You Have to See This!

WINNERS!!!!!!!!!!!! The Winner of Suzan Hardens and my contest posted Sunday is.... Mia Marlowe. And I pulled two names out of the hat accidentally so I decided to go with both of them: Staceyapurcell and MsHellion. Email me at christie (@) christie - Craig .com

Thank you to everyone who played along.

CC

Contest! Contest!

“You have to see this!”

When someone says that to me, there’s always this flutter of excitement in my chest. My mind starts to try and figure out what the heck it is that I HAVE to see. As a person who loves nature and is lured toward sunsets, beautiful landscapes, rainbows, and cute animals, I always hurry with anticipation to fill my eyes with some new bit of wonder.

I’ve seen a lot of gorgeous bits of nature--things that inspire me and leave me awestruck. Things that, just from looking at them, starts chills running up my spine; and for some reason, I hear a small voice deep inside my head whispering some fortune-cookie message, or at the least, the perfect caption for that particular piece of visual candy.

Coincidentally, when someone tells me “you gotta see this” my fingers immediately start to itch for the feel of my camera. Whatever “this” is that someone is certain that I HAVE to see, I feel driven to capture it on film, or in digital pixels. I feel it even before I fix my gaze on what it is that I must see. My gut tells me that if it’s worthy of that kind of excitement, I don’t want to just see it once, I want to see again and again. And I want to share it. Below are just a few of my past gotta-see-‘em images.

Inspiring, right? Ahh, but this particular gotta-see-this experience was a tad different than most of my others. Don’t get me wrong, I got chills dancing up my spine, and I heard that whispery voice offering up caption-type messages playing in my head. But I wasn’t so awestruck as I was . . . shocked. Maybe horrified. Not that it stopped my fingers from itching for my camera. And yes, I managed to capture the image in digital pixels. (Where is the image? Be patient, it’s coming.)

Now, one might worry about the person, a neighbor, who anxiously dragged me out onto her patio to see “this.” In her defense, there was wine involved. I suppose the most disturbing fact was that she thought I would be thrilled to see it. What kind of person does she think I am? Wait, that’s not the most disturbing fact. The most disturbing fact is that she was right. I had to see it. I mean, I’m blogging about it, aren’t I? Hey…I’m a writer and you guys know that gives me a license to be weird.

Oh, and just in case you are wondering…yes, my photo subject did meet his maker. Also, I would like to state that my neighbor, or I, played no part in the demise of this creature. It was in lizard heaven when she found the poor soul. She can’t, however, say the same for Winston, her feline, whose favorite pastime is running lizard patrol in her backyard.

And because I’m feeling generous, I’m offering a copy of Born at Midnight, the first book in my Shadow Falls series, as a prize to the best caption for this gotta-see-it image. And to play fair, I’m going to give you two that came to mind:

1) You think you had a bad day!

2) Be careful when taking a leap of faith.

So there you have it, my crazy captions. So come on, get your thinking caps on, give your funny bone a workout, and get creative. The winner will be posted tomorrow at the beginning of this blog, so make sure you pop over to see if you are the winner.

CC

By the way, don't forget about the contest still going on from Sunday's blog. Check it out. Suzan Harden and I are giving away more prizes and the winner of that contest and the one being help today will be announced first thing in the morning at the top of this blog.