Thinkingdog Publishing

There are two kinds of people awake at three in the morning. The first group is peacefully asleep, dreaming about beaches, vacations, and fluffy clouds. The second group is writers. Specifically… writers whose brains decide that 3:07 a.m. is the perfect time to launch a full creative production meeting . I wish I were exaggerating. Picture this: the house is quiet. The world is asleep. Even the moon seems to be minding its own business. I’m lying in bed trying very hard to drift off into dreamland. Instead, my brain leans over the metaphorical desk, slams a stack of imaginary papers down, and says: “Okay team, hear me out. What if… magical kingdoms… ancient prophecy… morally complicated hero… and it’s a trilogy.” Excuse me? A trilogy? It is three in the morning. I cannot remember where I put my glasses yesterday, but apparently I am now outlining an entire fantasy saga . And not just a vague idea either. Oh no. My brain goes all in. There’s world-building. Ther...

There’s this idea floating around that writers have “perfect writing days.” You know the ones. The charming cottage. The soft morning light. The gentle breeze fluttering linen curtains. The coffee brewed to aromatic perfection. The laptop humming obediently. The muse hovering nearby like a polite Victorian ghost, waiting to dictate brilliance. Somewhere in the background, I imagine a string quartet. I keep waiting for that day. It has not arrived. Instead, what usually shows up is this: I sit down to write and my laptop decides it is the perfect time to update seventeen things simultaneously. None of which I asked for. None of which seem to help my life in any measurable way. I glare at it. It whirs louder. We both know who’s going to win. Sometimes, in a moment of dramatic defiance, I grab another laptop. This one, of course, has absolutely no research on it. None of my notes. None of the carefully collected details about motives, timelines, magical Papillons, suspicio...

There are two kinds of walks. There are the determined, fitness-tracker-beeping, “we are MAKING TIME” walks. And then there are the walks you take when you share your life with a small, fluffy creature who believes every pile of leaves may contain buried treasure, secrets, or possibly a criminal mastermind. When you live with a dog — or are owned by one, which feels more accurate — you walk. A lot. Blueberry, my Papillon with the investigative spirit of a seasoned detective, does not “exercise walk.” She does not march. She does not power-stride. She stops. She sniffs. She wanders. She conducts what I can only assume are highly classified forensic investigations on twigs. Every leaf pile is suspicious. Every rustle is worth examining. Every breeze carries breaking news. And so we amble. Very slowly. At first, years ago, I would try to hurry her along. Come on, Blueberry. Let’s go. We have things to do. Deadlines. Laundry. Emails. Imaginary murders to solve. But ...

When you write cozy mysteries, you see things a little differently. No. Not in a “how would I dispose of a body?” kind of way. Please. I write about charming villages, magical dogs, and suspicious bake sale politics. We are not digging holes in forests. It’s not the process of murder that fascinates me. It’s the why. It’s the tiny, deliciously odd human behaviors that make my writer brain sit up straighter than a librarian who just heard someone dog-ear a page. Take the gentleman I see most mornings in the park while walking Blueberry. He walks the paths in a very specific order. Not random. Not “oh, I feel like turning left today.” No. It’s choreographed. Precise. Measured. He counts his steps. I know this because his lips move ever so slightly, and every time he reaches the same tree, he pivots. Exact angle. Exact spot. Every. Single. Morning. And there I am, supposedly walking my adorable Papillon, but internally I am spiraling into a full-blown character study. Wh...

There’s a dangerous myth floating around out there, and I hear it all the time. “I don’t have anything to write about.” Which is fascinating, because five minutes earlier, you were telling me about a weird look a stranger gave you in the grocery store, your dog absolutely refusing to pee for reasons known only to her, and a sentence you overheard in line that made you stop mid-thought. But sure. Nothing to write about. Here’s the truth I’ve learned as an author—and especially as a cozy mystery author. The big moments are overrated. The small, throwaway, blink-and-you-miss-it moments? Those are where the magic lives. The glance. The pause. The overheard sentence. The dog who suddenly plants her feet like she’s staging a protest because the grass feels emotionally wrong today. Recently, I was having a few drinks with my artist friend. Nothing fancy. Just gabbing, laughing, shooting the breeze the way you do when the world slows down enough for real conversation. Her house, by...

  Stone Walls, Secret Whispers, and Why My Books Are Haunted When you grow up in Germany , old buildings aren’t a novelty. They’re just… Tuesday. Crooked timber frames. Weathered stone staircases. Heavy wooden doors that creak even when you swear no one touched them. Windows that look like they’ve seen at least three wars and a scandal or two. Entire streets where the buildings lean toward each other like they’re sharing gossip. I lived in places like that. Apartments with stairwells that echoed just a little too long. Ceilings so high your imagination had room to stretch. Basements that absolutely, positively were not haunted… except, you know, maybe just a little. When you grow up surrounded by history, you don’t have to try very hard to believe that walls remember things. That footsteps linger. That stories don’t always end when people do. So yes. There are ghosts in my books. Not because I sat down one day and thought, “Let’s add a ghost for fun.” But because when you’v...

This might come as a surprise.....  But I can’t sing. No, really. I sound like a frog who’s just stubbed his toe and is trying to croak out a sad ballad about it. And yet… I love to sing. I love music. I grew up with it. My grandma was an actual, real-life, honest-to-Pavarotti coloratura soprano. She hit high notes like most of us hit snooze buttons—effortlessly and often. She sang in opera houses. People clapped. She wore fabulous dresses. She was a diva in the best sense of the word. And then there’s me. Genetics skipped a beat. I didn’t get a drop of that vocal magic. But I did inherit the passion. So, like any slightly embarrassed, secretly hopeful person, I sang quietly in the car. In the shower. Alone in the house. Sometimes into my dog’s ears (she forgave me). But here’s the kicker—I became a writer. And then I did the unthinkable: I started recording my own audiobooks. Why? Because I’m either very brave or very foolish. Possibly both. Now, recording audiobooks isn’t just re...