Traveling inspires me to write. I wrote my very first book, The Bridesmaid, after a 2003 trip to London with a friend of mine. I'd always wanted to write a book as long as I could remember, but I never could figure out what story I wanted to tell—until that trip. Suddenly this tale of an American girl on a trip to London who falls in love, and also falls right into the middle of an international terrorist plot, came rolling out of me. My first book! I was so excited, and it made me realize that I do have stories inside of me. I just have to find the right inspirations.
On that same trip we took a detour into Paris for a couple days. That journey sparked my idea for my book The Honeymoon, which I mentioned in my last blog post. (As an update to that entry, I finished editing and revising my new final version, and I am more in love with John and Olivia's story than ever before! Their story has so much humor and angst and feels...everything I love in a romance as a reader.)
A trip in 2010 to Ireland was the inspiration for my book Curveball: A Love Story (which is available on Amazon now!). I was pregnant at the time of that trip. We went in the spring, and my son was born that winter. In between those two events, Zach and Emma's story came to me, and I wrote Curveball that summer. Another book inspired by a trip!
I'm thinking about these books and the trips that inspired them because I'm about to take off on a journey back to London. My daughter wants to go to college there, so we're on more of a college tour and fact-finding mission than a relaxing tourist thing, but hopefully it will spark excitement and connection for my daughter with a couple of the schools we're visiting. And who knows, maybe it'll provide me with another book idea...
Keep reading!
—Anne
August 8, 2022
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