Did You Ever Wonder What Your Dog Was Thinking?
As dog lover, I have often looked into my dogs eyes as they stared back at me and wondered aloud “What are you thinking?”
Biscuit, my golden retriever mix, often has that sad-eyed gaze down pat, while Cooper, my Chihuahua, tends to have more of that crazed look accompanied by the Chihuahua sneezes. Neither of these were very helpful in figuring out what they were thinking.
But that’s where the idea began. What if we could know our dogs’ thoughts. Would we be surprised by what they were? Maybe we’ve been wrong all along. They weren’t looking to go out, they were looking for their favorite toy, that went missing under the couch ages ago.
And so I set out to create my new book. I decided it would be a follow up of sorts to my book “Dear Snow: One Man’s Angry Rant Against Winter”. I had a concept, and a name “Dear Human: What Your Dog is Really Thinking” — now all I needed was content.
Enter in my 100 day project experiment (You can read my previous post about my 100 days of cartoon dogs project.) This was the place to pilot and test some ideas (publicly even) to see if there really was something to my concept.
After 100 days, and 100 cartoon dogs, I then began my editing and curating process of the content. Being a graphic designer comes in real handy as I created my cover art, laid out my interior of the book and over all design.
Once I had a draft together I passed it along to a few people to get some feedback, insights and corrections. (Side note — as an artist it’s tempting to create your work in solitude up on the mountain, and then only bring it down when it’s finished. Don’t do that. We all have blindspots and need the insights of others to help us do the best work we can.)
Once my edits were made, I exported my book and uploaded the appropriate files to Amazon’s KDP service for self publishing.
And there you have it!
I hope you’ve enjoyed this peek behind the curtain into the making of my new book. Moreover, I hope that maybe it’s inspired you to think about what book you might be able to create!
If you are interest in buying a copy of “Dear Human” (It makes a great gift for the dog lover in your life!) you can fetch yours on Amazon, www.Dear-Humans.com or for a signed copy head over to my website!
