2020 had a lot of challenges for everyone, and I was afraid I would become a shopaholic or wine-aholic or wear the soles of my shoes out while on my five walks a day and I searched for something that would keep me from the loony bin. Fortunately, I found some friends, Audrey and Griff Lyons, who have kept me on the straight and narrow path. These fictional characters roll around in my brain and don’t ask for much except to be put on paper.
They live eighteen miles from their fictional town of Hunter, Idaho, and have lived there since their marriage nearly fifty years before and know every nook and cranny of their house and farm. Griff is a soybean farmer and Audrey is a nurse, both retired, trying to figure out what to do for the next twenty years. Like many, they have settled into a ho-hum existence with monotonous days and spice-less nights. Griff fishes, Audrey reads, and both try to ignore how quiet their house is.
Audrey complains that they have no spontaneity in their marriage until one day Griff, age 70, tells her they are going on a cruise and she should find her bikini. Her eyes pop open at the thought. A bikini? At age 67 with a spicy outlook on life, and despite some aches and pains, wrinkles and crinkles, she wonders what in the world has gotten into him but is game for just about anything that will put some zing back in her life.
The fun begins on day one of the cruise when Audrey meets Logan, a 70-year-old widower (a podiatrist), who immediately is smitten with everything about her, and she is surprised that her juices began to rumble, too. She thought her libido had gone south at menopause, but with Logan in pursuit she is wondering if there might be a great awakening in store?
My book is called Cruise Time, the first of three in the Wrinkly Bits series about these characters (and a few more) who begin to live, laugh, and love on a cruise to Portugal. It’s a spicy story, but, I promise, not erotic! My publisher says it will be in stores and online before I know it. As soon as I know, you will, too!
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Mask Time for us wrinkly folks.
