Another week, another #BlinkBlog! Curious of our author’s travel dreams and what is inspiring them??

Keep reading below…

If you could travel anywhere in the world this summer, where would you go?

Alison Gervais: I would love to go to Hungary and visit the town my great-grandma was from.

Annie Sullivan: Ha! I’ve actually traveled quite a bit, but one place I haven’t been yet is Iceland. I would love to see all those sweeping landscapes and how they differ across the island.

CJ Lyons: New Zealand and Australia—it’s winter down there!

Laurie Boyle Crompton: I’m actually writing this from an AirBnB in Southern California where I’m vacationing with my family and we’ve explored every beach in the area. Next week we’re heading back to New York where the east coast beaches await, along with our dogs who we miss VERY much. Southern California is really so beautiful and we’re having an amazing time, but I also love New York City in the summertime. We spend time upstate in New Paltz during the summer as well, plus we always travel 400 miles to Butler, Pennsylvania where I grew up so maybe ‘not’traveling will be nice for a bit. We’ve been away from our dogs for a week and a half now and miss them terribly, so if I’m making wishes it might be to travel everywhere with them. Which would be pretty silly actually because as I mentioned above, they’re kind of wild and out of control.

Lorie Langdon: London! I would LOVE to walk the streets and see the sights I wrote about in OLIVIA TWIST! Many of the settings I describe are still standing. Also, doing a Dickens tour of London would be amazing!  

McCall Hoyle: My twenty-one-year-old daughter has been in Spain studying abroad for most of the summer and sending home gorgeous pictures of Moorish palaces and the Mediterranean Sea. I would love nothing more than to be in Spain experiencing all the sights and sounds with her.

Stephanie Morrill: Italy. My husband and I have been planning a trip to Italy for about five years now. We tried to go a couple years ago, but then one of our kids was diagnosed with epilepsy and that became our life for a while. Then we had our third child, and Italy got delayed again. But one of these days!

What has been inspiring you lately?

Alison Gervais: History. That’s all I can really say at the moment!

Annie Sullivan: My niece and nephews have been inspiring me the most! They’re always coming up with funny stories to tell, and that’s sparks my creativity. Also just being in nature during these hot summer months always helps me connect with my creative side.

CJ Lyons: The Thai soccer team’s rescue—for a thriller writer and an outdoor enthusiast it was so fascinating to see it all unfold and so inspiring the way so many people from all over the world came together to make it happen.

Laurie Boyle Crompton: Traveling inspires me, especially being in a completely new environment and meeting different people. The house we’re renting has a treehouse in the backyard that is such a wonderful haven, it’s just popping with creative energy. I love capturing snippets of conversations and imagining what peoples’ lives are like. My favorite overheard snippet this week was, “I’m not trying to be negative, I’m just saying that everything sucks.” There is such a wonderful lack of self-awareness in that statement!

Lorie Langdon: I just finished watching the first season of the TV series POLDARK. The writing and characterization in that show are fantastic. As an author of historical fiction, the costumes, settings, and even the language make my heart sing!

McCall Hoyle: I teach high school English at a women’s prison, and it is the most rewarding work I have ever done. The women I teach are working so hard to improve themselves. They inspire me to improve myself as well.

Stephanie Morrill: Jen Hatmaker’s podcast, For The Love. I have been listening to it while I train for a half marathon that I am writing this fall. Not only is my body growing stronger, but my heart and my head too!