Golden Boy

Page By Paige Books Author Interview: A.J. Symon on Golden Boy, the Unconditional Love of Dogs, Football, and More!

Hi bookworms! Today, I’m interviewing A.J. Symon, author of Golden Boy! It’s a wholesome story all about the important life lessons we can learn from our pets. Stay tuned for my review coming soon! Golden Boy is available on August 25th! You can grab your copy here!

Hello A.J.! Welcome to Page by Paige Books! I am so excited to chat with you today. To get things started, I’d love to get to know you a bit more. In the spirit of Golden Boy, if you were transformed into a dog for a day, what breed or mix would you be and what would you do first?
A golden retriever because I would love to know what it’s like to be deliriously happy all the time. I wouldn’t do anything at all. I’d just enjoy being adored and waited on hand and foot and having my every wish fulfilled by my team of human servants.
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The premise for this book was so intriguing! What was the writing process like, bringing a dog into human form? Was there anything that surprised you?

I will probably embarrass myself with this answer, but I know I’m not the only dog lover who does this. I’ve always imagined what my dogs would be like if they were human. I have full-on conversations with my dog all day long, and I do his voice and mine. In fact, I’ve created voices for every dog I’ve ever had. I’m sure that I would appear an absolute lunatic to anyone who happened to witness these exchanges. So, I have years of experience under my belt imagining what a dog might say in everyday situations. I don’t think there were any surprises on that front.

What did surprise me was how quickly this book poured out of me and that I never experienced writer’s block. But that, I think, was because I was going through a tremendous period of grief after having lost my service dog, so I was full of all kinds of emotions that needed a release.