MC and I went to her grandparents' place in Pennsylvania to take advantage of the long weekend (and we took an extra day off to make it longer!)... and the house is on top of a (smallish) mountain. The Appalachain Trail runs near their place (less than 1/2 mile from it, actually), and it's quite a nice, quiet place.
And there were some alterior motives with the trip, as well... When I was first taken up there, almost two years ago (a sort of "meet the grandparents" before MC and I officially started dating), along with another of MC's friends (Melissa), we (Melissa and I) were force-fed some of the history of the area by the grandparents... it's not a bad thing, as people are always inclined to want to brag or show off some of the landmarks or features of the area, especially if there is some sort of personal connection.
In this particular case, it involves a now-lost luxury hotel (burned to the ground in 1967-ish) that opened for business in 1891. Being a hotel person in a past life (I do have a management degree for just such an occupation), it was something that intrigued me - and as a writer, it's been something that's stuck with me. Fueled by some ideas that popped up during my "Research" class, part of my plans for the trip were to gather some research information and ideas from the (now) grandparents-in-law. While I didn't get as much as I would have liked (abundance of information, not enough time to make notes or get a lot of pictures of other locations - not from lack of resources), I have enough to start some serious story-boarding for a project (including a time-stamp for circa early 1940s to accurately use the sights/locations that I am thinking about blending into the story)...
I've got a couple of things bouncing around, that I hope to make some distinct progress on over the summer (to prepare for my class next fall). If things go well this summer, I would like to be well into a couple of works (near 30k words), to be well positioned to take advantage of the semester for workshopping and improving the project of choice.
To the drafting table!
No comments:
Post a Comment