Thoughts of Summers Past
I’ve been seeing fireflies in our yard here in Connecticut. They rise, blinking, from the grass, flashing their golden lights. Seeing fireflies always sends me back to the summers of my childhood, which took place here in Connecticut. Chasing fireflies at night with my best childhood friend, Rebecca. Picking honeysuckle blossoms for their drops of nectar. And looking for mysteries in our neighborhood. We were fans of Nancy Drew. And we thought if Nancy could have dozens of mysteries fall right into her lap, why couldn’t we have one?
July 29, 2023
I’ve always lived in a place that’s close to the water – no more than a drive of a few minutes or so – and I don’t think I could ever live somewhere that wasn’t. The ocean in Palm Beach is within walking distance from our home and it’s beautiful, but there’s something about the Connecticut shoreline and Long Island Sound that I love even more. I grew up here and spent most of my life here and you just can’t discount history and nostalgia. But beyond that, the harbors in the towns that dot the coast are so picturesque. I took this photo on a recent drive to the shore in Westport. The day was steaming hot, but I sat on a bench under a tree, inhaled the salt air as if it were an elixir, and enjoyed a lovely breeze. There’s a famous poem by John Masefield that starts, “I must go down to the seas again ….” I get it, John. I know just what you meant.
I don’t have a green thumb. Let’s get that out of the way right off the top. Although we have a lot of orchid plants at our home in Florida and they bloom very nicely, it’s not because of anything I do. I just hang them outside under our trees where they can enjoy filtered sunlight and I water them when we don’t get enough rain. Other than that, I let nature do her thing and when the orchids bloom I bring them into the house. Among the other tropical shrubs in our garden, we also have four gardenia bushes. The smell of gardenias might be one of my favorite things in the world. Lately they’ve begun to bloom and I’ve been bringing a few of the blossoms into the house each day. Even two flowers will fill our kitchen with a fragrance that’s deliriously sweet. The flowers only last a day or so before they wilt, but for that short time their beauty and exotic scent are magical.
I’m in Connecticut, where I spent most of my life, and I’ve been thinking lately about past summers, including some from the distant past. One of my fondest summer memories is of the first time I made ice cream. It was with my father at our former home in Darien where I grew up. I was probably in my late twenties on this inaugural day of ice cream making. I might have been thirty. I remember making it in the garage because it was kind of a messy process.
I’m working on the second draft of my fourth novel and I think a good comparison is making a cake and adding another layer. The first draft is the first layer, the foundation of the story. The plot and characters and settings are all there, but it’s not complete. Each time I make a new draft, I’m adding another layer, creating more depth and, I hope, a more detailed and interesting story. I’m also editing for language, flow, sentence structure, scene and chapter transitions, and all of the things that affect the readability of a book.
After writing The Wedding Thief I became more interested than ever in weddings. When the pandemic hit and didn’t go away, I wondered what couples who had planned to be married were doing. Were they postponing their weddings, postponing their receptions/celebrations, postponing everything, or going ahead with some abbreviated versions? I recently talked via Instagram Live with four “Covid brides” – from Florida, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Connecticut – to find out how the pandemic affected their plans and what they ultimately did. Each story is unique and, fortunately, each one has a happy ending. Watch the interviews here: 
I enjoy weaving music into my novels. In my latest, The Wedding Thief, Sara Harrington loves the music commonly referred to as the Great American Songbook – music by Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Harold Arlen, and Johnny Mercer, among many others. Sara’s late father, a Broadway producer, was a big fan of that music and Sara grew up listening to it. Of course, the real fan is me, but I also love classical, Broadway tunes, jazz, blues…. I could go on, but I’ll stop there. I mention more than twenty songs in The Wedding Thief. If you’d like to see what they are or to have a listen,