I have written a first draft and done a little editing of the next book in the series! I will need to put in some more words in a couple of the chapters but it's more or less done, in terms of the text part of it. I caught up with the illustrator of Dig It, Ally Hean, and gave her a copy of the manuscript of the next book, and she is happy, or even keen, to get going with the pictures.
This is exciting stuff! I've done quite well with Dig It! and I hope the world is going to love this next book too. It's written by Buster again, and it's on a different topic, again looking at a human thing that dogs get involved in too, and looking at it from the point of view of our canine companions, well, at least from Buster's point of view!
So what is this book, you ask? Well it's this - "Doggone It! Mindfulness from a Dog's Point of View". Earlier this year I had the opportunity to go to a Mindfulness program, put on by the MS Society of SA & NT. I've had a long standing interest in mindfulness and I loved these workshops. I also like watching my four dogs as they go about their day, and I've had some amusing ideas about whether dogs are mindful creatures. That's how I got started writing the book.
When I began working on this book, I had just begun my role as Writer-in-Residence at the Poetic Justice Cafe & Gallery in Gawler, South Australia. In that role, it was appropriate for me to talk to interested people there about what my current work in progress was, and how it was going. It was when I was talking with regulars there, that one of them came up with Doggone It! as a possible title. I loved it and so that is what the book is titled.
It's not just a joke book, it actually does look at the issue of mindfulness, looking at it seriously to some extent, but thinking about how it would be from the canine viewpoint. I look at our dogs a lot, I think about things a lot, and "Doggone It!" is the result. I hope this book will be finished and printed some time around the middle of next year, or if not the middle, then certainly before Christmas 2016.
Buster, Ally and I are going to have a lot of fun with this, and I hope other people will have fun with it too!
Do you have a mindful dog? Or even a cat that has mindful moments? I'd love to hear about it, feel free to leave a comment if you do!
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