And then there’s Shar.  Talk about family issues.  She’s trapped by the demands of her past, having promised to finish her grandmother’s monolithic study on Mesopotamian goddesses (sort of a Grandma Causabon) and given the rest her life to teaching ancient history at the college her grandfather founded.   Her future is going to be the same as her present, and her present is all about the past.  She’s stuck with only her dachshund Wolfie to console her.  Then Things Happen.

I had a heck of a time with Shar in the beginning because she was so repressed–and repressed heroines can be really boring and passive aggressive–and because she was doomed to be the Exposition Fairy.  The Exposition Fairy, for those of you not conversant with writing technical talk–is the poor son of a bitch in the story who gets stuck explaining back story.  Dogs and Goddesses is a story about an ancient Mesopotamian goddess who calls her god-king consort to join her in modern Southern Ohio so that they can rule again, aided by the descendants of her seven priestesses.   Abby’s a baker, Daisy’s a techie, and Shar’s a . . . history professor.  Clunk, Exposition Fairy.  Most of the stuff we cut at the end was Shar explaining things we decided didn’t need explained.  And Daisy helped out on one part of the most crucial back story by hating the step temple rebuilt as the history building and wondering how anybody could live in the top two layers of it, moved down the street as a weird little two story cottage, which of course is where Shar lived.  But mostly, it’s Shar and her MacBook, saying, “Look at these pictures of bas reliefs from 2000 BC. . . ”  ARGH.

However, once Shar drinks the Kool-Aid at Kammani’s dog obedience class, she starts to change, and that was so much fun to write.  One of the first things I wrote was Sam, the god-king, rising in her bedroom while she thinks she’s drunk (she drank mysterious punch at the class and then Wolfie talked to her, therefore she must be drunk).   Assuming you’re drunk is the only way to take in stride a god-king appearing before you in your bedroom, but by the next day even Shar has to admit she’s sober and Sam’s still there.   That would be enough to make any woman rethink her position on reality, but her rapid personality change is speeded up by powers like hearing dogs talk and making people finish things (an invaluable skill for a college prof, let me tell you).

But the real change in Shar’s life comes because of the sisterhood she finds with Abby and Daisy.  These three women are very different, in age (Abby’s in her twenties, Daisy’s in her thirties, and Shar’s in her forties and the back end of those), in personality (Abby’s free and footloose, Daisy’s logical and focused, and Shar’s reserved and resigned), and in family (Abby’s a loner with a domineering mother, Daisy’s outgoing with a wingnut mother, and Shar’s a professional-without-a-life with an ancient and fierce Mesopotamian grandmother, gone now but not forgotten).  They meet because of their dogs, they cling together because they’re in the same world of trouble, but they bond because they’re sisters, because they’re the family they never got from their real families, because they risk their lives and loves for each other.   They love their dogs and they love their men, but it’s their sisters they turn to when things go wrong and they have to grieve (I love the boozle party), when things go right and they have to celebrate, and when things go pear-shaped and they have to kick some Mesopotamian goddess butt.

Writing Shar’s story was so much fun, feeling my heart lift as she broke free–”Mama’s Little Girl” will always be Shar’s song for me now–blowing off my own frustration as she starts kicking to the curb the people in her life who are trying to keep her down, and most important sharing that growing bond with Abby and Daisy as Lani and Krissie and I grew closer in real life.  We didn’t intend to become sisters as we wrote this book, but we did.

I think this book has the bouncey, sunny glow it does for me because it was so much fun to write even when we disagreed (THREE DAYS) because we were such cheerleaders for each other, such enablers.  I’d say, “I want to do this, but I don’t know if it’ll be believable,” and Lani or Krissie would say, “The dogs talk.  You can do anything you want.”   The only places we really intervened in each other’s work was in the sex scenes; every one of us did something that the other two said, “Are you kidding me?”   I’ll leave Krissie to tell you about the mattress and Lani to tell you about the courtyard, but mine was .  .  .

Actually, I don’t think I can explain what mine was, the language got fairly blue.  I can tell you that I laughed really hard while we were arguing about it, though.  Because that’s what sisters do.