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“I count myself among the living.”
Willowbe, panda and Mission Team Lead

“I always have an updated resume ready for situations like these!”
Dr. Freeze, owl, Chief Scientist and Doctor

“When you’ve lost everything, the only way to get your life back is to give it away.”
Snowy, polar bear, Commander and CEO

Coincidentally, it happens to be me.

But I’m not calling myself a hero; it’s easy to do that. These are the words of somebody else, an objective observer, who witnessed my amazing sacrifices and comments on them.

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“Willowbe,” Mandy said between breaths. “He’s—a hero!”

Snowy put the grill on the carpeted floor.

“You should have seen him!” continued Mandy, still catching his breath. “He was—incredible!”

- From “Claw of the Wolf,” pg. 98

(Mandy is a mandrill who is a member of my Mission Team and a witness to my heroics. About Snowy and the grill, let me tell you that it was another one of Snowy’s weird acts. Imagine, in the middle of a battle fighting to save a world against a raging super-wolf, Snowy decides to have a barbeque. )

(Isn’t it amazing how we’re including all these spoilers in these excerpts, just to make ourselves look good?)

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Anyways, here’s a quote that I like. Remember it’s from me, Flankton, a falcon and a Mission Team lead.

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“Here am I,” said Flankton eagerly. “Ready to save ya!”

- From “Claw of the Wolf,” pg. 64

(Isn’t that quote amazing? Nice, short, but powerful. Those are the words of a great animal, I can tell you that!)

Context for the Quote: Remember that Snowy, the greatest hero of the universe, is a polar bear, Wolveron is the supermutated wolf villain he is struggling against, and Montuka is the mongoose member of a Snowy mission team.

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Finally, Snowy launched a deep blow that sunk into Wolveron’s abdomen. As Wolveron doubled over, Snowy whacked his fist against the wolf’s skull. Wolveron tumbled far down the hall, stopping in an unconscious heap at Montuka’s feet.

- From “Claw of the Wolf,” pg. 109

(I think we give away a major plot line here, but oh well, Snowy wants to show how big and bad he is, so be it.)

Claw Clippings, get it? Clips from the Claw, novel, er…

Anyway, here’s the first excerpt, and more will be coming. Hopefully, they will whet your appetite enough for you to buy the book, which you can very easily purchase for $9.95 by clicking HERE.

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“Coward?” replied Mr. Crip to one of the many questions that were still being thrown at him by the aggressive reporters. “Snowy is no coward!”

“Then how do you explain his running away and not fighting?” asked the fox.

“Yeah!” “Yeah!” said the other animals together.

“Er, not everybody who runs is a coward…” responded Mr. Crip.

“Oh, yeah?” asked the fox. “What do you call him then? A marathon runner?”

“Ha, ha, ha!” exploded the other animals in laughter.

– From “Claw of the Wolf,” pg. 43

Here’s a list of all the characters in the novel, along with their animal species and their position in Snowy Rescue Corp.

• Snowy: Polar Bear, Commander and CEO
• Rizzy: Lizard, Chief Assistant
• Itchy: Elk, Mission Captain
• Dr. Freeze: Owl, Chief Scientist and Doctor
• Willowbe: Panda, Mission Team Lead
  • Mandy: Mandrill, Mission Team Member
  • Montuka: Mongoose, Mission Team Member
  • Blah-Blah: Crow, Mission Team Member
• Flankton: Falcon, Mission Team Lead
  • Plipisu: Mouse, Mission Team Member
• Mr. Crip: Dog (beagle), Press Secretary
• Flup: Armadillo, Mission Specialist
• Corky: Kangaroo, Mission Specialist
• Givi: Skunk, Mission Specialist
• Hoss: Mountain Goat, Mission Specialist
• Thunk: Donkey, Senior Mission Specialist
• Fiery: Orangutan, Assistant Mission Specialist
• Bandy: Raccoon, Assistant Mission Specialist
• Epty: Bat, Mission Supplies Specialist
• Aak: Pig, Logistics Officer
• Blom: Gorilla, Security Officer
• Pulix: Parrot, Medical Technologist
• Raggy: Bison, First Facilities Officer

And that’s not even beginning to mention the many animals who are not part of Snowy Rescue, most importantly the villain himself: Wolveron, the mutated super-wolf who seeks to enslave an entire planet!

Yesterday, I talked about the bad things, how life grinds. Well, it does grind quite often, and when it grinds, it feels like that’s always the way it’s been and that’s always the way it’s gonna be. Grind, grind, grind.

Usually, most of the time in life, the sun breaks through the clouds of our lives after a short while of cloudiness and storm. Then it feels like those clouds and storms were just a bad dream, that happy is now.

Sometimes in this life, however, we get these really loooong grinding periods, that are more like a famine. I mean, some bad situations in life are like storms, hurricanes that just come plowing through in a short while and leave a lot of devastation in their wake, those are the short but really bad times. Other situations are not so intense and constantly painful but still they’re really really bad, like a long harsh drought. That’s what I mean by one of those loooong dry spells.

Grind, grind, grind, right?

Well, when those times come, ya gotta remember the good things, even if it seems during those times that the good things don’t exist. That’s why ya gotta remember them. If they were in your face, you wouldn’t have to remember ‘em.

It’s like sometimes where I live, we get some really dreary weather that can last for weeks on end, nothing but cold and rainy days. Maybe you ask, if it’s so dreary, why do you live there, huh? My wife has a decent job in the area, that’s why. Hard to get a decent job these days. I commute to mine.

Anyway, we get weeks of constant clouds and rain, right? Well, what my wife and I do at these times is just to fly straight up, higher, higher, until we pierce the cloud cover, and then we see that fantastically amazingly intensely blue sky and the brilliant sun, and all those dreary clouds are now like a carpet of cotton puffs below. It’s beautiful! And it don’t cost us nothin’, we just fly up. And wow, do we feel much better! The blue sky is always there, and the great sun is always there, but it helps to pierce the clouds, see them and remind ourselves that this is so.

A lot of the times, though, life gives us situations where we can’t physically see the sun and sky that are being hidden by the clouds. Maybe you’re not a falcon who can fly high like me. Or often, I’m in situations in which I can’t just get out and take two hours to fly through the roof of my planet, you know, maybe I’m at work depressed that things aren’t going my way, or at home all down because I’ve spent years and years of trying to get my books published and I’ve got nothin’ to show for ‘em, or my wife’s mad at me because she thought I said “stupid” instead of “slurp it,” or any one of innumerable situations that come up in life.

That’s when the clouds feel so heavy that they’re just going to flatten me into a pancake of feathers.

When you’re in those emotional pits, then you gotta fly through the clouds with your mind. You gotta pierce the cloud cover of the bad situation and see all the good that you still have. I look and see that I have a real nice wife, five fine eyasses (those are baby falcons, I’m not insulting anybody), a pretty decent nest home and a lot of other things.

So if you’re going through one of those long droughts, fly high with your mind and heart, and see the good stuff that’s all around you.

Until next time, friends!

I know you humans have a saying that “life sucks,” but that just doesn’t make sense in the Animal Noir universe. I’m not sure that makes a whole lot of sense in yours either. Do you know who puts these sayings together? I sure don’t. Somebody must come up with ‘em, and then they just get repeated over and over, until, before you know it, WHAM! It’s a saying.

Over here in animal universe, we say life grinds. Grinding is something some of us animals do with our teeth when we’re not in a good mood, we grind ‘em together. There’s the idea that when something grinds, there’s a kind of friction, there’s something that’s getting ground down, there’s conflict, there’s dilemma. Life’s a lot like that, filled with challenges and obstacles and such.

Take my novels for example. Now I’m not talking about the “Claw of the Wolf” novel. No, I’m talking about a few books that I wrote myself. It’s a shame you can’t read ‘em; I guess it has to do something with the interdimensional thing, about getting from the Animal Noir universe to the human universe, two different realities, you know. Or maybe the “Claw of the Wolf” author is afraid humans will start buying my books instead of his.

At any rate, I’ve written these novels that I’ve been trying to get published for years, sending queries to all these literary agents and publishers, and no one accepts ‘em, not even one. That’s my life’s work, spent years and years writing ‘em all, they’re masterpieces, you know, but they don’t get accepted. So I start getting all flustered up and frantic, until I remember the saying, “Life grinds.” Yep, it grinds all right.

But there are good things that happen too, plenty of those, and I’ll talk about that some other time. Right now, I want to say, if you feel today that life grinds, I hear ya, I hear ya.

Hang in there until next time!

This is the only blog where animals can post!

Oh, you have a lot of blogs about animals but you don’t have any by animals. There are supposed to be a lot of animal lovers out there, but how many actually let their animals blog, huh? We do! And it looks like we’re the only ones!

By reading this, you are participating in a major advancement of animal rights for your planet.

Yes, your planet. I am a lizard, but I am not of your planet. I, and many of the other illustrious creatures who blog here, are part of the Animal Noir universe, which is exemplified by the animal fiction novel, “Claw of the Wolf.” In our universe, we fly spaceships, develop advanced technologies, wage battles, defend our planets from bad animals, and basically do what you humans do, except we are a few hundred years ahead of you on the technology timeline.

To get a close look at our amazing, action-packed universe, buy the novel “Claw of the Wolf” by clicking here.

But remember, this is not just a blog for Animal Noir animals. Earth animals can post too. If you’re a human, you can let your animal companion (a.k.a. pet) make comments here about all the different things we talk about.

Buy “Claw of the Wolf” and spread the word about this blog!

I’d like to add a little of my own input to this blog, along with my friend Flankton. We’ve had some interesting experiences together on the job, and the novel “Claw of the Wolf” definitely describes some of them.

However, there’s more to me than what the novel describes. I’m an important character but still, not the main character, so the novel doesn’t spend a whole lot of time focusing on me. In fact, the book sometimes spends time on certain episodes of my life that I would rather forget, but anyway, I guess it’s good that a more complete view of me is provided, so that I’m not idolized or anything like that. But I’ll talk a little here so that you can get to know me more, because I think I’m quite an animal, all modesty aside, and that you could benefit a bit from knowing me.

I agree with Rizzy, Snowy’s Chief Assistant. All we Animal Noir animals need to chip in a little at least to promote the book, “Claw of the Wolf,”  for our own well-being. As Rizzy has already posted countless times, if there are no sales, there are no future Animal Noir stories, and therefore our animal lives come to a standstill.

However, to be honest, I’m not sure if another Animal Noir story is in my own best interests, because I’ve heard rumors that the next installment will put a lot more attention on me. You might think I would be overjoyed with getting more focus in these great books, but if you haven’t read “Claw of the Wolf” (and you haven’t, because nobody’s bought the book yet), then you might not understand my uneasiness.

Characters who get more attention in Animal Noir stories definitely tend to suffer more. I guess that’s partly where the “noir” part comes from, a genre that centers on the darker side of our nature. Just look at Snowy, the main protagonist of “Claw of the Wolf,” and the one on the book cover. You can already see on the cover that he has a huge gash to his side, and that’s only the beginning of all the injuries that he suffers in the course of the story. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but the polar bear practically gets torn apart. So I’m not sure if I want to be a major character in the future installment of a book series like that, to tell you the truth.

I imagine that if there is a future installment, I have no choice. But I’m only explaining why I’m somewhat ambivalent about promoting “Claw of the Wolf.” Not that it’s not a good story; it’s an awesome adventure, of the kind that you’ve probably never read before. But I’m just not sure that I want to be a major character of the next one.

To Flankton: Take it easy bird, and it’s good to hear from you.