Several years ago, friends from church brought me a pepperoni pizza. My then-eleven-year-old son had told them that was the only kind of pizza I liked.
Reality? I like a few veggies – and even the occasional fruit – on my pizza with those meat toppings. Plain pepperoni was his favorite kind of pizza.
Then there were the peanut butter cups. Someone brought me peanut butter cups because my son had told someone it was my favorite candy. Truth? Kit-kat all the way, baby. Peanut butter cups were my daughter’s favorite. (Not that I didn’t eat every single last one, mind you…😉)
So when Mother’s Day came that same year, and my son made me a coffee mug in children’s church, it was no surprise when a friend sidled up next to me, eyebrows lifted high. “I just have to ask. All the other kids painted their mugs, but he kept yours white. He said you don’t have a favorite color…?”
Funny enough, he was right. I don’t have a favorite color. In fact, for most of my life, I said that white was my favorite color because you can do anything with it. It can be transformed to fit any mood. I still mostly feel that way…although you won’t catch me wearing white. With my luck, I would manage to dump black coffee, red Kool-Aid, and grimy axel grease on myself before I even got to breakfast.
Different colors evoke different images and emotions, don’t they? I hadn’t given color a lot of thought until I started writing Rainbow Falls. I realized that I’ve kind of shaped some of my characters to match their names, though. Jette Black is kind of intense and a bit darker than her friends. Skye Blue was – at least before her story finished – kind of sad. She was…well…blue. Rose Rhed is soft and kind of delicate (at least that’s the perception) and Ruby Rhed is bright and bold. Olive Green thought she was spectacularly ordinary, and she spent her life fighting against that feeling of being drab.
Then there’s Sunny Amarilla. Sunny is short for Sunshine, and Amarilla is Spanish for…you guessed it…Yellow. Can you imagine the expectations that come with a name like Sunshine Yellow?
Way back before I started writing Sunny’s character, I thought about the color yellow and how it makes me feel. Yellow makes me smile. It makes me happy. Yellow is bright and cheerful and uplifting.
Sunny is all of those things. She’s also flawed, though. She can be a little too bold, a little too brash. She can railroad over other people in her insistent enthusiasm. And she – like so many of us – often rushes words out of her mouth before she thinks them through. As my husband likes to say – she should do a better job of tasting her words before she spits them out.
Anyway. I hope you’re looking forward to Sunny Amarilla and her story as much as I am. Rainbow Falls Book 3 is underway. 😊
Heather Gray loves coffee, God, her family, and laughter – not necessarily in that order! She writes approachable characters who, through the highs and lows of life, find a way to love God, embrace each day, and laugh out loud right along with her. And, yeah, her books almost always have someone who's a coffee addict. Some things just can't be helped. Despite their different lives and situations, Heather’s characters have something in common. They're all flawed...but loved anyway.
I understand the colors! My favorite color has always been pink but the hue has changed as I grow.
As a child I loved baby/pastel pink which is very soft, in my adolescence I went for a slightly stronger pink, bubblegum pink and now at 26 I use a lot of strong pink pulling the so-called fuchsia. You can tell that the innocence of baby pink has been changing as I get older to shades of pink with more authority / that give away more character.
Hi Heather! I enjoy reading your Rainbow Falls series. Colors make the world shine. My granddaughter Maddie, since she is the first girl for this Oma (3 sons and 2 grandsons) loved the color purple. Now as a 3. grader when asked her favorite colors – it is the rainbow, since it includes ALL the primary colors she loves. Smart girl. Yes over the years and decades, color choices change. Looking forward to your next book – SUNNY yellow makes me smile, especially on an overcast rainy Michigan morning. Best Wishes.
I love yellow – it’s my son’s favourite colour and we painted his bedroom yellow, it always looks bright in there even on a dark winter day. Looking forward to Sunny’s story.
It is really hard to pick out a favorite color!! I like pretty much all of them with a few exceptions!! Your series sounds interesting!
It is hard to pick a favorite color sometimes. However, so is picking a favorite pizza topping and a favorite candy! If you look in my closet, you wouldn’t really guess that my favorite color is purple. If you looked at the walls in my home and my front door, you’d get a really good clue, though!! I have Skye’s book in paperback in my TBR stack! I really need to get to that stack!!
I love that! That’s so interesting that the color has stayed the same but the shade has changed. That makes perfect sense to me. While pink isn’t my favorite color, there was a time when I liked a softer versions of the color and times when I’ve liked brighter, bolder versions. And that has definitely changed with age. I wonder what shade you’ll like in another 10-15 years. :-)
Maddie’s one smart cookie! Thank you for stopping by the blog today, Renate!
Oh, yay! I can imagine how bright yellow would make a room. At one point, my kids shared a room, and we had two walls bright blue, one wall that was a really bright green, and one room that was a blinding shade of yellow. Thankfully, we ended up moving and selling the house before they outgrew the colors and we had to try to figure out how to paint over all that. The yellow would have been easy, but that blue was going to be a nightmare. ^_^
Ooooh. Now I want to know what those exceptions are. ^_^
Ha! One time, when my son was young, we were reviewing his colors, and he kept insisting he knew what purple was, but he couldn’t identify it on the page. So I asked him to show me purple. He ran into my closet, pulled out a skirt, and said, “Here! This is a purple.” It was the only piece of purple clothing I owned, and also the only skirt – so he thought it was a purple, not a skirt. That memory still makes me chuckle. ^_^
Your post was very interesting. I love all the “color” names of your characters. Makes me want to read your Rainbow Falls series. I will be adding that to my list.
I love color. All colors. Right now it is the turquoise color of Lake Michigan, although I am an Ohio girl. I am drawn to shades of aqua blue.
Thank you for your colorful blog today.
Yay! Looking forward to Sunny’s story. I love the Rainbow Girls!
interesting name
I love all the colors, but blue is my absolute favorite. Thank you for sharing. God bless you.
when asked my favourite colour it will alternate in the way I say Red and Blue. sometimes its Blue and Red and I love Yellow too. I tend to like the lighter blues but also love royal blue. I like the true blue colours more so than the ones tinged with green or purple.
Most people who know me know I dislike with a passion pink (hey its ok for others just not me). One year mum went to the regional centre with friends shopping and got me a skirt that was blue but had some pink roses on the bottom (this was ok cos it was blue). The friend insisted the pink top would go so well with it and I would love it. Mum said no she wont she will hate it and won’t wear it. But as it was on special and not too much Mum got it to appease the lady. Mum was right I didn’t like it and didn’t wear it. Loved the skirt. As a kid I did wear pink at times but they were normally handme downs from the cousins. When I got a new dress it was normally blues, reds or yellow.
I find yellow a sunny colour and bright and calming. Your new book sounds interesting.