Searching for Place

LUCY BURDETTE: You know that Key West as a place is important to me both because we live there half a year and because it’s the setting for my series. (The Mango Murders, number 15, coming to a bookstore near you on August 12!) I like nothing better than hearing from a reader about how much they enjoy visiting Key West vicariously or, how they have literally traveled in Hayley Snow’s footsteps, eating what she’s eaten, stopping to admire places she’s been.

Lorenzo and Dominique the cat man at Mallory Square

I travel this way as a reader myself. Sometimes I adore a book or series so much that I must travel there. You might remember this happened with Shetland, because of Ann Cleeves’ Jimmy Perez series.

At the end of May, John and I traveled to France for our vacation/anniversary. Yes, we went to my beloved Paris, but we first spent three days in Saint-Malo, a tiny peninsula on the north coast of Brittany. Once I knew we were going, I determined to read All the Light You Cannot See, which had been languishing on my bedside table forever. This walled city was bombed by the allies at the end of World War II, both in the book and the movie, and in reality. It has since been rebuilt, almost every stone put back in place, so that you can imagine what it looked like in the early 1940s. I could imagine the main character Marie Laure’s life as we walked the bumpy cobblestones of the old streets.

Here’s a bakery at approximately the place she visited over the course of the book carrying messages to and from the resistance.

Here is the path to the island that’s underwater at high tide where she loved to escape.

St Malo from across the bay…

Have you traveled to a place because you read about it in a novel? Are there places you’re longing to go (real or fictional) after reading about them?

Ann Cleeves--The Raging Tide

DEBORAH CROMBIE: It is always the biggest treat to welcome Ann Cleeves--author of the Shetland novels, the VERA novels, and now the Two Rivers series featuring detective Matthew Venn, all three of which have been adapted as hugely popular television shows--to Jungle Red!! 

Ann's new Matthew Venn novel, THE RAGING STORM, is out in the US on September 5th, AND Ann will be the International Guest of Honor at Bouchercon in San Diego! 

Ann, welcome back to Jungle Red!

DEBS: Matthew Venn, your detective in the Two Rivers novels, seems quite a departure from your Vera Stanhope and Jimmy Perez. For one thing, he's gay, and for another, he's in a committed, loving relationship with his husband, Jonathan. Was there a particular inspiration for the character?

ANN: There was!  When my husband Tim died, the people who looked after me, who scooped me up from the hospital, and who helped me organize the funeral along with my daughters, were Martin and Paul, a gay couple who have since married.  They’d been Tim’s close friends and they were grieving too, but they’re still looking out for me.  I wanted to celebrate their relationship.

DEBS: Matthew's background is unusual, too, as he grew up in a strict fundamentalist religious cult, and that upbringing affects the way he processes the world and approaches his cases. It's unusual and so interesting. Were the Barun Brethren modeled on a real group?

ANN: Not exactly.  Barum was the Latin name for Barnstaple, so I created a fictitious group.  I didn’t want to offend real believers. There are small exclusive groups who have similar beliefs, though.  The same certainties.  It seemed to me that if someone lost their faith, suddenly and dramatically as Matthew Venn did, they might feel very chaotic and unanchored and turn to the police service to find the sense of belonging, honour and duty they were missing.

DEBS: You've hopscotched around the UK with the settings for your book--Shetland, Northumberland, and now Devon. What drew you to the West Country?

ANN:  It’s where I grew up!  My father was a village schoolteacher in the Taw Valley and then on the North Devon coast in Woolacombe. I live in Northumberland now and lived in Shetland when I was a young woman.

DEBS: In THE RAGING STORM, a body is found near the village of Greystone on the north Devon coast. It's a very forbidding place; gray, isolated, cold, claustrophobic--it's such a wonderful atmospheric setting for a mystery that it almost becomes a character in itself. Is Greystone based on a real place?

ANN: The inspiration came when I was watching the first Matthew Venn novel, The Long Call, being filmed.  The production company had chosen Hartland Quay as one of the locations.  It has gloomy grey cliffs, and the weather was horrendous.  I was looking for a different, less tourist-led place to set the book, and that was the jumping off point.

DEBS: This book has such a twisty-turny complicated plot. I wondered how much you plan ahead?

ANN: Not at all!  I don’t know anything about the book, except the setting, when I start.  Very quickly I decided that this would be more of an adventure story than anything else I’d written.  The victim, Jem Rosco, is rather piratical, there are rescues at sea, and superstition.  But I still didn’t know the plot details!

DEBS: Once your series has been adapted for TV, do you find yourself adjusting what you write to sync with the way things are portrayed in the show? Do you now see Ben Aldridge (who is terrific) when you're writing Matthew?

ANN:  No, I don’t.  Ben is very much more good-looking than Matthew, who is rather restrained!

DEBS: Now that the Shetland books are finished (sniff), is there anything else on your horizon? New settings? New characters?

ANN:  The next novel will be a Vera book – I’m working on that now – and I definitely want to write more Matthew Venn books.  But who knows?  As I said, I don’t plan anything…

DEBS: One last question--what do you read for fun?

ANN: Mostly crime fiction!  There’s such a range within the genre – I’m reading Irvine Welsh’s Long Knives at the moment, which is violent, and thought-provoking and gripping, but I love more traditional Golden Age novels too.

DEBS: And one more question! Tell us what you’ll be up to at Bouchercon!!

ANN: Catching up with friends!  That’s what crime conventions are all about!

DEBS: Ann's Guest of Honor interview will be on Thursday, the 31st, at 4:30, and she'll be interviewed by Catriona McPherson and Lori Rader-Day. I'm sure it will be a highlight of the conference!

Here's more about THE RAGING STORM--

When Jem Rosco—sailor, adventurer, and legend—blows into town in the middle of an autumn gale, the residents of Greystone, Devon, are delighted to have a celebrity in their midst. But just as abruptly as he arrived, Rosco disappears again, and soon his lifeless body is discovered in a dinghy, anchored off Scully Cove, a place with legends of its own.

This is an uncomfortable case for Detective Inspector Matthew Venn. Greystone is a place he visited as a child, a community he parted ways with. Superstition and rumor mix with fact as another body is found, and Venn finds his judgment clouded.

As the winds howl, and Venn and his team investigate, he realizes that no one, including himself, is safe from Scully Cove’s storm of dark secrets.

DEBS: Ann will be stopping by to visit, so do add any questions I've missed in the comments!

 

 

A Visit to Northern Scotland @lucyburdette

LUCY BURDETTE: you may remember back in 2019 that I went on a wonderful small musical tour in Scotland that became the basis for A Scone of Contention. As the pandemic locked us all down, I developed a terrible itch to visit the stomping grounds of Ann Cleeves, whose Shetland series is one of my very favorites. I was yearning to see the haunts of Jimmy Perez. Luckily, I found another small tour focusing on walking and music in northern Scotland, the Orkney islands, and Shetland, and was able to talk some friends and family into going with me. I will show you a few highlights, but I promise to keep this brief! 

We started out in Stirling, Scotland, where I realized right away that I should have learned to play the bagpipes when I had the chance in high school. (Our high school in New Jersey had the only all girl bagpipe band in the country back in the 70s.) I did dabble in trying the drums (unsuccessful), and then became a sword dancer for the bagpipe band.

Our next stop was in Wick up on the northeast corner of Scotland. We visited the most amazing Wick Heritage Museum, crammed with artifacts and history of the area including its strength as the center of a salted herring boom before WWI. While in that museum, we were treated to a concert by well-known fiddler Gordon Gunn, and his accompanist Isobel Harp. In the background of the video, you can see some of the herring fisherman wearing the sweaters that are famous in that area.

After a shortish ferry ride to Orkney, we visited the mystical standing stones of Stenness...

and then onto an incredible multi-level archeological site called the Ness of Brodgar—all seen in a driving, cold rain. This is the only photo I managed to get—you might think it was a dump rather than a fascinating archeological dig with layers and layers of historical artifacts and structures stretching over many thousands of years. 

The whole thing was accidentally discovered when a neighboring farmer plowed up a stone. We were so lucky to have our tour from site director Nick Card.

I had no idea there had been so much World War II action in this part of the world (I am no historian!) This was a church called the Italian Chapel, built by Italian prisoners during the war. I began to imagine the historical romance I could write between a prisoner and a local Orkney girl. 

At the bookstore in Kirkwall, I inquired whether such a book existed. Umm, yes. There was an entire shelf of them, which I figured saved me a lot of trouble researching and writing something totally unfamiliar. 

That night we heard the music of Douglas Montgomery, along with his musical partner Brian Cromarty, and Douglas’s astonishingly talented children Lily, Magnus, and Tom. 

(Magnus and Tom had played for then Prince Charles on the island of Hoy earlier in the day.) Oh how I wish I’d stuck with an instrument as a kid!

If you’ve read the Shetland series, you will have heard of the ferry from Orkney to Shetland (about ten hours overnight.) Here was our bunk—I was prepared for the high seas with a scopolamine patch, but it was one of the mildest crossings our guide had experienced. 

Photo by Steve C

Finally we reached Jimmy Perez’s stomping grounds…below, his home...

We were taken on so many amazing hikes…

with one stop at a small graveyard where our musician guide Ed played a lament at fiddler Tom Anderson’s grave.

And then a concert and storytelling from Maurice Henderson on this rugged beach near Tangwick...

There was one extra guest in the audience...

Back on the mainland, our last stop was with fiddler Dougie Lawrence in Findhorn. 

By this point, we’d obviously done in our guides…

A final goodbye concert (Sneug Water Waltz,) though I hope we’ll be back!

My brother-in-law sent me this, do you think it’s too late? 

ANN CLEEVES Visits the Reds!

LUCY BURDETTE: Reds, I cannot tell you how excited I am to introduce today's guest. Ann Cleeves is the author of 8 Jimmy Perez Shetland books, plus eight Vera Stanhope novels, among others. She has a new series debuting next month with A LONG CALL. She won the CWA dagger award for Raven Black, and has had two series developed for television. Ann, we are rabid fans of your work and so very happy to have you here!

LUCY: I am a huge fan of the Shetland series and just finished Raven Black, which I read after all the others. Jimmy Perez’s life changed so much over the course of his series. How much of that arc had you imagined when you were writing Raven Black?

ANN: I didn’t have any of the story arc planned when I was writing Raven Black.  I thought it would be a single, stand-alone novel.  The theme of the book is about belonging and the outsider, kindness and inclusion.  That’s why Jimmy Perez is such a contradiction; he belongs, but not quite.  He’s a Shetlander, but he comes from Fair Isle, the most remote inhabited island in the group and a place most Shetlanders have never visited.  His family has lived in the islands for generations, but he has a Spanish name and a Mediterranean appearance.  When she first read the book, my editor was clear that it would be a stand-alone novel – it would stretch credibility to have more than one murder in a place with a population of just 23,000 – then it sold more copies than anything else I’d written and we agreed it would run to a short series.  Wild Fire, recently published in the US in paperback, is the eighth and last.

LUCY: I’m sad about the series ending with Wild Fire though I won’t argue with your decision! I would love to hear what went into the decision to let Jimmy and Willow go off without a bunch of readers watching their every move?

ANN: I knew that Wild Fire would be the last book, though I’m hoping that there might be more TV series.  I never plot in advance, so when I started writing, there was even a possibility that I would kill Jimmy Perez!  I understood a little about Willow’s situation, because that was fore-shadowed in the previous book, Cold Earth.  I wanted an ending that would be a little ambiguous, and would mark a new beginning in the lives of both central characters.

LUCY: Now Vera...she seems to experience less internal growth than Jimmy--maybe this is because she doesn't experience the dramatic life events that Jimmy Perez did. Was this an intentional choice? 

ANN: I think Vera’s character was formed early in the events of childhood, and though we learn more about that during the books, back story is harder to do in the TV drama.  I think the scriptwriter did a great job of explaining her past in the adaptation of The Seagull.  Vera grew up without a mother, raised by a father grieving for the woman he adored and resenting the burden of a child, especially a daughter.  By the time we meet her, you’re right, she knows who she is and what she needs: her work, her team and her house in the hills.  Definitely not a man!  When we meet Jimmy Perez, he’s on the brink of a new life back in Shetland, and we travel with him through the good times and the bad.

 LUCY: You use multiple points of view and seem to know many characters very well. How do you choose which character tells which part of the story?

ANN: I love writing from multiple view points.  The joy of writing is to see the world through another person’s eyes – and that’s the joy of reading too of course.  Again, the choice of POV is instinctive.  The returning characters always get a voice, and then I choose one or two others to help tell the story.  They grow in the writing and aren’t very much planned in advance.

LUCY: Some of the Reds have managed to snag an advance copy of the new book but I and many others are waiting until September. Can you give us a little preview of what’s coming?

ANN: In The Long Call, I return to my home county of North Devon.  I had a wonderfully happy childhood there and still have friends living in the largest town, Barnstaple. It’s an interesting region, beautiful, but quite isolated.  It pulls in holiday makers, but also transient seasonal workers, drifters, and there’s a lot of rural poverty.  My new series character Matthew Venn grew up in a fictional enclosed, rather blinkered religious community called the Barum Brethren.  When he lost his faith, his world crumbled and he found order again by becoming a police officer.  The book starts with him standing outside the chapel where his father’s funeral service is taking place, feeling unable to join in.  Then of course, he gets the call that a body has been found…

Photo: © Ph Matsas / Opale

LUCY: Who has inspired your work, and along that same line, what do you like to read?

ANN: My reading passion is crime fiction in translation.  I love the sense of vicarious travel.  I believe we have a sense of a culture’s preoccupations when we read its popular fiction and that at a time when we seem pulled to extremes, we need that insight and understanding.

Ann, thanks so very much for taking the time to answer our questions. Reds, Ann will be stopping by to answer questions and comments, if Blogger cooperates! And you can read more about Ann and her books on her website and twitter and facebook, and buy her books wherever books are sold.

Homesick for a Place You've Never Been?

LUCY BURDETTE: Can you feel homesick for a place you've never been? This question came up recently in a wonderful review of DEATH ON THE MENU from reader Mary Garrett: 

"Can one be homesick for a place one has never visited? I would have said no, but after reading Lucy Burdette’s Key West mysteries, I feel a bit homesick for sunsets on the beach, Conch Tours, John Martini sculptures (I looked them up — playful! and looked up gumbo limbo trees, too). Now I want some key lime pie . . . as well as flan, mojito cake, and Cuban Mix sandwiches (recipes included)."

Shetland, Scotland (Wikipedia)

Thinking it over, I think she's right about homesickness for unfamiliar places. I feel that way about Shetland because of Ann Cleeves' series with its moody characters and even moodier setting, and Iceland, because of  the books of Arnaldur Indridiason and Ragnar Jonasson.

Reds, can you think of a place you've only visited fictionally that you yearn to visit again?

Baynes Map of Narnia, Wikipedia

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Narnia. Though it does have its pros and cons, that's for sure. Oh! Definitely Lyra's London-esque city in The Golden Compass. Again, pros and cons. Downton Abbey? Huh, again, under the right circumstances. And maybe the little town in Practical Magic. :-)   And I'd love to be in Oxford with Morse, even though way too many people get killed there. I guess it's all about knowing the rules.

INGRID THOFT: Definitely Shetland.  And Santa Teresa.  Hopefully, Kinsey would be there and we could get some quarter pounders with cheese and hang out.  I would love to visit the top floor of the department store the night that Corduroy slipped from his display case and explored the mattress department.  I’ll see you in Oxford, Hank, but I’ll be there for Hathaway! 

from Wikipedia

JENN McKINLAY: Yes. Definitely. Yes. Our own Deborah Crombie made me so homesick for the Notting Hill area of London that I set my own series there and, of course, then had to go visit. Thanks, Debs! Other fictional locations I long for are Chanel Cleeton's Havana, Alexander McCall Smith's Botswana, and I would really get a kick out of spending an afternoon in Mick Herron's Slough House. 

RHYS BOWEN: St Mary Mead, where life was simple (although occasionally dangerous). I'm not sure about Narnia, Hank, although I would like to meet Aslan. Definitely Oxford if I could meet Morse there. I have to confess that I've always had a hankering to go to Falco's Rome, just not stay in his apartment but with Helena's family instead.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Middle Earth, of course. Although I think I'd pass on Mirkwood and Mordor. And Hogwarts!!!! I really, really miss Hogwarts...

Lucy, your books made me homesick for Key West even before I came to visit. And now I really miss it. And Jenn, I love that my books made you want to be in Notting Hill. Now I reread YOUR Hat Shop books when I need a good dose of West London.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: The Germans have a word for this! (Of course they do.) Fernweh's literal translation is "far-sickness," but it connotes a longing to go to someplace you've never been. I'd like to go to the glamorous between-war world of Lady Georgie - Great Britain, the mysterious Balkans, and the south of France (with, obviously, a bankroll that enabled me to travel in style and comfort.) Speaking of style and comfort, I would embark on a trip on Agatha Christie's Orient Express, and then take the steamer Karnak up the Nile to Amelia Peabody's Egyptian digs. From the descriptions I've read and the photos I've seen, the British were "glamping" a hundred years before it caught on here. I could go for that.

HALLIE EPHRON: Istanbul. I took an art history course in college and learned about the former Greek Orthodox basilica with its many windows that make the domes look as if they're floating. And the city sounds so fascinating. And the history--Turkey being at the center of so many centuries of European history. And of course the food. And though I've been to Paris several times, I feel homesick for Amiee LeDuc's Paris, as I've experienced them in Cara Black's novels.

And you, red readers? Homesick for a place you've only visited in fiction?

Familiar faces in unfamiliar places from the Brits

HALLIE EPHRON: I'm terrible at recognizing people, out of context.

I was once at a reception sponsored by People Magazine at BookExpo, chatting with a man who looked so familiar. “Haven’t I met you somewhere before,” I asked him.

“You might have seen me on television,” he said.

Blank.

“On The Office?" he says.

Doink. It was B.J. Novak, a very distinctive looking actor who played Ryan Howard, one of the misfits at Dunder Mifflin. And I am mortified. But really, who expects to end up chatting with a TV star at a book event, even if it is sponsored by People.

I have that same experience watching British TV shows. I see an actor and I think, You look familiar. Don’t I know you? And in a way, I do.

It's disconcerting when James Norton, who plays the human/saintly detective/vicar Sidney Cambers in Grantchester turns up as psychopathic, ex-con, drug dealer Tommy Lee Royce in Happy Valley. 

I got very attached to Honeysuckle Weeks as Foyle’s driver and assistant on Foyle’s War. Now she turns up on Midsomer Murders, Inspector Lewis, and Death in Paradise playing characters who bear no resemblance to plucky Sam.

Amanda Abbington, who plays Watson’s wife, Mary Morstan, in Sherlock (I'm still getting over her death) turns up in Case Histories as Jackson Brody’s former boss, DCI Louise Munroe. Now she's one of the leads in a new series on Netflix, Safe. (Did you know she's married... now getting divorced from Martin Freeman (who by the way played Bilbo Baggins in the movie of The Hobbit) who played Watson?)

Sometimes it seems as if the BBC has about fourteen actors that get recycled in their programs. It’s like subscribing to an ensemble company. And by the way, whenever you see one of those actors whom you recognize turn up on a whodunit like Midsummer Murders or Father Brown or Death in Paradise, you can be pretty sure shedunnit.

Last Tango in Halifax is a good example of a cast who pop up in multiple other programs. I'm a particular fan of Nicola Walker who's now one of the leads on Unforgotten.

Do you find yourself watching British TV shows, pointing to one of the actors and asking, "Don't I know you from somewhere?"

Traveling Solo

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Traveling alone for pleasure has come up several times recently in conversations with friends. A few friends have ventured on solo trips with trepidation; some enjoyed them, some did not. More friends have said that not only could they not imagine planning a trip alone, they couldn't imagine why anyone would want to do that.

And, then, there are a few weirdos like me (at least I hope there are) who actually enjoy it. It's not that I don't like traveling with family and friends--I do! But traveling alone is very different experience. My first solo trip was my second trip to England, the year after I graduated from college. I had been for the first time the previous September with my parents. I knew, after one week in England, that I absolutely had to go back. So I moved back home and worked in the family business for the next nine months, saving money and planning. In June of that year, I took off for England, alone. I'd bought a bus pass rather than a rail pass, because I didn't want to see Britain only from the backside, so to speak. I spent the next cold, rainy six weeks crisscrossing the country, staying in cheap (and often horrible) B&Bs. But there were some gems, too, and I saw wonderful places. And I looked and listened and made notes, taking it all in.

That, for me, is the big appeal of traveling alone. You have the opportunity to observe and process in a way that isn't possible if you're socializing. There is also, of course, the fact that you do only the things YOU want to do.

What about you, fellow REDS? Do you like to travel alone? And if so, what have you done that's most memorable?

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I used to enjoy traveling alone when I was a young woman, but I think so many years of solo business travel has made me appreciate having a companion (or companions) along.

When I was in college, I spent a summer at an archeological dig in the Apennine Mountains of Italy. I had a week or so before my semester started in London, so I went to Rome and Nice on my own. I did the topless sunbathing thing and felt very daring! Then, when we had the end-of-term holiday, none of my friends wanted to go to Germany and Austria, so I went by myself, to revisit some scenes of my childhood and see my dream city, Vienna. 

The things I loved then about going it alone? I talked with and met more people - there were several times I wound up having dinner with someone I had just met that day. Speaking of dinner, it was great not having to adjust to anyone else's stomach. (I swear, half the time we spend traveling as a family is consumed with finding food for one of the kids or Ross.) And, as an art/archaological/history museum fiend, it was bliss not having to cut a visit short because my companion was tired or bored. (My perfect art museum companion is my mother, who would stay until the doors close.)

And of course, you all know how much I value my solo visits to my agent's house in Nantucket in February. Is it a state peculiar to writers, or does everyone crave more time alone as they get older?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Okay, just between us? I adore traveling alone. I mean--I thrive on it. I get to make all the decisions. I can eat whatever I want. I can get to the airport really early, ridiculously early, because it's much more relaxing for me, without having to explain that to anyone. I can have hamburgers and salad and wine and diet coke and tea in my hotel room every night, and hot have someone wonder whether I am in a rut. I AM in a rut, and I like it there. I can work on my book for hours without feeling guilty.  I can sneak down to breakfast in a jersey nightgown and a levi jacket and scarf, snag my food and two cups of coffee and take it back to my room and watch the news. Oh. It is completely great.

Now let me say.  My mom used to say a "vacation" was not fully realized unless there was something to have a vacation from . So I am infinitely grateful to be able to travel with Jonathan at the times I do. ANd I love our vacations together--he is a perfect travel companion.   I'm just saying: when it's book tour and I am on my own? I really like it.
Julia, that is a good question.
 
RHYS BOWEN: I've always traveled alone, ever since my parents put me as a young teenager on a train in London and I made my way to Vienna unescorted. A year later I went to France by myself, finding the way to get around Paris from one station to another. I suppose I had been up to London on my own from the age of about ten, so nothing phased me much.

And I still love finding myself alone in a strange city. Sometimes when I come to New York on business I take a day to just wander around, discovering little treasures: a garden between tall buildings, new Subway murals, old Jewish delis. And I find myself thinking "Nobody knows I'm here but me" and it's a heady thought. Like Debs and Hank I love the freedom to stop to eat when when I feel hungry, suddenly decide to fan a museum and go shopping or just sit in the park and people watch. 

And I love getting room service when I'm on book tour and come back late to my hotel, then curling up in pjs and eating a sinful helping of fries. However..... I only like being alone for a finite amount of time. After three or four days alone in a city I find myself chatting to grocery clerks and the person next to me on the bus. And I do enjoy traveling with husband and family too. Just not all the time!

HALLIE EPHRON: I can't imagine traveling alone for pleasure. It's like an oxymoron. Because the fun of travel for fun is doing it with someone. YOu've got to be compatible because within five seconds you'll know if you're not. My druthers: food (YES, all kinds), walking (YES), museums (YES), shopping (NO NO NO!!!), wildlife (BIG YES). 

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Love, love, love traveling solo. Of course, I love traveling with my family, too. And, come to think of it, when I travel alone—for research trips—I'm really traveling "with" my characters. Having someone else along would impede all the ideas, the scribbled note-taking, the feeling of overhearing snippets of their conversations....

That said, I went to Scotland to research Maggie Hope #4, THE PRIME MINISTER'S SECRET AGENT, and I'm going to be returning to Edinburgh, with Noel and Kiddo, next summer for a proper holiday with all of us. I loved it so much I have to share.

But first I'll be traveling solo for work to ... Shetland! Yes, the very northern tip of the UK! The 8th Maggie Hope novel will be set in Shetland and revolve around the so-called Shetland bus—the secret boat service that ran between the UK and Norway, ferrying British SOE secret agents in and out of Nazi-occupied territory. So, solo research trip for me and THEN a meet up with the family. Sounds like a good compromise!

LUCY BURDETTE: I'm with Hallie--would rather travel with good company than alone. Definitely book research days are more productive alone, but for fun--I like someone to share the road with. Unlike Hallie, I don't at all mind a little shopping...

DEBS: Everybody's hitting my fantasies! Room service (adore it when I'm book tour.) Vienna. New York. Birding. And Shetland!! Susan, that sound fabulous. Ever since I read Ann Cleeves I've wanted to go to Shetland. Plus, the research time alone, and then the family time, is the perfect mix.

And that's a good question, Hank. I've always liked that time alone, but I think these days, because I'm so frazzled all the time, I appreciate it more.

READERS, solo, companions, or both? And what about the time alone?