I love the soft blanket snow makes when it covers the ground, how it smothers all the sound outside.  I'm not sure how winter looks by you guys, but here in Cleveland the sky tends to be a strange grey-orange, and everything feels ominous.  Like you're in a Neil Gaiman novel with the good guy (who doesn't quite seem so good) sensing the bad guy (who is exquisitely and properly good at not being good).

I have too much work to do tonight to be getting all dreamy and poetic about the precipitation, but it just can't be helped.  This is the stuff that makes me want to curl up and write.  My husband, bless his heart, brought me coffee, which makes a fabulous dinner as far as I'm concerned.  Holiday cards are spread around me, buried under 2 of our 5 cats, in the half-stages of being completed to send to the post.  The Cocteau Twins are fluttering through my laptop as I type, to be followed by Lycia, which truly makes the perfect soundtrack to this season.

Was there a point to this?  Yes.  It's to say that book 2 of the Jon Hunter Mystery series, Flowers in the Dustbin, is being written...with the hope that by this time next year it will be proper reading material.

Stay safe, wherever you are, and know that you are all in my thoughts as my pen goes to paper.