It rained most of the week here in Twin Bridges so I stayed in and worked on CHERISHED. (With the occasional visitor – see above.) Some of the essays in the anthology are reprints and two of them didn't scan properly so I couldn't turn them into Word documents – the only way to get them into my computer and manuscript was to type them myself. What had loomed as a boring chore turned into an oddly fascinating experience. The essays were written by two of my favorite writers – Mark Doty and Anne Lamott – and to type through their stories was a much deeper and illuminating view of their words and experience. When you type out someone else's essay you don't miss a word, you get involved in the cadence of their sentences in an intimate way, you feel part of the story. (I also learned once again that I don't have a clue about commas so it was also a comma lesson.) Try it with a passage by a writer you love – it's a whole new way of appreciating someone's work. 

It'll be worth the price of the book to read just these two essays; I laughed and cried as I typed them. One is Anne Lamott's funny and heartbreaking "This Dog's Life" and the other is the ending of Mark Doty's beautiful book Dog Years. But in fact all the essays in the anthology are fabulous – I'm in love with my writers. Some are famous, some not famous yet, though all are published. They love animals and all are terrific writers. The pub date for CHERISHED: 21 Writers on Animals They've Loved & Lost is April 2011 (New World Library) and don't worry – you'll be hearing more from the Marketing Whore.