Distractions of Spring

Finally some warmer weather has arrived in the Midwest. I’m conflicted between being outside and planting and being inside and writing. May is a writing sprint month so I’m working every day on adding words to Witch’s Quest, book 2 in the Stephanie Jones Women’s Paranormal fiction series. Stephanie and daughter Amelia are navigating the two worlds of earth and the fae realm. I hoped to finish the book this month, but I need a few rainy days to drive me inside to my office.

I started an indoor vegetable garden about a month ago. I grow the seeds in pods in water under florescent light, then transfer them outside once this area was beyond frost and the plants were a suitable size. I hope to have tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, winter squash, and lettuce perhaps in another six to ten weeks.

On a different note I participate in a variety of writing groups including Sisters in Crime. Some groups are devoted to writing sprints, while others have guest speakers that teach improving your craft or to learn something about law enforcement or criminals. Last month’s speaker was a forensic anthropologist and she was there to tell us about how evidence is collected and analyzed from bodies. For her day job she works for an agency in Omaha and identifies remains from U.S. service men and women that are sent to her lab for identification. She said that there are an outstanding 80,000 soldiers from WWII whose remains haven’t been found or identified. Those remains are located in dense jungles, on remote islands, or in water. Sadly, some of those remains are at the bottom of the ocean, they’ll never be identified and returned to the families. Her lab identifies about two hundred sets of remains each year. What a noble day job to bring closure for those families.

Wisconsin 1850s replica windmill

Finally, I toured a local 100 ft tall windmill yesterday. It is a replica of an 1851 windmill from the Netherlands and was installed in Wisconsin in 2012 in a town filled with Dutch immigrants. Twice a year they grind grain to make flour. While it was cool to see that wind could be harnessed to crush grain, it was a lot of manual labor to move the blades of the windmill so they face the wind as well as open the sails on each windmill blade. The stones that crush the grain have to be re-chiseled on occasion. It was a very apt demonstration of how electricity as made my life so much better. And, yes the wooden shoes, designed to walk in muddy fields and protects toes from cows are uncomfotable.

Wooden shoes

Happy spring,

Alec