Favorite Books about Animals and Pets

Since the theme this month is pets, I’ve looked back at some books that are about pets and working animals.

Black Beauty by Anna Sewell (30 March 1820- 25 April 1878)

As a teenager, Anna Sewell fell and damaged both her ankles. She never fully recovered, and always had difficulty walking. In Black Beauty, her only novel, the title character ‘breaks his knees’ after a fall, perhaps mirroring Anna’s own suffering.

Black Beauty, which raised awareness of the treatment of horses during the 19^th century, has been called ‘the most influential anticruelty novel of all time’. Anna died only a few months after its publication.

The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford (11 May 1918--20 April 1984)

I guess most of us know this story of three pets—a bull terrier, Labrador retriever and Siamese cat—who travel 300 miles through Canada searching for their owners. Who doesn’t love a story of endurance, companionship and battling the odds?

In 1963 the book won two awards: the ALA Aurianne Award and the Book of the Year for Children Award. Two movies have been made thirty years apart. The first in 1963, the second in 1993 as Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey.

All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot (3 October 1916--23 February 1995)

Born James Alfred Wight, Herriot chose his pen name after seeing Scottish goal keeper Jim Herriot play soccer. James, a vet by trade, had always been interested in writing. At the age of 50, prompted by his wife, he began putting pen to paper. His books about life as a British country vet were made into movies and a much-loved TV series starring Christopher Timothy.

In 1979 James received an OBE.

Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog by John Grogan (20 March 1957-- )

John Grogan began his writing career as a police reporter for the Herald-Palladium in the town of St Joseph. During this time, he rode with police and photographed murder victims. But he didn’t find his true calling until he took a job as columnist with The Palm Beach Post. Later he worked as columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Marley and Me spent 76 weeks on the bestseller list, 23 of them at number 1.

It was filmed in 2008. John and his wife were extras in one scene. Although he doesn’t reveal which scene, there are hints in his bio. Watch the movie and see if you can spot him and his wife.

I've only touched the surface of books about animals, and there are many more. So over to you. What is your favorite animal movie or book?

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A post about pets wouldn't be complete without a pic of my family's dog. Here he is enjoying the sun and surveying his domain.

Janni Nell writes mysteries. Her new paranormal cozy Secrets, Spells & Murder is coming in fall 2017.

Favorite Fictional Pets

Name your favourite fictional pet!

Was it Greebo from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series? That evil, slinking, massive, gorgeous cat is one of my favourites. Particularly Nanny Ogg's blindness to seeing what he's really like. To her, he's still a cute little kitten, not a brawler.

Merlin, the German shepherd from The Mark of Merlin by Anne McCaffrey, is lovely and loyal. Anne McCaffrey's famous for her science fiction, but this book, set toward the end of WWII, is a fabulous romance and mystery, the heroine snowbound in a remote house.

Then there are those cat mysteries, like Sneaky Pie Brown by Rita Mae Brown, where smart felines solve crimes, and hapless humans have to keep up!

I can't remember the name of the bull terriers in "Death in the Stocks", a mystery by Georgette Heyer, but for those readers who only think of her in terms of her famous Regency romances, she wrote Golden Age mysteries, with bull terriers featuring incidentally, usually owned by the heroine.

Actually, when I think about it, most of my favourite fictional pets feature in mysteries. Marion Babson's "Murder at the Cat Show" captures the charm of succumbing to the fascination of pets particularly well.

Widening the definition of pet to include any animal you can drag home, don't miss reading Gerald Durrell's delightful autobiography of his childhood in the 1930s on Corfu. "My Family and Other Animals" is a classic. It's also been made into a TV series, but I prefer the book.

But if I have to choose just one fictional pet, it has to be Scooby-Doo!

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If you're interested in fantastical creatures, my novel Fantastical Island features an abundance of them. In fact, you'll get to meet Cliff quite early in the story. Cliff, curious and cute, is a flying pig. Technically, that makes him a behemi.

Fantastical Island, free in Kindle Unlimited: https://www.amazon.com/Fantastical-Island-Old-School-Book-ebook/dp/B01N56RZ7Z/

Here Be News

New Releases:

PREDATOR OF THE PINES
Subwoofers, Book 4
Contemporary Fantasy/Paranormal Romance
by Linda Mooney
Word Count: 33.3K
$2.99 e (and coming soon to print and audio book!)

Alligator, Bear, Cougar, Deer, Eagle
They found each other by accident.
They became a team for life.

While preparing for a hurricane that’s heading straight for the Bag It and Tag It lodge, William “Brew” Estes makes a last-minute run to the market to grab supplies. While there, he heads off a robbery and saves the day…all in a day’s work for the former Marine.

Celeste Hart is exactly where she never wanted to be. When the robbery goes wrong, she knows this could be her only chance to get away. She runs, despite the storm that’s on the way, knowing that if they catch her again, they could break her this time.

The moment Brew laid eyes on the blonde, he knew something was up. Later, when he sees her walking down the road, he can’t leave her without cover, so he offers her a place to stay, if only through the storm. But neither can deny the connection they feel for one another.

When the truth comes out, will Brew and his partners turn her in to the police for her part in the robbery? Or will they help her escape the grasps of her stepbrother and his cronies?

Warning! Contains culinary skills, knowledge of firearms, driving wind and rain, a $5 bet, unbelievably tender kisses, a color brochure, love by candlelight, and a struggle to protect the woman who was becoming more precious to him than his own life.  

Excerpt and buy links.

Other NEWS:

  Now Available for Pre-order:

The fourth book in the award-winning Ravensblood series by Amazon best-selling author Shawna Reppert is now available for pre-order! 

With his murderous former mentor dead, reformed dark mage Corwyn Ravenscroft is looking forward to a brighter future with Cassandra and their new son. But when a mysterious killer stalks their friends and associates, Raven realizes that he may not be the only one among their social circle with a dark past.

Bring It Back(list) Feature:
Nicole Luiken's  Soul of Kandrith

Bring it Back(list) - Soul of Kandrith

 CONFESSION TIME: I have no idea how to market this book. No. Clue. Whatsoever.

First of all it's the second in a duology and the very blurb has spoilers for book one, Gate to Kandrith. So if you hate spoilers and haven't heard of book one, then go here.

Secondly, there's the cover which I both love and hate. It's a great cover, stunning and bold. I love the way it's framed and the red tones. It telegraphs that this is a fantasy novel quite well. But it looks as if the book is about a sword-swinging barbarian. In fact my hero is a healer. There is only one scene in which he picks up a sword--and after seeing the cover I tweaked the scene slightly so that I could tell myself the man was in fact Lance.

Third, there's the content. The book starts off with Sara having lost her soul and trying to regain it. the ending is happy, but it goes to some very dark places in which she is enslaved and, yes, raped. It feels unfair to encourage people to buy the book without including a Trigger Warning.

And yet I am proud of this book. I worked very hard on it: the pacing and action scenes, the world-building, the characters. It was hard to write compellingly through the viewpoint of  someone with no soul and therefore very little emotional connection to her surroundings, but I pulled it off.

VILLAIN STOMPING ON MY OUTLINE

Ironically, the rape scenes were not in my original outline. They are one of those (for me rare) cases where the characters came alive and the scene went sideways on me. I wrote the scene how it unfolded and told myself I'd fix it in the second draft, but when it came down to it I couldn't. Because I had something to say about slavery and sacrifice and rape. Too often in our world the victims of rape are shamed and told that they 'provoked' the attack or did something 'stupid' to find themselves in such a situation. But Sara, having no emotions, is not ashamed. She sees right through the villain when he tries blames her for the horrible things he does to her. And  that is why the dark scenes stay.

So if you're in the mood for some light entertainment, look elsewhere. But if you're willing to venture a step or two into the dark consider giving Soul of Kandrith a chance.

BUY LINK

A Plethora of Paranormals - The Science (or Magic) of Shapeshifting

There are a lot of paranormal romances out there. A LOT. And I love to read the genre as much as I enjoy writing it. And I also think it would be safe to say that a large majority feature shapeshifters.

Not too long ago, most, if not all, shapeshifters were of the wolf variety. Since then I've seen bear, feline, and even dolphin and shark. I myself have written shifters that were elephants, alligators, Newfoundlands (a "big-ass" dog), coyotes, wolf (Lupan), bear, red deer, ball python, and now a bald eagle. And in every case, I can envision how these big hulking men can morph their bodies into those forms.

But then there are those forms which leave me scratching my head. Duck shifter? Hedgehog shifter? Tarantula shifter? The vision of a man squeezing himself into that teeny-tiny form leaves me in stitches. I  can see a guy or girl becoming something that's relatively equal in size and weight to their human bodies, but to shrink into a form that can be held in the palm of a hand is perplexing. Science can "explain" the former, but wouldn't it take magic to perform the latter?

What unusual shapeshifters have you run across? I'd love to hear some recommendations!

* * *

New!

PREDATOR OF THE PINES
Subwoofers, Book 4
Contemporary Fantasy/Paranormal Romance
by Linda Mooney
Word Count: 33.3K
$2.99 e (and coming soon to print and audio book!)

Alligator, Bear, Cougar, Deer, Eagle
They found each other by accident.
They became a team for life.

While preparing for a hurricane that’s heading straight for the Bag It and Tag It lodge, William “Brew” Estes makes a last-minute run to the market to grab supplies. While there, he heads off a robbery and saves the day…all in a day’s work for the former Marine.

Celeste Hart is exactly where she never wanted to be. When the robbery goes wrong, she knows this could be her only chance to get away. She runs, despite the storm that’s on the way, knowing that if they catch her again, they could break her this time.

The moment Brew laid eyes on the blonde, he knew something was up. Later, when he sees her walking down the road, he can’t leave her without cover, so he offers her a place to stay, if only through the storm. But neither can deny the connection they feel for one another.

When the truth comes out, will Brew and his partners turn her in to the police for her part in the robbery? Or will they help her escape the grasps of her stepbrother and his cronies?

Warning! Contains culinary skills, knowledge of firearms, driving wind and rain, a $5 bet, unbelievably tender kisses, a color brochure, love by candlelight, and a struggle to protect the woman who was becoming more precious to him than his own life.  

Excerpt and buy links.

A Long-Suffering Cat Posts for her Irresponsible Writer-Person

Hello! Samhain-kitty here. Those of you who follow the blog on Shawna Reppert’s author website know I frequently take over the task of updating her poor, neglected readers while she’s off gallivanting with disrepute Irish musicians. She has reached a new low, taking off to see plays in Ashland with her sister and completely forgetting that she had a blog due for Pet Month here at Here Be Magic. (Of course, Companion Animal Month would be more politically correct, but what can you expect from mere humans?)

 

 Anyway, I’ve been trying to get her to have more of a feline-American presence in her works. She has become a bit better about it—witness Nuisance the cat in the Ravensblood series, who had a brief (and largely accidental) heroic moment in Raven’s Heart that almost makes up for that slanderous name. (Writer-person has called me worse over the years, though to be fair at least one of those instances involved the demise of one of her favorite wine glasses.) Fortuna in A Hunt by Moonlight fares better in that regard, but gets very little screen time, especially in comparison to the number of canids running around the book. (I don’t care if they’re werewolves, they still pant and drool.) She lets a child name the only cat in The Stolen Luck that is anything more than set dressing.

 

And yes, Jack the Dog is barely mentioned here and there in the Ravensblood series, but he bears an uncanny resemblance to her friends’ pit bull. As if I need a further reminder of her disloyalty than having her come home after a weekend away with that beast’s scent all over her.

 

This is where I need your help, dear readers. If you could only provide her with some gentle suggestions, maybe some positive feedback whenever a cat does finally make an appearance. Like most humans, she’s not too bright, but I believe she can be trained with just the right—

 

SAMHAIN GET OFF THE INTERNET!

 

Oops, gotta go!

 

 You can find out more about writer-person at her website www.Shawna-Reppert.com

Find her works on her author page on Amazon.   

Look for her newest book, Raven's Vow, on 9/23!