We are all Novel Travelers

This has been an interesting week so far. After my full-time job is done, I've been polishing up my book, gathering up my courage and setting out for yet another adventure! I'll be on the road for work this week, Vegas, no less. Sin city, as if I didn't have enough of my own sin to worry about. I picked up the book by a Pulitzer Prize winner,Larry McMurtry, called The Desert Rose,written in 1983. The main character Harmony is both tough and tender as an ageing Las Vegas showgirl. Here's a cut from the book.

"When she turned off the pavement onto the bumpy dirt road Harmony looked back at the Strip, eight miles away. It looked so miniature, like a wonderful toy place, with all the lights still on … It was one of her favourite things, to turn onto her own road with the air smelling so good and be able to see the Strip, with the Trop up at one end and the Sahara at the other, and besides that have the sun coming up just as she got home. With sights like that to see every day, who could complain?"

Trying to follow a novel I'm reading is turning into quite a good time. On airplanes, I have a ton of time to read. I mark up my books, circling locations and street names, restaurants and tourist attractions and then when I arrive, if I have any time, I try to find them. It makes for interesting travel. Now you see why the name change on the blog.

Writers are are odd as the characters they create. Think about it. You know you've always wanted to go to Laura Ingall's, little house on the prairie. Because some writer created an image that eventually made it from the written page to the silver screen, you visualized along with the writer what they had in mind as the book was written. The writer gave enough of a description that you could see, smell, feel, and hear the house. That's the beauty of what a writer does.

So off I go! I'll be looking for places and streets that McMurtry made come alive. Should make for a more interesting journey, don't you think?

How about you, have you ever tried to see if a place or person in a novel existed? Share that with us, won't you?