Good morning!

Ahh...  Saturday morning.  My favorite morning of the week.  Quiet, a nice cup of coffee by my side along with my cat, Sam.  I still have the errands and shopping to do, but it's restful anyway.

Yesterday was glorious here, warm with highs near 80 and clear skies.  This morning we have fog which is starting to burn off.

As beautiful as the weather is, I do wish it would rain - for days.  We are desperate for rain because we haven't had any in what feels like forever.  The lakes and reservoirs are drying up, as are the aquifers.  Not-quite-draconian rationing is in place and the water rates will go up because people aren't using as much water so the water districts aren't receiving the money they need to operate.  Sounds like a bit of a Catch 22 but we're like flies on pins out here.  We're stuck with no options but not to use water at all.

On my way home yesterday I got the idea that I should start a little travelogue about Sonoma County.  Out of the way places to go and see, oddball things to do that are a bit off the beaten track.  Thinking about it further, I'll start with one of my favorite places to go: the Sonoma Coast.

It's rugged and beautiful.  South of us is Pt. Reyes and the Golden Gate National Seashore, but they might well have included all of the Sonoma coastline, too.

At the south end of the county is Bodega Bay.  That and the little inland town of Bodega, were where Alfred Hitchcock filmed 'The Birds'.  The school and the house next door where the crows landed and attacked the children are actually in the town of Bodega.  The waterside scenes were filmed in Bodega Bay.  The villages have changed a lot in the past 40 years, but the school is still there.

About 10 miles or so north of Bodega Bay is Goat Rock.  It's an interesting place - an upthrust of rock right at the mouth of the Russian River, which is one of the major rivers north of the Golden Gate.
In the spring and fall, when the killer whale pods migrate between Alaska and Mexico you can sometimes see them from the highway that runs along the hillside above the beach.

I have never seen it, or heard about it directly from someone I know personally, but through the local grapevine I have heard that it's really not a good idea to be on the northerly end of the beach during the whale migration.  Harbor seals use the beach for pupping and I rumor has it that the whales will chase the seals into the shallows in attempt to collect dinner.  Now if you're wading, or your dog is frolicking the whale might get confused.

Here's a link that includes information about the Sonoma Coast and the various beaches.

http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=451

In the above link, there are also links to photographs of the area.  It's rugged and beautiful and great for hiking or exploring.

If you ever come to Sonoma County, it's definitely worth a day trip.

First Blog

Good morning!

Admission:  this is my first try at blogging and it's a bit intimidating.  What do I say?  Will anyone care?  Probably not, but we're all doing it anyway, so why not me, too?

I don't know what this will be - ramblings, little tit bits of information about me, about my place in the world (Sonoma County, California), grumblings.  Maybe a flash fiction piece or something longer.

You see, I want to be an author.  A friend of mine and I are currently writers.  We put things down on the modern paper of a computer screen - stories and so on - but we haven't yet been discovered.  So we're writers.  Once we're discovered and get published, or publish ourselves, we'll become authors.  It's kind of like caterpillars to butterflies.

Eighteen months ago I decided to stop writing in a vacuum and see what was available to budding writers for honing skills and gaining some visibility.

I discovered Harper Collins's writer's site, Authonomy - https://www.authonomy.com/ - which is a place where writers of all stripes and abilities get together.  We post books, we talk, we fight, we laugh, we joke.  It's kind of like Christmas in a big dysfunctional family at times, but it's my second life.  When I'm online, I'm almost always there, laughing and fighting, writing and posting. 

Right now I'm on the cusp of moving from writer to author.

A few months ago, one of the published and highly successful Authonomy members posted a link to the Inca Project - http://www.incaproject.co.uk/.  It is a website for new, recently discovered or undiscovered authors.

I submitted a bit of my writing based on their requirements.  They accepted me as a member.  A couple of months later, after gathering my courage, I offered the person who runs the site my MS.  He read it, wrote back that he loves it and wants to see it set loose on the world.

Largely because of his wonderful and much needed pushiness, my chrysalis is splitting.  In another couple of months my first book will be out on Amazon and I will emerge into the world with a brand new shiny set of wings.

In the meantime, I'm working on other things.  It's my passion.  It's what I love doing more than anything else, which is another reason I created this blog.  It's an extension of my desire to write, to write well and to provide entertainment and a little escape from the stuff 'out there'.

So - that's my first blog under my belt.  I'll be back and, hopefully, I'll have something more interesting to offer.

Best~
Philippa

Follow me at:  Philippastories@twitter.com