What is a cookie? I’m talking about the kind of cookie that is baked in an oven, not the kind of cookie you foolishly leave when you repeatedly visit a website that offers 101 ways to murder a spouse and get away with it. A cookie is a treat, of course, a mood-lifting morsel, and the primary food group that you must stock in your bomb shelter to survive a nuclear war. “Cookie” is also an affectionate nickname for the cook who feeds cowboys on a cattle drive, which is ironic when a cougar eats that kind of cookie and has its mood lifted.
Here in Koontzland, a cookie is more than a treat. It is also a reward. Elsa, our golden retriever, gets a cookie when she learns a new trick or new word, or when she does something especially cute like save a neighbor’s child from drowning. I give myself a cookie every time I deserve one as a reward. For example, if I write a really good chapter in the new book, I get a cookie. Or when I write the perfect sentence. Or choose an especially apt word that enlivens a sentence. I don’t give myself a reward cookie just for using the right punctuation; that would be so wrong. I do sometimes give myself a second reward cookie after I express my appreciation for the first cookie in an original and literary fashion.
Because I work much harder at earning cookie rewards than Elsa does, I receive more of them. However, that leads to awkward moments. If I eat a cookie when she gets none, she gives me a look that says, “I do not blame you for your insensitivity, but I am saddened by it, my beloved master.” If each of us gets a cookie, the look she gives me says, “I notice your cookie is larger than mine, but that’s okay. I pity you for your greed, my beloved master.”
It’s worse when I have earned two of my cookies and she has earned only one of hers, I try to eat my two cookies while she eats her one, so she might not notice. But this requires me to choke my two cookies down in the six seconds that she takes to eat her one. In this case, she gives me a look that says, “I will content myself with eating the crumbs and chunks that have fallen from your mouth, even if I must lick them off the floor in the manner of a dog less well educated than I am. I love you, my master, although I pity you for your barbaric eating habits.”
In order to eat my reward cookies without guilt, I began saving them all day and, at quitting time, taking them into one closet or another where I enjoyed them in the dark. This strategy was quite successful until yesterday. I had eaten only half of the reward cookies I earned when I heard a snuffling noise. As I froze there in the dark and stopped chewing, my attention was drawn to the thin line of hallway light at the base of the door where a shadow, which I suspected was that of a nose, moved from right to left in time with the snuffling noise. I did not wish to see what look she would give me if I opened the door and acknowledged what I’d done. Consequently, I remained perfectly silent, with a wad of unswallowed cookie in my mouth, for three hours, until I heard her padding away.
Overnight, I developed a new strategy. This morning, I spoke with neighbors to ask if I could eat my reward cookies in their backyard, which is screened from our property by a vine-covered wall. They were very receptive to my request, and I will be able to have my cookies there as soon as I save one of their children from drowning or save one of them from being devoured by a cougar.
I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you that my latest novel, The Forest of Lost Souls, is now available as a hardcover, an eBook, and in audio. This fast-paced, suspenseful novel about a very formidable woman who finds herself the target of several powerful men, is far better than a cookie. It’s better than a thousand cookies, if I do say so myself. And even if you have a dog, you won’t have to read it while hiding in a closet.