Thinkingdog Publishing

There I was, minding my own business, when fate decided to play a cruel joke. I dropped my phone. Not from a rooftop, not into a pond, not even in one of those heart-stopping toilet disasters. Nope. It just slipped from my hand like it was auditioning for a role in a soap opera. Dramatic fall. Shattered screen. Exit stage left. So, I did what any reasonable person would do—I got a new one. Same brand, just the next model up. Easy peasy, right? Wrong. Wrong in the way a “surprise” villain shows up in chapter twenty-seven of a cozy mystery even though he hasn’t been in the book since chapter two. Apparently, in the five years since I last upgraded (yes, five years—I like to think of myself as loyal, not outdated), phones have learned how to argue with their owners. This new contraption asks me every five minutes if I “really meant to do that.” Why yes, Phone Overlord, I did mean to open my email. I’ve been opening my email since the dawn of Gmail, and I don’t need your judgment. And t...

There comes a time in a woman’s life —usually somewhere between muttering “I don’t need instructions” and yelling “WHY won’t this work?!” at a perfectly innocent browser tab—when she realizes she’s building a quiz for her cozy mystery readers. And not just any quiz, mind you. Oh no. This is the “Which Rosewood Hollow Character Are You?” quiz. Are you a Sarah? An Emma? A Pixie? (You wish you were Pixie.) Or possibly a Matthew, which means you're chronically skeptical and have a thing about gluten-free muffins. Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Sabine, surely you just sent this off to an agency and had some sleek, high-end, interactive whiz-bang quiz built with fancy buttons, animated transitions, and background music that sounds like a Wes Anderson soundtrack played by hedgehogs on tiny harps.” Well. I could have. I could have dropped a few hundred bucks on a service. Or paid a developer to make it all look like it was sprinkled in tech-fairy dust. But here’s the thing:...

There was a time—ah, the golden days—when my favorite guilty pleasure was sneaking onto social media in the middle of writing. I’d be knee-deep in a tense chapter, or elbow-deep in a horrifyingly overcomplicated spreadsheet, and I'd whisper to myself: “Just five minutes... you’ve earned it.” Five minutes would turn into thirty, naturally. Maybe forty. I’d scroll, like, laugh at memes involving dogs in hats, argue with someone over the correct ranking of Halloween candy (Reese’s is #1, don’t @ me), and maybe even post a selfie if I was feeling wild. Back then, social media was my oasis . My little hideaway of chaos and dopamine and questionable life choices. A snack for the brain. A tiny vacation. But somewhere along the way, the snack became the meal. One day I woke up and social media was no longer my escape. It was on my to-do list. My to-do list! Right there, in between “write 1,000 words” and “don’t forget to eat something green.” The thing is, if you’re an author n...

I know what the experts say. “Writers write.” “Butt in chair, fingers on keys.” “Power through the block!” Sure. Okay. I hear you. But after approximately six hours in the same chair, surviving on coffee, creative fumes, and the misguided hope that the next scene will magically write itself, I start to feel like Gollum from Lord of the Rings . Only less shiny. That’s when Blueberry enters the picture. Blueberry is my Papillon dog, my muse, and arguably the real boss of this household. She has the self-confidence of a rockstar on a reunion tour. When Blueberry decides it's time for agility practice, she does not negotiate. There are no polite suggestions. There is barking. There is trotting in place. There is staring . And there is absolutely no chance I’m going to get away with, “Five more minutes, sweetie.” I’ve learned that when Blueberry wants to move, I’d better move with her. So we go outside. We run, we leap, we weave through poles, sprint through tunnels, and some...