Happy April, Friends!
Well, Spring has arrived in the northern hemisphere, and the two of us here in California are all enthused about spending every free non-writing moment working on our garden.
A disclaimer! Neither of us was born with a green thumb, but we work hard. There have been years when we were famous for our five-dollar tomatoes and the half-acre of kiwi vines that never bore fruit. But there were other times when we had enough zucchini to feed the entire eastern United States. Are we exaggerating? Maybe.
We do have a thing or two to share when it comes to gardening. The most important being, talk to other gardeners and don’t be afraid to experiment.
Experiment. That brings back the memory of an Easter Sunday a couple of decades ago. At the time, we were living in Bucks County, Pennsylvania...
Jim: The neighborhood advice was that there’s nothing better than turkey manure for the garden. Our friend next door told us that the local turkey farm was giving away free bags of manure that weekend. So I went over Saturday evening and picked up few big bags of the stuff. Because we had Easter activities to prepare for, I left them sitting in the back of the SUV.
Nikoo: Our sons were always fond of our annual Easter Egg hunt. And after tucking the boys in, I always got the baskets ready and then set the eggs out on the lawn in the front and side and back yards.
Jim: When we were done, I realized that the manure was probably making the car smell pretty ‘fowl’. So before going to bed, I dragged the bags out and quickly spread the manure over the garden.
Nikoo: Easter morning. We came home from church, and the boys excitedly dove into their baskets inside the house and then ran outside to find and gather the eggs.
Jim: That’s when the shouting started.
Nikoo: As soon as I saw the garden…yikes, I can’t repeat what I said.
Jim: Turkey feet were sticking straight up out of the garden like we’d buried big birds upside down. Mixed in with the manure were feathers, legs, and unidentifiable turkey parts. In the dark, I hadn’t seen what I was spreading.
Nikoo: The commotion at our house brought the neighbors’ kids running.
Jim: The entertainment value of the “Great Turkey Massacre” far surpassed the egg hunt.
Nikoo: It was definitely one of those ‘You had to be there’ moments. The event is now firmly enshrined in local lore.
Jim: But I do have to say, that year we had our best garden ever.
Nikoo: And why are we sharing this? Because writing is so much like gardening, though much messier.
Anyway, when we start a writing project, we dig around until we find our plot. We compost with the right kind of research (Learned a lessen there!). We plant the story seed and let it germinate. We begin and write and revise.
We’re not going to belabor the metaphor, but that, in fact, is what we’re doing right now.
Nik James has three books that are being published this year. And we’re already plotting and working on Caleb Marlowe’s next set of adventures.
May McGoldrick has started to write the first novel in what we’re calling our ‘Trailblazer Series’. It features women engineers in 19th century. (Nikoo knows a thing or two about women engineers. 😊)
The first story goes something like this... He’s an industrial giant. She’s an inventor who needs his money to survive. Unfortunately, they have a history. She has a week to convince him to invest…and falling in love is not part of the plan. Think, Christmas in Connecticut and When Harry Met Sally, set in the Scottish Highlands.
Jan Coffey isn’t slacking, either. She/He has been busy working on a historical fiction novel involving two timelines. The earlier story focuses on two sisters who went to work in an American shipyard during WWII. (Another topic that we know a lot about, since we were both shipbuilding ‘yardbirds’.) The present day plot involves solving the disappearance of one of them.
Now think of this as a pick-your-own farm. You’ve got your basket. What do you think of what we're planting these days. Let us know.