Beach Chat with Jayne Ormerod

Happy Friday!  And it is with great pleasure I announce the return of my favorite blog segment, Beach Chat, where I ask a few questions of a fiction writer.  Today’s featured author?  Moi!  (that’s French for me!)  Enjoy! 

Name:  Jayne Ormerod

Recommend a Beach Read: Summer Rental by Mary Kay Andrews (or really any book by this definitive "beach read" author.)  Summer Rental depicts a summer vacation on the outer banks of North Carolina so well you will feel sand between your toes! 

Most cherished beach memory: At the tender age of 12, my son was bitten by the Surfing Bug.  Not unusual for people who live near the shore.  A little rarer for people like us who lived an hour away.  It was a problem because he could only surf when I drove him, sat there on the beach, then drove him home when he was done (hours later.)  He caught me in a week moment one balmy summer’s morn and I agreed to a day at the beach.  I grabbed a beach towel, beach chair, beach cooler and the book I was currently reading, The Great Gatsby by Ernest Hemingway (a much more interesting read as an adult than a high school student!)  I sat and lost myself in the world of Long Island in the summer of 1922.  Needing to flip myself for the even tan, I paused and looked out over the waves.  I spotted a lone surfer, my son, with fins to the left of him and fins to the right.  He was surfing amidst a pod of dolphins!  It was the coolest thing ever! 

Beach Bling: The Basic Necessities of a Hurricane Beach Bag

Does anyone see the irony of my last post being a review of a book that chronicles the horrific events of the greatest storm of the 20^th century to hit New England, and now, Irene, the greatest storm of this century, is knocking on our door?  To say that I’m a little freaked out is an understatement.

For those of you who may not have read my bio yet, I write from Newport, RI.  As of the 8 a.m. projected track of Irene, we are due to catch the nasty east-side of the storm.  Probably a mere category 1 (winds of 74-95 mph) but a storm surge of 25 feet!  I was a girl scout, so I have assembled the items for my emergency kit as recommended by FEMA, so survival is not an issue.  What is at issue is the things I need to tuck into my beach bag to make the post-storm trials and tribulations a little more enjoyable.

First and foremost is my itty bitty book light!  I expect to get a lot of reading done in the darkness that is part of the “fun” of a week—or longer--without electricity.  It is near impossible to sleep on those hot humid nights without benefit of a/c, let alone a fan to offer a slight breeze.  (And don’t believe the advertisements, those little battery-powered “personal” fans do not offer a dang bit of relief!)  So I will spend the nights escaping into a fictional world, preferably one set in the middle of a blizzard.

Next in my Hurricane Beach Bag I will need liquid refreshments.  Not water (that’s part of the survival kit tucked away in the basement) but something refreshing to tickle my tastebuds and relax the stress.  To that end, I have tucked away a few cases of my daily caffeine staple, Diet Coke (which isn’t quite as refreshing without ice but is still a daily requirement).  I've also set aside another basic necessity of life, Cabernet Sauvignon.  A case of it, selected because it best enjoyed at room temperature.

And of course with the red wine there will be chocolate.  Dark, creamy chocolate that is perfect food for after a hurricane because it does not require cooking or refrigeration and is ooohhhhh, so tasty!  

So while the rest of the world remains plugged into their social media worlds, I’ll be curled up, nibbling chocolate while enjoying a glass of wine and reading a book by a meager light.  Kind of cozy, if you think about it. 

So if there isn’t a blog post on Monday, it’s probably because I don’t have electricity or any communciaton to the outside world.  But don’t worry about me.  I have my Hurricane Necessities packed in my beach bag and we’ll survivie just fine.