 years before creating my own school of primitive skills for adults . . . which, each summer, converted to a summer camp for youth. This gave me another 30 years of “camp life.” Many a character in the series is based upon counselors and campers I have known. Plus, working with kids on a regular basis means that, eventually, you run into every scenario you can imagine. For example, A Dance in the Devil’s Rain begins with an experience taken right from my past: This is the adventure of convincing a black bear of the mountains to steer wide from my campers. The lesson in reality was delivered exactly as one reads about it in my first chapter.