Hammond, on how she and the corgis were united:You know how this one goes. Your daughter wants, no, needs a dog. She’s thirteen, and a social underachiever, and it’s breaking your heart. She chooses the breed, finds the breeder, makes the pitch, is offered the dog--himself less than successful in his six scant months, having bilged out of the stud pool and sent back on account of an irregularity in one eye. So you say yes, you’ll take the dog, knowing your life will change forever but believing—I repeat, believing, which tells you something about our household habit of baseless optimism—that this will be your daughter’s responsibility and salvation. Ah, but no—he, Petey, becomes yours, instead, in three weeks flat.
And it is a further mark of your goodness—or pushoverability—that you believe Petey is suffering in his life as an only dog belonging to a writer. What is his life, after all, but lying beneath your desk all day? So you buy him a puppy of his own. Enter Haagen MacDoggin. For whom you fly from Oregon to southern California. And who falls instantly, deeply and hopelessly in love with your husband. Which is perfectly fine, since Petey...[read on]
Diane Hammond, the author of Going to Bend and Homesick Creek, is the recipient of an Oregon Arts Commission literary fellowship and served as a spokesperson for the Free Willy Keiko Foundation and the Oregon Coast Aquarium.In 2008 she applied the Page 69 Test to her novel Hannah’s Dream.
Earlier this month she applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Seeing Stars.
Read an excerpt from Seeing Stars, and learn more about the book and author at Diane Hammond's website.
Follow Diane Hammond and her corgis on Facebook.
Read--Coffee with a Canine: Diane Hammond & Petey and Haagen.
--Marshal Zeringue
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