Terry Spear's Blog, page 385

Camain in the Dark

It was pitch black in this place, so much so you couldn't see what was lurking in the depths of the water on either side of the walkway. We heard a big splash and we're hoping one of these guys didn't get away--or rather, hadn't gotten out. But I took pictures, hoping it would capture something in the dark anyway. You really couldn't see anything but a little bit of the one's head. In the one below, nothing, just guessed there was something moving there.

Just consider what it would be like to be trying to cross a log in the black river at night and guess what's sitting on the log in your path? This little guy. Or what if the splash that is made was you? Slipping off that log into the black lake and this is what's in there with you?

That's what they were thinking in Savage Hunger!


In the last picture, it wasn't quite as dark in that section, yet still very black. And in that blackness, I saw several of these caimans and had to take a shot, hoping we could see something...and yep, there were a bunch of them in this area. All waiting to greet you. :)

Aren't they cute???

Terry "Giving new meaning to the term alpha male where fantasy IS reality!"
www.terryspear.com

Wall Paintings & the Great Tree Mystery!

Remember the very austere bedroom scene from yesterday? The metal bed, no mattress, broken window? Well, see if we add a little wall mural, that will make it all the better. Warm colors on cold nights. If you're a shifter, you'll look at all these yummy animals and have pleasant dreams about all the feasts you can have.
Now, I need to clarify a mystery...I posted this a while ago:

The biggest tree I have in the garden is the Silver Maple. After my parents planted it, they were told they don't grow well in Central Texas.

Tell that to the Silver Maple! I was just reading on it and it said that it's disease prone, weak wood, fast growing, not sure about an age, but it's been there for about 35 years. What you don't want to do is plant it anywhere near cement!!!
Well, sometime later, I am taking pictures of spiders:
I see acorns. Nothing unusual about them, right? Except I have no oak trees, I sit in the middle of a cornfield, and neither neighbor have oak trees. Well, I do have live oaks, but they're really little and not producing acorns yet. No squirrels about, either. So not like they could have run a mile away from some other place where someone might have oak trees with a bunch of acorns in their cheeks, to come to my back patio and drop them all over the place.

What do you all think???

Am I just making this stuff up? LOL

  The mystery is solved. :) 
When the man came over to give me an estimate on cutting some tree limbs, he looked up at the Silver Maple and said, "That's sure a beautiful Red Oak." Red Oak. Acorns.
No Silver Maple. LOL They must have had the wrong label on it at the nursery.
So the very huge, tall, acorn-producing tree is a Red Oak. Warning, don't plant it near cement. But otherwise, I'd love to have several more! :) 
 
Terry "Giving new meaning to the term alpha male where fantasy IS reality!"
www.terryspear.com

Home Away from Home

This is what I call a fixer upper. If you're a shifter, no problem. Skip the bed, shift, and lie on the floor in all your furry glory. Notice the window is broken? In your furry form, you don't have to worry about bugs anyway.

Note that as bad off as you might be, you still have an electric outlet to plug in your laptop.

So take heart. :) It could be worse, if you don't have that someone to share it with. So what are you doing in here moping about the lack of mattress? Go out and find a hunky shifter. He'll make a terrific mattress, pillow, blanket. Whatever you need him for. :)

Hope you are all having a great time with the approaching holidays!!!

With not working this year for the first time in years (although I am writing up a storm on deadline), it's nice being able to take time when I need to to shop and not feel TOO guilty.

Have a super great TGIF!

Terry
"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male where fantasy IS reality!"
www.terryspear.com

How Many Snakes?

If you were Indiana Jones, you'd say way too many! One was more than he'd want to encounter. I wasn't going to take a picture of the snake, until I saw several. Really creepy and so I ask you, how many do you see?

I was watching The Island the other day while I was making a bear for an order...here's the bear...
But if you haven't watched the story, in one part the clones come upon a rattlesnake and it's shaking it rattley tail, and the male clone is putting his face right up to the snake that's getting ready to strike, and I'm like, ack, get away from it. I can't remember what he said but it was something like the creature was nasty tempered.
Yep. :) 
So hopefully on this delightful Thursday, you won't encounter any nasty snakes or anything close to it!
Off to write!Trying to get to the halfway point on Tom's story...41,000, 4,000 to go.
Terry "Giving new meaning to the term alpha male where fantasy IS reality!"
www.terryspear.com

What's in the Water with You?

A shark...these stayed on the bottom and can be dangerous as you walk along a sandy bottom and stir them up. Especially places like on the east coast of Florida where you couldn't see anything in the murky water.

A cute little fish. Not dangerous!

A ray. We actually fed them in Grand Cayman Islands just as Duncan and Shelley do in A Howl for a Highlander. But their tail can be dangerous.

Eels...not nice at all. He looks like he's watching us and ready to give us some trouble.

So my advice to Duncan and Shelley is to avoid picture number 1 and 4 and be careful around picture number 3. He knows how to take care of sharks though. Just wait to hear how he'll do so in A Howl for a Highlander!


Him, yum....Duncan's used to swimming in the Irish Sea or chilly Highland lochs...but put him in the islands, and it's a whole different sea world.


A Howl for the Highlander (Book 10)

Sourcebooks
Feb 2013
Duncan MacNeill is a Highlander at heart with a mission—find gray wolf and former stockbroker, Silverman who has stolen the family fortune and is purported to be living in the Grand Cayman Islands. As a Highland wolf, Duncan rarely leaves his native homeland and taking a trip to an island paradise doesn’t appeal. But keeping the MacNeill’s ancestral castle depends on making Silverman pay. What Duncan doesn’t plan for is the American botanist who distracts him from his mission and makes him realize what an island paradise really means. Shelley Campbell is teaching botany at a Florida college, when she receives an email from an old girlfriend, who’s renting a villa on the island and wants her to come to stay with her. Figuring she can study the old growth forest while she's there, and lecture about it when she returns home, she has no idea the secrets she might uncover. When her girlfriend’s a no-show, a Highlander turns up instead, and she has a choice—share the villa, or send him away and pay full price for the accommodations—which on her teacher’s salary is stretching things pretty thin. Since he promises to be no trouble at all, she lets him stay. And that’s when the trouble really begins!

 AmazonB&N

Terry "Giving new meaning to the term alpha male where fantasy IS reality!"
www.terryspear.com

Pacing Jaguar

My son and I couldn't find him. The black jaguar was sleeping happily inside, but my DIL said that she'd seen this one down below. So since we were all the way up the hill and ready to call it a day--we'd been there for 4 hours walking all over and were getting hungry since since we hadn't eaten anything yet... I took a long distance shot through the trees. He was really pacing, and I didn't think I'd even get that much of a shot!

Anyway, so he must have been hungry too. I would have loved to have heard him "roar." He's one of the big roaring cats, but they don't make a roar like a lion or tiger.

I listened to it on tape a few times, but one time I didn't realize that was what it was. It's a coughing sound rather than a roar. :)

 


Savage Hunger (Book 1)
Sourcebooks
October 2012 In the heat of the jungle, jaguars are clawed, dangerous, and hungry for love. With hopes of overcoming night terrors and thanking the man who saved her life, Kathleen McKnight returns to the Amazon. A jaguar at heart, Connor Anderson doesn’t just protect her, but wants to claim her for his own. B&NAmazon



Jaguar Fever, Book 2
SourcebooksAugust 2013AmazonB&N

Have a super great day. I'm back to Silence of the Wolf! Wrote 5,000 words yesterday and am still 18,000 words behind! But then that's because I had to do Jaguar Fever edits. *sigh*Terry"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male where fantasy IS reality!"
www.terryspear.com

Vampire Bats Or...Vampires?

See the yellow eyes?

This is the close one, and this place was pitch black, by the way. But down below, there are two clustered together on the ceiling against the wall also.

These are the blood suckers....NOT the fruit bats.




Doesn't it feel like a Monday? Again???

You're out there with all those blood suckers? Or....you're the one they need to be wary of!

So what will it be? Why should THEY have all the fun?



I'm also here today, talking about ghosts in Scotland and elsewhere!
 http://www.historyundressed.com/2012/12/highland-rake-with-ghostly-twist-by.html

Terry
 "Giving new meaning to the term alpha male where fantasy IS reality!"
www.terryspear.com

Where the People Are Confined at the Zoo

Think: Planet of the Apes!

Yep, at this zoo, the people are confined in big bubbles. They get fed three meals a day. They get exercised. Hosed down. Big straw beds to sleep on. They're happy! Look at their smiling faces! They're waving, not clawing to get out.

Free room and board, and all kinds of people adore them. Take pictures of them. A vet will check them out periodically. So what's not to like?

Do you ever feel you need to break out of the bubble you're in?

  Terry
 "Giving new meaning to the term alpha male where fantasy IS reality!"
www.terryspear.com

Black Wolf

Here is the black wolf, watching my son as he took a picture of him. Note, it has double fencing, which made it even harder to get a good picture.

The white wolf kept coming over to the fence on the other side and greeting him.

The keeper was feeding the bears in a pen next to this and so the wolf was running back and forth for a while, interested in what she was throwing to the bears. Lettuce and other veggies. I don't think the wolf would have loved that. :)

Back to edits. Does this sound familiar??? Actually, I'm done, but need to reread the mss just to make sure I didn't make new mistakes. :)

I would love to have this done this weekend, then decorate for Christmas, and get back to work on Silence of the Wolf!

Are you going anywhere for Christmas?


Terry
"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male where fantasy IS reality."
www.terryspear.com

Poor Old White Wolf

In the video I took and the other pictures, the wolves were very active. This one stayed in one small area and I took a couple of pictures of him, and then he disappeared and I wasn't able to get him on video.

There was a black wolf from a wolf reserve in Oregon that was in a run. The keeper said that the wolf would remain with them, as the Oregon reserve was renovating their grounds.

But they were acclimating the black wolf to its surroundings and to the other wolves, so it wasn't going to be released for a while. This wolf kept going back to the cage and greeting it. :)

It was hard to get a shot of the black wolf because it was in the back of the exhibit and trees hid it.

I'll share it tomorrow.

:)

Have a super great TGIF. Off to more edits!!! :)

At least my suitcase is unpacked and put away. Still need to decorate for Christmas. I usually do all that the day after Thanksgiving so I'm way far behind on everything. How about you? Have you already decorated???

Terry
"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male where fantasy IS reality."
www.terryspear.com