Next Book in Series Almost Ready!

I have almost finished the book three in the Buster the Dog series, that began years ago with “Dig It! Gardening Tips for Dogs” and continued a few years ago with “Doggone It – Mindfulness from a Dogs Point of View”. The main text of book three – “Dog Buddha’s Thoughts” is more or less finished, the Foreword is being worked on, and tomorrow I am meeting with the illustrator, Allyson Hean to give her draft copy of the text …

I’m getting excited, that’s for sure. This book has many more words than the earlier too, and it is a much more serious book, with fewer illustrations to reinforce the serious nature of it! Haha, it’s written by the dog that I say lives inside my head, how serious can such a book actually be?!!! Buster the Dog and I have had a wonderful time, playing with this book, coming up with thoughts and extrapolating on the implications of such thoughts.

I spoke with the illustrator this morning, to organise a meeting, and it looks she is now thinking on the matter of what the Dog Buddha actually looks like. He won’t look like Buster the Dog, he will be a wise looking entity though. Ally mentioned a Newfoundland, which I feel would certainly be a suitable dog breed to consider.

These issues are so much more fun than the more serious issue of how I am going to actually pay for and then market this book. That’s one of the reasons I’m posting this on this blogsite – If you’d like to have a copy of the book when it comes out, why not let me know, by leaving me a comment here?

I’ve loved writing this book, and I’m going to love talking about this book too. If you’d like to know more about this project, feel free to ask me questions! As a bit of a teaser, here are a couple of the Dog Buddha’s thoughts, and Buster the Dog’s ideas about them:

“The unkempt lawn gives the best back rubs …”

‘There’s nothing better on a sunny day than to be outside on the lawn, rolling and rolling on the grass. And the best kind of lawn, the lawn that feels the best on your back, is not a perfect just-mown lawn, oh no. As the Dog Buddha says, the best lawn is the unkempt lawn, the lawn with lumps and bumps that knead your back like the best massage ever!’

“The sofa isn’t there for a reason. The sofa simply is …”

‘A dog, a sofa … there isn’t really much more to say, is there? Humans say they love their dogs, they have these big soft beds they call ‘sofas’ and then they tell us we aren’t allowed to actually get on them! Really? Surely, if you truly do love your dog, like you say you do, human, of course the sofa is there for us to jump up on!’

These are just snippets, the book goes into far more detail than this for each of the thoughts. I did a bit of a count, and it appears there are over 35 thoughts, all deep and meaningful, haha! I’m hoping for big things from this book! I plan to launch “Dog Buddha’s Thoughts” at the Adelaide Plains Festival of Words (Freedom) 2017 on July 29 at the P/A Hotel in Gawler, South Australia.