The Nicholberry Dispatch
A year of Puppy Brain, and this Stephen King book really is that good
BOOK NEWS
Can you believe it’s been almost a year since Puppy Brain was published? The journey has been incredible, and I’m so grateful for all of you who have read, shared, and loved this book. I was going through my camera roll and came across this Instagram screenshot from May 13, 2023.
Max and I were on a mother/son adventure in Italy and I worked feverishly in the first days of our trip, as I wanted to be free of the thundering mandate in my head to work. I remember hearing Kristin Hannah once say something like, “You have to get to the point where you can write with a dead body in the kitchen sink” and I’m pretty sure that I was at the dead body stage while doing that set of revisions. I wrote in the airport, on the flight, in the hotel, and then woke up early to get it finished before we left for Como from Milan.
I remember toggling between elation at knowing that I was nearly done with the last big edit and terror that I was nearly done with the last big edit. While I might have been able to ignore a dead body in the sink, I never lost sight of the fact that I was writing a book that would affect the way humans relate with dogs. Such a sobering responsibility.
As I look forward to the release of the paperback (April 30, 2025), I do so with a year’s worth of encouragement and feedback from all of you. Thank you.
SOMETHING TO LEARN
No one teaches about trust quite the way Brené Brown does. In this eight minute snippet from Anatomy of Trust, she walks through the pillars of trust, starting with a key definition. “Trust is choosing to make something important to you vulnerable to the actions of someone else.” Oh dang. Keep watching and if you are processing a particular relationship in your life that is difficult, you’re sure to glean insights as to where trust has broken down (and if not, you’re sure to learn something new about how trust works).
SOMETHING TO READ
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
After being told by every writer I know that I simply MUST read it, I have finally started Stephen King’s On Writing.
Ah.
I get it.
It’s a memoir about writing and perseverance, but it is also filled with personal anecdotes told in his distinctive voice, making the book as compelling as his fictional works. An example: As a young aspiring writer, King began submitting stories to magazines but was repeatedly rejected. Instead of giving up, he hammered a nail into his bedroom wall and started impaling each rejection letter onto it (he received the first one when he was thirteen). Eventually, the stack grew so big that he had to replace the nail with a spike. But undaunted, he kept submitting. He didn’t see the rejections as failures - they were just part of becoming a writer. (He also tells a riveting story of his “first bestseller” - an eighth grade work of plagiarism based on a movie he’d seen at the Ritz). So good.
SOMETHING TO CONSIDER
“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” - Arthur Ashe
SOMETHING TO LOVE
A favorite outtake from the Puppy Brain cover shoot
As someone fiercely self reliant, that video on trust challenges very comfortable behavior patterns.
Writing Puppy Brain has changed so many lives and made such a difference in how we raise our pups!!! Thank you so much 😘