Nautical Muse

This is my yard. My husband and I live aboard a sailing catamaran on Puget Sound. Cheapest waterfront property we may ever own. It’s hard to beat the view, even if the living quarters are a bit small. There’s nothing like having a disagreement with someone and being stuck together in 300 square feet while it’s raining sideways outside.

Here are a few of my neighbors. we get harbor seals fishing beneath our boat. Occasionally, otters climb the swim steps in order to lunch on my deck. Oh, yes. This means finding blood and severed fish heads all over the boat. The first time that happened, I got up in the morning, opened the back door and nearly had a heart attack because there was blood everywhere. We counted the cats to make sure we still had the full crew compliment onboard. With everyone present and accounted for, we examined the evidence and realized we’d been left some kind of message from the God Otter. We’re still trying to work out the exact threat.

Over Memorial Day weekend, we had a plague of jelly fish, little dime-sized guys. They were thick enough that as they swam, the water looked like it was boiling. No kidding. The entire marina population spent the weekend commenting on how creepy it was. I was fascinated and delighted because I’m a complete geek. Jelly fish showed up in my second book, retooled as alien life forms clinging to the insides of space stations. They dangled a lure of stinging cells to stun and catch their prey. In contrast, most of the jelly fish we seen in Puget Sound are harmless – the odd [Lion’s Mane jelly] notwithstanding. Honestly, have a look at jellyfish and tell me they don’t look like aliens who should be totally dangerous.

Life aboard a boat figured into the first novel in the series, too. Did you know that there are no bathrooms aboard a boat? They’re called ‘heads’ as in ‘hitting the head’. Theory has it that the term comes from old sailing vessels which placed the bathroom facilities at the front of the ship near the figurehead. The term is still used aboard most boats today, including military vessels – the notable exceptions are aboard cruise ships and other pleasure craft serving a lot of customers who may not be familiar with nautical slang. My point is that I used ‘head’ rather than ‘bathroom’ or ‘toilet’ in my first book when the hero and heroine are aboard a spaceship. It came up in edits. Turns out my land-based publishing team didn’t know nautical slang, either. It did spark an interesting debate about whether space-going military forces would follow a naval model or be based on an air force.

No one won that debate. What’s your thought? Are space militaries naval in nature – like the submarine service (my argument), like a big naval carrier? Or are they more like the men and women who fly into the wild blue yonder?

I’ll give a copy of either novel (your choice) to one commenter chosen at random.


***Marcella's winner is Marybelle!  Please email me at totebag@authorsoundrelations.com with your full name and mailing info!***