I was thrilled at the beginning of this month to release my third book. Ignoring, for a moment, my supernatural thriller novel, it was book two in my travel memoir series and was aptly titled, “It’s not as bad as it looks.”
Book two continues and completes the story started in “Mistakes were Made” which was inspired by our unfortunately timed attempt to move from the USA to a beachside idyll of retirement in sunny Spain. It was badly timed because we began preparations for the journey in March 2020 and, if you cast your mind back for a moment, 2020 was forever immortalized by something else of some small consequence that was to happen later that year.
With “It’s not as bad as it looks” bringing the tale up to current day, I was left thinking about what to write next.
I have two other work in progress (WIP) projects I am currently working on, and to be honest I should really be focussing on them instead of writing this blog and thinking of yet another side project, but I enjoyed writing the funny travel memoirs and people seem to enjoy them. Then I had a thought…
It brought to mind a series of travel adventures I took part in during a miss-spent youth, when I was both single and the fortunate owner of large and rapid motorcycles. This was in the mid-1980’s, a period during which I was in my late teens and early twenties. Unlike all of my friends, instead of flying to Ibiza to drink copious amounts of cold fizzy lager and chase girls, each year I took a few weeks off work and picked a suitably remote and challenging destination to ride my bike to.
Without exception, the trips were all lonely and arduous. Both too hot and too cold, too wet and too arid; every one an arse cheek pummeling slog of endurance, and looking back I have to say, I wonder what on earth I was thinking. But I am certain that those trips hold pay dirt, a veritable cornucopia of humorous anecdotes and interesting trivia about a world long gone. If only, thirty years later, I can coax the increasingly feeble bag of grey tapioca that is now my brain into remembering a single one of them.
There were the usual easy trips to Europe, France and Italy mainly, but I also rode through the entirety of Scandinavia to reach Nord Cap, far inside the Arctic Circle, and one fateful year a scary ride through the communist Eastern Bloc to reach Istanbul and eventually Asia.
I do recall there were dead horses and armed checkpoints, reindeers eaten and tortoises run over, all amid a smattering of crashes, injuries and lasting friendships. I was terribly young and most of the time entirely ignorant of the danger I was barely skirting in my exposure and isolation.
That’s me below, stood beside my woefully uncomfortable GPZ1000RX, wearing a giant condom, and enjoying myself not one bit at the crossing into the Arctic Circle.
Ibiza? What were they thinking, those sun-kissed fools!
Unfortunately, it means that book three, if it does get written, will be way out of chronological sequence with the other two. It doesn’t seem to have done Star Wars or Pulp Fiction any harm, but I do wonder how to market that and how it would be received.
Let me know your thoughts if you can, and follow the blog, and give me a follow if you are interested in hearing more about this and other projects.
Oh, and don’t forget to read book one and book two in the laugh out loud travel memoir series. Available to buy on your local Amazon store and always free on Kindle Unlimited.
And, last thought I promise, writers need hugs too and the biggest, squeeziest hug you can give to a writer is an honest review.
Thanks for the kind read.
