First off continued good wishes for Mexico and Puerto Rico and everyone that was already trying to recover from nature’s wrath.
If you own or have watched two dogs interacting with each other, then you know they don’t just go up and say “Hey Butch, how’s it hanging”. There is a meeting-new-dog protocol, meeting-a-dog-who-is-a-friend protocol, and even a meeting-a-dog-who-is-an-enemy protocol. It all depends on which direction the tail is wagging, how hard the tail is wagging, and even different types of tail wagging and that is only one aspect of dog communication.
The same thing goes with cats. Do you know about kitty-eye kisses? Try this the next time you see a cat chilling. Look at them until they look at you, then close your eyes halfway and open them again a couple of times. The cat will copy you. That is a way of saying, everything is good here and good with us.
Animals use their whole body and all of their senses to communicate with each other. Some are more easy to tell than others, but they are communicating a lot more than you give them credit for. Our Border Collie, Paxil, is super smart. He has learned to be bi-species lingual. When people come over they are amazed because I have conversations with him and he seems to understand what I am saying. He does, and not just the words I speak but also of my tone and body language. He knows me so well that, to outsiders, it almost seems magical. Ok, he is kind of magical.
To animals, we must seem really strange because most of our communication is done with noises. We are just “telling” each other stuff. Even if you are animated and gesture a lot when you talk, it is still not to the same level as our pets.
When writing, we are told to “show” not “tell,” and that is an important part of communication. A dog barking is pretty tame. A dog with hackles raised, crouching on the floor with hind legs ready to spring, dripping foamy slobber, ears laid back with a low deep growl is a completely different thing, one you should not go near. Even if you are writing about people, we all can feel the hairs on the back of our neck tingle. There are a myriad of ways to communicate besides talking, ways that, as authors, we should look into.
Except for butt sniffing. That’s gross.
Have a good day.
Paula
by John Herrick
Warning: Hacks for Hacks tips may have harmful side effects on your writing career, and should not be used by minors, adults, writers, poets, scribes, scriveners, journalists, or anybody.
Take food graters. We have one that was pretty cool. It was a circle on top of a catch pan that you could rotate around for the grating type you needed. Not your mother’s metal square thing that left a mess. But after spending waaaay too much time trying to grate some lime zest my daughter had the brilliant idea that we really needed a new one. Not technically the language she used but you get the point. Sure enough, there is this 
I remember how stressed I was whenever I had a book launch for Penguin Random House.
A few of you may have noticed that there were no editor’s posts on Thursday and Friday of last week.
After finding myself backed into a creative corner with Canyon Echoes, and using a rudimentary version of outlining to get myself out, I was still reluctant to embrace the plotter program. I had been a pantser for nearly 20 years and the idea of changing the way I wrote was daunting. A little outlining had saved Canyon Echoes, but my fear of losing the creative flow was simply too great.
Not too long ago, self-published authors were collectively admonished about the need to invest in their work. Hiring quality editors, proofreaders, cover designers, and formatters before attempting to sell a book was the constant mantra of industry experts. While some hapless writers continued to slap their Word docs up on Amazon and hope to snare a few readers, authors who took their careers seriously made the proper investments.
Many pulp writers of old made good bank with a hit series character.
by David Gaugharan
If you own dogs, you know that old joke about dogs acting like you have been gone for 10 years when you just stepped outside to get the mail. We have two dogs, Paxil, a border collie/ Australian shepherd mix, and Lunesta (Lulu) who is a Papillion. Every morning the routine is usually the same. My husband, who is a saint and can deal with mornings better, gets up lets the dogs out to do their business, does his business and gets the coffee going. This is my husband’s time to relax and start the day slowly. Later when I have to get up, the dogs want to go out again. No matter if I get up in one minute or one hour later.
What Makes An Iconic Character? (And How Can You Create One?)
When it rains it pours and that can’t be poignant enough for right now. Poor Barbuda is pretty much wiped out, all the islands in the Carribean, Florida, Mexico, and of course Texas is still bailing out. Our good thoughts and wishes go out for all of you now and I promise to rearrange my budget so we can give cash as needed.