Vacation Time Slipping

We often talk of combining research trips and writing inspiration, so today I want to share a trip with you that was a very cool experience for me. But I also have a question. They're connected. Bear with me and you'll see how.

Do you read time slip/dual timeline or time travel stories?

I'm assuming if you do, you enjoy them, but I wonder, do you feel like a story needs to have a deeper moral question or lesson if it's going to extend across multiple eras?

I've been dabbling in timeslip/dual timeline stories since way before they became a thing. I fell in love with the subgenre when reading two of Barbara Michael's books - Ammie, Come Home and Patriot Dreams.

I have several of them I have worked on over the years, but when I sold to LIS, I tried to keep my focus on suspense.

But sometimes those voices from the past beckon.

I had that happen this summer.  We thought it would be too painful to go back to the place we had vacationed when my husband was alive, so my daughters, cats, dog and I vacationed in York, ME.  We rented a pet-friendly home within walking distance of 2 beaches.
It was gorgeous.

The pets all got along!

As lovely as it was...

I confess, I had an ulterior motive for choosing York Beach. Last winter, I read this article about a Revolutionary War ship being unearthed during a storm.


The ship was first uncovered during a storm  in 1958. Enough sand was washed away to reveal the skeleton of the sloop. A spring nor'easter uncovered it again in 1980, and it has resurfaced in major storms since in 2007, and most recently in 2018.

https://www.seacoastonline.com/article/20130313/NEWS/303130401

CNN did a story on it too, with a video.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/06/us/maine-shipwreck-revealed-trnd/index.html

This is what the beach looks like on a lovely summer day.

But this was what the storm unearthed.

This story totally captured my imagination, and since no one knows the origin of the ship, I want to write a timeslip book about it. I want to imagine the people who sailed it, and maybe the families who were waiting for them to come home. My imagination is having fun with all the "what if" questions.

Which brings me back to my original question - if you're a fan of timeslip/dual timeline books, do you want them to have a deeper meaning, carry more of a message, or just be entertaining.



Here are some lovely ocean waves to watch while you contemplate the question.

Of course, while you're looking at these photos, I'll be back in school. Today is our first dull day with the students, so I'll only be able to check in at lunch and then after school.

From Sea to Shining Sea, by Carol J. Post

I am currently plotting a new series. One of the things I love about starting a new book or series is visiting and researching the setting. There are so many intriguing and beautiful places across the US. I live in Florida but also spend a lot of time at my sister’s place in North Carolina, so until now, all of my stories have taken place in one of those two states.

Last April, my sister and I flew out to North Bend, Washington and visited friends. On our way back to the Seattle airport, I got a call from my agent who said that Love Inspired wanted me to write a story for the Baby Protectors series. When she finished telling me all the requirements, she said, “They also want the story set in a western state…kind of like where you are right now!” I said if I could use North Bend, Washington for my setting, I would do it. Of course, that was going to involve another trip out west since we were already en route home.

When I got back to Florida, I set to work with Google and the zillions of pictures I had taken. One place that just had to make it into my story was the summit at Snoqualmie Pass.

Selfie against a background of snow
Me, my friend Nicole and my sister Kim

Even though it was April, our friend Nicole was keeping an eye on the weather and telling us how dangerous Snoqualmie Pass gets when snow comes in, which happens even that late in the year. After determining it was safe, we made the trip up to the west summit where we drove through a resort area with street names like Ober Strasse and Unterstrasse, and Swiss-style homes jutting up through a deep blanket of snow.

Home partially hidden by six-foot tall snow banks

Fortunately, the plow had come through, making the streets drivable. Besides being breathtakingly beautiful, it was the perfect location to have my hero and heroine and little niece snowed in and trapped when the bad guys come to get them!
 

Gazebo at Railroad Community Park, Snoqualmie

Another site I wanted to use was the Railroad Community Park in downtown Snoqualmie, which is one of the stops on the scenic train ride. The gazebo there seemed like a romantic place for a marriage proposal. Although I loved the park, we didn’t have time for the train ride on the first trip, so that was going to be a must-do for our follow-up trip.

By the time my sister and I returned in September, I had Dangerous Relations mostly written. Then it was time to revisit places I’d been in April to make sure I had all the details right, besides deciding on other things, like the perfect location for my heroine’s diner, the path the hero takes when trying to chase down the villain, and the hero’s housing accommodations near Naval Base Kitsap, where he’s stationed. (My sister’s military ID got us onto the base.)

Sis with her goodies

When we stopped at Vanity Fair, where the hero and heroine stop to pick up some things on their way out of town, we had to hit the clearance racks! 

During our September trip, we made time for the North Bend/Snoqualmie train excursion, which stopped at an interesting railway museum with exhibits and dozens of old railroad cars. The route made a loop, starting and ending at the Railroad Community Park we had visited in April. 

100-year-old passenger coach

Apples growing wild along the tracks

Looking down over Snoqualmie River Valley from the train

The series I’m working on now is set near Pensacola, Florida. I don’t have mountains, waterfalls and snow to work with, but beaches, rivers and bayous have their own beauty. And danger, especially if I throw in a hurricane, gators and a couple of bad guys!

What are some places you think would make a good setting for a Love Inspired Suspense novel or series? Any places you've been that you've fallen in love with?

Dangerous Relations is releasing September 1. You can check it out here:

Amazon    Barnes and Noble    Harlequin

He’ll do anything to save his niece…

In this The Baby Protectors novel

When her sister’s murdered, navy man Ryan McConnell insists on protecting Shelby Adair and their niece—especially after someone tries to kidnap little Chloe. But can Shelby trust the child’s uncle? After all, she’s convinced his family’s behind the attacks. But the longer Ryan shields them, the more Shelby wonders if becoming a forever family is their only shot at survival.

Carol J. Post splits her time between sunshiny Central Florida and beautiful Murphy, North Carolina. She writes fun and fast-paced inspirational romance and romantic suspense. Her books have won two Royal Palm Literary Awards and been nominated for two RITA® awards and an RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Book Award. Besides writing, she works alongside her music minister husband singing and playing the piano. She also enjoys sailing, hiking, camping—almost anything outdoors. Her two grown daughters and grandkids live too far away for her liking, so she now pours all that nurturing into taking care of two sassy black cats.

Allie Pleiter on rest and creativity

“It’s no accident that the best idea I’ve ever had in my life — perhaps maybe the best one I’ll ever have in my life — came to me on vacation.”  Having taken a bit of a break myself twice this summer—rare for me—I’ve been fascinated by Lin-Manwel Miranda drawing a direct connection between his vacation and his spectacular success with HAMILTON.  

I am a creature of persistence.  I can dig my heels in with the best of them. If you need someone to stick in there and bang at a problem or challenge until it relents, I’m your gal.

And, I am learning, that is not the gift I used to think it was.

God is teaching me the value of rest and play—seasonally and daily.  It is the essential fuel that runs creativity and grace, the enemy of scarcity, the seed of joy.

“The moment my brain got a moment’s rest, ‘Hamilton’ walked into it,” Miranda says in a recent interview.  As I look to my next series beyond the Blue Thorn Ranch, I need some new characters walking into my brain, so I’ve been seeking ways to give it rest.

Sure, anyone who knows me knows one of my favorite ways to play is with yarn and knitting needles.  Trouble for us writers, however, is that one of the places we also love to rest and play is in books.  Rather a “busman’s holiday,” wouldn’t you say?

For me, I have to be careful about what I read or my brain kicks into “work mode.”  Audio books help with this, as does reading outside the genre I’m working in.  For example, I’m knee-deep in contemporary romance, so Kristy Cambron’s The Ringmaster's Wife was the perfect retreat for me recently.

What about you?  What do you read when you need to “play”?  Where do you find rest and rejuvenation when you need it?

Hello, my darlings. Elnora's in a good mood because I made my deadline this week. I'm going to take a few days off and rest up until I start all over again. But I thought it would be fun to show you the fruits of my labor over the past three years, starting in the fall of 2013 when I first started this contract. I love to write. I love sitting in my little room with view telling love stories. So other than the times I've beat my head against the wall or thrown a few shoes or ate too much chocolate or had me a royal hissy fit and stomped my feet and left the house to go shopping or maybe had a little tizzy tantrum and headed off to the beach a few times, I've been perfectly content writing all of these stories. I also have an ulterior motive for doing this. I want you to read. If you don't read my books, read someone's book and send me a picture of you reading on the beach, or on a bench, or in your car or even in a bar. I'll post them on social media, with your permission. Send them to LNwrite2@aol.com and put Reading a Book in the subject line! God gave women books so they wouldn't go AWOL, after all. I want you to have a great summer. We'll call it the Summer of Love!

So here goes. Let's stroll through my marathon book collection. This is all of the books I've written since mid-2013 (and four more on the way but I don't have covers for them yet!) Send me those pictures!

                                                                                 

Happy Monday everyone!

I've been enjoying the vacation photos that people have been sharing. They got me to thinking of one of my favorite vacation spots - the southern coast of Maine.

I remember years ago watching Angela Lansbury on Murder She Wrote and deciding I wanted to live in Cabot Cove, ME. 

Apparently Cabot Cove wasn't real, and the TV series was actually filmed on the West Coast in Mendocino, CA, but the fictional town was named after an inlet in Kennebunkport, ME.


We've been coming to Maine ever since my daughter chose a college here and I've found the real towns of Kennebunk/Kennebunkport and Ogunquit to be just as wonderful as Cabot Cove. They've also inspired quite a few stories that I'm working on.

I thought I'd share some of my pictures today and then maybe we can chat about what vacation spots you've been to that have inspired your stories.

 These are from the coast along The Marginal Way. (click to enlarge)

I took this short video along The Marginal Way.

These stretches of wild, rocky coast give way on one side to Perkins Cove with it's lobster boats and cute shops --

and on the other side to smooth sandy beaches in Ogunquit and Wells.

I was lucky enough to catch sunrise over the ocean back in April.

and snap this shot of the ocean just before twilight last summer

If you haven't guessed by now, this is one of my most favorite places on earth. Even my dog loves it here!

Summer

or winter

So do you have a special place that you love to write about? Or if you're not a writer, what is your favorite place to visit?