Camille DeAngelis

Camille DeAngelis's latest novel is Bones & All.

From her Q & A with Dianne Wenz for Chic Vegan:

CV: Tell me a little bit about your new book Bones & All and what inspired you to write it.

CD: Bones & All is about a sixteen-year-old girl named Maren who eats (as in gobbles up, like an ogre in a fairy tale) anyone who gets too affectionate with her. When her mother abandons her on the day after her sixteenth birthday, Maren goes looking for the father she’s never met, and encounters other “eaters” (and potential victims) along the way.

Every novel grows from a seed of some sort, and in this case it was “cannibals in love.” This was a paradox I found quite hilarious, but of course, the whole vegan-writing-about-cannibals thing was even more so!

CV: Why would a vegan write a book about cannibalism?

CD: It seems counterintuitive if not downright insane, doesn’t it? But the more you sit with it, the more sense it makes. Most humans are (or used to be) flesh eaters, and as consumers of animal flesh, we are predators even though we probably didn’t slaughter our dinner ourselves. I wrote Bones & All to get readers thinking, “Am I okay with being a predator? Is that really who I want to be?”

Of course, many would argue that eating animals is a much lesser sin than eating other humans, that the latter is murder while the former is sustenance. But who are we to say which lives matter and which lives do not? Cows, pigs, chickens, and other animals...[read on]

Visit Camille DeAngelis's website.

Writers Read: Camille DeAngelis.

The Page 69 Test: Bones & All.

--Marshal Zeringue