Weather-ing a book: A Round Robin post

At every writer’s conference, there’s bound to be a workshop on Setting as Character. Gothic house, Bahamian beach, big city, small town… each calls for a different cast of “human” characters and situations. But does the weather influence the book as well?

I think so. I quit reading a popular mystery author when I realized after 5 or 6 books that each of her stories was set in the dreary autumn with a too-hopeless-to-be-helped heroine. It made me consider more closely not only my type of heroine (I need women who can save themselves but aren’t too proud to accept help), but also the weather. And here I had to pull up short, because I was writing nothing but August.

August in Texas usually. Not only is it my birthday month, August in Texas has its own characteristics. With few exceptions, it’s wearyingly hot and dry. Not just a little hot, but over 100 degrees hot. Humid, but no rain. It creates a certain atmosphere of lassitude. Everyone is just waiting for that first gust of autumn air, usually mid-September and then snatched away until October. But the September peek at fall gives us hope. But we don’t have that hope in August.

I had already set a few books in August in Texas. It was time to try a different time of year if not a different place. Spring break in Florida. Autumn in Maine. Fall and spring in Texas. August—but in Hawaii!

To see how other authors handle the weather, please check out the following Round Robin members:

Skye Taylor
Rachael Kosinski
Beverley Bateman
Connie Vines
Anne Stenhouse
Helena Fairfax
Judith Copek
Dr. Bob Rich
Victoria Chatham
Rhobin Courtright

Presented for your viewing (dis)pleasure

Yesterday I caught a quick lunch at a fast Mex food place. Order at the counter, grab your drink, sit down and the buzzer goes off ASAP. Can't complain about the service. What I am complaining about--and it's not just at fast Mex food places--is the choices offered on the large TV screens.

Sports. All the time. Sports. Maybe, if you're lucky, there's two different channels on the three, four, or five screens. Perhaps the closed captioning is on. But yesterday, the area was under a flash flood watch and had already had a trying time of it rain and wind-wise. But, on the screens? Sports.

It was noon. There were news and weather channels available and perhaps I should have asked for a change of station on at least one TV. I'd have liked to see the big picture before setting out for home. Because it's not like anyone was watching the sports. They were all involved on their phones or computers. Probably watching the radar because it wasn't available on the TVs.

I think the first tendency is to think that the staff was catering to the male clientele. Granted, many women enjoy sports, and I'm not suggesting a series of soap operas or old movies or the latest talk show, although I don't know how the latter would be any different from a sports announcer panel. I looked around the establishment and more than half of the diners were women and children.

Most of the time, I'm not in such a place long enough for it to matter and perhaps next time, given the same circumstances, I'll ask for a change to weather and news.

Thoughts?

Can spring be far behind?

Besides the fact that we've had a most reasonable January with little cold weather and February has been more than tolerable by our standards (today is 70), as a whole the populace wonders when the other weather-shoe will drop and we'll be plunged into ice and snow in March. Or April even, because we've all seen it happen.

However, yesterday morning I saw three vees of birds, whether ducks or geese I don't know, headed north. I rolled down my car window hoping to hear them and know what it was I saw, black shadows against a gray sky, but they were too far up/the road noise too loud.

I'll just have to be satisfied that the birds know what they're doing, deserting the south in time to make it to their northern homes before all the good spots are gone.

Really, with daffodils blooming and hyacinths rising, can spring be far behind?*

*Also known as famous last words.

It finally feels like winter

It "northered" Sunday night. Sunday afternoon temps were in the 70s and the air was very still, as if the atmosphere was just waiting for the Next Big Thing. None of us were disappointed when it arrived. Rain, like buckets from the sky, then wind, and a temperature plummet. Monday was viciously windy. The temps may have been in the 50s, but the wind chill was far below that. Today the wind was less, the temps a bit higher, but my Texas bones would still call it cold.

The ginkgo lost the rest of its leaves. The roses continue blooming. Ah... autumn in Texas, where it feels like summer one day and winter the next.