Well, here it is Wednesday again, and I must update my Blog.
“Excuse me. Today is Thursday, not Wednesday.”
OMG! Someone stole a day from me. How could that happen?
“I think you misplaced it. Probably when you went to the Physical Therapist. PT stands for Patient Torture, right?”
You’re right. No wonder I erased the day from my mind.
“But facts are facts, and writers need to get them right.”
I agree, which reminds me of a novel I read recently in which the author wrote about hot air ballooning in California’s Napa Valley and got it all wrong. In the story, the hero picks up the heroine in her San Francisco apartment about ten or eleven in the morning, they drive to Napa Valley (“60 some miles north”) find a place in a balloon gondola (“They only hold seven people.”) fly for an hour, then go somewhere for lunch. Totally impossible.
“And you know this how?”
Because my DH and I did it. We Googled “Ballooning in the Napa Valley,” registered in advance, went to the site at six in the morning while the balloons inflated and joined five others in the basket for a forty-minute flight. Doesn’t the author know Google?
In fact, I put that very scene in my latest novel, FREE FALL, which is mainly about skydiving. Since I was married briefly to a skydiver, most of that is authentic too.
“So you’re saying all ballooning is done in the morning?”
Not at all, not even all over California. It depends on two things, wind conditions and air temperature. Here in the desert, where I live now, ballooning is done only on winter afternoons, because summer temperatures are higher than the air they could pump into the balloon. No hot air, no rise. A few years ago, a balloon flew over our house and landed behind our backyard.
“Thanks for the information. Have a nice day. Thursday.”
You too. Thanks for stopping by.
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