Thinkingdog Publishing

🐾 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...

I am tired. Not the “oh I stayed up a little too late reading” kind of tired. Not even the “my dog insisted 5:47 AM was a perfectly reasonable time to begin the day” kind of tired. No. I am the kind of tired that comes from falling down a social media rabbit hole so deep, I’m fairly certain I passed at least three alternate dimensions and a dancing algorithm named Chad. Somewhere along the way, I watched approximately ten thousand videos—give or take a dramatic exaggeration—on how to “optimize your content,” “hack the algorithm,” and “go viral overnight.” Yech. Every single one promised a formula. A trick. A secret. A step-by-step plan to become wildly successful if I would just… be slightly shinier, slightly louder, slightly more something . And do you know what I realized? None of them were me. Not one. I am not a 30-year-old with flawless contouring, botox and a ring light that could guide ships safely to shore. I do not have a “hot take” about anything except ...

There’s something wildly comforting about a simple phrase. “Just Do It.” It’s bold. It’s clean. It doesn’t overthink things. It doesn’t spiral into a late-night identity crisis while holding a cup of reheated coffee and wondering if it should also start a podcast, a newsletter, a YouTube channel, and possibly learn interpretive dance for marketing purposes. It just… does it. And honestly? That’s where the magic is. Because here’s what I’ve learned the hard way (and by “hard way,” I mean slightly frazzled, mildly sleep-deprived, and being judged by a very fluffy Papillon named Blueberry): the moment we quietly sneak one tiny word into that phrase— all —everything changes. “Just Do It All.” Oh. Oh no. Now suddenly we are no longer inspired athletes in a motivational montage. We are overwhelmed authors staring at a never-ending checklist that includes social media posting schedules, ad campaigns, newsletter funnels, branding strategies, reader magnets, SEO optimization, an...

There was a time—not so long ago, but also somehow a lifetime ago—when the internet felt like opening a mysterious little door. You didn’t know what you were going to find. You clicked anyway. And then you just… stayed. Reading. Exploring. Falling down delightful rabbit holes that had absolutely nothing to do with what you originally came for. No pop-ups screaming at you. No perfectly curated lives making you question your existence. Just curiosity and a sense that something interesting was always waiting around the next click. It was fun. And now? Well. Now it’s… a lot. It’s ads stacked on ads stacked on “just one more ad before you get to the thing you actually wanted.” It’s perfectly lit videos with people who somehow look like they woke up flawless and live in homes that have never met a stray sock or a muddy paw. And here I am… In a 100-year-old house that creaks like it has opinions. The lighting? Let’s call it “moody” on a good day and “did a ghost just dim t...