And So It Begins

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.  Albert Camus

Summer departed last week and autumn came into her own. When I walked last week, I found leaves beginning to show their colors. I like fall. I like seasons. I've never wanted to live where it was summer all through the year - although a year in Hawaii might be interesting - and I certainly wouldn't want to be where it was winter with no real summer.  A little winter is okay, but I never want it to linger. I like welcoming spring. But fall is a good season here in KY and perhaps even better to the north where the leaves show more vibrant color. We haven't had remarkable autumn color in the last couple of years. Too dry. So we'll see this year although I'm noticing a lot of oaks with brown leaves as if they're dying instead of changing colors. 

I like using seasons in my books. I pick summer to tell my stories a lot of the time. That's the easy season because you don't have to put coats and gloves on your characters to let them out the door. The Outsider went through summer and winter with the soldiers fighting the War of 1812 suffering first in the heat and then in the cold and snow. My Hollyhill books had a year's worth of weather, starting one June and ending the next. Angel Sister was set in the hot, dry summer of 1936. 

The weather can be a force in any book. A tornado blew through The Scent of Lilacs. A snowstorm stranded a visitor in Summer of Joy. Hannah made snow angels in The Believer. And the coming of spring played an important part in the plot of that story. Then of course, Lacey did her dandelion dance to welcome spring in The Blessed. Weather matters. I'm editing my fifth Shaker novel now. The Gifted will be released next summer. And the climatic scene is very stormy.

Do you notice the weather in the books you read? I try to make you feel it along with my characters. Of course I'm trying to make you feel everything along with my characters - love and joy, anger and despair. So why not rain and snow? Sunshine and shadows. 

Hope you're embracing whichever season is falling down on you right now wherever you are. Or in whatever book you might be reading. 

Oh yeah, if you haven't signed up for my giveaway - see the details of what you might win on my website News and Events page - you need to send me a message or leave a comment with a way to get in touch with you before the end of the week. But you can jump the gun on winning something before that. The Book Club Network is having a great giveaway Monday evening, September 26, at 9:30 p.m.  I'm giving away a couple of books. Several other authors are doing the same plus one author is giving away a Nook. You have to be present at the "live chat" to win. You can check it out at The Book Club Network. 

So great to have you come by.
 

Frost on the Pumpkin

--At least there would be frost on the pumpkin if we had any pumpkins in the garden this year. The grass was white this morning. So I hunted up a last year's picture of my angel trumpet plant because this year's plant got frosted last night before it had a chance to bloom. I should have covered it up, but who can remember everything? Well, some people but not me.

--But the frost is a chilly reminder that makes us pay attention to the change of the seasons. We need to take a little time to enjoy the spectacle of red and gold leaves before they all drift down. Some of us will have to get out the rakes or leaf blowers and others of us will just enjoy walking through the leaves in the woods in the fresh, crisp October air. At night the stars look brighter in the night sky and in a few weeks there'll be a harvest moon. My dad used to go out on those moonlit nights in the fall and pick corn by hand all night long. Now farmers have machines that pick whole fields of corn in the same time as he might have picked a few rows.

--Just as the seasons change, so do things in our lives. People move to new houses or towns. Kids have to change schools. We start new jobs or learn new operations at our old jobs. Babies come along to change couples into families. New people come into our churches. Sometimes so many that the churches have to build new buildings.

--Change comes to writers too as they craft their stories. They live with a story for months, even years and then finally manage to write the words "The End." Sometimes it's hard to leave behind the characters you've lived with so long. But you change worlds in your minds as you leave one set of characters behind and go out into your imaginations to seek new people and new stories. A writer needs to embrace change. Not just from one story to the next, but within each story. Without change we wouldn't have much of a story since change is what keeps the readers turning pages to find out what happens on the next page or in the next chapter.

--I read a writing advice piece once that posed the question, "What changes in your story?" And that person's advice was "Everything." At least your characters have to show some changes. That's where I am right now. Figuring out my characters and wondering about the changes they are going to see and what the results of those changes might be. Is it going to cost them happiness? Or love? Maybe it will bring them love. That sounds like a happier ending. But for sure they aren't going to be the same people who stepped up on my stage in the first scene. Nor will I be the same by the time I write "The End" one more time. Months will have passed. Life is a hands on experience. That's the way the Lord surely meant it to be. The Bible promises us He is the same yesterday, today, tomorrow and forever more, but we are continually learning and thus changing. It's how we're designed.

--Hope you have some great life experiences this week and that your flowers escaped the frost so they can keep blooming a few more weeks. Looking out the window I can see my poor angel trumpet lily frozen and ruined. But I raise my eyes and the sun is lighting up the red and gold in the trees down the way. There's beauty to each season.