September 1, 2008 It's official, I'm an author!

This month has been a whirlwind of things going on. After the fair, I was gearing up and growing out Jasmine for The All American Grooming Show, for creative grooming, in between grooming my customers dogs for the summer of course. August 1st, the book I wrote last summer was finally published and on the market! “The EVERYTHING Dog Grooming Book” by Sandy Blackburn has finally been born!
(Clears throat, ahem… “I’d like to thank all the little people….”)
It’s a surreal feeling, being a published author. I know writers try for years to become published and honestly, this was just a fluke, I did not intend to write a book but they approached me! How could I say no? This was a once in a lifetime opportunity for me to make my mark on the world. I have to say, I’m proud of the book as a whole.
Adams media is the publisher and they have a series of EVERYTHING books about well, just about everything! It’s a lot like the “for dummies” books you see at the store, very easily explained only they don’t insult you by calling you a dummy. (I have some of the “for dummies” series of books at home too, but the title really does put me off, I’m no dummy.)
It’s a how to manual about grooming your pet, well everything you can cram into 255 pages. There is so much to grooming there’s no way you can put it all into one book, which explains why I have my own library of grooming books at home. I used this opportunity to explain all that groomers do. Unless you watch the entire process, I can assure you that you have no idea how much work is actually involved. Most people go to groomers not only for haircuts, but also for bathing and nail trims because it’s just not that easy to get the job done at home. My book has a lot of information on training your pet to accept grooming more willingly and different household products that you can use to help you groom your pet.
Some people have asked me if I’m shooting myself in the foot by writing a book telling people how to groom their pets at home. The simple answer is no of course not, once people try it themselves, they will either: A. Like it and decide it’s something they want to do or B. Try it, decide it’s too much work and call in reinforcements.
I’m not offended either way. There are enough dogs in Attica for 10 groomers!
However, it was nice going into detail about exactly what we do and how we do it. I’ve been grooming for so long I had to stop and really think about questions that I had before. I asked numerous people what they wanted to know how to do, or why we do it, and I was surprised at some of the questions that I just assumed everyone knew the answers to. You never stop learning!
Writing the book was the easy part, I wrote the book last summer from April to July. I had a killer deadline! Waiting for the entire process of editing, rewriting, reviewing, and numerous changes later, actually seeing the book in print took about a year! I still don’t know a whole lot about the book publishing industry, as I did this all via computer and online to editors. What I do know is, there are tons of people with certain jobs to do and they do a very thorough job at that!
I was glad that I had the final word over what changes I would accept and my editors were very patient and nice to me and walked me through the process.
I’m still on such a high since the books arrived that I haven’t come down yet! Now I truly appreciate what writers go through and the ups and downs of getting a book published. I get why it’s such a big deal now!
I so admire those who can write novels and stories that they can make up in their heads, which will never happen to me. I can’t do fiction. I have zero imagination for making up stories and plots. I’ll stick to the how to manuals and writing true stories, that’s more my style. I’m sure teachers who read this column shake their heads at my grammatical errors, sorry people; spell check only does so much. This is just me; this is how I speak and how I write. I’d love to write flowery words and poetic verses but that’s not going happen either. I’m a “tell it like it is” sort of person. Thank you to “The Neighbor” newspaper for accepting me and my frank opinions and bad grammar! So, if you are looking for a how to manual on dog grooming, “The EVERYTHING Dog Grooming Book” is available in bookstores and online and of course, at my salon!