I saw some crocuses the other day. Since I’m an old hand at using the signs of nature to interpret my life, I immediately associated those gorgeous little flowers with purple messengers of hope, new beginnings appearing where before there was only dirt. And as a writer, the symbolism goes deeper. Words spring from the brain like blooms pushing through soil. Ideas, paragraphs, stories are seeds waiting for encouragement, nourishment, panic.

I haven’t found a flower to represent that most efficient motivator of all. Panic gets the heart thumping and the fingers tapping, and words turn up on the page. No matter they’ve been pried out of their dank hidey holes under rotten logs at the edge of a swamp. Maybe a bare, twisted branch would serve as an image for that icon, a stark instrument of torture to prod those creative ideas out into a light offering the editor on the shoulder a grandstand view of their shortcomings.

Can you tell I’ve been writing under the gun? All In Bad Time, Book 3 of the Wisdom Court Series, is long overdue. I’m crawling toward the end over shards of broken metaphors and fractured grammar, but I’ll clean it up before I’m through. The signs of spring broke through the haze of plot points only for a moment. I’m back at work again. I swear.