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Susan Waller Miccio, author of Dog Star, will be visiting us as part of the BookLocker Virtual Tour.      Susan is the author of entertaining and scholarly books about Tibetan Spaniels, including The Tibetan Spaniel - A Gift from the Roof of the World.

Cheryl: Are there any other mystery-solving dog books out there? I thought that the animal sleuths were all cats! What possessed you? Do you read mysteries and you finally got tired of all the cats? Did someone else suggest it to you?

Susan: I wish I could claim credit for the idea of writing dogs into mysteries, but I can’t. A rich and varied bibliography of dog lovers’ mysteries is out there. Wonderful dog writers such as Susan Conant, Carol Lea Benjamin, Laurien Berenson and many others have contributed to this genre within a genre.

I do think my series has a couple different twists. Most of the dogs featured in dog mysteries are large breeds such as Standard Poodles, Malamutes and Pit Bulls. Tibetan Spaniels (Tibbies, for short), Dawa and Senge, are small dogs but intelligent and curious with a dash of the mischievous and a pinch of the mystical thrown in for good measure. Little Dawa (who is an old soul) says, “The depth of our intelligence and the height of our awareness are of much greater significance to us than length of teeth or height at withers. And we must behave as our natural gifts demand.” The Tibbies take an active role in solving the mysteries, and that is also unusual in the dog mystery genre.

It really wasn’t much of a stretch for me to write fiction about Tibbies. In collecting material for my non-fiction books, Tibbie owners around the world told me stories about the intelligence and sensitivity, tinged with the psychic, of their dogs. I had read mysteries for many years. I eagerly awaited each new book in the historical mystery series of writers such as Ellis Peters, Lindsey Davies, and Stephanie Barron. I’d also read every dog mystery I could lay hands on, including those by the authors I’ve already mentioned and others. I’d also read cat mysteries such as the Mrs. Murphy mysteries by Rita Mae Brown, which incidentally feature a corgi sidekick along with the feline sleuths. When I was ready to try my hand at fiction, the mystery genre seemed a good fit for me. I took that old chestnut – “Write what you know” – seriously. It was just natural for me to write a mystery with Tibbies set here in Delaware.

“Sassy”

Cheryl: How hard was it to keep the dogs from taking over the novel? I’m replaying that old saw about actors not wanting to work with animals or kids. Or was it just the opposite - hard to find ways to work in the Tibbies?

Susan: Actually, it was neither and yet both. Yeah, I know that’s ambiguous. What I mean is that I was always aware of finding the “right” balance between the scenes where Abby, the human heroine, and the other human characters dominate –- let’s call those the anthropocentric scenes – and those where Dawa, Senge and the other canine characters dominate – let’s call those the caninocentric scenes. In the anthropocentric scenes, the humans are communicating with one another, thinking, and acting; the dogs are there and the humans interact with them but only in way that we interact with our pets. In the caninocentric scenes, it’s the dogs communicating, thinking and acting; the humans are likewise there but we’re sort of off to the side, like their pets. (There’s an old joke that Tibbies own us, not the other way around.)

Both kinds of scenes had to stand alone and yet be intertwined, and both kinds of scenes had to advance the plot but in different ways. Most of the action, for example, has to be in the anthropocentric scenes simply because we humans have the independence to move around as we choose. Dogs don’t. The caninocentric scenes had to advance the plot through the heightened senses and observations of the dogs as expressed in their conversations with one another. And, yeah, it was hard to do this, but that was the challenge and fun of it. It was also hard to find the scene-appropriate, authentic Tibetan proverbs that Dawa likes to drop into all her speeches.

By the way, one of the toughest decisions I had to make was how much to anthropomorphize the dogs. Giving human personality traits to dogs is anathema to most dog writers. I knew that some dog writers would denounce my device of dogs talking to one another, quoting proverbs, remembering past lives, and all the rest. I was like the character Peggy in the book who was upset and ambivalent when her Chessie “spokesdog” is dubbed with a voice in his commercials. In the end, I wrote dogs who talk, but they aren’t clowns. They are dignified, intelligent, wise, brave and sweet. I don’t really think my talking dogs are analogous to those ridiculous chimpanzees in costumes.

Cheryl: Why/How did you make the move from scholarly works to fiction?

Susan: I took a sabbatical to write my nonfiction books. I invested four years of research and significant expense in my first nonfiction book. That was back in the day when the internet was in its infancy, and only a few people had email. I had to wait weeks for answers to letters from Australia and Europe. I spent hundreds of dollars in international phone calls.

When I went back to work, I still needed the creative outlet of writing but, as a practical matter, I could not invest the same kind of time and money in my projects. Imagination is free, and verisimilitude requires a whole lot less research. Rich, ready-made sources of inspiration were all around me. Besides, when you have no literary pretensions and just want to entertain, fiction is way more fun than non-fiction.

Cheryl: Who do you see as your target audience? Who’s been buying your book? It’s one of the top-selling BookLocker mystery titles so you’re doing something really well.

Susan: Dog Star is a “cozy” – the type of mystery that features an amateur sleuth, often female, and non-graphic violence. Typically, cozies appeal more to women than men. (Men gravitate to more hard-boiled, professional sleuths and graphic violence.) It also appeals to animal-lovers in general, dog-lovers more specifically – a huge demographic in the United States. In terms of marketing, I leveraged my contacts in the dog world and people who bought my non-fiction.

Cheryl: Do you have insider info on television spokesdogs or is that fictional (maybe based on other’s experience or wholly made up/imagined)?

Susan: I have no insider knowledge of spokesdogs. It is axiomatic that dogs and kids improve the marketability of whatever it is you’re selling. Witness how many politicians do photo ops with dogs and cute kids. In Dog Star, the dog star is selling tourism. I chose tourism as a vehicle to set scenes in various interesting places around Delmarva. Although I imagined my spokesdog and his commercials, I based it loosely based on reading about dogs in show business.

Cheryl: Was it fairly easy to write about the competitiveness among dog owners?

Susan: Oh yeah. Ethical dog breeders and exhibitors show for the benefit and improvement of their dogs and breeds, with a dose of healthy competitiveness thrown in. However, when ego and personalities get in the way, as they often do, competitiveness is twisted into counterproductive and occasionally vicious behaviors to the detriment of dogs.

Cheryl: Finally, are Senge and Dawa modelled on two of your current five dogs?

Susan: They’re modeled on a mélange of my Tibbies and many others I know. Dawa’s personality is based largely on my Ciana – her sweetness, perfection and intelligence - but looks like Patches, who was a particolor. Senge looks like my Willy, who is pictured on the back of Dog Star, but his personality is very much like Bear – a worrier preoccupied with food but loyal, loving, and brave when called upon. The other dogs featured in each book are also based on dogs of my acquaintance. A Pug and a Mastiff join forces with Dawa and Senge in the next book. Visit my website www.susanwallermiccio.com to meet the Miccio Tibbies.

Cheryl: Thanks, Susan!      Okay, readers, go to BookLocker and buy Dog Star so when Susan shows up for our Virtual Book Tour so you can ask her your own questions! Link to excerpt

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Susan Waller Miccio is the internationally recognized author of entertaining and scholarly books about Tibetan Spaniels. Susan belongs to the Dog Writers Association of America and Tibetan Spaniel clubs in the US and Australia. She lives in Delaware with her “attitude” of five Tibbies.

The virtual tour starts here

Tags: Tibetan Spaniels, Dog Star, Miccio, Mystery, Author, Delaware