Valda Taurus is inspired by stories of survival in extreme situations, whether it be a natural disaster or an inner psychological struggle. She holds a master's degree in sociology and a minor in psychology that complements her desire to be a judgment-free observer of people. On the path to becoming a writer, she completed an advanced fiction-writing course. Killing Your Best Friend is her first novel in which she touches on the topic of destructive feelings such as guilt and self-accusation. Writing has always been her passion. As she says, "Before I learned how to write, I invented the stories in my head, or they just lived in my head, and then, I tried to guess where they originally came from, and why all these characters chose me to share their stories. I was never alone in my mind although often lonely in the world of real people." Such great classics as Charles Dickens and Honore de Balzac, Scott Fitzgerald and Leo Tolstoy, Ernest Hemingway and Gabriel Garcia Márquez, and, of course, Interpretative sociology of Max Veber and Georg Simmel influenced her work and her personal development. The theme of finding yourself in terms of life purpose and understanding people's actions lies at the heart of her book. Valda Taurus grew up in the northern hemisphere of the globe, on the coast, in extreme weather conditions, enduring a harsh lifestyle. In her earlier years, she used to fish with her dad, and an experience she likes to remember is when the wind took off with the shield of ice on which she was standing during her fishing. Another interesting experience she recalls is when she fell through and hung on to a rotten board on a bridge that was nearly 40 ft tall. Her dad pulled her out and then warned her once again to look under her feet and not above her head, no matter how beautiful the sunset is.