When I was asked if I'd like to contribute a short story to a mystery
anthology involving dogs, I hesitated.  At the moment I am owned by a
pair of cats and it has been years since I've shared life with a dog.
 But I loved them and remember them with affection.  There was the
roly-poly cinnamon brown puppy someone dumped on our doorstep,
eventually named Sherman by my husband.  I will never forget my
embarrassment when my father asked why the Sam Hill we would name a
female Sherman.  I admit to having paid little or no attention to her
underside but would have expected my husband to have noticed.  He never
lived that down.  And Sherman she remained.

Then there was Scooter, a small black and white Heinz 57 varieties,
with big dreams, particularly in regard to the female Dane next door.
Whenever she went into heat, Scooter went over a six foot fence to
answer her siren call.  That call remained unanswered, however.
Scooter was vertically challenged, built too close to the ground to
reach his goal.  He remains in my memory the living embodiment of
frustration.

And there was the drooler, Alice, a St. Bernard, a hundred-plus pounds
of love for everybody and everything.  My husband, knowing full well
she was a female, still delighted in calling her Big Al.  He maintained
that any dog heavy enough to knock him off his feet whenever she
launched herself at him to welcome him home from work, had to be called
Big something.  Yet she was as gentle as a lamb.  Kids adored her.

Those were the most recent of my doggy friends.  And since as far as I
know my cats can't read and question my loyalty, I wrote "Nightmare
in Nowhere" as a tribute to all the doggy friends I have known and
loved.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did writing it.

Chassie

Bark M for Murder

Publisher: Avon

ISBN: 006081537X

March 1, 2006

Who let the dogs out?

Evildoers beware! In Bark M for Murder, four of mystery fiction's top
storytellers are setting the hounds on your trail - in an
incomparable quartet of crime stories with a canine edge. Man's (and
woman's) best friends take the lead in this phenomenal collection of
tales tense and surprising, humorous and thrilling: New York Times
bestselling author J. A. Jance's spellbinding saga of a scam-busting
septuagenarian and her two golden retrievers; Anthony Award winner
Virginia Lanier's pureblood thriller featuring bloodhounds and bloody
murder; Edgar® and Anthony nominee Chassie West's suspenseful
stunner about a life-saving German shepherd (see preview below) and a
ghostly forgotten crime; and rising star Lee Charles Kelly's
edge-of-your-seat yarn that pits an ex-cop/kennel owner and a yappy toy
poodle against a craven killer...

A glimpse of Chassie West's Nightmare in Nowhere:

A. J. woke up woozy, in the back seat of a car she didn't recognize
-- a car that trembled precariously on the edge of an embankment. She
wanted out. The car wanted down -- toward the rushing waters below. She
had no hope of help -- until the German shepherd tried to tug her out
of her wobbly prison. Once out of the car, she struggled against pain,
cold and vertigo as her canine guide led her to a cabin in the woods.
In response to the dog's barking a man opened the door. And stood
unmoving. His silence screamed in her ears. Finally, he scowled at the
shepherd and said, "Well, hell, Duke, what have you dragged home this
time?"