This week is a sweet little chapter of Lily and Kendrick meeting together in the middle of a water-soaked road, completely with drawn swords and explosions. It ends well, as most of this novel, but it lets me enjoy my favorite weather: rain.

Rain as a Mood

When it rains in a Disney movie, you know that someone is sad or something terrible is about to happen. Actually, in most movies, rain is used as a way of setting the mood of a scene. It's a consistent symbol and sets off the right mood for proper gravity.

I'm the reverse. Almost every romantic and tender moment in my life happened when it was raining. It starts with that little thrill against the skin as the pressure changes. It continues with that smell of wet earth and muted noises masked by the hiss of falling raindrops. Even when it soaks into my clothes, I'm reminded of those tender, quiet moments in my life.

Likewise, I don't like sunny days. The heat and I are not friends. After my eye surgery in 2000, bright light is painful. Which means I have a tendency to show the nasty points in my stories during bright and sunny days, when the heat is pushing tempers to the edge and there is no comfort in the breeze.

If I start a chapter with a detailed description of a summer days, there's a good chance someone is going to die.

National Novel Generator Month (NaNoGenMo)

This year, I want to try my hand at NaNoGenMo. This is a lot like National Novel Writing Month (both are in November) but it appeals to my programmer side in addition to my writer. The challenge is to write a program that writes a fifty thousand word novel in a month. I've wanted to do this for a while, mainly because it is a hard problem.

This does mean I have to write a bit faster to get ahead of the buffer. I only have four weeks left for Second-Hand Dresses so I need to get another 4-8 chapters written to ensure there is a steady stream of chapters every week. It is also good because chapter twenty-one and twenty-two are naughty. With all my writing obligations, I need to write about forty thousand words in the next month and a half to ensure everyone is happy.

November's blog posts will probably be related to the challenge. Likewise, December has the “word a day” for my constructed language, but that rarely impacts the chapter schedule.

Second-Hand Dresses 17: Rainfall

After an hour waiting for the rain, Lily is the only one on the street to see three Martins running down the street. Even though she guesses their reason, she goes after them in hopes of seeing Kendrick.

Read the chapter at https://fedran.com/second-hand-dresses/chapter-17/.

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