It was my then ten-year-old son who had the idea, it might be better to say the dream, to write what became the novel Posie Parker and the Bulldog Bully (Nymeria Publishing, September 2025). While we were outside playing in the pool one summer afternoon, he told me about a dream he’d had about a therapist cat who lived with a psychiatrist human and acted as the therapist for all the animals in the neighborhood.
As he told this story, I shot up from my perch on one of our bright pink floating devices and exclaimed, “That sounds like a novel!” He laughed at first, but as we talked, the possibility of writing this thing, actually writing this thing, started to take shape.
I wasn’t sure how it would go. My son is a wonderful human, but he’s also willful, opinionated and sometimes easily distracted. How would this impact your relationship? Would we give up after five pages and never return to it? Add in coordinating ideas, writing styles, and schedules with a miniature version of myself who has homework, play practice, and the occasional social situation that must be dealt with this instant and it seemed… ambitious.
But what I didn’t realize at the time was that writing together would be one of the most rewarding experiences we would share.
Writing a novel as a mother-son team isn’t just about building a story. It’s about building trust, building patience, and building memories that will last far longer than any bestseller list appearance.
Start with play, not pressure
The idea was the easy part. The hard part was actually writing the book.
The first thing I learned about this? Keep it playful. Kids—and adults, too, if we’re being honest—can feel overwhelmed when something feels too big or serious.
We didn’t sit down and say, “We are writing a 300-page masterpiece!” Instead, it started with silly stories over a meal. We’d toss around “what if” ideas:
What the therapist was a dog instead of a cat?
Dogs get out more than cats generally and they are known to be more social.
What if we had a child in need of a therapist in the story as well, a child who was dealing with the same things our dog therapist’s clients were experiencing?
Before we knew it, those stories grew. I started jotting them down. He started adding characters, dialogue, even plot twists. It snowballed naturally because it wasn’t about getting published—it was about having fun
Embrace your differences
Writing with someone else means you’re blending two creative minds. That’s definitely true with an adult and a child. Writing with your child means blending two wildly different creative minds. And that’s a good thing.
At the end of the day, my son knew much more about kids these days than I did. No Cap. Slay. He’s got rizz.
These phrases all slid off his tongue so naturally while I was left scratching my head and wondering what was the matter with my child, why were they speaking in tongues? But it wasn’t just the slang my kid better understood, it was also the problems kids face in our modern world.
When we decided that our dog therapist, Posie Parker, would examine a dog who was being bullied, it was my son who drove the story of what bullying looks like in our modern world. While I remembered the kids stashed in lockers ala early ‘90s Saved By The Bell, he reminded me that cyberbullying is actually much more prevalent.
When I wrote that the human child’s mother stayed in the room while therapy was happening, my son reminded me of the times he’d seen a counselor. “You weren’t in the room. Parents usually aren’t.” Oh, that’s right, I thought. I didn’t even think of that, but my son, being more attuned to the way kids think, saw that right away.
The writing process
I was worried, when we started writing this novel, that it would be like pulling teeth at times to get my son to put in the work. That concern was completely unfounded.
This wasn’t work to him, just like writing a novel has never been work to me. This was his novel, his art, and as such this was important to him, just like writing had always been important to me.
Not only did he show up and write the novel day in and day out, but he spent hours going over edits I, and later our editors at Nymeria Publishing, gave us. He researched different dog breeds and made sure the color of the fidget toys in the therapist’s office were the same in each scene. It was amazing to not only see this kid put in the work, but to enjoy the writing so much, it wasn’t work at all.
We celebrated creativity over perfection
Was every sentence grammatically perfect? No. Was every chapter beautifully paced? Definitely not. But that wasn’t the point.
I’ve written enough novels and taught enough creative writing students to understand that a first draft is a hot mess, and a second draft isn’t much better. Even when you get those edits back from the publisher, everything isn’t perfect, and it takes time, work and routine to get there.
Writing with my son taught me to value the act of creation itself, not the polished product. Every goofy character name, every crazy plot twist was a sign that he was thinking, imagining, daring to put his ideas out into the world.
The real rewards
The best part wasn’t the pages we filled or even the story we told together or the book we will ultimately publish. It was the conversations we had while filling them. The long talks about what makes a kid brave and how a dog would respond to having a red ball thrown past his head. The quiet moments where he trusted me with a story idea he had so bravely shared with me.
In a world that’s often rushed and chaotic, writing a novel together gives us a shared, slow space. A place where his voice mattered. Where we built something together.
Whether or not this book tops the bestseller lists, it’s already one of the best things we’ve ever made. And as we come close to our publication date, neither of us are nervous about what might happen. We had fun writing a great book, we learned so much about each other, and hopefully it will help other kids learn about themselves.
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