Dear Diary: Surf's Up!

What a gorgeous day in Rhode Island! It's not often that January 28 counts as a gorgeous day in my neck of the woods, but it's a balmy 45 degrees today. I'm sitting at the beach watching scores of surfers wait for the next great wave. Admiring their grace and balance, I watch them fly over the surface of the water with breathless anticipation of the inevitable crash. Despite growing up at the beach, I've never once tried to surf. After failing to conquer gravity on skis, I can't imagine I'd be very good at surfing.

As I do every Saturday this time of year, I dropped Jake off at his hockey practice and went to do a few errands. I returned to the rink, which is just up the hill from the beach intending to write for the thirty minutes remaining in his practice. Then I said to myself, "Are you freaking crazy? The beach is right down the hill! You're going to sit in a PARKING LOT facing trees when you could look at awesome surf and white sand and water sparkling with the thousand diamonds of bright sunshine?" Good thing half of me has some sense, huh? Watching the surfers is absolutely mesmerizing, and it's giving me some ideas of how Evan McCarthy might expend some of the considerable rage he feels when a sweet, lovely woman finally manages to penetrate the tough outer shell he's used to protect himself from love his entire adult life. Oh the possibilities...

After a trip to the gym, I got some good work done on Hoping for Love yesterday. I'm really enjoying this story about two people in the throes of first love somewhat later in life than most people experience it.   As always, the Gansett Island crew is providing lots of fodder for my overly active imagination! From where I'm sitting, I'm looking toward Block Island, the real-life inspiration for my fictional Gansett Island. I'm thinking a lot about ideas for new Gansett stories, even beyond the original plan for the McCarthy siblings and a few of their friends...

So what're you up to this weekend? Anything fun?