My favorite time of year is Fall. The weather gets crisp. I go on a spree and buy myself fancy duds: wingtips, shirts, ties. I turn it out in the Fall, because that is when everything changes: with change comes newness; with newness, transformation; with transformation, redemption. Like my characters, I am always searching for redemption.
Fall in Southern California is hard to spot for outsiders but it is there—a subtle grace note. There is a certain smell. The pace suddenly quickens—a pulse of energy—and people get out of their summer daze. You know Fall has come, first, because of that Indian Summer that descends upon Los Angeles—the last gasp of Summer heavy in denial of its disappearance. Just as suddenly, it’s over. Women stop wearing strappy summer dresses.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what season my Detective, Robert, would like. I think that Robert is melancholic. He likes music played in a minor key. Slow songs. He doesn’t listen to lyrics. He craves the summer but finds it tedious after a few weeks. What he feels most comfortable in is the dead of Los Angeles winter; then, the temperatures get down to fifty and there are landslides off the Malibu coast.
I used to work at a department store—seasonal work that began in the Fall. I was what they called a floater and I went from department to department: a transient. I learned that in certain departments, they would analyze customers by their colors. “You are an Autumn,” I learned to tell people with confidence. And then I would help them pick out colors. “You are a Summer” and voila, another set of colors.
There was a logic to that. Sometimes, I wish that storytelling were that way. I wish that knowing that Robert is a creature of the Winter would allow me to pick out all the right accessories—the accoutrements that would set him off to fine effect. The perfect villain, the perfect sidekick, the perfect socks–these would reveal themselves to me with the aid of a little cheat sheet I kept next to the computer.
Fall and clothes … I remember you writing about clothes before Khanh.
Yes, I thought your character is about winter. I’m intrigued, when are you going to share bits of him? When is this novel going to be done? You have us all on tippy-toes now.
I used to think I was an autumn… turns out I’m a spring. Still, on more days than my color consultant would approve of, beautiful slimming and mysterious black is what I turn to.
Enjoy the fall collection.
Hi Audrey–I recently was informed by Hyphen Magazine that a portion of my novel was to be published: a murder scene and the opening monologue. I didn’t want to share this with people because little presses operating on tiny budgets can be so slow in getting things done. Maybe I’ll share something here.
By the way: thanks for asking about the book progress. That is what writers need: deadline-talk. I swear that the book will be done very very soon. There’s only a few more chapters left!
Khanh – I like your creative idea of thinking about characters in terms of seasons. I’ll have to think about that for my own protagonist. It really does help you get a sense of the character’s moods, disposition and so on. And by the way, I couldn’t agree more about autumn. I absolutely adore it. And I very much miss ‘real autumn.’ I grew up on the East Coast…
Margot–The LA writer, John Rechy, gets annoyed by people who don’t “get” Southland Fall. But I don’t. I have always wanted to experience that kind of foliage you mention–East Coast reds, oranges, yellows: it’s on my bucket list. When I moved to the Midwest, I thought I would get it. But, no, Fall foliage arrives for a nanosecond and the windswept prairie ushers in a crazy storm and all the leaves are off the trees. Seattle’s Fall is the closest I got. I loved walking the bike trail by my lakeside house and enjoying the still, bright colors.
Fall is the perfect season in LA. I love fall more than anything else, which is a shame that I never get a chance to see it now. I always arrive in LA during the summer or spring, when I like it least.
Delia, Fall is such a welcome relief after the heat of summer. I wrote this piece at the height of the Indian Summer, which is the true indicator of Fall. Indian Summer is like an autocratic dictator in a Third World Country; he makes a fuss because he knows his time is up. So, in one sense, it was a piece of wishful thinking…even as I knew Fall was a moment away. Was I manifesting? Is this what prayer is all about? Too metaphysical for me. I decided that if I made Fall come, I would take out all the sheepskin rugs and cover my hardwood floors with them!