There’s change in the air. Can you feel it? Here in the Midwest, the temperatures are going down and yesterday I saw chrysanthemums for sale at my local plant nursery. I also saw Halloween decorations and when I commented on them to one of the sales staff, he said, “Oh, we started putting those out right after the 4th of July.” I’m not a fan of the blurring of the timelines of the holidays and seasons, but that does seem to be what the stores do these days.
As a writer, I love fall or maybe you call it autumn. For some reason, I seem to be more inspired to write, and I write faster. Perhaps it’s because I’m not distracted by all the fun outside activities and the relaxed nature of summer. People seem to want to get back to business in the fall…and so do I. Of course, fall leads to winter and winter is good for writing as well.
Normally my book sales pick up in the fall as people begin buying gifts for the holidays. I didn’t intend to write holiday specific books, but some of them just are. This year, in the middle of July, I began getting orders for “The Halloween Scare” and I received one order for “The Christmas Church”. Those orders were earlier than usual and of course, I did my normal happy dance when I received them.
If you aren’t familiar with “The Halloween Scare”, it’s a very sweet and fun book about Halloween for the younger crowd, ages two to eight. It’s about what scares all the spooky characters of Halloween. If you have any little pumpkins in your life, you might want to order one for them. When my grandson, Graham, was five, he took it to school to share with his class. He told his classmates it was his favorite book, and his grandma had written it. I cried happy tears when I heard he had said that.
“The Day The Turkey Came To School” is based on a true story about something that happened with a turkey at my daughter’s elementary school right before Thanksgiving. I began writing about the turkey showing up at her school and it evolved into a story about how unexpected events in our lives sometimes bring people together in the nicest of ways. Because there just aren’t a lot of books that involve turkeys, it sells well in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving.
“The Christmas Church” is a very special book to me. It’s the story of a real Christmas church decoration my great-grandfather built more than 100 years ago. It’s been passed down in the family (kind of like the button box I wrote about) and I have it now. It’s fragile, but sometimes when I do readings and book signings, I take it with me. It’s a Christmas gift book and the first book that Vicki Killion Guess and I did for adults. Vicki painted the illustrations in watercolors instead of acrylic paints so the pictures would look like memories…and they do. After “The Button Box” it’s my best-selling book.
So, as we turn the pages from summer to fall, I’m looking forward to brisk writing mornings with a hot cup of coffee beside me and the leaves turning a rainbow of colors on the Maple tree outside my window. What are you looking forward to in the next season?