Thank You.

Thanks, everyone, for your input. I so appreciate the yeahyeahyeahs, and I also appreciate the nahnahnah’s. Much as a Leo loves approval, it’s actually kind of nice to know not EVERYONE’S here for the dog! How’s that for positive spin?

Whoops, Leona the lion is getting out of her little cage. Hello, Leona. Do you have something to say to everyone?

I want to reassure you that any book I write is going to have some tasty meat in the sandwich. Just to clarify, I’m not talking about a bunch of photos with cute captions here. I mean, people. You read the blog, right?

All right, Leona. Back! Back!

As a true creative hermit, I’m continually surprised at the extent to which my readers’ and friends’ thoughts are able to influence mine. I floated this book idea to my wise friend W., and his first reaction was that it needed paintings and sketches as well as photographs. Oh. Duh. Hadn’t thought of that. Well, all right. I’ll think about that. And here you are, saying the same thing. So now it looks like I’ll have to get out the pencils and watercolors. A good thing. Always a good thing.

To tell you the truth, thinking about the Chetbook is a little refuge for me when I’m deep into painting illustrations for my current book. As I laboriously create the paintings, I like to muse about how easy it would be, by comparison, to send my editor a compact disc full of photographs to illustrate a future book. So that’s partly where this idea is coming from. And now I see I shouldn’t rule out drawings and paintings. I SHOULD be drawing this dog. I should be drawing my kids, too. There’s another big Duh. You can’t do everything. Sometimes doing anything is a stretch.

Marcia, I am most grateful for your marketing ideas. The time I spend on the Internet has been given largely to blogging or researching, not surfing, and I don’t frequent Boston terrier sites or chatrooms of any kind. I had no idea there is a magazine devoted to the breed, though I shouldn’t be surprised. Smart marketing is key to getting a book into the right hands. I really appreciate your input, which was all new to me. When time comes, I will reach out again to the Boston terrier people and figure out how best to target the True BT Believers.

Anonymous (Leslieyosh), you get it. Thank you. More on your comment later. :-)

MojoMan, I hear you loud and clear about Chet’s story not being finished. God forbid the day it is. This book isn’t something that would come out next year. It would very much be a work in progress. Maybe a several-volume thing.

Chet Baker: The Early Years.

Chet Baker: Prime of Life.

Chet Baker: Dotage.

That was a joke.

As I found when he dropped off the rock cliff, Chet is far from done living his life and giving me thrills, inspiration, comfort, and hilarity in equal measures. I don’t know what happens to Chet in the end. Most of me hopes that nothing ever really happens to him. For every big event, there are a thousand little stories in this dog, and I’m grateful I started telling them when he was just a flop-eared pup. I want to keep telling them while he is here and warm by my side. You forget, day to day, all the little things. And it’s the little things that add up to something larger. All hail electronic archiving.

There will come a time to bring them all together, to sum it all up, and I’ll know when that time comes. I expect him to continue to teach and amaze me, to help me understand how one good dog can take someone from “No! I don’t need one more thing to care for!”

to “I don’t know what I would do without him.”

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Looks like we've pre-sold a hundred copies.

But onward and forward with the bird memoir. First things first. Thanks for your patience and your understanding. I wish you all a peaceful Christmas.

Well I'm learning

It's peaceful

With a good dog and some trees...

-Joni Mitchell, "Electricity"