March. In like a lion, out like a lamb. That’s the program here in NC, anyhow where redbuds have pinked up all the roadsides, dogwoods and azaleas are beginning to bloom, and bees are so busy that the very air vibrates as if someone’s left a motor running somewhere.
It’s been fun to check in on some of my friends’ blogs to see what March has brought them. Kathy Trocheck, who used to write the Callahan mysteries and who now as Mary Kay Andrews writes delightfully funny, non-mysteries about the joys of junking and love, has spent the last few months working on her new beach house down at Tybee Island. (www.MaryKayAndrews.com) Now it’s virtually finished and she’s ready for some Georgia sun and fun.
Nancy Pickard, when last heard from, was snowed in out in Kansas. Nancy’s book Virgin of Small Plains was chosen by the Kansas library system as their “big read,” and she’s been trying to visit every single library in Kansas. If you scroll down on her blog (www.sweetmysteryoflife.blogspot.com), you can see a map of all the places she’s been these past few months. How she’s going to top this for National Library Week (April 12-18, 2009) is anyone’s guess.
I get reading tips from Charlaine Harris (www.charlaineharris.com) who seems to read everything written both in and out of her field. Where she herself finds time to write her delightful paranormal books is a paranormal paradox, too.
Up in Maryland, Barbara Mertz (aka Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Michaels) hasn’t yet posted anything about spring on her website (www.mpmbooks.com/notes.html), but she possesses one of the most beautiful gardens of all my friends and I know that it will soon reach its usual glory. She, too, has trouble staying indoors to write when so much is happening outside.
I have to tell myself that it’s really just a little too early to be buying bedding plants yet and that I should stay inside and work. Of course, I’m also telling myself that I can work this afternoon with the sound turned off on my television while Carolina plays Oklahoma. Hey, March madness isn’t limited to weather you know!
