So I wrote a children’s book. Actually, co-wrote. My step-mother-in-law and I put our heads together over some wine (shocker) on a wine-filled Napa weekend last year and came up with a plan to write a book based on our dogs. Evil, the affectionate name for my step-mother-in-law (my husband coined it, Evil loves it. It’s a name that is quite the contrary to her true self. Her name is actually Sara), knows a guy who knows a girl who happens to be an unbelievable illustrator Erin Wainscott.

So we got to mapping out this book on our dogs. We love our dogs, but why would anyone else? I guess that’s a question anyone who writes a book around themselves or their lives must ask. Who cares? This didn’t matter to us getting started – it was the process, not the end result, we were excited about. If we printed two copies for our own bookshelves and that was it, so be it. We decided to bring back the animals-have-an-owner aka Christopher Robbins style, get these dogs up to no good, have their confident and carefree female Irish red head 10-year old owner Sam (Sara And Megan) teach the dogs (and the kids out there!) good values and life lessons. Basic, yes. But kids’ books are pretty basic.

Seven months later and after a lot of story-boarding, research, many edits, ample phone calls, several in-person meetings (she lives in San Francisco and I in Vancouver), lots of wine, an enormous amount of back-and-forth on the illustrations, more edits, advisory phone calls, publisher calls, and then some, we have a book.

And it’s beautiful!

We used a service called Blurb – it’s an easy way to print and self publish – and we’ve started cracking on more books in the series. This stuff becomes addictive. The market is incredibly saturated with a TON of competition. It’s not the goal to become a rich kid’s writer – does that even exist outside of JK and Dr. Suess? But this project was a blast. The site and being able to purchase the book (and dare I say the series) is coming down the pipes in 2010. Then we’ll start knocking on some publishers doors…

And this is a look at the real Capo and Jasper.