I can’t enjoy my vacations largely because I have to take myself with me. For those of you who know me, this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. I have a dark and twisted imagination, continuously spinning out the worst-case scenarios in even (and especially) the most beautiful places.
And I’ve come to accept, truth be told, that my brain doesn’t like vacations. In fact, it’s the worst thing for my brain – too much free time, endless dark possibilities. As in: Ah, it’s so beautiful here! I have no responsibilities. What could go horribly wrong?
My trips (let’s just stop calling them vacations) do however continue to inform my fiction. Take my upcoming novel CLOSE YOUR EYES AND COUNT TO 10 (February 2025) for example. It was fully inspired by an adventure my family and I found ourselves on in the Azores, a stunning chain of Portuguese islands in the Atlantic, on a day that we had decided to hike the rim of a volcanic lake. I’ll get back to that.
As I started this essay, I was in a gorgeous hotel on Miami Beach, a warm blustery day, with nothing to do but write, eat, maybe shop, listen to some music. However, I was only there because I’d had to evacuate my home due to the approach of Hurricane Helene.
So, not exactly the ideal conditions.
But you know what’s odd? The fact that something horrible was happening—a huge hurricane barreling toward the Gulf Coast, the fate of our home unknown—found me calmer than I usually am on trips. Maybe because it was not up to me to come up with the worst thing. Mother Nature was taking care of it.
Meanwhile, I hope you’ll forgive the disjointed nature of this essay. Because during its writing, we were forced to evacuate AGAIN as Hurricane Milton made its way toward Florida’s Gulf Coast. (Side note: I also happened to be on deadline. Stuck in traffic heading north, with my husband at the wheel, I turned in my 23rd novel using the hot spot on my phone for internet connection.) But that’s a whole other essay, about how I use writing as an escape hatch. It’s a place I go to metabolize darkness and uncertainty.
Bear with me.
In spite of weathering numerous storms, and semi-frequent panicked evacuations, I haven’t written the Florida Hurricane Book that every Florida thriller writer is required by law (no, not really) to write.
However, storms figure prominently in a number of my novels. Why? Because on some level, I (theoretically) love chaos. And there is nothing more chaotic than the wrath of nature. Nothing else so clearly reveals our utter powerlessness, the fragility of our structures, our lives. We are tiny, defenseless. We build things to stay safe. But when the storm comes, there’s little to do but get out of its path and hope for the best.
In fact, it was a storm that was at the root of the inspiration for CLOSE YOUR EYES AND COUNT TO 10.
See, I told you we were getting somewhere.
Okay, back to the Azores and that hike around the rim of a volcanic lake. Moments earlier, the sky had been a pristine blue, the air crisp and cool. But as soon as we stepped onto the trail head, the heavens opened in a torrential downpour, soaking us through and sending us rushing back to our rental car.
Oh, well! Who really wants to hike anyway?
We waited a while to see if the weather would suddenly change again which it will on the Azores, then finally decided to return to our hotel. On our way back, we came across something truly mind blowing. A gigantic, abandoned concrete structure. At the time, I had no idea what this obviously once-grand place had been called, or how it came to be so gorgeously abandoned. But a gigantic sign warning us away – DANGER! PELIGRO! NO ENTRA! – was essentially, as I saw it, a dare.
Come on! We had no choice but to explore.
And the storm picked that moment to clear, revealing once again blue skies.
So, we spent an hour wandering through this building, climbing winding staircases, reading graffiti, looking at the detritus left behind by others who had been here before us. We took in the stunning views of the lake below, listened to the constant sound of dripping water. Nature was reclaiming the place, as it does, foliage dripping fecund from interior balconies, a tree pushing its way through the concrete floor. It smelled of rot and wood and dirt, the wind howling through all the open spaces, tossing our hair, and snapping at our pant legs.
How was I NOT going to write about this place? It was like a gift from the universe.
Yes, we made it out alive! It wasn’t my finest parenting hour – but certainly the child of a thriller writer is accustomed to odd, semi-unsafe excursions.
An abandoned structure on a gorgeous island in the middle of the Atlantic, a wild storm that pushed us in a direction we wouldn’t have otherwise traveled. Isolation. And, yeah, a little bit of that adventurer’s spirit that goads you into doing something that others, rightly so, might not. And just like that, the seed for a novel was planted; or at least a setting, and the heart of my main character, Adele, whose inner adventurer pushes her to take a huge risk for the welfare of her kids.
So, all of this has me thinking that maybe writers aren’t supposed to go on normal vacations. Maybe our lives and experiences are just fodder for the page. A hike in upstate New York helped me solidify the idea for a short story that I’d been trying to tell for a while (“Exit Strategy”), a trip to Vegas inspired a Christmas tale (“The Kill Clause”), a pandemic getaway to a rental in the woods led to SECLUDED CABIN SLEEPS SIX, a trip to Prague inspired my novel DIE FOR YOU.
Trips, evacuations, unexpected detours. It’s really what life is all about, isn’t it? But those hours spent lazing on the beach, or being pampered at the spa, or whatever we think of as “relaxing” – those aren’t the things we remember, the stories we tell. Those aren’t the moments that weave their way into the fabric of our lives, that define us.
I’ve given up on the normal, easy vacation. It’s clearly not for me. I am practicing radical acceptance of the wild, the uncomfortable, the slightly scary, the experiences that change me, and find their way in unpredictable ways on to the page and to you.
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