NEWS

‘Downton Tabby’ is latest book from Pampered Pets pair

Kristin Danley-Greiner

Two Des Moines authors who met through a local writers group found success when they teamed up as a writing team.

Anita Carter and Mary Lee Woods, known collectively and Sparkle Abbey, published the seventh book in their Pampered Pets mystery series, “Downton Tabby,” this month.

Their books with catchy titles — “Desperate Housedogs” and “Kitty Kitty Bang Bang” — follow pet therapist Caro Lamont and pet boutique owner Melinda Langston, as they team up to solve mysteries among the wealthy pet owners of Laguna Beach.

The duo alternates the writing duties from book to book, while maintaining the same settings and characters.

“While there’s a lot of collaboration, the writing is done separately,” Carter said, “but we’ll read each other’s work to make sure the voice is correct or that I’m getting the right tone for a character in Mary Lee’s book.”

They’ve learned to cater their writing to give the books a singular voice regardless of who is doing the actual typing.

“Our publisher has said they can hardly tell the difference from her book to mine,” Woods said. “We think we can, but the style or our writing is so similar that it just works.”

Carter and Woods said they decided to team write after growing weary of receiving rejection letters for their individual efforts.

“We each were getting the good ones — the ones where the publishers liked the beginning, then asked for the full story and said it was great, but not for them,” Woods said. “We had the opportunity to meet with a New York agent at a writing conference who told us we had to have a hook.”

Woods, an IT professional with the city of Des Moines, was writing about a commitment-phobic temp worker. Carter, who works in marketing for Manpower, was writing about a female staffing company owner with a neurotic parrot.

“We were told we had to have a full, quirky mystery — something she could go to an editor with that stood out,” Carter said.

They put their heads together and came up with the Pampered Pets series.

“We pitched the idea to a publisher who expressed interest, so we sent in our first draft and out of that, we ended up with a four-book deal,” Woods said. “We were shocked.”

They chose their pen name by combining the names of their pets: Sparkle is Woods’ cat and Abbey is Carter’s dog.

“Downton Tabby” and other selections in the Pampered Pets series are available through the writers’ website, www.sparkleabbey.com, and online book sellers in both paperback and e-book formats.

“What’s neat about having them available online is that we’ve met fans from far off places like Brazil and Ireland,” Carter said.

The books also are available locally and Beaverdale Books.