Welcome to the first edition of Behind the Scenes (BTS)  Friday! That's a thing right? As any writer knows, sometimes the process can be a long, lonely and arduous one. But it is also filled with deep love for our characters and enchantment as we build and create a completely new world populated with our own imagination of characters.

After completing my final round of edits on A Week at the Woods' last month, I made the decision to send out inquiry letters to a few different reputable literary agencies - eek! Very exciting and nerve wracking but I decided to take a leap and see where I landed. The only thing is, now we wait! It can take up to three months to hear anything back so I have actually begun to work on my next novel in the mean time. Yes, the first one isn't published yet and only my editor and I have actually read it through from start to finish, but what better time to start creating another new world to get lost in?

Before I go into too much detail on this new project - it is after all, a very new relationship and I don't want to rush anything just yet - I wanted to share a tiny excerpt from the book jacket of A Week at the Woods' since I have had so many supportive friends reach out and ask me what it's all about:

If you love a big family dramedy filled with multiple points of views and a deep love for one another, than this is the book for you!

I'd also love to hear from the writers out there - how do you celebrate finishing a novel? Do you immediately start reaching out to publishers? Take the self publishing road? Do you start right into your next project? Or sit with the finality of your cherished characters and how their stories ended? 

In October, we celebrate Thanksgiving here in Canada. And while we tend to be very warm, welcoming and accommodating here in the North, I think we all go just a little bit further during these cooler months. We pause, give thanks to friends and family but also to those in our community in need. Perhaps it has something to do with the cruelness of winters here that we feel the need to let the warmth come from within us.

Either way, autumn has to be one of my absolute favourite seasons. In fact, I was recently listening to the Ologies podcast with Alie Ward and she said she had a theory that everyone's favourite season is the one their birthday is in and perhaps that explains my family's obsession with Fall and Christmas. Majority of us were born October - December (sorry pops - no spring babies counted here). There are also so many fantastic quotes about this time of year that lend themselves to the magic of the season. I've included a few of my favourites here:

• “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald
  
• “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers” - Lucy Maud Montgomery
  
• “The trees are about to show us how lovely it is to let the dead things go.” - Unknown
  
  

So while the nights start to draw in, and the long hot days of summer slip away, I'm going to smugly sit here, piling some freshly chopped wood into our fireplace. I'm going to let the dancing glow of the flames mimic the beautiful golds and reds outside my window and enjoy this fantastic reminder from Mother Nature that we can all slow down a bit now, we can shed that which doesn't belong anymore and spend the colder months doing a little work on the inside - inside our homes and inside our hearts.

How about you? I'd love to hear which season is your favourite and why!