And probably would be, if I was away on holiday in Europe, simply because I’ve always wanted to be in Belgium on a Tuesday just so I could use that line.  Not going to happen in the immediate future, but maybe next year sometime.

By the way, that line is out of a movie, but I’m not sure which one.  Obviously, it wasn’t that great if I can’t remember it.

But…

Searching for locations for my stories takes a lot of time and effort, using Google Earth and other means like street view.  Finding houses, or apartments required a great deal of real estate research, almost to the point of buying a property.

Is there any better way to see the street it’s in, the neighbours, the neighbourhood, and inside the house and gardens?  Almost as if you lived there, which of course you do in the story.

In reality, I’m in Canada on the trans-Canada highway heading towards Banff, on icy roads in winter.  Yes, that’s where we were a few years ago in early January, getting a feel for the place, the roads, the weather, the people, and the places.

Cold, yes.  Atmospheric, yes, exciting, double yes.  Sometimes research is really fun, well, I don’t call it that, otherwise everyone else will think it was not the birthday treat that it was meant to be.

And was.

My wife’s 65th birthday was one she certainly will never forget.

So…

Writing is proceeding better now that I’ve knuckled down.  The Trans-Canada experience has been translated into a story attached to a photo and has been posted.  It will also become a new episodic story, and will start now the helicopter crash story has ended.

The treasure hunt has taken shape, and there are lots of twists and turns, with people yet to show their true colours.  It always seems that way when there’s a fortune at stake.  Evil lurks behind and under every rock, and people who were thought to be untrustworthy suddenly change for the better, and those whom you thought you could depend on, well, you know what happens when a fortune is involved.  It ended on both a high and a low.

A simple surveillance task turned into a full-blown espionage story, and like all good spy stories, people are dying, and the guy trying to figure it all out is being led down more than one literal garden path.  But, he’s getting there.

My other story, in wartime Germany and Italy, is humming along, but it is about to hot up in the castle.  Our defector is yet to get there, but, by the time he does, our hero is going to have to clean up both the rogue resistance and treasonous soldiers.  Sounds easy, but in reality, it’s going to be a lot tougher.

We shall see.

Then, of course, I have gone off on a complete tangent and wrote a space saga.  I guess it’s come from watching too much Star Trek, but I always wanted to head out into outer space.  At the moment the ship is outside the orbit of Pluto, and encountering the first alien life humans have seen.

Or have they?  there’s a few interesting twists and turns in this story.

And the Being Inspired series just got to 151, and is nearly ready to be published.

Getting there is only half the fun.