I never planned to write a book. I planned to make people laugh in a pub, sling beers, listen to other people’s problems, and go home to my old toothless dog Audrey. That was the plan.
Then a teenage girl walked into my life in pieces. Family fallout. A broken heart she didn’t have the language for yet. And right next door to her — every bloody afternoon — a dog that wouldn’t shut up. I mean it. Hours. The kind of barking that gets into your skull and rearranges the furniture.
I started writing as a way to make her laugh. A scene a night. A character who wasn’t coping but was funny about it. A neighbour with a name that doubled as a punchline. A pub full of people who said the quiet bits out loud. By week three she was reading pages instead of crying. By week six I had something that looked suspiciously like a novel.
Comedy is just grief with better timing
People ask me why Dead Dog Barking is funny when so much of it is heavy. Honestly? Because the only way I know how to look at the hard stuff is sideways and laughing. Aussie humour does this thing where it tells you the worst news you’ve ever heard and then offers you a sausage roll. That’s the rhythm I wanted on the page.
Charlie — my protagonist — is me on my worst Tuesday. She’s spent five years overseas looking for peace, and what she finds instead is her aunt’s pub, a dog called Doug, and a memory of a stranger in a Delhi airport that she can’t shake. None of that is calm. All of it is funny if you tilt your head.
The real Doug
The dog in the book is real. Well, the barking is real. The owner is fictional (mostly) and I changed his name because I value my front teeth. But that sound — that relentless, demented, “I will outlast everyone in this postcode” sound — that’s real and I wrote four chapters to that soundtrack.
To the dog: thank you, you absolute menace. I hope your throat is sore.
What the book is really about
It’s about coming home. It’s about how the people who knew you before you fell apart are sometimes the only ones who can put you back together. It’s about a country pub on a Tuesday night, which I will defend as the most spiritually clarifying place in Australia. And yes, it’s about a dog. Sort of.
The hard cover edition launches mid 2026. If you’ve ever been kept awake by something — a dog, a heartbreak, a memory you can’t name — this one’s for you.
Love, Thompson