I think I’m going to have to say that of my younger reader’s books, it is a tie between Ellie’s Story and Max’s Story. Ellie’s Story is a great adventure, but Max’s Story is about a hilarious little dog who thinks he runs the world.

I did what you might expect: I walked around with a tennis ball in my mouth, I dug up my neighbor’s shrubs, I lifted my leg on a fire hydrant. Then I read a lot of books on canine behavior, some of which led me to conclude that the authors had never even met a dog. I mean, you might think that a dog pack is organized like the military, with everyone knowing their rank and saluting their superiors (see lifting leg reference, above) but in my observation, when a new dog shows up, the deck gets completely shuffled. We train our dogs and that, of course, changes everything, but if all you’ve done is adopt a dog and then beg it not to sleep on the couch, it is going to be this happy-go-lucky creature who just does not spend a lot of time stressing over the org chart.

When I was in fourth grade I wrote a book called “Bad Luck Bruce” which was based on a true story because I had the bad luck of having two sisters.

When you’re done for the day and can have dinner.

This question makes me feel like an idiot, because so much of my work has never seen the light of day. I wrote 9 unpublished novels before I sold my 10th book— 8 Simple Rules for Dating my Teenage Daughter. I’ve sold 8 screenplays and 2 TV pilots, and written probably twice that many in total. My published books are all listed in the front of each new one I publish, and in 2020 I published seven of them, so I’m up to 25 total. Grab a copy of my new novel, A Dog’s Perfect Christmas, and you’ll see them all in there.

I came from a family where everyone had a book going at all times. I didn’t even know there were people who didn’t read until I was maybe in high school. They didn’t seem like happy individuals.

Honestly, if I do, I think it will make the cats mad.

I will keep writing as long as people keep reading. And then I’ll just start talking.

Long ago I realized that “writer” didn’t mean I’d have an “income.” I’ve always been “one who writes,” so I’ve been a writer, but it has only been in the past two decades that I’ve managed to generate any money from it.

Do I have talent? I am not sure. I remember in a creative writing class in college, we had an assignment. This one guy David wrote half a page of flowing, lyrical prose—really beautiful stuff. I wrote 35 pages with a beginning, a middle, and an end. I remember thinking that David was the talented one and I was the determined one. In the end, I feel it is all about how much work you’re willing to do.

Being in my mind is like being trapped in a multiplex movie theater that has run out of popcorn. I always have several movies playing at once. I use the words to describe the movies I’m seeing.

I started with the characters. I build characters by assigning them attributes. With Josh in The Dogs of Christmas, I pictured a man who was gradually becoming a hermit. Alone in a cabin, no friends, no family. Not very emotional. Holding something back, some big tragic event that weighs on him, depressing his thoughts. Then I sprung a dog on him and pictured how he might react to that. What if he’s never been around dogs before, what would that be like? The voice just starts to flow. For a first person POV, as in A Dog’s Purpose and A Dog’s Journey, I had to start with, “what’s it like to be a dog?”

She is my partner in every single meaning of the word. We compliment each other’s work perfectly. She directed a movie and I produced it: I’m really good at managing people and processes, and she’s really good at talking to actors, mapping out the scenes, and cutting the movie together. When we write, I’m really good at coming up with the story; she’s very good at the nuances of people’s characters.

It is like having two buffalo stampede through your living room.

I have nothing being filmed at the moment. We have screenplays written for A Dog’s Promise and The Dogs of Christmas, and we are in discussions about A Dog’s Perfect Christmas.

A screenplay has a clock on it. If you run into overtime, you're dead. At 120 pages, you've overshot and no one will read a word of it. A book, on the other hand, can run thousands of words past the target and no one will care very much. It's easier to write a book, but quicker to write a screenplay.

That was 8 Simple Rules for Dating my Teenage Daughter, which became a TV show on ABC. That’s why I moved to LA, to work on the show. Three more humor books followed: How to Remodel a Man, 8 Simple Rules for Marrying my Daughter, and A Dad’s Purpose.

While I had eventually developed a reputation as a writer of humor books, I always considered myself at my core to be a storyteller. I had authored several novels which were never published and was eager to return to that artform. A Dog’s Purpose and A Dog’s Journey have whimsy, fun, comedy, and then, of course, drama and heart. I consider those attributes to be the trademark of a W. Bruce Cameron book.

My first wild guess is that there probably should be a dog in it. I think a successful dog story reveals the love that our canine friends feel for us.

Well look, 42.5 million households in this country have dogs living in them, according to the latest surveys, with millions and millions more worldwide. My characters have dogs in their lives because dogs are really special— who doesn’t appreciate coming home to a creature who is absolutely delighted to see you? Maybe your appreciation declines if it turns out your dog has been in the trash can again, but still, doesn’t it just make your day? Why there aren’t more dogs wandering in and out of the pages of novels, I don’t know, but when I write a book, I’ll put a dog in the story because dogs belong with us. That’s their purpose: to be by our sides on our life’s journey.

Well, only sort of. I imagine what the dogs would be like if they could talk, but I sort of make up their characters.

I was seeking to console a dear friend who had recently lost her dog. In her grief, she told me she could never go through that again, and would never, ever have another dog. I decided to tell her a story about a reincarnating dog who remembers each life, and eventually finds his way back to his original person. I really do believe that we will see our best friends again. If she were going to experience having her beloved dog come back to her, it meant she had to be open to the idea of adopting another canine. It worked: she adopted a dog, and she liked the story so much she married me! She also urged me to put it into a book which eventually became A Dog’s Purpose. But the story didn’t end there. Bailey/Toby/Ellie was still alive. I decided to write A Dog’s Journey because I wanted a different sort of novel: instead of reincarnating to meet other people and learn lessons from them, I wanted the dog to return to the same person each life, because she really needed her dog throughout every stage of her existence. And then I wrote A Dog’s Promise because I wanted to complete the circle, to show the ultimate promise of Bailey’s life, and how it related to all the people he had ever met.

My very first dog was a Labrador named Cammie. Cammie was sweet and docile and ate nearly everything left lying around: T-shirts, balloons, shoes. One time when my father wanted to get rid of a dangerously rusty backyard swing set (over his children’s loud objections) he dismantled it while we were at school and told us “the dog ate it.” None of us questioned the idea that our pet could chew up and swallow a hundred pounds of steel tubing. Anyway, Cammie and I were best friends, a little boy and his dog, exploring and playing and wrestling every single day. So when, years later, I was riding my bicycle in Colorado and I came across a dog behind a fence who barked like Cammie, stared at me with Cammie’s eyes, even wagged her tail with a curious little butt-bounce, I felt as if I was interacting with my childhood buddy, my first dog. I rode away from that encounter with a couple of questions on my mind: what if dogs never truly die? What if they are reborn, remembering each life, so that they might recognize their people just as Cammie recognized me? And, if that were true, what would it look like from the dog’s perspective? A Dog’s Journey and A Dog’s Purpose is based on a couple of things we all know to be certain: True love never dies, and our real friends are always there for us if we know where to look.

Frankly, it surprised everyone, though I don’t think my dog was as shocked as I was. These books have camped out on the New York Times bestseller list, they are taught in schools, and all the emails and social media response suggest people are really taken with these stories. I guess it may have something to do with the fact that in the end, you don’t have a sobbing family standing around having a dog funeral. There are goodbyes, of course, but none of my novels is a “dead dog book.” And the A Dog’s Purpose series concerns a real dog—that is, not a dog who understands spoken English, but a real dog who is hoping all the words he’s hearing from a human will eventually wind up with his name and “treat” in the same sentence.

Honestly, when you make a movie, it simply can’t ever be as dense and detailed as the book, because it is so much shorter. If you took every scene out of, say, Bailey’s Story and put it on the screen, the movie would be like four hours long. So yes, everyone worked hard to make the movie as true to the book as they could, but no, they really didn’t come very close.

I just couldn’t imagine writing A Dog’s Purpose from any other POV except the dog’s. Besides, I found out the dog was writing a book about me.

I am not sure if I’ll write another book exactly like A Dog’s Purpose, A Dog’s Journey, and A Dog’s Promise, but I do plan to write more novels from a dog’s perspective. Take A Dog’s Perfect Christmas, for example—there is some dog POV in there, but there is also the point of view of an eighth grader, a grandpa, and a mom.

Bella is separated from Lucas for reasons only a human can understand, so she sets out to make things right. Her trek will take her hundreds of miles through dangerous mountain territory, and she will change the lives of many she meets along the way.

My inspiration came from the absolute dedication and devotion that dogs feel toward us, and their instinctive desire to always be with us. The bond between a dog and a person is one of the truest expressions of unconditional love, an amazing gift from God.

I wanted to show the cruel injustice of laws that will put a dog to death just because it looks like it might be a pit bull. I wanted to show the consequence of these laws, and also to demonstrate that love and compassion will conquer this evil.

I was allowed to tour VA hospitals, I spoke to veterans, and I have a friend who is a paraplegic wit a service dog. We are just beginning to understand how therapeutic an animal can be to the men and women who have served their country and now may need some help.

There’s adventure, yes. I’ve had a lot of people tell me the plot moves so swiftly they get swept up in it. It was fun to write about a dog lost in the Colorado Rockies because I used to live there. I was lost a lot, too, because I refuse to stop and ask people for directions.

I am so glad you asked! The Dogs of Christmas is the story of a man who is both lonely and alone, living in a cabin in Colorado. Then he suddenly winds up with a litter of new puppies and a mother dog, and has to figure out how to deal with all of that. A Dog’s Perfect Christmas, however, is about a family in Michigan who is dealing with normal stresses, trying to prepare for the holidays. When Mom gets sick, the rest of the family has to pull together, which believe me, they are not good at. And then into the mess bounds a little lost puppy, which might just be the final straw—or the key to the family becoming closer.

I think sometimes the world just could use a fun and ultimately happy story about puppies at Christmas.

After A Dog’s Purpose came out, I had a lot of parents tell me their children would love the story, but that some of the scenes were too intense. So I decided to write about the dogs in A Dog’s Purpose, starting with Ellie, the police dog. Ellie’s Story won the 2017 Colorado Children’s Book Away, the Maryland Black-Eyed Susan Award, Pennsylvania Young Reader's Choice Award. And was on the Louisiana YR Choice Book Award Master List. I had never won a book award before! So I wrote more novels based on my books—Bailey’s Story, Molly’s Story, etc. We call them the “Puppy Tales.”

Yes! Shelby’s Story is based on the real-life story of Shelby, the rescue dog who is the star of A Dog’s Way Home. Toby’s Story is pretty much nothing like Toby from A Dog’s Journey, though they share the same name. And Lily’s Story is the wonderful story of a dog who is rescued and goes on to live and work in an animal rescue saving baby animals. (See below for more about Lily!)

Ellie’s Story Ellie is raised to be a working dog—a police working dog. Her job is to seek, find, and ultimately save, people who are missing or lost. She loves her work, but when she injures her nose, she can no longer do the job, and is retired. But then a little boy named Geoff is lost in a tunnel, the water is rising… can Ellie do save one more time? Bailey’s Story Life with Ethan is wonderful for Bailey Bailey Bailey, filled with daily adventures. It’s a dog-meets-boy story with important lessons, but it’s also an adventure story when Ethan is thrown from a horse and must wander the woods, lost and hungry. Bailey loyally sticks with his boy, and the two of them strike out to find help. Molly’s Story Molly’s girl, CJ, isn’t allowed to have a dog! But CJ falls in love with her puppy, and smuggles Molly into the house to live with her anyway. Keeping the little dog quiet and hidden is impossible! When CJ gets into trouble, she winds up doing community service at a facility that trains dogs to detect cancer, and Molly learns how to do this—she’s an amazing dog! But will CJ’s mom let her keep Molly? Max’s Story Max realizes he’s little… in fact, he’s tiny. And he and his girl are in the biggest city in the country. How’s a little dog going to survive? By pretending to himself that he’s a big dog, that’s how! CJ is back, visiting an aunt who lives in New York City, when she comes across little Max. Nobody else wants Max, because he’s too aggressive. But maybe all he needs is a little love! Toby’s Story Toby is a beagle with no energy, which is not what that breed is known for. But while the rest of the puppies in his litter run and run, Toby just naps. So he seems the perfect size and temperament for life in an assisted living facility, where Mona and her mother trains him to give quiet comfort. But then it is discovered that Toby’s food allergies are the reason why he’s so subdued, and when they change his diet, he’s a wild dog running loose in the home! Is this chaos a threat to order, or is it just what the people need? Lily’s Story Lily is a little lost puppy who is found and taken to a rescue shelter, which Maggie Rose’s mother runs. There’s a rule against shelter employees adopting pets, but Maggie Rose is in love with Lily and wants nothing more but for the two of them to be together. Can the rules be broken, just this once? Lily herself holds the key—maybe there’s nothing better to rescue animals than a dog who was rescued herself! Shelby’s Story When a movie version of A Dog’s Way Home was being filmed, screenwriters W. Bruce Cameron and Cathryn Michon were determined that the star should be a rescue animal. And they were able to find one living in a junk yard in rural Tennessee. They adopted Shelby the day they met her, because she seemed like the perfect dog to be in the movie! But can a junkyard dog really be trained to perform in a movie? And what about the most important scene in the film—can Shelby do what she’s asked to do and save the movie, or does the fact that she keeps failing mean this whole thing was a mistake? Bella’s Story Bella doesn’t understand when her boy Lucas sends her to live temporarily far away from their home in Denver, Colorado. Dogs just don’t get “temporary.” Feeling that a mistake has been made, that nothing can separate her from her boy, Bella jumps the fence and sets off to trek for hundreds of miles through Colorado wilderness, a treacherous journey that will take many years to complete! Cooper’s Story Cooper is a big, strong dog, a Malemute-mix who has one purpose in life—to play with his best dog friend Lacey. But when she is adopted by a boy in a wheelchair, life takes a strange turn. What kind of dog is Cooper, he wonders to himself, that this boy, his boy, wants and needs so much from him. Cooper must decide—is he a dog who has fun all day, or is he a working dog? And then the school kicks him out for being a “distraction.” Is Cooper going to be allowed back in?

Bella, like all dogs, has a lot of love to give. Her early relationship with felines leads her to a fateful partnership in the wilderness that ultimately saves her life. Without cats, Bella would not survive to make her way back to Lucas.

The pace of life makes it difficult to devote the time necessary to make people feel loved and cared about, which is one of the most basic needs we humans have. A dog is never distracted from the bond she has formed with her person, a bond to replenish the soul.

My favorite is rescue dog.

I was eight years old, the same age as Ethan in A Dog’s Purpose, when I met Cammie. I’ll never forget my father opening the back yard gate and in runs this little Labrador puppy!

All dogs. They are the most optimistic creatures on the planet and I am addicted to optimism.

I love their joy, their optimism, their love. They are friendly and happy and just want to please us. I do not like when my dog digs holes in the carpet, but I think he believes it will make me happy.

I have lived with a lot of dogs—growing up, my family had three children and three dogs at all times, though eventually the children grew up and moved out. This made my parents happy. On my own I have had two labradors, a malemute, and now a scruffy rescue dog named Tucker. The malemute taught me that not all dogs are labradors, and Tucker has taught me that a dog from a shelter can be just as wonderful as a purebred. I want to get an additional dog but Tucker won’t let me. He wants to be the only dog in my world.

I think sometimes a dog will choose its master. In my novel A Dog’s Journey, the second in the A Dog’s Purpose series, the dog Max picks its person and will not accept anyone else. Tucker did not pick me, he picked my wife. He puts up with me because I know where to find bacon.

Joy

Dogs are wonderful. They are friendly and happy and just want to please us. I do not like when my dog digs holes in the carpet, but I think he believes it will make me happy. Brazil has the world’s second largest pet population. Clearly, people are connected to their animals and thus it only makes sense that a dog story can appeal to the hearts and minds of people.

If this is true, I think it may be because people so often make informed choices. Animals are helplessly at the mercy of nature and of mankind. People can elect to do evil things, but animals are just following their nature and can hardly be considered evil. We shouldn’t feel guilty because all of us feel compassion for people who are truly innocent, just as we feel compassion for animals, and for the same reason. Plus, an animal will never play his music very loudly in the middle of the night so that nobody in the neighborhood can sleep.

I’d say my mystery novels series, The Midnight Plan of the Repo Man and Repo Madness, are not really books for children. They concern a repo man in northern Michigan who solves crimes. They are… well, they are different, in that the repo man, Ruddy McCann, has a literal voice in his head. A voice with its own personality, one that insists he is not a voice, he is a real person. And, oh yeah, he was murdered…. Oh, and The Dog Master, about life in the paleolithic, is most certainly not for children. It was a brutal time and there’s savage, violent tribal warfare. A young man finds a wolf puppy and names it “dog,” and the way he trains it to help him hunt, the two of them, man and dog, save each other. It’s the story of the world’s very first dog.

My series Lily to the Rescue is about an adorable little dog named Lily who was rescued by a girl named Maggie Rose. Lily works at a rescue, helping to save baby animals! The series is based on one of my other books, a Puppy Tale called Lily’s Story. The Lily to the Rescue books are chapter books, intended for children grades K-3, though many older children have read them. In the first book, Lily to the Rescue, we meet the characters and Lily helps save a crow with a broken wing. In The Not so Stinky Skunk, Lily and Maggie Rose find a skunk who can’t spray a smell, so the poor animal is defenseless. In Dog, Dog, Goose, a bunch of baby geese imprint on Lily—they think Lily is their mother! How are they going to learn to fly from a dog? In Two Little Piggies, a pair of piglets mysteriously show up at a gas station. Where is their mother? Lily helps rescue them, but then what? Can Lily help the piggies find their way home? The Puppy Tales – Ellie’s Story, Bailey’s Story, Molly’s Story, Max’s Story, Toby’s Story, Bella’s Story, Lily’s Story, Shelby’s Story, and soon Cooper’s Story – are for older children and are also enjoyed by a lot of adults!

My dog Tucker believes he has people, not the other way around. Our job is to provide soft pillows and delicious treats. Whenever I fail to deliver what he considers the proper amount of chicken snacks, he makes a note in my permanent record.

I believe that some dogs are fated to be with some humans. When a puppy breaks from her littermates and scampers across the room and into the arms of a single person, she is running to the human she will love her whole life, drawn by the invisible leash of love.

Well, I wouldn’t be a very good businessperson if I gave away all my products. But you can go to the library and check them out for free!

My favorite movie about animals is Finding Nemo. I thought it a wonderful story about parental love and responsibility. Plus it was simple enough for me to understand.

My wife Cathryn is a director, so it is very important to me personally that women be given an equal opportunity to direct feature films. Historically this has not been the case, but perhaps that is changing. I hope so. Gail is known as one of the most professional, hard-working, and pleasant directors in the business. She loves dogs and brought that love to every moment of this movie. I was thrilled with the choice of Gail for director—she did a great job!

Our dogs are so important to us, yet what they are thinking is mostly a mystery. By giving voice to a dog’s thoughts, my stories pull the reader into the delightfully joyous and optimistic dog’s point of view. In the end, my goal is to make people happy.

I am really interested in reincarnation except if I’m coming back I’m not re-doing Junior High School. And I want people to come to their own conclusions for what the purpose of the dog was!

Tucker has hired an agent who is demanding a 10% increase in chicken treats. We have tried to reason with him, but so far all he does is turn his back on us and nap.

Whatever I can reach when I’m hungry.

I have nothing for you here on this one. I can’t imagine having a favorite word, it’s like having a favorite breath of air.

I am rich enough to buy my dog chicken snacks, so he feels we are good, there. I am not famous, though the guy who cuts my hair has stopped calling me “Brice.”

Yes! I have two girls and a boy. None of them want to be writers.

Yes! I am not sure I will always write dog stories, meaning, stories where the dogs are the main characters and even the narrators, but for me a story with heart and humor should have a dog in it. I have a series of mystery novels out right now, and one of the characters in it is Jake, a Bassett hound who does not like to go for walks. Jake is not the central character, but he plays a major role in the book Repo Madness. I guess when I watch a family sitcom, or a movie about people and relationships, I am always wondering where their dogs are.