Never Rains But It Pours

The major fix of And Then You Dye is done.  My copy editor found several discrepancies in the dates; for example, I wrote this happened on Tuesday and then “two days later, Saturday . . .”  The manuscript was full of that kind of thing.  So what I had to do was break out a calendar and use those tiny Post It slips to mark occasions.  What a complicated mess it proved to be!  But what satisfactory words: Done.  Finished.  Completed.  Now I have a day to tweak, then tomorrow it must be sent back.  Sending a book off to be put into print must be like sending a child off to its first day of school.  You’ve done what you can, it is now out of your control.  Will it succeed?  Will people like it?

The calendar I used is one I recommend to writers.  Mine is put out by the weather department of a local television station.  Between the months are two pages telling what the previous month will bring, what plants are blooming, what local wildlife is doing, when the lakes freeze over, etc.  Each day is marked by the times of sunrise and sunset, the maximum and minimum average temperatures, moonrise and set.  Very useful to an author writing of June when it’s really November outdoors.  It’s more expensive than an ordinary calendar, so I  buy a new one every other year or every third year, and then keep it in my desk as a reference.  And now I have a new use for it.

Lush summer is here.  With all the rain we’ve had, everything is green and thriving, the roar of the lawn mowers is heard in the land.  Speaking of rain, Duluth had a terrible downpour, nine inches of rain in a few hours.  Some animals in their zoo drowned, others wandered free for awhile, most notably a polar bear.  An eight year old boy was washed down a creek and into a narrow six-block-long culvert and was thought drowned.  But he popped out the other end and was rescued by a man who heard him yelling for help.  He came home with a concussion, cuts and bruises and a story he can tell his grandchildren.  One could make an interesting thriller story from that, if one were so inclined . . .