Doug Goodman's Blog, page 4

“What’s Wrong With You?” My Time on the RF Blackstone Podcast

I wanted to share this podcast I did with fellow Severed Press author, RF Blackstone. I’ve said this several times, but you can tell we had fun making this one. When it opens with two dudes laughing their heads off because of something that was said off camera (and I have no recollection of what it was), you know the podcasters are going to have a good time.

He had some great questions. My favorite was “What’s wrong with you?”

For fans of the Zombie Dog Series, I talk about the challenges of writing Murder Dog starting at the 17:40 mark. At roughly 32 minutes, we go into 80s horror movies. Another ten minutes in, we “start” talking about Zach Snyder movies like Suckerpunch, Watchmen, and 300. At 50 minutes, we go full-on into discussing The Snyder Cut of The Justice League.

We also talk about some serious stuff, though, like spoiler reviews and breaking writing rules. And I couldn’t talk about this podcast without mentioning Richard’s current work in progress, Zombie Nazis on a Train!!

All likes and shares would be appreciated. Have a fun Thursday!

__ATA.cmd.push(function() { __ATA.initDynamicSlot({ id: 'atatags-26942-608ade23ad357', location: 120, formFactor: '001', label: { text: 'Advertisements', }, creative: { reportAd: { text: 'Report this ad', }, privacySettings: { text: 'Privacy', } } }); });

Hitting Send on Perro Chupacabra

Sweet Murder! I finished the latest Zombie Dog short story a few nights ago, and I’ve completed the edits today. I will be hitting “send” tomorrow. If you are a patron, you should be receiving a notice in your email tomorrow afternoon. The story will be loaded in its entirety.

To call it a “short story” is a disservice. It’s more like a novellette or short novella. At 17K words and 40+ pages, it is also the longest of the Little Dogs I’ve written in the past year.

Because it is so long, I’ve divided it into three parts. If you subscribe to my newsletter, Part One will be sent out in mid-May, with parts two and three sent out the subsequent months.

Also, I want to thank everyone who voted for the title. In this month’s newsletter, I asked you to give me your opinion: should it be “Perro Chupacabra” or “Chupacabra Dog.” You all agreed with my wife and her excellent taste. Overwhelmingly, you voted for the purely Spanish title. So this story will be the first Zombie Dog story of any kind to not follow the ___ Dog format.

That’s it until tomorrow. My brain’s fried and my fingers are turning to mush. (But a happy mush.)

Hey, thank you for reading and I hope you are enjoying my posts. I’m a writer from Texas who dreams of one day writing full-time. I write the Zombie Dog books, which you can find here both digitally and paperback. I also have a Patreon account here.

__ATA.cmd.push(function() { __ATA.initDynamicSlot({ id: 'atatags-26942-608a19289f48d', location: 120, formFactor: '001', label: { text: 'Advertisements', }, creative: { reportAd: { text: 'Report this ad', }, privacySettings: { text: 'Privacy', } } }); });

The Inevitably Triumphant Story of Wormtail

In 2010, I nearly lost my job. It was actually a blessing in disguise because I received another position in the company, a position that has led to a lot of career fulfillment I otherwise wouldn’t have enjoyed. But in 2010, I was notified I would be laid off, and then I got lucky and started a new position. It was very stressful. I remember the manager who hired me to the new position asking me if I could do certain tasks, and I said “No, but if you hire me, I’ll work harder than anyone to find out.” Turns out, that sealed the deal for him.

And I did work really hard. Long hours, then reviewing my work at home, everything it took to keep the company not just happy but thrilled to have me in that position. I knew I’d be the first in line to be laid off if my work wasn’t stellar. I work in aerospace, and this was the time when Shuttle came to an end. Tens of thousands of people, all super-smart, talented, and admirable people, were being laid off. At any time, I felt one of those extremely impressive people could point to my position and say “I want that one.” I wasn’t an engineer. It was obvious to me what the company would do. So I had to do it better than anyone.

Not long after, the family dog died. Princess was my daughter’s pet Labrador Retriever, but I’d been training her for a year in search and rescue. To this day she’s the best human remains dog I’ve ever worked. Most dogs learn to enjoy the game, but damn if that dog didn’t LOVE the smell of dead things. Like it was the most expensive, best smelling perfume in the world. Chanel Number Five had nothing on the smell of human decomp. Losing her was a gut-punch. It was tragic. Princess was only three years old. Everybody in the family was sad.

A few months later, I decided it was time to get a new dog. I wanted a white German Shepherd because Princess was a black Labrador Retriever, and sometimes in the summer you could reach down and pet her, and she’d feel hot to the touch. I didn’t like that. So, white coat.

I found a breeder in Buda, Texas who had a litter of white German Shepherd puppies. I left at dawn to beat the Houston traffic and begin the long journey. There’s no straight route to Buda. From Houston, you essentially drive toward San Antonio or Austin, then turn onto I35. And for those who don’t know Texas, it was about a four or five hour-drive from Houston. But I’d been hunting for a white German Shepherd for a while with no luck. My younger brother, who also owned a white German Shepherd (He Who Would Be Named Koda), checked out the litter since he lived in Austin at the time. With his confirmation that this was a decent litter, I made the appointment and drove to Buda.

Along a dirt road I found a small white house on a couple acres of flat ranch land. There was a litter of five or six puppies. I remember seeing both the mother and father, but I don’t remember what they looked like. I do remember the one female in the litter was peculiar. Most of her tail fur was scraped off!

The owner showed me the bloodlines and talked a bit about the dogs. Again, I don’t remember the event or what he said. I handed over a check, and he handed over the puppy, and we headed home. I put her in a kennel right behind me in the van, and she whined and cried out. She’d just been separated from her family. I felt for her, but I knew we were giving her a new family.

You know how the drive home is quicker than the drive out to your destination? Not this one. The puppy in the backseat might’ve had something to do with it.

At home, we fell in love with the little wormtail immediately. I took her to the vet, and they confirmed what we suspected. A mild fungus. An anti-fungal cleared it up in a week.

Trying to name her wasn’t easy. Of course, “Wormtail” was off the board immediately. We went through so many names, but where I’d been fine with whatever name my daughter chose for her dog, I was adamant that I approve the dog’s name this time. I wanted something with some punch to it. I’d recently seen Ghost Rider, and I was also a fan of the Clint Eastwood movie, Pale Rider. “Preacher? Preacher!?!”

And just as a reminder, I intended to work this dog on human remains. I kept thinking of the verse, “Behold a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death.” Perfect! I signed the paperwork and registered Pale Ryder Goodman.

Hindsight being 20/20, I should have seen the difficulties early on. Ryder, aka Wormtail, hated riding in cars. So I would take her, put her in the back of the van, and just sit with her. Even at 6 months old, her legs would tremble and her tail would hitch under her legs. So every day for two or three weeks I put her in the car. Sometimes I would have my awesome wife drive her down the block and turn around. I’d remain in the backseat and reassure her everything was okay.

When it got to where she could go a block or two, we tried taking her to parks to meet other dogs. She shied from dogs, big or small. I remember taking her to the dog park early one morning. She was the only dog in the run, and it was at least a quarter acre. Somebody came in with a little Labrador puppy that was all happiness and love. Ryder tucked her tail so far she should’ve been tickling her chest. Total fear reaction! She didn’t bite the dog, but she cowered from this little puppy that was maybe a tenth her size.

I’ve often wondered if Mojo had anything to do with her behavior. He was an older dog and a bit of a lone wolf, and I’ve wondered if one day he put her down too hard and she decided the world was just too damn scary for her.

As I’ve written before here and here, I put Ryder into SAR, but at this point it was mainly with the hope of socializing her. She had a great nose, but she was too afraid of the world to go out into it and find things. She’d try to run from dogs and dog-people when they approached her. The best thing for her was to have somebody stand with their back to her so that she could taste them and get used to them, but like Mr. Bunny I, once the person turned, she skedaddled.

Trying to find a way to help her, one weekend I drove her up to my parents’ place. They owned a couple of very casual, normal-personality German Shepherds. My hope was that a weekend playing with dogs not named Mojo would reset her brain into a more German Shepherd mentality. She didn’t have fun. Somewhere I have a photo of all the dogs sitting down together with me, and my dad is standing there, too. Marshall and Czar are happy and content. Ryder looks completely miserable.

I’d like to say that Ryder worked out of these behaviors and inevitably became a confident German Shepherd. Her story isn’t a movie, so it wouldn’t go that way. I will give you a for-instance. We host international students for two weeks every summer, and we’ve been doing it for the last decade. The students stay with us for two weeks, and it is usually a highlight to them when Ryder finally allows them to pet her. It usually takes about two weeks.

Years later, my daughter began SAR, and she took Ryder with her. Ryder worked for her better than for me, but she still was unhappy. But in her backyard? Ryder was alert and comfortable. So we stopped all SAR work with her and left her to the peace and comfort of her backyard paradise.

When Mojo died and Koda came to live with us, Ryder’s life changed. Suddenly she had a younger dog (he was nine and she was seven) who enjoyed playing with her on her terms. For us, it was fascinating. She was PLAYING. She’d never really played before. And she was happy with Koda. She liked to taunt him and tease him and boss him around, and he was always oh so willing to let her do it. She smiles a lot now. So the story does have a happy ending. Ryder has had two and a half glorious years in the backyard with Koda. She’s been the queen of her castle. And while now it is easy to look back on her life and talk about the things that could have been, I prefer to see the Wormtail who endured to eventually find happiness in her life, and I think that is all any of us can hope for is to find someone who enjoys being with us and gives us enjoyment.

__ATA.cmd.push(function() { __ATA.initDynamicSlot({ id: 'atatags-26942-60856261d2c89', location: 120, formFactor: '001', label: { text: 'Advertisements', }, creative: { reportAd: { text: 'Report this ad', }, privacySettings: { text: 'Privacy', } } }); });

Setting up Ryder’s Euthanasia and Weighing Her Good Days vs. Her Bad Days

First off, I want to say thank you to everyone for writing to me. The outpouring of your affections and the stories you have shared of your own dogs’ passings have been very helpful and touching, and I appreciate them all. Forgive me for not responding to them. There were many and I have read them all.

We finally were able to set a date with a vet for Ryder’s home euthanasia. It will be this Sunday April 22 at 5. We all tried hard to set a time earlier in the weekend, but drive times for the veterinarian had to be considered.

Working with a vet for home euthanasia has not been easy. I don’t want that to sound like a complaint. It’s not on them. The difficulty lies in two areas: first, because of the pandemic, home euthanasia has grown in popularity. Second, I’ve set my phone to silence calls that aren’t in my contacts list. What this means is that when this new vet calls me, I don’t see it. It took leaving several phone messages and an e-mail before I got it worked out. Again, that’s not on the veterinarian’s office.

We are spending these last few days with Ryder giving her all the treats she wants, showering her with as much affection as she will allow (This is a recurring theme with German Shepherds. The word in the breed description is “aloof.”), and generally enjoying time with her.

I wanted to share some photos from her past, and I hope you will enjoy them. The first set are recent photos I haven’t put on the blog before (except for that one of her hunting bees). The second set of photos have appeared here in earlier posts, but I wanted to collect them together in one place for the sake of remembrance.

Beautiful photos! They were taken by various family members, but I don’t know who took what.

One of the challenging aspects to all of this has been that Ryder still has good days. Look at that photo of her and my son in the bluebonnets. That was Easter, not but a few weeks ago. Those keen eyes! That sleek posture full of purpose and life! Moments like that make the decision difficult. But the reality is that they are blips. The photo of her sacked out on the pillow looking like the world is aligned against her? That’s her most days. For this stage of her life, I have to focus on that photo and remember that one, not the others. I have to remember the weary dog, and I take note of all the times she limps or stands without standing.

So maybe this post didn’t go the way I wanted it to? I wrote it for comfort, but it didn’t end that way. And maybe that is the message here: life doesn’t end the way you want, it just ends. I will have more about her, though. I want to share the story of how she came to us, and I hope to have it out before Sunday. After that, I may take a break from talking about Ryder. We will see.

__ATA.cmd.push(function() { __ATA.initDynamicSlot({ id: 'atatags-26942-6081ad47890de', location: 120, formFactor: '001', label: { text: 'Advertisements', }, creative: { reportAd: { text: 'Report this ad', }, privacySettings: { text: 'Privacy', } } }); });

The Difficult Decision to Euthanize Ryder

Unfortunately, all dogs die. There’s no easy way to do this, but it’s a fact of life as a pet owner. For me, the key decision was when is the right time to do it? I don’t want to wait too long so that Ryder suffers, but I’d feel guilty putting Ryder down too early.

We’ve talked about this many times, in fact. Often on walks or long rides in the car, my wife and I go through the bullets, like a checklist of emotional redemption. There are many “easy” decisions when owning a dog: which food? That bag of Purina over there. When do you pick up after the dog? At least twice a week in the spring and summer, sometimes every other day. Should you pet the dog? Well, it’s a German Shepherd, so if it wants to be petted, you better do it now because it may not want to be petted the rest of the day.

Deciding to euthanize is nothing so simple.

Years ago when we went through end-of-life with Mojo, a veterinarian recommended as a litmus test to pick the three things the dog enjoys most in life. When the dog can no longer do one or especially two of those things, it’s time to euthanize.

But that litmus test doesn’t apply to all dogs, and certainly not to Ryder. She’s always been a peculiar dog. She likes her backyard and playing with Koda, and she likes to eat*. She still does those things. For me, it is a pain factor based on arthritis and lack of mobility. People will talk about the dignity of life for a dog, and I think there is some truth to that. I remember laying in bed one day and Mojo walking in and telling me he was ready. A few months later, he again looked at me, and his eyes were full of truth. He wasn’t happy, he didn’t like this anymore. He was ready. Sometimes Ryder gives me that look, but I’m not sure. She’s always had a pained, scared-of-the-world emotion in her eyes.

But there is “pained” and there is “pain.” Ryder can’t put in words her suffering, so it’s up to me to observe her closely. Over the past few months, and certainly over the past year, my family and I have noticed changes to her behavior, physicality, and mental state:

-She had urination problems. She was diagnosed as a UTI and corrected. Alone, this is not a sign that she is close to dying, but I believe it may be a sign of the severity of her back arthritis. She’s not cleaning herself. This is especially troubling considering…

-She has problems holding in poop. Sometimes she’s sitting there, laying in it, and she doesn’t realize she’s pooped herself. Often, she can’t make it through the night without releasing her bowels in the house. If she isn’t able to clean herself, and she isn’t aware that she is going to the bathroom, this can lead to discomfort and additional UTIs.

-She stopped climbing the stairs. This was a subtle one because our dogs aren’t allowed upstairs. But last week we had a major thunderstorm, and as anyone who owns German Shepherds can attest, GSDs only want to be right next to you when the thunder booms and the lightning crashes. Koda busted down the dog gate and ran upstairs for solace. Ryder, who is usually the first one to bump against the bedroom door until we wake up, stayed downstairs and didn’t attempt coming to us. At least, I didn’t see her attempt it. She may have tried, failed, and gone back downstairs. That’s a first in her lifetime, and she wouldn’t have stayed down there if she didn’t absolutely have to remain on the first floor.

-She is stumbling. She often stumbles in the house, especially walking inside and out. She has fallen doing little playful jumps at my daughter. I’ve seen her fall to the floor and not be able to stand for thirty seconds or more.

-This will sound weird, but she sits a lot, and not on purpose. One of the things she does is get in the way of her people (helloooo, herding dog). She backs out when she realizes I want to get through. Now, she backs out, and her butt falls down, and she stares at me like “That wasn’t supposed to happen. What do I do now? Sorry!” until she can get back up.

-She is whining and yelping. This is the big one. My dogs don’t whine or yelp for no reason. They aren’t talkative dogs. For the past year, though Ryder will yelp when roughhousing with Koda. She wants to jump on him, but she’s incapable. Lately, she’s really reduced her roughhousing. Additionally, Koda is being a son of a bitch about this. A few days ago I noticed they were playing their favorite game of “I’ve got a thing and you don’t.” I posted about this when during one of these games, Ryder knocked the poop out of Koda. That old chestnut. But this last time when Koda wanted the random stick, he bumped her rear with his chest so that she went down. I scolded him, he didn’t understand, and eventually Ryder dropped the stick and guarded it with strong play-snaps. Koda wasn’t going to take any further action to take the prized random stick, but the fact that he knows to exploit this indicates to me that one day we could find out he’s hurt her, perhaps broken her back from bumping her, and now you have to put down Ryder immediately in your backyard. Nobody wants that.

So we have elected to euthanize Ryder.

Damn, there’s a lot of finality in that statement. She is a family member, and we lover her very much. I picked her up from the tiny town of Buda, Texas and drove her three or four hours back to Houston. She never liked car rides after that. We have a lot of memories with that dog, some I’m sure I will share in the coming weeks, but for now, I want to focus on the decision.

We are reaching out to companies that can euthanize at home. With all of Ryder’s fears, it seems like the best option. Of course, home euthanasias are the popular choice in the pandemic. Earlier in 2020, some of the vets we looked to wouldn’t allow owners to be present for euthanasias. So we will see if we can make the home euthanasia happen.

In the meantime, I give her half an aspirin to help with the pain, and my daughter purchased some CBD-infused peanut butter, too. We’ve had her on joint vitamins, but that only goes so far. We do as much as we can to keep Ryder comfortable, but it’s clear that she’s in near-constant pain and that her hips/back have greatly reduced function. She is an eleven and a half year old GSD, old for one. So as difficult as it is to decide to euthanize, I know that it is a necessary part of ownership. If I’m willing to own a dog, I must be willing to take care of it throughout it’s life, not just the happy puppy parts, but all of it, including her last days.

*Ryder only eats infrequently over the past few weeks. It is one of her three joys: play, eating, and protection/perimeter walking, and I would argue that food is her highest joy, so not eating is a big clue that her time is soon.

__ATA.cmd.push(function() { __ATA.initDynamicSlot({ id: 'atatags-26942-607ff99eb3675', location: 120, formFactor: '001', label: { text: 'Advertisements', }, creative: { reportAd: { text: 'Report this ad', }, privacySettings: { text: 'Privacy', } } }); });

Chupacabra Dog Part 1 is Complete

Spoiler Alert: If you haven’t finished Ghost Dog, you might want to skip this post.

One of my goals has been to write more short stories this year. There are just so many Zombie Dog short stories floating around my head! If you subscribe to my newsletter, you’ve already read some of them: Winter Dog, Cemetery Dog, Voodoo Dog, and now Oblivion Dog. If you are one of my patrons, those came out to you EVEN EARLIER, plus you received other perks.

Life isn’t always about goals, but I sometimes think that without goals, I wouldn’t have been able to write so many Zombie Dog stories. They would have been like spirits wandering around my head with no form and no substance. Just ideas and emotions. So I do think there is some good to come of setting goals. But you shouldn’t feel guilty for not meeting all of them. I think by this time in my life I was supposed to already be finished with the Zombie Dog series, but life keeps happening, and sometimes I just need a day off. I try not to beat myself up too much about this so long as I get back on it the next day.

The latest story is Chupacabra Dog, set where else? Beautiful Puerto Rico! I had the opportunity to spend a week or two in this island paradise back in 2019 (you know, BEFORE the pandemic), and almost instantly I wanted to set a Zombie Dog story there. Once I visited the only National Forest that’s a rainforest, El Yunque, I was sold. I think the final nail in the coffin (which is the wrong metaphor, but at the same time fits so appropriately for a Zombie Dog writer) happened months later back on the mainland. I learned that Puerto Rico is the origin of the chupacabra urban legend. Did you know that? I always assumed it came from Mexico. I guess that’s what happens when you make an assumption! Chupacabras have already appeared in Zombie Dog and Ghost Dog, but I want to focus one of Angie’s adventures solely on literal zombie dogs. Give me zombie dogs!!!

Note I said “Angie’s adventures.” Spoiler alert again if you haven’t finished Ghost Dog.

If you have, you know that Ghost Dog ends with Murder being absconded, a.k.a., “dogknapped.” The stories Voodoo Dog and Chupacabra Dog give a glance of Angie’s life without Murder. In Voodoo Dog, she tried training a new dog. Chupacabra is dog-less, except for the already mentioned zombie dogs. Years ago when I first conceived this series I imagined a book after Angie was separated from Murder. She was in a South American country helping a village stave off a zombie horde. Well, instead of a book, I decided on Chupacabra Dog.

This is a big short story, though. Most of my “Little Dogs” run over 8,000 words. This one I anticipate to be 10,000+ words (definitely in the novelette/novella range), so I’ve broken it down into two parts. Part One is rough drafted. Tonight/this weekend I will begin Part Two.

On the Murder Dog front, I am busy editing, and about a third of the way through the book. Then it will be off to the editors to review.

That’s it for now. Keep to your goals, but don’t beat yourself up for not flying so high. And if you’re a patron, prepare for the horde and expect Chupacabra Dog by the end of April!

Hey, thank you for reading and I hope you are enjoying my posts. I’m a writer from Texas who dreams of one day writing full-time. I write the Zombie Dog books, which you can find here both digitally and paperback. I also have a Patreon account here.

__ATA.cmd.push(function() { __ATA.initDynamicSlot({ id: 'atatags-26942-6078cd09596de', location: 120, formFactor: '001', label: { text: 'Advertisements', }, creative: { reportAd: { text: 'Report this ad', }, privacySettings: { text: 'Privacy', } } }); });

Ryder’s Supposed to be the Obedient One

I have this story about Ryder. She was young, maybe a year old, and I was working her on some material for Search and Rescue training. The material was laid out in a rough line along a concrete patio. Each piece of “Fred” (what we call human remains) was set maybe five feet apart from each other. And Ryder hit on everything correctly. But something felt wrong. I couldn’t figure out what, so I asked another instructor to watch while I worked her. We ran the scent lineup again, and he laughed. “She’s not a great search dog, but she’s a terrific obedience dog!”

Sit, stay, down, she nails it. Ask her to work independently away from her handler, though, and she struggles.

Obedience-wise? With a handler right next to her? Glorious! I want you to keep that in mind when you look at these two photos of dogs posing for photos in bluebonnets. The first one is the 13-year old brute, the dude who will probably keel over one day because he charges ahead at life with the energy of a 1-year old shepherd. The second is my perfect obedience dog walking toward me because she can’t sit still for five seconds.

I have maybe twenty or thirty photos of Ryder in the bluebonnets. That one on the right is the BEST photo I could get. Look at her! She had a marker and everything!

Poor girl. I think her give-a-damn’s breaking in her old age. In the meantime, enjoy my photos of two heathens in bluebonnets.

If you live in Texas, I hope you get a chance to get out and snap a few photos, and if you take your dogs, I hope they do a better job of standing still than my Ryder…

Hey, thank you for reading and I hope you are enjoying my posts. I’m a writer from Texas who dreams of one day writing full-time. I write the Zombie Dog books, which you can find here both digitally and paperback. I also have a Patreon account here.

__ATA.cmd.push(function() { __ATA.initDynamicSlot({ id: 'atatags-26942-60759bc3aafdb', location: 120, formFactor: '001', label: { text: 'Advertisements', }, creative: { reportAd: { text: 'Report this ad', }, privacySettings: { text: 'Privacy', } } }); });

Koda Goes Camping

I don’t want to put words in my daughter’s mouth, but I think it is safe to assume that camping with Koda was the most epic camping experience of her adult life. She bought her own tent, they drove to Meridian State Park in the Jeep, and they camped overnight. She read, they relaxed, enjoyed nature, and came home the next day. Being in graduate school, she was ready for some away time to destress. Who isn’t?

Koda. Was. Ready. This dog is all about the getting out and doing things, which is pretty exciting for a dog his age. He was excited and thrilled to go on a road trip up toward north Texas. he enjoys it so much, I sometimes think about putting him in search and rescue, but I always reconsider because of his age. He’d enjoy some of the exercises and being “out and about,” but no pressure, dog. If it happens, it happens. And there’d be no desire to certify. This would only be short runs for fun.

Thanks to my daughter, he gets to go on adventures all the time, and there’s no pressure to do anything except “dog.” Eat, walk, look out windows, and watch birds. It is really fun listening to my daughter recount their time. I can tell they both get a lot out of these little adventures. That’s why I thought I’d share them. Here are some photos of the happy pup on their camping experience. Hopefully with the weather turning a little warmer and the foliage opening up, you will get to go out on an adventure with your dogs, too!

__ATA.cmd.push(function() { __ATA.initDynamicSlot({ id: 'atatags-26942-606dbfa05bb94', location: 120, formFactor: '001', label: { text: 'Advertisements', }, creative: { reportAd: { text: 'Report this ad', }, privacySettings: { text: 'Privacy', } } }); });

A Fine Piece of Magic

I’m reading the novel “Boy’s Life” by Robert McCammon. Early in the book, the titular boy is helping his father deliver milk in the 1960s. The son and his father are talking about what they’d like to be when they grow up, and the boy says “I’d like to be everybody in the world. I’d like to live a million times.” It makes me think of the often-used quote attributed to George R.R. Martin: “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.” It’s one of those quotes that I see everywhere but that I’ve always discarded because while a reader might have a powerful experience in the pages of a book, do they really “walk a mile in a person’s shoes?”

In the past year, something clicked, though. I think it was reading memoirs like “Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer and “Ranger Confidential” by Andrea Lankford. In these books, I very much felt like I was walking in the shoes of other people. Which, duh? Right? “Into the Wild” is focused on the life of Christopher McCandless and the people he meets along his journey. In reading it, I was literarily if not literally walking in the man’s footsteps. And Ranger Confidential is a collection of WTF stories about the lives of National Park rangers.

Other memoirs followed, and then I gently returned to fiction: “The Water Dancer” by Ta-Nehisi Coates and “News of the World” by Paulette Jiles. While not memoirs, these books dropped you into the middle of the lives of fiction characters who felt very real, whether it was a slave on a floundering Virginia plantation or a world-weary, news-reading traveler in Texas in the late 1800s. Their fictional worlds felt real. The writers spent a lot of time and energy ensuring that the reader was transported to specific places with specific people, and I really appreciated the results of their work.

So yeah, I’ve come around to the George R.R. Martin quote. Readers live thousands of lives. Whether it was George Takei’s life growing up in internment camps for Japanese during World War II, Helen MacDonald’s attempts to train a hawk to hunt, or the Gideon’s and Harrow’s discoveries in the death opera/space opera Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth, I’ve participated in their lives. I’ve absorbed their perspective. Sometimes they’ve made me laugh, and other times I’ve yelled in frustration.

To bring this full-circle, to a certain extent I feel like the boy in Boy’s Life who is trying to live a million different lives. For the past five years or so, I’ve been sharing the life of a woman who trains dogs to hunt zombies. She is a specific person who becomes more unique the longer I write about her. But also, I’ve added other characters like Santa Anna, the curandero, Cut, the HPD officer, and in the latest book, 19-year-old Justice of the Peace Jim Lacy.

But there’s one other character these books has brought, and that’s the zombie hunter himself, Murder. Zombie Dog and Ghost Dog both featured sections, and then chapters, from his perspective. Murder Dog will be almost completely told from his point of view, and as I’m revising, that perspective is where I find most of my fine tuning. I want to get it right as best as I can. I want you to know this dog and how he perceives the world around him. Writing him hasn’t always been easy, and sometimes it’s been very challenging. How does a dog interpret human behavior? When the main character uses body movement as his main source of communication, how do you handle thoughts?

I won’t know if I succeed in putting a reader into “Murder’s shoes” (perhaps more appropriately, Murder’s paws) until the book is released and people are reading it, which is probably why I’m eager for it to see daylight (even though the idea of this book out there gives me butterflies). Because of all the lives I’ve been living, I really hope that it gives readers one more soul to inhabit and one more life to live. As the father in “Boy’s Life” says, “Well, that would be a fine piece of magic, wouldn’t it?”

__ATA.cmd.push(function() { __ATA.initDynamicSlot({ id: 'atatags-26942-606c5d2cddd63', location: 120, formFactor: '001', label: { text: 'Advertisements', }, creative: { reportAd: { text: 'Report this ad', }, privacySettings: { text: 'Privacy', onClick: function() { window.__tcfapi && window.__tcfapi( 'showUi' ); }, } } }); });

My Time on The Quiet Place Podcast

The Youtube channel HatchetMouth has a fun and nerdy podcast called The Quiet Place. Last night I joined them for an hour and forty five minutes or so. WE TALKED ABOUT SO MUCH GOODNESS! I really appreciate the time they gave me and all the questions they threw my way. I enter 1:12:31. We talk dinosaurs, zombies, dogs, wendigos, weresharks, and kaiju, some of my favorite subjects! There are even a few tidbits about Murder Dog, and a nice discussion of why I think Hunting with Dinosaurs is such an important book.