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. 

Now what?

First things first. Huge thanks to everyone who ordered hard copy or Kindle downloads of “How to Live with a Ghost” when it was released earlier this week. Many of you have listened to me talk about this book for years, and it was your encouragement that kept me going when I felt trying to publish was like hitting myself in the head with a stick and then wondering why I had a headache.

The evening after “Ghost” trotted into the big, wide world on its own two feet, I faced a new reality. The problem with reaching a goal that you’ve dreamed about for years is that once you achieve it, you’re kind of left floating in the ether. The thing that consumed a ridiculous amount of my mental energy since some point in 2022 had been checked off the to-do list. What was next?

Sales and marketing!

 

 

I may have mentioned my publisher, Pearl City Press, is a small operation. I went into this knowing much of the sales would fall on my shoulders because they do not have the people-power to drive a big marketing campaign. Or a small marketing campaign. Or any marketing campaign. If I wanted people to notice “Ghost,” I was going to have to make it happen.

 

Much like the farm wife who wears the hats of cook, meals-on-wheels driver, pickup fetcher, gate watcher, parts runner, weather reporter, cow chaser, fuel dump operator, and wagon hauler, I stepped into the position of publicist, sales executive, and event promoter.

 

I was not cut out to do this. My degree is in journalism. For three and a half decades, I made a living reporting the news, not being the news. However, unicorn dreams and glitter rainbows aside, once you’ve published a book, the goal is to sell the book. Books, annoyingly, do not sell themselves.

 

Speaking of selling things, let’s step back a few years. I grew up selling Girl Scout Cookies door-to-door to our farm neighbors. I sold candy bars to raise money for my 4-H club, candles and jewelry to finance the high school Spanish Club’s trip to Spain, and magazines to support the junior/senior prom. I hated every minute of it. I was a shy kid. I did not want to talk to strangers, let alone try to sell them stuff nobody really wanted. Well. Except the cookies. Everybody wants cookies. Of course, they all bought cookies and candles and magazines because that’s what you did back then. Their kids had sold stuff to my parents, so when I showed up on their doorstep, trying not to vomit, they cheerfully ordered a token box of Thin Mints or renewed their subscription to Field and Stream.

 

This does not seem like a viable marketing strategy for book sales.
But yay, Girl Scouts!

 

Here I am, many years later, trying to capture the attention of book readers, book buyers, booksellers, and the media in a climate filled with thousands of other authors doing the same thing. This would be easier if I’d penned a best-selling, forty-seven-title series because name recognition is everything. You can walk into a bookstore and tell who the big-name authors are without having read any of their work. Their name on the cover will be larger than the title. 

 

But here I am. First-time author. Debut novel. Single book. Not even the promise of a series (more on that another time). Just me, dizzy with relief at this lone achievement and wanting to share it with the world. 

 

Well, look at that, will ya?

 What I’ve learned so far can be summed up in one word: networking.

 

I am calling in favors left and right, relying on contacts from my years in the newspapers, and thanking God in Heaven for a friend with a marketing degree who has given me some excellent ideas. She would cringe if she knew my approach is still more reckless than methodical, but I feel good about the results. 

 

And incredibly nervous because it still involves talking to strangers. Substitute “book” for “cookies” and it’s a flashback to the 1970s, clutching the order form in sweaty palms and trying not to mumble when I ask, “Would you like to buy my book?” Only now I’m holding a press release praising “Ghost” and handing out business cards and smiling in what I hope is a friendly and professional, not deranged, manner.

 

I'm fine. Really. Just fine. Delighted to be here.

Author events an exhilarating and terrifying concept. Some writers are naturally gregarious. I am not one of them. Put me ringside at an obedience trial and I can talk the ear off a total stranger, discussing the judge’s habit of running teams into the gate before calling the turns on heeling or the hysterically obsessive inspection of each exhibitor’s dumbbell. (Yes, I know the regs say the judge will inspect the dumbbell, but I’ve had several that made it look like the ceremonial weighing of the wands in “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.” But I digress.)

 

But ask me to speak to a room full of people who may or may not be expecting to hear great literary truths or just didn’t have anything better to do with their time that night and, well, it’s hard. I am not good at putting myself out there. I was raised with the belief that you shouldn’t attract attention to yourself. I suppose that’s a good approach if you’re a burglar. Not so much if you’re trying to sell books.

 

Anyway, I venture to say my initial — if slightly feeble — marketing strategy is going . . . maybe . . . kinda . . . sorta . . . well? I’ve got some book talks and signings scheduled in January. I even added a coming events widget to the right side of this blog so if you’re in the eastern Iowa area and there’s no Cyclone or Hawkeye basketball game on TV that night, you can get out of the house and beat that cabin fever. Come listen to me prove that I write better than I speak.

 

Also in the good news report, several local retailers have agreed to add “Ghost” to their inventory, and I’ve started the daunting process of contacting indie booksellers in the area. I say daunting in the bestest way possible. It means I finally have a finished product to share with the world, not just a sparkly dream.

 

One last thing, when you finish “Ghost,” if the spirit moves you, please leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads. This is the stuff authors live for. It helps boost sales and is helpful in marketing the NEXT book (hint-nudge-wink).

 

If I don’t get back to you all before then, I wish you all a merry Christmas and a blessed new year. As always, I invite you to follow me at my author’s page at https://www.facebook.com/melinda.wichmann.author. 

 

Dog show packing Tetris

Now that the dust has settled on Raider’s and my 2025 obedience trial season, it’s time to review a critical element that can make or break the success of any team.

Packing for the weekend. 

 

If your non-dog-showing human partner has ever looked at the pile of bags sitting by the back door on a Friday afternoon and said, “You’re just leaving for the weekend, right?”, you understand. 

 

If the show site was within a two-hour radius, I used to be that handler who got up at the hour of stupid on Saturday and drove there from home to avoid hotel expenses. I would drive home again at the end of the day, fall into bed and get up the next morning to do it all again. Driving back and forth to shows eliminated the need for packing clothes, toiletries and other survival gear like four pair of shoes, five jackets, my laptop and forty-seven feet of charging cables. I told myself I was saving money, which was ridiculous, because people who do dog sports save money by living on ramen noodles and not buying their husband Christmas gifts. Sorry, honey. Love ya, but entry fees.

 

As the years and the odometer clicked by, I did the math and realized I was not, in fact, saving anything. Fuel costs, plus wear and tear on my vehicle as I racked up the highway miles, ate up the imagined savings earned by avoiding hotels and restaurant meals. 

 

Plus, as I—ahem—matured, I discovered I really disliked driving in the dark. Dark driving is rife with annoying things like deer. And other drivers.

 

With the decision to abandon my long haul, road warrior lifestyle and embrace the “get a good night’s sleep within twenty minutes of the show site” approach, came the need to become an efficient packer. Sure, I’d hotel’d it enough over the years to have a good grip on the basics, but I was not necessarily good at it. 

 

There is a fine art to assembling all of the stuff you need for a weekend on the road and packing it neatly into your car. And by luggage, I mean everything from that screen-printed canvas bag from a national specialty twenty years ago to the wheeled carry-on with its fancy 360 degree spinning wheels and titanium handle that could withstand being flung around by gorillas in a remake of the 1970s Samsonite commercials. (Yes, I’m that old. We’ve discussed that. Move on.)

 

Like everything else that comes with the glamorous dog handler lifestyle, packing is a minefield of overthinking. I admire the people who can throw a toothbrush and a change of underwear in a backpack and be away from home for three days without looking like a refugee. If I tried that, the only thing I’d pull off is the bridge troll look.

 

 

I've created a master packing list to ensure I don't forget anything vital. The essential categories break down as follows.

 

The dogs’ training gear bag: leashes, collars, dumbbell, backup dumbbell, toys, treats, brush, training journal, obedience regs, weekend judging program, etc. Basically, all the essentials you need at the trial. If you forget your toothbrush, you can go to Walmart and get another one. If you forget your custom-sized, hand-crafted, maple and cherry wood dumbbell, you’re screwed. The gear bag is the first thing that goes in the car.

 

The people bag: human clothing and toiletries. Regardless of the season, deciding what to take for a weekend means consulting multiple forecasts, tea leaves and a crystal ball. I end up packing more clothes than I need but hey, I like to be prepared. Husband points out I am prepared to not come home for two weeks. He likes his little jokes.

 

The dogs’ motel bag: dog food, food and water bowls, sheet(s) to cover the bed and/or furniture, entertainment items (toy, bully sticks, bully stick holder), poop bags, extra poop bags and anything that didn't fit in the people bag.

 

The food bag: snacks. Self-explanatory. Long trip? Lots of snacks. Short trip? Same amount of snacks. Possibility of getting caught in a blizzard on I-80? All the snacks. Don’t take chances.

 

The cooler: more snacks. And pop.

 

It should end there, but it doesn’t. 

 

If you’re showing in Utility, you’ll have an article bag(s) and/or extra articles. Extra dumbbell. Extra gloves. A full set of portable jumps, forty feet of ring gate and stanchions, platforms, props and the entire freaking kitchen sink for practice at the motel when the weather is cooperative. 

 

Now let’s talk about coats. Rain coat. Warm coat. Nanook of the North coat. Jacket for a chilly show site. Don’t forget gloves, scarves and hats. In an emergency, you could use your dog's Utility gloves. Make sure the set contains both a left and right hand. This will not work if you show a chihuahua. If the weather is atrocious and your dog is an itty-bitty or extremely short-coated, you will need dog coats as well.

 

Plus shoes. Everyday shoes. Trial shoes. Slippers for the motel room. Rain boots in the summer. Snow boots in the winter. My personal best for a winter show weekend was four pair of footwear to cover all conditions. Don’t judge. I can be cranky enough without adding cold, wet feet to the mix.

 

Back in the day, I traveled with a dear, dear friend who could not pack lightly to save her life. Actually, she did pack lightly. None of her bags weighed much at all. But there were A. Lot. Of. Them. I was never sure exactly how many of them there were because aside from her gear bag and people bag, the extras were Walmart bags and they all looked alike. Pretty sure she did that on purpose so I couldn’t get a firm count and give her a hard time.

 

We jokingly called them her subsidiary bags. In the tradition of Walmart bags (at least back in the days before self-checkout) they each seemed to contain only two or three items. Nowadays, the best thing about self-checkout is that I can cram a single bag with as much as possible because I am not making four trips to carry sixteen bags into the house when I get home.

 

But I digress.

 

Once, my subsidiary-bag friend, another friend and I and our dogs loaded up a Chevy Blazer (Blazers were a lot bigger back then) for a show weekend. In the interests of not having to rent a U-Haul for all our crap, we agreed to limit our luggage to one gear bag, one people bag and one small cooler per person, plus the necessary crates and chairs. True to form, Subsidiary Bag Friend showed up with a multitude of extras. There was a great deal of eye rolling, but down the road we went. I think we made her hold them all on her lap.

 

Another friend joined us on a weekend excursion and brought her clothes on hangers in a garment bag. She’s a breed handler, too, so we forgave her the reluctance to take chances with wrinkles. That didn’t stop us from teasing her mercilessly about her “ball gowns.” To this day, every time I put clothes in a garment bag, I think of the ball gown weekend.

 

 When I was showing Phoenix, the Farmer made a last-minute decision to go to the ABMC national with me. At the time, I was driving a Chevy Equinox, which was a cute little SUV that fit one woman, one Malinois, one Aussie, and all our stuff quite nicely. Squeezing in another human, his luggage, and a second folding chair was do-able but . . . snug. Then Phoenix won a lovely embroidered chair for High Combined. I seriously thought I might have to find someone to bring the thing home for me. 

Then I remembered a good friend and master vehicle packer’s advice: “You can always go up to the roof.” I wedged that ten-inch-wide folded chair into a nine-inch-wide space atop the crates and we were good to go. Never mind I needed a crowbar to get it out of the car when we got home.

 

These days, when I leave for a trial, my car is packed using a “last in/first out” approach. I’m OCD enough to put everything that goes into the hotel in one area and all the trial gear in another. Nothing rattles. Nothing tips over. I could slam on the brakes and there would be no massive load-shift, mostly because everything is wedged in so tightly it can’t move.

 

By the time I leave the show site on Sunday afternoon, my car looks like I drove past a garage sale with the windows down and people threw stuff into it at random. I’m just happy I can get the doors closed. 

 

Is it wrong that one of my goals for the new year is to master truly efficient packing? I’ll let you know how that goes.

 

IN OTHER NEWS

The final countdown for “How to Live with a Ghost” is officially on! Release date on Amazon is Monday, Dec. 15. Don’t know what to give that reader in your life? Feel like buying yourself a holiday gift after shopping for everyone else? Currently, you can only pre-order the Kindle version, but the hard copy option should show on the release date. Bless all you Kindle folks who have pre-ordered. Here’s the link.

 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G2KRCN38

 

 

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

Dogs behaving, well, like dogs

I’ve spent my entire adult life watching my dogs act like idiots at the vet’s office. Relatively well-trained idiots who wouldn’t make the tech’s lives a living hell, but idiots nonetheless. Five generations of dogs (we'll talk about the sixth generation later) couldn’t make it through the front door of the clinic before the shaking started. Followed by the panting. Eye rolling. Fur shedding. Acting like the world was ending accompanied by vast sighs of canine angst.  

Through the years, my vets and the techs who help them have been, without fail, some of the kindest, gentlest people my dogs ever encountered. 

 

Keep in mind, these dogs were trained for the show ring and had been exposed to all the madness of the human world from day one. Semi tractor-trailer air brakes. Screaming toddlers. PA systems. Live fire. Slick floors, bicycles, errant wildlife, other dogs being jerks and once, a hot air balloon lifting off about fifty yards from where we were training (okay, that was kind of a surprise to everyone). Meh. They’d been handled from nose to tail by me, my family, my friends and complete strangers. Almost without exception, this interaction was met by patient tolerance or enthusiastic reciprocation. (The latter being Raider. He is a firm believer in reciprocation.)

 

But take them to the vet? Dramatics ensued.

 

Sheltie Jess buried his head under my arm and pretended the vet didn’t exist if he couldn't see her. I’m not sure he actually saw any of his veterinary caregivers in his fifteen years on this planet. 

 

Sheltie Connor was a little more chill. He pulled some kind of Jedi mind trick where he slowed all his vital signs at the vet's because he was pretty sure death was coming for him and he was going to meet it halfway. His blood pressure was so low at the vet’s office, techs couldn’t draw from a vein in his leg and had to draw from his neck.

Connor, Phoenix and Jamie

Tervuren Jamie was the undisputed high royalty of drama at the vet. Poor guy. He kinda liked going to the vet until he got neutered. What should have been a straightforward procedure turned into abdominal surgery to find a retained testicle, and that was the end of any positive association with the vet's office. When I went to pick him up after his neuter, his opinion of the situation echoed through the whole building. The tech who went to get him soon returned, pale and counting her fingers, and suggested it would be in everyone’s best interest if I were to go and fetch my own dog.

 

Malinois Phoenix was stoic about the whole vet scene. He played the “Yeah, whatever” attitude card during routine exams and blood draws. Keep in mind, this is the dog who once chased a cat through a rotary hoe. Sort of. Cats can run through rotary hoes. Malinois can not. He abandoned the cat and trotted back to me with an eight-inch laceration across his ribs. He was wagging his tail. Off we went to the vet to get stitched back together. He didn't hold it against her. 

This is what a rotary hoe looks like, in case you were wondering.
It was not in use when the cat-chasing occurred.

 

I think Phoenix liked going to the vet more than he let on. He liked to lick faces, and veterinary care meant there were lots of faces in lickable proximity. The problem was, he usually bared his teeth before he licked. I suspect he took a few years off the life of several techs when he looked at them, pulled his lips back to show a little fang, then gave them a fast tongue swipe.

 

Aussie Banner, who generally likes everyone, gave it the ol’ college try when it came to the vet’s office, but he just couldn't manage it. The dog who will happily let a complete stranger pet him takes a dim view of being poked and prodded in the name of health. He carries on, shaking and panting, but is willing to negotiate for treats. He does not, however, think the number of treats he receives at the vet’s is fair compensation for the indignities he has to endure there. He would like more. As in, all of them. He can see the full container on the counter. He is nobody’s fool.

You will give me the cookies. All of them. Now.

 

Then Raider arrived. The dog who likes everything. All the time. All at once. 24/7/365. When we go to the vet, the wiggling starts the second his paws hit the ground outside the office. Granted, this dog also wiggles at the mannequins in stores. His delight accelerates as we go through the doors. Unlike my shelties, who started trying to leave the minute they arrived, Raider starts looking for people to wiggle at.

 

He is delighted to see the front office gals. Ditto for the techs, his vet, other vets, drug salesmen, clients trying to pay their bills and on more than one occasion, a very annoyed cat in a cat carrier.

Raider at about 5 weeks old.
This is still how he does everything, including vet visits.
Go now, go fast.

When Raid was a puppy, the ecstasy of meeting all these wonderful people often triggered the waterworks. He leaked. If Jamie was the Drama King, Raider was the Peeing King. He didn’t mean to. He was just so happy he couldn’t stand it. P*ss on being reserved and aloof. There were people to meet!

 

It got to the point where we’d enter the office and I’d ask the staff not to talk to him, look at him or pet him, unless they wanted to clean up after him. Life was hard for a few years.

 

I’d like to think he’s finally outgrown this expression of delight in being able to interact with his medical providers. It only took four years—four years during which I think he peed in reception, up and down the hall, on the scale and in every exam room in our clinic. I don’t know how much vet techs get paid. It’s not enough.

 

After the sprinkles, Raider was a cooperative patient. He didn’t care what part required examination, he would happily comply. You want to see a paw? Wonderful! Check teeth? Absolutely! Palpate nether regions? A little weird but knock yourself out. He wiggled his way through routine exams and vaccinations with inexhaustible joie de vivre.

 

The only time he did NOT appreciate going to the vet was an emergency trip when he was young. He came out of his crate in the morning on three legs and went tri-podding around the yard like he’d never had four legs in his life. Off to the emergency clinic we went, where I summarily handed him over and went to sit in the waiting room where I listened to someone’s noisy dog screaming at the top of his lungs for at least thirty minutes.

 

Thirty-one minutes later, a vet appeared and said, “He’s a little excitable, isn’t he?” I decided the “If you’d let me stay with him he would have been quiet” argument wasn’t a hill I wanted to die on. Clinics have their protocols and many pets are, indeed, easier to handle when anxious owners aren’t hovering and raising everyone’s anxiety. Within twenty-four hours, Raider re-discovered his fourth leg and everything was fine. Except my wallet.

 

This fall, my local veterinary practice added a chiropractor, and I began taking Raider for routine appointments. This would be right up his alley, I thought. He was going to love going to the vet’s office for the express purpose of having someone put their hands on him. No needles or probes, just fingers.

 

It took about five seconds for Raid to fall in love with his new provider. She’d just come back from a farm call, and he thought her coverall smelled divine. He was all about the touching until he realized this was touching with a purpose beyond his own selfish gratification. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Getting him to simply hold still was asking quite a lot since he is a graduate of the school of “Pet me and I will pet you back.”

Raid does have "indoor enthusiasm" and
"outdoor enthusiasm." He just has "enthusiasm."

 When the restraint and manipulation got to be too much, Raid would break free, ricochet around the room like a demented rabbit, then settle back down to focus on bits of cheese while the appointment commenced. These breaks came to be known as “Raider minutes.” It is now commonplace for his chiro to address a troublesome area, then release him, saying, “He needs a Raider minute.” I think this is a concept we could all get behind. 

THE BOOK

I am soooooo close to being able to share the cover design. But I can't. Not yet. The final tweaks are taking an agonizing amount of time, as these things do.

Still no release date. Thank you for hanging in there and believing me while I keep chanting, "It's getting closer!" I promise!

Shut the bedroom door. Please.

Since Halloween is drawing near, I chose a scary topic this week.

Let’s talk about sex in books.

 

Coming from the viewpoint of someone born in the previous century, I’m fine with it. A little spice is fine. But like garlic and tequila, a little goes a long way. 

 

We’ve never been further from the social constraints of our Victorian predecessors who were scandalized by the accidental reveal of a booted ankle. Sex is pretty much everywhere, and we’re pretty much blasé about it. Things that would have given my grandparents heart attacks barely earn a raised eyebrow in today’s society.

 

But I am a graduate of the School of Less Is More. 

 

As I sat at my keyboard, telling the story of two old-enough-to-know-better, young-enough-to-do-it-anyway, slightly messed-up people who fall into friendship before realizing they want to be more than friends, I drank a lot of coffee while trying to decide how much more-than-friendly they were going to get on the page. I concluded that I enjoyed developing their relationship more than spying on them while they consummated it. Click. That's the bedroom door closing.

 

Avid readers encounter couples coupling in genres from romance to mystery. Good for them (the characters). They can do whatever they want to one another, as many times as they want, in as many places as they want. But after they make their intention clear, please, someone shut the door. I’m perfectly happy knowing they are enjoying one another to their mutual satisfaction without explicit descriptions of things that are bulging, throbbing, thrusting, or doing anything else that ends with -ing. I wonder if those authors’ grandmothers read their books. I am this many years old, but the thought of writing explicit, intimate scenes that my family members would read gives me the heebie-jeebies. Christmas dinner would never be the same.

 

 Color me old-fashioned. Romances, by their very nature, are about two people falling in love and a natural extension of that means they end up in the bedroom (or shower or on the kitchen counter or beach or whatever surface is handy). I don’t care where they go. But I’m over having it described in detail. Page after page. Multiple times. We’re all adults here. We understand the mechanics. 

 

I chose this topic because I’ve encountered a run of audiobooks lately that had well-developed characters and interesting storylines but waaaaaaaaay too much shagging. There was so much sex in one book, I was like, “We’re doing this again? I thought we just did this. Can't you keep it in your pants?”

 

No judgement, honestly (she said, while judging). A little consensual something-something can create a whole lot of conflict between characters who something-something’d with the wrong person and now their lives are total chaos OR took a tumble with the right person and now their lives are a different kind of chaos.

 

There’s a market for stories that embrace, well, embracing and a whole lot more. I just felt a little blindsided by all the panting, moaning, grinding, etc. that have popped up, unsuspected, in a couple of books marketed generically as romances. These are not the sort of thing you want to be listening to when your husband is in the car with you. After a few of those, I’ve wised up and started avoiding books described as steamy, spicy or sizzling. That translates to “clothes are coming off and body parts are going to do things that I suspect are not physically possible in real life but the author is determined to prove me wrong.” It's just not my gig. If it's yours, you're welcome to it.

 

Sometimes those R rated scenes are important to the story’s progress but hey, I heard you the first time. I also nearly drove into a ditch so please, you’ve made your point. Can we move on? How many times are you going to describe decadent cupcakes in a book that isn’t about cupcakes? 

 

 As I wrote “Ghost,” I struggled constantly to juggle character development, plot advancement, conflict building and all those other writerly priorities. There were lots of scenes (not involving sex) that I wrote just because they were fun—until I realized they did nothing to move the story forward, and they got cut in the name of word count. 

 

With that in mind, when I read/listen to a book with a seemingly gratuitous amount of time spent getting nekkid, I wonder if the author felt it was really necessary or just word candy? Done well, intimate scenes are, um, well done. Diana Gabaldon’s “Outlander” series is a five-star example of putting sex on the page and making it an integral part of the storyline. Done badly, the cringe potential is staggering and makes me avoid that author in the future. 

 

IN OTHER NEWS

 

My designer sent me the initial cover mock-up for “Ghost” this week! It’s still a work in progress, but I’m excited to have a foundation to build from as he and I fine-tune art concepts. 

Cover design is not for the faint of heart. Think about a favorite book—now think about what you’d want on the cover if you’d written that book—then think about how you’d convey those ideas to an artist who hasn’t read the book. That’s kinda where we are right now.

 

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