Vicki Batman on What's inspiring you? #readromance #springishere #RLFblog

Nature is!

I have always liked the beautiful colors of flowers; however, my obsession really began about three years ago when Handsome and I traveled the Rhine on a river cruise. We began our journey in Lucerne, Switzerland in late June. The weather was perfect, in fact, almost like spring compared to the heat my area experiences in the summer. Many variety of flowers bloomed everywhere. I became captivated and took many photos. Some flowers resembled those grown at home. I also spotted new plants. Even the tiny orange weed in the crack next to a white-washed building captured my fancy. 

This year, the spring flowers are bountiful, most likely due to the abundance of rain and cool temperatures. The antique climbing roses is loaded with tiny pale yellow bouquets. (These are the same plants I nearly chopped down, too.) Every day, I see new things—a snowball viburnum bursting with large blossoms. Many colors of Iris. Hot pink Gerbera daises. Green roses.

The air is fresh, perfumed by the budding flowers. The breeze lifts my hair and brushes across my mouth only to stick on my lip balm (no flavor). On dog walks, Champ, our white malti-poo, toddles along, stopping to pee every ten feet. His smoky gray brother, Jones, has long straight legs and walks like he knows what he is doing, only he doesn’t most of the time. Kids handling super-hero kites which are struggling to find lift. My neighbor is dead-heading the yellow and purple pansies with their fanciful smiles along her front walkway garden.

So how is all this loveliness inspiring?

I’ve been working harder at effective descriptions by adding how I feel and what I see. Hopefully by doing so, you--the reader--are experiencing a better mind picture.

Here’s an example from Temporarily Employed, my humorous romantic mystery:

“Yuck.” Pretty much covered the whole freakin’ day.

A blinding red-white, red-white strobe, reflected in my brand new Wrangler’s rearview mirror, seized my attention. The police.

I tossed my hands skyward, ready to surrender. I shouldn’t have been too surprised. Like I’d commented this a.m. to my roommate, Jenny, “Today, anything’s possible.”

My Bad Day checklist included:

- Crappy job interview, one which might have provided desperately needed income.

- Wore gut-busting panty hose on a hot day which had now worked past my waist and strangled my diaphragm.

 - A barely blowing air conditioner indicated something had malfunctioned in my new, fun car.

Hopefully, you are seeing a young woman having a bad day, absolutely nothing going right. And the cherry on the sundae is the police stopping her.

If you would like to read more, the fun is at: Murder & Mayhem .