Animal Nature

(2005-2006, 2019)

Shyanne and David are dedicated animal lovers and vegans… until David goes missing on a camping trip. His friends describe a huge beast that attacked their campsite, and Shyanne worries that David might have been killed. Then David shows up out of the blue, much changed…

You can read this novel online via Wattpad!

Writing Process

This was my 2006 Nanowrimo novel. I had already written this novel once and I didn’t like it, so I took the Nanowrimo opportunity to rewrite it completely. There were quite a few good scenes, but I was still not thrilled with it, and I put it away for a while. More than ten years, in fact.

Then I decided to post it on Wattpad, because some of the characters are shared with one of my other Wattpad books, Seven Minutes to Midnight. And that’s when I realized the book wasn’t actually complete. The ending was a mess of random scenes.

So, in late 2019, I began writing the ending, and finally finished it.

Inspiration

I hadn’t written about werewolves before this point, but the movie “Ginger Snaps” inspired me to write about them. Shyanne Brown and David Lupien are teenage animal rights activists and vegetarians, quiet kids who are very close friends (but not quite dating). David goes on a camping trip with two friends, and those friends come back without David and talking about some wild animal that ripped through their campsite. Search parties turn up nothing, and Shy starts her junior year of high school all sad and lonely. When David shows up out of the blue, he doesn’t seem to want to talk to Shy at all. Finally, when he does talk to her, he is very sexually aggressive toward her. So she is all confused, especially when one of her vegan friends sees David at the grocery store buying meat. Long story short, Shy discovers that he’s a werewolf and searches for cures, but not before he has accidentally infected Shy and several other students as werewolves.

I’m still not sure I have the right tone yet. This is definitely meant to be a series. I want to explore how Shyanne changes as a result of turning into a werewolf, and I want a battle between the jocks and the “tree-hugger” werewolves, and I also want to have them find out where the werewolf who bit David came from. All these ideas really can’t fit into one story… And there’s also a “Little Red Riding Hood” theme…