Sandra Cox's Blog, page 238

Tuesday's Chuckle And Little Miss E's Easter Bonnet

And In Her Easter Bonnet. Is that not the cutest thing?

Filters

Good Monday morning. Was the Easter Bunny good to you? He/she better have been or we'll hold an election and get a new Easter Bunny for 2015.

The topic for today, boys and girls, is filtering, a big no-no in deep POV.   Filter's are words at the beginning of the sentence that describe the character's thoughts in narrative fashion. These bad boys are guilty of diluting the reading experience. Raise your hands if you use filters. I admit I'm guilty.

Examples:

With Filter: I  thought it was supposed to rain.
Without Filter: It was supposed to rain.

With Filter:I  felt it was the right thing to do.
Without Filter: It was the right thing to do.

With Filter: I heard the phone ring.
Without Filter: The phone rang.

With Filter: I saw the guard at the gate.
Without Filter: The guard stood at the gate.

I'm currently on a de-filtering (This word came from the Cox Dictionary by the way)  project. Some of the filters are easy-smeasy to remove. Others not so much. What about you? Have you ran across any filtering problems you'd care to share?

Happy Easter

 To my blogster buds: May your baskets be filled with chocolate and your Easter blessed. If you're traveling, stay safe. 

BB: A Baby For Easter

BLURB:Micah has always been a prodigal son, but now he’s trying to put that lifestyle behind him. Then a five-month-old daughter he never knew existed is dropped on his doorstep, the result of one of his many one-night stands. He needs help from Alice to care for his daughter, but he can’t let himself hope for anything more from her than that. He can’t help but want it, though…EXCERPT: Now, however, Alice was regretting her random impulse to put on a skirt that morning, since she was on her knees in front of the bookshelves, putting the last of the commentaries back in place.
At least no one was around to see her undignified position, with her skirt pushed up to her thighs to give herself freedom to move.
“Daniel,” a voice came from outside the office. “Daniel!”
She recognized the voice, but he was in the office before she could move or pull down her skirt. She froze as she looked over her shoulder, befuddled by Micah’s sudden appearance.
He seemed equally startled to discover her on the floor, after his eyes scanned the room for his absent brother. “Oh,” he said, standing in the doorway.
It took her a minute to pull herself together, but when she did she managed to smile. “He went to the hospital to see Mrs. Cooper.”
“Oh.” Micah was such a self-assured man that it was strange to see him so stumped.
Then there was a different sound in the office. It took Alice a few seconds to even identify it. It was so unexpected that she was sure it wasn’t right.
It sounded like a baby whimpering.
Finally, her eyes drifted down to something Micah was holding. A baby carrier. A baby carrier.
“Is that a baby?” she asked, her voice hoarse with surprise.
He looked down at the carrier as if he’d forgotten he held it. “Yeah.”
She scrambled to her feet, rather clumsily, and hurried over to look at the baby as he set the carrier on Daniel’s desk, right on top of the printed copy of sermon notes for Sunday.
She peered into the carrier and saw the baby—maybe four or five months old—wearing a pink sleeper. Her eyes were blue and grumpy, and her whimpers were quickly turning louder.
Instinctively, Alice reached out for the girl and pulled her up to rest against her shoulder, patting her back in a comforting manner.
Alice had always liked kids. She’d never had baby-fever, but she certainly knew what to do when one was starting to cry.
“What are you doing with her?” she asked Micah, who’d been staring at the baby with that same glazed look of bewilderment.
“I…I don’t know.”
“Well, whose is she?” Surely this baby hadn’t dropped from the sky into the back of Micah’s truck.
His features twisted slightly—maybe anxiety, maybe disbelief. “That’s the thing. I think…I think she’s mine.”AUTHOR Bio and Links:Noelle handwrote her first romance novel in a spiral-bound notebook when she was twelve, and she hasn’t stopped writing since. She has lived in eight different states and currently resides in Virginia, where she teaches English, reads any book she can get her hands on, and offers tribute to a very spoiled cocker spaniel.
She loves travel, art, history, and ice cream. After spending far too many years of her life in graduate school, she has decided to reorient her priorities and focus on writing contemporary romances.
Social Media:Website: http://noelle-adams.com/Home_Page.htmlFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/NoelleAdamsAuthorTwitter: https://twitter.com/NoelleAdams3Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6572847.Noelle_Adams
Book Trailer for A Baby for Easter:http://youtu.be/HkL8asd5StU
Buy links: AmazonBarnes and NobleAll Romance Ebooks A Baby for Easter will be offered at a special release price of $.99 through Easter day! Regularly priced at $2.99.

*One winner will receive a $25 GC to Amazon or BN* Two winners will receive signed paperbacks of Married for Christmas and A Baby for Easter* Ten winners will receive their choice of ebook of any title from Noelle’s backlist.To follow the tour: http://goddessfishpromotions.blogspot.com/2014/03/sbb-baby-for-easter-by-noelle-adams.html

Seeing Spots

Remember this one?

Mother's Day Contest

This contest is for all the Mom's out there and will be running through Mother's Day. The giveaway: a copy of Akasha. (A little calico cat who is the quintessential mother.) And a multi-colored ceramic paws bracelet. To enter: just go to PAGES on the right, click on contest and enter the rafflecopter.
 
 Short Excerpt:Akasha raised her pretty calico head and sniffed the air. Something about the brooding stillness didn’t feel right. There was too much electricity in the heavy atmosphere. The cat peeped out the cubby hole in the boathouse, where she made her home, and looked at a sky turned black with storm clouds. The waves of the lake lifted and hit against the shore with a sharp slap that made her flinch. Thunder rumbled. In the distance, a bolt of lightning cut through the dark and hurled a sizzling blaze of light to the ground.“Mamma, I’m scared.” A tiny replica of herself, down to the gold spot on her chin and black splotch on her right shoulder, peeped at her from the top of an old wooden fishing boat that rested upright on a flat webbing rack supported by eye-hooks.
“Don’t worry, Cairo. Mamma’s here. Mamma will take care of you.” Akasha purred. Her first litter and she was so proud. She’d never known kittens that were as smart or as cute as her little five-week old darlings. She’d had no idea how it would feel to be a mom. That nothing in the world would ever matter as much as these three balls of fluff. She would lay down her life to keep them safe.

And for the non-moms:)
On the same page is a goodreads giveaway of Akasha. Love to have you enter. 

Smelly Cat

Greetings. How was your weekend? .
Did you see the story about the poor kitty that lived in a park for a year before he was taken into rescue, then adopted and returned two days later because he passed too much gas? Lucky for the little guy he was adopted out pretty quickly after he was returned.  Good thing you can't do that with people or there'd be a lot kicked to the curb. Here's the link if you want to read the story.
https://shine.yahoo.com/pets/smelly-cat-returned-parents-claim-farts-time-194900289.html

Happy Friday

Hmm, do you think that's true? Regardless...Have the best weekend ever.

Easter Eggs...Lots Of Them

Isn't this amazing? 
Mr. Volker Kraft, from Saaalfeld Germany hung 10,000 colored eggs in his apple tree this week.My idea of decorating for Easter is to toss a bunny face on my scrawny, stuffed alley cat I keep at work:)
He's motion activated. When he was younger he used to screech out: 'I'm nothing but an alley cat.' Over the years he has developed laryngitis so now he only arches his back and his eyes glow when someone walks by.

Bar Room Buddies

This is dedicated to the baby bro whose idea of a musical is Paint Your Wagon:)