I did it! After
striking out twice I did a successful (at least I think it was) radio interview
today with Barbara Hodges on Red River Radio. I shared the spotlight with
fellow mystery writer, S. L. Smith, and as soon as we finished I ordered the
first of S.L.’s Culnane and Tierney mysteries. The interview lasted an hour and
covered everything from how we came to write up to marketing. Lots of fun. You
can listen to it here: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/rrradio/2017/09/19/red-river-radios-no-limits-with-barbara-m-hodges
Pat Bean is one of
many delightful friends I treasure but have never met in person. We’re internet
pals, this time through Story Circle Network. Pat has recently published a
travel memoir, appropriately titled Travels
with Maggie, and reading it I found out she is my kind of traveler. Having
spent too many years of my life with a man who thought the point of road trips
was to see how fast you can get from point A to point B, I was delighted to read
about her meandering travels. And in awe of the courage, bravery, wanderlust,
whatever it took for a woman “of a certain age” to set off alone, driving an
RV, with only a canine companion, for a six-month trip of some 7000 miles. She
stopped where she wanted to—state parks, RV sites, but never a motel or hotel—and
if she liked it, she might stay two or three days. Some days her travel was
only 60 miles, but she went as far as she wanted. As a reader, you get to
travel from Arkansas to Maine and back to Texas, sharing stops in Mark Twain
country, Carthage Missouri (takeoff point for the Mormons headed west), Niagara
Falls. You can get lost with Pat in Logan Airport, picking up her son, and take
a commuter train into NYC, a place she’s “always eager to visit and always eager
to leave.” Me too.
My particular
favorite stop was Chesterton, Indiana, and the Indiana Dunes. I spent many a
youthful summer there and still treasure memories of Lake Michigan, especially
when roiled by a storm, the woods, the dunes, the swamp (okay marsh, but we
called it a swamp).
Birding is a big
part of this travel book, and I, not a birder, learned a lot as Pat listed the
birds she’d seen. I’d have liked to see more about Maggie the dog, but it
comforted me to know she was there.
Writing a book
about her experience is another act of bravery. Our travel literature is full
of the adventures of men—Paul Theroux, John Steinbeck, Bill Bryson, William
Least Heat Moon, Charles Kurault. Joining that all-male club didn’t faze Pat
Bean for one second.
Let’s hear it for
adventuresome women and their dogs!
Other than the
radio interview and writing the above book review I didn’t accomplish much today.
A visit to my doctor assured me that I am doing well and not malingering—comforting
but also time consuming. I’d say I’m going to charge around and set the world
in order tomorrow, but, alas, I have a dental appointment. Too late tonight for
writing, but I do have a neighborhood newsletter to put together. Whoever
taught me that idle hands are the devil’s work sure did a good job of
instilling that lesson.
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