Another Tantalizing Question

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I am laughing too hard. I love Nancy Cole Silverman, she's a true soulmate. But after reading this, I am even more convinced. And yeah. My answer to her question--as benighted and misguided the answer--is yes.

Confessions of an Obsessive Compulsive Wordsmith

By Nancy Cole Silverman

I fear vacations. Oh, it’s not that I’m afraid of flying or strange places or meeting new people. I love all that.  No. My fear is based on something much more mundane. It’s the fear of closing my computer, leaving behind my work-in-progress and detaching from social media. Allow me to explain.

I recently completed Reason For Doubt, the fifth book in the Carol Childs Mysteries that debuted this week, November 6th.  While this is good news, those of us who write know that once we’ve kissed our final draft goodbye, it’s time to start and maybe even complete another project. In my case, I had started a new manuscript, pulling Misty Dawn, one of the reoccurring characters from the Carol Childs Mysteries, and – fingers crossed – submitted it for review to my publisher.

Caught between the marketing for the release for Reason For Doubt, and hoping to hear back from my publisher about the new prospective series, I was, I think, understandably anxious about being out of touch for an extended period of time.

However, my vacation beckoned. A Baltic Cruise. The trip of a lifetime. A much-needed escape for my husband and me, whose schedule is as crazy as mine, and who needed this vacation perhaps more than I did. Ordinarily I’m pretty good at balancing things, and with today’s modern internet connections, travel’s not usually too much of a problem. But, when it comes to cruising, internet connections at best can be iffy. Nevertheless, I determined to soldier on.

Which meant, I’d be doing a tap dance of sorts.  In the back of my obsessive/compulsive mind, I was plotting yet another murder mystery, while in person I was Nancy-tourist, shooting photos and chatting away with strangers about the various ports where our ship had docked.  I flittered from photo shoot to wine tastings and back to tour groups, all the while feeling guilty I wasn’t meeting my daily writing quota or able to maintain my author profile on my social pages or interacting with potential readers.  But, the longer we were away, the more I relaxed I became with the idea that time off might be a good thing.

Soon I found I was checking my email less and less, and my notepad that had been scribbled with notes to myself for some future project I was planning became full of notes about Viking ships, castles, and ports of entry. Ideas for future stories.

Including one about the people of Tallinn, a former part of the Soviet Union, where our ship had docked for the day. 

Tallinn

 Our tour guide explained that on August 20, 1991, the people of Estonia declared their independence from Russia with a bloodless coup.  While Soviet Tanks rolled through the countryside and surrounded the lone TV tower in Tallinn, volunteers from the city gathered beneath the tower and began to sing.  In what came to be known as the Singing Revolution, the country was ultimately granted its independence, and today its citizens maintain they sang their way out of the Soviet Union.  

And then there was a large rock in Denmark, a pink colored

boulder our tour guide pointed out to us.  The rock commemorated the Danes and a turn-coat Nazi who saved the Danish Jews from certain death.

It was these stories and more that I filled my notepad with, and at night after we returned shipboard, that I tapped into my Ipad, exercising my anxious fingers, while I lulled my creative spirit back into its happy place.  I don’t write historical fiction, and may not use any of what I saw or learned exactly as it happened.  But the theme for them will show up somewhere in a future work when I hope to show the power of the human spirit.

Curiously enough, just as we were about to board our flight from Amsterdam back to the US, I checked my email. Good news.  My publisher Henery Press loved my Misty Dawn manuscript.  And...surprise, surprise, I even had an email from Shawn Simmons regarding Malice Domestic's 14th Anthology, Mystery Most Edible.  My short story, “The Gourmand,” was selected to be included. Hmmm… Maybe instead of fearing travel, I should go away more often?

How about you? Are you an obsessive/compulsive wordsmith as well? Have you ever been hesitant to leave your computer, worried that if you looked away or allowed your attention to be diverted, you might return and find the magic had disappeared? 

 HANK: Right? No matter what we do--are we afraid to stop? Reds and readers, what do you think about this? (And readers, um, do you even notice when your favorite authors are on vacation?

Nancy Cole Silverman spent nearly twenty-five in Los Angeles Talk Radio, beginning her career on the talent side as one for the first female voices on the air, to the business side, where she retired as one of two female general managers in the nation’s second largest radio market. 

After a successful career in the radio industry, Silverman turned to writing fiction. Her crime-focused novels and short stories have attracted readers throughout America. Her Carol Childs Mysteries series (Henery Press) features a single-mom whose "day job" as a reporter at a busy Los Angeles radio station often leads to long nights as a crime-solver. Silverman lives in Los Angeles with her husband and a thoroughly pampered standard poodle.