Winter is not my favourite season… and it’s not because of the outrageous heating bills, the terror of driving in whiteouts, the dodging black ice in the grocery store parking lot, the shortened hours of daylight, the cancelled music concerts, or the wind that blew most of the songbirds south.
It’s because I need colour.
I am a devout gardener; my front and back yards are riots of colours for three seasons. Spring and summer and fall each have their own colour-filled delights and they never last long enough. And I’m a visual artist. I sell paintings filled with a range of colours that convey every mood and emotion you can put on canvas. Every room in my house is painted a different colour.
And yet where do I live? In a Snow Belt. Read more
What is it about this writing thing that we enjoy?
It’s the journey, not the destination—I keep reminding myself. And it’s a long journey, or at least I’m making it one. It was about a year ago that I decided to re-write the novel that I’d already written seven times. I was going back to scratch. I’d hoped it would take me three months, but now I’m hoping I’ll be done before the end of this year.
Writing a novel is really like putting a puzzle together. Characters, plot, setting, theme, dialogue, emotion. Or perhaps it’s more like cooking a stew.
It was a balmy twenty seven degrees centigrade in late October in Venice, Italy; birthplace of Casanova and often referred to as the most beautiful and romantic city in the world. I was lounging in a café, sipping cappuccino and watching the world go by. Gondolas and river taxis glided past and the canal water gently lapped at the edge of the patio, a scant three feet away. Tourists stopped to pose for photos on the iconic Rialto Bridge.