On the 26 April 2012 A Dog Called Homeless was published in the UK. It was a very special moment for me. Not so long after, the book was also published in the US and over the years it has published in many other countries around the world. It will always be the book that means the most to me.
There were were many key things that set the story of Cally and Homeless in motion:
- I learned a lot about the power of speech, particularly about the effects of not speaking after attending a silent retreat.
- A character called Cally Fisher who kept interrupting my daily life, each time showing me a little more about who she was, and demanding to be heard.
- I was paired with a tutor who was the father of a child with elective mutism, and who was kind and brave enough to answer my probing questions so I could understand first-hand the character of Cally’s Dad.
- We had recently become the owners of our first ever dog, Harry!
- A desire to write what I felt simply and clearly so anyone could understand.
- A comment from Judith Heneghan, a tutor at UofW, who said that I should finish what I had started to write. And so I did…
10 Years have passed since a dog called Homeless led Cally, her deaf and blind friend Sam, and her dad to the lake across the common. And after refusing to speak for 31 days, Cally says the one word she needed to say to make her family whole again…
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