And now, the mundanity of weather.

The weather here in my little swath of the Midwest is a bit bipolar lately.

A couple of weeks ago it was subzero (keep in mind I live in Iowa, United States, so I use the Fahrenheit system of measurement) and then it climbed into the 50s. It then dipped back into the 30s and climbed back up to almost 60 degrees today. Today we have rain. Tomorrow we will have snow and a blizzard (or as one weatherman called it this morning, a “weather derecho”) and then next week it will climb as high as seventy degrees.

They say March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb. And always, Mother Nature tends to say “hold my beer” and never hold herself to human standards. But then again, since I moved to Iowa 18 years ago, there has been snow as late as June in this little swath of the Midwest and warm weather until December. We’ve had some pretty crazy weather with floods and tornadoes, blizzards and derechos, sweltering heat and polar vortexes (vortices?) and everything in between.

Now I could go on and have a discussion about climate change and all of that, but that is not my forte nor the whole point of this post.

Weather inspires me. It inspires the stories I write. From the autumnal backdrop of Sa’s tale of courage in Keeper of Stories to the thunderstorm at the culmination of Ambarre’s vengeance in Magister to the snowstorms that threaten Berh’s life in the final book of Heirs to the Realm, the weather I encounter in real life becomes almost a secondary character in the stories I write. And while the sprites in the Realm of Original Magic maintain the Maple of Weather with their magic to keep continuity in the seasons in Portal Seeker, crazy things happen meteorologically in the realm when they come under attack.

Want to know more…. then read some of my stories!

But in all seriousness, some see a snow storm and grumble about having to use the shovel or drive seven miles to work in it. But I see adventure. I hear the crunch of it beneath my boots and wonder how a nomad from a realm of sandy desert would encounter such a marvel. I watch a storm glide across the landscape and instead of seeing an inconvenience, I dance in the rain or pay partial attention to how the raindrops spatter against the glass of my windshield as I drive home from the full time job. I find the magic in a whirlwind or blowing dust in a windstorm as I think of how a giant made of air would glide across the ground without harming anything. Even hunkering down in my basement during tornados, I imagine I am hiding from a sorcerer wanting to find me or a tyrant seeking to take my magic.

Yeah, I imagine all sorts of scenarios.

Any who, all of this crazy weather has me thinking about spring and the adventures outside I will have once this March goes out hopefully like a lion. There’s my yard to work on, there are hikes to be had, there are geocaches to be found and stories to be written. Perhaps this is the year that I will not only put my outside office up but actually USE it as well to write some of the ideas kicking around in my head. But we will see. For now, I am going to kick back and enjoy the crazy that the weather has to offer the rest of this week. Schools have already been canceled for Wednesday in anticipation of the weird weather, so we shall see what mother nature will show us.

After all, she is quite fickle even if she is constant!

And yes, that’s a quote from another one of my Portals Series and if you can tell me which one, you’ll win my admiration and marvel.

Stay magical, friends.

Write your own stories.

And perhaps maybe read one or two of mine?

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