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Reviews For Night of the Fatal Squirrels
Author's Response: Hee hee! Yeah, I went all out for the fatal battle! The toad totally deserved it, but the squirrels don't discriminate, so the students had to fight off the never-ending swarm, too. I had to revise the battle scene umpteen times to get it to work out, but I finally got all the details in. Whew! Halloween to the max! I'm glad that you read all the way to the end. My chapter read count has always indicated that I lose a substantial number of readers after the first chapter. Not sure if they don't want to read about animal experimentation (which I also object to in real life), or if they were hoping for the "night" to occur in Chap. 1, or if they just got bored after the first 8000 words! But for those who persevere, it all comes together in the end! Many thanks for all of your reviews -- much appreciated! 😊
Author's Response: I hadn't posted stories in a while, and reviews had tapered off to zero on my older stories, so I stupidly quit checking for new ones. Then, over a year ago, I checked one day and discovered a backlog of reviews dating back over more than the previous year!!! I spent so much time responding to every single review that day!!! I didn't want my reviewers to think I was ungrateful, since most readers don't review at all -- they just enjoy reading and moving on to the next chapter or story. (And I'll admit I'm guilty of that myself, since my log-in often times out as I'm reading longer chapters.) Anyway, lesson learned: I now check my "reviews received" page every morning while lying in bed after my alarm goes off. (I have a cell phone routine I click through, checking weather, CNN headlines, P&S, sunset time for that date, and my fave beach cam [haven't been to the beach in almost 20 years, but I love to watch "my" beach!], and when I spot reviews, I try to respond immediately! So glad you're enjoying the story! And it gets even darker... 😁 Thanks for reviewing!
Author's Response: Glad to hear you're off to a running start! This is one of my stranger Halloween tales, but then again... HALLOWEEN! I wanted to get creative and creepy. Hee! Thanks for reading and reviewing! 🎃
Author's Response: Thanks for saying so! I know it's more than a little weird, but I just let my imagination run amok, and voila! Thanks for reading and reviewing! 😉
Author's Response: Hi there! I didn't actually mention a third cross. Professor Grubbly-Plank was speculating that there might be one, but none was ever mentioned. Also, your idea of using a Patronus is insteresting -- I'd honestly never thought of it. I don't know if the Ministry thought of it either (behind my back!) while attempting to get the squirrels out of Gringotts! Hmmm... Definitely food for thought. I'm not planning to write a sequel, but thanks for planting the seed of an idea. You never know when I might be able to employ it in a future story! Many thanks also for reading and reviewing! :-)
Author's Response: You make an excellent point, and I wanted to show an individual squirrel so we see her up close and personal, before we see the gathering masses of squirrels. The wizards need to know exactly what they're dealing with in order to stay ahead of the game, so to speak. In reality, the squirrels never should have been bred in the first place, much less turned loose. It's the ever-present situation of "just because we CAN do something doesn't mean that we SHOULD do it". In today's world, outrageous stuff turns up on the news every week, and you'd think that SOMEONE should have had more sense, or exercized more restraint, whatever the specific "thing" is. Thank you for taking time to review, and I hope you continued with the rest of the story.
Filch, however, I do feel a bit sorry for him. Poor guy, cleaning up all that mess. :P A brilliant job, Shadow. Lots of fun without being overtly silly. I like! Author's Response: When I saw your Shout asking about how to get past the fatal squirrels to post a chapter, I giggled and passed you the salt shaker, thinking you'd laugh in understanding! But when it kinda fell flat, I guessed you'd probably missed SQ (my abbrev for my story) during Halloween. So NOW you get the reference to salt, hmm?! Glad you liked the story (despite the grisly aspects), and yep-- I just HAD to go after the toad once again! And I can't help wondering about Filch... with all the house elves at Hogwarts, why-oh-why is he on the staff? There's gotta be some sort of story there! Anyway, thanks so much for reading and reviewing! :-)
Author's Response: :-D Wow! Thank you so much for your compliment! I guess the title does sound a little funny, but it came directly from the computer glitch's nickname, so what can I say?! I guess it just goes to show that writers can get ideas from the most unlikely sources! But after a year of hearing Shoutbox comments about squirrels hijacking chapter updates, I suddenly thought, "If a Fatal Squirrel was a Magical Creature in the HP universe, what KIND of creature would it be?" So the vampire-squirrel, then the story, grew from there. It still amazes me that it worked out as well as it did! Thank you so much for reading and reviewing! :-)
Author's Response: "The battle had me on the edge of my seat"-- love it! I worked so hard on that scene, trying to iron out every detail to keep driving the action forward! Thank you so much for letting me know it WORKED! As for Mrs. Norris-- no way was I going to let the squirrels get her! Which, of course, was why I subjected the Slytherins to a detention with Filch! Ha! Also, thought it wouldn't hurt to insert a bit of irony-- after the "pink" scene, Draco & company had to miss out on the excitement after all! And yeah-- I really detest Umbridge! Thanks for reading and reviewing and telling me all the details you especially liked about the story!
Author's Response: Writing the squirrel was tricky, I'll admit. I couldn't give it a name, for obvious reasons, but I decided to make her female to help generate a bit of sympathy. I love animals, and I shudder to think of all the animals who have suffered in experiments that made advances in human medicine possible. But sometimes, it's the only means to learn by. Sigh. And I had to create a balanced contrast between the test squirrel and the other squirrels' victims. This was actually the most challenging story I've written so far for many reasons! Thanks for the review! |
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