September and the spider lilies are one of my joys! I’ve written a novel, Spider Lilies Bleed, so of course, they hold a special place in my heart.

It’s fun taking pictures and seeing the different feelings you get depending on the background, the surrounding elements, the number of flowers in the photo, the width of the focus (how much you allow into the frame), and of course, the angle of the shot. And when I think about that, I think that writing fiction is not so different from taking photographs: there may be a central character (a central element) focused upon, but the angle of “the shot,” how much you decide to widen your lens, what characters (colors) you decide to surround the central one with, the “lightness” or “darkness” of the background, will make all the difference in how readers perceive that central character.

Anyway, enjoy the flowers below, as well as the snippets from Spider Lilies Bleed.

Do you get different feelings from the different shots?

In their little clumps, the spider lilies seem to stand guard. They’re unarmed soldiers. They watch over the voice. When I run Guru’s weak beam of light over them, they shimmer scarlet red. I sit down. It’s a good spot. I don’t see any reason to leave.

I’ve had one of those dreams that feel so real. I was in the middle of a giant field of yellowing rice, protected by a circle of spider lilies. The spider lilies were three times as tall as I was. Electric currents were racing around the curling petals that formed their red halos. The halos squealed with red light. The power generated flowed into the long red antennas and shot out into the dark sky.

“Everywhere you go,” she says, “people have different nicknames for them. Grave flowers. Funeral flowers. Snake flowers. Razor flowers. Ghost flowers. Dead man flowers. Hell flowers. Orphan flowers. . . .

“At the equinox, spirits become active. That’s why people visit gravesites this time of year. It’s the time of year when people need to feel close to the ones they’ve lost–and the spider lilies help them. . . .

“But most people don’t want to think about death more than they have to. That’s why they don’t want them in their gardens.”

Different color, different feeling?

She waves, then walks over into a little gravel area and guides our car in. She’s holding a pair of scissors and a single spider lily. She’s got one of the sweetest smiles I’ve ever seen.

A single flower under an azure sky, a patch of flowers among dark green weeds and shaded by trees. Same feeling?

Thanks for reading! When September rolls around again, enjoy the spider lilies–if they grow near you!