This week, on the Romance Writers Weekly blog hop, we're asked, "Do the seasons affect your writing? Tell us how."

This is a great question. I think the answer to the question is yes; and I believe that the most obvious way in which seasons affect my writing is by messing with my head. I remember being in the grocery store with my daughter one day in August (many years ago) when we encountered several college age people dressed in costumes. She asked me why they were dressed like that and I immediately answered that it was for Halloween--because that's when my current WIP was set.

To this day, I have no idea why they were wearing costumes, but I'm certain it had nothing whatsoever to do with Halloween.

My books definitely tend to be set in a particular season, in specific locations with weather that is integral to the story and/or the plot. For example, the third Oberon book is set in January/February on the California Central Coast. It rains most of the time in the book, and it was very helpful that (at least when I started writing that book) it was also rainy winter in California IRL. It's always good when the world my body is inhabiting matches the world my head is immersed in. If I'm struggling with the details of how my characters are feeling, or what they're seeing, I don't have to try and remember what that's like, I can simply step outside and see for myself.

Unfortunately, however, books do take awhile to write. Sometimes a very long while! So, even if I start out living in the same season as the book I'm writing is set in, it's fairly safe to say that, by the time the book is finished (or close to finished) actual time has moved on faster than fictional time has done. Which might lead to me listening to Christmas carols in March or June or October. Or being sick to death of the holiday season by the time December rolls around.

In real life, I definitely take the time to make notes about the weather on a somewhat regular basis--especially if I have a book planned for that particular time frame. I can think of several occasions when those notes have been crucial in helping me capture the setting in a book that's written way after the fact.

Now, hop on over to Brenda Margriet's page to learn how the seasons affect her writing. And be sure to check out her book, Richly Deserved!

To these two skeptics, true love is as phony as fool’s gold. But this improbable search for buried treasure could lead to their hearts’ hidden desires.

More than twenty years ago, Claudia Aronson escaped an abusive marriage. She built a secure, stable life, and is now only weeks away from realizing a long-held dream—opening her own art gallery. But her well-ordered world is threatened by the compelling, abrasive man essential to bringing her new venture into the spotlight.

Artist Titus Wilcox is reclusive, nomadic, and passionate. His solitary, drifting habits have fed his creative soul, but played hell with his love life. Soon after he meets the statuesque, seemingly-serene Claudia, however, he feels a compulsion to paint a new reality—with her.

When an antique painting reveals mysterious documents concealed behind its frame, Titus and Claudia unite in a hunt for lost riches—a pursuit that takes them into the remote hills surrounding the fabled gold rush town of Barkerville.

https://books2read.com/RichlyDeserved