Contests & Hornworm Porn

Winner, Winner, Winner.

Tori Lennox, you won the drawing for the note cards. Please shoot me your snail mail address to my website email addy.

Congrats and thanks for posting.

And guys, don't forget to enter the trivia contest. I'm already getting some entries.

Crime Scene Christie

Today is the last blog day for the release month of my latest book, Weddings Can Be Murder. And I’m holding two contests today. One is for a pack of my personal note cards, and all you have to do is post a comment to be entered. The other, well, it’s the biggie prize. The “Pamper Me Like a Bride Basket” which will include, a Tee-shirt, note cards, chocolate, candles, books, and some other goodies.

Here’s how it works: Hopefully, you’ve bought a copy of Weddings Can Be Murder. (If not, you still have time, because you’ve got a week to enter the contest.) Below you will find trivia questions about the plot and characters of Weddings. All you have to do is answer them and . . . email me the answers at christie(@) christie-craig (.) com. All emails with the correct answers will be entered into the drawing. I will announce the winner next week on the blog. So make sure you pop back in next week so you can shoot me your snail mail if you are the lucky winner.

Now…on to my life lesson for the day.

If you know anything about writing, you’ve probably heard the saying, “Write what you know.” Well, as a photographer, I’ve learned the lesson, “Know what you photograph.” And while looking for images to include in this piece, I found another valuable lesson to include. “Know what you eat!” And the only reason I include the last lesson is because it’s so appropriate for the Wedding Trivia.

Now, here’s something you don’t know about me. I’m a horticultural photographer, I do a lot of garden photography. Unfortunately, because I shoot plants, doesn’t mean I know crap about them, or that I can garden. Nope, in addition to be being a horticultural photographer, I’m pretty much a horticultural serial killer. I’ll blog more about this later, but that’s just to give you a bit background.

Anyway, almost every year my husband and I attempt to grow a small veggie garden. Considering my dark side, it generally doesn’t work out. Normally, things either never get out of seed form, or die in infancy. But then this one year we actually had tomato plants grow to be big and strong. They blossomed with pretty yellow flowers that would soon turn into tasty tomatoes. Then it happened. We walked outside to see our beautiful sturdy plants, only to find something missing. Like the entire head of my one of my tomato plants. Gone. Decapitated. And duh, if someone’s gonna kill these plants, it should be me!

Then my hubby sees the culprit—a large very fierce-looking worm with a horn on top of its head. It was also kind of pretty, bright red horn, beautiful butterfly-like patterns tattooed on its wormy skin.

Hubby, who knows everything, (just ask him,) told me it was a tomato hornworm, that they could eat an entire tomato plant in hours. Well, the fierce-looking creature had to go, but it was too pretty to kill. Hey, I kill plants not bugs. But just because I don’t kill ‘em, doesn’t mean I won’t take advantage of them. I saw myself selling a short filler article about tomato hornworms, so I snagged my camera.

Hubby, who knows everything, helps me. I get my close up lens, my tripod, I’m ready to shoot me some worm. But while I’m willing to shoot a worm, I’m not willing to touch a worm, (Did I not tell you it was fierce looking?) so hubby places the worm on tomato plant. After the long, trying photo shoot, we reward the worm by taking him to our neighbor’s garden, the man who is always rubbing his horticultural successes in our faces. (Hey, all’s fair in horticultural war.)

When I get my slides back, I’m blown away by the sharp images. Oddly, I never took a good shot of the entire body, but hey, close-ups are hard to do, plus it was the colorful head/horn that really was worthy of photographing. Then I went to do my research, you know, the quick filler material to include in the piece and . . . well, I learned two things:

1) We’d been outsmarted by a flashy hornworm.
2) My husband doesn’t know everything.

You see, the colored horn isn’t on the worm’s head, it’s on the worm’s butt. It was meant to fool predators who would go for the throat and come away with only a bite of butt. I’m guessing it was also meant to show up photographers with know-it-all hubbies who might hang the worm upside down and proceed to take pictures of its ass. Yup, I was fooled into shooting worm porn.

So…know what you write, know what you photograph and as for the “know what you eat”? Well, while looking for good picture of a tomato hornworm’s ass, (I tossed my hornworm porn for fear the FBI would discover it) I found this: http://www.olympus.net/dggordon/EatASample.htm and I just have to say… “That worm was lucky all I did was take pictures and didn’t serve him up for dinner.”

Now, on to the trivia questions:

1) What did Katie do that reminded Carl of his mother during the end of her life?
2) What kind of worms did Carl eat?
3) What actor did Carl remind Katie of?
4) What was the catch word that Katie said was not Ray-like to say, and yet she ended up saying it a lot and even used it in the last few paragraphs of the book?
5) Name at least one of the dogs that Carl got stuck with?
6) What weapon did Katie use to take down the killer?
7) What scene in the book will encourage men nationwide to help women with household chores?


Remember, send me the answers at my email address listed above. But don’t forget to post a comment, tell me about one of your life lessons, or about seeing Weddings.

Crime Scene Christie