Road Trips

 

All my books are available at  http://www.bookswelove.com/baldwin-barbara/

            And we’re off. Whether everyone’s piled in the car or in a mobile RV; whether it’s just you, or you and a friend riding bikes or motorcycles, taking a road trip is one of the greatest adventures you can have. If you mapped out your trip beforehand, did you leave time for unexpected stops? Did you plan to specifically stop at tourist attractions along the way to your destination? Whatever you plan, DO NOT get in the car, buckle up and not stop until you get to your destination.

Lavender fields in Ontario, Canada

          

The very best road trips are those times you find unexpected treasures along the way. Sure, there are a whole lot of “The World’s Largest”…whatever. There are even towns that have very creatively turned themselves into a travel/tourist stop.

 One such place is Casey, Illinois, where throughout the town you will find the world’s largest golf tee, the world’s largest wind chimes, the world’s largest knitting needles (which actually work!), and the world’s largest rocking chair – all in one town!

            Yet the very best “finds” are sometimes “hidden in plain view”. Have you ever seen barn quilts while driving through the Midwest? What about a long, long row of fence with old cowboy boots upside-down on each of the fence posts? When we were kids traveling to grandma’s house in the summer, there were no interstates and we could find all sorts of things as we drove two lane highways. (Remember travel bingo?) Finding Burma Shave signs was always a great treat.

            

One of the most intriguing finds recently was during a drive from Niagara Falls, Canada to Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. The highway was cut through rocky hills and suddenly we began seeing rock statues high along the tops of rock outcroppings. These weren’t carved out of rock, but were rather what looked like statues of people made out of rocks. We were seeing them from the ground and they were anywhere from a foot to more than eighteen inches tall.

Further research when we had the time and we discovered they were “Inukshuk”, used by the Inuit in the north as directional markers. They are in the shape of a person to signify safety, hope and friendship. These stone sculptures were important for navigation, as a marker for hunting grounds, or possibly to denote a food cache. And we found them totally by accident!

Once upon a time I took a trip across Missouri into Kentucky to eventually end up in Tennessee. I loved the estates I saw in Kentucky, given romantic names such as “Misty Farms”. Large brick homes with tall white columns across the front were surrounded by white wooden fence, and many had green pastures full of thoroughbred horses. On the interstate, I drove by a uniquely built barn; so unique I pulled off the interstate at the next exit, turned across the overpass and returned the opposite way to get another look at the structure. Going the proper speed, I missed it again. The second time I exited the interstate, I took a back road and found a piece of history – an old tobacco barn with open slats on the sides and a totally unique interior. At that moment, I decided the rest of my trip would be made on back roads and two lane highways. As a writer, road trips such as this are invaluable for everything from collecting strange and unique names to use in my writing, to imagining scenes as real life slides by the windows.

I’ve posted covers from two books this month – “Love in Disguise” and “Hold on to the Past” because both of these are about traveling. The first takes place along and aboard the first transcontinental railroad, and the second is about a trip on the Missouri River aboard the Steamboat Arabia. Both are great “road trip” stories of a different sort, full of mystery and romance and can easily be ordered at http://www.bookswelove.com/baldwin-barbara/.

Taking a road trip is something we can begin to do as we emerge from the pandemic because it doesn’t involve large groups of people in very public places. Fill up the car with gas, pack a lunch and head out along the back roads. Perhaps you’ll come across the fire-breathing dragon we did!

And whatever you do, don't just read the billboard about the Drive-Through Safari. Take that exit!

Barb Baldwin

http://www.authorsden.com/barbarajbaldwin

http://www.bookswelove.com/baldwin-barbara/

Curves anyone? by J.S. Marlo

J. S. Marlo's BWL Books

For many years, I was a member of Curves, a gym for women only. Back then, I bounced lots of my storylines on my workout friends. The grandmother angle in Unraveled was born during a workout, but that's another story...

As incentive to show up for workouts, we received Curves t-shirts for every milestone we met. First one hundred workouts, five hundred workouts...I got my seven-hundred-and-fifty-workout t-shirt a month before the gym closed. There were also monthly attendance and special events prizes, which were mostly t-shirts. So, no surprise that over the years I collected a lot of t-shirts with the Curves logo on it.

They were nice and well-made t-shirts, so I wore them in many places, not just at the gym, and I  also packed a few in my suitcase when I went on trips. I didn't think the word curves would offend anyone, and I never felt it did. If anyone looked at me funny, it flew right over my head.


Around the same time, one of my Curves friends went to a conference in the United States. I can't remember in which big city they held her conference, but she stayed in a very nice hotel.  One early evening she stood in the lobby wearing a Curves t-shirt, with the word curves positioned over her bosom. She was waiting for someone when an older couple approached her. Then out of the blue, the older woman asked her "How much for the girls?"

My friend just stared in total confusion at the woman who spoke with a strong Eastern European accent, but then it occurred to her  that maybe the meaning of the question got lost in the translation, so she replied with something like "I'm not sure I understand."

The older woman pointed at my friend's bosom. "Your sign says curves.  Where I come from it means hooker. So how much for the girls?"

We couldn't stop laughing when my friend recounted the incident at the gym a week later, but on the spur of the moment, she was flabbergasted then completely mortified to have been mistaken for a hooker or a madam. She just left the lobby and went to her room to change clothes without asking the couple which language they spoke...or for whom they wanted to hire the girls. In hindsight, those would have been interesting questions LOL

To satisfy my own curiosity, I played with Google Translate and found out that in Romanian, curvă means hooker. It was the only European language that came close to meeting the criteria.

I don't know if my friend ever wore that t-shirt again, but I stopped packing clothes with words on them when I go on trips. That being said, one of these days, that incident will end up in one of my novels.

Happy Reading & Stay safe. Many hugs!
JS

 

J. S. Marlo's Website

First Draft Completed! by Eileen O'Finlan

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Click here to visit Eileen O'Finlan's website

After more than a year of research and writing, I've finally completed a first draft of Erin's Children! I am so happy with how this story came out and can't wait to share it with readers. 

Of course, a first draft is just that – a FIRST draft. Now I'm on to editing and revising, painstakingly looking for all the grammatical and typographical errors, making sure the story line never went astray, and that characters I was just getting to know when I first began didn't suddenly act out of character in later chapters. Flow and continuity, word choice, story and character arcs – all these things must be running smoothly throughout the entire story. The purpose of the editing and revision phase of novel writing is to make sure they do.

Still, having an entire first draft completed is a huge relief despite all the work yet to come. Two of the most gratifying words an author can type are “The End.” The only better two words, at least in this author's opinion, are “Chapter One.”