Holidays

I’ve always daydreamed on long car drives, but I tend to do it much more often now I write more or less full time. And as many of my holidays include discovering new places off the beaten track (or going back to places I’ve been to before and loved) there is always a lot to daydream about.

I was lucky enough to get back to the Snowy Mountains region of NSW recently, where my family has spent many holidays over the years. We only ever went skiing with the children once (it is very expensive!) but we had such a wonderful time with so much laughter - all being out of our comfort zones at one time or another. Now the kids are all grown up, it would be lovely to go back together one day. With travel being restricted as it is at the moment, that might happen sooner rather than later!

The snow was great this year, as was the skiing, but I stopped on our road trip to capture other images as well—from donkeys to happily situated churches and homesteads, to trees and other scenes of natural beauty.

And as a bonus, I finally worked out where to set my book after the next book after Starting From Scratch (that would be 2023 which sounds like a long time away but it made me feel better to have a few ideas to kick around in the meantime!). The character I needed to locate is Hugo, the biologist from Starting From Scratch and I could very much see him in the mountains looking for endangered frogs and other wildlife.

Sometimes you have to leave the keyboard at home in order to find inspiration. So I’ll write a few notes and then get back to my 2022 project!