Thinkingdog Publishing

There are few sounds in the life of an author more emotionally loaded than the groan of an old printer waking from hibernation. Not the cheerful hum of a modern office machine, mind you. I mean the old one. The dusty beast squatting in the corner like a retired dragon guarding ancient toner cartridges and unresolved grudges from 2017. The printer you haven’t touched in so long that when you finally press the power button, it sounds personally offended. As a cozy mystery author, I spend most of my days happily tucked inside the digital world. My manuscripts float safely in cloud storage. My notes live in apps with color-coded tabs. My editor leaves comments in neat little bubbles instead of scribbling in red pen like an irritated schoolmaster from a Victorian boarding academy. And yet. Every now and then, despite all our noble intentions to save paper and become streamlined digital creatures of the future, an author needs a hard copy. Maybe it’s edits. Maybe it’s proofreading. Maybe you...

This morning, I opened my laptop with the kind of determination normally associated with heroic quests, tax audits, or people who genuinely believe they can clean out the garage “in one afternoon.” I had one thing on my list: I was going to write a brilliant marketing post for my books. Possibly several. Something clever and charming and irresistibly engaging that would make readers laugh warmly into their coffee while simultaneously rushing to buy cozy mysteries. Instead, I spent twenty minutes staring at Canva before accidentally resizing a photograph of Blueberry to the dimensions of a highway billboard. Then I opened Facebook, forgot why I was there, wandered into the kitchen for more coffee, remembered I already had coffee, reheated the original coffee, and returned to my desk only to discover I had somehow opened seventeen tabs and absolutely none of them contained a usable thought. This, unfortunately, is what many people do not tell you about being an indie author. People see t...

Here's what I'd noticed: when someone asks "how are you?", we mostly answer with a verbal shrug. Oh, you know. Tired. Busy. Surviving. And then we nod at each other, having successfully confirmed that being alive is a lot of work and neither of us wishes to elaborate. Because — and I say this with love — nobody actually wants the download. Answer that polite little question with a four-minute report on your car's mysterious new noise and your neighbour's judgmental dog, and you can watch the light leave a person's eyes in real time. They asked out of habit. You handed them a monologue. But. And it's a glorious, magnificent but. Walk around genuinely smiling — not the frozen caffeine grin, but a warm, I-know-something-you-don't smile — and suddenly everyone is desperately curious about you. Like you've strolled in holding a mysterious little box, and the whole room wants to know what's inside. So naturally, I ran an experiment....

🐾 5 Cozy Mystery Series Pixie Would Consider Starring In (as told by Pixie the Magical Papillon, international jewel thief of hearts and occasional solver of crimes) Listen carefully, dear reader. I do not audition . I grace productions with my presence . However… after reviewing the literary landscape (while reclining on a velvet cushion, naturally), I have selected a few series that might be worthy of… me. 1. The “Large Dog Energy, Questionable Elegance” Option Baker Street Mysteries A 250-pound mastiff named Baby? Adorable. Excessive. Slightly drooly. I would, of course, bring refinement. Imagine it: I enter the bakery, solve the murder, and leave without a single crumb on my fur. A revolution. 2. The “Finally, Someone Who Listens to Dogs” Situation Dog Walker Mysteries A human who can hear dogs’ thoughts? At last. Someone who will document my brilliance accurately . I have been saying for years that I am the true detective. The humans simply hold the snacks. 3. T...

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. Not journaling. Not “dear diary.” No, no. Full-scale, dramatic, emotionally riveting, possibly suspiciously embellished storytelling. “Active imagination,” they called it. “Lying,” my mother called it. In fairness, I can see her point. If a child comes home from school and claims she single-handedly rescued a flock of endangered geese while befriending a mysterious old woman who may or may not have been a witch… well… questions will be asked. But give me this: those stories had structure. They had pacing. They had emotional arcs. Honestly, they deserved better editorial support. My favorite assignment every single year was the classic: What I Did This Summer. Other kids wrote half a page about popsicles and sunburns. I turned in seven pages without taking a breath. Characters were introduced. Plot twists unfolded. There may have been a subplot involving a dramatic betrayal at a lemonade stand. Looking back, it wasn’...

 There is a moment — somewhere between hitting "publish" and refreshing your sales dashboard for the seventeenth time in a single afternoon — where you realize something: you can do everything right and still have absolutely no control over the outcome. You can write a great book, the kind where you sit back after the final sentence and think, well, that was mildly brilliant, someone alert the literary authorities. You can edit it within an inch of its life, polishing every comma, wrestling every sentence into submission, whispering sweet motivational speeches to your manuscript at 2AM while cradling a cup of tea that went cold hours ago.  You can position it and promote it and send it out into the world dressed in its very best metaphorical outfit. And still, none of it belongs to you once it leaves your hands.  You don't control the reviews. You don't control the rankings. You don't control whether people get it — and that last one, I'll admit, carries a...

You ever notice the meanness authors pour on other authors on social media just now? Like they are thinking - “But what if other authors are my competition?” Nope. Not today. Not in this cozy, coffee-fueled universe. ☕️ If you’re an author, and your friends are authors, congratulations—you’ve accidentally built yourself a dream team. They’re not your competition. They’re your brainstorming buddies when your plot goes sideways, your cheerleaders when you hit “publish” and immediately want to hide under a blanket, your reality checks when your villain starts sounding a little too reasonable, and your emergency chocolate providers (this one is non-negotiable) Here’s the thing: readers don’t read just one book. They’re not out there saying, “Well, I’ve read ONE mystery novel, that’s enough for my entire life.” No. Readers are glorious little book dragons, hoarding stories like treasure. 🐉📖 When you support another author, you’re not losing anything—you’re expanding the ent...