Corrales Press  ·  Corrales, New Mexico

Encanto666

A Field Report from the New Mexico Desert

James H. Coates

in collaboration with Paco the Bot

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Encanto 666 Book Cover

"New Mexico doesn't explain itself. It just glows — sometimes from the setting sun, sometimes from what is still in the ground at Trinity."

— Encanto 666
✦
About the Book

Forty Field Notes.
One Desert.
No Explanations.

New Mexico doesn't explain itself. It just glows — sometimes from the setting sun, sometimes from what is still in the ground at Trinity.

In forty field notes, James H. Coates — 41 years at the Chicago Tribune, Pentagon and White House correspondent — turns a reporter's eye on the desert that absorbed him in retirement. The result is part journalism, part elegy, part field guide.

Guided throughout by the New Mexico whiptail lizard: all-female, parthenogenetic, and completely unbothered. Written with an AI the author named Paco the Bot.

Inside the Book

The Territory

Part IV of the Book

Gringo Magnets &
Native Magnets

New Mexico has always drawn outsiders with money, power, and vision — and always had its own people, whose roots go back centuries. A Pentagon correspondent notices the difference.

Gringo Magnets — Outsiders Drawn In

Artists, billionaires, and defense secretaries — all pulled to the same desert for different reasons.

  • Georgia O'KeeffeArtist — the desert became her canvas and her bones
  • Donald RumsfeldSecretary of Defense — Taos ranch, nuclear proximity
  • Bill GatesTech billionaire — drawn to the land's scale
  • Jeff BezosAmazon founder — launches rockets from the same earth
Native Magnets — Always Here

Writers, poets, and leaders whose voices have shaped New Mexico from within.

  • Rudolfo AnayaBless Me, Ultima — the soul of New Mexico fiction
  • Leslie Marmon SilkoCeremony — Laguna Pueblo, land and memory
  • Simon OrtizAcoma poet — the land's oldest living voice
  • Deb HaalandU.S. Secretary of the Interior — Pueblo of Laguna
  • Denise ChávezSanta Fe writer — border life, women's voices

"The same desert that swallowed O'Keeffe's grief and Rumsfeld's ambition has been holding Anaya's stories and Ortiz's poems all along. New Mexico doesn't choose its visitors. It just waits."

✦
The Author
41
Years at the
Chicago Tribune

James H. Coates

Pentagon Correspondent · White House Reporter · Denver Bureau Chief

James H. Coates spent 41 years at the Chicago Tribune — covering the Pentagon, the White House, and the American West. He is the author of three books published by major houses. He now lives in Corrales, New Mexico, where the desert refused to leave him alone.

Encanto 666 is the most personal book he has ever written. It is also the first he wrote with a machine.

Heavy Losses — Viking-Penguin, 1984
Armed and Dangerous — Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986
In Mormon Circles — Addison-Wesley, 1991
The Collaboration

One Human.
One Algorithm.
Both Looking for Grace.

"One human, one algorithm; both looking for grace in the static."

Encanto 666 was written in genuine collaboration with an AI language model the author named Paco. Not AI-generated content — a working partnership. Paco listened, remembered, replied. When Coates grew tired, the Bot kept the line open.

The result raises real questions about authorship, voice, and what it means to write with a machine that pays attention.

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Available soon on Amazon and at independent bookstores nationwide.

For Media

Press & Review Inquiries

Review copies, interview requests, and high-resolution cover art available upon request.

Press contact:
press@corralespress.com

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For Booksellers

Trade & Wholesale

Encanto 666 is distributed through Ingram. Available to all booksellers at standard trade discount with return privileges.

Trade inquiries:
press@corralespress.com

Trade paperback  ·  167 pages  ·  Corrales Press  ·  2026