Yellow is the Color of Spring

I don’t know about you, but it felt like spring took forever to get here. Then last week, the final week of winter, suddenly our temperatures were so warm! I went to my car after work one day to find it was 90 (32 ºC) degrees inside. Of course with the warm temperatures came the sea of pollen. 

 

They say that if you don’t have allergies when you first come to Georgia, you’ll probably have them in 2-3 years. It’s not surprising either when you find out how bad pollen season is. (Pollen Season Starting Early This Year) It’s even worse if you have allergies and asthma like I do. You have to do regular inventories to make sure you’ve got the tools you need on hand and increase your medication to stay healthy. Otherwise you end up with regular sinus infections that can turn much worse.

Despite that though, I do love springtime. I wanted to share this pic of one of our Redbuds in the yard. If you follow me on Instagram then you already know the story, but I wanted to share it here too.
  
If memory serves me right, we got our two Redbud trees the year after we moved into our house, so that would be in 2010. My younger sister offered to pick up a couple of trees from City Hall because they were being given away for free on Arbor Day. She got a tree for herself too, but a neighbor mowed over it thinking it was a weed. (How do you even do that?)

The first few years we had them, I don’t recall seeing any real flowers on them. There were maybe a handful before the leaves came in, then they were gone before you could even notice them. This year they’re simply beautiful.

For lovely shots like this I’ll gladly deal with all that pollen!

Hostages and Regrets

Look at that, I’m finally getting some words in on Book 2 of the Colton Fen series. Going at a far slower pace than what I would prefer, but I do at least have somewhat of an outline to go along with this scene. Seems like every time I sit down to write on this story, I can never get more than 500 words or so done. A far cry from the 2k/day I did back in November on this same piece. I tell myself it’s due to the story coming to a close, and that all the strings of storylines have to coalesce, but really I think I just need to be more disciplined with my writing. If I were writing every day, or even every other day, and doing 500 words at a time, I would be fine with that. Instead I end up writing maybe twice a week, which just isn’t working.

Eastern-Redbud_1In other news, we picked up a couple of trees for the yard at the City Hall tree give away yesterday for Arbor Day. They were the smallest of the trees being given away, but some of the cuter ones I think. We’re going to put them on the side of the house next to the road, to assist with blocking noise from the cars. I’m sure it’ll take a while for them to get big enough to do much good though. Right now they remind me of Harry Potter wands. Aren’t they cute though? We really do need some color in our yard.

Well on to word metrics!

Project: Smoke & Witchcraft

Summary: My trio of protagonists (a werewolf, a half-vampire, and a sharpshooter) head to New Orleans to investigate a series of unexplained abductions. So far this pulpy paranormal will have plenty of banter, a slew of fistfights, undercover operations that fail miserably, battles of magic, a necromancer seductress, a coven of witches with a bad rap, and a ton of zombie alligators. Also I plan to toss the damsel in distress idea on its head since both guys will likely need saving. Oh, and did I mention awkward romance?

Current Word Count: 58,295

New Words Written Today: 514

Progress: Rennick’s love is held at gunpoint. What the hell is he going to do about it? I guess he picked a bad time to have an emotional breakdown. Now he’s just kicking himself for it.

Total Words for 2013: 3,177