Monday morning I was due to deliver our 12-year-old dog, Loki to a 7 am vet appointment. He’s a sweet dog who’s getting old, which means he gets anxious about car rides, grooming appointments, and visits to the veterinarian.
As soon as we walked through the door, he pooped on the floor.
Okay, c’mon, it happens. I said he was getting old. And it’s the vet. I’m sure he wasn’t the last dog to poop on their floor that day. I clipped his lead to the front desk and cleaned it up.
By the time I returned, he’d pooped again.
Well, sh*t, Loki.
I cleaned that up, too.
By the time I was done with his paperwork, he’d peed.
I reached the car already tired. Sometimes, life is just too full of poo.
My latest book comes out in a few weeks. It’s about an unlikely trio of conspirators who unite to save a Minneapolis icon called the Over the Rainbow Bookshop. I love, love the way the book came together but let me tell you, it took its own, blessed, sweet, teeth-grindingly slow time in getting there. Version after version after version. Every character died. Everyone got sick. Everyone was miserable.
In the very first draft of the very first scene, the neighborhood sewer line explodes, essentially shutting down the street on which the bookshop sits. Like my visit to the vet Monday morning, there was sh*t everywhere.
And somehow my brain thought people would want to read that book.
Actually, it was 2020. My brain was trying to process the horror of that year. The you-know-what everywhere we turned. No getting around it.
The writing, though, helped. I processed something on the page. What began as a sewer volcano became a magical bookshop. For which the motto is, “Books and rainbows are where dreams come true.” Inside which there may or may not be a leprechaun.
Books do that. They spread magic. Even when it starts as a big ol’ pile of, well…
The vet says Loki is doing great for his age, though she also reminded me we can’t turn back the clock. He’s beginning his slide into senility. She gave him something to calm him, help him sleep at night.
When I picked him up Monday afternoon, I told him, “I love you, Lokes, but you gotta change up your game. Shitting on the floor is way too on the nose for a Monday morning.”
He ignored me. There was a squirrel. Duh.
Help me spread the word about The Book Haters’ Book Club and check out the calendar of upcoming book launch events on my website. Hope to see you—virtually or in person—very soon.
Share this post