Oh, Great! Now All These Scary Hurricanes are Dictating My Writing Process
Another week, another hurricane. . .
This one, Milton, isn’t likely to do much more to us than drop a lot of water, but my son and his family in Orlando are preparing to hunker down with boarded-up windows and an emergency generator for afterwards. . .
We moved to Florida in 1989. We lived here until 2004 before experiencing a serious hurricane. Then, in 2004, we had three back to back, exactly two weeks apart. That was Charley, Frances, and Ivan. In the 20 years since then, we’ve had a bunch of storms that affected us. Definitely more storms, more often in the last 20 years than in the first fifteen. . .
Why am I writing about hurricanes again? Because these darn storms are forcing me to rethink a piece of my writing strategy. Typically I write my drafts in Google documents. I like knowing that I can write or edit, wherever I am and no matter which device I have at hand. I don’t want to be restricted to having to do all my writing solely on the laptop.
But what happens when a storm knocks out the internet? Oops.
I haven’t come up with a solution that makes me happy, yet. But I have downloaded all of my current WIP into Scrivener, on my laptop, so that I can keep going there even if my internet goes out.
If any of you have ideas for a platform-agnostic, non-internet-dependent solution, I’d love to hear it!
PS For some reason this song keeps going through my head, only I’m thinking of it as Writers on the Storm, LOL.
What I’m Reading
This was a good week — I was able to read the latest books in two of my favorite series.
Poison in Picadilly by Kelly Oliver
I love Kelly Oliver’s Fiona Figg character. She’s so delightfully oblivious while thinking she’s such a great spy, her naivete is totally charming. And nowhere is it more charming than in her persistence in planning to marry heartthrob Archie Somersby.
Oh, sure, she knows he’s an assassin. But that lock of hair falling over his forehead! And his eyes! Besides, he really loves her. Doesn’t he?
Fiona’s at home in London, officially on leave for a month to prepare for, and then honeymoon after, her wedding. But someone attacks her colleague-masquerading-as-her-niece, Kitty Lane, and kills a society woman who changed the place cards and took Kitty’s place at a luncheon.
Kitty’s got a serious case of amnesia, and Fiona is desperate to find the culprit before her wedding so when her boss insists she come back to work and take on an assignment in Ireland, of all places, she’s not best pleased.
The Last Letter from France by Lise McClendon
It’s hard to believe this is the 19th in the Bennett Sisters mystery series, and it’s still going strong.
Merle Bennett is from a close-knit family of lawyers. She, and her four sisters, and their father, all practice law. She loves her sisters, but sometimes things get a little strained, so she’s happy and relieved when big sister Stasia volunteers to come to France and help her renovate the two run-down rental cottages she owns.
While clearing out one of the cottages, Merle finds a leather wallet containing the remains of nine letters a WWI soldier wrote to his sweetheart. They’re badly damaged, and she can’t read more than a few words here and there, but something about them captures her imagination and she wants to find out what happened to the couple.
This starts Merle on a quest, traveling through France and England, to find possible decendents. In the end, the final puzzle piece comes from much nearer home.
Full disclosure: There’s no actual murder in this mystery.
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Wise Words
It’s time for another word choice game! As always, select the more appropriate word for the sentence below. Your choices (in alphabetical order, so don’t read anything into it) are inauspicious and innocuous.
He had swapped his usual burgundy jacket for an _______ grey calico one.
- Murder on the Nile by Verity Bright
Check back next week for the answer.