N.M.Kelby loves her springer spaniels Tyler (black and white) and Fitzgerald (liver and white) so much that she incorporates their spirits in her books.: The wicked Tyler makes an appearance as Mandi, the Shitzu who bears a striking resemblance to Barry Manilow, in Murder at the Bad Girl’s Bar and Grill, while Fitz is the brainchild behind “Guide to Your Inner Dog,” an essay which appears in the paperback of Whale Season. “The dogs, being literary in both name and spirit, find this all very amusing,” Kelby emails, “but now have their own agent and appear in Nikki Moustaki‘s Dogfessions and are shopping a joint memoir, Marley Who?, although both claim that that’s just a working title.”