2025 A to Z Challenge Blog From the Letter V

April 25, 2025. Day 1 post-surgery. As I mentioned yesterday, these last seven posts have all been pre-written to allow me to finish the challenge this year. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has done this, but normally I would’ve written today’s post last night, instead of last week.

The smell of coffee tickles my nose as I sit at my desk this morning, contemplating what to write about, how to amuse, inform, and maybe reveal a little more about myself, my hopes, my dreams, my aspirations. I’m in my seventh decade. Just how much can I actually accomplish in my coming years–of course that presupposes that I made it through surgery. No gloomy thoughts, only positive ones allowed.

Today’s letter is the letter V. When I was younger, V meant vacation. At the end of June, that was always cause for celebration: no more pencils, no more books, no more teacher’s dirty looks. But by the end of August, I was bored and longed to get back to school. When I was a teacher, my reaction to June was almost the same, but when August rolled around, I wasn’t as keen to get back to work. The patina had worn off the joys of teaching, and as I appoached retirement age, my dreams for a different lifestyle grew. I would be on vacation 365 days a year! How great would that be?

The truth is that like my ten-year-old self, it didn’t take me long to get bored again. So, I did some supply teaching, had the cleanest house ever, but my husband was still working, and our ability to travel was limited by that, our finances, and the fact that our widowed daughter and her four children needed us. That’s when my life took a strange turn and I found the vacation life I’d always wanted. I could travel to exotic locations, through time and space, create myths and legends, see good triumph over eveil each time, and enjoy life to the fullest. I decided to do what I had always wanted to do. I decided to write.

Now, that may not sound like a vacation to you, but to me, with my vivid imagination, it was a place to dream. I’m happier now, sleep well, and if I prefer the situations I create to the ones that surround me, who has the right to say I’m wrong?

My first novel, Fire Angel was released on April 23, 2013. Since then, it has undergone some serious editing and rewriting as I took into account all of the comments made about the story. When I first published it, I was with a small press, Crimson Romance, and had to adhere to their rules for romance. Times changed, Crimson Romance was swallowed up by Simon and Schuster, who really didn’t care about the stabe of authors they’d acquired. Sales and pages read tanked, and we were offered the chance to take back our books, which I did. I went to work on the book, rewriting it to be far darker than the original had been, giving the villain his own voice and digging deeper into the mind of a pyromaniac, and learning all that I possibly could about arson and the way fire behaves. This wasn’t work; it was a life-long learning experience.

Since that first novel, I have penned 53 others. Like most vacationers, I shop around to see where I would like to go. I’ve written several more romance suspense novels, many of them more thriller than romance. I have created a line of romantic comedy novels called Cocktails for You. As a history major, I loved learning about the past, so I added historical romance to my portfolio. In addition, I played with low fantasy/paranormal novels. The Tigress is the first book in a series about paranormal detectives working in modern day New Orleans, keeping both the living and the undead safe. It’s one of the few books that I have in audio form available from audible.com as well as amazon.com. I also have Christmas books, regular romance novels, and even a YA suspense. Everything you could ever want to know about my books can be found on my website. https://mhsusannematthews.ca/

In short, while I do go on regular vacations, I always come away with a little something I can turn into a longterm vacation by writing about it. Here are the most recent products of vacation writing: A Case of Mistaken Identity, The Awakening, Atonement, Sea Breeze.

I love my writng vacations. I’m actually taken three of them simultaneously now! How much more exciting can that be?

Today’s musical tribute is to vacations.

Come see me tomorrow for words of wisdom on W. Here’s the MASTER LIST https://tinyurl.com/tauke86z