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Bella
I love to write animals into my books. Especially dogs. I have three myself and have almost always had a dog since I was a kid. Even as I write this post there’s one at my feet trying to figure out if I dropped anything from breakfast and another half napping in a chair and half judging the other one. She’s got that look.
Often showing how a character treats an animal or loves his/her pet is a short cut to character development. In Wild Bliss, Sawyer is a grump of the highest order, but his relationship with a dog he found nosing around in his trash shows that he’s got a soft heart.
While I’ve written a lot of pets, this one is special because she was mine. Bella. She was a rescue mutt I fell in love with via picture, took my kids to meet and they fell in love with her, and that was when they told me she might have cancer. Smart, sneaky shelter manager. She knew a sucker when she saw one. So a couple grand later we learned all of Bella’s tumors were benign, and I got to spend eight years with the sweetest baby in the world. Like the Bella in Wild Bliss, my Bella loved to dance around and wag her tail and followed me everywhere. Later when we got Sam—the aforementioned dog who sits at my feet hoping I’ll drop something—she was the best big sis. We lost her in 2018. Sadly to cancer. She died in surgery to remove the tumor. But she lives on in my heart and books and my children’s memories.
Funny fact. While I joke about the Wild Bliss version of Bella being named after Bella from Twilight, my Bella was named by the shelter manager who loved Star Trek. Her full name was B’Elanna after B’Elanna Torres from Star Trek: Voyager. I brought it down to Bella because it was so much easier to put on forms.
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