Autumn is my favourite season. I love the cool air and the lower light come as such a relief after the heat and humidity of the summer — especially this past summer with its long drought. And of course, the colours of the leaves.
I’ve heard people say “Fall is the season when everything dies.” But the cool air energizes me. Fall is the season of the harvest, of pies and soups and my favourite sweaters and leather jackets.
Fall is also the season of Hallowe’en, the funnest holiday of the year.
To me, fall is the best time start new projects. Let’s face it: 17 years of my own schooling, and a further 17 for each of my children has conditioned me to consider the autumn as the beginning of new chapters in life.
But I think the one aspect of fall that is most inspiring to me is the colours of the leaves.
I wasn’t able to ride my bicycle all summer, since I tore my quadriceps tendon in May. I was only able to get back to it in September, and after just a couple of days of riding 25 kilometres to the office, I noticed my mood getting much better. Being outdoors gives me a boost.
My biking route is spectacular in the fall. This year, the colours of the leaves seem especially intense, with lots of red and orange. They look brighter when the sunlight hits at a low angle, early in the morning or later in the afternoon — when I’m on my bike.
Last week, I took a trip to the Finger Lakes region of New York to see the area and also sample the wines I had been hearing so much about. When my wife and I got there, we found the leaves were just starting to turn colour. But each day, there was more red, orange and yellow on the vine- and forest-clad slopes.
Inspiring? Definitely. Driving, viewing, tasting wine, relaxing in cafés, chatting with other guests at our B&B — somehow, that allowed my brain to put some vague ideas together. Over four days, I worked out the plot for a new novel, and it’s going to be my best yet.
For a long time, I’ve had the idea to write a novel that uses two songs as a starting point: Bruce Springsteen’s “Jungleland” and the Clash’s “Guns of Brixton.” But I couldn’t even get to an outline. Until, strolling along the edge of a Finger Lake in New York, I had a flash: “What if I made this a new Vanessa Storm, and Vanessa was the Barefoot Girl?” This book would be something of a departure from the previous Vanessa Storm books, but it would still fit within the Lei Crime Kindle World.
This new will tell two parallel stories: about Vanessa as a teenager, wondering which direction to go in life, about whether to go to university like her parents want her to, or to ride off with the bandit with a heart of gold; and then today, dealing with the consequences of the choices she and others made. It’s more than a typical action-thriller or mystery. It’s more about what makes us who we are, and how we change the others around us.
In the meantime, I am finally making progress again on the third volume of the series about my father-in-law during World War Two. I have one last chapter to finish now before I start with the second draft. Here’s to hoping that I’ll finish before the end of the year!