A Month of Renewal

by Fran McNabb

As I thought about my topic for this month’s Classic and Cozy, I kept coming back to the idea that we’re already to the end of April, the fourth month of the year. This month has always been a favorite of mine and can elicit a smile just thinking about it. (I know, that sounds silly, but it’s true.) In my mind, April is a happy month.

No one knows for sure where the name of the month originated, but some believe it came from the Latin word “aperire” meaning “to open,” such as in the opening of so many flowers in spring. 

The traditional birth flowers for April are the sweet pea and daisy, and, yes, both of these flowers happen to be my favorite. I call sweet peas “old fashioned” flowers. My mother used to have them running up one of her side fences. The sweet fragrance filled the air during the summer months. She’d let me go out to pick a bouquet to put in a vase in our house or to take to some of the older ladies in the neighborhood. I don’t see many of these plants today, but when I do, I think of Mom and her green thumb. The other flower of the month is the daisy. I wasn’t married in April, but I used daisies for my wedding. I just love the simplicity of the flower.

April is frequently the month that Christians celebrate Easter, this year celebrated on April 21. As a child I remember always getting a new pair of shoes and a hat to go with a new dress that Mom usually made. We didn’t have much growing up, but Easter was always special to us. This year the day was cloudless and the temperature warm. After church my husband took me and two other ladies in the neighborhood on a boat ride. What a wonderful way to celebrate Easter!

Lots of other days in April are set aside for special (and some not-so-special) days. The month starts off with April Fools’ Day on April 1 and ends on the remembrance of George Washington becoming our first President on April 30. In between, there are days that many dread, such as tax day on April 15, and some fun days such as National Grilled Cheese Day on April 12. In 1973 the first mobile phone call was made by Martin Cooper in New York City. What would we do without our cell phones today?

April has many other days of celebration or recognition, but to most of us it simply means that winter is ending and warmer days are ahead. It actually is the “aperire,” the opening of something new and exciting—a renewal. As a writer I am reminded this is a good time to renew my enthusiasm for writing. It's easy for long-time authors to burn out. If you find yourself lagging in enthusiasm, find a way to renew that interest. Maybe stepping away from your computer and enjoying other things for a little while will help. Enjoy your family. Read other authors. Relax. Do whatever it takes to renew yourself and your writing life.

Whatever April means to you, I hope you enjoy the last few days of this month.

FRAN MCNABB lives on the Gulf Coast and loves the warmer days of spring and summer so she can enjoy the beaches and water with her husband and family. Using this setting (as well as a couple others) she has published nine sweet romances, mostly dealing with characters trying to start over with their lives. Check her out at www.FranMcNabb.com or at mcnabbf@bellsouth.net

Deciding for Joy

I was cutting flowers to bring inside to decorate the house when the thought intruded. Why bother? Yes, they’ll look pretty for a few days; then they’ll shrivel up and die and I’ll have to go out and get some more. Why do all that work for something that won’t last?

Flowers fresh from the garden

But I do. And each time I bring in a fresh set of flowers I remember why I do it.  I love the way they look and smell, the way they bring a bit of color and beauty from outside into the house. It brings me joy to look at them. And those moments of joy are a rare and beautiful thing.
We need those moments, but they don’t always just happen. Sometimes you have to decide to make them happen. Decide it’s worth the effort to cut and arrange some fresh flowers even though they’ll be sagging and brown in a few days.

I’ve come to believe that it’s not just nice but necessary to allow ourselves some time to appreciate beauty even if it takes a bit of work to achieve it. Our souls need to be fed just as our bodies do, and beauty, things that delight our senses, are its nourishment.

Sometimes I have the same feeling about my books.  I put a huge amount of blood, sweat, and love into writing them, editing, rewriting, and formatting them.  Then I send them out into the world and…?  Well, it depends where I send them.  If to a publisher, under contract, they get edited again and finally released into the world, where they’ll sit on a shelf for a few weeks, then get remaindered.  These days they’ll continue to be available online where they’ll sell maybe a few copies a month for the next year or so. If they go to an agent or editor after a query, then most likely they'll be returned with a "Thanks, but no thanks," response.

Sigh. Is it worth it?  I hope so.

Now I’m venturing down a new highway. Since Five Star ended its mystery line before the second in my Market Center Mysteries series was published, I’m publishing it myself.  I’ve paid for editing, have a new cover for the first book (A Gift for Murder) and one for this one (Wired for Murder) that share a new look, and I’m working on the formatting.

I can’t help but wonder if I’ll sell enough copies to make it worth all the work and expense. But I love this series and writing it has brought me joy. A joy I want to share with everyone.  So even if it only sells ten copies, it will be worth the effort.

And now Wired for Murder is available for pre-sale at Amazon.  I'm fearful and excited to see how this venture will work out.

Editing My Garden

One of the things I like to do, besides reading and writing, playing with my puppy, and baking, is work on my garden. This work is mostly theoretical, especially since I don’t like worms, getting sweaty, or dirt on my hands. The bulk of the gardening is done in my head, with flowers. I’m not big on shrubs and trees, especially since they flower for a maximum of ten minutes and then just hang around being green until they shed their leaves and get even more boring.

That is not to say that I don’t like certain flowering shrubs. Many years ago my husband planted sand cherries, with their tiny pink flowers and reddish purple leaves, under the window of my home office. I wrote that event into my first Wally Morris book, only I had Nate Morris do the planting. Both Nate and my husband were a little sore afterwards.

In my theoretical garden there are blooms upon blooms in gorgeous hues, except for yellow flowers.  (I must have had a traumatic experience back in the day, because I don’t like the color so much. Pale yellow is okay, maybe, if it’s on its way to being white.) Mostly my flowers are purples, pinks, and blues, with white thrown in for fun.

Over the years I have randomly bought one of just about everything in my color palette, either as virtually dead sticks sent by one of the catalog companies, or flowering plants purchased at a nursery. I planted them the same way; one here, one there.  The concept of planting them in organized clumps never occurred to me. My garden was like a sampler, and the flowers were pretty enough for my husband to assemble a photograph book of my garden, with a single flower on each page. He did it as a mother’s day gift, so that I could keep my garden with me year round, even when it is covered in a foot of snow.

My husband and I have become very good at identifying various plants. We sound quite knowledgeable 

when we go to public gardens, a pastime we both enjoy. He’s also good at identifying trees and birds, although for a while even I was getting better at it. We had put up bird feeders and my husband used to call to ask me what was on them. I had to keep the Sibley’s handy.

 Our garden was getting out of control recently and I called a landscape contractor to see if he could tidy it up. I thought of it as editing out the bad stuff, like what often happens with my writing, and leaving clean text, something with which I am familiar. But once the landscaper came to see the actual garden, I could suddenly see it through his eyes. I saw the total mess it had become and the ridiculous randomness of it. Vines wildly snaked through the garden pulling down the flowers struggling to get some sunlight, with those managing to bloom struggling to stay off the ground. My garden needed a thorough rewrite, a slash and burn.

I couldn’t replace the old overgrown shrubbery with little singleton samples of various flowers. No, there had to be a pattern, and while it could be in my favorite colors, it couldn’t be done haphazardly. Luckily, my random pots of random plants were allowed to stay, and to my surprise were arranged much more attractively.

My new garden looks great, if a little skimpy. I’m led to believe it will fill in and grow together, making for great curb appeal. But there aren’t twenty kinds of flowering purple, pink, and blue plants, and that makes me a little sad.

One of the concepts that has been drilled into me is that when editing, it is sometimes necessary to kill your darlings. Most of my darling flowers are gone and what’s left is cleaner and prettier. But it doesn’t necessarily feel like my garden, at least not yet.