Furbabies

Music, coffee, tea… everyone has something by their side while they write, helping them push through the idle fog blocking the creative process and keep them sane. For some of us, it’s pets. Sweet, troublesome creatures that they are, they comfort us when we’re frustrated, and annoy us when we’re in the zone. Cats, dogs, fish, birds, reptiles, and everything else.

Lauren shares her writing bubble with her fur baby boy, Jasper. He’s a 4 ½ year old mutt found as a puppy behind a Waffle House. After a few days of fostering, the decision was made not to adopt him out. We’ve been told that he is likely either a Springer, Brittany, or Aussie mix, but definitely some sort of good ol’ fashion Labrador mix. He’s an anxious doofus who is only happy if he has his mom near, but likes the freedom to go lay in the hallway when he’s tired of trying to lay on top of her Chromebook when she’s trying to work. He also likes to lay on top of Xbox controllers and TV remotes so you can’t find them. When he’s not silently providing moral support (or, sleeping adorably, as it were) he will sit as close to the computer chair as he can, often getting his chin on the armchest, and whine insistently to be given attention, because clearly he is far more important than the development of your novel.

Jasper

When in Georgia, Anna divides her attention between her two cocker spaniels, Tiana and Jasmine. They are seven and six years old, respectively, and playful as they are cuddly. Both are rescues, and both are as different as their coats. Where Tiana, the cute blonde, loves people of all types and will nosily demand attention by crawling into stranger’s laps and bumping their hands for pets, Jasmine, with her curly black coat, is the introvert dog, who finds meeting new people a little nerve wracking, and much prefers to lay by your legs of her own choosing, to be close without being smothered. Things are quite the opposite when it comes to the dread vacuum, though, and Jasmine bravely tried to murder the noisome machine, while Tiana cowers. The true struggle, though, comes when both are attempting to garner attention from Anna at the same time, and often leads to dramatic, snarling dog fights. Such is the woe of being so fiercely loved by two adorable dogs.

Tiana

Jasmine

What kind of pets do you guys have? What sort of kinship do you hold with them? What do you find them doing when you’re working on your writing? If you don’t have any writing companions, what kind do you see yourself one day having? Do you have any characters that own interesting pets, mundane or fantastical? Leave us a comment and let us know!

-Lauren & Anna

It's The End of The Year As We Know It

Howdy Folks,

At last, we are drawing close to the end of the year. I apologize for the radio silence. Not only was there Nano to contend with, but the rapidly approaching holidays have just about eaten all of our free time (mostly due to extra working hours). But soon, soon the blissful freedom of January shall be here.

Just as an update, Lauren and I are currently working on giving Forstfire one last revision before tweaking our submission packet and hitting the streets again to sell our novel to agents. If nothing percolates from this round, we have discussed possibly looking at other publshing routes, but we really want to give this another good round before we move on.

Our novel we worked on during Nano is about half-finished, and put on a backburner at the moment as we realized it was not developing quite as we envisioned. We have promised to return to it soon with a stronger gameplan once the new revisions are done on Frostfire and our attention is free to focus on it. We started in on another novel idea, but it is admittedly progressing slowly due to the large amount of focus Frosty is taking.

All in all, the end of this year is proving busy beyond measure, but hopefully with excellent things to show for it come 2019.

Til Next Time,
Anna Harpe