A reader inquired about Good With Dogs Cats, “How did you come to write this book?”
Here is a long-winded answer.
I began making up and writing down short stories sixty-five years ago when I was in First Grade at Las Lomitas Elementary School in Menlo Park, California. My first successful short story was entitled Albert the Alligator and Billy Brown about a talking alligator who befriends a little boy.
I say successful because one day my First Grade teacher Mrs. Bushnell, desperate for a nap, had me up in front of the class to tell the kids my latest version of Albert the Alligator and Billy Brown. My classmates enjoyed the tale, especially my silly voices for the characters, and laughed throughout the telling. Mrs. Bushnell woke refreshed and thereafter had me tell stories to the class on several other occasions.
Word spread among the teachers and I was asked to appear as a guest performer for the other First Grade class, for both Second Grade classes, and so on up through the Fourth Grade classes. Heady stuff for little Todd, performing for giant kids who had a separate playground from us little kids lest the big kids trample us at recess.
My older sister was in one of those Third Grade classes I performed for. You may imagine her chagrin as her annoying little brother held sway over her classmates and garnered big laughs. I can still see her squirming in her seat and rolling her eyes as I babbled and cavorted.
I think it fair to say the adulation of those kids in elementary school emboldened me to continue making up stories for the rest of my life.
As a reader I have always favored short stories over novels. As a writer of fiction, several of my novels are composed of interconnected short stories. Now and then one of my stories will beget a related story that begets another related story, and so on until those related stories amount to a novella or novel.
This is what happened with Good With Dogs and Cats. Two years ago I published Why You Are Here, my first book of interconnected stories set in the mythical town of Mercy on the far north coast of California – Mercy being a mythical version of Mendocino where I live. Readers let me know they enjoyed Why You Are Here, and, having grown enamored of Mercy, I was glad when The Muse sent more stories set in the delightful little town.
Several characters who debut in Why You Are Here appear again in Good With Dogs and Cats: the adventures of Healing Weintraub as well as in the soon-to-be published sequel Raaz and Oz: the further adventures of Healing Weintraub. Those characters include the poet Helen Morningstar, her very tall husband Justin Oglethorpe, Ruben Higuera the unflappable Sheriff of Mercy, and Eliana Levine, a musician and actor.
When I penned the first of the Healing adventures, I had no idea the story would create such a frisson of appreciation in readers (a dozen encouraging emails!) nor did I imagine I would eventually write another fifty stories featuring Healing Weintraub, his family and friends, and the many fascinating dogs and cats he helps, but that’s what happened.
So that’s part of the answer to how I came to write Good With Dogs and Cats. However, I think the questioner was also curious about why I chose to write about a person who helps dogs and cats with problems they’re having with humans.
The answer to that part of the question is: I don’t know. And the reason I don’t know is that I never know what I’m going to write before I write whatever comes out on the page. I have never successfully had a conscious idea for a story and then written that story. Whenever I try to do that, the result is poo-poo. Better for me to write down what my inner storyteller has to say and then see what I’ve got.
Which is to say, I didn’t consciously choose to write about a person who helps dogs and cats with their people, but once that switch was flipped, so to speak, I kept writing until stories in that vein stopped coming.
Several people have asked me if the Healing stories are autobiographical. The answer is no, though it is true I love cats and dogs, they love me, and I do communicate clairvoyantly with animals, but that’s where the similarities end.
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Copies of Why You Are Here and Good With Dogs and Cats are orderable from your favorite actual bookstores and many online bookstores. E-books of both books are available from Amazon, Apple, and Barnes & Noble, and a really neato audio book of Good With Dogs and Cats is available from Apple Books and Audible. Rave reviews most appreciated.
