Weather suddenly turning autumny, wet, and cold, I got a seasonal flu with relative headache, itchy throat, and runny nose. Despite adverse conditions, both inside of me and outside of the house, my writing hasn’t suffered. Instead I’m witnessing a moment of intense inspiration. My illustrations for the kids book are taking a considerable number of hours, but I like what I’m doing with them. TCOM has reached 30k and its main characters are about to experience a big change in their young lives. X is slowly but steadily growing into something that could have a chance to become a full-fledged story. Only Notturno is sleeping in its cozy folder. I do feel slightly guilty about that, but not a lot I can do about it at the moment.

From X, because an author must have fun at least once a week.

Allegra blinked once, and then when her eyes showed her the same sight, she blinked again. The big foyer was empty. Floor to ceiling empty; no furniture, tapestries, decorations. Nothing. She breathed slowly. The air inside the room reflected the same state of emptiness by carrying no scents to her nose. She started shaking.

“Nothing?” Julius stepped by her side.

“Nothing.” She knew he would ask her to go visit the rest of the house and started walking toward the end of the foyer before he would say the words. She saw her siblings playing hide and seek with her, their favorite spot to hide a big armoire that used to fill the entire wall she was presently looking at. The dark piece of furniture one of their mother’s whims. Allegra had always thought the armoire ugly, now she was looking at the striped ivory and yellow wallpaper and hoped to see it here, interrupting the pattern. The foyer opened to a corridor dotted with doors on both sides and led to the internal courtyard. She opened the doors as she went—her father’s studio, her mother’s craft room, her brother and sister’s playroom, the small library where she had spent hours dreaming of faraway places —to find exactly what her nose was already telling her. Nobody and nothing was there anymore. They entered the internal courtyard and found the central pool still filled with water, but the koi fish which had resided there as long as she could remember where gone.