Notes of Autumn

Connected as a former pianist and cellist respectively who played together, best friends Ellie Matthews and Leo Carrington rarely see each other in living in different places, Ellie in the American city of Westerhaven, and Leo in the small Canadian town of Pinewood. Leo willingly moved on from his musical life to become the successful author of the Parkington Manor historical romance novel series. While the comfort of the familiar has worked for him in the past in not being an adventurous person, he having churned out a novel a year in the last fifteen years in the safety of Pinewood, he currently has writer's block as he is working to a deadline for number sixteen in the series. Julliard-trained Ellie, however, has moved from one career to another proverbially to "pay rent, buy food, and buy clothes", those career moves usually not her choice, although her move away from music was largely in self-doubt after a professional setback. When she is fired from her latest job as an event planner at an upscale hotel for being too distracted, Ellie suggests to an ultimately agreeable Leo that they switch homes for two weeks as a change of environment, for Leo to be inspired by new surroundings to unblock, and Ellie in trying to figure out what to do with her stalled life. In miscommunication, both are surprised by promises each made before leaving home affecting the other in the swap: Leo's that Ellie would help his friend and next door neighbor, Sam Perkins, owner/operator of the one-person business Pinewood Nature Tours, organize the town's annual fall fundraising event, the Piano Ball, but more importantly for Sam guide the string quartet in the fundraiser's centerpiece, a performance of Antonio Vivaldi's Autumn from "The Four Seasons", especially as classical musical is not the genre preferred by any of the members of the cobbled together quartet; and Ellie's that her friend, the hotel's executive chef Matt, could use her kitchen as he prepares for an investors' dinner for his own restaurant, he a bundle of indecision as the hotel has always dictated his menu. Both Ellie and Leo do not welcome the intrusion on the reason for the home swap, but ultimately commit to the promises made by the other, largely in they forming a connection to Sam and Matt. Burgeoning romances form between Ellie and Sam, and between Leo and Matt, as each inspires the other in the partnership in new directions in the other's life. What happens between each couple is affected by the success or failure of those new life paths. Written by Huggo