“Nobody just dies in the winter,” Mrs. Joyce Thionnet, my eighth grade English teacher once told me. “When an author talks about winter it’s a metaphor for death. The trees are dead. Snow is still and silent. Death is cold.” “But what if the person in the story just happened to die in the winter? Like, coincidentally?” I asked. “There are no coincidences in fiction,” she said. “In fiction, winter equals death. Period.” — “I put a shovel in the back of the truck in case you guys hit snow on the way to Chicago,” Susan said Thursday night. Forcasters… (read more)