Wildlife Wednesday - Turtle

Spot the turtle!Can you see the turtle in my picture? The shell has speckles on it and it's about the middle of the photo. This was taken on our WA trip, at Exmouth. It looked much better in real life - the water was murky though, which has caused the blurriness.

I used a turtle in my scuba diving story (Deep Diving) and I said that the turtle slowly poked its head out at them. When I was editing/rewriting, I looked at that and scratched my head. I've seen a few turtles in the water but I hadn't actually seen them poke their head out at me. So I did a Google hunt and found that they don't have the ability to retract their head or limbs! I'd messed up my land turtles and sea turtles in my writing flurry.

It's those silly little things that can make or break a book for me. If an author gets something wrong that I notice, then I begin to question the book. I worry that I have these types of mistakes because my brain doesn't fact-check when it writes. It only switches on to analytical mode when editing (and it's sooooo mean then - but it's not infallable).

I love seeing turles underwater. The first time I took Mr E snorkelling, I shot off after a turtle all excited, only to realise he was nowhere near as excited or interested. In fact, without his contacts, he could hardly see! I've made lots of modifications to my snorkelling-with-Mr-E routines since but turtles still bring me the biggest buzz of excitement.

Are you a turtle fan? A snorkelling or diving enthusiast?