Changing of the seasons, in more ways than one

It's been a while since my last post. Sorry for the silence. Life has been a bit busier than usual. My son's getting married. He's twenty-four, and has been dating a young woman in our congregation for a couple of years. They're about to tie the knot.

No, for security reasons, I'm not saying when, but once he's gone, my husband and I will begin that phase of our lives that happens to most couples when their children have all moved out. (Although, my parents actually got to experience the whole having-the-house-to-yourselves thing several times, since my youngest sister is unmarried, and has at various times ended up using their spare bedroom over the years.)

I'm sure this will really hit us after he's gone, but right now everyone's exhausted trying to save money for the big event. For my son, who's been saving for their honeymoon for some time now, this has been more of a marathon than a sprint, but the finish line is coming up, and we'll all have to trust that we'll have what we need when we get there.

There's another bit of news as well. For a long time, I've been trying to get the fourth Patty O'Donnell story off the ground. It's been like going out to chop down a tree, only to find that you're trying to take down a titanium trunk with a stick. No dents, no nuthin'.

If you hang around writers long enough, you will hear that our characters have lives of their own, that they express opinions about what we write and let us know when we've got them doing something they wouldn't do. Not that we're crazy or anything. It's like we have this constant movie in our heads where our characters try out the scenes before we write them. When you've developed a character thoroughly enough, you know how they would react to things.

It seems that I've been misreading what Patty's been telling me. After Reef Runner, she seemed to go into hiding, and I thought what she was needing was a break to recover from what I'd put her through. I've been searching for just the right story to coax her back out, but nothing has worked. She was, in fact, telling me she wants out. She wants to be left alone to raise her family and live her life without villains lurking around every corner. I've decided to honor that and let her go.

It doesn't mean that I've stopped writing. One leading lady has retired, but during the last few years, another auditioned for the part, although I didn't know that's what she was doing at the time. I do not know yet if she's series material, but we'll see how it goes.

And now, on to the real seasonal changes. This spring has been...odd. It's usually warmed up better than this by now. Instead, we're on an up and down and up and down ride with the temperature, they're still getting some pretty hefty snow storms up north, and we're getting rain. Lots of it. Last time I looked, our level on the drought scale is down to D0, which means things are Abnormally Dry, but that's the bottom rank on the scale. The ground is fairly saturated now, and we've got storms coming in over the next few days that are supposed to dump a couple of inches of rain on us. It's enough to make you wish you had rain boots.

I have nothing to report in the 'books read' category, at least not this time around. Haven't had the time or the inclination lately. That will end, I'm sure, but for now it must be endured.

Until next time~~~