Dog Fairness

Some have wondered why I talk about two dogs, but only have a photo of one on my book jackets. That's because Cappy is the only one who sat still long enough to be photographed on the day we took the jacket photo. If you look closely at that photo, you can see that I am restraining him from running after the squirrels that made Britches too much to deal with that day.

Britches was the model for Shade, though -- there is a slightly altered picture of him above, the second image in the line-up in the illustration bar at the top of my blog and Web site.

And here are a couple of photos of him. The hedgehog toy recovered from the attempted drowning.

Nature's dust mop rides again

The contest is on.  

If you go to this site (aka http://ping.fm/p/AFvQH ),

you'll see one of my dogs, Britches, wearing an attractive yellow leaf.

Britches is one of nature's dust mops.  He goes outside, and a little bit of outside comes back in with him.  If you have a dog or a cat that provides a moving sampler of nature on four paws, link to a photo from the comments section.  If you need an easy way to this, consider opening a ping.fm account.  (As previously noted, I love ping.fm -- makes it easier for me to blog, keep up with Facebook and Twitter, etc.)

No prizes.  Just my complete sympathy.

Lots to catch up on

I'm way behind in posting news to you, and responding to comments -- a combination of post-travel discombobulation and working on finishing a book.

Which doesn't mean I'm short on news! It has been a great week! As some of you know, Kidnapped has been nominated for an Anthony Award for Best Novel, which will be voted on and given at Bouchercon. I know people joke about this, but really, it is an honor to be nominated, and this year I find myself in fine company. You can see the full list of nominees here.

The Summer 2007 issue of CLUES: A Journal of Detection is just out. Ed Gorman has posted some kind comments about my essay in it on his blog. I wrote about Charlotte Armstrong, and like Ed, I hope a small press will reissue some of her best books — she was a master of suspense.

Some of you have mentioned that it is now hard to find a photo of my dog Britches on my Web site. Cappy's on the cover of the books -- his one brown, one blue eye face always appeals to photographers more than Britches, who not only fails to sit still for them, he disappears into his own dark fur. So above, I've posted (or tried to -- Blogger seems not to be cooperating) a photo I took a while ago of him -- "helping" Tim to do a push-up.

More soon!