Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall – Does the Season Matter?

 by Jean C. Gordon

Do you what September is? September is National Chicken Month. Thank you Little Gray, Yellow, Brown, and Yellow Spot for posing. 

It's also the beginning of Fall, my favorite season, ushered in at 10:29 last night. My birthday is in September. Our wedding anniversary is in September. We're blessed with beautiful fall foliage. And school starts. I was enough of a geek that I always looked forward to going back to school.

Which brings me to a question: Does the season a book is set in influence your book choices? Aside from holiday-month books — I love holiday books — I never gave much thought to the season in which a book was set, either in my reading or my writing, until my ninth book, Small-Town Mom. The season only came to my attention then when we were at the cover stage. The story takes place in the dead of a frigid Adirondack Mountains winter. But the book came out in June, and initially, the cover had no snow and looked like spring, not winter. The dusting of snow was added to bring it into season.

With the books I've written since then, I've thought about when it will be published and tried to mesh the story's season with the publication season (or close). And, just for fun, I checked the seasons my books are set in. Four are set in the fall, one in the winter, and the rest take place in the summer.