Tag: writing

Ready to Travel? And Happy Mothers’ Day!

May brings an urge to travel – the days are longer, the birds are returning, and school is ending. Everything’s coming to life after the routines of winter. Perhaps you are dreaming of filling up the gas tank and hitting the road or hopping on a plane.

Oops! Fuel prices have skyrocketed, and reality sinks in. If you had a sailboat, the wind would blow you where you wanted to go for free! Sound familiar? No sailboat?  You could travel on foot or by bicycle.

Coot Under Sail, 1990s

 In 1984, Kent, Pam, and Andy crossed the Atlantic in their thirty-eight-foot sailboat using less than ten gallons of diesel fuel to charge their batteries. In the 1990s they paid five cents per gallon for diesel fuel in Venezuela. In long-ago times, sailors had no electricity at all, and Pam and Kent met at least one sailing couple (on Emerald) who relied on wind alone.

Linnea Departing on Her FIrst Camino in April 2010

In 2010, during my first pilgrimage through Spain, I smiled as I passed petrol stations. No need to stop!  My boots were my tires, and my legs and lungs the engine, fueled by tortilla de patatas, café con leche, and zumo de Naranja (Spanish tortillas, coffee, and orange juice).  

Some Book Recommendations

(Might be Nice to Stay Home and Read!)

If you’re not ready to set sail or take off on foot on the Continental Divide, Appalachian, or Pacific Crest trail, or one of many lesser-known trails or bicycle paths (for the price of shoes, a backpack, and perhaps a bus ticket), but would rather be an armchair traveler, you might enjoy reading We Ran Away to Sea: A Memoir and Letters (if you haven’t already read it), or one of several sailing books I’ve recently enjoyed including A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck (2025) by Sophie Elmhirst, and Child of the Sea: A Memoir of a Sailing Childhood (2012) by Doina Cornell.

Our friend Jim Sollars has also recently added to his series of sailing adventure/detective tales, and Tom Cunliffe, whose gift for storytelling is evident in his portrayal in We Ran Away to Sea, has recently published a historical adventure story of his own, Hurricane Force (2025). I’ve just started reading it, and the opening chapters drop you right into a heart-stopping situation. 

For something different, take a look at Seagoing Gaucho, the wild story of a group of Argentinians who sail to Africa, Europe, and navigate the Mediterranean Sea in the years immediately following World War II. On the way home they follow the path of Columbus from Spain to San Salvador, then beyond to North America before returning home. I found the book on Internet Archives. To read it, you need to set up an account, but that is easy to do.

Camino books I’ve recently enjoyed include Jacqueline Saxon’s Tales from the Trail: Keeping It Real on the Camino de Santiago: One African American Woman’s Quest for Clarity (2025), and Andrew McCarthy’s Walking with Sam: A Father, a Son, and Five Hundred Miles Across Spain (2023)

As for our writing, I am still working on Home Sea Home, or Andy and the Sextant, a picture book currently with an editor, and on my memoir Once a Pilgrim that may not see the light of day for a long time yet, while Kent is still poking along, prodded by me, editing some of the stories he left out of the original book and writing new stories about his life since then…hint: he meets me!.

Keep reading, and please consider writing a review (no matter how short) of We Ran Away to Sea. Write back! We need encouragement, and we look forward to hearing from you. Add a comment or email us at jacana@jacanapress.com by copying this email or clicking below.

Kent and Linnea

So, what’s the excuse?

What have we been doing in the month since we returned from Africa and the glorious Cape Verde Islands, besides trying to set up Mailer-lite?

10. We had all the pressure water lines replaced in our house, which entailed living with plumbers and erratic water supplies for almost a week. 

9. I’ve been making crazy videos on TikTok using Canva, iMovie, and TikTok’s own program in hopes of selling more books. The ones I spend the most time on and think are the best get the fewest views. Take a look and vote (click on the heart) for the ones you like best. Look for Linnea448.  Keep your eyes averted when you encounter some of the other stuff (not in my account!). It’s a wild world out there.

8. Book sales have been falling over the past month. Maybe time to try something new – like writing a newsletter?

7. Kent has been writing more stuff to add to a sequel to We Ran Away to Sea,

6. I finally set up my new Epson 8550 printer that arrived in December. It prints beautifully, although I’ve just begun to explore what it can do, including printing photos on larger paper. Oops. I haven’t ordered the larger paper yet.

5. Partly to make my workspace work better with the new printer, Kent and I spent a morning moving furniture around. I just took a couple of pictures, but it still looks depressingly messy. Maybe next time?

4. I made a New Year’s resolution to clean up the piles of folders and who knows what else that have been stacked in my office on the beautiful big coffee table that Kent built long ago. You can now see the top, although it is still not perfectly clear. A friend and I agreed to share our progress on organizing. Hey, Dana, how is it going for you? A picture next time? Maybe that will motivate me to finish the job AND keep it neater from now on. Maybe I can invite all of you to come for tea?

3. I upgraded my wonderful Sony A6000 camera to the A6700. Figuring that out has taken a few hours, and I’m not done yet.

2. I’ve been submitting photos to exhibitions, near and far. One picture was accepted, and I sold two prints in December, so that has been motivating.

Morning on Golden Gate Pond

1. I’m revising two picture book stories and have continued writing. I’m congratulating myself that I managed to sort through all those folders without getting too distracted.

AM I ALLOWED A MINUS ONE? After two years in a repair shop, I stopped by one day (amazed to find it open after years of unanswered phone calls!) and reclaimed my old Bose radio, still without the CD player, but now I get to listen to classical music on KHFM while I work. It keeps me going in a happier frame of mind.

The Wanderer by Sharon Creech

            Of course, there’s been much more besides… but this is already too long. I can see I have to write more often. I’m listening to Sharon Creech’s The Wanderer. How did I miss this before? It is a great story of life on a sailboat from a teenager’s perspective (actually two teenagers’ perspectives, so it is two voices, just like We Ran Away to Sea. What a great writer Creech is! Sadly, the book is available from the library only as an audiobook. I’ve ordered a print copy so I can enjoy it that way, too.

On São Vicente, Cape Verde (the sands were blown from the Sahara Desert, almost 2000 miles)!

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!   We are looking forward to a visit from Andy (yes, the Andy who was a little kid and a young man in We Ran Away to Sea.

Leave a comment

The Vagabonds Return

December 11,

In the flurry of getting ready for what we intended to be a pilgrim walk in France that got switched to an Overseas Adventure Travel excursion to Egypt, I’ve neglected updates to this blog. Here is the latest from our newsletter, and a promise to do better in the future!

Linnea and Kent adventuring in EgyptAnd experiencing ancient and modern GreeceAmazon Sales

Amazon Book Sales

Would this encourage you to buy the book?I didn’t make any goofy videos for Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok while we were away, so perhaps that is why Amazon sales of We Ran Away to Sea suddenly slumped during the last week of November and the first week of December. Alas!

We’d  been selling about 20 books per month on Amazon for most of the year, but it appears that We Ran Away to Sea has hit the doldrums.

If you’re still looking for just the right present for someone (hint), the book is readily available at local bookstores, on Amazon, or even from us.

If you’d like to give us a present, please share your responses to the book in a sentence or two.  And a big thank you to those who have already done so!  Or, send us a picture of you with the book!


Overlooking the River Nile from the Old Cataract Hotel in Aswan

Now that we’re home, once I get a Christmas letter written, I’ll return to writing my memoir tentatively titled Once a Pilgrim about my 2010 life-changing solo pilgrimage from Le-Puy-en-Velay, France, to Pamplona, Spain, (including a May snowstorm in the Pyrenees). Kent and I are also compiling and editing the stories we left out of We Ran Away to Sea.

Kent gave two well-received book talks, one just two days before we left for Europe and one just four days after our return.

Don’t give up on us!  We’re not dead yet, but still processing the thousands of years of history we walked through in Egypt and Greece, and the U.S. election, which took the wind out of our sails.

Kent is reading Joseph Conrad in an oversized volume I must have inherited from my dad called A Conrad Argosy.  Now there’s a real writer for you!

Marlow speaking in The Heart of Darkness (near the beginning of that novella), “…like a running blaze  on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds.  We live in a flicker — may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling!  But darkness was here yesterday.”  And will come again.

Kent reading A Conrad Argosy. Doubleday, 1942. woodcuts by Hans Alexander Mueller

Until next time…

Calling all Writers! Join me on a Shakespearean Excursion: “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by our sun of York.” opening lines of Richard III

Background

Despite my efforts to be creative in promoting the book, I have been discontented these past months with the modest sales of We Ran Away to Sea.  I recently contracted someone in Poland to analyze my efforts with Amazon ads, upon which I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time and money with mediocre results.  I enjoy the creative aspects of promotion, but not the nitty-gritty details or keeping track.

This morning, a serendipitous detour led to some unexpected pleasures as I reflected upon “Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by our sun of York,” the brilliant opening lines of Shakespeare’s Richard III. The link below provides an excellent analysis of the entire passage and concludes with a fabulous video of Laurence Olivier delivering the soliloquy.

https://nosweatshakespeare.com/quotes/soliloquies/now-is-the-winter-of-our-discontent

My Polish Mentor

My Polish mentor suggested that the blurb which I revised several times with the dubious “help” of ChatGPT was more a synopsis than an invitation to read the book. So, I tackled revising the blurb, and I invite your suggestions and comments. I uploaded the revised blurb for both the ebook and the paperback onto Amazon last night, but I’m not satisfied with either. This morning, I wrote the following shortened version with no use of AI.

So, channeling Shakespeare again, Ladies and Gentlemen, please “lend me your ears” (Julius Caesar) and your advice.

(1) Revision March 22 (morning)

Frustrated and unhappy with their comfortable lives in mid-America, Kent and Pam sell the family home and all their possessions and run away to live on a sailboat. With no experience of the sea or sailing, they fly to England with their children in search of an affordable boat. Their first sail is across the Atlantic. In the days before GPS, they rely on celestial navigation to get them to the Caribbean. Are they crazy, brave, foolish, or all three? Would you or wouldn’t you do what they did? Told in two voices from different perspectives, Pam and Kent’s accounts of their lives at sea and at home will give you much to think about.

Run away with Pam and Kent and explore the unknown with them and within yourself.

 Or should the opening (continuing the Shakespeare allusion) be: “Discontented with their comfortable lives…”?

(2) Current Kindle version (as of March 22)

Would you voluntarily give up your secure, comfortable life for the unknown?

When Pam and Kent make the audacious decision to sell their house and everything in it and embrace life at sea, they envision a harmonious existence on their sailboat, filled with adventure and togetherness. However, their dreams shatter early on when Pam and the children abandon Kent and their boat in Europe, leaving him disheartened and adrift. Undeterred, he embarks on a solitary journey through the equinoctial gales of the Bay of Biscay, accompanied by a hired crew. Weeks later, Pam has a change of heart and joins him with their ten-year-old son in the Canary Islands for the Atlantic crossing. Using celestial navigation in the days before GPS, they arrive in Antigua as planned. But little do they know that the challenges of their chosen new life are just beginning.

Pam’s vivid letters and Kent’s heartfelt stories document the grand experiment of their years at sea, their risky overland travels, and the struggles that threaten to pull them apart but bring them closer together. The book contains maps, photos, a timeline, and a glossary.

(3) Current Amazon paperback version (as of March 22)

Would you voluntarily relinquish your comfortable life and worldly goods and set out for the unknown?

When Pam and Kent decide to sell their house and embrace a life at sea, they envision a harmonious existence on their sailboat, filled with adventure and togetherness. However, their dreams shatter when Pam and the children abandon Kent and their boat in Europe, leaving him disheartened and adrift. Undeterred, he embarks on a solitary journey through the equinoctial gales of the Bay of Biscay, accompanied by a hired crew. Weeks later, Pam has a change of heart and she and ten-year-old Andy join him in the Canary Islands for the Atlantic crossing. Using celestial navigation in those days before GPS, they reach the Caribbean. Yet, their challenges are just beginning.

Although Kent yearns to sail through the Panama Canal and explore the vast Pacific, Pam harbors deep-seated fears, and fourteen-year-old Jake, who has reluctantly joined them in the Virgin Islands, craves the familiarity of friends back home. Despite memorable family adventures, Kent reluctantly relinquishes his cherished dream.

Nearly a decade later, Pam and Kent sell their home and possessions again, this time venturing through the Great Lakes into the North Atlantic, through the Bahamas to the Caribbean. For over six years, they travel to offbeat destinations and undertake daring overland journeys through Central America, Venezuela, and Colombia—a country then known for its perilous reputation. Kent remains steadfast in his desire to traverse the Panama Canal and sail the Pacific, but equipment failures, storms, illness, financial worries, and family complications often interrupt their idyllic moments.

Will Pam succumb to her fears, or will Kent embark on his grand voyage alone? Share their journey and the difficult, sometimes heart-wrenching decisions involved in living at sea.

So that’s it! Which of these versions or variations of them would entice you to read the book? What would Shakespeare write? Comments?

Leave a comment