Fido Phone Home?
What does your dog do when you aren't home? Sleep? Gaze out the window longing for the sexy little Lhaso across the street? Or, relevant to today's post, does he wish he could call and talk to you wherever you are? Maybe a quick text? That's the premise of a study that NYT journalist Christine Chung told me about, (not the texting part!) in which a device was designed to let dogs call their owners and see them on a screen. You can read about it here, in an article titled "Forming the Dog Internet". I'm stretching it by calling it a study, because it involved one dog, and one person. The bulk of the work, the real experiment I'd say, was done trying to create a device that Read More
Do Privileges Affect Behavior?
In my last post I mentioned that Skip was being given couch privileges, but he didn't feel quite comfortable up there when first allowed. Here's the photo I took several weeks ago: It's pretty clear who was the most comfortable. This photograph, along with a post on my Facebook page, led to some comments about when dogs are allowed "privileges" like access to the couch, and when they aren't. At the risk of resuming a conversation everyone else is done with, I've found myself thinking about the issues of "privilege," "fairness," and whether getting to sleep up on a couch might influence the relationships between household dogs. First, let me tackle some thoughts I have on the Read More
Progress on the Novel!
It was hard not to write to all of you last week, seriously. But, I made some real progress on the novel and that feels good. I didn't write thousands of new words, but I got some good work done on the structure and plot. (Not that plot is important in a mystery . . .) An especially helpful step was getting Plottr, which gives you a great visual representation of the flow of the book. I also had a good talk with my agent, who reminded me to always ask myself, "What do you want your reader to be feeling right now?" Great advice. FYI, just in case you are interested, a few books have been particularly helpful to me, especially James N. Frey's How to Write a Damn Good Mystery. One of his Read More