Wednesday's Words for August 12, 2009

The vacation continues!

We’re busily adding States to our list of places we have been; this vacation we’ve added 6. Maybe it’s cheating to add them if all we do is drive through them, but there you have it. By the time we get home, the list will stand at 27 out of 50 visited.

I never imagined I would travel so much!

Virginia Beach was a wonderful experience. I’m going to carry with me for weeks to come the tranquility of sitting on that tenth floor balcony, breathing in the sea air and listening to the surf. I did get to put my toes in the ocean. Doing much more than that is difficult for me, physically. I swam in the hotel pool, and that was fun.

How inspiring it was to write with the balcony door open, and the surf-sounds serving as background music. To look up and allow myself a few minutes of being mesmerized by the waves as they rolled in to shore. In the evening, and very early in the morning, it seemed as if it was just the ocean and me.

While in Virginia Beach, we had the opportunity to spend time with another writer and her family. What an awesome evening we had!

Have you ever met someone and instantly connected, felt as if you’ve known them forever? That’s the way it was when I met author Desiree de Cleves. I don’t think there was a quiet moment between us. A great bonus was that her beloved and mine hit it off instantly.

At the end of the evening we both wondered if we could pry the men apart.

What struck me as fascinating was that Desiree and I come from different countries, different backgrounds. Several years separate us. On the surface, we have nothing in common, really. But we are both authors.

We are both drawn, inexorably, to put ideas, thoughts, themes into words so that others may read them. This need does not come any desire for wealth or prominence; it evolves from the instinct to share.

There is nothing more exhilarating for me than spending time with a fellow author. The evening I spent with Desiree and her family is destined to be one of my most cherished memories of this vacation. Look for Desiree’s novel soon from eXstacy books.

So far, we’ve not experienced too many traffic delays. Only one major one, really. It took us nearly three hours to cover the distance from the end of the New Jersey Turnpike to the toll booths on the George Washington bridge. This was on Saturday, and at the time I didn’t know about the tragic accident over the Hudson River. A fellow traveler from New York, who was beside us in the next lane, guessed our delay had to do with a Yankees game. I’m not really certain at this point the true source of the delay.

The unfortunate part was that I hadn’t realized we’d be crossing this bridge, and by the time we were crossing it, I was too exhausted to enjoy the experience. We’d left Virginia Beach at 7:30 in the morning and this was coming up on 7 o’clock at night.

But travel delays are just a part of a driving vacation. And like I said last week, once you go into vacation mode, you need to set aside the concept of schedule and take an extra-heaping spoon full of patience.

We’ve arrived in Bar Harbor, and I’ll tell you all about it next week!

Love,
Morgan
Feed the flames of your passion… with a novel by Morgan Ashbury
http://www.bookstrand.com/authors/morganashbury