“The truth is, most of us discover where we are headed when we arrive.”
Bill Watterson
As I sat astride a camel in the Sahara recently, I was struck by how many uncomfortable things I’ve done while researching my young adult fantasy series, The Maqlû.
You might wonder why a camel ride would trigger that line of thinking. Well, the answer is that it’s much harder than it looks, as evidenced by the fact that only two of the nine people in our tour group made the trip out and back (three hours). I was tempted to take the 4-wheeler back, but I kept telling myself that my protagonist, Alex Scire, didn’t have the option to drive out of the desert, so I had to gut it out and learn how to ride. There’s an art to riding them. Going up sand dunes was easy, riding across flat ground wasn’t too bad, as long as you swayed with the camel. But I never figured out how to be comfortable going down the dunes. However, I did get used to the strange feeling of being upside down when the camel stands up or sits.
Some of the other strange, cool, and uncomfortable things my youngest daughter, who plans all the trips, and I’ve done in an attempt to experience what Alex Scire encountered are:
Book 1 – The Palantir
- I tried acting like a kid by running up a 10-story-tall Mayan pyramid. But I needed a break halfway up.
- The best time was zooming down a river in Belize in a twin-engine speed boat to reach Lamanai.
Book 2 – The Pair Dadeni
- We hiked four miles up a mountain in the heat and humidity of a Caribbean summer to reach North America’s largest fortress.
- Perhaps our strangest experience was shopping in a really nice grocery store where armed guards patrolled the outside.
Book 3 – The Sangreal
- We jumped off a train down a small hillside in Romania. It wasn’t moving when we jumped, but it was pulling away before our feet hit the grass.
- We climbed 1480 steps to see Vlad Dracul’s fortress the day after a snowstorm without adequate winter clothing. I can tell you, it was brisk.
Book 4 – The Chintamani
- We hiked for miles across a cold, rainy, windswept beach to find the right spot where Alex came ashore in England.
- We kept ducking into tiny, dark rooms in castles to find creepy places where Alex encounters ghosts.
Books 5-7 – To be published
- See camel comments above.
- We walked along the edges of tall cliffs on cold, windy, misty days in Northern Ireland in December to discover more of Alex’s journey.
I’m looking forward to our future research trips to experience more of the same types of adventure.
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