Holidays!

Writers don't get days off. Seriously. 

But don't take this as a cry for help or a cheap ploy for sympathy, because I wouldn't have it any other way. Because everything -- EVERYTHING -- is grist for the mill. Or chaff in the wind. Or something. 

Anyway, I'm about to head off for three weeks in Victoria. Why the rest of the family has chosen winter as the season to meet up there, I have no idea. Because it's going to be cold. 

Fucking cold. 

And as someone who hasn't done cold in a long time, I'm alternating between "Oh, it won't be that bad" and "God help me, I'm going to die." 

But of everything we're doing in the next three weeks, here's what I'm looking forward to the most: 

Sovereign Hill. And no, not for the old-timey sepia photographs I'm sure I'll be forced into, but for the Gold Museum. Seriously, because I'm working on a historical at the moment that could really use a bit more research in that direction. Okay, so my story is set twenty years after the heyday of Sovereign Hill, and in Wyoming, but you can bet I'll learn something important about gold mining in any case. And if they've got a butcher's shop, even better. 

Note to self: stop giving your characters jobs you know nothing about just because "Oh, it surely can't be that complicated." 

A holiday? Hell no, this is an extensive research trip with some shopping, sightseeing and probably frostbite thrown in.