The Dogs Who Found Me
Today is the first day of what I hope will be a productive month in which I focus exclusively on finishing up my forthcoming "memoir" The Dogs Who Found Me, which will be published next Spring (see the link to the right if you want more info via Amazon.) This is the first time I've been in the position of having a contract for a book that was completely unwritten, and nearly everything that might go wrong has. First, the offer came just as I decided to return to school to get a PhD in creative writing. No big deal, I thought, I'll write on weekends and between semesters. Then I spent the entire Fall term exhausted--thinking it was from doing too many charity events with my Dog Culture paperback--only to discover that I had no pulse. Well, I had a pulse, but it was only 25.
In December I had a pacemaker implanted, then a few weeks later I was back in the emergency room with a slashed leg from a post office doorway accident. In January my computer started acting up, which led to a total hard drive failure in February. My computer was finally up and running in March, which gave me just enough time to finish final projects for all of my courses for both Fall and Spring terms.
Needless to say, I've fallen a bit behind. My plan now is to focus on a dog a day for the next couple of weeks. The book is an account of the many dogs who have found me after being abandoned--and what became of them once I took them in. I imagine now that the end may have something to do with my heart problems and my perverse concern that my dogs wouldn't be fed without me around to do it for them. We'll see if I can manage that episode without it getting in the way of the dogs, who are really meant to be the focal point of the story...
In December I had a pacemaker implanted, then a few weeks later I was back in the emergency room with a slashed leg from a post office doorway accident. In January my computer started acting up, which led to a total hard drive failure in February. My computer was finally up and running in March, which gave me just enough time to finish final projects for all of my courses for both Fall and Spring terms.
Needless to say, I've fallen a bit behind. My plan now is to focus on a dog a day for the next couple of weeks. The book is an account of the many dogs who have found me after being abandoned--and what became of them once I took them in. I imagine now that the end may have something to do with my heart problems and my perverse concern that my dogs wouldn't be fed without me around to do it for them. We'll see if I can manage that episode without it getting in the way of the dogs, who are really meant to be the focal point of the story...
Comments
Terry
youareadog.com
I read 'the kind I'm likely to get' back in March of 2000. I had just moved to LA and lived in Chinatown. I had never been to NY or SF at the time I read it. Actually thinking back, I read it from cover to cover one Saturday morning as a haidus from a state of affairs too pointless to explain. Snippets of your work 'the kind...' always seem to bubble up in my memory. Flashes of scenes from your stories haven't left my 'palette?' since that one and only reading of it. I remember faintly, 'resources of an art store' 'a mother leaving her kids behind'a little doodle on t shirts' 'cigarettes in a glass'... After opening it up I found the sentence 'Susan laughs smokes and sips her microbrew' and I thought I have to find out what this guy is up to. I've lived in the west village of manhattan since 01.04 and already owe new york my life. I found out about your site because I recently discovered my paperback copy of your book and remembered that you hosted a reading night somewhere in soho. Checking to see if it was still happening, or to see if you had anything new to say I found ken-foster.com /
I'm going to reread 'the kind...' and write back later.
Cheers,
Thrift
You should check out the readings at the KGB Bar, and also the Happy Ending series, where I happened to read a few months back.