Keith Charters: Landing on the Sand

We welcome author and publisher Keith Charters to the blog. Keith tells us about the odd, far-flug and often perilous locations that being a writer takes him to.


As some of you will know, I’m both the author of the LEE series of humorous novels and the MD of Strident Publishing. But today, I want to wear my author hat and I want to talk about travel.
You see, I do a lot of it, dashing around the country presenting in schools and libraries and at festivals.. Happily I love going places (and coming back from them). And every so often I get to go somewhere…well, if not exactly exotic, certainly far flung.

This coming school year will begin with me boarding a disturbingly small plane of the bring-your-own-elastic-band variety as I head off to Barra (where you land on the beach – yikes!), Benbecula, Orkney and Shetland. I was invited to the first two; I invited myself to the latter two, precisely because I have never been to them before.

Why do I love this sort of travel when I could just as easily stay at home in front of my computer? Well, we have 6-month-old twins and a 3-year-old in our house. Happily the twins have yet to work out how to open my study door. Unhappily the 3-year-old learned that trick a long time ago and now only the lure of chocolate raisins in the kitchen keeps him out of the room.

As a result, these days I write almost exclusively when I am travelling. And since I love writing I have to love travelling. So I can’t wait to get on those flights to the isles. I have tightened my elastic bands to breaking point, so we should be able to get off the ground. It’s just that landing on the sands of Barra that I have some misgivings about.

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