“You had me at puppies”

Posted on in Nature and Wildlife / News

So a month or so ago I got an email from my editor letting me know my latest book had been accepted (yay) and asking me whether I could ‘squeeze in’ a novella before my next deadline. I hesitated because my schedule was carefully constructed to give me some time off over Christmas after I wrote-through the last two holiday seasons.

“It’s a Christmas book…” she hinted.

Mmmmm… vaguely more interested, I’ve never written a Christmas book… Then she brought out the kryptonite

“…and it has to have puppies in it.” 

Image courtesy Wikipedia under Creative Commons

Image courtesy Wikipedia under Creative Commons

A puppy-based Christmas book. SOLD!

So now I’m tapping away on a story half the length of my usual stories (though my last novella “Seven Day Love Story” was also 25k) and enjoying bringing my own special flavour to the story.  I knew this was an anthology and I knew that chances were very strong that the other two authors would be doing puppy-puppies–canine puppies–and so I wanted to do something different.

Instead, mine’s about a litter of wild-dogs and the conservationists working to help save them.

Aren’t they adorabubble!! African Wild Dog pups. I’ll let you know how I go when it’s all over!!  Back to the keyboard…