Yes, it’s true. I have a problem. (Hey, I heard that!)

Animals. They’re everywhere. In my world. In my house. In my books. I didn’t do it intentionally or anything. They just sort of show up. The parrots I rescue. The stray my neighbors took in. The new born foal at my sister’s place. The pregnant alligator in my book. I mean, is it my fault? I think not.

Okay, so maybe it’s a tiny bit my fault. But animals have been a part of my world my entire life, so I guess it shouldn’t have suprised me that they’ve found their way into my fiction. I don’t think it was a conscious thing. They just popped up naturally, as the companion my hero or heroine simply had to have. There, just like the dogs in my house, and the shark in my fishtank. I don’t know exactly how or why they have to be under my care, or my hero’s care…they just do. It wasn’t until a reader commented recently, after I excitedly told her about a new series I had coming out (the Black Sheep…this August! Oh my god, Sheep! I swear, there aren’t really sheep. That was in The Great Scot… Oh dear. I need help, really I do…)

Where was I? Oh. Right. Black Sheep (mmmm….. and her response was “I can’t wait to see what animals you give these guys to deal with”…and I realized she wasn’t referring to my heroines. (Thank goodness. I mean, they know what they want and aren’t afraid to go after it, but I wouldn’t call them animals…the guys on the other hand, have a few, well, animalistic tendencies, but of the very best kind…)

Again, I digress. So…animals. Yeah. I started thinking about it, and in the 30+ plus books I have out there, of varying length, pretty much every single one has a beast of some kind or other traipsing through its pages. Hunh. (The pregnant, three-legged alligator was quite a while ago, back in my Loveswept days. I should have seen the problem then, I suppose. And if not then, surely when Elvis the iguana popped up. But no…) All these books later and, currently, it’s a pregnant horse and Bagle the watch-Bassett. It makes me wonder, can I write a book without a furry, feathered, or finned companion? (Ask me about Fred, the upside down fish some day…but I had to write him, he was based on a real fish! A reader’s fish, to boot. Come on!)

And the answer is, I’m not sure I can. Sure, there are exceptions in my backlist, but not many. And now I worry that I’ve left those poor characters companion-less. Out there somewhere, a fictional dog or tiger is still homeless. And it’s all my fault. Of course, now that I’m consciously aware of it, who knows what will happen. Think of the all the little kitties and adorable wildebeests I can save now!

So…don’t say you haven’t been warned. After all…just like you, me, and all of my characters, wildebeests need love, too.