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Here is today’s video of my brook under ice for your Friday relaxing enjoyment. Make sure the volume is up on your favorite viewing device and feel the peace settle into your soul…

(And you’d better appreciate it because I damn near fell into the aforementioned brook trying to get this angle!)

Calm… Calm…

Lovely almost full moon rising behind the maples across the field this evening. I just stood outside and breathed for a while. The colors are so subtle in midwinter, compared to all the other seasons. Winter is like a poem you have to read several times to appreciate, a mindset you need to get into. And then its beauty sifts delicately into your senses like soft, windblown snow.

I love lingering along the brook as I walk past, listening to the sound of the water beneath the ice. Today, the ice lines the rocks like lace, allowing glimpses of the flowing water to show through.

It’s been a lovely fall here in Vermont, and I’ve been out enjoying it as much as possible. When I haven’t been  gazing at the leaves and migrating geese, I’ve been writing, writing, writing. I finally got the novel I wrote last winter revised and submitted, and now I’m waiting for word on that.This summer’s project, a novel I’m calling Cricket, is in the hands of my amazing friend and editor, and she has already warned me that I have a long revision ahead of me. But for now I’m as free as I can be to dive into a new project. I have two ideas bouncing around in my head, and I’ll just have to see which one decides to come out. I really enjoyed writing full time all summer. Now I’m back to evening hours. Once all those pesky getting ready for winter chores are done, I’m looking forward to long, cosy nights curled up with my laptop.

So we’re over at camp and having a lovely time. I’m starting to feel settled, and I’m hard at work on a new novel called Aiming for You.

Depth of Return is still resting.

This is a video I took yesterday when the wind kicked up.

Yesterday, I had one of those weird moments when I suddenly realized how much my characters are a part of me.

A long time ago, I wrote a story (never published) about a man who had been kidnapped as a child. At one point, he’d been tied up with a piece of green nylon rope. He was soon freed and grew up to be a very normal and successful man, but whenever he saw a piece of green nylon rope, he’d come completely unglued.

When I was writing this story, I became very sensitive to pieces of green nylon rope and couldn’t believe how and where they kept turning up in my life. The freakiest was a piece in the back seat of  my own car, which literally had me screaming in the garage. (My husband had stuck it there for some dumb reason I can’t remember now.)

Well, a lot has happened since I wrote that story, but yesterday, which was the last day of school (YAY!) I was cleaning our room with a colleague, and since I am tall, she asked me to pull down something green she had just noticed on top of a black cabinet (where I have kept my stuff all year, by the way.)

I reached up and pulled down a piece of green nylon rope.

I yelped and dropped it to the floor as though it had bitten me. She freaked out, thinking I thought it was a snake. It took me a moment to get my head together — no, I had not kidnapped as a child, and I have never been tied up by a piece of green nylon rope — but for an instant, it really felt like I had. Then I was faced with trying to explain to a non-writer what had just happened. She looked at me as though I had two heads.

I very casually threw away the piece of rope and went back to sorting out our room. But the incident really made me realize how my characters have influenced my life. And that writers have problems no one else does.

The air temp is in the 70s. Not sure what the water temp is, but I’m pretty sure there was still ice in the water last week. We opened the pool this weekend (uncovered, brought the pump/filter system out of the cellar and attached it, added about a foot of cold well water, and dumped in tons of chemicals). Monday, I put my feet in and they turned the same color as the liner, but today I put my whole self in. Okay, I went down the ladder one gasp at a time, backed two steps away from it, dunked and swam one stroke right back to it, and swarmed up the ladder yelling school inappropriate things. But I got wet, and my bathing suit is hanging on the patio to prove it.

Feels so good (now that I’m warm and dry.) I love the tingling feeling you get afterwards. And the feeling of accomplishment.

Notice the lack of green leaves in the leaves beyond? Well, summers are short in Vermont. One has to take advantage of the sun.

Now for an evening of writing! I finished a very rough draft of Depth of Return last week. Now I’m revising it before sending it to my editor-in-chief, who will editor-in-chief it. Very excited about this one.

Anybody else been in swimming yet?

The ice is out! Yeah! It’s still very gray and cold at camp, but I would have loved to jump in anyway. Minor problem — the stairs aren’t down from the deck into the water yet, so it would have been a bit of a problem. Only one boat went by all afternoon. This is what the lake looked like before people.

I’m busy working on Depth of Return. The end is in sight!