I’m doing first revisions on a draft of a winter story, and our recent snow is very much a mood connection. I spent five hours outdoors helping with our local Winter Bird Count, starting at 20 degrees and ending at 32. My chilly breaths of outside air remind me how winter feels, letting me deepen my descriptions.
In the new story, Diviner of the Streams, my heroine Duffy (introduced in book 1 of the Windborne series) dresses in layers, stuffs her hands into her pockets and looks forward to stoking the fire and warming her hands on a mug of tea when she gets inside.
From my drafted manuscript:
Duffy came inside to find Uncle still sitting at the dining table, his mugs empty. The room was far warmer than the greenhouse, because a fire blazed in the woodstove in the sitting area beyond him.
Uncle Humus looked up from writing on a yellow pad of paper, what looked like a list.
“Did you nap?” she called while turning on the kettle again. He hadn’t answered by the time she put the single egg on to boil and found some nuts and dried berries to add to a salad. She came around the island with the kettle and refilled his tea and her own mug. “Sorry. I should have lit a fire as cold as it is outside.”
He glanced at the woodstove. “Perhaps you can bring in another armload of wood before evening?”
“Of course. Salad for lunch with more broth?”
“That would be nice, thank you.” He gestured to the pad. “I’ve pulled together a list to go over.”
“Supplies for the Seas to get in town?”
“Ah, right.” He raked his fingers through his white hair. “Not that, and I seem to have forgotten to pick up the last order.”
She dropped into another chair and wrapped her hands around her warm mug. “You really aren’t feeling well, are you?”
~~~
If you’re wondering about the outcome of our birdwatching: The Reston Winter Bird Count, in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., usually numbers 50 species in our backyards, wetlands, lakes, meadows and forests. With Covid, the five teams are small, usually household members together, and each team takes a different sector. My husband and I hiked together and spotted 30 species in our sector.
Below is a background detail from the new cover. Unfortunately, It won’t be ready for release while we still have snow.
Leave a Reply