The Author and the RV Life by Sharon House

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The Author and the RV Life

By Sharon House

Several years ago I wrote my first novel but did not sign a publishing contract until 2006. The ensuing year was filled with editing, choosing layout designs, cover design, reviewing the proof and seeing the end result, my novel in book form ready for market. My husband and I lived in a house, held down jobs, and camped on holiday weekends and a few vacation trips during the summer months. A fall outing was a rare occasion. Then retirement came and the question was: do we stay in the house and deal with the winter cold and snow or do we make a change.

Camping brought us new acquaintances, but would we find friends along the way if we made this drastic change in our lives. Would our children, grandchildren, friends understand our desire to seek out new horizons and live out an adventure? What about my church involvement and what about my writing?

Jon was already retired and my May 2010 retirement date was fast approaching. Two novels were half finished with no time to work on either between working, committees that needed attention, and our house sold. We had to find that RV and soon. How could I write when my mind was a twirling kaleidoscope of tasks to be completed?

At last just a few weeks before the long awaited day when I could say goodbye to slogging through fall down pours and winter boots we found it – the RV of our dreams; we thought. Have you ever emptied a house and discovered you don’t have any idea where to start? Once again writing was pushed to the back of my mind to dismantle a house filled with memories. The RV only had a certain amount of storage space to keep those treasures that we couldn’t part with; sell or just plain didn’t know what to do with. We loaded our son’s basement and daughter’s shed and the rest was crammed into the new motor home storage bays – never to see the light of day again.

The big day arrived and we left the house for good and were officially full-time in our RV. The printer sat on the dashboard of the motor home, my lap top alongside it, my research tucked away in a basket beside my seat at the front along with my Bible and worship books. I was ready to work on my novels; the big change was behind me. But first I wanted to get to know the people that came every weekend to the RV Park; spend hot summer days in the pool, visit our retired friends more often, and there were still those committees that needed my attention. There was the whole summer after all to get at least one story finished before we left our home state and started the real adventure.

We put up our screen room, or as I called it the sunken living room and life was good. Finally, another chapter opened in life that waited for the pages to be filled with all the adventures the unlimited days without time constraints would bring. Certainly now Brimstone and Water would be completed without interruption. But first we better go to town and get the mail and maybe meet our friends for lunch today.

The summer went by in a whirlwind of sleeping late, lazing in the pool, trips to town and spending weekends seeing our children and grandsons, extended family and friends. A few nights I would light up the computer screen and work on that novel, but all too often it was checking the email and playing computer solitaire. And there were those books I always wanted to read that were down in that sunken living room waiting to have the cover opened.

The park was closing soon and our big day came, we were going on the road. My favorite thing about a camping life is being on the road to the next destination. It was okay that the screen room wouldn’t be used for a few weeks while we traveled; after all it was only temporary. Once we were in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas we would set up our snug living room. In the meantime we were full-timers moving to a winter haven in our “camper.” We were going to Dodge City for a week and Oklahoma City with a chance to visit my publisher. That second novel somehow got finished through the summer and it was time to think about the next step – getting it published. And what a wonderful opportunity to meet the people I felt I knew through emails and phone conversations yet never met face-to-face.

We spent the winter of 2010/2011 in the warmth of Texas, visited Mexico, made friends, saw my cousin and his wife and spent time being the retirees with no set schedule to fill our days. Four months passed before I knew what happened and my only accomplishment was to approve the web page my publisher created. Little else happened in the way of writing other than a signing event for my first novel and I knew it was time to buckle down and concentrate on getting Brimstone and Water published. It was late June by now and we were back in Michigan.

In the meantime I began to think about the next novel that was partially written, but first we had to think about making some money as workampers. Social Security just isn’t the same as that bi-weekly paycheck. Time was running out to secure a fall/winter job that paid the park expenses and gave us income as well. God smiled on us that fall when we were hired as workampers for peak season with Amazon in Kentucky starting in November 2011 and there would be no time for writing while we were on the job.

But I still had that final edit to complete before the end of September. And there was that one little thing of moving out of the motor home and into beautiful fifth wheel that became our home between the first and second edit in the midst of all this. Friends in the campground would stop by the fifth wheel and ask what I was doing inside on such a lovely fall day the weekend after the move. My answer, “Editing the final copy for my book, but I’ll be done before long so I can meet the deadline.” At last the final edit was done and I could concentrate on putting our new home in order before we hit the road for Kentucky.

We were somewhere on I-65 heading south when I received a phone call regarding cover design choices. That evening I went on line and reviewed the choices and emailed my family and friends in Michigan to tell me which design caught their eye before sending my decision to meet the late November deadline. At least it was only a matter of emailing the final decision because those four 10 hour days were beginning at Amazon and would last for the next few weeks.

The move to the Panhandle of Florida came when the layout design was ready for approval followed shortly by the final read through of Brimstone and Water before the proof was printed and sent for final review. One day we were beachcombing and wading in the sea and a few days later we moved to Alabama where I reviewed my latest novel in book form ready to find those last misspelled words or missing punctuation marks.

We returned to rain and cold in Michigan and the loss of a good friend in late April, 2012. We set up on a Wednesday and attended our friend’s funeral on Saturday. Saturday evening we learned my husband’s father had fallen and broken his hip and would have emergency surgery early Sunday morning. The next few weeks were a whirlwind of hospital and nursing home visits while living in my sister-in-law’s driveway until we moved to our next workamping job on June 15^th. Oh yes, I nearly forgot, the May 7^th release date for my second novel arrived during that chaotic time. But there’s no internet at my sister-in-law’s house, so that meant trying to market from public internets between hospital visits. On June 25, 2012 my 94-year-old father-in-law succumbed to age and illness and passed to the next life.

A year has passed since Brimstone and Water launched in a time of chaos and uncertainty. Our saving grace during it all was our home on wheels. The past year brought book signings, presentations and a crash course in social networking. Our RV lifestyle offers opportunities to tell people we meet I am an author when asked what I do. It also allows me to seek out venues where ever we travel. The third novel is written and it will soon be time to work through the process again while researching the next. And all the time the home on wheels continues to bring new adventures while writing excites the imagination.

————————–

ABOUT BRIMSTONE AND WATER

Orphaned as a toddler, Caralynn Davidson grieves the loss of her grandfather as she takes over the reins of the family estate near a small Swiss village, but the Brimstone and Water from millennia ago that destroyed an ancient civilization is about to change Caralynn’s life. She receives a letter from her grandfather, charging her with the mission of bringing an ancient soul to rest. “But I thought only God could bring a soul to rest,” she whispers with the loosely held pages still in her hand.

Mynah is Caralynn’s ancestor who is princess of Crete when the under gods attack. Mynah is transplanted into the exotic but foreign world of Egypt, where she learns that she can be welcomed into a new family but will never be able to rest until she is returned to her beloved Crete. Hoping that one day she will rejoin her family, Mynah tells her daughter and her daughter’s daughters that they must satisfy her ultimate desire

For generations, Mynah has visited the women in Caralynn’s family, and now Caralynn knows the time has come to visit Mynah herself. She learns in this compelling story about love and a soul crying out to be free that even Brimstone and Water cannot keep a family apart.

——————————

ABOUT SHARON HOUSE

Author Sharon House and her husband Jon are retired and currently spend six months of the year in southwest Michigan wine country while traveling to warmer climates through the winter months. They have a married son and married daughter, gaining a daughter and son, and four very lively grandsons ranging in age from teenagers to adolescent to toddler. In college Sharon was a voice major with an English minor and loves to sing in her local church choir. She credits writing to her maternal grandfather who owned and edited a small town newspaper in the early part of the 20^th century and left a little ink in her veins.

Her latest book is the historical romance, Brimstone and Water.

Visit her website at www.sharonhouse.tateauthor.com.

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