I used to own a dog that came when called and I was angry that I had let nostalgia interfere with the common sense I should employ on a naughty new puppy. One of my shoes was sucked off and instead of putting it back on my foot I pried it from the deep and threw it. Cricket came tearing towards me, grabbed it and ran back to a point slightly further into the field than she had been before. She began to eat the shoe.

I thought about just hopping home and climbing back into bed. This didn’t seem to be a day for authorship or dog walking. Maybe Cricket would get lonely and follow me. Maybe the farmer who owned the field would adopt her and give her a better life than I could. The problem with the plan of just abandoning her though, was that I was already a mile and a half down the trail, a pretty long distance to go on one foot, especially in the middle of November. I flailed further forward in the mud and made it to the pumpkin.

Cricket was interested in why I wasn’t coming after the shoe. She raised her head and sniffed the air. I pretended that I was really glad to have scored something better out there in the middle of the cornfield.

“Yum, rotten pumpkin,” I said out loud.

Her ears sprang up.

“Delicious,” I added.

She inched forward.  After another minute, she had slunk close enough to the pumpkin that I was able to snag her collar and my shoe. I almost lost both raising my arms in victory.

Later, when I returned to the computer, I came to the Zen conclusion that it was okay to be optimistic once in a while, but I shouldn’t be greedy and I should know a good thing when I see it. Writer’s sometimes need profound thinking to get them through rough spots, that’s why I take walks.

Meanwhile, Cricket stared longingly at my feet.

PARIS PAN TAKES THE DARE

• Publication Season/Year: Summer 2009
• Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
• Release Date: June 11, 2009
• ISBN (hardcover): 978-0399250439
• ISBN (paperback): TBD

Twelve-year-old Paris Pan’s life is a mess. She’s just moved to a tiny town in Nowheresville, Oklahoma; her family life is a comical disaster; her new friends are more like frenemies; and the boy she has a crush on is a dork. Things couldn’t possibly get worse, until she discovers that a girl mysteriously died years ago while taking a seventh-grade rite of passage–the Dare– right near Paris’s new house. So when Paris starts hearing strange noises coming from the creepy run-down shed in her backyard, she thinks they could be a message from the ghost of a girl. But while she has no plans to make contact with the great beyond, her two new friends have other thoughts. Everyone who’s anyone takes the Dare, and now it’s Paris’s turn.