Jodie was reading on the couch when Piper burst into the apartment, bringing the wind with her, smelling of dried leaves and the crispness of fall. Hayden followed behind her, tall and nervous. Jodie made men nervous. She didn’t know why.

Piper ran up the stairs. Hayden stood in the center of the room. He nodded, Jodie nodded back, the mutual acknowledgment of each other’s presence. This was the part she hated. Was she supposed to stop reading? Was she supposed to entertain him? Make jokes? It was an odd, forced kind of friendship, her roommate’s fiancé. The walls of this apartment were paper thin; she’d even heard him having sex before. Jodie would be maid of honor in this man’s wedding, next to Amelia, and Piper’s dozen-or-something sisters. Piper was making the dresses herself, both her own and for the wedding party, clouds of tulle in yellow and lavender. They’d all look like Easter eggs.

Hayden shifted his weight, cleared his throat. “You mind if I steal your girl for the night?”

Didn’t he already have her?

Jodie shrugged. Did she mind? Didn’t she mind? “Sure, have at her,” she said.

- Jodie, from chapter 1.1, Exactly Where They’d Fall

notes: Happy Easter!

Little bit of Photoshop work on this one, just for the heck of it. I felt like desaturating the colors a little (it was too bright for Jodie, lol!), and added a texture.

Be humble about how much you think you know. You never know as much as you think you know, and the universe has a way of proving that to you. The universe will rearrange itself to prove that to you. And you’ll only feel like an ass. Or maybe you won’t (that depends on your personality type). But believe me, the universe has made waves to show me what an ass I’ve been before, and it didn’t feel very good on my personality type.

By all means, know what you know (be proud of what you know), but just be humble about it.

And kindness is nothing to scoff at either. I’m not talking about fluffy white bunnies and rainbows kind of kindness – but basic respect and a little bit of grace. That’s all.

“It’s summertime,” she said, clutching her arms tighter as it started to rain. “We’re always busier in the summers. The new shop, and Charlotte’s about to have the babies. I have a lot on my mind. I’m not mad.”

He sighed. “Of course.” Though he wished she would just be mad, that he threw his dirty field clothes on the bed, that he walked through the house in his boots, that he put the milk carton back empty. Anything. He would be overjoyed that she was mad at him, so that it wouldn’t be something else instead.

“I’m going inside,” she said. “It’s starting to rain. Are you coming?”

He shook his head.

He wandered to his fields in the warm summer drizzle. He meant to plant a lighter crop this year, but all he gained from the lightened workload was the extra time to watch his marriage fall apart. It was too late to change his mind at this point in the season. He had what he had, and there was no going back. So he watched the wheat sway in the wind, tiny raindrops stinging his face, the wet sky feeding the soil. He reached out a hand to touch the young stalks as he passed. It amazed him that this ground was so filled with life, that anything at all on this toxic farm was able to grow.

- Matt, from book #2 (working title: Where the Universe Dwells)

notes: I am cheating the crap out of this week! I actually took this picture last summer, lol!

But I’m busy, and I’m writing, and that trumps my picture project. At least for the next few weeks until I get this novel draft done. And I will get this novel draft DONE, and to my beta readers, by June 12th! I have about eight weeks, and it’s looking possible, people! It’s gonna happen, I swear it!

And maybe this is like one of those things where if you say it out loud with enough conviction, it might actually manifest itself into existence?

Amelia came home to an empty house, and Drew’s absence from it felt unsettling. Coming home to him was a comfort she never realized until he wasn’t here. They didn’t officially live together, except that most of the time, they did. He’d even taken up a corner of her spare room with his laptop, his stacks of The New Yorker that came faster than he could ever keep up reading, his pens left around the house, his scribble of random poetics on grocery receipts and sticky notes.

She picked up an electric bill payment stub from the kitchen table, his handwriting scrawled over the back of it: freedom, friction, fiction, fallacy. She examined it, tossing the words around in her head like a puzzle. She asked him once what these meant. “Oh, it’s nothing,” he had said. “I thought it might be something, but it was nothing.”

- Amelia, chapter 1.4, Exactly Where They’d Fall

notes: a looser translation of the text this time. I took this when I was sick, playing Scrabble with D, and it seemed like the kind of thing Drew might do, make random words and see if they might or might not be something.

I actually tried to make all four of his words on here, but there’s only two F’s in a Scrabble game, lol!

Eeek, and I’m SO far behind with my photo/story project weeks! Writing has been keeping me busy though, and I refuse to complain about that!

But I actually do have an idea that should catch me up on a few photos at once pretty soon here.