"Dottie's Daring Day" is HERE!

Paperback copies are in hand. Everything is set at amazon.com. I can officially say that "Dottie's Daring Day" is here and ready to launch out into the book world. This is the second companion book to my Cats in the Mirror series.

Readers made it very clear that they wanted another dog book. "Max's Wild Night" is a best-seller, so it only seemed logical that another dog book should be on the agenda. But even back when Max's book was brand-new, the wheels were in motion. We had a booth at a spring craft fair. Daughter "Mindy" came to visit with her dog Dottie and said that I had to write a book about HER dog too: "Dottie's Daring Day." The title was born then and there.

Dottie even helped sell books that day.

Well, once a title like that is out in the world, how could I avoid writing it??

While Max's book is set around our home here in the Ozark Mountains, Dottie's book is set around her home in Fayetteville. As I did school visits last year, I asked students what they thought a dog would do loose in the area around the University of Arkansas campus. They had fantastic ideas, many of which made it into the book.

Dottie didn’t mean to run away. But when she accidentally slipped out of her collar on the Razorback Greenway Trail during a Saturday walk, she began a day of adventure—exploring the town and the University of Arkansas campus. Along her journey she meets new friends and even learns how to Call the Hogs. She always planned to be home before dark, but will she still be able to find the way back to her girl Mindy when her daring day is done?

To get your own copy, you can click here to purchase a Kindle or paperback copy from amazon. But if you want a signed, personalized paperback copy (with matching bookmark), you can purchase them directly from me at this link thorough PayPal and at my website.

There are also matching toys to go with the book at the shopping cart at my website. What do you think? A pretty good match?

Dottie toy, available at megdendler.com.

Dottie is excited to have her very own book. Finally!

I hope you enjoy the next installment in my book series! We won't be walking away from the cat series completely, but 2017 is going to be the year we focus on a different book I have been working on for many years in various forms. I love the current MG/YA version. It is in the last stages of being critiqued by my talented writing group, so I look forward to having a final version ready to begin promoting by summertime.

Let's just say, "Beyond this point, there be dragons."

Reflections on a Big Plan

In 2010, I sat in a booth at Dave and Busters in Houston, Texas, while "Mindy" and a handful of friends played games and enjoyed being teenagers. Ignoring whatever sporting events were on the multiple TVs in the bar, I took pen to white legal pad and said "what if." I had a cute little early reader book about my cat Kimba, but it seemed like it could be more and bigger and better. I'd even gotten that advice from an agent at a SCBWI conference. But what would that story look like?

After several hours of making notes and letting ideas flow, I wrote down the names of what I could now see was a series of books: Why Kimba Saved The World, Vacation Hiro, Miss Fatty Cat's Revenge, and Slinky Steps Out. I wasn't even sure what Miss Fatty Cat would want revenge for, but the title was too fun to not write down.

Back in 2010, I couldn't have begun to imagine living in Arkansas, my work with Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge that gave shape to Miss Fatty Cat's book, and all the events that would lead up to self-publishing the Cats in the Mirror series. Life is a funny thing.

Today, the paperback editing proof of the final book in that pre-planned series arrived.

It was hard to imagine Slinky going off to college with "Mindy" back when I started this writing journey. Now it has been a fact of life for a couple of years. It makes me step back and take note that the goal I set six years ago has come to total fruition, with even another book about Max in there as well, not to mention At the Corner of Magnetic and Main, which was nowhere on my radar back then.

It makes me wonder where I will be six years from now. Already, big changes for our lives are on the horizon--not the least of which involves "Leia" heading off to college in August and leaving us with the first stages of being empty-nesters.

I often see the joke meme passed around that says, when life hits us with big stuff we don't expect, writers should know enough to yell "plot twist" and go with it. Control freak that I am, I am really going to try, though it may come off more as mumbling while I bang my head on my desk.

My hope is that there will be Dottie's Daring Day on the horizon, featuring our granddoggie Dottie and some parallel adventures to Max's book.

Dottie is certainly deserving of her own adventure story.

There really should be a Kimba's Christmas story because every series needs a good Christmas book, but I haven't got the faintest idea what that would be about.

Kimba reminds me daily that it is still HER series.

Cheetara is quite confident that she deserves her own book, sooner rather than later. Cats are so demanding.

Chee is a character and will be easy to write about if I sit down and try.

It would be really great to take some time to put together learning guides to go with each cat book and get more involved with home schooling groups. I'm giving lots of writer talks this year, and I'd love to keep that going and kick it up a notch. But there are plot twists ahead that I am as clueless about as any main character could be. I'm just taking each day and the list that goes with it and trying not to freak out too much.

In the meantime, you will be hearing more than you could ever want to about Slinky Steps Out come April 1st. Release date is on schedule, and it's nearly time to party about Book 4 in the Cats in the Mirror series. Whoot Whoot!!

New Book Is Here!!

I've been waiting for amazon to sync up the kindle and paperback pages, but they are taking way too long. I at least have to blog about the fact that At the Corner of Magnetic and Main is available and beautiful and ready to order! I can be quiet no longer.

Click on the cover above for the kindle version.

Click on the cover above for the paperback version.

Click here to order a signed paperback and matching bookmark directly from Meg. The first shipment should be going out on Thursday. Yay! 

And it even has a review already at amazon, sort of. You can't see the text yet, but I found it through my author central page. Here's what Susan had to say about this book: 

"I'm so excited to see this title out on Kindle. Full disclosure, I was asked to be a beta reader for this work several years ago. Meg is a friend of friends who know we both write. I started it and then some major events in my life interrupted any "fun" reading for a long while. I lost the link and life went on. But these characters and the small town setting have stayed with me all this time. I'm looking forward to seeing how it all comes out for Penny and Jake. So, I'm cheating here, not having read the whole book, but I wanted to be the FIRST of what I'm sure will be a raft of good reviews. I figure any plot line and group of characters that can stay in my head for this amount of time deserve four star recognition."

Yes, it takes several years to do a book right. It has been a long and involved process. Publishing any book is. But having it ready to share with the world has been worth every step. 

My first event to officially share this book with the world starts on Friday, October 9th, at the Ozark Creative Writers Conference here in town, and I can't wait! I'll blog all about that next weekend, right before we head into four days at the War Eagle Fall Craft Fair. 

That's all for now. I just wanted to shout out that IT IS HERE!!

Preorder "At the Corner of Magnetic and Main" Now!

The links are up from my publisher, and you can start preordering copies of my new book, At the Corner of Magnetic and Main, immediately!

Click here for the link to preorder from the publisher.
or
Click here for the link to preorder autographed copies directly from me.

Penny had been stuck in the same diner for decades—ever since she died in 1952. Her diner was comfortable and safe. Serving ice cream to those who dropped in on their way to the next level of existence, she helped to ease their transition into The Light, the one place she can't go. Her afterlife was perfect. 
      But when the ridiculously handsome, bad boy biker Jake Thatcher shows up and becomes stuck as well, Penny rediscovers feelings that she thought had been buried with her body. 
      Life is still life, and love is still love. But was her existence really perfect, or was it something else entirely?

There will be much celebrating in October and November, and I'm in the process of setting up a blog tour. But you can get in on the first copies during the soft launch in September. 

Order your copy now! 

There will be much more to follow during the craziness that is September at our house, but that's all for now. I have a first draft of Slinky Steps Out to finish if it's ever going to be ready by April. And those other books from Pen-L are not going to edit themselves. Onward!

Book Sale! "Max's Wild Night" This Weekend

Just a quick heads-up: the kindle copy of "Max's Wild Night" is on sale for 99 cents from the 14th through the 17th this month. I'm celebrating the end of the Dog Days of Summer and the beginning of the school year--and The Fussy Librarian is helping spread the word. Get yourself a copy by clicking here!

Max didn’t mean to run away, but when he found himself alone in the moonlit woods, he saw his chance for freedom. No humans to tell him what to do. No cats running the house. No one to call him Bad Dog. No fences and no rules. He could be wild and free and never have to answer to anyone again! But will that freedom turn out to be the fantastic journey he was expecting? What adventures and strange creatures will Max discover in the Ozark forest on a full-moon spring night? 

That's all. Have a great weekend!