Book excerpt: Wanda Waffle is a single mother of twins. In order to get any help from her ex-husband, she would first have to obtain an advanced degree in crypto zoology. In case you don't know what that is, it is the study of creatures that do not exist, like Big Foot, Sasquatch, the Abominable Snowman, the Yeti, the Chupacabra, the Loch Ness Monster, the Thunder Bird, the Jersey Devil, and Willie Waffle, her fugitive ex-husband who, much like D. B. Cooper, might as well not exist because he couldn't be found. Wanting to make a better life for her children, she moves from the East Village in Manhattan to the small Victorian coastal town named Big Water, where during a period of unemployment in the 1970's she starts to write a book out of sheer desperation. Thirty years later she finds the old manuscript in a trunk. It was written at a time of rampant unemployment, a falling dollar, and high gas prices. It sounded just like today!