Romance With a Motorboat

There's a very old, well-known writer's adage which says, "Write what you know." Some writing authorities don't consider it a valid piece of advice. Some do. I believe real life winds up in every novel in some shape or form--because that's what makes the writing feel real.

In my book, Irons in the Fire, the hero owns a motorboat. Not surprisingly, my first date with hubby involved a ride in his motorboat. That's him in the photo standing in the boat while unhooking his lines. The boat was sixteen feet long and had a sixty-five horsepower Johnson outboard motor on the back. We went up the river and down the river and then we went out for pizza.

I had a good time. We went on more dates. We went up and down the river, sometimes we ventured into the Shrewsbury River, and occasionally we would drop anchor in Horseshoe Cove along Sandy Hook. We never went far into the bay because the boat was rather small and the waves in the bay can get rather large at times.

I packed picnic lunches, which we ate in the boat. We also dined at restaurants if they had docks along the river where we could tie up the boat.

We hopped into the boat to watch the Fourth of July fireworks. We got stuck on sandbars. We towed sailboats under the bridge. We helped to right sailboats when they toppled over.

We used up a lot of gasoline, but it was far less expensive in those days.

Love blossomed between us and by the following summer we were married.

Eventually, after baby #1 came along, we moved to a larger home five miles inland and sold the boat. It had been fun but we had other things to do.

When I wrote Irons in the Fire, all those rides up and down the river came back to haunt me--and I put them into the book. The plot is an invention, but the boat rides are not.

So if you'd like to spend a few evenings going for a virtual cruise up and down the river, I recommend Irons in the Fire.

But it now at AMAZON!