Thinkingdog Publishing

There are many things I love in this life. Cozy mysteries. Plot twists. The smell of coffee in a quiet morning. The dramatic flutter of Papillon ears in the wind. What I do not love? Wasting time. Now here’s the funny part. I write cozy mysteries. My series, the Magical Papillon Mysteries, features a single mom with supernatural abilities, a telepathic Papillon dog, and enough small-town secrets to keep everyone whispering behind lace curtains. On paper, it sounds quaint. Peaceful. Slow-paced. In reality? Being an author is like juggling flaming swords while someone keeps adding chainsaws. I am a writer. I am also a dog servant. A social media manager. A web designer. An accountant. A marketer. A scheduler. A newsletter fairy. An amateur tech support hotline. Somewhere in there, I’m supposed to eat and sleep. There are at least eleven thousand tasks I never knew existed before I decided to publish a book. No one tells you that “author” secretly means “CEO o...

Did you know I record my own audiobooks? I know. It sounds very glamorous, doesn’t it? You might imagine a sleek studio, a glowing microphone, a sound engineer nodding approvingly while I read my words with theatrical perfection. Now allow me to gently replace that image with reality. Reality looks a lot like a cozy mystery author sitting in a carefully engineered blanket fort made of pillows, quilts, and pure determination, whispering dramatically into a microphone while praying the dog does not bark and the refrigerator does not suddenly decide to hum like a jet engine. Is it easy? No. Not even slightly. Recording an audiobook means discovering that your own tongue apparently has a personal vendetta against certain words. Words you wrote. Words you edited. Words you confidently believed were perfectly pronounceable until you had to say them out loud seventeen times. Then there are the unexpected discoveries. For example, you will learn exactly how many sounds exis...

  There comes a moment in life — somewhere between your first grey hair and the first time you willingly choose elastic-waist trousers — when you realize something profound: You have spent an impressive amount of time trying not to offend anyone. Not too loud. Not too strange. Not too ambitious. Not too dreamy. Not too… you. For a considerable portion of my life, I tried very hard to be what I believed was “expected.” Sensible. Polite. Predictable. Professional. The kind of person who nods in meetings, files papers in neat folders, and pretends spreadsheets are thrilling. I did the “normal.” I did the “responsible.” I smiled through jobs that felt like wearing shoes two sizes too small. Perfectly acceptable. Mildly painful. Entirely unnecessary. And do you know what happened? Absolutely nothing. The world did not applaud my normality. No one handed me a medal for “Most Inoffensive Human.” There was no parade for “Successfully Blended In.” Instead, somewhere ...

There is a myth floating around the internet. A persistent little fairy tale. Apparently, somewhere between publishing my first cozy mystery and lovingly introducing the world to magical dogs, ghosts, and small-town secrets, I became independently wealthy. I would very much like to know when that happened. Because according to my inbox, I am absolutely swimming in consultant-level disposable income. Every single day, without fail, I receive approximately seven emails. Sometimes more. They arrive like clockwork. They are polite. They are enthusiastic. They are confident. “Dear Author, Let me put your book on my premium reader list.” Which book, my friend? I have fifteen. Are we talking about the one with the ghost? The one with the magical Papillon? The one with the small-town murder wrapped in Christmas cookies and secrets? A hint would be delightful. Next email. “Let me optimize your categories and keywords.” Marvelous. Again — which book? I would love to know whi...

There’s a new ailment going around the creative world, and it’s highly contagious. Symptoms include staring at your unfinished manuscript, sighing heavily, and mumbling something like, “I should be writing.” Yes, my friends, I’m talking about writing guilt —and though I hadn’t heard of it until recently, I seem to have earned an honorary PhD in the subject. Here's what happened.... A little while ago, I had a solo art show . One entire gallery. My artwork. My setup. My everything. It sounds glamorous, right? Cue the applause, the soft lighting, the elegant hors d’oeuvres—except, behind the scenes, it’s less “artistic reverie” and more “running a small logistics company while trying to look charming in public.” I was the planner, the promoter, the installer, the social butterfly. It was exhilarating… and exhausting. And right in the middle of it all—between hanging canvases and smiling through small talk—this tiny voice piped up in my head: “You haven’t written your 1,000...

At the end of every year, the same thing happens. Like clockwork, my social feeds turn into a literary Olympics. Suddenly everyone’s posting reading stats as if they’ve just returned victorious from Mount Everest holding a pack of bookmarks instead of climbing gear. There are pie charts. There are bar graphs. There are people who somehow—while presumably sleeping, working, raising kids, and occasionally eating—managed to read 147 books, 62 audiobooks, and a partridge in a pear tree. And I sit there in my cozy corner of the internet, sipping my tea and thinking, Wow. That’s impressive. And then immediately after that: How? When? Do these people have a personal time-turner? Is there a reading portal? A secret club? Should I be taking notes? Meanwhile, a small voice inside me whispers, “You finished a novella this month. You’re doing great, sweetie.” Here’s the thing no one tells you during the year-end reading frenzy: whether you read two books last year or two hundred, you are still...

There’s something funny about the end of the year. Some people are counting down with fireworks, champagne, glitter, and questionable hats that will appear in photos no one remembers taking. Meanwhile, in my house, we approach December 31st with the tactical precision of a military operation because, well… we have dogs. And dogs do not appreciate the European “Sylvester” tradition of exploding the sky for entertainment. Growing up in Germany, New Year’s Eve was a literal blast—fireworks everywhere, people cheering in the streets, the whole world sparkling. But now? Now I have small fluffy creatures who think fireworks are the opening act of the apocalypse. So we celebrate quietly, with blankets, snacks, and repeated promises that the big booms outside are absolutely not the end of days. But while the sky may stay quiet, my imagination certainly didn’t this year. Around this time last December, I had this wild spark of an idea for an art-history-themed mystery. I told myself, “Sabi...

So, here I was on a regular old Tuesday , birds chirping, coffee brewing. I sat down at my desk, fingers poised dramatically over the keyboard, inspiration about to strike—when… nothing loaded. I refreshed. I stared. I unplugged the modem and plugged it back in like a techno-priest performing a sacred ritual. Crossed my fingers, did it again.... Still nothing. The internet. Was. Out. And yours truly? Flying into a full-blown tizzy . Not a mild inconvenience. Not a quiet sigh and a cup of tea. No, we’re talking dramatic gasping, pacing, muttering to myself like a Victorian heroine who’d just received tragic news via telegram. Now, let me say this—writing, in its purest form, requires no internet. Not even a computer if you're hardcore enough. You can write with a pencil on a napkin while waiting for your latte. You can scribble in notebooks like it’s 1992 (Yes, I wrote entire books like this back then). But we don’t do that anymore, do we? No, because we writers have convenience ...

Oh hello. You're here for the author , aren’t you? Sarah something? Writes those cozy mysteries where people drink tea, find dead bodies, and somehow still have time to bake cookies? Yeah, her. Listen, I’m not saying she’s bad at it. I’m just saying… without me , there’d be a lot more plot holes and a lot fewer ghosts, magical clues, or talking dogs. Let me introduce myself properly. I’m Pixie , the Papillon. Aka the real power behind the pen. Aka Editor-in-Chief at Thinkingdog Publishing. Aka the Reason She Ever Finishes a Book. You think she sits down at her desk, lights a candle, and gracefully types out a mystery masterpiece? No. She sits in pajamas that may or may not be from last Tuesday, holding a coffee cup like it’s the Holy Grail, muttering things like “Wait, did I already kill off the gardener?” and “Why is there a duck in this chapter?” That’s where I come in. The moment she veers too far off track—like, “Let’s make the killer a time-traveling pigeon farmer fr...