I excused myself and climbed down under the table, sitting there for about 20 minutes, seeing for the first time what it looked like to a dog. I watched them cross the room, the person sat down, and the dog went obediently under the table, leaning ever so lightly against the human’s leg. One evening I went to dinner with some friends and while sitting in our booth, someone came in with a support dog. I was speaking a message to those who couldn’t speak for themselves, and that message was designed to save a lot of animal’s lives. The enormity of my task didn’t stop there as more time went on, I knew I was writing, once again, on behalf of the voiceless.
I cried, I walked away, and yes, I probably threw a few things, too. There were many times I thought I was in way over my head. All the while I was hearing two opposing views of how the book should be written. I have chapter after chapter that were discarded, themes that didn’t work, and at one time I had 64 characters. I rewrote the first 60 pages of that story at least a dozen times. Would a dog telling this story know what an elbow was? Did he understand Googling? How would he react differently from humans when faced with a variety of situations? How did they sort out who was in charge of a pack? No elections, I was pretty sure. I had my vet’s voice in one ear, my editor’s in the other, and to be honest, it stumped me for a long time. But when she befriends a frightened new pony in a field at a horse farm through the woods, she knows that to be able to help him, she’ll have to learn to expose herself and fight for what she wants.īut when my small-town veterinarian asked me to write Midnight at the Shelter, a story told through the point of view of her own three-legged rescue dog, not only did I feel the pressure of writing someone else’s story, but my editor at the time had a very different view of how the story should be told. Lizzie is determined to keep the secret of what happened, and to not make friends in her new school who might ask too many questions. Lizzie Flying Solo features a recently homeless girl who moves with her mother to a transitional housing shelter after her father is arrested for white collar crimes. Magnolia Grace’s father had already passed by the time she and her mom moved there, but he had arranged everything so she’d get to know and love him before making a decision that would erase him from her life forever.
My second novel, Georgia Rules, is the story of a young girl who moves to a rural maple farm in Vermont that was owned by her absent father’s family for generations. Secrets that made their chance meeting and friendship so profound, just what the other one needed at that time. Secrets that changed the trajectory of their lives at that crucial pre-teen time when kids are trying so hard to find their way. In Swing Sideways the main characters, two girls who meet one summer on a farm, each have secrets they can’t, or won’t, tell.
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