When someone asks you if you want an all-expenses paid trip to Sardinia to cover a racing trimaran sponsored by Maserati and get a look at two of their cars, you don’t say no. Luck for me I’ve got a mate who runs a lifestyle magazine in London and asked my Monday evening if I could pack and be ready for a flight Tuesday morning for a one-night trip south into the Mediterranean. The gravest challenge facing me on a truncated time-line was figuring what to wear, but needless to say I accepted the assignment and roughly 12 hours later I was en-route to Heathrow. A few hours after that I was in the sun on the north east coast of Sardinia.
I won’t cover the details of the trip, but it involved a boat trip, a swim, some amazing food, and a spin in some fast Italian cars. As a writer, and one that thinks that they’re more than competent, I believe that if you can write about one thing, you should be able to write about something else. Do I know anything about trimarans, Sardinia, or Maserati, not really, but hell, I can appreciate all three.
I suppose that as a sci-fi writer I have an active imagination, and with that the capacity to think freely and creatively. What else does a writer need, the facts? Sure, but if you ask the right questions of the right people you can get those without too much trouble.
One unsuspected benefit of the tip was meeting some fellow wordsmiths, two of whom were happy to take two copies of my first novel, Minus Epsilon, off my hands. Hopefully they’ll find the subject matter palatable.
As a struggling writer, at least for now, I’m always open to the next opportunity that might be coming my way. Always looking out for what is on the horizon. Now I just need to find my next assignment with a preference for somewhere new and interesting.
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