Where do I write?

Pat Davids here to answer the question, where do I write?

I write at the intersection of romance and adventure.

Okay, I write in my own little office, a third bedroom in my home that gets the morning sun through two big windows. Not that I see the morning sun very often. I’m a night person.
I have a cluttered desk, a cherry wood two-door filing cabinet and a closet full of bookshelves and books. Above the filing cabinet is a three-foot by three-foot mirror.

My mirror frame is a collection of postcards and photos of my grandkids. When my grandson was little, I often took him to places like the Kansas Aviation Museum, Oklahoma’s Aquarium, the Cosmosphere in Hutch and the Sedgwick County Museum here in Wichita. We loved to explore new places and learn new things and each time we went somewhere, we got a postcard for him to put on my mirror. Over the years, that collection has grown.

Sitting at my desk I see the sharks cursing underwater and the spires of the Cathedral of the Plains in Victoria touching a cloudless blue sky. I see the dark and glittering world 800 feet below the surface of the earth in the Underground Salt Museum. I remember the weight of the earth pressing down overhead and tang of salt on my lips in the cool darkness. I remember how good ice cream tasted when I was standing in the August sunlight afterwards.

On my mirror are pictures of graduation, first communion, and baptisms. I can see my granddaughter’s first pony ride, my daughter hugging her kids at the fair, me standing beside my elderly parents at my daughter’s wedding. I’ve kept a school play brochure and a drawing of a stick figure that is Jesus on the Cross: all highlights of my life as a grandmother.

My mirror is a refection of the joy, sadness, pride, and adventures that are gifts for my soul and inspiration for my work. I wouldn’t trade a single one of them for a million dollars. One funny thing about my mirror, as it gets more crowded, I can see less of myself in it, and isn’t that the way it should be?

If you’re wondering why a romance author hasn’t mentioned her husband’s picture on the mirror, I’ll tell you why. Dave doesn’t like to travel. He’d rather be a home, but he likes that I go and do things without him. He’s always waiting for me when I come home and he’ll always ask the same thing. “Well, did you have a good time?” Not only do I get to enjoy my adventures, I get to recount them and they do get better in the retelling. As I sit at my desk, all I need do is turn my head slightly to see him sitting at his desk across the hall. Usually, our eyes will meet and we will both smile. Because that’s what you do when you spot the one you love.

My office sits at the intersection of romance and adventure—on a quiet street in Wichita, Kansas—and that’s the way I like it.