A Spirited Gift - Getting Caught Up in a Setting

Settings intrigue me. Because we live in an area of Virginia where people flock to vacation in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, I was especially interested in the setting of A Spirited Gift by Joyce and Jim Lavene. The book begins when hurricane winds damage the hotel where a group of area governing officials are meeting. The descriptions of the low-lying terrain so easily devastated by storms captivate me. I've often wondered why people build homes in these locations, then refuse to leave when warned to do so. As in this story, the area's bridges are often closed during and following storms, and tourists as well as residents are cut off from the mainland.

A Spirited Gift features a heroine who has the gift of psychometry that helps her solve a murder, the ghost of a pirate, and much more. It is part of the Missing Pieces Mystery series. 

Still, it is the setting and how the elements of nature affect this story that attract me. I tend to get caught up in a setting!

Coming Next Week

Next week on January 6, Diana Cosby, Amazon Bestselling Author, will be a guest on Notes Along the Way. Diana who is author of the MacGruder historicals set in Scotland will be my first guest blogger.

Settings Mean A Lot

Key West Sunset - Sikes photo

 

It surprised me when the list owner of one of the romance groups to which I belong told me that a blog about the Hemingway House did not relate to romance writing. For me, it does. After all, Ernest Hemingway wrote in one of the most inspiring settings I have seen. Maybe his books cannot be classified as romances, but looking out a wall of windows (as he did from his writing studio) into a tropical setting invites the imagination to go wild in a myriad of directions. At least, it invites mine.

"Imagination is more important than knowledge," Albert Einstein once said.

Imagine that! A man of his brilliance knew the importance of imaginative inspiration. The idea must first grow in the mind before anything can be created.

The idea for the painting comes before the blank canvas can be filled. Even if it begins only with a spattering of paint. We have to decide to spatter and where.

The ideas for a novel comes as characters grow inside our heads. I think they grow more easily when we have an amazing and inspiring setting like Hemingway found in Key West and later on in Cuba, another tropical location.

Settings inspire writers and artists. They inspire romance. Settings mean a lot.

Mary Montague Sikes