What day is this?

The best way to guarantee you will NOT do something is to say you will do it when you have time. That approach offers a built-in escape clause that allows you to look at the clock while pulling on your pajamas and say, oops, guess I didn’t have time to do that today.

 

Which explains why the Gypsy has been galloping around in big loopy circles for the last month, doing everything but writing regular blog posts. Bad Gypsy. 

 

BUT!

 

I have managed to start the sequel to “Ghost.” So far, the process consists of drinking large quantities of coffee and staring out the window, wondering if there are any chocolate chips in the freezer and what season we're doing today. Such is the creative process.

 

 

The sequel has no title. It has something that is trying very hard to be a plot. It has a jumble of quirky, rural-Iowa-in-the-summer scenes and eastern Iowa folklore and actual history that, given enough time and discipline, will evolve into an actual manuscript. When I was writing “Ghost,” I remember a speaker at a writers’ conference saying the first draft and the final draft should not look like twins. Maybe cousins. Once removed. With some questionable DNA results and a lot of questions about that uncle who lives in a doublewide up in the hills.

 

I’m working from some notes I made a Very. Long. Time. Ago. Maybe some writers can remember every element of character development and timeline and plot twist as they create it, but I am not one of them. Half the time I can’t remember who did what in the previous chapter.

 

 The creative process also includes filling out vendor intake forms for local farmers markets and researching esoteric topics like how to pay Illinois toll fees and when did Grant Wood paint “Young Corn”? Do not question the creative process. And I still owe the state of Illinois an undetermined amount of money, which they do not seem very interested in collecting.

 

BOOK #2

A few weeks ago, I announced the happy news that I’ve signed with Hayseed Press to make my second novel, a cozy mystery titled “Exercise Finished,” a reality this summer. Hayseed is an Iowa-based indie press co-founded by brothers Nick Narigon and Aaron Narigon. 

Nick and I served in the trenches of community journalism for a number of years before he wised up and moved on to bigger and better things, including but not limited to a wife, two boys who look like the trouble he probably deserves, several international moves, a return to the USA, and his first novel, set to release April 1. He assures me the date is not entirely a coincidence.

 

One of my favorite memories from our shared newspaper days involved dead people. I one hundred percent blame the fact dead people have supporting roles in my writing on the fact I spent about thirty years writing obituaries. This was when the internet was in its infancy, and putting obits in the newspaper was Serious Business. Back then, people picked up the paper for information instead of picking up a device.

 

Part of my job was to process the obits for multiple newspapers in our publishing group. On an average week, there were four or five, enough to fill half a broadsheet page. I was on a first-name basis with funeral directors across eastern Iowa. I knew the various spellings of local surnames, including Bloethe, Cronbaugh, Schlabaugh, Leichsenring, and Demeulenaere. I not only knew how to correctly spell Armah, Koszta, and Genoa Bluff, I knew where those cemeteries were located. I knew pallbearers was one word and casket bearers was two. 

 

Anyway, I went on vacation, and Nick wrote the obits that week. There were thirteen of them, and the deceased had all lived long, service-driven lives which were fondly recalled down to the last Lutheran women's ice cream social committee membership and county fair board office, as well as extended family trees whose branches were documented to include the most distant cousins. They took a staggering amount of time to write and a vast amount of space to print. When I came back to work, Nick informed me I was never allowed to go on vacation again. He was kidding. I think. Shortly after that, he left for greener pastures. I’m pretty sure the obituary apocalypse had nothing to do with it.

 

Flash forward to 2020. The world was in lockdown. I’d been dabbling with finding a literary agent to represent “Ghost.” It wasn’t going well. Out of the blue, Nick emailed me and said, in effect, “I’m bored. Send me the manuscript for your novel. I want to read it.”

 

So I did, and he did, and the suggestions he made launched “Ghost” onto the path to what it finally became. I’m excited to join forces with him and Aaron at Hayseed Press. Check out Hayseedpress.com to see what projects they’ve got coming up. I’ll be part of a panel with other Hayseed authors at the Des Moines Book Festival on Saturday, May 2, and Nick has promised he will tell us the topic we’ll be discussing at least five minutes before we sit down. 

 

I am also writing (gonna need more chocolate chips) a short story for Hayseed’s collection of all things weird, suitably titled “Iowa Weird, Volume 2, which will release this fall.

 

And at the end of this month, Nick is going to finally get even with me for making him write thirteen obituaries in one week when he drops the first round of edits for “Exercise Finished” back in my lap. At that point, I’ll jump from Jess McCallister and Dan Sinclair’s world of ghosts, cemeteries and historic mystery into River Kincaid and Tyler McAllan’s world of murder at an obedience trial.

 

This coincides with the calendar turning to April and my first mission as trial chair for the Iowa City Dog Obedience Club’s three-ring, three-day circus—um, highly efficiently run obedience trial. Followed by a road trip north for another classic spring trial weekend. Followed by a road trip south for Aussie Nationals. Followed by whatever follows hauling all over the Midwest for three major events in two weeks. No one plans to live like this on purpose, it just happens. If you encounter me walking around, talking to myself, please offer coffee or chocolate or a hug. All three would be appreciated.

 

 Check out the sidebar for dates I’m giving author’s talks and signings. Come if you can!

 

As always, I invite you to follow me at my author’s page at https://www.facebook.com/melinda.wichmann.author for updates from my very small corner of the literary world.

 

 

 

Sequels and series

First, THANK YOU EVERYONE, for jumping on the marketing team for “Ghost.” I cannot love it enough that you guys have sent unsolicited copies to friends and family all over the country with instructions to “Read this.” I’ve received pictures of “Ghost” on a cruise ship and on the beach, accompanied by a pina colada. It’s been shared all over the place, from poolside in Florida to the Williamsburg, Iowa, Kiwanis Club. 

The latter was probably the most awkward author event ever—me talking about writing a paranormal romance to a room full of men. Then I told them they all had to buy a copy because their wives would be upset if they didn’t. It worked. That’s me, the Master Marketer. 

 

“Ghost” is also available at the Amana Heritage Museum in Amana, Iowa, even though it has very little (trust me, very, very, little) to do with Amana history, and will be on the shelf at the Amana Art Haus when it opens for the season next month. 

 

It also makes my heart happy when you guys say, “I love your book when is the next one coming out is it a sequel?” Yeah, pretty much all one sentence.

 

The answer is, “Thank you so much this summer no.”

 

Let me clarify.

 

Yes, the next book is coming out mid-summer.

 

No, I really have no idea when “mid-summer” is.

 

No, it is not a sequel to “Ghost.”

 

Yes, there will be a sequel to “Ghost.”

No, the sequel will not be released any time soon—mostly because it only exists in over-written digital pages in the “Books” folder on my hard drive and random thoughts floating through the ether in my brain. Please keep asking me about it because that keeps me on task.

 

So, about the NEXT book. It’s like this: a cozy mystery but instead of a knitting club in a quaint English village, make it competitive dog trainers in the Midwest.

 

The title is “Exercise Finished,” and it’s about a murder at an obedience trial. I wrote it last winter, while the future of “Ghost” was still very murky, and I needed something to do. This is what happens when writers have too much time on their hands and no project occupy their brains. I thought, what if someone killed a competitor at an obedience trial and everyone there was a suspect? So I opened up a Word document to find out.

 

 My goal (a lofty one, but go big or go home) was to write the obedience trial equivalent of Rita Mae Brown’s Sister Jane foxhunting series. Brown’s books trot out all the ritual and tradition of fox hunting in Virginia with inconvenient bodies routinely turning up. Granted, the horse and hound culture is a bit more posh than showing dogs at the county fairgrounds, but I think the world needs exposure to the quirky sub-culture of competitive dog trainers.

 

Did I reach my goal? That’s for you to decide this summer. I hope my dog-crazy friends will read it with enthusiasm, and the casual canine owner will be intrigued by a good story while they dream of their family pet becoming a “show dog.”

 

I’m delighted to announce I have a publisher! I’ll release details once things get firmed up, but I’m looking forward to working with them. It’s also a bit like getting the band back together, which I’ll also elaborate on in the future. The manuscript is in their hands now, so I’m waiting for the first round of edits to be returned and give my life meaning. Or angst.

 

While waiting, my current project is a short story for “Iowa Weird, Volume 2” by Hayseed Press. Check them out at www.HayseedPress.com Hayseed launched “Iowa Weird” last fall as a collection of Iowa ghost stories that morphed into more. I’m sorry to say although I’d been invited to join the weirdness, I was up to my eyeballs in pushing “Ghost” through final production and declined the invitation to write for them.

 

I’m not making that mistake twice! When they put out a call for stories of the weird for a second volume, I was all over it. Having said that, short stories (less than 5,000 words, in this case) are not my jam. I write big. I write long. I love using words. I have my work cut out for me. My story premise is a blend of “The Walking Dead,” “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” the TV show “Grimm,” and a ghost story from the Amana Colonies. To quote the good people at Hayseed Press, “That is absolutely unhinged, and we love it.”

 

 

But . . .  I am also (cue dramatic music, the opening theme from Star Wars would be appropriate) starting to outline the sequel to “Ghost.” Why bother with an outline this time? Because I don’t want to spend half a decade writing it! Seriously. I wrote “Ghost” by the seat of my pants. This only works if you know what you’re doing (I didn’t) and you’re extremely efficient with plotting in your head (I wasn’t) and if you can envision the storyline from A to Z (I couldn’t). Combine those three elements and it means you do a lot of rewriting. A. Lot. Of. Rewriting.

 

 Here’s the thing about sequels. The characters have to move forward. As much as I love Jess McCallister and Dan Sinclair, they can’t keep running around doing the same things they did in “Ghost.” Well, they can do similar things. But they need to do NEW things, too. And there need to be NEW characters. And NEW mysteries to solve. While it will be great fun to trot out all the familiar faces, I’m still starting from square one on the plot because I have this ridiculous idea that if I actually know where I want the story to go, it will be easier to get it there. And it won't take five years.

 

 Sequels lead to series, and I am very cautious about promising anything about the Fox Hollow gang beyond two books. We all have series that we love. They are brilliant. They are epic. I have been reading Diana Gabaldon’s “Outlander” series since college. Since COLLEGE, people. That was in the last century. They are complex and vibrant and have lost none of the elements that drew me in when I was a junior at Iowa State and should have been studying for mid-terms but was reading about Jamie and Claire's adventures instead.

 

But I’ve also experienced series that lost their shine. An absolute favorite was brilliant for the first five books or so, then began to dull. The characters were just going through the motions. The quirky elements that had been so endearing now felt like filler. The plots were predictable, the dialogue contrived, and the editing was no longer crisp. I was so disappointed. It was like a good friend turning into a boring stranger.

 

On the other hand, fans of Janet Evanovich’s “Stephanie Plum” series (currently at 31 main novels, since “One for the Money” in 1993) will recognize the truth that every single one of those books follows the same formula (struggling bounty-hunter Stephanie’s crisis with her love life, her eccentric grandmother, dysfunctional family, exploding cars, the Jersey mob and other criminal elements, plus a truly crazy cast of characters). And I will keep eating them up with a spoon. Yes, they’re predictable, but like a bowl of vanilla ice cream with Hershey syrup. You know exactly what you’re getting, and it never fails to satisfy. Ditto for John Sandford’s Virgil Flowers series and Craig Johnson’s Walt Longmire books. The wait for a new title is agonizing.

 

Authors who have built empires on their series are incredibly gifted. I bow to their greatness. Right now, I’ll just be happy to craft a decent outline for “Ghost 2,” which remains untitled. But I have ideas. I always have ideas. That’s what got me into this mess in the first place.

 

My overpaid office assistants. Cute, furry, and generally absolutely no help.

 Check out the sidebar for dates I’m giving author’s talks and signings. Come if you can!

 

As always, I invite you to follow me at my author’s page at https://www.facebook.com/melinda.wichmann.author for updates from my very small corner of the literary world.

 

 

 

Art mirrors life

 This week’s installment falls into the I Swear You Cannot Make This Stuff Up category.

First, SPOILER ALERT! If you haven’t read “How to Live with a Ghost” yet, you might want to skip this post. Or if you’re one of those readers who likes to know what happens before it happens so you can enjoy it when it happens (weird, but I get it), read on.

 

My father’s lone living sister, Joyce, is the Hanson-Gaskell family historian. She has spent decades recording the stuff family genealogies are made of, but it’s not just who-married-whom and how many kids they had. She also records stories like the wife who shot her husband for going fishing in his Sunday suit. These are my people. (I’d like to know more about the fishing incident but no one seems to recall the details and it might better that way.)

 

Aunt Joyce writes poignant, often sobering and frequently funny “memory lane” posts dusted with the dry sense of humor that seems to be a Hanson genetic trait. She distributes these via email to various branches of the family tree, since we are scattered to the four points of the compass and possibly the China Sea. Seriously. I’ll get back to that.

 

WRITERS & RELATIVES

 

So, my aunt recently shared the following after some gentle prodding by me to elaborate on a different topic she had referenced in a previous email.

 

“Dear Melinda (insert chatty familial catching up here) . . . Congratulations on your new book . . . I am anxious to start it soon, and know that my mom (my paternal grandmother, Laurel Gaskell Hanson, whom I never met) would have been so proud of you. She was a great story teller and both Rosey (my dad’s other sister) and I told her she should have written a children’s story book.

 

Laurel Gaskell Hanson, 1950s
I am blessed to have this quilt.

My aunt went on to inquire, “Have you read any of the books that were written by my great-great-great-great English aunt, Elizabeth Gaskell? Actually, she wasn’t a blood relative as she was a Cleghorn and married one of our ancestors in England. He was a Unitarian minister. She is buried in a side chapel in a cathedral in London. Her two best books—she wrote over 15—were ‘North and South’ (about England) and ‘Cranford.’ They are pretty good.”

 

Well. No. I had to admit I was not aware I had a (add another great to the above list) who penned books in England in the 1800s. A quick check of Google confirms she wrote “detailed studies of Victorian society, including the lives of the very poor.” 

 

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell,
Victorian-era novelist and my 5x great-aunt

 

Then Aunt Joyce dropped the bomb.

 

“I was impressed that the forwards in the books were written by Charles Dickens and Jane Austen, who she was good friends with.”

 

Well. Alrighty then. Perhaps Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell was only a relative by marriage, but she’s still a branch of the family tree, and I was this many years old when I found out an ancestor of mine rubbed elbows with Dickens and Austen.

 

Before I got too puffed up about my literary ancestors, Aunt Joyce continued:

 

“My Grandfather Walter Gaskell thought he was a great writer. He was not, as proven by editors with many rejection slips. I have a copy of (his) stories if you ever want to waste the time reading them.

 

“It’s kind of funny as the original handwritten copies have been passed around . . . no one wants them, but no one wants to throw them out. I sent them to a cousin last Christmas, wrapped up, and she says I get them back this coming year. Someday my kids can throw them out, which you will understand if you ever read them.”

Maybe my great-grandfather wasn’t Hemingway when it came to literary achievement, but an inkwell that belonged to him found its way to me about thirty years ago, via my dad’s other sister, who thought I should have the it because I was a newspaper columnist. No word on how she ended up with it, although both of my dad’s sisters wrote beautiful letters back in the era when people still wrote letters. 

 

My Great-grandfather Walter Gaskell's inkwell
has received more appreciation than
any of his literary non-achievements.

 

Anyway, I love the inkwell. It’s a cool bit of history and sparked a brief passion for collecting inkwells and ink bottles, until I began disposing of my disposable income on dog show entry fees.

 

WHISKEY IN ODD PLACES

 

Okay, seriously stop reading NOW if you don’t want to get some major hints about the ending of “Ghost.”

 

I did some research for certain elements of “Ghost,” but I wasn’t trying to get a Ph.D. in American history, and let’s face it, at the end of the day, fiction is just a writer sitting at a keyboard, making stuff up. (And honestly, that’s why we do it—we’re thumbing our noses at everyone who told us we shouldn’t “tell stories” when we were kids. Look at us now—telling stories and making money. Okay, telling stories.)

 

I totally made up the bit in “Ghost” about home-brew whiskey being hidden in Bishop Cemetery by Prohibition-era bootleggers with plans to distribute it via the Iowa River. Yepper—plucked the idea right out of the clear blue sky. It sounded like a fun bit of make believe and a nice twist to what everyone thought was in the cemetery. Had no idea anyone actually DID that.

 

Then just as the book was going into serious production and we were past the point of no return on major edits, my aunt drops another bomb in a family and local history email episode.

 

Hiding hooch in cemeteries WAS a thing.

 

Prohibition stone in the Wapello, Iowa, township cemetery.
The date on the stone predates Prohibition but I suppose
it could have replaced the original grave marker. These "whisky monuments" were not
made from stone at all, but "white bronze" (zinc), hollowed for storage of alcohol
awaiting transportation by bootleggers.

 

Alex, I’ll take “Stuff I wish I’d known as a kid” for $100.

 

There were “Prohibition stones” on graves in the township cemetery near the farm where I grew up (which was near the Iowa River). I asked my aunt to expound on that, please, and she wrote:

 

 “Many (Prohibition stones) can be found in the cemeteries along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers and also further south. They are usually hollowed out, with space to hide booze. Mom told me about them in the Wapello Cemetery . . . They are also called ‘zinkers’ as that is what the door would have been made of, and sometimes I guess the entire stone was zinc. The ones in Wapello have been painted over and can’t be opened any more. More can be found close to the rivers, as that was how a lot of alcohol was moved.”

 

RELATIVES & BOOTLEGGERS

 

My aunt continued with her tale of enlightenment:

 

“Did you know you have a bootlegger in your history? My dad’s brother, Ralph Brueck, was one. He transported liquor from up river (Mississippi River) into Burlington (Iowa) using a shallow draft boat. Dad (my paternal grandpa) said that he knew the river well and would go into shallow side flows where the Revenuers could not follow with their bigger boats. If necessary, he would dump the liquor into the water.

 

“This activity was well-known in the family, as Dad would laugh about it. Apparently, he made money at it, as he started Brueck Plumbing and Electric Company in Burlington. I liked Uncle Ralph, as he was always jolly, but it upset Mom so much that he smoked cigars and that they served beer at their kids’ weddings.”

 

I guess if this writing gig doesn’t work out, maybe I could take up moonshining. 

 

Or not.

 

It would probably be best for everyone involved if I just stuck to researching and discovering the antics of the people who came before me because they were undoubtedly better at it than I could ever be.

 

MORE GENEALOGY TO END THE WEEK

 

My aunt comes up with the most delightful bits of history from the Danish/Swedish branch of the family. (The crazy Celts are on my mom’s side and apparently no one has ever looked too closely at the antics of the Mills-Cameron family tree.)

 

Anyway, back to Danes doing Dane things:

 

“. . . did you know that Dad’s great-grandfather was a Danish sea captain who went down in the China Sea? (Apparently his death was never confirmed.) Maybe he survived and we’ve got cousins over there! . . . I do have Grandma Christine Hanson’s family back to Sweden in the 1600s (farmers) and the Hansons in Denmark back to World War I (farmers). After that, church records in Denmark were destroyed, but I know Grandpa snuck out of Denmark with a younger brother to escape having to go into the German army.”

 

There you have it. The result is a fun smorgasbord of lineage to pick from when trying to figure out why I am the way I am.

 

Check out the sidebar for dates I’m giving author’s talks and signings. Hope to see you there!

 

As always, I invite you to follow me at my author’s page at https://www.facebook.com/melinda.wichmann.author for updates from my very small corner of the literary world.

News from the hobbit hole

 Thank you.

 

I don’t know what else to say, so I’ll just keep saying it.

 

Your response to “How to Live with a Ghost” has been beyond my wildest dreams. Thanks for taking the time to leave reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Thanks for posting “Ghost” on your social media and telling friends “You have to read this book!” Thank you for sending copies to unsuspecting friends from coast to coast. Thank you for sending me messages saying how much you enjoyed it. 

 

I especially love everyone who has said, “I was so sad when it was over.” Yay! Well, I’m not happy that you were sad, but I’m delighted you enjoyed being part of Jess McCallister and Dan Sinclair’s world so much you miss them now that you aren’t there. I spent so much time with them over the last few years, I miss them, too.

 

 

I also love that so many of your messages ended with “When is your next book coming out?” Okay, that makes me twitch a little (the final weeks of pre-publication on “Ghost” were not a kind and gentle experience), but I’m ready to do it again. Older, wiser and all that. 

 

An author friend warned me the ink would barely dry on the first book before dear readers started asking about the next one. I can think of worse problems to have.

 

But . . .

 

Publishing a book is the literary equivalent of hosting Thanksgiving dinner. You spend ages cleaning the house, planning the meal and shopping for groceries at four different stores. You get a flat tire in the process and have to call AAA, then you realize the spare is UNDER the dog crates and the only way to get it out is to take the crates out first. (I’ve done it. Zero stars. Do not recommend.)

 

Tire crisis solved, you manage to defrost the turkey without the cats gnawing on it (not my experience but a childhood memory I’ll never forget), and make accommodations for great-aunt Ethel’s gluten intolerance and nephew Johnny’s strawberry allergy. You nearly break your neck dusting the ceiling fan, then scrub the dog snot off all the windows, only to discover now they let in so much light you have to go back and deep clean everything over again. 

 

Then you roast, bake, boil, blend, peel, knead, beat, frost, baste and wash dishes for what feels like a lifetime and set the most beautiful table ever, complete with starched linens and sparkling stemware. You get up at zero-dark-thirty to put the bird in the oven and let the wine breathe. There’s a military grade spreadsheet on the refrigerator detailing oven temps, bake times and ins and outs in order to have everything come together at the appropriate time.

 

Then it takes your guests about twenty minutes to eat the meal.

 

All analogies between writing and food gluttony aside, I can tell you a few things with certainty.

 

There WILL be a next book.

 

It WON’T be a Fox Hollow mystery. (I’ll address that in a sec.)

 

It WILL be a cozy mystery involving a murder at a dog obedience trial—new setting, new characters, total immersion in the crazy that is the sub-culture of competition obedience trainers. There are no ghosts but there is a dead body in the Utility ring, and no one can figure out whodunnit. The trial chair stumbles onto the reason why the victim was killed, and although she doesn’t know whodunnit either, there’s a good chance she’s next on the killer’s list. On top of everything, a friend is pushing her to adopt a wild young Malinois from a local rescue, and she’s mentoring a Beginner Novice exhibitor who traded rodeos for dog shows but won’t give up his cowboy boots. While I can’t say with any certainty when it will be released, my goal is early autumn. 

 

 (Takes deep breath.) I’m excited to say I DO have a plot idea for a sequel to “Ghost.” However . . . I want to actually outline the thing this time before tackling the writing. Having said THAT, I am under no illusion I will actually follow said outline, but I wrote “Ghost” by the seat of my pants and it was a pretty reckless experience I’d prefer not to repeat. That blatant disregard to anything resembling good sense made things super awkward when it came to character and story development, which in turn was one of the reasons it needed about a dozen rewrites. I would like to avoid that again. Like, really, really like to avoid that again.

 

Oooh, is this a mysterious clue to what's next for the Fox Hollow crew?

 

So that’s a lot of grand plans for 2026. Plus the usual dog induced mayhem.

 

Infant canine mayhem. It's bigger now.
And so is the accompanying mayhem.

 I’ll spend the next couple of months complaining bitterly about winter here in the Midwest, but secretly loving the excuse to hide in my little hobbit hole, maintaining all my relationships with fictional characters.

 

As always, I invite you to follow me at my author’s page at https://www.facebook.com/melinda.wichmann.author for updates from my very small corner of the literary world.

 

 

 

The dogs of "Ghost"

I hope 2026 brings wonderful sparkly things for all of you!

 

Happy new year and thank you all so much for your support of “Ghost.” Since its release two weeks ago, you’ve bought it, shared it on social media and left wonderful reviews. I’m loving that you’re loving it! 

I’m especially loving reviews where readers highlight what they felt made the book relatable and enjoyable. That gives me ideas to build on for . . . um . . . possibly . . . another McAllister/Sinclair adventure. Maybe by then Jess will be able to go for a walk without falling into an open grave or onto a skeleton or off the edge of a river bluff. Seriously. Looking back, I’m not sure how I got her through three-hundred-plus pages without her breaking her neck. 

 

On to this week’s topic: if you’ve known me for longer than five minutes, it’s no surprise I found it easier to create the canine characters of “How to Live with a Ghost” than the human ones. If we’re relatively new acquaintances, I’m glad you’re here, and it might be beneficial to point out I am a certified crazy dog lady. I earned my first AKC obedience title on the family beagle when I was 11 and things . . . escalated. Fifty years of dog sports later, it’s that connection with another species that meant many of the supporting characters in “Ghost” were naturally four-leggers.

 

The main canine, Raider, Jess’s Belgian Malinois, was the first to interact with Fox Hollow’s invisible resident. He enjoyed connecting across the veil while Jess was either oblivious or in denial or both. It was easy to use him to create tension, serve as comic relief or save the day. 

 

Raider the fictional Malinois is based on my very real Malinois, OTCH, U-OTCH Carousel’s Call of the Wild, UDX, MX, MXJ, TT (Phoenix). Phoenix liked who he liked, and if he didn’t like you, well, sorry. One of my favorite scenes in “Ghost” comes late in the first chapter, when Dan Sinclair drops in to meet Jess, as the new owner of Fox Hollow. His initial attempt at a friendly handshake quickly changes to “Is your dog going to bite me?” while Raider gives him the classic Malinois FAFO look.

OTCH, U-OTCH Carousel's Call of the Wild
(Phoenix the real Malinois who was the
prototype for Raider the fictional Malinois)

 Raider, my very real Australian shepherd, is named after Raider the fictional Malinois. That weaves some kind of twisted connection with Phoenix, the very real Malinois. When Raider the Aussie goes over-the-top nuts or gets spicy, I feel like there’s a bit of Phoenix still with me.

Cedarwoods Macallan Red Label, UDX, OM2
(Raider the Aussie)

 Through the years, all my dogs’ call names and/or registered names have shared a literary theme linked to either a character or a book title. Raider the Aussie was the first one to deviate from that path. While his call name referenced a canine character in the unpublished manuscript that absolutely no one had read at that point but which would eventually become “Ghost,” his registered name, Cedarwoods Macallan Red Label, was a nod to whisky, no literary connection in sight. 

 

Now, I’m laughing even harder at the whisky reference because after “Ghost” went through several rewrites, well, if you know, you know. 

 

Having spent decades experiencing dogs’ intelligence and ability to problem solve, not to mention being blessed with the soul-deep relationships that come from working so closely with them, I wanted to present dogs as sentient, intuitive beings whose behaviors fill the lives of those around them with a richness that defies description. I hoped to capture my four-legged characters exhibiting normal canine behavior but with the underlying current of thoughtful intelligence and more often than not, a sense of humor.

 

Raider the Malinois was easy to write because I spent eleven too-short years with a Mal who never let anything stand in the way of what he wanted (including but not limited to fences, vehicles, farm fields, furniture, crates, trees and buildings). He was also obsessed with tennis balls.

 

Ruby, Dan Sinclair’s Australian cattle dog, is a nod to every tough, loyal, bossy, herding dog out there who not only thinks they know better than you do, they don’t GAF whether you agree.

 

Kerri Grimm’s Aussies reflect all the wonderful Australian shepherds who convinced me to switch breeds in real life from Belgians to Aussies. Seely, Kinna, Julia, Mia . . . you know who you are. I had written quite a few more of Kerri’s Aussies into original drafts of “Ghost” but they didn’t make the final version. Damn word count.

 

Cannon, Susanne Bartacheck’s fabulous BIS, BISS German Shorthair Pointer, was inspired by Carlee, the GSP who went BIS at Westminster in 2005. I remember watching her gate and stack and thinking she was absolute perfection on a show lead. When I needed a breed dog for Susanne, she immediately popped into my head. 

 

Mare MacGregor’s “incorrigible corgi” Poe doesn’t get a lot of press, which is a shame because corgis are wicked cute little beasts who deserve a supporting character role. Maybe he’ll get to shine in the future.

 

The other dogs who trot through the pages of “Ghost” were chosen more or less at random, because they seemed to fit their owners’ personalities, as well as represent the variety of breeds taking part in dog sports across our nation. If there’s any subliminal text here, it’s the message that all dogs should receive a baseline minimum of obedience training to make them good canine citizens in a world that expects them to conform to human demands while at the same time, neglecting to give them the skills to do so.

 

Thanks again for reading and reviewing and being part of my marketing team by telling your friends about “Ghost.” I’m doing some book signings in eastern Iowa this month. They are listed on the right side of this page. If you don’t have anything better to do, come and listen to me prove that I write better than I speak.

 

As always, I invite you to follow me at my author’s page at https://www.facebook.com/melinda.wichmann.author.