Overheard at . . . Home

“Now I’ll be able to use my English accent and people will understand me.”

To be fair, my daughter does have a unique ability to mimic accents and voices. This isn’t always a good thing as we’ve had a few awkward moments when she was younger and people may have thought she was making fun of them.  Her favorite accent is a Northern English one. I believe she learnt it at an early age while watching a kids show on t.v.- but it never ceases to amaze me how spot on she is with it.

And, indeed, she will get to try it out in person this summer. True to my New Year’s Resolution, we started off 2014 by making the reservation for our trip to England this summer. I have a million ideas for our itinerary battling for attention in my head right now. But since the purpose of the trip is to do research for my next book, this sets the priority. Fortunately for both me and my daughter, the trip is based around a mother and daughter’s visits to competing tourist locations of Jane Austen and Harry Potter.

There are so many possible sites for each of these that even that will be difficult to cull. The filming of Harry Potter and the many Jane Austen stories has covered many English locales. But the point of the story will be the mother’s conflict between literary pride and commercial prejudice. Expect some romance thrown in there (for my character, not me:>) and it is a story I am really eager to write. It also is a great way to prioritize which of these many locations we visit.

I read somewhere that having a goal is a great way to focus a trip. At the same time the author wrote that while the goal might help create the itinerary, the real journey takes place in the experiences, planned or unplanned, along the way. So, while we will be excited to visit friends in England, and eager to finally go to some places my daughter has on her bucket list (like Highclere Castle, Stonehenge and The British museum for the Rosetta Stone,) the purpose of our trip is to experience our mother/daughter time, and allow it to inform the manuscript. We may even blog about it from each of our POVs... a record, so to speak, of this personal and emotional journey for each of us.

In the meantime, I’ll try to share our itinerary with you as it grows, and I’ll look forward to your suggestions. I like to hope it will be a Journey Inspired by Love and enjoyed by many.

Happy New Year! Here’s to your own Journeys Inspired by Love in 2014.
Deanne

Have you visited any must-see Harry Potter or Jane Austen sites? Do you have any big journeys (literal or metaphorical) planned for 2014? I love to hear from my blog readers! And to prove it I'll give a copy of any one of Daniel Davidson's Travel Free Guides to one lucky commenter during the month of January. Leave your comment and then check back at the end of the month to see if you won. Good Luck and Happy Journey.

P.S. In case you haven't found him yet, Daniel Davidson is a travel writer with great advice on saving money while traveling. Check him out at his website: http://www.freetravelideas.com/