Her love of animals is the reason there are details about them in the book. ST’s irrepressible hope and bright voice is what Kira used for a guide while writing the book. She finds humor is a beautiful antidote to how hard life is. Kira has always been drawn to humor, which is why it is featured so prominently in the novel. Despite their love for the book, many of the agents she talked to said that they were unsure of how they could sell it since they had never seen a novel like it. When she talked to agents about the book, there was a lot of positive response from them on the premise of the novel. Merging different genres wound up being organic for her, a mixture of the elements of the fiction Kira loves the most. She loves literary prose and humor, and feels both should be featured in a novel.

She put the story first, at the risk of no one ever reading it. Kira was committed to writing it as it was, without any problems of it getting on a bookstore shelf, or how she could pitch it to some publisher.

She penned the book because she felt like she had to, it was burning inside of her.

It was important to her that each of the voices was authentic, something that took a combination of the research and listening to her intuition about how exactly a certain animal would express themselves in some way. She wanted to honor all of the species with her research and get all of the details right. Big Jim started out as a little boy (small Jim). Angus the Highland Cow exploded right onto the page when she was trying to voice a hummingbird. Quite a few of the characters in the book were total surprises to her. ST’s voice came through just as vulgar as a sailor and clear as a bell. She was so terrified and excited by the challenge of it all that she wrote the first chapter in ecstatic frenzy. It gave her the influence to write about crows as well as the premise of people no longer being around it was just a single crow telling the story. Her interactions with the murder were very different. She felt they knew she was there to help the bird. Kira approached an injured crow and expected she would be dive bombed by his murder of at least forty. When she and her husband first moved to Seattle, she began having encounters with crows. She would hold a cobra, brush the hippo tongues with a broom, hand feed the rhino. At first, it felt important and epic, but she became bored by the second day. Kira grew up in Indonesia and her first job was at a zoo when she was twelve years old.

Author Kira Jane Buxton’s writing has appeared in The Rumpus, McSweeney’s, The New York Times, Huffington Post,, and more.

Kira jane buxton