Jumping Ahead

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There’s a tree near where I work that’s getting a headstart on fall. Even though it’s late September, around here most everything is still green. There’s a tinge of yellow in a few places, and a couple of bushes near my house are starting to glow a bit orange around the edges. But mostly, we’re still green.

Except for this one maple, which flourishes on a dead end street. It’s red. Not a little red. Bright red. All of it. It stands out among the rest of the still verdant surroundings like the moon against the stars. It’s the first thing you see, and it always makes me grin.

And, of course, the writer in me immediately wanted to turn it into a metaphor….or a murder plot.

That’s where ideas really come from, y’know. The odd fact, the strangely placed object, an unanswered request. I’ve developed murder plots from a lost shoe, a crushed flower, an overflowing dumpster. One of the “novels of my heart” first started growing when I heard about a woman who’d given her blind son a car.

Ideas bloom from all sorts of ground. All we have to do is transplant them, nourish them, let them grow.

Which is what I need to do now. Rachel is well. I’ve been in a tunnel, focused so much on her that I’ve been in “maintenance mode” – doing what I have to do to stay on track and meet deadlines, but no more. No growth. She’ll be with her sitter this weekend, so I’m hoping to rest, hike, and … well … catch up on all the little things that have sat dormant for the past few weeks.

Grow.

And if you wonder why the site of the red tree made me grin so, let me introduce you to the first paragraphs of A MURDER AMONG FRIENDS. I’ve just completed the author alteration stage, one step closer to that February pub date.

———————–

Autumn looks like death, sometimes, with the bright blood-red leaves fading to burgundy and finally to rust and brown. Maggie Weston thought about such death as she stared steadfastly out the window at the swirl of leaves, despite the rumble of a male throat that sounded behind her.

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