I Was Promised Fall

I'm giving myself a fresh start on being all virtuous today. I took a short walk this morning, so I've done some exercise, and I'm really going to try sticking with a schedule for the rest of the day so I can make more headway on the book.

On Friday, I made my very first professional short story submission. It was strangely scary, considering that I've been a career novelist for more than a decade. But I have fallback plans in case it's rejected there, and I have ideas for other stories, so I may start trying to do that as a palate cleanser between books. If all else fails, I can offer them as loss leader teasers on Amazon and use them to drive readers to my books, and then I can put together an anthology.

It's supposed to be fall by now, but we're having summer weather. On Friday, I noticed one of my neighbors taking her kids to the swimming pool. Hmm, maybe I should hit the hot tub. I think the pool would be too cold for my taste, but the hot tub would feel nice.

Normally, October is my favorite month because I love fall weather. I like mornings that are cool and afternoons that are just right for being outdoors -- warm enough that you can sit around without getting chilled, but not so warm that you sweat. I like fall colors and stuff like hot cider, hot cocoa, things made with cinnamon, and sweaters. I'm not a big Halloween person, but I like a lot of Halloween-adjacent things.

But today I took my walk wearing shorts. It'll probably be too warm for me to work on the patio this afternoon. I was planning to make chicken pot pies this weekend, but it was too warm to turn on the oven and have that kind of food. Unfortunately, because they'd been forecasting a cooler weekend, I'd bought the ingredients. So yesterday I made the filling for pot pies, and there's supposed to be a cooler day this week when I can make the pastry and bake them. Let's just hope that we're finally having fall in November when I take my "fall" vacation. I based the timing on last year, when it was still a bit too early for that kind of thing in late October. Plus, I had to plan around our Requiem performance.

So, that's my week -- suffering through summer, trying to be good around writing and other virtuous stuff.