Last week we had some spectacular storms that dropped a lot of rain.
The natural consequence of all that rain was flooding.
Fortunately, we live on a hill, so pretty much don’t have to worry about our house flooding. But when I went to the nearby lake where I like to walk, I was confronted with this.
As you can see, the water was halfway over the road, and the walking path, which runs next to the trees, was covered by about 2 feet of water (my eyeball estimate).
Needless to say, I didn’t walk there that day.
By Sunday, the water was still high but much more back to normal.
So I parked my car and started walking. There were places where it was a little treacherous, since the path was covered with piles of leaves and dried mud, but much of it was just fine. However, I saw this poor guy who’d apparently gotten caught in the fence when the water was high, and then left gasping when it receded.
The fish was stranded a good 25 or 30 feet back from the shoreline.
As a writer during these past few weeks, I’ve felt a bit like that poor fish, gasping and stranded in an unfamiliar and inhospitable place. Normally I have no problem meeting my self-imposed word count goal every day, but that hasn’t been the case recently.
Instead, I’ve been in very unfamiliar territory, dealing with the news that one of my kids has cancer, trying to figure out how to support him and his wife and 6-year-old twins who live about 5 hours away, and all the anxiety around it.
It’s very difficult to be creative in the midst of upheaval and uncertainty. Nevertheless, I am making progress on the second book in my cozy mystery series. My plan was to finish this draft by the end of August, then pull the first book out of the virtual drawer and do final edits and polishing. That’s still my plan, but it’s unlikely to happen in the time frame I originally set.
It will wait until the floodwaters of my life recede.
What I’m Reading
For Us, the Living by Robert Heinlein
I was an avid reader of Heinlein’s science fiction in my younger days, although I found everything from Stranger in a Strange Land on to be too much preaching and too little storytelling.
But his earlier novels were masterful. In many ways he was quite prescient about what the future would hold, and unlike some of his peers like Isaac Asimov, Heinlein seemed to envision roles for women and minorities far beyond what they actually were in his time.
So I was quite intrigued when For Us, the Living popped up as a suggestion in my feed. Apparently it was his first book, written in 1938-39 but never published until recently.
While it’s a terrible novel — it’s mainly a discourse on the economics, religious practices, and ethics of the year 2083 strung together loosely on the flimsy story thread of educating a man who died in 1939 and suddenly woke up in a snowbank in 2083 — the concepts were fascinating. I was very interested in being able to identify the germs of ideas that became excellent books later on.
If you’re at all interested in science fiction, or the history of science fiction writing, you’ll appreciate this book.
Murder and the Scent of Nutmeg by LB Hathaway
This is the 16th book in the Posey Parker series, and a new Posey Parker is always a cause for celebration.
Posey, now married with three children, is having a rough time. It’s just before Valentine’s Day, but her husband seems oblivious to her and — horror — comes home smelling of a perfume that’s not hers.
She wanders forlornly through London, and eventually her feet take her to a place that conjures strong memories of her childhood and her family. The sudden appearance of a man who served her father as a curate seems unsurprising.
He’s concerned about a possible murder, and Posey is thrust back into a place she’s had nothing to do with for many years, the home of her one-time fiance who was killed in the war.
Posey manages to avert a terrible miscarriage of justice, but is forced to confront aspects of her past that make her appreciate her present life even more.
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Notable Quotes
“I… If… Why…” I was awfully good at starting sentences. If they’d had an exam on that, I’d have been top of the class.
- The Curious Case of the Templeton-Swifts by Benedict Brown
This is from the sixth book in the Lord Edginton Investigates series, and the narrator, 17-year-old Christopher, has turned self deprecation into an art form.
Depressed and disgusted with myself, I got a glass of chocolate milk out of the fridge and added extra chocolate syrup to it. I still had enough dignity to not eat frosting for breakfast. But I did grab a bag of peanut butter cookies from the pantry (peanut butter is protein after all) and scuffed my way back to the living room.
- Class Reunions are Murder by Libby Klein
Is there a depressed woman anywhere in the US who hasn’t been there, done that???
Wishing you and your family the best.