Monday, April 14, 2014

PETS - LIKE THEM IN YOUR BOOKS OR NOT?

I like books with pets in them. I hate if an author kills off a pet. People are fine, just not a pet. Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum has a pet hamster named Rex. Some characters have fish. Other writers’ characters have cats, or birds, like parrots.

Rita Mae Brown co-authors her books with her cat, Sneaky Pie Brown.

Some writers have horses in their books. In my Hawkins’ Ranch series it takes place on a ranch in Montana and there are several horses. Many of the characters have their own horses. And in HUNTED the first book in the series I have a Merle Australian Sheepdog, named Blue. He also appears in MISSING. In Targeted the heroine finds a scruffy white terrier, named Lucky.

In my other published Holly Devine, Assistant PI series, she has a black Scottie dog or Scottish terrier (also known as an Aberdeen Terrier). I named him Bruce, after Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland.

I usually write a dog into most of my stories. I have two dogs of my own. I’m sure you’ve seen them on my site. They’re Shiba Inu’s, Japanese Hunting dogs, called Yoshi and Sachi. They’re family.

Do you write about pets? Do you have pets in your books? Do you like to read about pets? I’d love to hear about them, or your favorite books with pets in them.

13 comments:

  1. I think having pets makes us better humans. I love my puppies and got puppy prints tattooed on my foot. I've not added dogs or cats to my stories but I've enjoyed when they are in other stories. Thanks for sharing photos of yours with us.

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    1. Puppy prints tattooed on your foot? What a cute idea.

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  2. I have a dog in all my books except one. They are like secondary characters and are involved in my stories. I also have a ghost horse in another story along with a dog. I can never kill off one of my dogs.

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    1. A person after my own heart. A ghost horse? What a cool idea.
      Which book is that?

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  3. Hi, Beverley: Sometimes, I add a pet. And yes, I've named them after my own. lol. I wrote about a pesky bug once--does that count?

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    1. Hey Vicki, A bug definitely counts - pesky hmmm?
      Thanks for dropping by.

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  4. Hi Beverly, I'm big on pets. In my mystery series there are two cats, Stalin and Churchill. Stalin is catnapped in the first book, but he arrives home safely. I would never kill off a pet and when an author does, I stop reading. Even if an innocent animal (not necessarily a pet) is killed in a book, I usually put it down.

    In Ordinary Thunderstorms (a great book btw), the sociopath killer hooks up with a dog. I worried and worried about that dog. In fact, it reached a point where the dog might jeopardize the killer's safety. The killer (who would kill a person on a dime) had to kill the dog. BUT, he couldn't do it. In my view the author created a perfect villain in that instance. He was indeed a killer, but he showed some humanity. How perfect is that?

    When they killed the cat in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (another of my fav books), I almost stopped reading. But, by then I was hooked and could not do it.

    Thanks for sharing. I may blog on this as well.

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    1. Hi Joan, great post. Ordinary Thunderstorms sounds like a great book with a well-developed villain. I agree - never kill an animal. If you do post about let me know. I'd love to read it.

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    1. You're my kind of person. thanks for dropping by.

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  6. Hi, Beverley:
    The big cats in my Chronicles of Kassouk series, are sometimes telepathic and often important as characters. Rascal, in Red Leopard, won the best animal character in a book for 2010. I have cats in almost all my books (except for medieval fantasy), sometimes small, sometimes big. I didn't realize it until a friend pointed it out to me. Now I make it a point to have feline characters. Of course, I have cats at home, too. They fascinate me and I love them dearly. I do not name my animal characters after my pets, but sometimes I name my pets after my animal characters. Go figure.

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    1. I love the big cats in your stories. Congrats on winning the "best animal character in a book?, - who knew there was such an award. Cats are wonderful characters in books. Thanks for dropping by.

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  7. My co-writer and I'd series totally has a pets (specifically a cat named Todd and a dog named Beau who is referred to as Divorce Dog). But since the series is multi-generational over a very long time line they aren't present in all the books. That said, any pet deaths happen between books, and they're remembered fondly by the characters in the text even after they are gone.

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