I’ll put this news out first:
The digital Kindle edition of Love in a Small Town goes on sale this Friday, June 23, for one week. It will start out at 99¢ on that day and gradually increase.
My goodness, we had a bit of rain on Monday. Our area–Mobile, Alabama–is a the top of the list for averaging the most rain of any area in the nation. The entire southeast makes the top of the rainy list.
It was rather wonderful at first Monday, because the rain cooled the heavy humid air, and I like to see and smell the fresh rain-on-hot-earth scent from the porch. The scent of rain on a summer day always brings memories of childhood visits to my grandmother’s house–my father’s mother, who lived in a large Victorian clapboard house, complete with porches and gingerbread trim. I remember as a child of nine or so sitting in the front porch swing, swinging and watching the rain fall, feeling the mist that made it to the porch. I almost always had the front porch to myself. The adults favored the smaller screen porch at the rear of the house off the kitchen. My grandmother could walk to the back screen door and spit out her snuff, without being seen.
I enjoy writing when closed in by rain, so I got quite a bit of polishing done on the WIP (reading scenes of a storm of the same nature that is actually in my novel). It rained for hours, a deluge of rain, without let-up. It also thundered greatly, and dear Faith either stayed under my feet or slunk back to hide in the darkness of the closet. I laid on the couch and took a nap, and when I awoke, it was still raining in the same manner, as if an endless enormous bucket was pouring out of the sky. This heavy rain continued through the afternoon. My phone gave out startling alarms from the National Weather Service, advising of flash flooding. By early evening the photographs and reports of flooding appeared on Facebook. My son called, telling me of places with water higher than had ever before been seen. Roads closed that had not before closed. Houses and cars flooded. The report was over 12 inches of rain falling in one day and causing havoc.
The next morning I was out driving those same roads on my way to an appointment. The roads were high and dry and back to normal. Driving quickly past, no damage at all could be seen. It was hard to comprehend how high the water had been in places. The flood had come, the flood had passed, and the next morning the sun came out.
As I drove and looked around, I was starkly reminded of how the storms of life come and go. No storm, be it rainy weather or a life situation, lasts forever. It would be helpful for me to remember that fact when I get overwhelmed, blocked, disappointed and disrupted and hurt–it all passes, and the sun will come out.
Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come. ~ Proverbs 31:25
Blessings,
Curtiss Ann Matlock 