New Freebie + Another Step Closer...

I've been busy working on the final draft of my Charlie, The Mystery-Solving Great Dane & His Quick Traveling Partners series book 1 - 1st to Find.

That's a mouthful!

The joy in working with Charlie and His Quail Buddies has been marvelous. Tedious, daunting, even boring at times, I've persevered and worked through a story level edit, moving on to a scene level edit, and am finally on the dreaded grammar and sentence level edit. (Can you hear the sigh?)

While working with Charlie and his quail friends has been pure joy, at times I needed to walk away.

So I created something!

My wonderful cover designer, Gabby, created a coloring page for my fans to use their imagination and color Charlie's world as they see fit.

Click the image on the left and it will take you to my Freebies page where you can download other items and really get to know Charlie and his Quails Buddies.

As an author, I want Charlie to leap off the page. I want you, the reader, to see him like I do. A gentle giant who only wants love and attention from the people around him.

As a dog, he only sees in black and white, not the vivid colors surrounding us. He relies heavily on his nose for direction, danger, and dog treats.

But he's the first one to stand in front of a 3 year old boy and wait for a small hand to pat his head.

He loves the attention no matter how short you are, he'll use his nose to tap your hand and continue to 'play' with you until I tug his leash and continue on our way.

I want you to see Charlie interact with his best friends, whether they sport feathers or fingers. The way they talk to each may not even be with words, but they definitely communicate.

The reason for writing this series was to engage children with a dog they may never encounter. A dog so large most people fear him for his size, when he's not scary, he's an over-sized lap dog.

Or at least that's what he thinks, but we know better!

As a dog lover for most of my life, living on a farm with dogs of all breeds, I've learned a few things about the animal most people might not know.

My experience is mostly with German Shepherds and Labs, but there were the odd Poodle and Doberman in the mix. What I've noticed, observed, even tested, is that dogs have a mind of their own.

It doesn't matter if you call them, if they don't want to come, they won't.

It doesn't matter if they're in danger, just like children, they don't sense it, or know it's about to happen (hence the collision with a car).

We see resemblance to human characteristics in many of our pets, cats included. I haven't had much experience with cats, mostly barn cats only, but in my short-lived experiment observing them, they are complex creatures.

And now you know why I write this series!

Observing animals for most of my life has been a joy. They comfort us when we're sad, they cower away from us when we're stomping around the house, but they know when it's dinner time.

You can't use the can opener without the cat leaning against your leg. Don't think you can tear the bag of dog food quietly because you can't, he'll know the minute he hear's the rip start!

I look forward to editing book 2 - 2nd to Search because I get to spend more time with Charlie and his quail buddies. I hope this time the process will be smoother since I'm getting better at editing with each pass.

Book 4 will be outlined soon and written this November for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month - it's 50,000 words in 30 days and it's fun).

Can't wait to spend even more time with my best friends.

Until then, enjoy getting to know Charlie, the quails, the Peterman's, and maybe even me, too!