Happy Autumn! Five Things to Love

It's been a while since I've done one of these posts, but I like them because, although they're simple, they give everyone reading the blog an opportunity to join in. I enjoy when a blog post turns into a conversation.

So anyway, here are five things I love about autumn. And if you'd care to share five things YOU love in the comment section below, I'll randomly choose someone to receive a print copy of the Japanese translation of Fair Play.

Now perhaps you don't speak Japanese.

That's okay. I don't speak Japanese either. You will still enjoy this book because ILLUSTRATIONS, PEOPLE.

So.

Five Things to Love About Autumn.

1 - Idyllic temperatures. Fall in Southern California means cool, breezy nights and mild sunny days. The light is gorgeous. Luminous. The mornings smell of fresh-brewed coffee and a hint of something like damp earth and warm stone. It smells like the start of a new year, even though it's technically the wind-down of the old year. We use the fire pit in the backyard mostly in autumn. And those final, just-on-the-verge-of-too-chilly swims of the season are some of the very best.

2 - Sweaters. I love super-soft, warm and roomy sweaters. My cashmere coat sweater. The gray, green and purple pullover I bought on Orkney. The gray lambswool cardigan I wore the first night I went to dinner with the SO.

3 - The spooky vibe. I guess I partly mean Halloween, although I'm not really that much of a fan of Halloween. What I do like about it are the costumes and masks and spooky movies and spooky stories and spooky walks late at night when every skitter of leaves on pavement has you looking over your shoulder. There's something dark and mysterious about autumn, and that's what I love more than the candy...although I hasten to add there is nothing wrong with the candy.

4 - Baking. Serious baking starts in the fall. Pumpkin breads and pecan pies and bread right out of the oven, slathered in butter. All sorts of cookies and pastries and delicious flaky goodness. Yum.

5 - Going to bed early and sleeping late--and the snuggling that takes place in between. I sleep better in the autumn. I sleep better when I'm cold (not too cold of course--not so cold I wake up and start searching for socks). I read more in the autumn too, because there are few things cozier than climbing into a giant nest of pillows and blankets with a good book. Or even a bad book, if it's so bad it's funny.

Okay, what about you? What five things do you love about Autumn?

Five Things That Inspire Me

New summer header starts on the blog today. This is of a beach in the Ionian sea taken by Tamara83 and licensed through Shutterstock.

One of the questions that pops up a lot in chats and so forth is where do I find inspiration, and photos are a great source of ideas. Not just ideas…because inspiration isn’t just an cerebral thing. Inspiration has to be at least partly...trigger. Drive? Impetus? It’s emotion and urgency and the need to create or put into action.

Seeing that it’s about time for another one of those quarterly FIVE THINGS I LOVE blogs, I thought maybe we could put a different twist on it and offer up five things that inspire you. Er, me. And you.

For me, photographs, old and new. And vintage postcards. I love vintage postcards. Those muted, slightly unnatural colors and depictions of a world lost to time. I have a number of them from Catalina where I hope to set the next Doyle and Spain story one of these days.

Music. I don’t know a more powerful medium for reaching across cultures and politics. This is “Didn’t Know,” a song by Laura Browne-Sorenson (among other things, she did the music for my last two book trailers).

“But you stand out among the faces,

Choir robes and shoe laces”

Gets me every time.

Rain. Rain makes me want to write. I don’t know why that would be, but nothing gets me in the mood to write like rain--especially if a fireplace is involved.

Swimming. Water again? But yes, I get many good ideas for writing while I’m swimming. Or even just floating. A long, quiet swim is both inspirational and centering. Walking is good too. But swimming is better.

Dreams. Yes, I’ve actually got ideas for stories from dreams. More so when I was younger. I don’t have many “story dreams” anymore, though I did spend a lot of last night trying to preserve a basket of new born kittens. Since I’m allergic to cats, there’s no doubt a goldmine of psychic weirdness going on there. I used to have wonderful, scary, elaborate adventurous dreams. Now my dreams are much more confused (though still elaborate) and have to do more with losing paperwork or turning up on the day of a final after missing class all semester.

Bruce Rolff licensed thru Shutterstock

So what about you? What do you find inspirational? And what are you inspired to do?

Happy Spring! Five Things I Love

Happy First Day of Spring!

As a lot of you probably know by now, we put an offer in on a house and this time someone took us seriously! So we're in escrow. We close on the 27th of April -- which is right about when I'll be wrapping up work on Winter Kill. So it's kind of an action-packed spring.

I'm still a little in shock.

But anyway, it's a good shock. I'm thrilled about the house -- and terrified that something will go wrong and we won't get it. I don't think I will really believe in it until we're unlocking the door for the first time and walking across our threshold.

It's been a while since we've shared one of our Five Things We Love and I thought the first day of spring might be the perfect time.

1 - Tacos.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CAN'T CHOOSE TACOS AGAIN? Okay, This is not intended to be an advertisement, but we subscribe to Blue Apron and I'm really having a lot of fun cooking right now. I'm putting BA on hold for the next few weeks while we get through escrow, so I will miss the enticing boxes of produce and packets that show up every Thursday evening. The next time I cook -- really cook -- we'll (cross my fingers) be in our new kitchen in our new house.

2 -  Vintage home decorating books. Wow. Whole chapters devoted to Where to Place Your TV.

3 - Sinking deep into a new project. Losing myself in that world of my imagination. Writing is such a weird thing. It's like intense daydreaming, only all the while your brain is observing and trying to translate the experience into precise and evocative words. It's a peculiar exercise of creativity and intellect. Keeping that perfect -- articulate--  balance of emotional involvement and dispassionate observation...I think that's what makes writing so different from the other arts.

4 - The way the air changes with the seasons.

Spring feels warm and young. It is fragrant with flowers and grass and sunshine. Autumn and Spring. Those are the two big changes here. Those are the ones you really feel in your chest.

5 - Change.

I hate change. But I love to force myself off the diving board anyway. I love the cold blue splashing
shock of it. And then how stronger and better you feel after you've been swimming in that change for a while. And how quickly change becomes the new normal.

So what do YOU love this Spring? What is spring bringing you this year?

So that was summer?

We had a sudden snap in the heatwave, and all at once last night was cool and breezy. What a relief!

But at the same time there was a sense of No! Is summer over? Not yet!

It needs to be over for the sake of the wasteland that was my garden. But I need that quiet solitude of water and sky. Where it's just me and the hummingbirds.

My summer was spent writing. I wrote two novels. Fair Play (out in November) and Boy with the Painful Tattoo (out in October). In between the writing there was time spent with kidlings who are now taller than me. I read some good books, I had some nice meals. watched a few interesting documentaries, I argued with the SO. But really...that was about it. This was a working summer.

I heard coyotes last night -- loud and nearby. When I woke this morning, it smelled like autumn. Summer is fading. The clock is ticking.

So time for another FIVE THINGS I LOVE. I suppose this is the autumn edition. We've already had summer.


1  - Action-Adventure movies.

Edge of Tomorrow. Well, they changed the name (Live, Die, Repeat?) and it's still wrong. But the movie is right. Possibly the best action-adventure movie I saw this summer. I loved it. Yes, lurved it.

It's now on video/stream, so go treat yourself to an entertaining Friday night.

2 - Mournful sounds.

The wind through the trees. Coyotes at night. Train calls in the moonlit distance. I had ALL of them last night, so I maybe be sleep-deprived right now. There were no sobbing ghosts, so that's something.

3 - The light in Autumn

The light changes in Autumn. Everything is more intense, more luminous. It's a sunshine and shadow thing, but...it really gives a strange power to every afternoon. The days linger. You feel reminiscent and weirdly anticipatory. It's a strange time, these few weeks while everything changes. It is a time of possibility, and yet I feel more connected to the past. I am always both melancholy and excited in the fall. In short, I am harder to live with than usual.

4 - Black and White photos

This often pops up on my Goodreads lists of Daily Things I Love. I saw a documentary lately about a woman -- an amateur photographer by the name of Vivian Maier. Anything I tell you will be too much. You must discover this story for yourself. I think it speaks to the nature of creativity and art.

5 - The Mysteries of Frances Crane

Well, vintage mystery in general. But I am really enjoying the Crane's extensive backlist. I like to hunt down original editions with the gorgeous (or sometimes just crazy) cover artwork. Right now I'm reading The Golden Box, which I've started several times before but just was never quite in the right frame of mind. Now I am loving it, and looking forward to reading every night before I fall into bed.

So now it's your turn. Five things you love about autumn. Maybe you'll pick the very same things you picked last year at this time. That's always interesting. Some things are universal.  The seasons are changing. But how much do we change? ;-)