Less Than 24 Hours Until February Is Over

Posted on by Erin Bartels

It is a grand day, everyone. The last day of another February. Tomorrow it will be March. Let that sink in for a moment.

While you shiver on this sunny, 0°F morning; while my arctic dog is rolling around in the snow like an idiot; while we shuffle through yet another day that feels like a science experiment gone awry–all that time we are moving closer, moment by moment, to March.

Yes, it will be largely a symbolic victory. The battle against seasonal affective disorder will continue and we still can’t see the grass, but we shall overcome the snow in the end.

The birds are already starting to sing the victory song. Can you hear them?

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Arctic Blasts and the Reason for Fiction

Posted on by Erin Bartels

Thanks so much to so many of you who downloaded free stories yesterday. What took me by surprise was that the overwhelming favorite of the day was “Beneath the Winter Weeds,” the story I wrote last January. I suppose I had thought that people would be more interested reading about summer during this second (or is it third?) cold snap.

Perhaps fiction isn’t truly an escape from reality so much as it is an exploration of reality.

In case you were curious about what Michigan has been like the past few days, here’s the Lake Michigan lakeshore:

Be sure to watch the whole thing so you can see how this photographer found shelter from the storm.

This morning it’s cold (-10 on the thermostat–that’s -23 celsius for my international friends) and sunny and definitely the sort of morning that Valerie Steele might head into the woods to make her discovery…