"All Dogs are Guide Dogs in the End" with Chris Lynch author of Walkin' the Dog

In this episode I am joined by Chris Lynch. Chris is an award wining author of several highly acclaimed young adult novels and a national book award finalist . He joins me to talk about his latest middle grade novel, Walkin' the Dog ( released March 12) which is a moving story about a young boy and the life lessons he learns from his four-legged friends and the unexpected paths they lead him on. Chris also shares his own stories of the guidance and lessons he has learned from the loved dogs in  his life.

Resources:
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Walkin-the-Dog/Chris-Lynch/9781481459204

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

That's Selkie.

Speaker 2: 0:02

Hi, selkie, selkie, Hi, what kind of puppy is she?

Speaker 1: 0:09

A lurcher Greyhound Saluki mix.

Speaker 2: 0:13

A lurcher, okay, okay, I was going to say she looks like a wire hair greyhound to me.

Speaker 1: 0:19

I've never heard of a lurcher. Saluki gives her the hair, it's gorgeous.

Speaker 2: 0:23

How old is she?

Speaker 1: 0:24

Three and a half.

Speaker 2: 0:26

Okay, she's still young. Is she your only puppy?

Speaker 1: 0:30

She is as of now. We just had to put one down about a month ago. He's actually. I don't know if you've seen the actual copy of the book, but he's in my. He's in my, my author photo Texting.

Speaker 2: 0:46

How old was he? May I ask?

Speaker 1: 0:49

13 and a half.

Speaker 2: 0:50

Okay, he had a nice life, a nice long life. He did. Yeah, the end was hard though. Yeah, it's always it's. It's super tough and I'm sorry that you're going through that, and I know it. It has its moments, you know, but I'm sure he had a wonderful life with you.

Speaker 1: 1:10

Yeah, it was great it was. It was better for me than it was for him.

Speaker 2: 1:13

Yeah, how's she faring with the loss?

Speaker 1: 1:19

She's doing. Okay, yeah, she's. She's not unaffected. The first week she was like having accidents in the night, interesting On the floor, which she hadn't done for a while.

Speaker 2: 1:32

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:35

And I would say that she seems a little bit more shy now because she always had decks. She's never. She was never alone, ever. Yeah, because even when we got her at the rescue place she was there with her brother. So and we got it Okay At 11 weeks and then we brought her home from home and then she was dexterous sidecar.

Speaker 2: 1:57

Little sister sidekick, so she's always had somebody to look up to and guide her kind of right.

Speaker 1: 2:03

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:04

Yeah, those transitions can be really tough, but dogs are very adaptable. They do, they do tend to find their way.

Speaker 1: 2:13

Yeah, she's learning to like being the only child pretty quickly.

Speaker 2: 2:17

Really yeah, she's like. This is not to show that our dogs growing up were like that. As soon as my, my parents had two poodles, and since as soon as the brother died, like the sister just started thriving, she was like so happy to be the only.

Speaker 1: 2:33

Well, it's almost like Selkie is going what? There are no rules for me now.

Speaker 2: 2:39

Does that mean that?

Speaker 1: 2:40

that guy was responsible for all those rules.

Speaker 2: 2:44

Exactly, she gets all the, she gets all the extra, she gets extra spoiled and all the things right now. That's really sweet. Are you in Scotland right now? Yeah, you are okay. You live there most of the time, you're back.

Speaker 1: 2:58

Yeah most of my people are still in Massachusetts. So all my, all my relatives, most of my oldest friends, yeah, I'll be going there actually in just about under a week to do some okay and book business, oh.

Speaker 2: 3:14

That's great. You have Written several award-winning books for young readers. But we're gonna talk about your newest book today, which is appropriate for my podcast because it's called walk in the dog and it centers kind of around a middle-grade boys. He's kind of an introvert, I would say correct, and he it kind of centers around his journey in and his growth. That's pretty much guided by his, his launch of a dog walking business unintentionally his launch of a dog walking business, and kind of the characters that he meets along the way. And now he grows and changes and gains confidence and it really speaks to the human-animal bond and, as you Say in your book, all dogs are guide dogs in the end and I I love that quote Because it's so true.

Speaker 2: 4:06

I mean I started my business my dog when I adopted my own dog he's 16 now, 15 years ago. I know we're really lucky, still moving along. He's a little tired but it's still moving in group and but you know, 15 years ago I stumbled upon my dog and he he Really changed my life and guided me. I started a dog walking business. I didn't know what I was doing. I moved LA to be an actress and you know all the things and he really guided me in a direction and I Met people. It was very similar, actually, to the young kid in your story. I met many people along the way and it really changed my life In ways I didn't really understand it could. At the time I was just starting a gig and I knew I wanted to spend every day with my dog, so I really love that quote. But this is your first thought. This is one of your. This is your only book, as far as I know, that really centers around the human-animal bond.

Speaker 1: 5:00

Am I correct in that or Um, I, that's fair, I mean it. Animals have appeared in my books periodically Through the years, but this is the first time I took center stage really is it something that Was Inspired by kind of your own connection with dogs, or is there? Yeah yeah, I can come out there from a couple of angles. Yeah, one is Is Dexter, who just passed away.

Speaker 2: 5:34

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 5:36

He was he was. It's been Nearly unbroken 28 year continuum between Chunk, his predecessor, and Dexter Chunk. We got as a kind of a transitional being when we uprooted the kids from Boston, okay, first to Ireland and then in Scotland, and she was a springer spaniel. She's just like just the sweetest nature to creature and she was perfect for what she did. There were a couple, there were other dogs along the way. You know psychics, but basically it's. It started in July of 96. Okay, we left Boston to try and give the kids something to settle with yeah and she was perfect.

Speaker 1: 6:22

She was absolutely perfect. I mean you could reach into her mouth and take out a ham sandwich and she Let the kids do whatever they wanted to her. That mean there, I would look out the back window and there they were. They had her tipped up Over, upside down, yeah, walking around. So everything about her was ideal for the job, right.

Speaker 1: 6:44

And then, with impeccable timing, my daughter left to go to university. And then my daughter had her first child, my first grandchild, yeah. And then my son went to go to university and it was an empty nest for the first time. And after Walker went to University of Aberdeen, one month later, chunk died. Oh, we had her from two weeks after we got here to one month after he left.

Speaker 1: 7:19

And what happened then was I surprised myself and everybody else, but it took about three months before I realized. I said something's missing here. I didn't even. I never considered I was going to get it on the car. In fact, when I told the kids, they were like what? Like you have an interior life of your own? Yeah, I think it's both of them, but I missed it. I missed all the things. I missed rhythm of the day, getting up periodically and going out. I just missed having a warm body there. So it took three months and I went back to the same rescue place which we got her at, 10 years later. I love that, but they've closed down since then. But I kept, you know, test driving their dogs, walking them, and then he popped up one day. He's come out of the van. They're rotating them. They rotate them around different sites.

Speaker 2: 8:20

Yeah, and he comes out.

Speaker 1: 8:22

I was like, where have you been all my life? And that was next. And you know what he was there at the beginning of the empty nest. My wife is a teacher, so her days kind of mimic the rhythm of the days when the kids were here. That would be my work day, but there was a big hole in the middle and so I got Dax and he was just, you know, my companion. I mean, he was always right there for the next 13 years, which included this book, by the way, was signed up in 2015.

Speaker 2: 9:02

Wow.

Speaker 1: 9:02

And it was a lot of reasons. It got sidetracked over and over again, having to do with health issues and car crashes and deaths of editors and all of this, and it just got waylaid. And Dax was like the constant there with me the whole time through what I consider to be my wilderness years. Really, professionally, I had quite a disappearing act. I was still doing what I do but it didn't look like it.

Speaker 2: 9:29

Common with many creatives?

Speaker 1: 9:31

Yes, and then you know, and then the book took the shape that it took and I picked this great photo that everybody loves for my. I haven't used an author photo in a long, long time.

Speaker 1: 9:46

But I said this has to happen and I put Dax on the book and everybody's talking about Dax here and then he made it again almost exactly like Chuck, like he knew what his assignment was, and he made it to a month, a month before the book comes out, and he made it to publicize the book next week, march 11th, I think the book comes out correct.

Speaker 2: 10:07

Yeah, the 12th, he just made it to.

Speaker 1: 10:09

He made it to whatever. 29th of January.

Speaker 2: 10:14

He's like you can take it from here, yeah.

Speaker 1: 10:16

He did, he did. Oh, that's going to make me cry yeah, cause that's.

Speaker 2: 10:20

you know I'm similar. I'm feeling that with my dog too. You know it's like.

Speaker 1: 10:24

And now this stuff.

Speaker 2: 10:25

Yeah, I love that both of them. Both of them came in with a, with a clear, clear vision, clear goal, like this is my job. I'm here for you, this is what we're doing, and you know precisely, precisely as if they knew.

Speaker 1: 10:41

And now Selkie's listening to the whole thing. So you know, cut out for her. And as for the book becoming dog centric, yeah, after the whole thing with with being in the wilderness and I had to be rematched with an editor because my editor got sick and retired and died and I was orphaned for about a year and then they finally matched me up with Kendra Levin and I think it's been a God, she's been a God said.

Speaker 2: 11:08

Great.

Speaker 1: 11:09

Cheekaboo. I knew I wanted to write this book about this kid who was a bystander and happy to be so, and just like yeah, but he had this pilgrim's progress from someone who didn't want to be involved to someone who gets integrated into the world.

Speaker 1: 11:28

And she said well, what's your vehicle? How are we going to deliver this? What is your follow, the magic footprints of this journey? And I said well, you know, I've had for years I've had this back burner idea that I wanted to match with something else, based on my theory that dog walkers make the world go round.

Speaker 2: 11:48

I love that.

Speaker 1: 11:50

Every news story right. Dog walkers found the dead body. Dog walkers found the burning vehicle. Dog walkers found the people flashing around in the river about to die. Where would we be without dog walkers stumbling across everything? I thought there's a vehicle that gets this kid out of the house and interacting with people and with canines, all of which contributes to his journey. Yeah, Because if my original plan to have him just be a kid, it was just like no, no, no, thanks, I don't want to get involved, I'm just going to stay here with him. I'm telling Reed.

Speaker 2: 12:29

Yeah, yeah, exactly yeah. He seems like he was very comfortable. It didn't know what he was missing really by not being out there in the world and he was comfortable doing so. He really could have cared less, but it's those dogs that really.

Speaker 1: 12:47

Yeah, he didn't see the problem until he was dragged outside.

Speaker 2: 12:49

Yeah, he didn't see the problem. Yeah, they forced him and they gave him confidence and purpose and forced him to connect.

Speaker 1: 12:57

Okay.

Speaker 2: 12:58

Open those doors. Yeah, let me ask what's the most important lesson? You think the main character's name is Lewis, correct? Nope, what do you think the most important lesson he learned throughout that journey? This one's pretty easy actually, okay, I lifted it almost directly.

Speaker 1: 13:21

I altered it slightly. There's saying from a woman shelter in Boston called Rosie's Place, okay, which I believe was the first women's shelter in the United States, wow, and it was founded in like 1974 by a heroic woman named Tip Ternan, and to this day they have a quote of hers posted in there and it couldn't match my hero's journey more perfectly. It is the journey must be made in the company of others.

Speaker 2: 13:57

Which is the?

Speaker 1: 13:58

opposite of how he enters the book. It's sort of a more poetic way of saying no man is an island.

Speaker 2: 14:04

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 14:06

And the dogs sort of took him through this journey and made him see it Right. But that's what he saw when he got there.

Speaker 2: 14:17

That's a fantastic lesson. I think it takes some of us a long time to learn that lesson, right.

Speaker 1: 14:21

I'm still learning it yeah.

Speaker 2: 14:23

I'm still learning too.

Speaker 1: 14:25

I'm going out to promote the book and I'm like does this really?

Speaker 2: 14:28

have to happen. Well, that stuff is so hard, yeah.

Speaker 1: 14:32

That stuff is yeah, it just takes a different side of you as an artist, right.

Speaker 2: 14:37

So it's.

Speaker 1: 14:38

Some people are more naturally that way inclined. I know a lot of them who are great at it and once I get into a rhythm where I'm supposed to be and it's going well, I'm all right at it. But I'm not by nature a public facing person. This is good that I do what I do for a job.

Speaker 2: 14:56

Yeah, absolutely. One question I want to ask you. I've had very few authors on here and I myself am not. I'm not a writer, I cannot sit down. I've tried, I've even tried to write blog posts, it's just I can't. It's not my jam, I don't know, and I wish it was, because I'm surrounded by some pretty amazing people and some amazing writers my sister's a writer and a book editor and she just comes so naturally to her.

Speaker 2: 15:28

It's just something I can't grasp my head around and I want to know, as a professional author, what do you find the most difficult about writing for you and how do you get through that? That's Okay. Maybe it just varies depending on what you're working on.

Speaker 1: 15:46

But it does to a degree. But I've come to the conclusion that there are three strata to the writing of books. First is conceptualization what am I going to write about? What is this? What is the structure? The last strata is sentence level writing sentences and paragraphs, which I love.

Speaker 2: 16:08

Okay.

Speaker 1: 16:09

I'm fond of saying that writing sentences is fun, writing books is hard.

Speaker 2: 16:15

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 16:15

Okay, and then there's the middle strata is how do you link all that stuff up? How do you make those sentences and paragraphs say the thing you have proposed at the beginning in your conceptualization, right, and that is the hard part. How do you build all the pieces of the mosaic into it to make a picture and structure it perfectly? That has always bedeveled me more than the other stuff. I've gotten better at the other stuff. I will always struggle with that big middle ground.

Speaker 1: 16:57

And the answer to how it gets done. I love editors. I love editing.

Speaker 2: 17:02

Okay.

Speaker 1: 17:03

I like being edited more as I get older, which is counterintuitive, but I need and want more as I get older.

Speaker 2: 17:13

That makes sense to me. I mean, you're really working on the creative aspect and you're really just getting your vision out there and then they can do, they can fine tune, right yeah. There's more satisfaction in that, maybe for some yeah.

Speaker 1: 17:28

And I'm not insisting that I have structure. See, it's sort of like once you know, it took me forever to learn to write like an elevator pitch. This is what the book is about, right? Yeah, it took me forever to learn that. In the early days it took me more words to describe what my book was about than there are words in the book. I was just lousy at it.

Speaker 1: 17:53

But over the years and again, I learned this more or less from an editor, from that editor who died, david Gale. He said basically, you know, we look for three level elevator pitch. Pretend you're trapped. I'm trapped on an elevator with you and I say, okay, you got my attention. Give me a sentence, what's your book about? And if it's a good, compelling sentence, I'll say, all right, give me a paragraph, okay. And then you give him a paragraph what it's about. And if that works and these are two different skills, and here comes the third one he'll say, okay, you hooked me. Give me a page. And any writer worth his or her salt he's got to say, right, if I got you that far, well, you're going to read a page of mine. I have you. And so what happened when I finally got that was.

Speaker 1: 18:40

I learned to write at the beginning what my book was about, which I never did before. I always follow my notes. I still do, but I know now it has to be about something. So with that through line in place I would always. My writing still does the same thing. It's a slalom down the hill right With that through line as the center. But in the old days the slalom would go and I'd go way out on unpeded walks and then come back now when I've been forced to to land on what my book is about at the beginning. I still swallow them, but I don't veer too far off. Everything I do, all my little side trips, serve that through line.

Speaker 2: 19:31

Okay.

Speaker 1: 19:33

Because I don't allow myself to go too far away from it. Everything's got a feedback into it. I had one, my favorite backhanded column. It came from a big guy in the library industry who was telling one of my former editors and it came back to me Because Chris writes so well about stuff nobody cares about. Oh my God. And it was first. I will take any great line, funny line, anywhere I can get it, and it made me laugh. But secondly, it focused my mind Like, yeah, I could do what I do and still be writing about something, Because I like to write dialogue, I write characters, I write humor. I can do all that within a structure that says this is what the book is about. So since then I've focused a lot more on it.

Speaker 2: 20:23

That's great. It's funny how someone can say one thing and it changes your whole. You carry that with you, Like people can say so many things and there's just one thing that someone says and you carry that with you.

Speaker 1: 20:36

Now that you put it that way, I do see why I'm an oaf.

Speaker 2: 20:43

What do you think? So, if we can circle back to this particular book for young readers, what do you think you would like your young readers to take away from this book? What's the one thing that you hope that they take away?

Speaker 1: 20:58

Basically, I'm going to go back to that saying, but I'm going to couple it with I mean, just because you think you're not the problem doesn't mean you're not the problem. Not being a participant in life is not good enough. Just because you're not one, you yourself identify as screwing things up for other people probably not good enough and, against your nature, you might have to force yourself out into life.

Speaker 2: 21:32

Yeah, I think that's so appropriate, especially for the times now when people I feel it's like people everyone's just kind of overwhelmed and a lot of people just don't want to participate. They're just not interested or it's just too much and they just want to go back into their hidey holes.

Speaker 1: 21:49

There's a lot out there to want to shrink from right now.

Speaker 2: 21:52

Yes, there is Absolutely Hi Sunky.

Speaker 1: 21:58

You're so pretty Sunky girl.

Speaker 2: 22:00

Sunky. Look at you. All right. Well, thank you, chris. I appreciate you jumping on.

Speaker 1: 22:04

Thank you very much for having me. I enjoyed it, cheers.