I have always had a soft spot for animals. I grew up in a semi-rural environment where we always had dogs, chickens, pigs and other farm animals. Being on a farm meant some of those animals were for eating, but I loved talking to them and playing with them.
This is Miss Kittiana having one of her 2 hourly feeds. Isn't she cute.
When I wrote my first book, I had several animal characters. Some were eventually dropped from the final draft but a malamute named Cerberus, did make the novel. He remains one of my favourite characters. In DEATH’S SWEET EMBRACE my characters are shapeshifters and I get to flex my animal loving muscle. But I also have a character who is a Humegetarian, which means he will only feed on the donated blood of human vegans and vegetarians (a true vampire vegetarian unlike the animal murdering Edward and his family from Twilight). He is also a member of the Parahumans Against Animal Abuse and is inspired by a friend of mine.
I love stories with animals in it. I think one of the reasons I read ANIMAL FARM when I was a teenager was because it had animals in it. Okay – it was a little different than I thought, but I still enjoyed the dystopian drama, even if I was expecting something more like CHARLOTTE’S WEB.
But one of the things I love about paranormal is that we can do strange and wonderful things including what we can make our animals do. They can talk, they can change in and out of human form, they can give in to their animal instincts. They can be used to show off characteristics of our hero or heroine or they can be characters in their own right,
Tell me some of your favorite animal characters from books, movies or TV and why you connected with them.
