Spicer pens pet memoir for Ebury

Freelance lifestyle journalist Kate Spicer is to write  "a modern take on a pet memoir", about her rescue dog Wolfy, for Ebury Press.

A "tender memoir of an extraordinary rescue mission", Lost Dog: A love story describes how the author was saved by the arrival of her rescue dog Wolfy, and how her life was transformed when he went missing.

According to Ebury, while exploring London’s dark underbelly in order to bring her boy home, Spicer also delves into the story of her own life in "a very modern take on the pet memoir, exploring modern womanhood as well as the bond between human and animal".

Robyn Drury, commissioning editor for Ebury Press, pre-empted world all languages rights from Robert Caskie at Caskie Mushens for Spicer's first book. She said: "Kate’s narrative voice – tender, comic, vulnerable and brilliantly complex – is totally thrilling, and Lost Dog is a book that we instantly knew we needed to publish. In her hands, the simplest sentences become absolutely compelling, and I’m so thrilled to be publishing her first book."

Spicer said: "When I started writing this book, I expected it to be a fairly simple telling of a Lost Dog story. As I wrote, though, I realised that without telling the story of how the dog saved me from myself, then the story of trudging the streets of North London trying to find him would have no bite. This took the book into territory that was far from a vanilla pet rescue story. As anyone with a pocket full of poo bags can tell you, there's nothing vanilla about dog ownership. Ebury totally got it. And I'm over the moon to be working with them."

Ebury Press will publish Lost Dog in hardback and e-book in April 2019.