George Clay

 George Clay jumped into my imagination with both feet when Michael Bracken invited me to submit a story to a proposed anthology to be called Groovy Gumshoes, Private Eyes in the Swinging Sixties. That story, “Heir Apparent,” was revised and incorporated into my new book, Bless Our Sleep.

In the sultry heat of 1968 Miami, private investigator George Clay finds himself entangled in a web of murder, smuggling, and forbidden desire. Fresh out of the Navy with an honorable discharge and a taste for adventure, George sets up shop on Miami Beach, where the glittering facade of Art Deco hotels hides a thriving underground gay scene.

When wealthy banker Will Broadwater hires George to find a missing signet ring, the PI stumbles upon the battered body of a teenage boy known as "Worm" in Matheson Hammock Park. As George digs deeper, he uncovers a tangled network of privileged teens, Cuban exiles, and shadowy figures with dangerous secrets to protect.

Complicating matters is George's growing attraction to the handsome and enigmatic Alex Reyes, a Cuban exile with his own ties to Miami's criminal underworld. As their relationship deepens, George must navigate the treacherous waters of love and trust in a world where nothing is as it seems.

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 With the help of his new friend Raj and the reluctant cooperation of Detective Aloma, George races to unravel the mystery behind Worm's death and a high-stakes smuggling operation. From the neon-lit streets of South Beach to the lush mangroves of the Florida Keys, George's investigation takes him into the heart of Miami's Cuban community and the dangerous world of drug trafficking.

As the body count rises and the danger mounts, George finds himself caught between his duty to solve the case and his loyalty to Alex. Can he bring justice for Worm without destroying the man he's falling in love with? And can a rough-around-the-edges PI from the wrong side of the tracks find happiness with a wealthy, sophisticated Cuban exile?

 

Set against the backdrop of a city in flux, where the sexual revolution clashes with conservative values and the influx of Cuban refugees reshapes the cultural landscape, "Bless Our Sleep" is a gripping noir thriller that explores themes of identity, belonging, and the power of love to transcend social boundaries.

I’ve tried to bring 1960s Miami vividly to life, from the smoky depths of the Cockpit gay bar to the sun-drenched beaches of Haulover.

I hope that fans of the Mahu series and the Have Body, Will Guard series will fall in love with George, as I have.

My connection to Miami Beach goes back a long way, to the time in the early 1960s when my father’s mother spent winter months in a hotel on Meridian Avenue during the winter. I imagine her among those retirees in their lawn chairs, basking in the sun and playing cards.

The Rouse Company, which employed me as a construction manager at South Street Seaport in New York, transferred me to Miami in the fall of 1986. I got off the plane, felt the warm air and saw the palm trees, and decided I was going to stay. I fell in love with Nice, France, on a visit when I was fourteen, and spent two summers there as a young man. But I couldn’t find a way to live there permanently, and Miami seemed a good choice, which it has been for over thirty years.

My parents came to visit me my first Christmas, and I got to see the city, the Keys, and Key West through their memories. Those have informed my descriptions of George’s world.

If you haven’t already, I hope you’ll follow me on Goodreads and BookBub. Both of those sites help readers discover me and my books, and getting a lot of free subscribers there can offer me promotional opportunities.

How Did You Meet?

 

I planned to write about book banning this week, but I’ll put that off until my next newsletter, because something happened as I was preparing that message.

Last week, my husband and I celebrated the twenty-seventh anniversary of the day we met. We went out to dinner at Aventura Mall, and he took a funny picture of me with a giant monkey. I posted the photo on Facebook, and mentioned in passing that it was our anniversary. I didn’t put it out there to get accolades, just because it was a cute picture.

Of course, many friends, family members and casual acquaintances posted congratulations. We were surprised that a very close friend only “liked” the photo, and never sent us a message or a text celebrating the occasion.

When I asked her why she didn’t bother to type two words into the box, she said it was because it wasn’t a “real” anniversary. According to her, our real anniversary is the day we married, six years ago. She is an elderly woman in her early seventies, never married, and as far as we know has never had a significant romance, so her opinion is certainly colored by that.

I gently reminded her that was a heteronormative approach. The tradition for straight couples is to meet, date for a year or two, and then marry. So the actual date they met fades into unimportance. But for the first twenty years we were together, marriage wasn’t an option. We did file for a civil union at one point, so he could get onto my health insurance, but that date wasn’t that important to us.

I thought about my parents. My mother grew up in the right-hand side of a duplex in Trenton, New Jersey. The Crusades, a Syrian family, owned the left-hand half, and the Hershes, a Jewish family, lived in the detached house on the corner, to their right. When the Hershes moved out, my grandparents bought their house and moved in.

They kept their original duplex and rented out rooms there. When I heard my parents’ origin story, it was about my father’s friend Ed Kucharski, a fellow aeronautical engineer. They were looking for a room to share, and Ed went to my grandparents’ house. It was raining and he had his collar up and his hat down. My parents were glad my grandmother opened the door and let him in.

The story continues that my dad and Ed dropped my mother at the train station in Trenton each morning on their way to work. Fast forward a year or two (I have no idea how much time passed) and my parents were married, in my grandparents’ living room.

So the only anniversary they ever celebrated was March 21, 1953. Their wedding photo sat on our mantelpiece.

That made me wonder how other couples celebrate. The author Hank Philippi Ryan and her husband celebrate the day before they met—because one day can change anything. Some gay couples I know have multiple dates to celebrate—the day they met, the date of their civil union, then the day of their marriage.

My husband answered my online profile, and we emailed a few times before agreeing to meet. I spotted him on Lincoln Road on Miami Beach based on the description he sent me, and then joined him in line at a now-defunct coffee shop called Joffrey’s. We had dinner, walked, and talked, and I didn’t look at my watch until two AM.

That event is more meaningful to me than the day we drove to the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale and signed a few papers—though of course that’s an important date on our calendar.

How about you? What do you celebrate? Is there a “meet cute” in romance terms in your past? And, though I hesitate to ask, do you think that the day a couple first meets is as important as the date of a legal marriage?

Fixing Errors

Recently a reader messaged me on Facebook about an error he found in an old book of mine. I’d like to show you a bit of what goes on behind the scenes when I get a message like that.

Back in the old days of print and traditional publishing, if a reader found an error all I could do was thank them and apologize. There was no way a publisher would be able to change the publication files, often in a program like Adobe In Design, and then set up a new print run, unless it was a huge and significant error, or one that might lead to legal ramifications.

Even with digital publishing, a publisher may not want to bother going through all the steps of correcting the error and republishing. But as an indie author, I want to give my readers the best experience of reading my books, so if someone points out an error, I’ll fix it.

In this case it’s a typo in Deadly Labors, the tenth book in the Mahu series, which originally came out in 2019, about the death of a police officer named Brian Yang.

Here’s the context:

I saw Ralph Kim come on, and hushed Mike and Kitty so we could watch. “New developments in the death of a valiant HPD officer at a bar in Waimanalo,” he said, doing a stand-up in front of the Crazy Bar. In the distance behind him I could see waves slapping the shore.

“HPD officer Brian Kim was killed in the bar behind me three weeks ago. A confidential source at HPD has told me that even though a suspect is out on bail, the investigation continues. A witness met with our KVOL sketch artist this afternoon and described a man considered to be of interest in the case.”

Can you spot the error? I didn’t, no matter how many times I read through the manuscript. The dead officer is Brian Yang, not Brian Kim—a mix-up I probably made because I had TV reporter Ralph Kim in mind.

What happens now? I open up the original Word document on my computer and change the name. I have separate files for the e-book version and the print version, so I have to change them in both places.

Then I upload the corrected Word docs to Amazon, who will create a new epub document for readers. Presumably anyone who orders the book after the new upload will get the corrected file. (Though with Amazon, you never know.) Amazon is supposed to also provide the updated file to anyone who has purchased the e-book, but again, no one really knows how that process works.)

I am also a “wide” author. No, that doesn’t have to do with the size of my hips! It means that I upload my files to a distributor called Draft2Digital. Then they pass the e-book along to retailers like Apple and Barnes and Noble. So I have to upload the corrected file to D2D as well, and it may take a while for the new epub they create to get disseminated to over 40 retailers around the world.

I go through a similar process, though much quicker, when I need to change prices of books for promotions or sales. And often when I’m working with an older book I discover things that need to be changed, like a book that’s missing acknowledgments or one where the links have been changed or expired.

All that takes time away from writing. I try and keep my mornings free for creative work, accompanied by a vat of café mocha, and then do admin work like this (and writing newsletters) for the afternoon, after I’ve walked the dogs.

 All four of the Angus Green FBI thrillers are now available through Ingram, which distributes to bookstores all around the world. If you’d like a print copy and want to support your local bookstore, you can now order these titles as well as the golden retriever mysteries. Next up will be the Have Body, Will Guard series and the Mahu investigations. Right now only the most recent two are available in each series. 

Conferences

 I know many of my readers are fortunate to attend conferences and conventions relating to their jobs as well as their hobbies. I recently returned from Bouchercon, the worldwide mystery conference for authors and readers, and I have some advice for those who are planning to attend something similar.

Bouchercon is big—about 1200 people, and it’s both a business event for me and a chance to see friends and indulge in one of my biggest hobbies—reading. To get the most out of it, I started early. I answered emails from organizers promptly, providing my author photo and bio for the program and indicating that I would like to be on a panel.

I wrote about the kind of panel I wanted to be on, citing my publication record. The golden retriever mysteries fall into the sub-genre often called “soft-boiled cozies,” where there is no sex or blood on the page. They’re a tiny bit darker or more realistic than true cozies, which often include crafts or cooking, and I stay away from those.

Last year, I read 85 cozy mysteries as a judge for the Lilian Jackson Braun award given by Mystery Writers of America, and I wanted to share what I learned at Bouchercon. I was assigned to a panel called “How Do You Like Your Eggs in the Morning,” referencing that soft-boiled term. Sadly, the moderator didn’t get the message about the theme—she wanted us to talk about, of all things, the 1980s TV show Remington Steele!

Another author and I hijacked the program and involved the other panelists in sharing our experiences, discussing how we incorporate food and culture, how we keep a long-running series fresh, and where we draw the line between cozy and traditional mysteries. Though our panel was at eight AM, the audience seemed to love it.

I also asked to participate in the Speed Dating for Authors event. Twenty tables for ten in a banquet room, with two seats reserved for authors. My friend Clea Simon, who writes about cats (among other things) and I each had two minutes to talk to the table about our books. Then ring! The bell announced we had to move on to the next table. Two hours of that, and my husband wonders why I came home hoarse!

I accepted an invitation to lunch with an editor and other short-story authors, which was a great chance for in-depth conversation along the ever-popular topic “What do you write?” I learned how a woman with a military career had transitioned to writing about kick-ass female protagonists.

I was also invited to read a two-minute excerpt from a book at an evening event called Cocktails and Cozies. It was a lot of fun, and gave readers a chance to hear our work in our voices.

I reached out to people I knew, including book bloggers, to make arrangements for coffee and conversations, and I spent part of each day at a table in the lobby, just shmoozing.

If you’re going to a similar event, whether for work or play, I suggest that you consider what you want to gain—knowledge, networking, friendship, and so on, and plan how to achieve it. And be sure to leave yourself some free time for serendipity. I heard a great line from another author that I might steal, and I’ll leave you with it:

“He could barely count to twenty-one if he was naked.”

With joy and hopes for cooler weather—

My August Birthday

 

Honestly, birthdays don’t have the same impact as they used to. First double digits, then being able to drive and vote. The big 3-0, the big 5-0, then Medicare. 67 isn’t a big deal.

Late August has always been a busy time to have a birthday. For kids it’s the last chance to have summer fun, and I never got to celebrate in a classroom. When I was growing up in Pennsylvania, we didn’t go back to school until the Thursday after Labor Day.

One of my best birthdays was spent at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in rural Vermont. It was the only time I was able to celebrate in a group of my peers. They announced birthdays at group dinnertime, and a chorus of a couple of hundred voices joined in song.

Then back to school developed a different meaning once I became a full-time professor of English. New syllabi, hundreds of new student names to learn, even new classes to teach and new colleagues in the department.

The day after my birthday I’m leaving for Nashville, Tennessee, to attend Bouchercon, the largest gathering of fans of the mystery genre. There will be over 1500 of us at the Gaylord Opryland Resort. If your tastes are on the cozy end of the spectrum, I’ll be on a panel about soft-boiled crime. I’m also on the first panel of the event, on Wednesday afternoon, talking about how I balance out different series. (TL:DR, after finishing a book I love to jump to a different character, a new location or even time period. It keeps the writing fresh for me.)

I’ve changed my approach to conferences. When I was working full-time and writing on the side, I seized every chance to slip away from the con and write. I knew the location of every Starbucks in the area around the hotel. Now that I have so much time to write, I cherish the chance to interact with people. I’ve gone through the schedule looking for opportunities to network and meet readers and editors. I hope to learn about anthology calls, joint promotions, and new trends in crime fiction.

And of course I’m looking forward to meeting readers. There’s nothing more gratifying than having someone come up to me and say that they love my books. And I hope to introduce readers to Steve and Rochester, Kimo, Angus, and Aidan and Liam.

I’ll also be at reading briefly at an event called Cocktails and Cozies, shmoozing at the bar with other LGBTQ authors on Friday evening, and participating in a speed-dating event on Saturday morning. My friend Clea Simon and I will be traveling around a room of readers table by table. Each of us will have one minute to talk about our books, then a bell will ring and we’ll move to the next table. It’s exhausting but fun, and a chance to talk one-on-one to over 150 readers.

I hope you’ve had a great summer, with the chance to read some fun books. My favorite has been Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. It’s about two high school game-playing friends who go on to develop computer games, and I enjoyed a trip down memory lane recalling my own gaming days. (Nine years producing Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune for many different platforms.)

Happy reading!

Entrepreneurship

 

As many of you know, I have an MBA as well as a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing, and I’ve always been interested in business. I spent the first twenty years of my career in real estate construction and then software development, before transitioning into another twenty years as a college professor.

Even while teaching English, I managed to bring in my business background. I taught other faculty members how to use technology—building websites and explaining computer learning platforms. In my last years I was part of a program to teach students about entrepreneurship.

That was particularly fun because I have been an entrepreneur ever since I was in college. In the mid-1970s, Lacoste shirts were just becoming fashionable, and through my mother I discovered an outlet store in Quakertown, PA that sold Lacoste seconds. Many of these shirts had nearly imperceptible flaws—maybe improper stitching on the placket, for example. The shirts were retailing then for about $18, but you could buy them at the quarterly outlet sales for four bucks.

Whenever my mother would get a postcard announcing the sale, I’d take the train from Philadelphia to Quakertown, walk about a mile to the outlet, and fill my backpack and shopping bags with shirts that passed my quality check. Then I’d return to campus and sell them to my friends for eight dollars apiece.

It was a great bargain for them, and I had the thrill of running my own small business. Later on, a friend and I sold cheesecakes by the slice at college fairs. You can read about that business here.

When I transitioned into being a self-published author, I began to learn how to run my writing efforts as a business, and that has been great fun—as well as a great challenge. I have learned that many authors don’t have the background or skill set I do, so I’ve done a lot of teaching in this area.

I’ve decided to start posting this kind of information on Substack a couple of times a month, and you’re welcome to come along for the ride. I hope that the information will be interesting even to casual readers, as you come to understand what’s going on behind the scenes of a writing business.

I promise not to bore you with statistics, and I hope that if you like the narrative voice from my books, leavened with the occasional humor, you’ll stick around.

How I Write Reviews

 A reader recently wrote to compliment me on one of my books, and to ask my advice on how to write a review.  Here's what I suggested:

When I write reviews, I consider a couple of things. First, do the characters engage me? Are they funny, awkward, smart, etc. Do they seem like real people?  Reviewers often find that they believe Rochester finds clues because he does so in a believable way, doing doggy things like sniffing, barking and digging. Then they recognize their own dog's behavior in those actions. I did have a reviewer complain about one of the earlier books that Rochester mastered the weave poles in an agility course too easily.  Yet she didn't mind that he dug up clues to the crime!

That takes into account dialogue, too. Sometimes authors use too much dialogue as exposition. "Well, Rick, after Rochester dug around in my neighbor's yard and uncovered a human finger, I confronted him and asked where it came from. He told me to get off his yard and take my lousy dog with me."

That could be much better in scene, showing Rochester digging, Steve tugging on the leash trying to get him to stop, then Rochester backing off to show the finger, etc.

And speaking of scene, can you visualize the place? Are there details of the five senses used regularly? I'm not saying you would call out each of those, but you could write something like, "the author's use of details really helped me see the characters and the places."

Then there's pace. You often read things like "I couldn't put it down." That's kind of generic. But "at the end of almost every chapter, the author posed a question that I wanted to know the answer to, forcing me to keep turning the pages." "Oh, my god, Rochester," I said. "That's a human finger!" (Chapter end.)

Critics of mystery novels often indicate if they were able to figure out the criminal quickly, or if the author put in a bunch of red herrings that kept them guessing. 

I also often mention if I have read other books by the author or in the series. Readers want to know, if this is book six, do they need to read books 1-5 first? I feel that if you are reading for the mystery, you can read my books in any order. But if you want a real sense of the growth of the characters, then I suggest reading in order. A character like Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot, however, don't change from book to book so there's no reason to read Agatha Christie in order.

I used to write book reviews for the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, among other places, so I had to hone my skills, because often I only had 75 words for the review!

Squeeze Pages and Newsletters

Here's a new term I learned this morning, courtesy of David Gaughran's newsletter. Gaughran is a marketing guru for the self-published; if you don't already read him, check him out online. His "squeeze page" is a box on the right side of his home page, in which he offers a free copy of his book "Following" in exchange for signing up for his newsletter. That's pretty much the definition of the term-- it's a page in which you offer something of value to the reader in exchange for signing up for your newsletter. Here, Gaughran is offering a free copy of his e-book Following in exchange for your email address.

Your newsletter is your most valuable asset as a writer-- it's a way for you to get in direct contact with your readers. It's advertising on a shoestring-- if you have a small list (under 1,000), you can get a company like MailChimp or MailerLite to host you for free. Then all you have to do is periodically write some engaging content-- but remember, it can't always be about sales. Let your readers get to know you as a person.

Then you can begin to develop a personal relationship with your readers. Whether you send one out monthly or semi-annually, It's a way to remind your readers that you exist, to share your triumphs (new book, new contract, new story published) and turn your fans into superfans (another Gaughran book.)

I joined a massive 180-author promo in January. I wrote a new story on the theme “Winter Wonderland,” and we leveraged our joint promotional efforts to give away nearly 100,000 gay romance e-books to readers. By offering a free copy of an otherwise unavailable e-novella, Winter Term, I added nearly 5,000 dedicated readers of the genre to my mailing list, and the unsubscribe rate was fairly low – less than ten percent so far.

Right now, this story is unavailable. Soon I will make it a giveaway to join my newsletter. (Note to self: work on that!) I have three separate newsletters-- one for gay romance, one for gay mystery, and one for fans of my golden retriever mysteries. Eventually I will have a separate giveaway for each list.

The 5,000 new signups gave me a dedicated launch pad for my February 1 release, The Gentleman and the Spy. That audience is not the only reason why I sold 200 e-books during the first two weeks of release (I did some minor other promo, including a paid newsletter listing, a newsletter swap, and visits to two other authors’ Facebook groups.) When you consider that according to Scribe Media, “Research suggests that the “average” self-published, digital-only book sells about 250 copies in its lifetime,” I’m doing pretty well so far. And I look at the “long tail” – sales over time.

My first self-published book, In Dog We Trust, came out in 2010, as the Kindle was gaining traction, and so far has sold a little over 21,000 copies on Amazon alone—add another roughly 10-15% for other sites like Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, Smashwords, and so on.

So I’d say that my gentlemen have gotten off to a good start, helped by my mailing list. I have been working, on and off, since December on my newsletter “onboarding” process—soliciting new readers, then welcoming them with a series of emails giving additional freebies and encouraging them to stay on the list, but that process is nowhere near finished—and now that I know the term “squeeze page” I’m going to keep that in mind as I polish the process.

 My favorite books of the year 2020

One good thing about this year-- lots of time to read! Here are my top mysteries, in the order I read them. Not always the BEST I read, but ones that were intriguing and well-written, with interesting settings. 

Best Mystery

Blue on Blue, Dal Maclean  Great MM police procedural

The Last Hunt, Deon  Meyer  Great police book in South Africa

Trace Elements, Donna  Leon  Love to be with Guido Brunetti again

Murder at the Mena House, Erica Ruth Neubauer  Clever Christie-like mystery set in 1026 Cairo

Bones in the River, Zoe Sharp   Great police mystery.

Next to Last Stand, Craig Johnson  Slow to start but ultimately satisfying

Quiche of Death, Mary Lee Ashford  Cute cozy with recipes in Iowa

Vera Kelly is Not a Mystery, Rosalie Knecht  Loved this lesbian mystery set in the 1960s

Left-Handed Booksellers, Garth Nix  Fun mashup of fantasy and mystery

The Sugared Game, KJ Charles  Loved this second pulp fiction story

The Sailor Who Washed Ashore #1 Frank W.  Butterfield  First in a series of very enjoyable gay mysteries set in 1947 Daytona   

 Best Non-Mystery    

The House in the Cerulean Sea TJ Klune  Fantasy that made me weep

Sharks in the Time of Saviors Kawai Strong Washburn  Excellent sense of place in Hawaii

The Confectioners Guild Claire Luana  Loved this YA fantasy mystery

Kings County David Goodwillie  Loved it. Like a Tom Wolfe set in Brooklyn

Slippery Creatures KJ Charles  Loved it. 1920s mystery with intriguing pair.

Two Rogues Make a Right Cat Sebastian  Lovely historical MM

The Calculating Stars Mary  Kowal  Excellent speculative fiction about alternative route to space

Cemetery Boys Aiden Thomas  Loved this YA with Latinx magic

Troubles in Paradise Elin Hildebrand  Loved this third in the series

The Sand Sea Michael  McClellan  Grand scope fantasy with historical twist

The Watermight Thief Jordan Rivet  Great worldbuilding and protagonist in this first in a series

Edward Albee and His Wolfhounds

Excerpts from Paws and Reflect

Here is another excerpt from this wonderful anthology, this one from award-winning playwright Edward Albee.

I BECAME INTERESTED in Irish Wolfhounds because a friend had one. He was a painter. He had invited me over to look at his canvases, and this dog came up and leaned against me. I sat down to look at a painting, and he sat down and looked with me. We moved out to his studio to look at another painting, and this big dog sat down next to me again.

We went to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee, and he stuck to my side. He had this big head, and wherever I sat, he put his head on my knee and looked up at me with his big, dark eyes. We became very good friends. He was the dog that introduced me to Irish Wolfhounds. They are the loveliest of creatures. I decided I had to have one. That was in 1969.

I’d always been a dog lover. Whenever I visit someone who owns a dog, pretty soon the animal of the house has drifted over to sit near me. People are always telling me, “This animal doesn’t like anybody—I don’t know why he’s so taken with you.” Animals and I just seem to get along.

I’ve had as many as three Irish Wolfhounds at a time. The Wolfhound breed is very special to me, but I like all dogs. At one time I had three Irish Wolfhounds, one Lhasa Apso, and one cat.

Irish Wolfhounds were originally bred to hunt wolves. We don’t have a lot of wolves in Montauk, so they’re not going after their natural prey. But their hunting nature is always with them. They are indefatigable. They can run forever.

Back when the Romans first came to Ireland, they took some of the early Irish Wolfhounds back to Rome with them and paraded them around. I wanted to parade mine around in New York. I got big leather collars for them. 

We would go to Central Park and walk to a huge hill. The dogs and I would stand at the top. The hill sloped down before us for about 300 yards. If they saw a squirrel at the bottom of the hill, they would race down it, knocking over people and bicyclists on their way. They just had to chase the squirrel. It was inconvenient for the people, but the dogs loved it.

I’ve gotten each dog from a different breeder. I make my choice on the personality of the puppy: Accessibility—a dog that’s not frightened of people. Alert. Sensitive. My Wolfhounds, in particular, have always been thoughtful, generous and intelligent—qualities that really mark the breed.

When I pick a dog, I want one that is both fully an animal, with animal instincts and one that relates to other animals, and one that is fond of being around people. I find that Wolfhounds satisfy both requirements.

Want to read more? Paws and Reflect is available from Amazon or other e-retailers.

Little Caesar

Another Excerpt from Paws and Reflect

CAESAR WAS DEAD. The little emperor who’d stolen all our hearts was gone after eighteen years, and we were left with silence and memories. He wasn’t my first dog, but he was the most memorable dog I’ve ever had the pleasure to call my friend.

His imperial name came from my little brother’s overactive imagination. But it fit Caesar’s regal personality, which was clear even in the squirming puppy that he was when he entered our lives.

I was fourteen, my sister and brother even younger, and we’d wanted nothing so much as we wanted a dog. A neighbor’s beautiful terrier, Sheba, was about to give birth. She had mated with a regal-looking, all-white Fox Terrier. My sister, brother, and I anxiously awaited the results of the match. 

When it happened, I remember my brother running home with the news that Sheba had produced a litter and that we were to choose one.

We trooped over to the house to take a look at the litter and make a choice. The squirming mass of puppy flesh was too indistinct for me to choose, and neither could my sister or brother. So Mom picked one of the puppies. We were to wait for him to be weaned and then could take him home. The waiting wouldn’t be easy, even if we could visit him each day.

A few days later, however, disaster struck—Sheba was killed by a car and the puppies had to be hand fed.

Mom picked him up, a shivering little squealing bundle who barely knew what was going on. He fit in the palm of her hand, tiny, vulnerable, and pitiful. I took one look at him and wondered how we’d keep him alive. But Mom knew more about puppies than I’d imagined. She promptly found a tiny bottle and fed him some kind of milk mixture whenever he wanted.

On the day he came home with us, my brother immediately named him Caesar. I looked at the tiny wriggling pink-and-white pup and laughed, thinking that such a big name would weigh down so small a dog. Watching him move and yawn, blink his eyes and fidget—the sight tugged at my heart and I knew that no matter what his name, I was bound to this little dog.

That was the beginning. The days turned into weeks, and he gained weight and strength and was soon standing on his own and demanding something more than milk. Next came the training—a gentle boot camp. 

Joe's website

Caesar was a quick learner and took his place among the family members in a short time. I remember staring at him and wondering how that little lump of flesh had become the handsome dog surveying his territory with an imperial air. He was like his father: shapely, sturdy, and smart. 

Unlike his father, Caesar’s white coat was marked with one black furry patch circling his right eye. But rather than appear foolish, Caesar managed to look dashing, black patch and all.

Small and quick, Caesar quickly became the neighborhood favorite. And he lapped it up. He loved the attention but also knew that he had responsibilities and took them seriously. He shook the windows with his barks and with his paws as he pounced on the storm door to frighten passersby. No one escaped his attention, especially not strange dogs, whether or not they had a human companion.

Enjoyed this excerpt? You can order Paws and Reflect from Amazon or other e-retailers.

The Girls by Victor Banis

Another Excerpt from Paws and Reflect

I'm continuing my posts of excerpts from this great collection of essays about men and their relationships with their dogs with this bit from "The Girls" by Victor Banis.

Victor was a terrific guy, a gentleman and a pioneer of gay literature who wrote prolifically for the pulp paperback world beginning in the 1960s, under many pen names. This excerpt gives you an idea of how wonderful his prose is, and his attention to detail.

She was a year old when a boyfriend—mine, not hers—arrived one day carrying in his arms a peculiar-looking little animal that purported to be a German Shepherd with the ears of a jackrabbit. 

Her name, he informed me, was Prima, and she had been terribly abused in her previous home. I pointed out that I had neither the desire nor the room for a second pet, and reminded him that my landlord had not been happy about the first one, but he asked plaintively if I would just keep her for a day or so while he found a home for her. I made the mistake of saying yes.

In all fairness, he did warn me that she was not yet housebroken. By the next morning, however, Jennie had seen to that, and they were going outside together. That struck me as even more mysterious, since it was not the sort of oddity you would expect to have happen twice. Still, I had no reason to complain.

Since we lived in the city, I tried training the newcomer to a leash, thinking that Jennie’s instant understanding of that necessity was certainly not likely to repeat itself, as the toilet training had. But Prima was such a frightened little thing that, no sooner had you put any kind of collar around her neck than she fell to the floor in a quivering, peeing mass and could not be induced to regain her feet until the collar was removed and she had been reassured that no physical violence was intended.

It was Jenny once again who took charge. To my astonishment, by the next day she had taught Prima to heel at the snap of my fingers, and from then on I could walk down a busy sidewalk in, say, West Hollywood, with both girls safely and politely at perfect heel.

How had Jenny done that? What secret language had passed between them? I only knew that whatever I wanted her to do Jenny divined, and whatever Jenny did Prima did as well. So I could come out of the kitchen into the den, where the rug had just been shampooed, and walk around the bare-floor perimeter to cross the room, and Jenny would follow after me, and Prima after her, and not a paw upon the damp rug. I could entertain less–dog enthusiastic guests in the living room and, though the girls had the run of the house, they would sit politely in the doorway while I sipped cocktails with the guests. I have had two legged friends whose manners weren’t so good.

The story of Victor's life in the pulps

They could be parted from me only by trickery. If, of necessity, I left them home without me, they would sit at the upstairs window and cry in great mournful howls until I returned, to be greeted with wagging tails and scathing looks.

The girls shared my life for fifteen happy and loving years. About halfway through that span, we moved to a cabin in the mountains. They loved it: the great outdoors, exploring together, creeks to splash in, all sorts of scents to investigate. In the summer we took long treks in the woods; in the winter, they liked me to throw snowballs for them to catch. They got friendly with the squirrels, who lost their fear of the girls and would leap over Prima when she slept in the doorway to come inside and beg for a snack.

Victor Banis passed away but his work lives on.

You can buy Paws and Reflect from Amazon or other retailers.