Sunset at the Home Office

Photo by Karen Fernandez

I have mentioned before that my imprint, Herridge Lake Public Library, is named for Herridge Lake in the Temagami district of northern (to me, anyway) Ontario. I have had considerable success writing at Lake Herridge Lodge, and I wanted to honour lake and lodge in appreciation of this.

A bunch of us went up there again this year, and I believe the weather this trip was the best it's ever been for us. Days were almost all sunny and warm (warm for the region, at any rate) and what rain did fall mostly fell in a Camelot sort of fashion (early morning or late night).

And when we did get clouds, it was only so we could be treated to Maxfield Parrish-like sunsets or sunrises. (One morning we had fog so thick you could scarcely see the other side of the lake, shown in the photo above.)

The (delightful) irony is that I did almost no writing at all this trip. I say delightful because on previous visits I was on vacation from day-jobs (broadcaster, tech writer, biz analyst), and writing was a vacation activity. Now I write full-time, and the visit to the lake was a vacation from writing. So I spent my days paddling around in the lake, or reading, or even (for the first time in more than four decades) painting and building plastic models.

Since I got home I've written every day. Which is one reason the only posts this blog has seen recently are novel-serialization posts.