#writerslife

Somewhere over the last week I moved from creating A+ content to creating what’s becoming a visual bible for the Veronica Tracey Spy/PI Series. How?Well, I wanted to see my version of my characters – and use them, some of them, with some other images on Amazon, right? If you have a look at [Nothing happens here] – just pop through the link and scroll down the page, trust me, you be able to miss…

Then the monsoons come. But first, they tease. Clouds teeter on the horizon, swelling into complex layers, only to deflate over the mountains and deflate your own hope of relief. Extreme temperatures flirt with triple the usual humidity, and no electrolyte on earth can counteract that. Humans weren’t built to live in such extremes–yet we do.

The morning commute reads 118 on the dash. Sometimes it’s better if you don’t look.

Batteries give out in July; by August, air conditioners give up the ghost. But it’s almost autumn, so you give up yourself.

You quit fighting. You let the sun bake your skin into the seat, layer on your sunscreen and thrifted linen, and grimace every time you catch a whiff of sweat-salted polyester. Deodorant becomes non-negotiable–even the hippies give in.

You let the heat strip away any inkling of ego.

We’re all survivors here.

The desert will expose you in ways you couldn’t fathom. Die, or evolve–those are your options.

And every summer, the Mojave takes her offerings without remorse. Remorse is a human condition, one we rarely make good use of.

Our history books scream to us from the archives; online, we don’t hear them anymore.

But I can still hear the cicadas. They learned long ago the wisdom of seeking shelter in stable ground when the surface no longer feeds them. Yet the ground grows more unstable, and still, we build up. We build up and spread out, everyone claiming their right to a white vaulted ceiling, spreading our pestilence across the land and cursing it for its alleged hostility.

Late at night when the evening winds offer a fleeting respite, you’ll lay awake asking yourself why we’re the only species who seems never to learn not to work against nature.

But nature has its own way of helping us remember our history.