Chewelah in the Spring: Earth and Inspiration

I took a walk through town today.  May is probably my favorite month out of the whole year.  I love watching the colors suddenly explode.  There is a wind blowing today, and you can smell all the flowering trees at once wherever you go.  Our garden is getting better by degrees each year, and the berry bushes are thriving.  We take Ferdy out in the grass sometimes and let him run around.  He likes to snuffle about for a while, then always ends up nosing around in our clothing.

I've had a writing surge lately, and am hoping to finish my first draft of Violet Shadows by early June.  Then comes the rewriting and editing process.  I'm hoping to publish in the autumn again, around October sometime if all goes well and my characters don't decide to do something outlandish out of the blue.  On Saturday I'm taking part in a book fair with the Libraries of Stevens County.  It's being held at the golf course.  A good venue, but it does feel a little strange after last summer to be going up there in a capacity that doesn't involve serving beer.

Spring, and a Man in Yellow

Yes, I know, I've been a slacker about blogging lately.  However, I have a perfectly viable excuse in the form of a rather nasty cold which has been plaguing me this week.  So basically I've been coming home from work each day to roam about in a fog, blowing my nose and grunting in a truly unattractive way, which doesn't really make for good blogging material.


We've had beautiful weather the past few days, and it really looks like spring is on its way at last.  For additional proof, when I went to pay our utility bill at City Hall I saw crocuses coming up in their flower beds.  The sight of them made bill-paying much more thrilling than usual.  Aaron and I have also been planning our garden... or rather, standing in the middle of the backyard pointing and saying, "we should put these over there, or maybe against the fence."  This is very exciting.  We moved into the house too late last year to plant much of anything, and before that we lived in an upstairs apartment.  I'm looking forward to getting my hands in the dirt again.


On the writing front, I'm still working on the new novel, though it has been moving rather slowly again thanks to the busyness of life in general.  I did send a (very) short story to the 100 Words Or Less contest, which is a first for me, so we'll see how that goes.  I haven't done much with short stories lately, but I'd been playing around with this one since the autumn.  I'll be a good blogger and paste it below.  It all started with an incredibly surreal moment last September when I was out for a walk.  I glanced down a side-street and saw a man dressed all in yellow (yellow pants, yellow shirt, everything) standing under a tree with leaves of nearly the exact same color.  Who knows where the rest came from.

Recurring Dream

In my dream there are three of us: you, me, and the man dressed in yellow.  Though he might have been a tree.  Might have been, but wasn’t.

We say we are looking for an elephant.  A small one -- or a kangaroo.

He says he saw an elephant once, in Portugal.  But it might have been a large dog.  Kangaroos now, he’s never seen those.

You ask, “Was the elephant in a zoo?”

He says, “No, it was on a street in Lisbon; playing a concertina.”

You take my hand, adventure in your eyes, and just then, my dream dies.