If I like to eat pickles, should I write about it?

I really meant to post this earlier, but something detained me –exhaustion. Yesterday, I spent the day taking care of animals, in one way or another.

Many people know I have horses. Two, to be exact: my 12-year old mare, Frostie and her 5-year old son, Snoopy. When people find out I wrote a book, their first question is often, "Does it have horses in it?"

No, as a matter of fact, there are no animals at all in Freezer Burn, at least not the four-legged kind. It was a conscious decision; I wanted to portray Peri as not being a natural nurturer. She's been married three times, is 50 years old, and has no children. I needed an explanation for that, and it seemed an easy progression to see her as someone who can't keep a goldfish alive.

She's a sympathetic gal, and has a good relationship with her BFF's kids, but has just never had the desire to have her own child and watch them grow. This is an important point in the book, because there's a subplot involving Peri thinking she might be pregnant. She has to confront her non-maternal instincts as she wonders what kind of upheaval a child would bring to her life.

Upheaval – with animals and kids, it sometimes comes down to that, doesn’t it? Unlike Peri, I'm the kind of gal who needs animals around. I like the feel of a cat settling into my lap to be rubbed, or the dog poking his nose into my hand to be stroked. When I am cleaning up their messes, or vacuuming the fur off the couch, I tell myself, "When this one goes, I'm not getting another one." But I lie. I can't live without a four-legged critter around.

As I was trying to get out of the house yesterday, our cat, Katie, came out of her litterbox dragging her tushie on the linoleum. It could only mean she had some, um, debris stuck in her fur, debris that I had to clean up before I could get out of the house. This cost me an extra 15 minutes. Upheaval.

I was trying to get out of the house in order to meet the horse transport company that would take Snoopy to a lameness specialist. Snoopy broke a bone in his leg last year and is still limping. His diagnosis and treatment has become such a big deal, he has his own blog to talk about it (http://thatsmysnoopy.blogspot.com), but the Reader's Digest version is that we traveled from Chino Hills to San Marcos for more tests.

This is the route we took:

And this is how much it cost me:

Taking Snoopy to San Marcos was not exactly in my schedule, either. I had to rearrange Tuesday's writing to meet Wednesday's deadlines early, and then cancel Wednesday's lessons, just to have not one, but two specialists tell me that, theoretically he's healed but realistically he's lame. Since horses can live for over 20 years, it will be a long time before I say, "When this one goes…" Again, upheaval.

The upheaval of pets in my life is what kept animals out of Freezer Burn. I know of many books where animals figure prominently into the storyline, and I love reading them. But I was more than a little anxious about writing a cohesive murder mystery. I actually made an Excel spreadsheet to keep the clues and suspects and subplots straight. Threading an animal into the mix didn't make sense.

We're always told to "write what we know" and I know (and love) animals, but I preferred not to add them to this book. I may add them to another story, but only if they fit into the plot.

Is there anything (a hobby, a skill, a passion) that you know intimately, but choose to keep out of your stories? Why?