GUEST POST BY BRITT LIND:AUTHOR OF THE BOOK 'DECEFTION'

 

I am an animal activist. I’ve loved animals all my life and although my passion was always acting, my calling from God is to help animals. That means I’ve never wanted to eat them, and when I was a little girl in Norway the thought of the animals on my uncle’s farm, who I loved dearly, being killed and eaten was horrifying. I still feel that way. My friend Billy, who read an early version of Avarice, asked why my characters were vegan and why that theme was repeated in the book. He thought it was like I was forcing my beliefs on other people. I disagreed with him. For one thing both my main characters came to be vegans in a very believable way. For another, I read at least three or four mystery/thrillers every month by my favorite authors. All of the main characters in those books are meat eaters – steaks, hotdogs, hamburgers, veal (ugh), pork chops, chicken, and on and on. Sometimes the main protagonist may have a crazy daughter who is vegan and is ridiculed for it, because, in these books, eating animals is normal and not eating them is weird. So, to me, it seemed perfectly fine for my characters to express their love for animals as they go about their business of solving crimes. It can’t begin to compete with the number of carnivores in other mystery/thrillers and offset that with animal loving characters but I think it’s more than fair for me to try. For anyone who wants to understand what my calling is, go to www.kindnessandscience.org I promise you will learn a lot of things you never knew you didn’t know.