25) Do any of your characters have pets? Tell us about them.

It’s kind of rare for my characters to have pets, now that I think about it. Neither Brutal Light nor True Places has any. The main characters in my serialized novelette nihil nations: Electricity in the Rain had a cat, but it was mainly a background detail. My other short works are notably petless. Some pets show up in my Superguy and SfStory writing, but these are also fairly minor (with the notable exception of Lucky, a six-foot-at-the-shoulder mutant cat who is actually someone else’s character anyway) or Not What They Seem.

My most notable usage of ‘pets’ comes in Onyx Fire, the kids book I co-wrote with my wife, Kristyn. It has various animals, domesticated and otherwise, who end up talking during the course of the story–my favorite being Jitters, a hyper-caffeinated, self-absorbed black squirrel… not a pet, okay, but still my favorite.