Now I want to talk about the good things in life.

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!

Life grinds.

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!

Out of all of the billions of blogs out there, guess what?

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!

Willowbe, panda.
Snowy Rescue Mission Team 1, Captain.

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.

Ya know, it’s funny that a creature like me gets to talk about animal fiction.

You see, I’m a falcon, like I’ve said before in my previous post. And I live in this supposedly fictional universe of animals that’s referred to in the novel, “Claw of the Wolf.” I say “supposedly” ’cause for me, my universe is about as real as it can be, just like your universe is for you. I can touch things, feel things, see things, just like you.

In my universe, there ain’t no such thing as animal fiction, just like in yours there ain’t no human fiction. Here in my part of the dimensional equation, we’re all animals, so it’s kind of superfluous, redundant, you know, to say “animal fiction” over here, ’cause we’re all animals and all it’s gonna have is animals in it.

Now, there are a few authors over here who’ve made quite a good livin’ out of “plant fiction.” You see, they give plants the chacteristics of thinking beings like you and me, and they create all these story lines and novels about ‘em, and some of them have been quite successful. Tell the truth, I don’t see much interesting in books like “Battle of the Azaleas” or “Rozie Stem and the Crown of Ten Horns.” I’m not much for botnopormorphic books myself.

Me, I’ve written a few novels, and they’re really good, I mean, really, really good. I’m gonna tell you about ‘em some other time, but for now, you’ve got to take my word for it that they’re good. Doesn’t matter that they’ve been rejected by like a million literary agents and publishers throughout all the galaxies of the animal universe over here.

Anyway, my point right now is, everything I write, I guess you would call animal fiction as well. But to me, it’s just fiction, because that what our universe is all about, animals.

That’s all for now, human buddies. See ya.

Hello, ya’ll out there in the human world.

I’m Flankton, a character in the “Claw of the Wolf” novel that Mr. Castillo the author over here is trying to sell with this blog.

I’m a falcon, and I form part of a very important Snowy Rescue Mission Team. My team consists of two: me and my good, old pal Plipisu (he’s a mouse, tiny in size but big in ferocity and courage).

I’m not going to say like my supervisor and companion Rizzy that I’m the most important character in the book, but I’d like to think of myself as important.

And I can sympathize with Mr. Castillo’s and Rizzy’s efforts to sell the novel. Ya see, I’m an aspiring author myself, and I’ve been trying to get my books published for years. I haven’t self-published them like Mr. Castillo over here did, but I can imagine he just got tired of all those literary agents and all those publishers just saying no, no, no to his works, so he just gets the book printed himself and tries to sell it online.

Hey, I know the feeling. Maybe I’d do the same myself, if I had that option in the animal universe that I live in. I mean, we have a lot of high-tech gadgets that you don’t have, and intergalactic travel and colonization and all that stuff, but we don’t have self-publishing efforts like CreateSpace that allow you to get your books printed without dishing out forkloads of cash.

Still, I can see “Claw of the Wolf” has got another hurdle. It’s in print, but it’s only available online, and humans are only going to find it either through word of mouth or by this here blog. And then, even if some them find it, they won’t really discover our universe until they buy and read the book.

Groan. The pains of an author. I understand that perfectly well, perfectly well indeed.

So I’ll be chiming in with my own bits and bytes, so you get to know me a little better. And who knows, if “Claw of the Wolf” starts to sell in this universe, maybe some of my books will start to sell in mine.

That’s if I ever get ‘em published in the first place.

See ya’ll.