At least, we have. And I'm guessing our loyal followers have been, too.

I, personally, have been waiting to make an announcement like this since we started the blog. And I've been chomping at the bit to make this particular announcement since I first heard the words, "I'm thinking of writing a book about..." We all knew, right then, that this book was going to be something special. And all of us were delighted (though not exactly surprised) when editors thought the same.

Our own Donna Cooner has sold her first YA novel.

And not just any novel. A novel of grace, and elegant prose, with a gut-grabbing hook and meltingly honest characters.

Here is what Publisher's Marketplace had to say today:

Donna Cooner's SKINNY, about a girl whose obesity and negative thoughts stand in the way of her dreams of becoming a singer and finding love, until she begins a long, hard journey of self-discovery and reinvention culminating in gastric-bypass surgery, only to find that love was never dependent on her size, to Aimee Friedman at Scholastic, at auction, in a good deal, in a two-book deal, for publication in 2012, by Sarah Davies at Greenhouse Literary Agency (NA).

So have a glass of champagne and congratulate Donna!

Yep, I’m a published photographer. Yep, the picture on the left of my dog Bailey is forever posted on the National Geographic WILD website. Don’t worry, I’ll wait while you wrangle back your jealousy.

*Buffs fingernails on shirt. Waits patiently.*

Seriously, I’ve got my own goat-dog and a stroke of luck to thank for it. Here’s what happened:

My wife and I have two amazing dogs. They’re four-year-old brothers from the same litter of half-Yellow Lab and half-Golden Retriever. Cody (a.k.a The Code or Code-a-licious) got all the loving, dumb beauty of the Golden. Bailey (or Bail-lickers to his friends) wound up with the Lab. Together, they are our Red Devils. I love them both in their own unique way, but this post is specifically about Bailey.

For those of you who are fortunate to know a Lab (or read Donna’s post or have seen one across the park) understand they are both brilliant and tragically stupid all at the same time. Bailey heels better than most heelers out there. He can pick out certain toys by name. Also, I’ve seen him stare, genuinely surprised, at his own butt after farting.

All of these qualities are endearing . However, he does have once vice I will forever battle: rock eating.

Yep, Bailey loves minerals. Sometimes I picture him like Bubba naming off all the different types. Granite rocks, marble rocks, pumice rocks. You’ve got your sedimentary rocks and your river rock and your… Any time he’s left alone with a stone big enough to go in his mouth…well, it goes in his mouth.

I’ve caught him countless times “chewing” away on one. I pull it from his mouth, yelling and pointing. He cowers and, believe me, never touches THAT rock again. We even keep him in a dog run without bite-size mineral snacks, but it wasn’t always that way - they used to do their business on a bed of the yummy things.

A couple year ago, Bailey woke up sick. Really sick. Poor pup couldn’t stomach water. Within seconds of entering the exam room, the vet touched – actually, "grazed" is a better word – his stomach with a single pinkie.

“I’m going to get an x-ray,” she said as she whisked Bailey out of the room.

A few worried minutes later, they charged back in. She shoved an x-ray film on the light board. “Count ‘em!” She said.

And I did.

Seven.

Seven, silver-dollar sized rocks had passed from his small intestine to his large and were on the way out. Which was lucky for him, otherwise, she’d need to do a “looksy surgery” (That’s right, dogs *cough, Labs, cough* eat enough stupid stuff to warrant a cute name for the exploratory procedure.).

“And guess what?” The vet smiled. “You’ll get to count them on the way out too.”

And I did.

(Yes, it was as glamorous as it sounds, thanks for asking.)

Needless to say, I shoveled out every last rock from their dog run.

Cut a few months ahead. I’m seated next to a new writer friend at the 2010 international SCBWI conference in NYC and I told her this story. She loved it.

Cut another several months ahead. Turns out that same friend works for NationalGeograhpic.com and she needed to write a short article about the crazy stuff dogs eat. And what story did she want? And who’s picture?

On May 4^th, 2010 Bailey, his intestines, and my picture at the beach went national. Click here to see it.

Now thanks to Jodi Kendall (check out her website) and Bailey’s bad habit, I’ve got a picture published on nationalgeographic.com AND I’m quoted on it talking about poop.

*Buffs nails again. Smiles smugly.*

The perfect writing day for me would be in the winter, with a heavy rain beating at the windows of my office. I’d have my sweats on, a big mug of coffee at my desk, great music playing, and all the time in the world.

The reality is that there are usually at least six children (only two are mine) tearing around the house, slamming doors, yelling, asking for food, or asking for more food. The phone rings. People need to be picked up or dropped off. Doors slam again.

Meanwhile, I write. How do I do that in the midst of this chaos? Well, I have two great teammates. They are named Lola and Ivan.

This is Lola.

She’s my girl. I love this dog. I love all dogs. But this dog is special.

This is Ivan.

He’s new. We just got Ivan but everyone’s crazy about him already. He’s either very regal or very mischievous. Mostly mischievous.

Lola and Ivan are always with me in my office.

Here’s Lola on my desk. Yes, on it.

That was her spot until Ivan took over.

They’re my little pals. My protectors, even though they sleep most of the time.

When the kids burst in, or the doors slam, either Ivan or Lola will lift their head and look at me.

This is what I imagine them saying to me: You got this one? Because I’m feeling pretty darn good over here. Hurry back, though. We’ll be here waiting for you. We like it when you’re at your desk, making that tap tap tapping sound with your fingertips.

And I do hurry back. And they are waiting for me.

In a strange and wonderful way, they provide a sense of continuity and peacefulness to my loud and chaotic day. Even if I’m not experiencing the perfect writing circumstances, they help make every day pretty darn good, as Ivan would say.

There's no questions that pets can be real characters, so it's not surprising that pets have a way of turning up in my books.

In Bandia, the main character has a horse named Dart, a project horse she got off the track and is training to be a jumper.  The money to buy and keep Dart comes right out of her college fund, and Brianna has to sell Dart if she wants to go to college. Dart is based on a horse I had in high school named Heart, an appendix quarter horse that I got off the track and trained as a jumper, and yes, had to sell in order to go to college.  Dart was easy to write because he was real.  His habit of nudging Brianna's pockets in search of carrots is something I remember clearly from those days with Heart.  Certainly, the emotional conflict inherent in commoditizing a beloved animal was well known to me.  Horses were a huge part of my life as a teen, and it felt like I was honoring Heart by giving him life on the page.

With Spies, the chicken came before the egg.  Or is it the other way around?  I started writing the book in June 2009, I know this because the main character's pet, Lulu, appeared in the early chapters.  Lulu is a sweet-natured Saint Bernard that takes up most of the available space in Berry and her father's detached condo.  I had never had a Saint Bernard before.  In fact, I had lost my own beloved Akita a few months before I started writing and was missing having a dog around the house.  Not surprisingly, Lulu grew on me very quickly.

Within a week of Lulu appearing on the page, I began doing "research" online, finding information about the breed and its history.  Soon I was trolling breeder websites for puppy pictures.  And before long, I was calling breeders to interview them about their dogs.  The next weekend, I found myself driving to visit a breeder three hours away to "look" at puppies.  I might have borrowed my daughter's SUV, loaded a kennel in the back and taken my checkbook along too.

Three hours later, I was the proud owner of Huckleberry (that's him on the right), my own ten week old Saint Bernard of Doom.  Huckleberry is as sweet and as loving as I imagined Lulu to be.  He also provides me with details that I never could have imagined on my own.

How could I know that the soft fur behind his ears would be forever tangled, no matter how often it is brushed?  I would have no understanding of what it's like to dress up to go out only to have a Saint wipe a long line of drool across your skirt.  How could I know that a dog this big would be afraid to come to the door unless he knew the person on the other side?  How else would I know that Saint Bernard drool dries to the consistency of Elmer's glue?

These are the rich details that come from living with and loving a pet. Call it method writing.

Pets bring humor and love to our lives, is it any wonder that they also bring something to the page?

For those of you who didn’t read Donna’s post yesterday (and if you didn’t, why not?  Go look now), you may have guessed we’re talking about pets this week.  As Donna said, pets are great for writers – companions who don’t talk (but still, amazingly, interrupt!) – and provide great comic relief.  Pets worm their way into our hearts, our blog posts, and sometimes, even our books.

I have a dog.  He’s a quintessentially English dog who lives up to the old phrase, “Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun.”  Because he is both (mad and English), he will lie – bellyup – in the sun when it is 113 degrees in the shade.

We got him from the RSPCA (the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals).  They had found him alone in a too-small cage on the side of a busy country road.  In England, when you are all alone, you are “all on your todd.”  So that’s what they named him.  And it stuck.

Though he didn’t appreciate the journey (the British Airways stewardess could hear his crazed barking in the hold through the floor of the first class cabin) he did appreciate the move to California.  It’s warmer here.  And we go to the beach more often. 

He also appreciates my writing career.  And has learned to capitalize on it.  Even at the ripe old age of fourteen, he is an opportunist of the highest degree.  He can’t see very well anymore, and his hearing is definitely going.  But his sense of smell makes up for that.

My agent lives in Australia.  So telephone calls from her are a big deal.  Early this spring, I had just returned home from a massive grocery shopping trip (trying to make up for a week of dinners of grilled cheese sandwiches and naked pasta).  I had a bag in each hand (canvas of course, we’re nothing if not eco-friendly in this house), managed to kick the door shut and the phone rang.  In my purse.

So I dropped everything (literally), saw that the call came from Catherine, and took it in my office (read – bedroom with a desk in it). 

Business finished, I went about the rest of my evening, put everything away in the kitchen and got the food on the table when I heard squeaking. Todd makes this noise when he’s in distress. 

I found him in the living room.  In the middle of the floor.  Squeaking.

Right next to a Styrofoam tray.  Licked clean.

I had left one of the bags of groceries on the sofa.  And the temptation of a pound of steak proved too much for him. This is a small dog.  Twenty pounds, tops.  So a pound of steak distended his belly to drum-like proportions.  I couldn’t tell if he was squeaking because he was disgustingly full or because the steak was gone. 

Todd, unlike Donna’s Goat Puppy, was not at all sorry.

Once upon a time there was a very good dog named Cassidy. She was eleven years old, sweet, easy to train, and very obedient. She hung out at home with her best friend, Stu.
Everything was so nice that their owner, Donna, thought it'd be great to get a new puppy to keep them company.

So she brought home Roxanne. Roxanne was really a goat disguised as a cute, chocolate lab puppy. When Donna was gone, Roxanne entertained herself by eating a pound of sugar, a kiwi, and a couple of potatoes out of the pantry.

But she was really sorry (notice the sugar still stuck to her ears).



Another time when Donna left, Roxanne ate the firewood and the birdseed in the basket by the backdoor.



But she was really sorry.



Then Roxanne, the Goat Dog, had a big party with the feather pillows on Donna's couch. When Donna came home, she tried to stay very still like a Sphinx and be invisible, so maybe she wouldn't be noticed...

Because she was very, VERY sorry.



Now, Roxanne has to stay in her crate when Donna is gone and she is trying to be good (most of the time). She likes to play with Cassidy and sleep with Stu. She is part of the family, even when she is a goat. Roxanne's big news is that she will be able to see herself in print when Donna's new book, SKINNY, comes out in Fall, 2012.



P.S. I think having pets is a must for a writer, don't you? After all, who else can give you unconditional adoration and also provide you with great stories?