As Baby Birds comes to its fruition, I'm happy to say that I'm well along on a book about Chet Baker. It doesn't yet have a home in a publishing house, but that's not a big concern to me right now. What I want, and what I've accomplished, is to have a bunch of chapters written and its voice firmly established when Baby Birds hits, so you can tell exactly what it will be and what it won't be. And we'll take it from there. The time to shop a new manuscript is when your new book hits. With your help, I'm looking forward to Baby Birds hitting hard!
The Chetbook is not going to be another "Your dog is actually a wolf and here's why" book. Lord knows that's been done, and done, and done again. It's not going to be all sciencey. Well, it will have the amount of science that my everyday life does, which is a good dash, the sriracha sauce that spices every pursuit.
It's not going to go on and on about training, but it will, I hope, give you a picture of how one person molded a near-perfect companion from a little blob of black putty.
Mostly what it will be is me, telling you who this dog is, what he does and what he means to me, every day. There is adventure, reflection, reverie and the helpless laughter that Boston terriers so expertly draw from their people. The Bacon keeps giving me stories, another huge one last night, right after this video was shot. I'm saving that one for the book. I put a lot of good stuff on the blog, but I can't write the way I can in a book; I can't delve as deep. The Chetbook seems like one without an end, because his story is changing and deepening as we go. It's my story, too. Eleven years is a long time to love someone this much. I hope we have a good handful more.
Enjoy the video of Baker being hisself. Enough bulldog in him to give up the chase and come along, and enough terrier to run ahead.
Monday, February 8, 2016
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