Benefits of the Job ... Motivation and Research ...

One of the benefits of this kind of work is the travel -- if you are lucky, you actually get the chance to visit the places that appear in your stories and these places will inspire you to no ends in creating the Happily Ever After.

My family and I traveled to Tombstone, Arizona this weekend not for work, but because it was where my oldest daughter wanted to spend her 24th birthday. She inherited more from me then the big eyes and brown hair -- she has the love of the old west and adores stories of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. I was not only excited about revisiting the setting to the opening scene of a western I had been working on a few years ago, but I also knew by just being there, I would be dying to get back to work on it as soon as we got back.

We saw the old courthouse, built in 1882 -- one year after the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. It was the setting in my novel of the great jail break. We saw The Bird Cage Theater and Crystal Palace where Doc and Wyatt, along with Morgan and Virgil used to hang. We even saw the Oriental where, in the movie with Kurt Russel as Wyatt, he acquired a stake after Billy Bob gets on the wrong side of Wyatt.

It was a great trip with a lot of good things to see and old west all around. I'm afraid the burning desire to work on the book didn't take a hold again, but then, that is okay. I do have four books ahead of it on "need to get submitted." I will go back to it soon and now I have even more photos.

I mean look at this place ... have you ever seen skies so blue or that went so far up into the heavens? It is a great place to get inspired ... even if it wasn't this trip. It was still with the drive.

Where have you gone for 'research'? ;)