pet connection

Although there’s never a good time for a disaster, the fact is that for me it would have been difficult to imagine a more worse time to cover the pet-food recall than last spring. That’s because not only do I have a full-time job as a writer and editor in a subject area unrelated to pets, and not only do Dr. Becker and I write a weekly page of pet-care information for Universal Press Syndicate, but last spring we were trying to do something we’d never done before, either on our own or as a team:

Write three books in less than six months. With contracts signed before we ever heard of the mess that is Menu Foods and deadlines with little wiggle room.

Somehow we did it, and they turned out pretty darn good. We’re proud of them, and a little amazed that we did hit our deadlines, more or less. How did we do that? I’m not really sure, but I know that the horse book wouldn’t have happened without my long-time friend Audrey Pavia as our co-author, and the other two wouldn’t have happened without the help of Christie Keith on the blog and the pet-care page, and Susan and Dr. Rolan Tripp on the pet-care page. On the editing side, we thank heavens every day for editors Greg Melvin at Universal Press and Allison Janse at HCI. The writers get their names out there, but nothing good happens without the editors, and that’s the truth.

Those three new books are almost out, and this week they’re featured in Publishers Weekly, the trade publication of the book-publishing industry. BowWOW and MeowWOW, indeed! Click on the picture to get a better look.

This makes me insanely happy. I love these two little books, with their beautiful, whimsical color illustrations by Molly Pearce.