Amanda Divine: You've written across several different genres, but one seems to stand out. How did you get started writing about pets?

Margaret H. Bonham: I started writing at around 15 or so and about that time, I wrote a rather short novel (55K). No, you don't want to read it. It was fantasy. When I was 17, I reworked it and edited it and tried to get it published, but thank goodness it never did. I kept writing and although I got handwritten rejections, I didn't understand that the editors were actually encouraging me. I wrote bad short stories and sent them in. They got rejected.

I ended up shelving my fiction and got into sled dogs and mushing. About the same time, I was subscribed to a number of dog magazines. I read them voraciously but after one particular article, I got so mad because I knew I could write better than that. So, I wrote an article and sent off a query letter. (By the way, that's the wrong way to do it -- you send in a query first). A month later I was asked to send the article in. I can still remember that day when I got the contract. I opened it up and didn't really know what it was. I had to keep reading it over and over to make sure I got it right. And that was my first sale. All the rejections in fiction disappeared because my very first nonfiction submission was a sale.

In three years time, I had sold maybe a dozen or so articles (I had a job that took most of my time). It really wasn't until I met another dog writer on a discussion list that I found out how to submit to a particular book publisher. She said, "Oh I've read your writing -- you're really good." Boy, was that great for my ego. (Little did I know the truth!) She encouraged me to call the editor and I did. When the editor heard who sent me, she warmed right up and told me she needed a book on Wheaten Terriers. I agreed to submit a proposal to them. A month later, I received a phone call with an acceptance.

There's a funny story about this because I owe a lot to that author who recommended me. You see, that author told me afterwards that she got me mixed up with another author (named Boneham). She thought I was her! After that, we laughed and I said, "Good thing I'm a good writer, huh?" She and I are pretty good friends on the phone and internet, but I have yet to meet her in person. Sometime I will. The rest, as they say, is history. Well, not entirely. The pet book biz has its ups and downs. But I've written and been paid for more than 17 pet books since 2000, which is pretty nice.

Amanda: Were you actually active with sled dogs and mushing, or just your writing turned in that direction?

Margaret H. Bonham: *Laughs* Yes, I am a sled dog racer, although currently inactive because, well, my guys are mostly geriatric now and to build my writing career, I've had to hold off on buying more dogs. I am what they call a mid-distance musher -- I race anywhere from 20 to 150 miles and drive a team of dogs between 6 and 14 individuals. When I've raced, I've run in Minnesota, Idaho, Colorado and Wyoming.

Amanda: Did you win anything?

Margaret H. Bonham: Yes. I took third place one year for the entire season in three dog. I usually came in to where I won something (either dog food -- very handy) or a small cash prize. When I hit the bigger races, I tended to trail behind because I was working some jobs with long hours. I am the prestigious 3-time Red-Lantern winner at the American Dog Derby and ended up on the front page of various small-town papers up there. (I won't mention that it had something to do with chasing a loose Pomeranian into the backyard of the local gossip columnist).

Amanda: Where did your interest in dogs begin?

Margaret H. Bonham: I grew up with dogs. My first dog as an adult was a very recalcitrant Newfoundland Samoyed we named Conan. He was a very difficult dog who became much better when I figured out he needed a job to do. That ended up being my first sled dog team. It kind of went downhill from there.

Amanda: How did you do the book on Wheaten Terriers? Do you have to go out and live with that kind of dog for a year?

Margaret H. Bonham: For the Wheaten Terrier book, I visited Wheaten breeders and did a lot of talking on the internet and on the phone with people "in the know." When I do a breed book, I still do a lot of talking to breeders and show people, but often I talk and listen to people who own them as pets. I'll get lovely emails from people who say my books have helped them so much. In most cases, the publishers don't give you a year to write a book. So, researching for a year is pretty much out. In fact, with most books, I was lucky to get three months to write them. With one book, I was given one whole month to write it. That's the fastest I've ever been able to write a book. So, what publishers love is a person who can write fast and accurately as well as someone who knows a lot about dogs. In other words, a person who already knows most things about these dogs and then do the research (quickly) to fill in the gaps. Because I've been tied in with the dog community, it enabled me to write a 60-100k book in that timeframe. And then do it again and again.

Amanda: Your first published novel was released last year, and you've got several short stories out since. What made you decide to get back into fiction?

Margaret H. Bonham: Science fiction and fantasy has always been where my heart is, even when writing nonfiction. It's kind of sad, but as much as I knew about submitting to publishers and writing (I did an awful lot of reading on the subject), I was doing most of it in a vacuum. As a lone writer out in Colorado, I really didn't have a lot of contact with other writers or writer organizations. So, not understanding the "codes" in rejections, I pretty much gave up. It was only when I started getting published in the dog arena did I think I was good enough to be published. But only for nonfiction. It took a long time to get myself back in the swing of things and a couple of novels that will most likely remain in the drawer that got me back into fiction.

Now, I know I can get published in fiction, it's just a matter of building a readership. It's funny because all along I've been writing fiction. I'm not much of a short fiction writer (I tend to write book length, regardless). My first fiction novels after getting published in the dog arena were a Star Wars novel (yeah, I know), that I wrote in 1999 and a dog mystery novel that I wrote around 2000. I started writing Prophecy of Swords in November 2001 and finished the first draft in January. Its sequel, Runestone of Teiwas, (first draft) was written sometime in 2002. I have other books finished that are currently being marketed. So, it looks like I haven't been writing a lot of fiction, but nothing is further from the truth. I really have written a fair amount of fiction, it's just it really takes longer to get them accepted. To give you an example, many New York publishers will take as long as three years to get through their slush. With nonfiction, the longest I've waited has been about eight months and in most cases, two to three months is often the norm for me. When I work on nonfiction (that which pays the bills!), it takes away from the fiction side. Fact of life. I enjoy writing, so doing both makes sense to me.

Amanda: A dog mystery novel...Did you write that specifically to help yourself transition between dogs and fiction?

Margaret H. Bonham: I wrote the dog mystery novel because that's what I thought everyone wanted. It seems that people think you need to have something of your nonfiction in your fiction topic to write well. Only, that's just a marketing thing. Sometimes writing something others want isn't the right thing to do. The Star Wars novel was more or less something I wanted to write, and it showed. It was good.

Amanda: Were the Star Trek novel and the dog mystery novel some of your "stay in the drawer" writings, or are they being marketed?

Margaret H. Bonham: Marketed? Hmmmm. Well, yes and no. Right now they're shelved. The Star Wars novel is shelved because more or less there's one publisher for that and it was rejected (without much of a glance, I suspect). Therein lies a lesson for anyone wanting to write in someone else's universe: don't, unless you are contracted to. The mystery I made the mistake of following some advice that didn't fit my writing (made by a friend who was a pro). So, I have to go back and gut the thing, which is more effort than it's worth. I know why it doesn't work. I'm just too dreadfully lazy to fix it at the moment. I guess I don't really have many "stay in the drawer" writings. Well, I may, but they've been lost for eternity or have been typed out on a typewriter (yeah, I'm THAT old).

Amanda: Is writing about dogs and other animals in fiction something you're really not interested in, or did it just feel forced at the time?

Margaret H. Bonham: That's a complex question, but I'll try to answer that. When I have an animal in my writing, be it a canine, horse, or whatever, I try to make them as realistic as possible. You'll find pretty cantankerous horses in my world, for example. They need rest and food and generally don't do well unless they're cared for. Now, with writing about dogs (or cats), the first thing people do is make them more human-like in a fantasy. That's fine because that's really what the readers want is a character they can relate to, but it's not right and it's not accurate. I've seen a few science fiction and fantasy writers do a really good job with animals -- one, in my opinion, is Connie Willis. To Say Nothing of the Dog is easily the best book I've read so far that handles a dog as a character. Jack London did it really well, but unfortunately embellished a lot of the stories to make them more dire and more interesting.

So, my problem has been is how to have a fantasy where an animal can be what it is without telepathy, talking or whatever. The truth is, I don't always write like that because if you want an animal as a main character, it's pretty difficult to do. Jack London did it, but again, I'm not really looking at writing animal stories. I cheated like hell when I came up with Ni'yah in Prophecy of Swords. He's a wolf, yes, but he's actually a god. So, he can talk and shapeshift. But he was actually patterned after a dog I owned who was a very smart and very tricky Alaskan Malamute with a wicked sense of humor and a protective streak. Ni'yah is probably the only character I ever took from real life. Whether it's something I'm interested in or not, I think it genuinely depends on whether the story calls to me. So far none with animals do that. That may change. Did it feel forced? When writing it, it sometimes did but the reality is that the writing itself doesn't feel forced when I've read it. The dog sled mystery novel is more or less on the shelf until I feel brave enough to seriously tackle it. And I just don't right now.

Amanda: Some writers have trouble writing human plots without resorting to telepathy...

Margaret H. Bonham: The problem that most writers face is that they really don't know how animals think, so anthropomorphism is very common. Likewise, a lot of readers don't know how animals think, and so a lot of animal thought and behavior just doesn't work for readers. For example, there isn't a question of morality in an animal's thought patterns. A wolf isn't good or bad, it simply is. It may kill a rabbit one day and a child the next in order to survive. Its nature doesn't make it dwell on what it kills -- it knows that in order for it to survive it simply must eat. There is the pack and there is a certain hierarchy in it that the wolf recognizes. There's also friendships and bonding, but again, that's according to the pack. If a human isn't part of the pack, the human isn't recognized as much more than a threat or food source. Now we can have a creature such as that in a story, but again, how much do people relate to it, especially if it can't talk or we don't know the proper way to communicate? Then, instead of telling the story you were originally telling, you start telling a whole different story, which might be interesting, but in the end, it's been done to death with nature shows, alien cultures, and whatnot.

The reason why Jack London was able to pull it off successfully is because he was able to pull at the reader's reactions and sensibilities. I might consider writing something like that someday, but it won't really fall into a mystery or science fiction and fantasy category unless it's the worn-out trope of human ends up with a group of aliens and starts taking on characteristics of them story. And then again, when someone writes this kind of story, you need some sort of communication. And canines, for example, don't "speak" in words. You get concepts like, "I'm annoyed," "I'm hungry," "Friend is coming," "I'm nervous," etc. Again, it's just not what I'm writing at this time.

Amanda: What other problems did you encounter while writing Prophecy of Swords?

Margaret H. Bonham: I really didn't have this problem with Prophecy of Swords because I steered clear of the whole animal issue. The only animals in Prophecy who are main characters are a wolf and a dragon and both are very special creatures (quite magical). When I deal with animals, they behave more or less like animals, e.g., horses. Prophecy was more or less an emotional outpouring that came after a depressed period after 9-11. I don't know any author who wasn't affected by it. When I started writing again, I went back to a very old story that had stayed in my mind for over twenty years. I wrote it with adult sensibilities and that's pretty much how Prophecy was born and Runestone of Teiwas after it. I was halfway through the third book when I got another book contract (my first Idiot's guide) and I had to go make a living. The hardest part about Prophecy was selling the book, because at the time, I had not even sold a short story to the science fiction and fantasy market. That's changed, of course. Yard Dog Press bought my first short story in The Four Bubbas of the Apocalypse and I went ahead and submitted Prophecy of Swords somewhat later.

Amanda: So Runestone of Teiwas is a continuation of that post-9/11 feeling?

Margaret H. Bonham: When you read Prophecy of Swords or Runestone of Teiwas, I doubt there's any 9-11 feeling, per se. It isn't an allegory of any sort, so I hope your readers won't take it as such. However, a good portion of my fiction has come from that incident, mainly because I was floundering around like so many people at that time and looking to get my bearings on my writing. A couple of things had happened at that time which threw me into a depression of sorts. One was obviously 9-11 -- I really didn't get anything written except an article or two I had under contract for about two months. The second was that within a blink of an eye, the market had pretty disappeared as New York went through a horrendous time. My problems were pretty inconsequential in comparison, but when your main source of income dries up, you have nowhere to go and no contracts to write to, it really affects your life. So, when I was ready to write again, it was fiction. It had to be. And it was Prophecy of Swords and Runestone of Teiwas. And eventually the other books I'm working on.

Going back to science fiction and fantasy was more or less a way for me to ground myself and get back to writing, even if I didn't have a contract. Runestone of Teiwas (which is complete right now), is a bit darker than Prophecy of Swords. It sat for a long time as I marketed Prophecy of Swords because it felt scattered and because, quite frankly, my work picked up again. I had revised Runestone a couple of times, but the beginning didn't work for me. But Prophecy has been doing well enough that my publisher wanted to see Runestone. So, this past fall, I went back and read the book and realized that it needed a much stronger beginning, which it now has. It took several months to go through it, but when I finally did, I was really happy with it. In some ways, it's my favorite book because it feels right. I can't explain it, but it's just a better book, probably because even a pro learns things as he or she continues to write.

Amanda: It's interesting to think of science fiction and fantasy as a way to ground yourself...

Margaret H. Bonham: Science fiction and fantasy has always been a comfortable medium for me. I grew up with Star Trek TOS [The Original Series], Lost in Space and probably a bunch of other science fiction and fantasy-type shows. One of my 6th grade school teachers was a big fantasy fan and read us The Hobbit and A Wizard of Earthsea and a number of other cool stories (this was in a parochial school too!). I remember being completely blown away by Star Wars. So, for me, science fiction and fantasy was incredibly comforting.

Amanda: Is there anything in particular you learned from Runestone of Teiwas?

Margaret H. Bonham: Runestone is a good book but in its original form, it tried to do too much. I had to keep focus on the story, which in the long run, made it better. At the same time, when I revisited the book, I saw I had made a classic error that many writers make -- and that was not getting to the story fast enough. So, when I rewrote the beginning, I wasn't so concerned about telling you what happened in the first book -- you pick it up as you go along and as you need the information. You really don't need to read Prophecy to read Runestone, but at the same time, I really feel that you can only enhance your experience reading both. At the same time, I drop the characters into some pretty sticky situations at the beginning -- which is precisely what an author SHOULD do.

Did I learn anything from it? Well, I think I became a better writer somewhere between Prophecy and Runestone and Runestone of Teiwas really does shine because of it.