Fast forward again: It was 2006 and “Cat Attacks,” although it was Sasquatch’s top seller the year it came out, had slowed way down since my coauthor and I stopped supporting it. Sasquatch let it go out of print and all rights reverted to us.

Which suited me: I wanted another crack at the material. We could rewrite the book as a genre buster, I argued to my coauthor. Use attack stories, sure, but not as the center of the book. They would be merely part of an exploration of a larger question: Will humans willingly share living space with big predators?

Since humans are rapidly gobbling space it seemed to me a burning question. If the answer is no, it’s hard to imagine how any amount of legislated protection would shield North America’s big predators, from wolves to cougars to grizzlies to black bears. That serious question would frame a responsible, thoughtful approach to the subject matter, I said. And inside that frame we could still tell these great, exciting stories.

My coauthor was not interested. He was done with the topic and not unhappy with the book as it stood. I could go forward with it alone with his blessing.

A week later Falcon, a Globe Pequot imprint based in Montana, had bought the project.

The revision I did with Falcon was close to what I had intended, but not close enough to please me. It was smarter and more thoughtful than the original. Most of the chapters were not built around attacks on humans.

However many readers still felt the book foregrounded attacks and rightly so. A writer I greatly respect named Chris Bolgiano, who also writes about cougars, lambasted it. She told me the book would result in the unnecessary killing of more cougars.

The bottom line is, I was not yet a good enough writer to handle sensational material in a thoughtful way. Also problematic was the fact that my editor at Falcon had been determined to capitalize on the very sensationalism I’d hoped to downplay. He was a heavy-penned but light-handed editor, so when I could articulate a good reason for overruling his extensive edits, he gave ground. The trouble was me: Often I could not articulate my genre-busting vision and the reasons it seemed a good idea.

One day my editor emailed me with his proposed title: “Stalked by a Mountain Lion.”
I howled. He gave me a chance to come up with a better title. I proudly dusted off my old “Track of the Lion.” He gave both titles to the Barnes and Noble rep, and the rep immediately picked “Stalked” for a title.

And that was that. You don’t argue with the Barnes and Noble rep, my editor said. If it made me feel better he’d let me write the subtitle.

No amount of howling had any further impact. I reread my contract. As far as I could tell I had no contractual right to veto a title.
The book was released in 2007 under the title, “Stalked by a Mountain Lion: Fact, Fear and the Uncertain Future of Cougars in America.” On the cover, a cougar stares into the reader’s eyes.

By my score, that was strike two. I had tried to deliver a thoughtful, responsible but compelling narrative and had only  partially succeeded. But the book as titled, with that cover and the words “Deadly Cougar Encounters” highlighted on the back, made a promise I also didn’t deliver on: the book appeared to be but now was not a rehash of scary animal stories.

Sigh.