Author survives Greek sailing adventure – Alexander McCall Smith 6 Sept
It’s amazing how sailing in Greece lures authors. It has sudden storms and danger, then dazzling beauty mixed with kindness, love, life and hospitality – all the ingredients your characters can surprise you with when you are trying to write them into an orderly story. Will they even survive a night of disaster, being cast onto the rocks, to see a peaceful dawn or happy ending?
I’m so happy it was the happy ending this week for great writer Alexander McCall Smith, author of The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency and many, many great books this week, when sailing in Greece this week. Here are his tweets @McCallSmith of 6 September:
“I’m sailing a boat off Greek islands. Last night a violent storm seized us and we faced being dashed on rocks. We narrowly escaped disaster.”
“It was very frightening. Then I thought: good material for the next Tobermory book! When dawn came, we were glad to be alive.”
“And now nature is benign once more: Homer’s wine-dark sea, not a cloud in the sky. Jason and the Argonauts sailed near here.” Hmm, he didn’t mention that Penny and Sally and crew maybe also went past..
Here is his blog, letting us know all is well. “A spokeswoman at Polygon, one of McCall Smith’s publishers, said that the author was still on holiday in the Greek islands and was indeed ‘shipshape’.”
One of McCall Smith’s book series is The School Ship Tobermory, published 2015, which follows the exploits of children who go to school on a ship.