by Savannah Russe, 2006

ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED AT SavannahRusse.Blogspot.Com, August 02, 2005

The heat continues now in the dog days of August. A cicada chorus outside my open window fills the night with an eerie chirping. The bats have returned too, diving around the lamppost in the yard. These are small bats, dipping and soaring as they hunt mosquitoes. Last year larger ones dominated the sky. I wonder if they perished over the terribly cold winter we had. I prefer to believe they just moved down the road a bit. Bats only have one offspring a year, reproducing so slowly that all bat species are now endangered. So losing even a few from this area is disturbing.

As the temperatures climbed toward ninety today, I was sitting in front of my computer in the small room I call my office. I was writing about vampires again and once again the characters took over, carrying my heroine from present day New York back to London in 1808, to the night where she first saw Lord Byron, loved him, and sealed his fate. I hadn't expected to go there, to a masked ball in an elegant mansion in Regency England, but that is where I was led as Daphne Urban remembered the passion that haunts her still...

Ah well, the night air here is still heavy and hot. Time to get away from the computer and wander outside.