1. Can you please introduce yourself and tell us something about your book "How to Train your Hooman: A Field Guide"
Answer - I’m Gwen, but more readily known to book fans as “the squishy one” or “devil woman”. That’s what Finn calls me as he describes his life in his books. When Finn had to describe his new hoomans, he called it like he saw it – I became “the squishy one” and my husband became “the hairy one.” And when he is irritated with me, which is often, he calls me, “devil woman”.
I’m very new to the world of writing. It’s been a really crazy year. If you’d told me last spring I’d be writing and marketing books, guest teaching with littles or pawtographing books from my kitchen table… I would’ve thought you were bonkers. My career has been in the legal field – helping corporations, nonprofits and governments with ethics, compliance and anti-corruption programs. I’m also a passionate volunteer with a few different organizations that: help children experiencing homelessness with basic needs and personalized support to achieve graduation, help underserved teenagers develop their legal knowledge and ways they can join our profession, help military veterans fight the system to get the benefits they deserve after service, and help dogs through rescue.
“How to Train your Hooman: A Field Guide” came about after the first two books in his annual series were published and caught on. I wanted to publish a book with a different structure than his “weekly reports” in the other books. So many fans of his series books would comment about not letting their dog see his techniques, lest they get ideas, I thought it would be fun to write a book just for the dogs. I reached out to very talented friend I’ve known since 6th grade to see if she’d be willing to illustrate the book, and thankfully she said yes. Julie Goldman is a phenomenally talented artist whose usual graphite works are so astoundingly striking that people often can’t tell they aren’t photographs. And here I was, asking her to draw some stick figures in a way Finn would do it if he could hold a pen. It was fun to collaborate with her and I think her illustrations are the best part of the book! If you want to be blown away, check out her Etsy shop for her real-deal work: https://www.etsy.com/shop/BentRailArt
2. When did you get the thoughts of writing this book? i read the book and i loved it, your writing style is commendable. You are amazing.
Answer - Well, thank you! I love to hear that!! In 2018, my husband and I took in a dog named Finn for what we’d planned to be a foster-fix period. Meaning, we’d foster him long enough to get him trained and correct some of his behavior challenges. He’d spent part of his first year of life on the streets in North Carolina and his attitude and bad habits showed it. I started posting weekly reports in Finn’s voice to the different rescue groups on Facebook, hoping to help some potential adopters fall in love with his quirky, intense and dramatic personality. Long story short, we ended up foster-fails, but by then he’d already amassed quite the fan base online and they insisted we keep his weekly reports going. I just posted week 158. He’s very easy to write for. He has more personality, attitude and opinions than any dog I’ve ever known. He has hundreds of facial expressions and ways he communicates with us.
Over the years his fans have grown to over 4k people from around the world and many had maintained a constant drum beat trying to persuade me to turn the updates and his hilarious photos and videos into books. When my corporate job was eliminated at the start of the pandemic, I decided to finally listen. Learning the author world and figuring out just how to write, package, distribute and market a book has been a wonderful distraction from the slog of job hunting in these crazy times. And Finn’s constant social media posts and the books make people laugh – I can’t get enough of knowing we’re spreading a little joy in these tough times. So, it’s been fun!
3. What kind of research do you do, and how long do you spend researching before beginning a book?
Answer - To be honest, not much! The actual content happens organically because it’s based on our actual life, day to day. I did have to do a ton of research and learning about the process of creating, distributing and marketing the books, though. I’m so grateful for generous women who stepped forward to coach me, teach me and show me how it’s done! A friend helped me understand the marketing aspects – getting our website and social media up and running, how to make effective ads, even how to make the covers eye catching. Another friend connected me to an author friend of hers, who generously spent hours on the phone helping me understand the world of publishing. She started out a total stranger and has become a trusted mentor and friend. I knew nothing, and I mean – NOTHING, about being an author, how books get created and published, etc. She gave me the lay of the land and helped me figure out how to keep moving forward in the process. A generous Hallmark store owner I’d approached to carry the first book in her gift store realized instantly I had no clue what I was doing. She sat me down in her store room and explained how shop owners look at this process, what they expect, and how to succeed in those negotiations. And she took a chance on me and started selling my books in her store. They have sold out for her over and over, thankfully. So, it turned out to be a good risk she took. I’ve been amazed at the generosity of strangers willing to take time to help me figure it all out.
4. What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating your books?
Answer - This may not be something I’m supposed to say out loud, but here goes: it’s very very, very hard to make money in this business. I didn’t expect to become wealthy or anything, but I did think revenue would easily outpace expenses given how successful the books have been. The books in my series are full color interiors and loaded with photos, so the margin on those are very small. Production costs, marketing fees, website costs, etc. – it adds up fast. New authors considering this process should definitely factor in far more on the expense column than I realized upfront.
5. Do you want each book to stand on its own, or are you trying to build a body of work with connections between each book?
Answer - The “Finn Chronicles” series are definitely connected – they are each a collection of weekly reports, a bit like diary entries from Finn, compiled by year. The Field Guide maintains Finn’s persona and first-person voice – full of the sarcasm and wit he is known for. In the children’s activity book/coloring book, it’s still all about Finn but I do soften the sarcasm and humor a bit for that age group.
6. What was an early experience where you learned that language had power?
Answer - I have a distinct memory of a teacher writing a sentence on the chalkboard. She separated the boys and girls into separate groups and asked us to punctuate the sentence. We got very different results and it blew me away.
“A woman, without her man, is nothing.”
“A woman: without her, man is nothing.”
7. Do you hear from your readers much? What kinds of things do they say?
Answer - I do and I love it more than I can even explain. First, the readers online are the people who made me believe I could do this and they’ve been the biggest supporters – buying the books, sharing posts, telling friends and keeping me inspired to keep going. I have the best tribe, truly. I’ve also gotten more messages than I can count that were so compelling, they actually changed the course of things. I’ll give you a few examples.
One of the first messages that shook me was from a stranger on Facebook. She wrote to tell me how much laughter and joy she found from reading the first Finn Chronicles book to her very ill brother as he battled COVID in a hospital bed. I cried knowing something I made had been a part of such a meaningful memory for someone and that it brought her a little comfort in a really hard time. That was my first realization that the books could really be a light to people in a miserable time. It was right around then that I’d been debating whether to publish the second book, year two. Her message was like a sign from the universe to keep going.
I also started getting messages from parents telling me how much their kids loved the books. This came as a total shock to me. The chronicles were written for adults, full of pop culture references I can’t imagine anyone under 40 even getting! Despite that, I heard from parents of 9-year-olds, 10-year-olds and even teenagers telling me their kids were obsessed and asking for more Finn. One parent even sent a picture of her 16-year-old son reading book one and captioned it, “I’ve never seen this kid read voluntarily… thank you.” This got me thinking about how Finn and I could maybe contribute to the elementary aged kids, teachers and parents suffering through the new world of virtual school. Just as I was looking into how we might offer virtual visits, a Finnatic (that’s what we call Finn’s fans) reached out to ask if I’d be willing to do a “meet the author” event for her teacher friend’s school in Florida. I developed a short interactive lesson that used Finn and his YouTube videos to teach about the concept of a “persona” in writing, about child-authors, how they can be creators, too… and a little on dog rescue and how to be safe around dogs. That first session was so much fun, I got hooked and built out a whole program for this. Finn and I have now participated in virtual “meet the author” events with elementary schools all over the U.S. We volunteer this time to help all the teachers and parents struggling with pandemic virtual learning and to hopefully inspire kids to create and share. We ask the kids to write a story and email it to Finn and he always replies with positive reinforcement and praise. It’s been so fun for us. That whole process that led us to develop the coloring/activity book.
It’s truly been the fans that have inspired me to keep going with the next project and get ideas for what would be fun.
8. How would you express your journey as an Author?
Answer - Terrifying, vulnerable, inspiring, gratifying! It’s really scary to create something and put it out there for the world to judge. It’s also a very vulnerable feeling to embark on a new career and process that you don’t understand. It was scary to just step out and keep figuring out the next thing. But, messages and support from fans, the joy I see in the kids’ faces in virtual sessions, and the ways we have connected to amazing fans who become friends… it’s been amazing.
9. What other things do you love than this writing?
Answer - I like cooking (mostly getting to eat it after), painting kindness rocks, scrapbooking, crocheting gifts and above all else – laughing!
10. And last, what advice do you have for writers?
Answer - Get a wonderful tribe to lift you, carry you, talk you into keeping on, and support you. I would not have done this at all without those amazing people – most of whom I’ve never even met! I wish every writer, creator and artist could have the tribe I have.
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