This week I didn’t post my usual article. Instead, I visited Killer Crafts and Crafty Killers with a blog about a sailing trip my husband and I made in 1989. It was the first big trip we made on our sailboat. I called it Sailing the Dismal Swamp Canal to Hurricane Hugo.
To see this post, go to this blog site. Of course, with a title that includes a hurricane name, you might guess what we ran into.
We took many trips between that one and our last big trip some years later. By then we were too old to handle lines and dodge swinging booms. We had a power cruiser instead of a sail boat. For that last trip, we were a group of only two boats. I blogged about that last year for Dames of Dialogue. You can see it at their blog.
Death of a Hot Chick, the mystery mentioned in both blogs was inspired by my sailing trips. So too was my amateur sleuth, Cyd Denlinger. I blogged about how I chose her before I had a single book published. That is on Working Stuffs.
These blog posts, especially the last one I mention above, will give you an idea of how a writer’s mind works when she is crafting someone to solve her mysteries. Enjoy!
I loved the post on Sailing the Dismal Swamp, Norma, and believe I may have posted a comment there. It must be quite different, now, with a powerboat instead of sailboat, but probably a bit easier to manage.while having time for a good time.
I think the Dismal Swamp Canal still looks the same. Actually, one can not use sails on most of the Intracoastal Waterway — too narrow and any wind would probably be coming from the wrong direction. So with a sailboat using her engine and a powerboat restricted by speed controls, usually six knots, there isn’t a lot of difference. We’ve traveled it both ways. Oh, except, sailboats must always wait for bridges carrying cars over the waterway to open. (Often powerboats must too.)
Norma