I will be on holiday in Singapore when this is published and although it is a family visit, which I know will include more card and board games than I actually want but, as a good grandmother, I will play, my mind has already turned to holiday reading.
Some of the books I've most enjoyed I've discovered on holiday, not because I've chosen and taken them with me but because I've found them on the pre-loved shelf in a hotel or on a cruise ship, visited a secondhand bookshop in a newly discovered town or village, or, on one occasion, bought in a sale in a National Trust stately home.
When I'm at home my book choices are mostly governed by conversations with friends, titles I've read about, what is on the suggestion table at the library or a book giftedly by someone. On holiday it is different. I go with the flow, open to anything that looks interesting, and over the years this has introduced me to authors I'd never heard of whose books have given me immense pleasure. Whether such a laissez-faire attitude will be possible in Singapore I don't know, but I hope so.
Often the books I write are set in places where I've been on vacation because my other holiday activity is taking in the atmosphere, the scenery and the people, learning about the culture and enjoying the food. So much so that the tagline on my website is a ticket to romance!
While nearly every one of my novels is linked to somewhere I have visited, the two that offer the reader the best means of holiday escape are Cabin Fever and Reluctant Date. I visited and enjoyed the places featured in the books so much that I just had to write about them.
Cabin Fever takes the reader from London to New Zealand and then on a cruise to Australia and back again, while Reluctant Date is set on the North West coast of the UK and an idyllic Florida key, with a trip to the Swanee River thrown in. Sometimes I take these, and others, down from the shelf in my study and re-read them to remind myself of past times and why I had to write the story. I hope that while I am in Singapore I will be equally inspired...and maybe I'll find another of those serendipitous books as well.
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