Archive for October, 2024

Life

Glorious Fall

Fall was one of the reasons I moved across the country. Texas doesn’t really have fall as a season. They have occasional days from October through Christmas that feel somewhat fall-like. The peak color starts hitting maybe around Thanksgiving, so fall overlaps with the holiday season. I always delayed starting to acknowledge the holiday season because I was trying to enjoy fall. I once joked that autumn in Texas reminded me of the Ray Bradbury short story “All Summer in a Day,” except it was all autumn in a day. The first day the high temperatures dropped below 80 (usually in October), you went on a frenzy of doing all the fall stuff — get a pumpkin spice latte, hot cocoa, or hot cider. Make soup and bread. Go on a walk in the woods. You had to cram all of your fall stuff into that day because you never knew if that would be all you’d get. There might be another fall-like day later on, closer to Thanksgiving. Or we’d get a freak freeze at Halloween and we wouldn’t get any fall color.

Every year when the September and October issues of home and garden magazines came out, I’d read them and sigh over the idea of having fall as a whole season instead of the occasional day and having it come in September and October instead of just before Christmas.

Well, I found that here. We started getting the kind of weather I associate with fall in mid-August, and that was when we got our first hints of fall color. We’re getting our peak fall color now, as October is coming to an end, though there are still a lot of trees that haven’t completely turned, so it will probably last at least a couple more weeks. I’ve been able to do all the fall things without having to cram them into one day.

I’ve gone walking in the woods, driven through the mountains to look at leaves, visited an apple orchard and a farm stand. I finally got the apple cider donuts I’ve always wanted to try. I’ve spent time sitting on my porch, drinking warm drinks. The trees around my back yard are just starting to turn, so unless we get a drastic freeze or severe wind storm in the next week or so, I’ve got at least another week of peak fall before the transition to winter starts. And then I’m going to Texas for Thanksgiving, so I’ll hit peak fall there.

A white gazebo is surrounded by pumpkins in various shapes and colors, from traditional orange to white.
Ticking the farm stand off my fall list. I bought apples, but I know where to go for pumpkins.

The color around here has been spectacular. Here’s part of one of the city parks, and the trees were even brighter in person. They were practically neon.

A curving road is lined in bright red and gold trees. The ground below is blanketed in fallen red and gold leaves.
This color was even more astonishing in person. The photo didn’t capture the full glory.

The mountains were like a patchwork quilt. This is from the Blue Ridge Parkway, but the sun was at the wrong angle to really show the intensity of the color.

A view of mountains covered in red and gold trees with a bright blue sky overhead.
The sun was at the wrong angle to really show the color in a photo, but this view from the Blue Ridge Parkway was all gold, yellow, and red.

I’ve never seen such intense reds. Most of the “red” leaves I’ve seen before were more rust or burgundy, but they have scarlet leaves here.

A single tree with scarlet leaves stands against green trees.
Such bright red!

There’s also some lovely gold, like this tree in the churchyard at the old church downtown (there are tombstones in that churchyard from before the American Revolution).

A bright gold tree hangs over an ornate iron fence, showering the sidewalk with leaves. There's a bright orange tree next to it. In the background is an old church.
The churchyard at the old church has some of the best fall color downtown. It’s like walking down the yellow brick road.

I just need some time at a firepit or campfire to complete the autumn experience. That’s a plan for when I get a real house. But there were a lot of campfires at the Frontier Culture museum event I went to last weekend, so I got to look at leaves while getting a nice aroma of wood smoke.

While I’ve joked that I want to find the place that has fall-like weather year-round, I think that part of the appeal of fall for me is how ephemeral it is. It only lasts a relatively short time, and it’s constantly changing. The color is different every day, as is the amount of leaves. You have to enjoy it while you can, and you revel in the change. I wouldn’t mind the fall-like weather through much of the year, with cool nights and days just warm enough to be outside comfortably, but you need some warmer weather in the summer to truly appreciate that first hint of a chill and to know that the change is happening.

exploring

Off Again

It’s another adventure day. It’s supposed to be nearing peak color on the Blue Ridge Parkway and I want to miss the Saturday crowds, so I’m off to explore. I may find apple cider donuts, and I’m going to try to get some apples for making apple butter.

This morning, I went to a meeting at the local Shakespeare theater, which is the only reproduction of the Blackfriars Theatre, where Shakespeare’s company performed once he had sponsorship by the king. The Globe is more famous, but Blackfrairs was the fancy one, and for some reason they rebuilt it in this smallish town, so we have the American Shakespeare Center here. I met some interesting people and even exchanged contact info and got invited to some other events.

It was exactly this time last year when I first visited here to decide if I wanted to move, and I can’t believe I live here now. I think it really was a good move for me. I would like to meet more people, but that will take time. In the meantime, there’s so much to do and see.

Now I’m going to pack a picnic lunch and head off into the mountains.

Life, exploring

The Adventures Continue

Last weekend’s exploring adventure involved a bit of history, some socializing, and the continuing quest for apple cider donuts.

I started by going to the heritage day at the Mennonite Heritage Farm. That’s part of Eastern Mennonite University about 40 minutes north of me, and it’s a preserved/restored/rebuilt farm/settlement. For this event, they were demonstrating some aspects of farm life from the past. I took the back roads up there and saw some amazing scenery, as well as driving through some of the towns that get mentioned on the TV newscasts, so I managed to orient myself better around the area along the way.

When I got there, I was just in time for a shape singing lesson. I’ve sung a lot of pieces that had their origins in shape singing, but I hadn’t seen the actual shapes in use. I’ll have to research more to see how that works because I’m not sure of the point. The old hymn books we were using used both the shapes and a regular staff, so I never looked at the shapes. I just looked at where the shapes were on the staff. It’s possible that this publication was a hybrid and the true shape singing didn’t use a staff. Anyway, it was fun getting to sit in an old one-room schoolhouse/church to do this kind of singing.

They had some farm animals, as well as activities mostly for kids to do, like a two-person saw, a cider press, and tin punching. They also had some blacksmith demonstrations and they were making molasses and making popcorn in a big kettle. Then the buildings on the property (old farmhouses) had some craft displays, like showing the transition from raw flax to linen fabric.

Demonstration day at a historic farm. In the foreground, a man makes popcorn in a big, black kettle over an open fire. To the right is a big, red-brick farmhouse. In the background is a white dining pavilion tent. The sky is a bright, clear, blue.
A day at the farm.

They had a lunch on the grounds, with soup, homemade bread, homemade butter, and homemade apple butter, plus pies. They had long tables under a tent pavilion, with open seating. I ended up chatting with the people I was sitting near, swapping suggestions about places to visit in the area (they’ve been around here for a while, but I’ve gone to places they haven’t). And it turned out that they’re friends with my neighbor a couple of doors down, the one I met at the town visitors center when I first got here. I got to try some shoo-fly pie, which I’ve read about but have never had. Then I got to take a buggy ride. They had an Amish/Old Order Mennonite buggy and were giving rides. I walked up to take pictures and they said they had room for one person, but everyone waiting was a group, so I went for it. I got to sit next to the driver and chatted with him.

A white, wooden schoolhouse with a woman in an old-fashioned dress standing in front. In the foreground is an Amish-type black buggy pulled by a dark brown horse. There's a row of green trees behind the school, and the sky is bright blue.
Roger the horse took me on a buggy ride. In the background is the old schoolhouse where they taught shape singing.

After that, I headed up into the mountain foothills toward an apple orchard that supposedly sells cider donuts, along with cider, and there’s a brewery for hard cider, with a tasting room with fabulous views. Well, it turns out that everyone else thought it would be a great day to pick and buy apples and have cider, plus they were having a wedding there. I could smell the donuts. I saw people eating them, but I never found where you bought them. There were some really long lines around the place, so one of them may have been that line. It was too crowded for me, so I bailed. At least it was a really pretty drive.

On the way home, I stopped at a heritage market that I’ve seen advertised on TV. They advertised baked goods, produce, and other stuff, so I thought maybe they’d have donuts (and probably a restroom). It turned out to be more of a mall, and they had a really good kitchenware shop where I found a pastry cloth and rolling pin cover that I’ve been looking for and unable to find. No donuts, alas, though. When I get a permanent house and am ready to decorate, this place would be good to go back to because they had a lot of handcrafted items, plus that kitchenware shop (so many gadgets!).

I have leads on a couple of other possible orchards that advertise cider donuts, and I think I’ll go on Friday this week, when it may not be as crowded. On the weekend, there’s an event at the Frontier Culture museum, plus there’s a festival at the park near me, which means it would be a good time to walk or drive around the neighborhoods I’m targeting for buying a house to see how far I can hear the music from the festival. It’s not too bad where I am, though there are times when it’s less pleasant to sit on my porch, so I want to see where the music is louder.

It was around this time last year that I came here to visit and see if I wanted to move here. I really did pick the best time to visit because autumn here is absolutely glorious.

A hillside covered with red and gold trees.
Fall colors at the park near my house.
writing

Writing in a Daze

I hit my target word count for Rydding Village book 3, but I’m only at about 2/4 of the way through the story, and I’m not entirely sure what should happen next. I checked my outline notes, and it turns out that the ending I had planned was based on an entirely different middle (and was pretty vague). It seems I veered into an unexpected direction along the way.

So now I’m regrouping by rereading the book up to this point, since I couldn’t remember what I’d planned vs. what I actually wrote and I need to base the end on what’s actually in the book. It turns out that I seem to have written this book in a kind of daze because I don’t remember writing a lot of this — and it’s only been a month since I started writing.

For instance, in chapter 20 I wrote a scene that involved the viewpoint character trying to figure out who a person was and getting her first impression of that character, since I didn’t think the viewpoint character had encountered this person before. But in chapter 4 there was a whole scene of her being formally introduced to this person.

I also seem to have changed my mind a few times along the way, going back and forth about what a character’s attitude toward a particular topic should be.

Then there are the amusing typos. Some of them come across like I was doing dictation and the transcription software misread what I was saying, like the word “end” for what should have been “inn.” I guess I was transcribing the story coming out of my brain and glitched. Some of them are clearly me hitting the wrong key adjacent to the key I was aiming for or missing a key, but somehow it still makes a real word that makes sense in the sentence while drastically changing the meaning of the sentence. I’m fixing these things as I find them to avoid future confusion even though this pass is meant to be just reading to refresh my memory, but I’m going to have to be really careful when editing because this isn’t something an editor is likely to catch if the editor doesn’t know what I meant to say. It looks like a reasonable sentence if you don’t know what I was trying to say.

Rereading the book is helping me clarify character arcs that will lead to an ending. It’s also helping me check pacing. It takes so much longer to write a book than it does to read one, and it often takes a lot longer to write a fast-paced scene than a slower one, so what feels like it might be dragging might be the most intense scene to read.

I hope to finish rereading today, do some thinking over the weekend, then finish this draft next week. I’m not sure about my release strategy. I might be falling into the holiday rush if I try to publish later this year, so I may give myself a little breathing room for thinking and revising and publish early next year. Things always seem to end up taking a lot longer than I planned.

Life, exploring

Over the Mountain

Last Friday’s adventure involved a lot of driving in the mountains. I need to get a topographical map because the road map doesn’t tell the full story or adequately prepare me for the road I’ll be driving on. I think the map might even straighten the roads a bit instead of showing every twist and turn. I’ve learned that if an otherwise straight road on the map has a section that suddenly shows a lot of zigzags, that’s a sign that the road is going through mountains, and those zigzags are switchbacks and hairpin turns. I’ve been reading about going through mountain passes all my life but it turns out my impression of what that meant has been inaccurate. I’ve pictured a cleft between mountains, a simple up and over in a relatively low spot. But that turns out to be an inaccurate impression because that relatively low spot is still up pretty high, so you have to climb to get to it, and that often means going along the side of a mountain with a lot of switchbacks.

So, I set out heading west on what amounts to the major east-west road around here. I don’t know how old this road is, but there’s a coaching inn on it that dates to 1812. That’s before you get to the mountains, but there’s nothing much past it until you get through the mountains, and the town past the mountains was pretty old, so I think the road through the mountains may be that old. It was definitely built before they did things like dynamite mountains to put roads through. It was actually kind of a fun drive, if sometimes a bit harrowing. I was very glad I was driving my Subaru, which has all-wheel drive and is built for that sort of thing. While twists and turns were kind of fun with the stick shift in my old car, this might have been a bit much for that car to handle.

At the top of a mountain, there was a scenic overlook at a Civil War battlefield, where the Confederate army dug in to defend the pass (which suggests the road through the mountains may date back at least that far). They’ve preserved one of the trenches, but you can also see where there are terraces dug into the side of the mountain. There’s a short hiking trail with signs along the way containing excerpts from letters sent by a soldier who was there, talking about his experiences. On a sunny autumn day, it was chilly up there, so I can’t imagine spending part of a winter there (they got snow around there early this morning). It did make for a glorious vantage point for viewing the valley and more mountains beyond it. The mountains here are in waves of ranges with valleys of varying size in between, so it’s a bit of harrowing mountain driving, then flat valley, then more mountains, then flat driving, etc.

Rows of gentle mountains, covered in a patchwork of green, gold, and red trees. There are pine trees in the foreground and there's a bright blue sky above.
Rows and rows of mountains, with a little valley between each row and some interesting driving along the way. This is looking west, so probably West Virginia in the distance.

After a couple more harrowing mountain passes, I reached a valley with a little town that’s close to the West Virginia border (if I’d known how close it was, I might have driven on a bit just to add another state to my list). They were having their fall festival. I walked around a bit and got some tourist information. This area is a big producer of maple syrup, and they have a syrup festival in the early spring that I’ll have to go to. In this area, the trees were all red and gold, and it was beautiful, but I didn’t manage to get a good photo because the angle of the sun was wrong.

Elements of the festival were scattered around the area, and I headed off the main road to get to where they were supposed to be doing more stuff, but that road turned out to be a tiny byway that really twisted around the mountains. The place I was heading seemed to appear out of nowhere around a bend, right at a time when I had two trucks behind me, so I couldn’t stop abruptly or turn back. It’s a place that’s part of the syrup festival, so now I know what to look for when I go back. I ended up making a loop and going what the locals call “over the mountain” at a different pass, one my friend calls “the one that’s not scary,” and now I know what she means. It’s a bit more straightforward up and over drive.

A view from a mountain pass, with lower mountains and the start of fall color in front and the blue ridge of the Blue Ridge Mountains in back, with a bright blue sky overhead.
Looking east from the “not scary” pass, the leaves are just starting to turn, and you can see how the Blue Ridge Mountains got their name. That’s the blue ridge in the background.

In all, I saw some beautiful fall color and found several places I’ve read about that now I know how to get back to for more in-depth exploration. A lot of the driving was through forests, in places where the trees arch over the road and form a tunnel. That’s one of my favorite things, to drive or walk through a tunnel of trees. I opened my sunroof so I could see the trees over my head.

This weekend’s adventure is going to involve an open house day at the Mennonite Heritage Farm. I hope to learn some stuff I can use in my books. I may also visit an apple orchard that’s nearby as I continue my quest for apple cider donuts.

Life

Off on an Adventure

via GIPHY

 

This weekend is supposed to be peak fall colors for the mountains along the border with West Virginia, but Saturday is supposed to be windier and will likely be more crowded, so I’m switching my Friday and Saturday, taking today as a “weekend” to head west into the mountains and see if I can see some leaves. Supposedly, there are some Civil War battlefields that are now parks that have good views, and the farthest west county in Virginia is having a festival today and tomorrow. I may find some apple cider donuts. I hope to have a full report next week.

In the meantime, if you like cozy fantasy like my Tales of Rydding Village series, Monday, October 14, is the Cozy the Day Away sale, where you’ll find a whole bunch of cozy fantasy books cheap or even free. Tea and Empathy will be one of these books, but I’m sure if you’re reading my blog you’ve already read it, right? If not, here’s your chance to try it cheap. I’m looking forward to loading my tablet up with good books to enjoy on cool nights with a cup of cocoa. On Monday, you’ll be able to find the list of books on sale here (but you won’t be able to see anything until then).

Life

Milling Around

I had a big day of exploring on Saturday, and I think some of it may count as research for my books.

The main event was Mill Day at a nearby preserved historic farm. They were going to be running their restored 18th century water-powered mill, and I was very excited about this. I’ve been fascinated by water-powered mills since I was a little kid. We had a print of a water mill — I think it was even in my bedroom at one point — and there was something about it that made me want to crawl into that picture. There might also have been a Captain Kangaroo episode about a mill (I think a lot of my lifelong interests can be traced back to either Captain Kangaroo or Mister Rogers). I saw one water wheel on a trip to England, but it wasn’t a functioning mill. Otherwise, I’d never seen one before.

A grist mill made of logs and stones with a water wheel. There's a weeping willow tree in the foreground, and the sky is a bright blue.
A water mill! I was so excited to see this.

So, when I got to this farm after a pleasant country drive and the first thing I saw when I got out of the car was the water wheel turning, I got way too excited. I was practically shaking with glee to watch the water wheel turn. Then I got to go inside and see the millstone turning and the meal coming out. It’s a pretty noisy operation, which was a detail I need for potential scenes in the Rydding Village books, in case we visit the mill during working hours. This place also had a nature trail along the mill pond, which I walked, and some other demonstrations that were mostly for kids, but they also let me work the water pump.

My original plan had been to drive home via the Blue Ridge Parkway, but the whole parkway is closed for a damage survey after Hurricane Helene. I don’t think our end, the very northern part, was damaged all that badly, but they got hit a lot worse over there than we did here, so there might have been some trees down. I checked on the map for other things I could do on the way home, and it turned out that there was another mill nearby, and this one has been in continuous commercial operation since 1750. They still mill different kinds of flour and corn there. So I drove over to that mill. You can go around inside it and even go out onto a walkway that overlooks the water wheel. You can buy flour and meal in the shop there. I chatted a while with the miller and got some buckwheat pancake mix and some corn meal (both ended up being really good).

A big mill made of golden-toned wood, with a water wheel on the side. The sky is a bright blue.
Mill #2. They actually mill grains here.

The next stop was the Enchanted Mushroom Festival in a village just down the road from where I live. They had some interesting educational displays about fungi and mushrooms, but otherwise it was the same festival vendors you see at all the local events, so I didn’t stay too long there.

But I realized that once I was in that village, I was pretty close to the mountains to the west of my town that I haven’t visited before (the ones I can kind of see from one corner of my back yard), so I drove in that direction. I saw a sign for a recreational area in the George Washington National Forest and turned off down a narrow road up into the mountains, where I found this small lake/large pond with a picnic area nearby. I’d brought some hot tea and cookies and had my afternoon tea in the picnic area, then walked around a bit. There’s a hiking trail there, but I hadn’t brought hiking boots and it was pretty rugged, so I decided to do that another day. That spot is only half an hour from my house.

A mountain lake surrounded by trees, some with a hint of autumn color. There are mountains in the distance. The sky is blue with wisps of white cloud.
This beautiful spot is only half an hour from my home.
A cluster of orange and white mushrooms right out of a fairytale grow among dry leaves on a forest floor.
I found the enchanted mushrooms!

Ironically, that area was where I saw the true enchanted mushrooms. These were right out of a storybook. Apparently, mushroom foraging is big around here and the people putting on the mushroom festival are professionals at that, teaching classes. I’m wary enough to stick to eating what I buy in stores, but I now know to look for interesting mushrooms when walking in the woods.

It was on the way back that I realized how far into the mountains I’d gone because I had mountains ahead of me. I guess the road goes up gradually in elevation but also through a pass so I didn’t realize I’d gone through mountains on the way to that lake. The mountains are smaller than I thought, so they’re closer than I realized. I think I prefer these ancient, sort of worn-down mountains covered in trees to the more rugged, snow-capped mountains like the Rockies and the Alps. The Appalachians are so old that the mountains in Ireland, Scotland, and Norway are all part of the same range because the range was formed before the continents split apart. Maybe that’s why I feel so at home here. My heritage is Scottish, Irish, and Norwegian, so I’m living in the same mountain range that’s in my ancestral lands.

Supposedly, this weekend will be peak fall color in West Virginia, so I may head over there. I might take Friday off and go then so that it will be less crowded, then work on Saturday.

Publicity, publishing business

Marketing Ideas

I’ve been on a learning binge lately, as it seems the latest marketing trend for people offering services to writers is to put on “summits.” These are generally several days worth of recorded presentations or interviews with various people related to writing, usually “book coaches,” marketing people, editors, and sometimes writers. All of these people promote the event to their mailing lists. They’re free to attend, but you have to sign up to get access, and you usually only get access to the sessions for 24-48 hours after they’re posted, but you can upgrade by paying a fee to get longer access (usually lifetime), and there are usually some other bonuses for those who upgraded. And then they usually have it set up so that to get the handout for the session or whatever other thing the speaker refers to, you have to sign up for the speaker’s mailing list, which means you’ll get invited to even more summits, and it increases exponentially.

I can’t resist the opportunity to learn or to get free things, so I’ve been doing a lot of these. I’ve yet to find one that would have been worth the upgrade, but I’ve picked up a few tidbits here and there, including a lot of promotion and marketing ideas. I guess I’m always looking for that golden nugget that will really make a huge difference.

It really seems like I should be doing more video. I hate to dive into Tik Tok, in part because of security concerns and in part because I just don’t want to deal with it, but supposedly it can really sell books. I don’t know if I should revive my YouTube channel and do more videos, like possibly some “vlogs” to talk about my writing and give updates, in addition to the writing how-tos. I keep coming back to the fact that I’m trying to target readers, so would they really watch videos? But it does seem that when I post a lot to Instagram, my sales go up.

I’ve started doing a little advertising on Amazon, but I haven’t noticed a huge difference in sales. Then again, this is usually about the time after a recent release that sales tend to drop, so maybe the sales staying about the same is actually an increase over what it would have been.

Of course, here I’m preaching to the choir. If you’re reading this, you’ve already found me and probably already read my books. My challenge has been in reaching more people and convincing them to try my books. Once someone reads something, they tend to be hooked. The trick is getting awareness in the first place, especially when what I like to do is write, not make graphics or videos. I’ve heard that most of the promo stuff does no good, so you should just use that time/energy to write more books, but at some point you do need to reach new readers to make all that time spent writing worthwhile.

Are there ways/places you hear about books? The best marketing is word of mouth from other readers, so the best way to keep me writing is to tell other people about my books. Otherwise, I’ll have to find a day job, which would really cut into my writing time, so fewer books, released more slowly.

Life, fantasy

A Magical Village

I’m still recovering from last weekend, when I was not only very busy but also more social than I’ve been in years. It was the weekend of this city’s big festival, the Queen City Mischief and Magic Festival, which started as a Harry Potter themed festival but they’re now calling it a general celebration of all fantasy fiction. Thousands of people descend on this small city and fill the downtown area. Apparently, hotels for miles around are sold out for the weekend, and people make their reservations for the next year the moment they become available. It’s pretty wild.

I’ve described it as an open-air ComicCon, but without the panels and with the downtown shops being the dealers’ room. Or it could be like a Renaissance festival, but fantasy-themed instead of historical and in a Victorian downtown setting instead of a festival ground, and with shops and restaurants instead of booths, with various activities and shows. Except it’s free to get in. Thousands of people roaming the town in costumes, shopping, eating, and seeing the sights. There were costumed characters roaming and doing meet-and-greets and photo ops. They set up some backdrop vignettes for taking photos. The characters made arrivals at the train station a few times a day. The Shakespeare theater did wand dueling choreography and dance classes, and there were Victorian-style dances being taught in the middle of one of the streets that was blocked off for the festival. I saw Morris dancers performing, Elizabethian dancers in costume dancing, and a bagpipe band. There were a few wildlife rescue shows, one with reptiles and one with owls and raptors. There were a few scavenger hunt-type activities. You could collect charms from the characters to go on dragon pins, beads to make friendship bracelets (found at various shops), or little dragon figures (at some shops or from police officers patrolling the streets). At one point, the carillon at one of the downtown churches was playing themes from various fantasy movies.

My job was running character meet-and-greet areas. On Saturday, I had Professor Sprout and Professor Trelawney, and a few others came and went. They had little areas set up that looked like their classrooms. People could talk to them and they had some kind of interactive activity, and they could get photos taken with them or of themselves in that setting. That one was on the side of downtown near the farmers’ market. Sunday I got to be on the main street, where they had a bunch of scenes set up in an old furniture store. The front display windows were big enough to be rooms, and in one they had the potions lab and in the other Professor McGonagall’s office. In the rest of the space they had common rooms from each of the houses set up, as well as some other settings for selfies. I mostly welcomed people in and managed crowd control, but I ended up also serving as an information booth. Sunday I was also Official Dog Petter. For some reason, all the dogs would drag their people over to me. I got lots of good puppy snuggles.

The people watching was amazing. It was mostly families, and most people were in some kind of costume. Some were really creative. A lot were related to Harry Potter, but there were also a lot of Disney princesses, dragons, and general fantasy-type stuff, like Renn Faire outfits with fairy wings. It was so fun watching the kids react to things.

An old-fashioned bank vault full of treasure is guarded by a dragon so large that only its mouth with glowing red teeth shows.
The vault in the downtown bank’s basement is well-guarded.

I did manage to get away from my post briefly on Sunday to see one of the really cool things that was set up. There’s an old bank downtown that’s basically the perfect old bank, right out of a movie (in fact, they do film movies there). They turned it into Gringott’s bank from Harry Potter, but they didn’t have to do much to it. High school kids dressed up as goblins worked at the teller windows, and then down in the basement they had the old vault open, filled with treasure, and guarded by a dragon. There was a long line to get in, guarded by cadets from a nearby military academy. The woman working with me dragged me down there and got us in past the line, since we were wearing staff shirts and her daughter was one of the goblins. I’d been wanting to see the inside of that bank, anyway. They use it for special events like concerts and balls, and it’s absolutely gorgeous.

We didn’t get hit as hard by Helene as they did farther south, but we got a lot of rain on Friday and there was some flooding in the area. Saturday, it was nice and sunny, so we were fortunate. It started raining lightly late in the day on Sunday when the remnants of Helene came back. The lady at the gift shop across the street from where I was working ran over and gave me a plastic rain poncho, so I didn’t get too badly drenched when I walked home.

By Monday, my body was a bit mad at me, given that for two days in a row I’d walked a mile, walked around a bit more, was on my feet for three hours, mostly standing, then I walked a mile up a high hill. And then there was the introvert battery drain. I really enjoyed all the social interaction, but after years of mostly solitude, I was around thousands of people, interacted with hundreds of people, and had extensive chats with a few people. But it was enough fun that I’m definitely doing it again next year. I love seeing how the whole town comes together to put this on. There are all the shops and restaurants and community groups, plus all the volunteers, and then there are the property owners who let them use the empty spaces like the bank and the furniture store. Plus the church that puts on a feast in the church hall and plays music on the bells.

I should be recovered by this weekend, when there are more festivals, but I’m just going, not working. The main one is a farm day at the Virginia Tech Agricultural Extension farm near here with historic farm buildings. They’re going to be demonstrating an 18th century water-driven grist mill. I’ve been fascinated with water-driven mills since I was a little kid, but I haven’t seen one in active use in person. They’re making a whole festival of it, with hayrides to tour the farm and a nearby volunteer fire department selling barbecue. Then a nearby town is having a mushroom festival. I may do some touring in between, depending on what roads are passable by then. The weather was worse closer to the mountains east of me, so they had more damage.