Joy Adamson & the Long Road to Fiction

True confession: I’m a crier, I’ve always been a crier, and nothing opens the floodgates faster than a touching story about animals.

Movies are the worst. Years ago, I went to see Dances with Wolves, with my coauthor, Yvonne. Remember the scene where the pet wolf (pass the tissues!) dies? I sobbed so hard Yvonne couldn’t see the screen for the fog. She leaned over and hissed, “Get a grip. It’s an ACTOR wolf.”

Too bad she wasn’t around to make the same observation a decade earlier, when I watched Born Free, sobbing into the green shag carpet in my parents’ living room. That moment where Joy Adamson drives off and leaves Elsa the lion running behind the land rover? It wrecked me. And the scene where they reunited, with Elsa giving Joy a big lion hug? My eyes are still puffy.

Books I could handle. In fact, reading Born Free and Joy Adamson’s other books made me realize that I was put on this earth to study animals in the wild.

I became a primatologist groupie, riveted by the adventures of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birutė Galdikas, who studied chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans respectively. Until James Herriot, came along, with his stories of caring for animals in the Yorkshire dales. Maybe being a witty country vet would suit me even better!

Sadly, my ambition to work with animals hit the brick wall of reality in 11th grade. While I did well in Bio and Chem, Physics and Math were disastrous. How would I survive a Science degree?

Plus, there were some personal barriers to my whole study-animals-in-the-wilds scenario. For example, I was the kid who wouldn’t play in the sandbox because I didn’t like to get dirty. And when my family bought a cottage without plumbing, I tried to shut down all bodily functions while there to avoid using the outhouse.

My parents would snicker and say, “You can’t use a diffuser in the bush, you know.”

Finally, there was the issue of anthropomorphizing. I projected human emotions onto every creature, from bugs to bats. I was never going to get used to seeing them in pain, or tearing each other apart.

So there I was, career goals shattered, right before college apps. I did the logical thing, and studied English. On some level, I guess I knew that what I loved about all these writers was their storytelling, and I hoped that I might be able to do something similar without giving up heels and mascara.

Still it was a long journey through Africa, Borneo and Yorkshire and the corporate jungles before I realized what I should be doing is projecting human emotions onto fake humans through fiction.

It all worked out in the end, but I like to give our characters an easier time of it, at least on the career front.

Anyone have a story to share about an ambition that didn’t turn out exactly as you’d planned?

For the first five comments or e-mails, we’ll offer a free copy of Trade Secrets, our new novel, about three teens with lofty ambitions, who also happen to be moonlighting as love experts.