Tomorrow morning–early–well, for me early is any time before they stop serving Egg McMuffins at McDonalds, I’m heading off with my family to the vacation cabin we’ve gone to since I was a year old. Now when I say my family, I don’t just mean immediate. I mean siblings and families. This year I think it rounds out to about 30 people. I’ve said before that a drunk lady once labeled us “The Last Functional Family in America.” It was on the beach in Michigan we had our run-in with her.
We have a whale of a time here. The kids are kids, the adults are kids, and the entertainment is watching storms come across the lake(the rule is that we all sit on the deck with our gin and tonics until lightning hits the flagpole). There are no TVs, no radio, and only one emergency phone. Cell and wi fi can’t make it around the surrounding dunes. It’s….QUIET. It’s away from everything. It’s heaven.
So what am I going to do while I’m there? Why, write, of course. Actually, during the day I’m going to be doing research. You can’t really research a fairy kingdom you’ve made up yourself, so that’s a gimme. But I can reread Infamous Army by Georgette Heyer to get me in the mood and place for my regency adventure series. I’m also reading books on regency etiquette and battle tactics. I can’t wait. I’m also going to give that collage thing a try. If this series goes the way I want it to, I’m going to have to put together about ten extended peerage families. They need faces, names, houses and animals. So I’m bringing magazines on English architecture, history, etc, and those People magazines with beautiful people in them. I guess if I have ten families, some of them are going to have to be blondes(have you ever noticed that there are more dark haired-blue-eyed English heroes than you’ll find in the entire empire….including Wales?) So I’m going to be cutting pictures like a third-grader.
For my suspense I’m reading books on criminal motivation by John Douglas and psychiatric disorders. I’m going to be putting down the basic plot. I already have the okay from my most important forensic research person for the plot and characters. I really would tell you who she is and what her expertise is, but I”m just too superstitious. I don’t want to ruin my mojo for the book.
Okay, I’m going to be doing that all out on the deck in the sun with my daughter, sister and sisters-in-law while my brothers play golf. I’ll get the research in around long, convoluted discussions on the family(especially the ones not there) and breaks for storms and the hot event of tankers coming into the harbor(I wrote a romance called Hot Shot that I set in Grand Haven, and my favorite scene involves a tanker arrival). Not that I really need to soak up even more atmosphere, but I will. The beginning of my suspense takes place in a town called Blue Harbor, Michigan which is really Grand Haven(but which I change the name to so I don’t get caught in mistakes—“No, the Prontopup hotdog stand is in the first block of Washington. Not the second.”)
And then, at night, when everybody but me is in bed, I’ll pull out the laptop and play in the world of faerie. Nights are the best time for faeries, after all. And there won’t be anything to distract me there….except the moon on the water, the sound of the waves, the raccoons digging in the trash cans….
So, if I can stir myself to get off the deck and into town where they swear the whole town is wi-fied, I’ll blog for you then. Otherwise, see you in a couple. I’ll be busy working…..yeah.
eileen/kathleen, the evil twins
Very Interesting!
Thank You!