All About Books
This week’s travel to Brunswick, Jekyll Island, and St. Simon Island, GA, has been all about research for a new book set on St. Simons Island.
When St. Simons Lighthouse Museum & Gift Shop opened, I was their first visitor through the door. Business cards, notebook, pen, and a page of questions got me started with an informed and helpful docent. After a few hours taking notes in the museum and watching the movie twice, I perused the books in the shop noting some that might be helpful. Then I spent a couple hours talking with the docent, asking her questions that sent her scurrying to find the answers. Wet weather kept the lighthouse tower closed that day, but they honored my ticket the next day when I returned to keep an appointment with the curator. She’d made copies of some documents from the archives she thought might be helpful, and let me read some old books in her library.
Following my walk up the 129 steps into the lighthouse tower, and a short visit with another docent, I purchased some books at the museum shop with photographs that will put me in the time and place of this story. I’m eager to get started. But I’ll be mentally writing first, which is what I do when traveling. We’re driving home tomorrow. I’ll be returning to Georgia over the weekend to visit a book club, then we’ll be driving to Edenton for our house closing next week. So getting off to a slow start with the writing.
This is going to be a fun story to create, build, and write; I hope the young readers will find it fun to read. A volunteer at the museum asked me, “What’s the book’s title?” I said, “It hasn’t told me yet.”