The year is on the turn. The first leaves are scattered on the driveway, fallen without even troubling to change color, tired and done before their fellows still holding to the trees. But even their green is dulled, tired with the weeks of summer, the brightness faded. And while the days are still warm, there’s a different coolness to the nights, promising that soon a blanket, neglected all summer, will be needed toward dawn.

I love the changing times of year, when the sense of time passing is so clearly before us. Someone once asked me why I have so much weather in my books. I said because weather is so integral to life that to leave it out of a story lessened the texturing I try for in my writing. The same holds true with seasons. The time of year often weighs heavily on how the characters live their lives.

That said, I’d like to claim that the terrible, cold, wet weather that permeated The Servant’s Tale, The Outlaw’s Tale, and The Bishop’s Tale was not my fault. Chronicles covering those years tell how bad the weather was, and so the weather was bad in my stories, too. I promise you that I greatly enjoyed setting The Boy’s Tale in warm, dry, sun-filled summer days!