Natasha Deen's Blog, page 68

Mother’s Day Surprise

With it being May, today my husband decided to clean up the BBQ* in preparation for a summer of burgers and grilled shrimp. Instead of a charred grill, however, he found this:

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Yep, we have a family of squirrels living in our BBQ! 

The family is safe and secure and living in a warm cozy nest the size of our BBQ grill.  A phone call to Wildlife Rescue & The Nature Center assured us it was okay to leave the babies in there until they were grown (we weren’t sure if the unu...

Saturday Wuss

There was no Friday Freebie post yesterday because I couldn't bear to write about what was going on: namely the dirty slogging of edits. Man, just when I think I've gotten tighter in my writing, autocrit gently points out my overuse of the word "gently" & serenity software wonders if I shouldn't take a grammar refresher.

Oi.

And the worst part isn't even that I've used "it" 95 times too many (thanks Autocrit!) but the fact that for the life of me, I can't get my brain to think of new ways o...

Thursday Time: Wha?!

Heard a study that said a cat falling from 20 stories has a 30% higher chance for survival than a cat falling 7 stories. Here’s my question: How did the heck did they collect that data?!

Wednesday Whoa: Worth Reading

The Weekend Novelist – Robert J. Ray. From the cover: "A dynamic 52-week program to help you produce a novel-- one weekend at a time"

How to Start a Tuesday: Adopted feline saves owner's life

Jamie Hall, Edmonton Journal

It was perhaps fitting that after Patricia Peter gave Monty the cat a new lease on life, he should return the favour and save hers.

It was little more than a year ago, three months after she adopted him from the Edmonton Humane Society, that the lovable, 15-pound ginger tabby awoke the Camrose woman from a deep sleep, alerting her to a medical emergency that could have killed her.

Diagnosed with diabetes only months before, Peter's blood sugar had dropped to dange...

Technique Tuesday: 3 Easy Tips on writing the TSTL* heroine

1) Have her behave in wildly erratic ways and offer no explanation/cliché explanations for her (her sister died! Her father didn’t love her!)

2) Make sure she does incredibly stupid things, but continuously remind the reader how smart she really is by having the supporting characters say (ad nauseum), “How can someone so smart make such stupid decisions?”

3)At every opportunity, let her reject help, companionship, and love, then have her brood (late at night, with a glass of scotch—no girlie...

Mechanical Monday - The Perfect Tenses

You know this little cutie because it's form is: have + past participle.

Its function is to tell you about something occurring before a second time/event.

"He has already slept." (the present moment is the second event...he's slept before now).

"I had already showered before my muddy nephew hugged me."

"She will already have a new boyfriend by the time the concert is done."

Feuding Hearts is Up for LASR’s Book of the Month

Vote here, polls close Sunday, May 6th.

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Thursday Time & Friday Furry

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to talk about with Thursday’s post, so I opted for silence over meaningless ramblings.

In Friday furries, though, some great news!  My neighbour is redoing the pad in his garage, which has meant a whole lot of jackhammering, whining tools, and noise that lasts all day. Why is this great news? Because Murphy actually ATE with all of this going on!

For those who don’t know, Murphy & his brother, Milo, were rescued from a farm. The tenants who rented the lan...

Wednesday Whoa: By the Light of the Moon

Dean Koontz has always impressed me with his ability to make me laugh at the same time he’s scaring the daylights out of me…I don’t know if it’s a result of his skill with writing the everyday character caught in circumstances beyond his control, the juxtaposition of the ludicrous against common sense, or Koontz’s talent with using characteristics to offset emotion…I’m still learning, but lines like this crack me up (and granted, maybe you have to read the paragraph in the context of the stor...