NOLA STARs

This week, the theme I've chosen for the blog is our pets.  You can pick any funny story, antidote, memory, or whatever as a base to your post.  This does not exclude the fact that you can even write how they may have affected your writing.

As for me, over the last 15 years, I have had two black cats.  As one should know about cats, they are not your pets but you are theirs.  That usually means that when they wish to have their heads rubbed, you are to oblige.  At least, that is the way mine act.

Queenie refused to take no for an answer.  Thus the name of Queenie – the queen of her universe.  She pranced around like the queen of her domain, and me, as her subject, must be at her beckoned call.  This was no more evident than when she decides that she needed me to rub her head at two o'clock in the morning.  This turned out to be her way of telling me that she wanted to go out.  This is because she would end up being put outside.

Our latest cat is named Fuzz Tail.  Though her name registered at the veterinarian is Eight Ball.  That is because she is black as an eight ball.  But the moniker she goes by is  Fuzz Tail.  This is partly because she sticks her tail straight up in the air.  The main reason is that her tail is fluffed out.

It seems when I wish to start working on my computer and my writing project, this is a signal to Fuzz Tail that I am prepared to give her a rubdown.  If I do not pick her up, she will hop up into my arms and force me to stop writing.

Now, I bring these two cats to your attention because they also influenced a set of characters in my writing.  As I mulled over ideas for my books, I wanted a group who worked for the antagonist or antagonists.  Since this was a series of books, I would use these creatures more than once.

When I refer to them as creatures and not people, it means that these creatures were built by combining DNA from various races and animal to achieve the desired results that the first antagonist wanted.  He used these creatures as intelligence gatherers, bodyguards, assassins, kidnappers, enforcers, etc.

Though, their major use is as assassins.  Since they do most of their work in the dark or in the shadows, they usually dressed in dark robes or clothing.  Their skin is dark as well. This is when the question of “how can I describe them?” came about.

The cats to the rescue.  Queenie would greet me when I come in from karate class that night wanting me to rub her head.  The same thing happened with Fuzz Tail later.  To keep from killing myself, I had to watch to see if I can see a shadow moving in the darkness.  If I did not watch out, either one of them would get entangled in my legs and trip me up. 

Then a word popped into my mind that described her moving around in the darkness: black hole.  In order to keep them from tripping me up, I looked for a black hole that moved around in the darkness.

This particular phrase, black hole, fits these the description in needed for these creatures in my book to a tee.  They look like black holes moving in the background and in the shadows.  By the time their targets realize that they are there, it's too late.

That is my pet story for this week.

Dennis