The problem with being a one-woman business is that although you can GO on vacation, you can\u2019t necessarily BE on vacation.\u00a0 I\u2019m sitting here in our suite on a ship docked in the harbor at Palermo, Sicily.\u00a0 It\u2019s sunny out.\u00a0 Next door to us a work crew is using a welding torch to dismantle a metal band around what appears to be a group grain elevators. They\u2019re doing hot, heavy physical labor.\u00a0 What am I doing?\u00a0 I\u2019m writing my blog because, although I\u2019m on vacation, my readers are not, and Friday morning is coming.<\/p>\n
Last Friday afternoon, the manuscript for Field of Bones, Joanna Brady #18, went to my editor in New York. It was supposed to be done before we left on the cruise, but it was finished shortly thereafter.\u00a0 Whoo-hoo!\u00a0 Thank God, and the Internet, it\u2019s gone!<\/p>\n
So this week we did some cruise oriented outings.\u00a0 In Tuscany, we went on the Bocelli Wine Tasting.\u00a0 We walked off the ship and I started to climb on board a bus that was already quite full.\u00a0 \u201cOh, no,\u201d I was told, \u201cyou\u2019re not on this bus.\u201d\u00a0 In fact, we weren\u2019t on a bus at all.\u00a0 We were directed to a Mercedes mini-van where, other than our guide and the driver, we were the only passengers.\u00a0\u00a0 We drove along a rocky cliff lined shore, through fields strewn with poppies, and down ever-narrowing winding roads until we reached the home of Andrea Bocelli.\u00a0 Yes, that, Andrea Bocelli\u2014the one who\u2019s coming to Seattle on June 24.\u00a0 It turned out that our driver is his personal driver.\u00a0 We got to walk down into the outdoor concert area where the Red Hot Chili Peppers will be playing later this year.\u00a0 We got to walk around in the Bocelli vineyards where our guide, a sommelier in her other life, pointed out how the vines must be trimmed by hand in order to make sure the plant\u2019s full effort is devoted to only one bunch of grapes and how each plant produces a single bottle of wine.\u00a0 We drove past Andrea Bocelli\u2019s home, saw his horse, and then went to lunch at a restaurant in what had once been his parent\u2019s home and where both our wine tasting and our luncheon were hosted by Andrea Bocelli\u2019s nephew.\u00a0 The whole day was MAGIC!\u00a0 The wine was glorious.\u00a0 The food even better.<\/p>\n
The next day we had signed up for Tuscan Wine Tasting, Take 2.\u00a0 That day we were on a bus where the leg room was so tight that I had to take my long legs and go to the back of the bus.\u00a0 I was sitting in the back minding my own business, when the bus driver slowed for a speed bump and then accelerated away before the back axle cleared the bump.\u00a0 I believe we\u2019ve all seen the America\u2019s Funniest Video Segments where someone jumps onto a air-filled diving platform and sends the unfortunate victims sitting there first sky high and then into the drink.\u00a0 People in the middle of the bus bounced up high enough that their heads hit the ceiling.\u00a0 I did that, too, but when I came down, instead of landing on the seat, I landed on the floor before bouncing again onto a lower level of the floor.\u00a0 I was not hurt\u2014at least I didn\u2019t think I was hurt\u2014so much as I was embarrassed.\u00a0 And I used my seat belt from then on, right? \u00a0But it turns out I was hurt.\u00a0 Although there were no bruises showing, there were bruises, and I\u2019ve been sitting on pillows.\u00a0 I\u2019m sitting on one right now, but I\u2019m pretty much recovered.<\/p>\n
Yesterday we were scheduled to go to Herculaneum.\u00a0 It\u2019s the place down hill from Pompeii where all the people trying to escape the volcano went in hope of catching boats and mostly didn\u2019t\u2014escape that is.\u00a0 We had visited Pompeii years ago.\u00a0 My father, Norman, always had a keen interest in ancient civilizations, and in his memory, we had planned to do Herculaneum this time around.\u00a0 Two days earlier we made the joint decision that it was probably a more physically demanding tour than we wanted to take, so we cancelled that shore excursion.\u00a0 Since it rained like crazy that day, being on the ship as opposed to being on slippery sloped hills was probably a very good idea.\u00a0 But it turns out it was a good decision for another reason as well.<\/p>\n
The evening before what would have been our Herculaneum day, my editor let me know that Costco has requested some \u201cspecial\u201d material to be bound into the books they will be selling.\u00a0 So I spent our non-Herculaneum day writing a 3500 word essay about one of the things that sparked my career as a writer.<\/p>\n
And then my editor produced another request.\u00a0 Could I PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE write a novella.\u00a0 So I\u2019m writing a novella.\u00a0\u00a0 Yesterday I thought about it and finally managed to come up with 1600 words that Bill loved.\u00a0 Today, when I finish writing the blog, I\u2019ll go back to writing the novella.<\/p>\n
But don\u2019t shed too many tears for me about having to work on my vacation.\u00a0 I always wanted to be a writer, and it\u2019s one of the great joys of my life that I get to BE a writer.\u00a0 And once I\u2019m working and the words are actually flowing?\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t even feel like work.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s who I am and what I do, on the road or off it.<\/p>\n
And I have a feeling my readers wouldn\u2019t want it any other way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The problem with being a one-woman business is that although you can GO on vacation, you can\u2019t necessarily BE on vacation.\u00a0 I\u2019m sitting here in our suite on a ship docked in the harbor at Palermo, Sicily.\u00a0 It\u2019s sunny out.\u00a0 Next door to us a work crew is using a welding torch to dismantle a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[165],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-traveling"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-pW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1608"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1609,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1608\/revisions\/1609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}