why are you so upset, it's just a dog?

     Unfortunately, this is something that I’ve heard going on almost two months now, since one of my black babies have needed several emergency surgeries. It all started in November with a blown ACL for my Kanchen. After his knee surgery there was an abscessed tooth with complications. Just before Christmas we discovered he might have a malignant tumor in his nose that’s eating its way back into his skull, so again we’re trying to do what we can to get him healed up as much as possible and keep his pain in check.
     Even though Kanchen and his brother Rowen are both around nine years old (something like forty in dog years), they will always be my babies plain and simple. They’re both wickedly smart. I always think of them as being around six to eight years old mentally in their human understanding of things. They both traveled with me from Florida to Germany and have been traipsing around Europe with me on my travels, so much so that they even have their own passports.
     For those of you who are pet owners you know how much your dogs can mean to you and your family. For those of you who are not pet owners or who do not have kids, it’s probably something that sounds crazy. For me, they are just as important as any family member. More so in many ways, but that’s coming from someone who’s never have had much in the way of family. I had to laugh because one of my co-workers was talking about the death of his hound being more terrible then that of some of his family members dying. It was a perspective that I could readily understand.
     Anyway, when I found out how sick Kanchen was it kind of knocked me off my feet Tuesday and Wednesday evening. I didn’t get much done in the way of editing Destiny, but slowly I’ve been getting back in the swing of things once again. Tuesday we’ll find out if the tumor is malignant or not, so to keep my mind busy and to not think about everything too much I downloaded Elliot Kay’s books Poor Man’s Fight & Rich Man’s War and read them both. You can find the first book of the series here: http://www.amazon.com/Poor-Mans-Fight-Book-ebook/dp/B00RH1NV4M/ref=sr_1_6?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1450542538&sr=1-6&keywords=elliott+kay  It’s a good series btw and was just what I needed at the time to get my mind off of everything. I really enjoyed the basic training in book one. It brought back memories of my own time in the Army.   
     Tuesday my Christmas vacation starts. I’ll be at the vet for Kanchen’s surgery for most of the day, but I’ll be home editing and sitting with him Tuesday afterwards and probably most of Wednesday as he’s recovering, while finishing up the first run through of Destiny. My first check is mostly the story’s flow. Although I’m checking sentence structure and spelling too on this first run through, it’s not my focus. That will be the second check I run using an app from Grammarly.com. Then I’ll be passing it out to people to help me correct mistakes I’ve missed and let me know what they think of the story. Once that’s finished, I’ll run it by a couple of fans who’ve expressed interest in being beta readers and who really enjoyed the series. After making the corrections that people have found, I’ll release the story.
     The only major pain in the ass thing I need to also finish up is the back cover. Something that seems like it would be simple, but it’s really not. The back cover to your book, if done properly, is quite the work of art. It’s your main advertisement to get people to check out your story. I’ll go into the how more once I’m working on getting Destiny’s finished.
     I’ve included some pictures of Kanchen below for those of you who are interested. I’ll talk more about Christmas in Germany in next week’s post. For now I hope everyone has a great weekend.