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Patricia Reding
a book bubble about
Ephemeral and Fleeting
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Author Insight
Countrysides
Every writer knows what a challenge it is to keep so many balls up in the air at once. Every line depends on where the characters are, whether they are standing, sitting, or moving, what they are wearing, if it is day or evening, and/or spring or fall. Those may seem small and incidental issues, but a story doesn't always come about by the author's creating each piece from the beginning to the end in one pass. Stories change and grow. Sometimes pieces have to be moved around. For this story, I had to so some serious calculations about seasons and seasonal changes. This scene was originally written for summer weather, but I had to change it to a fall day. While rewriting, rather than changing the countryside completely, I decided to keep most of what I'd had. To do so, I had to show this portion through Mara's imagination--as a vision of what the place might be in spring or summer. Consequently, I didn't have to do a great deal of rewriting. (Whew! One more ball caught out of the air before it fell to the ground . . .)
Book Excerpt
Ephemeral and Fleeting
They skirted the edges of a swamp. Tall grasses waved in the breeze, and cattails showed off their furry brown cylindrical heads from which seed tuffs billowed out. Mara, enjoying the beauty of the place, imagined the classic conk-la-ree ending in a musical trill that its seasonal resident red-winged blackbirds would make there. In her mind, she could hear the scolding chak chak chak of the females of the species alarming their kind, along with the interspersed rattling of a flock of sandhill crane. Unfortunately, both varieties had already made their way south for warmer climates.
Beyond the swamp, they traveled in silence for some time. The twins seemed to have turned introspective, as each looked forward to meeting, for the first time, the eldest of their six other sisters.
Soon they passed through the town gates and came to a stop at a house just inside of them. Built of logs, its sturdy presence suggested that someone cared well for it. Herb gardens sidled up near the front entrance. The stalks and leaves of some of the plants had already turned brown. Still, the dusty scent of sage, and the savory aroma of thyme, filled the air. When the first freezing nights came, they too, would die away, then await a spring rebirth.
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