Most writers (or maybe just me) worry a lot about their sanity. After all, when your day job involves mentally leaping from reality into fiction and (hopefully) back out again, it’s easy to wobble a bit upon landing.
Like the time (and I’m sure this has happened to everyone) I found myself straining to discern what my little desktop fan was whispering as it rotated (was it whisk-whisk-whisk it? or wish-wish-wish it?) before remembering fans (motorized ones anyway) can’t talk. They just blow hot air.
Or ridding myself of my secret (until now) belief that my furniture (especially the ones with the cute legs, like the squatty yellow dresser in my bedroom) have personalities à la those in Disney movies. (For the record, I never believed my chubby dresser could sing or dance; it simply smiles all the time.)
And let’s all agree right now on stuffed animals, and the impossibility of purging them. Of sticking them in plastic bags (where they can’t even breathe!) in the hopes that after donation, they’ll find their forever home. (From a thrift store? Let’s get real here, people. What are the odds?)
But personally, I view the above (and I’m sure you do, too) as mere mental missteps. Slight stumbles on the narrow (yet still totally solid) path of reality. But imagine my shock when my friend Mindy Neff and I were walking (literally) along the border of her high desert property and the path (figuratively) disappeared. When we came face to face with Puppy—the (supposedly) fictional Cane Corso mastiff I’d created for Domesticating Luc!
Well, I was dumbstruck and dumbfounded, astounded and astonished (all the dumb/ass emotions at once). It was as if Puppy had bounded from his book (although it wasn’t around), to land right in front of us! (Or technically off to the side behind a chainlink fence.) Same dark coat. Same muscular build. Same somber demeanor and sweet, deep-set eyes. The uncropped ears and tail had possibly been added (like Superman’s glasses) as some kind of disguise, but still…
It was Puppy!
Mindy tried to deny it. Told me that this mastiff was Louie, apparently Puppy’s doppelgänger, who her neighbors had found wandering the railroad tracks on New Year’s day and adopted when they couldn’t find his owners. (C’mon, Mindy! You write romantic suspense. An abandoned dog found New’s Year’s Day along the railroad tracks? Like an orphaned, doggy hobo? That’s obviously a (kinda cliche) cover story designed to hide Puppy’s true identity. And they couldn’t “find” his owners because he’d jumped out of my book! And his owners were still in there!)
Sheesh. Even when the evidence is right before their eyes (and you’ve got a picture!) some people just can’t deal with reality…
