World Animal Day Blog Hop: TIE Goes Animal Mad…

For the World Animal Day Blog Hop we decided to let the animals loose from the pages. We asked TIE members to share the animals that had appeared in their books, whether real or fictional and however fleetingly. Here are the quotes they came up with, plus a giveaway of some great books!

The Quotes

Bird Magics – JC Andrijeski

A light came on in the building below. Fark blinked at it, watching a shadow move around inside, blocking the light and unblocking it as it puttered around the small cave where it slept on the upper floor of the white-painted box where it lived. The monkeys were builders…all knew that. They liked their complex caves, their little holes in the dirt. Like the ants, they built stories upon stories inside the holes they dug, until their towers blocked the sun, creating odd holes and even long, endless gaps between and among the trees. The monkeys seemed to harbor a deep hatred of trees in particular…cultivating a few as pets but otherwise cutting them down with their giant knives, even digging them out of the ground with the heavy metal teeth of more of their smoking metal box machines. Fark, like most in his murder, found himself forced to contemplate certain aspects of the monkeys…

Elephant: An Indian’s Tale – JC Andrijeski

As he walked into the water, Mr. Rahol on his back, Didier felt a certain lightness reach him, and he found he no longer minded what the humans were doing. Out here, they swam and shrieked, sang and laughed, and he trumpeted with them, wading out among their small, brown bodies and soft hair and skin. He no longer minded what they did. But he did not want to be one of them, either. In fact, standing in that cool, wave-filled water, filling his trunk with salty water and spraying it around him in a fountain while the humans laughed and screamed in excitement, Didier decided his mother had been right all along. It was a fine thing, to be an elephant.”

Girl in the Glass - Zoe Brooks

I put my hand down to massage my thigh and feel something flicker against my fingers. I freeze. A tongue is tasting my sweat. The muscles beneath its skin ripple as the snake moves slowly over my palm. I wait, but nothing more happens. Has it slid away again? I haven’t felt it, but then my legs are so painful I probably couldn’t feel anything. I must know. Carefully I follow the snake’s course with my hand and find my fear coiled in my lap. It doesn’t move as my fingertips brush its side. It seems asleep, I on the other hand am horribly awake.

Mother of Wolves - Zoe Brooks

Do you remember, Father, when you showed me the ways of the wolves? Watch the conversation of death, you said. A wolf will stare into the eyes of its prey and choose whether to kill or let go? They speak to each other. Death is a contract.

A World Apart – David M. Brown

The day had begun like any other. Lacuna, now twenty-eight, awoke at dawn and had immediately taken to the hills with two dogs and his flock of sheep. A light, autumn rain had been falling most of the morning, moisture clung to the grass and mist lingered over the nearby mountain ranges.

A Butterfly Lights Beside Us – Deborah Carney and Vinnie O’Hare

A butterfly lights beside us, like a sunbeam…
and for a brief moment it’s glory
and beauty belong to our world…
but then it flies on again, and although
we wish it could have stayed,
we are so thankful to have seen it at all.
~ Author Unknown

Magnus Opum – Jonathan Gould

Shafkron was a thread spun from the hair of a little-found rodent known as a shafrat. Each shafrat had but one hair which grew at the rate of half an inch every ten years. Lienkor down, on the other hand, was not so hard to find, given that the lienkor was an extremely common, fifteen-foot high bird covered in brightly coloured feathers from beak to tail. However, removing the feathers from a lienkor was a tedious and often highly dangerous task. The birds were obsessive about politeness, requiring you to say “pretty please with sugar on top” for every feather that you plucked. And if they did not feel that your manner conveyed the correct tone of deference, they were liable to eat you.

Neiko’s Five Land Adventure – A. K. Taylor

He (Quickstrike) had the attack stance of an ordinary scorpion and he had his cobra tail hissing and ready to strike. The tail’s jaws were open and venom dropped from its fangs. He was only the size of the toy. His body was only four inches from the claw, and his tail was six inches. His tail was mostly brown except for the green bands on the head and hood on top of the cobra, which spread from its red eyes. He had a golden and green body with two brown sections on his sides with a large green band down the middle of them. His head was golden with a green band coming from behind each eye and coming together on his nose. He had two small red eyes and eight orange legs. He had a brown upper part of his arms to his elbows; the rest of his arms were golden, and he had two wide green bands on the tops and bottoms of his claws and two slim ones in the middle of his claws.

SILVER: The Lost & Damned – Keira Michelle Telford:

Swaying its hindquarters from side to side, the Chimera swaggers and tries to make itself appear even bigger. Deep inside its throat, a low rumble begins. Baring its teeth and raising its nose high into the air, the massive creature shows off its strength. Long canines protrude from the maxilla, torn pieces of flesh from its last meal still clinging to the gum line…

Madison Morgan: When Dogs Blog – Pam Torres

“Madison? Back here, dear. Just follow the second aisle down to the end,” she yelled. A few puppies yelped when they heard her voice. We headed down the second aisle and found Netta on the ground with a litter of young puppies, all black except for one with white paws. She rolled the small puppies over on her hand and then put them back with their mother.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Oh, these little fellas were born yesterday, and I’m just checking them over and making sure they’re all healthy. It’s important to handle puppies in the first few days—helps them be calm and relaxed with humans. Just routine.” Netta jumped up and wiped her hands on the rag thrown over the stall gate. Then she whipped her arms around me and squeezed me super tight. Her black hair stuck out from under the faded pink bandana around her head. She wore a bright, lime green shirt that said “Groovy Girl” across the front.

“You’ve grown so big! So what brings you both all the way out here?”

Two Moons of Sera – Pavarti K. Tyler

The animal loosely resembled dogs I’d read about and seen in pictures, but it was too large and its body was angular. Most disturbing were the piercing, intelligent eyes. I was being appraised, my behavior and quality measured and judged by the animal before me.
 

The Books

The Sponsors

The World Animal Day Hop is being sponsored by Terri Giuliano Long and David M. Brown. Terri is the author of best-selling novel In Leah’s Wake, while David is the author of The Elencheran Chronicles.

The Giveaway (TIE)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Giveaway (Sponsor)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The rest of the hoppers

• Bio
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Donna Brown

By day a publicity assistant, by night an avid blogger and reader. I'm happiest when I'm surrounded by books and cats, with my husband by my side. Luckily, that's a pretty apt description of most days!

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