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Hello Readers,

It’s been, oh, about a month since I have posted here, so I thought I’d just give you all a quick update.

Here’s what Peter and I have been up to.

Earlier this week we (along with the help of some improviser friends in town) did a One Page Salon reading from the upcoming sequel. If you missed the reading, then you missed the sneak peak at book two. But here’s a hint: a child’s Batman mask was involved. And someone said the word “and.”

We (okay, mostly just me), have been in talks with schools state-wide about implementing the books into book lists and doing some author visits.

In December, I’ll be participating in a Typewriter Rodeo event here in Austin (I’ll post details under events).

And finally, baking. No, of course I’m not baking – if you know me, you know the extent of my culinary patience (I can make eggs.) But Peter has been baking up a storm. I think he’s a bit sad about the end of book two, to be honest, and trying to go into a sort of cookie coma until I start book three.

Which won’t be long. Yes, in between the poetry practicing for Typewriter Rodeo, the school visits, the readings, the auditions (did I mention the auditions?), and the cleaning up after Peter, there will come a day soon when I start writing book three.

BUT IT IS NOT. THIS. DAY!

– Natalie
and Peter

P.S. – Contact me if you or someone you know might be interested in implementing the Fantastic Fable of Peter Able into school booklists. Or if you’d like a cookie.

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What’s this? You want me to elaborate? I thought the message was pretty clear in the title of the post, but okay, large and empty box…

Book Two is done.

I’d been putting it off for the past two months, since I got back from my summer in London. Why? Probably because not having finished editing it kept it going for me – tied me, in an odd way, to the UK, where I wrote the bulk of it. Because once the edits are done, that means it’s no longer a work in progress, but a complete work – and then what?

What to do when a child leaves the house for good? When the wolf I’ve been raising since he was a puppy must go back into the wild? What, Jack London, WHAT?!

Well, I could do what many newly set-free parents (or wolf caretakers) do – take up some sort of new addiction to fill the time: shopping, drinking, making long distance prank phone calls to China.

Or I could simply write a new book*. After all, there’s one more in this trilogy, and infinite possibilities beyond that.

*This is where the metaphor must end, because while you can just write a new book when the other ends, you really shouldn’t just pop out a new baby every time your other child grows up, or buy a wolf pup when White Fang gets older. Because it’s illegal. Don’t buy a wolf.

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I’m not sure if this is typical of writers, or if this is just typical of me, but when my mind gets focused on something it’s hard for me to allow anything else in. I call it my Dog Brain – just like when a dog sees a ball or a treat, the whole rest of the world seems to disappear. Funnily enough, that’s precisely what’s been on my mind lately: dogs.

As many of you know I’m in London for the summer working on the sequel to The Fantastic Fable of Peter Able and while the going was slow at first, I’m happy to report that now, I am almost done with the first draft.

So of course, as this book is winding down, my brain, like a dog with a ball, had decided that no, it can’t possibly just rest and relax. It needs a new something to ponder and just the other day as I was walking through the park, the perfect new obsession entered my mind: You have to get a dog.

And no, my brain didn’t say, “maybe you should get a dog when you get back home,” or “perhaps it would be nice; think about it.” It said “you have to get a dog,” in a voice rather like the voice of God’s, or perhaps James Earl Jones, I always get them confused. And so here I am, a few days away from finishing my book, and now obsessing over, not the finale, but what type of dog should I get?

Psychologists out there, go ahead and tell me I am undoubtedly prolonging finishing this book, as it has been my project and my doted upon baby for the past months. Go on.

Truth be told, I know this already. It’s always the same finishing a book, whether you’re writing it or reading it. It’s exciting, liberating, and at the same time, rather depressing. What will happen to the characters when you’re gone? What will you do with the time?

Well, luckily, I still have one more book in this series to write, which I’ll begin later on this year.

In the meantime, though, I have to get a dog.

So which kind should I get?