Dogs Chase Squirrels Afterword

A whole year.  Hard to believe Dogs Chase Squirrels started back in the beginning of 2020, when the world looked slightly more optimistic and less...well, like what we ended up with.

While not the largest project I’ve ever planned, Dogs Chase Squirrels is certainly the largest project I’ve seen to “completion”.  (I use quotation marks here because this is, technically, still a draft.)  It’s a story I’ve wanted to tell since introducing both Camelia and Irene to the world, as well as the city of Pinewood and its inhabitants.  I’m working on a better name for this series of stories, I promise!

Now that the draft is complete, I can safely say it’s been one of the most fun -- and the most tiring -- projects I’ve ever attempted.  Make no mistake, I loved writing it, but that love presented more than a few roadblocks.  Some I cleared, others I stumbled over, and at least one or two I crashed into head-long and came out the other side somewhat battered.

Writing about a growing relationship is hard.  It isn’t all sunshine, rainbows and sparkles -- no relationship is ever that clear-cut and dry (and admittedly, boring).  A relationship needs to grow and blossom organically.  The characters at play need to have chemistry together.  They need to offer something that the other desperately needs, whether or not they consciously realize it.  In that same breath, they need to be their own people outside of that relationship, and not have their every waking moment focused on being together.  When those moments do happen, they should feel special.  Disagreements and arguments happen.  Questions about whether a romantic partnership will even work will inevitably occur.  I know from experience.

Even if the end result is easy to predict -- anyone who’s read Late Bloomer or talks to me at length can probably guess how everything ended up -- you still need to keep your audience guessing, and hoping, and planting just a few seeds of worry that their relationship may not end on a happy note.  Doing all that and much more ended up being a thirty-eight-episode-long endeavor.

I approached Dogs Chase Squirrels with the impression that coming up with a 3K-4K episode every week would be manageable.  And for the first one-and-a-half arcs, it was.  But then 2020 happened, and everything got...messy.

Part of that is on me.  I went into the serial right after finishing up Monsters Don’t Cry (my other big project, and was my largest writing endeavor thus far), eager to tackle something more light-hearted and fun, with a sprinkling of drama to spice things up.  What I hadn’t realized was that I may have bitten off a bit more than I could chew; along with penning other short stories, planning and drafting each week’s episode, and dealing with the rapidly changing state of society, the fact I had been writing non-stop for well over a year just eluded me.  And as much as I enjoyed writing, even I had my limits.  And when those crashes came, they came hard.  That’s why there were so many breaks in between episodes, and why the story stopped at a few crucial points.  It became hard to keep up with.

Don’t worry, this isn’t going to just be me whinging about having to keep up with my own self-imposed deadlines for...however long this afterword ends up being; consider this pulling back the curtain more than anything.  Dogs Chase Squirrels served as more than a character study -- it became a great learning experience overall.  Not only did I learn what I was capable of as a writer, but I also became aware of my own limitations, and when to say, “okay, you’ve been at this for 3 months straight, you’re obviously tired, take a break and do something else for a while.”  I had to be reminded on multiple occasions that breaks are not a bad thing to take when it comes to long-form creative works, which I’ll be taking to heart whenever I dive into my next project.

So, enough dwelling on the stumbling points.  Let’s talk about the fun stuff.

Finding a way to make Dogs Chase Squirrels both an entertaining read on its own, and a rewarding experience for anyone who’s kept up with my silly scribbling for the better part of three years, was a challenge.

Not only did I have to remember that this may be some reader’s first foray into the world of Pinewood, but I had to make the world feel connected with past events for long-time readers -- hence the inclusion of the fallout of events from Monsters Don’t Cry.  Both stories are only loosely connected -- Karen and Marcie’s night at the Jazz At Night bar coincides with the same night that Irene met Camelia, even though they never interact with one another -- but the consequences of one event should naturally spill into others.  I knew that pretending everything was hunky-dory after what happens at the end of Karen’s story would be incredibly silly.  So, I had to sit down and think, “Okay.  Major giantess attack on Denver.  People aren’t happy about it.  Camelia and Irene are both capable of becoming giants.  Both have caused their own bits of mischief as giants.  How might people react to that?”  That was fun, and only mildly harrowing.

And then there are the side characters surrounding the main cast.  Once again, I’ve found myself creating new characters I’ve fallen in love with.  Ashley, the cute, size-smitten rabbit barista.  Zara, the brash but well-meaning -- and very big -- punk rocker dingo.  The trans lion, Blair, and his sweet, sexy hunk lion boyfriend, Drake.  It was a blast writing about each and every one of them, and how they bounced off the main couple in fun ways.  Even the cast members that haunt their respective pasts (Camelia’s well-intentioned but short-minded immediate family, and Irene’s strained past with her abusive father, Cornelius) gave a chance to explore how the Labrador and squirrel became who they are.  For better, and for worse.

Needless to say, it was a joy to make Camelia the protagonist, along with her better half in Irene, and to flesh them out as fuzzy critters with their own goals, wants, and desires.  Characters you can (hopefully!) relate to as people -- even when said characters can make themselves building-sized with ease.  And believe you me, somehow making a story featuring sexy, cute and somewhat scary giant women relatable is no easy feat, but hello, yes, hi, I like giants, how did you guess?

So, now begs the question -- what happens next?

Well, if you haven’t read Late Bloomer, I’d recommend you give that a read.  Even though Camelia and Irene are secondary characters in it, it does serve as a retroactive “sequel” of sorts.

As for the serial itself?  Well, as I said, I still consider it a draft.  At some point, I’d like to give this another pass, and see how well the story threads hold up.  There will be some changes, I’m sure, along with touching up dialogue that might have ended up a bit too fluffy, along with patching up the occasional technical flub or grammatical issue that slipped past during the proofreading phase.  But I want to approach it with fresh eyes -- a project I can tackle on the side when the mood strikes me, instead of in the moment when I’m trying to hit that deadline.  (Also, might I add, I do not envy soap opera writers anymore.  What I did in a year, they have to do in a matter of days.  Nothing but respect there -- even if the end product leaves a LOT to be desired.)

Will this be the last you see of Camelia and Irene?  Not a chance -- I do love them, along with the rest of the cast.  And if an opportunity arises where other side characters can get their own inclusion in future works, I’ll do my best to fit them in if it feels appropriate.  Seriously, Zara and Drake really need to get more screen time.

If you’ve read this far, and you enjoyed the serial, thank you so, so much for seeing it through to the end.  Writing it wasn’t easy, but if it made you laugh, worry, cry, or smile, and made your 2020 even a little bit less insane, then I’ve done my job.

For now, I’m going to enjoy a nice, cold drink, sit back and recuperate in the best way possible -- by daydreaming of enormous canine and squirrel women looking cute and imposing for a city of little people below.

As always...I’ll see you all in the next one.