Moscow got spring before we did here in the Twin Cities, but the last of the unseasonable fluffy white stuff has melted off and today I am abroad and afoot, taking the first walk of the season not in the winter boots. I’ve settled into a comfy seat at the Lavvu Coffeehouse, a new establishment just on the other side of highway 35W opposite the University of Minnesota East Bank campus.

As a NaNo novelist I’m always on the lookout for new writing places. There’s something about getting out of the house and writing someplace different that gets the brain running on a new set of tracks, and I look at my coffee drink as the rent I pay on elegant office space. Today I’m recovering from a wickedly stressful week at Ye Olde Day Jobbe, puttering with email correspondence and thinking-aloud on the blog. I have a whole list of backlogged entries, and of late I’ve been doing more reading than writing. I’m preparing for the summer campaign season, with CONquest (Kansas City) and CONvergence (Minneapolis/St. Paul) in my immediate future. 

Puttering, too, on my Vampire Variations story, as I queue up this Saturday’s Weekend Writing Warriors entry and think about the projects that have been hanging fire for the last months as the day job has gotten more soul-devouring. Yes, you’re so in my novel, as my NaNoBuds put it, which is cold comfort indeed.

For the nonce, though, I’m kicking back in this airy sunlit space while jazz plays on the sound system and the handful of us here putter away on our laptops.