Tonight the low is supposed to be thirty-six. Welcome to April in Missouri!
Did I get any work done this weekend? No, unless you count planting peas, radishes, daikon radishes, parsnips, spinach, swiss chard and beets. Whew! A few weeks “late” — you’re supposed to plant peas when the forsythia blooms — but not given the weather we’ve been having, which has involved snow on the forsythia blossoms.
Plus I took three of the dogs hiking! Including my fifteen-year-old Papillon, which turned out to be a misjudgment, because 86 degrees is too hot for him. I wound up carrying him about half the time. Even a nine-pound dog is pretty heavy after the first quarter-mile or so. Oh, well, hopefully it won’t get hot and stay hot for a little while; maybe he’ll get another chance or two before summer really sets in.
Okay! I have an idea for a short story tied into the werewolf (sort of! Not exactly werewolves!) novel I just finished. This is remarkable. I never, ever get ideas for short stories. This time I have the whole entire plot in my head. Who knows, maybe I’ll join Dan Wells in his NaShoStoMo pledge !
Don’t hold your breath, but actually I sort of think I might. A short story a day! For a month! Dan’s right, it would be an excellent way to stretch myself, because I’m lousy at short stories.
But that’s for this summer sometime, not right now. I want to revise the ms. I’m currently working on — I’ve figured out stuff about the main character that I need to integrate into the story so far — and after that I want to write the one (1) short story that’s sprung full-formed from the aether, and then I want to FINISH the manuscript I’m working on — before June, I expect — and THEN I want to take a month off. But after THAT, I think maybe I will try out Dan’s idea and see if I can do it.
And after that, I’m pretty sure I will try to write another fairy-tale-esque story with a tone sort of like The City in the Lake, because The Book Smugglers gave CITY such a fantastic review that it instantly put me in the fairy-tale mood.
So that’s my plan for my summer! Not saying it couldn’t get revised, depending on events . . .