Chet The Dog

Posts Tagged ‘reader questions’

Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge

Many thanks for all the questions re Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge, my next novel, coming July 25 and already pre-orderable, thanks to the miracle of modern commerce.

1. Will this be a series? I think so.
2. Any dogs (or cats) involved? No.
3. Will there be more Chet and Bernie? For sure! I’m working on one right now.
4. Is Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge a mystery? It’s certainly in the more general realm of crime fiction, but I’d say closer to suspense or thriller, with elements of caper.
5. What type of revenge is Mrs.P seeking? Well, no spoilers, but she surprises herself in the end.
6. Tone: Lighthearted and fun or more serious and suspenseful? Yes.
7. Any quirky characters? I would say so, but never to the point of being unbelievable. You may enjoy Mrs. Plansky’s 98 year old dad.
8. Any supernatural? No.
9. What’s on my nightstand? Open, by Andre Agassi. It’s great.
10. Is Mrs. Plansky based on a specific real person? No.
11. Does she like baseball? Mrs. P was a bit of a tomboy, as she puts it, and played Little League with the boys.
12. Does she drink beer? Beer doesn’t come up, but a Romanian drink called tuica plays a role.
13. How old is Mrs. P? 71.
14. When does the story take place? Now.

Reader Questions

A young woman looked out. Not Mavis, a fact I noticed only in passing. What caught my attention was the ferret on her shoulder. And I’d caught his attention, no doubt about that. He showed me his teeth first thing, just like every ferret I’d ever met. I showed him mine. You’d have done the same. His tiny eyes burned hot. Would playing a game of some sort get us off to a better start? For example, how about the grabbing-the-little-fella-by-his-collar – a velvet collar, by the way, velvet being a material I knew well from an incident with a tapestry, best forgotten – and-flipping-him-up-to-the-ceiling game? Who doesn’t like being flipped up to the ceiling? Although I don’t know personally on account of who could flip the likes of me that high, or anywhere at all? Ah, the likes of me! Once I’d flipped a bunny rabbit name of Ursula – true, not a ferret – so high that I’d had time to run over and catch her in midair and flip her up again! The look on her face! So when would be a good time to get things underway with my new ferret buddy? Now, maybe, like right away, this very –

Answering A Reader Question

Yesterday mlaiuppa wrote this re the Proust and Chet post: “Would like to hear from Spencer if he had Proust in mind, even on a subliminal level, when he wrote that passage.”

Answer: Yes, I did, and quite consciously. A good question and thanks for asking. Any other reader questions out there?

Q&Q (More)

And now back to reader questions. Heather Hannah Knopp writes:

“You’ve probably been asked this before, but what was your inspiration to write from Chet’s perspective? From the first few pages of “Dog On It”, and Chet was getting high from riding in the car with his head out the window, I was hooked on his storytelling and utterly charming POV. How do you “get inside” Chet’s head? (okay, that’s two questions, but I know Chet can handle up to 2 😉 )”
Answer: 1. Inspiration: One evening my wife said, “You should do something with dogs.” Twenty minutes later I’d written what became the first page of Dog On It. Just to see if it worked. We voted 2-0 that it did. (No kids at home at the time – we could have lost 4-2.)

2. Getting inside the head: I have no satisfactory answer to this. It has to do with the imagination, of course, but how to describe the nuts and bolts of the imagination at work? And is it always a good idea to look under the hood?

(And to the Plunderers: I love my calendar! Many, many thanks!)