On a buoy

About a year ago there was a story in a local Tampa newspaper that didn't get much publicity, and yet it struck such a poetic chord with me.


A man fell off a cruise ship. The ship kept going and eventully pulled into port without anyone knowing he was missing. After falling off, the man had been hit by a boat and finally managed to swim to a buoy. He crawled up on it and sat there waiting.

Can you see him...waving, saying, "Uhhh...guys? Hey guys?! Remember me? Guys?"


A pilot boat finally saw him and saved him. But ask yourself, how many times have you felt like the man on the buoy?


It actually makes for the perfect Facebook status. "On a buoy."

Big noses

I used to travel 80% of the time for work and it was during airport layovers and lengthy flights that I did some of my best writing. Of course, when you're in the middle seat on a six hour flight to the west coast, your neighbors grow bored and also grow BIG noses.

To get around this, I mastered the art of reducing my Microsoft Word page to about and inch by inch in size, and the font (though it doesn't even register as an option) was reduced to 6.

You won't find it hard to believe that I have a little trouble with my eyesight after years of that :) But whether you're writing a gory scene, or another eh-hem type of graphic scene, it's not something you want to share with the man sipping on his fifth mini-bottle of Vodka or the teenager travling alone, pretending to be mad at the world, while secretly watching Madagascar on the overhead.

I know people read books on their cell phones now, but if ever there is a market for books on your watch, I'd feel right at home again!

Origins

We all have to start out somewhere. As I pointed out on my website, mine began with the infamous Super Watermelon Man.









Please be liberal and bear in mind that I was about ten or eleven when I wrote this, but you could tell from this nail-biting introduction that I was destined for great Romantic Suspense novels!!!