Deborah Cooke: Author

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about rhythms in our lives, cycles that repeat and intersect and sometimes even collide.

There’s the rhythm of the year, the cycle of the seasons and of various seasonal celebrations.

There’s the rhythm of the family, the cycle of birthdays and weddings anniversaries to be celebrated and commemorated.

There’s the rhythm of work – for me that’s the cycle of proposal, negotiation, contract, writing, editing, and promoting. The cycle for each book overlaps the cycles of other books, the writing taking precedence over everything else.

And all of these rhythms jockey for position and attention. They also compete with the interruptions caused by sudden events, both good and bad.

We have an extended-family rhythm, Mr. C. and I, which sees a very intense period of celebration from roughly November through February each year. Some of this is the holiday season, but there are also a whole whack of birthdays falling into that period of time. This year, that collided with my having a bunch of deadlines AND needing to do promo work for KISS OF FATE. It’s been a wild ride these last couple of months, but we’re through that phase now.

Phew.

And now we enter the family phase of winter vacations. Everyone in our family except Mr. C. and I are beachy people, and they head to points south at varying intervals between now and Easter.

Mr. C. and I, btw, are not beachy people. The last time we went on a winter vacation, we went to Paris (France) in February. It rained. It was damp and silver-grey and utterly beautiful. I think we were the only tourists in town and we loved every minute of it. We’re just not beachy people.

So, I’m looking forward to the departure of the beachy people and their joy in finding a degree of beachiness in the dead of winter. I’m also loving the fact that my desk is comparatively clean, and that spring is on its way. The willow branches are turning yellow-green, and there are buds on the trees. The cardinal is singing and the geese are passing through, heading north. The snow is melting, so I’m on First Flower watch.

How about you? Does your family have annual rhythms? Do you? Are you a beachy person?