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.
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.
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.
I’m still rewatching The Office, watching an episode after listening to the podcast episode from The Office Ladies, and I’m noticing character details that even they don’t seem to have registered. The one that’s hitting me in this go-round is that Jim is what Michael is trying to be, while Michael is what Jim is in danger of turning into.
Michael wants to be the life of the party, the one who keeps morale in the office up with his hilarious jokes and pranks. He sees himself as well-liked and successful, the hot bachelor who can snag any woman. But he doesn’t seem to have any dreams of moving beyond where he is. He’s found his niche of success as regional manager of a paper company, and he only does anything toward moving beyond that when his position is threatened. He likes being the big fish in a small pond, and his dreams are pure dreams — stand-up comedy, screenwriting, improv, acting, being a secret agent. They aren’t anything he actually does much about. He writes a screenplay, which stays in a drawer (where it belongs, to be honest). He doesn’t seem to have made any effort to improve, so it was merely about playing out his personal fantasy of being a secret agent, not a serious effort to become a screenwriter. He takes the improv class, but considers himself to already be a genius, so he resists any effort at guidance by the instructor and alienates the rest of the class by being a poor collaborator.
Jim actually is the life of the party who keeps morale up in the office with his jokes and pranks, but a big difference is that his morale boosting comes from him paying attention to what the other people want and what will boost them. When Michael’s out of the office and Jim comes up with fun things to do, like the Office Olympics or the screenplay table read, he doesn’t build it around himself. He focuses on encouraging the others and drawing them out, like giving timid Phyllis the role of the sexy girlfriend in the table read or finding a “sport” for everyone in the Olympics. He even often overcomes his own dislike for Michael by soothing his ego, like giving him an Olympic medal in a stirring closing ceremony or joining him for a karaoke duet when Michael crashes his party at his home. Jim is the guy popular with women, managing to win the women Michael wants but turns off with his weird behavior. Michael talks about how cute Pam is (or used to be), but Pam falls in love with Jim. Jim’s the one who takes the hot girl (a pre-famous Amy Adams) home after Michael spends the day trying to impress her.
But Michael is also a cautionary tale for Jim, what could happen to him if he stays where he is. Is the best he can hope for being regional manager of a paper company someday? Will his jokes and office antics go from being a morale boost to making his staff cringe and keeping the HR department busy? Will he continue to have dreams that he never acts on? That’s why the later seasons are difficult to watch for me because he seems to realize all this, himself, but when he tries to act on his pent-up dreams instead of just playing them out in a computer game, he gets cast as the bad guy and it nearly destroys his marriage because it draws attention away from his family and leaves his wife carrying the load. That’s unfortunate because he had supported her so strongly in pursuing her dreams, but at that time they were just dating and didn’t have two small kids to deal with, so the situations aren’t equal. I’m not at that point in the rewatch yet. I’m still in season two, when Jim is pining for an engaged (but clearly unhappy) Pam and avoiding going after other, better jobs because that means being away from Pam.
Last night’s episode was “The Injury,” which may be the ultimate episode of this series. It doesn’t get into any of the ongoing arcs, but it so perfectly represents what the show is about, with Michael being so childish and demanding about his minor injury that he completely misses Dwight’s more serious injury (and then still tries to take the spotlight even after they realize Dwight has a concussion), and Jim having to step up and be the adult in the room to take care of Dwight and deal with Michael (the scene with the spray bottle in the van is one of the funniest things ever on television).
One thing I love about this series is that the documentary format did away with the studio audience/laugh track thing for TV comedy and let the TV audience decide for ourselves when to laugh. I’ve now reached the point where I can’t watch old-school sitcoms with a laugh track.
I found something I wrote back in late 2020, probably for a TV forum, on how various characters on The Office would deal with the pandemic, if you teleported the season 2-3 cast/situation to 2020 (rather than where they’d have actually been in 2020). I may have to post that next week, especially if I still have Book Brain and can’t come up with anything else.
I’m in big writing mode, about a third of the way through Rydding Village book 3, which means I don’t have a lot of brainpower for much else. It’s been so long since I’ve doing this kind of serious writing, back early in the year, before the move. Since then, I’ve mostly been editing and revising, proofreading, and all the business stuff. It feels so good to be back in the mode of seeing a story unfold. I’ve plotted this book, but I’m still discovering fun things along the way as I write.
The weather’s even cooperated, giving me some good rainy days, which are good for writing. I don’t really have an office in my current home. The living room, kitchen, dining room, and office are all one big room. I set up a little sliver of space between the living room area and the kitchen/dining room area, with a laptop stand and a desk chair facing a window. I can sit there to write and look out the window at some trees. One handy thing about everything being one room is that snacks and drinks are easy to get to. In my old house, I had to go down the stairs to get to the kitchen instead of taking a few steps.
The back porch office for brainstorming mode. If I’m actually writing, I’ll bring out the laptop stand so I can get it to the optimum height.
When it’s not raining, I take the laptop stand to the back porch and sit outside to work, though I’m likely to get distracted by the antics of the squirrels, especially now, when they’re running around with acorns and nuts in their mouths, looking for places to hide them. If I’m sitting really still other than my fingers moving on the keyboard, they seem to forget I’m there and will run across the porch, sometimes even under my chair, which startles me. There’s nothing like having a squirrel run under your chair and between your feet to jolt you out of your writing flow.
Writing these books makes me want all the tea, which is another nice thing about having my office essentially in the kitchen. I can get up to make a pot of tea, write a little while the kettle boils, then write a little more while the tea steeps.
The trees are just starting to turn autumn colors.
For years, around this time of year I would find myself researching other places to live. I was getting impatient for fall, while it was still in the 90s and felt like summer in Texas. I’d read the fall issues of magazines and dream of being in a place where September was time for warm beverages, walks in woods where the leaves were starting to turn colors, and the weather was getting cooler.
And now, I’m in a place like that. The trees are just starting to turn. The mornings are chilly — I have to put on a sweater to sit on my porch — and the afternoons are pleasantly warm. I’m getting baking urges, and I want to drink All the Tea. It keeps blowing my mind that I’m actually getting September in September, not the upper 90s that they’re having back in Texas.
This week we’ve had both kinds of my favorite fall weather. It’s been rainy and cool, and today it’s cool and sunny (now that the morning fog has burned off) but will be warm in the afternoon. It’ll be rainy again tomorrow, which is nice because I’m getting my flu shot this afternoon, and a good rainy afternoon is great for huddling under a blanket with a book while feeling icky in the aftermath of the shot. Even if I’m not feeling icky, I’ll pretend I am so I can have a proper wallow.
Then next weekend, all the fall festivals seem to really get going. I’m volunteering for the one in my town, since I can walk there and it will make traffic nasty enough that I won’t be able to get around, as close as I live to downtown. After that, I’ll have to look at the calendar and prioritize which ones I want to go to. There’s an apple butter festival, a mushroom festival and a couple of harvest festivals, that I know of. They’re putting decorative scarecrows in the park, and there’s going to be a pumpkin float in the lake at the park.
Yes, I do seem to have moved into a Hallmark movie. Still haven’t found the flannel-clad woodworking guy yet, but maybe at one of these festivals …
I’ve been making good progress on my writing, so I should be able to get away enough to really enjoy my surroundings. I’ll be picking up Instagram fodder, so it kind of counts as work.
I recently read a book that was about creating some kind of superhero persona or heroic alter ego as a way of motivating yourself to do things, so for instance, you’re not just exercising, you’re training yourself for some heroic task, like going on a journey to Mordor or being a secret agent. (I actually thought the book would be about something different when I checked it out of the library, but I read it anyway) Along the way, you’re supposed to also be planning grand adventures that you could actually do, finding real-world ways to live out the kind of adventures you might read about or see in movies.
That got me started wondering, what would my alter ego be? I don’t have too many grand adventures I want to carry out. I’m old enough that my idea of fantasy travel right now would involve first-class flights and either nice hotels or interesting bed and breakfast type places. I have no desire to bungee jump over gorges or parasail, or anything like that. If I just focus on what kind of character I might “play” in order to get more fit and do the kind of exploring that interests me, I might be some kind of wandering druid/bard who goes exploring to see more of nature and learn about plants and trees and pays my way by telling stories.
While they talk in terms of superhero secret identities, the characters they describe seem to have more to do with D&D character classes, so maybe they just mean that this is your secret “super” self, not necessarily that you’re a superhero. Oddly, the town where I live now does have a superhero. There’s a guy who dresses up like Spider-Man to do parkour and good deeds around town. He’s a local celebrity. People in the town Facebook group will respond to missing pets posts by commenting that they saw Spider-Man out looking for that missing pet. When there were some car break-ins at the town swimming pool, he started patrolling the parking lot (presumably either to be a deterrent with his presence or to call the police rather than shooting webs at anyone breaking into cars). There’s a big local festival coming up, and I’m volunteering as a way to get involved in the community. Last weekend, there was a Zoom meeting for volunteers, and Spider-Man was in the meeting, because of course he’s volunteering. He’s apparently an integral part of all local events (he was the grand marshal of last year’s Christmas parade). He wore the mask, and his Zoom name was “Spidey.” So, if I did want to actually go around dressed in a hooded cloak and tending to the trees while telling stories, it wouldn’t be the weirdest thing in this town. People probably wouldn’t blink. There are people who hang out at the farmers market dressed in fantasy/medievalish clothes and hand out quests to find the dragons hidden around town. People would assume I was with them.
It sounds kind of silly, but I did find my mindset changing when I started thinking of myself as that character. So, instead of sitting down at my computer to write, I’m crafting stories I’ll share with my adoring public in Ye Olde Amazon Tavern. Going on long walks in the mountains would be exactly the sort of thing I’d do, though I’d come home at the end of the hike instead of camping out or staying at an inn (one nice thing about living in the mountains—I can hike the Appalachian Trail for a few hours and then come home).
Now I just need to figure out why a druid/bard would be doing housework and cleaning the kitchen because that’s where I really need the motivation. Maybe not enough people tossed a coin to me after my storytelling session, so now I have to wash dishes to pay for my night’s stay at the inn.
I do have a few big adventures I’d like to do, though they’re less on the “adventure” side. I want to get back to Europe to hit a few of the places I haven’t visited and revisit some of the places I’ve lived or visited. Staying in a real castle is on my bucket list. I also want to see New Zealand and Alaska. For now, I hope to start really exploring this area. I think my big fall vacation will be to Yorktown/Williamsburg/Jamestown. It’s only a few hours away, the hotels aren’t expensive this time of year, and in addition to all the history stuff, there’s a big outlet mall with the shops they don’t have here, so I can replace my comfortable nice shoes (comfortable enough to walk downtown, but nice enough to go to concerts/theater/church) and maybe pick up some winter clothes that will be suited to this climate.
I also have some day trips planned. There are so many festivals in the fall, and there’s what looks like an interesting event at the Mennonite heritage center. Then there’s hiking and some drives to look at the autumn colors. The leaves have already started turning, and it feels like fall.
So I guess I’ll put on my druid/bard persona and get out there and do stuff — in addition to writing, of course. The bard has to tell stories to pay the bills.
I started writing Rydding Village #3 this week (title remains to be determined). I did the character development for the new characters last week and started plotting, then got a bit more into plotting this week, but then I decided that I needed to really “meet” the main characters for this book before I made more plot decisions, so then I started writing the first scene. I don’t know if it will remain the first scene or if this scene will even remain in the book, but it’s my current starting point.
The main couple in this book is made up of a character who appeared briefly in the second book and a character who has been mentioned but who has not appeared. At the moment, I know a lot more of their backstories than I know about what’s going to happen in the book. I’ve worked out a whole story that happens long before the book, which made me feel like I knew more about this story than I really did, so when I set out to outline this plot, I realized how vague it was. Maybe I’ll write that story and use it as a newsletter subscriber bonus at some point, but for now it’s mostly for my own benefit to explain why things are the way they are now.
This book is also going to start getting into the mystery of what’s going on with the village, why it’s abandoned and why it seems to be a magic magnet.
I don’t have a publication date planned yet. I’m a bit behind schedule because I always get overly optimistic about what I can get done. The plotting/planning took longer than I expected. As I said, I thought I had the whole book in my head, but when I started actually outlining, I realized that what I had was all backstory, not story. That often happens with my “shiny new ideas,” but this time it’s a book I need to write, not a distraction. I hope it means these characters will feel really vivid and come to life for me as I write them.
Next week is when the writing will begin in earnest and I start with things like target word counts.
The book draft I recently finished is something I’m hoping will fit the current trend for “romantasy,” or romantic fantasy, but I’m still not really sure what they’re looking for there. Earlier in the year, I saw an online panel of editors working on romantasy and asked just what they’re looking for in the romance part of it — can it be just vibes and the sense that the couple will get together (maybe later in a series) or is it a full-on romance novel that happens to be set in a fantasy world? One of the editors, who’s heading an actual “romantasy” imprint and who came from the romance side of things, said she want’s a full-on romance, while another editor said she was fine with just vibes.
If it’s supposed to be a romance, then that generally means a Happily Ever After (they’re definitely together as a couple at the end of the book and have made some kind of commitment), the main conflict in the story is between the couple, and if you remove the romance, the story doesn’t work. That’s different from a fantasy with romance in it, in which the romance happens along the way as all the plot stuff happens. The couple may or may not be together at the end. If it’s a series, it may take multiple books for them to definitely be together. There may not even be a conflict between the members of the couple. They may get along pretty well and just have a development from strangers to colleagues to friends to lovers, and the main thing keeping them apart is the plot situation — it’s hard to have a happily ever after when there’s still that dark wizard to vanquish. If you removed the romance you’d still have a story. It’s an accent to the story rather than the core.
Well, when I read a book from the designated romantasy imprint, I found that it actually wasn’t as romancey as the editor made it sound. There was a complete romance with a happy ending in the story, but you could have removed the romance and still had a story that worked. There was some conflict between the hero and heroine, but most of it was one-sided, with the hero unknowingly pushing the heroine’s buttons and getting on her nerves until she realized she needed to handle things differently.
I’ve actually seen things that come closer to being “romance” that were published before the current romantasy trend. I just finished reading that Twelve Houses series by Sharon Shinn, and I think you could remove the romances from the first couple of books and still have a story, though the romances upped the stakes and were pivotal for the character arcs. In the second two books, the romance was more pivotal. Most of the plots wouldn’t have happened if the romances hadn’t been there because they had a lot to do with the characters doing the things that were critical for the plots.
As a reader, I find that I don’t engage as much with a fantasy book that doesn’t have any love story in it. I like figuring out who’s going to get together and if they will, and I like it if a lot of the character growth comes through the relationship — where they make each other better people. But I don’t really like a full-on romance that focuses on the relationship. I like the relationship to happen along the way as other stuff happens.
I’m still not sure if that book I’ve been working on fits. It doesn’t really have a strong romantic happy ending. It mostly ends with them having an awareness that there are feelings there, and that will develop in the next book. And yet, there wouldn’t be much of a story if you removed the romantic elements because romance has a lot to do with the characters’ motivations at each of the major turning points. It has much more romance than the first Enchanted, Inc. book, which a lot of readers (and editors) saw as very romantic.
I guess all I can do is write it as well as I can and see what happens. If publishers don’t want it, I’ll just independently publish it and let readers decide.
I guess I’m still enjoying my surroundings because I got sidetracked by such a perfect fall-like day, so I took a long walk in the park and totally forgot it’s one of my blog days.
In Texas, around this time every year was when I’d be looking around for other places to live where I could experience a real fall, and I’d be making lists of things I wanted to do to enjoy the fall experience when the weather finally changed. Here, the fall weather started in August, so I feel like I need to catch up, and I definitely need to make a list because there’s so much going on. My plan was to get a draft of the next Rydding Village book done in August so I could take time off to enjoy the fall. Now I’m hoping to get much of it done in September so I can take time off in October. I may also shift my work schedule to spend the days exploring and my evenings writing.
I also need a shopping list to restock my fall supplies, like some candles, apple cider, cocoa, and ingredients for fall baking. I need to make cookies and bread and other fun stuff. I made my first batch of veggie soup for the year last night, since it’s starting to be soup weather.
I’m hoping to do a lot of day trips to look around the area and see the fall foliage in the mountains and visit the historic sites. I also want to make it over to West Virginia, just to add another state to my list. Then there are a ton of little festivals around here.
I’m starting my fall exploration with a guided nature hike at one of the parks tomorrow morning, then there’s an event at the frontier culture museum, and I think I’m going to do some baking.
I had pretty much the perfect weekend in a way that was unique to being in this place. I haven’t had any regrets about moving, but I have moments when it strikes me how crazy it was to move across the country, kind of on a whim (though a thoroughly researched one) and I’ve wondered if it was worth it. But this weekend really took advantage of the location.
A foggy morning in the mountains.
Friday morning, there was a meeting of a group for creative people in the area, and I went with a friend (the person who used to have the apartment I now live in, and we turned out to be kindred spirits). I picked her up and we drove to the next town over to the park where the meeting was, which was on top of either a very tall hill or a very small mountain on the edge of the Blue Ridge. It was absolutely spectacular up there. There was a fog/mist, so it looked a bit overcast down in the valley, but up at the park we were above the mist. The meeting turned out to be a fun mix of theater people, photographers, writers, artists, musicians, etc., and the backdrop of the speaker was an incredible view.
We took a scenic route home, with my friend directing me around some sights in town. After I dropped her off, I continued exploring, taking each of the major roads I hadn’t been on yet to the edge of town and then driving around one of the neighborhoods where I think I might want to get a house.
Saturday morning, I walked to the farmers market because I needed zucchini for a recipe I wanted to make, and while I was there I found a stand from an apple orchard. They had some samples, and I’d never had fresh apples straight from an orchard that weren’t from a supermarket. The flavor was so much more intense than any apple I’d had, so I had to buy a small basket of mixed apples (the grower made me take a couple more) and I chatted with the grower, swapping apple butter recipes.
On the walk home, I saw a deer running across my street, a few blocks from my house. That’s the fun mix of urban and rural here. I can walk downtown, where there are sidewalk cafes and shops, but it’s still rural enough that there are deer running around (one night last week I saw one in my yard, near my front door). I sat on my porch and drank tea and finished reading the newspaper to recover from the hike up the hill, then I went to the park, where there was an art show. I browsed all the booths and made mental notes of things I might want when I have a permanent house.
Then in the afternoon, it clouded up and rained off and on, and it made for a good reading day. We got a mild thunderstorm in the evening. I’ve seen people talking about liking thunderstorms, which always sounded odd to me, since I’m used to storms meaning the potential for danger, but this was gentle, with just some rain and distant thunder. I opened the curtains and blinds in my bedroom and sat on the bed and read, looking out at the rain every so often. The view and sound were basically one of those “rainy evening” ambience videos on YouTube.
These were all things that were reasons I wanted to move here, and I felt like it validated the decision. Just looking at the mountains makes me happy. The few vacations I took back in Dallas were road trips to mountains, which took at least three hours of driving to Oklahoma mountains or about five hours to the Ozarks. Now, I can be in mountains in half an hour driving either east or west from my home. My town has a couple of tall hills that might technically be mountains, and the hill I live on is about the size of an Oklahoma mountain. Since I’m also surrounded by trees, I can’t see the mountain ranges from my house, but I can see them while I go to and from the grocery store. Just going to and from Kroger gives me breathtaking views, and the trip to and from Target is practically a religious experience.
Meanwhile, I like being able to live in a wooded, country-like place but still walk downtown. I love being able to buy apples from the farmer, right off the tree. I also love the arts and creative community around here. And I love being able to have a thunderstorm that isn’t a serious threat.
This weekend, I’m going on a guided nature walk at one of the city parks. This morning, I took a walk in the park, and it was crisp and cool, and the leaves were just starting to turn vivid colors. I love getting into fall weather so early. This is pretty much Thanksgiving weather in Texas.
