Greetings, all! And a merry autumn to you!

I’ve finally and really returned from Portland. Although I moved out of my summer residence two weeks ago, I came home to see family and my Dad decided that he wanted to go to Portland too. So, lo and behold, I ended up going on a family vacation back to Portland as soon as I got done moving all my stuff back out of Portland. I have a serious travel problem. I just can’t say no to GOING some place. We took the train down, and that was a lovely slice of scenic wonderment.

Where am I going next? Well, I’m spending my fall pinball-style in the bay area. I have family members I want to see in the Napa and Santa Rosa, I have old friends in Campbell I really ought to say hello to, some friends now out in East Palo Alto, a boyfriend in San Jose, and a whole heck of a lot of people at Stanford still that I need to thank for their help and encouragement.

I’ll head back to Seattle for an extended Thanksgiving-and-Christmas holiday, and then the boyfriend and I will make plans from there. This means, of course, that I will be doing NaNoWriMo in travel status again. I like NaNoWriMo in Seattle. I love it in Bellingham. I did it once while moving and shuffling around the Stanford area, and even though I wasn’t crazy about the experience, it produced The Neverland Wars, so what better way to write the sequel than in the very manner that I wrote the first book? I’ve beaten out three little books and a lot of other work since then, so with any luck I’ve grown as a writer these past two years too.

The air smells best in the fall. Say what you will about the floral scents of spring or the salty beach in the summer time, I’ll side with the crisp leaves that don’t smell like anything except themselves. It is the perfect olfactory input when you’re trying to output a novel. I can hardly wait until NaNoWriMo begins, and I feel silly and backwards trying to refrain from writing when I am SO full of ideas. There are a million novels I want to write, and plenty of stories which are probably only long enough to be novellas or novelettes…if only I were better at short stories! Then I could write a few of those and keep myself busy until November…I guess I just better refine my outline a little bit better and keep dreaming big. Maybe I’ll finally write a decent short story, if the anticipation really starts to kill me.