March is such a great research month!

This world of ours is so incredible! There is so much beauty it is almost indescribable, even for someone who perhaps talks too much and works with words all day.

This month I have been traveling and am beginning to forget what my home office looks like. I fell deeply in love with the ocean when I was eight years old and have longed to live near one ever since. Swaying palm trees, the sound of the waves lapping against the shore, seagulls complaining in the distance, the surfers catching air on temporal waves and the murmur of white noise in the sea breeze strangely feel like home for this landlocked Colorado native.

Yesterday I went on a five hour hike into the back country of Kauai and swam in an icy pool fed by one of the most incredible waterfalls I have ever been up close to. For those of you who watch LOST it was like being on the set of the show. I expected Hurley to pop out at any moment. My ankles and knees have never been so sore, but it was so totally worth it!

Earlier this month I had the opportunity to scuba dive on a liveaboard boat in the Bahamas. We did 24 dives in 6 days, including reef, drift, night, wrecks, shark and other dive styles! It was wonderful on on of the wreck dives to have an EPIPHANY about a picture book I am working on titled; There's A School In The Pool! about an elementary school at the bottom of the ocean. The book deals with fears and cliques and just great oceanic fun, but for some reason I was stuck on the setting. I kept visualizing the school in a cave, but it never worked well. THEN, I was diving a wreck and looked into the hull into what once was a living quarters and it became clear! Sitting at the bottom of the room was a giant lobster who was a bit irritated at me for shining my light in his face. I suddenly saw the whole thing. A cruise ship with many, many rooms for classrooms that had sunk at the bottom of the ocean. The Principal with the spiny personality and it all came together. That one dive made the whole trip worthwhile, even though I would never question the validity of the whole experience. It was awesome! Now I am sitting on the island of Kauai as I write this and a whole new book is forming here in the Pacific in my mind. From Atlantic to Pacific and I just got an invite to go to the Solomon Islands, which might provide even more inspiration. When kids ask me in almost every school I visit, "What is the coolest part about being an author?" I think I just might have a new answer!

Sometimes you just have to "be there" to get it right. As I drive by houses here on the island I look at them as potential places for my new home office. It's snowing back home. I don't miss it.