read around the rainbow: seasonal reads?

This month’s Read Around the Rainbow topic is seasonal reads – holiday, summer, and so on! Do we like them, do we loathe them, do we write them?

Apologies for this being a bit late; my summer teaching schedule has just been sheer torment, not because of my students, but because of the two-hour driving commute, four days a week. I’ve basically lost pretty much all writing time and brain-energy, so I’m playing catch-up!

There was definitely a divide in our group about “yay seasonal reads!” and “nope, not for me,” which was interesting to me, because I feel like I’m…somewhere in the middle? I love a good autumn-themed or winter holiday story – but I’m happy to read them any time of year! I do end up reading a lot of holiday stories in December purely because that’s when they tend to get released, but I’ll read other stories too. I usually do a nostalgic read of Ray Bradbury’s The Halloween Tree in October, because I love it, and Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather in December. But then I was also doing a reread of KJ Charles’ Masters in this Hall, with its Victorian medievalism, just last month, in June! So I suppose my answer is, I do like seasonal-themed reads, but…any time? *laughs*

I was trying to decide what might be a ‘summer’ read for me, and I’m not sure I have a type, specifically—like I said above, it’s whatever my brain is in the mood for! I will say, if I’m on vacation and relaxing someplace, it’s probably a (somewhat) fluffier or low-angst romance, as opposed to a Big Academic Research Book or the kind of romance that’ll be heartbreaking and brutal. But it also depends; if I’ve just discovered an author, I’ll probably read their entire backlist no matter what! (And then message friends at 2am about Gregory Ashe’s Hazard and Somerset…)

(It gets horribly hot where I live (and only getting worse) – as in, it’s been over 100F all week! all praise to the inventors of air conditioning! – so I’m not personally a fan of the trope (and I’ve seen it! my own publisher used it as a theme once!) of “heat is sexy! heatwaves are fun! Hot sweaty sex!” Look. No. No no no. Human puddles of sweat trying to blob together is not sexy. Sticky skin squishing close and then peeling away is not sexy. No, thanks!)

Do I write seasonal stories? Well, I’ve written some – a few December/winter holiday stories, from A Demon for Midwinter (paranormal) to “December Beginnings” (contemporary). I usually do at least one per year because my publisher always wants some for December, and I like winter! And a lot of my stories – like “October by Candlelight,” or the Poe-inspired “Peaches and the Shadow” – tend to be set in the autumn because it’s my favorite season. (Actually, “October by Candlelight” started the whole seasonal story series – that’s the Wes/Finn stories – which does have stories for, for instance, February (valentines!), and April (rainshowers!), and so on. But that was sort of externally imposed – JMS Books had specific “this or that” calls for each month (like, “rain or shine”), so I used those as prompts. And some of them are specifically seasonal, like the October ones, and some not really specific – “Under an August Moon” really could’ve been set any time, but it was next in the sequence, and the prompt was “day or night,” so the setting was an August night…)

The odd thing about writing seasonal stories is, to have them published in the appropriate season, you end up writing them early—so you might be writing about Christmas or Midwinter in the middle of summer! So, much like with the reading, I feel as if I actually end up very often writing/playing in seasons that don’t coincide with the non-fictional world! So it all blurs and drifts and eddies around, like ocean currents, or snowflakes, or russet-brown leaves in the wind…

That’s probably about all I’ve got time for, and I’m late getting this up in any case, so we’ll stop there! But definitely pop over to see what my fellow bloggers have to say:

Fiona Glass

Ellie Thomas

A.L. Lester

Nell Iris

Lillian Francis

Addison Albright