Operation Tropical Affair: A Poppy McVie Adventure (Poppy McVie Series Book 1)
Page 21
Wildlife trafficking is estimated at over $20 billion annually and is rivaled only by illegal drugs and weapons in the money it earns criminals. The number of organized crime syndicates profiting from large scale trafficking is mind blowing. Millions of wild animals are captured and slaughtered each year for traditional medicine and aphrodisiacs, exotic pets, souvenirs and religious trinkets.
This cruel holocaust MUST STOP.
Thank YOU for reading. If you feel as strongly as I do about the issues presented in this book and you want to help, PLEASE start by taking a moment to post a review on Amazon.com and Goodreads.com and tell a friend about the story. Help me spread the word. For the animals!
If you’d like to learn more and stay informed, please follow my blog at http://www.KimberliBindschatel.com
THANK YOU
Writing a novel is a huge endeavor and certainly not a solitary one. I am grateful so many people were willing to lend a hand.
Special thanks to Professor David Favre of the Animal Law Center at MSU for all the advice and guidance. Any error is mine alone.
Many thanks to Larry Richardson for helping me with some details about the U.S.F.W.S. To Jane Whaley for the juicy details in our interview. To Joel for the info on making a snake vomit. (I’m still not sure I got that right.) Thanks to Roaster Jack for suggesting the old coffee roasters.
To Rachel and Dan for the feedback, especially at the early, rough stage when all is gobbledygook and nothing makes sense.
I am so thankful for my readers—April, Diane, Tricia, Linda, Kathleen, Michele, Ellen, Joni, Mary, Laura, Valerie, Andrea, and Jan. Their feedback was not only helpful but uplifting.
Thanks also to Amy for help with my Spanish, April for the subtitle, and Barbara for the exhaustive list of copy edits.
As always, a special thank you to my loving and supportive husband who has loved Poppy since the day she sprouted into my head. And to my parents, for raising me with a love of nature.
Thank YOU for reading. If you feel as strongly as I do about the issues presented in this book and you want to help, PLEASE start by taking a moment to post a review on Amazon.com and Goodreads.com and tell a friend about the story. Help me spread the word. For the animals!
DEDICATION
For Marie, my Muse
And to the brave men and women of the USFWS and their counterparts around the globe who dedicate their lives to save animals from harm. Their courage and commitment is nothing short of inspiring. May their efforts not be in vain.
The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.
~Mahatma Gandhi
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born and raised in Michigan, I spent summers at the lake, swimming, catching frogs, and chasing fireflies, winters building things out of cardboard and construction paper, writing stories, and dreaming of faraway places. Since I didn’t make honors English in High School, I thought I couldn’t write. So I started hanging out in the art room. The day I borrowed a camera, my love affair with photography began. Long before the birth of the pixel, I was exposing real silver halides to light and marveling at the magic of an image appearing on paper under a red light.
After college, I freelanced in commercial photography studios. During the long days of rigging strobes, one story haunted me. As happens in life though, before I could put it to words, I was possessed by another dream—to be a wildlife photographer. I trekked through the woods to find loons, grizzly bears, whales, and moose. Then, for six years, I put my heart and soul into publishing a nature magazine, Whisper in the Woods. But it was not meant to be my magnum opus. This time, my attention was drawn skyward. I’d always been fascinated by the aurora borealis, shimmering in the night sky, but now my focus went beyond, to the cosmos, to wonder about our place in the universe.
In the spring of 2010, I sat down at the computer, started typing words, and breathed life into a curious boy named Kiran in The Path to the Sun. Together, in our quest for truth, Kiran and I have explored the mind and spirit. Our journey has taken us to places of new perspective. Alas, the answers always seem just beyond our grasp, as elusive as a firefly on a warm autumn night.
Most recently, my focus has shifted to more pressing issues—imperiled wildlife. With the Poppy McVie series, I hope to bring some light into the shadowy underworld of black market wildlife trade, where millions of wild animals are captured or slaughtered annually to fund organized crime. IT. MUST. STOP.
If you’d like to learn more and stay in touch, please sign up for my newsletter or follow my blog at http://www.KimberliBindschatel.com
COPYRIGHT
Published by Turning Leaf Productions, LLC.
Traverse City, Michigan
www.KimberliBindschatel.com
Copyright ©2015 Kimberli A. Bindschatel
All rights reserved.
Print ISBN-13:9780996189026
Print ISBN-10:0996189025
E-BOOK ASIN:B00Y18HMJY
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Thank you for purchasing this book and supporting an indie author.