Walking for Words, Take 2

If you go into the archives for my blog to September 23, 2015, you’ll find a post called “Walking for Words.”  In it, I described how much of what goes into my books – the plots and their twists, the dialogues, and the back story – comes to me during my daily walks.  These walks can be anything from coffee strolls on St. Louis city streets, to hikes on the state park trails in Missouri, Illinois, and Kentucky, to outings in several of our national treasures, such as the Pacific Crest Trail, the American Discovery Trail, or the Appalachian Trail.  And being the nerd I am, I even cited the number of steps on my Fitbit, which now total 12,259,448 in a little over 2.5 years.

But following the traditional literary advice to show, rather than tell (which is somewhat counter-intuitive when you are working with words), I give you a picture of my hiking boots after a recent trip to Hawn State Park, south of St. Louis.  About 5 miles into an 8+ mile hike, the sole of one boot separated from the upper – I swear it looked fine before the walk!  But before you blame poor quality or workmanship, let me say, these boots are probably something like 20 years old, with several thousand miles on them.  I was just checking them out for an upcoming hike in Colorado.  I guess I’ll need a backup plan?

So, with this many miles accumulating in the preparation of book 3, I’ll have to make it at least a best seller.  What do you think – ten steps for each book sold would be, what, 120,000 books.  That’ll do.

Happy Writing,
BmP