Tag: fall

We’re celebrating twenty-five years since Guilty Pleasures was first published. It came out in time for Halloween that year, and I got to add that to all the other reasons October is my favorite month. I love autumn. Late summer as the weather begins to turn cooler all the way through the end of October is my favorite time of year. I was raised without air conditioning, so the heat and humidity of summer going away was part of my love of fall. It’s easier to bundle up in jackets and sweaters for warmth than to stay cool in less clothing. But September was the beginning of fog. Sometimes the fogs were so thick that the start of school would be delayed for hours. Once I was old enough to drive, the fog wasn’t so fun; but when I was younger I thought fog was magical. It turned the ordinary into something mysterious. A foggy world was full of hidden dangers, monsters, or maybe a fantasy world that you could accidentally walk into through that soft, wet, gray cloud cover. From the trees blazing with color, fog, rain, cooler temperatures, it always made my muse happy even before I realized that I wanted to be a writer.

But now autumn means something else to me: boot weather! Boots and shoes in general weren’t that important to me until after I created the character, Jean-Claude. He walked on stage fully formed and very who he was from the first scene. He was a serious clothes horse from the beginning and elegantly fashionable. I was none of these things. I have pictures to prove that I dressed by picking the T-shirt on the top of the pile, jeans, and tennis shoes. I never wore makeup. I just didn’t care. I was raised that what I looked like didn’t matter, what I could do was what mattered. And then Jean-Claude came into my life and onto the pages of my novel. To be able to design his clothes and keep him dressed in the style to which he demanded. I bought my first copy of Vogue and other fashion magazines. I watched fashion shows on TV. I so could have used Fashion TV back then, but it was the late 1980s, so I went to the library to find research books on clothing through the ages, and costuming. I’d never worn a pair of stilettos, but researching for Jean-Claude opened up the world of shoes to me, and his voice in my head was what helped me learn to walk in heels higher than three inches. Writing him as a character made me more interested in clothes, makeup, even trying to gain control of my curls. I don’t think I would have needed a second closet just for shoes if it wasn’t for researching clothes, and especially boots, for Jean-Claude. So, now autumn doesn’t just mean, “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,” as John Keats wrote, or apple picking and apple cider, or a dozen other wonderful things. Now it means boot weather.