Aimee’s dogs Moose and Lally
You know her as Aimee Amodio (or maybe by her Families.com handle NewroticGirl). I know her as my fellow Pets blogger.
But just how well do we really know the woman behind the myth? Or just how true an animal loving soul she possesses?
We’re about to find out. Aimee had the fun idea of interviewing every author we know, including ourselves, about our pets and how they factor into our writing lives. I thought it was a brilliant idea and hopped right on board to interview this prolific fellow animal-loving blogger who I so highly revere.
Here are her answers in Technicolor! (Warning: as is her style, her responses will have you simultaneously laughing and crying.)
Courtney Mroch: Besides blogs in Health and Pets, what other kind of things do you write about? (Genre, subject matter, themes, what have you.)
Aimee Amodio: I’m a full time freelance writer, so I do a lot of writing on a lot of different topics.
My first love will always be fiction, and my favorite genres are sci fi and fantasy. I’ve loved the fantastic since I was a little kid and a teacher friend of my mom’s loaned me one of Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern books. I immediately fell in love with space travel, dragons, magic, and epic quests!
I actually got to meet Anne McCaffrey a few years ago at a writing workshop, and thank her for being the inspiration that set me on this path. (Of course, I was so nervous to go talk to her, I had to have a friend go up with me!)
CM: Regular readers know about your Moose and Lally, but for those who don’t can you share their breeds and ages and maybe some special quirk that makes them unique or that you especially love about them?
AA: When my dog Miko passed away, I went right out to the shelter to find another dog. I was scared of being alone, really. There were maybe seven or eight dogs there, and I didn’t immediately fall in love with any of them (as I had when I went to the shelter to find Miko). One little dog at the end of the row had a sad story –she’d been picked up as a stray and showed signs of recently having a litter, but the shelter folks never found any puppies.
I was halfway home before I turned around and went back to get that sad little girl… my Lally. She’s a boxer/shar-pei mix, a combo that gets us lots of looks and comments when we’re out walking. Recently somebody asked me if she was a dingo! Lally is definitely a mama’s girl, and spends most of her time at my side. She loves to play ball, and ‘boxes’ when she’s happy. Hard to believe it, but she’s a senior citizen now –she turned seven in September.
Moose was just supposed to be a foster! I was thinking about getting a second dog and thought fostering would be a good trial –to see if Lally and I could handle it. I guess I failed fostering, because I kept him. Moose is “mostly” German shepherd (the vet says he’s mixed with something with a fat head, like a Rottie or a pit bull) and he’s a year older than Lally. He acts more like an old man, definitely.
CM: Do animals appear in your other writing? Do you ever use your pets as the basis for any animal characters?
AA: It’s funny, but when I start to write pets into stories, I usually end up taking them out because they’re too much like my own pets and I feel silly. However, my first published story did feature a fairy wolf-girl. (Does that count?) And lately I’ve been writing stories about werewolves…so animals are in there, but they’re generally anthropomorphic.
CM: Do your pets contribute to your work methods and help with the process?
AA: I tend to do a lot of thinking while I’m walking, so walking the dogs is always a good way to get my brain churning. Usually one or both dogs will hang out in the office with me while I’m on the computer (right now, Lally is crammed into the tiny space between my desk and the wall)… and they make sure I take regular breaks.
CM: What are you working on now? Any new releases?
AA: I’ve got a story in an anthology called ‘Futuristic Motherhood’ that is due out this month. All the stories in the anthology were written on the theme of being a mother in the future. Mine is about an overpopulated world where parenting is strictly regulated, and what one woman will do in order to have a child.
Aimee at…work? (Looks like she’s having too much fun both using her Writers of the Future book as a pillow and then at a signing with two other Writers of the Future winners.)
CM: Can you list your works and how/where we can find or get them?
AA: So far, I’ve only sold two pieces of fiction:
“What Became of the King” in Writers of the Future, Volume 18 (available from Galaxy Press) and “In Ur Intarnetz, Stealin Ur Bodiez” in Futuristic Motherhood (available soon from MSP Media).
But I also took a five year break from fiction while I was working in radio. So I’ve only really been back to writing stories for a little while! With any luck, I’ll have more sales to report soon.
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Photo credit: All photos provided by Aimee Amodio and used with her permission.