For the Love of Dogs by Emma Pass

Anyone who knows me knows that I am, unashamedly and unapologetically, a dog person. Here's my very first dog, Scamp. He belonged to my mum when she was a little girl, and she passed him down to me. He's a little worse for wear now – his paws are patched where my aunt's puppy tried to chew them, his fur is a little threadbare, he can no longer stand up on his own and in places, his straw stuffing is leaking out, but I still treasure him.

And here I am, aged 2, with our family dog, Shep. We're not sure what mix she was, but she was a sweet, gentle soul, and I'll never forget the story my mum told me about the day she left her with my grandparents for the day. They lived on the Cornish coast, in a big house on top of a cliff, and when my mum returned my grandfather told her the foghorn had been sounding all day. He was puzzled; it was a bright sunny day, not a scrap of fog to be seen. When the "foghorn" went off again, the mystery was solved: Shep, pining for my mum, was sitting on my grandparents' bed upstairs, howling mournfully.

Naturally, when I left home and got a place of my own, getting a dog was a priority. (Luckily, my husband, who'd only ever owned cats, gave in…)

We'd already decided we wanted to get a rescue dog, and after much research and deliberation, ended up at the East Midlands branch of the Retired Greyhound Trust. We were introduced to two dogs – both ex-racers – but although they were lovely, one was too much of a handful and the other so nervous we couldn't even coax her out of her kennel. "Wait there," the kennel hand told us. "There's one more dog we'd like you to meet. He's the biggest greyhound here, but don't let that put you off." She disappeared, returning a few moments later with a tiger-striped giant who walked straight up to me, waving his tail, and leaned. That was Kelly, A.K.A. The Hound.

 

Unbeknownst to us, Kelly had numerous health problems, we suspect thanks to poor treatment he received before landing in rescue, and we lost him tragically young, at just six years old. I hope in the three years he was with us, he knew how much he was loved, and that he had more happy memories than bad ones. After his death we decided we weren't going to get another dog for a while – any animal is a big commitment, and my debut year was almost upon us. I was still working at my day job and barely had time to breathe, let alone adopt another rescued greyhound and get it used to living as a pet.

Fate had other ideas.

The night we lost Kelly, I had a vivid dream we'd adopted another greyhound – small, skinny, black, with a bald bum and a white zig-zag on its chest. "A bit of TLC and you'll be fine," I remember telling this dog in my dream, while it laid on its back and begged for belly rubs. Four weeks later, I had the same dream, and told this dog the same thing. Later that day, I was "just looking" on the East Midlands RGT website…

…And there he was: the dog from my dream. Everything about him was the same, even the zig-zag marking on his chest. "Email them!" my husband said. I did. It turns out I was the first person to do so; this dog, Gunner had been put up on the website just hours before. Four weeks later, after all the paperwork was sorted, he came home. Yep, our dog-free time had lasted all of two months…

If you made it this far, you're probably saying, "But this is a writing blog! What has all this got to do with writing?!"

As anyone who writes knows, it's a sedentary occupation. Having a dog means I must leave the house twice a day, whether I want to or not. Whether it's summer or winter. Whether it's sunny, or snowing sideways. Gunner – known as G-Dog on Twitter and Facebook – lives for his walks, and if you're so much as ten minutes late taking him out, he comes and STARES at you until you put the laptop down and fetch his lead. And if you don't respond to the STARE, he'll start whinging through his nose, very softly at first, then louder, until the sound is impossible to ignore. (And that's a lot of nose for whinging down.)

Even if it is snowing sideways, I love our walks. Not only do they keep me fit (I suffer from mild CFS/M.E., so more strenuous exercise isn't possible for me right now), but they give me time to think; to chew over tricky ideas and figure out plot tangles. If I've been struggling with something, I nearly always have an "ah-ha!" moment when we're out and about. If I'm really lucky, I might even get an idea for something shiny and new.

But the best thing about having a dog?

Getting them to write your books for you, of course!

How about you? Do you have any pets? Do they help with your writing? I'd love to hear about them in the comments!

Writing under siege by wildlife – Lari Don

I’ve spent most of the last few months, winter and spring, working on the last two books in my Spellchasers trilogy. And due to the inevitable noise and increasingly late bedtimes of the teenagers with whom I share my small terraced house, I’ve done most of that work in the garden shed.

But not on my own. Despite going out there for peace and quiet, I am never alone in my shed.

My small wooden box

The magical world I’ve created in the Spellchasers trilogy is about human beings shapeshifting into animals and birds (and even a few creepy crawlies, in the final book) so the constant presence of creatures in and around my writing space has been occasionally inspiring and sometimes a bit threatening.

My shed backs onto a tree-lined path, so there is almost constant birdsong, which is always lovely. But there are also occasional quarrelling and swooping crows. The baddie in the trilogy is called Corbie (Scots for crow) and he is often aided by his flock of curse-hatched crows. So the clamour and flurry of crows just a few feet away from me as I sit in a thin wooden box has sometimes felt quite threatening, especially when I am in the midst of helping my heroines and heroes defeat a flock of crows. Do they know what I’m writing, I wonder? Are they annoyed about it? Are they about to fly in here? Will they ambush me when I leave?

A helpful cat

Then there are the cats, and the dogs. Both animals feature in the trilogy, usually as a danger to my heroine Molly, who is a part-time hare and an occasional mouse. My own cats regularly try to distract me from writing by lying on manuscripts and draping tails over keyboards. And their wet and muddy pawprints (a cat walking into a shed from a rainy garden and jumping straight onto pg 121, leaves impressive pawprints) can be quite atmospheric in a scene about a girl being stalked by a predator... The cats next door often tap dance, noisily and surprisingly, on the shed roof. And dogs, barking in neighbouring gardens,or being walked on the path behind, can be equally surprising for both me and Molly, especially as her transformations are triggered by the sound of predators.

And then there are the insects, creepy crawlies and mini beasts. I don’t mind the slaters (Scots for woodlice) or the ants or the daddy longlegs or the little beetles with shiny wingcases (in fact, I found a minor role for those jewel-like beetles in the third book, the Witch’s Guide to Magical Combat.) I find the persistence of wasps trying to build their nests in my shed, from the scraped off wood OF my shed, rather admirable - though I do discourage them quite firmly. But I don’t like the spiders. In fact I’m terrified of spiders. I have to check the shed for spiders every single day before sitting down to write. And they still appear. Above my head or in the dark corners... And that constant fear of the suddenly lurking spiders informs every dangerous and tense scene in my adventures.

I’ve not been visited by a toad, wyrm, kelpie or sphinx, but the final book in the Spellchasers trilogy doesn’t go to printer until next month, so there's still time!

So, the wildlife in and around my writing space has definitely added to the writing experience, and influenced the content of my trilogy.

And now that I’m nearly done, I wonder what I will write next, and whether it will contain birdsong, barks and pawprints.

I’m fairly sure there won’t be any spiders. Not as characters, anyway. They may be present as a lingering sense of danger though, lurking in the corners of everything I write...

Do other authors feel that where they write influences what they write?

Lari Don is the award-winning author of more than 20 books for all ages, including fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales, a teen thriller and novellas for reluctant readers. 

Lari’s website 

Lari’s own blog

Lari on Twitter

Lari on Facebook

Exam Time: Season 7, starring Tracy Alexander

I work from home most of the time. And I am mostly alone. Except in exceptional circumstances such as . . . exam season. It is, to clarify, my seventh public exam season. During this period I take on extra roles including taxi driver, nutritionist, supply teacher and negotiator of virtual landmines. There have been moments when I’d have rather been sitting in an office, far from the hothouse of data cramming, but being around and available when your kids are stressed is, of course, one of the privileges of flexible working. And I embrace it.

Being truly seasoned, I have tips. They may not be useful, or practical, or wise.

(There are ten, because there are always ten for alliterative purposes.)

1 A dog is invaluable

Dogs do not give you helpful advice. Dogs do not whisper about your chances. Dogs do not read your predictions. Dogs do not care about your revision timetable. Dogs lick your face. Only dogs understand what teenagers are going through.

(Warning: Dogs are for life, not just for exams.)

2 Less is more

There is too much talking. Parents have done exams themselves. They know everything. They want to tell you. This is all white noise. Talk less.

(Unless you’re discussing meal-planning for the day after the last exam, when eating breakfast, lunch and dinner in bed in front of Netflix is obligatory. Then more is more and more and more . . .)

All the words you need:

I love you.

Do you want a lift?

Do you have a bottle of water?

Don’t forget to leave your phone outside the room.

I love you.

3 Actions

Actions speak louder, and more intelligibly, than words.

Deliver, wordlessly, a hot drink or a tasty treat, a hug, or a gift*

*A stress toy, chocolate, or the pig from Moana are all top gifts.

(A Revision Guide is less appealing, but preferable to the course text book thanks to its relative size.)

4 Food and drink

Stock up on an abundance of both, nutritious and not nutritious.

Sugar is bad because of that up and down thing, but sugar is good because it tastes nice and makes people happy.

Exam mornings require easy to swallow slop.

Water all students as though they’re hydrangeas. Adrenalin starves the body of water. Dehydrated brains don’t work as well.

(It’s important for the support worker to eat delicious treats, and make the most of the units the government allows us.)

5 Rest breaks

Rest breaks are intervals between revising. They may vary in length, from most of the day to half an hour. (Less than half an hour is punctuation.)

Call me old-fashioned, but a rest break should involve something other than a screen. See 6) Exercise.

6) Exercise

The dog is the perfect excuse to get the examinee out of the house. In the absence of a dog, walk to the take-away. Walk to the bakery and buy cakes. Walk to a friend’s house.

Use those apps everyone has that count your steps and make a random minimum target for exam season . . . however small.

Even better, run, play tennis, skateboard . . . swim in the sea . . .

(Don’t eat, sleep, revise.

Also don’t check your phone, eat, check your phone, sleep, check your phone, revise, check your phone.)

7) Positivity

Exams are not the beginning or the end of the world. They’re exams. Some people do better than others. Some people work harder than others. Some people are tall and some people aren’t. Some people can remember every box on the periodic table and some can’t, and some don’t want to. Where you end up in life is about way more than a few capital letters next to a few subject names on a sheet of paper. Chill!

8 Mess

Who cares?

Leave the past papers, the scribbled-on A4 pages, the text books and the revision guides where they are. Scoop up the chocolate wrappers, the discarded drinks and the tissues. Repeat.

Abandon all ideas of personal space for the duration. 

9 Being asked for academic help . . .

Do not use the voice.

(I don’t know what the voice is, but I know not to use it. Knowing and doing are two different things.)

Do not use the word obvious.

10 Results

What’s done is done. Rejoice regardless. They’re young, and, as the lovely Mrs Gillman who taught all three of my wee ones used to say, “You’re a long time grown”.

 Tracy Alexander

@tmalexander
www.tracyalexander.co.uk