This Writer's Diary
June 30 to July 5, 2025.
Dusk, deepening rapidly into night. I’ve gone out to bring the hummingbird feeder in, safe overnight from the ravages of raccoons. I stand entranced, instead. Over the lawn, and round the shrubs and trunks of trees, tiny flashes of light. Fireflies! Each brief spark is a coded message: I am this species, I am male; I am this species, I am female. Come to me. Witnessing this courtship ritual is a moment of utter delight for me, a gift of the July night.
The hummingbird feeder is refilled every morning, in case the sugar water ferments in the heat. Somewhere in a shrub close by, in a nest built of spiderwebs and dandelion down and lichens, the female ruby-throated hummingbird is feeding young. Back and forth she comes to the feeder — it goes out between 5 and 6 am, and stays out until near-dark — all day, drinking deeply. A male, which, even if he is the mate, doesn’t help feed his offspring, comes more sporadically. Another gift of the summer, these tiny iridescent scraps of bone and wing and feather, so seemingly fragile, so apparently strong.
Belatedly, we put up the falcon silhouettes on the patio slider doors this week, after the female hummingbird ricocheted off them. She flew off, apparently unhurt, and was back again at the feeder shortly after. (As we’ve never witnessed a dispute between two females at the feeder, and they are territorial and aggressive in defence, I’m assuming it’s the same bird.) But a close call, and a reminder to do this as soon as the feeder goes up each May.
This week I attended two oral storytelling events, another summer delight here in my city. Held in a shady section of a park on the river, I went for two reasons. One was simply to enjoy myself. The other was to listen to the structure and rhythms of the stories told, especially the ones traditionally told by grandparent to grandchild, the teaching stories, the folk tales that seem fanciful but pass on deep truths. I want to learn from this, both for myself and for the character in the work-in-progress who would be, some of the time, this sort of storyteller. The storytelling events continue weekly until early September. I hope to be at most of them.
Finally, on the third iteration, I think I’ve found an effective way to write the pivotal chapters in An Unwise Prince. (And in doing so, identified a minor plot thread that needs expanding.) I’m about halfway through this version, and it feels right this time.
I finished the on-line course I’ve been taking on medieval warfare — this is research primarily for the second book, A Distant Obligation, and while I’ve filed the notes away for future reference, my dreams are full of details from the course: the construction of castles, the machines of war, the horses, but mixed with aspects of the fictional medieval world of my books. I welcome this: it tells me that deep in my subconscious, an amalgamation of history and imagination is occurring, which will help create a believable reality on the page.
Briefly, because I really dislike self-promotion but I have a responsibility to the other writers in this anthology, here’s a quote from the newest review of Fate: Tales of History, Mystery and Magic.
‘you’ll find all of [the stories] fascinating and satisfying’
The song this week begins with the words “I dreamt of you…” and some of its imagery might evoke some of the old ballads of Scotland. But it’s modern. During the early days of writing Empire’s Passing, I was sitting in a lawn chair at an outdoor folk festival late on an August afternoon, listening to Garnet Rogers. He sang this song, So Happy, and all of a sudden I had an entire subplot and the final scene. Not the first time, and I doubt the last, that I found inspiration in a song.
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https://books2read.com/marianlthorpe