A Little Something I’ve Been Working On…

There is something rather wonderful about holding a book in your hands before anyone else knows quite what is happening with it.

For the past several days, I’ve been doing just that.

If you’ve been following along here, you know that I’ve spent much of this year writing the fourth and final novella in The Seasons of Eleanor. There have been early mornings at my desk, pages written and rewritten, sentences moved around, chapters read one more time, and all those tiny decisions that somehow become part of making a book.

And now, I can hold it.

Autumn.

The fourth season.

I thought I might immediately feel the need to hurry on to the next step. Instead, I’ve found myself wanting to stay right here for a little while.

I’ve carried the book from room to room. I’ve set it on the coffee table and picked it up again. I’ve turned through its pages even though I already know every one of them. And more than once, I’ve placed it beside the other three books and simply looked at them.

Winter. Spring. Summer. Autumn.

Four little books.

Four seasons.

When I began writing the first one, I don’t think I fully understood where Eleanor would take me. What began as a story became a journey through seasons, homes, memories, friendships, loss, change, and the quiet ways we learn to carry our lives with us.

And somewhere along the way, her seasons began to echo some of my own.

Perhaps that is why finishing this one feels different.

There is excitement, certainly. There is also something quieter underneath it—a kind of gratitude.

I am realizing that not every accomplishment needs to be rushed immediately into its next moment.

Sometimes we are allowed to sit with what we have finished.

To hold it.

To remember where we were when we began.

And to quietly say, I did this.

So that is where I am on this late-August morning.

There will be more to share soon. But today, I am simply enjoying the rather extraordinary feeling of seeing all four seasons together and knowing that this little journey I began has become something I can actually hold in my hands.

And for right now, that feels like enough.

Winter. Spring. Summer. Autumn.

A year of Eleanor.

And, in ways I never could have anticipated when I began, a little bit of my own year tucked between the pages too. 🩷