This is today’s question.

About a year ago, something happened to me I can’t explain.  Out of nowhere, I developed an interest in perfume that swiftly became an obsession. Not logical, said my electrical engineer’s mind. My nose overrode and swiftly built a kit to teach me perfumery notes (see pic). In the process, I accumulated more than 687 perfume samples, most free from perfume houses or counters to encourage us to buy an FB (full bottle).

Some so delighted my enraptured nose that  it raided my alarmed pocketbook to do just that.  This happened more than once.

I learned my favorite notes are Jasmine, Rose, Bergamot, Neroli, Amber, Sandalwood and Musk.  The next time I make soap, I’m going to use that combo for scent. (Tip: homemade soap doesn’t have its glycerin spun out to make lotion for softening dry skin the altered soap creates!)

I learned perfumes can take us faraway and write stories in our minds.  However, I’m a novelist now.  I’m supposed to write stories in actual books. Logically, I had no time to linger over any other obsession. Sometimes I wonder, though. Did  my body conspire to give me the time by making me too sick to write? (See Not Afraid of Ebola posts)

Now I am well, though!  Nothing prevents my return to The Enemy Apostle, final thriller in The Jesus Thief series.  It’s a third draft — i.e., readable, but not yet what it can become.  In sum, a young boy named Peter gets in an incredible mess in Milan, Paris and New York, trying to educate himself about life. Beautiful vistas, a moment of bliss followed by heartbreak, danger, a betrayal, love that willingly risks its life all await draft four.

“All right, I’m coming!” I promise the characters, distracted, “but what perfume will I wear?”  One sits suggestively amid my desktop’s menagerie. Named after the twilight period when the sun, just below the horizon, gives off a blue hue, L’Heure Bleue is my newest arrival. When I first smelled a sample, I couldn’t believe anything could be this beautiful.  I spray it on  and once again am lost.

Hmmm. Morning twilight is usually when I start my writing day. It’s past that now. “Hang on, Peter,” I say.  “In l’heure bleue tomorrow I’ll be back.”

If you have a signature scent or favorite notes–if you’re a perfume addict, too, and it’s threatening to take over your life–do tell us about it.