Anna Wineheart Books

The Feral Alpha is particularly special to me because part of it is from my own (and Huz’s) life. We used to go taking pictures in the south-western US deserts a lot (A LOT), and yes, he probably had a thousand pictures of my face.

I’m just gonna share some pictures from back then, and point out the parts of the book that are based in truth. Indented passages are from the book.

Prepare for a long post!

The next morning, Olson woke to the Jeep rumbling around him.
They were on the road again.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” George said from the front of the Jeep–Jeeps were not ‘cars’, George had said several times. “I’m surprised you woke. It’s not even sunrise yet.”
Olson crawled out of their blanket nest, climbing awkwardly into the front passenger seat. His ass bumped George in the side of his head.
George laughed. “You should put some clothes on.”
“It’s dark out. No one’s going to see.”
“I heard that Border Patrol keeps an eye out here. They’re going to think I kidnapped you.”

1) Yes, I called the Jeep a car a number of times, and Huz was always like “It’s not a car” 😂

2) We used to wake hours before sunrise so we could drive to a location in time to catch the sunrise – the light at sunrise is something special because it’s extra-yellow/gold (see below), and it throws long, deep shadows across the human body that you won’t get towards midday

3) We DID have a run-in with Border Patrol. I think part of it was Huz speeding a bit to catch the sunrise – we were bouncing around off-road and bumping our heads, and we were in the middle of taking pictures when a Border Patrol officer pulled up and wanted to see my ID…. here’s a picture I took of the encounter

Huz remembered it years down the road, too – particularly the way the Border Patrol guy flicked my ID back at me between his fingers. I’d forgotten that part!

They turned off the highway and took a side road, then a dirt road. Then, George parked. “The GPS says it should be around here somewhere. But it’s cold out. Wait here while I scope out the place.”
It was close to sunrise; the sky had brightened to a purple-grey-pink. All around, the landscape was awash in a watery sort of light.
Everything was so still. No birds. No insects. Just the vast sky above them, low hills in the distance, and a quiet sort of beauty that couldn’t be found in civilization.

1) Huz somehow KNEW where all the special spots are, without a map. We’d drive up to these hills and he’d take this little dirt road and another one, and we’d pull up next to a really nice rock for photos. I think it’s because he’d spent years in the desert doing photography before meeting me.

2) the landscape is so different right before sunrise. It’s a little muted, a little grayer, but still so beautiful:

When they reached the rock, Olson saw why George was so excited about it. The rock was low to the ground, smooth like a stage and wide enough to be one. Several deep cracks ran across it, their edges weathered smooth.
“It looks like a dance floor,” Olson said.
“We could dance on it later.” George grinned.

I’m still looking for the picture of this rocky stage! It has to be somewhere in my files!

“You must have, what, a thousand pictures of my face by this point?”
“You’re always so beautiful,” George murmured.

Offhand, I don’t have a picture of all the pictures Huz had of my face, but you can totally believe he had a TON of pictures of me

He stepped back; the shutter clicked. It kept clicking as George moved around, finding different angles. Olson arranged his limbs into the most graceful poses he could, marveling at the play of light and shadow over his body.
“Beautiful,” George murmured.

Huz was always taking pictures of my face, which I got bored by because it’s just my face!! And I started making funny faces to change it up, and he’d get mad because he wanted the non-funny faces 😂
But he always said “Beautiful” while he was taking those pictures, and I think it was one of those things about him that made him so comfortable to be around.
I’m looking at the old pictures now and thinking to myself “If I could’ve just moved my body a bit more into the light, or away from it, the picture would’ve been so much better”
Hindsight is 20/20!

“I always thought the deserts were boring and full of sand dunes,” Olson said. “Until one day you pulled up all these pictures of the rocks and plants there. And it’s just breathtaking.”
George had shown him a photo of the Pinto basin, a wide, open valley with a road passing through endless shrubs, the sky tinting the shadows blue. There was a vastness to the place, peaceful yet full of life, and Olson had wanted to visit.

The Pinto Basin is one of my favorite views of the desert. It’s when you’re heading down from Joshua Tree National Park, I think, when you’re overlooking the Teddybear Cactus patch, and you can see the entire valley.
I’m not sure if this is the same place, but it sure has the same feeling! (Huz would totally know where this is though

(Also, yes – the shadows are blue because they’re reflecting the blue from the sky)

“We camped out in Death Valley once,” he said with a laugh. “In the summer. And it was still sweltering past midnight; neither of us could sleep. You ended up taking pictures of the Milky Way. Then we woke up late and drove around, but all the interesting places in Death Valley are so far apart, I was asleep for most of it.”

Me, I was the one who couldn’t sleep at night at Furnace Creek (appropriately named). Huz went out like a light (probably because of all the driving – it’s at least an hour’s drive between tourist spots at Death Valley, if not 2-3 hours). I spent a while that night figuring out how to do long exposures on a camera, and then taking pictures of the sky – which is really just setting the camera against a hard surface and trying not to move it for 20-30 seconds.

In person, the Milky Way is barely a smudge in the sky, but it sure looks spectacular when cameras capture enough light from them to show what they’re like!

this is my picture from Death Valley, with quite a bit of photo editing to bring out the contrasts

We went to the dry lake bed north of Victorville–there’s a massive solar array there now. We visited the mailbox on the Old Mojave Trail. We hiked around in Joshua Tree National Park, and then we went south, to the Salton Sea. Gods, the shoreline was made out of fishbones. And you wanted me to pose there. Barefeet!”

Dry lake bed:

The mailbox on Old Mojave Trail – people do leave things in there like snacks and random knick knacks:

Joshua Tree – this was an especially big one with several limbs, mostly they’re scrawnier and have maybe 2 limbs, like the smaller ones in the background of this photo

Salton sea – yes, I stood barefeet on the fishbones

“One time, we went down this really steep offroad trail,” Olson said. “And there was a horrible smell. I asked you what it was. Guess what you said.”
Rex tilted his head.
“You said it was the smell of death. Fucking jerk. It was the clutch burning!”
“Bad?”
“We didn’t go any further,” Olson said dryly. “We reversed and made it out alive.”

I don’t have a picture of the steep offroad trail, but this actually happened

Olson pointed out the teddybear cacti.
“Do not step on those,” Olson said. “They may look fuzzy, but those are all sharp spines. They’ll pierce your shoes or your pants, and you can’t use your hands to get them off or they’ll hurt your fingers, too.”
“Olson step?” Rex asked.
Olson sighed. “I did, a couple times. Wearing my shoes. You helped to knock them off.”

Huz kicked them off my crocs, but a time or two, I could feel the spines through those soles. It was very uncomfortable. 0/10, do not recommend.

–

A number of people have told me they saw the way Huz looked at me, and that is the inspiration for Rex’s adoring looks at Olson through a lot of The Feral Alpha.

So yeah! This book touched on just one part of the life that Huz and I had, but it was something very significant and special to us 🙂 Here’s a photo of us:

Huz : Remind me to suck in my belly!