Beautiful vendor at the Chichicastenango market in the Highlands.

Today I’m sharing some photos of my trip to Guatemala, all from our visit to the Chichicastenango in the Highlands on market day. Last week I explained that the trip was research for Endless Chain–just reissued–book two of the Shenandoah Album series.

The trip was a bit unusual since I traveled there after the book came out. But that’s when the opportunity arose, and how could I miss the chance to see if I’d gotten some of my back story correct? The trip was transformative, and I fell in love with the country and the Mayan people.

The church in Chichicastenango on market day.

You can see more photos I posted right after my trip if you click on “travels” under categories to your right and scroll down a bit to the posts on Guatemala from 2009. My husband went back in 2010 and actually witnessed kite flying on the Day of the Dead in Sumpango (which is part of the Endless Chain story) and brought back photos which I shared. You can enjoy those, too.

Cemetery in Chichicastenango

And where in the world is Emilie Richards right now? Well I’m between homes, moving slowly northward as you read this, first to visit family and friends, then to speak at the Ohioana Book Festival in Columbus on May 11th.

The final stop will be in Western New York where I’ll finally get to view the renovation of our cottage. I promise photos of that, too. I have many of the work in progress, taken by our contractor, but even I can’t figure out what most of them are.  So we’ll wait and see the product when it’s closer to the finish line. (Check the Renovation category for photos and renovation blogs up to this point.)

By the way, try to imagine me writing once I settle in while workmen are banging and clanging around me to finish the work. I once visited an author whose house was in the middle of renovations. She had rigged a plastic tarp over her computer to avoid leaking pipes and was writing away. This is the definition of the term: Good Sport.  I’m determined to be a good sport, too. But if you don’t see quite as much of me for a while, you will understand, right?

I had the good fortune to visit Guatemala in early 2009, an unusual journey since I’d written about the political struggles in Guatemala in my novel Endless Chain, the second book of my Shenandoah Album series, but had never visited the country.  Although only the back story took place in Guatemala, I found it strange to write about a place I’d never seen and experienced.  So when our church organized a social justice delegation to be based in Antigua, with excursions into the Mayan Highlands, I gladly signed on.  You can read about that trip here and here, or search under my “travel” category for even more. 

Recently when a second trip was planned, I had to say no, since I had promised to help out after the birth of our new grandchild.  But my husband went again, camera in hand.  And this time, the group was there during the Day of the Dead, November 1st.  They took part in the wonderful kite flying festival in the village of Sumpango, and came back with lots of photos. (To see more plus my original Guatemala album, you can access here if you’re  registered at Facebook.) (more…)

I had such big plans.  Almost an entire month by myself at our “new” (1895) cottage just up the hill from Lake Chautauqua in Western NY.  Chautauqua Institution is a historic community, once a camp for Methodist Sunday School teachers and now a renowned cultural community with a nine week season of music, lectures, theater and much, much more.  We’ve been coming here for years to recharge for a week or two each summer, but this is the first time we’ve had the luxury of coming off season.  I planned to “open” the cottage, figure out what to keep and how to organize what was left, then write, write, write.  I thought with all this peace and quiet, I could manage perhaps as many as two rough draft chapters every three days.

In my weeks here I’ve written three chapters. 

Finding the time to write, every writers dilemma.  How can this be as difficult as I’m making it?  After all, you just sit down, turn on the computer or pull out the yellow legal pad and magic pen and away you go. 

Not.

Writing demands complete concentration.  For me, that comes at a price, usually hours at the computer before I can really sink into the book and detail what I see.  When I’m lucky enough to reach that stage, pages fly by.  If I’m interrupted during this warm-up, often I never quite reach that point where the writing flows.  I struggle over sentences, and while I usually have something to show for the effort, every word is hard won.

Sometimes, though, interruptions are more fun than the alternative.  A lot more fun.  In my weeks here I’ve watched our little house achieve some kind of order, and supervised needed repairs and changes.  I landscaped the front garden and found a helper to do some of the dirty work.  I accepted a plot in the community garden and today will finish planting my tomatoes.  I attended two concerts, met scores of wonderful people, most who generously invited me for meals or porch socializing.  I took walks and field trips, shopped at the incredible Wegman’s grocery store, and discovered that the local Dollar General has almost anything I could ever need. Who knew?

I discovered that dinner parties in my tiny kitchen will have to be planned carefully and executed in stages, and while I was at it I was reminded that friends don’t care, even when the chicken takes forever to cook.  I found that early June can be cold in Western NY, and that a warm dog in a lap is almost as good as a heater–but that doesn’t mean a few baseboard units wouldn’t be a welcome addition in the future.  Nemo and I took frequent walks each day, watching the community come alive and enjoying the sun sparkling on our gorgeous blue lake.  I said hello to a hundred strangers who all said hello in return.

Sometimes the best laid plans go astray.  Mine certainly did.  What does this mean exactly?  Well, in my case, it means I’ll have to write in August when I’d hoped not to.  But that’s a price easily paid for the fun I’ve had.  I’m looking forward to sinking back into my book and reuniting with my characters. 

I had great expectations for my time here, but the reality was even better.  Sometimes it’s important to let go of expectations, to see what transpires without them.  Some of  life’s finest gifts arrive that way.  My gift this past month was making new friends and learning to appreciate this remarkable community in a whole new way.   I just bet, in the long run, Tracy, Wanda, Janya and Alice will all be better off for it when I settle in, once again, to tell their story.

How adventurous are you?  On a scale of one to ten now, and remember, no one will know what you’ve decided.  Do you like challenges?  Are you happiest when you’re doing something you’ve never done before?  Do you get bored easily doing the same old, same old?  Then think of yourself as a ten, just a tad more cautious than say Harrison Ford in the Raiders of the Lost Ark, or Arnold the governor either in movies or real life.  After all, anybody who can govern California AND terminate life forms without remorse (on film, of course) is a classic ten.

How about ones?  Do you prefer your own home and hearth to any other environment?  Do you eat the same breakfast, lunch and dinner whenever possible?  Have you watched Casablanca or even Sex and the City so many times you can mouth the dialogue, because you prefer no surprises in your entertainment, as in the rest of your life?  You’re a resident of One City.  And if you’re married, I bet you’re married to somebody who also enjoys a lack of surprise and is perfectly happy with mac and cheese every Friday night.

I fall somewhere in between.  I’ve traveled, seen some fabulous places, enjoyed a diversity of people as friends (Happiness Key had to come from somewhere, right?) I’ve explored a variety of interests.  But with all that, I have to give myself five, at most, because there are some areas where I don’t want things to change, and some times when transitions are so exhausting I’m tempted never to willingly plan one again.

So having admitted this, here I am, on a brand new computer it’s taken days to put in some kind of working order.  And here I am about to pack for a new adventure.  Next week I’ll travel to Western NY to stay in our summer cottage with only Tracy, Wanda, Janya and Alice for company–well, Maggie, too, but you don’t know Maggie yet.  The ladies of Happiness Key and I are going to hunker down with my new computer for three weeks and see how much of the final installment of their story I can write.  Just me, Nemo the friendly beagle, whatever varmints enjoyed the winter as our guests, and my neighbors at Chautauqua Institution. 

The travel?  Fun.  Breaking in a new computer?  EEEEK!

I may not always be adventurous, but I am looking forward to this new experience.  And now that I’ve figured out how to load my documents and software, I may enjoy the computer, too.  However, if I don’t blog for a little while?  You’ll have a variety of scenarios to consider:

1–The cable guy didn’t show up to install the Internet

2–Emilie couldn’t figure out how to configure the wireless

3–Emilie is so busy chasing mice around the cottage with a broom that she’s too tired to blog

4–Emilie and the ladies of the key are so immersed in Sunset Bridge without the normal interruptions that she’s yet to come up for air.

More likely I’ll be telling you what it’s like to write and write and write some more.  That may not sound like an adventure to some people, but those gutsy Florida gals are always willing to share their adventures with me, and frankly at least at those moments, I’m a ten once removed. 

Now that summer is almost here, I hope you’re planning to leap out of your easy chair and have an adventure or two of your own.  We’d love to hear if you’d love to tell us.  Just click on comment above.  Never tried that?  It’s an adventure.  Give it a whirl.

I was seven the first time I visited New York City with my family.  This was the only trip out of state that we ever took together, and perhaps an unlikely destination, except that both my parents had been born there, my mother in the Bronx and my father in Brooklyn.  I remember very little.  A red bedspread at the hotel.  The view from the Empire State Building.  A sandwich from the Automat. 

And the people.

Growing up in segregated Florida, everybody I knew, everybody I’d ever had a conversation with, looked a lot like me.  The people who didn’t lived in another part of town, as mysterious and out of reach as beings from another planet.  Our lives did not intersect.  Any questions I had about them were answered by people as clueless as I was– and even more determined to stay that way.

That first trip to New York was like a time bomb planted in my young brain.  I remember being afraid of everyone, not just the sheer numbers–which can intimidate me even today–but the diversity.  The exotic blend of colors.  The languages I didn’t understand.  Babushkas and dashikis, although those words, too, were foreign to me.  People who didn’t look like me, talk like me, think like me.  A world in which I was just a tiny sample of a tiny sample of humanity.  A lesson to be learned, and one too many people still resist.

I visited New York City again this weekend.  There have been a number of intervening trips, of course. I go to New York any time I’m given the opportunity, connected by umbilical cord, perhaps, to stories of life in an apartment in the Bronx in the 1920s and 30s.  I feel at home, even though I rarely know where I’m going or how to get there.  I wander, and people are helpful, destroying all notions that New Yorkers are a breed apart.  I leave my purse in a Broadway theater, and the next day it’s still there, intact, waiting for me.  My suitcase catches on a subway escalator, and the man behind me grabs it and brings it up without so much as a murmur.  I stop on a street corner with a map, and a stranger asks where I’m going and proceeds to tell me how to get there.

But it’s the diversity that excites me most.  The same diversity that enriched my life when I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, or in New Orleans, or these days on my own street in Northern Virginia, where half the houses have someone from another country, sometimes two, in residence. I am no longer a worried seven-year-old.  I am an adult, thrilled to be among people who aren’t exactly like me, people who have different experiences to bring to our common table, people whose lives and cultures have led them to a greater understanding that they are willing to share.

Poverty is our challenge.  Hatred is our challenge.  Ignorance is our challenge.  But diversity?  Never.  Walk the streets of Manhattan for a weekend, and appreciate the miracle of so many different kinds of people going about their lives within arm’s reach of each other.

Oh, and please don’t forget to take your children.  The experience might change them forever.  

There are two kinds of people in the world.  Actually there are almost seven billion kinds of people in the world, but for our purposes today, I’ll simplify.  There are two kinds of people.  The kind who fall neatly into slots other people choose for them, and the kind who make their own slots.  I won’t complicate this by pointing out that at one time or another, we’ve probably all done both.  Let’s just pretend life’s easy to understand and go from there.

As loyal blog followers know, I spent most of the past two weeks in New Zealand watching one of my earliest novels being made into a film for the German television station, ZDF.  We won’t take up the question of why an American author flew to New Zealand to watch a German production company make a film of a novel originally set in Georgia.  Suffice it to say that the transition works well, and that New Zealand has enough gorgeous and diverse locations to make a gazillion movies, as well as a flourishing film industry eager to help.  What I really want to talk about is how often I noted people doing what they loved. 

Take Terri and Jim, for instance.  Terri and Jim are originally from the UK–although Jim spent time in Jamaica along the way.  After a trip to New Zealand’s South Island, they went home and began to work toward the goal of moving back permanently to run a charter boat service.  It took more than a decade to make the dream happen, but now Jim and Terri ARE Kaiteriteri Boat Charters, offering spectacular cruises through the Abel Tasman National Park.  Their joy in what they do is catching.  Every detail is performed with enthusiasm and care, plus they serve the best picnic lunch I’ve ever had, which permanently endeared them to all on board.

Then there was James.  James is a runner, at least I think that’s what he’s called in filmspeak.  James does everything.  I noted him on the first day and the last, a young, energetic man who seemed to know exactly what to do and how to do it on time and with courtesy.  On the last day I overheard him in conversation with another member of the crew.  He talked about how his job was simply to do whatever needed to be done with no excuses.  Not ever.  Can you imagine a world in which everyone had that attitude?  I have a strong feeling we’ll be hearing from James again.  All of us.  Because I’m sure James has plans to move on in the world of film, and I’m sure he will. James isn’t afraid to try.

How many of us can say that?  I’m one of the lucky ones.  I “fell” into writing when the opportunity presented itself.  I adore what I do.  But I was never told to follow my dream.  I was told to be practical, to shoot for security, and not to step over boundaries because that wasn’t sensible.

I did step over boundaries, of course, and became a writer, even though I had a nagging feeling–and still do sometimes–that my typing skills might best be used for clerical work.  Still, had I not found a publishing niche so quickly, would I have continued working toward my goal?  I’d like to think I would have worked a decade for my dream, the way Jim and Terri did, but I’m not sure it’s true.

Do you have a dream you’re trying to fulfill? Go for it, and tell your children to do the same.  We’ll all be better off because you did.  After all, happiness and enthusiasm are catching.  I know it’s true.  I came home with both.    

Years ago when my husband read Lord of the Rings to our children, I figured that was “their” time together.  After all, hobbits and elves and wizards?  Not my thing.

Then, the movies arrived.  Although I wasn’t dragged to the first one, neither did I go with much enthusiasm.  And then, the magic.

At one point while we were waiting for the third movie to debut, I turned to my husband and said, “You know, if I die before this movie comes out, that’s going to be the last thing I think about.”  And while that probably wasn’t strictly true, it was nearly.  I still think watching the movies on the largest and best screens in our area were some of the most pleasurable moments of my life.

Until I was on my way to New Zealand, I forgot that the films were made here.  Then we had the pleasure of meeting Robin Murphy, who was our guide around the islands for several days.  Robin was the location manager for Lord of the Rings, and of course, had fabulous stories to tell us.  She also offered to take us to some of the sites.  So here we are at Hobbiton, in Rivendell, and finally at the stately home where Gollum commits the act that turns him from a happy fisherman into the creature he becomes. 

Novelists deal in fantasy, but we all have our personal fantasies, too.  Mine is of a life in Middle Earth.  I’ve yet to decide whether I’ll be a Hobbit or an Elf.  I just know that if Middle Earth is half as beautiful as the country where the movies were filmed, I will be eternally happy. 

We take so many things for granted.  You know that already, I’m sure, but recently I’ve had the lesson significantly reinforced. For instance, hopping a plane and arriving on time.  Or at least on the right day.  Or at worst, the right week. 

Those of you who visit my Facebook page know that after two lovely months in Florida, then another week in Sarasota with my brainstorming group, I was marooned in Tampa by the back to back blizzards that hit my home in the Washington DC area.  As some of you pointed out, this was no time to whine.  I should have been down on my knees saying prayers of gratitude I was snug and warm with my wonderful brother and sister-in-law instead of shoveling snow. 

Truthfully, despite that timely reminder, I’ve been more worried than grateful.  Because on Sunday, I’m scheduled to fly again, this time to New Zealand to see two of my novels filmed for television movies to be shown in Germany.  This is truly a trip of a lifetime, so I’ve been understandably concerned I might not get home in time to make that flight.  Right now it looks as if I’ll be able to fly home this afternoon, but at worst, I should be able to find another flight out tomorrow.

I’ll be away for ten days, and may not be able to blog down under, although I’m hoping to. At worst I can promise I’ll store up lots to tell you when I return.  Polyphon, the film production company, is shooting two of my novels now, ending one and beginning another.  So hopefully I’ll see some action on both.  My wonderful husband will be with me, and promises to be my photographer.

For fun?  Can you guess which of my novels they’ll be filming?  A hint.  Click here for a list of my old series romances.  The two they’ll film are listed under Silhouette Romances.  Yes, they’re that old, but I know they’ll be freshly updated.  I’ll tell you all about it.

One guess per person, guess one book only.  Everyone who gets one of the two will be entered in a drawing for something fun and funky (and cheap) from New Zealand and an autographed copy of one of my more recent novels. If no one gets either novel right, I’ll draw from all the guesses.

Email your answer.  I’ll announce the winner once I return at month’s end.

So off to the Tampa airport I go for the first leg of this journey.  Wherever you are, stay safe and warm.

Meantime, don’t forget to comment on my blog about author Mary Alice Monroe to enter a drawing to win her autographed novel The Four Seasons. You have until March 1.

As I’ve told you before, I’m a confirmed Brainstormer, or BSer, as my group fondly calls itself.  I just finished a week in Sarasota, Florida with my brainstorming friends working on ideas for our upcoming novels.  Please remember, the plans for this event were laid months ago.  We didn’t check weather maps or consult a crystal ball.  I had no idea that the Washington DC area, where I live, would have a historic snowstorm, the largest on record, while I was away, or the view from my front windows would be the one in this photo.  No idea, nada.

But wow, did we choose our week well, or what?  I’m a great fan of history.  I just prefer not to witness this kind first hand, particularly not when my author friends are calling, our view is a lake with an alligator snoring in the sunshine, and the only objects falling from the sky are ospreys searching for dinner.

So what if now that we’re finished, I can’t get home again?  Southwest Airlines apparently objects to 30″s of snow on airport runways, but no problem for me.  I am snugly settled at my brother’s house in Tampa for the duration, having at brith been lucky enough to acquire a sibling who would have the good sense to live not far from the very airport where I’d be forced to wait for Snowmageddeon to cease in Virginia.

Meantime, while I wait, I’m bursting with ideas I want to translate to paper.  A brainstorming group is NOT the same as a critique group.  We don’t read passages of our work out loud to solicit comments and advice. We are all confident in our abilities to put our stories on paper–although when we’re actually doing it, we often wonder. Instead during our week together, in ten one-and-a-half hour sessions and five tarot readings for characters, we worked on skeletal plots, plumping them out  or more often turning them inside out.  Some of us started with bare bones ideas; some just needed advice on a few points in their works in progress (my Sunset Bridge among others).  We plotted an international thriller, a paranormal mystery, an inspirational novel, a traditional mystery, a women’s fiction story.  We discussed at length two ideas for upcoming series–one of those mine.  Some of us worked on different ideas at each session, and some stuck to one. 

My job now that I’m temporarily marooned, is to transcribe the tapes I made during my sessions.  What will I find?  From experience, I’m sure I’ll discover many, many half-formed ideas that lead nowhere.  I’ll listen to ideas that have no appeal or are impossible to implement, ideas that just didn’t fit this story but are worthy of consideration for another, ideas with possible merit.  And finally, there will be THE ideas, the ones that are like  fireworks displays when they erupt.  “Ka-ching” ideas that are the missing pieces I’ve been searching for.  There won’t be many.  But two or three for a week of hard work?  Believe it or not, that’s enough to fuel a novel.

Brainstorming is wonderful.  I’m delighted by my fellow BSers.  I like their wit and their insights.  I love our dinner conversations, when we finally have the chance to catch up with each others’ lives.  But brainstorming is surprisingly exhausting.  At the end of a day’s work, we go to bed early and sleep well. Very, very well.

So once Southwest decrees it’s safe to fly, I’ll go back to the land of ice and snow.  In the meantime, I’ll enjoy a few more days of sunshine.  And I’ll put ideas on paper.  Lots of ideas.  I hope that in a year or two, I’ll be sharing them with you.  After all, that’s what this past week was all about. 

For two months I’ve enjoyed staying on Sanibel Island, one of Florida’s most beautiful barrier islands.  There are so many things to love about this special place, not the least of which is the attention to wildlife and it’s preservation. 

In December my husband came home from an Audubon Society bird walk and told me about the island’s resident crocodile.  She was an anomaly, the only one of her kind this far north, and beloved by all the island’s naturalists.  She had been here for years.  At one time the locals captured and transported her south, back into crocodile habitat, where it was felt she would be safer and happier.

She had other ideas.

Back she came, and this time, clearly outwitted by a beast with a walnut-sized brain, the island not only allowed her to stay, but made certain she was respected and enjoyed by everyone lucky enough to glimpse her.  Since she liked to sun herself at a special spot at J. N. Ding Darling Nature Refuge, a special fence was built so that when she appeared (all 11 feet of her) visitors would respect her privacy.   That’s where my husband saw her and took this photo.

The island croc wanted badly to hatch more island crocs, but without a male in residence, this was not to be.  Instead she sometimes played foster mother in alligator nests, and was known to live under a home on Wild Lime Drive, where the owners enjoyed and respected her company.  It’s said that when the local paper boy threw a newspaper too close to her nest one day, she left, removed it, and carried it out to the driveway where it belonged.  The paper had teeth marks when the resident human collected it.

The recent cold wave to hit the eastern half of the U.S. was not kind to Sanibel’s wildlife.  On the morning after the coldest night, I was saddened to see beaches littered with fish, a macabre aquarium of species.  Unfortunately the crocodile, a senior citizen, was also unable to cope with the cold.

Sanibel will hold a memorial service for the island croc next week.  At the end, they plan to serve gatorade.  And that says everything about Sanibel Island you ever need to know.